Batman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
decentdad) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
synergetic2015-03-05 09:10 pm
decentdad) wrote in synergetic2015-03-05 09:10 pm
(no subject)
"Do you see now what happened?"
Dick, very determined not to let on just how badly he felt, nodded briefly. "Still don't think I was wrong," he said, but Bruce caught his desire to save face and let him keep it. He was tempted to remind him that being right isn't always a defensible position, but it could wait. It was a conversation they'd had many times before.
"Go report in to the League," he said, neutrally. "Canary's on monitor duty for a little longer, she should be debriefing Wonder Woman now." Canary was much better at neutrality. Bruce's neutral was "trying not to be upset," while Canary's was more genuinely neutral. Dick would have an easier time talking to her (or Diana, for that matter) than anyone else.
"Right," he said, a little bit flat. "This is, um, still salvageable, right?"
Bruce hesitated-- and Dick knew him well enough to catch it instantly, so any thoughts Bruce had of sugarcoating the facts were quickly discarded.
"Salvageable," he agreed, after a moment's thought. "But that's not a guarantee, you understand. Nothing's certain."
"'Course not," Dick said, still more muted than usual. "You said Dinah and Diana were on the Watchtower, right?"
He didn't wait for an answer; he just spun and went for the exit.
For his part, Bruce didn't give him a second look. The Batman pushed opened the door to Omi's room and stepped inside.
Dick, very determined not to let on just how badly he felt, nodded briefly. "Still don't think I was wrong," he said, but Bruce caught his desire to save face and let him keep it. He was tempted to remind him that being right isn't always a defensible position, but it could wait. It was a conversation they'd had many times before.
"Go report in to the League," he said, neutrally. "Canary's on monitor duty for a little longer, she should be debriefing Wonder Woman now." Canary was much better at neutrality. Bruce's neutral was "trying not to be upset," while Canary's was more genuinely neutral. Dick would have an easier time talking to her (or Diana, for that matter) than anyone else.
"Right," he said, a little bit flat. "This is, um, still salvageable, right?"
Bruce hesitated-- and Dick knew him well enough to catch it instantly, so any thoughts Bruce had of sugarcoating the facts were quickly discarded.
"Salvageable," he agreed, after a moment's thought. "But that's not a guarantee, you understand. Nothing's certain."
"'Course not," Dick said, still more muted than usual. "You said Dinah and Diana were on the Watchtower, right?"
He didn't wait for an answer; he just spun and went for the exit.
For his part, Bruce didn't give him a second look. The Batman pushed opened the door to Omi's room and stepped inside.
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No, Omi was trapped. The most he could hope for now was to keep his big mouth shut. They weren't interested in anything more than extracting as much information from him as they could to shut down Kritiker. He couldn't let that happen.
When he heard the door, Omi didn't move more than lifting his head enough to see who it was. He said nothing, and kept his body closed off, his gaze hostile and distrustful. He wasn't stupid enough to try to attack, but he didn't want Batman getting too close either. Or any ideas that his company might be welcome.
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He's not going to be coaxed. If nothing else, he won't allow himself to be. So Batman just jumps right in.
"I wanted to apologize for my boy's actions earlier."
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He didn't move or reply, but he did hold that gaze expectantly. Omi wasn't interested in excuses or explanations for their behavior, but he was interested in seeing if the man even recognized why he'd stopped trying with them. Just for curiosity's sake.
It also would have meant more if the apology came from the offender, but that was likely a lost cause. Batman wouldn't be standing there in Robin's stead otherwise.
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"I thought he'd build a better rapport with you because of the closer age, but I didn't factor in how little experience he has with diplomacy as opposed to enforcement. You're not to be intimidated, and I appreciate that you're in a difficult position."
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"I want to make one thing clear... I'm not a traitor. No level of rapport or diplomacy-- or intimidation-- is going to change that."
So don't even try to get me to talk.
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If Batman were to assume that the boy was speaking off the cuff, not deliberately trying to obfuscate his true motives, then... loyalty. Loyalty. No matter how righteous your war, eventually, it's the one in the foxhole next to you you're fighting for. This in spite of him easily being young enough to lend himself well to fanaticism, especially as the victim of violent crime himself, and--
Well.
The victim of violent crime, robbed of his family, bets on personal loyalty being the best way to convince the Batman that he won't cooperate... he wasn't so different from Dick at all, was he? Bruce Wayne, deep inside the Batman's stony countenance, felt a hotly irrational surge of hatred for Shuichi Takatori.
If the boy was just brainwashed into believing this was his only option in life, that would be reprehensible, but to take a child's need for a stable environment and tie the two together, and he was-- well, for the sake of his own soul, it was a good thing the Takatoris were mostly extinct by this point.
"A difficult position," he repeated, trying to get his thoughts under control. And re-kidnapping him to keep wasn't going to solve the problem. It was just going to make him cling harder to what he had. The only way to get Omi out was to let him walk out on his own.
He turned, nonchalantly, to pace, to break eye contact, to let Omi not feel like he was being stared at.
"Suicide is usually at the very bottom of someone's bag of tricks," he said, "meaning you'd already eliminated the option of killing us instead. That either shows good assessment skills or a value for innocent life despite ideological differences. And I don't think you've put that option back on the table, so I have to wonder what it is you want to happen next."
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He watched the famed superhero begin to pace, and subconsciously relaxed a bit to no longer be under such intense visual scrutiny. He tried to remind himself, as Batman spoke to him again, that his mission was not to talk to him. Keep his big mouth shut. Nothing you say will help you or your cause. The more you do say the more they'll learn and--
He shrunk in on himself just a little, dropped his gaze to his lap.
"I don't have any desire to hurt the people here..." And no means even if he did, but that was a moot point. "And I'm not sure what point it serves asking what I want. I think we're already clear that's not a priority."
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Now he wasn't sure. But where else was there to go? Normal life was out of the question. Even if Batman were to let him walk out-- which wasn't going to happen-- he couldn't stand idleness: going to school and reading about murderers and heinous crimes in the paper and having no power to change it. He didn't have the resources to do anything about it without Kritiker. He'd go mad sitting in a jail cell with nothing to do, no way to be constructive. And the alternative Robin floated he no longer had faith in as a real possibility. The boy wonder was right. Why would they trust someone like him, or care about doing any more than stopping him from going back to killing targets? He wasn't worth that kind of risk and trouble.
Why couldn't they have just let him die...
Thoroughly depressed after running through that list of not-choices, Omi dropped his head to rest on his arms, hiding his face. "That's pretty vague," he mumbled.
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The window in the room was electronically locked, but with a little bit of--
"Batman, Zero Two," he said crisply. There was a soft buzz of the lock whirring itself free, and the window sliding back.
He took a grappling hook from his belt and laid it on the windowsill.
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Omi didn't respond to the man aloud, having nothing of import to say. He certainly didn't have a solid answer yet. He knew what Batman would probably like to hear, but Omi wasn't so sure turning himself in and spending the rest of his life in jail was so preferable to death.
The strange buzz and whir prompted him to lift his head and look at the window, as confused as he was curious about what Batman was doing. He watched in silence, his expression increasingly befuddled as the man continued to work.
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He left without looking back.
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It was a meaningful gesture. Until then, efforts to work with them, to trust them and hope for something back, had all gone ignored. Leaving the window open and the hook in reach was an extension of trust. Of course Omi did not think he was really being left unsupervised. At the same time, that didn't change the measure of risk that he would take advantage of the chance and try to escape. If he was good-- really good-- he might even succeed.
But that didn't answer the real underlying question that had so depressed him moments earlier: even if he were free again, where would he go? Weiss was supposed to be where he belonged, the group that, under Kritiker, took care of him in exchange for his loyalty and service. And it was a cause that deep down he still believed in. There were unforgivably horrible criminals out there and they had to be stopped. It wasn't a glamorous job, it wasn't even something he could call a moral right anymore, but it was a necessary evil in their city. Someone had to do it. Why shouldn't it be someone with nothing left to lose? Wasn't it selfish to not give his existence to helping others stay safe, when for all intents and purposes he was already dead anyway?
But if what Robin said was true... that wasn't really how it worked. But that left no community or group at all. Weiss were the only friends he had close enough that he could run to them. He had no family. No church group. No other jobs. No school clubs.
Without Weiss, Omi was completely alone. And without its cause, he was completely empty.
After a few moments, he looked at the IV in his wrist and picked at the tape securing it. He peeled it back, pulling the needle from his hand. Leaving it alone, he went to the sink on the other side of the room to take a drink and rinse off the spot of blood on his hand. He looked at the window and the grappling hook sitting on the ledge, staring at it with a frown.
He thought he understood what Batman was trying to say. If he had to tell him what the right answer was... and it wasn't any better if he had no opportunity to choose the wrong one, was it? But what did it even matter anymore if he left?
He walked to the window and picked up the hook, and for just a moment, he looked out the window, down at the drop. It could easily be managed with the tool Batman left. For one morbid moment, Omi even thought of forgoing the hook and jumping to his death.
Then he set the hook on the counter by the sink, pulled a chair over to the window, and sat backwards in it with his arms folded across the cleared sill. He put his head down and watched the city, the breeze cool against his face as it shifted his bangs. The songs of birds whistled past his ears.
1/2 (meanwhile)
Normally, he'd make Batman find him -- it was a
gametestgame they'd played since Dick was a child -- but he needed facial expressions to get his point across right now and vacated the shadow behind a door across the hall."You wanted to know if I could salvage it," he said matter-of-factly. "This is the only thing I could think of. Either he stays with us now, and we'll go from there, or he goes now, has some time to think."
"Not used to your plans being this open-ended," Dick said, skeptically.
Batman very nearly said something about how Dick had led them to this point, but, luckily, rephrased at the last moment.
"Either you trust me or you don't," he said loftily, and started to steer him out.