Blackwood Grove, Saturday Afternoon

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian turned in a slow circle, examining his Grove from every angle, his brows drawing together and his shoulders slumping. The damage was...extensive. Not catastrophic, thank the Forest, but not far off, either. 'Devastated' might be about right.

Naked branches clawed at the sky. Tree trunks were withered and twisted. The grass was dried and yellow under his feet, crumbling to dust wherever he stepped. The soil was thin and powdery and several of his reservoir rocks had split or shattered. Even the air felt thin here. He laid a hand on his heart tree, the acorns all paper-thin husks scattered across the ground.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to the great oak, which seemed a little diminished under his touch. "I was a poor steward to you. You are my responsibility and I failed. I'm sorry. I'll do better, I swear. Just..." He looked around again. He wasn't even sure where to begin to fix the damage he'd caused. "Just keep going. I'll swear, you'll be strong and healthy again."

"Adrian!" A yowl as a black blur streaked from the cabin to his side. "Adrian, what happened? How did this happen? What did you do?"

Adrian looked down at the accusatory face of his familiar and winced a bit. "C'mon," he said, holding his arms out to Boston. "I'll explain inside. We've got a lot of work to do."

[Open, though Pam's thread is canonically last!]

Comments

[witchoftheflesh]

"You didn't put me through anything," he retorted. "I chose to follow, and I don't think you chose a damn thing that happened to you yesterday."

He looked around, and took a seat on one of the large reservoir rocks. "A lot of that is going to linger with me for awhile," he admitted frankly. "And I'm confused by so much of it."

[joan_of_bark]

"A lot of what happened yesterday is a consequence of my own choices," Pam pointed out.

She picked a rock of her own, settling down on it with one leg swung over the other.

"Either way," she said, "The least I owe you is answers."

[witchoftheflesh]

"So, I guess we should probably start with..." He looked at Pam. "Why is Janet living in your closet?"

[joan_of_bark]

"She wanted to come with me to Gotham," Pam said, blinking. Really? That was what he was focusing on? "I couldn't find her anywhere else to stay, so Harley offered up her walk-in."

[witchoftheflesh]

Everything else was so much! Getting that one out of the way was easier than tackling most of the others.

"Will you be upset if I try to convince her to move literally anywhere else?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Why would I be?" Pam asked, frowning. "But you'd have to find her somewhere she can afford, and she's in between jobs right now."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Still, she deserves something better than a closet," Adrian said.

But, with that out of the way...

"Okay, so now who were all those people? What was their deal? The guy with a flower for a head? The guy who carries flamethrowers on his bike? Solomon Grundy and his everything?"

[joan_of_bark]

"We'll have to take that one at a time," Pam said wryly. "Pick one."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Random flower-headed guy who showed up out of nowhere?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Peter Undine," Pam said smoothly. "He was a real estate developer. He discovered this new alloy, greensteel, that he thought would make him a billionaire. But it turned out it poisoned everything it came into contact with. It changed him."

She rubbed the back of her neck.

"I ran into him a few months ago," she said. "Haunting one of his unfinished apartment buildings. It turned into something out of an Escher painting. I essentially had to eat through the walls to get me and Croc out."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Okay, I remember you telling me about this when you got back from that," Adrian said.

He paused.

"Actually before I ask you anymore questions, can I ask you for a favor?" He looked at her. "Could you please stop eating your enemies?"

He could not handle being witness to another weird forced-birth allegory.

[joan_of_bark]

Pam blinked. Then-- she managed a laugh. "I'll try," she said. "But I can't promise you anything."

[witchoftheflesh]

"At least I got a promise to try," Adrian sighed.

He'd thought, as the one who'd experienced it, Pam would be a little more inclined to, you know, not do the thing that could result in a man made of compost rip his way out of her abdomen, but it took all folks, he supposed.

"So, he got a flower-head because of the poisoned steel." Sure. We were just pretending that was a normal sentence. How did he end up in the swamp helping us keep zombies off of you and on Woodrue?"

[joan_of_bark]

"I don't know," Pam said. She sounded thoughtful. "I think at one point or another, part of me... sent out a distress call through the Green. I guess he got it."

[witchoftheflesh]

"And the guy on the motorcycle said something about...biochemical signatures? Which was how he knew where to go?"

Maybe? Adrian had been a little distracted.

[joan_of_bark]

"Yeah," Pam said, wryly. "Harley got one, too."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Who was that? And why did he have a flamethrower?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Red Hood." She sounded less than impressed. "One of Batman's boys."

[witchoftheflesh]

"One of whose?"

[joan_of_bark]

"The Batman." You could tell how Pam felt about him just by how tense and flat her tone got. "He's a vigilante who patrols Gotham for criminals every night. He loves recruiting teenagers and twenty-somethings to back him up."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Why is he called the Batman?" Adrian asked, because he hadn't quite internalized that pretty much everybody's name was stupid in Gotham.

[joan_of_bark]

"Because he dresses up like a bat when he goes out every night," Pam said dryly. "I'm sure there's some kind of psychosexual explanation for that."

[witchoftheflesh]

"That...." Adrian trailed off. "Okay, how is it that after everything that happened yesterday, I can still get thrown by the idea of a grown man dressing up as a bat to...fight crime?"

A pause.

"And you said he recruits teenagers to help?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Yep," Pam said. "We've always wondered how legal any of that is, but..." She shrugged. "It's Gotham."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Legality and Gotham are staring to sound like nodding acquaintances at best," Adrian muttered. "And Slaughter Swamp? Is it just a place where resurrections happen? Very ironic, considering the name."