10 Bruce-centric Drabbles
So. I'm still doing that 'sporatic posting' thing. It's chill. I come bearing fic. Here's the set-up:
callmejude wrote in
house_wilson:
CHALLENGE: Pick a novel (or book), preferably one of more than 100 pages in length, and take the first (full) sentence off of the top of page; 10, 20, 30, 40 & ect. Until you have ten (or thereabouts) quotes. Take said ten (or so) quotes and write drabbles based on them. You can use the whole quote, or just a section, even a word - all that matters is that you stay faithful to the first sentence part of the challenge.
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I- being devious, and also silly, and also maniacal, and in many small ways mad, have decided not only to follow through with the challenge, but to use the same quotes for a number of fandoms, and a number of characters and/or pairings in those fandoms.
------In the spirit of full disclosure, I occasionally skipped when the sentences were to long (70 was, I believe, originally a laundry list of things unavailable in a distopian enviroment.) or to specific (90, I think, was a rambling discourse on doublethink.).
------
I'm putting them all under the cut, with the warning that they trend toward being dark. There is some character death, some mentions of non-con, and some contemplation of mortality. Of course, I already told you: They're about Bruce.
Title: Revolution of One
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Four legs good, two legs better.
Word Count: 165
Story Note: Implied Character Death
Quote: She was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven, with thick dark hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements
------
She was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven, with thick dark hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. Bruce didn’t know her name. He didn’t think it mattered.
People sometimes called him a misogynist over the way he let women slip out of his mind. Of course, people also called him ‘Brucie’, and every single time he had to stop himself from snapping their necks. Honestly, why should he worry about the name of some twit debutant or other?
He smiled, he laughed. Her face was solemn, and her voice was deep. He sipped champagne. She casually tipped a bit of her cosmopolitan into the plant at her elbow every few minutes. He tried to engage her in a little conversation. She just said something barely comprehensible about him being someone named Mollie and something about ribbons. The cluster of expensive, glittering people around her decided it was a joke, and they laughed.
Bruce was still laughing when the bomb in her purse exploded.
Title: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: PG
Summary: Try, try again.
Word Count: 143
Quote: His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless.
------
There were four men on the dock, rolling nondescript barrels away from the road, towards the water. He knew three of them, had arrested them before. It made a band tighten around his chest when he recognized someone’s henchmen working for someone else.
His mouth tasted like ashes. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless.
He hated this part. And all the parts that came after it. And most of the parts that came before.
He wondered again why he was doing this.
A birdarang whizzed out of the darkness, and lodged unexpectedly in the shoulder of the redhead. It was accompanied by a wild war cry as Robin leapt out of the darkness for his Gotham nightlife debut.
Batman swept in to back him up. Hell. Maybe the fifth time was the charm.
Title: A Wish Your Heart Makes
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Bruce’s subconscious has something to add.
Word Count: 169
Story Note: Some Disturbing Imagery
Quote: It was one of those dreams which, while retaining the characteristic dream scenery, are a continuation of one’s intellectual life, and ideas which still seem new and valuable after one is awake.
------
He wonders, sometimes, when the insomnia and the night terrors conspire to keep him awake, what other people dream about. Normal people.
He’d read books about dream imagery before. He’s talked to shrinks before, although he doesn’t let on about that to his colleagues. It’s sort of fun, provided he’s got his identities straightjacketed away and can just be Bruce for an hour. Between mad playboy Brucie and robotic logical Batman, it’s hard to get some time to himself.
He’s used to dreaming about the things he knows are true- murders, blood, sex, pain, guilt, grief. To little, he dreams of things he is less sure of- hope, love, friendship, family, peace, safety, sanity. Infrequent, but more disturbing, are the dreams he knows are not true- dreams that leave the sheets damp and his body hungry, and his throat dry from speaking to people who will never know this room, this bed, this body.
He wonders, though, if other people have dreams of being pecked to death by robins.
Title: Who I Used To Be
Rating: PG
Summary: He’s a secretive man.
Word Count: 160
Quote: Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.
------
He’s okay with it.
He probably shouldn’t be. Lying is the direct opposite of how a relationship is built. If they don’t trust him, it’s really not all that surprising. Whether they were Robin or Batgirl, he’s taught every member of the clan to spot a lie a mile away (Cass hadn’t needed any help in that department). They don’t know what he’s lying about, but they know he’s lying.
He doesn’t worry about it anymore. It has become just another piece of necessary maintenance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. Five minutes to sweep through the archives, to delete a few incriminating news articles, blot out a handful of connections. It’s the only time he’s glad for the way no one communicates around here.
Batman isn’t the first mask he wore, and Robin wasn’t the first partner to fly by his side.
But it’s better if they don’t know that.
Title: Gravitational Drops
Rating: Soft R
Summary: Bruce considers Dick’s colors.
Word Count: 184
Story Note: Character Death
Quote: And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue- a quite bright blue.
------
He never really got the blue. It was just so… bright.
It was, he reflected, more in keeping with Dick’s character than the black was, really. And it was better than the disco suit or (Bruce shuddered involuntarily) the first Robin costume.
That was his fault. He’d given a traumatized seven year-old circus performer with moderate red-green colorblindness a box of crayons.
“B?” Tim’s voice, trembling and pitched far to high. He sounded more like Dick than he ever had before. Focus, Bruce. Focus.
“Go to work.” Robin swallows hard and starts taking pictures of the scene. Bruce calls in to Oracle. Above them, dangling from a tangle of cables, Nightwing’s heels tapped against each other.
Tim snaps a shot of the knife on the ground under the body and Bruce thinks of Jason. The blade is straight, and Bat-issued, and it looks like Dick was trying to cut himself out of the snarled cables and made a mistake.
In the darkness of the dirty alley, the only color is Nightwing’s stripes, and the tongue sticking right out, and blue- a quite bright blue.
Title: Event Horizon
Rating: PG
Summary: Trust is earned.
Word Count: 146
Quote: Sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.
------
Sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. They aren’t stupid, just… soft. Trusting.
They trust him, and that thought makes him reconsider his evaluation of their stupidity. Because it isn’t as though he’s been secretive in this respect. He’s hidden secret alliances, cloaked old associations, concealed terrible research, and masked strange weapons from them, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out he’s got ulterior motives, even if they don’t know what they are.
There are times, when there isn’t a disaster looming on the horizon, or a jailbreak at Arkham, when Batman just sits, and watches a bank of computer screens. Each one trails a friend, a foe, a family member. He watches them living their lives, and calculates the odds.
Eventually, someone is going to realize who the real threat is. And he isn’t looking forward to killing them.
Title: Papaver somniferum
Pairing: Non-Con Bruce/Tim, if you squint and turn your head.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A slice of (surreal) life.
Word Count: 162
Story Note: Vague mention of non-consensual sex with a minor.
Quote: He wondered, as he has many times before, whether he himself was a lunatic.
------
He wondered, as he has many times before, whether he himself was a lunatic. He’s sitting in a swivel chair, in a cave, building a bomb while a teenage boy in tights twists himself into a pretzel behind him.
It doesn’t seem like what sanity is made of.
Tim untwists, and Bruce thinks of nature videos showing flowers bursting into blossom in seconds. Then he thinks of Poison Ivy, and her latest batch of sex pollen. And then he tries to stop thinking about Tim, and the bruises he knows still dapple Robin’s bony chest, and guilt that gnaws at his guts.
He relaxes, and lets himself drift, and when he opens his eyes they are pointed to The Wall. The Cases. He’d stitched the gaily-colored costumes back together himself. His stitches aren’t as neat as Alfred’s, but Alfred doesn’t do his sewing while he begs forgiveness of people who are dead because of his failures.
At least, not that Bruce knows.
Title: Gargoyle
Pairing: Bruce/J’onn, if you really stretch.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An exercise in futility.
Word Count: 193
Quote: Half of them hadn’t even had boots on their feet.
They were tired. So tired. A week of endless enemies in both the heroic and civilian worlds will do that to you, no matter what kind of super powers you have. Batman was slumped at the computer, monitoring their latest patch over a hole in the fabric of the universe. The rest of the League had trooped to bed an hour ago.
J’onn’s mental voice shook and wavered- Freeing Superman from the alien’s mind control yesterday had tapped him out- he’d been slow off the mark when the dimensional rift opened.
the Martian groused. Bruce rotated the cameras for a better view of the crater in Brazil. There was a group of small children taking turns laying in the Clark-shaped depression in the black dirt. Half of them didn’t even have boots on their feet. Their bellies were rounded and their eyes sunken. Several of them had dried blood all down their legs. He felt J’onn wince.
An image bloomed from his companion’s mind- Batman, crouched on top of one of Gotham’s infamous stone gargoyles.
Title: Memories of Brownies
Rating: PG
Summary: Things happened, between Zorro and Batman.
Word Count: 194
Quote: Throughout that time he had been intending to alter the name over the window, but had never quite got to the point of doing it.
He was 23 when he bought the building. He’d picked this building because of the apartments- apartment, really, although it’s too big for one person. They never boarded up any of the doors, just left the strange rabbit warren floor plan as it was. On the ground floor, there was a shop. It had been a bakery, when he was 23 and the apartment was filled with voices. He had been intending to alter the name over the window, but had never quite got to the point of doing it.
He stops the car here sometimes, in the dead of night, if he’s alone. The flock doesn’t understand- not why he goes to stare at the dirty windows or why there isn’t any crime for six blocks in any direction, despite the neighborhood.
He stares at the dust, and notes the handprints. One woman, two men. The woman wore gloves- she has as much to hide as he does. Batman presses his own right hand against the glass, smudging the dust just so. He walks back to the Batmobile, and longs for a time when he laughed, and baked, and answered to no one.
Title: Candle In The Window
Rating: PG
Summary: Bruce gets a phone call.
Word Count: 212
Story Note: This one still feels frustratingly incomplete. I just don’t know what the next line is. Grr.
Quote: Now that you’ve seen what I’m really like, can you still bear to look at me?
Bruce was at his office when he got the call. The secretary smiled that smug little smile they use when they think they know what’s going on in the big office. He made a note to fire her as he picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“I’m an idiot.” He sank to the floor.
“Jay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”
“What- Why?”
“I needed you to know that I’m an idiot. And that I know it.”
“Jay-“
“I fucked up bad. I fucked up real bad.” Bruce stared sightlessly out at Gotham, reluctantly gleaming in the spring sun.
“It’s okay.” Jason heaved a shuddering sigh. “Just tell me where you are.”
“Now that you’ve seen what I’m really like, can you still bear to look at me?”
“We all fall sometimes.” A splinter of memory: Robin picking at the scabs on his knees and glaring as Nightwing soared overhead. Three Robins now, and they had all done it. “And I think being brought back from the dead falls under ‘extenuating circumstances’.” Jason’s laughter echoes. Small space. Phone booth? Closet?
“I’m a monster, Bruce.”
“Tim is trying to clone Kon in the basement. Cass is an assassin. I recruit teenagers for my war on crime. Compared to the rest of us, you look positively normal.”
Feedback makes me purr. Questions make me write.
callmejude wrote in
house_wilson:
CHALLENGE: Pick a novel (or book), preferably one of more than 100 pages in length, and take the first (full) sentence off of the top of page; 10, 20, 30, 40 & ect. Until you have ten (or thereabouts) quotes. Take said ten (or so) quotes and write drabbles based on them. You can use the whole quote, or just a section, even a word - all that matters is that you stay faithful to the first sentence part of the challenge.
------
I- being devious, and also silly, and also maniacal, and in many small ways mad, have decided not only to follow through with the challenge, but to use the same quotes for a number of fandoms, and a number of characters and/or pairings in those fandoms.
------In the spirit of full disclosure, I occasionally skipped when the sentences were to long (70 was, I believe, originally a laundry list of things unavailable in a distopian enviroment.) or to specific (90, I think, was a rambling discourse on doublethink.).
------
I'm putting them all under the cut, with the warning that they trend toward being dark. There is some character death, some mentions of non-con, and some contemplation of mortality. Of course, I already told you: They're about Bruce.
Title: Revolution of One
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Four legs good, two legs better.
Word Count: 165
Story Note: Implied Character Death
Quote: She was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven, with thick dark hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements
------
She was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven, with thick dark hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. Bruce didn’t know her name. He didn’t think it mattered.
People sometimes called him a misogynist over the way he let women slip out of his mind. Of course, people also called him ‘Brucie’, and every single time he had to stop himself from snapping their necks. Honestly, why should he worry about the name of some twit debutant or other?
He smiled, he laughed. Her face was solemn, and her voice was deep. He sipped champagne. She casually tipped a bit of her cosmopolitan into the plant at her elbow every few minutes. He tried to engage her in a little conversation. She just said something barely comprehensible about him being someone named Mollie and something about ribbons. The cluster of expensive, glittering people around her decided it was a joke, and they laughed.
Bruce was still laughing when the bomb in her purse exploded.
Title: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: PG
Summary: Try, try again.
Word Count: 143
Quote: His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless.
------
There were four men on the dock, rolling nondescript barrels away from the road, towards the water. He knew three of them, had arrested them before. It made a band tighten around his chest when he recognized someone’s henchmen working for someone else.
His mouth tasted like ashes. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless.
He hated this part. And all the parts that came after it. And most of the parts that came before.
He wondered again why he was doing this.
A birdarang whizzed out of the darkness, and lodged unexpectedly in the shoulder of the redhead. It was accompanied by a wild war cry as Robin leapt out of the darkness for his Gotham nightlife debut.
Batman swept in to back him up. Hell. Maybe the fifth time was the charm.
Title: A Wish Your Heart Makes
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Bruce’s subconscious has something to add.
Word Count: 169
Story Note: Some Disturbing Imagery
Quote: It was one of those dreams which, while retaining the characteristic dream scenery, are a continuation of one’s intellectual life, and ideas which still seem new and valuable after one is awake.
------
He wonders, sometimes, when the insomnia and the night terrors conspire to keep him awake, what other people dream about. Normal people.
He’d read books about dream imagery before. He’s talked to shrinks before, although he doesn’t let on about that to his colleagues. It’s sort of fun, provided he’s got his identities straightjacketed away and can just be Bruce for an hour. Between mad playboy Brucie and robotic logical Batman, it’s hard to get some time to himself.
He’s used to dreaming about the things he knows are true- murders, blood, sex, pain, guilt, grief. To little, he dreams of things he is less sure of- hope, love, friendship, family, peace, safety, sanity. Infrequent, but more disturbing, are the dreams he knows are not true- dreams that leave the sheets damp and his body hungry, and his throat dry from speaking to people who will never know this room, this bed, this body.
He wonders, though, if other people have dreams of being pecked to death by robins.
Title: Who I Used To Be
Rating: PG
Summary: He’s a secretive man.
Word Count: 160
Quote: Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.
------
He’s okay with it.
He probably shouldn’t be. Lying is the direct opposite of how a relationship is built. If they don’t trust him, it’s really not all that surprising. Whether they were Robin or Batgirl, he’s taught every member of the clan to spot a lie a mile away (Cass hadn’t needed any help in that department). They don’t know what he’s lying about, but they know he’s lying.
He doesn’t worry about it anymore. It has become just another piece of necessary maintenance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. Five minutes to sweep through the archives, to delete a few incriminating news articles, blot out a handful of connections. It’s the only time he’s glad for the way no one communicates around here.
Batman isn’t the first mask he wore, and Robin wasn’t the first partner to fly by his side.
But it’s better if they don’t know that.
Title: Gravitational Drops
Rating: Soft R
Summary: Bruce considers Dick’s colors.
Word Count: 184
Story Note: Character Death
Quote: And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue- a quite bright blue.
------
He never really got the blue. It was just so… bright.
It was, he reflected, more in keeping with Dick’s character than the black was, really. And it was better than the disco suit or (Bruce shuddered involuntarily) the first Robin costume.
That was his fault. He’d given a traumatized seven year-old circus performer with moderate red-green colorblindness a box of crayons.
“B?” Tim’s voice, trembling and pitched far to high. He sounded more like Dick than he ever had before. Focus, Bruce. Focus.
“Go to work.” Robin swallows hard and starts taking pictures of the scene. Bruce calls in to Oracle. Above them, dangling from a tangle of cables, Nightwing’s heels tapped against each other.
Tim snaps a shot of the knife on the ground under the body and Bruce thinks of Jason. The blade is straight, and Bat-issued, and it looks like Dick was trying to cut himself out of the snarled cables and made a mistake.
In the darkness of the dirty alley, the only color is Nightwing’s stripes, and the tongue sticking right out, and blue- a quite bright blue.
Title: Event Horizon
Rating: PG
Summary: Trust is earned.
Word Count: 146
Quote: Sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.
------
Sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. They aren’t stupid, just… soft. Trusting.
They trust him, and that thought makes him reconsider his evaluation of their stupidity. Because it isn’t as though he’s been secretive in this respect. He’s hidden secret alliances, cloaked old associations, concealed terrible research, and masked strange weapons from them, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out he’s got ulterior motives, even if they don’t know what they are.
There are times, when there isn’t a disaster looming on the horizon, or a jailbreak at Arkham, when Batman just sits, and watches a bank of computer screens. Each one trails a friend, a foe, a family member. He watches them living their lives, and calculates the odds.
Eventually, someone is going to realize who the real threat is. And he isn’t looking forward to killing them.
Title: Papaver somniferum
Pairing: Non-Con Bruce/Tim, if you squint and turn your head.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A slice of (surreal) life.
Word Count: 162
Story Note: Vague mention of non-consensual sex with a minor.
Quote: He wondered, as he has many times before, whether he himself was a lunatic.
------
He wondered, as he has many times before, whether he himself was a lunatic. He’s sitting in a swivel chair, in a cave, building a bomb while a teenage boy in tights twists himself into a pretzel behind him.
It doesn’t seem like what sanity is made of.
Tim untwists, and Bruce thinks of nature videos showing flowers bursting into blossom in seconds. Then he thinks of Poison Ivy, and her latest batch of sex pollen. And then he tries to stop thinking about Tim, and the bruises he knows still dapple Robin’s bony chest, and guilt that gnaws at his guts.
He relaxes, and lets himself drift, and when he opens his eyes they are pointed to The Wall. The Cases. He’d stitched the gaily-colored costumes back together himself. His stitches aren’t as neat as Alfred’s, but Alfred doesn’t do his sewing while he begs forgiveness of people who are dead because of his failures.
At least, not that Bruce knows.
Title: Gargoyle
Pairing: Bruce/J’onn, if you really stretch.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An exercise in futility.
Word Count: 193
Quote: Half of them hadn’t even had boots on their feet.
They were tired. So tired. A week of endless enemies in both the heroic and civilian worlds will do that to you, no matter what kind of super powers you have. Batman was slumped at the computer, monitoring their latest patch over a hole in the fabric of the universe. The rest of the League had trooped to bed an hour ago.
J’onn’s mental voice shook and wavered- Freeing Superman from the alien’s mind control yesterday had tapped him out- he’d been slow off the mark when the dimensional rift opened.
the Martian groused. Bruce rotated the cameras for a better view of the crater in Brazil. There was a group of small children taking turns laying in the Clark-shaped depression in the black dirt. Half of them didn’t even have boots on their feet. Their bellies were rounded and their eyes sunken. Several of them had dried blood all down their legs. He felt J’onn wince.
An image bloomed from his companion’s mind- Batman, crouched on top of one of Gotham’s infamous stone gargoyles.
Title: Memories of Brownies
Rating: PG
Summary: Things happened, between Zorro and Batman.
Word Count: 194
Quote: Throughout that time he had been intending to alter the name over the window, but had never quite got to the point of doing it.
He was 23 when he bought the building. He’d picked this building because of the apartments- apartment, really, although it’s too big for one person. They never boarded up any of the doors, just left the strange rabbit warren floor plan as it was. On the ground floor, there was a shop. It had been a bakery, when he was 23 and the apartment was filled with voices. He had been intending to alter the name over the window, but had never quite got to the point of doing it.
He stops the car here sometimes, in the dead of night, if he’s alone. The flock doesn’t understand- not why he goes to stare at the dirty windows or why there isn’t any crime for six blocks in any direction, despite the neighborhood.
He stares at the dust, and notes the handprints. One woman, two men. The woman wore gloves- she has as much to hide as he does. Batman presses his own right hand against the glass, smudging the dust just so. He walks back to the Batmobile, and longs for a time when he laughed, and baked, and answered to no one.
Title: Candle In The Window
Rating: PG
Summary: Bruce gets a phone call.
Word Count: 212
Story Note: This one still feels frustratingly incomplete. I just don’t know what the next line is. Grr.
Quote: Now that you’ve seen what I’m really like, can you still bear to look at me?
Bruce was at his office when he got the call. The secretary smiled that smug little smile they use when they think they know what’s going on in the big office. He made a note to fire her as he picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“I’m an idiot.” He sank to the floor.
“Jay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”
“What- Why?”
“I needed you to know that I’m an idiot. And that I know it.”
“Jay-“
“I fucked up bad. I fucked up real bad.” Bruce stared sightlessly out at Gotham, reluctantly gleaming in the spring sun.
“It’s okay.” Jason heaved a shuddering sigh. “Just tell me where you are.”
“Now that you’ve seen what I’m really like, can you still bear to look at me?”
“We all fall sometimes.” A splinter of memory: Robin picking at the scabs on his knees and glaring as Nightwing soared overhead. Three Robins now, and they had all done it. “And I think being brought back from the dead falls under ‘extenuating circumstances’.” Jason’s laughter echoes. Small space. Phone booth? Closet?
“I’m a monster, Bruce.”
“Tim is trying to clone Kon in the basement. Cass is an assassin. I recruit teenagers for my war on crime. Compared to the rest of us, you look positively normal.”
Feedback makes me purr. Questions make me write.