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WIP Amnesty: Beneath the Banner of the Bat (DC Comics)
Posted for my Unofficial WIP Amnesty Week
Title: Beneath the Banner of the Bat
Fandom: DC Comics
Rating: As it is: PG-13 As it was intended to be: R
Pairing/s: Assorted Batfamily slash, het, and femslash.
Notes: This completely crack-addled Fantasy Elseworld, which began with the image of Bruce Wayne in a Kilt (I think the link is in the notes somewhere) and as an excuse to use the line, "have this one washed and brought to my quarters", would have been written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dc_flashfiction Lord King Badfic Challenge, but I wrote three whole stories for that challenge. Also, as may be seen in the second IM conversation, I had too much shame to write down what the plot was leading me towards.
Text:
The iron gates of Gotham before him, his army victorious and weary behind, Wayne the Bruce at last attained the city of his birthright, the city he had battled and bled to possess. Raising his longsword in one mighty fist, he struck its hilt upon the seam where the gates would part; the clang echoed out over the waiting troops, up to the low wet clouds spread across the dawn-lit sky. "Open!" he called, and the boom of his voice reverberated further than the blow of his hilt. "Open these gates to your prince now returned!" The echoes climbed to the crests of the battlements, before fading into the wind's breathing silence.
The Bruce drew his arm back and smote the gates again. "Open! In the Name of the Far-seeing Empress!" His deep-voiced command rippled around him where he sat like a statue kilted in blue-black-yellow plaid on a cloaked horse of bronze, through the breeze lifting the loosed hair of the silent maiden of battle who ever rode at his left, even out and up to the city's glittering spires.
"Open and admit the Banner of the Bat!" Wayne the Bruce dealt the gates a final blow; they groaned beneath his hand, and the long lines of prisoners trembled in their rough rope bonds. Riding back in the midst of the column rather than at the Bruce's right hand, Dic the Fair dropped his head and shook it, hiding his smile behind the fall of his long hair.
The gates groaned again, and creaked as they parted; they clanged wide to reveal Vizier Akins and the sullen-eyed councilors standing unmounted, bearing on a chased silver platter the keys to the city. The Bruce bowed to them, smiling as if unaccustomed to shaping his face to pleasantry, and reached out with one iron-gauntleted hand, and they raised the keys to his grasp and turned silently as one.
So rode Wayne the Bruce into the city of Gotham, returned from exile with fire and sword in the name of the Flame-Haired Empress, accompanied by his battle maid and his estranged protege, followed by his woad-painted warriors and long trains of war captives. So rode he, and the people of Gotham looked down silent from their towers and shivered at the sight of him, but when they looked upon Dic's smiling face they smiled in their turn.
[scene change]
[lengthen this scene with more description]
The captives were led into the largest market square, and Bat-blazoned awnings unfurled over them as the clearing sky unveiled a bright Sun. The closed shops were locked to keep order, and then the people were allowed to enter in small groups to ransom back their kin and beloveds for gold or silver or fine goods in plenty. Wayne the Bruce rode among the eddies of hurrying people, his black steed sleekly curried, his enveloping helm polished and the bands of paint round his eyes freshly renewed; he surveyed the prisoners and the townsfolk come to fetch them, seeing the frightened, awed faces of the people he would rule as they looked up and beheld him.
The Bruce's roving gaze settled upon a boy of the age to be a squire, his hair a thatch of wild black curls, the line of his back strong and defiant even as he knelt nude in the dust, bare but for rough bandages around shoulder and thigh. When the Bruce paused before him, the face the boy turned up was proud and dirty and lit with two wide-set beautiful blue eyes.
The Bruce pulled rein and dismounted. The prisoners to either side shrank away, but the boy held his gaze with an unafraid scowl. "Boy."
"That isn't my name." The beautiful eyes narrowed, and the omitted "sir" reverberated in its absence between them. The right-hand prisoner gasped.
"What would that name be?" The Bruce knelt before the boy, heedless of the hem of his freshly washed kilt or his scabbards dragging behind him in the dust. He stripped off his gauntlet and took the boy's chin in hand, swiftly before he might dodge away, and felt the muscle of his jaw tense, the tension in his strong neck as his head was turned to one side and the other. His shoulders were unbowed and square, solid enough already to heft a two-edged sword, or even an ax.
"Jay," said the boy, not at all muffled by the Bruce's hand holding his jaw. He narrowed his eyes further, till they glittered between thick-lashed lids. "Jay of the Todds."
"And who of the Todds will come to ransom you?" The boy Jay was bruised, and wounded, and beautiful. No young man had ridden at the Bruce's side for long hollow months.
"None remain." Jay closed his eyes, a gesture of pain but not of weakness. The Bruce waited, feeling the warmth of the skin in his hand, the sturdy architecture of bone, and when the boy opened his eyes again they glittered like jewels discovered in springtime mud.
"Then I shall." That flared Jay's bright blue eyes wide, the only sign of surprise he betrayed, as the Bruce rose and gestured to two nearby soldiers. When they came and had bowed he nodded to Jay. "Have this one washed and brought to my quarters."
[scene change]
Dic the Fair went walking alone in the cool of evening, cloak thrown over his bare shoulders, to see the city he'd heard tales of for long wandering years. As he trod the city's cobbles with soft-shod feet, he thought of his first glimpse of Gotham, when he was a child and his parents' troupe had come to dance for the nobles of the city; he still remembered how he'd spun with his mother, laughing amid showers of little Bat-emblazoned coins. The wealth and the laughter had hid till too late that their ill-luck had brought them to the city just as its ruling council's civil war would end in blood, fire, and exile. His parents killed before him when a squad of soldiers sought to annhilate the Bruce at a dinner party, Dic had fetched up among the jetsam of the shattered, fleeing household, whence the Bruce had found him and raised him to be his right hand, training and teaching him.
But the Bruce had also raised Dic as his son, as his heir, and as his replica, and that last Dic was not.
The streets were dark and close and empty, all Gotham's folk shut away for fear of their new masters. Dic would have to change that, with time's aid; to think better on the question, he sought the heights whose eddying breezes always cleared his wits. Forsaking the ground, he climbed the rough shell-stone facade of a tower, past curtained windows glowing with warmth or humming with low apprehensive voices. From one drifted a woman's sweet song as she worked at some broidery or stitching and chanted softly to herself, and he paused for a few moments, hanging easily from her ledge, and thought briefly to enter.
No, the woman would but fear him. He climbed on, until the breeze blew sweeter and cooler, until the tower narrowed to a crenellated spire. He swung his leg over and rested his elbows on the low balcony, a banner snapping above his head. If he'd been a few years younger he might have climbed up bearing a Bat-stitched flag to replace it and leave the tower's masters puzzled, and he smiled at the thought as he looked out over the city, glittering dark against the wine-colored glow of the sunset's remnants and the deep blue of the sky. The obsidian towers of dark glass and polished stone, flickering with tiny window-lights, thrust upwards like frozen fingers of midnight, their shadows blanketing the lesser buildings. Dic looked across the shadow-swamped streets and wondered how Gotham would appear full of torches and lamps and smiling faces, lit brightly in the night and shining up to the sky.
Something moved in a patch of moonlight.
Dic leaned to see closer. A slight young person -- a woman, obvious even from this distance and the boy's clothes she wore -- dashed from shadow to shadow, bright wisps of hair flaring from beneath her hood. Behind her walked a boy or perhaps a slenderer girl, following the first one's path, and it was soon clear that he was her rearguard.
Two young people, of an age to be easily seduced to intrigues; Dic smiled at them even as he swung back over the edge of his little nest, unhitching a fingerswidth line from his belt to toss it to the next tower. A tug and a leap and he was flying through the air of his new city, borne on the breeze as easily as a bird. He turned in the air, landed and slid along a gabled roof, leapt to another as lightly as he might, and from thence a falling flip brought him down to the street, right before his quarry.
The boy froze. The girl leapt, teeth bared and fists up. Dic caught her easily, tucking her beneath one arm, but in the brief scuffle her hair sprang free of its hood, and he knew he'd seen its like before. With his free hand Dic caught the boy's cloak, but he'd made no move to flee, staring at Dic with eyes that gleamed wide in the moonlight. "You are Dic," he murmured, looking up unafraid. "The right hand of the Bruce."
That made the girl redouble her thrashing. "So he is, and so we're caught!" she snapped, struggling. "Help me, here!"
Dic squeezed her a little more tightly, but though she gasped she did not give in. "Shh," said the boy to her, and to Dic, "Sir, I implore you, set her down. I offer myself as surety that she will not flee."
"Gargoyle's stones, I won't," she muttered, but sounded more restrained by the boy's promise than Dic's hold. Dic nodded and set her down, shifting his hold on the boy to the well-made collar of his tunic. She set herself to the boy's side, glaring up at Dic from beneath her cloud of bright hair; they were of a height, a head shorter than he, and between the boy's gravity and the girl's bantam fierceness he was hard pressed not to smile.
So he allowed himself at least a small one. "Hail and well met, my young friends. Why do you walk city streets in the darkness?" The boy glanced at the girl, who shook her head with extravagant emphasis. Dic sighed a little; the day had been long, and his patience was not boundless. "Why should I not call for the soldiers who keep order in the night?"
The girl flashed him a look of a rabbit feigning foxhood; the boy's eyes narrowed from their first round look, but otherwise he stood like a post, as he had since Dic had stopped them; the girl meanwhile was never still, as full of motion as Dic had been at her age. He could not but help smile, and wider at her pretty scowl. When he glanced to the boy again he was greeted with a cool-eyed observance, as if the first wide-eyed greeting had been well put away, and he realized with a slight shock that the boy's eyes were light, perhaps blue. Rather like... the Bruce's.
Dic shook himself. They had still not answered him, either of them, and he now recalled where he'd seen such hair before. "Why is Tawny Arthur's daughter abroad? On some errand of mischief?"
The boy shut his knowing eyes. The girl gasped, eyes flaring wide. "I am not--"
Dic laughed, and ruffled up her hair. "I saw the man, and you have his hair." She ducked away, but seemed less afraid. "And a name?"
"Stepha." The boy glanced at her reprovingly, but she had shut her eyes, her shoulders drooping.
"He died well," Dic offered.
Stepha repaid him with a bright-eyed glare and a kitten's growl. "He did not!" she cried. "He died like the spineless worm he was, and escaped by it punishment for betraying our city. Now Gotham rages at me in his place."
The boy's squeeze to her hand stopped her words, and she shut her eyes again. "And I am Tim," he said, eyes clear and unafraid. "Timanthy of the Drakes. Do with me as you will, but let her go."
Dic was unsurprised to hear this, and delighted when the look Stepha gave Timanthy was neither gratitude nor shock, but a fond angry glare. "I think not," Dic said, as helpless to keep from spoiling the tease by smiling as he was to keep from stroking Tim's fine collar with his thumb. "Let you go into the city, and if you win through that, to the Bruce's men whose camps ring the landward wall and whose ships fill the harbors? You would never succeed. Not as you are." And just as he'd thought, those last four words lit Timanthy's eyes, though the rest of his face was as calm and grave as one might see of a man twice his age.
Stepha's was not, her whole face flickering with fear and curiosity before she pulled on a mask of defiance. "I'm no man's thrall!"
"Not yet, nor need you be." She shut her mouth tight, regarding him sidelong and disbelieving; Tim regarded him evenly, as if judging the worth of his word. Dic steeled his voice a little as he added, "or, take your chances with those who blame your father for Gotham's fate."
"I know your deeds." Tim spoke slowly. "I think... Stepha?"
Stepha set her teeth. "What will I do? Yes. Yes, my Lord Dic. If we are not your thralls."
"My students, then. Both of you." And they both smiled warily, so Dic smiled at them till their wariness melted, Stepha's into an unclouded smile and Timanthy's into something narrow and thoughtful that Dic wished to trace with his thumb.
He did not. Instead he laid his hands on their shoulders, saying, "Come with me," and they did.
[scene change]
Scene here of Bruce seeing Helena, another agent of the All-seeing Empress, of whom he rather disapproves, and their interaction.
The Faseeing Empress sends her agents, a pair of high born ladies (or disguised as such) to see the city/the results. Intro Jason as The Bruce's lap boy then. And Bruce's attitude towards his city.
[scene change]
The woad swirled down one side of Tim's face was still tacky when his new lord Dic ushered them up the long spiralling stair within the Tower of the Waynes, soldiers before and behind them in the Bruce's blue-black-yellow plaid. Timanthy wore the red-green-gold of Lord Dic, as did Stepha, and the curls of woad inscribed from their hairlines to their cheekbones should have stood out garish and wild set against their new clothes, the very mark of captivity. Instead Stepha's made her beauty sharper and fiercer, and Timathy's, sticky and faintly itchy as it was, felt like truth upon his face.
Could it befal that they had fallen into their fates? Dic never raised his hands from their shoulders as they walked up and up through the torchlit spine of the Tower, and though Tim knew with his wits that it was merely to leash them in, he couldn't find the defiance within him to resent the warm pleasant grasp on his shoulder, and Stepha, who brooked no curbs nor bonds, climbed contentedly with one hand twined in Tim's.
At last, legs aching, they reached the chamber at the top, one large room faceted like a gem, its wide windows displaying the lights of Gotham far below. Timanthy looked across the room from side to side as best he could, ignoring Stepha's gasp and tightening fingers, because he knew that once he looked towards the throne...
It was carven of gleaming dark wood, and canopied with sable silk, and [Wayne the Bruce sat on it, larger than life and twice as awe inspiring, etc. Describe him.
[last scene: Tim POV] So Dick takes them to see Wayne the Bruce; [ I have to describe him on his throne with his sable cloak, don't I?] Describe Jason sitting at Bruce's feet like a beautiful wild thing lightly chained and not at all tamed. Bruce's hand in his curls. He and Tim stare at each other and then smile half-unwillingly and Steph talks irreverently to him while Tim tries to shush her. Dic and Bruce are poky and then Bruce says, "if you have students you must learn to be a teacher." That mends things a little. Bruce then uses Cass as a lie detector as he questions them about their loyalties (he asks them if they are agents against him and Steph tells about the abortive plot run by her father's man Rog): Tim shrinks back against Dic, Stepha leans forward. But never call her Cass, call her the Silent Maiden. Cass looks at Stepha and says "Come," and Steph goes to her.
Dedicate to Maelithil -- see note at end
Maelithil's artwork of Dick: http://photobucket.com/albums/v340/maelic/?action=view¤t=dickkiltcopy2.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/v340/maelic/?action=view¤t=dick2.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/v340/maelic/?action=view¤t=jay.jpg
http://ciceqi.slashcity.com/touch.htm
Editing: give Steph and Jason a few contractions each.
Note on names: Bruce= the Bruce (plaid: blue, yellow, black)
Dick= Dic (plaid: red, green, gold)
Timothy= Timanthy
Steph = Stepha
Cass= The Silent Maiden
Jason= Jay
Babs/Barbara/Oracle - The Far-Seeing Empress / The All-Seeing Empress
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rubynye: Do you want to hear my lovingly crafted context for "have this one washed and brought to my quarters"?
petronelle: YES!
rubynye: "Beneath the Banner of the Bat"
petronelle: oh dear.
rubynye: Wayne the Bruce rides into the newly conquered CityState of Gotham.
petronelle: *chortles!*
petronelle: OW, Ny.
petronelle: Bruce inna KILT.
rubynye: At his side is his mute assassin maiden; further back is his esttran-- don't make me giggle, I can't type --- estranged protege Dic. No k.
petronelle: I am a dead gil.
rubynye: Yes, Bruce inna kilt.
petronelle: *DEAD* girl.
rubynye: High Fantasy.
petronelle: Why does Batman wear a kilt? 'cause Robins can hear zippers!
rubynye: Bruce reviews the captives and finds a boy wisWSEQQTE
rubynye: <--KEYBOARD MASH
rubynye: *hiccups*
petronelle: *giggles merrily*
petronelle: Cass the mute assassin maiden makes me make GLEEP noises.
rubynye: Reviewing the captives he finds a boy with a dirty face and beautiful blue eyes. He commands that that one be washed and brought to his chambers.
petronelle: I think Dic married into the Gordon clan.
petronelle: (OH! I could resurrect the YJ Regency AU!)
rubynye: Meanwhile, Dic -- no K-- is walking along and catches a boy and girl trying to sneak away--- I think you're right, but Babs informed me she will not be party to this foolishness.
petronelle: Oh, Bah! Babs, you are a bodacious babe, and as such you must even know the etymology. Work it!
rubynye: Heh. What can I find for Babs to do? Hmmm. Which side will I have her on?
petronelle: Side?
rubynye: the city or the conquerors?
petronelle: She may not be involved.
petronelle: She may be elsewhere.
rubynye: maybe we'll mention the Red-headed Queen.
rubynye: Anyway. You can guess who the boy and girl are, right?
petronelle: The boy's Jason. The girl's Cass. Yes?
rubynye: No, Jason is the dirty faced boy, and Cass is Bruce's assassin girl.
petronelle: Yes, I got that.
rubynye: Oh, sorry. I meant the boy and girl Dick catches.
rubynye: anyway. Dick catches Tim and Steph (which latter is the daughter of a feckless spy who got killed in the war, and is in trouble because of her father's misdeeds) and [insert some vague bit of plot here] Dick ends up reconciled to Bruce, I mean Wayne, and gives Steph to the Mute Assassin Girl as a present and takes home his own blue-eyed souvenier. Cue stickiness. The end.
petronelle: Awwwwwwwwwwwww.
rubynye: Dear God that's shameful idfic.
rubynye: The thing that stopped me was: I realized the Tim/Steph/Jason conversation was going to be, basically, "yay concubinage!" "yeah, I hope he isn't too rough on my ass" "do you think he'll actually teach us anything, outside of how to please him in bed, I mean?" and my shame came rushing back in a tidal wave
maelithil: DAMN YOUR SHAME
maelithil: this is not the shame you were looking for! *jedi wave*
Maelithil says that if I finish this with the Happy Catamite Conversation between Steph, Tim, and Jason, she will write the story where Slade the General captures Dic, Right Hand Man of the Bruce, and Dic kills him mid-sex a la Judith.
Title: Beneath the Banner of the Bat
Fandom: DC Comics
Rating: As it is: PG-13 As it was intended to be: R
Pairing/s: Assorted Batfamily slash, het, and femslash.
Notes: This completely crack-addled Fantasy Elseworld, which began with the image of Bruce Wayne in a Kilt (I think the link is in the notes somewhere) and as an excuse to use the line, "have this one washed and brought to my quarters", would have been written for the
dc_flashfiction Lord King Badfic Challenge, but I wrote three whole stories for that challenge. Also, as may be seen in the second IM conversation, I had too much shame to write down what the plot was leading me towards.Text:
The iron gates of Gotham before him, his army victorious and weary behind, Wayne the Bruce at last attained the city of his birthright, the city he had battled and bled to possess. Raising his longsword in one mighty fist, he struck its hilt upon the seam where the gates would part; the clang echoed out over the waiting troops, up to the low wet clouds spread across the dawn-lit sky. "Open!" he called, and the boom of his voice reverberated further than the blow of his hilt. "Open these gates to your prince now returned!" The echoes climbed to the crests of the battlements, before fading into the wind's breathing silence.
The Bruce drew his arm back and smote the gates again. "Open! In the Name of the Far-seeing Empress!" His deep-voiced command rippled around him where he sat like a statue kilted in blue-black-yellow plaid on a cloaked horse of bronze, through the breeze lifting the loosed hair of the silent maiden of battle who ever rode at his left, even out and up to the city's glittering spires.
"Open and admit the Banner of the Bat!" Wayne the Bruce dealt the gates a final blow; they groaned beneath his hand, and the long lines of prisoners trembled in their rough rope bonds. Riding back in the midst of the column rather than at the Bruce's right hand, Dic the Fair dropped his head and shook it, hiding his smile behind the fall of his long hair.
The gates groaned again, and creaked as they parted; they clanged wide to reveal Vizier Akins and the sullen-eyed councilors standing unmounted, bearing on a chased silver platter the keys to the city. The Bruce bowed to them, smiling as if unaccustomed to shaping his face to pleasantry, and reached out with one iron-gauntleted hand, and they raised the keys to his grasp and turned silently as one.
So rode Wayne the Bruce into the city of Gotham, returned from exile with fire and sword in the name of the Flame-Haired Empress, accompanied by his battle maid and his estranged protege, followed by his woad-painted warriors and long trains of war captives. So rode he, and the people of Gotham looked down silent from their towers and shivered at the sight of him, but when they looked upon Dic's smiling face they smiled in their turn.
[scene change]
[lengthen this scene with more description]
The captives were led into the largest market square, and Bat-blazoned awnings unfurled over them as the clearing sky unveiled a bright Sun. The closed shops were locked to keep order, and then the people were allowed to enter in small groups to ransom back their kin and beloveds for gold or silver or fine goods in plenty. Wayne the Bruce rode among the eddies of hurrying people, his black steed sleekly curried, his enveloping helm polished and the bands of paint round his eyes freshly renewed; he surveyed the prisoners and the townsfolk come to fetch them, seeing the frightened, awed faces of the people he would rule as they looked up and beheld him.
The Bruce's roving gaze settled upon a boy of the age to be a squire, his hair a thatch of wild black curls, the line of his back strong and defiant even as he knelt nude in the dust, bare but for rough bandages around shoulder and thigh. When the Bruce paused before him, the face the boy turned up was proud and dirty and lit with two wide-set beautiful blue eyes.
The Bruce pulled rein and dismounted. The prisoners to either side shrank away, but the boy held his gaze with an unafraid scowl. "Boy."
"That isn't my name." The beautiful eyes narrowed, and the omitted "sir" reverberated in its absence between them. The right-hand prisoner gasped.
"What would that name be?" The Bruce knelt before the boy, heedless of the hem of his freshly washed kilt or his scabbards dragging behind him in the dust. He stripped off his gauntlet and took the boy's chin in hand, swiftly before he might dodge away, and felt the muscle of his jaw tense, the tension in his strong neck as his head was turned to one side and the other. His shoulders were unbowed and square, solid enough already to heft a two-edged sword, or even an ax.
"Jay," said the boy, not at all muffled by the Bruce's hand holding his jaw. He narrowed his eyes further, till they glittered between thick-lashed lids. "Jay of the Todds."
"And who of the Todds will come to ransom you?" The boy Jay was bruised, and wounded, and beautiful. No young man had ridden at the Bruce's side for long hollow months.
"None remain." Jay closed his eyes, a gesture of pain but not of weakness. The Bruce waited, feeling the warmth of the skin in his hand, the sturdy architecture of bone, and when the boy opened his eyes again they glittered like jewels discovered in springtime mud.
"Then I shall." That flared Jay's bright blue eyes wide, the only sign of surprise he betrayed, as the Bruce rose and gestured to two nearby soldiers. When they came and had bowed he nodded to Jay. "Have this one washed and brought to my quarters."
[scene change]
Dic the Fair went walking alone in the cool of evening, cloak thrown over his bare shoulders, to see the city he'd heard tales of for long wandering years. As he trod the city's cobbles with soft-shod feet, he thought of his first glimpse of Gotham, when he was a child and his parents' troupe had come to dance for the nobles of the city; he still remembered how he'd spun with his mother, laughing amid showers of little Bat-emblazoned coins. The wealth and the laughter had hid till too late that their ill-luck had brought them to the city just as its ruling council's civil war would end in blood, fire, and exile. His parents killed before him when a squad of soldiers sought to annhilate the Bruce at a dinner party, Dic had fetched up among the jetsam of the shattered, fleeing household, whence the Bruce had found him and raised him to be his right hand, training and teaching him.
But the Bruce had also raised Dic as his son, as his heir, and as his replica, and that last Dic was not.
The streets were dark and close and empty, all Gotham's folk shut away for fear of their new masters. Dic would have to change that, with time's aid; to think better on the question, he sought the heights whose eddying breezes always cleared his wits. Forsaking the ground, he climbed the rough shell-stone facade of a tower, past curtained windows glowing with warmth or humming with low apprehensive voices. From one drifted a woman's sweet song as she worked at some broidery or stitching and chanted softly to herself, and he paused for a few moments, hanging easily from her ledge, and thought briefly to enter.
No, the woman would but fear him. He climbed on, until the breeze blew sweeter and cooler, until the tower narrowed to a crenellated spire. He swung his leg over and rested his elbows on the low balcony, a banner snapping above his head. If he'd been a few years younger he might have climbed up bearing a Bat-stitched flag to replace it and leave the tower's masters puzzled, and he smiled at the thought as he looked out over the city, glittering dark against the wine-colored glow of the sunset's remnants and the deep blue of the sky. The obsidian towers of dark glass and polished stone, flickering with tiny window-lights, thrust upwards like frozen fingers of midnight, their shadows blanketing the lesser buildings. Dic looked across the shadow-swamped streets and wondered how Gotham would appear full of torches and lamps and smiling faces, lit brightly in the night and shining up to the sky.
Something moved in a patch of moonlight.
Dic leaned to see closer. A slight young person -- a woman, obvious even from this distance and the boy's clothes she wore -- dashed from shadow to shadow, bright wisps of hair flaring from beneath her hood. Behind her walked a boy or perhaps a slenderer girl, following the first one's path, and it was soon clear that he was her rearguard.
Two young people, of an age to be easily seduced to intrigues; Dic smiled at them even as he swung back over the edge of his little nest, unhitching a fingerswidth line from his belt to toss it to the next tower. A tug and a leap and he was flying through the air of his new city, borne on the breeze as easily as a bird. He turned in the air, landed and slid along a gabled roof, leapt to another as lightly as he might, and from thence a falling flip brought him down to the street, right before his quarry.
The boy froze. The girl leapt, teeth bared and fists up. Dic caught her easily, tucking her beneath one arm, but in the brief scuffle her hair sprang free of its hood, and he knew he'd seen its like before. With his free hand Dic caught the boy's cloak, but he'd made no move to flee, staring at Dic with eyes that gleamed wide in the moonlight. "You are Dic," he murmured, looking up unafraid. "The right hand of the Bruce."
That made the girl redouble her thrashing. "So he is, and so we're caught!" she snapped, struggling. "Help me, here!"
Dic squeezed her a little more tightly, but though she gasped she did not give in. "Shh," said the boy to her, and to Dic, "Sir, I implore you, set her down. I offer myself as surety that she will not flee."
"Gargoyle's stones, I won't," she muttered, but sounded more restrained by the boy's promise than Dic's hold. Dic nodded and set her down, shifting his hold on the boy to the well-made collar of his tunic. She set herself to the boy's side, glaring up at Dic from beneath her cloud of bright hair; they were of a height, a head shorter than he, and between the boy's gravity and the girl's bantam fierceness he was hard pressed not to smile.
So he allowed himself at least a small one. "Hail and well met, my young friends. Why do you walk city streets in the darkness?" The boy glanced at the girl, who shook her head with extravagant emphasis. Dic sighed a little; the day had been long, and his patience was not boundless. "Why should I not call for the soldiers who keep order in the night?"
The girl flashed him a look of a rabbit feigning foxhood; the boy's eyes narrowed from their first round look, but otherwise he stood like a post, as he had since Dic had stopped them; the girl meanwhile was never still, as full of motion as Dic had been at her age. He could not but help smile, and wider at her pretty scowl. When he glanced to the boy again he was greeted with a cool-eyed observance, as if the first wide-eyed greeting had been well put away, and he realized with a slight shock that the boy's eyes were light, perhaps blue. Rather like... the Bruce's.
Dic shook himself. They had still not answered him, either of them, and he now recalled where he'd seen such hair before. "Why is Tawny Arthur's daughter abroad? On some errand of mischief?"
The boy shut his knowing eyes. The girl gasped, eyes flaring wide. "I am not--"
Dic laughed, and ruffled up her hair. "I saw the man, and you have his hair." She ducked away, but seemed less afraid. "And a name?"
"Stepha." The boy glanced at her reprovingly, but she had shut her eyes, her shoulders drooping.
"He died well," Dic offered.
Stepha repaid him with a bright-eyed glare and a kitten's growl. "He did not!" she cried. "He died like the spineless worm he was, and escaped by it punishment for betraying our city. Now Gotham rages at me in his place."
The boy's squeeze to her hand stopped her words, and she shut her eyes again. "And I am Tim," he said, eyes clear and unafraid. "Timanthy of the Drakes. Do with me as you will, but let her go."
Dic was unsurprised to hear this, and delighted when the look Stepha gave Timanthy was neither gratitude nor shock, but a fond angry glare. "I think not," Dic said, as helpless to keep from spoiling the tease by smiling as he was to keep from stroking Tim's fine collar with his thumb. "Let you go into the city, and if you win through that, to the Bruce's men whose camps ring the landward wall and whose ships fill the harbors? You would never succeed. Not as you are." And just as he'd thought, those last four words lit Timanthy's eyes, though the rest of his face was as calm and grave as one might see of a man twice his age.
Stepha's was not, her whole face flickering with fear and curiosity before she pulled on a mask of defiance. "I'm no man's thrall!"
"Not yet, nor need you be." She shut her mouth tight, regarding him sidelong and disbelieving; Tim regarded him evenly, as if judging the worth of his word. Dic steeled his voice a little as he added, "or, take your chances with those who blame your father for Gotham's fate."
"I know your deeds." Tim spoke slowly. "I think... Stepha?"
Stepha set her teeth. "What will I do? Yes. Yes, my Lord Dic. If we are not your thralls."
"My students, then. Both of you." And they both smiled warily, so Dic smiled at them till their wariness melted, Stepha's into an unclouded smile and Timanthy's into something narrow and thoughtful that Dic wished to trace with his thumb.
He did not. Instead he laid his hands on their shoulders, saying, "Come with me," and they did.
[scene change]
Scene here of Bruce seeing Helena, another agent of the All-seeing Empress, of whom he rather disapproves, and their interaction.
The Faseeing Empress sends her agents, a pair of high born ladies (or disguised as such) to see the city/the results. Intro Jason as The Bruce's lap boy then. And Bruce's attitude towards his city.
[scene change]
The woad swirled down one side of Tim's face was still tacky when his new lord Dic ushered them up the long spiralling stair within the Tower of the Waynes, soldiers before and behind them in the Bruce's blue-black-yellow plaid. Timanthy wore the red-green-gold of Lord Dic, as did Stepha, and the curls of woad inscribed from their hairlines to their cheekbones should have stood out garish and wild set against their new clothes, the very mark of captivity. Instead Stepha's made her beauty sharper and fiercer, and Timathy's, sticky and faintly itchy as it was, felt like truth upon his face.
Could it befal that they had fallen into their fates? Dic never raised his hands from their shoulders as they walked up and up through the torchlit spine of the Tower, and though Tim knew with his wits that it was merely to leash them in, he couldn't find the defiance within him to resent the warm pleasant grasp on his shoulder, and Stepha, who brooked no curbs nor bonds, climbed contentedly with one hand twined in Tim's.
At last, legs aching, they reached the chamber at the top, one large room faceted like a gem, its wide windows displaying the lights of Gotham far below. Timanthy looked across the room from side to side as best he could, ignoring Stepha's gasp and tightening fingers, because he knew that once he looked towards the throne...
It was carven of gleaming dark wood, and canopied with sable silk, and [Wayne the Bruce sat on it, larger than life and twice as awe inspiring, etc. Describe him.
[last scene: Tim POV] So Dick takes them to see Wayne the Bruce; [ I have to describe him on his throne with his sable cloak, don't I?] Describe Jason sitting at Bruce's feet like a beautiful wild thing lightly chained and not at all tamed. Bruce's hand in his curls. He and Tim stare at each other and then smile half-unwillingly and Steph talks irreverently to him while Tim tries to shush her. Dic and Bruce are poky and then Bruce says, "if you have students you must learn to be a teacher." That mends things a little. Bruce then uses Cass as a lie detector as he questions them about their loyalties (he asks them if they are agents against him and Steph tells about the abortive plot run by her father's man Rog): Tim shrinks back against Dic, Stepha leans forward. But never call her Cass, call her the Silent Maiden. Cass looks at Stepha and says "Come," and Steph goes to her.
Dedicate to Maelithil -- see note at end
Maelithil's artwork of Dick: http://photobucket.com/albums/v340/maelic/?action=view¤t=dickkiltcopy2.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/v340/maelic/?action=view¤t=dick2.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/v340/maelic/?action=view¤t=jay.jpg
http://ciceqi.slashcity.com/touch.htm
Editing: give Steph and Jason a few contractions each.
Note on names: Bruce= the Bruce (plaid: blue, yellow, black)
Dick= Dic (plaid: red, green, gold)
Timothy= Timanthy
Steph = Stepha
Cass= The Silent Maiden
Jason= Jay
Babs/Barbara/Oracle - The Far-Seeing Empress / The All-Seeing Empress
rubynye: Do you want to hear my lovingly crafted context for "have this one washed and brought to my quarters"?petronelle: YES!rubynye: "Beneath the Banner of the Bat"petronelle: oh dear.rubynye: Wayne the Bruce rides into the newly conquered CityState of Gotham.petronelle: *chortles!*petronelle: OW, Ny.petronelle: Bruce inna KILT.rubynye: At his side is his mute assassin maiden; further back is his esttran-- don't make me giggle, I can't type --- estranged protege Dic. No k.petronelle: I am a dead gil.rubynye: Yes, Bruce inna kilt.petronelle: *DEAD* girl.rubynye: High Fantasy.petronelle: Why does Batman wear a kilt? 'cause Robins can hear zippers!rubynye: Bruce reviews the captives and finds a boy wisWSEQQTErubynye: <--KEYBOARD MASHrubynye: *hiccups*petronelle: *giggles merrily*petronelle: Cass the mute assassin maiden makes me make GLEEP noises.rubynye: Reviewing the captives he finds a boy with a dirty face and beautiful blue eyes. He commands that that one be washed and brought to his chambers.petronelle: I think Dic married into the Gordon clan.petronelle: (OH! I could resurrect the YJ Regency AU!)rubynye: Meanwhile, Dic -- no K-- is walking along and catches a boy and girl trying to sneak away--- I think you're right, but Babs informed me she will not be party to this foolishness.petronelle: Oh, Bah! Babs, you are a bodacious babe, and as such you must even know the etymology. Work it!rubynye: Heh. What can I find for Babs to do? Hmmm. Which side will I have her on?petronelle: Side?rubynye: the city or the conquerors?petronelle: She may not be involved.petronelle: She may be elsewhere.rubynye: maybe we'll mention the Red-headed Queen.rubynye: Anyway. You can guess who the boy and girl are, right?petronelle: The boy's Jason. The girl's Cass. Yes?rubynye: No, Jason is the dirty faced boy, and Cass is Bruce's assassin girl.petronelle: Yes, I got that.rubynye: Oh, sorry. I meant the boy and girl Dick catches.rubynye: anyway. Dick catches Tim and Steph (which latter is the daughter of a feckless spy who got killed in the war, and is in trouble because of her father's misdeeds) and [insert some vague bit of plot here] Dick ends up reconciled to Bruce, I mean Wayne, and gives Steph to the Mute Assassin Girl as a present and takes home his own blue-eyed souvenier. Cue stickiness. The end.petronelle: Awwwwwwwwwwwww.rubynye: Dear God that's shameful idfic.rubynye: The thing that stopped me was: I realized the Tim/Steph/Jason conversation was going to be, basically, "yay concubinage!" "yeah, I hope he isn't too rough on my ass" "do you think he'll actually teach us anything, outside of how to please him in bed, I mean?" and my shame came rushing back in a tidal wavemaelithil: DAMN YOUR SHAMEmaelithil: this is not the shame you were looking for! *jedi wave*Maelithil says that if I finish this with the Happy Catamite Conversation between Steph, Tim, and Jason, she will write the story where Slade the General captures Dic, Right Hand Man of the Bruce, and Dic kills him mid-sex a la Judith.