Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-27 11:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *log, bruce wayne, damian wayne, helena wayne |
breaking out bats.
Who: Bruce + Helena + Damian
What: Escape.
Where: Underground.
When: Nowish.
Warnings/Rating: Mentions of violence maybe.
The thing with leads was that you had to follow them. Helena wasn't sure that it would lead to Bruce until it had. A fresh cable streaming out of an old electrical box and maybe it wasn't anything, maybe it was one of a hundred places just like it, made for bootlegging power for those that couldn't afford it. And maybe it was something else.
She wouldn't know until she looked. She kept to the sides of the sewers, walking over grates and the slight inclines at the base of the walls. Art mimicked her life as she kept to the very edges, in the darkest parts of the tunnels, one hand feeling along the line that hadn't been there long enough to get coated in grime and dust. Down one rabbit hole masquerading as a tunnel, around the corner to another, until the cord pushed through a wall and her fingertips at the hole confirmed dust.
If it was older, there wouldn't be any. New. It wasn't confirmation though and so she said nothing as she tracked through the tunnels to the nearest door. Also new, the wood thick but it didn't have that touch of rot that came from a prolonged visit in the sewers. And with a helpful skeleton key lock. She peered through into the room beyond. Dark. Darker in spots along the walls -- doorways? Dark shapes -- she needed better eyes. Even goggles, maybe could have helped, but those were more Selina's style than hers.
Only one other option. She reached for her kit to pick the lock first, listening for that little tumble. When she heard it, she stepped back and let go. Let the frustration of not being able to find Bruce slide off her back, let the buzz on the comms slide away from her, she was the rock in the stream, everything else carried downstream. Nothing else made her feel half as free as when she was like this, her tail swinging languidly behind her. Anyone on the other side of the door was in for a rude awakening as she pounced inward to an abandoned basement.
Abandoned. Her ear twitched, picking up nose her human ears would have lost. She sniffed. Dust and old sweat, but something else, human, warm, male. She took her steps slowly on the hard concrete floor. Human voices. TV. Human, human, door, steel, her lips peeled back from her teeth, male, another one, cigarette smokers, sand, new sweat, wild grass, Manor. She had never smelled Bruce like this before, but she had smelled the Manor and she knew it, way down to the bones she didn't have right now.
Chattering on the comms. A plan? Her plan. Her plan was to find Bruce, to get him back alive. She slid under a table covered by a sheet and forced the transformation back, teeth gritted as stone gave way to flesh and her suit. And as soon she could, she responded.
And maybe it wasn't the best damn plan but that door was steel, no lock on this side, no other way in except through that door that connected with thick rock walls and maybe the door wasn't locked, but she could guess that if was missing a lock on this side, it was barred on that side. But she looked while she waited for Damian, crept in human form through the other rooms. Vents too small to crawl through, stairs that led up to a blocked door at the top of the staircase.
How do you enter a locked room? Digging through the floor would take days, going through the ceiling would lose all element of surprise and there was no lock to pick. The other options had already been voiced. She wasn't stupid enough to believe that Ra's wasn't going to find out anyway that Bruce was gone, but she didn't believe he'd kill him either. Not because there was some compunction against killing or some damned code, but because Ra's was the type of megalomaniac that was never going to let Bruce Wayne die by any other hand, especially not the one of some underling.
When there was nowhere else to look, she stepped out of the basement again to wait against the tunnel wall for Damian. As soon as he was there, it was a fast relay of information, which room, how many men she could tell were in there. "Let me be the shield on this one. You go for Bruce. And if you have any qualms about this, if you want to change the plan, say so now. Ten minutes from now it's going to be too late."
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Damian said and he knew his sister was butting heads with Selina and maybe the rest. He also knew Selina was also freaking out and if it were up to her, she’d be the one rescuing Bruce. She had even asked to join the team. But, Damian couldn’t work with her. Selina was selfish, unapologetically so and the thought of seeing her with Bruce in some sappy romantic reunion made him sick to his stomach.
Damian gave a nod and waited for Helena to bust through the door before slipping past her through the shadows. The little bird was just as good at being unseen as he was at fighting and none of the ninjas even noticed the young al Ghul slip past. He pulled one of the remaining guards into a sleeper hold, silently laid him down on the ground and then worked on Bruce’s restraints. “Are you hurt?” Damian asked, because he knew that his father could do the rest on his own as long as he didn’t have broken legs.
Bruce had kept count. Tick, tock, seconds and minutes and hours, and the TV was always, always on. He saw. He watched. His anger grew and grew, and time passed, and what he wanted was to scream and shout and fight against his restraints until he could fight no longer and he was numb, staring but not really seeing. But that would be weakness, giving up, and ne couldn't do that. Out. He needed of get out. Soon, he thought, soon, but opportunities were slim and waiting was agony.
And then it happened. A commotion beyond the doors of his prison, freedom, and he was alert. No sleep, little food and water, but he'd been saving his energy for this. Relief was short-lived, however, and he forced himself to sit still as Damian worked on his restraints. "No." Out, out, out. They had to get out, and as soon as he was free he was up, ignoring the stiffness in his legs and the way his head spun; it didn't matter. There was no time for gratitude save for a nod, a flicker in his gaze before he focused in other things. Anger and sheer desperation to get above and help his city gave him strength, and none of the League was going to stop him.