Note: I messed up (again). This is 9; the one just before is 8.
The images of Bruce losing his fucking mind and being summarily assaulted play on too many channels to count. Bruce makes it to three hundred before he has to bury his face in his hands and regroup. It takes him hours longer than it should. He needs to watch the attack, to be assured that he’d utilized every advantage afforded him, to examine the battlefield from every available angle, but the only angle that’s available is the one being used to victimize him. Consequently, Bruce finds it much more difficult than he’d expected to…
He can’t make it through the footage, not a tenth of it—not a minute of it. Not thirty seconds, not five.
It doesn’t surprise him to find that Clark has taken a leave of absence from the Daily Planet, citing personal reasons. He imagines what it must be like, to have to hear it over and over, and Bruce can only hope that Clark has taken a trip to that monstrous structure he hides in the Arctic, rather than sitting in his dingy west Metropolis apartment listening to Bruce’s pain.
The police are easy enough to brush off; they always have been, for Bruce. They ask their questions at the hospital, and Bruce’s attorneys answer while Bruce, behind a partition, prepares swabs for the Kit in grim silence. He doesn’t look at them, Gotham City’s finest—not one of them, when he walks stiffly past. He doesn’t speak to them. When he discovers who was on patrol duty the night before the cruise set sail, Bruce will let the Bat have his say.
Eventually of course, after, after Bruce’s name and proclivities have been dragged through more mud than half the Liberty, everyone steps up to denounce the “brazen act of terrorism”. There are speeches and parades and protests. There are city-wide petitions for increased budgetary allowances for the GCPD. There’s the Protect Our Own campaign. There’s the flood of inappropriate and vicious-spirited memes and all the uninspired glee the tank media takes in calling him the Wincing Prince until his people sue them for defamation of character and harassment. (He doesn’t ask them to do so, but his people are loyal; there’s some comfort to be had in that.)
There are marches and unauthorized television re-enactments. There are Walk for Wayne races. There are point-of-view eyewitness exclusives. There’s however many digital copies of the footage that Alfred was unable to catch in his frantic world-wide server-scrape of information (and let them come after Bruce and Wayne Industries for that—let them try to prove it). There is the upswell in stock prices and the outpouring of support and inspiration that Gotham City dedicates to the victims and by extension, Bruce.
However, Bruce doesn’t serve the duty that he does for thanks and he doesn’t need support; he makes do with what he has—he doesn’t require inspiration to perform his obligations.
He doesn’t allow himself to make the mistake of believing that what happened to him was the worst thing that happened aboard ship for the hour he and his fellow hostages were detained. He’s fine, he thinks.
Alfred is a wonder that Bruce doesn’t deserve. He takes over Bruce’s care once his physician is assured of his fitness to return home. He helps as he can; Bruce represses his flinch whenever his Guardian hovers too close. (Two steps.) Alfred has the furniture rearranged for Bruce’s comfort, he has all the chair backs turned to the walls and the doorways cleared.
Returning to his daily routine is imperative. It’s three hundred and nineteen strokes from one end of his swimming pool to the other; Bruce trims his time down to seventy-nine point seven-five seconds. He aims for seventy-five.
Bruce pretends not to notice the changes taking place in the manor; it’s best to allow Alfred his preferences. The west hallway is one hundred and two feet long, forty point eight steps; it takes approximately six point fifty-two seconds to get to the door of Bruce’s Study from end. Alfred announces himself before entering rooms in small ways which he never would have used before-a deliberate scuff of his shoe, the tap of meticulous fingernails on plaster, the slight catch of clearing his throat.
The study is ten steps across. If he’s quick, if he’s fast enough, Bruce can make it from one side to the other in under one point twenty eight seconds. There is no clear line of sight to the upper stairwell; he needs a mirror moved so he can properly see the bannister-head. He coats the mirror in a translucent nano-polymer to keep it from being shattered.
Alfred looks him in the eye, accedes to his many requests and carries on doing what is in Bruce’s best interests as he always has, without consulting Bruce about the details. Bruce finds stacks of invitations and puff-piece articles bound up with the newspapers in the bin. He reads every one, in the dimness of the large kitchen at night—the well-wishes and the slander both—then puts them all back in the trash where they belong.
Returning to his daily routine is imperative, and yet it lingers just out of his reach.
Alfred never lets him see a glimmer of pity; Bruce is pathetically grateful for this.
The scene becomes an iconic one: Superman, caught by camera in the midst of his battle against the elements, saving civilian survivors of a mudslide. The camera is shaky, the footage just clear enough to see the Man of Steel pause, head turning before continuing the rescue efforts for several minutes. His eyes glow. The crack of the sonic boom echoes and the footage goes to static.
Nine minutes, no—five hundred and fifty seconds. The news reports that Superman doesn’t return to the scene of disaster until half an hour later. Bruce counts it out again and again.
“No comment yet,” the glossy News Anchor relays, “on why Superman left an evacuation zone to assist with a relatively minor hostage situation on the Atlantic basin—”
Bruce turns the sound off.
Four hundred and eighty-six seconds. Two thousand, one hundred and eighteen point two seconds. Six hundred and ten seconds. He knows it’s there, but he can’t find the seam in his memory where the time was lost.
Re: No Justice (But What We Make) 9/?
The images of Bruce losing his fucking mind and being summarily assaulted play on too many channels to count. Bruce makes it to three hundred before he has to bury his face in his hands and regroup. It takes him hours longer than it should. He needs to watch the attack, to be assured that he’d utilized every advantage afforded him, to examine the battlefield from every available angle, but the only angle that’s available is the one being used to victimize him. Consequently, Bruce finds it much more difficult than he’d expected to…
He can’t make it through the footage, not a tenth of it—not a minute of it. Not thirty seconds, not five.
It doesn’t surprise him to find that Clark has taken a leave of absence from the Daily Planet, citing personal reasons. He imagines what it must be like, to have to hear it over and over, and Bruce can only hope that Clark has taken a trip to that monstrous structure he hides in the Arctic, rather than sitting in his dingy west Metropolis apartment listening to Bruce’s pain.
The police are easy enough to brush off; they always have been, for Bruce. They ask their questions at the hospital, and Bruce’s attorneys answer while Bruce, behind a partition, prepares swabs for the Kit in grim silence. He doesn’t look at them, Gotham City’s finest—not one of them, when he walks stiffly past. He doesn’t speak to them. When he discovers who was on patrol duty the night before the cruise set sail, Bruce will let the Bat have his say.
Eventually of course, after, after Bruce’s name and proclivities have been dragged through more mud than half the Liberty, everyone steps up to denounce the “brazen act of terrorism”. There are speeches and parades and protests. There are city-wide petitions for increased budgetary allowances for the GCPD. There’s the Protect Our Own campaign. There’s the flood of inappropriate and vicious-spirited memes and all the uninspired glee the tank media takes in calling him the Wincing Prince until his people sue them for defamation of character and harassment. (He doesn’t ask them to do so, but his people are loyal; there’s some comfort to be had in that.)
There are marches and unauthorized television re-enactments. There are Walk for Wayne races. There are point-of-view eyewitness exclusives. There’s however many digital copies of the footage that Alfred was unable to catch in his frantic world-wide server-scrape of information (and let them come after Bruce and Wayne Industries for that—let them try to prove it). There is the upswell in stock prices and the outpouring of support and inspiration that Gotham City dedicates to the victims and by extension, Bruce.
However, Bruce doesn’t serve the duty that he does for thanks and he doesn’t need support; he makes do with what he has—he doesn’t require inspiration to perform his obligations.
He doesn’t allow himself to make the mistake of believing that what happened to him was the worst thing that happened aboard ship for the hour he and his fellow hostages were detained. He’s fine, he thinks.
Alfred is a wonder that Bruce doesn’t deserve. He takes over Bruce’s care once his physician is assured of his fitness to return home. He helps as he can; Bruce represses his flinch whenever his Guardian hovers too close. (Two steps.) Alfred has the furniture rearranged for Bruce’s comfort, he has all the chair backs turned to the walls and the doorways cleared.
Returning to his daily routine is imperative. It’s three hundred and nineteen strokes from one end of his swimming pool to the other; Bruce trims his time down to seventy-nine point seven-five seconds. He aims for seventy-five.
Bruce pretends not to notice the changes taking place in the manor; it’s best to allow Alfred his preferences. The west hallway is one hundred and two feet long, forty point eight steps; it takes approximately six point fifty-two seconds to get to the door of Bruce’s Study from end. Alfred announces himself before entering rooms in small ways which he never would have used before-a deliberate scuff of his shoe, the tap of meticulous fingernails on plaster, the slight catch of clearing his throat.
The study is ten steps across. If he’s quick, if he’s fast enough, Bruce can make it from one side to the other in under one point twenty eight seconds. There is no clear line of sight to the upper stairwell; he needs a mirror moved so he can properly see the bannister-head. He coats the mirror in a translucent nano-polymer to keep it from being shattered.
Alfred looks him in the eye, accedes to his many requests and carries on doing what is in Bruce’s best interests as he always has, without consulting Bruce about the details. Bruce finds stacks of invitations and puff-piece articles bound up with the newspapers in the bin. He reads every one, in the dimness of the large kitchen at night—the well-wishes and the slander both—then puts them all back in the trash where they belong.
Returning to his daily routine is imperative, and yet it lingers just out of his reach.
Alfred never lets him see a glimmer of pity; Bruce is pathetically grateful for this.
The scene becomes an iconic one: Superman, caught by camera in the midst of his battle against the elements, saving civilian survivors of a mudslide. The camera is shaky, the footage just clear enough to see the Man of Steel pause, head turning before continuing the rescue efforts for several minutes. His eyes glow. The crack of the sonic boom echoes and the footage goes to static.
Nine minutes, no—five hundred and fifty seconds. The news reports that Superman doesn’t return to the scene of disaster until half an hour later. Bruce counts it out again and again.
“No comment yet,” the glossy News Anchor relays, “on why Superman left an evacuation zone to assist with a relatively minor hostage situation on the Atlantic basin—”
Bruce turns the sound off.
Four hundred and eighty-six seconds. Two thousand, one hundred and eighteen point two seconds. Six hundred and ten seconds. He knows it’s there, but he can’t find the seam in his memory where the time was lost.