Open Post 001

[2020mod]

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[phobic]

If ever a man had been broken, it was Julian, and Jonathan was surprised to feel his numbed and cold heart turn over a little in hazardous sympathy. What had happened to Gotham's children, men and women unbreakable--the offensive had finally come that was strong enough to bring them down. Slow, and glacial, and insidious, it had crept inside them all like frost into a building's foundations, crystallizing, fracturing, bringing them down from inside in one final thunderous collapse.

The end of an era, indeed.

"I thought you'd appreciate my coming, today."

Even Jonathan's liquid sadism didn't permit the silence to linger more than a handful of seconds, "It's your birthday."

[exceptfebruary]

"February 24th."

There was no wait time, this time. It came out instantly. And then again, more caressing: "February 24th."

He sat up, so slowly, crossing his legs and looking up at Jonathan. Standing took too much effort, and just sitting up was more than he had done for a long while. He felt the blood rush, and let it settle.

"You remembered."

[phobic]

He opened his mouth to match gratitude with indignation, did you think I'd forget, but his own psychology ran ahead and came back that Julian should be expected to be surprised, because nobody had remembered. Ever.

His own mother.

"And I brought you something." He let the promise linger, glanced around and then crouched down. Winced at the additional pressure as pain shot down his spine and pooled into his right leg, which was still in the process of slow healing.

"But shh. My superiors think I'm here to torture you. Can you imagine? There's nothing I could do to you that would match what they've done already."

[exceptfebruary]

It didn't quite connect, that if Scarecrow was here it was because he was working for the people imprisoning him. Even as Julian was told that, his mind was filled with the date, and it was his birthday, and Jon had remembered it, visited. It was February. February. His calculations were off, he had thought it was March already. How or why Jonathan was there didn't matter, and he rejected the explanation.

But he caught the first part. "A birthday present?"

[phobic]

"Dear boy. I know you've had some trouble." He reached out uninvited to press a fingertip to Julian's chin, patted the far-too-pale cheek. Whatever they were feeding him, it wasn't enough.

"A present is the least I could do." More seriously. "But focus--this first. If they permitted my coming, it means they think I can get something of value out of you. I wouldn't presume to know what, but at the very least--"

He drew forward, ignoring the protest of his spine, to whisper directly into Julian's ear, "I'd like you to make something up, so I have something to bring back to them."

[exceptfebruary]

And then it started to sink in, and his expression slowly shifted into his calm poker face. Jon was one of them, he was working for them. The keepers. They frightened Julian in a way that the guards at NOHoPE rarely did, so filled with hate, not for what he had done but for who he was.

Frightened. And with that thought he rearranged his thoughts. It seemed obvious then, that Jon would be the one causing fear.

He had been quiet for a bit too long again. What was it that Jon wanted? Something. Something to bring back.

He tried to think of something, of anything, but the only thing he could think of was the date.

"Leap Day, Julian calendar. The day the Gregorian calendar was introduced. February 24th."

[phobic]

"You're quite gone." It was said flatly. He didn't think Julian was faking--depriving him of his driving purpose was like hollowing a pumpkin and expecting it to stand up to force. It would be beyond useless to tell the Calendar Man nobody but him valued a sense of time to that level... that it was hardly secret, elite knowledge.

"I'll have to make something up myself."

He shrugged, dipped a hand into his coat, and came out with a small watch, stripped of its strap but brand new by the piece of plastic separating the notched tuner from the rest of the watch body--digital, so that it would glow in the darkness of Julian's cell.

When Jon wanted to, he could think the dimensions of a problem through with devastating attention to detail.

"Here. You'll have to be clever about keeping it from them."

[exceptfebruary]

A younger Julian, a Julian with a firmer grasp on the here and now would have instantly reached out and grabbed the watch. He stared at it instead, trying to remember - but of course, he had used technology. He'd always preferred paper, but such a thing would be so easy to hide, so easy to conceal.

"Thank you, it's just what I wanted."

He lifted his hand and hesitated for a second as if the watch were no more than a mirage. Then he reached for it, looking from Jon to the Watch and back again, half convinced they'd both disappear.

[phobic]

Jon opened his fingers as Julian took it, letting him have it without a tease, his gaze flickering. Angry, though not at the man in front of him, but the circumstances here. When had Gothamites been so thoroughly broken to the yoke? He'd heard whispers about the Riddler being used as government strongarm, and doubted very much he'd be anything but a free agent without some duress.

"If they find out I've helped you at all, there will be hell to pay."