Who: Max and Jack What: Jack puts on the Batsuit and practices not falling over. Where: The Bat's warehouse. When: The night following Thomas getting shot. Warnings: None.
Corbinian made it to the Bat’s warehouse early, taking the approach over the rooftops about ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Max. His only memories of the place were not positive ones, so he was a little reluctant to pay it a visit, but here he was all the same, coming to the Bat’s lair to take his suit out and wear it for himself.
In truth, there were very few things that he would have liked to do less than take on Thomas’s identity in any capacity. But his dislike for the man did not change the fact that as a vigilante, he was a success, and that it was important to keep a symbol of protection like the Bat alive to the people of the city. More importantly, however, there was Max to think of, and Amanda, and everyone else related to Thomas and to Monarch who were bound to be hurt if this all didn’t stop.
It was strange how relieved he felt not to be going to this meeting as Jack, to be going in his costume (face, Rorschach called it, and on some level he understood that feeling), because while as Jack he could not talk to Max and had managed to neatly destroy their relationship, as Corbinian he had a reason to talk to her, business to discuss, a plan to make that came first and foremost.
He climbed in through one of the upper windows, dropping lightly to the ground, demonstrating his usual lack of care for heights or anything else. The main difficulty in being the Bat would be in behaving like he had something to lose, something he might have forgotten how to do.
Max had arrived well before Jack.
She’d found the lightest version of the suit in the warehouse - and there were more than a few versions to pick from. Thomas was methodical, and there were suits for any scenario he could have conceived of. The weight varied depending on what it was for, and the heavier ones always offered the most protection. She was looking for light, flexible, easy for Corvus to move around in.
The lightest one she found weighed about forty pounds; it would have to do.
She laid it out on the cot, the one she and Thomas had spent the night on just a few days before, and she waited. The alarms let her know when he was close, and she didn’t move; she just waited for him to get inside and reach her. She was dressed in black - jeans and a t-shirt - and her hair was messily piled atop her head.
He walked over to her. He'd done a quick patrol on his way over, and there was a little blood smudged on his knuckles. "Is that it?" he asked, looking at the suit on the cot. He felt a strange sense of dislocation from the situation, and from the suit. He had a difficult time imagining himself wearing it, but that was in fact what he was going to have to do.
She looked over her shoulder at him, taking in his clothes and the paint on his face. She made a thoughtful sound, and she nodded. “Go wash that off,” she said of the white paint. The neoprene that goes beneath it is in the bathroom. It’s like a wet suit with wires,” she explained, sounding far too calm, far too monotone.
He didn't like that distance, but he didn't comment on it, not yet, following her instructions and finding his way to the bathroom. The paint didn't take long to remove, and then he contemplated the neoprene suit. It was all incredibly complicated, particularly for him, a mask with no armor, no gadgets, nothing but himself and a knife and a startlingly high tolerance for pain. He held it out in front of himself for a moment, then put it on, removing his clothes and carefully dressing again, minding the wires as he did so.
Corbinian came back out, looking from Max to the suit on the cot. He held off asking about the suit again. "How are you holding up?" he asked. He could, at least, make sure she was alright.
“It sucks when you don’t exist,” she said, unthinking, and shaking her head a moment later when she realized he wouldn’t want to hear about that. She took his clothes from him, and she tossed them on the table for him to collect once he was done. And then it was all rote and memory. She picked up the torso of the suit first, about twenty pounds of kevlar in the chest and back plate alone, and she motioned for him to come closer. It was an effort, hoisting it onto his shoulders, and the muscles in her arms tightened, belying how thin she was. She lifted one of his arms, and she began on the snaps, fingers experienced as she did it. “It’s going to be really fucking hard to keep your center of gravity in this,” she told him, and she’d opted to put the torso piece on first to get him to experience that first-hand when he tried to slip into the bottom.
The kevlar was...heavy. For the first time, he wondered more about whether he was capable of doing this than whether he wanted to. All he could really do was hope that his body adjusted to accommodate the extra weight. He certainly wouldn't be jumping between the tops of buildings with as much ease. How did Thomas even move? "I can tell," he said, lifting an arm experimentally.
"When he wakes up, the first thing you need to do is get him to sign something that will give you visitation rights," he said, proving that he did indeed want to talk about it. He'd had a little experience of his own in hospitals, and if he had been given the opportunity to see Helen again on her deathbed and then been denied it by bureaucracy - he shook the thought off. He wanted Max thinking forward, assuming everything would be fine, that Thomas would wake up and be able to sign something. He moved to take the bottom and pull it on, shifting his weight carefully.
She made a sound that was noncommittal. Signing papers would make things official in a way Thomas didn’t want, and she knew it. “He worries about being tied to Manda in any way,” she said, closing the last snap and then ducking her head and lifting his other arm to close the line of stays there. Once they were closed, she stood back and smoothed her hand over the symbol along the front. It was loose on him, but not enough that he’d have trouble with it, and it was bulky enough to confound the eye. She patted her hand where she had just touched, and she stepped back and nodded toward the bottom of the suit. “Try it. Might as well start finding your center of gravity now.”
He felt a flare of anger, sharp and immediate. He knew the logic in it, that Thomas wouldn't want to be tied to his daughter for reasons relating to her safety, but still, it hardly mattered when popular rumor connected them anyway. What was the point? Why not keep Max and Amanda connected to him, with rights to do things like see him in the hospital? He remembered the memory he'd felt from Max, her crushing disappointment and embarrassment. The costume practically itched at him. It was anathema to him, and there was no happier moment in the future than the one where he took it off.
He got one leg into the bottoms and nearly lost his balance, catching himself against the wall. "An auspicious beginning," he murmured, and put the other leg through.
She smiled when he almost lost his balance, reaching out a hand to steady him, then moving close enough to close the snaps at his hips and down. She looked up at him from her crouch once she was done, and the smile actually widened for a minute. “That’s about forty five pounds,” she said. “Think you can handle the boots and the gauntlets?” He would have to, and they both knew it, but she asked anyway. “If it makes you feel any better, Robin fell off the damn building when he wore this thing,” she told him, standing again, fingers checking the stays as she straightened. Her hand lingered on his hip a moment, over the familiar curve of beaten kevlar, and then she stepped away to open the drawer with the gauntlets and cowl. “Shoes are beside the cot.”
Her smile went miles to give him the confidence that he had to do this, like it or not. "I think I can," he said. "I know he did. Unfortunately, I don't think I can afford to follow in Robin's footsteps on that one. I have to get this right." Otherwise, people would remember the first time and assume he was an impostor, which would only make Thomas look all the more suspicious.
The lingering touch was enough to give him pause, but then it was gone again. He wondered what she'd been thinking in that moment. He thought he knew. He sat down on the edge of the cot, the extra weight giving him a heavier fall than he was used to. It was just going to take time to get comfortable with the sensation. He began pulling on the right shoe. "So tell me. What would the Bat do?" He had no idea really how the man patrolled, or what sort of crimes he concerned himself with.
She leaned back against the table, and she crossed her arms and watched him, noting the differences in how he moved in the suit, the ways in which he was nothing like Thomas. She tried to watch with a casual eye, as if she was a casual observer who didn’t know how the muscles that made the suit worked the way it did moved. “Getting it right it kind of important, yeah,” she said, and it was an understatement. Nightwing would have pulled the suit off better, and she knew it standing there; but she trusted Corvus to do it, and she knew he would, even if he wasn’t the obvious choice.
She waited until the shoes were on before she moved again, and she walked up to him and slipped one glove on him, then the other. “He patrols the docks and the roughest areas of Rainier,” she told him. “He doesn’t look for crying women in alleys,” unlike you. “He hits the drug rings hard, the weapons dealers, the big guns, and he expects it to trickle down. Homicides, hard, dangerous crimes that impact bigger shit. And he’s rough on them,” she added, turning his now-gloved hands up so Jack could see all the impact marks across the knuckles. “Lots of hand work.”
He knew he wasn't the ideal. He also knew that there was likely to be gunfire and an extra dose of aggressive behavior, even for the Bat, and that no one else could afford to take a bullet. In a way, that actually did make him the ideal, even if he didn't have the training or the experience with the suit. There was no better cannon fodder on the team.
He clenched the fingers of one hand, checking the grip on the glove while she slid the other on him. It had been a long time since he'd been this close to Max, but she was still a thousand miles away, separated by the suit and her thoughts, which had obviously gone somewhere else entirely.
No crying women in alleys - no person to person work, just going after the larger organizations. Someone had to do that, he supposed, even if it wasn't something he had ever wanted to do himself, ignoring the mundane horrors for the larger ones. "Any idea who he's been after recently?" He didn't have the benefit of knowing who Thomas might have been on the heels of. Jack did, however, have a fairly good working knowledge of the various gangs and power players in the city. You had to as a mask, even if you weren't going after them yourself all the time. He found himself looking forward to being rough on someone, giving the armor a few new chinks.
She was expecting that question, and she reached for a sheet of paper she’d printed out. It had names, descriptions and places, and she crossed her arms after handing it to him and looked at him with the added height of the boots. He was tall enough, she decided, and she walked out of the room for a second, only to return with the cape over her arm a moment later.
She had to stretch to get the cowl on him, and the curls got in the way enough to make her laugh and curse. “There’s a comm built in one ear, and police bands in the other,” she said of the cowl. “And sensors, to let you know what you’re walking into,” she told him, and then she was sliding the weighted cape onto him. “Water will slide off, and it’ll help with a glide or drop, if you need it.” She reached under the cape to cinch the belt at his waist, and she spent the next thirty minutes on what everything in the belt did. She’d never actually asked Thomas about anything, but her own military experience made it easy enough for her to get the basic purpose of the items.
Once she was done, she stepped back a few feet and she beckoned him challengingly with her hands. “Come at me. If you can’t stay on your feet with me, we’re going to have a problem.”
Jack was tall to begin with, and the boots gave him a few inches more. Height might make up for any lacking bulk, in this case. While she was out of the room, he walked around a little. The boots were hardly different, but the feeling of the weight was still settling in, around his legs now as well. It was a good thing he didn't really tire the way most people did. He read down the sheet of paper, memorizing names and places to look. The house of a drug lord here, a gathering place of mob enforcers there.
The cowl, he knew in advance, would be the most difficult part. There was identity connected to someone else's mask, and identity he neither wanted nor could refuse, and more practically he wasn't used to having the movement of his head restricted at all. Seeing her laugh at last did make him smile a little, though, and he let her mess with the cowl until his unruly hair fit beneath it. Then there was even more weight, with the cape. He'd never really understood the appeal of a cape, except perhaps to obscure oneself when in shadow, but she had a good point. The idea of gliding was appealing, but likely not something he would test his first time out.
He listened to her talk about everything on the belt, knowing full well he wouldn't use most of it, but listening all the same, because you never knew. Then, moment of truth. If this were any other circumstance he would have time to train and get comfortable moving under the weight, but they didn't have that kind of time. He moved toward her, slowly at first, then gaining a little speed, striking out at her chest and assuming she would block, preparing to be thrown off balance.
She did block. She blocked, and she swept his leg, which was harder because of the weight of the suit and easier at the same time. It was a push at his chest and a sweep forward, and she knew Jack’s fighting style well enough to know he would normally move forward in such a situation. She knew, just as surely, that it was the wrong move in something that weighed as much as what he was wearing, and she stepped left and clear immediately after the sweep and shove, not knowing whether he’d opt to right himself or tilt. It was strange, fighting with anyone in that suit, and she didn’t give him a chance to steady before rounding a kick at the center of his back, where the suit was thinner and there was more vulnerability where it met. She grabbed for the cape as she did it, yanking it over his head and using it against him.
He did move forward, instinctively, not thinking about what the weight of the suit might do if he did so. He usually moved forward instead of moving back, because a knife to the stomach couldn't kill him and it brought him close enough to do real damage. Moving close instead of keeping a safe distance tended to be unexpected, but Max was counting on it. His balance was thrown off from the sweep to his leg, and as he moved forward to catch himself, he caught the kick to his back. There was no time to keep himself from falling by the time the cape was over his head, and he hit the ground hard, managing not to break his nose from the weight and the flat fall, though he wrenched something in his arm in catching himself. Great. Whatever it was, it swiftly healed and settled back into place. It was something of a struggle to get on his feet, but he did it as quickly as he could, pushing the weighted cape back over his head and into place again.
He could already tell this was going to be frustrating, but it turned out the cowl was good for a multitude of things, including hiding that feeling. "Do it again," he said.
She did, but she changed it up, and he fell again, just as hard. It took an hour for her to be able to sweep him without affecting his balance, and then it was just the cape that was a weakness. She concentrated on moving around him, ducking under arms that were too heavy and around a torso that couldn’t move with the agility it was accustomed to. “You can’t fucking chase me, Corvus,” she said, catching the cape and smashing her foot against the back of his knee and she tripped him up in the inky fall of black. “You have to take me down, incapacitate me before I have a chance to touch you. I can play you like a fucking violin if you don’t grab me,” she told him.
It went on for an hour. An hour of falling and feeling less than the Bat, an hour of quietly churning frustration and anger that he, as usual, refused to expose. He kept reminding himself that this was important - that this wasn't about Thomas, this was about Max and everyone else who was bound to be hurt if this didn't stop. That was what kept him going, what got him up from the floor over and over.
And he did improve, at least, finding his center of balance under the weight of the kevlar. He could hardly stand it, used to a fluidity of movement and a fighting style that was about speed, not bulk, but he bottled his frustrations with logic and got up again, got up again, got up again. By the time Max was telling him not to chase her he felt he might be able to do this. He got up again after falling for the thousandth time, and he moved in without waiting, grabbing her arm this time and spinning her, counting on her to correct the motion and try to shake him, using it to pin one arm against her back and grab the other at the wrist, pulling her close against him.
She slammed her heel into the boot, snapping it before she managed to grind down, and even then her weight didn’t do much damage with the protection the boot offered. She laughed, and it was an honest, throaty laugh, even as she reached up and jabbed her fingers into his eyes before he knew it was coming. It was an easy thing, from there to elbowing just where she knew the torso of the suit met the pants, hitting neoprene and sensitivity. “Better,” she said, even as she grabbed the cape and broke free and ran with it at full tilt, away from him.
The slam down onto his foot didn't hurt much, but the jab at his eyes did. He pulled his head back even as she struck with her elbow, grunting with pain. He did not, however, lose his balance, although the sharp yank on the cape almost sent him toppling. He backed up to create slack and then turned, winding the cape up against his side and forcing her to come closer or let go.
She let go with a smile. “Much better,” she said, smiling harmlessly as she walked toward him. When she pulled the gun from the back of her jeans, it was so quick the glint of the barrel lasted only a second. It discharged loudly, the ricochet noticeable at such close range. She went straight to the chest, at an angle, wanting him to feel what a bullet impact felt like in the kevlar. It didn’t pierce the suit, didn’t crack, but the same material that protected him spread the force across his torso like a thousand fists coming at him at once.
It wasn't as if he had never been shot. Hardly. Still, the shot to his chest sent him straight to the ground. He was used to bullets going through, of the momentum of a bullet carrying him a few steps back without falling, and then moving forward again as the wound healed, always good for a few seconds of horrified distraction. He was not used to the force of a bullet being like a punch to the chest, and there was no chance he was going to stay on his feet. He fell back, but he kicked out with his foot. If he could at least get her on the ground he would feel as if he'd accomplished something. Truthfully, he wasn't fighting as hard as perhaps he should have been. He wasn't going to hurt Max, and sparring was always going to be miles away from the real thing.
She wasn’t expecting the kick, and she barely managed to catch herself in a crouch instead of landing flat on her ass. She smiled at him, and she nodded. “Good enough,” she said, standing a holding a hand out to him, to help hoist him up in the heavy suit, which required all her weight in the movement. “Nightwing is going to be waiting for you near the docks at 10,” she told him. “Call if anything goes wrong.” She paused, and her voice went softer. “And thank you, Corvus.”
He straightened, settling into the suit again. He had little doubt Max had called in Nightwing just to make sure he didn't fuck this up too badly, but he couldn't blame her for that. "I'll meet him then," he said. He tugged the cape back into place, the pain in his chest easing and then fading altogether as the bruise healed and disappeared like it had never been. Some things were so easily fixed. He was still wearing a contact to cover his lighter eye, so his eyes were dark under the shadow of the cowl. "No need," he said, and moved out into the night.
She watched him go, knowing the Nightwing comment had hurt him. She cursed when he was gone, sorry for it, and then she grabbed the clothes he’d discarded. She’d need to find some white paint.