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schizoauthoressTitle: All Our Best Men Are Laughed At III
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: set after "The Death of Superman", goes AU from there.
Warnings: canonical character death, broken grief process, foul language, violence, eventual clonecest
Prompt/Fill: First sentence and general story idea provided by M.G. Nemesi on Tumblr.
Word Count: 2116
Summary: Breaking in, breaking out, breaking memorials, and breaking the law. All in a good night's work for Jason Peter Todd.
Word of the Day: fiducial, adjective:
1. Based on or having trust.
2. Accepted as a fixed basis of reference or comparison: a fiducial point; a fiducial temperature.
Masterpost (click for previous parts)
All Our Best Men Are Laughed At, Part Three
Wayne Manor is a fortress. And besides, Jason doesn't want to try getting in through that way... Alfred is up there, and Alfred thinks he's dead. Alfred doesn't need a ghost from the past rustling the curtains as he slips in through a window or running through the halls toward the secret entrance to the Batcave. He goes up the back-road that the Batmobile usually takes, whether going into the city or heading back home, on foot. It's a trek -- with only a guard rail to keep him from tumbling down the grade, and enough gravel and dislodged asphalt pebbles sprayed across it to make the walk treacherous -- but he's gone through worse.
There's a stunted, scrubby little tree up ahead. Jason reaches up and readjusts his sweatshirt hood. It's black, like the stealth suit he has on underneath it, and even in the fading afternoon sun it's hot and miserable. But it's necessary, or will be once he gets into position. When he's six feet from the tree, Jason cuts across the road and climbs up the incline -- avoiding the security camera.
They got the occasional hiker or high school party up here when Jason was Robin -- never mind that the nearest woods are Bruce's private property and clearly marked as such -- and he's sure things haven't changed. It's not exactly bravery to flout private property markers, but it's accepted as the sort of daring that most normal teenagers admire. Jason hated having to pick up the beer cans (always shitty brands, too, without fail) and garbage they left behind, but he would have felt worse leaving Alfred to do it.
Anyway, with his ripped-up jeans, Doc Martens boots, and black sweatshirt, Jason looks like a high school kid at first glance. The stupid wraparound sunglasses he'd picked up at the Gotham Mall complete the look and hide enough of his face. Even if Batman and his new Robin notice him on motion sensors and activate the other, hidden security cameras, they will likely dismiss him as a threat. He moves up the incline into the tall, drying grass, what used to be near the limit of the cameras' range. He hopes that's still the case.
Jason keeps climbing until he's in line with the hidden entrance to the Batcave. It's quite a ways below him, but he doesn't think about that. He pulls down the sweatshirt hood just enough to pull the stealth suit's hood in place, so that it covers most of his face. Then he folds his legs underneath him, steadying himself, and goes still and quiet -- almost into a meditative trance. The sensors shouldn't pick him up now that he's not moving.
He wants back into the Cave -- back into Bruce's life, if he's honest with himself, even though he knows that's really fucking unlikely -- and he has a vague idea of messing things up once he's inside. There's nothing concrete, though. Jason is excellent at making plans, but he also knows that there's such a thing as over-planning. He's got no reason to stuff his head full of contingencies and what-ifs right now. All he has to do is wait for the beginning of patrol. Alfred always stayed away unless there he was needed to coordinate for a big operation, and there shouldn't be one happening now.
Jason wants to keep his eyes closed when he feels the faint tremble of the security access doors sliding open beneath the ground. He doesn't want to see the new Robin in action -- it was bad enough looking at those photographs. But he has to, he has to know who is leaving the Cave, and whether he needs to wait longer.
It's the Batmobile, and he sees two silhouettes in the moment that the front of the car is visible. Batman and Robin, then. Jason leaps to his feet once the car makes the turn to go downhill, running down the incline. The sweatshirt's hood flies backward off his head, but it doesn't matter at the moment. He hits the pavement and whirls toward the -- still open, but rapidly narrowing -- access doors. He darts toward them, just barely making it through. The doors fall closed on the hood of his sweatshirt, and Jason has to wriggle free of it. He leaves it for now.
Jason moves at an easy jog now that he's in the Cave, toward the main Batcomputer. The Cave is empty of other people right now. He glares for a second at the Robin costume in the glass case as he passes it, not bothering to read the plaque at the bottom. It's just like Bruce to make a monument to his failure.
He slides into the tall chair at the main console of the Batcomputer -- he actually fits in the seat, back straight and feet on the ground, which throws him for a moment because he remembers being too short for it. The main screen is mostly blank. Some of the others show tracking devices and vital stats. Jason automatically checks the stats labeled 'Batman', but forces his eyes away from the others.
Instead of reading the other screens, he hits the enter key, which brings up a login screen. Jason enters in a username and hard coded password. He's banking on the fact Bruce would not have scrubbed his information from the system. Bruce is a sentimental sort, and Jason is supposed to be dead.
"Huānyíng," Jason mutters to himself, remembering how his dad's mother would greet them on visits.
Jason wasn't especially talented at computers, but he'd learned his lessons well -- during that six month preparatory period before becoming Robin -- and put in a backdoor code that allowed him to see Bruce's files. It is read-only access, but that was enough. Jason hadn't quite trusted that Bruce would share all the information he had, out of a desire to protect him.
He opens a selection of files and skims them. The current case is a ransom kidnapping, the most recent in a series. Batman seems to have it well in hand. He looks through a few others -- nothing seems out of the ordinary.
Wait.
Jason frowns behind the stealth suit mask. There's another set of vital stats pulled up on Bruce's account. He double-checks it against the others on the side screens. It doesn't match any of them. He continues to click around, quickly skim-reading other files. The words 'Cadmus Project' mean nothing to him, but 'Kryptonian genome' and 'cloning' and 'knowledge downloads' certainly do.
He closes down his view of Bruce's account, pulling up the security programs for the Cave. This will probably set off alarms in the Batmobile. He doesn't know for sure, because he's never shut down all the security programs being run by the computer...
Jason takes a deep breath and enters a series of shutdown codes.
The Cave plunges into complete darkness for five seconds, before the back-up generators (which run on an entirely different computer system) click on the emergency lights. Jason is on the move toward the medical bay even before the lights come back up. He's got a limited amount of time -- he takes a controlled drop down the access tube, hardly slowing when he catches one of the ladder rails, bouncing against the wall slightly. He drops to the floor and sprints toward the sealed door at the end of the hall. The retinal scan access pad is blinking -- it isn't working right now, and he has to get to the door before it reboots.
He barely manages to slow enough, hitting the sealed double door with one shoulder. It does nothing, but he expected that. Jason taps an access override code into the keypad. A low, negative tone is the only response to the input.
"Fuck!" Jason hisses. Too late. (He wouldn't be surprised to find out that Bruce had purposely chosen the length of the hallway to make impossible what he'd just attempted.) But Jason wasn't going to give up. If he was right, if what he suspected was behind this door, he couldn't leave now.
He didn't want to resort to this, but his hand was forced. Jason pulls out two explosive charges and peels back a foil seal on each, exposing the adhesive layer on the back. He sticks them along the center line of the double door, spaced apart deliberately, and enters in a time. Then he runs back down the hall to a safe distance, counting down in his head and flinging himself flat to the floor at 'zero'.
The sound of the explosion is a somewhat muffled 'whump-crump', the force shaking the small hallway. Jason looks up, glad to see that the controlled demolition went as he planned. He approaches the secret room with some caution, still very aware of how much time has passed since the shutdown.
'You expected this,' he tells himself, when he gets a good look at the hidden laboratory, but it doesn't really help. He stares at the teenager floating in a large, fluid-filled glass tube and feels sick. He knows that face. It's Superman's face, even if it's younger than he's ever seen it.
Jason wishes that he'd been wrong.
****
He wakes to the sound of breaking glass. His blue eyes fly open -- there's a slight sting that leaves as fluid rushes past him through the hole in the glass before him -- and he immediately lashes out with... something. The rest of the glass flies apart in small shards. Another voice cries out.
It takes him a moment to focus, but then he sees the teenager in the dark clothes. He's got a... microscope clutched in one hand, but he lets it tumble to the floor.
"Come with me," the teenager says urgently, holding out one gloved hand. "I'm getting you out of here."
He's supposed to be the new Superman. He knows this. He shouldn't have been released yet. He can't imagine that breaking the glass is proper procedure. But this boy thinks there's some kind of... danger? For him? Or for them both?
There are too many questions. But he's the new Superman. Even if the boy is lying or means to harm him, he'll be able to take care of himself.
"Okay," he says -- trying to ignore how his voice sounds so young -- and takes hold of the boy's hand.
****
Jason leads the way down the hall, toward the access tube. They are running out of time... Batman has to know something is wrong by now.
Suddenly, there are strong arms wrapped around his waist, and Jason yelps in surprise before he realizes what's going on. The Superman clone has him, and they're flying upward to the main level of the Batcave. He tries to reassure himself, 'It's okay, it's okay, brea--'
"Look out!" Jason shouts. Too late -- they're moving too fast for the teenage Superman to correct their course in time. Jason flings his arms over his face, but the broken glass from the memorial case doesn't seem to hit him. He cautiously opens one eye, and sees only yellow. He rips the old Robin cape off the clone's head. "Okay, get me to the garage and put me down!"
The Superman clone looks relieved at the order and complies, landing them next to Bruce's collection of Batmobiles. Jason darts for the keys, grabbing the most familiar set out of habit. He runs for the old Batmobile that matches the keys, glancing over his shoulder only once to make sure he's being followed. The clone flies over the top of the car to the passenger side door after Jason hits the unlock button. They slide into their respective seats and slam the doors shut at the same moment.
Jason can't help laughing as he turns the key in the ignition -- years of hassling Bruce to let him drive the car, and he had to die and come back to do it. "Buckle up, pal!" He says, with cheer that's only slightly forced, giggling as the clone does what he says yet again. (He hopes that won't get to be a habit, and makes a mental note, as he backs the older model Batmobile out of its parking space, to cool it on the orders himself.) He stabs a finger at one of the large buttons on the roof of the car, and when he's got the car turned around properly, the doors leading to the back road exit have opened.
He lays down a layer of rubber as the car roars out of the Batcave.
*****
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: set after "The Death of Superman", goes AU from there.
Warnings: canonical character death, broken grief process, foul language, violence, eventual clonecest
Prompt/Fill: First sentence and general story idea provided by M.G. Nemesi on Tumblr.
Word Count: 2116
Summary: Breaking in, breaking out, breaking memorials, and breaking the law. All in a good night's work for Jason Peter Todd.
Word of the Day: fiducial, adjective:
1. Based on or having trust.
2. Accepted as a fixed basis of reference or comparison: a fiducial point; a fiducial temperature.
Masterpost (click for previous parts)
All Our Best Men Are Laughed At, Part Three
Wayne Manor is a fortress. And besides, Jason doesn't want to try getting in through that way... Alfred is up there, and Alfred thinks he's dead. Alfred doesn't need a ghost from the past rustling the curtains as he slips in through a window or running through the halls toward the secret entrance to the Batcave. He goes up the back-road that the Batmobile usually takes, whether going into the city or heading back home, on foot. It's a trek -- with only a guard rail to keep him from tumbling down the grade, and enough gravel and dislodged asphalt pebbles sprayed across it to make the walk treacherous -- but he's gone through worse.
There's a stunted, scrubby little tree up ahead. Jason reaches up and readjusts his sweatshirt hood. It's black, like the stealth suit he has on underneath it, and even in the fading afternoon sun it's hot and miserable. But it's necessary, or will be once he gets into position. When he's six feet from the tree, Jason cuts across the road and climbs up the incline -- avoiding the security camera.
They got the occasional hiker or high school party up here when Jason was Robin -- never mind that the nearest woods are Bruce's private property and clearly marked as such -- and he's sure things haven't changed. It's not exactly bravery to flout private property markers, but it's accepted as the sort of daring that most normal teenagers admire. Jason hated having to pick up the beer cans (always shitty brands, too, without fail) and garbage they left behind, but he would have felt worse leaving Alfred to do it.
Anyway, with his ripped-up jeans, Doc Martens boots, and black sweatshirt, Jason looks like a high school kid at first glance. The stupid wraparound sunglasses he'd picked up at the Gotham Mall complete the look and hide enough of his face. Even if Batman and his new Robin notice him on motion sensors and activate the other, hidden security cameras, they will likely dismiss him as a threat. He moves up the incline into the tall, drying grass, what used to be near the limit of the cameras' range. He hopes that's still the case.
Jason keeps climbing until he's in line with the hidden entrance to the Batcave. It's quite a ways below him, but he doesn't think about that. He pulls down the sweatshirt hood just enough to pull the stealth suit's hood in place, so that it covers most of his face. Then he folds his legs underneath him, steadying himself, and goes still and quiet -- almost into a meditative trance. The sensors shouldn't pick him up now that he's not moving.
He wants back into the Cave -- back into Bruce's life, if he's honest with himself, even though he knows that's really fucking unlikely -- and he has a vague idea of messing things up once he's inside. There's nothing concrete, though. Jason is excellent at making plans, but he also knows that there's such a thing as over-planning. He's got no reason to stuff his head full of contingencies and what-ifs right now. All he has to do is wait for the beginning of patrol. Alfred always stayed away unless there he was needed to coordinate for a big operation, and there shouldn't be one happening now.
Jason wants to keep his eyes closed when he feels the faint tremble of the security access doors sliding open beneath the ground. He doesn't want to see the new Robin in action -- it was bad enough looking at those photographs. But he has to, he has to know who is leaving the Cave, and whether he needs to wait longer.
It's the Batmobile, and he sees two silhouettes in the moment that the front of the car is visible. Batman and Robin, then. Jason leaps to his feet once the car makes the turn to go downhill, running down the incline. The sweatshirt's hood flies backward off his head, but it doesn't matter at the moment. He hits the pavement and whirls toward the -- still open, but rapidly narrowing -- access doors. He darts toward them, just barely making it through. The doors fall closed on the hood of his sweatshirt, and Jason has to wriggle free of it. He leaves it for now.
Jason moves at an easy jog now that he's in the Cave, toward the main Batcomputer. The Cave is empty of other people right now. He glares for a second at the Robin costume in the glass case as he passes it, not bothering to read the plaque at the bottom. It's just like Bruce to make a monument to his failure.
He slides into the tall chair at the main console of the Batcomputer -- he actually fits in the seat, back straight and feet on the ground, which throws him for a moment because he remembers being too short for it. The main screen is mostly blank. Some of the others show tracking devices and vital stats. Jason automatically checks the stats labeled 'Batman', but forces his eyes away from the others.
Instead of reading the other screens, he hits the enter key, which brings up a login screen. Jason enters in a username and hard coded password. He's banking on the fact Bruce would not have scrubbed his information from the system. Bruce is a sentimental sort, and Jason is supposed to be dead.
"Huānyíng," Jason mutters to himself, remembering how his dad's mother would greet them on visits.
Jason wasn't especially talented at computers, but he'd learned his lessons well -- during that six month preparatory period before becoming Robin -- and put in a backdoor code that allowed him to see Bruce's files. It is read-only access, but that was enough. Jason hadn't quite trusted that Bruce would share all the information he had, out of a desire to protect him.
He opens a selection of files and skims them. The current case is a ransom kidnapping, the most recent in a series. Batman seems to have it well in hand. He looks through a few others -- nothing seems out of the ordinary.
Wait.
Jason frowns behind the stealth suit mask. There's another set of vital stats pulled up on Bruce's account. He double-checks it against the others on the side screens. It doesn't match any of them. He continues to click around, quickly skim-reading other files. The words 'Cadmus Project' mean nothing to him, but 'Kryptonian genome' and 'cloning' and 'knowledge downloads' certainly do.
He closes down his view of Bruce's account, pulling up the security programs for the Cave. This will probably set off alarms in the Batmobile. He doesn't know for sure, because he's never shut down all the security programs being run by the computer...
Jason takes a deep breath and enters a series of shutdown codes.
The Cave plunges into complete darkness for five seconds, before the back-up generators (which run on an entirely different computer system) click on the emergency lights. Jason is on the move toward the medical bay even before the lights come back up. He's got a limited amount of time -- he takes a controlled drop down the access tube, hardly slowing when he catches one of the ladder rails, bouncing against the wall slightly. He drops to the floor and sprints toward the sealed door at the end of the hall. The retinal scan access pad is blinking -- it isn't working right now, and he has to get to the door before it reboots.
He barely manages to slow enough, hitting the sealed double door with one shoulder. It does nothing, but he expected that. Jason taps an access override code into the keypad. A low, negative tone is the only response to the input.
"Fuck!" Jason hisses. Too late. (He wouldn't be surprised to find out that Bruce had purposely chosen the length of the hallway to make impossible what he'd just attempted.) But Jason wasn't going to give up. If he was right, if what he suspected was behind this door, he couldn't leave now.
He didn't want to resort to this, but his hand was forced. Jason pulls out two explosive charges and peels back a foil seal on each, exposing the adhesive layer on the back. He sticks them along the center line of the double door, spaced apart deliberately, and enters in a time. Then he runs back down the hall to a safe distance, counting down in his head and flinging himself flat to the floor at 'zero'.
The sound of the explosion is a somewhat muffled 'whump-crump', the force shaking the small hallway. Jason looks up, glad to see that the controlled demolition went as he planned. He approaches the secret room with some caution, still very aware of how much time has passed since the shutdown.
'You expected this,' he tells himself, when he gets a good look at the hidden laboratory, but it doesn't really help. He stares at the teenager floating in a large, fluid-filled glass tube and feels sick. He knows that face. It's Superman's face, even if it's younger than he's ever seen it.
Jason wishes that he'd been wrong.
****
He wakes to the sound of breaking glass. His blue eyes fly open -- there's a slight sting that leaves as fluid rushes past him through the hole in the glass before him -- and he immediately lashes out with... something. The rest of the glass flies apart in small shards. Another voice cries out.
It takes him a moment to focus, but then he sees the teenager in the dark clothes. He's got a... microscope clutched in one hand, but he lets it tumble to the floor.
"Come with me," the teenager says urgently, holding out one gloved hand. "I'm getting you out of here."
He's supposed to be the new Superman. He knows this. He shouldn't have been released yet. He can't imagine that breaking the glass is proper procedure. But this boy thinks there's some kind of... danger? For him? Or for them both?
There are too many questions. But he's the new Superman. Even if the boy is lying or means to harm him, he'll be able to take care of himself.
"Okay," he says -- trying to ignore how his voice sounds so young -- and takes hold of the boy's hand.
****
Jason leads the way down the hall, toward the access tube. They are running out of time... Batman has to know something is wrong by now.
Suddenly, there are strong arms wrapped around his waist, and Jason yelps in surprise before he realizes what's going on. The Superman clone has him, and they're flying upward to the main level of the Batcave. He tries to reassure himself, 'It's okay, it's okay, brea--'
"Look out!" Jason shouts. Too late -- they're moving too fast for the teenage Superman to correct their course in time. Jason flings his arms over his face, but the broken glass from the memorial case doesn't seem to hit him. He cautiously opens one eye, and sees only yellow. He rips the old Robin cape off the clone's head. "Okay, get me to the garage and put me down!"
The Superman clone looks relieved at the order and complies, landing them next to Bruce's collection of Batmobiles. Jason darts for the keys, grabbing the most familiar set out of habit. He runs for the old Batmobile that matches the keys, glancing over his shoulder only once to make sure he's being followed. The clone flies over the top of the car to the passenger side door after Jason hits the unlock button. They slide into their respective seats and slam the doors shut at the same moment.
Jason can't help laughing as he turns the key in the ignition -- years of hassling Bruce to let him drive the car, and he had to die and come back to do it. "Buckle up, pal!" He says, with cheer that's only slightly forced, giggling as the clone does what he says yet again. (He hopes that won't get to be a habit, and makes a mental note, as he backs the older model Batmobile out of its parking space, to cool it on the orders himself.) He stabs a finger at one of the large buttons on the roof of the car, and when he's got the car turned around properly, the doors leading to the back road exit have opened.
He lays down a layer of rubber as the car roars out of the Batcave.
*****
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on 2012-11-22 16:17 (UTC)no subject
on 2012-11-23 05:56 (UTC)