But, All the Same - Part Eleven (SPOILERS for the Film!)
'Batman' and certain characters belong to DC Comics and Warner Bros., respectively. No profit is gained from this writing-only, hopefully, enjoyment.
Those fucking tanks of Bruce's sure come in handy now, doing what they were originally built to do-create bridges. Here, it's really more a case of rebuilding bridges, and right now it's just the one, but the fact is those Tumblers are dead useful. Nice they're on the good side again.
People in Gotham have selective memory loss now when it comes to certain things, and the Bat is certainly one of them. 'Don't speak ill of the dead' and all that, and whenever Gordon's crew or the folks around the shelters get that sad guilty look on their faces, John has to fake it back to them in response and feel some genuine sad guilt of his own. It's a big fucking lie he and Selina are telling every single day, and it burns going down-and coming back up.
But, he doesn't have to like it. Betraying Gotham in this way is a white lie, and telling would mean betraying Bruce, and that wouldn't be anything near as benign or compassionate as a white lie. That would just be betrayal, and John doesn't do that-not to strangers, not if he can help it, and not to people he knows and cares about and certainly not to. . .
He just doesn't do that. It's wrong, but the thing is, by lying to Gotham about Bruce and the fact he was Batman and the fact he's still alive and still as messed up as ever, he's doing the exact same thing that Bruce and Gordon did eight fucking years ago and for the exact same reasons. He's doing it for Bruce, but he's doing it for them too, for himself, for Selina, for Gordon and Fox and Pennyworth and everyone else who knew what was going on and didn't do anything but take take take. The Batman is a hero forever now. It almost feels like a crime to risk ruining that by explaining-the sacrifices made, the debt every single person in this city owes, the horrible, disgusting truth of it all.
John's continually surprised he hasn't developed an ulcer or had some kind of stress-related breakdown. He gets headaches but nothing out of the ordinary. He's steadily putting back on some much needed weight, and so he doesn't look quite so much like a homeless teenager as he had. He's not lonely or swamped, and yet carrying around this secret is exhausting, frustrating, and just overall horrible.
How did they manage it for eight years? How did Gordon do this? John figured it out, yeah, but it wasn't the same. What he'd managed to work out was a sliver of the whole picture, one piece of a 1,000.
He's seen Gordon a couple more times since the incident with Selina and the bike coming back from the bunker out at the docks, and they said their hellos and shook hands and griped some, but the strain is still there and likely always will be. John can't believe the lengths Gordon went to in order to play along with Bruce's martyr complex, and Gordon resents having to justify what he still evidently strongly believes was the right thing to do.
And, meanwhile, John's a big ol' fat hypocrite, lying through his goddamn teeth every time someone mentions how tragic it is that the Batman died without even receiving any gratitude for all he'd done or an apology for the awful way he'd been treated all that time.
'He won't accept any apology,' John wants to say. 'He doesn't think like that. You'd be wasting your breath.'
He'd told Selina that this is his 'just deserts' for refusing to understand the position the Commissioner had been in. She'd looked at him and asked how he thought she felt, and he'd dropped it. That's something, at least. John hasn't betrayed Bruce, not in that sense, not yet. He may be aiding and abetting in terms of this stupid martyr thing Bruce has going, but technically nothing John has done has caused direct harm to come to the man.
Again, not yet anyway because he's not fool enough to believe they're out of the woods. If Gotham's taught him anything, it's that something too good to be true is always too good to be true.
And nothing lasts. Something's always gotta give.
***
People start coming back into the city, and finally successfully escaping it, 13 days after The Occupation, after what John refers to in his head as people coming to 'love the bomb.' Who knows the long-term effects of that explosion, of all that radiation going up a scant six miles off the nearest coast of the city? Maybe they're all fucked anyway, Chernobyl-style, and kids conceived during the celebratory mood of today will come out even more fucked. Maybe cancer rates in the next ten years will skyrocket. For sure, though, therapists are going to be making millions for the foreseeable future-not billions, though, because of all the unlucky rich neurotics who died. That's likely half the cost of reconstruction lost right there. But, medical and tech people are in high demand, engineers too. Lawyers are already making a killing, attempting to sort out everything.
That's part of what the Commissioner had talked to him about a few days ago. Priorities first, and evidently a certain fucking someone is high up on that list of priorities, and another person connected to that certain fucking someone is now demanding he be let inside not just the 'former' estate, but also anywhere around the city he damn well feels like going. It's causing quite the ruckus too because this person evidently gave a number of interviews to the media during The Occupation, whilst living safely abroad, and in these interviews he also made it a point to repeatedly remark on how badly run Gotham's been for decades, the corruption, the inefficiency, the danger. 'Mortal peril on every corner,' Gordon quotes for him. Never mentioned any specific incident; never fucking had to. Everyone knows; everyone got it.
It has, to use Gordon's own unique turn of phrase, 'turned a national and personal catastrophe into a city-wide free pass.' And John can't say it's a flawed assessment of the situation, but he also understands what motivated the old guy into saying all that he evidently said, and, Christ, is John glad to exercise his right to avoid catching up on all those interviews. Bad enough Gordon's roped him into playing chauffer and welcome wagon to Alfred Pennyworth when he arrives. Reading what the guy had said while stuck a thousand miles away from the man he'd essentially raised, and who he now mistakenly believes is dead, is not something John ever wants to do.
It just gets worse and worse. He can't even decide what to do with regard to Bruce. He can't tell him, surely, but what happens if he doesn't, and then Bruce finds out some other way that his former legal guardian, surrogate father, caretaker, and friend is back in the city and confronts John, and all John will be able to say as justification for lying to him is, 'Well, maybe I didn't want you to be hurt again. Maybe I care about you too much.'
He doesn't even know Pennyworth, after all, and he barely knows Fox, and his take on Gordon wasn't ever really accurate, as it turned out. He doesn't owe them anything, certainly not the truth he can't and won't share. That's how he initially justifies lying right to their faces the day Pennyworth arrives, the 13th day after Batman supposedly died in the explosion, almost two weeks since the last time anyone can officially verify Bruce Wayne's presence in the city, and the earliest a civilian is granted permission to re-enter the lower portion of Gotham.
They'd met before, John and Pennyworth, that day he'd driven out to the Wayne estate nearly six months and a whole lifetime ago. Curt but polite, almost seemingly pleased to let him inside the place-and when he'd left, Pennyworth had looked at him, a certain expression on his face, and John in hindsight has decided that look was hopeful, optimistic, maybe a smidgen encouraging. 'Get him out,' he figured the guy had been thinking. 'Give him a reason to get the hell off the property for once.'
Well, if that were the case, then John succeeded admirably. If his job were setting things in motion, he'd be like a fucking fish in water because that seems to be all he ever accomplishes. John starts shit, and he very rarely is the one who has to finish it, and he doesn't know if that's luck or bad karma-six of one, half dozen of the other.
He doesn't know if he's a good man to know or the guy people die cursing.
Fox steps forward first to meet Pennyworth and shake his hand. It's formal and controlled just like the two men themselves, but the cracks are there. Fox is always frowning, has this hangdog expression, and John's heard a bit about the autopilot situation from Selina and even less from Bruce, but he's got the gist of it. Fox feels guilt for not fixing the autopilot himself when he had the chance, and John feels guilt for not being able to tell him. . .
"You lied?" John had asked, flabbergasted.
"No," Bruce had responded. A second or two passed in silence, and then he'd elaborated. "I really didn't know if it would work. Not like there was a manual."
"Still," John had said, "that's pretty. . . "
"What, cold?" And everything about Bruce in that moment, from his face to his posture to his voice had been, well, cold too.
John had met his eyes and nodded.
"'Prepare for the worst'," Bruce had retorted.
"No 'hope for the best'?" John had quoted back, angry and sad and horrified.
And he thought it pretty much summed up Bruce as a person when he'd answered, "That was hoping for the best."
"Lucius," Pennyworth greets, and he's chilly but not cold, not detached like. . .
"Alfred," is Fox's response, and then they stop shaking, but Fox brings up his other hand and briefly squeezes Pennyworth's hand in both of his own. Then, that's it. They step back, and it's the Commissioner's turn.
Pennyworth narrows his eyes when Gordon says quietly, stiltedly, "My sincerest condolences, sir," but they shake hands too, and nothing more is said.
"Sir," John offers, when it's his turn and those critical eyes are evaluating him, trying, no doubt, to figure out what he knows and what he'll give away and what his role in Bruce's "death" had been.
They don't shake hands. Pennyworth doesn't offer and neither does John. It's no doubt intended as an insult, but it comes as a relief.
There's a fucking motorcade behind the four of them, all to give the best impression possible, to convey the message that the city's taking this seriously, that Bruce Wayne is still important, that his death is a tragedy, that what happened is now seen for what it is.
A big fat fucking atonement, is what this show is all about. They dismissed Bruce as soon as he stopped being entertaining, made him a punch line, mocked and cheered when he first "wasted" his money on the clean energy idea and then had it stolen the day before the start of The Occupation.
Well, they're not laughing anymore. Now, they feel bad. Now, they're reevaluating the situation. Too little, too fucking late.
Or maybe not. John keeps hoping that every time he brings back news of what's going on and of how people are grieving that it will stir something up inside Bruce, that he'll slowly come to realize that he's not forgotten or irrelevant, that he's part of this, not outside it.
No luck so far.
He'd left mid-morning today after his and Bruce's run, after that shower to end all showers, to come here and stand here and lie here, and it's easy to think of it all as just a waste of time, futile. Bruce won't change, won't be changed, and people are people. They'll forget. In time, The Occupation and the Batman will be soapboxes, platforms, rallying cries for the same corrupt politicians and the same social reforms that never happen, and books will be written and films and TV shows made, and none of it will factor in at all.
It's easy to be pessimistic.
John has two strategies in life-fight or flight, and the former wins out more than the latter, but he does nothing small. He's not subtle. He's not good at pussyfooting around and slowly manipulating people like chess pieces. He sucks at chess, hasn't the patience for it-more of a leap before looking kinda guy. All this strategy is usually embarrassingly out of his depth, but it comes to him then that maybe there's a way to navigate this gulf between Bruce and the rest of the world. Maybe he can split the difference between the complete lie and the absolute truth.
John charges in, and Bruce plans out, but Selina, Selina, Selina-now, she does both, doesn't she?
"Where to first, Mr. Pennyworth?" John asks, and it's bold, blunt, somewhat ruthless even, but Pennyworth's looking at him differently, not like a moment ago. "Have you been out to the mansion yet?"
"Not yet, no," the man eventually answers, and in his tone John hears the gears rapidly turning, the ideas formulating. "I was rushed here for this pomposity."
"Probably best to start out there," John offers, and then he goes in for the kill, wanting to put to rest any doubts or reservations the other three might have about him, specifically the extent of his knowledge. "Or at the docks." Three pairs of eyes are on him at that, and he adds, "Although at this point, I think that bunker's pretty much been cleaned out."
He barely resists adding 'if you know what I mean.' But, that would be too quick. It'd give it away, and he needs to tread carefully, maneuver around all the traps and tripwires.
'Prepare them for the worst.' Oh, they're already there.
Now it's the second part, time to give them some hope-some, while he keeps working on the rest of the problem, while he keeps up with Bruce, while he and Selina work at amends.
"The Manor then, if you please, Officer Blake," Pennyworth says to him.
John shoots him the tiniest smile ever, as he turns with his keys in hand and gestures towards the car. "No 'Officer' anymore, Mr. Pennyworth. Just 'Blake' is fine-or John."
***
The place is empty when he gets back, no Bruce, no Selina, and instantly the alarms in his head go off. Not right, they scream; something's not right here. Like in a dream, John walks through the apartment, straight from the door to the miniscule bedroom and right to the safe because no Bruce and no Selina means the presence of someone else, the hand of another, intruding, interfering.
And John already has a pretty good idea whose hand that is. His gut, his intuition brings him back to the other day, the first 'run' he and Bruce went on, and it's always been there, some part of the whole scheme lurking in the back of his mind like that one puzzle piece. Bruce Wayne is Batman, Robin had realized, short for his age, scrawny, 14 years old and so goddamn naïve, the little tough guy, hitting bigger kids with lunch trays and considering himself a true badass after he'd had his nose broken the third time. Bruce Wayne, billionaire orphan, is the Bat, and it had all fallen into place. Then, the Joker happened, and they'd all had to grow the fuck up and stop believing in miracles and superheroes. Juvie, then prison, had been Robin's fate, and John had turned that around right quick, nipped that in the bud.
But, now it's the Joker again and Bruce again, and maybe it's the Batman again too. Maybe, though, it's someone else too. No such thing as coincidences, right?
John carries his gun with him at all times, so he's ready to go. He grabs the flashlight from his duffle, though, before locking up Selina's apartment again and heading out.
The safe was empty, and John's willing to bet that the rest will turn out how he's guessed too. The coincidences are piling up, like-puzzle pieces dumped on the floor. That clinic will be short a doctor when he gets there; the folks around will stutter and shrug when he asks about a guy with big scars on his cheeks; Selina will be holed up somewhere, temporarily taken out of the picture because she's too valuable as leverage to be done away with permanently.
A trap. Fucking chess pieces moving on the board. John hates this stuff.
Robin, though, was pretty good at it. Little detective, pint-sized hero, he'd considered himself the smartest kid in any room. Had to be.
Bruce, you brash fucking idiot, John is thinking on a loop. He runs blocks and blocks, always keeping an eye up towards the rooftops-looking for a dark shadow carefully making its way. Likely already weighed the options, decided this is the best course of action. Maybe even put it together the other day on that 'run.' While John had been focusing on keeping his hands to himself and making sure Bruce didn't pop his stitches, Bruce had been staring down the street at the clinic. "Elliot," he'd said, and it'd been too knowing, sad, angry-disgusted.
John knew there'd been something off about that guy but couldn't prove it. Fucking creepy fish-eyes.
Those fucking tanks of Bruce's sure come in handy now, doing what they were originally built to do-create bridges. Here, it's really more a case of rebuilding bridges, and right now it's just the one, but the fact is those Tumblers are dead useful. Nice they're on the good side again.
People in Gotham have selective memory loss now when it comes to certain things, and the Bat is certainly one of them. 'Don't speak ill of the dead' and all that, and whenever Gordon's crew or the folks around the shelters get that sad guilty look on their faces, John has to fake it back to them in response and feel some genuine sad guilt of his own. It's a big fucking lie he and Selina are telling every single day, and it burns going down-and coming back up.
But, he doesn't have to like it. Betraying Gotham in this way is a white lie, and telling would mean betraying Bruce, and that wouldn't be anything near as benign or compassionate as a white lie. That would just be betrayal, and John doesn't do that-not to strangers, not if he can help it, and not to people he knows and cares about and certainly not to. . .
He just doesn't do that. It's wrong, but the thing is, by lying to Gotham about Bruce and the fact he was Batman and the fact he's still alive and still as messed up as ever, he's doing the exact same thing that Bruce and Gordon did eight fucking years ago and for the exact same reasons. He's doing it for Bruce, but he's doing it for them too, for himself, for Selina, for Gordon and Fox and Pennyworth and everyone else who knew what was going on and didn't do anything but take take take. The Batman is a hero forever now. It almost feels like a crime to risk ruining that by explaining-the sacrifices made, the debt every single person in this city owes, the horrible, disgusting truth of it all.
John's continually surprised he hasn't developed an ulcer or had some kind of stress-related breakdown. He gets headaches but nothing out of the ordinary. He's steadily putting back on some much needed weight, and so he doesn't look quite so much like a homeless teenager as he had. He's not lonely or swamped, and yet carrying around this secret is exhausting, frustrating, and just overall horrible.
How did they manage it for eight years? How did Gordon do this? John figured it out, yeah, but it wasn't the same. What he'd managed to work out was a sliver of the whole picture, one piece of a 1,000.
He's seen Gordon a couple more times since the incident with Selina and the bike coming back from the bunker out at the docks, and they said their hellos and shook hands and griped some, but the strain is still there and likely always will be. John can't believe the lengths Gordon went to in order to play along with Bruce's martyr complex, and Gordon resents having to justify what he still evidently strongly believes was the right thing to do.
And, meanwhile, John's a big ol' fat hypocrite, lying through his goddamn teeth every time someone mentions how tragic it is that the Batman died without even receiving any gratitude for all he'd done or an apology for the awful way he'd been treated all that time.
'He won't accept any apology,' John wants to say. 'He doesn't think like that. You'd be wasting your breath.'
He'd told Selina that this is his 'just deserts' for refusing to understand the position the Commissioner had been in. She'd looked at him and asked how he thought she felt, and he'd dropped it. That's something, at least. John hasn't betrayed Bruce, not in that sense, not yet. He may be aiding and abetting in terms of this stupid martyr thing Bruce has going, but technically nothing John has done has caused direct harm to come to the man.
Again, not yet anyway because he's not fool enough to believe they're out of the woods. If Gotham's taught him anything, it's that something too good to be true is always too good to be true.
And nothing lasts. Something's always gotta give.
***
People start coming back into the city, and finally successfully escaping it, 13 days after The Occupation, after what John refers to in his head as people coming to 'love the bomb.' Who knows the long-term effects of that explosion, of all that radiation going up a scant six miles off the nearest coast of the city? Maybe they're all fucked anyway, Chernobyl-style, and kids conceived during the celebratory mood of today will come out even more fucked. Maybe cancer rates in the next ten years will skyrocket. For sure, though, therapists are going to be making millions for the foreseeable future-not billions, though, because of all the unlucky rich neurotics who died. That's likely half the cost of reconstruction lost right there. But, medical and tech people are in high demand, engineers too. Lawyers are already making a killing, attempting to sort out everything.
That's part of what the Commissioner had talked to him about a few days ago. Priorities first, and evidently a certain fucking someone is high up on that list of priorities, and another person connected to that certain fucking someone is now demanding he be let inside not just the 'former' estate, but also anywhere around the city he damn well feels like going. It's causing quite the ruckus too because this person evidently gave a number of interviews to the media during The Occupation, whilst living safely abroad, and in these interviews he also made it a point to repeatedly remark on how badly run Gotham's been for decades, the corruption, the inefficiency, the danger. 'Mortal peril on every corner,' Gordon quotes for him. Never mentioned any specific incident; never fucking had to. Everyone knows; everyone got it.
It has, to use Gordon's own unique turn of phrase, 'turned a national and personal catastrophe into a city-wide free pass.' And John can't say it's a flawed assessment of the situation, but he also understands what motivated the old guy into saying all that he evidently said, and, Christ, is John glad to exercise his right to avoid catching up on all those interviews. Bad enough Gordon's roped him into playing chauffer and welcome wagon to Alfred Pennyworth when he arrives. Reading what the guy had said while stuck a thousand miles away from the man he'd essentially raised, and who he now mistakenly believes is dead, is not something John ever wants to do.
It just gets worse and worse. He can't even decide what to do with regard to Bruce. He can't tell him, surely, but what happens if he doesn't, and then Bruce finds out some other way that his former legal guardian, surrogate father, caretaker, and friend is back in the city and confronts John, and all John will be able to say as justification for lying to him is, 'Well, maybe I didn't want you to be hurt again. Maybe I care about you too much.'
He doesn't even know Pennyworth, after all, and he barely knows Fox, and his take on Gordon wasn't ever really accurate, as it turned out. He doesn't owe them anything, certainly not the truth he can't and won't share. That's how he initially justifies lying right to their faces the day Pennyworth arrives, the 13th day after Batman supposedly died in the explosion, almost two weeks since the last time anyone can officially verify Bruce Wayne's presence in the city, and the earliest a civilian is granted permission to re-enter the lower portion of Gotham.
They'd met before, John and Pennyworth, that day he'd driven out to the Wayne estate nearly six months and a whole lifetime ago. Curt but polite, almost seemingly pleased to let him inside the place-and when he'd left, Pennyworth had looked at him, a certain expression on his face, and John in hindsight has decided that look was hopeful, optimistic, maybe a smidgen encouraging. 'Get him out,' he figured the guy had been thinking. 'Give him a reason to get the hell off the property for once.'
Well, if that were the case, then John succeeded admirably. If his job were setting things in motion, he'd be like a fucking fish in water because that seems to be all he ever accomplishes. John starts shit, and he very rarely is the one who has to finish it, and he doesn't know if that's luck or bad karma-six of one, half dozen of the other.
He doesn't know if he's a good man to know or the guy people die cursing.
Fox steps forward first to meet Pennyworth and shake his hand. It's formal and controlled just like the two men themselves, but the cracks are there. Fox is always frowning, has this hangdog expression, and John's heard a bit about the autopilot situation from Selina and even less from Bruce, but he's got the gist of it. Fox feels guilt for not fixing the autopilot himself when he had the chance, and John feels guilt for not being able to tell him. . .
"You lied?" John had asked, flabbergasted.
"No," Bruce had responded. A second or two passed in silence, and then he'd elaborated. "I really didn't know if it would work. Not like there was a manual."
"Still," John had said, "that's pretty. . . "
"What, cold?" And everything about Bruce in that moment, from his face to his posture to his voice had been, well, cold too.
John had met his eyes and nodded.
"'Prepare for the worst'," Bruce had retorted.
"No 'hope for the best'?" John had quoted back, angry and sad and horrified.
And he thought it pretty much summed up Bruce as a person when he'd answered, "That was hoping for the best."
"Lucius," Pennyworth greets, and he's chilly but not cold, not detached like. . .
"Alfred," is Fox's response, and then they stop shaking, but Fox brings up his other hand and briefly squeezes Pennyworth's hand in both of his own. Then, that's it. They step back, and it's the Commissioner's turn.
Pennyworth narrows his eyes when Gordon says quietly, stiltedly, "My sincerest condolences, sir," but they shake hands too, and nothing more is said.
"Sir," John offers, when it's his turn and those critical eyes are evaluating him, trying, no doubt, to figure out what he knows and what he'll give away and what his role in Bruce's "death" had been.
They don't shake hands. Pennyworth doesn't offer and neither does John. It's no doubt intended as an insult, but it comes as a relief.
There's a fucking motorcade behind the four of them, all to give the best impression possible, to convey the message that the city's taking this seriously, that Bruce Wayne is still important, that his death is a tragedy, that what happened is now seen for what it is.
A big fat fucking atonement, is what this show is all about. They dismissed Bruce as soon as he stopped being entertaining, made him a punch line, mocked and cheered when he first "wasted" his money on the clean energy idea and then had it stolen the day before the start of The Occupation.
Well, they're not laughing anymore. Now, they feel bad. Now, they're reevaluating the situation. Too little, too fucking late.
Or maybe not. John keeps hoping that every time he brings back news of what's going on and of how people are grieving that it will stir something up inside Bruce, that he'll slowly come to realize that he's not forgotten or irrelevant, that he's part of this, not outside it.
No luck so far.
He'd left mid-morning today after his and Bruce's run, after that shower to end all showers, to come here and stand here and lie here, and it's easy to think of it all as just a waste of time, futile. Bruce won't change, won't be changed, and people are people. They'll forget. In time, The Occupation and the Batman will be soapboxes, platforms, rallying cries for the same corrupt politicians and the same social reforms that never happen, and books will be written and films and TV shows made, and none of it will factor in at all.
It's easy to be pessimistic.
John has two strategies in life-fight or flight, and the former wins out more than the latter, but he does nothing small. He's not subtle. He's not good at pussyfooting around and slowly manipulating people like chess pieces. He sucks at chess, hasn't the patience for it-more of a leap before looking kinda guy. All this strategy is usually embarrassingly out of his depth, but it comes to him then that maybe there's a way to navigate this gulf between Bruce and the rest of the world. Maybe he can split the difference between the complete lie and the absolute truth.
John charges in, and Bruce plans out, but Selina, Selina, Selina-now, she does both, doesn't she?
"Where to first, Mr. Pennyworth?" John asks, and it's bold, blunt, somewhat ruthless even, but Pennyworth's looking at him differently, not like a moment ago. "Have you been out to the mansion yet?"
"Not yet, no," the man eventually answers, and in his tone John hears the gears rapidly turning, the ideas formulating. "I was rushed here for this pomposity."
"Probably best to start out there," John offers, and then he goes in for the kill, wanting to put to rest any doubts or reservations the other three might have about him, specifically the extent of his knowledge. "Or at the docks." Three pairs of eyes are on him at that, and he adds, "Although at this point, I think that bunker's pretty much been cleaned out."
He barely resists adding 'if you know what I mean.' But, that would be too quick. It'd give it away, and he needs to tread carefully, maneuver around all the traps and tripwires.
'Prepare them for the worst.' Oh, they're already there.
Now it's the second part, time to give them some hope-some, while he keeps working on the rest of the problem, while he keeps up with Bruce, while he and Selina work at amends.
"The Manor then, if you please, Officer Blake," Pennyworth says to him.
John shoots him the tiniest smile ever, as he turns with his keys in hand and gestures towards the car. "No 'Officer' anymore, Mr. Pennyworth. Just 'Blake' is fine-or John."
***
The place is empty when he gets back, no Bruce, no Selina, and instantly the alarms in his head go off. Not right, they scream; something's not right here. Like in a dream, John walks through the apartment, straight from the door to the miniscule bedroom and right to the safe because no Bruce and no Selina means the presence of someone else, the hand of another, intruding, interfering.
And John already has a pretty good idea whose hand that is. His gut, his intuition brings him back to the other day, the first 'run' he and Bruce went on, and it's always been there, some part of the whole scheme lurking in the back of his mind like that one puzzle piece. Bruce Wayne is Batman, Robin had realized, short for his age, scrawny, 14 years old and so goddamn naïve, the little tough guy, hitting bigger kids with lunch trays and considering himself a true badass after he'd had his nose broken the third time. Bruce Wayne, billionaire orphan, is the Bat, and it had all fallen into place. Then, the Joker happened, and they'd all had to grow the fuck up and stop believing in miracles and superheroes. Juvie, then prison, had been Robin's fate, and John had turned that around right quick, nipped that in the bud.
But, now it's the Joker again and Bruce again, and maybe it's the Batman again too. Maybe, though, it's someone else too. No such thing as coincidences, right?
John carries his gun with him at all times, so he's ready to go. He grabs the flashlight from his duffle, though, before locking up Selina's apartment again and heading out.
The safe was empty, and John's willing to bet that the rest will turn out how he's guessed too. The coincidences are piling up, like-puzzle pieces dumped on the floor. That clinic will be short a doctor when he gets there; the folks around will stutter and shrug when he asks about a guy with big scars on his cheeks; Selina will be holed up somewhere, temporarily taken out of the picture because she's too valuable as leverage to be done away with permanently.
A trap. Fucking chess pieces moving on the board. John hates this stuff.
Robin, though, was pretty good at it. Little detective, pint-sized hero, he'd considered himself the smartest kid in any room. Had to be.
Bruce, you brash fucking idiot, John is thinking on a loop. He runs blocks and blocks, always keeping an eye up towards the rooftops-looking for a dark shadow carefully making its way. Likely already weighed the options, decided this is the best course of action. Maybe even put it together the other day on that 'run.' While John had been focusing on keeping his hands to himself and making sure Bruce didn't pop his stitches, Bruce had been staring down the street at the clinic. "Elliot," he'd said, and it'd been too knowing, sad, angry-disgusted.
John knew there'd been something off about that guy but couldn't prove it. Fucking creepy fish-eyes.