corvus, jack (corbinian) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-11-16 20:16:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | eric draven, lois lane |
Who: Jack and Max
What: A check
Where: Bathos 404
When: Following this.
Warnings: None.
Jack left the apartment as soon as he finished talking to Max on the forums. He had no idea what she wanted to show him or why she hadn’t simply responded to him directly, but he wanted to see her in person to check on her health anyway. He simply couldn’t take her at her word. Max was the type to downplay things like fighting for her life against a madman who attacked women and children when they were at their most vulnerable, and he hardly believed that it had just been a few ‘scratches’ that sent her to the hospital.
He came without makeup, taking the subway over to the Bathos. Then it was just a quick jaunt up the fire escape and he was sitting outside her bedroom window, rapping lightly on the glass with knuckles, the impact softened by his gloves.
Max had been awake since she’d publish the article, and she was in her bedroom, nursing a warm cup of coffee and wishing it was a cold beer, when he knocked. She put the coffee on the dresser, and she walked over and unlocked the window, which was barred and had a new alarm installed that didn’t route through the front door and only wired her bedroom and the window. It had been installed through a contact, and she had it set up to send up a call after 30 seconds if it wasn’t deactivated. She was worried, and the additional security measures were indicative of that.
She pushed open the window, the bathrobe she wore over a tank and running pants fluttering with the cool breeze, and she moved aside to let him in. “No makeup tonight, huh?” she asked, teasing smile in place despite the tense topic on the forums earlier.
He watched her unbar the window, and if he hadn’t been worried before he certainly was now. Still, he answered her teasing in kind, with a slight smile as he slipped in through the window. “If you prefer me with it on," he said, looking over at her, taking in the alarm wired to the window, "I could always go get it before we continue."
She laughed, and she didn’t bother lowering the window against the cold before walking back to her coffee. “Would you say I’m competent in a fight, Corvus?” she asked him casually, leaning back against the dresser, the edge pressing low below her hips as she watched him.
He turned, watching her fetch her coffee from the other side of the room, bot moving away from the window just yet. The tone of the question was casual, but he could tell the meaning was anything but, and he had a feeling he knew where this conversation was going. "I would say that to my knowledge, you have the training to handle yourself," he said. "Max, if this is is going to lead to you pointing out that even capable you could be harmed by him, you didn't know then what we know now."
She quirked a brow at him, and she set the coffee on the dresser after a long, thoughtful pause. “I shot him in the head. Repeatedly. I emptied my cartridge on him. Twice,” she told him. “I’m really good at getting out of places unscathed, trained to do just that,” she added, and she slipped off the bathrobe and turned her back to him. The stitches, four gashed diagonals across her back from shoulder to hip, were visible through the white of the tank top she wore. She slipped the bathrobe back on a second later. “Just because he can’t kill you, it doesn’t mean you can stop him, Corvus. This one isn’t going to be that easy, not on his turf.”
He was going to counter what she was saying, and then she pulled her bathrobe off.
The gashes across her back stopped him cold. His reaction was visceral anger that didn't disappear right away. He was livid, and he was worried, and the sensation was something like his stomach falling out of his body altogether. He'd been expecting something severe, but seeing it was another thing entirely.
He almost missed what she said, the gashes lingering in his mind's eye along with exactly what he planned on doing to the man who had put them there. "It doesn't have to be easy," he said, looking up at her. "It's a dream, isn't it? We know now that he's real, and that the damage he does is real. I can't imagine that it's impossible to turn that back on him."
He finally walked over to her. "I dream...quite a bit. Every time I sleep, and vividly, and I almost always remember what I've been dreaming about when I wake up.. I know my dreams well, and I know them better than he possibly could. That isn't his land, it's mine. The same way your dreams are yours, the same way anyone's belong to them. We will always know the lay of the land better than he will."
She shook her head. “I controlled the place, but he changed it around me,” she explained, going back to her coffee cup and slipping her fingers through the handle. She took a long sip. “He told me, at the masquerade, that he didn’t care about anyone. That he wanted to hurt people. He kills kids outside of the dreams, and he can find his way back, I think, in the dreams, whenever the hell he wants. I was talking to someone on the forums who said the key was not to sleep.” She sighed. “If we’re going to bait him, it isn’t going to be with you. He doesn’t have any interest in getting someone like you or the Bat in a dream. So, we’re going to need backup for this, and I have no idea what the hell we’re actually going to do.”
"We'll find a way," he said, because he believed it. He wasn't going to let this go on happening, and that was that, no matter how stark the contrast of the odds seemed. "Do we know anyone who can get into dreams, who has an ability that would allow them an advantage on par with his?"
“The anon I was talking to on the forums can go into other people’s dreams, and he can’t die in them, but he can get hurt,” she explained. “But that doesn’t help us lure him. There are hundreds of thousands of kids in this city. Even if we could get into the right dream, how the hell would we find it?” She shook her head. “That won’t work.”
Every dead end she presented to him only magnified his anger, and he stopped for a moment, staring blankly at the door as a thought struck him.
"We can lure him into a dream, but we can't guarantee the back up that you're looking for," he said slowly. That particular obstacle hadn't even occurred to him. "I've never jumped into someone else's dream by choice. Have you?"
He usually wasn’t much one for outward expressions of anger, but it was the sort of moment in which he always wished something would present itself to be on the receiving end of a strike. He wasn't going to let this psychopath win, or harm anyone that he cared about. Not again. "We need to find him on this plane, then," he said, speech slow, carefully measured. "If there is no way to confront him in dreams, we use what information he's given us to track him down in the city. Assuming his ability is based in dreams, this world is where his vulnerability is, and this is the world where we can do him damage."
She walked over to the bed, and she sat on the edge and looked up at him. “So we lure him into a dream, and we ask questions, and someone is around to wake whoever the dreamer is if it gets too dangerous?” she asked.
He finally looked up at her again. "I don't know that we have another option," he said. "The only problem is that a man who is indiscriminately killing children is not going to be the most forthcoming with helpful information on how to find him and catch him. But he seems cocky. He might give us something assuming we would flounder with it. Men like him are egotistical, and like to tease those who might catch them."
“We need to talk to the Bat,” she added, knowing she was sounding like a broken record. A month ago, she would have jumped into this thing without looking. Now, she wanted to make sure waking up was a given. “I don’t know. Maybe we can get our hands on some of that dream equipment, whatever the dream thieves use,” she suggested, but she shook her head almost immediately. “Not if he doesn’t dream.”
The urge to snap at her when she mentioned the Bat again was so strong that he walked to the other side of the bed instead, just to do something. She didn't deserve that, it wasn't her fault that everything seemed to be setting him on edge right now.
"Clearly he does, even if he invades the dreams of others. He does sleep, and he does dream. That might work." It was a glimmer of hope - not much of one, but something that sounded safer than luring the murderer to Max.
Max was pretty good at reading body language, and his anger surprised her, the vehemence of it and the fact that it was directed at her for a brief minute. “I know you two don’t get along, but we need to make sure we have a gut check on this, Corvus,” she said, watching him move. “We can lure him. I just want to make really fucking sure we’re ready to pull out if it comes to that.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt tired, suddenly, like he'd run two marathons and only now was being told there were a dozen more still to go. It had been a long few days behind him, and a long few nights. The night before last - but no, he wasn't going to think about it, not now, not here. The world just seemed to be getting darker and darker around him. All he could do was continue on walking through the valley of the shadow.
"You're right," he said. "You never know. He might know something that we don't, as far as reaching the dreaming goes. And he could get the equipment, if we need it." He'd seen the Bat's face, long enough to match it to the face he occasionally saw in the society section of the Seattle Times. The Bat had money, and if ever there was a time to use that money, it was now.
Max nodded gratefully. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she clarified, because that really wasn’t it. “If we can get you up against him, you’re the obvious choice. You can’t die,” she said, hugging her arms around herself as she said it, as if to ward off something more than the cold from the open window. “If we need to lure him with some more attractive bait, that’s fine, but we have no fucking idea how to put it together, and I can’t risk not waking up.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” he said. Now he felt like a broken record. “No one is untouchable, Max. We will find a way to get at him that doesn’t involve using you as bait.” There was no other option. Either they found a way to get to him and kill him - and make no mistake, if he was presented with an opportunity, he would take it in a heartbeat - or he would continue to kill children, and possibly even...but no, it wouldn’t come to that.
She smiled at his certainty, because it was young seeming, and she nodded. “I know the Bat saw his message on the forum,” she said, and she gave him a teasing grin. “Maybe it’s an excuse to get you two talking again. Something good has to come of all this shit.”
He tried to take that grin as an easy route away from his other thoughts, and managed a small smile. "I saw that you told people to sleep in shifts, or watch one another," he said. "I can skip sleeping for a night or two, if it would help."
She quirked a brow. “I can set an alarm, Corvus. I’ll be fine,” she said. She’d been researching REM sleep, and the fact that it wasn’t absolutely essential to survival. She’d manage. “Go on. Get out of here. I’m dragging. Contact the Bat about what we discussed?” she asked, reaching over and rubbing his shoulder with her palm. “And quit sounding so damn worried. That’s my job.”
"I'll get in touch with him," he said, because some things were more important than personal distaste. "I can stop sounding worried," he said, because he couldn't agree to stop being worried. "Try to get some sleep. Call me on the communicator if anything happens."
He ducked out the window, shut it behind him, and climbed up to the roof.