#tagging polls is always so humbling. answer my questions boy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tablestoastandtime · 2 months

Text

SAHTW: Trinity

So per that funny little poll, here's a snippet that's probably getting cut from the main fic of the sequel to Take It Back Now Y'all, but is kinda fun anyways. The current title for the whole project is Such A Heart That Will and all ficlets will have that in the title and the tags + a descriptor.

Bruce is having FeelingsTM and also an interrogation.

On his own, it would have taken months of planning. Even with the help of his family it would have been weeks. Within thirty-seven minutes of telling Clark and Diana that he needed to talk to Alvin Draper, a not insignificant member of the Gotham criminal element, openly and honestly after years of push, pull, and mysteries, the entire matter was handled.

There was always something humbling about the reminder just what the remarkable people he surrounded himself with were capable of.

In this case, that meant the Red Hood of Gotham seated and bound in the Lasso of Truth on the Watchtower.

His helmet was gone, but they’d left his domino as a professional courtesy, for whatever that was worth. It wasn’t much but it was a shred of privacy in what was bound to be a vivisection of a conversation. Bruce hoped it was better than nothing.

There wasn’t the space for that kind of mercy when it came to the questions even Bruce wanted to. The Lasso gave no quarter.

“Had you already been planning your takeover Park Row when we first met?” He needed to know, even if he doubted it. Back then the boy had barely been upright with illness, but time had proven Alvin a skilled liar. It wasn’t entirely out of the question that maybe the whole thing had been a play to bring his guard down. Bruce already knew that Alvin had somehow discovered his identity years ago. He might have already known back then. He might have use that, then.

Alvin barely blinked before the words were spilling out, honest in a way Bruce knew he would never be anywhere else. “It hadn’t’ crossed my mind in any meaningful way. The idea of controlling Crime Alley was a pipe-dream. I’ve seen people try and I’ve seen them fail.. Why would I be any different?”

“Any why were you?” Clark asked, gaze steady and incisive, all light and journalistic focus. “Different, that is. What do you have that they didn’t?”

Alvin twitched, the barest of flickers in his cheek and a tightening around the eyes for half a breath. In front of any other tribunal, the reaction might have gone unnoticed. Tonight, it didn’t.

“Training, knowledge, foresight, and a tired and true persona managed by a combination of deception, dramatics, and dumbass RNG.”

There were more questions than answers in that response, and Bruce paused to consider which angle to start unravelling them from. Who had Alvin watched fail to take over Crime Alley? Where had he tested his methods? Alvin’s resemblance to other criminals was a funhouse mirror, all warped edges and alien familiarity. He looked as much like an unusually brutal vigilante as he did a gang leader. Bruce could go try to pull apart the knot of his behaviour from any one of a dozen of threads, but which would get the most mileage?

Diana had no such compunctions. “What is Batman to you?”

A fair question, and one that cut to the root of so many of the questions and fears in the dark of Bruce’s lungs in a way that Bruce may not have thought to go for this early in the process. Certainly not something he would have thought of asking for the real reason he wanted to know.

He didn’t want Alvin to have lied about caring.

Bruce only had a moment to enjoy the warmth that flickered at Diana’s thoughtfulness before Alvin’s response crushed his ribs inwards.

“Well he’s my dad.”

His vision tunnelled ever so slightly, even as some part of his brain started doing the math. It didn’t make sense, couldn’t be true, the numbers just didn’t line up. And yet, somehow, it had to be the truth because otherwise Alvin wouldn’t have been able to say it.

Which meant-

Alvin was a good liar, but Bruce knew from experience that the Lasso didn’t work like that.

Which meant-

In every encounter they’d ever had, no matter Bruce’s disguise or name, Alvin had always looked at him with something Bruce had never been able to pin down. Something wary and judging and longing. Years passed and sometimes it was so secondary Bruce forgot to wonder what it meant, but from that first meeting with a child blinking through fever and cheap lighting to their last fight at the docks that ended with the Red Hood diving into the harbour, Alvin Draper had always looked at him like he wanted Bruce to know him but never expected him to be able to.

Which meant-

Beneath the domino mask they’d left him, Alvin’s face twisted. That seemed right, because Bruce had no idea how to untwist the knife he felt buried in his lungs.

“I wish you hadn’t asked that.”

#tim drake #bruce wayne #sahtw #my writing

6 notes · View notes