9648/Knightfall: Heavy Price

Knightfall: Heavy Price
Date of Scene:	18 October 2019
Location:	Interior - Wayne Manor
Synopsis:	Tony visits his friend Bruce... but finds a Bat.
Cast of Characters:	Iron Man, Batman
Tinyplot:	Knightfall

---

Iron Man has posed:
Attempts had been made a few times. Tony's people calling Bruce's people, really. Tony himself isn't a pest, but his assistants were, perhaps, instructed to be persistent. It already had been ages since Tony had seen Bruce in any form other than a vague wave across a crowded charity event or a quick handshake for a photo op. Bruce being gravely injured was another matter.

Worse, learning that Bruce wasn't able to have visitors at all was something of a clear indication that a visit sooner, rather than later, was needed. If Tony was going to lose his friend, well. He wanted to at least see him before he was gone.

Tony's arrived without assistants; he's parked the obnoxious orange sportscar in the driveway, and was escorted inside. He's accepted a drink, but downed it entirely before going upstairs: no need to drink right in front of someone that probably isn't' allowed any alcohol. That'd be rude. Tony himself should probably not be having it, on the painkillers he himself is on, but that's another argument for another time. Tony has minor trouble with the stairs; he is wearing a very brightly colored red and gold leg brace on one side, Iron Man styling, that's helping with his leg injury. It isn't that he is limping, but more that he can't just jog up the stairs in a natural way, because it feels slightly off, so he uses the bannister to head up there.

Tony's also sporting some bruises and cuts to his left cheekbone and eyebrow, but otherwise is bright eyed and bushy-tailed when he's let into Bruce's convalescence room, sharp eyes rapidly taking in clues and cues.

Batman has posed:
The master bedroom of Wayne Manor is a testament to the extravagance and opulence of America's Gilded Age. It is as big as some mid-range apartments, appointed with dark and rich-smelling wood, luxuriant carpets, and works of art obtained over more than a century by generations of Waynes. But the hospital equipment makes it seem more, well, cluttered. There are power boards and extension cords run across the floor, great machines beeping and pinging - no great thought put towards making them neat or tidy.

In the bed itself lays Bruce Wayne. He's bandaged, both legs are in braces of their own, and his head is being held perfectly still by a bulky-looking neck brace. The expression on his face is impassive. A blank, emotionless slate staring up at the ceiling. When Tony is announced, his eyes flick towards the door and it's almost as though his body is inhabited once again. He smiles faintly, there's a light behind his eyes again, and what little body language he can muster suggests he is suddenly feeling the pain when - just a moment ago - it looked the furthest thing from his mind.

"Trying to show me up?" he asks, eyes tilting to the brace on the man's leg.

Iron Man has posed:
Tony gets a good look over the injuries, and a clear wince at what he's seeing comes across his features. Tony isn't really much of an actor, he never has been; concealing things, such as how he feels about something, isn't usually a priority. Still, a brave face is settled on for Bruce as Tony flutters his knuckles against the door, and proceeds into the room. He troops over the cords and tech with an air of someone entirely used to tech clutter.

A chair is chosen, and pulled around to be facing backwards towards Bruce's bed: a subconscious attempt to put a little barrier between himself and the mortality clearly displayed by his friend, maybe, but Tony did come. He sits backwards in the chair and grins.

"Pretty sure I won that competition," Tony kids back immediately. "//Ouch//, Bruce. Way to fight through," Tony compliments, after sweepingly seeing the injuries. Wow. "I can empathize; I got crushed by a Sentinel last week; technically the cannon I made to fight the sentinel, and I was wearing my armor, so I---- I ----," Tony derails himself verbally almost immediately, pausing. Tony's hardly a fool, and evidence is evidence. There's a quick little awareness in his gaze, that involves a direct stare.

Tony lifts one hand to rub along the edge of his jaw, though, and continues, though his gaze remains focused. "I got lucky. Looks like maybe you did too, though I doubt it feels like it."

Batman has posed:
There is something altogether unsettling about what happens next. That friendly smile, the look in search of commiseration, even the pained grimace - all of it drains from Bruce's face. It's as though he was wearing a mask of his own flesh, and Tony has said - or done - something to remove it. The man who lies in the bed now is stoic, grim, and almost uncomfortably alert. Blue eyes blink once, slowly.

"I make my own luck," he says flatly, in a voice that is not Bruce Wayne's - a voice like the distant slamming of crypt doors. A voice carefully crafted over a decade to bring fear to the common criminal of Gotham City.

He minces no words, whatever he's read in the other man as plain to him as newsprint ninety points high: "This a reconnaissance mission?"

Iron Man has posed:
"That would suggest an adversarial dynamic here, Bruce," Tony replies smoothly, brows lifting as he takes in the extreme shift in behavior to come over his friend. He drapes his forearms against the chair's upper back, arms crossing, there's a relaxed quality there. Both of the men in the room are fearless in their own ways: Tony's is just a sort of brash style. The crypt door of Bruce's current personality seems to get a skeptical but respectful reaction from the Avenger. He's deciding what to make of it.

"I didn't think there was one," Tony says, but lifts both hands, palms forward. He's not here to antagonize. "And I didn't expect this when I came here," he adds firmly. "More to see how long I needed to wait before offering another Vegas holiday," quips Tony. None of Tony's behavior is a mask: which has perhaps always been the most major difference in the men. Tony actually IS an attention-seeking playboy, it's not a cover, he flourishes in it.

Batman has posed:
There's nothing relaxed about Bruce Wayne now. The way he holds himself, one might wonder if he ever was capable of relaxing. Everything he has said and done in the past seems like so much greasepaint and parlor tricks now, when confronted with someone who is every inch Gotham's Dark Knight even without his suit of armor.

"There's not one," he admits, and even though the neck brace hold his head in place his eyes remain locked on Tony, "But given the position I'm in? I'm cautious. Your organization doesn't exactly take my brand of dichotomy in stride."

There's a faint tick at the corner of his mouth, a smirk or a smile: "When did you work it out?"

Iron Man has posed:
"Half in the driveway, and then half here," Tony replies first, answering Bruce's question up front, first, easygoing. "There's some tech clues that I mostly just ignored when I did a ping on arrival---, but with that, combined with what looks like happened to you?" Tony smirks. "I've looked like that," he says, with a buck of his chin towards the state of his friend. Or the man who was his friend. Tony's unsure about that, at this point, and has very clearly backed off from his more usual comradery with the man he thought he was talking to. Nobody likes to be fooled, and the personality change is impactful.

"Yeah, I respect the caution. But you'll note my refusals to share my tech with anyone? Even in my own group? Eh. I can keep secrets that need keeping," Tony observes, canny. "This is your situation, and your right to reveal... or not." Tony shrugs, liquid cool, as if it weren't really something worth being weird about.

"Do you need dirt on me?" Tony teases, with a wink.

Batman has posed:
"That implies I don't already have it," Bruce answers plainly on the subject of dirt, his eyes and the faint tick of his mouth the only real emoting he is capable of at the moment, "But I'll give you cred - nnngh!"

His eyes close suddenly, wincing shut and creasing at the corners. He looks as though he wants to bend his neck, but the brace holds him in place. One arm, slow and cumbersome as though he weren't in full control of it, comes to the back of his head as he lifts slightly from the pillow to rub his hand against it.

"Pass me those," he asks, still grimacing through the pain as he gestures to a bottle of pills resting on the bedside table, "Headaches. Comes with the territory. Not my first but - definitely the worst."

Iron Man has posed:
"I did imply that you didn't know something," Tony agrees, automatically teasing. "And I'm not apologizing," he adds. He looks at the pills he was requested to grab, and picks them up. He does flip it around to read them, before he opens them and shakes out a rather heavy dose, setting that in range of Bruce's hand, and then moves the water cup nearby into the same spot. Tony isn't going to be feeding anybody anything. For multiple reasons.

"Can't do much for headaches," Tony admits. "If you need //fashionable// legwear, that's a maybe. Pretty tired of every Tom, Dick and Nancy thinking they need armor made by me," Tony chuckles, sits back down on his chair, legs extending out, half to show off the iron leg, and half just to get his weight off of it more entirely. Tony doesn't push the conversation much: he can clearly see Bruce's trouble, and he is not without empathy or social awareness.

Batman has posed:
"Don't need armor," Bruce can't help but smirk a little more, "Fought Superman without it - at this point, I feel like it'd just slow me down. Or make me soft."

That's more to the strangeness of it. The man he lets the world believe Bruce Wayne is certainly different to him, but after the same fashion there are still elements of truth there. As though the public Bruce Wayne is some caricature of the real thing, absent his grief, pain, and rage.

He takes the pills and the cup from the dresser, tossing them back with the practiced gait of a main used to taking painkillers. He crushes the pills between his teeth, washing them down with the water. To his credit, he makes no face at the bitterness of the medicine imbibed in this way.

"Don't need a leg brace either," he explains, "But I do need something. I need Bruce Wayne to be out in public again. This talk of the Batman being dead, I need to act quickly before some people start tying the threads together."

Iron Man has posed:
"Good; I wasn't offering armor," Iron Man replies with a quick, relaxed laugh. Truth there: he wasn't. He doesn't take offense to armor making people soft. That's a Bruce thing, not a Tony thing. He only smiles vaguely and rests his chin on his raised palm, on the chair back.

"At the very least, to be seen on a yacht with Jasmine and Courtney," Tony opines, with a shrug, and general roll of his eyes. He grins briefly, sitting back, and fishes in one of his interior suit pockets. There's a little plastic baggie of snacks there: maybe some kind of dried fruit. He begins to eat a few, grinning around the snack while he chews.

Batman has posed:
Bruce watches the plastic fruit baggie for a moment - a very different snack in comparison to his own crushed Meperidine and room temperature water. He seems for a moment as though he might mention it, but in the end, he says nothing. He simply finishes his medication, putting the empty cup back down on the bedside table.

"Not finished with the treatment yet," he explains, shifting just slightly, "Going to need surgery, physical therapy. Time. But once I'm mobile, I'll take you up on the offer. The world needs to know Bruce Wayne is alive and recuperating."

He pauses a moment, considering something and then asking: "Do you have a phone on you?"

Iron Man has posed:
"You're asking if Tony Stark has tech with him?" Tony teases, in a grand third person just to help push how silly that question is to him, but he doesn't seem to actually be going to be a dick about it. Injured people get all kinds of extra leeway. He fishes out his mobile device, wagging it once. It's STARK brand, of course. It's sort of like a phone.

"I don't recommend a selfie; you look like Superman hit you in the throat," Tony does say, straight, without withholding anything, but the smile lingers. "What'd you have in mind?"

Batman has posed:
There's an actual smile from Bruce. It's wry and it looks like there's no small measure of pain behind it, but it's genuine. Or, at least, it looks like the sorts he used to give back when his midnight hobby was still a mystery.

"A selfie."

He shifts very gingerly in the bed, the braces about his legs groaning with the movement and the machinery that monitors his every biorhythm picking up pace almost like a warning. But he sets himself upright, sitting in bed instead of laying even if it looks as though it's gravity holding him there more than any display of strength.

"World needs proof of life," he explains, "So far it's been Damian's press conference. Nobody's seen anything, though. Seems like ... best solution. Not a model or a fast car, but I'm sure your follower count won't take too much of a hit."

Iron Man has posed:
"Yeeeeah," Tony says, skimming his eyes over Bruce. Tony's done this before, and is looking over the scene like a photographer, suddenly. "JARVIS," Tony asks nobody, across his phone.

"Yes, sir?" asks the phone, in JARVIS' calm tone. "Clean up some of the injuries, please. Discretion: the usual," Tony requests. He lifts his brows at Bruce in a check of 'that ok?' silently, and then rotates, getting off the chair to approach Bruce's bed.

"Of course, sir. On you, or on Mr. Wayne?" JARVIS asks.

"Both," Tony smirks, flipping the phone around skillfully. Tony does do this often. There's probably one of himself and Bruce from Vegas, really.

"Look alive," Tony grins, planting a hand comfortably near Bruce's shoulder pillow.

Batman has posed:
Bruce gives a silent nod that says 'go ahead' as he readies himself for a picture. Even in his civilian guise, social media was never his strongest suit. He was more for prepared statements issued through a public relations firm - he didn't even have a twitter handle. What person under fifty doesn't have a twitter handle?

As he poses for the photo, all the vibrance that had been so absent from him suddenly reappears. It's immediately obvious that he turns it on and off like a light switch - Bruce Wayne in public, Bruce Wayne in private. He smiles, nothing about it looking forced. All of it is the expression of a man in his sickbed who is trying to get better and look on the brighter side of life.

"Vegas," he says through smiling teeth, like one might say 'cheese!'

Iron Man has posed:
Tony laughs openly, and agrees, "The man says Vegas next," with a full charming grin. Pictures taken, Tony stands back up, smile remaining: Tony wasn't false at all. He then flips his phone horizontal. It immediately projects hologram versions of the array of pictures into the air, for Tony to browse. "Link those, video, last three. I want audio."

A moment later, JARVIS completes the recording and prepares it: It's a very high res video of Tony leaning down next to his friend Bruce. There's no traces of neck injury, and Tony looks entirely uninjured. Bruce looks battered but amiable. "Vegas," says Bruce in the video, which causes Stark to laugh, and agree immediately, "The man says Vegas next," with a charismatic flare of eyes and cheeky smile. There's a slight rotation of the wrist on the shot, that gives a view briefly over the room. There's no medical equipment anywhere in sight, in the shot, cleverly doctored by JARVIS. "Pass approval?" Tony asks.

Batman has posed:
"Good," Bruce groans, slumping a little further down into the bed as the machines beep and whistle in protest. Once more the air of carefree billionaire washes off of him, leaving a man who seems truly haunted by what he has seen and done, "Thank you for that, Tony."

He doesn't speak again for a moment, taking a deep breath. His eyes close, but not sleepily. His breathing becomes steady, as though meditating. Focusing himself. This would be the time the X-Wing rose out of the swamp in another, far away place and time. When his eyes re-open, it is the voice of Batman again.

"There's a new Batman," he explains, "Not me. Not for a while, at least."

Those words seem to give him pause, and he frowns. He looks down at himself, as though only now noticing the array of gruesome injuries he currently suffers from.

"But I'm not done," he promises, "This business with the strange energy readings. The Tesseract. I want to help. Would your people be open to that?"

Iron Man has posed:
"Okay," Tony says simply, entirely accepting the statement about a new Batman, as if Batman were pointing out what he likes in his coffee. That's fine, Tony has no comments either way about it, other than to take in the information.

"Yeah. We're pretty sure Loki has it, so that's a matter of sending Thor after it, at this point," Tony shares, openly. "But it caused a lot of damage, and we're starting to see some stress from it. Happy to share what I've got, maybe some of the patterns'll mean something to a new set of eyes."

Tony's talking while fiddling with his social media, it looks like. "There's also a small pile of these stones, like the Tesseract. More of them that show up here, the more it feels like we're in for even more problems. If you like data, wow, I have data. I'm a /wealth/ of data." Tony smiles aside, then. He's smart enough to not only see Bruce wants to do something useful, but that he'll get a good detective out of it. No fight from Stark.

"That said, I gotta go," Tony adds. "I'll do a data dump to the JLA. Work for you?"

Batman has posed:
Bruce takes pause for a moment. He weighs up some options in his head, mouth a grim-set line in that passionless mask that looks to be his true face.

"Alright," he finally acquiesces, and it seems almost to be under sufferance. But he adds nothing further about it, instead letting himself slip back into a more comfortable position in the bed. The neck brace shifts and tightens of its own accord, electronic restraints in it compensating in order to keep his upper spine as straight and supported as it can.

"I'll get back to you with my findings."

A beat. His eyes flick sideways and he adds: "It was nice to see you."

Iron Man has posed:
"Ouch, that almost hurt to say, didn't it," Tony teases back, at the end comment. "It's okay to like me," Tony assures Bruce, arrogantly pleasant. Like always. Tony may be a lot of things, but genuine is one of them. He offers a low handshake - no pressure, he's aware of the injuries. It's a calm shake from Stark: there's no need to do any dick measuring here.

"Nice to /meet/ you, finally," Tony says, flippant, but his smile adjusts to a more quiet one after a moment.

"Heal up," he insists, before turning to swan his way out of the room. He didn't bother to fix the chair he turned around, of course.