9687/Knightfall: Alive

Knightfall: Alive
Date of Scene:	21 October 2019
Location:	Library - Wayne Manor
Synopsis:	Diana pays a visit to a more conscious Bruce, discussing the League and life after death.
Cast of Characters:	Batman, Wonder Woman
Tinyplot:	Knightfall

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Batman has posed:
The news had gotten out quickly that Bruce had emerged from his coma. Diana herself had seen the very beginnings of it, Bruce lapsing out of unconsciousness for a few moments last week. By now, the process was complete and he was both alert and talking - enough to make a brief appearance on social media, though he look decidedly healthier (no neck brace, for one) in that brief appearance on Tony Stark's Instagram than he does now.

Despite all that, Bruce had yet to make any real public appearances. He remained secluded in the Manor, his public role assumed by Damian while others of his brood tended to Gotham's nightly affairs. He sits quietly in his bed, propped up and wearing an automated sort of neck brace that keeps his head still and straight. Both legs are in a cast, and a WayneTech laptop sits open on a sliding table that has been rolled over his lap.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana was busy, with the affairs of the Justice League to take care of, she was out most of the day tending to activities related to League business as it had been decided that they must make a more public presence of major team members to help solidify confidence in the team in the wake of recent events.

As such, when she arrives tonight at the manor--after getting word he was awake--she does so by simply touching down on the balcony outside of his room where he is now. What he'll see is movement outside his windows, between the drapes that partially obscure the look outside.

It might be a little surprising even for him at first but he's smart, he'll recognize what he saw pretty quickly. Gold, red, blue...

The door to the balcony opens and between the drapes that billow inward from the cool night time breezes, Diana steps between them and lets the door slip shut behind her. There she stands, cloak around her shoulders and her hair loose about her shoulders. She stares at him for a moment before smiling.

"You look comfortable." She says then her soothing and soft voice.

Batman has posed:
"I don't feel it," Bruce answers, his head still faced forward even though his eyes flick to one side to watch Diana in his periphery, "But then, I suppose that's what happens when I stop taking the painkillers Leslie prescribed. Corticosteroids for the spine, sleeping pills to keep me from restless sleep - I'm practically rattling when I work."

He looks unhappy about it, but some of that slides off of him as Diana steps into the room. He keeps his eyes on her the entire time, unable to turn his head for the brace but doing his best to make eye contact.

"I didn't expect you to come," he admits, "I imagine the League is ... feeling understaffed at the moment." Not that he ever did much in the way of public appearances or administrative work.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana gives a look back behind her the way she'd come and then she returns her brown eyed gaze to him as she steps further into the room until she's at the foot of his bed, her Eagle cloak gently swaying around her body as it settles after her momentum.

"Under enthusiastic might better describe the group moral. Though some are doing their best to keep those spirits up, myself... Arthur. I am sure you can imagine. It is the younger members who are most effected by all that has happened."

She draws in a breath then and simply stares at him. "You are alive, you are awake, these are good signs. I would not expect you to delve into the medicines, at least not too deeply, it does not match your... personality... to let a mind altering drug inside of your system, even if it's purpose is to aide you."

She shows a soft hint of a smile, but it comes and goes quickly. "Is there anything I can do to help?" She asks then. Which is probably an odd question for Wonder Woman to ask someone, standing at the foot of their bed after sneaking into their room. But she's being sincere and this is not some silly dream!!

Batman has posed:
"I'm sure some of them want an explanation for what I did," Bruce says flatly of the League, "I'm aware of how it looks. Considering the memorial, I doubt anybody truly understands just how far he had sunk."

But this is who Batman is. The man who shoulders the burden, so others do not have to. The one who lives in shadow so others can walk in the sun. Though, for once, he looks - agitated. Nothing more than a microexpression. Perhaps a faint tick at the corner of his mouth and the narrowing of his eyes. A moment later he groans, reaching a hand up to gingerly pat at the back of his head.

"He wanted to take control. Play judge, jury, and executioner."

He sighs, casting his eyes down to the laptop and then reaching up one bandaged and bloodied hand to close it with a firm snap.

"I'm not sure there's a lot you can do," he says, his tone muted now, "The only medicine for me now is time. That'll tell whether these headaches will stop, where my neck will heal."

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's left hand comes up and she grasps on to the wooden post at the right corner of the foot of the bed. She guides herself around the corner of the bed and starts to walk up the side of it until she's standing beside him. Her left hand now extends out to his and that bandaged and bloodied grasp of his is now being taken hold of by her hand, wrapped in leather around palm, her fingers left bare, warm and soft. Far softer than any warrior's fingers should be in fact.

She holds onto his hand now. "You've no one to answer to." Diana says then to him, her eyes locked onto his. "All you have done is help the world... and you helped Kal. He would not have wanted to be doing the things he was doing. You saved him, as much as you saved us." She would've liked to have been there to help, but Diana is also aware that her place in this world can--and should--take more into consideration, as she's needed in so many different places.

"Time you have." Diana states then. "Your family has been strong. The League is united. We are all here to ensure that you will have that time."

Batman has posed:
"There may not be enough time," Bruce answers, the words spilling out as though unbidden. He takes a moment, considering whether to continue, and sighs deeply, "Breaks and fractures I can deal with. I've broken my legs before - I think almost every rib's been cracked at some point. But my spine? My brain? Leslie isn't certain they'll heal."

He squeezes her hand in his own, and evidence of his current disability is made plain. There's no real strength in his grip, none of that precision that he had honed to a razor edge. It's as though all the strength had drained from his arms, and he were trying to control his fingers through a pair of thick gloves.

"The League may need to accept a new Batman." The words come out with great difficulty, and when he says them his face becomes an expressionless slate.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's stare doesn't break from his as he gives her this... dramatic news, even if the emotions between them are both fairly locked up and kept from their faces. At the last bit, Diana's expression breaks from stoic to a half smirk of all things.

She looks away then, down toward his feet and shakes her head. "Forgive me." She says quietly before shooting her eyes back up to his. "But I do not believe that." Diana's hand within his adjusts, so that their palms can slide together, until she's holding his hand in a style like one might to pull him up out of bed--of course she doesn't do that, she just holds his hand in this way as she looks at him now.

"You are a remarkable human being, Bruce Wayne. What your doctor, even with all her experience, is telling you... is not how you do things. You do not 'settle' for such an outcome. You do not let others tell you what you will and won't accomplish. It is not in your person to limit yourself as such, it never has been and it never will be." She seems... a little worked up by this. Defiantly telling him who and what he is and isn't capable of, because she believes in him, and wants him to feel inspired in himself.

"Your mind will heal... your spine will heal..." She says these words while letting her slim pointed chin lower, but her piercing gaze remains on his eyes. "Because you are Bruce Wayne, and because you are better than they can ever understand. Stronger. More stubborn... bolder, and braver. You will heal, and overcome this."

Her chin raises again and she shakes her head softly. "Because you know no other way." And then she shows him a smile, an honest and warm expression from deep within her heart.

Batman has posed:
When Diana begins speaking, Bruce's eyes remain downcast. He stares at the laptop on the table in front of him, focused and stoic. But as her words reach him, he slowly glances up. By the time her speech has ended, his eyes are fixated on hers and even the strength of his grip on her hand seems doubled.

"You'll have to promise me you'll never change," he tells her, the faintest of smiles playing on his lips, "Clark and I? Maybe the world will learn to live without us. But you? I think they'd sooner get by without oxygen."

For a moment, he thinks back to the Hall of Justice just prior to the Battle of Metropolis. A kiss that has come bubbling up out of him without warning. Given because he felt like he was going to his death, yet everything about it had made him want to live all the more.

"Fancy way of calling me stubborn, by the way." The faint smile becomes a genuine one.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's hand continues to hold his reassuringly so that he knows she is ever here for him, she enjoys feeling even a minuscule example of added strength in the man's physical form before her.

Its his words though that make her smile shift from supportive and warm, to down right amused. It makes her whole face light up in a way he's likely seen before, her cheeks rise and her eyelids squint just some. She has to force herself to look down in fact to gain a bit of composure as she knows this is a dramatic moment, not one for quite that much levity. She composes herself and raises her eyes again to nod a pair of quick and soft times, then tilts her head just a little toward her left shoulders while her dark eyebrows raise up above those brown eyes.

"So very stubborn." She tells him bluntly then, just to tease him of course though. "And I have no plans on going anywhere any time soon, though this world has survived a very long time prior to my arrival in the public eye. All the same... I plan to remain yet where I am for many more years to come, and... I look forward to having you at my side for yet more of these... wild times, we always manage to find ourselves within."

Batman has posed:
"I'm glad to hear that," Bruce tells her earnestly, "And I know you don't think much of the name, but I've always believed they hit the nail on the head when they called you Wonder Woman. You really are a wonder."

There's a lot of emotional outpouring from Bruce. Far more than he's ever exhibited with her in the past - indeed, with anybody. But, then again, a great deal has changed since they last spoke. Not the least of which was more than a near-death experience. He clears his throat.

"There was a time," he explains, "After they brought me back to the Cave. I - I think it was just a hallucination. The sort you have when you're deprived of oxygen. I've had them before but never quite this ... vivid. I was in this grey, empty place and a man there told me it was Hell. He told me asked me if I wanted a chance to repent. To come back here and change my ways. I told him that if he sent me back, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't stop."

Wonder Woman has posed:
Not many people know that secret about Diana, that she doesn't like the name Wonder Woman-- or more specifically that she doesn't feel worthy of it-- she's only ever told a handful of people. Bruce was one of them. So when he says that, it makes her somber, but she still shows a faint smile to his compliment associated with it. The name itself comes from her first 'adventure' away from Themyscira, from a newspaper printed in the small German village that she and her companions had all worked together to liberate.

They had printed it the first time with the headline 'The Womder Men' with a photo of them all together, Diana front and center between her friends. Though the article itself had never called her Wonder Woman, and the village itself was lost the very next day to a terrible chemical attack... the article had resurfaced a handful of years ago when Diana had gone public with the Justice League's formation, it was from that rediscovered news print that the modern media derived the name Wonder Woman for her. It means so much to people now that she tries her best to live up to it...

All in all, Diana is humbled to know he has that little bit of information about her and remembers it.

His story of his dream, or experience while incapacitated has her rapt attention. "It was a test." She quietly says to him then. "You passed it because you refused to bend the knee and admit defeat. That is why you were given the chance to come back. Because you displayed your unyielding..." She grins. "Stubborn..." She gives his hand a soft squeeze. "Desire to keep doing what must be done."

There's a short pause then and there. "And we are... I am... happy to have you back."

Batman has posed:
Bruce weighs the idea of a test up in his head. Once more his expression becomes that mask of impassive neutrality, the look that so frustrates his family. The vault door to any and every emotion he might feel, sealed away from anyone who might want to know.

"Maybe a test," he agrees, "Or maybe just a dream brought on by a dying mind. I bring it up because, when I thought that I'd finally come to my end? I felt something I honestly thought I'd buried years ago. I always knew that this thing that I do might kill me one day - I was prepared for that and I accepted it. But when I was right up against it all I could think of were the things I'd denied myself."

His blue eyes flick upwards to meet hers again: "I'm not certain I can change. Not easily, anyway. But I'm going to try - and if I'm as stubborn as you say, I might have a good chance at it."

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's eyes lower down after he speaks these words and she looks at where their hands are together, she's in full armor so her bracer is on her forearm and it glints in the ambient light around them, her Eagle patterned cloak mostly concealing the rest of her armored form and the gear she has upon her back, making her contrast quite a lot from him in his bed recovering from his grave injuries.

"Well." She says then as she raises her eyes back up to his and summons another ghostly faint smile. "We will worry about smoothing away your rough edges once you are further along into your recovery process." She teases him, ever the tease she is, especially whens he feels it can help bolster a moment or perhaps in this case, his mood.

She then just slightly shakes her head again. "Lets simply focus on that for now though, yes? Your recovery and eventual rehabilitation. Once that is taken care of? Well... we will talk about the rest." She gives him then just a slight mischievous grin.