batfic: Blink, part 4
Title: Blink
Author: zombieboyband
Fandom: Batman, Earth 3
Summary: Bruce blurts out an incredulous laugh when he sees Owlman. Owlman really, really doesn't like people laughing at him; nor does he like someone else wearing his face. Owlman draws an owlarang and prepares to slice. "Who's laughing now?"
Pairing: Owlman/Batman. Um. Yes. endcredits made me do it encouraged me and gave me the prompt in the summary. Mentions of Owlman/Jokester, and slight Batman/Jokester.
Rating: overall NC-17; this part...PG-13?
Warnings overall: Owlman. Violence. Non-con. Language. Knifeplay, bloodplay, selfcest. Here, though? Eh. SMOOCHIES.
Wordcount: 1,933
Disclaimer: Batman and Owlman, the goddamn, are not mine. Neither are the clowns. Sigh!
An epilogue/part 5 after this, kiddies, and then we're done here--at least with this arc. We might return; WHO KNOWS. I have werewolf batfic to finish before we do.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Despite everything, Batman is Batman: he retreats and considers his options. Immediately, he checks the device on his wrist, tugging off his glove and gauntlet to do so. He doesn't understand, at first, why the gadget is silent, why the cracked face isn't a blinking display of digits without units, without meaning. It takes him a full minute of staring at the broken machine before the significance of it seeps into his awareness.
He's trapped here.
He'll never see his home again, never have Alfred tease him, never visit his parent's grave, never host another stupid party as Bruce Wayne.
Never. Never again.
He will die here.
He will die here, in fear, in the cold shadow of the Owl, because his shadow self is crueler than his worst enemy back home.
The realization is more than enough to set him off another round of running, fleeing from an enemy that isn't there and is everywhere. His mark is all over the city, like Batman's is over his own Gotham. Where there is an unexpected softness in his city-a still open soup kitchen, a warmly lit halfway house-here there are gaping holes, ugly like empty spaces in rotting mouths, absences where teeth should be. There are condemned hole-in-the-wall spaces that sink of meth; there are dead cats no one has swept away; there is long dried blood on the street; there are discarded syringes in the alleys he hides in; lazily hidden body parts in dumpsters and discarder murder weapons.
Every half heard step of every street hoodlum is amplified to his ears; his heart starts to pound anew for each almost-encounter, and he flees with the same determined desperation he would show if it was the Owl coming for him in the night. The suit's crotch is slit open and there's nothing he can do about it. Abandoning the armor seems like madness, and it isn't as if he has a change of clothes. Apart from the physical protection, it's all he has; it's the only thing to remind him of who he is.
Or was.
Batman hates to steal, but he breaks into a small mom and pop pharmacy, looking for disinfect, bandages, needles and surgical thread. There's only enough time to half bandage his chest before some noise erupts in the night. If he had a moment to think, he'd reason that Owlman is beat up and likely tending to his own wounds, but there's no time for thinking; there's only time for terror. He runs.
The rest of the night is a madbad rush. Batman's feverish and needs to rest; oblivion licks at the edges of his vision and unconsciousness threatens. Maybe it even wins a few times, but every noise, every can knocked over by a stray cat, every cautious shuffle of a possibly harmless vagrant wakes him. He springs up, sweating and freezing, and runs, and runs, and runs. He runs until he stumbles, until he's catching himself on worn brick buildings, begging his city that isn't his city to help him stand, to aid and guide him, to hide him until he heals.
It seems like forever but it can't be long at all until he falls, scraping himself up, and stays there, his chin against the ragged concrete.
"So you're the Bat," an almost familiar voice says, the sound ghosting over him.
The dawn's pale and cold and there's mist curling around black boots that step into his vision.
No.
Please, no.
Not now.
"I wanted time for a heart to heart, but I'm sure I'll get the details from an angry little bird, eventually..." A theatrical little sigh. "Say, big boy. You don't look so good. You're about ten minutes past death, from the looks of it, actually. If looks are anything to go by, in your case."
He expects another knife at his mouth. This universe's counterpart has the Owl for company; he has no reason to spare the Batman. He is extraneous here, or worse. In his own world, he doesn't doubt the Joker would take his time picking Owlman apart, to get some mad insight into what makes Batman tick. Same parts, same model, different paint job, says the voice he imagines in his head, while his knife spills rubies that look like bolts and gears to the madman.
Batman stays silent.
"Sheesh, you're less chatty than birdy-brain," the voice says more softly, coming closer to the ground as a clown kneels by his bruised and broken body. "Never thought you were mute. Or is it that the other one of me understands sonar?" A make up stained hand rests on the side of his head, confusingly gentle.
"I want to go home." He lifts his head up as much as he can, but it isn't far, and he knows there is blood running down his chin. He knows this because those fingers have moved to the line of his jaw, and those fingers are now bloody. What brings out the honesty in him, he isn't sure, but it's want he wants with every shaking fiber of his being. He wants it so badly he is trembling. It could be the blood loss, but he swears it's not.
"Home," the clown says wistfully, and some part of Batman--of Bruce--registers that the hair is wrong, purple and too long, pulled back in a ponytail, and the expression is wrong. It looks too sincere. He still doesn't understand the mercy in the touch. He doesn't understand how he finds kindness here, of all places. The mercy he could not get from himself has no business being found now, here, with this.
The shadows are shaped all wrong.
"Whatever you're going to do," Batman manages, through gritted teeth, because he does not believe the mercy he sees, "I won't--I won't make it easy for you." And he's trying, he's struggling. His muscles tighten, like a great beast coiling to strike, but he can't jump to his feet right now.
"Shush your nonsense," the clown tells him, and he sits down on the filthy concrete, drawing Bruce's head into his lap.
"If you're going to kill me--"
"Kill?" he says, puzzled, "Honeydew, moonbeam. I think you've got me confused with someone else. I don't kill."
Batman closes his eyes.
"Neither do I," he whispers.
"I find that hard to believe," comes the soft hum, "No offense. But I do believe you, all the same. Sometimes I've dreamed about it. When is an Owl not an owl? When it's a Bat. And I've seen some strange things in my time, beeelieve you me, sweets. Some of them even really happened!" He pauses, and pats Batman on the head. "By the way, Talon came by, quick as a hop and a skip, and took old Birdie-Bird in. He'll be just fine."
"Talon?" Batman asks, more confused than ever, even though the words don't really matter. It's the soft touch that confounds him, and he is suddenly, sharply sure that he must be dying. His subconscious has decided to torture him in his last minutes, or the wild neurons firing in his brain are becoming stranger and his heart gets weaker. Soon his depleted blood will stop pumping; his fingers will give one last, desperate twitch, and his pulse will stop. He will die, and probably Owlman will find his body and string it up somewhere, or use it for target practice. Perhaps this clown will beat him to it, and delight in doing to Bruce’s body what he can’t to the living Owl, whatever it might be.
The clown continues talking, apparently unconcerned.
"Your, mm, ensemble is even worse than Owlsie's, though, I gotta say. All black. Tsk. Do you lock yourself up in your room and listen to The Cure when you get back from school?"
"Joker," Batman says, weary beyond all understanding, "Not now."
"Jokester, Jokester, make the effort and get it right, sweetpea. I'm not calling you Ratman, am I? But you mean to say you and owls didn't swap stories about your bestest enemies?" The Jokster looks offended, then sympathetic. "I guess there wasn't time. I saw what he--well." He stops when he sees Batman flinch. "I got there at the end, but I know how he is," he says, voice softer. "I'm sorry. I know. If I'd found you sooner, I would've--but you left so fast. You're hard to track."
"Home," he says again, miserable. It's less a wish and more a statement.
"You want me to figure out how to dimension hop you to the proper when and where? Send you skipping through the multiverses to end up safe and sound?" the Jokster sounds amused again. "Well, if that's all..."
He bends over, nearly double, and carefully fits his lips against Batman's. Too much has happened for Batman to jerk back, to ask why, to feel it hurt. It happens--he lets it happen--one of the two. Maybe both. The kiss goes on and on, and while it does, the Jokster nimbly runs his hand over Batman's arm, and he pulls off the gauntlet off. When his hands are free of the glove, the Jokster twines their fingers together breifly, squeezing. Tenderly, he undoes the clasp of the remote whateveritis (still without having to look).
Batman doesn't protest. It's broken, after all. He's stuck here, and what does he have left--
The mouth against his stays tender, but it's Batman who nips at the lips with a touch of desperation, and it deepens from there, tongues sliding against each other curiously and needfully. This clown tastes of greasepaint and lipstick and a minty something or other. Maybe gum. Maybe mentos. Maybe mint lifesavers. It is definitely not real mint. The artifice of it is somehow comforting, like bubble gum flavored medicine that doesn’t taste too bad, or honey-lemon throat lozenges.
When the Jokster pulls back, his eyes are half lidded and his red lips are parted.
"Huh," he says, "That was...different." He soothes a hand across Batman's face, and then fiddles with the metal cuff, looking down. On someone else, the body language might read embarrassed. There is a maybe-flush under the white face paint.
"It's no use," Batman says, "It's bro--"
It's beeping.
Jokester pats him on the head again. He seems to enjoy doing that.
"It takes a tender touch, what can I say? Magic fingers." He wiggles his digits in front of Batman's face.
"What--how?"
"I don't know," the Jokester says, cheerfully, "Sometimes I just do things, you know? Nah. I guess you don't, do you." He eases Batman off of him, stands up slowly, but not before lingering a second to cup his hand around his face. "Nice to know you, moonshine." Then he adds, "I have no idea if this'll work. Sorry!"
He snaps the metal cuff over Batman's bare wrist, and steps back quickly.
There isn't a flash of light. There's just the Bat, there one moment, gone the next.
"Whoops," Jokester says, looking down at the gauntlet that's been left behind. "I hope he doesn't need that." A moment of hesitation, then he picks it up. "Just in case," he says, before sauntering off.
If part of him aches, well--he ignores it.
Somewhere out there is a hurt Owl, and that's going to make for some interesting pay back, some day soon. Showing up at the end of the confrontation means he knows exactly where the knife wound is.
That kiss, though--
Well.
Somewhere, sometime, it happens again.
That's enough, maybe.
The Jokester whistles, jumps up and taps his heels together, and melts off into the night.
Author: zombieboyband
Fandom: Batman, Earth 3
Summary: Bruce blurts out an incredulous laugh when he sees Owlman. Owlman really, really doesn't like people laughing at him; nor does he like someone else wearing his face. Owlman draws an owlarang and prepares to slice. "Who's laughing now?"
Pairing: Owlman/Batman. Um. Yes. endcredits made me do it encouraged me and gave me the prompt in the summary. Mentions of Owlman/Jokester, and slight Batman/Jokester.
Rating: overall NC-17; this part...PG-13?
Warnings overall: Owlman. Violence. Non-con. Language. Knifeplay, bloodplay, selfcest. Here, though? Eh. SMOOCHIES.
Wordcount: 1,933
Disclaimer: Batman and Owlman, the goddamn, are not mine. Neither are the clowns. Sigh!
An epilogue/part 5 after this, kiddies, and then we're done here--at least with this arc. We might return; WHO KNOWS. I have werewolf batfic to finish before we do.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Despite everything, Batman is Batman: he retreats and considers his options. Immediately, he checks the device on his wrist, tugging off his glove and gauntlet to do so. He doesn't understand, at first, why the gadget is silent, why the cracked face isn't a blinking display of digits without units, without meaning. It takes him a full minute of staring at the broken machine before the significance of it seeps into his awareness.
He's trapped here.
He'll never see his home again, never have Alfred tease him, never visit his parent's grave, never host another stupid party as Bruce Wayne.
Never. Never again.
He will die here.
He will die here, in fear, in the cold shadow of the Owl, because his shadow self is crueler than his worst enemy back home.
The realization is more than enough to set him off another round of running, fleeing from an enemy that isn't there and is everywhere. His mark is all over the city, like Batman's is over his own Gotham. Where there is an unexpected softness in his city-a still open soup kitchen, a warmly lit halfway house-here there are gaping holes, ugly like empty spaces in rotting mouths, absences where teeth should be. There are condemned hole-in-the-wall spaces that sink of meth; there are dead cats no one has swept away; there is long dried blood on the street; there are discarded syringes in the alleys he hides in; lazily hidden body parts in dumpsters and discarder murder weapons.
Every half heard step of every street hoodlum is amplified to his ears; his heart starts to pound anew for each almost-encounter, and he flees with the same determined desperation he would show if it was the Owl coming for him in the night. The suit's crotch is slit open and there's nothing he can do about it. Abandoning the armor seems like madness, and it isn't as if he has a change of clothes. Apart from the physical protection, it's all he has; it's the only thing to remind him of who he is.
Or was.
Batman hates to steal, but he breaks into a small mom and pop pharmacy, looking for disinfect, bandages, needles and surgical thread. There's only enough time to half bandage his chest before some noise erupts in the night. If he had a moment to think, he'd reason that Owlman is beat up and likely tending to his own wounds, but there's no time for thinking; there's only time for terror. He runs.
The rest of the night is a madbad rush. Batman's feverish and needs to rest; oblivion licks at the edges of his vision and unconsciousness threatens. Maybe it even wins a few times, but every noise, every can knocked over by a stray cat, every cautious shuffle of a possibly harmless vagrant wakes him. He springs up, sweating and freezing, and runs, and runs, and runs. He runs until he stumbles, until he's catching himself on worn brick buildings, begging his city that isn't his city to help him stand, to aid and guide him, to hide him until he heals.
It seems like forever but it can't be long at all until he falls, scraping himself up, and stays there, his chin against the ragged concrete.
"So you're the Bat," an almost familiar voice says, the sound ghosting over him.
The dawn's pale and cold and there's mist curling around black boots that step into his vision.
No.
Please, no.
Not now.
"I wanted time for a heart to heart, but I'm sure I'll get the details from an angry little bird, eventually..." A theatrical little sigh. "Say, big boy. You don't look so good. You're about ten minutes past death, from the looks of it, actually. If looks are anything to go by, in your case."
He expects another knife at his mouth. This universe's counterpart has the Owl for company; he has no reason to spare the Batman. He is extraneous here, or worse. In his own world, he doesn't doubt the Joker would take his time picking Owlman apart, to get some mad insight into what makes Batman tick. Same parts, same model, different paint job, says the voice he imagines in his head, while his knife spills rubies that look like bolts and gears to the madman.
Batman stays silent.
"Sheesh, you're less chatty than birdy-brain," the voice says more softly, coming closer to the ground as a clown kneels by his bruised and broken body. "Never thought you were mute. Or is it that the other one of me understands sonar?" A make up stained hand rests on the side of his head, confusingly gentle.
"I want to go home." He lifts his head up as much as he can, but it isn't far, and he knows there is blood running down his chin. He knows this because those fingers have moved to the line of his jaw, and those fingers are now bloody. What brings out the honesty in him, he isn't sure, but it's want he wants with every shaking fiber of his being. He wants it so badly he is trembling. It could be the blood loss, but he swears it's not.
"Home," the clown says wistfully, and some part of Batman--of Bruce--registers that the hair is wrong, purple and too long, pulled back in a ponytail, and the expression is wrong. It looks too sincere. He still doesn't understand the mercy in the touch. He doesn't understand how he finds kindness here, of all places. The mercy he could not get from himself has no business being found now, here, with this.
The shadows are shaped all wrong.
"Whatever you're going to do," Batman manages, through gritted teeth, because he does not believe the mercy he sees, "I won't--I won't make it easy for you." And he's trying, he's struggling. His muscles tighten, like a great beast coiling to strike, but he can't jump to his feet right now.
"Shush your nonsense," the clown tells him, and he sits down on the filthy concrete, drawing Bruce's head into his lap.
"If you're going to kill me--"
"Kill?" he says, puzzled, "Honeydew, moonbeam. I think you've got me confused with someone else. I don't kill."
Batman closes his eyes.
"Neither do I," he whispers.
"I find that hard to believe," comes the soft hum, "No offense. But I do believe you, all the same. Sometimes I've dreamed about it. When is an Owl not an owl? When it's a Bat. And I've seen some strange things in my time, beeelieve you me, sweets. Some of them even really happened!" He pauses, and pats Batman on the head. "By the way, Talon came by, quick as a hop and a skip, and took old Birdie-Bird in. He'll be just fine."
"Talon?" Batman asks, more confused than ever, even though the words don't really matter. It's the soft touch that confounds him, and he is suddenly, sharply sure that he must be dying. His subconscious has decided to torture him in his last minutes, or the wild neurons firing in his brain are becoming stranger and his heart gets weaker. Soon his depleted blood will stop pumping; his fingers will give one last, desperate twitch, and his pulse will stop. He will die, and probably Owlman will find his body and string it up somewhere, or use it for target practice. Perhaps this clown will beat him to it, and delight in doing to Bruce’s body what he can’t to the living Owl, whatever it might be.
The clown continues talking, apparently unconcerned.
"Your, mm, ensemble is even worse than Owlsie's, though, I gotta say. All black. Tsk. Do you lock yourself up in your room and listen to The Cure when you get back from school?"
"Joker," Batman says, weary beyond all understanding, "Not now."
"Jokester, Jokester, make the effort and get it right, sweetpea. I'm not calling you Ratman, am I? But you mean to say you and owls didn't swap stories about your bestest enemies?" The Jokster looks offended, then sympathetic. "I guess there wasn't time. I saw what he--well." He stops when he sees Batman flinch. "I got there at the end, but I know how he is," he says, voice softer. "I'm sorry. I know. If I'd found you sooner, I would've--but you left so fast. You're hard to track."
"Home," he says again, miserable. It's less a wish and more a statement.
"You want me to figure out how to dimension hop you to the proper when and where? Send you skipping through the multiverses to end up safe and sound?" the Jokster sounds amused again. "Well, if that's all..."
He bends over, nearly double, and carefully fits his lips against Batman's. Too much has happened for Batman to jerk back, to ask why, to feel it hurt. It happens--he lets it happen--one of the two. Maybe both. The kiss goes on and on, and while it does, the Jokster nimbly runs his hand over Batman's arm, and he pulls off the gauntlet off. When his hands are free of the glove, the Jokster twines their fingers together breifly, squeezing. Tenderly, he undoes the clasp of the remote whateveritis (still without having to look).
Batman doesn't protest. It's broken, after all. He's stuck here, and what does he have left--
The mouth against his stays tender, but it's Batman who nips at the lips with a touch of desperation, and it deepens from there, tongues sliding against each other curiously and needfully. This clown tastes of greasepaint and lipstick and a minty something or other. Maybe gum. Maybe mentos. Maybe mint lifesavers. It is definitely not real mint. The artifice of it is somehow comforting, like bubble gum flavored medicine that doesn’t taste too bad, or honey-lemon throat lozenges.
When the Jokster pulls back, his eyes are half lidded and his red lips are parted.
"Huh," he says, "That was...different." He soothes a hand across Batman's face, and then fiddles with the metal cuff, looking down. On someone else, the body language might read embarrassed. There is a maybe-flush under the white face paint.
"It's no use," Batman says, "It's bro--"
It's beeping.
Jokester pats him on the head again. He seems to enjoy doing that.
"It takes a tender touch, what can I say? Magic fingers." He wiggles his digits in front of Batman's face.
"What--how?"
"I don't know," the Jokester says, cheerfully, "Sometimes I just do things, you know? Nah. I guess you don't, do you." He eases Batman off of him, stands up slowly, but not before lingering a second to cup his hand around his face. "Nice to know you, moonshine." Then he adds, "I have no idea if this'll work. Sorry!"
He snaps the metal cuff over Batman's bare wrist, and steps back quickly.
There isn't a flash of light. There's just the Bat, there one moment, gone the next.
"Whoops," Jokester says, looking down at the gauntlet that's been left behind. "I hope he doesn't need that." A moment of hesitation, then he picks it up. "Just in case," he says, before sauntering off.
If part of him aches, well--he ignores it.
Somewhere out there is a hurt Owl, and that's going to make for some interesting pay back, some day soon. Showing up at the end of the confrontation means he knows exactly where the knife wound is.
That kiss, though--
Well.
Somewhere, sometime, it happens again.
That's enough, maybe.
The Jokester whistles, jumps up and taps his heels together, and melts off into the night.