sixthiterationlogs | we do our time like pennies in a jar

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we do our time like pennies in a jar

WHO: Bruce Wayne
WHERE: The Fountain | The Inn | Fountain Park
WHEN: October 15th and the days following
OPEN TO: all
WARNINGS: to be updated as needed
STATUS: open

arrival; the fountain

He wakes to the sensation of cold and damp, and for a long, hazy moment, all Bruce can think of is Amnesty Bay. The faint light he can sense through his closed eyelids gives that thought fleeting reinforcement--is it the lighthouse?

...No. No, that was weeks ago. He left Amnesty Bay, he came and went from Central City, he forged--he hoped--new alliances. Tomorrow he goes to Detroit. Tonight... tonight he's in Gotham.

His eyes snap open and he breathes in, startled, then shaken as he gets a noseful of water. He holds his breath, nostrils smarting, lungs tight, and on instinct he lunges upward toward the light.

He doesn't so much break the surface of the water in the fountain as he does crash through it, waves smacking the concrete walls, his breath righting itself in coughs and ragged gasps for the few moments it takes him to regain control. He treads water, taking stock: trees, sky, he's in some kind of pool--no, he turns, it's a... fountain? His armor is gone, he's not in Gotham, he knows there's no place like this in Gotham, what's on his back? Where are his clothes?

He strikes out for the edge of the fountain, hauling himself up and over, water dripping from his light gray scrubs, his hair, everything, noisy as it hits the ground around his feet. He sheds the backpack, dropping it onto the fountain wall, digging through its contents.

The sound of someone approaching gets his attention. He turns at once, tense, alert, though he makes no further moves.

"Hello?"

getting settled; the inn

The close quarters already grate on his nerves, and it's only his second full day here.

Bruce closes the door to his assigned room with a very small sigh. It's nothing against everyone else here, far from it. They've all been kind, helpful, friendly if a bit wary about him, and he doesn't blame them for that last part. He's a newcomer, he'd be unsure of him too.

Part of his restlessness, sure, is that he's used to having so much more space. The lake house, the estate grounds, his business properties in both Gotham and Metropolis, all of Gotham at night. But the greater part of it is his usual solitude. It's just been him and Alfred, for a decade now, since...

Since the last time he tried to build a family led to loss and ruin.

It's been easier to work alone, fight alone, grieve alone. But he can't do it all himself. That was a hard lesson to revisit this year, and again it cost him dearly. He gets it, now, that he can't fight alone, that he can't shoulder everything. He's building a team back home, and he's got to, he's sure, become part of the community here.

It just still feels weird.

He sets out, determined to battle his ingrained instincts. He offers the people he passes on his way downstairs a friendly good morning, pausing for more conversation if they'll have it. He joins a few others at breakfast, dialing back his urge to interrogate everyone about everything.

Afterwards, he's out on the front porch, breathing in the fresh air. This place would be so peaceful if he was here by choice.

finding his bearings; fountain park

One of the basic rules of detective work is to start with the scene of the crime. Gather your evidence there. Figure out what happened. Try to make sense of it, let that tell you the story.

He can't think of anything else to try at the moment, so Bruce has returned to where he arrived, hoping maybe something will give him some clue, some idea.

At the start of his reinvestigation, he can be found inspecting the fountain and the immediate area. How was he placed there? Is there a way out? Does the fountain have any significance?

Somewhere in the middle, he climbs the tallest tree nearby. With rather a lot of speed and agility, if you happen to be around, happen to have an eye for that sort of thing. He lingers up there a while, surveying the fountain, the park, but also getting views of the village as a whole, or at least as best he can from this single tree.

There might also be a small comfort in something a bit familiar. Watching the area from on high.

Before he leaves, in the interests of being thorough, he jumps back into the water. He feels his way along the walls, he does his best to reach the floor, he breaks the surface a few times to look up at the trees and sky. Eventually he hauls himself out, the wet weight of his clothes against his body and the soft patter of water dripping from them onto the ground giving him a moment of déjà vu.

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New faces are a painfully common occurrence around the inn; some weeks it feels as though one can't throw a rock without hitting a newcomer. When a man he doesn't recognize descends the stairs, Jess glances up from where he sits alone at a table with a half-eaten plate of fried eggs and mushrooms, seemingly unsurprised to see Bruce there.

"Hey," he offers, a casual greeting. Angled slightly in his chair, he has one arm resting on the chair back, a leg stretched out on the seat across from him. Projecting normalcy is a conscious effort in this place. Some days his acting is better than others.

"First night?"

He'd heard a rumor the fountain had spit someone else out yesterday--looks like it'd been true. Too bad for this guy.

"That obvious, huh?"

Bruce too is an old hand at projecting: harmlessness, if not normalcy. The smile he offers is easy, friendly, if a bit uncertain. But that's to be expected the day after you woke up in a strange place and had to haul yourself out of a fountain.

"But yes: I'm new here. I'm Bruce."

Jess tilts his head with lip tucked between his teeth in a look that says kind of, yeah. 'Obvious' is one word for it. 'Predictable' is another. The trickle of new faces doesn't seem like it's going to stop anytime soon, not when the ring masters who run this circus keep bringing people here like it's going out of style, and almost all of said new faces find their way to the inn eventually.

The foot traffic is part of the reason Jess still lives here; rooming in the hub of the community is advantageous for keeping up with the latest news. And for sniffing out the latest additions, case in point.

Rising from his seat, he opts to go the full nine yards in greeting the older man, hand out to shake. "Jess Brightwell, sir," he says. The sir is more for Bruce's sake than his own. Some basic manners might wash this nightmare down a little easier. "I stay here. If you're taking a room, I expect we'll be seeing plenty of each other."

God, but he's young, now that Bruce is really looking at him, taking him in. He looks about as old as Jason was when he--

Bruce draws in a breath. It's been a decade. It doesn't ever get any better, it just lies in wait, letting you focus on other things until it's ready to wound you anew. Time doesn't really heal, not from a loss like this.

He musters up a friendly smile all the same, reaching for Jess' hand. "Bruce Wayne," he replies, "but, please, call me Bruce." He appreciates the manners, he really does, but he's not sure he's ready to be sir'ed constantly. "It's nice to meet you. I'll be here for at least a few days yet, I'm sure."

It passes almost too quick to catch, but for a moment the man seems to look at him peculiarly, an emotion flickering to life in his eyes Jess doesn't have a name for, and then it's gone and they're shaking hands firmly while Jess studies the other's face.

Probably none of his business. He doesn't recognize the name Bruce Wayne, and the man doesn't appear to recognize the name Brightwell, so he doubts the man knows him from somewhere.

"The more, the merrier," he says with what he thinks is a rather respectable attempt to be a welcoming welcome wagon, releasing Bruce's hand. "Bruce it is. Then just Jess will do." He jerks a thumb at the kitchen. "Welcome to the asylum. It's self-serve for the inmates if you're hungry."

Bruce reins in his reaction, his memories. New losses at home have dragged up old ones but none of that has anything to do with being here, and he's got to hold it together. It'll get better, he's sure, once he's got his bearings.

"Thank you, Jess," he replies, more relaxed, grateful for the help, for being warmly welcomed after waking up in a fountain. He spares a glance at the kitchen--he is hungry--before meeting Jess' gaze again.

"Is it all right if I come sit with you once I've gotten a plate?"

Jess nods easily, stepping back. "I could use the company and I expect you have questions," he guesses.

Making conversation is the least he can do, all the more if his months' worth of experience fills in some blanks. He'd have to be made of steelier stuff to ignore a newcomer like nothing's amiss. Jess knows perfectly well he can be cold sometimes (he'd be the first to agree that putting distance between yourself and the living is self-preservation sometimes, it keeps the ghosts at bay) but not that cold.

"If you run into a woman with a bit of an Australian accent, that's our resident Miss Kate Kelly. She does a lot of the cooking and tends to leave food out."

Bruce can definitely be cold. It's what's protected him at some of the worst times of his life, it's what's allowed him to carry on being his city's guardian vigilante for decades, now. Whether he'd acknowledge it or not is a good question. Here, though, it's not going to serve him, so he doesn't call on it.

"I do have questions," he answers, good natured, "and I could use the company too. I'll be back."

A few minutes later he's settling in with a plate, mindfully having served himself just enough to get by.

"How long have you been here, Jess?"

"Found it all right?"

By the time Bruce returns from kitchen with a plate of his own, Jess has returned the table to its former neatness and sits facing the table with proper etiquette, both chairs tucked back in. He'd let his train of thought distract him, but now he resumes eating, skewering a mushroom with his fork.

"Too long, if you want the truth," is his wry answer as he turns the fork between his fingers. Two months ago, he might've let some of his indignant anger show through, but now he voices it as an objective fact, slightly removed from himself. "Eighty four days. They brought me in back in the summer. Probably not what you want to hear."

"Yes, thank you."

He settles in, across the table from Jess. He's just picked up his fork, about to tuck in, but the number Jess says gets his attention, his gaze snapping up.

"Eighty-four days..." No, it's not the answer he wants to hear at all. It means there's some longer game here. On the one hand, it probably bodes well for their safety, relatively speaking. They aren't being brought here just to be killed quickly.

But what do those in charge here want to do with all that time?

He sighs, the sound and sag of his shoulders both nearly imperceptible. "I'm sorry to hear that, Jess. I can't imagine what it's like, being here that long."

He hopes he never has to find out, but right now he's not terribly hopeful.

Bruce glances down, pressing the tines of his fork into a hunk of scrambled egg. "Do you have any idea what they want with us?"

"That's the bad news. Don't let it ruin your appetite or you'll never eat again," he says, brushing off the apology with a casual lift of his shoulders and a quirk of his lips. He's the last person Bruce has to apologize to here. "There are worse ways to be held against your will as long as you're okay living off the land."

Giving into depression and self-pity just gets in the way of solving the problem at hand. He still has hope he can get out of this experiment or whatever it is--he has to. Considering the alternative is a distraction, the same as feeling sorry for himself, and he's nothing if not adaptable in less than savory circumstances.

"We're still working on answering that question. The good news is it doesn't look like it's to pick us off. Not quickly, anyway," he goes on, unintentionally following Bruce's same line of thinking. There's a clinical air to the way he describes the situation; he's used to life handing out lemons and people with power taking those lemons and squeezing them right into his eye. "We had a couple of disappearances around two months ago, and another two weeks ago, but the bodies never turned up. There were no signs of an attack. For the most part, they seem content to sit back and stay hands-off. Who 'they' are is still up for debate as they only ever make indirect contact."

That's the oft-unspoken problem with Bruce: no matter how much he might like to do otherwise, no matter how much easier it would make things, how much more expedient they would be, he can't stop caring about his fellow man. It's a hell of a thing that he's tried so hard to cover up with bat-shaped armor and strangle with rage and grief, but it always comes back.

All of this bothers him. More for the others dragged here than for himself, though he's got plenty of feelings about that too.

"Indirect contact? How do they do that? Notes? Signals?"

"Supply drops, mostly," he filled in, taking a bite of his eggs. They'd gone lukewarm in the time since he'd sat down, but they'd been rather bland to begin with. He's not exactly a gourmet cook when it comes to utilizing natural herbs and spices.

"They started dropping these nondescript boxes off for people, addressed to that person. Just a few at first, then more and more. Just like that," Jess snaps his fingers for emphasis, "a box shows up at your door with your name on it. No sign of how it was delivered, just the box. Never been able to catch them at it. Damned if they're not careful."

And Bruce seems like a guy who can follow that thread to the next logical conclusion--the prison wardens in this scenario haven't left the prisoners to rot, they're still watching.

It's the only logical conclusion to come to, he thinks. Stirring the pot a little, watching to see what happens. Bruce blinks a few times, chewing a mouthful of eggs.

"Well," he says, once he's swallowed, in that a-little-too-jovial tone people use when they really don't feel jovial about what they're saying in the least, "that's creepy. You get any boxes, Jess?"

The effort to take the bad news in stride doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated, Jess regards the man with a small smile. "You can say that again."

This, all of this... it's easy enough for Jess to handle, bitter mouthful though it is to swallow; his youth means only that he's had to pack plenty of other bitter experiences into fewer years. When stacked up, they make kidnapping and imprisonment seem more or less like the next step in a progressively worsening situation. If not these mysterious kidnappers, the Library would've made a move on him eventually. He's alive. That's something a part of him hadn't expected he'd still be after all this time.

But not everyone's faced these kinds of poor odds before. That the man stays calm and keeps his wits about him does him credit. Jess thinks he'll probably fit in quite well. This town sports a number of surprisingly tough and resilient people.

"And yes, two," he answers. "One with some survival gear, and one with another change of clothes. It's like we're rats in a maze, pushing levers for cheese. They're biggest move to date has been to leave a number of crates with primitive sorts of weapons inside for us to find, color-coded by our scrubs. Other than that, your guess as to who's behind this is as good as mine."

It's probably a sad commentary on Bruce's life that while this latest development--kidnapping, entrapment, being stripped of things--isn't an entirely unfathomable one, given the trajectory of his life over his forty-five years, it's not the most bitter. It's almost, almost, an improvement.

His terrible experiences started so early. His entire life has been dedicated to trying to negate them. For other people, not for himself, except maybe the satisfaction of hoping he made a difference, that he spared even one person similar pain, even as pain made return visits, settled deep into his life.

He can take this in stride because he's had to take everything in stride, for nearly four decades now. But that doesn't mean everyone else should have to, and seeing them try bubbles a bit of his ever-present anger.

"So the colors, the scrub colors, they mean something. I suspected they must. I wonder why they would arm us."

It's more that he's concerned, worried, but, you know. Taking things in stride.

The man's right, of course. No one goes to these lengths to capture and contain a group of people and then leaves something like the scrub colors to chance. Their clothes, their packs, this town...

It's deliberate. It's all infuriatingly, impossibly deliberate.

Jess continues eating, repressing the storm of ire and unease that threatens to blow apart his composure whenever he has to explain just how thoroughly they're outmatched here. "It adds a new level to 'all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players'," he agrees, eyebrows rising and falling in an expression of wry resignation.

And he's been here for months, plenty of time to get comfortable with the rigged odds. Bruce has only been here days. Honestly, the man deserves kudos for not flipping the table over. Jess wouldn't blame him one bit if he did.

"It fits with the theme. Primitive weapons. Primitive town. It's an experiment of some kind, the question is where it ends. I see they've got you wearing grey, though. I suppose that makes us birds of a feather."

Jess, too, wears grey. Their number seems to be growing.

Bruce lives in a pretty perpetual state of wanting to flip tables. He usually gets to work those frustrations, that anger, out on his city's criminals. But he's also very skilled in hiding it, in keeping it in check outside of those situations.

"I suppose it does," he says, easy, calm, sparing his clothing a glance.

"Primitive technology, though, you say: are you from a place that's more advanced than what we have going on here?"

"Not entirely. When I said primitive weapons, I meant it in the literal pre-industrial sense. Slings and arrows, hand-carved spears, that kind of thing. Thankfully, I lucked out and missed the Neolithic era by a few thousand years. I have to admit, any kind of country living kind of looks like it to me, being from a major metropolis."

He shoots a crooked smile across the table. But the man's not wrong--Jess is from a strikingly different place, both time-wise and technology-wise. If Bruce is referring to the multiple worlds theory, he'd be a little surprised to learn the man is getting comfortable with the idea so soon, but maybe not too much. The man's taking things in stride like an Olympic sprinter--and who knows, he has some experience with alternate realities.

Jess can't judge these days. He spends time with a young woman from his history's distant past, and another from his history's future (unlikely future, as he doesn't care to believe the world is destined to become an irradiated wasteland like Raven says), and Vikings, and men who fight giants for a living.

At some point one just has to accept they live with a very, very strange bunch.

"I come from Alexandria, Egypt, born and raised in London."

Bruce huffs out a soft chuckle, nodding. "You and me both. My family home is meant to evoke the idea of country living but we're a short drive from the largest city in New Jersey. One of the largest cities in the entire Eastern United States. All this--" He gestures, briefly, meaning their surroundings, "is so far from what I'm used to as to almost be alien to me."

It's been many generations since the Waynes were gentlemen farmers. The physical work of being a vigilante, yeah, he can do that. But raising crops? Manual labor? Getting by without his smartphone or the internet? It's all a bit daunting.

"But I guess I'm about to get a crash course."

"Oh yes, you're in for a treat. More fresh air and scenic views than you'll know what to do with." The comment clearly falls on the sarcastic spectrum, if the amused curl to Jess' mouth says anything.

"How is that going, by the way? Wrapping your head around where we are and how the lot of us might have gotten here?" A gentle way of asking if Bruce has already had his brain turned inside out with talk of different realities, and universes, and histories. "Has anyone said the 'm' word yet?"

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we do our time like pennies in a jar

Inn

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