Work Text:
Bruce is just resting. He must be. John can’t see the steady rise of his chest from where he’s sitting but he can picture it pretty easily. It’s fine, he’s tired, he’s had a long day. They both have.
He shifts, tries to bring some feeling back into an unresponsive arm. He can’t tell if the position is to blame or the batarang shoved squarely through his palm. Both, most likely. John doesn’t--
He doesn’t blame Bruce.
Waller is a likely candidate, he himself is the lead suspect. John thinks he might have heard about this sort of thing before. No one in the Pact had been on the look out for justice but some paths had been more justified than others. He remembers Freeze and his Nora.
Ill-defined last words blur together. A shuddering breath. John tries to reach Bruce with the tip of his shoe. He can’t quite manage it, not without wincing as the batarang moves.
There’s so very little distance between them now -- unreachable all the same.
“I’m glad you’re my friend, Bruce.”
John hears his own voice shake, recognises the tone but not the wetness in it, submerged in something that sounds too much like mourning.
Nothing to mourn here. Bruce is fine. Batman always makes it. John’s done his research, not as thorough as those years spent riffling through mountains of tabloids for the perfect picture but he knows enough. The hero has to win. Now, in the wake of a catastrophe of his own making, he's barely on nodding terms with that long-awaited title. Hero. The duty falls to Bruce. It’s how it works.
“Right?”
White lenses remain closed. If Bruce breathes, John doesn’t hear nor see it.
He repeats himself. Tries again over and over. It’s the explosion or the blood loss or something John hasn’t yet seen but has undoubtedly been part of. His knives are strewn all around the floor, tainted red where they'd hit their target, glinting in the dim light more often than not. He’d been proud of the trick, had practised it endlessly, had thought Bruce would like the magician’s flourish.
If he did, John might never know. There are footsteps somewhere below. He considers pulling out the batarang himself and knows he doesn’t have the stomach for it.
“They’re going to take me back to Arkham, aren’t they?” he asks Bruce. There’s a flicker of a sad smile among all that smeared makeup, a reminder of a desperation that had never left.
Arkham had been, for better or worse, home. John dreads it as much as he misses it. He swallows against the lump in his throat and takes a gulping breath, once, twice, as many times as it takes until he starts believing. Maybe Bruce can even hear him, maybe he’ll tell him to fight against this dawning panic.
Or he’s done enough fighting for today. That has to be it. Ace Chemicals is thick with things blind and terrible, long closed down, their own scribbled myth added to it.
“Dr. Leland is going to be so disappointed in me.”
Silence, John comes to understand, would mean acceptance.
“They’re coming for me, buddy.” The word feels foreign on his tongue, undeserving of it as he’s now found himself.
Hope, thin as an eyelid, flutters in John’s chest as Bruce makes what can easily be one of those minute movements attributed to the unconscious grace of sleep. He’s got no time to confirm it as uniformed officers burst in. They’re not, thankfully, the near-identical mass of agents belonging to Waller.
The batarang is dealt with quickly, he hears promises of an ambulance outside and doesn’t understand. Something’s pressed to that gaping wound but John’s drowning as he’s dragged away. He thrashes around, tries telling them about Batman, about how he has to know, begs and pleads.
No one listens. Faith in John seems, in the end, to have been reserved for Bruce alone.