mother, don't worry

Deep in the Cheap Seats

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:42:33 GMT

Title: Deep in the Cheap Seats
Fandom: Football RPS
Pairing: Leo Messi/Gael Garcia Bernal
Disclaimer: This never happened.

Deep in the Cheap Seats

It’s the kind of event that mildly pretentious people label as fascinating, less cultured souls regarding it merely as not only unfairly intimidating but also an outrageous waste of time and money. But what could be more natural (run the press releases) than for the biggest Spanish language film of the year, (a film about a sport which pounds in the blood of every man and boy throughout the land), to have its spectacular European premiere in the very heartland of football? A cultural city with many great theatres, as someone once rather memorably said, and on a Friday night in the giddy heat and chatter of summer, the lady Barcelona outdoes herself.

The audience is assembled piecemeal from the very highest strata of society, with a typically modern Catalan tendency towards meritocracy, in deed at least, if not necessarily in thought. The building has been transformed into a symphony, a riot of peach and gold and cream. Beneath its vaulted ceilings there are chandeliers, sommeliers and, the piece de resistance: that most rarefied commodity, the actual bona fide professional footballer. Who after all are a species that traditionally hunt in packs, and so, where one might attend out of a genuine interest, in the glittering flurry of his wake there tend to follow another three or four, drawn out by the tenuous threads of self publicity, curiosity or boredom.

Deco squints at the creamy carapace of a quail’s egg, which has been encrusted in salt crystals and meticulously hand dotted with squid ink so that it aspires to resemble a football of an era that his father might dimly recall. Reluctantly he pops it into his mouth and chews down with an expression of intense disillusionment.

Within the gilded halls a state of freedom seems to be prevailing against the odds. The press, realising the nature of their prey, are more than happy to permit a relative state of truce to exist inside the building in exchange for the quick-fire high-voltage glamour of the red carpet and the less poised but equally lucrative lenses of the post-show paparazzi. In any case, flash photography in a room so unsparingly draped with Swarovski could only result in snow-blindness and embarrassment of the most financially wearing kind.

Deco rolls another egg between finger and thumb, in the manner of an epicurean zombie inspecting a less than succulent eyeball, then replaces it on the edge of his saucer. He looks mildly revolted by the whole procedure.

Leo, who thinks the little eggs are rather nice in a briefly but not unpleasantly salty fashion, considers it for a moment then returns to his contemplation of his own plate. He’s been trying to mentally overcome the fact that his bowtie is starting to restrict the range of his breathing by imagining that he is Cristiano Ronaldo, who apparently wears such things out of choice rather than through the application of immutable physical and moral force. It’s not easy.

On the other side of the room, resplendent in a grey suit that fits him as perfectly as his smile, Thierry Henry is flirting and smirking his way through the good and great of Spain’s cultural brigades. His eyes are wide, his head is inclined to the perfect degree of gentle respect, mingled with an unarguable superiority.

Deco winces, his forehead wrinkles. “Look at him,” he says. “Look at him. He’s enjoying this.” His eyes follow a passing waitress, the neat line of her uniform over her breasts, the way the hair at the nape of her neck dips deliciously down into her collar, and Leo thinks, not without a touch of jealousy, and so are you.

The space has been liberally sprinkled with a helping of handsome ball-savvy Brazilian kids, each one totally intent on keepy-upping his way to fame and fortune (in actual fact, during the course of the evening one of them will be spotted by a media-savvy scout from one of the bigger Spanish clubs, a man temporarily dazed by silky eyelashes and golden skin and the prospect of more money than even his wildest dreams have ever calculated on. The boy’s career will soar briefly through the thin air of the stratosphere before settling into a comfortable holding midfield mid-table role with benefits; a regular paycheque and enough money spare to buy his whole family the kind of luxuries that they once only saw on television. At the age of thirty his ghostwritten autobiography will outsell Dan Brown’s final Catholic epic and his supporting role in a minor arthouse picture will win international acclaim, before he finally retires from the high octane world of professional football to raise hens, the way his father’s fathers did for all those generations before he was a twinkle in somebody’s eye . . .) .

Leo watches them from under the protective shelter of his eyelashes; they’re the only thing, other than the movie, which has caught his attention all night. He tries to repress the thought, not as good as Ronnie, as unworthy of both the occasion and his better nature. He runs a finger under the edge of his tie, inhales gratefully and is frozen in his tracks by Deco’s disapproving stare.

Three canapés later (and he doesn’t notice, never notices, although Deco does and despite his best efforts always does, that virtually every plate crossing the floor comes to Leo first, twisted around to ensure that he gets the pick of whatever might be on offer) he is brought back from a pleasant dream of Buenos Aires, a city he reassembles piece by piece every time the opportunity arises, by Thierry tapping at his shoulder.

“Leo?”

He blinks up at Thierry’s open smile, the whiteness of his shirt, and is, as usual, unable to resist smiling back. No-one can. He can’t decide if that’s a blessing or a curse.

“There’s someone here who would like to meet you.”

He blinks some more and temporarily wonders if Thierry has perhaps mistaken him for someone else. Or if somebody else has mistaken him for somebody else. And then Thierry says: “Gael, this is Leo,” and then “Leo?”

Deco shifts in his seat, half way between a smile and a scowl. Leo thinks, in a sudden sparkling vista of shiny lights, that he has never seen anything more wonderfully tiny or more perfect. And then, Leo doesn’t really understand how, somehow Thierry is gone and Deco is incomprehensibly gone with him, and it’s just the two of them and Gael is talking.

Leo sketches little tactical game plans into the condensation on the neck of his bottle until the tip of his finger is quite numb. And watches. But it doesn’t really matter, as Gael is clearly capable of filling in not only the gaps that Leo leaves in the conversation, but also any pauses for breath that a normal person might have had to accommodate between phrases. This doesn’t mean that his laugh isn’t slightly wheezy, so that when he giggles it’s both immediately infectious and at the same time impresses Leo with a terrible sense of vulnerability exposed. He feels almost protective, which he knows only too well is the kind of mistake most likely to cause immediate and justifiable homicidal offence.

Gael’s quite capable of doing an Argentine accent that makes Leo temporarily breathe in with a soft shock of pleasure and surprise; not only in Spanish, but (more impressively) in English. After a few minutes he can do Leo’s accent, which is unnerving and then alarmingly endearing; there’s something cautious in the way his mouth shapes the words, there’s a visible thought process at work that leaves Leo fascinated.

Sometimes Leo tries to run away from the lazy generalisations of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’; ‘special’ and ‘ordinary’. They’re like little quiet deaths inside his head that he’s spent his whole life working painstakingly to avoid, and yet Gael dances around them; the same way Leo takes the ball sometimes and his feet are more than capable, he doesn’t even need to look up to see the goal, the movement of the keeper, the flare of the net.

Deco leans over the table, twin bottles of Corona snugged into each of his palms. He grins widely and generously at them both; it’s a kind of reckless generosity that Leo suspects Thierry is keeping well fuelled with something more potent than pale Mexican beer.

Gael slides down the wall to the floor, eighty percent incautious with drink, twenty percent the kind of grace that some people get handed to them as a gift they never even notice. He shifts a chair to prop himself up on, pulls a cushion to the floor and presses up to it and Leo sees something there that he recognises: that half-involuntary hard learned capacity to make a home wherever the day ends. But what Leo does by going inside, Gael does by moving furniture, by forcing the space around him into something more than an arrangement of floor and walls. Shaping the world into something more ambitious, more comfortable than it really is. Leo mostly just reshapes himself and burrows in and secretly hopes that no-one’s going to notice.

Leo lives, primarily, in daylight. The narratives of his life don’t really play so well under tungsten flares, although he can do that too, for a while. Sometimes he wakes up, and he’s disappointed, somehow, in the night sky. The flat sparkle of stars; the stylised sequences of seasons he’s seen in more continents than he can clearly remember.

Gael puts a hand on Leo’s knee, stares at it for a second as if he’s never seen it before in his life, then leaves it there. It crosses Leo’s mind that Gael might just turn out to be one of those girls that Frank (and just about everyone else he’s ever met) warned him about.

“Well, I could tell you about the water, or you could just get in.”

“Oh,” Leo says.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Gael does most things the same way he talks: slightly too fast, breathless, balancing on the edge of a precipice where the fall is enough to break more than bones. It turns out that this is, actually, not an altogether bad thing.

In this moment, when their worlds have contracted to the soft spaces of lips and tongue and the slightly exotic awkwardness of teeth, they are temporarily careless. And so it is that the waiter who has come to clear the table of napkins and glasses discovers them, pauses for a moment, crumples a cream wedge of linen hard in the palm of his hand and then retreats with the slightest of coughs. For the next five minutes he stands between them and the room, his back turned, his mouth giving away nothing, although his eyes are perhaps less deceptive.

(This waiter is a young man called Raphael Suarez, who will die some seventeen years later, in Cuzco, of that condition popularly known as a broken heart, although the medical records will state nothing more revealing than a diagnosis of high altitude pulmonary oedema combined with a tendency to asthma. Even so, until that day, he will always remember and the memory will always be accompanied by the same disproportionate stab and lurch of jealousy and gratitude . . .)

And Barcelona, who run as a group towards stolid, don’t feel anything like this; nothing like this sudden almost hurtful frailness of bone under his hands, of spine, pressing against his fingers. Of stubble and jawline and ribs and everything alive and working against him and asking questions he isn’t sure he knows how to answer.

They pull apart. Leo isn’t breathing anymore, just in case.

Gael holds out his hands, palms uppermost. “This is the part where you freak out.” There’s apology written into his collarbones, caught in the teeth his smile is hiding, and it’s something Leo doesn’t know how to return. He understands through his body; his skin hums with responses he can’t find a formula for and words he can’t phrase.

“You don’t like losing, do you?”

“It’s fine. It’s alright. It’s good.”

Behind them velvet and stripes swim through the motions of another world, through the sequins and caviar that float towards the surface of a dream Leo has never shared. The walls sparkle. Gael’s eyes sparkle, and Leo has never really believed in the whole concept of sustainability so much as the way things are right now, and the way they are likely to be in the immediate future.

And although it’s a detail unlikely to feature in any of the official biographical works, Leo Messi loses most of his inhibitions in the back of a taxi somewhere around the Plaça de Sant Jaume and the rest about three hours later, between a bottle of Californian Zinfandel and the Sky Sports South American football catch-up show.

I had a watch engraved in Switzerland.

Fri, 30 May 2008 20:08:15 GMT

Title: I had a watch engraved in Switzerland.
Pairing: Leo Messi/Diego Maradona (I KNOW, I KNOW)
Rating: R-ish. Should I mention drugs references?
Disclaimer: Lies, crack and untruths.
Author’s Note: I'm so sorry.

I had a watch engraved in Switzerland

Four things that probably never happened to Leo Messi:

ONE: Leo had always been extremely lucky with his mentors. Up until now he'd known this fact largely because they'd been very careful to tell him so. Repeatedly, in some cases and with a distressing lack of modesty, but Leo was hardly the kind of boy who took pleasure in bursting other people's bubbles.

Now that he was facing the combined results of three moderately priced Brazilian hookers (long gone), the chopped out remnants of approximately a gram of white powder which (he licked a finger experimentally) was at least eighty percent cornstarch, five bottles of champagne and the sadly denuded corpses of two deep dish seafood pizzas, he began to wonder if perhaps they might just have been right all along.

But it was no time for hysteria. Leo sighed, tucked his hair firmly behind his ears, knelt down between the bottles and peeled a thin purple tentacle away from Diego Maradona's left cheek. This was going to require subtlety. And also a sponge.

-

TWO: After a few weeks back home Leo really starts to hit his stride when it comes to dinner parties. Sitting next to El Diego helps to take some of the pressure off, for sure, but he’s warm and happy and full of food, and okay, he possibly had one glass of wine too many, but it was good wine, and Deco always said that good wine didn’t make you drunk, as such-

And Maradona laughs and eats and drinks some more and knocks things over and at some point his hand ends up on Leo’s knee and stays there. Leo contemplates the possibility of removing it but can’t quite develop a plan that won’t cause offence or result in his knee being any happier, so it stays. After a little while (dessert) the hand becomes less passive and, rather unexpectedly, it turns out that actually being groomed for sex by an aging sports star is not quite as unpleasant as people said it would be.

-

THREE: Everything happens at once. Leo puts one side of his hand in his mouth, because he’s terribly worried he might make the wrong kind of noise . . . and everything keeps happening. So slow he thinks he’s going to go insane, slower and slower so he gasps against his hand, and his hips lift up off the bed, apparently without his say-so, then twitch and, and- stop.

He looks down. There’s a swirl of black hair cushioned on his shirt and an extremely heavy head resting on parts of his body that God never intended as pillow material. After a few seconds the head slides with a gentle thump onto the mattress, face down.

Leo sighs. Then he rolls over, finishes himself off, checks a couple of times to make sure that Maradona is still breathing, pulls the covers carefully up over both of them and goes to sleep. He understands the appeal of pragmatism, even if he doesn’t necessarily subscribe to it as a way of life, and the next morning (early afternoon) it really starts to make sense.

-

FOUR: Apparently Deco is the only person allowed to finish stories with the phrase “-and then we had sex.” Or at least, when Leo tries it, all he gets is thirty seconds of incoherent Portuguese sputtering (at a pitch where individual words are probably only audible to bats) and then a violent clunk and then the dialling tone.

Thirty seconds later his phone starts to ring.

“Please. Please tell me that was a joke.”

Leo shrugs, which apparently transmits perfectly well across three thousand miles of ocean.

“I’m telling Frank.”

“Oh.” Leo blinks a bit at the wall, which has an unidentifiable smear of something on it. “That’s . . . a good idea. I think it would be better if maybe you told him, and then by the time I got back he wouldn’t be so-”

Deco hangs up. Again. This time it sounds as if he might actually have broken something in his phone.

--------------------------

And the prequel, written for applegnat, who I feel should take a proportionate amount of blame:

Five potential boyfriends for Leo, as listed by Deco:

ONE: It’s one of Deco’s five foundational rules for living that no matter what people tell him, he’s not going to make any kind of noise or reveal by so much as a flickering eyebrow that he’s taken aback. As a direct consequence of this decision, on the Thursday afternoon that Leo Messi chooses to mention (in a manner Deco would regard as having a suspiciously studied degree of casualness, coming from anyone else) that maybe, maybe, he might, actually, like boys, rather than, you know, girls, Deco neither crashes the car, spills his Starbucks raspberry frappe or swears out loud. He’s prepared to admit that he may, briefly, have allowed an eyebrow to flicker, but all things considered he’s reasonably proud of his reaction.

Mentally he consigns the sacrifices of the last few years - the constant stream of starlets whose determined track towards Leo he has so unselfishly intercepted, the countless semi-clad girls who he has removed from hotel rooms and generously pacified - to the dustbin of history and slams the lid shut. And then (because he has responsibilities, and because he doesn’t think of himself as the kind of person who backs down from a challenge, and because he really refuses to think about any other options whatever), as soon as he arrives home he goes on the internet and buys a book. And another book and, after some deliberation, a DVD.

Three weeks later he fills his living room with candles, his kitchen sink with crushed ice and some rather expensive white wine, including a Chateau D’Yquem that he’d been saving for a special occasion, and puts something moderately seductive on the stereo.

Leo neither panics nor makes any attempt to escape; he evades Deco’s outstretched arm with the grace he normally reserves for the Getafe defence and asks politely if he can use Deco’s phone. Five minutes later there is an inexplicable screeching sound outside the door, almost immediately followed by the kind of knock that Deco can’t help but associate with the forces of law and order.

“What a coincidence,” Lilian says, with enough moral authority to make that exactly the way it is, and then somehow ensconces himself right in the middle of Deco’s couch where he remains until all Deco’s wine has gone and Leo has made his slightly wobbly way home.

-

TWO: Deco watches more football. And more football. He makes pages of notes on triple punched, blue lined pads of A4 paper. For one exhausting week he constructs a series of comprehensive five year plan star-charts which encompass every player between the age of seventeen and twenty five in the major leagues of Europe. Somewhere in the middle of his late night forays onto the internet he catches hold of the phrase ‘doesn’t look like he’d want to try anything too complicated’ and clings to it like a drowning man.

Fortunately for Leo, Deco has never been the kind to break out a plan without first thoroughly testing the water for depth and temperature. Fortunately for Theo Walcott, Cesc’s gift for encapsulating complicated situations in one tersely worded text message remains unrivalled. And fortunately for Deco the enraged phonecall that Frank Rijkaard receives, late one night from an almost incoherent Arsene Wenger, remains one of Barcelona’s more closely guarded inside secrets. After all, it’s Leo.

-

THREE: Bojan Krkic arrives into the first team like a small floppy haired, green eyed heat seeking missile. Deco takes his notebook out of his pocket, crosses out a few names from the bottom of the list and starts making notes in heavy capitals. Bojan starts training sessions mildly perturbed and finishes bug-eyed, blushing and tucked firmly behind the protective form of Thierry Henry, who stares Deco out for just long enough that everyone notices and no-one dares to comment.

-

FOUR: Despite being (marginally) shorter than Deco, Leo still manages to fill his doorway with more authority than Victor generally manages in goal. In the flat behind him a door bangs and someone curses. Deco is filled with righteous suspicion. Leo looks at him reproachfully. Deco narrows his eyes, folds up his notebook and tries to see over Leo’s shoulder. There is an incomprehensible squeaking noise from somewhere at their feet, and then Deco is bitten very suddenly and quite painfully on his left ankle by an extremely small dog.

There is a moment of confusion, in which Deco’s horrified thought process is only accelerated by a semi-naked figure appearing at the end of the hall behind Leo and shrieking melodramatically for Odi to “Come HERE.” A whole series of connections light up in his brain, all of which fill him with a kind of vast foreboding. Leo blinks. Deco takes in a breath which he feels is barely going to be adequate for the amount of things he wants to say. Then a hand descends lightly but persuasively on his shoulder.

“Anderson.” Leo’s father smiles at him, generously. “How lovely to see you.” He looks down at the bottom of Deco’s trouser leg and tuts. "That looks quite nasty. Come up to the house and let me have a look at it."

Deco deflates and, not without a certain gratitude, submits to being led limping away.

-

FIVE: And finally Deco’s resistance breaks a little. He has the kind of epiphany that he almost expects to be accompanied by choruses of angels and blinding flashes of heavenly light. Because, after all, it’s Leo. And what can anything possibly matter, beyond that Leo is as far as possible, completely and utterly happy. And besides, he trusts the boy’s judgement. He’s never known it to be wrong so far.

In the most awkward recess of his jacket his phone suddenly kicks into life. He palms it out and up to his face, squints at the display and is entirely delighted to see that it’s Leo himself, calling from Argentina.

Funny how you run straight for the gun.

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:08:52 GMT

Title: Funny how you run straight for the gun.
Rating: R?
Pairing: Roy Keane/Jose Mourinho
Summary: Jose's last night in England.
Disclaimer: Really never happened.
Author’s Notes: Oh, Jose made me lose this bet. With someone who knows EXACTLY who she is and why she should be THOROUGHLY ashamed of herself. (ILU2 BB.) As close to shameless flaunting PWP as my writing tends to go ;-).

Funny how you run straight for the gun

Roy Keane comes with his eyes wide open, his hand on Jose Mourinho's cock and the words 'fuck you' lost somewhere between his tongue and his lips.

- - -

Or: this is what happens: he gets invited for a drink. Which, after all, is an innocent beginning to so many stories there's not the time to tell them. But this is the kind of drink that costs more money than his first car; it's a Sir Alex special. Obscenely comfy chairs, glasses that sing in the hand and the kind of wine that slips into a body all too easy.

When he wakes up (and again, it's another generic starting line for another set of generic tall tales, but-) he's on the floor of a shower cubicle. It's not the first time (although it's the first time for years) but the thing, the thing is, that this time his hands are tied behind his back and they're looped around the pole of the shower and he can't move. And he's lost his jacket somewhere between Sir Alex's room and this bathroom and there's a plane waiting for him on a runway he can't get to- he tries to stand up, jerks his hands around behind him, slides gracelessly back down and runs off a string of fluent curses.

The room is warm, which is one mercy at least. His head feels like there's something sharp-edged and moody sharing it with him; his mouth still tastes of wine. The bathroom smells expensive, clean and faintly, very faintly of static. His arms are starting to hurt from the twisting.

"Fuck," he says, "fuck." but it doesn't sound so much in an empty bathroom, it just echoes back at him from the whiteness and the tiles. He can move his arms up and down, he can get his fingers almost round to the ties (strip of cloth, something soft but unyielding.), he can get halfway standing (his feet kick and slide against the floor), but that is all.

There's nothing doing with shouting; he reckons he could shout all night, but this is no position for a Premiership manager to be picked up in on a Wednesday evening. Reputations aren't an easy thing to come by; like everything else he's worked hard on his.

And he's sweating now, a little. Trying to figure out if he could step back through the loop of his arms (yes, probably, if he dislocated both shoulders, weighed five pounds less and was ten years younger), trying to get his fingers in under the tightness around his wrists (trying to ignore the tightness in his chest) and he's still slightly hazy from the wine, caught off balance. He can't remember the in-between, and it's the in-between that worries him; he's paid for that in-between in the past and he doesn't owe anyone anything now-

The door opens. He freezes (which is stupid), then-

Jose Mourinho smiles at him.

"You must accept my apologies." He steps noiselessly into the room and closes the door. Deliberately. He smiles again, then he slides the bolt across and gives the handle a little demonstrative tug. The door is, quite clearly, firmly shut. He keeps smiling.

For the first time since he was three years old Roy Keane can think of nothing to say.

Jose walks over to the sink, turns and leans against it, casual, unaffected. "I was promised a leaving present," he says, "and Sir Alex was," a pause, "happy to oblige. In the end."

Roy just keeps his fingers working at the ties, keeps his mouth shut, but his eyes are narrowed; he's fucking clueless as to what the hell is going on but he's not going to wait to find out.

Jose sighs like a cat, arches his back, reaches up and very slowly undoes his tie. Pulls it loose and puts it down on the counter by the sink. "It's been a very long day." He's still smiling that neat irritating smile; his composure is entirely unruffled.

Roy Keane, who is sweating and has lost his jacket, who can't get his hands loose and who is beginning to feel pretty fucking ruffled, just stares at him and hopes he drops dead with it.

Jose does not. He just takes off his own jacket, untucks his shirt and keeps watching. He doesn't make any effort to hide his amusement and Roy can repay that favour; he doesn't pretend not to be watching. Doesn't pretend that his breathing hasn't sped up just a little, that his mouth is not dry.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way." Mourinho's voice is entirely devoid of irony; it's a line that's hard to do straight but maybe it sounds straighter when you're the one tied to something.

Roy's mouth catches up with him. "Fuck off, you little shit." Witty repartee being flavour of the month chez Keane and that.

Jose's smile becomes a grin. "I was expecting something like this from you." He covers the space between the sink and the shower door in less time than is at all reasonable. And he's a lot taller from the perspective of the floor.

The rational parts of Roy's brain grind quickly through 'what the fuck?' and 'this is insane' and stop functioning altogether. Logic apparently lost a lot of relevance at the point where drugging people and tying them up got to being acceptable management behaviour.

Jose looks down at him in a way that makes him feel simultaneously furious and (horribly, gratingly) proud. He pushes his shoulders hard against the wall to keep the movement of his hands to himself; there's something loosening there, he can feel it. He stares back, chin high. World's gone fucking crazy, he thinks, and his fingers work deep into the knots, although his wrists are sore and there's a stab of cramp high up above one of his elbows.

Jose nods. "I think I was right to have you tied up. I don't think you're going to be very . . . co-operative."

He drops to his knees and puts one hand gently, comfortingly on Roy's shoulder. Then trails it ever so lightly down across Roy's chest, down- Roy spits at him, incandescent with fury and helplessness. "Fuck you. Fuck you."

Jose raises a finger to his lips, teasing. "Now now. I don't think you would want anyone else to hear you."

Roy snarls. "I'll fucking shout. I'll have them all in here."

"And tomorrow I'll be in another country. Whereas you . . . you will be here. Right here, if you don't learn some manners." He undoes a button at his collar, cricks his neck in a slow circle. He's still smiling. His mouth is damp; there's a day's growth of stubble fading down into his shirt. He reaches out his hand again, reaches out to run a finger along the line of Roy's cheek.

Roy, who's fought in dirtier fights under worse conditions that this, lashes out with a leg. It catches Mourinho sharp on the side of his shin; he bangs clumsily over against the door and pushes himself upright. Rubs thoughtfully at his shoulder. He's not smiling anymore.

"Okay," he says. "Okay." For a second Mourinho looks almost . . . old. Then he leans forward over Roy's head and Roy ducks on instinct and then is fucking cut off by this rush, this torrent of icy water. He's soaked in seconds. He can't breathe; he thinks his heart might just have stopped, it feels like his spine is going to come out through his chest. After a few seconds he honestly doesn't know if he's making a noise or not; he jerks hard against the restraints, and all the carefully loosened knots slam tight again, his wrists rub raw. He's choking, the water rushing past his ears is so loud and it's so bright he can't look up.

It stops. He gasps in the silence between drips; there's a ragged edge to his breathing. He spits out water and shakes and blinks.

Jose's mouth twists. "So. Are you going to be more reasonable?"

Roy's lips are numb with the cold, he says, clumsily but with venom: "Fuck-" and Jose switches the shower back on and this time he knows he's making a noise, but he can't help it. He presses his lips hard together and shivers and jolts and he closes his eyes and fights it-

The water stops and Jose's mouth is so fucking hot against his; it's like the only warm thing in the world and he presses up against it with a dark shamelessness, then a second later jerks away. "You shit. You piece of shit-"

This time he really thinks he might black out, and he's almost sorry when he doesn't. Jose looks down at him dispassionately as he coughs and shudders.

"You know, we don't have to do this this way. I like you."

Roy half laughs through the shakes but he doesn't know if he can take it again; he's sat in an inch of cold water, he can't feel his legs or anything except the shivering that's racking down from the back of his neck and the scraped skin at his wrists.

Jose leans forwards, the edge of his jaw against Roy's cheek, the warmth of him so close, so temptingly available. His cheek brushes against Roy's; stubble and silk and water.

"I like you," he says, again. "Don't force me to make you beg for this." His mouth is so close to Roy's ear that the words scratch and tickle. His tone is a nice mixture of regret and pleasure and Roy shivers with something more than cold, because he knows that he's not kidding; that if he has to he will make him beg for it, and he doesn't know how long that will take . . .

He swallows and twists his numb fingers up behind him, the joints of his shoulders nagging and burning with pain. There's a second where he feels the pressure on his wrists lessen and then snag. He tries again and the same thing happens. and then suddenly he sees the light. He pushes his hands together then apart, then lifts one wrist high-

Jose runs a gorgeously warm finger along the side of his face, rolls it down to the corner of his lips and then slides it in and Roy concentrates and touches his tongue over the tip, along the edge of the nail, and swirls it softly round and his hands are so wet now behind him that it's almost easy and Jose smiles and leans in. And Roy tilts his head submissively (which if Mourinho was paying any attention would be an obvious tell, but-) and Jose takes his mouth with a quiet aggressive expertise that makes even Roy stop what he's doing for a second. For an moment he closes his eyes and throws his weight into the kiss; the heat of his mouth, the teasing hint of tongue, the heat, jesus.

He bites down on a moan which is more of a whimper, and behind him, finally he gets one hand free and the other following quickly on. Jose's tongue glides up into his mouth; there's a sudden tingling knowledge of teeth and want and-

He grabs Jose Mourinho by the scruff of the neck and pulls him up roughly, like he's a stray cat. For a second Jose goes completely limp, shoulders loose against Roy's hand and he almost drops him. His legs are so numb he can barely stand. Then he's slammed him up against the wall, one hand on his chest, driving him into the tiles. Using him to hold himself up, if he's honest. Jose gasps, the breath knocked out of him, eyes wide, mouth still infuriatingly amused, and then Roy gets a finger on the button of the shower and stabs into it hard.

Jose doesn't flinch as the water hits and Roy does, because he's too slow and too out of breath to get out of the way in time, and it's that slowness that gives Jose enough time to snake a hand round the back of his head and fucking yank his head in for another kiss. They're both gasping now with the shock of the cold and Roy's whole body is wired and Jose doesn't let up, doesn't let him breathe through the shaking.

Their bodies jolt together uncontrollably, hips, chests, thighs; Roy makes a sound in his throat which leaves Mourinho slant eyed and straining against him. Together they rock back out from under the water, the floor is wet and they slide and Jose's hair is wet and his hands are persuasive and so fucking hot-

They roll. He's got Mourinho pinned between him and the floor, Jose's hair tangled and mussed under one hand, his other hand weighing him down hard over his shoulder. Jose bucks and fights, but there's a rhythm to it, the transparent wet cotton of his shirt clings to the muscles of his back. They slide in the water that's puddled around them. Roy can't decide any more if that's water or sweat that's trickling down his face; he tastes of salt and Jose's mouth.

He pushes Jose's head down into the ground until his neck is twisted sideways and he's gasping for breath. Roy throws the weight of his chest down to hold him, dips a hand between the man and the floor and roughly snatches at the buckle of his belt. Jose lifts his hips off the tiles, arches and angles himself up into Roy so hard that he almost loses his concentration; the buckle gives, he jerks the belt clear of the loops and then he's got Jose's hands behind his back. He cinches the leather tight; throws a half hitch on it for good measure and yanks that shut.

Below him Jose makes a noise that's almost openly demanding, so that Roy laughs and flips him over to face him; pushes him over so his back's against the wall. Kisses him again, messy and hard and then rocks back until their lips are hardly touching and makes Mourinho work for it, makes him whimper and tease and press up against him like an eager whore. When he's done with that he leans back in; puts his hands against the tiles either side of Mourinho's head, uses his teeth down along the curve behind the man's ear, nips and scrapes until Jose is rubbing shamelessly against him, hips moving against the wall, against Roy's knees.

As he pulls away to catch his breath he sees that Mourinho is laughing, quietly.

"What's so funny?"

"I didn't think it would take you so long." Mourinho ducks his head to slide his tongue along shivery lines over the backs of Roy's hands: he works his lips gentle and almost apologetic over the broken skin at the wrists so Roy sucks in a breath sharp between his teeth. And then he comes back up with his mouth half open, this mixture of defiance and grace that makes Roy's whole body twitch. And-

- - -

Roy Keane comes with his eyes wide open, his hand on Jose Mourinho's cock and the words 'fuck you' lost somewhere between his tongue and his lips.

Worse things happen at sea

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:22:19 GMT

Title: Worse things happen at sea
Rating: PG-13?
Pairing: Craig Gordon/Steven Pressley (Elvis)/Paul Hartley (Z) (LOL: Hearts OT3 *cries*)(I am going straight to Hell *sigh*)
Summary: Crack interpretation of a headline which ran something along the lines of ‘Riccarton Three exiled to Siberia’. BLAME THE BOY.
Disclaimer: Really never happened.
Author’s Notes: See this (still almost unbelievable) news story for more information.

Worse things happen at sea

Craig’s head feels as if it has been run over by a bus. This is, for now, enough information, but his senses persist in exploring their world, much against his better judgment. He is lying on something soft but springy. It has little pointy bits and smells like lucky heather. Everything seems to be unreasonably cold. Shit.

The light is a pale blue, almost lilac. The sky looks oddly shiny. He blinks at it, horrified. He hasn’t fallen asleep outside since he was about fifteen.

He rolls over, wincing. His body feels reasonably rested but there’s something sharp and pointy repeatedly jabbing at the bits of brain behind his eyes and he can’t remember- He sits up. And stares at the horizon, which is further away and emptier than any horizon has any right to be.

Behind him two alarmingly familiar voices are raised in animated discussion.

“Rannoch?”

“Easterhouses?”

“Skye?”

He turns around without enthusiasm and is stared at disapprovingly.

“The youth of today,” Elvis says, and rolls his eyes. “In my day, we used to wake up in fields all the time.”

Z nods. “And then we’d go straight to the ground and play a full match. With only a slice of orange at half time, none of this jaffa cake crap.”

Craig lies very gently back down on the grass and prays to all the saints he can think of that when he wakes up again it will all be over.

It isn’t. He should have paid more attention in religious education. He should have paid more attention to everything. He doesn’t understand why it’s quite so cold. He doesn’t understand why he can’t remember-

There’s a wind blowing that would strip the skin off a dead horse. Someone prods firmly but kindly at the back of his neck.

“Wake up time. We need you.”

Well, Craig thinks, it might have been worth it, to get that kind of admission. He opens his eyes again. The light is just the same. The horizon is as far off as before. It’s like East Lothian; blank, mind numbingly featureless, fucking cold, but somehow he knows it isn’t East Lothian.

Elvis peers at his face. “Better now?”

Craig nods, takes a deep breath. “Where the fuck are we?”

They look at each other, and then back at him; it’s not a routine he’s unfamiliar with, they’re pretty slick. He didn’t miss the concern, but he is aware that he was supposed to.

“This isn’t Scotland, is it?”

They do it again, less convincingly this time. Elvis licks his lips, stops and then tries another time. “How much do you remember about yesterday?”

Craig laughs, although he thinks it’s probably him that’s missing the joke. “Nothing.”

Elvis scratches at an eyebrow, pushes his hair back under his hat. “Yeah. That’s what we thought. How about the day before?”

Craig struggles briefly. “The meeting?”

Z nods. “You remember the whole-”

“-Siberia thing?”

It’s a thing they do, Craig thinks, they don’t even notice any more, they just do it and they have no idea how fucking irritating-

Z squints into the sun. “But wasn’t that a metaphor? A simile?” There’s a brief pause. “What? What? I did English at school too, you know.”

Elvis looks at the sun too, at its shallow trajectory across the edge of the blue. “Apparently not,” he says, and Craig looks desperately for some kind of peg to hang that on, because really-

About a hundred metres away there are two bags. One of which contains a tent. The other contains a frankly desultory quantity of food, primarily geo-bars. At least someone had the grace to make sure they were dressed for the occasion, but none of them feel moved to consider this a particular blessing, although Craig is starting to appreciate his gloves.

“The real question,” Elvis says, without any visible humour at all, “is who are we going to have to eat first?”

Z looks up, shrugs. “Well, I would have thought that was obvious.”

They both look at Craig, who is so appalled that he actually stops walking. “Hey, wait.” He can’t find enough words to express himself; he waves his arms about in the vague hope that this will impress them with the general unfairness of the whole situation. “I’m the youngest; I’ve got things to live for.”

“Like what?”

“I’m going to play for Arsenal! I’m going to be in the Premiership.”

“Re-ally.” Z’s eyebrows arch. “Ve-ry interesting.”

Elvis shrugs, deflects the attention like a stray shot on goal. “I don’t think you should eat me,” he says, mildly, “I’d be all stringy.”

Z nods at Craig, with the enthusiastic air of a man who has been considering this very question for some time. “You’ve got to be the highest quality source of protein there is out here,” he says, apologetically. “If you eat either of us you’ll just get horrible deficiencies and die slowly and painfully. Really it would be the kindest thing.”

Craig backs away. “Yeah? Survival of the fittest, right?”

“You’re a goalie. Between us we could outrun you in minutes.”

“Try it.”

At this point both Elvis and Z collapse in a mutually supportive heap. For a moment he thinks they’ve both simultaneously suffered massive heart attacks. When he realizes that they are, in fact, laughing hysterically, he looks at them with utter disbelief.

Elvis says they need to go West. So they go West, or at least in the direction of the closest approximation of West a democratic vote can establish.

The sun never sets, so they have to guess at blocks of time. Z’s watch is still working, but, as they have no idea what time-zone they are in, it’s only really helpful in terms of shift measurement. Elvis sets them a schedule, to which they keep religiously, because it’s the only thing they have.

It’s about twenty minutes before their official stopping time when Z makes a sudden dart to the left, yelps and then flings himself into the air. He lands flat on his face, groping about wildly under his body.

Craig wildly considers all the options (fly bite, bee sting, snake, large snake, spider, arctic scorpion, madness, tumour) and has got as far as thinking about improvising some kind of weapon when Z rolls over onto his back, triumphantly clutching what looks like a mitten. He waves it in the air.

“Got one!” He bounces to his feet, still clutching the mitten, which turns out to be a small inanimate brown rodent.

“It’s,” Elvis pauses, then states the obvious, “flat.”

Z pats and prods ineffectually at the little body, like a man trying to plump up a hotel pillow. If anything it gets even flatter.

Craig stares, simultaneously revolted and fascinated. “It would be like eating a guinea pig.”

“They do eat guinea pig. In South America they do, I saw it on the Discovery Channel.”

Elvis pokes at the lemming’s fat furry tummy. “It was only going to throw itself off a cliff anyway,” he says consolingly.

The second night Craig can’t sleep. It’s not the cold, although it is fucking cold. It’s not the lemming, which turned out to be surprisingly good. It’s this damn repetitive noise. He tries to pretend that he can’t hear it, but it’s futile. He tries to think of something else. Anything else. Something taps gently against the wall of the tent; he takes a deep breath.

“Look, are you-”

There is the sudden awkwardness of complete silence. From both sleeping bags. Or, to be more accurate, from the single mound of sleeping bag that seems to have formed at the back of the tent. Craig sits up, stares and then decides never to ever open his eyes again.

“Sharing body heat?” Z’s voice is a little muffled. Elvis laughs.

Craig lies back down and puts a hand over his face. His mouth carries on without him, in some grotesque parody of polite social intercourse. “Well. Could you maybe do it a little more quietly?”

There is the heavy sound of two bodies disentangling; a noise from Z which is half way between genuinely pleading and seriously pissed off.

“Oh God,” Craig says, staring up at the unearthly lilac of the ceiling. “I am going to be the one who gets eaten first, aren’t I?”

Z starts to say something which is abruptly cut off as his mouth is covered. Craig chooses not to think about what might be covering it. He rolls over so his back is to them, pulls his hood up over his head and counts very intensively to one hundred. He’s still awake at ninety nine. He’s still awake hours later.

Everything becomes a little uncomfortable. Craig doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, which, given his currently limited social world, may mean that he’s never going to see another human face for the rest of his life. They just walk.

It’s almost a relief when Elvis snatches at the collar of his coat, then traps his face awkwardly between his hands and kisses him so hard he can taste blood in his mouth. And for the first time in days his mouth is warm, hot, his face, hot-

Elvis pulls away, breathing hard. “This would be a whole lot easier if there was something to throw you up against.” He isn’t quite joking.

Craig looks around at four thousand acres of contourless treeless flat land; Z coughs, discreetly and moves to stand behind him and Elvis leans into them both and kisses him again. He tastes of smoke and salt, his mouth is hard and fierce; Craig closes his eyes.

Behind him Z shifts his balance, shoves a hand flat against Craig’s shoulder, holds them all steady. When they eventually come up for air there’s a sardonic edge to Elvis’s smile, a glad sort of aggression.

“So?” Z says, and Elvis runs his tongue over his lips, considering.

“You should try it,” he says, and before Craig can even catch his breath he’s been rotated and rearranged and Z’s mouth is softer but more urgent. Craig leans back into Elvis’s chest and puts one hand, slowly, cautiously up to Z’s cheek. He closes his eyes again and doesn’t think of anything at all except the horizon and the warmth around him.

“Aah. Fuck. That elbow. That has to go.”

“Where?”

“You’re just too fucking long, that’s your trouble.”

Z sniggers.

“It’s not fucking funny, you should have a go.”

There is a momentary pause and then a brief scuffle as Z tries ineffectually to wedge himself in between them. Three people, Craig thinks, is probably too many. Especially when the tent is very small and the air is very cold- and then there’s a hand in his hair and a mouth moving evasively along his throat and another hand and another hand and he’s insanely grateful for it all.

There are two bags, the tent and the food, and they take it in turns to carry them. One only gets lighter, while the other seems to get heavier every day. Craig wonders if Elvis is slipping in little bits of rock for some kind of delayed psychological boost, but at the end of the day when he unpacks it he only ever finds canvas and pegs.

They seem to have slipped into their roles so easily; Elvis, the bold leader, Z, the hunter gatherer, and Craig, who puts up the tent and cleans up after everybody. It’s like they never left. Except that he’s starting to get fucking bored of lemming and geo-bars and he’s always so fucking hungry and he’s got a blister on his left heel the size of a fifty pence piece-

And he’s not stupid, although he’s beginning to wish he was, and he can’t help but notice the way the sun is dropping inch by inch down to meet that horizon that never gets any closer. And he can’t help but be a tiny bit grateful that they are obviously never going to talk about that either.

And there’s another little conversation they never have; the ‘what do you miss most?’ conversation. (His dog, his car, his music). So, Elvis, what do you miss most? (My wife). And Z, how about you, what is it that you miss most? (My kids).

Eventually all they think about is food. Except at night, when they can forget about most things for a couple of hours, and then, sometimes, they can sleep. Craig lies between them, and most nights listening to them sleep is almost as good as sleeping himself. Elvis’s arm across his back, Z’s face buried in his side; the lilac sky above them, the first little stars on the horizon.

Once there’s a vapour trail, but it’s so far away it might as well be in another country.

They are lying in a sort of abstract sculptural form, where anyone moving would violently disrupt the whole effect. Craig’s hand is gently tracing the lines of Z’s shoulder. Outside the wind is blowing like ice from the north, but he is gloriously, gloriously warm. Elvis presses up against him, makes a small but definitely interested noise.

“Do you think this is burning too many calories?” Z’s voice is completely serious; beside Craig’s head Elvis snorts.

“You want to sit it-”

“-out? Fuck off.”

“Well then.” Elvis rolls over and props himself up on an elbow and Z lifts his head to kiss him, open mouthed, right in front of Craig, who is still, ridiculously, almost shy of looking.

Sometimes Craig thinks they only include him to be kind. And sometimes Craig notices that they all say ‘we’ now, instead of ‘I’. And sometimes he’s so fucking turned on he can hardly think at all, except to briefly wonder whether this was who he was all along and how long it would have taken him to find out.

Z’s been limping for two days. No-one wants to be the first to mention it. Eventually he trips and stumbles, throws out an arm to stop himself falling full length. Elvis reaches out a hand to help him up and he knocks it away, coughs and spits; his voice is as brittle as glass.

“Look, I’m a midfielder for fuck’s sake. I can run around for ninety minutes, fine, but this? This is insane.”

Elvis unbuckles the bag he is carrying and lets it slip to the ground; his mouth is set into a thin line.

“Do you even know where we’re going? Because this fucking tundra all looks the fucking same to me. For all I know we’ve been walking in circles for a week.” Z gestures wildly at the horizon then looks back; his eyes are unnaturally bright, his cheeks scraped red by the wind.

Elvis doesn’t say anything. He takes off his hat and runs a hand through his hair, which is dark with grease and sweat and smoke.

“Oh God,” Craig says, possibly to himself. “We’re actually going to die here, aren’t we?”

That night they all sit outside for longer than normal. The ice blue overhead is dark with purposeful arrowheads of geese, heading South.

“We could trap one and tie a message to it,” Z says. He is laid on his back watching the sky.

“Fuck off, Z.” Elvis says, without rancour.

Craig is trying to make his piece of muesli bar last as long as possible, but he has to balance that with not actually dropping any of it. It’s taking up as much of his attention as he can spare; because he knows that if he just sits there and watches the two of them he’s going to have to deal with that awful feeling in his chest that, in other contexts, he might label as love.

“We could train them to fly in SOS shapes. Why is it always V’s anyway?”

Elvis flops over onto his back and stares up at the sky as well. Behind them the sun grazes the edge of the earth; the world, presumably, turns.

“What if, right, we got enough of them and we tied them together and- no, wait- this is good, you’ll like this- we wrote a message across their bellies-”

Elvis stretches up a hand and traces a wide lazy V against the sky; there’s a gentle honking drifting slowly over them. It’s going to be dark soon.

The Northern Lights really are as beautiful as everyone says they are. Even the snow is kind of beautiful, in the end.

Dominoes falling in a chain reaction

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 23:17:59 GMT

Title: Dominoes falling in a chain reaction
Fandom: Football RPS
Pairing: Tomas Rosicky/Alex Hleb mainly; but basically QUITE A LOT OF ARSENAL (and some of Chelsea). I HAVE MINIMAL SHAME.
Disclaimer: I own nothing; up to and including the roof over my head and the shoes I'm currently wearing. And this never happened.
Summary: A distinctly crack follow-up to this; in which consequent fallout is handled The Arsenal Way.
Note: Almost 7000 words of far from adequate present for the delightful saltlemonnlime . Apologies if it doesn't come up to scratch and happy birthday! I apologise in advance for once more alienating both halves of my f-list ;-).

Dominoes falling in a chain reaction

It was one of those facts it was impossible to deny. Those who were tempted were brought up short by the memory of Andriy Shevchenko tapping cautiously on the open door of their changing room and self-consciously pushing Cesc through it. (This only after a twenty minute argument regarding the wisdom of further team members going in search of him: Borderline hysterics from Mathieu Flamini: “He said ‘he might be some time’. Doesn’t that mean anything to anyone?” Resigned eyerolling from the older division (Jens, Freddie, somehow, as if by default, Tomas Rosicky, who counts himself less resigned than incapable of surprise). Captainly advice and a decent appearance of concern from Thierry. Wild theorizing from Alex Hleb and Robin Van Persie, ranging from Russian Mafia Abduction to Spectacular Chelsea Implicated Suicide (best guess). Healthy interest in not only Cesc’s fate but the possibility of anyone ever getting showered and getting the fuck out of Cardiff from the remainder of the team, with the honourable exclusion of Theo Walcott who was enduring some kind of long dark teenage night of the soul in a corner.)

And anyone still bent on denial had only to cast the most cursory glance over the slackness of Cesc’s limbs, the blownness of his pupils, the way his mouth was swollen and dark, and really, there was no point in proceeding any further. Of course, in the event, no-one cast cursory glances. They just stared with their mouths half open, and Cesc shrugged and walked past them to the showers without saying a word. A moment or two later they heard the water start up, clouds of damp cottony steam billowing out into the room like dry ice at the end of a show. It was hardly inappropriate.

For possibly the first time in the history of forever, the Arsenal dressing room was completely silent. Thierry, ever the tactician, was the first to take advantage.

“Phil, I want details.” The silence continued. “Jens, stop smirking. It isn’t helping the situation. See if Shevchenko’s made it back to their dressing room. We need to know everything.” Silence, minus one. “The rest of you, get showered. And don’t look. What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

Naturally everyone looks. Cesc manages to briefly combine a facial expression of immense smugness with one of mild contrition (which fools nobody) before eventually falling asleep on Phil’s shoulder within thirty seconds of the bus pulling away from the stadium.

Phil, who has the unfair lead of an insider and a gift for flattery that sometimes leaves even him a little breathless, has virtually the whole story by early the next day. His rendition to Thierry is slight on detail (Phil can be economic where it suits him and there are some things he likes to look on as payment for his role) but graphic where it matters; namely the last three minutes.

Thierry raises an eyebrow. “Mourinho?” he says. “Shit.” He runs his fingers briefly across his forehead. “CCTV?”

Phil nods glumly. Thierry sighs. “Call the team,” he says, without enthusiasm. “Try not to let Cesc know.”

Predictably this ploy results in Cesc arriving at the designated meeting point about fifteen minutes in advance of almost everyone else; holding a mug of coffee large enough to sink a doughnut into (which he is doing) and buzzing with a nervous energy that makes people around him twitch unexpectedly. By the time the full team has assembled Cesc has already spilt hot coffee onto Alex Hleb’s feet, twisted a knot in Tomas’s hair which refuses to yield to the combined persuasion of Adebayor and Theo and stained one of Freddie’s most expensive shirts with the luridly spectacular shades of the hundreds and thousands which were once an decorative feature of his lunch.

Thierry is serious. He uses the word ‘breach’ more than once (which makes Mathieu giggle in an inexplicable but infectious manner). Cesc looks reproachfully at Phil, but as Phil has been happily occupying a very private dream world since Cesc’s confession, it makes less impression than he had hoped. He settles for looking reproachfully at Alex, who squirms awkwardly.

“And so,” Thierry concludes; “I will have to go and retrieve this tape myself. I have made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.” He glares at Cesc, who suddenly looks supremely innocent and about twelve. “I hope you appreciate how thoughtless you have been.”

Cesc blinks and nods, head down. From where he is sitting Tomas can see the grin that is being so vigorously repressed but he can also see the twinkle in Thierry’s eye. Sometimes he feels like he is existing at the centre of so many levels of subterfuge he can hardly breathe. And this is precisely the reason why he decides to have nothing to do with anything that might result from Cesc’s little adventure. He is not, he hopes, completely stupid.

Nine hours later he is sitting in a car outside Stamford Bridge, dressed, much against his better judgment, entirely in black and wondering where the hell he went so very wrong. Alex (aha!) is sitting behind him, holding a very expensive and completely gratuitous pair of night vision binoculars.

The path of events which lead up to this moment are complicated and Tomas is not entirely sure that even he understands them. He knows that at some point Alex actually said “One for all and all for one,” although he still desperately hopes that he imagined it. He is also aware that at some point someone (Alex) mentioned the midfield code. What he can’t quite decipher is how all this gallantry somehow transferred itself into action; although he is dimly aware that the visit to the army store mid-afternoon was a turning point of sorts.

He knows he should have said no then, but Alex is not only persuasive but also quite capable of playing the ‘endearingly bewildered by language’ game, which mostly translates as ‘ignoring direct orders’. He tries again.

“Thierry said that he would deal with it.” He tries not to sound too stressed, although his heart is starting to play nasty tricks on his voice.

Alex leans around the back of the seat until his mouth is exactly level with the side of Tomas’s face. “But we can’t let him do that,” he whispers.

Tomas wipes his ear. “This is hardly a better option,” he complains, aware that he might as well just beat his head repeatedly off the dashboard.

The seats creak a little as Alex leans back into position. “He’s one of ours,” he says, and Tomas can’t argue with that, although if right now he could change it he most assuredly would. He briefly considers running away to sea and becoming a hairdresser. And curses the fate that led him to be considered, for various reasons, the smart one.

Alex is moving again; he taps Tomas’s shoulder and beckons. “That’s the last light out. Come on.”

They make their way circuitously round the car park. Alex zips from patch of shade to patch of shade, Tomas just walks. He is, secretly, rather hoping for the friendly beam of a flashlight, the rough shout of a guard. He feels no shame in running away. There is of course the possibility that any guard employed by Roman Abramovich might be the type to shoot first and ask questions later. He wonders what being tazered will feel like.

When they reach the door he is, marginally, disappointed not to have found out. It still seems like the more appealing option, where those options include being caught inside Stamford Bridge late at night, dressed in black fatigues and with breathtakingly stupid Adam Ant style stripes of black on his cheeks (Alex insisted).

Alex looks at him expectantly and, through a supreme effort of will, he not only manages not to sigh but musters the energy to type 0826 into the keypad and then feel a little smug as the door opens first time. It is easy, he thinks, when you know how. And although, of course (of course!), the situation would never arise, he is aware that Cesc would do the same for him and he supposes that is why he is there. Although he is also aware that wherever Alex goes, he will, inevitably, be three or four paces behind.

A brief argument earlier in the day had settled that they would try Stamford Bridge before Cobham, although the logic of either approach escapes him. Alex is already making his way purposefully through the police lighting, and yes, those computer hacking skills had come in useful when looking for floorplans; he allows himself this little tribute.

It turns out that he might have saved himself the trouble; the office is hardly difficult to find and the nameplate is a bit of a giveaway, but this is a minor setback. He expects it to be locked, but Alex, who clearly has no such concerns, just gives it one sharp push and they are in. For a second he stands blinking in the dark and the sudden smell of leather and flowers; well, it’s tasteful, he thinks looking around, he likes the chair and the bookshelves, it's less brash than he had expected . . .

There is a crunch. Alex, wearing latex gloves which seem to be faintly glowing under the fluorescents, is rummaging through the desktop. He flicks another pair of gloves at Tomas, who holds them limply between finger and thumb before finally yielding to his fate. Past compulsions lead him to run his eyes over the books, fingers lingering briefly on familiar titles, a perfectly justifiable place to start looking he assures himself. He ignores the ominous creaks and rustles in the building; he tries to concentrate on the reason they are there. For Cesc, he thinks, not without a little resentment and he bends to his task.

Overhead the lights suddenly flicker and jump into life; his heart is in his mouth, he turns to snap at Alex. “Do you really think-” and he stops.

Jose Mourinho; a little ruffled looking but otherwise perfectly composed, is peering at them from the hallway door. “Good evening, gentlemen. Can I help you?”

Tomas moves instinctively a little closer to Alex; he says “ - ” and then, with a sad lack of originality, “ - ”.

Mourinho curls his lip, obviously unimpressed, he steps into the room and shuts the door behind him. Then he opens it again and looks elaborately at the nameplate. “Perhaps this is my mistake? No?” He shuts the door. “No.” His eyes are tired, but there’s something in the set of his shoulders that makes Tomas nervous.

Alex lifts his chin defiantly; he says; “You know why we’re here,” and Tomas, who is frantically attempting to pretend that he is somewhere else altogether, is temporarily struck dumb with admiration. All he can think about is the many many ways in which this is not going to make a good appearance in the press; he wonders if Mourinho will call the police.

Instead (and it’s infinitely worse than anything Tomas’s imagination has offered so far) Jose smiles. “Perhaps.” There’s a grudging note of respect in his voice. “I admire your team spirit.” He walks around the desk, pushes the chair back and sits down, heavily. “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.” His lips press together; Tomas’s heart sinks.

Alex shifts from foot to foot; he says, reluctantly, “What do you want?”

Jose smiles again. “I think you should stand a little closer together,” he says. His eyes inspect them appraisingly; something high up in Tomas’s chest jumps and startles. They shuffle to stand side by side; Tomas’s mouth is dry. Jose’s smile is at once comforting and mildly predatory, he nods. “Take off your gloves,” he says, and it isn't a suggestion.

Alex’s eyes meet Tomas, slightly panicked; he peels the rubber off his fingers one by one as Tomas does the same. Tomas’s body is humming like a badly tuned engine; he wonders what exactly Jose would do if he passed out right there and then. Alex’s mouth moves once and Tomas thinks, oh no, no, because he can see where this is going.

Jose leans back in his chair, settles down comfortably. “Okay. And now, I think you should touch his hair,” he says. Tomas hesitates and Jose's smile glides through another couple of shades of unpleasant, he says, "I could always call security? If you would prefer?" and Tomas, who can hardly keep his hand from shaking, reaches out and runs his fingers very lightly over the top of Alex’s head.

Jose sighs. “Properly. Don’t make this any harder on yourselves than it needs to be, alright?” He looks so genuinely concerned for them that Tomas has to bite back the sarcastic answer which is burning his tongue; instead he slides his fingers down to touch Alex’s scalp, strokes gently up the rough hair at the back of his head, down into the curve of his skull, onto the top of his neck. He tries to send coded messages through his fingerprints; he tries to say, this is not exactly how I had planned this, but then, that’s hardly a comfort.

"Good." Jose's voice is encouraging and Alex, who is always eager to help, lifts a hand, reaches out cautiously for Tomas’s shoulder.

“No.” Jose shakes his head and Alex snatches the hand back as if he has been burned. “Wait.”

He looks at Tomas again, nods gently. “And now his face,” he says.

Tomas’s fingers ride gentle over cheekbone; slide into the space below Alex’s eyebrows; Alex closes his eyes and that is easier. And Tomas draws out his complicated roadmap of desire and resistance into the dark smudges of camouflage paint; he tries to keep inside the lines. He tells himself that he is only imagining the way the pressure is increased against his fingertips; that Alex is, ever so slightly leaning into him. He closes his eyes.

Jose sighs. “No,” he says patiently. “Open them.”

Tomas, whose self control is rapidly unraveling, does so only to glare at Jose, who smirks back at him. “That’s better. Now, you touch his mouth.” Which would be less irritating if it wasn’t so exactly what Tomas is aching to do.

Jose's eyes are all arrogance and dark charm; Tomas has to fight himself not to blush, not to let anything show that he might later regret. Jose smiles. "There. You like that, don't you?" he says, and apparently Tomas is more transparent than even he suspected.

Alex’s lips move under his fingers; he can feel Alex’s breath on his fingertips; it catches and he realizes he is holding his own. Alex takes a half step forward and Jose says nothing, although Tomas can feel his eyes all over them; he slides a finger into the corner of Alex’s mouth and is rewarded by the tiniest touch of tongue. He blinks, temporarily at a loss and then Alex’s hands are back on his shoulders; a cheek presses briefly against his, soft and warm and-

“For Cesc?” Alex says, and Tomas, forced for once outside the limits of his self restraint, snaps “Oh, fuck Cesc,” and pushes his tongue inside Alex’s mouth; he takes and he takes until he thinks he is going to lose himself. Alex’s smile curves around him; the body pressed against him changes from polite to suddenly very very interested. Alex’s hands are up against his chest; he is pushed backwards against the desk. Oh my god, he thinks, I’m trapped in a 1970’s porn movie.

Behind them Jose nods; “Very nice,” he says approvingly, and Tomas thinks; you bastard, you bastard, I swear. And whatever the hell is going on here, however rapidly the predicted outlines of his life seem to be changing, he promises himself that before it ends they are going to break that smug bastard’s composure all to fuck.

Alex leans into him; presses the lines of his body all strung tight against Tomas’s. His mouth is hot and wet; his eyes are briefly open and Tomas doesn’t try to hide the fact that he was looking. That Jose isn’t the only voyeur in the room. And Alex smiles with a kind of reckless gratitude; his tongue scrapes down the side of Tomas’s cheek and Tomas shudders in the sweetness of his surprise.

Alex makes a noise halfway between a snarl and a whimper; his hands are inside Tomas’s shirt, finding all the soft places between neck and rib, up into the tingling scoop of collar bone. Tomas closes his eyes on the line between hair and skin at the back of Alex’s neck; he lets his teeth and his tongue find the places he can no longer see. He braces himself against the desk; to take Alex’s weight, to take the weight off his feet because his knees are suddenly as soft as old rope.

He arches his back, for himself and fuck, yes, for Jose too; because if he has to share this moment with anyone else then they are fucking well going to enjoy it almost as much as he is. His fingers scrape against the warm skin of Alex’s scalp; he fists them into the short hair and drags Alex back up to his face and kisses him, open mouthed.

Alex breathes a little faster and Tomas lets his hands slide up inside t-shirt; is vastly, brilliantly amazed by the warmth of skin, by how fast a heart can beat. He moans softly into Alex’s mouth and feels the response racing through his pulse; he tilts his head back to expose his throat which is nipped and teased until he can hardly think. There’s a magical symmetry to the ways their body are working; to the way a man’s mouth feels, the heaviness, the firm line of the lower lip against his teeth.

Alex. Alex. He wants to say it again and again, wants to hold it between himself and disbelief. He closes his eyes and drops his neck; he lets his hair fall forward around his face and Alex scrapes it back and kisses him again.

His shirt is dragged up over his head and Tomas twists his arms round and Alex pulls it down just far enough to trap them behind him and Tomas gasps, suddenly wonderfully helpless. Alex has one hand knotted tight into the fabric; he twists it tight enough to hurt and Tomas jerks and fights it, then is calmed by Alex’s other hand spinning with a graceful brutality down across his stomach. Down, down; his mouth opens and he tries not to plead.

Behind them Jose shifts slightly in his chair; trying, perhaps to get a better view, but they are so far beyond that now. Still, Tomas moans for him, wrists strapped back, because he is not ungrateful, and because the next time they do this it is going to be slower, far far slower and no-one is going to be watching but them. Because there is going to be a next time and a next time and-

And Alex slides down against him, keeps that hand holding Tomas’s arms back; looks up at him, a mess of black paint and swollen lips and Tomas’s mouth is still open but this time he can’t make a sound.

Alex’s mouth works long unbearable lines across his hips; his hand works further down until Tomas’s trousers are around his knees and he can’t move his legs or his hands, and fuck, fuck, fuck-

For a sudden vital flash he is gloriously outside his body; he looks down at himself, pale and pretty, cheeks flushed, looks down at Alex Hleb on his knees, blowing him right there in front of Jose Mourinho, looks at the way his spine is racked back against the desk. His body jerks and stutters, he gets a hand free and fists his hand into Alex’s hair and his feet slide out from under him. And Jose makes the tiniest sound, leans forward the slightest of fractions and Tomas Rosicky comes so hard he thinks he is going to die.

They drive home in silence. When they get to Tomas’s house he gets out without a word. His lips are sore. Alex drives away and Tomas stands watching the lights merge into the others and very carefully not thinking.

An hour later his phone rings, and he doesn’t bother to pretend that he’s been asleep.

“Yes?”

Alex’s voice is a little shaky. “Tomas?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to come over here.”

“Yes.”

It’s not as if he isn’t already dressed. And it’s a short enough drive. And really, it's hardly as if he was going to get any sleep for a while anyway. He has a strangely familiar feeling of dread, mingled with an abstract kind of happiness that starts in the back of his neck and wraps up in the bones of his shoulders.

Alex lets him in and then pads back to the couch. He presses play on the video recorder and Tomas sits down beside him, he doesn’t feel uncomfortable, although he suspects he probably should. His mouth still tastes faintly the way Alex’s hair smells.

On the screen the video skips and blurs, then catches. It isn’t the Chelsea dressing room. It isn’t even a dressing room. It’s the office that they were in a few hours earlier, except that this time it isn’t them leaning up against the desk. It’s-

“Cesc.” Tomas’s voice is as flat as he can make it.

The bodies shift over each other; behind them Mourinho lounges comfortably in that damn chair.

“And Mathieu.”

They watch for a long moment in silence. Then Tomas winces a little and Alex twists his head through a slow revolution of one hundred and eighty degrees and squints. “So it really is true, what they say about the French.” Tomas thinks briefly of all the possible replies he could make to this and settles for a mildly stunned but dignified silence.

On the screen Mathieu’s hands twist and jerk across Cesc’s back; the light catches on the patch of skin at the nape of Cesc’s neck. The angle of the shot catches every pull of muscle; the gleam of sweat, the white knuckles of the hand that is now scratching and tangling into Cesc’s hair. Mathieu’s back arches across the desk. Cesc, not to be outdone, almost turns himself inside out; his cheeks are flushed, when he drops his head they can see that his mouth is half open, his eyes closed.

Tomas attempts to distract himself with calculation; if a video lasts almost ten minutes and Alex has been home for an hour, how many times is he likely to have watched it before calling me? If Mathieu and Cesc have never done this before, then how many times are they likely to do it again afterwards? Alex’s body is very warm beside him. The digital time stamp on the video puts it, he estimates, at about an hour before they arrived at Stamford Bridge.

Cesc’s mouth shapes a whimper Tomas is half grateful he can’t hear; he is aware that his own heartbeat is probably audible. Alex shifts his weight in Tomas’s direction; they are watching the way Mathieu’s feet struggle briefly against the floor; the startled flutter and lift of his lashes. It's a not unwelcome distraction from the conversation Tomas considers they should probably be having.

Experimentally he puts his lips against the side of Alex’s neck; he breathes in the warm cotton sweat smell of the pale skin. Alex’s hand wraps around the back of his head with more confidence than he could have believed possible; Tomas looks up, shy suddenly, and Alex smiles and- Alex’s phone vibrates its way across the coffee table, and they both jump about a foot in the air and try very hard to pretend that they didn’t.

Tomas grabs at it but Alex gets there first; he palms it up to his face and hits the answer key.

“Yes?” Alex pauses. “Yes? Yes?” Tomas contemplates strangling him. “Yes? Yes.” He hangs up. His eyes don’t quite meet Tomas’s. “Er. It's- They- Cesc and Mathieu have a video too.”

“And?”

“It’s, it’s not the video.” Alex scratches nervously at a cut on the back of his hand; he spins the phone on the table and looks away. “It’s Jens and Freddie.”

Tomas supposes that one of the problems of the whole team living within striking distance of each other is that it’s very hard to find time to process current events when people like Cesc and Mathieu can be on your doorstep in minutes. Also he supposes that if they’d had slightly more time they might have considered hiding the tape featuring those two people before they entered the lounge. Or at least, not having it actually playing.

There is a brief pause, which might in, circles other than Arsenal, have passed for uncomfortable. Then Mathieu looks at Cesc and says, critically; “The label was sticking out of your shirt.” Cesc leans forward and squints at the screen, he scrubs at it with a pointy finger (Alex shudders). “Is that dirt on your face?” Mathieu joins him; they both stand in front of the TV critiquing each other’s performance with a regrettable lack of discretion or lowered volume. (“I told you that wouldn’t work.” “But if you would just lean back a little bit more, and then - ” “No look; if you keep your hand there then I can’t move, can I?”)

Tomas, for the first time in at least an hour, dares to look directly at Alex; he can’t decide whether he is going to laugh hysterically or just collapse into a quivering heap. His body feels as if it has come unstrung along the spine and his mind is rapidly following suit.

Cesc and Mathieu turn simultaneously round and look at them; Cesc starts to say something and then is distracted by the video tape in Mathieu’s hand. He snatches it and waves in front of Alex and Tomas. “But, you have to see this,” he says. “We thought it was just us.”

Even Tomas has to admit the tape is impressive. About halfway through Cesc says, plaintively; “But . . . how?” Mathieu makes a brief abortive experiment in limb angles, wobbles and falls limply off the end of the couch. He lies exactly where he has fallen, eyes never leaving the screen. Everyone ignores him. Alex starts to comment and then stops; he licks his lips (Tomas is uncomfortably aware). None of them actually look at each other.

When the tape cuts out Alex rewinds it without a word and they give it another watch. Tomas is graphically aware of their likely fate should Jens and Freddie ever find out about this, but he is also- “I’ve got a bigger screen at home,” Cesc says, thoughtfully.

Twenty minutes later they are all sat on Cesc’s couch in front of what is undeniably the biggest home cinema Tomas has ever seen. He looks suspiciously at the surround sound arrangements and thanks God that Chelsea’s CCTV facilities don’t run to audio (or at least that if they do then that Jose has yet to let them know that). It is, undeniably, better on a bigger screen.

He calculates that this video must have been shot about an hour before Cesc and Mathieu’s. “I admire your team spirit,” indeed, he thinks.

Time passes. His attempt to make a quiet retreat to the bathroom is cut short by Alex; who no doubt believes he is acting with complete discretion. Mercifully Cesc and Mathieu are far too absorbed to even notice such minor disturbances. Alex catches Tomas’s wrists in his hands; he pulls him through the door and his mouth is hot and demanding. They have made it as far as the floor when Tomas’s phone starts to ring.

It’s Thierry. “Tomas?” His voice sounds unusually lacking in confidence.

“Thierry?” Tomas tries to construct his answer in a way that skirts around the fact that he is a) somewhat breathless and b) has a midfielder lying on his chest. “It’s-” He consults his watch. “-very early in the morning. Are you okay?”

Thierry sounds slightly disconnected. “Yes. I’m fine. I just – do you have Cesc?”

Tomas rolls himself out from underneath Alex, much to the disappointment of his body. “I’m at his house, yes.”

“Is he awake?”

Tomas flaps a hand at Alex and they sneak briefly out into the hallway. He looks down the stairs. He can just see the top of Mathieu’s head, and then the top of what he takes to be (he hopes to be) Cesc’s head. And a hand. They look very very busy. “Yes,” he says, and then as he retreats back into the bathroom, more kindly; “No.”

Thierry tuts; he sounds slightly agitated. “Do you-, have you seen-, is Phil there?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Thierry sounds for once at a loss. He also sounds ever so slightly breathless. In fact, if Tomas didn’t know better he would-

“Jens and Freddie brought me a video. It is not The Tape.” Alex’s head is pressed against the back of the phone; he turns to Tomas wide-eyed at this revelation.

Tomas tries to find the words to ask who exactly the tape does feature, but he can’t quite find a way to phrase it.

Thierry sighs. “I thought I made it quite clear that I would handle this. However, I have reason to believe that the problem has now been solved. Are you- in a bathroom?”

Tomas, whose mouth is not quite as practiced at deception as the rest of his body, stutters.

“Never mind. I will speak to you in the morning. We can only hope that this matter is now closed. Call me if there are any further developments.” There is a neatly final click as Thierry hangs up.

Tomas’s mouth stays slightly open until Alex figures out exactly how he can turn that to his advantage. A little later on they break Cesc’s towel rail, but Tomas works out a way to put it back so it looks almost as good as before, which means that it doesn’t count.

It is a tribute to the quality and quantity of Cesc’s towels that they both wake up the next morning and are able to walk almost immediately. And as Alex observes (in that specially Belarussian way which Tomas still can’t quite classify as either deadly seriousness or unexpectedly straight-faced humour); waking up already in a bathroom really saves a lot of time in the morning. Although this would perhaps have been more accurate if they hadn’t decided to experiment with sharing the shower.

When they eventually make it downstairs they find Cesc wandering about the lounge, semi-dressed and holding a cup of coffee that has the apparent consistency of oxtail soup. Mathieu; whose mouth looks slightly bruised and who is quite clearly gently out of breath, is peering over the edge of the couch for his t-shirt, which Tomas can see has somehow made it all the way to the corner behind the TV. On which Mathieu and Cesc seem to be indulging in some kind of infinite loop of slow give and take; he looks away with an effort-

“Thierry phoned last night.” Tomas is determined that until someone else mentions the current circumstances he is damned if he is going to.

Cesc looks up at him reproachfully, he says; “I know. He phoned me too. It was very inconvenient.”

Some times Tomas finds it hard to remember that this whole situation was, essentially, Cesc’s fault. It’s as if his aggrieved expressions of innocence do something awful to the space-time continuum.

“And?” Alex is never at his best in the mornings. None of them are.

“I phoned Phil, but he wasn’t up,” Cesc wails. “And I don’t see why Jens and Freddie went to get the tape at all. What about the midfield code? Shouldn’t you have got hold of it first? Don’t you care?

There is one of those three second pauses which are starting to give Tomas the swirling sensation of an oncoming migraine and then all hell breaks loose. It’s like an endless carousel of bickering and Tomas, who never really wanted to ride in the first place, is starting to feel mildly nauseous, when, contrary to most theological advice, hell is brought to a screeching halt by the entrance of Phil Senderos.

There is a faintly battered quality to him, but he is holding a video tape in one hand and wearing a smile which he might have borrowed from Cesc for the occasion. Time temporarily stops, then Cesc bolts forwards and jumps into his arms. “Phil!” he beams.

Phil disentangles himself from the squirming mass of limbs with an ease derived from long practice; there is a slightly mysterious bruise on his neck which Tomas can only hope no-one else will notice.

Alex stares at him; awestruck. “Is that it?”

Phil nods and then jerks the hand with the tape in it easily up out of Mathieu’s reach. Mathieu pouts. “But it’s not fair.”

Alex is already dialing Thierry; they hear the faint static crackle of his voice over the line, the buzz of irritation. “Now what?”

“We’ve got it. Phil got it.”

Although, technically, sighs of relief are reasonably silent, they all hear it. “Are you sure?”

Alex looks at Phil, Cesc does not. Phil nods. “Yes.”

“Yes,” Alex says. And then, in a more puzzled tone of voice; “Yes. Okay. Yes.” He hangs up and looks at Phil with the slightest hint of suspicion. “He giggled,” he says, “he said your name and then he giggled like mad.”

Phil shrugs (and blushes); “Thierry is always like that,” he says, unconvincingly. And then, with more conviction and a slight note of concern in his voice; “Is that, is that – Mathieu?” Everyone turns back to the screen; Mathieu says, in a tone of not inconsiderable pride; “Mais, oui.”

The subsequent explanations and re-viewings (which are hardly sped up by Cesc using the pause button more than once to point out shots of particular interest) not only take a distressingly long time, but neatly distract attention entirely away from Phil’s success. Particularly the highlights of the Freddie and Jens tape.

Tomas, who likes to know exactly what is going on at all times, at least where he can see that the information might benefit him and that not knowing is a potential disadvantage, eventually corners Phil in the kitchen. He likes Phil.

“So?” he says, he sounds no more respectful than he is feeling, he is impressed out of his normal reserve but he knows there is something here which is escaping him.

Phil rummages through a cupboard and comes out with only Nutella; he rolls his eyes. There’s a partially devoured loaf of bread abandoned on the surface and with a meticulous precision he slices half-inch thick pieces and pops them into the toaster. “So?” he says, but there’s an obvious shiftiness about him. He sticks a spoon into the top of the Nutella and hands it to Tomas, who has the roof of his mouth covered long before he notices that Phil is checking the use-by date on the bottom of the jar.

On the surface the toaster hums and buzzes and pops; Phil turns to hitch the two pieces of toast onto a clean magazine in the absence of washed plates. Tomas empties his mouth; he says: “Jose didn’t just give you that tape.”

Phil looks up, licks crumbs neatly from the fingers of his left hand. “Who said anything about Jose?” He holds out a steaming piece of toast, which Tomas takes incautiously then juggles rapidly between finger and thumb, his eyes meet Tomas’s with a tolerant amusement. “I thought you Eastern Europeans were the lateral thinking experts.”

Tomas tries to correlate his experience of Alex Hleb with his understanding of lateral thinking and almost chokes on his Nutella. Behind them Cesc appears in the open door; his eyes are bright, there is a small red mark just under his jaw which would probably provide a forensic team with enough dental records to furnish a conviction. “Toast!”

Phil flaps a hand at him until he vanishes again, slices more bread with hands which are commendably steady. Tomas is drawing a mental flowchart of co-incidentals which culminates at Jens and Freddie. Who, he likes to imagine, were old enough and wise enough not to have watched the videotape they secured, who would have handed it straight over to Thierry . . .

Phil looks at him narrowly, his smile is conspiratorial. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?” He spreads Nutella expertly onto another piece of toast. “Seems like Jens was pretty unimpressed when he found out that they’d been performing for nothing. He was hoping to use The Tape as blackmail material to secure himself peace on the bus for a few months at least.” Phil doesn’t look up from the worktop. “And it looks like Freddie might not be able to train properly for at least a couple of days.”

Tomas blinks, chooses not to think about that and tries again. If not Mourinho, then – “Shevchenko?”

Phil looks temporarily rueful. “After Jens was finished with him it was hardly worth the effort. Besides, it’s hardly likely that Mourinho would give him a key to his office.”

Tomas’s mouth falls slightly open. “John Terry?”

Phil sighs patiently. “Well, that would hardly have been appropriate given the circumstances, would it?” He leans closer to Tomas, he whispers in his ear. Tomas, who feels he may be starting to develop some species of nervous twitch, drops his toast and is completely unsurprised by the fact that it lands Nutella side down.

“Drogba? When?”

Phil laughs, he looks around to make sure no-one else is listening, he says, under his breath; “Yesterday morning.”

Tomas stares at him. Phil smiles without malice; he says, blandly; “Are you going to eat that or do you want me to make you another one?”

The morning’s training session is predictably complicated. Robin is by turns aggrieved and snippy; “But why? Why didn’t you call me?” Mathieu and Cesc, all tri-lingual hysteria and shaky thighs, are intermittently brilliant and useless; they can see that Jens Lehmann has Something To Say To Them and it makes them justifiably nervous. Thierry tries, once or twice, to speak to Phil and then visibly loses his nerve and his composure and from what Tomas has surmised about the video in Thierry’s possession he is hardly surprised. Freddie’s absence is as obvious as the proffered excuse of a migraine is unconvincing.

Out of the eye of the storm Tomas and Alex jog companionably around the edge of the pitch; Tomas because he is trying to stay as far away from Arsene’s expression of total bafflement as he reasonably can, Alex because he is thinking and it’s a process which requires as little distraction as possible. His lips are moving. When Tomas first came to Arsenal he assumed that this was a sign of some form of deep religious devotion; now he more accurately interprets it as a necessary corollary to deliberation. It’s a useful warning system as much as anything else.

He waits patiently. Eventually Alex says, contemplatively; “He taped us, didn’t he?”

Tomas nods noncommittally; he keeps looking down at the flicker and shade of the grass under his feet. He thinks briefly about writing his name on Alex’s back with a finger, about the gentleness of Alex’s hands in the dark; it’s like a bright wonder that leaves his mouth tasting of plastic and copper. He contemplates the wisdom of sending one Jose Mourinho some kind of thank-you card; anonymous in the mail.

Alex’s mouth moves again; he says; “But we have the other tapes, right?” and then “So, we win, right?”

Tomas, who doesn’t really believe in winners and losers as much as the bargain basement excitement of knees still working in the morning, of muscles that tighten and release without pain, looks at him and smiles briefly. “You could say that.”

He looks across the pitch to the squabbling that has commenced upon the allocation of stretching partners; Alex runs a finger down the back of his hand with a delicious suggestiveness and he smiles and Tomas thinks about infinite variations on a theme. There’s a pale red line running around the backs of his wrists, there’s a bite mark on his chest, his back feels like heavy cats have been walking up and down it for days. And, for all that he doesn’t really believe in victories and defeats, he can’t help but count these things as tiny trophies of a kind that he’s hoping to keep winning and winning.

A winter machine that you go through, and then -

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:23:26 GMT

Title: A winter machine that you go through, and then -
Pairing: Andriy Shevchenko/Kaka
Rating: Mild.
Disclaimer: Pretty lies.
Author’s Note: Follow-on to You left your rings on the shoreline. For the lovely

wonderkid and her prompt: things to be applied literally or metaphorically or, um, not at all: second chances, how to stay and how to leave. bonus points for mentioning black coffee and/or... red cards? god, how lame. just: color imagery much appreciated, don't mind my idiocy. and, um, watch me continue to be shameless-- SUITS! (y y y.). Mostly in the school of not at all, then ;-).

A winter machine that you go through, and then -

Time passes. The world turns steadily, over and over without reference to anything beyond gravity and light; the pattern of days is a statement not a question. Andriy grew up in a land afraid of the rain. In England it rains every day (and this is almost the truth); it runs down his face and into the corners of his mouth and it tastes of nothing but a grey blank sweetness. Sometimes he wants to drink it; he counts the beads of water on the windscreen of the Bentley, before the wiper swishes them out, he counts to twenty-two and then he breaks off and the white noise of the rain is like a distant crowd, and if he knew how to stop, he wouldn’t.

It transpires, hardly surprisingly, that a career spent in attack is not, after all, the best preparation for (self) defence. But he understands the bare bones of the concepts if not the tactics, and he learns quickly. Too quickly. The idea that a man can carry the seeds of his own destruction in his bones is, after all, hardly new to him. Where he turns his head now, he sees things out of the corner of his eye and he lets them slip past; allows them to fold themselves over and over until they are gone and the sky around him is just one long sheet of grey.

Through the slow mechanisms of his new world he is ground down to dust; the consequences of the choices he has made are more permanent than the marks of fingernails on hipbones. What he sees now, where he could never have seen it before, is that in Milan he was young. Young in ways his childhood had never considered an essential factor in survival, young in ways a man who risks his life at the ring of a bell can never fully comprehend. But this kind of youth is ephemeral. Circumstances change. One day, he thinks, one day you wake up and the rain itself has changed to poison, and while he can sneer at his own melodramatics he cannot distance himself from them.

Trying is the only thing he knows how to do, but even his body has turned against him and in the end, that is all he really has. Two heavy legs and a chest that resents the cold winds of the cut white mornings; two eyes that watch the world without ambition beyond another day done. He never believed in fate; the pre-ordination of all things, a divine plan stretching through the infinite webs of time to catch men up and hold them helpless. Now he shrugs it off, lets the morning breeze blow it away with the steam from his coffee, and he gets back in the car and tries again.

And if he has learned anything, it is this; that you can never go back. It seems like such a long road to have gone for such a ridiculously trivial self-help cliché. He watches the white lines tick, beat by beat, under the edge of the bonnet; he lets his foot ease down on the pedal, into the dark. He has hardly seen his own house in daylight in three months; he barely remembers the way his children’s faces look, awake. He drives without the radio; only the sweet low purr of the engine and the savage wire of his thoughts wrapping around his ribs and the journey is never long enough. And, sometimes, what he thinks is this: that he is only waiting for the next open door.

For a man whose home vanished in a cloud of bitter rain, it troubles him a little that the most appropriate image he can find for hell is an amateur golf tournament on the day of the Champions League Final.

And in another way the end of the world is alarmingly predictable. Which is the reason that he finds himself (wearing a suit which shapes him into someone he barely remembers) walking up the crass red carpet of a midtown casino. Everyone, it seems, has their price, and if team unity can be bought with a handful of free chips and an unlimited bar tab then who is he to argue? After all, what he is starting to do best is to forget, and the compulsive gambler is a man who relies on failing to learn from experience. He takes the chips that are measured out to him (in a white plastic cup from behind a vacant plexiglass window, oh he can read the signs) and he takes his seat and for an hour or so the world is hardly a loss to him.

He supposes he should have learned something else; that it is these moments of freedom, the fragments of amnesia which mercy lets from time to time fall, where that imposed projection of life is most dangerous. He drags his fingers through chips like pebbles on a beach; he acknowledges the approving nods from round about. He looks up -

And Andriy Shevchenko, who does not believe in fate, cuts his cards and drops his eyes. Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, who once believed that all things were foreordained from a place outside time, whose new concept of mercy has an edge like a knife, pushes a handful of chips towards the centre of the table.

“Don’t - go - anywhere,” Kaka says, like it’s a joke, and people laugh with that irritating London laugh of being in on the in-joke. And Sheva laughs too, laughs at himself, laughs because he has had one drink too many and because of all the things he has no capacity to deal with, this, right here, this is out there on the edge with the dying stars. And because Kaka has come with a script and all Sheva has are bruises which have faded, a mouth that once bled, the taste of salt and honey. The grace-notes of a tune he will never learn.

Kaka licks his lips, slow and deliberate, he smiles but it is not a smile. Sheva twists his wedding ring once around his finger, with the all the brutal casual grace of the unaccustomed drinker.

“Not any more,” he says, and perhaps his performing days are over, but this is one game where he can give as good as he gets. I made you, he thinks. I made you. He looks into the shattering radiance of Kaka’s smile, he does not shield his eyes. His mouth tastes strangely metallic, there are pins and needles dancing green fire over his face. He knows not to expect softness, only the brittle snap of ice and that brilliant confidence. The pose and poise of a dancer. The cut of his jacket as sharp as the turn of his tongue.

The world fades into monochrome and red. Sheva bets without caution; throws chip after chip into the sea and watches the tide wash them back to his feet. Kaka never bluffs, never stops smiling, changes tactics without warning and then reverses to meet himself; graceful on his tightrope as Sheva is on his. It’s a flirtation of kinds; an extension of courtesies as formal as any two jousters under fluttering pennants, and Sheva can admit that they are both on enemy territory.

“Give my regards to your wife,” Kaka says, sweet as the scent of almonds, and Sheva returns the compliment; he is aware of the crowd even as he is careless of them. He plays these two games better than he can play the one by which he lives; it is as if he has been waiting, waiting for this.

“Congratulations on the League,” he says, and he takes care to say it in English, to impress, even as he weighs up his chances of a flush, as he traps his cards between his fingers like flat shiny petals.

“Congratulations on the ‘FA Cup’” Kaka says, all sincerity, but the way his lips shape the words leaves Sheva in no doubt of his meaning and he can barely hold back the smile. He looks down instead, studies his cards as if he expects to find some kind of answer studded into the red and black; hidden between the pictures and the numbers.

And in the end (just like old times!) it is just the two of them and an interested crowd. But this time they are opponents and Kaka, whose face is as innocent and beautiful as water, whose fingers are pale and dazzling, is, he realizes, toying with him. A spark of anger scrapes across his cheek, a fuse somewhere, burning. He makes mistakes that his feet recognize too easily; he runs without the ball, without any hope of a pass. He throws cards and chips at the table; lost and losing. And he remembers the fierceness of the light, narrow hips, a compromised smile, the end of the road.

He can’t deny the tides of his own body; the stifled twitch and catch of this history he cannot escape. The lovely oblique angles of Kaka’s wrists; of his hands, first quiet then abruptly mesmerizing. The tease and promise of a different game, the unexpected grace of meeting on neutral ground. The way Kaka’s eyes meet his, once, twice.

Kaka rakes chips into towards himself, his cheekbones catch the light and Sheva is (always) all in. An eight, a ten and a jack. There’s a killing to be made somewhere, but Sheva is no killer, although his hands know the dark lines of guns in the dark, although his fists have felt bone chip against their bones. Kaka; who claims not to remember heaven, smiles like the last carriage of a ghost train, and he never bluffs.

Behind them the silks and satins swish and glide, there is a semi-circle of faces overhanging their table; some of them he has played beside, once, twice. He can’t remember their names. He only remembers the sudden violence of a Tuesday afternoon; that he was passive in his aggression. That in retrospect we can be taken to take, but that at the time that is never the case. He feels as if something in his chest is made of glass; as if he should reach in and carefully try to take it out before something hits him and it shatters.

He puts his cards on the table, one by one. It is barely worth the effort. Kaka’s hair shines under the lights; his lashes are dusty with neon. When he lays his cards down there is a momentary pause, then a short startled burst of applause. Sheva remembers that foamy whiteness inside his head; the sound of his own breathing, Kaka’s body over him – he looks away and then back.

Kaka catches up a chip, holds it for a second between his fingers, looks a million miles past it and back. His lips part, undecided, then close in a smile as beautiful as exploding glass. “One more,” he says; and Sheva understands, is caught, tugged a little closer towards the centre of the wheel on which he is breaking. “One more.” He throws the chip up into the air, it spins and Sheva reaches out, one hand, assured now and catches it.

The croupier shifts a little, uneasy, and Kaka looks at him from under his eyelashes, his voice is light with affection, with that awful depth of understanding. A wholesome flirtation. He says, like it is a very very small favour to be asking of an old old friend; “Just this once?” and the croupier, hypnotized, nods. Sheva watches, resigned and fascinated. It’s an easy trick, he thinks, to be played on those who never look behind the eyes, the foolish ones. And Kaka is never bluffing.

He keeps his eyes on the table, on the cards, on the synthetic brightness of the baize. He stakes his soul on a red switch of hearts; an irony he is not immune to, but he is tired, tired suddenly. Once, he remembers, they used to be on the same side. And the cards on the table are black, all black; a speckled tattoo of darkness that reflects in the gleaming face of Kaka’s expensive watch. If he lets his mouth slip a little he wonders how anyone will ever know; he is old now and his face has set into the proper expressions for a man without further expectation.

And all the cards are against him. It’s hardly a surprise. Kaka holds out his hand; eyes bright and expectant like coins, and Sheva drops the chip into it, shrugs, flippant for the audience who begin to disperse. He straightens his collar; there are words balanced along the tip of his tongue like blue swallows.

“A drink?”

Kaka nods; his face now blanker than at any time when he was playing, there are no easy secrets to read there.

“Here?” And Sheva doesn’t even know what he wants, he has nothing left to lose or gain because he has already lost. In the background his team, his team, are propping up the bar, his captain calls his name and he half turns, he is poised between feet in front of goal.

And Kaka says, soft; “I have a room,” and Andriy Shevchenko, for the first time in months of aimless in-betweenness, takes the ball and runs with it.

They sit side by side on the edge of a bed big enough for a five-a-side match. Kaka’s hands are warm; the condensation of his glass runs over them and drips between his fingers. The half-moons of his fingernails blink and flicker like tiny bulbs; Sheva tries not to stare.

He sees that they are both old now; that the directions of their lives are taking new paths. There are lines around Kaka’s eyes he does not remember, and yet all he sees is that same blinding beauty that once broke him and he thinks about running. But Kaka’s skin, the slight catch of his breath, is so dear to him (but what he thinks, because he too once lived in a world where God was as real as horses teeth, where words were more than just symbols, is “take it, and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey”). He can’t forget the unforgiving whiteness of that room in Milan; the red and black of a world he walked away from without pretending not to look back.

He wonders when he will be old enough not to feel anything; whether a man reaches an age of therapeutic numbness and slips from there into the night. He can feel the sun of Italy shining back on him from the skin at the side of Kaka’s neck; he remembers the light and the birds and the long grass growing between the paving stones on the quiet streets. He remembers.

And Kaka’s voice is wound tight and hard, his mouth is very close to Sheva’s ear, he says, without the need for preamble; “I gave up Heaven for you.”

And Sheva does not say, “So did I,” only, finally, because he has lost all regard for dishonesty; “Is that what you want? Do you want me to destroy you?”

A door slams at the end of the corridor; Kaka looks up at him, his eyes bright slivers of silver, his wrists tremble briefly, he says; “Yes,” and then, “Yes,” and Sheva thinks, but I already have. And look at you. Look at you.

He slides a finger down inside the crisp white line of pressed cotton collar; follows muscle and bone, the slight depression and mound of vertebrae. The beads of Kaka’s spine, melting and separating under the pressure, the soft dark hair at the back of his neck, the bone tight ridge of his skull. The shameless way Kaka’s mouth moves, searching; he says, and his voice is suddenly young, almost innocent; “Don’t go - anywhere.”

And Sheva takes him; gentle, gone, the lightest of kisses, the softest lips ever, and there are promises there that he intends to keep. And he is old, and he is without ambition and in the morning his legs are so fucking heavy he can barely run a hundred yards, and all he knows how to do is try, but when he sees an open door he can still walk towards it and look out, blinded, into the sun.

Once I was you: (32/Epilogue) I'm never going to know you now

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:08:08 GMT

Title: I'm never going to know you now (32/32 of Once I Was You series) (final chapter)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: The end. Or, alternatively, the beginning.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

(With thanks to those who helped out so much :-). And lyric chapter title credits (credits, really) to Elliott Smith).

Once I was you: (32/Epilogue) I'm never going to know you now

Somewhat to Bruce’s surprise, after the storm there was calm. They sat side by side on the ledge, looking out over the sparkle and gleam of Gotham on the horizon. He’d gone downstairs, picked up the bottle and brought it back with him. This time they didn’t need glasses.

Nothing had really been permanently fixed. Really, if he could have brought himself to accept it, he had always known that the doctor was truly insane. Much more so than any strength of medication was going to do anything other than mask. Tonight had finally forced him to face up to what that was going to mean. For both of them. And right now it would have to be enough for him. What he couldn’t hope to cure he was going to have to live with.

The whisky burned a long clean line of pain through his tired chest. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and passed the bottle.

Now that the last of the sunlight was finally gone the evening was turning colder. Crane shivered a little in the chilly night air, hunching his slender shoulders together. With the innate instinct of a man who’d been raised a gentleman, an instinct that he knew was going to lead to an sharp and immediate rejection, Bruce turned round to pick up the coat that had dropped to the floor earlier.

And suddenly everything was terribly, terribly wrong. He heard the glass that he had put down on the edge of the parapet opposite scrape across the tiles a split second before it crashed to the floor. Looking up he saw the black clothed men who were so quickly climbing over the low walls, tried to count them, six, seven?

Before he even had a chance to stand up they were already on the terrace coming rapidly towards him, an aggressive assurance in their speed and purpose. He straightened up, the balls of his feet pressed hard to the tiles, the adrenalin hot slamming against the small of his back.

Dr Crane, who had spun round like a startled rabbit at the sound of the glass smashing, was standing by his side. Almost unconsciously Bruce shifted to stand a little way in front of him, blocking the slim body with his own. He ignored the small offended sniff which came from behind his shoulder.

“Don’t move.” he ordered Crane, his voice harsh. The space on the roof was too limited for fighting man to man in the dark, he didn’t want to inadvertently knock the doctor over the edge. No weapons. The last thing he needed was have somebody in the way to fall over. In the three seconds before the first thug reached him he had time to wonder if Crane had planned this all along. Then he was fighting for his life and little questions like that ceased to matter as much.

It took only an instant for him to realise yet again exactly how dependant he’d become on being Batman. The effect of his appearance, the weapons, the costume and the way it adapted easily to his every move. The comforting protection of the armour on his chest, the firm touch of the mask tight over his face. He was naked and exposed without it. And there were far too many of them for him to fight alone.

The first man went down easily enough but then there were three and even he could not keep them all at bay. Through the blur of movement, the sound and the fury of the fight, he knew that at least one had got past him but there was no time to turn.

The sudden crash from behind his back was loud enough to make both him and his attackers stop and look round.

Dr Crane was still standing, very pale, but the line of his mouth set firm, holding the jagged neck of the whisky bottle in one shaking hand. At his feet the body of one of the men was slumped in a heap, covered in shards of broken glass. He could see a patch of bright blood smeared on the back of the head. No, Crane wasn’t ever as defenceless as he seemed, and the realisation made Bruce smile a little even as he turned back to take on his own enemies.

Unequal as things were he began to believe that this was a fight he could win, the three men beginning to weaken under his renewed attack. He pushed them harder towards the edge of the roof, his anger rising at the thought of the presumption, the arrogant boldness of these men in daring to take him on in his own home.

They fell back before him like children running from his rage and the warning that was beginning to scream like a siren in his brain had barely reached him when he saw the eighth man crouched silently in the corner of the terrace. He was holding what looked like a gun, but when he fired there was no sound other than that of Bruce’s own laboured breathing.

There was a jarring instant of stabbing pain and then, surprisingly, there was none. He looked down dully at the tiny red dart that was sticking jauntily out from the muscle of his shoulder.

And realised his mistake. It wasn’t him that they had come for.

Bruce’s eyes went straight to Dr Crane, now pinned down between two balaclava clad heavies, arms twisted behind his back. There was a fierce pride in the look that came back, in the head that was held so high despite the obvious fear. Any question that he might have held a moment before about the doctor’s innocence in the assault was instantly erased. The tallest of the attackers, features covered by a long black scarf, walked swiftly across the rooftop and stepped between him and his last glimpse of Crane’s face.

Then the darkness of the drug slid over his body like a greasy wave and he went down into it without a murmur. As he fell he heard Crane cry out in pain, just once, and the sound followed him like the cold snap of a breaking bone. It was a sound Batman had never succeeded in prising from the doctor.

And then, then it was dark for a long time. Bad dreams forced him to run through shadowy places, far from the known reaches of his own sane mind. He was looking for something, something that had once been left behind. Every time he felt he was starting to come up to it another turn in the path would sweep him hopelessly away from his goal, and he couldn’t even remember exactly what it was that he had wanted to find in the first place.

Time moved unutterably slowly. Until, finally, he remembered just enough to force him to start out on the long painful struggle back towards consciousness. Coming round was, he thought wryly, never the easy part. He didn’t know exactly what he’d been shot full of this time, but he thought that Dr Crane might have recognised it. His brain felt as if it had been dragged through a wringer. His head hurt. The side of his body on which he had fallen was now pleading for the touch of something softer than the hard cold tiles of the roof. It took him more than one attempt to lift himself up far enough to see, as he had known that he would, that the terrace was completely empty.

He was lying among the broken fragments of the bottle, sharp tiny splinters embedded deep in his hands and arms. There seemed to be a lot more blood now than there had been when he fell. As he struggled to his feet the effort made him retch, again and again, the sour taste of the whisky rising up in his throat, dizziness forcing him to slow his movements.

The whole attack, he thought wonderingly, had had been so swift and silent that Alfred, sat down the stairs in the kitchen, could never have heard a thing. He looked numbly at the place where Crane had been standing such a little time before.

And a single piece of paper fell from the clear sky as he finally stood up, alone on the dark roof. It fluttered gently in the early autumn breeze before it dropped to the ground at his feet. He knelt to turn it over where it had landed on the glazed tiles, resting among the broken pieces of the bottle.

It was a small old fashioned patience card, the pattern on the back constructed from a mass of entwined snakes. And on the other side the dancing figure of the Joker stared up at him, a smile that was a shade closer to a sneer than a grin stretched across the painted face.

He picked it up and held it tightly in his bloody hand, and the cheap cardboard crumpled in his fist like a fallen leaf. Purposefully he moved to the edge of the parapet and looked out over the city.

“I will find you.” he said, speaking the words out loud into the night air. Even this early in the year the first cold winds of winter were beginning to blow in from the sea fifty miles away over the hills. The night was still bright and moonlit.

Then the terrace was empty.

Fifteen minutes later Alfred jumped up from his chair to the sound of the Batmobile screaming in a blaze of light and engine noise across the lawns. Inside the big car Batman leant forward over the wheel, his eyes narrowed, his teeth clenched shut. And a wild storm of righteous vengeance blew on the sea wind towards the streets of Gotham.

Once I was you: (31) I've got no desire to use you, you know

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:01:56 GMT

Title: I've got no desire to use you, you know (31/32 of Once I Was You series) (final chapter-esque)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Life is a series of compromises anyway.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (31) I've got no desire to use you, you know

There was enough of a breeze coming off the sea to make the air on the roof pleasantly cool. Above the side of the house facing away from the orange glow of Gotham the stars were glinting like tiny chips of quartz. They sat down, one on either edge of the terrace that spanned the roof space. Bruce took off his coat and laid it down beside him on the ledge.

For once Crane was quiet, holding his glass in his freshly bandaged hand. He was looking out into the darkening night sky with an expression that Bruce didn’t like to try to analyse. In the dusk his face was mostly made up of shadows, the strong lines of his cheekbones gleaming.

It was a strange face, Bruce thought. A curious mixture of strength and fragility. Not unlike Dr Crane’s own personality, inasmuch as Bruce would ever come even close to understanding that. He knew that there was a good deal he did not know about the doctor; things that Crane concealed, deliberately or otherwise, from him.

Bruce swirled the whisky round the bottom of his glass. He wasn’t even sure if Crane should be mixing alcohol with whatever else his system was pumped full of. But psychopharmacology was after all the doctor’s special interest. If any one knew what effect that specific combination might have it would be Crane. He had never asked about the pills that seemed to form the staple item of Crane’s sparse diet. He didn’t want to know and he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to be told even if he asked nicely.

Whatever those little multi-coloured tablets the doctor was knocking back so regularly were, he was fairly certain that they weren’t just aspirin. He didn’t trust him, but at least now he knew roughly what to expect from him. A Crane unleashed from the controlling effects of the drugs, well, that was another thing entirely.

But even with the pills, and there were seemingly more of those every time the doctor’s hand slipped into his pockets, Crane’s periods of lucidity were becoming shorter and less frequent. He wasn’t the only one who had noticed. One glimpse of the distress in the man’s eyes as he began to slide away from relative sanity towards whatever it was that lay on the far side of Jonathan Crane’s mind had been enough to convince Bruce that this development was less than welcome to either of them.

The memory of the first day, before he had handed over the bag of drugs, that memory was still vivid. Even after he had given Crane the pills, wondering as he did so what exactly there was left to save, there was still nothing normal about the man.

Now Crane was looking across the roof top at him, his gaze shrewd enough to convince Bruce that their thoughts were not far apart in substance. “What do you want me to say Bruce?” The tone was light but the eyes were far from playful. “I’m not getting better yet.”

“Do you need more pills?” And he knew as soon as he said it, the moment the words left his mouth, that he shouldn’t have rushed it out like that, that he’d as good as told Crane out loud just what he’d been thinking about.

But Crane seemed not to be offended, his pale face still turned towards the rapidly rising darkness in the east. “Pills can only do so much.” Again, the soft voice was deceptively casual. “Every crazy in Arkham took their pills. They didn’t all get let out.”

Yes, Bruce thought, because you didn’t choose to let them go. But he said only, “Is there anything else?” And wished that it hadn’t sounded so harsh.

“It’s so pretty out here.” The doctor’s voice was wistful, but beneath the wistfulness Bruce could hear the tone of the voice Crane used when he was no longer himself. “Are you going to let me go?” And the question was abrupt but not unexpected.

Bruce sighed. “I can’t just let you go. I know what you can do. I’ve seen what you are capable of.” He knew full well that Crane was using his talents to manipulate him yet again. That he might as well just get ‘Bruce Wayne - sucker’ tattooed permanently onto his forehead.

There was a short silence. Then the other man turned to look directly at him and the big blue eyes opened deep and wide beneath the long black lashes.

“Oh no, no, no.” The voice was very soft now, soothing but with a cold sharp edge like a steel blade underneath. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine everything I’m capable of.”

Bruce felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle. Started to wonder if being up there, so far up there, all alone, on the roof, unarmed and with a dangerous mad man was really such a good idea after all. Saw how once again Crane had closed the door of the trap so quietly behind him that he had never even seen what was happening until it was too late.

Crane was smiling at him, not a nice smile, not the sweet sparkling expression that Bruce had seen before. There was nothing gentle about this smile. “What? Nothing to say for yourself now?” he sneered. “I thought you were smarter than this. Frankly I’m disappointed in you.”

Bruce put his glass down on the ledge beside him, his hands moving slowly but his mind running feverishly over his options. In a straight fight he was sure that he would win, his weight and height were serious advantages. And he was sure that Crane knew that as well as he did. So that wasn’t going to be the way it went.

“Why are you doing this?” Bruce tried to keep his voice as level as Crane’s, getting carefully to his feet.

Crane looked at him as if he couldn’t believe what he just heard. “Newsflash Batboy. Crazy here. Reasons come as extra.”

“I can get you help.” Bruce worked hard to sound reasonable. “I can get you more drugs. It doesn’t have to be like this . . .”

Dr Crane moved so quickly that even Bruce was not able to step away fast enough. The slap burned high on his cheek, he could feel the hot blood rushing up to the skin that covered the bone. Crane was luminous with rage, his eyes snapping blue sparks. He was very close to Bruce’s face when he hissed “But it does.”

He turned abruptly away, fiercely pacing the narrow confines of the roof like a caged animal. His anger seemed to be directed as much at himself, for having broken the stranglehold of his own formidable self control, as at anyone else.

After a moment he looked up again, seemingly as shocked as Bruce at what had just happened. But Bruce knew far better now than to take anything that the doctor said or did at face value. Sure, he would humour Crane up to a point. But this time, if the situation went Bruce’s way, there would be no more mercy.

The Batman that Bruce could barely control would have killed Crane long ago, and up till now Bruce had stopped him. Because he understood, as much as anyone could understand, how it felt. He could no more give up Batman than Crane could give up the Scarecrow. That was who he was now, a part of him he could sometimes direct but never erase. The shots that had brought his father to the ground had killed more than just his parents and created more than two immaculate graves in a quiet churchyard.

And that was why, in the end, as much as it pained him to admit it, there was only one answer. He had known from the beginning how it would have to finish. He couldn’t condemn Crane to a life of semiconscious incarceration in Arkham’s grey corridors or those of whatever grim institution might arise to replace it. He had come too close to that himself.

Crane looked at him with an expression of scornful pity, one corner of his mouth twisted into a pensive smile. The anger in the doctor’s face had changed to an exhausted kind of grace, his pale skin glowing in the last of the evening light, every bruise a dark smear against the white. “I asked you for something once. In Arkham.”

“You tricked me.”

“You let yourself be tricked.” Crane span away from him, his face working hard. “I was ready . . .”

In Bruce’s head the dream of the previous night played over and over like an unwanted in-flight movie, Crane’s eyes ice blue pools of need, the sharp smell of the cordite, the blood . . . the tired acceptance in the doctor’s last expression. His body slipping away in the flood.

Crane’s hands were deep in his pockets and when he drew them out they were filled with multicoloured pills. He turned back round, held them in front of him for a second, long fingers cramped together like claws, the pale strip of bandage starting to unwind from his left hand. Then he let them go, watched them scatter wildly across the tiles of the roof, red, white and blue, skidding into the furthest corners.

“Not man enough to finish the job?” The doctor’s voice was a pale imitation of the venomous tones Bruce had heard him use in the past. He could see tiny red spots of blood glistening on Crane’s bee sting lips. The last of the pills rolled past Bruce’s feet.

“Crane . . .”

“For now.” There was a terrible resignation in the doctor’s voice. “I can’t stay like this forever.” He took a step backwards, his eyes locked on Bruce’s face. Shining. “I can’t stay here forever. Don’t make me.”

“I have no choice.” The frustration filling Bruce’s voice surprised even him.

And Crane smiled at him, that little boy lost smile, and this time it reached his eyes. “Bruce. There’s always a choice. Let me help you.”

Before he had a chance to react Crane had hopped nimbly up onto the low parapet that ran around the edge of the roof. He looked across at Bruce and his eyes danced. “We can come to some arrangement.” He twisted away, balancing gracefully on the stone rail and looked out over the drop like a curious child. “It’s a long way down.”

“Crane . . .” Bruce’s voice shook a little. “This is not the answer.”

“But isn’t this what you want?” Crane was standing very still now, frail but determined, precariously poised on the edge of the roof. Behind his slender silhouette the streetlights of the city burned into the sky like a second sunset. Bruce’s mouth was dry.

“Wait . . .”

“Give me one good reason not to do it.” Crane’s voice cracked briefly, the fragile snap of a breaking bone.

And Bruce actually believed that for once Crane meant what he said. All the emotion of the last week rushed over him in a riptide of dark water, the pain and the loneliness and the relentless tug of his duty. The feeling of isolation, like an endless drop through a cloudless night. There was only one other person who could possibly begin to know what that felt like. With a sudden sharp twist of apprehension he realised that there might be more than one answer after all.

“Stay,” he said, and his voice sounded strangely small and foolish, as if he’d honestly believed that what he was going to say would make any difference at all.

Crane’s eyes were wide and lost and hopeless, and just for a second Bruce thought, but we have come so far. This is not the end. “This is not how it ends,” he said out loud, stumbling a little. And the doctor looked down at him, confused and hurt, bitten lips and pale skin, his hair blown dark and soft across his face.

“Isn’t it?”

Bruce shook his head; kept his voice even, light. “Giving up caring is easy,” he said, and it was true.

Crane smiled, that sad sweet smile; that grey ghost of wistfulness tugging at the corners of his eyes. “You’re trying to tell me this is hope?” He looked away, shaking his head. “Once you told me to finish it. Now you’re trying to talk me down. But really, you just don’t want the inconvenience of my death on your conscience.” His voice had changed again, from sweetness to scorn.

And Bruce, who had been as close to breaking point as he ever wished to come, who had come perilously close to losing every single thing he had left, finally, finally allowed the anger that he had been holding back for so long to show. His voice almost perfectly cold. Almost Batman’s voice.

“Fine. Do it. But don’t pretend it doesn’t matter. And don’t pretend that it means you win. Because it does. And you don’t.” For a second he hated himself almost more than he could have believed possible. Then he looked up at Crane and saw the shock on the pale face. The surprise. In other circumstances it might have felt almost like a victory.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Cautiously he reached out to touch Crane’s trembling shoulder; and to his relief the doctor made no move towards the edge. Gently, his hand tracing the swollen marks his own fists had made, Bruce turned Crane’s young tired face slowly around and looked up at him. He wondered what exactly he thought he was doing.

For a second he was staring straight into the heavy lidded blue eyes and it was like that first time, that time after the toxin, when he had looked down at Crane and Crane had looked back at him and he had been sorry - But Batman and the Scarecrow were something else entirely. And this . . . wasn’t right. But it wasn’t wrong either.

In some respects: THE END. In other respects: NOT. Closest thing to an 'ending' as such that you're going to get. This doesn't mean that there is not another chapter. And no, it is NOT gratuituous porn (sadly).

(next)

Once I was you: (30) You can't kick when you're down

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:54:05 GMT

Title: You can't kick when you're down (30/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Where do we go from here?
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (30) You can't kick when you're down

It seemed all too soon that Bruce was being shaken awake. Alfred’s hand was on his shoulder, although Alfred’s eyes were warily watching Crane, who had retreated back to his own side of the car. Fox had brought the Batmobile up to the front of the cottage and normally Bruce would have felt some vague sense of irritation at the lack of security. But he supposed tonight was a special case.

Alfred helped him up out of the car, his legs impossibly stiff, seemingly every muscle in his body rebelling against his instruction to move. He waited for Crane to climb out; stretching as he did so, experimenting with the limitations of pain. Giving Crane every opportunity to think that Bruce wasn’t nearly as beat as he must appear.

Fox gave him a quick tight salute. A smile. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. Then he climbed back into the Batmobile and swung it expertly around. Headed away back into the night, into the dark smudge of trees at the bottom of the hill.

Bruce wondered if he should feel some sense of curiosity about where the car was going, but he knew Fox well enough to be assured that everything would be taken care of. And then it was just him and Crane and Alfred. There was a short pause.

“Well,” Crane said brightly, “this is awkward, isn’t it?” For a second Bruce felt a deep mental connection with Alfred, a shared desire to have Dr. Crane as far away as possible. Ideally gagged and medicated.

He wasn’t ungrateful that the doctor was there; that they had some kind of combined focus, even if Crane would hardly have been his first choice. But the man was like a wasp; Bruce was happier having him where he could see him. And it would hardly have helped the situation to suggest that he should return Crane to the storeroom in the Batcave where he had been so recently imprisoned.

In the end the kitchen was warm and comfortable enough for Bruce to temporarily lose all interest in anything else. Alfred brought him clothes and he stripped gratefully out of the Batsuit. Crane was almost dry now and once Bruce had ascertained that all the knives were safely stored away he felt safe enough to collapse into the sofa. The doctor perched on the edge of a kitchen chair, still disconcertingly alert and alarmingly pale. His eyes were fever bright, his lips set in a worryingly cheerful smile. After a brief moment of resistance he even submitted to having his finger rebandaged, bowing his head in a display of compliance which set Bruce’s teeth on edge.

Bruce watched him distrustfully. At some point all of them were going to need sleep; and, troubled though he was by how Alfred might take to the idea, the only way he could think of arranging the matter was to tie Crane up. Preferably to something extremely solid that was bolted to the ground.

In the background the butler was moving around with his customary purposefulness, and once again Bruce realised exactly how much Alfred was a part of who he was. What he was. Alfred remembered his parents far better than Bruce ever would. He could hardly bear to take his thoughts back to that moment in the cave; just thinking about it made his fists tighten.

And now here they were. And there were things he still hadn’t told him, although he was quite sure Alfred had seen the papers and drawn his own conclusions. “TWO KILLED IN VIGILANTE ROOFTOP HORROR.” He could imagine the headlines now; the poisonous mixture of truth and lies. Gordon “keeping things quiet”, and all the time doubting his own judgment, believing that he had made a horrible mistake and that it might be one which dragged the city further down.

“A shower, sir?” Alfred’s voice had lost none of its politeness. There was even some warmth there and Bruce wondered just how much Alfred knew or guessed about Crane and what had really happened. Or how much Fox and he had seen on their journey through the Narrows.

“No, thank you, Alfred.” He tried to find a way to make the words say more; to say “I’m sorry,” without having to say it in front of Crane. And really he would quite happily have sacrificed an arm, or a rib maybe, for a shower, but there was no way he was leaving the psychiatrist alone with Alfred. Especially in this mood, shotgun or no shotgun.

“Shower, Dr. Crane?”

Bruce closed his eyes. There was hospitality and then there was hospitality. Crane was already wearing his clothes, he was damned if he was going to let him use his soap.

“Shouldn’t you remove the razors first?” Crane grinned, the disarmingly helpful grin of a man with nothing left to lose and a history of anti-psychotic medication. “Just in case?”

Bruce winced. Of all the personas he had seen Dr. Crane assume, this one was by far the most irritating. And exhausting. He wondered if Crane was planning to niggle them to death. It just might work.

Alfred shrugged and turned away, back to the kettle and the stove. Bruce kept his eyes down, just enough to glance at Crane, to see his face without being observed. And what he saw there made his hardened heart crack a little. The brittle shell of bravado Crane was keeping up (and Bruce remembered the cost of a similar show, not so long ago, and he felt sick to his stomach) was only that. Behind the mask there was something more desperate, something darker. It was that same look he had seen there when he held the gun up to that pale face; that same look of longing. For an instant Crane’s eyes met his, guard blown away, heart-stoppingly open - and then that glassy grin was back as if nothing else had ever been.

He bit his lip. What was it he had thought in the car? Crane was his responsibility now and he had to be prepared to deal with that. Whatever it might mean.

Alfred placed a glass of whisky on the table beside him and he looked up, smiling to say thank you, for an instant his concerns about Crane blocking out other more painful memories. And the smile that met his was genuine and only slightly tinged with regret and the relief that washed over him made him generous. He got to his feet, stretched. Poured out a second measure of whisky into another glass.

“Crane?”

The doctor looked up at him, all mild surprise and charmed delight. “For me? How kind.”

Bruce sighed. Sometimes the only way to face a problem was to meet it head on. It wasn’t really his style. But he couldn’t have the conversation he needed to with Alfred standing there. It wouldn’t be fair. It was one of the rules, really.

He gestured to the stairs leading up to the rooftop terrace. “Move,” he said, abruptly, and then when Crane hesitated, more firmly. “Move.”

“Well, as you insist.” Crane pouted a little, eyelashes fluttering like a flattered society beauty. “I’m sure I will be quite safe with you.” Bruce gritted his teeth. Crane was always at his best when playing to a sympathetic audience.

The doctor made his way to the base of the steps, a little shaky, glass in hand, and Bruce wondered, too late, always too late, about the wisdom of giving him anything with potential cutting edges. But he’d made his decision and it was too late to turn back on it now.

Alfred looked at him, a little suspiciously. “Will you be requiring anything else, sir?”

Bruce shook his head. “If we need anything, we’ll call,” he said, and he kept his voice purposefully expressionless. Crane wasn’t going to read anything into the situation that Bruce could avoid, although he knew his acting skills were amateur in comparison to the doctor’s.

Alfred nodded. “I will be just here.” His voice was firm and Bruce felt rather than saw Crane’s lips twist a little; disappointment or amusement, it was anyone’s guess. Then he gestured once more to the stairs and followed Crane out into the clean night air.

(next)

Once I was you: (29) Stay down and keep evil away

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:51:03 GMT

Title: Stay down and keep evil away (29/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Sometimes there's just no way to walk away.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (29) Stay down and keep evil away

Bruce’s eyes opened onto a lazily spinning ceiling fan. He watched the blades cut slowly through the air, and wondered if this was to be his Vietnam flashback moment. His flashbacks tended to be a little . . . different. He was soaked through, soaked right down to the bone. Even his hair, tucked away beneath the mask, felt wet. And the water was as cold as ice and the ache of it sucked away at his strength and left him drained and empty. His chest was burning.

Away to his left something coughed and wheezed, a retching miserable cough like a dying sheep. He let his eyes linger on the oddly restful whir of the fan for a second longer, focusing his eyes on the soft hypnotic shimmy of the central bolt. The floor beneath his back was firm and strangely comfortable. You know you’re tired, he thought vaguely, when the cement starts to feel like an eiderdown coverlet. And you could just lie there and close your eyes and let it all slip slowly into the dark.

He could have watched the ceiling fan spin forever. Anything else seemed like more trouble and effort than his body had left in it. If this was what dying felt like, then it wasn’t nearly as bad as most people made out.

But he had unfinished business. Business which was giving the depressing impression that it would remain unfinished for a long time yet. Business which seemed to be coughing it’s lungs up onto the floor a few feet away.

With an effort that seemed hopelessly disproportionate to the effect it actually achieved he rolled onto one side and looked around him dizzily.

Crane was down on his knees beside the opening to the storm drain, still fighting for breath, still coughing hard. Bruce could only imagine the agony that coughing like that must be inflicting on the doctor’s recently broken ribs and he winced in involuntary sympathy. Watching seemed unpleasantly intrusive. So he looked down at the floor and waited for the sounds to subside.

Ten minutes later the doctor’s breathing was merely torn sobs, the occasional cough still forcing him to double over. He had lain down on his side, curled up like a sick dog, but his eyes were open now and he was studying Bruce without expression. His face was almost pure white in the shadow, lips a smudged line of grey.

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” Bruce was alarmed by how insubstantial, how un-Batman his voice sounded. “I believe I may just have saved your life.”

The doctor shot him a look of purest loathing and he didn’t blame him. Unforgivable really.

He rose stiffly to his feet, shaking a little to dislodge the water that still seemed to be pooling in every available spot. Everything hurt, but no more than he had expected. Frankly he was amazed that they had both survived that last little experience. He could still feel the toxin working inside his mind, feel it in the way he jerked his head at every clank and clatter in the roof, at every little creak from the walkway above them. But the cold water had washed away the sweat and the smell of fear. And he was past that now. It was finally time to go home.

He walked up to Crane’s small prone figure and extended his arm down to help the doctor up to his feet. Crane’s hand lashed shakily out at him in an unmistakable ‘no’ and he started and backed away, feeling foolish. How little had really changed.

He watched impatiently as the doctor slowly struggled upright, standing unsteadily in a small pool of water. The clothes were sodden, shapeless, the spare lines of the psychiatrist’s body all too clear beneath the wet fabric. Jutting hipbones, the rise and fall of the ribcage trapped under the shirt. The pale face so oddly peaceful and composed, the body supported by pride and an iron will alone. Grey lips trembling.

Bruce gestured clumsily towards the door, water still dripping from his arms, still running off the cowl in little icy rivulets across his chin. The cape clung to his back in a heavy mass, clutching at his shoulders. He had never been more grateful for the suit and its multipurpose fabric. Amazingly he was almost warm, even though he was still soaking wet. Just looking at Crane let him know how bad it could have been.

It was only a short walk back to the car, but Crane made it last an unreasonably long time. Every few minutes he would have to stop to cough and the coughing would force him to his knees and Bruce was guiltily grateful that the sound of the water and the generator drowned out the worst of the noise.

As they finally approached the Batmobile he let his feet kick a few stones up from the floor, warning the two men at the car of their approach. Alfred span quickly around, the heavy shotgun almost at his shoulder, before he saw that it was Bruce and his face began to relax.

“You were gone a long time,” he said, flatly. And Bruce thought that he’d heard that line somewhere before.

Crane was slowly coming through the doorway behind him, an uncertain stagger in his walk like a meths drinker, one hand tangled in his hair. His feet dragged along the ground, tiny scraping noises. Bruce turned gratefully towards him, unable to sustain Alfred’s level gaze.

The psychiatrist had stopped halfway through the arch, leaning propped against a doorpost, staring blankly at the Batmobile. Fox looked up at him with obvious fascination, mingled with a partially concealed revulsion and Bruce had to admit that Crane wasn’t looking his most prepossessing. He wondered where the glasses had gone, although he was fairly certain that they were more by way of a prop than a necessity.

Clearly neither Alfred nor Fox was going to actually comment on the fact that he was still dragging Crane around with him. And thank Christ for that, he thought wearily.

“Hello, Alfred.” The psychiatrist’s voice was weak but still disconcerting and Bruce, turning back towards the car, was half surprised by the distaste that curled Alfred’s lips. In the temporary silence he heard Crane slide down the doorpost behind him and crumple like a folded doll onto the ground.

Fox raised an eyebrow, carefully inspecting the state of the Batsuit, the condition of the doctor’s dripping clothes. “I’m almost afraid to ask what you have been doing.”

“Spelunking,” Bruce said shortly. He saw the quick complicit grin that streaked over Fox’s face like summer lightning, and he turned back to deal with the psychiatrist, momentarily gratified.

The doctor was curled into a tight ball, just where he had fallen, shivering violently. Bruce could hear his teeth chattering and he wished that they had thought to equip the Batmobile with something more than a basic first aid kit. The blanket he had wrapped Rachel in was back at the cave and his eyes searched the room for something, anything he could throw around the psychiatrist. Soft furnishings seemed to be thin on the ground.

He sighed, and crouched down beside Crane. He remembered only too well the way the psychiatrist had once fought against him, all the way from his basement to the pavement. Like a small frightened animal, struggling crazily for its freedom. Knowing what he now knew about Crane’s feelings regarding human contact he wasn’t surprised at all. More amazed that neither of them had been hurt.

“Dr Crane?” He wasn’t even sure if the psychiatrist was still conscious. In a way it would almost be easier if he had passed out, even though he knew only too well that in this state unconsciousness might be a one way ticket.

For a second the shivering almost stopped. Trust Crane to still be functioning, he thought, both irritated and impressed, even after everything that had happened. Why could nothing ever be easy?

He reached behind his back and unfastened his cape, shaking it out. He was pleased to notice that the black fabric was almost dry. Fox had done a good job with this one. The psychiatrist had barely even noticed that he’d moved. Behind the doorway something scuffled in the rafters. Pigeons, Bruce thought and he was happy to find that his heart rate had scarcely risen.

He draped it carefully over Crane; ignoring the sudden jerk of tension, the sharp intake of breath. Alfred looked up at them for a second, concern clearly lining his face. Bruce shook his head very slightly, and after a second Fox beckoned him away.

Crane’s hands were clenched so tightly that he could see stars of white spreading out over the knuckles, whiter even than the pale skin. The veins beneath the surface were blue and clear, a delicate tracery. The doctor’s nails were bitten and ragged, a few red strips of skin running down from the tips of the fingers. They looked painfully sore.

“Get up.” He was too tired to observe any kind of social niceties now. Alfred and Fox were loading the last of the barrels into the Tumbler, carefully slotting the metal drum in between the three they’d already managed to get on board. Even shock and icy water couldn’t quite take the edge off Crane’s shaky sarcasm. “Oh my. Fully armed and trunk space too.”

Bruce choked and bit back on the smile, uncomfortably aware that both Fox and Alfred were looking at him as if he’d just sworn in church. Don’t bond with the prisoner, he thought, and he waited for Crane to catch up while he wondered just who he was fooling.

The tiny space behind the front seats of the Tumbler had never been designed with passengers in mind. Alfred held the car door apologetically open, pulling the seat forward with one hand. “I’m afraid this may be somewhat on the cosy side.”

Bruce stepped aside to let Crane climb up into the car and settle into one side of the bare well behind the leather seat backs, knees pressed up into his chest, Bruce’s cape wrapped around him. The psychiatrist’s eyes were barely open, his lips horribly blue against the dull white of his skin. Cosy might not be such a bad thing. He was beginning to fear that the doctor might not make the journey home.

At his shoulder Alfred gave the tiniest of suggestive coughs. “Might I suggest that we move on?”

He was still far too awkward around Alfred to risk making a joke. So he simply nodded and climbed in, even though really he would have preferred a few minutes to himself.

Crane shrank away from him and he tried his hardest to keep to his own side of the car. There wasn’t much room at all, certainly not enough for the two of them, even given the tiny amount of space that Crane was occupying. His legs were tucked up uncomfortably, no chance to stretch out.

He reached up and pulled off his mask, running his fingers through his wet hair, tenderly feeling the bruise on the side of his head. It had only been a couple of nights ago that he’d flung the same mask across the car in disgust. So much had changed since then.

A few moments passed before Alfred and then Fox got into the car, doors slamming shut, the sound making Crane flinch back violently against the corner of the car. Bruce wondered exactly how many pills the doctor had missed. Whether there were any left in the bag in the Batcave. Certainly he wasn’t going back down into Arkham’s basement tonight. The psychiatrist would have to manage without, assuming he was going to survive at all.

And suddenly he found that he did care. Crane was his responsibility now. He had made that decision days ago. Now he just had to deal with the consequences. There was no-one he could hand the doctor over to, no-one who would understand that really there were worse people out there.

The car started up with a jolt and he braced his feet against the floor so as not to slide across. Crane’s head came up briefly, the blue eyes wide and confused in the sudden noise. He wasn’t sure how much the doctor understood what was going on, where they were going.

“It’s alright,” he said, as gently as he could, feeling ridiculous as he did so. It was a stupid thing to say.

The doctor’s eyes met his without any real sense of urgency, and he searched them vainly for some sign of comprehension. There was only alarm and bewilderment and for some unknown reason that made him feel angry. He had come to genuinely admire Crane’s work, admire the lightning twists and turns of the damaged brain that he could barely keep up with. He couldn’t bear to think of all that being gone forever. And the thought crossed his mind that perhaps the doctor was bluffing again.

Then the car swung round a corner and down over a step and the psychiatrist was thrown unceremoniously against him, hard enough to send electric shockwaves of pain racing up through Bruce’s chest. He heard Crane gasp at the same time as he did and the tiny whimper which followed so quickly behind the gasp hit him more even than the pain in his ribs. This was stupid. They couldn’t travel the whole way like this. Something would have to be done.

So he stuck out his arm, far too quickly for Crane to even see it coming and wrapped it tightly around the psychiatrist’s shoulders. The doctor flinched and struggled against it wildly, not quite panic, but more than close enough. His breathing was ragged and the force of his efforts to escape made him cough again, struggling to gasp at the air. His shoulder banged hard against the wall of the car.

“It’s alright,” Bruce said again, not because he thought it was, but because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Bruce.” The voice was very small. “Don’t . . .”

And he had never heard Crane sound like that. The tiny crack of a light bulb breaking.

But there was nothing else he could do. He was a clumsy fool when it came to this kind of thing and he knew it. But he didn’t see any other way. He was damned if he was going to let Crane come to any more harm, sliding about in the back of the car all the way home.

The psychiatrist struggled on, heartbreakingly, weakly pulling away from him until finally, mercifully, his strength was exhausted. Bruce was only grateful that there was nothing in the back of the car with which the doctor could improvise a weapon or he knew for sure he would be dead before they ever reached Wayne Manor.

The small body shivered and tensed, jerking under his arm, uncontrollable floods of shaking washing over the narrow shoulders. He could feel the fragile bones beneath the milk white skin, the cold that was burning against his own warm flesh.

He let the warmth flow out of his body, ignoring the pins and needles that were beginning to prick at him, the numbness spreading up towards his elbow. He didn’t dare move. From here on in it was up to Crane how much he chose to take. Whatever problems the doctor might have he was more than smart enough to realize that Bruce’s body heat could easily be the only thing that might save him. And more than tired enough to submit to a risk he might not normally have accepted. And little by little Crane’s neck came edging shyly back to press against his arm, a few damp tendrils of hair curling down onto the Batsuit.

Fox took the car round another corner, gunned the engine and Bruce felt the surface under the wheels briefly slide away and assumed they must be crossing the river. A second later the car touched down with a thump and a crash that jolted both of them forward against the back of the seats.

Alfred’s face appeared instantly between the headrests, mildly concerned. He looked down into Bruce’s unmasked face and then stared coldly past him at the shivering figure that Bruce was holding awkwardly in the curve of one arm. Bruce shrugged as casually as he could manage, trying to look like it was a perfectly normal position. He had a feeling he would be hearing more about this later. Thank God Crane hadn’t completely panicked when he’d grabbed him.

A second’s quick scrutiny and Alfred was gone. Bruce heard him say something over the engine noise to Fox, and a moment later Fox’s quick dry laugh. He smiled ruefully. He wasn’t sure his reputation was going to survive the journey unmarked.

And finally Crane’s head fell forwards to lie reluctantly against his chest, a slight weight like a resting sparrow, his scratchy heartbeat clattering against Bruce’s own. Bruce stayed perfectly still, bracing his feet against the back of the seat. The psychiatrist’s breathing was still uneven, his head fluttering restlessly against the tight black fabric of the Batsuit, hands scratching at each other. Bruce wondered how quickly he would have broken, if Batman had only come up with the idea of holding him rather than hitting him. But he didn’t really believe that Crane would ever break.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and he wasn’t just apologizing for the arm over the doctor’s shoulders.

In the front of the car Alfred and Fox were talking in low voices, their conversation lost in the roar of the engine. He thanked an unusually merciful God for that small blessing. Some things were best unheard. On both sides.

Against his chest the psychiatrist’s damp wet hair lay in tangled drifts of darkness, the street lights sending chunks of orange light skidding over the shadows. He could just see the edge of Crane’s lips, enough to see that they were still tightly drawn and he tried not to hold his own breath. To breathe slowly, calmly, a soothing regular rhythm.

Crane murmured something and his shoulder twitched a little against Bruce’s encircling arm, his head a dead weight now, rolling with the movements of the car. And Bruce was too tired to think any more. Even as he looked down at the doctor’s still drenched body, the wet clothes clinging and sticking like tissue paper to the slender limbs, his eyes began irresistibly to close.

The first few times he jerked them open, blinking and staring in an attempt to stay awake. Fighting. But the swaying rhythm of the car was hypnotic, the seduction of being driven, of being, finally, completely unable to control his destination, sucking at his powers of resistance. It wasn’t even possible to see what way they were going. He could learn to like that.

He was in safe hands now. They both were. And with a final look down at Crane’s still shivering form he braced himself a little tighter against the back of the seats and let his eyes close.

(next)

Once I was you: (28) He'll take you out any open door

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:46:49 GMT

Title: He'll take you out any open door (28/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: The difference between winning and not losing.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (28) He'll take you out any open door

Bruce couldn’t decide if he was more alarmed or impressed that Alfred had seen fit to bring the shotgun with him. The Batmobile, as he had no doubt Fox had attempted to explain, was armed to the teeth and any additional weaponry was probably unnecessary. But Alfred had stubbornly refused to leave the house without it and in the end Lucius had been forced to capitulate, although with the proviso that it not be loaded whilst they were in the car.

They were as difficult, in their way, as each other, he thought affectionately. He had hardly dared touch the Batmobile for fear that Lucius might have made some of his little ‘adjustments’. Now his main concern was being unexpectedly shot at; although he was fairly certain the body armour could handle it. He could hear them bickering quietly behind him about the best way to load as much of the toxin as possible into the Batmobile. He only hoped that his instinct was right and that Crane would come back to check on him at some point, possibly to make notes.

There was a doorway between the room where the Batmobile was parked and the room where the storm drain opened down into the water mains and he slipped through it quietly, pushing the heavy door to behind him.

Alfred would be sure to call him on the radio if he was needed; although he was more concerned for the health of Dr. Crane than anyone else. He remembered watching Alfred shoot crows as a boy. It had been enlightening.

His body was still humming faintly to the tune of the toxin; his pupils wide in the pale light. The tiredness had left him, although for how long he could not hope to guess, with the putting on of the Batsuit. It was like being reborn. It was as if his body now tuned itself to the suit; as if the equipment he carried with him was an extension of his own limbs. As if the suit gave him strength. And that, he thought, probably wasn’t too far from the truth. It was just as well. He was going to need all the help he could get.

And still the thought of Crane pricked at him; it caught him in his conscience and in his imagination, it got lodged in his throat like a pin-bone. So many times he had concluded that the only thing he could do with Crane would be to end it, and had justified that thought with the belief that it would be a mercy. And that he still almost believed. Crane was at his most disconcerting when he allowed his desire for death to show. And that meant he was also at his most dangerous.

Running now through the list of alternatives he was forced to conclude that they were thin on the ground. Handing Crane over to the police, while it would undoubtedly earn him points with Gordon, hardly seemed an option. He couldn’t believe that anywhere would succeed in keeping the psychiatrist where he did not want to be for long. And he refused to even examine the thought of Crane caged. That brilliant mind, subdued by drugs, those blue eyes staring eternally into the grey spaces of an Arkham cell.

“You ever worn a straitjacket?” Crane had a way of cutting straight through Bruce’s facades; a directness that was only enhanced by his insanity. And there was something strangely fascinating in his sickness; in his capacity to sit back and explore the limits of his own madness.

Crane had made his brilliance and his frailty a weapon; one which he seemed equally happy to use against the population of Gotham or himself. Or Batman, Bruce thought, and he tried to ready himself for whatever he might find. He couldn’t help but feel that in their last encounter the doctor had had the upper hand.

Once again he was struck by the sense of Arkham around him; the way the building seemed to breath, groaning under the weight of its secrets and sorrows. The rays of light filtering hazily down to the floor; evening sunshine now, less bright than before. The age and the strength of the foundations, and above him, soaring up into the sky, all those floor of corridors and rooms. And somewhere, not too far away, the basement Crane had made his own.

He remembered what the doctor had said, back in the subway, that there was a tunnel to the station, and inwardly he shuddered at the thought of returning there; to the bodies on the platform, to the dark oil stained tracks.

In the cemetery dark shadows at the edge of the room it was all too easy to imagine hostile eyes, following his every move, to imagine that Arkham’s previous wave of inhabitants hadn’t all made their departure the previous day. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of movement, something too slight to be definitive but distinct enough to send him on the defensive. To send him up onto the balls of his feet, eyes narrowed, listening hard to the noises behind the rush of water, the slip and gurgle of the open pipes. Twisting his head to try and catch another glimpse.

Again, something flickered, and this time he was ready. He flung himself into the shadows, snatched and grabbed. Something scratched and slid across the armour plate at his chest; there was a short struggle and then he had Dr. Crane by the scruff of the neck. By the collar, he thought darkly, of his own shirt. Crane fought and struggled, desperate, but the knife he had been holding was already on the ground and he was obviously far from well.

Still, it took far longer than Bruce had expected before he finally went limp against Batman’s hands; before the snarl left the white face. He was breathing hard, his thin chest shaking, his eyes wide. All the bruises and the scars of the burn standing out, dark and red against the pale skin. He didn’t look dangerous, and it was a mistake Bruce had made far too many times already.

“Surprised to see me?” At least for a second he allowed himself to celebrate what had seemed a ridiculously easy victory. And, he noted with no little satisfaction, Crane did look genuinely shaken.

The doctor’s head was thrown back, the expression in his eyes impossible to read now. His lips moved for a second into the angry ghost of a sneer.

Bruce shrugged. Half Crane’s venom was in his voice; if he didn’t want to talk that was fine with him. It only made things easier; stripped away the complications, the confusion that the psychiatrist was such an expert at creating. The layers of ambiguity which had so effectively crippled Bruce, and turned Batman into a destructive force of rage. Batman, who now twisted one of Crane’s arms up behind his back, whose voice was rough and devoid of emotion and for whom Bruce was suddenly deeply grateful.

“Walk,” he said, and although he had expected resistance there was none. Once again he wondered exactly how much damage Crane’s slim body had taken over the last couple of days; whether there were injuries there that he knew nothing about. There was a strange acquiescence in the way the doctor was moving, a resignation in the lines of his neck.

Fifty paces, Bruce thought; fifty paces back to the Batmobile, fifty paces until Crane is no longer my problem. He had no doubt that Alfred and Fox would be the first to insist that the psychiatrist was taken directly to the police and it was oddly comforting to know that the decision was no longer his to make. It was over; these restless days of uncertainty. No more games.

He gave Crane’s arm an extra little twist, more out of a desire to ensure he was secure than anything more mean spirited. Right then, he could think of nothing he would like more than to hand Crane over to the proper authorities. After all, he would come to less harm than he had with Batman.

Forty paces. Beside them the open cover of the storm drain, the water foaming past. The sound drowning everything else out. And he should have known, he should have known. For a moment time stopped.

He was suddenly fighting, struggling for his life, high on a slippery ledge in the Batcave, Crane’s thin fingers wrapped around his neck. Below them the seething pool of the waterfall, the icy tide of the flood. Sliding, sliding towards the edge. He should have known.

In the same moment Crane’s head snapped up, jerked towards something, some sound Bruce hadn’t heard. And, like the audience of a skilled conjuror, his attention was misdirected for just long enough. Just long enough for Crane to wrap a leg around his ankle; to lash out with more strength than Bruce could have believed he possessed. For the arm Batman was holding to be twisted up, so the doctor cried out, sharp, involuntary, pained. And then a scuffle, feet sliding; and Bruce realised, with his last bright second of uncommanded attention, that he was fighting for his life and Crane was not.

They lurched, entwined; Crane’s feet kicking and stabbing at the back of his knees, Crane’s hair in his face. An arm smashed, brutal, against his cheek and he jerked back, lost his balance for a second.

Batman reached out, lunged for Crane’s neck and Bruce, fighting his own anger back for just long enough to stop himself, was falling. He realised, with a sudden blinding flash of memory, that Crane would not let go when they hit the surface.

Then the water came up for him like a jagged block of ice; unforgiving, breath taking. The current trying to suck him under; tugging at his body, at the folds of the cape wrapped around him. Blackness above and below, only Crane’s fingers still locked around his throat. And then Crane’s face, strangely peaceful in triumph, his eyes smiling as the water dragged them down towards the pipe; towards the tunnel.

There was a roaring in his ears; a darkness rising up to meet him. He thrashed against Crane’s hands but they held true. His lungs were on fire, the breath had been half knocked out of him in the fall. He had smashed an arm against the edge as they went over and there was a thin cloud of red beside his face, but the numbness was starting to take hold of him and soon he would succumb to that lassitude. Tiredness and injuries and the cold; the seductive temptation not to fight. To close his eyes and go down to a place without pain, without all this terrible terrible hurt.

With the last of his strength, the very last, he managed to get a hand into his belt. Get his fingers down around the butt of the grapnel gun and pray like hell that the water would not have affected the mechanism. And fire, blindly behind him, hoping against hope that there would be something, something solid and permanent. One long moment of hope, and his chest exploding and then, thank god, the jerk of something firm. There was a violent twist, one that damn near yanked his shoulder out from its socket. Then his head came bursting out above the water and he gasped and spat.

Around his neck he felt Crane’s fingers slipping; that dark strength ebbing away into the cold embrace of the water. He looked down, down into the blackness and the cold. Into that quiet face. Watched as Crane slowly slid away from him; as the current sucked him down, away towards that final tunnel. And Batman let him go. But Bruce couldn’t do that.

He dived back under, a quick half hitch of the cable over his wrist to secure him. The psychiatrist’s body was spinning out of reach, arms flung wide, his hair a gloomy stain on dark water. The current was stronger down below the surface, an insistent drag against him, as if he was being blown by a strong wind, that same feeling of powerlessness. The deafening noise all around him, the fear and the exhilaration and the exhaustion. And then Bruce found Crane’s thin lifeless hand, and inch by agonizing inch he pulled them both slowly back to the surface.

(next)

Once I was you: (27) The only thing that never really changed

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:42:02 GMT

Title: The only thing that never really changed (27/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Old friends and old enemies.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (27) The only thing that never really changed

It was, he supposed, only natural. He had known that Crane would eventually lead him through the gently sloping foothills of insanity to some kind of beautiful mountain of madness. And here he was. From this perspective it was almost interesting. The Batmobile. He should have realised that insanity was a beginning, not an end. Obviously he hadn’t been paying attention. He wondered what other strange hallucinations he was going to be subject to, and why, of all things, he couldn’t hallucinate himself some uncracked ribs. And a new head.

Below him the Batmobile rocked into silence and he watched, intrigued. He wondered whether it was something Crane had organized to maximize his discomfort and really, if it was, then he was more than a little impressed. He wondered where Crane was, and what he was doing, and how he planned to get out of Arkham. Or if he planned to get out of Arkham. He had a horrible vision of the psychiatrist waiting for recovery teams; tucked away in some dark haunted corridor, that blissed-out, burned-out smile and his eyes softly wondering.

And here, looking as lovely as he remembered, the Batmobile. One of the few things that he had left behind. Everything else, every one else, had left him in the end. Even Crane.

The doors softly popped open and Bruce watched, holding his breath between his teeth. From the floor below, mercifully slightly muffled by the background noise of Arkham, there came the sound of some creative but heartfelt cursing. A second later, Lucius Fox struggled awkwardly up out of the car into the half light.

“I am too damn old for getting in and out of these damn seats.”

Bruce blinked. From the other side of the car came an equally heartfelt, but less colourful response; a voice that Bruce knew so well, so well.

“Perhaps we should consider building some kind of conversion kit?”

Alfred emerged into the gloom, a little disheveled and clearly slightly overheated. That old familiar resignation on his face. Lucius smirked at him, rakishly, across the bonnet. “Now, where would be the fun in that?”

And of all the things Bruce had expected from insanity this was not even on the list. He had never for a second blamed Alfred for leaving. Even without Crane’s undoubted embellishments he had done more than enough to justify Alfred’s decision. He had lost control, and this was the price he had paid for it and he knew in his heart that had Alfred not left that would have been worse, far worse. And yet . . .

Fox was looking around him, stretching his stiff legs. “You know where he’s going to be?”

Alfred shrugged. “I normally find it sufficient to follow the trail of destruction to its source.”

Fox grinned. “Ever thought about radio tagging him?”

Alfred’s eyes rolled. “Now, where would be the fun in that?”

High up on the walkway Bruce spent a moment swallowing his pride, and what little remained of his self respect. He had spent his whole life relying on Alfred’s kindness, on his unfailing loyalty to the last remaining representative of the family he had loved and served. When Bruce was eventually ready to come back, that first time, he had never doubted that Alfred would be waiting for him. And finally he had done something he had believed that Alfred couldn’t forgive. Shouldn’t forgive. Alfred’s affection had been the only constant he could remember, but he wasn’t sure he deserved that kind of friendship.

As for Fox, he had risked his position at the company for Bruce and for Batman, even without Bruce allowing him fully into his confidence. Not that Fox had wanted in. But it looked as if Batman’s brutality to Crane had forced Alfred into making that confidence. And from the mischievous smile on Fox’s lips it didn’t appear that he was altogether unhappy about it. Besides, Bruce was pretty sure that Fox had always harboured a desire to take the Tumbler out into the streets. He was probably more offended that Gordon got the chance first.

Gordon. For a second Bruce was back in that dark nauseous spiral. There were things Batman had done - and he stopped himself - things he had done, that would have to be accounted for. He knew Gordon well enough to believe that he would only ever get one chance. After that, he was on his own.

High in the rafters, caught in dusty beams of light pigeons jostled and flapped, and he spun round; mind still on edge, his nerves strung like piano wire under the aching surface of his skin. All of his senses on overdrive.

He could still walk away. Instead he looked up at the ceiling, making sure there was no camera there to record the scene. Not that Batman’s credibility wouldn’t be completely blown in any case by video footage of these two struggling gracelessly out of the car; and for the first time in a long while he allowed himself a real genuine smile. Then he leant forwards over the railing and flipped, as neatly as he could manage, to the floor.

The shock of landing took his breath away; the pain in his ribs cutting deep, a tight band of wire over his lungs. In the dim light of the dirty windows he watched Alfred’s face turn from alarmed to reserved to concerned in less than a second. He was, vaguely, aware that he probably was not looking at his best. Fox, less reserved and with less recent history with Bruce was quicker to express this fact. “Jesus H. Christ. What the hell happened to you?”

Bruce thought about trying to explain, then thought better of it. Time was not on his side. There was something important he still had to do, and he knew that Alfred and Lucius had not come after him merely to take him home. He wished he could have taken a picture of Lucius’s face though.

Alfred was looking at him narrowly; inspecting the damage, his expression carefully guarded. Bruce didn’t know how long it would take for him to rebuild some part of the trust they had once shared, how long it would be before Alfred would look at him without that tiredness, that sadness in his eyes. If that would ever happen. But what went on in the next few hours was undoubtedly going to play some part, and he cursed the fact that fate had once again left him dependent on Dr. Crane.

“He isn’t far away,” he said, not knowing if it was the truth but gratified that he didn’t need to make any further explanations.

He wondered whether it was him Alfred had come for, or Batman. Whether this was about forgiveness, or Gotham. Perhaps the two were connected now. He couldn’t count on distancing himself from what he did in the mask anymore; Bruce Wayne and Batman were part of the same story and there was nothing he could do about that except make sure that he was the one in control.

A part of him, far in the back of his mind, expressed a kind of oblique gratitude to Crane for this new clarity. He wouldn’t have put it past the psychiatrist to have had this in mind all the time. What had Crane said to him? “I know who I am. How about you?” Well. Now he knew. It was an uncomfortable kind of knowledge, but it was important. In a world where he had been left very little to cling to, it was almost all he had.

Perhaps Crane really had been genuinely good at his job, once. Almost as good as Henri Ducard, and once again Bruce wondered how well they really had known each other. There were so many things about the doctor he didn’t fully understand. After all Ducard had come so close to turning Bruce into some kind of dark monster of vengeance. Who was he to say that Crane hadn’t received some kind of fatal push in that direction?

Once there had been a time that he had believed that he was in a position to judge, that he could make that kind of decision. If the time he had spent with the psychiatrist had taught him anything it was about shades of grey. And yet the way Crane had reacted to the crowds in the subway, on the streets of the narrows had filled him with an anger so pure, so incendiary that it was far beyond anything he had felt for Ducard. It was so easy to fall for the promise in a pretty face and a beautiful mind, so easy to believe in the possibility of redemption, and surely that was forgivable?

Alfred was already moving to the car, reaching behind the seats. When he straightened back up he was holding the Batsuit over his arm. Fox was studying Bruce with obvious alarm.

“Are you really sure you’re up to this now?”

Bruce reached out for the suit, let his hand close firmly over the black fabric. His eyes didn’t quite meet Alfred’s. “As I’ll ever be,” he said, and his voice was suddenly a lot firmer. A lot closer to Batman’s. It didn’t feel quite as good as it used to, but there was still a thrill in his spine, a freedom against his heart that he knew he could no longer live without. He had come as far as he could without Batman. Now they were going to take Gotham, together, street by street if necessary. And if this was insanity, well, he was ready for it. After all, he’d had the best teacher anyone could ask for.

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Once I was you: (26) Being him just wasn't that much fun

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:37:06 GMT

Title: Being him just wasn't that much fun (26/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Pieces fall into place (where 'fall' is read in the literal sense).
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (26) Being him just wasn't that much fun

The doctor’s steps died away along the metal walkway and the darkness rose up behind Bruce like a storm. His head was full of screaming twisted faces, cold hands tearing at his hair, nails scraping down the blackboard of his skin. In front of him a tower of black swept up in an endless spiral through the roof to the sky and irresistibly his eyes were drawn up into the night. To the shrieking cloud of bats he had known would be waiting, and far far beyond them, in the sky he knew it was impossible to see, hung the shimmering image of the Batsignal.

It had been two days since he took the antidote and apparently two days was long enough for it to have worn off almost completely. His body, already weakened by pain and chemical assault, sank under this new blow, deeper and faster than before, staggering dangerously on the height of the walkway.

A flickering torrent of images spun past him; like warped distortions in funhouse mirrors. The crying child on the roof, a silent child in a window, Alfred’s face, Crane’s face as he slipped from consciousness in the chair, Gordon, Rachel. “I would imagine not, sir.” And behind them all, there and yet not there, the mask of the Batsuit, and behind that his own face. Or was it Ducard’s? He shrank away from the revelation, from the bewildering flurry of sounds and pictures, from the skin crawling horror of the bats. Far ahead there was a deep tunnel of grey and he ran towards it with gratitude, ran for that still quietness even as what was left of his conscious mind screamed for him to stop.

Crane’s voice, cutting through the madness like a razor: “Everything becomes surprisingly simple once you’ve finally gone over the edge.”

And so here it was. The edge. He looked up into the face of his mother, still young, still beautiful. Mother, don’t worry . . . There were bullets in the dark, the explosion and the cheap crack of a handgun. His father lying in the gutter, the blood and the dirt on the expensive material of his suit, the angle of his legs horribly wrong. “Bruce. Don’t be afraid.” Ducard laughing at him as he sank into the ice; the black water sucking him down into the numbing cold.

Between him and the spiral of grey, the looming figure of Batman. A man, laughing to death. A body, toppling from a rooftop. Rachel, convulsing in his arms. The Batmobile, screaming through the Gotham night. His heart, racing unevenly; some kind of poison in his veins. The Batman reached out for him and he shrank back, terror paralyzing his body, his breathing slower and harder. “Everyone loses their parents, Bruce.” His body on flames, falling.

Crane’s voice again, or Ducard’s or his own; it was too hard to remember: “Don’t fight it.” Darkness descending; a darkness more complete than oblivion. This mask that he was so afraid of.

He looked out through the slits and the world was so many shades of black it was almost beautiful. And he saw the truth he had been running from. That Batman was far wilder, far darker, far more dangerous than he would ever fully comprehend, and that the best he could do was to steer that force, to direct it and to channel it and to keep it from doing more harm than good. That from now on there would always be the two of them; but as long as he was winning then maybe Gotham might be saved. Everything . . . became surprisingly simple . . .

His eyes snapped open and he was falling, falling; the world blurred past and he had just enough sense left to snap out an arm, grab at a twisted metal spar and hang, gasping and coughing. Batman’s reflexes. Batman’s body, strong enough to drag him back up to shudder and retch on the metal floor of the walkway.

There was a dark throbbing in his ears and at first he thought it was his own blood, rushing like an angry flood through his head. One hand grasping at the railing, knees grating tender skin across the rough lattice of rust and iron, he dragged himself painfully to his feet. Stood for a moment, head bent forward, deep shuddering breaths shaking his chest.

He was still afraid. But the darkness was part of him now. The last thing his parents had given him. He had done all his running years ago.

And with a splintering crash that ripped through the echoes of the building like an explosion the huge double doors at the end of the hall burst apart. A pair of white halogen beams shone full into Bruce’s sore eyes, and half blinded he struggled to make out the shape of the vehicle emerging from the dark below him. A shape that seemed nightmarishly familiar.

As the dust settled, the throbbing that thundered in his head resolved itself into the dying roar of an engine that he knew only too well. And impossibly (madly), the Batmobile skidded to a halt in the middle of the empty floor far below.

(next)

Once I was you: (25) It was easy when I didn't know you yet

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:30:29 GMT

Title: It was easy when I didn't know you yet (25/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: The end of the line.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (25) It was easy when I didn't know you yet

Even Bruce could appreciate that there was a certain beauty to Arkham. To the repetition; to the endlessly serrated patterns of doors and windows and bars, over and over. In the unstructured wastelands of insanity this kind of architecture made sense, oppressive as it was.

And yet at the same time there was something horrible about it; about the way every corridor looked the same, the way a man could walk and walk and end up exactly where he started. There was something familiar about that too, he thought, and he didn’t quite smile.

What he had found in the mountains, what had found him, was a sense of purpose. Of direction. Somewhere out there in the confusion and blur of Gotham and Batman he had let that go. And when the wheel turned it all came back to Crane.

Before Crane came along everything had been black and white, or close enough that the edges were still easy to see. Now he didn’t see anything that easily. There were shades and shades of grey and somewhere between them Dr Crane was slipping away into the Gotham night, into the battered shelter of Arkham’s corridors.

But there was one thing that made sense. Some people were innocent victims. People who got hurt through no fault of their own, the people he would stand in front of until his last breath. He had been that innocent victim once and there had been no one to come between him and the world. Perhaps Crane had been too. Once upon a time, long ago. But that didn’t really matter, now.

And there was something he could take from Arkham; from the patterns and the repetition. It turned out that everything really was just history, repeating. He knew exactly where Crane was going to be. After all, he thought, when an addict needs the substance which feeds their addiction, the very last thing on their mind was the people who were standing between them and their goal.

Oh, Crane was smart enough, more than smart enough, to know that Bruce would know where to find him. He just didn’t care. Again, that crazy recklessness.

There was a flicker and bang as a light burned out behind him; darkness imminent. His time was limited. In the vaulted room somewhere below him the doctor was undoubtedly making use of the minutes far better than he was.

Bruce wondered exactly how much toxin was left; whether Crane had had the foresight to retain enough for his own personal supply. There were noises all around him now; scrapings and clanks that made him speed up, the sound of his own breathing, the slow whirr and sigh of Arkham closing like an iron lung over his head. It was so hard to keep a hold of his sense of purpose, to keep chasing these ghosts, when he was so tired, so tired –

To his left a stairwell plunged down into shadow; he took the steps two at a time, grateful for the support of the railing, for the comfortingly solid slide of steel. He was horribly aware that the growing darkness might not be entirely environmental; that Crane’s gently administered injection, that merciful little pinprick that had taken the edge off his pain, might have come with an added bonus. It made sense, he thought, and he admired the mind that could keep all these threads together, even as its own weave frayed and tore. He knew that he wasn’t doing nearly such a professional job.

Once again he contemplated the possibility, incredible as it might seem, that Crane had planned all of this from the very beginning. That he had known that Batman would come back for him even before Bruce had made that decision.

And finally he was fighting. Fighting to stay above the lovely tide of shadow, not to slip gratefully out into the warm waters of unconsciousness. He had come so close, so very very close to accepting that gift; to letting go of whatever it was he thought he was holding onto. To giving up. You seem to have left the job of saving the city half finished. Crane had taunted him with his failures, had held that bright ideal out as bait and Bruce had taken it. And now he had to believe it. Believe that it was possible to finish what he had started; that Gotham could be turned back from the edge.

Because if he did not, then he should have died on that train with Henri Ducard. Or worse. He should have put his arms around Ducard’s shoulders and they should have watched together as Gotham tore itself apart; because if he didn’t believe the city was worth saving then he was already complicit in its destruction.

At the final turn of the corridor; mirrored in the tiled floor, the light from the world outside stole in; refracted and dulled by dust and gloom. Bruce had already been in this basement once; had watched as Ra’s Al Ghul’s men poured litre upon litre of toxin down into the rushing waters. Now he was more cautious. Batman had abilities and capacities in which he was painfully lacking.

Along the wall ran the initial structure of the walkway system which crisscrossed the vaults; vertiginous towers of black metal crusted with age and disuse. It seemed as good a place as any from which to make an initial assessment. Down here the sound of the water and the echo of the generator was loud enough to kill any chance that he might hear Crane moving around. And experience had taught him well enough that if Crane did not want to be heard then he wasn’t going to be.

Painfully he swung himself up through the beams, unable to bite back a gasp as the weight of his body tugged at his ribs. Whatever else Crane’s chemical cocktail might be doing to him, right now it was giving him enough cushioning to carry on and he was hardly ungrateful.

The inside of his mouth tasted of blood; the roots of his teeth were sore. If he could have laid down there and then on the floor, curled up in some dark quiet corner and slept for the rest of his life, then he would have done it without hesitation.

With a final effort he dragged himself up over the edge and lay for a second, panting, his eyes closed. He was halfway now, halfway between accepting that beautiful strange sedation or getting up and moving on; halfway down the road that his whole life had been a fight against. It was true. It was easy, so very easy, to give up caring. But hope, hope . . . that was more difficult. He remembered Crane’s face; that brief unguarded sadness. His own stupid unforgivable belief that he might not be the only one . . .

The walkway beneath him shook, briefly. His body retained just enough instinct, just enough strength to roll, to push away; to get him, blinking and wincing, to a standing position. For a second he thought he was going to throw up; his stomach rose in a tight wadded ball to meet his throat and he choked.

And in front of him the Scarecrow stood patiently, waiting, and Bruce, eyes stinging in the light, was briefly amused by how little surprise he felt. He had swallowed Crane’s lies again and again. Whatever he had wanted to believe, the doctor had always been in control and really, nothing had changed. He had seen how far Crane would go to make sure of that.

And so, he thought, here we are. The end of the line. With an effort he raised his head. “Crane.” Although he wasn’t really sure if that was appropriate any more. The doctor isn’t in right now, he remembered, and the memory was like a knife in his back. That pale face. Those frightened eyes. The twist to the mouth. If he really wanted to argue the point, perhaps he had been the one to end the doctor’s chances of recovery.

Then he remembered the other things Crane had said. Henri Ducard? I knew him pretty well. Whoever Crane had been before the toxin took some parts of him away, he had hardly been without guilt. Perhaps he preferred Crane like this; where his insanity sometimes let slip tiny glimpses of some kind of past innocence. Where his control occasionally lapsed. He was almost sorry that that time was over, now.

Even the Scarecrow’s body language was different. But the voice, that hypnotist’s voice was the same.

“Bruce. Bruce.” The doctor sighed melodramatically but his eyes behind the mask were like twin holes punched in a blank sheet of paper, empty and uncommunicative. “I confess, I’m a little disappointed in you. I really had thought you might turn out to be slightly less predictable than this.”

Bruce shrugged, wrestling to hide the streak of pain that went down his side as he moved. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

The slender figure shifted forwards a little, just enough to make absolutely certain Bruce had seen the spray can dangling so lightly from one pale hand. Even with his face covered (and Bruce was careful not to look too closely at the mask, those memories were still raw) there was still that spooky quality of dissonance about the man, something so wrong, some kind of damage that Bruce couldn’t take all the responsibility for.

“No.” A thoughtfulness in the voice, that cold considered reasoning that was part and parcel of Crane’s madness. “I think I did. Survival of the fittest is such a comforting concept, don’t you think? And I could hardly rely on you not to have some kind of misguided notion that you should try to stop me.”

Bruce smiled, almost against his will. “I got this far.”

The Scarecrow nodded, the can raised a little higher now. His shoulders shaking a little, the confident glaze that he seemed to have put on with the mask sliding away to reveal something less controlled.

“I won’t pretend that I’m not going to regret this. A little.” Crane’s words shivered along a rusty razorblade of ancient hurt, the kind of hurt that Bruce recognized just well enough to make his nails dig sharply into his palms. Ten little points of pain between him and the edge. He didn’t have to deny his compassion. But he didn’t have to like it either.

“You made a mistake when you left the gun behind.” Crane’s tired voice was flat and unrevealing as his eyes now, and Bruce tried not to look at the hand holding the spray can. Pale grazed hand, angled knuckles as white as he remembered the doctor’s face. And those long pretty fingers curled so easily around the trigger. The slightest flexion in the back of the wrist, the gentlest of tremors through those bones.

He tried not to move; if possible not to breathe. His head was packed with ice cold needles, there was an insistent buzzing now in his ears. “You can’t change who you are.” He tried to inject some confidence into his voice but his eyes didn’t meet Crane’s level blue stare. “Only what you do.”

“But I can change who you are.” The arrogance in the psychiatrist’s voice was softened with something so close to regret that Bruce felt his breath catch in his throat. He looked up, caught off guard. Off balance, again.

“There’s something you should know. The truth is . . . I think you already knew. The human mind is ever so fragile. Like a champagne glass. One wrong note and . . . gone. Once someone has been exposed to the toxin for more than a few hours there is no cure. Game over.” He paused, and Bruce knew, without needing to see, that Crane was smiling, that unsettling sweet smile.

“And Bruce, I’ll let you into a little secret.” The eyes behind the mask were burning now, bright like embers in snow. “This . . .” His hand came up and slowly, sensuously stroked the rough fabric covering his head. “. . . is for everybody else. I know who I am. How about you?”

He slipped the mask away from his face in one smooth gesture, pale face aloof, perfectly composed. His pupils were so large as to make the blue eyes seem almost black. A peaceful smile hung on his mouth, lids sweeping down over his eyes. His voice was wistful now, almost charming.

“Goodbye Bruce. Sweet dreams.” And he squeezed the trigger.

(next)

Once I was you: (24) Keeping a hold of what you just let go

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:24:31 GMT

Title: Keeping a hold of what you just let go (24/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: As one door closes another door opens?
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (24) Keeping a hold of what you just let go

Arkham hummed and buzzed like a dying machine; the staccato echo of the slamming door vanishing into the silence. As if it had never been.

Bruce stood staring down at the gun in his hand; half stupid, still half tranquilised, and wondered why he wasn’t more surprised. Why the sound of the door crashing shut fitted so neatly into the spaces in his head; a heavy bolt sliding firmly into place. Even back when he had thought he was calling all the shots Crane had somehow been in complete control. But he’d never really believed that Crane only wanted him to go as far as Arkham. Until now.

The overhead lights burned unsteadily; the shiny silver windows in the doors further down the corridor blacking in and out of vision. Blinking like eyes. Crane had been so obviously glad to be back inside Arkham’s walls that Bruce had unconsciously absorbed a little of that relief. Now he was alone the building didn’t feel nearly so welcoming. He’d never liked hospitals.

He glanced down and turned the gun over in his palm. But it was a foolish place to look for answers. His head was still unpleasantly muzzy, occasional thoughts breaking the surface and then gliding away before he could properly catch hold of them. There had been a time when he had thought he knew what he was doing. More than that, there had been a time when he was sure. It was hard to imagine.

Crane had lied to him again and again. From the beginning. Lies that he had wanted so badly to believe because there didn’t seem to be anything else left to believe in. Pretty lies that had led him to believe in all of those desperately tempting shades of grey. That had shown him how fine the line really was, if you let yourself believe in it.

And for the first time in a couple of days he thought about Rachel. Her pale face upturned to his; her eyes wide and wet and clear. No fear in her voice, only concern and something stronger than concern, something he couldn’t quite put a name to. She had wanted to know who he was. And she hadn’t just meant Batman. He knew that, now that it was too late.

“It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” The gun brushed a cold grey line across his cheek, a metal feather falling gently past his cheek. And it was true. Whatever Crane thought, and he knew exactly what Crane thought. “You may just be the one person in Gotham crazier than I am.”

Maybe. But whatever crazy fucked up shit was going on inside his head made no difference to how people saw him. You could do the right thing for the wrong reasons. And no one would ever suspect otherwise.

He’d been on the other side of that equation too. Robbing his own damn company. Bribing the police with stolen money. Rolling filthy cigarettes in fragile pages torn from a Red Cross bible. Tasting the black tar on his lips.

Ducard had pulled him up out of that dark maze. And offered him a different world. A better world, he had thought, at the time.

Well, it had been a better world. Yes, there had been cold and hunger and pain beyond anything he had known but racing behind it all a crazy happiness. Because there was a way to make it all make sense. Because finally there was someone who understood everything.

And, of course, in the end, it had turned out to be Bruce who didn’t understand. Which was why this time he was going to have to make his decisions for himself.

His head lurched again and he leant forward, wondering if he might be sick. Listening to the whispering voices in his head, words he couldn’t pull away from.

“You feel dead inside. You feel like nothing you do will ever make any difference. And you go through the motions of your life like maybe it might matter to someone. But it doesn’t.”

Crane’s voice was as clear as it had ever been and the memory of those muted intelligent eyes scraped a small raw patch in Bruce’s mind. Crane spinning out into the street and smiling up at him; smiling with a sweet complicity. Trustingly.

And what it came down to, in the end, was this. He could stand in that corridor, in the asylum, and let the memories suck him down into an endless spiral of tired promises. And when they reclaimed the Narrows and retook Arkham they could put him in a little twelve by twelve padded cell and measure out his moods with his meals. And that wouldn’t really be so bad.

But what he wanted, more than anything, was the same thing he had always wanted. Craved. Searched for in the mountains and on the rooftops of Gotham and so hopelessly needed back there with Crane holding the gun against his head and that sick razor twist of longing tugging so hard under his ribs. Peace. And if he walked away now then he would never find it.

Revenge and justice were just two tarnished sides of a dirty dollar and whichever way it fell it was all leading to the same place. The search for that stillness which his heart had failed to find. Even in the mountains. Even in the twisted burning wreckage of a subway train. Even in the bullet ripping through Joe Chill’s chest. All he could do was keep looking.

One thing he knew for certain. He wasn’t going to kill anyone. Not even Dr Crane. Even if he asked nicely. He could still hear the crunch of the metal edge slamming into the forehead of the kidnapper on the roof and he pressed his tired eyes tightly shut and tried to think about some thing else

It was time to take stock of his surroundings. The long corridor stretching away. The endless doors. Three cream painted metal hot water pipes ran down the wall beside him, institutional plumbing, cold now, of course. They turned sharply above the line of the floor and split both ways, running along the sides of the corridor into the scarred serrated metal of two huge Victorian style radiators. It seemed like as good a place as any.

The gun tucked neatly and easily away down the back of the radiator; wedged tightly between the curving steel and the chipped cream paint. After a few seconds he pulled it back out and removed the clip, tapping the ammunition carefully out onto the palm of his hand and filling his pockets. After all, there was no need to make things easy for anyone else.

All the floorplans of the asylum were still fresh and clear in his head; a legacy of Batman. And Alfred’s research. Transposing them onto the dimly lit maze of corridors was the kind of mental exercise he needed. The kind that precluded actually thinking.

The sun dropped slowly down from a Mexican sky into the sparkling lights of a crystal blue sea. A sea the same colour as Crane’s eyes. The same colour as the sky above the Narrows. He let his breath slide slowly out, the breath he hadn't even known he was holding.

Streaks of darkness painted the ceiling above him, a yellow light clicking and buzzing over his head. The generator wasn’t going to hold out forever and the thought of trying to navigate through Arkham in total darkness was less than appealing. He closed his hand slowly over the emptiness where the gun wasn’t.

The trick, he thought, mouth twisting into an involuntarily derisive smile, is to keep moving. And his footsteps echoed off the corridor walls a fraction behind the beating of his heart.

(next)

Once I was you: (23) You're a jaywalker, you just walk away

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:17:40 GMT

Title: You're a jaywalker, you just walk away (23/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: You're a tongueless talker, you don't care what you say.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (23) You're a jaywalker, you just walk away

The Narrows smelled of smoke and dirt and decay, much as it always had. Bruce’s nostrils wrinkled in the fresher cooler air blowing into the atrium. Climbing the stairs had taken more out of him than he had expected; the ache in his chest still dragging at his lungs even over the lubrication of the drugs.

He was almost ready to throw his pride away and beg Crane for one of the pills that the doctor’s pockets seemed to be an endless source of. One of the little blue and white ones ought to about do it. Maybe two.

The doctor was standing outlined beside the door; whip thin body thrown into stark relief by the light from the street and the gently clinging drape of Bruce’s old sweaters. The gun was resting loosely in one white hand; dark dirty hair sweeping down over his face, hiding his eyes. A nervous tension was humming through his frame, humming loud enough that Bruce could almost hear the static, taste the ozone radiating out like dust from the taut body.

In the street outside there was no noise except the slow sighing of the wind between the buildings. From where he was standing he could only glimpse one narrow sliver of black empty tarmac; an red striped plastic bottle rolling backwards and forwards in the breeze on the pavement. Wherever the crowd from the platform had gone they weren’t here now.

He moved to a position beside Crane, his head leaning cautiously round the doorway to look out along the road. It seemed quiet enough. The mental map he had been constructing of their route from the station to Arkham was unfolded neatly in his head, and he traced their path in reverse back to the door.

This would have been easier on the rooftops, he thought, and for a moment he almost wished that Batman was there. But Batman would never have come this far in the first place. And he couldn’t imagine Crane acquiescing to being carried. His lips twitched.

Beside him the doctor turned his head and looked up, eyes glowing with a spooky intensity. The sunlight falling through the doorway caught and shone on his hair, splashing bright patches across the floor.

Bruce wondered what Crane was thinking. If he was thinking. It was impossible to tell how deep the madness ran; how much of Crane’s coldly logical brain was still operating beneath the surface.

He was in the doctor’s hands now. For better or worse, whatever that meant in this context. And when he looked down into Crane’s clear face he no longer really saw the madness, or the mob on the platform, or even the sick sigh of content at their fear that the psychiatrist had let him see such a short time before.

Justice had failed them both. It could so easily have been him here; ill and broken and burning up with the desire for revenge like a smouldering funeral pyre feeding on its human fuel. It very nearly was.

“Bruce.” Crane’s voice called him away, out of the strangely sedated fog of his thoughts, back to the station and the sunlight and the empty street. He blinked at him, half blinded by the light, running a hand through his hair, rubbing at his temples. His head still throbbed under the warm blanket of tranquilisers, but the pain was meaningless background noise. Almost comforting.

“We have to go now.” The psychiatrist’s hand dipped down into his trouser pocket and came up holding a tiny red pill clipped between finger and thumb. He peered at it for a few seconds, eyebrows slightly raised, frowning. Then he shrugged and slipped it into his mouth, dry swallowing with a wince.

“Those help much?” Idle curiosity, and he knew it. He just couldn’t help himself.

Crane looked down at the floor, scuffed the side of his foot against the lino. “It’s not an exact science.” His eyes swung up to Bruce’s face, eyes that were blue and blank like a summer sky. “Things . . . come and go. Sometimes I can keep them away for days.” Behind him the wind whispered down the empty street, blowing scraps of paper and plastic bags up into the warm air. His pale face was different now; the sick spinning excitement mutating into something sadder. Something older.

“You know what that feels like?” Crane’s gaze trapped him, snapping him away from his own thoughts, pulling him down into the gently spiraling vortex of the words. The reasonable tone. The understanding. It wasn’t really a question.

And Bruce backed away, shaking his head, and the psychiatrist’s insistent voice followed him as he went, nuzzling its soft way inside his mind. Rubbing against the things he kept buried so far down that no-one would ever have a chance to touch them.

“You feel dead inside. You feel like nothing you do will ever make any difference. And you go through the motions of your life like maybe it might matter to someone. But it doesn’t.” The voice had turned to the sweetest poison. Like Ducard in the mountains, sat beside a smoky fire, little by little twisting the story of his life into something more than was really true.

Crane’s eyes met his without flinching, a question mark, and he couldn’t quite contain the shudder running like black ice along the rivets of his spine. Couldn’t hide the recognition he knew was flaring in his eyes.

“One morning you look into the mirror and you see that your soul has gone. And when you wake up the next day you can’t even remember why you once thought it was important.”

And Bruce knew that there was a reason why it was important. He just couldn’t find a way to articulate it.

“Fear means believing that something matters. That your life is actually worth saving. But when you no longer care about yourself, and you finally realize that nobody else does either, then there’s nothing left that’s worth being afraid of.”

The sour mixture of triumph and defeat in Crane’s voice tore at something in Bruce’s chest. Tore into the long vanished memory of an angry confused boy, dropping an unfired gun into the freezing black water of the docks. Watching it slip away under the still surface like a hungry ghost. A ghost he had never been able to satisfy.

The doctor’s dry lips parted in the mocking twist of a scarred smile. “Oh, don’t think it didn’t take a while. Long enough to know what I was losing. Long enough for me to be sure that I would make them regret it.”

Bruce didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were. He could guess. It didn’t matter.

And so this is it, he thought, and he let what shadows there were veil his face, keeping his expression as concealed as he dared. The reason why Batman and Bruce Wayne have to work separately.

Because if you listened to all the reasoning and the causes and the explanations, then eventually the madness would catch you and the justice and the logic would fall away into the dark. Because when you think you are working to protect the innocent victims of an evil world there’s no way to accommodate the possibility that everyone is a victim.

“And they think they have it all.” Crane’s voice continued on, a dry harsh undertone rustling like the wind moving through a field of corn. “But when it comes to it they’re all the same. They scream, and they beg and they plead for it to end. But it never ends. Until you forget who you were and embrace who you are.”

The doctor’s eyes were sapphire, vivid and blue, burning with hate and loss and pain. All the things Bruce had lived with for so many years.

“But the toxin . . .” He stumbled for a second, groping to organize his thoughts. “You were . . .”

“Afraid? Nobody’s perfect.” Crane’s smile was a shard of ice; flashing briefly in the sunlight then disappearing with a splintering crash back into the cold deep water.

And there was another question that nagged at Bruce’s clouded brain. “Did you . . . ?” He rubbed hard at his eyes, and the diesel fumes scratched at his vision, scribbling white lines of pain across the doctor’s strained face. “How well did you know Henri Ducard?”

“Who?” Crane’s expression was temporarily blank, almost . . . surprised, if the psychiatrist ever actually allowed that kind of weakness to show.

“It doesn’t matter.” Bruce cut the disappointment carefully out of his voice. Just another thing he would have to let go. In time.

The psychiatrist was fumbling awkwardly in his pocket for another pill; pale face drained, uncharacteristically clumsy. He was mumbling, dead words, murmuring to himself, and the eyes that half met Bruce’s were almost pleading. “It never ends . . .” A whisper.

“So finish it.” The words were harsh, hardly formed, spat out before he was even aware of having thought them. Batman’s voice, he thought, with a chill.

“You really think it’s that easy?” The scorn in Crane’s low tone was barely concealed and Bruce walked along the razorblade of that smile with one hand over his heart and a sneer on his face that belonged to someone else.

“Isn’t it?”

“Giving up caring was easy. Giving up hope seems to be more difficult.” And now all the mockery and anger in Crane’s bitter brittle voice was directed inwards. He found the tablet he had been looking for and snapped it neatly in two, tucking one half carefully back into his pocket. The long lashes dropped down and his head slumped back against the doorpost. The split half of the tablet dropped to the floor with a tiny click.

Bruce hesitated for a second. The warm yellow light washed over him in a balmy surge, touching his face with soft fingers that stroked the skin. And he stooped forward and picked up the pill. For a second he held it between his finger and thumb, a small dark fleck against the bright street behind the door. It didn’t seem enough to make a difference.

“Come on,” he said gently. “We’ve got an asylum to break into.” And he handed Crane the tablet and walked out of the door into the light.

The road was empty and abandoned. The Narrows bore the scars of the nights of panic since the toxin had been released. Torn advertising hoardings snapped and rippled in the warm wind, grey drifts of smoke blowing between the buildings.

The fresher air felt like the purest sweetest mountain breeze after the dark fume laden atmosphere of the tunnels beneath the city. He could still smell the breath of the man who had attacked him and forcibly he pushed the last vivid image of the twisted face out of his mind. His eyes swept up to the tiles above with a tug of longing.

A few moments passed before Crane followed him out onto the pavement. The doctor had the gun pressed up against his cheek again and Bruce watched him warily out of the corner of one eye, expertly scanning the street for potential trouble. This was more like it. He knew how this was done.

“Corner of Fourth. Go. I’ll cover you.” Crane’s voice was unexpectedly firm. If he hadn’t known how unpredictable that voice could be he would never have believed it was the same man. Once again he wondered exactly who the doctor was. Who he had been. You do what you have to do, he thought, with more than a dash of resignation.

And, questionable as the wisdom of letting Crane stand behind him with a loaded gun might be, it was all he had right now. Once again his eyes swept the street. It seemed safe enough. It was the route he would have chosen himself.

He stepped down off the pavement, into the street and the breeze scuffed at his hair, pulling the longer strands down to sweep across his forehead. Turned to see Crane, gun raised, eyes narrowed, lips barely parted. “Go.” And he went.

A few seconds later Crane hit the red brick wall beside him, gun in his hand, eyes alive, laughing almost happily. It seemed the medication had done its job. “Axminster’s doorway. Next block.”

And Bruce was almost happy too. He felt alive, strong despite the pains and the aches. This was the life he had learned so easily to love; the thrill he had sought to take away the darkness and the dullness. The adrenalin rush that wiped away all other considerations like so much driftwood in a spring tide, the speed and the timing and everything fading away into the crackling blur of the background.

“Go.”

He was out in the street already, checking for any signs of life along the sidewalks and in the doorways, spinning to run to the next point. Behind him Crane watched the road, gun raised, sun sparking on the barrel. As Bruce reached the safety of the building’s edge Crane slipped away to follow him and a second later they were both standing beneath the canvas cover of the store entrance, breathing a little heavier, bodies warm now in the afternoon sun.

At the end of the street ahead of them Arkham soared up into the sky, grey tiles glinting above the bricks, barred windows like blind eyes watching the street. A ceaseless vacant stare. He knew how it affected him. But he supposed that for Crane it was rather different.

Even the road was strangely eerie, the storefronts smeared and dirty, the empty rooms behind the cracked glass, abandoned tills and cans of food. And between the buildings lining the far end of the street something shuffled and moved. His hand flew out to grip Crane’s shoulder. “Wait.” It might only be one. But he knew better than to take that chance.

The doctor had frozen under his hand; the same snap reflex as in the car. All the muscles in his neck were twists of wire beneath the fingers, tension humming like electricity and Bruce looked sharply away from the street and down into a pair of eyes, two pale chips of turquoise. Opaque.

“Crane?”

The psychiatrist’s expression was locked, closed off. Carefully, almost holding his breath, Bruce lifted his hand away from the delicate bones of Crane’s shoulder. Don’t freak out on me now, he thought. Not here. His hand dropped to his side, palm open, an offering of some kind.

The psychiatrist closed his eyes and let his breath slide slowly out between his lips. Unconsciously Bruce breathed out as well, tension draining into relief. He would learn.

At the end of the road a small crowd was rapidly gathering; apparently drawn together by some force stronger than fear and distrust. The herd instinct, Bruce supposed. He would have to make a note to ask Crane about it at some point, and the idea of some remotely normal future made him smile with disbelief. He’d already given up believing in his visions of the future, whatever they might hold. But giving up hope appeared to be more difficult . . .

He watched the crowd edge forward, their attention caught. There were more people emerging from the doorways and alleyways; shuffling into the light like characters in a nightmare, features indistinct. Between them and Arkham.

Crane was watching them as well, the expression on his face complicated. Too complicated by far for Bruce to even begin trying to decipher, but he saw no remorse on the fragile features. He hadn’t really expected to.

“So?” he said, and he was amazed by how level his voice sounded. Another shade of Batman.

The doctor’s lips moved without sound, and Bruce wondered whether he had planned this far ahead. Whether he was planning on saving any of the bullets left in the gun for them. Whether he would stand and watch as Bruce was pulled down, the muzzle of the gun resting lightly over his heart, that wistful smile sweetly brushing his lips.

He recognized that unnatural stillness; the lack of visible malice which could so easily be mistaken for patience. It was all part of that side of Crane he was sure he’d never even touched. The side he had begun to associate (stupid, stupid) with the sun sliding down into a silver sea.

“Wait for me.” The doctor’s smile flashed briefly up at Bruce, a small tight determined smile, and he span away, out into the street. For a second the light caught on his face, bounced off the angled cheekbones and Bruce was dazzled. Then he saw what Crane was going to do and his gut twisted like a knife inside him.

“Bruce.” Crane turned back to face him, moving slowly away from the clearly interested mob. A low growl rose from the crowd, hung like thunder in the warm smoky atmosphere of the afternoon. “You might need this.” The gun hung from the tips of the psychiatrist’s fingers, his arm swinging lazily through the air. As it left his hand the barrel flashed once, turning in the sun, spinning towards Bruce.

He stuck his hand out and caught it, fingers twisting expertly to send the handle slapping snugly into his palm. His eyes met Crane’s without comprehension, unable to believe that after they had come this far Crane was going to throw everything away. To stake all their chances on one throw of a heavily loaded set of dice. Snake eyes . . .

“Get to the door.” The doctor’s voice was terse, but level. He was backing slowly away from the crowd and for a second he looked so broken and clumsy that Bruce almost moved to help him. Then he saw the dark smile in Crane’s eyes and he knew that it was all a sham and a fake and he was ashamed at himself for having fallen so easily.

Then the doctor shuffled forwards, close enough for the people at the front of the crowd to back away. He stretched out his hand, and the expression on his face made Bruce turn away. When he looked back Crane was edging away from the mob, and they were slowly beginning to move towards him. The psychiatrist’s face was drawn, lips pressed together, but his eyes were as soft and wondering as a kitten’s.

Bruce turned away again, sick and helpless. The gun tapped against the side of his leg, useless against so many. He might turn them back for a moment. But then what? It should have been him out there.

Crane was backing into an alleyway. The crowd hesitated for a moment, then one by one slipped after him. For an instant the doctor’s gaze rose to meet Bruce’s, eyes locking above the heads of the mob and the message in them was clear. Then he vanished into the gap between the buildings, and after a few minutes the last of the crowd trickled slowly through behind him, glancing over their shoulders, reluctant to be left behind.

Bruce stood alone in the doorway for a second; watching the archway where Crane had disappeared like he almost expected something to happen. Then his shoulders dropped down, eyes pointlessly roaming the rooftops. Experimentally he raised the gun to his cheek, ran the smooth cold metal over the bone. And it felt better than he could ever have imagined.

Then he stepped down from the shop step and walked out along the block, the looming mass of Arkham growing higher above him as he moved forwards. There was a single door set in the wall that faced into the street, the standard issue steel security style door. It had no handles set into the grey mirrored surface, nothing to suggest how it operated, only a single panel of buttons set embedded in the concrete doorpost to the left.

He thought about how he felt about the Batcave. He couldn’t remember exactly when they’d started calling it that, if it had been him or Alfred that first used the phrase. It had stuck. Now here he was again, washed up on the threshold of Crane’s Batcave. Every man needs a hobby, he thought, and then rapidly quashed the rising surge of hysteria.

Without an audience to perform for he was finding it hard to maintain the surface impression of calm. The minutes slipped away with agonizing slowness, seconds creeping with the cold sweat that beaded his forehead.

What would Crane do? If it had been Bruce who had led away the crowd. And he imagined returning to find the door locked, the doctor gone, all of the boltholes sealed. He remembered the dragging tug of the hands of the crowd when he had fallen among them in the Batsuit. The whispering and the pawing and the whimpering and the smell of the sweat. This time there would be no escape to the rooftops.

But that wasn’t who he was and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. Batman would have waited for Crane and so would he. What had he been doing when he’d tied Crane to that chair? Christ . . .

He studied the control panel built into the doorpost. One to nine, standard square buttons. How many combinations did that make possible? How likely was it that the doctor would have picked something obvious?

A sudden noise startled the resting birds on the ledges high above him and he whipped around, gun pointing out into the street, grateful for the distraction.

First he saw the crowd, approaching up the street at a rapid pace, dust rising under their feet. And his heart turned over when he realised that he couldn’t see Crane, and then turned over a second time when he finally did. The doctor was limping badly but he was in front of the mob and Bruce remembered with a sick revolution of his stomach the wounds that had marked Crane’s fragile body when he had first found him. How much pain had Crane been masking all along?

He brought the gun up to chest height and aimed it into the crowd. For a second it swung over the psychiatrist’s head, paused briefly and then moved on. Crane had given him the gun. And he had trusted him to wait for him. The doctor might be reckless with his own life but he certainly hadn’t intended Bruce to shoot him now. Whatever dark scheme he might have penciled in for a later appointment.

He pulled the trigger. The bullet buried itself harmlessly in the tarmac in front of the crowd; the sharp crack of the shot sending a shower of pigeons shooting up like fireworks into the air above the building. The mob startled to a halt, a single body, temporarily put off by the sound and, he presumed, whatever they could still remember of its implications.

The doctor struggled on, stumbling on the pavement edge and Bruce had reached out and hauled him up into the doorway before he even thought about what he was doing. Before he felt the icy tension beneath his hand, felt it through the dragging breathing and the barely controlled heaving of the damaged ribcage.

Damn Crane’s problems all to hell, he thought with a rough impatience, and he pushed the psychiatrist away from him. Crane hit the metal of the door behind him with a soft thud. He was breathing hard, hair tangled over his face, chest heaving. “I need three minutes.”

Bruce nodded shortly, eyes still locked on the faces of the crowd, the feet shifting restlessly in the dirt of the gutter. He couldn’t believe the risk Crane had just taken.

The front runners of the mob shuffled forwards and he fired once at the ground in front of them, sending the dirt spraying up into their faces. Beside him Crane tapped calmly at the control panel, horribly, irritatingly unconcerned by the situation. Bruce could see enough of the psychiatrist’s face out of the corner of his eyes to know that that frustratingly sweet tranquil smile was resting on Crane’s lips. Whatever the doctor was afraid of, death didn’t seem to feature on the list.

The murmuring of the crowd was getting louder, an insistent nagging buzz that scraped like barbed wire at the ache in his temples. He was trying hard not to look at individual faces; not to see the details that marked them out as fathers, children, lovers. One of the men on the far flank of the crowd was still wearing the tattered but recognizable uniform of one of Gotham’s fire crews. The badge sparkled and caught in the sunlight, little stabs of gold piercing the warm air.

There was a muffled bleep and a mechanical whirring and gratefully he turned his head around, saw the look of triumph slide over the doctor’s face. Then the heavy door swung open with a click and a wave of stale hospital air and he had just enough time to let Crane slip past, keep him covered and follow him in, dodging through the arch.

The crowd moved agitatedly with them; one by one slowly edging forwards across the pavement towards the doorway, the muttering increasing in intensity.

Behind the door there were flickering yellow lights and dry cold air, and a gentle hum of electricity overhead. With a quick glance over his shoulder Bruce saw the long corridor stretching away, leading far into the gloom of the asylum. He could never have believed that Arkham would one day seem welcoming to him.

Crane looked up, shadowy in the sudden cool darkness of the corridor, and for an instant his face was alive with pride and relief. It was an expression so close to normal that Bruce’s heart almost stopped beating.

Then the psychiatrist turned away to stare out through the narrow gap between the door and the wall, watching the faces of the mob, torn between fear and rage, hovering anxiously on the pavement. The smile that twisted at his mouth was almost beautiful in its innocence.

Bruce bit his lip. Tore his eyes away from Crane’s pale absorbed face and pushed the heavy door firmly shut. It closed with a sound like a lead weight slamming into the ground. Heavy. Final. Behind him the noise raced away to echo off the walls of the corridor, fading into confusion and clamour in the distant reaches of the building.

Crane rubbed at the bridge of his nose with the back of his injured hand and crouched down, resting his back against the wall. The tail of the bandage was flapping loose, a dirty grey strip of damp fabric hanging down. He looked very small and slightly bewildered. It would have been almost endearing if there was any way of forgetting exactly who the doctor was. What he was capable of.

Around them Arkham echoed and buzzed, six floors of cells and offices and padded rooms with cameras angled steeply over the barred doors. The emergency generator was still firing the empty corridors with uneven yellow toned light, brown shadows painting distorted portraits on the walls. A few blessed moments of peace.

And there was something Bruce had to know. Even if he didn’t really want to hear the answer.

“Was it true?”

Crane looked up at him, all ‘is now really the time?’ eyebrows arching, cheeks still flushed with red. “Was what true?”

“The things you said. At the station.”

The smallest of superior smiles crept up and twitched at one corner of the psychiatrist’s grey mouth. “Did you want it to be?” The hard edge was back in the dry voice, like a hidden ridge under cold water and Bruce cursed the drugs that were softening his mind even as they soothed his body. Would he never learn?

The doctor’s smile lingered as he rose and turned to walk away and an uncomfortable sensation of disquiet hung in the air behind it. If Crane was planning something (and Bruce gave full credit where credit was due, if anyone was capable of planning through the madness and the craziness that had characterized the last few days it was Crane) then it would be Arkham that he would choose as his backdrop.

And he thought about the doctor spinning out into the sunlit street to lead the crowd away. About the gun flashing in the light as it left Crane’s hand. About believing that something mattered. He watched the slight figure walking down the corridor; perspective dwarfing the small frame.

The psychiatrist turned, looked back over one shoulder, eyelashes drooping affectedly, a self satisfied pout shaping his mouth. “Oh, and Bruce?”

He raised his head, tired now.

Crane pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Henri Ducard? I knew him pretty well.”

And before Bruce could even formulate a response, even marshal enough words to begin to let Crane know what he was thinking, he saw the doctor pause again. Look back at him half apologetically, half shyly.

“Bruce?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s been a pleasure. And I really mean that.” He stepped carelessly to one side of the corridor, and the smile that shone out at Bruce was warm and sincere. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Bruce’s fingers tightened over the handle of the gun but he didn’t raise it from his side. He’d seen this moment coming all along. Like a train rushing towards him in a dark tunnel, headlights blazing into his eyes.

The doctor nodded, slowly. Thoughtfully. Then he stepped away into the wall, into the open hallway that Batman would have noticed long before.

The heavy door slammed shut with a crashing thud. And Crane was gone.

(next)

Once I was you: (22) Follow the path of no resistance

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:27:13 GMT

Title: Follow the path of no resistance (22/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: The light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a station.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (22) Follow the path of no resistance

The darkness flickered and bent into strange shapes. Bruce struggled to keep a hold of something tangible, anything that might help him to remember what had been so important. Everything . . . flowed, and the sound of it sweeping past him was like the clattering rush of an oncoming train.

He’d thought that death would be peaceful, but it turned out that was just another of the things he had been wrong about. Once upon a different time he had imagined that he might find his parents waiting in the final silence beyond the pain. Now he realised that he didn’t know what he would say to them.

When he had eventually stopped trying he had thought that everything would become simple. But sometimes trying really was the only way to make things make any sense at all. Everything happens for a reason, he thought, and it seemed such a pity he’d had to lose it all just to find out something that stupidly obvious.

The darkness swirled around him like a black cape; brushing whispers of smooth silk over his face and he couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t escape the things it murmured into his ears; couldn’t pull away from all the needs and the wishes and the wants. Because now it was all around him, and, somehow, he was the one who was generating all of it.

He peered hopelessly into the restless gloom that covered him, struggling to see an end to the black clouds, to find a way out. To find the answer to a question he’d never wanted to have to ask. A smear of grey painted a dull wash of brightness over the horizon and he noticed with the smallest start of surprise that his eyes were still tightly shut.

And the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a station. Crane was sitting perfectly still beside him, his face turned away to the far end of the platform. There was a rapidly cooling dead body slumped heavily beside them. It all made perfect sense. Even though really there was no sense at all.

He wasn’t surprised to see the gun resting in Crane’s lap, the loose fingers of one slim hand absently stroking the barrel as if it was a sleeping cat. Even the sick tug of unconsciousness couldn’t erase his certain knowledge that if there was an advantage to be found the doctor would make the most of it.

The inside of his mouth was painfully dry; his throat throbbing dully. His eyes felt as if they had been recently soldered shut. He let them close again and lay still in his darkness, trying not to imagine the future. There weren’t going to be any silver sun drenched Mexican oceans waiting out there. Only loss and madness and whatever it was that Dr Crane’s world was made of. He’d caught glimpses here and there.

Something stabbed at his arm, a sharp point of hurt like a horsefly biting down into the skin and he tensed away from the pain and what it might mean. Just a little pinprick . . . His eyes sprang open, staring up into Crane’s mildly concerned face.

“Relax.” Crane’s voice was just the wrong side of bored. Between disinterested and nervous. “This won’t hurt you.”

He flicked the syringe expertly away from Bruce’s arm and stuck the cap back over the needle. “It’s a muscle relaxant and a painkiller. It’ll help with the bruising.”

Bruce wondered exactly what else Crane had tucked away in his pockets. And, more pertinently, exactly what the doctor had in mind.

All the reactions that he had so carefully trained over the years were screaming at him to run. To get as far away from Crane, from Arkham, as far from the Narrows as he could. But his body was letting him down. Death does not wait for you to be ready, he thought, and the drug slipped easily through his veins like a flood of warm milk. Ducard would have been outraged.

The psychiatrist looked down at him with a detached scientific curiosity; hooded eyes half veiled behind the glass of the thin lenses. Under the cold stare Bruce twisted like a bug on a pin, uncomfortable and unhappy.

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” Crane’s voice was entirely devoid of irony. Of anything really. It sounded as if it had been scraped clean. “I believe I may just have saved your life.”

“I don’t owe you anything.” Bruce’s throat struggled with the words, with the effort of breathing and speaking simultaneously. His voice was a dry whisper. He could feel Crane’s drugs slowly rising up his spine; a blessed sensation of stillness sweeping over his aching bones.

The psychiatrist’s lips parted in a bare cold scowl, fingers running restlessly over and over the gun lying on his thighs. “This isn’t over yet.”

Oh God. “Until the fat lady sings?”

Crane didn’t smile. “I need to get into Arkham, Bruce. With you or without you. Sadly, and don’t for a moment imagine that I don’t resent this, I may still require your help.” His voice was as patient as a mother explaining something to a particularly dull child.

Bruce closed his eyes and let his head bump gently back down against the platform. Every little scrape and graze on his body was tingling in the cold damp air, dragging him back to full consciousness. Kicking and screaming, he thought, and he wished for a second that the doctor would just put a bullet in his head and leave him there.

He imagined the cold steel of the gun pressing hard into his aching forehead, the click of the safety catch coming off. Crane’s hair brushing his cheek and then . . . nothing. But he couldn’t even depend on oblivion.

Beside him Crane was picking at the scuffmarks on the sole of his shoe with one delicate hand, the other still tracing the lines of the gun barrel. “We can’t stay here forever. They’ll come back, sooner or later.” He didn’t sound worried but Bruce knew better by now than to rely on surface impressions.

“You can get into Arkham?” He stared up at the damp stains on the roof, letting them run together, merge into one dark patch of rusty black. There were places he would rather be going.

Crane shifted uncomfortably, stretching one leg away along the ground, and Bruce wondered how exactly long he had been out. How long Crane had been sat beside him; watching and waiting. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

“I can.” The doctor paused, flicked a glance down at Bruce’s face. “We’ll need to go outside.”

“No convenient emergency exit from Arkham to the station for Professor Crane? No tunnel?”

Crane stiffened. “The rumours of this . . . tunnel have been much exaggerated. It’s just an urban myth.”

Bruce looked up into the scarred face, intrigued despite himself. The doctor’s wary eyes didn’t meet his. “Is that so?”

Crane’s gaze dropped away to brush the tiled floor. “I locked the door from the other side,” he admitted, voice low, and for a second his mouth twisted into something close to a self mocking smile.

Hundreds of little shocks of pain were still jolting along Bruce’s throat; a pearl necklace of shining beads one by one slipping up through his brain and exploding behind his eyes. The drug curled up into the lights in his head like the grey smoke from a cigarette; gently whispering into the hurt, a sweet line of comfort.

It was true what they said, he thought, when the pain was wiped away you could hardly remember how bad it had been. He concentrated on breathing; trying to ignore the seductive demands his body was making for sleep, trying to use what was left of the hurt as a means of retaining control. It was an old game. Crane played it far better than he would ever want to.

There was an echo far down in the tangled mess of thoughts that he’d believed were already buried. An insistent buzzing pushed itself forward into the front of his head. And it was on his tongue before he could stop it. “It’s not pretension.”

“What?” The doctor merely sounded irritated, but below the irritation was something like confusion and Bruce saw for a single second a gap opening in the wall of indifference with which Crane pushed away the world.

“Alfred. There are reasons.” It felt good to have an excuse to say his name. Even there in the crackling darkness of an abandoned subway below Arkham. He had never said thank you. It had never been expected of him. And one day he had finally pushed hard enough and now Alfred was gone.

When he had walked out all those years ago he had always expected, known, really, that Alfred would be waiting for him when he was ready to come back. But he didn’t think Alfred was going to be coming back. And he didn’t think there was any point in waiting for him.

“I’m sure there are.” A mixture of sarcasm and the fake sincerity of a cash-per-hour psychoanalyst. “I’m sure he’s been handed down through the family for generations.”

He is the family now, Bruce thought, and the truth of it hit him somewhere in the small of the back. “Something like that,” he said, and the doctor’s cynicism washed off him like water sliding down a newly waxed car hood. It didn’t matter any more.

Crane’s hands were wandering through his hair now; the gun still dangling down from his loosely clasped fingers. The disconnected look was starting to appear in his eyes, his concentration wavering between Bruce and something else. Something further away. In as much as the blank expression masking his face revealed anything it was unhappiness and Bruce couldn’t handle the way that made him feel.

“Why do you do it?” he asked; letting the words hang bare between them, the harshness of his voice matching the hunger rising in his chest for something that he didn’t really remember.

“The same as you.” Crane’s voice was offhand, casual, but the blue eyes that looked down into his were glowing like opals, translucent and filled with tiny sparks of light. Behind him the station sign fizzled and burned, the black letters hanging down the wall like angled shadows. “Revenge.” The word was filled more disgust than Bruce knew the world held.

“I prefer justice,” he said; like it was the end of the conversation, like he was supposed to, and it sounded weak and stupid even to him. It wasn’t what he had said back in the tunnel. It wasn’t what he had really thought at any time in the last six weeks. In the last ten years.

One dark eyebrow slipped out from behind the glasses. “Really Bruce? Because revenge is far sweeter. And far more honest.” His voice tailed off into a scornful whisper. The blue eyes were distant, looking out into a world Bruce could not see. But he could imagine.

“Crane,” he began. Then he stopped. He was fairly certain that the doctor was listening to something other than him. He had seen that look before.

The psychiatrist’s pale face was rigid, locked into a sneer that was aimed at someone other than Bruce. When his lips finally moved the contemptuous poison coating his words made even Bruce edge a little away.

“Justice is a story for children, Bruce. There is no justice. You know that.”

The hard edge of Crane’s voice cracked a little and Bruce’s shoulders drew together, pulling back against the hard tiled floor. How easy, he thought, to mistake desperation for defiance. Or the other way round. He wasn’t sure if he would ever really know how it worked.

The psychiatrist was still staring absently into the shadows, his legs curled beneath him. The hand that gripped the gun was lightly brushed with white over the knuckles. Over the edge of the platform the rails hissed and sighed; another train running somewhere far away in the distant reaches of the new city.

“Once everything loses its shape revenge is the only thing that makes any sense.” And the low bitter voice sounded hopelessly lost.

In the silence of the station a door slammed far along the corridor leading away from the platform to the daylight of the street above. The doctor looked up; the spell broken, temporarily startled, dark eyelashes flashing up from the blue eyes.

Bruce rolled away, over onto his side, uncurled, instinctively testing the strength in his legs, in his arms. Whatever it was Crane had stuck him with seemed to be working; at least as far as his body was concerned. What it might be doing to his mind was a problem for another time. It was time to move.

“Can you stand up?” Crane didn’t try to hide the concern in his voice. The whispery dissociated quality was gone, replaced with the efficient calm manner of the Dr Crane that Arkham and the lawcourts had known. The hand that was holding the gun moved up to his chest, the other searching his pockets for another pill.

Bruce gave a slight nod, trying to convince himself as much as Crane. With a rush of confusion that left his head spinning he fought his way up to his knees and paused, gasping painfully. Trying to conceal his weakness, although that already seemed redundant.

Beside him the cold dead body of the man who had attacked him lay staring reproachfully at the ceiling. He wondered if Crane had killed before. Certainly the methodology had been commendably scientific. A sharp blade to the base of the skull, aimed up into the soft tissue of the brain. He didn’t think he could have done it nearly so neatly himself.

The doctor was on his feet already; pacing backwards and forwards along the stretch of platform that ran below the sign, lips moving impatiently. His face was lit with an excitement that made Bruce’s stomach turn. He had heard Crane that night he had come to rescue Rachel and that same unhealthy excitement had been in the psychiatrist’s voice then. That hadn’t ended well.

He forced himself to slowly rise the extra few feet up until he was standing on his feet, swaying a little unsteadily in the half light.

Crane smiled at him, a quick taut smile. “Shall we?” He slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket, and his eyes were huge and bright. Then he turned, spinning away, movements just a little too large, like a clubber hitting the far edge of some drug induced high. “Come along.”

Bruce sighed. It would have been easier to be Crane’s prisoner than his accomplice. The weight of responsibility was heavier on his shoulders than he could bear. He knew only too well what would be awaiting them in the street up the stairs and he had no desire for it. No desire to see Crane transformed again, to see that horrible look of awe hanging in the soft blue eyes.

Reluctantly he followed the doctor along the corridor; trying not to breathe too hard. His head was still swimming in clouds of cotton wool like fog, his eyes burning and prickling in the dirty air of the subway.

Crane was holding the gun in front of his body, waist height, moving with a jerky edged caution.

“You know how to use that thing?”

The doctor turned towards him, let the gun spin in his hand in a way that left no doubts on that score. Bruce raised an eyebrow.

“Sam Colt made us equal.” Crane’s dry lipped mouth smiled sardonically, his eyes dark and strangely luminous. Then he looked at Bruce’s surprised face and the smile reached up to the corners of his eyes. “Oh Bruce. What a poor creature you must think me.”

Bruce shrugged, a little awkward. The shrug caught at his ribs and his breath snagged behind his teeth. “Not much of a gunfighter?” he said, and the words came out oddly raw in the diesel laden air of the passageway.

“Raised in a corn-brake.” Crane’s artfully caricatured drawl was dismissive. “You do what you have to do.” He turned away, effectively cutting off the conversation before Bruce had a chance to reply. Before he had a chance to even think about what Crane had just said.

Ahead of them a long flight of steps stretched up into the distance, leading towards a patch of bright blue light. No escalators in the Narrows, Bruce thought with a stab of unexpected nostalgia. Only stairs.

At his side Crane gave a little twist of eagerness, fretting to be off, almost quivering. He had got so close to finding out what drove the doctor on into the darkness. And he was beginning to accept that even madness was never simple. Hell, even oblivion had turned out to be more difficult than he had expected.

He had genuinely believed he could betray Crane’s trust. Even thinking of the people on the platform made him shudder with disgust, skin prickling with horror. He would have put a bullet into Crane’s knee and left him on the floor of Arkham for the police to find. Batman would have done the same. If there was no justice then there was no sense. To anything.

But that chance had been taken out of his hands and Crane, broken as he was, had saved his life when he knew he would probably have stood aside and let Crane go down. He touched the finger that he had bent back earlier that day, let the pain shiver up his arm, insistent even over the numbing sway of the drugs.

And everything was suddenly mercifully simple. All his choices were gone now. There was nothing else to do except see what happened next. For a second he felt happier than he had at any time since Ducard had walked into his house on the night of his birthday.

Crane looked over at him, smiling like an excited boy, and he almost smiled back. The doctor’s eyes were glowing as he turned away up the stairwell. Bruce sighed, and the pain in his chest and the pain in his head slipped away into the night like the red tail lamp of a passing freight train. With one hand resting heavily on the slick metal banister he followed the silhouette away up the steps into the bright light of the Narrows.

(next)

Once I was you: (21) Good and evil matched perfect (it's a great romance)

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:17:26 GMT

Title: Good and evil matched perfect (it's a great romance) (21/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: A faintly dysfunctional zombie movie.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (21) Good and evil matched perfect (it's a great romance)

The doors of the underground station were flung wide; police tape running in zigzag diagonal bands across the opening. In the cavernous lobby at the top of the escalators nothing moved. There was enough dirty glass at the front of the building to allow the sun to light up the windows of the desks on the side wall, and the brightness made the deep well of black into which the corridor descended all the more unwelcoming.

In the middle distance, away behind the dirty grey warehouses on the other side of the road, a siren wailed into life, cutting briefly through the warm air and dying into silence. Crane looked over his shoulder; the sun flashing in the lenses of his glasses. Bruce ran a hand lightly over the grip of the gun in his belt. Then he reached out and pulled the tape up to form an arch. The doctor was industriously searching in his pocket for another pill; fringe hanging down over his eyes.

“After you.” Bruce’s heart was beating a little faster. He had missed this. In all his dreams of a life elsewhere he had acknowledged that he would never feel this way again. It was the price he would have to pay. He remembered his cellmates telling him about their experiences with opium, how, once you surrendered to the drug, even after you were cured of your addiction nothing ever felt that good again. A flat world. Empty.

Crane ducked gracefully under the barrier, fluidly spinning around to hold the tape up for Bruce to step through the doorway. The sun had warmed the air of the building until it was almost uncomfortably hot; only the air nearest the door holding the murmur of the breeze.

To all appearances the building was utterly abandoned. Bruce walked slowly across the echoing tiles toward the slope of the escalators; every muscle of his body prepared for the future. He could feel the adrenalin pulling at his spine, liquidizing his chest.

A waft of cooler damper air rose up from the darkness far below, mixed with the smells of diesel fuel and bleach and decay. It blew into his face; moving through his hair with cold shivery fingers. Down in the black a dim sputter of blue neon flickered and burned.

“Stay behind me.” He didn’t turn round to see if Crane was paying attention. If Crane really wanted in to the Narrows then he was going to have to play by Bruce’s rules for a change. Not that Bruce was particularly enchanted by the idea of the doctor following him down those steep steps into the unknown. Again his hand came back to the comforting bulge of the gun.

He hated escalators. Always had done, hated the clank and rattle, the mechanisms grinding away below the metal sheets. Irrationally he shuddered at the thought of the stairway lurching into life as they descended; a last flutter of life from the dead circuits. Sucking them down into the pit.

His boots clanked against the steel; one hand guiding him down the slope of the rail, away from the light. He closed his eyes, counted down from five, opened them again and was relieved to see that his night vision at least was still as good as ever. The silver surfaces gleamed dully on either side of the flight of stairs; reflecting those last rays of sun that had journeyed this far below ground.

On the stair behind him he could hear Crane sliding one hand carefully along the banister, measuring his steps down into the unknown. Mark my footsteps, my good page, tread thou in them boldly. The memory of the words surfaced unsummoned; the corners of his mouth twisting up almost against his will. He didn’t think Crane would appreciate the parallel nearly so much.

At the bottom a long corridor led off into the distance; a few dimly bulbed emergency lights casting a dull gleam on the tiled walls. The light fell down into dark pools of shadow, blending into the dirt and grime that had coated every surface, clinging like grated cheese to the tiles.

The silent corridor smelled of piss and stale cigarettes. Discarded papers and food wrappings lay strewn across the floor. Bruce could imagine the panic there had been on the day when the toxin had been released; the last train to make it out of the Narrows pulling away from the platform of Arkham Underground with the first wafts of distilled fear floating in on the air conditioning.

Crane was by his side, pupils huge behind the glasses as he struggled to make out what lay ahead in the low light levels. Bruce felt a stab of irritation, irritation he knew was childish and pointless, that the doctor had made no mention of his choice of route. He supposed that Crane had thought it all out days ago. Being locked up gave a man time to think. More vacant time than he might necessarily want.

He couldn’t help but notice that the doctor’s face was starting to heal a little; the swellings around the eyes beginning to go down, the darkness of the bruising fading from blue to yellow. At some point Crane had removed the plaster from the cut on his jaw and the line lay marked across his white skin like a piece of red thread.

Once again Bruce felt the horrible sensation of something spinning out of kilter and coming clatteringly loose in his chest. He believed now, more than he ever had done before, that something truly terrible must have happened in Crane’s past. Something bad enough to push the doctor towards the edge; the edge from which he had finally jumped into the shadows.

He didn’t need to imagine the straitjacket. He already knew only too well what losing control felt like. Ducard had taught him well. But it wasn’t always possible to contain everything that he was feeling . . .

Crane was looking at him searchingly; more curiosity than he normally permitted to show sparkling in his eyes. “Penny for your thoughts?”

The doctor was a shadowy figure in the darkness; cheekbones casting long smudges of darkness down the hollow cheeks. Bruce remembered the look of detachment on Crane’s tired face as he had stroked the blue steel barrel of the gun gently along those bones.

“What are you afraid of?” he said, and he listened to the tug of the words as they disappeared into the black, tiny puffs of air dissolving. Empty rhetoric. Vanishing into the stillness.

A measured smile parted the swollen lips, the eerie accommodating smile that Bruce was starting to dread. It was the kind of smile that might once have transformed Crane’s face, made him look human. Now it only served to highlight the taint of madness that gleamed behind those cold blue eyes.

“Everything.” Crane’s voice was a muted whisper, sad and low. “Nothing.”

The lights high in the ceiling over their heads guttered and flashed; the occasional crackle of electricity breaking the silence with a crunch of static. Crane held Bruce’s gaze levelly, chin slightly raised. The defiance was back; the old defenses thrown up against him.

Before long Crane would be gone. And Bruce would never have a chance to understand anything. When the warm creamy surf of the South finally curled around his feet he would stare out over the ocean, into the distant line of the horizon vanishing into the sun. And he would wonder exactly who Crane had been.

He turned away and walked cautiously away down the poorly lit hallway, footsteps echoing off the tiles all around him. He had never appreciated until now exactly how unsettling an empty station had the potential to be. A space intended to be filled with the crush and push of jostling bodies; the mechanoid voices of the public address system. But then, this station hadn’t been like that for years. Since the time when his father had been alive.

The platform was as empty as the corridor, only a few pieces of garbage blowing across the greasy tracks in the cold draft that sucked through the passageways. The air was thick with diesel fumes; catching at his chest, forcing him to regulate his breathing. Crane was walking away from him towards the mouth of the tunnel, his feet scuffing on the concrete, hair hanging down over his face. His hands were in his pockets again.

Bruce began to think that the sooner they got into Arkham the better. He wasn’t sure how many more pills Crane was going to need to maintain this level of functioning but he was certain that the doctor’s supplies must be beginning to run low. He’d seen the madness already. And even under the influence of the drugs Crane was still very far from sane.

He lowered himself down from the edge of the platform to drop onto the tracks; boots squelching into something far less pleasant than simple mud or dirt. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a sudden scuttling movement beside his foot and twisted sharply away, breath caught in his mouth. Just a rat, he told himself. Just a rat.

Further along the line ahead of him he could dimly make out Crane sliding down from the platform edge onto the rails. In the furthest reaches of the tunnel the blackness was almost complete. He wished he’d thought to pack one of the torches from the Batcave in his bag. It wasn’t like him to set out without making some sort of preparation.

Crane was stood at the mouth of the tunnel, waiting. Even in the gloom he could see that the doctor seemed a little more agitated than usual, almost . . . excited.

“Next stop Arkham” he said shortly. He was starting to long for the time when this was all done with. Finished.

There was no hesitation. Crane followed him into the darkness without a word.

The oily lines either side of them hissed and whispered under the weight of a distant train, moving somewhere out on the network. Bruce prayed that nothing would come down the track towards them, catching them there like rats in a trap. There was no room either side of the steel rails for even Crane to flatten his frail body away from the rush of an oncoming train.

Less than half a mile between them and the next set of station lights and already it felt like an eternity to walk. The loneliness of the dark tunnel settled on him like a cold damp cloak; filling his head with whispering voices.

He quickened his pace a little; the darkness light enough for his practiced eyes. Behind him he heard Crane stumble clumsily into a pool of foul water, struggling to keep up in the blackness. Mean spiritedly he sped up just a little more, relishing his position in control. He was the one driving now and the kick of the power sent tiny spurts of adrenalin through his body. A passing feeling. Transitory.

But there wasn’t all that much separating him from Crane right now. Only his compassion, whatever there was left of that. Once upon a time he had told Ducard as much.

He stopped and waited impatiently for the doctor to catch him up. The blackness was almost total now; the least glow from the station behind them still allowing him to see a little. From all he could remember this bit of track was fairly straight and he only hoped that the next set of lights would appear before these ones were completely gone.

Crane’s voice cut like a razor into his thoughts, scattering them out into the damp atmosphere of the tunnel.

“Why do you do it, Bruce?”

It was impossible for him to see Crane’s face but he could guess what it looked like. The intensity, the dark pleasure masked behind the smile. But there was something else in the voice now, a breathless edge to the words.

“Do what?”

“The mask, the cape, the . . . altruism.” The last word was almost spat out. Crane’s voice had dropped back to that unnatural bitter shiver Bruce had heard from behind the storeroom door. “The Bat Man.”

“Revenge.” The answer was on his lips before he could stop it. Before he could decide if that was even true anymore.

“Everyone loses their parents, Bruce.” Taunting, light words falling into his ear like acid.

“How about you? Scarecrow.” And he said it like he meant it to hurt.

“Oh, I made my decision years ago.” Crane’s voice was still light. Offhand. As if nothing was really that important. “Be afraid or be feared.”

Yeah, Bruce thought. Me too. And he sped up just enough to leave Crane a few paces further behind him.

It was a few minutes later that he realised that the source of the light had switched from behind them to somewhere up ahead. A few more steps before the glow began to crystallize into the D shape of a platform.

Instinctively he slowed his pace; eyes straining against the dark to make out any details. He felt Crane slow his pace to match and wondered if the doctor too was struggling to see what lay before them. How much trust he had invested in Bruce’s ability to get them through this in safety. None at all, most likely, he thought with a half irritated flash of temper.

And in the flickering glare of the platform lights something moved.

Crane was already up by his shoulder, eyes shining in the darkness. Bruce extended his free hand very slowly across the tunnel, blocking the psychiatrist’s movement forwards. He wouldn’t make the mistake of putting his hand on Crane a second time. “We’ve got company.”

He heard Crane’s small intake of breath; the near silent footsteps slowing to drop a little behind him.

“So this is it.” The weird note of excitement Bruce had heard before filled Crane’s voice, a little higher than usual. He’s enjoying this, Bruce realised, and against his will he smiled at the doctor’s hidden strength. It seemed like they both drew power from the darkness.

“Afraid?” He had to ask.

“No.” The smile was audible in the voice now.

“Even of dying?”

“Oblivion?” A cold laugh accompanied the word. “Life could never be so sweet.”

Bruce’s lips met in a thin line. If he died here in the dark then everything would be accomplished. Alfred would know he had tried. Gordon would forget the masked vigilante who had once tried to make the city they both loved into something more than a rotting hulk of corruption. Gotham would go on beyond them all, a tall ship heading on out into a never-ending silver sea. Life could never be so sweet . . .

He turned to look at Crane in the half light. Very deliberately the doctor reached up and removed his glasses. “Show me how it’s done.”

Then Bruce was slipping away through the darkness to the platform edge; senses alert, the adrenalin coursing through him like a drug hitting his veins. With one hand he pulled himself up far enough to see over the lip of the raised area, the other hand holding the gun.

Two men were grappling with each other against the platform wall, their breath coming in hard gasps. One of them was whimpering a little, even as he fought his eyes nervously scanning the area for further sources of terror. Bruce remembered the time he had spent under the toxin, the ceaseless rush of fear turning his muscles to water.

He pointed the gun in the air and pulled the trigger. The explosion in the confined space of the tunnel sounded like a demolition bomb.

The two men fell instantly apart, cowering back away from the source of the sound. Both dirty, both half starved looking. Bruce pulled himself slowly up over the edge of the platform and advanced, waving both arms, making himself look as big as possible, shouting. For a second they stared at him, eyes dilated, terror imprinted onto their faces. Then they turned and ran, wildly, colliding with the walls, tearing at each other in their rush to escape.

He smiled. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

“Impressive.” Crane’s voice was as dry as dust. “Will that work with the others?”

Others? Bruce turned to the other end of the platform. Saw with horror the crowd of wide eyed, fear ravaged faces watching him warily. Shifting on their feet like a herd of cattle trapped in an abattoir pen. And he realised that he was between them and the door.

One woman, her clothes torn and tattered, standing a little apart from the edge of the mob, face working lopsidedly, began to scream. It was a high wordless scream; the scream of a terrified child. And the crowd began to move like one body, surging along the platform towards him. He watched horrified as the screaming woman disappeared beneath the trampling feet.

Desperately Bruce dived for the platform edge, every inch of his skin crawling with revulsion. These weren’t people anymore, they were zombies. Irredeemably lost. How much impact was an antidote going to make?

Below him in the well of the track he could see Crane running one hand slowly, wonderingly over his hair, eyes fixed on the mob. His face was glowing. He looked, Bruce thought sickly, like a man who had looked into the face of God.

Then he hit the rails with a dull thud and crouched, making himself as small as possible, waiting for the noises on the platform to die away into the distance.

When it was all over he pulled himself upright. Crane was still standing between the lines, transfixed.

“Crane.” he snapped. There weren’t enough words to say what he wanted to the doctor. The Narrows had been like this for three days now. What other horrors were out there in the streets? Nothing could ever justify this. The contagion of Crane’s madness must have truly infected him if he had ever believed that the doctor could be excused for anything he had done. Finally he could see clearly.

As soon as this was over he would make sure that Gordon knew exactly where to find Arkham’s former director. Two could play at deceit as well as one.

“Crane.” He walked briskly up to the doctor and shook him. Any fear about Crane’s response had vanished along with his compassion. He would shoot him now like a mad dog if he had to.

Crane’s blue eyes jolted back into focus. “Yes?” His voice was dreamy. Bruce looked at him with disgust.

“Let’s get going.” He turned away abruptly, walked back to the edge of the pit and pulled himself up onto the platform. Turned and with a reluctance bordering on revulsion stretched his hand down and dragged Crane up from the tracks. The doctor’s lips moved in an involuntary whimper at the pressure on his broken ribs, his wounded body collapsing in a crumpled heap at Bruce’s feet. Bruce looked away, uncaring.

The body of the woman who had screamed lay broken at the far end of the platform; an obscene trampled shapeless mass. I’m sorry, Bruce thought. Crane’s mocking words were haunting him. You seem to have left the job of saving the city half finished. It echoed through his head like the fading sound of a gun being fired.

He turned back to see the doctor on his feet, eyes still unnaturally bright, face still touched with the bright glow of delight. He was almost quivering now, driven by the force of some emotion Bruce didn’t even want to imagine. The fragile face held no alluring secrets for him now. He finally had seen what Crane was capable of; seen through the masks the doctor had so skillfully shown him. It hurt his pride that he had let himself be fooled for so long.

“Door. Now.” Crane moved across the platform as if in a daze, giving no sign that he had noticed the change in Bruce’s manner. The long sleeves had fallen down over his hands, a frayed end of the bandage that wrapped his broken finger poking out from the once white cuff.

Bruce was still holding the gun tightly in his clenched fist. His trigger finger burned with desire. Once they were finally in Arkham, finally at the source of the antidote, he would know what to do. Even Dr Crane couldn’t get far with a bullet in each knee. There were stronger prisons in Gotham than the asylum had ever been. Death would be too easy.

He reached the doorway a few steps ahead of the doctor, mind racing ahead, racing to a future where Crane was gone and his own freedom was secured. A strange shadow fell forward onto the platform from the bright lights of the hallway and he paused. Saw in the corridor behind the doorway a single huge figure stood like a colossus blocking his way. And he recognized only too well the tattered orange canvas of the Arkham high security wing.

When he looked over his shoulder he was completely unsurprised to realise that Crane was nowhere to be seen. He had expected nothing less.

Slowly he stepped backwards, tempting the man away from the door, away from the narrow corridor where the advantage would be all one sided. To his relief he followed. The same fear as Bruce had seen on the other faces was seared into the heavy eyes, but he guessed this one was an example of the fight response. He’d been lucky so far. Now it looked like his luck had run out.

The man hit him with surprising efficiency for someone in such a condition. Bruce lashed out wildly at the grinning face, suddenly struck by how different fighting was without the Batsuit. By how quickly he had become dependant on his little toys. Behind him there was only the blank wall at the far end of the platform. Or the tunnel on into the Narrows. There was no hope of escape there.

A second later the gun was knocked out of his hand. His attacker had strength and weight on his side and Bruce had only his speed and the advantage of a sound mind. But the pain in his chest was like steel wire wrapping his lungs. He hadn’t realised how weak he had become. All the damage his body had endured was finally taking its toll. Then the man was on top of him, sweaty and rank and desperate, the whites of his eyes flashing terror.

Bruce struggled against him with all the strength he had left. The hands wrapping unmercifully around his neck were hot and damp, the man’s stale breath seeping horribly across his face in a fetid stream. The lights in Bruce's head span and crashed down into the red cloud of pain like a ferris wheel exploding, his tortured lungs grinding against the broken bands of his ribcage.

He could feel the strength draining away from his arms, feel his will to fight weakening. It would be so easy to surrender to the darkness, to slide away from the pain and the dirt, to take that small step into nothing. Once he would have fought his death. It had taken thirty years for him to realize that he didn’t actually want to any more. Crane was right. Oblivion would be enough.

His body was struggling without him now; only the animal force in his muscles still straining for survival, for a single gasp of sweet air. Without emotion he watched it happen, gazing out from a place that was becoming further and further away. The crazed, fixed face of his attacker filled his rapidly darkening vision, filled his world. He stared into the maddened eyes and he could almost bring himself to feel pity. And he almost hoped that Doctor Crane would make it. To the victor the spoils.

And with a quick flicker of partial understanding the face hanging in front of him changed. The wet mouth hung temporarily open, panting out a pained little grunt of surprise. The wild eyes rolled slowly back in the head and the man lurched away from him, the choking fingers reluctantly releasing Bruce’s burning throat from their grip. Then the heavy body slid slowly down his heaving chest and dropped like a dead weight to the floor.

A second later Bruce followed, crashing clumsily to his knees, retching uncontrollably. Between the deep tearing breaths that were racking his agonized chest he looked apprehensively up into the previously empty space above him.

Crane smiled encouragingly. In his unbandaged hand he was holding a slim chisel, the blade slick and wet with blood.

“Crude. But effective.”

On the tiled wall behind the doctor’s dark figure a single neon tube blinked on and off, illuminating the black and white platform sign. Arkham Underground.

Barely comprehending, head swimming with sickness, Bruce stared at the wooden handle of his father’s chisel, hanging so loosely from Crane’s blood stained fingers. Then the oblivion he had craved came down roughly over his head like a canvas sack and he fell away into the dark.

(next)

Once I was you: (20) When the socket's not a shock enough

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:03:58 GMT

Title: When the socket's not a shock enough (20/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: A faintly dysfunctional road movie.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (20) When the socket's not a shock enough

The city was still quieter than usual. The events of the past week had rocked even Gotham. He could feel it in the air blowing over the river from the Narrows; police helicopters circling overhead like angry wasps.

The bridges would all still be up; the rest of the city cut off by the swirl of the oily water from its dark and disturbed heart. The old city, as some people still called it. But the road across the river wasn’t the only way into the Narrows. Or the only way out.

When this is over, he thought, easing his foot gently off the gas, I’ll take the car. Fill her up and just keep driving, heading South. Drive right down to Mexico, slide quietly through the border for the coast. Slip off my shoes and walk out into the surf.

He could hear the waves crashing endlessly onto the crumbling shore, the high free cry of the gulls over the ocean. The sound of everything coming to a halt. It was surprisingly beautiful.

Out behind the glass, in the real world, the grey buildings of Gotham’s industrial district flickered past the windows in an irregular rhythm of light and shade. Beside him, a gentle reminder of how things really stood, Crane moved restlessly in his sleep, his head bumping against the panels of the door.

As Bruce glanced over to the passenger seat he caught a brief uncomfortable glimpse of his own brown eyes sliding across the mirror on the windshield. It’s just me and you now, buddy, he thought. Everybody else has gone.

He looked down at the psychiatrist’s small awkwardly folded body, twisted away from him; the pale face oddly pure in the sunlight. Beneath the fall of Crane’s hair he could just see the red angry twist of the burn across his cheekbone. Isolation was a dangerous thing. And he wondered when Dr Crane had first realised he was alone.

For a second he imagined Crane standing in the sea, watching the dizzying sparkle of the Mexican sun on the waves.

Then he swung the car down off the road into the small parking lot beside the river; rolling below the giant yellow ‘M’ sign above the gateway. As he had hoped the lot was deserted. The entrance to the subway station was fluttering with red and white crime scene tape but there was no guard outside the open door.

When his father had the skytrains built the subway had become almost obsolete. A few people still used it but mostly the trains ran empty until they reached the suburbs. The central underground network had become synonymous with violence and drugs and all the things that Gotham’s citizens preferred to keep out of sight below the pavements.

Today there would be no trains. He imagined Gordon had been swift to cut off the services in and out of the island; although he had no doubt that there were still trains trapped on that section of line. Once Crane’s toxin had been released it was only a matter of time until it would filter down into the dark tunnels beneath the streets. If those already driven mad by their fear hadn’t got there first. He shivered at the thought.

The lot was empty apart from the stripped out shell of a derelict Ford rotting away in one corner. He parked the car beside it, and with a gentle rattle the engine cut out and died away.

There were tall clumps of ragged weeds growing up through the cracks in the concrete; nature slowly reclaiming the land Gotham had so greedily consumed. Far away in another part of the city a freight train whistled; the melancholy sound fading into the background noise of the traffic.

Across the water the Narrows brooded like a wounded animal; small columns of smoke drifting up from between the tenements. Cooking fires, he supposed, and the after effects of the criminally insane rampaging through the quarter. Even at that distance he could smell the charred wood, and something else, something like burning hair, thick and heavy on the breeze. It seemed that somehow he was never far from the scent of burning these days.

Crane was still slumped over against the door; all aberrant angles and long dark hair falling softly against the grey wool covering his chest. He looked peaceful and Bruce regretted the necessity of waking him up. He preferred Crane this way; a blank canvas for his own dreams. But it was time to get moving. Bruce reached out and gently touched his hand to the folded shoulder.

In a brittle flash of movement the small body flexed instantly away from him, pressed up hard against the door and then went rigid under his hand. Instantly it seemed as if there was far far less air in the car than there had been. Bruce didn’t move a muscle, didn’t alter the pressure of his hand by as much as a fraction. His heart was suddenly in his mouth, little electric danger signals flying up his spine.

“Crane?”

“Bruce?” It was almost a whisper. The doctor’s tense frame relaxed and slackened beneath his hand, moving with scattered dignity into a more upright position. “I thought . . .” He stopped, visibly controlling himself. Bruce pulled his hand away. “I thought you were someone else.” The voice was flat again; any trace of something below the surface wiped smoothly away. Another door slammed shut in Bruce’s face. What else had he expected?

He watched as Crane stretched unselfconsciously against the backrest of his chair, his white throat arching back, exposed, sleepy eyes half closed. Bruce wondered how much of the doctor’s nonchalance was for show; whether he would ever find out what went on behind those eyes. If he would ever understand.

And there was one thing that had been gnawing at his mind almost continuously, a constant buzz of static in the background. A question mark. And the sound of a bone breaking.

Experimentally he braced the little finger of his left hand against the door, keeping it concealed from Crane with his body. He gave a light push down against the metal and felt the pain he had anticipated go shooting across his wrist and up his arm. His stomach lurched. He bit down into his lip and pushed again, just hard enough to feel the bones grate beneath the skin.

There was a soft purposeful rustle of clothing on the seat next to him.

“Don’t fight it.” The doctor was perfectly still, eyes on Bruce’s face, a strange expression shaping his mouth, curving his lower lip into a half smile. At the corner of his mouth an old wound cracked and bled. “Embrace the pain. When you truly understand it there will be nothing more to fear.” His voice was low and breathy, eyes shining with an inner light.

For a second Bruce was ashamed. Then he yielded to the hypnotic pull of the words, pathetically grateful that Crane’s bruised face held no sign of judgement. He couldn’t understand . . .

He let the pain trickle lazily through his head, felt the simplicity of the hurt scouring at his confused thoughts, washing away everything. Batman, Gordon, Ducard, his parents, Rachel, all briefly lit by the fire and then burned away to ashes. On the horizon of his mind the sun flared briefly over a silver sea. All he could feel was the anguished screaming of the nerves in his hand, pleading with him to make it stop. He pushed down again, jolting a little at the fresh stab of agony slicing through his left side.

Crane smiled, face lit by the sun falling through the windshield. His voice was soothing, smoothing a path through the jagged peaks of suffering. “Did you know that the thing most people are really afraid of is physical pain? Accept it, Bruce. Control your own fear.”

Bruce suddenly saw the black and white image of Crane’s bloodied face, beaten but unbowed, snapping back from the impact of his own gloved fist, defiant. And the pain was all around him but he could bear it. He knew that the final break would hurt, but it meant nothing. He could endure worse than this. Finally he began to understand how Crane could have made that push with such clear sighted finality.

With nothing to stop it the tide of pain crept forward through his mind, washing up against the rockbed of a different memory. An empty room; wardrobe doors swung open. The clean smell of vacancy and a photograph, the face turned away. Alfred. What else could possibly matter more than that? Because Alfred was out there somewhere, alone, and, Bruce knew with a certainty that cut into his chest like a knife, believing he had failed the boy he had brought up as his own.

And the hurt and the emptiness that slammed up against him made the pain in his hand a meaningless ghost. He pulled it away from the door as if it had been burned.

Crane’s blue eyes met his with open contempt. “Still afraid?”

“There are worse things.” Bruce’s voice was deliberately rough. He could feel enough pain to be angry; angry at himself for slipping towards Crane’s level. Crane was the fly in his ointment. Without the psychiatrist’s unsettling presence he might still have been balancing on the edge of his precipice; Batman and Bruce Wayne, Prince of Gotham and its Dark Knight. He wondered, not for the first time, why he had gone back.

“Such as?” The contempt was dwindling back into an idle tone of disrespect, the moment passing by before Bruce could take advantage.

“Not all pain is physical.” Bruce reached to the ignition for the keys and pocketed them, avoiding the use of his left hand. There were more important things they had to do before the day was done. Deliberately he kept his voice as level as Crane’s had ever been. “A psychiatrist should know that.”

Far away in the icy grey clouds of the mountains Ducard’s words slipped like the sweetest venom into his ears, tugging at the knot of hurt he had held so close. Reminding him of the way the days could slip past, the grief fading with the old happinesses, until the memory of your loved one was just . . . poison in your veins.

And Crane’s sick smile made his stomach turn. “Senseless.” Every word was weighted with a bitter undertow. “Senseless, the day I vowed revenge not to have torn out my heart.”

“Dumas?” Bruce didn't know why he was surprised.

Crane gave a tiny nod of assent.

“Is that what you did?”

The psychiatrist looked away out of the windshield, eyes tracing the mock Doric front of the subway station, lips pressed hard together. Bruce paused, waiting. The strange fascination that Crane seemed to have for him was still strong despite it all. He had never been this close.

Then the doctor reached out and picked his glasses up from the dashboard. He gave them a little polish, mopping at the lenses with the long cuff of his shirt sleeve and settled them back on his face, covering the bruised skin, the bottomless blue of his eyes. When he slowly swivelled back around all the expression had been wiped away as if it had never been.

“Long ago, Bruce. Long ago.” He turned away and opened his door; stepping out a little stiffly into the sunlight, looking out away over the river towards the distant roofs of Arkham.

And after a second Bruce followed him.

(next)

Once I was you: (19) A little nap while the road is straight

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:55:38 GMT

Title: A little nap while the road is straight (19/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: A faintly dysfunctional road movie.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (19) A little nap while the road is straight

The sun was still high in the sky; burning down in slanting beams through the tall trees, casting glittering shadows on the path. He hadn’t realised how late it was. Bruce walked a little faster, the pain that was banding his chest tugging at his lungs. But if the pace was hurting him then sure as hell it was hurting Crane, and that was reason enough not to slow down any.

“Are we walking to Gotham?” The psychiatrist was a lot closer to his shoulder than Bruce had expected he would be. The warm light took some of the eerie edge out of Crane’s voice, but the bitter note of resignation was still humming like a dark current behind the words. Bruce wondered exactly how much Crane trusted him. How much faith Crane had in his own ability to size people up.

“We’ll take the car.” He paused to catch his breath, turned and saw the look of enquiry on Crane’s face. “Not that car.” The doctor shrugged, lips pursing in a small tight gesture of discontent. He had put his glasses back on at some point during the walk up the path but even the blank lenses couldn’t totally disguise the flicker of disappointment in his eyes.

But he didn’t need to rationalize his decisions to Crane. They would take the staff car. Alfred’s car as it had been. He knew Alfred well enough to believe that he wouldn’t have left Wayne Manor with a single thing that belonged to his employer. The station wagon would be just where he had seen it last, parked discreetly out of sight behind the cottage.

He knew no-one would look at it twice once they reached Gotham. Batman might need to make an impression and Bruce Wayne certainly liked to. But neither of them was here right now and the unmarked grey car with the scuffmarks on one door would be just fine for slipping quietly into the streets of the city and making their way unremarked towards the Narrows.

He stepped out onto the lawn, into the sunlight, and stopped for a second to allow Crane to catch up. The doctor’s hand was back in his trouser pocket, searching around for another pill. Bruce wasn’t going to ask. He had seen the lengths Crane was prepared to go to in order to hang on to whatever shards of sanity he had left. He supposed he should be grateful that this time it was just pills.

As Crane stepped up out of the trees he paused and Bruce saw his eyes widen. Across the sloping strip of lawn the battered ruins of Wayne Manor shimmered in the heat, great blackened beams emerging from the fallen stone like the twisted timbers of a wrecked ship.

“Something the matter?” He was enjoying Crane’s brief discomfiture.

The doctor’s expression was one of grudging surprise. “I admit, I wasn’t expecting this. There have been some changes since I last saw this place. What . . . happened?”

He had let himself forget how far Crane was behind on recent events. “Birthday party.” he said shortly.

“My. How the other half must live.”

Bruce was amazed at how quickly the bland mask had slipped back across the pale face. Crane looked more bored than anything else. Annoyed he set off again across the lawn, wondering why exactly he had allowed himself to be talked into anything so stupidly Quixotic as this plan to save the Narrows.

He had never succeeded in getting through to Crane. Every time he thought he might have detected a small chink in the doctor’s wall of self possession the door was slammed shut in his face. And now he was voluntarily accompanying him back into the heart of the Narrows; back into the clinical darkness of Arkham. He must be going crazy.

But he still noticed that when they reached the front of the cottage Crane’s cheeks had become alarmingly pale. Bruce wondered when he had last eaten, whether Alfred had fed him when he cleaned him up. The last thing he wanted was for the doctor to pass out half way into Arkham.

“Get inside.” His voice wasn’t unkind, merely stern and Crane didn’t even bother to argue, simply pushed the door open and walked into the kitchen. Bruce followed him; habit and prudence prompting him to leave one hand draped loosely over the butt of the gun in his belt. “You need some food?”

The psychiatrist was looking around the small room with obvious interest, eyes lingering for a second too long on the knife block beside the sink. Bruce tensed and Crane’s shoulders dropped a fraction. He walked tiredly over to the couch and sat down slowly, lowering himself onto the cushions with what Bruce recognized, with a stab of reluctant sympathy, as the pained caution of the wounded.

And he knew that if he was in Crane’s position he wouldn’t ask for anything either. So he busied himself finding a loaf of bread and a couple of apples in the cupboards, never taking his attention completely away from the small figure on the brown couch. The doctor was apparently engrossed in going through the record cases on the table beside him, but Bruce knew better than to let that fool him.

“Here.” He stepped over the rug and put the food down next to Crane on the side table. The doctor looked up at him, blue eyes openly scornful, mouth twisting. His hand was in his pocket again; Bruce could see the concentration creasing his forehead as he searched for the right tablet.

“Gosh. Bruce. What can I say? I’m touched by your concern, really, I am.” There was no mistaking the hostility in Crane’s tired voice. He found the pill he had been looking for, checked it quickly and brought his fingers up to his sneering mouth. “It almost feels like you care.”

Bruce stared down at Crane’s defiant unhappy face. “Suit yourself. I didn’t think you should be taking that shit on an empty stomach.” For a second Crane’s expression remained frozen, looking up at Bruce. Then he shook his head, disbelief filling his eyes, half smiling. His bandaged hand came up and rubbed hard at his right eyebrow, then stroked away down his cheek.

“You’re worried about my long term health?” The tone was still mocking, gently incredulous, but the bitterness was largely gone. Bruce saw again how the loosely fitting clothes only served to highlight Crane’s delicate frame, to reinforce the slender grace of the white wrists. Blue eyes rolled under long black lashes. “Oh, as you wish . . .”

He picked up the bread and ripped a chunk off, tearing into it with a force that left Bruce in no doubt of how hungry he had been. Once again Bruce felt the reluctant stirrings of respect for Crane’s self control; for the way he had made his body so subordinate to his desires. He frowned and turned away. Mouth and hands full of bread Crane rose to his feet and followed him out through the open door.

As Bruce had expected the car was still parked in its usual spot behind the cottage. The keys were hanging on the usual hook under the bumper. Gotham’s tide of crime had yet to wash up onto the shores of the Wayne estate.

The car smelled slightly of pine and barley sugar. Bruce remembered the small tin boxes of sweets arriving parceled up from England when he was a child, to be stowed secretively away in the glove compartment for the rare occasions when he was allowed to escort Alfred out on a shopping trip into the city. He remembered riding shotgun; mouth full of sticky, slightly sickly candy, watching the other cars swish past them. Alfred telling him stories about the country he had imagined one day visiting; stories about London and the parks and the palaces.

Crane was stood a little way back from the car, watching Bruce curiously. “No cape?”

Bruce’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “Not any more.” he said, and he wondered as he did so what exactly had happened to Crane’s family. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Get in.”

Crane walked round the front of the car, eyes raking over the dents and the scratches. “Not how I imagined riding with the Batman.”

Bruce ignored him, threw his bag onto the back seat, twisted the key in the ignition and felt pleasantly relieved when it started first time. He shut his door and tried not to think too much about the possible risks of being in such close proximity to the psychiatrist. If Crane was going to try anything then he would probably have done it already. He’d already given Bruce the gun after all, and its weight over his hip was an inexpressible comfort to him.

The doctor settled into the passenger seat, moving uneasily, trying to find a comfortable position as the car taxied slowly down the gravel drive. Bruce speculated that his kick had most likely broken one or more of the doctor’s ribs and he hoped that at least some of those little pills were painkillers. He had a feeling he was going to need the doctor to be fully mobile in the not too distant future.

He bumped the car up onto the hardtop and turned out to the left, away from the freeway. Crane’s bruised face turned enquiringly towards him; the light reflecting off the small strip of plaster near his mouth.

“We’re taking the long way round.” Even as Bruce spoke a police car appeared in the opposite lane and accelerated away in a cloud of fine white dust. He watched it speed away in his mirror and saw that Crane’s eyes were following it as well. “No point attracting attention.”

The doctor nodded, apparently satisfied, but Bruce could see that his pale face was a little whiter than it had been. He was still finishing the bread, and the poised elegant fingers were shaking so slightly that Bruce wasn’t entirely sure whether he was imagining it or not. Experimentally he twisted the knife a little, banishing the faint sensation of guilt that was flaring behind his eyes.

“You don’t want the police involved?”

Crane looked at him, and for one second Bruce saw everything he had hoped for in the half glazed blue eyes. Fear, lapping away at the margins of Crane’s fragmented mind like a cold river rising. But it wasn’t him that Crane was afraid of. And it didn’t feel like any kind of victory.

The psychiatrist looked back into Bruce’s dark eyes without flinching. “You ever worn a straitjacket?” The tone was light, conversational. Bruce turned away to look back out at the grey road, the sunlight sparkling in the verges. He had his own problems. He didn’t need this.

“You know what being helpless feels like? When they fasten the straps and twist your arms behind your back?”

Bruce kept his eyes on the road, concentrated on the driving, on the firm pressure of the pedal on the sole of his foot. The feel of the road sliding under the wheels.

“You ever lost control?” The doctor’s pale scarred face burned at the edge of Bruce’s vision and he struggled to ignore it. To pretend that this wasn’t happening.

“Everything becomes surprisingly simple once you’ve finally gone over the edge.” Crane’s voice was flat and hollow. “But I imagine you would know that.”

Bruce let a humourless smile settle on his lips. “I’m still on the edge.”

“Still on the side of the angels Bruce? Do you really think so?”

“You don’t?”

“Well, let me see. Since I met you I’ve been tied up, punched, kicked, tortured, drugged . . .”

“You set me on fire!”

A small smile floated across Crane’s lips. “Yes. Yes. I did do that, didn’t I?” He nodded like a man savouring a particularly pleasurable memory.

Bruce turned away from the bright face, eyes back on the road, shaking his head. Crane confused him and he wasn’t afraid to admit it, to himself at least.

“I take it you have a plan?”

Bruce kept his eyes fixed forward; watching the white line flicker steadily away under the hood. He had no intention of letting Crane in on anything he didn’t strictly need to know. A dog ran up out of the ditch in front of the car and he swerved around it and then watched it disappear into the cloud of grey dust hanging behind them.

“Fine.” The doctor twisted awkwardly away from him against the pull of the belt and settled down into the corner of the seat, limbs neatly folded. “You get us into the Narrows and I’ll get us into Arkham.” He gave a little sigh, exasperation or exhaustion, and snuggled down a little further, eyes closing. A hand slipped up from his side and carefully removed and folded the glasses, pushing them away up to the top of the dashboard. A few moments later the tense face started to slowly let go; the frail body slumping against the door of the car.

Bruce stole a glance across the seats at the doctor’s impossibly vulnerable face, relaxed and unnaturally still. He wondered again how much Crane really trusted him or if he just had nothing left to lose; if he was always this reckless with his life. And everything he had seen of Crane so far pushed him towards the possibility that the answer might somehow be both.

After all, Bruce was the good guy. He was meant to be playing by the rules, which presumably included not taking unfair advantage of sleeping psychopaths. Or at least not the ones who still had something he needed.

As he watched Crane’s bruised lips moved a little and the thin shoulders drew a shade closer together, shivering even in the heat of the afternoon. Bruce sighed and turned his head forcefully away.

Ahead of him the road forked; one way leading off towards the horizon, another going right, vanishing into the distant haze. He span the wheel round in his hands and headed the car onto the road leading towards Gotham.

(next)

Once I was you: (18) Through trying now, it's a big relief

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:08:05 GMT

Title: Through trying now, it's a big relief (18/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen, with a healthy regard for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Playing games without rules.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (18) Through trying now, it's a big relief

There was a second when Bruce very nearly stopped breathing. He had been so certain he was alone. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up in a slow cold wave running towards the top of his skull and he shivered. Because it was a voice he knew only too well. He had kind of hoped he would never have to hear it again.

“I thought you would be long gone.”

Crane’s weight shifted slightly against the panels of the door behind Bruce’s shoulders. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” The voice was subdued, a little sad.

For once Bruce thought that Crane might just be telling him the truth. It was said simply enough, but there was the faintest catch of desperation tugging at the words. And, despite everything, the thought that Crane had nowhere to left run to nowhere better than the place where he had been so recently hurt, cut into Bruce like a rusty blade twisting deep into his stomach.

He settled back against the door; closed his eyes and rubbed gently at his forehead with the ball of his hand. The key was still sitting in the lock above his head. It would only take a second to turn it; to leave his final problem locked up in the cave below Wayne Manor. He could be out on the road in a few minutes, find a ship, leave Gordon an anonymous tip off regarding the whereabouts of Arkham’s missing director. He owed Gordon something.

Crane shifted again and the distant vision of the golden mountains faded into the dust of the stone floor at Bruce’s feet. Against his better judgement and the creeping numbness that was slowing his thoughts there was one thing that still stood out against the grey.Crane was the puzzle piece he couldn’t solve; the mystery he kept coming back to.

“What makes you think you know who I am?” And he already knew that he hadn’t been using Batman’s voice. He wasn’t even sure if he could.

“Come on Bruce. How long ago did you stop looking at the faces of staff? Not every family in Gotham is pretentious enough to employ a genuine English butler.”

And suddenly Bruce was done with pretending. There were more important things than Batman, more important things than Bruce Wayne. He fought to keep the emotion out of his voice.

“Where is he?”

He could hear the pleasure barely concealed in Crane’s easy drawl. “Why, let me out and I’ll be happy to tell you.”

Bruce began to think that maybe Crane had guessed his identity days before, had been toying with him all along, saving his trump card for the final showdown. "Does he have your daddy’s eyes?", indeed.

He pushed himself painfully up the door until he was standing; the dull pain from his cracked rib still encircling his chest. He had already mentally consigned Crane to hell; accepted that the psychiatrist had made good his chance of escape. What difference was anything else going to make? How much would it really matter?

And giving up turned out to be surprisingly easy once everything he cared about was gone. It almost felt good. He moved clear of the archway, standing to one side.

“Ok.” His voice sounded flat and dead, as if all the life had drained away long before.

The door into the storeroom dragged open with a slight creak. Bruce realised that he was holding his breath, and he cursed himself for it.

And Crane stepped lightly out of the shadows like an actor taking to the stage, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a pair of grey trousers. Self possessed. His dark hair fell down around his face, half hiding the blue eyes behind the glasses.

Bruce vaguely recognized the white shirt that Crane was wearing as having once been his; almost smiled at the way the stiffly crumpled cuffs fell down past the tips of the doctor’s fingers. The shirt was buried under two wool pullovers; one grey, one black, both a little too big for Crane’s slight frame. His face had been washed and the lack of dirt made the bruises and the burns stand out starkly against the pale skin. A small strip of plaster ran across one side of his mouth and half consciously Bruce looked away, down at the split knuckles of his own right hand.

It was amazing how much difference the glasses made to Crane’s face. He looked mild, self contained, studious. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, Bruce thought wryly. For all the punishment and the lack of food and the long hours alone in the dark Crane appeared surprisingly fresh.

The doctor’s heavy lidded eyes ran over him, amused and slightly superior, and he looked away, irritated. He couldn’t deny that Crane seemed to be a whole lot saner than when he had last seen him.

“So . . . the Crown Prince of Gotham and the Batman are one and the same.” The full lips hovered dangerously close to a smirk.

“I’m not the Prince of Gotham.”

“But you are Bruce Wayne.” Crane turned and walked away from him across the rocky floor of the Batcave, head turning slowly to take in the hanging canopy of bats, the lights, the fire blackened shaft of the elevator. “Nice place you’ve got here.” And Bruce didn’t even bother trying to work out whether it was said ironically or not. He had seen Crane’s basement in Arkham.

“Your man.” Crane was talking as he moved, keeping Bruce’s attention on the words, hustling like a street magician fixing a con. “He left after he patched me up.” He moved behind the workbench. “Gave me some clothes. Told me to turn onto the track and just keep walking.” The bitter note that had laced his soft voice in the past was starting to creep back. There was an eerie edge to his calm smile.

“Do excuse me.”

Crane’s left hand went down into his pocket and for a second his face tightened in concentration while he searched around. After a moment he withdrew it and briefly studied the blue and white pill that was between his fingers before popping it into his mouth and swallowing it with a wince. His eyes were half shy, half daring Bruce to comment and Bruce turned away from their challenge, uncomfortable.

He wasn’t sure he liked this new improved version of Crane anymore than the crazy one. He was certain he shouldn’t trust him any more. But at least now he could begin to believe that Alfred was safe. Far away, but safe. There had been no trace of triumph in the doctor’s voice when he mentioned him.

The psychiatrist hadn’t moved, now rummaging inquisitively through the things on the bench, bright eyed, and Bruce noticed the clean white bandage wound tightly around his damaged finger, the very slight clumsiness of the usually graceful hands.

“So now what happens?”

“Come now. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.” Crane looked up at him and for a second Bruce was looking into the sweet complicit smile of a fellow conspirator. “Two educated men like us don’t need to complicate things with violence.”

And Bruce thought that, whatever Crane might or might not turn out, be he was certainly not lacking in bravery. Bruce could have knocked him down there and then, left him bleeding on the floor of the cave. But he wasn’t going to do that and he supposed that Crane knew it.

The psychiatrist gestured at the bag Bruce had left lying on the floor by the door. “Were you going somewhere?”

“I was leaving.”

“Leaving?” Crane flicked awkwardly at the closed catch on the box of tools, opened the lid and inspected the contents.

“Leaving Gotham.” Grudgingly Bruce recognized the well rehearsed trick, the leading repetition.

“I hope you run fast then.”

Bruce looked at him quizzically.

“A man’s got to run pretty fast to get away from himself.” Crane didn’t raise his eyes, hands busy in the box of tools.

“Are you trying to analyse me?” Horror and amusement jostled for place.

“I wouldn’t dare.” For a second Crane’s eyes were alive with mischief, sparkling with something that Bruce, awestruck, recognized as fun. It had been such a long time since Bruce had really let himself enjoy anything without guilt. Survivor’s guilt, if Crane really wanted to play at psychoanalysis.

“I have a proposition that you might find interesting. Assuming your plans to leave the city aren’t immediately pressing.” The doctor was still searching through the tools.

“What makes you think I would be interested in any proposition of yours?”

“You could describe it as mutually beneficial.” Crane took a step back from the bench, eyes running over the cases lining the walls behind him and once again Bruce felt the familiar sinking sensation of being a backseat passenger to the doctor’s chauffeur.

“What do you have that I could want?”

Crane’s bruised lips moved into something close to a smile. “A water borne antidote? For the Narrows? You seem to have left the job of saving the city half finished.”

Bruce’s forehead tightened involuntarily. Once again Crane knew exactly which buttons to push. Am I really that transparent?, he thought, already knowing the answer.

“And what do you want?”

“My freedom. I give you the antidote and you let me go.”

“You could have had your freedom hours ago.”

The doctor sniffed disdainfully. “I’m not accustomed to all this violence. Frankly I need an escort into Arkham to find the drugs that I need. I think you will do very well, assuming you can manage to resist any unnecessary heroics along the way.”

Bruce rolled his eyes impatiently. Crane’s posturing irritated him.

“So? Are you in?” The doctor paused, a wave of dark hair falling into his face, his cheeks slightly flushed. “Look . . .” He reached up and took off his glasses, carefully folded them and tucked them away in the pocket of his shirt. His voice had taken on the level patient tone of someone speaking to a not so bright child. “This doesn’t have to be consensual.”

And with a slight contraction of his chest Bruce finally realised the logic behind where Crane was standing. The significance of his proximity to the case on the wall; the case where Bruce had once kept the Batsuit locked away. Where the few weapons he allowed himself to carry were kept. It hadn’t taken the psychiatrist long to find an advantage.

He watched, motionless, almost beyond caring as Crane reached into the cabinet and picked up one of the heavy guns, his good hand small and white against the black metal. The doctor prised the chamber open and span the barrel round with one finger, pale face brightening at the realization it was loaded.

“An unlocked gun cabinet? How careless of you.” His tone was chiding. “Some one could get hurt.” He snapped the gun back together, ran his thumb over the safety catch. There was a slight click, not quite loud enough to echo back from the walls. His hold on the gun was far from expert but Bruce felt quite sure he knew the basics. He remembered reading an article once saying that everybody knew how to hold a gun, that the grip of the finger on the trigger was intuitive, and he wondered when it was that he had first learned. He had never thought that shooting Joe Chill at point blank range would require much in the way of practice.

Crane smiled at him across the bench. “Nervous, Bruce?” He reached up and pushed the long hair back out of his face with the barrel of the gun, his gesture casual as his words. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.” The blue eyes were like mirrors, giving nothing away.

“That’s not what I do.” The contorted expression of the kidnapper falling away from him flashed briefly into his mind.

“So what were you going to do? Exactly?” Crane was stroking the cold steel of the gun over the planes of his swollen cheek; wincing a little as it grazed the burns seared into his face.

Bruce paused, watching Crane’s relaxed expression warily. “I don’t know.” he admitted and saying it out loud was a weight lifted from his back that he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying.

The doctor stared at him for a second, the muzzle of the gun wavering between Bruce’s head and the roof of the cave. Then he laughed, a quick dry laugh like a feather bursting into flames. “Here.” He span the gun deftly round in his slender hand, pointed the handle towards Bruce. “Take it. I’m not much of a gunfighter myself.”

Bruce reached for it, too quickly, he thought, far too quickly to avoid any trap Crane might have laid for him. His hand closed over the butt and briefly the gun wavered between them. Then Crane shrugged and let the barrel go. He gestured towards the waterfall. “Shall we?”

Bruce kept the gun level and steady, the muzzle aimed at Crane’s chest. The psychiatrist sighed, dark eyebrows creeping up in a flush of exasperation. “Must we go through this ridiculous charade every time one of us picks up a weapon?”

He stepped out from behind the bench, his hands held loosely in front of his body, the bandage clearly visible. Bruce tightened his grip on the gun, eyes never leaving Crane’s scarred face, holding his ground as the psychiatrist moved slowly forward.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t wanted this.” Crane’s voice was soft, hypnotic and understanding. “To blow it all to hell.” He kept coming towards Bruce, blue eyes locked on the trigger, keeping moving until his chest bumped gently against the cold muzzle of the gun. So close it was impossible to look away from the cuts and bruises that marked the pale skin. His hair smelled very slightly of damp and antiseptic.

“So do it. What are you afraid of?” Crane’s voice shivered away into silence. The end of the gun was embedded deep in his ribcage, pulling the fabric down into a soft spiral over his heart. Bruce couldn’t tell if the vibrations nudging along the metal down to his hand were from his pulse or Crane’s. And at that moment the doctor’s face was as close to peaceful as Bruce had ever seen it.

He could end all this in a second. He had been working so hard to prove to himself that he could just walk away from everything; from the city he had loved and saved, from the people who mattered to him. But, and obscurely it didn’t cause him that much pain to admit it, he knew that Crane was right. No one could run that fast. Or that far.

And even though he still ached with the hatred Crane caused him to feel, the hate he struggled to control, that hate was now mingled with a grudging respect. Crane had called his bluff more times than he cared to remember; times when he had thought he was holding all the cards. The psychiatrist kept his cards so close to his chest Bruce wasn’t even sure Crane was playing the same game.

He wondered what the real Dr Crane had been like. How long it had been since he slipped away behind his masks and disguises. And it might brand Bruce as crazy to admit it, but he almost thought that he might have liked him.

Crane’s strange eyes were looking straight back into his, defiant, daring him to pull the trigger. Bruce would have put a lead bullet in Joe Chill’s chest once, and never thought twice about it. Turned out time had changed him more than he liked to think about.

“I won’t kill you.” And in his head he let Ducard finish the sentence for him. But I don’t have to save you.

He dropped the barrel of the gun away to point at the stone floor, set the safety and tucked it away in the belt of his jeans. Crane pouted at him, face falling in mock disappointment.

“Maybe next time?”

“Get your things.” He span sharply round on his heel, away from Crane’s mildly taunting smile, heading for the daylight behind the waterfall. Maybe he could clean up all his loose ends in one go; leave a clean slate behind him. And if not at least he had the chance to die trying. It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough.

The light of the afternoon was gentle and warm on his face, the water falling ceaselessly into the pool in a sparkling torrent under the trees. High above him a single bird sang out into the cloudless sky and when he set out up the path to the house he didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that Crane was just behind him.

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Once I was you: (17) No escape for you, except in someone else

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:30:05 GMT

Title: No escape for you, except in someone else (17/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen with lots of legroom for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Bruce can't sleep.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (17) No escape for you, except in someone else

Cold grey light filtered through the kitchen window; just enough to see the open cuts on his knuckles as he turned the tap to fill the kettle. He hadn’t wanted to sleep anymore. Wasn’t sure if he would be able to anyway. His heart was still scratching an uneven rhythm into the walls of his chest.

And he knew what he was going to do now. It wouldn’t be that hard. He had run before. Only difference was that this time he didn’t think anyone would come looking for him when he was gone.

He wondered how far he would have to go to forget. And he remembered the still crisp air of the mountain ridges, the clear blue light shining off the peaks. The piled snow wrapped over the dark rocks like a white fur and the steep winding paths leading up to the high places. The ramshackle villages tumbled together in the valleys. The wild call of the birds circling overhead. It might be far enough.

And he remembered the dark damp cells of the thief’s prison, the brown filthy slop that constituted meals, the necessary violence and the weary endless boredom and the grudging respect of the guards. And that might be enough too.

He opened the coffee jar and dropped two heaped teaspoons of granules into the bottom of a mug. He was going to need it.

The coffee was dark and bitter and smelt like the air in every roadhouse diner he had ever driven away from. Instant coffee and steam and damp and people leaving. He drank it while it was still almost too hot to hold; letting the burn of the liquid sear down into his stomach in a sweet red line of pain and caffeine.

When he put the mug back down on the draining board his mind was made up. There were just a few things he needed to do.

He stuffed his things into a bag, a jumper, a pair of jeans, a razor and a lump of soap. The picture Alfred had left behind. His passport, an army knife, and he was ready. He shut the house door quietly behind him, and he didn’t bother to lock it. There was nothing left behind that he cared much about losing.

It was still surprisingly cold; the wind blowing up over the lawn into his face was almost icy. It carried the faintest trace of ash, the last whisper of Wayne Manor as it had been before. He hoisted the bag onto his shoulder; felt the slight weight of his last links with his home dig into his back. There was just one more thing he needed to do.

The dirt path down through the trees was wet with dew, the dangling leaves dripping soft cold splashes of water into his hair. It was still a little too early for the birds to be awake. By the time they began to move about the garden he would be a long way down the highway to the sea. Find a ship, make his way on board. He was fit enough that with a little ready cash he would easily be able to find a berth. Foreign ship and no-one would even know who he was. Who he had been.

He clambered up the rocks beside the waterfall, feet sliding on the wet path and for a second he wished that his dream had been true. At least in part. Crane was the loose end he had failed to tie up. Turned out that he didn’t have it, really. The will to do what was necessary. He doubted he had the discernment to decide exactly what was necessary. Ducard had been right about him all along.

He missed Ducard, suddenly, and with a surprising stab of pain. Ducard had been so confident, so absolutely convinced about the rectitude of his own moral judgement. Of course, Ducard had also been insane. He wondered if there was a correlation there somewhere that he was missing.

And obviously there was. He knew after all that Bruce, with all his confused conflicted questioning, had become absorbed in Batman’s frighteningly clear vision of right and wrong, and he knew in his heart that Batman was very very far from being sane. Alfred had been right. “You're getting lost inside this monster of yours.” It all made sense really. He should have asked the psychiatrist when he had the chance, he thought, and the image made him smile for the first time since he had strapped Crane to the chair the previous night.

He just wanted to see the Batcave one last time. So he would remember how it had been, when it was good. It didn’t look like that now. The chair where he had last seen Crane was still standing beside the bench, empty now, the plastic ties on the arms cut through. There was a small stain marking the stone floor there that he knew must be blood, but it didn't matter, really. Not anymore.

The Batsuit he had left in the cottage. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He imagined the mask must still be on the seat of the car where he had thrown it the previous night.

An innate instinct for tidiness nagged at him to replace the tools on the bench in their box. The toolkit had been his father’s once; the wooden handles smoothed down over the years by use and age. Bruce had liked using it, found the rhythms and routines comforting. Letting his hands sit in the same places as his father’s; guiding the blade over the wood, following the grain. Briefly he contemplated dropping the box of tools into the swirling pool beneath the waterfall, watching the dark waters close over it. But it would be a melodramatic gesture. Someone else would find them useful one day. He shut the lid and it closed with a soft click.

The door to the storeroom was still half ajar. He pushed it shut, turned and looked around at the place he had once believed would be his salvation. And he needed to sit down.

He let himself slide gently down against the door, his aching back grateful for the firm support of the wooden panels. He supposed Fox would take back the car. He was going to miss the car. In all his loss it was a small thing but it still hurt that little bit more than he had expected. But he had lost more than the car. He let his head drop down onto his chest and he wondered where Alfred was now.

And a voice behind him, quiet but very close to his ear said: “Can’t sleep, Bruce?”

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Once I was you: (16) I may talk a little in my sleep tonight

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:56:28 GMT

Title: I may talk a little in my sleep tonight (16/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen with lots of legroom for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: They say the darkest hour is just before dawn.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (16) I may talk a little in my sleep tonight

It was pleasantly cool and shady in the garden. Crane twisted away from under Batman’s hands, gave a delighted giggle at finding himself free and scooted off across the lawns. Batman never hesitated, never stopped to think, pulled the grapnel gun from his belt so fast he thought he must have ripped the material, aimed, fired . . . and saw Crane throw his arms up wildly, stumble and hit the ground.

The Dark Knight strode across the short stretch of scuffed grass to the place where Crane was now laying prone; slim hands pressed over his face, moaning softly. Grabbed him by the scruff of his jumpsuit, hauled him to his feet and shook him hard. Crane’s eyes were wide with pain and shock; the bolt of the grapnel had hit him cleanly between the shoulder blades. He was gasping for breath.

Pitilessly Batman dragged him back across the unkempt reaches of the garden; making no allowances for the smaller man’s obvious injury. Crane tripped and bumped over the rough ground, his feet barely keeping him upright; the wheezing turning into bouts of racking coughs and finally a choking pant that soothed Batman’s vengeful soul. Little shit, he thought. That will teach him.

At the entrance to the cave they halted, not out of any desire to linger, but because Batman was trying to decide the best way to take Crane through the curtain of water that was falling heavily onto the rocks, its dark current carrying the first rain of the storms lashing the hills around Gotham. Crane had gone almost completely limp as soon as he was allowed to come to a halt, his eyes rolling back in his head, lower lip hanging slackly down, and Batman was forced to support him.

Hell, he had carried him before. He could do it again now. With an abrupt movement he scooped Crane off his feet; not that Crane was putting a lot of weight on them anyway, not that Batman wasn’t already virtually holding the man up.

The path behind the roaring waterfall was narrow and slippery, treacherous in even ideal conditions. And conditions were far from ideal. He was damned if he wanted to do this more than once. There had been times when he had taken pleasure in the swift duck off the rocks to get in behind the falling water; when the consuming sound of the falls had filled him with a kind of joy. Now, with a flood draining down into the drop, and with the shivering body of a dangerous madman pressed against his chest, he felt less pleasure and more grim duty in the climb.

The cold water splashed against his face as he transferred his weight onto the track behind the falls. As soon as he had a second to take his mind away from the present danger he looked down at Crane; huddled miserably in his arms, eyes pressed tightly shut. The doctor’s blue lips were moving with the whispered rhythm of a prayer; a tiny pulse beating erratically under the translucent skin at his temples.

And, despite the deafening thud of the water hitting the pool below him, despite the fear and the exhilaration of the drop beneath and the slippery rock under his feet, Batman paused, lowered his head and tried to make out what it was that Crane was saying.

There was an instant of sweet echo shrouded peace. Then the small wet figure came suddenly alive in his arms, lashed wildly out at his face, thin arms swinging into his head, the pale face caught in a snarl of fury.

Batman’s feet slid inexorably towards the rocky edge, skidding over the wet gravel as he struggled to contain the force of the psychiatrist’s rage. For all the punishment Crane had taken over the last few days he was far from beaten, far from weak. It was a desperate man that battled now in Batman’s arms; a last trick from an old master of misdirection, a man who was now fighting for survival as much as for freedom.

Crane’s foot had found the wall of the passageway, his spine curved and braced against it, hands wrapped around Batman’s throat. They slid a little further towards the edge, and now Batman was trying to get away, trying to dislodge Crane by whatever means. His only free hand groped uselessly against the belt over his hips, grasping for something, anything with which to cut loose the hold Crane had taken.

With a final push the doctor flung them away from the wall, Batman scrambling to retain some sort of purchase on the wet rocks. They were sliding now towards the edge, and he knew with a flash of foresight that if they hit the water like that then Crane would not let go. He imagined Alfred finding them there, bobbing like Halloween apples, wrapped tightly together in the cold bitter water, Crane’s thin white hands still locked around his neck.

There was no time for games now. This was it, one black promise pitted against the other and there was no happy ending here. And, finally, he chose. Chose to do what was necessary.

And as the last pebbles crumbled away from the edge of the path and fell like meteors into the foaming pool, and Crane, lips still moving in some kind of jubilant chant, fastened his fingers, bandage and all, tighter around Batman’s neck, so tightly that Batman could barely breathe, finally, finally, the hand he had worked to keep free gripped the smooth worn handle that stuck out from his belt like a piton on an ice climb.

The black knife went in so sweetly and so far that he thought for a second he had missed his aim, that he had mistakenly struck behind the doctor’s back. Then with a heart stopping slowness Crane raised his head and looked, brokenly, into Batman’s face. Batman looked back, not breathing.

The strong bony hands that had been so busily choking his life away gradually released their fierce hold on his neck; tension slackening until they were barely a shadow resting against his skin.

Crane looked so confused, confused and unhappy, like a little boy who had received a slap where he had expected praise. The mud and the sweat and the fine spray from the waterfall had mixed to a fine gloss on his skin, and he shone in the blue light like a dirty angel. Then his mouth formed a silent o of understanding, his body gave a convulsive little jerk and he toppled gently away from Batman’s clasp.

It was all Batman could do to catch onto the psychiatrist’s extended wrist before he disappeared down over the edge, and the jolt that it gave him nearly dislocated his own shoulder. Full length on the gritty floor, inch over painful inch he pulled the doctor back up onto the path beside him.

Crane was so wet now he might just as well have fallen in; the once bright orange of his suit turned to an unattractive shade of rust. His hair was lying over his face in sharp jags of black; the twisting mark of the burn livid against his pale skin. He lay still, his ribcage rising and falling unevenly, his breathing fast and shallow. But his eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling without expression.

Once again Batman cursed the unkind fate that left Crane conscious at the most inconvenient of times. He would rather have done what he had to do while the doctor was still out cold, even if Bruce’s rebellious heart told him he was a coward, worse than a coward, for wanting it that way.

When he reached down to his belt Crane made no attempt to get away, gave Batman no indication that he was even paying him any attention. His lips were moving again in a ceaseless whispered incantation, barely audible and in any case drowned out by the thundering rush of the water a few feet from his head.

Mechanically Batman released the safety catch; the tiny noise disappearing into the rumbling background like the sound of a dropped pin. But it was enough to make Crane turn his head a fraction towards him, enough for him to see in the grey shade of the corridor that the words Crane was repeating, over and over, like some charm to keep death, or fear, or both at bay were; “it isn’t real . . . it isn’t real”.

And Batman was temporarily gone. There was only Bruce, dressed like a pantomime fool in a masquerader’s costume, silently praying for strength. For the courage to do what was right. For Crane to give him a sign, just a small sign . . .

“Give me one good reason not to do it . . .”

And Crane looked straight up into his face, the light of his huge blue eyes veiling seemingly unfathomable depths. Bruce stared down into those expressive eyes and for a fleeting instant he saw a sadness there that almost broke his heart.

But Batman’s heart was cold and as hard as stone and little trifling emotions like sorrow and pain had no meaning for him anymore. There was only justice; and justice, like madness, was a cruel and remorseless mistress to those who had fallen under her spell. His mouth set into a hard line. And Bruce was extinguished like the failing flame of a candle in the midday sun.

Below him Crane’s bee stung lips parted in the mocking ghost of a smile. At the corner of one eye, bottomless and sleepy and bluer by far than any sky Batman had ever seen, a single diamond drop of water hung glinting on a dark lash, endlessly reflecting the black mouth of the heavy gun. Batman pulled the trigger and the sound of the shot filled the world.

Then blood splashed against his face, warm and wet, the hot smell of salt and the iodine mingling with the metallic taste of cordite. The kick of the gun had temporarily forced him to shut his eyes, bright red pinpricks of light were dancing like tiny demons across his retinas.

When he eventually looked down again Crane’s eyelids were softly closed. The doctor’s face looked peaceful, younger; all the tiny lines of care smoothed from the skin as though it had been caressed by a compassionate hand. Blood was starting to creep down his face from the entry wound in the top of his skull, dark defined lines of liquid making the clear skin seem whiter, purer than it had a moment before.

The echoes of the shot were still dying away along the distant walls of the cave. He bent to press a finger against the side of Crane’s head, knowing the truth long before the stillness under the soft skin confirmed it. It was over.

Standing up, replacing the gun in its holster, the shiny metal of the barrel misted with condensation from the damp air, he took his last long look at Jonathan Crane. Appreciated once again the manner in which Crane always appeared innocent in repose; a weary boy, tired after a long day, finally resting . . . and he hoped that wherever Crane was now he would find more peace than life had ever offered him.

The doctor’s face was already changing in death; the poise and the grace that had served him so well in life imperceptibly melting away. He looked older, more worn than he had a few moments before, deep lines beginning to creep around his eyes, around the corners of his mouth. The fair purity of his white skin was fading, his frailty becoming less obvious.

Something old and hideous tugged sharply at Batman’s heart; a memory of something, something that he chose not to remember. The torn shell of the orange Arkham inmates uniform was merging into the puddles of water that Crane had fallen in, merging into darker more defined lines, the lines of a gentleman’s suit. Batman’s head swam.

Heart full of apprehension now, every breath he took cutting deep into his chest, Batman reached down to touch the face of the man who he had just killed, let his gaze bit by bit follow his hand . . . and saw there, spread like a stain over the stone floor at his feet the bleeding murdered body of his own father.

- - -

Heart pounding, shaking body slick with cold sweat; Bruce jerked upright in the coils of his wrecked bed and stared wildly at the wall.

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Once I was you: (15) Everything he's supposed to be

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:47:36 GMT

Title: Everything he's supposed to be (15/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen with lots of legroom for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Sunshine is no guarantee of safety.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (15) Everything he's supposed to be

Sunshine showed the dirt of Gotham’s streets in an unforgiving light; motes of dust swirling like birds in the dizzying gaps between the buildings. A hunter in search of prey; every sense alert, every atom of his being focused on his purpose Batman stalked the rooftops.

His eyes narrowed to thin slits, pupils pinprick dots in the bright midmorning light. Since Batman had made Gotham’s darkest night an uncertain refuge for crime the city’s seedier residents had taken to using the hours of daylight to carry out their illegal activities. Now they would learn that sunshine was no guarantee of safety.

Wayne Manor was gone now forever and Bruce Wayne could go to join it for all he cared. The loss of the house would serve as a convenient front for the retirement of the Prince of Gotham from public life and Batman would rule supreme over the city; striking fear into the hearts of the criminal fraternity, leaving no stone unturned in his ceaseless quest for justice.

He had let himself get soft. He had let the appeal of a double life lure him into mistakes, mistakes which were going to cost him dearly. Giving up his life of visible luxury was only going to be the start. From now on there would only be Batman; Batman alone, triumphant and unaided and separated from all the parts of Bruce which threatened to bring him down into the dirt he claimed to despise.

Batman über alles, he thought, face twisting into an exhausted sneer, and far inside he slammed the door shut on the fading memory of Alfred’s voice. “I would imagine not sir.” On the distant sound of Crane’s soft bitter voice. “Does he have your daddy’s eyes?” The crack of a bone breaking. He wondered why he could no longer remember what Rachel sounded like . . .

On a distant rooftop a child screamed.

Batman crossed the three intervening buildings like a streak of black lightning; his trained body responding to his demands despite the tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm him. Balanced on a ledge overlooking the top of one of Gotham’s busiest banks he looked down; black cape flapping in the breeze.

Three men, one dragging a small struggling blonde boy, moving awkwardly together across the flat roof towards the door to the stairs. Two visible guns, both being pointed wildly around at the sky. This was going to be a pleasure.

The men grappled with their reluctant charge; apparently unwilling to inflict any serious damage on the boy but all too clearly frustrated by his resistance. The two on guard duty were bizarrely jumpy, looking over their shoulders, checking every angle of the roof for possible surveillance. As they rounded the head of the stairwell there was an almost audible sigh of relief. And then they stopped and stared in horror at the grim black figure standing like a statue of Death by the stairwell door.

“Going down?” Batman allowed himself a small superior smile.

Then he lashed out at the first of the men, the force of the blow sending a tremor shocking through his body, absorbing the recoil with practiced grace, spinning to hit out again, higher, sending the man crashing to the floor. The wind tore briefly at his cape; the material dragging behind him like a tortured shadow.

Two of them now, the third man throwing aside the child like a sack of garbage, both running towards him. Daylight eliminated the element of surprise; the advantages of his technology. He would have to do this the old fashioned way.

The first shot hit him hard in the chest, and for an instant he wondered if it had penetrated through the Kevlar breastplate. Then the sharp and unmistakable pain of a damaged rib, agonizing but far from mortal, ripped through his chest and he knew he had been mistaken. If he was lucky it would only be cracked.

The kidnapper holding the gun stared at him in amazed horror. The bullet had left a mark scarred into the Batsuit, a dark hole branded directly over his heart. A better shot than most of Gotham’s rent-a-thug mob, or just lucky? The second shot gave Batman no time to ponder such questions, too busy making sure there wasn’t a third.

A quick step to one side, the grapnel gun pulled out from his belt, a single grip of the trigger, and the man holding the gun was knocked out to one side like a bowling pin. Before he had a chance to regain his nerve Batman snapped the recoil on and reeled the gasping kidnapper in towards him like a hooked fish. One hard punch and he was out of the picture, the line snugly securing him to a convenient railing.

When he turned around the third man was holding the terrified child in front of him like a shield.

“Don’t shoot.” His voice was harsh. “We wouldn’t want the boy to come to any harm now, would we?”

And if there was anything he really really hated it was the kind of lowlife cowardly scum who would defend himself with a helpless child. The cape swirled back around him, covering his hands for just long enough . . .

“What are you doing?” The kidnapper’s voice was high with fear and Batman saw the dirty fingers tighten around the child’s exposed throat. Then he threw the bat shaped slither of metal straight and true and the noise it made when it hit the man’s forehead was both deeply satisfying and deeply repulsive. He watched the fingers uncurl and the body crumple to the ground, and he felt nothing at all.

The boy began to cry, quietly and without tears. Once Batman had known what that felt like. But he had made his choice. His grief was of no use to anyone. His anger was cleaning the streets of Gotham like purifying fire.

“Don’t move.” The child’s face was a picture of terror, too frightened to distinguish between captor and saviour. No wonder, Batman thought.

Then he dismissed the boy from his mind. The kidnapper he had tied to the railing was starting to come round. Batman’s ribcage throbbed, a sharp pain spiking through to his spine every time he breathed in. He had a score to settle with this one.

He untied him first. Crane had proved to him that the power balance between captor and captured was not determined by who was free and who was tied down. He could learn from his mistakes. Just thinking about Crane made him want to kick something. Something soft that would squeak when the boot went in.

“Who are you working for?”

He had the man by the scruff of the neck now, shaking him brutally, enjoying the fear, the confusion, the pain. He was ready to do some damage.

Your anger is your purest emotion. Ducard had told him that, long ago, back in the cold snows of the mountains, where their breath had surrounded them in swirling white clouds. But this didn’t feel pure.

It felt like hitting Crane; the pleasure and the guilt and the sense of duty and the feeling of his fist splitting into soft flesh. It felt dirty and good and wrong and like everything that he had kept at bay for years. Like shooting Joe Chill, the way he had imagined it, back before he cut and ran. Like the look on Ducard’s face when he realised that the brakes were gone. It felt like the end of the world.

This time there were going to be no mistakes.

“Who are you working for?”

“Who are you?” The man’s voice shook with fear.

“I am Batman.” And it was the truth.

“Please. He’ll kill me.” The face was as white as chalk; the voice a harsh whisper. His eyes were looking over Batman’s shoulder, searching the corners of the roof.

“That’s the last thing you should worry about.”

The man’s terrified gaze flicked back up to Batman’s black mask. “Please . . .” he said a second time, the obvious terror in his eyes eloquently begging for protection.

Then, shockingly, he began to laugh, a raw sounding high pitched laugh coming straight from his chest. In a few seconds he was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, struggling to double over. Batman stared at him in horror; barely able to hold on to the shaking shoulders, staring straight into the red open mouth, the twisted face.

The laughter turned into screams, tears pouring down the man’s contorted cheeks, his chest heaving, hands clawing at the air. He gasped for breath, choked, coughed, and a fine spray of blood spattered his shirt and flew up into Batman’s face.

Batman, sick to his stomach, let the man’s shoulders go, pushing him away. He pitched once, retching, wildly flailing towards Batman. Then he rocked back onto his heels, still laughing, suspended for a moment in the warm air like a dangling puppet, and toppled gently over the edge of the building.

The falling body crunched like a rotten apple onto the pitiless surface of the road seconds before Batman hit the ground beside it. It twitched once, then lay still, the sunlight picking out the red stains spotting the front of the grey shirt.

Batman swallowed hard, back on his feet, eyes already scanning the rooftops on the other side of the street. He was pretty sure the man had been dead before he’d hit the ground. In the back of his mind he could see the playing card he been shown that morning, the laughing figure, face cracked into a rictus of false humour. He thought he knew who to blame.

A movement in the alleyway behind him made him spin round sharply, hand reaching for the gun on his hip.

“Nice work.” Gordon’s tone was as dry as sandpaper.

Batman looked down at the corpse lying at his feet. Ran a brief mental replay of the last two minutes. The interrogation, Batman pushing the man away, the body falling to the ground and Batman landing a split second too late to come between it and the tarmac.

And, oh Christ, up there on the roof there was a dead or dying man with a Bat shaped piece of titanium embedded in his forehead . . .

“I can keep this out of the press.” Gordon paused, meaningfully. “This time.” And he looked very old and very tired.

“There’s a kid up there.”

“OK.” Dismissive.

A siren wailed across the empty street; the blue lights skidding over the long rows of windows, the noise cutting off abruptly as the car pulled into the road.

A heartbeat, and Batman was gone.

Bruce tore off the mask, threw it across the car, wiped the back of his hand hard across his face; hard enough to hurt, hard enough to leave a trail of bright lights across his vision. So much for the future. And the drive back along the freeway seemed to take forever.

By the time he reached the gravel track a merciful darkness was starting to blunt the harsh edges of the day. He could barely keep his eyes open.

The lights of the car swept across the grey lawns, the reflections flickering back from the broken glass and fallen stone. Flickering back from the windows of the cottage. And there was no light shining back to greet him.

He wondered if Alfred was still tending to Crane. He didn’t want to have to put the mask back on. But when the car bumped up into the Batcave he realized that that was the least of his problems.

The storeroom door was ajar and there was no trace of either Crane or Alfred. Instinctively Bruce turned to the workbench and saw only empty space where the Scarecrow’s mask had been. And he had never run so fast in his whole life.

The door slammed into the hollow echo of an empty house and Bruce knew before he even reached the other side of the kitchen what he was going to find upstairs. His feet pounded on the wooden stairs, breath choking in his throat. Hands shaking so hard on the handle of the door that it was all he could do to force it clumsily round and throw the door back.

He had never been in Alfred’s room before. It had never been necessary. He had never wondered . . . and now it was too late.

Heart racing, gun in his shaking hand, he sprang into the room. And it turned out that the absolute worst thing he could imagine having happened might not have been so bad after all.

The single bed was neatly made; sheets pulled smoothly up over the pillow. But the rest of the room was bare; empty photo frames hanging like blank windows on the white walls. The wardrobe doors were open, but the only things hanging from the brass rail were vacant hangers and all he could see was his own reflection in the blank mirrored door.

There hadn’t been much left after the fire. But everything that Alfred had salvaged was gone now.

On the bedside table, lying face down beside an angled reading lamp was a single photograph, the corners curled with age and when he turned it over he felt no surprise at meeting the sad cautious gaze of his own brown eyes.

Bruce sat staring numbly into space, his back resting against the foot of Alfred’s narrow bed. And night fell over Wayne Manor.

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Once I was you: (14) I have become a silent movie

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:38:01 GMT

Title: I have become a silent movie (14/32 of Once I Was You series)
Fandom: Batman Begins
Pairing: Essentially gen with lots of legroom for subtext. Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane.
Disclaimer: I don't own these people.
Summary: Winners and losers.
Notes: Originally posted on ff.net. Slightly edited.

Once I was you: (14) I have become a silent movie

The stuttering beep and crackle of the radio died away like whispers into the murmur of the waterfall, and Bruce turned back towards Crane. His heart sank. The doctor was still slumped against the restraints; his head hanging down, hair obscuring his face, the dirty tatters of the orange suit hanging off his wasted frame.

And Bruce felt more hatred than he had known was possible; more hate than he could contain. Hate that was turning with a grinding inevitability into guilt; and following the guilt, speeding like an ambulance chaser through the chaos of his mind, was the shame. Crane looked so . . . broken.

He leant down, and gently cupped the doctor’s chin in his palm; lifted the fallen head up gently with his gloved hand, noticing his knuckles still bleeding through the black fabric. The angled face was tranquil, almost peaceful in victory.

Because Crane had won and Batman had lost and he didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell him what that meant. Because somewhere Batman had crossed the line between justice and vengeance and somewhere back on that line Bruce had left what once seemed like an important part of his soul behind.

Your compassion is a weakness that your enemies will not share. Ducard again.

And what had Bruce said to him, momentarily ablaze with defiance, safe in the knowledge that he was right? “That's why it's so important. It separates us from them.”

But Batman had never thought that, because a part of Batman was still standing in the corridor of the lawcourts, a gun in his hand, waiting to serve his own judgment on the man who had killed his parents and shattered his childhood. Waiting to taste his vengeance; sweeter than wine, sweeter than Rachel’s soft lips, sweeter than life . . .

With the instinct of a caught out child Bruce wiped some of the blood away from the razor edge of Crane’s left cheekbone with his sleeve; trying to conceal the damage that fists and hunger and cold had left furrowed into the once smooth features. There was far more blood than he had thought there would be; blood that stained his glove so that he could no longer tell what had been his and what was Crane’s.

The doctor’s skin was starting to discolour, the bruising beginning to show. One plum shaded eye was swelling slowly shut.

Bruce kept his gaze averted from Crane’s awkwardly splayed hand. The sharp crack of the bone breaking was still replaying on a constant loop inside his head. He wondered if it would ever go away.

Dirt mixed with the blood and the sweat and the traces of tears that streaked Crane’s once pretty face. Too pretty, Bruce thought. Pretty enough to tempt Batman towards destruction. Pretty enough for even the red blistered tracks of the tazer to look like a trophy of war rather than a disfigurement on a guilty man. The mark of Cain.

With the doctor helpless it was easy to forget all the cold malice and spite that had driven Batman to anger and despair. That had driven Batman like a goaded animal to a place where Bruce had never wanted to be. Means to an end, he thought. But he didn’t believe it for a second.

Head full of hurt he stared numbly down into Crane’s strangely innocent face, small and fragile in his hand, and wondered where to go from here. Where to stop.

“Sir?”

Alfred was standing silently in the entrance to the cave, a small bag in one hand. His eyes swept past Bruce to the chair and his face froze.

Bruce let Crane’s head drop back to his chest. Stepped forward, blocking Alfred’s view. But it was too late for that.

“I know what you must be thinking . . .”

Alfred didn’t look at him; kept staring at Crane, tied down, pale, broken. “I would imagine not sir.”

And one day, Bruce thought, you catch yourself wishing you had never existed . . . so he could be spared the pain. He dropped his eyes, took a long breath of cold air.

Alfred walked slowly past him; his gaze never leaving the small figure in the chair. Inspecting the tight restraints, the dried blood on the suit, the pale face so indelibly marked with the impression of Batman’s fist.

It wasn’t all my fault, Bruce thought angrily, struggling to suppress a ridiculous childish impulse to deny responsibility.

The butler knelt down beside the chair, and Bruce’s brows drew together as he saw him looking at Crane’s hand. At the sickly unnatural angle of the little finger, twisted into a grotesque gesture. It didn’t look self inflicted. He didn’t blame Alfred for drawing the obvious conclusion.

“Dr Crane?” Alfred’s voice was very gentle. The voice of somebody consoling an injured child. Bruce fought the memories back, the empty feeling in his chest starting to make his stomach turn. Standing in a window, dry eyed, a silent child watching the funeral mourners . . .

Crane’s dark lashes fluttered, and Bruce shifted forward a little, the muscles of his shoulders tensing.

And when Crane’s eyes opened he finally saw all the fear that he had longed for such a short while ago. Saw Crane look round him with startled terror, a blue eyed Bambi pumped up on crystal meth, his darkly bruised lips parting in a silent cry.

Alfred’s face was expressionless. “Dr Crane?”

Crane’s eyes found Batman’s face and for a split second Batman saw behind the carefully constructed mask. Saw a brief flicker of pure triumph, swiftly extinguished behind a convincingly wide eyed look of alarm.

“My hand . . .” Crane’s voice was the merest whisper, his big blue eyes turned imploringly on Alfred. “I think it’s broken . . .”

Bruce turned away, his brow working. There was only so much he could take. Alfred never saw Batman, never had; only saw Bruce, the boy he had raised all dressed up in a bulletproof suit and mask.

But Bruce knew by now that there were some situations that only Batman could handle. Because if he had to choose between grief and anger he chose anger. Every time.

Minutes later the car slammed against the track with a snarl of spitting stones; the exhaust pumping clouds of black smoke into the stillness of the morning. Batman leant forward over the wheel; eyes narrowed, his face contracted, steering the car back towards the Gotham skyline, heading for the grey cloud of smog that permanently veiled the city. His lips drew back over his teeth in a gaunt wolf’s smile.

Someone was going to pay. And in Gotham it was never going to be hard to find someone who deserved to.

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