Who: Luke, Audrey, Thomas, and Max What: Thomas gets injured by a protester, and Luke, Audrey, and Max go to the hospital. Where: Bathos, then Virginia Mason When: During the mob activity Warnings: Violence
The mob outside of Aubade that evening was not a friendly group, consisting of protesters against the masks on one side, and protesters for on the other, separated by police who were keeping a pathway open, and they had their job cut out for them when Thomas Brandon walked out the front doors of Aubade. The crowd whipped into an immediate frenzy, with everyone trying to get past the police.
Thomas, for his part, gritted his teeth and let it happen. It was not in his nature to wait, and he was fully aware, after a night previous on the streets, that the city needed the Bat as much as it had in the months before he had began again in Humanity. He could have found a way around the crowd, and the men he’d hired could probably have shoved their way through, but Thomas had to show them that he was going and coming from Aubade just like a normal man did, so they weren’t watching for other abnormalities about his movements. As he moved, it was not research and PR on his mind, but the merits of one plan over another, whether it was Thomas Brandon or the Bat that was the threat. Thomas didn’t understand when they’d become two people; that was not what he’d intended.
The police were stretched thinly, and though they did their best to keep people back, a man slipped beneath the arms of an officer and directly into Thomas’ path. No one knew he had a gun until he lifted it. The police officer, a tired, aging traffic cop that just wanted the day to be over, was already turning to pull a straggler back into the crowd, when he saw the gun and desperately reached out to push the man’s hand up.
The man’s hand flew up. The gun went off with a flash. Thomas saw it coming and, with reflexes born of someone who saw the end of a gun barrel far too often, started to throw himself to one side, but not fast enough. He felt the impact but not the pain. The shot rang out, sound slower than light. Thomas didn’t hear it; the bullet got him askew in one shoulder, and it turned him over and knocked him down hard enough that he didn’t protect his head as he fell.
Police tackled the shooter to the ground in a pile of angry hands and hard weight, even as the crowd panicked. Some few clustered around Thomas, and shouts for someone to call an ambulance accompanied the stars behind his eyes as everything went white.
Max had just sent Alina out the door with the baby. The woman had ensured her that there would be a secure perimeter a foot around her an Amanda on all sides, and she’d even let Max try to penetrate it in a dozen different ways. She felt better, but not good, and she’d pulled the baby back no less than five times and ensured her pacifier was clipped to her pink onesie, and that her cap had been covering her ears, and that she was bundled up sufficiently in the carrier. She knew it was the right thing, sending her to Aubade where security had just been beefed up, but she didn’t like it.
Once they’d gone, Max had spent the next fifteen minutes pacing across the living room, arms hugged around her midriff. She knew they had no choice but to do this, but she still felt like shit about it. She was torn between wanting to keep Thomas safe and wanting him to love her, and she knew he’d see this as her betrayal. In the end, if Luke couldn’t convince him to see reason, she’d carry the blame for it. He’d forgive the kids, because Thomas always forgave the kids; it was one of the reasons he was such a good father. But her, she wasn’t sure he’d forgive her.
But to keep him safe, Max would do almost anything. She’d do the same thing for Amanda, for Luke, for Audrey. She wasn’t selfless enough to be a Mask; she never had been.
Luke thought about their plan on the way to Bathos, and by the time he arrived he didn’t like it any more than he had while talking to Max. He knew Thomas would see it as a betrayal, one that wouldn’t easily be forgiven if at all, but the alternative wasn’t any better. If it was a choice between protecting Thomas and potentially losing his trust, then Luke would always choose the latter. At least then he would still be alive and the Bat would remain the symbol of hope it was meant to be. Of course, all this could be avoided if he could manage to talk some sense into Thomas, but it would be difficult at best and his hopes weren’t admittedly very high. He knew how stubborn Thomas was, especially once he was set on a particular course of action.
He deftly avoided the reporters and slipped inside the building, taking the stairs up to Max and Audrey’s apartment two at a time. Since he figured Max would be on edge he knocked first and spoke through the door, letting her know that it was just him before actually going inside. There wasn’t much to say, not yet, so he simply flashed a tight smile and waited.
Bathos wasn't nearly as bad as Aubade, but Audrey still didn't feel like setting the time aside to make the journey from Monarch to the building. A supply closet served as a convenient door point, and she popped out of the closet in the living room of the Bathos apartment less than a minute after Luke. "Hey," she said, a little breathless from running. "So, what's the plan?"
Max was, admittedly, grateful to see both of them. She stopped pacing, and she took a deep breath, making sure she really wanted to see this through. “We try to talk to him. If we can’t,” she added, pulling a Musings issue tranquilizer dart from the pocket of her jeans. She didn’t get to do anything more than hold it up before Luke’s cellphone rang, and she looked at him, and then at his pocket, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. “Answer it,” she said, already putting the dart aside unthinkingly.
The tranquilizer dart was a surprise even though he’d known that they had to incapacitate him somehow, but his cell rang before he could think on it too much. Even though it could have been anyone from Wren to another reporter the ringing made him uneasy, and Luke pulled the phone from his pocket with a slowness that was almost reluctant. He answered, though, and as he listened to the voice on the other end his expression shifted from confusion to something like panic before he could turn away and hide it. His conversation was a series of muttered questions from ‘What happened’ to ‘How bad’, and when he finally hung up a long pause followed.
Not even his best attempts could hide the strained look on his face, and Luke couldn’t think of a way to break the news gently. “That was... the hospital. Thomas was-- there was--” He shook his head. “He was shot. Not life-threatening, it got him in the shoulder, but… he is unconscious. They say he suffered a concussion.”
Max was already thinking when Luke was muttering his questions. She was thinking about forgetting the fucking truck and risking Audrey’s door ability, and she was thinking about killing him (if he was still alive), and then she was clicking into that frightening military place where panic got so bad that it stopped existing altogether, a learned disassociation. She grabbed her keys, and she was already grabbing her coat and slipping it on by the time Luke listed the injuries. Not life threatening, she told herself, tried to make herself believe it. “Which hospital?” she asked, trying to keep the conversation about logic, voice unnervingly calm. “If it’s Virginia Mason, there’s a closet in the ER, Audrey. Job and I hid in there for a smoke.” Calm.
The color had drained from Audrey's face by the time Luke had hung up the phone, and she could only watch Max, already on her feet and getting ready. She blinked, and shook herself. Thomas had been shot, and he was concussed. This wasn't happening. It was like somebody had heard the thing they wished for and made it happen in a grotesque and terrible way. "Describe where it is," she said, and the door to the closet that she'd come through was already white with a star on it as she spoke. She was determined not to panic. The last few days had been...well, they'd been too much. She'd seen a man get shot in the head, and now this? What if it never got better? What if things stayed this insane? She crushed that thought before it could make her hysterical, and opened the door.
“It’s Virginia Mason,” Luke confirmed, though it seemed unnecessary at this point. He felt like he was watching the two of them from far away and nothing was sinking in as quickly as it should have been, but there was no time to fall apart now. For a moment he considered trying to be the voice of reason, suggest that they take a car instead of magically appearing in a closet, but that would be unbearably slow. Audrey’s way was better. He was right behind her, waiting for the door to open so they could get where they needed to be.
Max described the space, and the process of getting there took only a minute. Her stoicism slipped for only a moment, and it was for Luke (not Thomas). There was something in his face that broke her heart, that spoke of even more shit on his young shoulders, and once they reached their destination she ruffled a hand into his hair and then squeezed his shoulder once. “Tomorrow, Luke, you go to Thomas, Inc., an d you take Thomas’ place,” she said, glancing at Audrey later. “You’ll need to get Orin Monarch in here, visiting enough times that he can’t be the Bat, and we get Corbinian or Nightwing in the suit, I’ll take care of that.” She opened the door from the closet and looked either way down the hall. “Are we agreed?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at them. They were fixing this shit, and they were fixing it now.
"Sounds good," Audrey said, keeping her voice down, following Max's look up the hall. She began walking, sure that if she slowed down and thought too long that she might just start crying, which wouldn't do anybody any good. "You sure you don't want to get Orin in the suit? He could do the job just as well. I know it wouldn't really solve the problem of proving he's not the Bat, but..."
Luke nodded. “Agreed.” It didn’t matter that he hardly knew enough about the company and business in general. Someone had to take over in Thomas’ absence, and he wouldn’t have accepted anyone else. “Not Orin,” he said as they walked, shaking his head. “They both need to be cleared. Either of the other two can do a good enough job.”
It was easy enough to find Thomas’ room in the ER. The door was lined with police, and the crowd could be heard just beyond. “Corbinian first. He can’t get killed, and Thomas was really fucking worried about that,” Max said, because it was true. If something happened to Roger, Thomas wouldn’t be able to handle it, not after the two deaths that had already happened. “Luke, you’re listed as his next of kin. Audrey and I aren’t on the list,” she said, stopping and nodding toward the door. “Go. We’ll wait here. I’ll contact Corbinian and Roger. Audrey will get in touch with Monarch.” She paused, adding. “Let us know if he’s okay?” She knew they wouldn’t let strangers in that room, not with what had happened, and she and Audrey had no legal leg to stand on, not here.
"Oh. Good point." Audrey had heard Corbinian on the comms, but never met him. Still, if he couldn't die, at least he couldn't make Thomas feel guilty for endangering someone.
Audrey turned to look at Max, genuinely surprised that they wouldn't be able to get in. "What?" she said, unthinking, then realized why, and that it was better not to probe even if she felt like they should all be able to stare at Thomas until his eyes opened and he was fine again, which was what was going to happen. "Oh. Yeah, sure." She shifted back. "Yeah, let us know."
Luke wasn’t paying enough attention to feel any kind of surprise that Audrey and Max couldn’t go in. He was thinking about how he should have stayed in Aubade and been there instead of leaving him alone, but the door and the police lining it brought him back to the present. “I’ll let you know.” But he’d be fine, of course; that was what Luke had to tell himself. He paused for a moment before moving past the police and disappearing through the door.