Evangeline wants to be (upintheclouds) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-11-09 19:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *log, barbara gordon, dick grayson |
Log: Dick and Babs
Who: Dickie and Babs
When: A few hours after This non-answer
Where: Clocktower.
What: Oh. You know.
Warnings: LOL. IDEFK. Please hold for updates.
Fall in Gotham City did not generally mean the leaves changing and the cute scarves coming out. No, in general the leaves only turned just outside of town where Bruce Wayne lived. Inside the city, where Dick lived and where he was currently driving in rush hour during a downpour, was gray and gloomy. And it smelled weird. Every time it rained in a big city it smelled weird, that stench of big city life collecting in a manky pile of cigarette butts and cheeseburger wrappers that clung to the storm drains providing just the right barrier to ensure there was a literal river running down the city streets after about two hours. The smell of fresh rain didn't last long, try as Mother Nature might the freshness and cleanliness streaming down the brown haze that hovered around the Gotham skyline could not overtake the centuries old stains on the streets of any big city, and Gotham was no exception. Instead the freshness almost stung the nose, as if someone had tried to mask the scent of death with a quick spritz of lilac air freshener.
No. Fall in Gotham was no one's favorite season. Winter? Possibly. The snow blanketed everything even the lights seemed to glow a little brighter. The Christmas Tree that required armed guards 24 hours a day was a particular favorite of Dick Grayson's. But that was a month off. A month of rain and wind and the smell. Good God the smell.
He was in his '67 Shelby, the loud engine rumbling as he sat idle at a stop light that had turned green at least four times since he'd been sitting there as one car inched up after another. Had he been on his motorcycle he would have been at the Clocktower by now. But he would also be soaking wet, and seeing as how he wasn't on the Bat Clock, and was, in fact wearing a suit because he'd just come off the Wayne Clock. His jacket was flung over in the passenger seat, his tie was loosened, and the sleeves of light purple starched shirt were rolled up around his forearms as he listened to the steady schwump schwump schwump tempo of the windshield wipers trying, poorly, to keep up with the deluge that was beating painfully down on the metallic black and blue racing stripes adorning the roof of the classic heavy metal.
His windows were up, but they were getting a bit steamed around the edges - no matter the shape his car was in, there were some things that would never work properly. The defrost system in any car built before 1983 was one of those things. But he was not going to roll down the window no matter how stuffy the damn car got. He'd just re-upholstered the seats.
It was late in the evening, but it had been dark for two hours already. It was a quarter past seven when he pulled into the alley behind the Clocktower. He hadn't been focusing on this visit on his drive over, though he'd had plenty of time to. He couldn't, he didn't want to try and plan to say anything, he didn't want to try and work it all out in his head before hand. Because if there is one thing he knew, it was that Babs didn't have the script and to write her into a corner so he could unload was the last thing he wanted to do. Any reaction was acceptable, any discussion was on the table.
He didn't feel particularly brave, or proud, as he jogged the five feet or so to the back entrance, trying unsuccessfully to shield himself from the rain via his hands. He let himself in the backdoor, climbed up a flight or two - opting to walk up (to delay? Maybe.) and by the time he reached the top he let himself into the main area without so much as a deep breath to prepare him.
He walked in closing and locking the door behind him, and rubbing the palm of his hand down his face to dry it just a bit, there were darkened splashes on his purple shirt and his hair was dripping. Outside for five seconds and still pretty wet. Ridiculous. Gotham.In.The.Fall.
He called out that it was just him, he went about making himself a cup of coffee even yawning as he waited for the one cup machine to heat up and give him the blast of caffeine he had missed out on by not listening to that three o'clock slump that people with day jobs always talked about but that he'd always assumed was a myth. It was not.
He watched the hot liquid stream out of the machine into his mug and he thought about what time he'd go out patrolling that night. If he would, depending on where this conversation got them (if anywhere). He assumed that Damian was well and happy in London with Helena, the little "real kids" club full of complete and utter brats. Brats Dick had tried to love, Damian had always been easy, Helena - well he didn't know if he was coming and going with her on the best of days. Let alone wondering if she was going to show up feral in the night and kill him on the worst of days. He missed Damian, his heart hurt more than he could possibly describe - and more than he would ever admit to. If he hadn't understood anything else in the world, if nothing else made sense, if he was disappointing people left and right Damian had been the one thing he had always gotten right. At least he thought he had. And maybe that was what hurt the most. The realization that you really are as selfish as you pretend to be.
Floating in a sea of disappointment was never easy. And being selfish was not a way to wade through. He had done some irreparable damage to a lot of people. Maybe they had done it to themselves as well he wasn't egocentric enough to assume that he was actually to blame for every facet of everyone's problems. But he had let so many people down, and disappointed them - and it probably could have been much less painful if he he had bothered to stop thinking about how everything was affecting him and starting thinking about what it (whatever "it" might be) was doing to those he loved. And he did love them. But he wasn't going to be able to love away anyone's problems, despite what he may have thought previously.
Good nature, charm, good looks, and an eager desire to be loved and approved of did not a successful patriarch make.
He wasn't pulled out of his depths of despair until the loud hissing of the coffee machine informed him that it was spatting out the last little bits of legally addictive stimulants into his mug. Well shit. He was going into this hurt, and sad, and miserable. And he imagined that the tide of disappointment that was waiting for him on the couch in the other room was just as hurt, just as sad, and just as miserable. Hooray.
He grabbed the mug, took a sip of the hot bitter liquid, and sighed. Here goes nothing.
He walked into the living area, Babs was on the couch, he sat down next to her, setting his mug on the end table and putting his socked feet on the coffee table. He didn't speak right away. But when he did he looked over at her and gave her a bit of a defeated smile. One that might have told someone he'd been made. Or a smile that might have said he was all out of ideas. Whatever it was when he spoke it was without blame, and as plainly has he'd been able to speak in a long time.
"When I was growing up and was told exactly how to do something, and I tried to follow it to the letter, until about halfway through when I realized that - of course - I could do it better than the instructions were. Inevitably this failed, and Bruce would lecture me with big words and that stern voice knowing that I was sitting there with my eyes rolling so far up into my head that he was going to have to smack me upside the head to put them right again.
But that was training.
When I was doing something with Alfie, or for him, he would give me exact instructions. I would find a way to do it better. Screw it up. And Alfie would come in and say," and then in his best Alfred Pennyworth impression, "Richard Grayson, well you've really gone and cocked this up now, haven't you?"
He paused and sighed. "And I think if he were standing here in this room right now he would probably say the exact same thing." He looked over at her. "What do you think?"