Who: Damian and Mr. Freeze What: A conversation. Where: An unused warehouse in the Gotham slums. When: Not long after this. Warnings/Rating: None overmuch.
The cold had started to consume Gotham.
It wasn’t cold enough, of course. Not yet. Not until nothing was moving except the windblown snow along the streets. But for the moment, fifty degrees in June and dropping was almost satisfactory. It wasn’t an elaborate plan, and to be completely honest, it was almost disappointingly simple, but Freeze wasn’t looking to destroy the city or the world just yet.
One thing he knew with absolute certainty was that he likely wasn’t going to get much further before certain people came crawling into his lair, looking to stop him. Disappointing but not unexpected, and it wouldn’t stop him completely. The real question was if they would find his work while he was there with it, or if they would stumble across his frozen warehouse basement while he was somewhat safely tucked away in someone else’s mind in the middle of a desert.
Either face down the Bat or come back to find his work smashed and destroyed. Neither was a terrifically appealing option. With a sigh, he put all thoughts of heroes and their proclivity for destruction aside and went back to fine-tuning his latest device. Behind him, the small but nonetheless powerful machine that was tearing the heat out of Gotham hummed steadily, ice forming and re-forming on its base.
Though the warehouse he was hidden in wasn’t exactly easy to find, for someone with the Batman’s level of technology, it wouldn’t be all that tricky, either. And if he knew them, a little hard work was never something they set aside.
Damian had decided to find Freeze as himself. The Robin costume couldn’t be taken seriously and his status as Talon was still on unsolid ground. The choice to become the Talon was to leave enemies unsure and spooked, but that wasn’t what he wanted from the cold doctor. He had no desire to crash into the ice covered lab and destroy. Damian just wanted to talk. Besides, Freeze would recognize him as the son of Batman with his strong jawline and bright blue eyes. Even if he did not know of Damian, he would see the Wayne blood pumping through his veins.
And, Mr. Freeze wanted to be found. All the villains in Gotham did one way or another, but his brand of menace was lonesome like a penniless violinist playing music louder than the city could drown out. He was only content if the ice surrounded him, surrounded everything he could see. Not because of some superiority complex or greed, but because his humanity had been frozen a long, long time ago. Damian liked him for that, in some odd way. He understood the need to just shut everything down inside and wish the world around would do the same.
Dressed in a black turtleneck, combat pants, a utility belt and boots, he followed the cold chill to the warehouse district. With the help of one the bat scanners, he eventually pinpointed the general location of where the weather was actually coming from. It took hours, even with the help of his gadgetry, but Damian found the search strangely calming. He missed being outside, even in this kind of strange weather and it put him in the right place to talk to a man like Mr. Freeze. He needed to be understanding, sober and without the edges that made him one of the least likable in the Bat Family.
Pulling open the warehouse basement door quietly, he took the long way down into the ice cave in order to stay hidden and silent. Eventually, somewhere in the middle of the night, he perched on top of a giant, steel, sturdy looking machine and looked down at the toiling ice man. “Victor.” Damian’s voice was dark, but decidedly young. “I think it’s a little too early for snow.”
A voice cutting through the semi-silence of the room was not unexpected, though it wasn’t quite the voice Freeze had anticipated. Not old enough, and not from directly behind him, and not accompanied by an attack or a sudden batarang buried in his table, inches from his fingers. He looked up and around and saw the silhouette on top of of one of the silent machines: no cape, no hood, but decidedly familiar regardless. It was a strange sensation to almost recognize someone, as if from some other life, but his face didn’t so much as twitch except to narrow his eyes.
“It’s never too early for that,” he said, keeping Damian in sight. “If you were to take the heart of a man and let it control the weather, the selfishness and arrogance within would ensure that it never stopped snowing.” Raining down the frozen cold on everyone but them, able to shatter lives as they pleased. “So it is for you or I or anyone in Gotham City, or even the world.”
That he hadn’t already been attacked was evidence that maybe this wasn’t strictly a hero’s visit, and so Freeze turned his back to Damian. He was down to the fine minutiae of the upgrade he was working on. Provided nobody decided to interrupt him and destroy it, it would allow his freeze gun to maintain a steady rate of fire for far longer than it already could before, ironically enough, freezing up.
“What is it that you want?”
Damian shifted from his perch, the speech about men and selfishness making him slightly uncomfortable only because it reminded him of his mother. She saw the good in only a handful of men and believed the rest would happily rain down fire on the world if it meant domination. The irony was, of course, that she wanted Damian to grow up to do just that. “I want to help you.” Damian said after a moment, gracefully descending from up high in one sweeping, fluid movement. He stayed just in the corners of Freeze’s vision, as if to keep the man from getting nervous. “My name is Damian Wayne. I am Bruce Wayne’s son and I’ve always admired your technology.”
When a Wayne gave a compliment, especially like that, there was not want underneath the words. They said it like what they saw was simply a fact that needed to be uncovered. “I assume you understand the resources my family holds. If you would stop with this change of weather, I’d be willing to give you everything you need.” Damian held his breath, hesitant to even bring up Nora, but knowing it was an important part of who Freeze was. “For your wife.”
Freeze snorted, never pausing in his work. The son of the great Bruce Wayne? And here he’d never thought the man responsible enough to raise a child. The resemblance was almost striking, though, so that much, at least, he was willing to believe. And while it concerned him that Wayne’s son could hunt him down, there were few limits to what a man could do when he had that kind of inheritance behind him.
While there may not have been any want in Damian’s words, Freeze heard it anyway - or maybe his mind put it in there, layering the simple compliment with ice. It was almost irritating, the offer, especially because a small if thoughtful part of him considered it for a moment, but it was swept clean off the table when the man almost offhandedly brought up Nora. She wasn’t a great secret, though sometimes he wished she was. It shouldn’t have been so enraging that people knew about her. But it was, and his heart flared with rage that only intensified the ice around it.
He snatched up the freeze gun and turned in one swift movement, pointing it at Damian’s chest.
“Do not think to bribe me with my own wife, Damian Wayne,” he said, the warning in his voice like the cracking of too-thin ice. “Especially not over this pit of a city of yours. I do not need your resources, nor those of any other man.” Though he would steal those resources without qualm. “You ought to hold your so-great offers until something truly valuable is on the line.”
Damian tilted his head to the side, looking up at Freeze like the gun in his hand was just a bubble blower. “I’m serious Freeze. What are you even doing?” He gestured towards the lab. “I know you. I know you don’t want this, but you feel compelled. I know if you had the money and technology to save your wife, you would have done it by now. But, you don’t.” There was a change in his expression along with a small pause as he tried to remember what his father would do. In one memory, he threw Freeze out. In the other, he tried to help, too. The young Wayne respected Freeze too much, felt more comfortable in the greys he existed in, so he decided to keep trying. He had to.
“It’s not a bribe. You know as well as I do that if Nora woke up right now she’d tell you to put that freeze ray gun down and talk to me.” Freeze would recognize the lack of fear in Damian’s eyes, that cool darkness behind bright blues.
“Do not think to speak for my wife.” Every passing word got colder, and the gun hummed with charging energy. Part of him knew that Damian was right, and that Damian knew he was right, and that this gave the man no fear even as he stared freezing death in the face. “And don’t even consider speaking for me. You don’t know what I want.” Being talked down to by someone so young, with a life he must have had as the son of Bruce Wayne … “Do you assume to have the sort of resources that could cure her? If you did, surely you would have found the solution by now.”
But because there was little point in lashing out against someone who’d barely moved, Freeze didn’t fire. He set down the gun again, turning back to his project and picking up a small collection of wires that needed to be properly welded on. It was still in reach, though - he would never be foolish enough to let it out of his grasp when an intruder was anywhere nearby.
“What I am doing is putting this city in its place. A cold dead world where everyone watches through a sheen of ice as time slows to a crawl.” He smoothed the wires down with a thumb and selected a wire cutter from the toolbox nearby; it came away from the metal of the box with a crack of ice. “Where I will not be constantly interrupted while I am on a limited timetable.” The stoic and not entirely satisfactory other half, currently brooding somewhere in the back of his head, was not keen on spending more time than absolutely necessary through the door.
Damian made a noise that sounded like a muffled, short laugh. “This is Gotham, the city of interruptions.” With the gun no longer at his chest, he moved to look idly at some of Freeze’s recent work. It was close to what he remembered and Damian tried best to hide whatever fascination he had with it. The cold weapons could be used to slow down thugs, but Damian wasn’t stupid enough to do more than barely look over what it took to make them.
“Wayne Corp can’t buy your mind, Freeze. That’s why we could never do it on our own.” Damian looked back over at the ice man. “Besides. I am also the grandson of Ra’s Al Ghul. I have my own Lazarus Pit. You used it once on your wife in my world, but didn’t take the necessary precautions for it to work properly. For once in your life, you were feeling hasty. I believe the correction application of the Lazarus chemical along with your technology and my resources could save her. You know what blood pumps through my veins. I would not make this offer unless I knew it would bring you results.”
His shoulders up instinctively to block Damian getting any real view of his technology, Freeze never looked away from his work for a moment. He listened as he cut the wires individually to the proper length, checking them each time against the notes in his head to make sure they were correct. It was all background noise, undercurrent thoughts, to what Damian was saying, however.
In what strange world would he have resorted to something as strange as a Lazarus Pit to save his wife? When he’d spent so long trying to cure her, why throw it all away in lieu of that?
“What a bloodline,” he said, almost snidely, before going back to the topic at hand. “I may be able to trust results, but I don’t know if I can trust you. Would they be the results I want, or something else?” To his knowledge, Ra’s Al Ghul was not an overly trustworthy sort of man. Depending on his level of influence throughout a grandchild’s life, there was certainly room for doubt. “If you’re so sure of this success, then maybe we can make a deal. Bring me a sample of that chemical, and I’ll spare this worthless city.”
Of course, this still maintained the question: why was the son of Bruce Wayne trying to help him? Strictly for the sake of the city? It was seeming less and less likely.
“I hoped you’d say that.” Damian delicately reached into the utility belt around his waist and pulled out a vial shaped like a flattened orb filled with green glowing liquid. It was enough to cure a still heart and more than enough to study. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful with it.” He said placing the vial on Freeze’s desk delicately. If his father wanted to give the Lazarus Pit to people he didn’t know, Damian could do the same. Freeze was a chemical genius, in any case, and with enough trust built between the two of them, he could get some answers on what made the Lazarus Pit so special.
“You can contact me on the forums with questions or information. Let Gotham have its summer.” Deep down, Damian didn’t care if the city turned to ice. He knew Batman could stop Freeze, but (like Jason Todd in a different way) wanted to stop the cycle before it could really begin. He wanted Freeze to get what he wanted without all of the pain and death that would otherwise come along with it. “I have to go. Thank you for your time, Victor.” Damian looked up before gracefully climbing through the vent he crawled out of.
Freeze was not expecting Damian to pull out that strangely glowing vial. He wasn’t even expecting him to acquiesce. But the young man was quick about it, and he didn’t have time to try and keep him from leaving - one moment Damian was there, being almost ingratiatingly personable, the next he’d already vanished into an air vent. With a lingering glower at the vent itself, Freeze eventually pulled his gaze down to what was apparently the very chemical to be found in a Lazarus pit. It gleamed, casting a strange light on the ice around it.
So … now the city would be spared, he supposed. True, he could go back on his word and refuse to turn off the machine, but undoubtedly the boy would return, or more irritatingly, the Bat, and then this would have been a pointless endeavor. He wasn’t expecting to have gotten something valuable out of the meeting. Now, he wasn’t about to let anyone take it back.
But that didn’t mean the city had to go back to being safe immediately. How did he know this was even the real chemical? There would be tests to run; then, and only then, would he set the freezing monstrosity aside for another day. For now … the gun had to be finished.
Carefully tucking away the chemical in a less-frozen lockbox under the workbench, Freeze went back to the delicate task at hand. It wasn’t going to finish itself, after all.