#babsggordon

He couldn't be completely certain. The false Batman he had held his ground against- a barely trained, but Lazarus touched bulk of muscle and rage - but Ra's apparent heir, the meticulously trained and fiercely intelligent, Altair tipped the scales. All too much like Tim, Bruce acknowledged as he was driven down and still and finally, into that smoke-streaked limbo between alert and not conscious anymore.

He tried to count the turns. Restraints blunted through his armor. Pain a throbbing storm that ran down his temples into the ocean of his body. Captured glimpses of where he was being brought. Struggling to name this particular part of the city, but recognizing it.

Gotham, he repeated, as he was brought into a terrace house that would probably fall down in a gust of wind. And then. Shining and clear. Alleytown.

Except. Here was the thing.

When exactly had there been a Lazarus lake beneath Gotham's Eastern Boroughs?

Not a pit. A chasm. The seething green being fed and fattened with green-rusting pipes. An underground, cavernous lake. Dread gnawed in his gut as he was shoved past the lake- usually such primordial places, not this... this industrialism?

But he remembered it. Acknowledged the immensity of the cavern, hollowed below Alleytown. Ready to make his report when he got loose-

And he would get loose. He had to get loose. His kids were out there. Dickie was out there. Facing down Slade Wilson who had been both obsession and obsessed. Nemeses were tricky things. And Ra's was involved, Ra's was involved in this.

He was needed. His city needed him, his children, the boy in the concrete box who had done nothing wrong except be a Robin in another universe.

This intel was crucial, but Bruce couldn't stay here. He would tear himself to pieces to escape.

Ra's was a cautious opponent, a few centuries of your own machinations built a healthy suspicion, so Bruce was unsurprised to be stripped. His belt (and pockets, and hidden pockets, and hidden batarangs, and the collapsible sword) had been removed from his person as soon as he'd been contained. What surprised him was that he was not being offered an ostentatious robe, and possibly even Arak, before Ra's deigned to speak with him.

Instead, Bruce was showered down in a tiled room that was stark. Freezing water making his teeth grit, and thoroughly inspected for sub-epidermal trackers- which were removed to confirm their deactivation. A process he 'enjoyed' without anesthetic.

And Ra's never showed himself.

The Joker did, freshly sane from the Lazarus pools- Bruce was beginning to suspect the large one was being fed by a number of sources, though again... questions. He'd been brought by a hooded figure- but one Bruce could now place as Altair -and left with Bruce in the tiled room.

The Joker was not a pleasant companion. All smiles and taunts and guilt peeking through now and then, frustration. Sanity didn't really endear him to Bruce, but he could at least understand. And with little left to hope for, he'd asked, voice raw and honest:

"Help me and let me go," asking with all he had, pride eating a hole inside him, "work with me, Joker."

Jaybird. Jaybird. He was working with the Joker.

"Why should I?"

"...because it's me asking."

Don't think about what that means. Don't think-

"Can I get a kiss?"

Nausea erupted bright and scalding in Bruce's stomach. The drop in his gut. Disgust folded itself away with the shock, and Bruce weighted his options.

Jaybird. The Joker's harassing him in laughs, echoes, a shadow of himself burying a fist in Bruce's gut mid-fight. Jay.

"...yes."

He had to get to the boy in the concrete box, Jay's son. To Dick, suspended like a bird on a string. Tim with his dangerous and potentially obsessive alter-ego. The League's long claws reaching for Damian. The Joker shooting darling Babs, beating Bruce's son to death. The wide breadth of the Lazarus waters he had seen.

He had to.

"Eh, your lips are kinda crusty… No thanks."