Who: Luke and Jack What: The boys have a chat. Where: Luke's apartment. When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: None.
Gus woke up halfway through the cab ride from Turnberry to his apartment, and immediately started asking for the stupid kitten, interposing lisped repetitions of where'd Wren go and are you feeling better? between the request. Luke was just grateful the little boy hadn't started crying, and he explained as calmly as he could that the kitten couldn't come home with them just yet, yes, he was feeling better, and--after receiving Wren's text and having a moment of pure, silent panic--that Wren had to go out for a bit, but he'd see her again real soon. Considering how close he'd been to falling apart mere minutes ago, and the fact that it had been the police at Wren's place, he thought he was doing quite well. Gus seemed appeased, at least, still sleepy and lulled by the prospect of future promises and seeing his canine companion again. The rest if the ride was uneventful, and he carried the boy up to his apartment, managing to open the door with one hand and nudging the door open with his foot.
Finch met them as soon as they stepped inside, greeting the pair with quiet wuffs rather than loud barks. Gus mumbled something in his sleep, reaching out little fingers for the dog to lick, while Luke realized, belatedly, that Jack might be here. He thought of Wren's memory, and he thought of Bruce's suspicions, and neither left him very inclined to speak to him. But, as he reminded himself, he was in no position of his own to judge, and he shifted Gus' weight in his arms as he moved forward. "Jack?"
Jack had been in his own apartment for days while Luke had been absent, something he felt guilty about mostly for Gus' sake. He didn't know who had been watching the boy while Luke had been gone, but if Wren said they were coming home together, presumably he was fine.
As for himself, he didn't really know what to feel. He’d just finished talking to Ivy. Now she was gone as well. Everyone had seen such horrible times lately. Those few people he hadn't alienated were so badly off themselves that he wouldn’t dream of bringing his problems to them. In some cases, he didn't dare to. But he didn't know where he was going, or why, anymore. After he'd seen those memories, he'd thought he'd found purpose again, but that had dissolved to a slow burn, a quiet itch he might be able to go back to ignoring, if he tried. He had a decision to make - to feel useful, or to give up, just live for what little he could do for his friends, and get by. And when they were better off, when they didn't need his help anymore, maybe then he could find the final comfort he'd considered, off and on, for years.
All he knew was that he felt tired. He'd given up trying to convince himself he might mend. All he could do now was acknowledge the realities. Whatever sickness was in him wasn't going away. And after what he'd seen, he'd made at least one firm decision - he wouldn't be getting near a woman again. Too much risk, too much fear, too many unknown variables. Best for everyone if he just stayed on his own.
Jack set aside his journal when Luke called from the door, walking out of the spare bedroom. He looked at Gus, first, his loose weight in Luke's arms, and then glanced up at Luke. "Asleep?" he asked, keeping his voice down because he assumed so. He stepped toward him and gestured to himself, arms out, offering to carry Gus the rest of the way into bed. Luke looked exhausted, and harried. The fewer things he had to worry about, the better.
Luke was undoubtedly exhausted, and while he had managed to calm himself down since coming from Wren's, he still felt too raw to pretend as well as he normally did on a daily basis. He stopped moving when Jack emerged from the bedroom, abruptly enough to make Gus murmur sleepily in his arms, and stared at the other man for a long moment. Too long, really, but he was trying to imagine the anger he'd seen in Wren's memory on the face of the man before him, trying to imagine what he was capable of beyond what he was already aware of. For the first time, he began to wonder if Jack was even worse off than he'd initially thought, and he berated himself for not seeing it sooner.
"Yeah," he said, a belated response to the quiet question, and his hold on the little boy tightened instinctively when Jack gestured to himself. They were both murderers, really, neither fit to be around a child, but Luke would put a bullet in his head before he hurt his son; would Jack do the same? Maybe. Maybe it wasn't the boy he was worried about, so much as it was women, women like Wren, who trusted him. Such doubts only weighed him down even more, and the tenseness vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He didn't want to lose one of the only people he trusted; if Jack was struggling, then he would help him, not abandon him. "Thanks," he whispered, and while there was a brief hesitation before he deposited the sleeping child's weight into the other man's arms, he managed to keep from pulling back. Once the boy was safely in bed, he could explain Wren's absence.
Jack caught the hesitation, and he knew, then, that Luke must have seen or heard something, suspected something about what he'd done. He waited a long moment, and took Gus when he was offered, but the impression the pause left behind was deep - Luke didn't totally trust him with Gus anymore. Perhaps he was right not to.
Jack carried Gus into the bedroom, laying him down, pulling his shoes and socks off, and pulling the blanket over him. At least Gus wouldn't be crawling under the bed for comfort tonight. Once he seemed comfortably settled, Jack backed out of the room, shutting the door behind. He looked over at Luke. Now he had even less of an idea what to say than before. "How's Wren?" he asked, moving back toward the living room and kitchen, where the talk wouldn't wake the sleeping boy behind the door.
Resisting the urge to follow Jack and Gus into the bedroom, Luke turned wearily towards the living room and managed to make it the few steps to the couch before letting himself drop into the pillows. Finch joined him a few moments later, obviously satisfied that his little master was being looked after, and laid his head on his lap with a soft whine. "I know," he sighed, nearly a whisper in the silence of the room, and he lamented just how much the memories had changed things. Even if they eventually improved, things would never quite be the same.
He looked up when Jack re-entered the room, though he remained where he was on the couch. "She's a mess. The cops showed up at Turnberry, so she's hiding through the door right now," he said, lacking the energy necessary to lie. "I don't know if they were there to arrest her, or question her, or what."
Jack sighed, and sat down in the chair adjacent to the couch. "I spoke to Selina, and she said something to that effect," he said. "I was hoping it wasn't true. Did she actually talk to the police, or did she run as soon as she saw them?" Either way, it couldn't be a good sign. "I told Selina I'd try to find out if they were actually looking for her or not, since she didn't seem to know."
He leaned back, a little, looking across at Luke. He looked about as tired as he felt. He didn't even want to think about what it might mean if Wren went to jail - for Luke, and for Gus. "So," he said. "What about you? How are you?" He smiled, just a little. "Be honest."
Luke had no particular fondness for Selina just then, so he simply frowned at the mention of her name before shaking his head. "I'm pretty sure she just ran. I was there, and someone buzzed up, but she didn't answer. After Gus and I left, she was supposed to follow, but instead she texted me that she was going through the door." Maybe it was a red flag, how matter of factly he was stating everything, when he should have been panicking, or at least worried. It was like there was a disconnect somewhere, a wire that had finally snapped, or maybe it was just a way to cope without retreating back into himself again. "It would be good to know," he agreed, "why the police were really there." If Jack wanted to look into it, he certainly wasn't going to tell him no.
Normally, he would have simply said 'fine'. It was his first response whenever his well-being was asked after, but lying seemed like so much wasted effort. Jack would see right through him anyway, even if he tried. "I've been better. I saw things that made hell look like paradise, and I was too weak to be there for Wren when she needed me." The self-loathing was audible in every word, but he managed to rouse himself from his bitterness long enough to remember that he wasn't the only one in the room with problems. "What about you? And be honest," he added.
Jack certainly noticed the distance, but he doubted he even needed to remark on it, and that much was justified when Luke finally confessed to how badly off he was. "I can tell you're trying to push it off," he said. There was no use in not being blunt about it at this point. He leaned forward. "Luke, I know you feel beholden to this place, but now might be the time for you and Wren to leave. Take Gus and just...go. It hasn't done either of you any good to stay here." And if the police were actually looking for her, getting out of town would be the best thing they could do.
"Well, I should have been here for the both of you," Jack said. "So don't rip yourself up too much over it." He met Luke's gaze. "You're not weak. You've just seen too many things, by now, for it to not pile up. We all have. And it's not as if anyone asked for those memories." He paused a moment. "What did you see that was so terrible?" He had a feeling there was nothing good lying in Luke's answer to that question after the way he'd hesitated with Gus, but he had to ask. It would gnaw at him if he didn't at least try to find out.
What about him? Good question. "I've...been better," Jack said. He sounded about as tired as he looked, gaze a little too distant. "I saw some things as well. Things that dug deep, reminded me...” He stopped. No, he wasn’t going to say that, not to Luke, not right now. “They were just nightmarish, that's all. Not all of them, but some." He couldn't say any more than that. He couldn't tell Luke that he wasn't sure what he was doing here anymore - here, or anywhere. Luke had a thousand troubles of his own to see through. "I wasn't doing well afterward,” he said, an understatement if there had ever been one. “I wasn’t really thinking straight. I should have stayed, though, and I'm sorry I didn't."
Luke didn’t bother trying to argue or defend himself, because he was so far from okay that it would be laughable to insist otherwise, but Jack’s suggestion that he leave pierced through his haze of apathy and caught his attention. Yes, he’d thought of it once or twice, but where would they go? Back to New York, to the man he hadn’t seen in years? Or would they just keep running forever, always looking over their shoulders, trying to give Gus as normal a life as possible in the process? He’d spent five years running, and it had done him no good. He couldn’t do it all over again. Besides, there was Bruce to consider. “I can’t,” he said, voice hollow, without elaborating. “Wren should take Gus and go, maybe. They could go to New York. Thomas would look after them, and he’d be able to in a way I never could. Especially with Gus.” Or maybe they should both just stay, and send the little boy to be with Thomas. Neither of them were really fit to be parents anyway, were they? Thomas had Amanda, and there was Max; maybe he’d be fine. A part of him hated himself for having such thoughts, but he’d been brought back from the edge and it left him more willing to think certain things than he had before.
He simply shook his head. “That’s different. You don’t owe us anything, Jack. You had your own stuff to deal with.” Maybe he had seen too much. Maybe they all had. But a stronger person would have been able to endure, something he hadn’t been able to do. “I saw... things Wren did while we were apart. Things she did to survive, to find Gus, because I wasn't there. I just-- was I that bad, Jack?" He looked up at the other man, almost pleadingly, as though he held the answers. "Was that kind of hell preferable to being with me?" Logically, he knew her reasons had nothing to do with that, he did, but it still hurt, and he wasn't exactly thinking straight just then. "I saw you, too," he added, almost belatedly. "Through her eyes, when you were tied up. And other stuff. From Gotham." That was less important, though. He couldn't worry about Bruce's problems, his own, and everyone else's too.
Despite his exhaustion, Luke made a concentrated effort to see past Jack's answers to the truth beyond the words. "Reminded you what?" Bruce's suspicions made him panic, and he didn't want to believe the worst, he didn't, but what else could he gave been doing? "I don't think any of us were doing well afterward, Jack. You don't have to apologize to me. I left too." He paused. "Where were you, if you weren't here?"
"You know Wren would never leave if you stayed," Jack said. He sighed. "Truthfully, I doubt she'd leave if anyone she cared about stayed. She's too self-sacrificing by half, even if she doesn't admit it out loud." Jack canted his head to the side, and tried to pretend he didn't feel a flare of frustration simply at the thought of Wren and Gus living with Thomas, of all people. "Maybe," he said, carefully. "It would certainly be better than nothing." The unspoken 'but' hung in the air. Thomas had his chance with Max to prove there were people he cared about more than his mission, that he was capable of caring about them more. He didn't know the full story with Luke, but he suspected it wasn't much better.
"It isn't about owing," Jack said, with a brief shake of his head. "You're my friends, both of you. I promised myself a long time ago I was going to be there for the people who were important to me when they needed help. And I wasn't. It's as simple as that." He listened as Luke talked about Wren and what he'd seen with a heavy heart. When Luke asked him whether what Wren went through was the better way, his brow raised. "I don't think it was about you, Luke," he said, quieter. "Wren loves you. Anyone can see that. She didn't pick what happened to her after Seattle over you, or because it was preferable. From what little bit she's said to me about it, it seems like she did it because she thought she had to. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise. No one picks that life."
When Luke said he'd seen Jack through Wren, he stilled. But Luke brushed over it so quickly that it was hard to tell how much he'd seen, or if that was the reason he'd hesitated earlier or not. It was a shameful thing for him to think about on a good day, but to imagine Luke seeing it? That was going to take a while to shake.
Luke's questions struck too close to a truth he wanted to hide. Jack rubbed his thumb over his opposite palm, distractedly, wishing he had something to do with his hands. "Just...about the past. It wasn't important." Where had he been? "I was at my apartment." Partially true, anyway. There was a clear warning in his gaze that said Luke ought to stop asking questions there, if he didn't want to know something he might be better off not knowing.
“She might for Gus,” he insisted, but it was a weak argument, and he knew it. After all, if she attempted to convince him to leave with the boy while she stayed behind, Luke would have fought tooth and nail against her. Either she came with him, or they all stayed. What kept them together was too strong to be willingly broken by that kind of choice. “I know she is. We all are, I think, in our own way. Everyone puts each other above themselves.” Living with Thomas wasn’t precisely what Luke wanted for his son, but he was willing to put the old bitterness and hurt aside if it meant the little boy could have a good life, a normal one, being denied nothing and not having to worry about parents who lived dangerous lives no matter how hard they tried to make things safer. “That’s the thing,” he agreed, “it’s better than nothing. As a last resort, I’d do it. Better Thomas than some stranger.”
He didn’t want Jack blaming himself; that much was clear, but he also knew that it would be near impossible to convince him otherwise. "You're too hard on yourself," he said, too drained to argue. Maybe he should have been angry, but how could he be? Luke hadn't been there either, and he should have been, for Wren, more so than anyone else. When Jack said it hadn't been about him, he laughed, a low, hollow sound. Oh, no. Wren's abandonment had nothing to do with him. Of course not. "But she didn't have to. She didn't. She could have told me the truth, but instead she ran off and became a prostitute again. While she was pregnant, Jack," he said, his voice breaking, and it took him a few moments to recover. He curled his hands into fists, the pressure enough that red began to seep through the white of his bandages. "I don't know how to deal with that," he admitted, making a considerable effort to keep his voice steady.
Luke's mental state might not have been the best, but he wasn't stupid. He knew that look, and he knew what it meant, as much as he wished he could pretend otherwise. "About the past," he repeated, before shaking his head. "What I saw through Wren's eyes, it wasn't you. Not the you I know, at least. I know what you're capable of, but I never thought-- I never thought you'd look at any of us like that. I don't know what's going on with you, Jack, but I'm not an idiot. I know I'm not much better myself, but I want to help." He paused. "I know I need help, and I think you do too, but you have to want it. You have to admit it."
Jack watched Luke clench down on his injured hands and knew what that spread of blood meant, how tightly he must be grasping. "Luke," he said, carefully. "I don't know exactly why Wren left, but I know that she only did it because she was afraid. She guessed wrong about how you'd react to Gus. That's her mistake, and she's had to live with it for five years. What happened was terrible, but also a consequence of the kind of life she's been leading since she was a kid, a life she didn't get a choice in. Those experiences made her think it would go badly if you found out she was pregnant. It doesn't mean you did something wrong, or you drove her to it. It means the fear of having you turn on her did. That wasn't you, in the end. It was just fear."
Jack couldn't meet Luke's gaze, after he said what followed. Luke had clearly seen a lot more than Jack wished he had. The thought of it alone made his stomach turn over. He looked at his hands. "I've had to come to terms with it," he said, slowly. "After I saw those memories, it made me realize that I couldn't just keep running from it. I'm...sick. I have been for a long time, and it's the kind of sickness that gets rooted so deep I don't know if anything could pull it out. If I could feel those things I felt, then...I'm not much better than the people I wish dead when I wake up every morning. I thought there was more left of me, who I was, I think, than there is. I don’t think there’s much at all." He looked up, finally. "And if that's how it is, if that's who I am, what I am, then there's nothing anyone can do about it. I don't know what I'm good for, anymore, or why I'm here. But I have to keep going, somehow, even though I know all that." He took a breath. "I'll understand if you don't want me around Gus anymore, after you saw what you saw."
The sad thing was, Luke had been well on his way to leaving the past in the past and focusing on the present until the memories had hit. Now, all that progress had been reversed, and he couldn’t stop dwelling on things that had already occurred, things he could do nothing to change. It hurt, and he was dangerously close to slipping back into old habits, because physical pain was so, so much more bearable than what he felt now. “No,” he insisted, wincing as he dug his fingers into his palms, more red spreading across white. “No, I did do something wrong. She should’ve known that nothing would have made me hate her, that she didn’t have to be afraid of my reaction. She should have known, but she didn’t, and that’s my fault.” He shook his head. “She was afraid of me. I would’ve stood by her no matter what, even if it wasn’t my baby, and I would’ve taken care of her, but she didn’t think I would. She didn’t think I could handle it. I should’ve gotten rid of that fear!” His voice rose before he could stop it, and he shot a quick, frenzied glance towards the closed bedroom door, inhaling deeply to ensure he stayed quiet. A second passed, then two, then three, and when Gus didn’t emerge, he let his breath out in a long exhale. “I thought I could move past it,” he admitted. “But now... now I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
Every word Jack said made him want to cover his ears with his hands and refuse to listen, but that was childish, weak, and he had to be stronger than that. Even if he felt like falling apart would be so much easier, he had to do the exact opposite. It made his blood run cold, the other man’s confessions, and he just stared, unable to come up with a response. Part of Luke thought that he should tell him to leave, because he shouldn’t be around his son, or Wren, if she came to stay, but another part balked at turning his back on a friend. “I don’t think you’d be here, admitting any of this, if there wasn’t some part of you still left,” he said finally. “I-- I’m not the right person to give you advice on this. I’m not. I probably shouldn’t be around Gus either, but I’m trying to be better, I am, even if I don’t think I can be. I know what it’s like, to not believe people when they tell you you’re more than you think you are.” Maybe he’d forgotten that he hadn’t quite told Jack about what he’d done, or maybe he was just too far gone to bother keeping it a secret. Regardless, he uncurled his fists slowly, staring down at his bloodied palms, and sighed. “You have to stop,” he said. “Whatever you’re doing, if you’re doing what you used to again, you have to stop. I had to stop too, because I couldn’t let myself be around Gus with that kind of blood on my hands. And if Wren comes to stay here--” He broke off and shook his head again.
“I trust you, Jack. I do. But you have to stop. You have to try.” He didn’t want to think about what he might do if he was left to his own devices, and despite feeling like a huge hypocrite, he couldn’t just turn a blind eye. He couldn’t. He would help, and he wouldn’t cast him out, but he wouldn’t pretend everything was fine either. Maybe, if there had been no Gus, he would have, but the little boy had changed everything. “Please.”
Jack watched Luke work himself into a frenzy over Wren, and he was quiet, all through his protests. He too looked over to the hall to be sure Gus hadn't woken up, and kept listening as Luke talked, as he berated himself. Jack gave him a moment to breathe before answering any of his claims about all the things he should have done, all the things he thought he had failed to do. "Luke, trust me when I say that I understand how difficult it is to admit when there was nothing more you could have done, but there was nothing," he said. "You can think on it all you want, dwell on it as long as you like, but it won't change the fact that you did nothing wrong, and you couldn't have known what was going to happen."
The halfway admission of what Luke had done didn't surprise Jack even a little. He'd put together some time ago that Luke had taken a similar path to his own after he left Seattle, and it saddened him to think of it. Luke's ultimatum was no shock either. In his shoes, he likely would have said precisely the same thing. He knew he had to stop, knew he should have never started again, but in the wake of the memories he'd been left with that same old feeling of helplessness, the cover on that yawning pit of rage ripped off and nothing to direct it at. "Alright," he said, quietly. His gaze was dull, and tired. He'd just been so tired, these last few years. And if he stopped again, if he gave up on the only thing that lent him purpose, anymore, what then? Knowing what he knew now, what reason did he have to even get up anymore? He'd thought it was to help his friends, to try to be there for them, but now he only felt as if he was one more burden on their already heavy shoulders. Luke, clearly, hardly needed any other broken souls to mend when he had so much work yet to do on his own.
Jack sat forward, thought for a moment, and stood. "You'll need new bandages," he pointed out, stepping toward the bathroom to get the first aid kit.
A part of him knew Jack was right. It was the logical part of him, the one that knew beating himself up over the past was pointless, and yet another, larger part of him refused to allow him to agree. Luke didn’t feel deserving of vindication, and admitting there was nothing he could have done was not only releasing himself from blame, but accepting a sort of powerlessness he hadn’t felt in so, so long. Torn between relenting and stubbornly continuing to stick to his guilt, he merely shrugged, subdued, the closest he was willing to come to agreement. Nothing anyone said was going to make this better, he knew that. It was something he’d have to get past on his own, and he hoped that maybe seeing Wren would, somehow, make things different, make things better. Maybe he was just getting himself worked up over nothing. He’d only seen her for a few minutes, after all, and the wounds were still fresh.
The other man’s agreement should have reassured him, but it didn’t. If anything, it only made his panic rise, because Jack reminded him so much of himself in that moment, when Wren had found out the truth and given him the same ultimatum he was dishing out now. Now, Luke knew how she’d felt, and he wished he knew how to help, but he couldn’t even help himself these days, never mind anyone else. “Okay,” he said, trying not to sound as worried as he felt, with only minimal success. “Good. Listen, I know what you’re going through, I do, so if you-- if you need to talk or anything, I don’t know, I’m here.” He may have had a lot going on, but nothing was ever enough for him to turn his back on a friend in need.
Luke looked down at his reddened bandages and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” It was funny, how he’d stopped being as aware of pain as he once was, and now his wounded hands were merely a dull throb; if it hadn’t been for the blood, he might not have noticed at all.
Jack stepped into the bathroom, and picked up the gauze and the medical tape, along with the antiseptic. "Thank you," he said, only, knowing full well how unlikely he was to take Luke up on that offer, and that it was likely Luke would know it. He intended to make sure he didn't become a burden to anyone, emotional or otherwise. That would be inexcusable. It was kind of him to offer, however, especially considering how badly off he knew Luke was.
Jack came up beside the chair. "Pain isn't a solution either," he said, a bit of blunt advice. He didn't like what Luke purposefully doing more damage to himself might imply, or simply what his apparent numbness to pain might drive him to consider. "Take it from someone who knows." He extended the gauze, the tape, and the antiseptic. "Do you want me to bandage them up again?" The wounds didn't look too bad, but there was also a risk Luke might tear them even more if he did too much work with his hands after ripping them open again, but it was up to him.
Regardless of the fact that his offer was very likely made in vain, Luke felt as though he had to try. Jack would have done the same for him, he knew, just as he knew he would have been no more likely to take him up on the offer than the other man would be to take him up on his. He might have felt a little better had he known that Jack had someone else to talk to, even if it wasn’t him, but he didn’t know, and that worried him. So many things worried him, though, and he didn’t know how to express any of it, so all he could do was hope that, if things got bad, Jack would be able to take that step and reach out. “Don’t mention it,” he shrugged, as though he could get rid of the feeling of unease and everything else in one fell swoop with one single movement.
He glanced at Jack a little too quickly when he came up beside the chair, looking away almost guiltily at the mention of pain and it not being a solution. “Yeah, I know.” For a moment he wondered about the scars Wren had mentioned, but that was something he would never ask about, and really, he didn’t need to. He looked at the first aid items being proffered to him for a long moment, silent, before nodding. "Okay." It made him feel like a teenager again, but he was just going to aggravate the wounds more than he already had if he tried to do it himself.
Jack sat on the arm of the chair, took Luke's left hand, and began unwinding the bloody bandages. "How did these happen?" he asked. It wasn't a judgemental question, just an acknowledgement that the gashes were deep enough that he either had a significant accident, or something went very wrong. They looked to have been healing when Luke tore them open, but not infected. They'd be fine, once Jack cleaned them out and bandaged them again. How he'd gotten his own scars wasn't really a matter for discussion, not today, anyway. It was a difficult enough thing to admit privately to himself, let alone out loud, and it would bring on a discussion about what Luke might or might not have been doing that seemed a little too harsh for the moment. It could wait until Luke was in a better place.
The sight of blood had long since ceased to bother him, and Luke had seen far too many injuries of his own, inflicted by both others and himself, to be bothered by a few gashes, but he looked away nonetheless as Jack began unwinding the bandages. His gaze remained somewhere on the floor, and to give him his due, he managed to keep still, fighting the urge to flinch at the sting of open air on the wounds. “I punched a mirror,” he said bluntly. “During the memories. There was a lot of glass. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.” It was nothing, really, in comparison to the multitude of damage he’d sustained over the years. The boy in Seattle who’d thought a bullet wound was the end of the world, heralding death itself, was long gone, it seemed.
Jack was thinking of much the same thing. He'd seen Luke shot soon after he first met him, if he remembered right. He didn't know how to feel about those days anymore, didn't know if they'd been better or worse. Different, surely. Simpler, as impossible as that would have seemed back then. "Well," Jack said, pouring some antiseptic onto a torn stretch of gauze and carefully cleaning the edges of the wounds, "I killed someone. I think you win, if we're comparing notes." His voice didn't even shake. It was something that had happened, and there was no changing that now. The trick now was going to be trying to get past it, trying to forget how easy it had been, and the look on that girl's face when he’d walked into the room where she was tied to the headboard. He stared a little harder at Luke’s hand, and began wrapping it with clean gauze, sighing a little. “I owe Selina one, you know,” he said, glancing over at Luke. “I talked to her before you came home. I don’t think she is what she thinks she is. Or what most of them on the other side of that door think she is. She has a lot of good to spare.”
It was surely a testament to just how far he’d come that Luke barely even reacted to Jack’s confession. In a way, he’d already known, and so he wasn’t surprised, or even outraged. Once he might have been, but things had changed a great deal since Seattle. “Yeah,” he sighed, “I guess I do.” He wasn’t going to ask, recalling some hazy memory about something on the news, but after a moment he tipped his head to the side and regarded Jack almost sadly. “What happened?” It was a distraction, at least, from his wounded hand, and he was the last person who had any right to judge whatever had occurred. Jack was, really, the only one who understood in a very literal sense. The mention of Selina came as a surprise, and right then she wasn’t really someone he wanted to talk about; the disaster with her, Ivy, and Brielle’s husband was still a sore point. “She’s not so bad,” he admitted, albeit grudgingly. “I think she’s her own worst critic, though. Bruce doesn’t see her as a villain, not like she thinks he does.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jack said. “The last thing that girl needs is more people kicking her to the curb and proving what she thinks about herself.” Jack taped off the bandage on Luke's left hand, then took his right, unwinding the bloody bandage and repeating the process again. It gave him something to focus in on while he talked. He considered not answering Luke's question directly, but what did it matter, anyway? "I went out looking for someone. Like in the old days." Back in Seattle. It seemed like such a long time ago, even though he had still dabbled in vigilantism since every once in a while, though without the killing. "I've been trying to keep my eye on at least a few groups of girls in town, strippers and showgirls at a couple of the nastier places. In the past couple weeks, I noticed a guy hanging around a few of those places once they closed for the night, trying to proposition the girls, so I looked around to see if I could catch him doing anything, or whether he was just garden variety lonely." He began cleaning out the wounds carefully with antiseptic, and thought vaguely that he should have grabbed the vaseline to keep the wounds wet and protected from infection. Ah, well, Luke could do it when he had to replace them next. It occurred to them that he knew much too much about wounds like these, and how to mend them.
"When one of the girls rejected his advances at the door, he followed her in his car, knocked her out in an alley, then threw her in and took her back to his place. I followed." He finished cleaning the wounds, then began wrapping again with gauze. “I went inside. He had her tied to the bed, he'd already started cutting her with a pair of scissors." His tone was measured, though not entirely distant. There was mostly just sadness, and resign. And when he mentioned the scissors, and thought of the long gash down the girl's leg, there was a flicker of anger, disappearing as quickly as it showed. "I got him to the ground." He stopped, his fingers pausing in winding clean gauze around Luke's hand, and then he went on. "I crushed his ribs with my boot, and then I caved his head in with a crowbar." It sounded unreal, like a bad joke, or something from a movie. He reached for the tape again, finishing the bandage, looking up at Luke, finally. "I cut the girl's restraints, and she ran out to the street. I called the police so someone would pick her up and get her to the hospital, then broke up the phone." He looked across to the hallway. He'd been talking quietly, but he still wanted to be sure there was no one up and peeking out of their room down there. The door was still shut, Gus still safely asleep.
Jack sighed, a slightly shaky thing. "I always forget the simplest thing about it," he said. "The one that's easiest to forget. It doesn't make anything better. It's like...trying to drink from a mirage. You think it will be a balm, make the pain disappear, but it doesn't. It just leaves you even thirstier than when you started." Jack paused, then slid off the arm of the chair. “You should be good. You need to change them at least once a day, though, so if you need help tomorrow, I’ll be around.” True enough, and also a promise. He wouldn’t be leaving again, not any time soon.
Luke raised his eyebrows, wondering what, exactly, Jack and Selina had discussed. “No one’s kicking her to the curb, not as far as I know,” he said. “Then again, Bruce and I don’t exactly discuss what goes on in Gotham. That’s his turf, not mine.” He was aware of most things, of course, but primarily in a general sense, and he did trust the other man to keep himself alive; more so than he did Selina, who was much more reckless. Not intentionally so, maybe, but when Wren’s life was on the line, he found it difficult to be understanding. He flexed his left hand experimentally once Jack was done, not enough to reopen the wounds, but enough to test his range of movement as well as the bindings. He listened while Jack spoke, barely even feeling the sting and ache of antiseptic at this point. It was a familiar story, reminiscent of Seattle, where trouble was sought out and the victims were always the young, the vulnerable, the innocent. He’d purposely been avoiding what Jack was doing, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to resist acting if he caught wind of anything even remotely suspicious. The problem was that he simply wasn’t suited to sitting at home doing nothing, and sooner or later, the urge to do something was going to become too strong to fight.
He nodded along as the story progressed, knowing the type all too well. Some were harmless, but some weren’t, and sometimes the difference was caught too late. Despite his silence, his expression spoke volumes; disgust, and his own brand of anger, as Jack described what the man had done, though there was a distinct lack of what might have been a normal response to hearing that someone had smashed in another human being’s head with a crowbar. It might have been wrong, murder, but he would never be capable of lamenting the death of those who were capable of such horrors. “You saved her,” he said simply. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Because it wasn’t really, and he followed Jack’s gaze, ensuring there would be no interruptions from little boys who should be asleep, before continuing. “I think the problem, though, is that you still could have saved her without killing him.” Moral dilemma aside, it just wasn’t healthy, and they both knew that.
Oh, god, the words sounded so familiar it ached, and Luke couldn’t help sighing. “I know,” he admitted. “I used to tell myself the ends justified the means at first, but somewhere along the line it stopped being about doing the right thing, and became more about me, about trying to... I don’t know. Make it better, like you said, but it just made things worse.” So, so much worse. But if he could stop, he had to believe that Jack could too, despite his most recent relapse. He’d almost missed the fact that Jack had finished with his other hand, and he nodded, vowing to be more careful this time around and allow the wounds to heal properly. “Thanks,” he said, and the gratitude in his voice was audible.
Jack glanced out the window. "I guess I did," he said, with a faint smile. It was the only good thing to come out of it all, and the part that would make the act haunt him for a long while, precisely because it was a positive effect. It made all the other deaths, all the lives he took, feel meaningful, important, like something he could do to fight back against the helplessness and the aimless anger. But in the end, it was always as he said. Someone might end up saved, but killing the person responsible just left him worse. "I know that," he said. It wasn't a rebuke, just an acknowledgement. Luke was right. He could have restrained the man, freed the girl, and called the police. But he had hated, and wanted to quiet the noise in his head, and he had killed him. "It's difficult to shake the feeling that letting him live might mean someone else would get hurt down the road." He shook his head. "But that's just something I'll have to find a way to live with."
Jack smiled faintly. "It's always going to be difficult," he said. "For both of us, I think. Not impossible, just...difficult." And wasn't that the truth. Something told him that he and Luke did things the way they did for somewhat different reasons. For Jack, killing the men he came up against wasn't so much an addiction as a drive, the only way he could be sure to keep the people safe who he wanted to protect, and an outlet for his rage. There was nowhere else for it to go. If this was going to work, and he was going to try to carry on despite losing one of his last reasons for pushing through, he was going to need to find some other way to vent it. A question for another day.
Luke’s gratitude broke through Jack’s train of thought, and he nodded, smiling a little. “No problem,” he said. Maybe there was a good reason to stick around, to try to soldier on. If he was needed - if he could still be a help, somehow, even if only in small ways - that meant his life wasn’t totally worthless, at least. “I think I’m going to try to sleep,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You probably should too. And thanks,” he added, “for talking.” Jack found it difficult to lay out his problems on his friends, but it had made him feel a little better, like his head was at least a little more in order. He nodded to him, and moved around the chair, down the hall, and into the bedroom. Worrying about what came next could wait until tomorrow.