corvus, jack (corbinian) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-04-04 21:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | eric draven, lois lane |
Who: Jack and Max
What: Driving home
Where: Max's truck, then Bathos
When: Just after the Arbor party.
Warnings: None.
There was only one way out of the maze, and Jack intended to take it and head home as quickly as he possibly could. But leaving meant walking alongside Max. There was no way around it, and so he kept pace a step or two behind her, making his way through the dimly lit maze path to the exit.
At least Oracle was finally under control. At least they could stop worrying about Mockingbird after this, if their assumptions about her were correct, and the idea that he could finally go out masked again was at least a relief where there had otherwise been none for weeks. As for Oracle, and not recognizing her, and Max walking up on them, he didn’t know what to say. If he could pretend it had never happened, all the better. He couldn’t walk in silence forever, though, so he finally asked, “Do you know where he’s taking her?” People filtered by them, running past in giggling groups as they searched somewhat drunkenly for the Bat and the source of the commotion.
Max had spent enough time in the past hour atop the maze wall to know the way out, but she didn’t immediately turn in that direction. She had to pick up Amanda once she left here, and she needed to find her shoes before she could do that. She knew Jack was behind her; she could hear his footsteps, and she decided to wait for him to say something, rather than saying something herself.
She heard his voice as she was reaching for her discarded heels, and she sat on a nearby bench and crossed her knees, slipping one heel on and then the other. She looked up at him in the dark, only able to make out a shape and nothing else. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say. I’ll find out once I get home,” she said, standing and shifting her weight into the toes of the shoes. “Probably one of his safehouses,” she added, because that made the most sense. She didn’t think he’d take Oracle to Aubade, not with the reporter on his case.
"Nobody is protective of her," he said. No one had ever told him that Quinn had undergone a nickname change, so he assumed it was still the same. His technique could admittedly have been more gentle, but he had been desperate to get her to be still. They had her in hand, now, so it was excusable, he supposed. "I didn't expect her to be walking," he said, almost offhand, still feeling like he needed to justify why he hadn't known it was her. He had his head turned to look down the path, even though all he could really make out of anyone running through was the edges of their figure at the most.
He wondered how he should tell Max about the feelings he'd felt while inside her head during the terrible memory he'd lived through, or whether he should say anything about it at all. Likely not. "Are you still in Bathos?" It was a question about whether she had patched things up with the Bat yet, indirect as it was, sure as he was that she would patch things up eventually, even if the things she'd felt should have absolutely precluded it. He wasn't so foolish that he really thought she wouldn't go back to him.
She nodded, remembering belatedly that he wouldn’t be able to see it, and she began walking again in silence. The maze was crowded now with girls screaming about finding capes and masks and things they thought were sexy, and Max couldn’t help but smile despite the evening’s completely fucked up conclusion. “I was like that when I came here,” she said referencing the girls that had just passed. “So much fucking hero worship you wouldn’t believe it.” She laughed a little, a chuckle at the expense of herself a year ago, and then they were out under the lanterns.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’ll give you a lift. We can talk about it in the truck.” Where it was quieter and safer, and she was sure there weren’t any reporters listening.
"I think I can imagine it," he said. His face was still invisible in the dark, but there was a bit of a smile in his tone. "I did know you then."
They were suddenly back out into the light. He looked much the same as he usually did with no mask to cover him up. His suit was rumpled from the activity with Oracle, but everything was buttoned the way it should be. The mellow light from the lanterns caught a halo in his light eye. "Alright," he said. Horrific evening or no, he wouldn't mind having a chance to talk to her in private, and to get away from this madness faster than he could walk from it.
Her truck was parked in the press area, which was thankfully close with the Garden’s external warming system long left behind. She reached into the passenger’s seat of the truck when she opened the door, and she slipped a coat on over her dress and tugged her hair free of the collar before motioning him in. “Mind if we pick up an impossible month-old on the way?” she asked, leaning against the door and taking in his rumpled appearance and the smell of sex on his clothes.
Max looked even more beautiful than she usually did in that red dress she was wearing, so much so that it was a shame, in a way, when she covered up with the coat. But Jack wasn't meant to be noticing that sort of thing anyway, and he climbed into the truck without commenting on it. "Of course not," he said, leaning back into the seat, grateful to be away from the screaming, giddy throng in the maze. "Who did you leave her with?"
She closed his door, and she walked around the truck, giving the maze and the party one last look, and then she climbed in and started the motor. “I’m back at work at the paper,” she told him, “so I found a Creations daycare for her - well, nightcare, too. They have late hours,” she explained, pulling out of the parking lot and turning the radio to quiet country, something appropriately mournful. “I’m still in Bathos,” she added, answering his question from earlier. “Did you know you were fucking Oracle?” she asked, doing him one better.
"Good," he said, automatically, to her being back at the paper. He knew that being a journalist was important to her, so he was glad she hadn't given it up.
He was admittedly surprised to hear that she was still in Bathos. He'd felt so sure that she would have gone back to the Bat by now, and he tried not to feel a combination of satisfaction and relief to hear she hadn't. It didn't work. Her question, however, made him tense. He should have seen it coming, but it still didn't seem wholly fair. "No, I didn't," he said, a little curt, bitterness on his tongue. Why would that be any of her business even if he had known? "As I said - I didn't expect her to be walking. Or to be at a party."
She glanced over when his tone turned curt and bitter. “I thought that was what you wanted to talk about, Corvus. Was I wrong?” she asked, turning her attention back to the road after voicing the question. The sun was getting light in the sky, and she was a lot fucking later than she was supposed to be to pick up Amanda, and she increased the truck’s speed to match the realization of the time. She wasn’t used to having a baby-related curfew yet, and she had about three hours before she had to be at the paper. And she needed to have an article on the party ready to submit for the evening edition. So much for fucking sleep.
“I wanted to make sure you knew that I didn’t know who she was,” he said, doing his best not to sound defensive. “That I didn’t notice and just not broach the subject,” Jack said, glancing over at her. “If I had known, I would have tried to contact someone.” He could see the sun edging up outside the window. The night, eventful as it had been, had flown by, and it was later than he’d thought. He wondered if Max had told Thomas what she found Jack and Oracle doing - God, he hoped not. “Are you working today?” he asked, the thought occurring to him as the sky lightened. Max did too much, tried to be too many people at once for too many other people.
“Someone’s threatening to expose the Bat. I’m trying to find out who the fuck he is at the paper,” she explained. “So, yeah, I’m working. I have a couple of hours to rest, assuming Manda sleeps,” she told him, pulling into the quiet driveway of the house that served as a daycare center. “Give me a minute,” she told him, putting the car in park and leaving it running as she went inside.
She exited the house a few minutes later, and she managed to only curse twice while trying to make the carseat in the extended cab do what she wanted. Then, after handing the baby her pacifier, she climbed back into the car and pulled out of the driveway to the sound of sleepy gurgling and cooing in the backseat. “Corvus,” she finally said, once she was on the road, “I am perfectly aware that you would have conked Oracle over the head instead of having sex with her, if you’d known it was her. I was just surprised.”
Jack would have followed her in had she not clearly intended him to stay. Amanda looked radiant as ever, if sleepy besides, and he reached back and lightly touched her cheek with one finger before Max was back in the car and they were moving again.
He straightened, settling back into his seat. "Who's threatening to expose him?" he asked. He tried to make himself care. He reminded himself that it would be bad for everyone if he was, particularly for the safety of Max and Amanda, and that managed to do the trick. "Do you think it's tied to the things Mockingbird was doing?" He assumed that Oracle was Mockingbird, and that she was taken care of at last. "You need to get more rest," he said, frowning just a touch. "I could watch her," he said, looking across at Max. "Make sure you at least get a few hours sleep before you're running again." It wasn't as if he would be sleeping tonight anyway.
He sighed, unthinking. "I am not precisely fond of hitting women under any circumstance," he said. "But she was determined." He didn't know what to say in regards to the sex, hated that he felt somehow guilty even though he had every right to go sleep with someone he felt nothing for.
She laughed quietly. “Oh, that would be a great one to try to explain to my sister. Audrey, this is Corvus - he’s my overnight babysitter,” she said, glancing in the rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure the baby was okay. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Mockingbird - just a reporter. You know how fucking nosy we are. Can’t mind our own business to save our fucking souls,” she said, because she would have done the same thing, and she knew it. “It’s- When it’s just Masks and Cowls and you don’t know the people underneath, exposing them makes so much fucking sense. It’s almost, I don’t know, honorable - giving them their credit, making everyone see. Now, now it’s just a nightmare.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, the silence only punctuated by screaming when Amanda lost her pacifier, and then silence and contented sucking when she found it again. “There’s nothing wrong with going into that maze and getting lost in someone, Corvus. I went in there, too, and I talked to someone I don’t know, someone I’ll never know. It’s normal.”
"I don't look like a babysitter?" he asked, with a faint smile. "This reporter is willing to expose Thomas even though he knows what the consequences of that would be? That goes beyond nosy and into reckless and threatening. He can't honestly be a reporter and be so naive that he thinks only good can come of it." He began to wonder if it would perhaps help if the reporter found himself threatened.
When Amanda started screaming he turned his head sharply, checking to be sure nothing was wrong, relaxing when she found what she was looking for and stopped again. "It's not normal for me," he confessed, slowly. He sank back into the seat. "...It's been two years, and the first person I went for was someone I didn't even know. I don't know what that says about me.
“You look like trouble,” she told him fondly. “And completely un-fucking parental.” She grinned over at him. “That’s a compliment. Parents look fucking stuffy.” She turned the radio station to something more upbeat, since she’d realized cheerful music actually kept the baby from screaming for longer periods at a time. “He might not even have a story, Corvus. I haven’t talked to him. But I went back to work to see if I can keep an eye on him; everyone wants a Times press pass. If he has a story, he’ll take it to the paper eventually. That means driving clear across fucking town for childcare and late nights covering things. Tonight it was the party. I’ve got some fucking health care scandal convention five hours away tomorrow night.”
She thought about the maze, about sex, about Oracle. “I can’t judge you for that, Corvus. I had a lot of meaningless, nameless sex in the military.” Pause. “And the guy I met in the maze, he offered a blatant invitation - I just don’t think I want the thrill without anything meaningful anymore. Fuck, I am either turning into a mother, or a grown up, or both.”
"Well, at least I'm not stuffy," he said, smile wry. "Are you sure you don't want any help looking after her? I could at least pick her up if you're going to be out of town." He had a sudden image of carrying the child on his back while riding his motorcycle, and smiled a little.
He turned that smile on her for a moment. "Everyone wants that," he said. "Whether they're willing to admit it or not, everyone does. It's just a matter of finding it, or waiting for something you're not sure is ever going to come." He didn't mean to put it quite that way, and he looked out the window again.
“Don’t fucking lecture. That got me away from maze guy quicker than anything else he could have done,” she said, reaching over and shoving his shoulder with one hand. “Did you suddenly find a car somewhere and not tell me about it?” she asked, regarding the offer to pick Amanda up, her brow quirking. “And Oracle’s a fantastic woman. That goes without saying,” she added meaningfully.
He fell partly against the window when he was shoved, and laughed a little. "...Fair point." he said. "I could borrow one. I'm not very good at this mask thing, I think I'm supposed to have a mobile."
He sighed. "You know that isn't what I meant," he said. "I just meant that you want that your entire life. It's just that it can become so important to you that you're not willing to take anything less. I'm not so discerning." Not any more, at any rate. It hardly felt worth it. If he waited, he would be waiting forever, and to wait forever for something he could no longer raise his hopes was coming would be even worse than letting go of that hope.
“I thought I was supposed to stop growing up at eighteen,” she said, turning onto the road toward Bathos. “But me at eighteen? I would have been all about sex against one of those shrub covered walls.” She pulled up in front of the building, and she tossed him the keys to the truck, as she fought to get the carrier out. “Park it and come up the escape. You might as well feed her while I change and shower. Make yourself useful and tell me what you think about Oracle.”
“I don’t think it’s ever that neat,” he said. He caught the keys neatly and shifted into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be back in five minutes,” he assured her, and pulled off once she got inside the building with Amanda.
He was outside her room on the fire escape five minutes later, and, finding it unlocked, slipped in and shut it behind him. “Show me what to do and consider her fed,” he said. “Do you want to know what I think about Oracle after everything that’s just happened, with Mockingbird and the man pulling her strings, or just in general?”
“Give me whatever you’ve got,” she said, handing him a squirming baby and a warm bottle. She went into the bathroom, leaving the door just cracked enough so she could hear him and turning on the water immediately, steam filling the crack between the door and the frame.
Jack held Amanda carefully. He knew you had to support a baby's head, but he still found himself a little nervous to have the infant in his arms, a symptom of that common, irrational fear that something would go wrong as soon as the infant was separated from their mother. He tipped the bottle up and Amanda went at it with gusto. "If I was judging her by the way she was before all of this, I would say she was faithful to the cause, loyal to the Bat almost to a fault, and very good at what she did. She's also harsh and argumentative, which I expect is a result of everything else as much as a cause of it. But she isn't without a sense of humor, and she can be kinder when she wants to, I think, though I haven't seen much of that. She seems to feel entitled to scolding everyone around her like they were children." He pulled the bottle back, periodically as he spoke, allowing Amanda to catch her breath.
"Now, I don't know. I know that she wasn't doing any of the things she did of her own will. She was defiant even when she had to acquiesce, which is admirable. But there are some people who are never going to be able to trust her again. I don't know if I blame them."
Max came out a few minutes after he went quiet, dressed in running pants and a tank top, and the baby started fussing as soon as she heard the familiar footsteps on the carpet. She took her from him, two weeks of this melting away any insecurity she’d had, and she put Amanda to her shoulder and rubbed her back. “You can set the bottle on the sill,” she said. The room didn’t have anything significant for furniture - only the bed and the unused crib. “It could have happened to any of us, Corvus. Assuming they got her in that hotel room, it could have been me just as fucking easily. Would you hold it against me, like you’re holding it against her?” she asked, walking the length of the room slowly with Amanda. “She’s a good woman. She isn’t happy. Her fucking relationship sucks. You must have felt something to have slept with her, even if you didn’t know it was her. Get to know her, Corvus. Something good might come of it.”
He did as she asked him to, watching her rub Amanda's back, leaning against the sill. The window was still slightly open, and cool air flowed into the room. "I never said I was holding it against her," he pointed out. "Just that some people will, if they weren't inside her head and they don't know how it was."
Jack watched her walk with Amanda, thinking a hundred things - how he had ended up here, with a woman this good as a friend and nothing more, how he'd managed to try to find someone anonymous to lose everything in and had found someone he knew instead, how two years ago this life would have been beyond the scope of his imagination. He couldn't articulate how it felt, being told by Max to look elsewhere. It was another rejection and a pushing aside all at once - if he found someone else, or at least started sleeping with someone else on a regular basis, she wouldn't have to worry about the fact that he was carrying a torch for her. Not for the first time, he regretted ever telling her how he'd felt in the first place. "I slept with the first woman I found that seemed interested," he said, and it wasn't nice, but it was true. "I felt nothing. That was the point." He glanced off to the side, at the doorway, wondering if her sister was at home. "I'll talk to her," he said. "I was going to do that anyway. I owe her an apology."
“Hey,” she said quietly, wanting to get his attention. “You don’t owe her an apology. You just owe her a conversation,” she said, adding. “And maybe ask if she was on birth control while you’re at it,” she added, hand still moving up and down the baby’s back. She nodded her head toward the window. “Go on. I might be able to catch an hour’s sleep once I put her down.”
Jack had thought of that, once he was out of the maze and had started thinking through what he'd done. He'd assumed that she wouldn't be so willing to get involved with a stranger with no protection if she wasn't, but now that he knew it was Oracle, who was being controlled by someone else...who knew. He sighed. "I did think of that," he said simply. "Alright. If you need anything, call me."
He ducked out the window and onto the fire escape, shutting the window before he left. He had to call the Bat now - and there was nothing more thrilling than that prospect.