Bruce Wayne (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thingsfall) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2016-10-15 08:04 pm
thingsfall) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2016-10-15 08:04 pm
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.
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
"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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
"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?"