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ajremixLate, because I suck. Unbeta'd, because I'm lame. And slightly shuffled around because I'm stupid and don't realize the timing of certain things was wrong until I almost put it up. Go team me. Unfortunately this means the next chapter isn't pre-ready so I don't know if it'll be up by next week or not. You'll probably hate me when you reach the end so... *hides*
Title: The Inventor 07
Fandom: DCU
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2222 (well howabout that)
Characters: Ted, Booster, Dick
Summary: Eras don’t end, they merely change. Words are finally had.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
“You’re going to feel a little prick.”
“Well geez, Grayson- could you make my choices any more difficult? I don’t know if I should go with a malpractice comment or a male enhancement one.”
So it was a different costume and a different man, but Ted still prided himself on being able to make Batman roll his eyes enough to tell when it happened. Dick might’ve jabbed his arm with a bit more force than necessary but the ‘ow’ he got was mostly reflexive. Watching the younger man fill a vacutainer with blood, then switching it out to fill a second (and what would eventually be a third) Ted had to ask, “So how many liters are we siphoning today? You know if you people keep taking my blood I’m going to eventually need a transfusion, right?”
“I’m sure one day we’ll have enough.”
“Enough for what? To build a whole clone army? Now, I’m not exactly modest, but even I know that’s a frightening thought.”
“Well I hope you unthink it soon,” Dick returned, untying the band around Ted’s upper arm, “you’ll be meeting with J’onn shortly and I’m sure everyone would rather you didn’t traumatize him.”
And so it had been going for the better part of a week. Whenever Ted wasn’t being jabbed or having various fluids drained or hooked up to machines, Ted was being mind probed by J’onn or exposed to various magic whats-its by what seemed like every magic user on the roster. Ted had been questioned, quizzed, truth lasso’d, physically examined, physically tested, mentally tested, x-rayed, blood tested, dental tested, polygraphed- everything short of being autopsied to test his authenticity.
On more than one occasion Ted rethought the wisdom of going to the Watchtower, but it was far to late for take-backs now. On a vaguely positive note, however, it left Ted with little time or energy for anything else, let alone confronting Booster on his behavior While Ted wasn’t happy with avoiding the issue, he was also generally too worn out to get upset about it, either.
Booster himself- clever puppy that he was -made occasional stops in to see Ted (usually when he was too busy being examined to do anything) and schmoozing it up to the other heroes enough that they were too busy being glad he wasn’t around to notice how little time he actually spent with Ted. Most of them anyway.
“Look,” Dick said, disposing of the needle and securing everything in its proper place as Ted rolled down his sleeve, “I know you think it’s not my place, but what’s going on between you and Booster-“
“You’re right,” Ted cut in sharply, “it’s not your place.”
The line of Dick’s jaw went steely. “He’s upset.”
“Thank you, Son of the World’s Greatest Detective- I never would’ve figured that out.”
“Would you stop being an ass? I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”
“And what are you going to tell me that I don’t already know?” Ted looked at the other man fully, hands braced on his hips and expression hard. “What would he tell you that I haven’t already figured out?”
“Figured out,” Dick shot back just as sharply, “because he didn’t tell you?”
That got him teeth bared in a silent growl. With a deep sigh, Dick forced the aggression from the hard ridges of his body. “I’m not trying to pick a fight, Ted. I’m honestly worried about Booster and why he’s...”
“Being particularly Booster-ish?”
“That’s probably the simplest way to put it, yes.”
Ted snorted, arms dropping to his sides. “Good luck with that. It’s... look- could you take that cowl off? I know Bruce is gone but I’m still trying to get used to the idea and the fact that you move and act completely different but still wearing the batsuit is throwing me off. Besides, as bad as I feel about the fact that he’s missing or whatever, I’m still pissed about the satellite thing, so trying to get me to be civil when you’re dressed like that isn’t going to work.”
A rueful half-smirk quirked at Dick’s lips, but he complied. The face beneath the cowl was far older than Ted remembered last seeing it- or rather, as Nightwing. Stubble lined his jaw and lines were etching in hard on his brow, threatening to give him the permanent scowl that marked Bruce’s face for so much of his life. Looking at Dick- not so much younger than Ted himself -made all the aggravation seep right out. Everyone always looked so much more human under the masks- more vulnerable. It reminded Ted that he wasn’t dealing with Nightwing, trying to passive-aggressive Ted away from Robin and Barbara, neither was it Bruce trying to intimidate Ted into compliance when his patience had run out. It was just young, overtaxed Dick Grayson who really didn’t have the emotional strength to spare on everyone around him but found the ability to do so anyway.
With a sigh, Ted sat on the edge of a table, idly motioning Dick to do the same. “I want to deal with this, I really do, but Booster hasn’t been making this easy. I took him away from the timelab, trying to cut him off from escaping into the timestream every time I tried talking about this, but now I’ve just been stuck here, dealing with one thing after another.”
“And he’s been making himself as scarce as possible without drawing attention to himself.” Dick shook his head, remembering what everyone kept forgetting- Booster was more calculating and observant than anyone gave him credit for. “The rest of us haven’t exactly been making it easy for you, either.”
“Never a moment’s peace around here.”
“We could probably do something about that, you know,” Dick said, leaning forward, elbows to knees. “J’onn’s already made comments that you’ve been getting increasingly high-strung. If we convince him it’s because you’re tired of being observed and poked at all day and could just use either a day to break or just overall less time in the labs, we can get the rest of the League to go along with it.”
That was a promising idea, but Ted asked, “What about detractors? Wouldn’t they just say that it’s a sign of the imposter breaking character?”
“Well sure there’s a few who are vocally skeptic but, well, I’m sure you can guess who they are.”
“Meh. Every group needs their cynics and their paranoids, I guess. Honestly though, if you want to help,” Ted grimaced slightly, wondering how things had gotten so out of hand that he was reduced to asking someone’s assistance for this, “I need some way to pin Booster down in one place and actually get him to talk.”
“The talking part I don’t know if I can do anything about,” Dick conceded, “but I can at least help locate him and get you some time to get him to talk.”
Ted looked at Dick for a long, considering moment and saw nothing but sincerity and compassion in return. Then he gave a big, friendly smile, sticking out his hand so suddenly it made Dick pull back a bit. “Well, Mr. Grayson,” Ted said warmly, “you drive a hard bargain, but I do believe we can do business together.”
For a moment, Dick just looked back with a confused eyebrow raised as if waiting for the punchline. But that quickly turned into his own grin and he shook Ted’s hand. “As we will in the future, I’m sure.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
~*~*~*~
At some point in the future, Ted was going to look back at this all and laugh. Right now though, when he didn’t feel annoyed he felt like a stalker. It took a great amount of will not to start narrating in his head like some Animal Planet special. Elusive Gold: The Search for Booster.
Who seemed to have an innate Ted-radar because every time he got to wherever Dick said Booster was at, the man was gone by the time Ted got there. By the fourth time that happened, Ted told Dick over the comm, “He’s gotta sleep sometime. I’m just going to wait in his room.”
“/Good luck with that/,” was all the reply he got back.
Boy did Ted begin to regret that decision. Being that these were temporary quarters for non-fulltime League members, there was very little in there asides from basic furnishings. Even the computer had limited access- something Ted had no doubt he could fix, but he didn’t want anyone lecturing him about hacking the Watchtower (again) when he had someone far more important to talk to.
So he waited, swinging between boredom and ‘argh, hurry up!’ when he wasn’t doodling some random equations or the beginnings of a schematic. He felt like he was slowly going mad (far too slowly- madness had to be better than boredom). He wasn’t even certain when Booster would even return to his quarters- Ted was always conked out from the day’s examination before hearing Booster enter the other room.
When Booster did finally show up, Ted jumped up with an almost frantic, “It’s about time!” He internally grimaced at how much it seemed like he was eager to be confrontational but he’d been bored, dammit. An argument would be a welcome reprieve to the vast amount of nothing he’d been doing.
Booster eyed him, shocked at his presence and equally wary of it. “Shouldn’t you be in the labs?”
“If I was, I’d be there. Or you’d have seen someone beating down the door, trying to get at me.” Ted tried to figure out how to get between Booster and the door without having to body toss him (though it was a last resort). “We need to talk.”
“Why,” Booster asked, deceptively light and not really moving from the door, “something interesting come up during your testing?”
“We need to talk about you.”
“What for? Not like anything of interest happened to me since I’m stuck here.”
“Would you knock it off?” Ted edged forward, noting how Booster was balanced on his feet, just one weight shift away from running. “I want to know what’s your problem with me!”
“A problem? Why would I have a problem?”
“You’ve been avoiding me ever since I’ve come back. You don’t look at me, you don’t talk to me-“
“I’m looking and talking to you right now.”
“You don’t even want to be here!” Ted jabbed an accusing finger at Booster. “You used your duty as Time Master to avoid me, but guess what, buddy. You can’t use that excuse now and I’m not letting you go until you talk to me.”
“You’re making such a big deal out of nothing.”
“Then humor me.”
Booster rolled his eyes, arms crossing over his chest. “What do you want from me, Ted?”
“Do you wish I wasn’t alive?”
“What? No!” Ted had to take some amount of relief that that, finally, got some genuine emotion out of Booster.
“Are you glad that I’m back?”
“Of course I am!”
“Then why do you keep running away from me?”
Booster threw his arms into the air, “Because I’m afraid, okay?”
“Of what?”
“You!”
It was like someone had put Ted’s heart in a vice and squeezed until it burst. “Me? Why me?”
“Look- I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Yeah? Well tough! You can’t say you’re afraid of me and then not say why!”
“Because you... you were smiling” Booster said, sounding devastated. “When you went back to fix the timeline, you were smiling when we were fighting that... your... corpse, you were smiling and every time you- I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“What other shoe? I’m here, I’m back- what can I do to make you believe that?”
“How should I know? It’s not like I can forget you died overnight!”
“Okay, one- you’ve had almost a month to come to terms with my not-deadness. Two- I never actually died.”
“You were gone for two years!” Booster shouted, grief turning into frustration and fear into anger. “We had a fucking funeral for you! To everyone, you were dead! And now you just come back, like nothing happened, like nobody cried their goddamn eyes out and you expect everyone to be magically okay with this?”
“Everyone is ‘magically okay’ with it!” Ted snapped, his own anger feeding off Booster’s, just as it fed it right back. “You’re the only one that’s not and you know what would make this easier? If you fucking talked to me!”
“Talk to you? You try pretending that nothing happened! You act like your death wasn’t real!”
“It wasn’t real!”
“It was real to me!”
Silence cracked the air with all the sharpness of a whip. It fell heavily over Booster’s trembling shoulders and Ted’s beseeching expression. Ted reached out, aching to hold his best friend, to soothe everything away until they were smiling and laughing and comfortable and together again. “Booster-“
Booster flinched back, skirting Ted’s hand widely, not even bothering to hide the depths of his emotions and fears anymore. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, voice thick, “I don’t want to talk to you.”
He all but ran from the room and Ted, like a fool, let him.
Title: The Inventor 07
Fandom: DCU
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2222 (well howabout that)
Characters: Ted, Booster, Dick
Summary: Eras don’t end, they merely change. Words are finally had.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
“You’re going to feel a little prick.”
“Well geez, Grayson- could you make my choices any more difficult? I don’t know if I should go with a malpractice comment or a male enhancement one.”
So it was a different costume and a different man, but Ted still prided himself on being able to make Batman roll his eyes enough to tell when it happened. Dick might’ve jabbed his arm with a bit more force than necessary but the ‘ow’ he got was mostly reflexive. Watching the younger man fill a vacutainer with blood, then switching it out to fill a second (and what would eventually be a third) Ted had to ask, “So how many liters are we siphoning today? You know if you people keep taking my blood I’m going to eventually need a transfusion, right?”
“I’m sure one day we’ll have enough.”
“Enough for what? To build a whole clone army? Now, I’m not exactly modest, but even I know that’s a frightening thought.”
“Well I hope you unthink it soon,” Dick returned, untying the band around Ted’s upper arm, “you’ll be meeting with J’onn shortly and I’m sure everyone would rather you didn’t traumatize him.”
And so it had been going for the better part of a week. Whenever Ted wasn’t being jabbed or having various fluids drained or hooked up to machines, Ted was being mind probed by J’onn or exposed to various magic whats-its by what seemed like every magic user on the roster. Ted had been questioned, quizzed, truth lasso’d, physically examined, physically tested, mentally tested, x-rayed, blood tested, dental tested, polygraphed- everything short of being autopsied to test his authenticity.
On more than one occasion Ted rethought the wisdom of going to the Watchtower, but it was far to late for take-backs now. On a vaguely positive note, however, it left Ted with little time or energy for anything else, let alone confronting Booster on his behavior While Ted wasn’t happy with avoiding the issue, he was also generally too worn out to get upset about it, either.
Booster himself- clever puppy that he was -made occasional stops in to see Ted (usually when he was too busy being examined to do anything) and schmoozing it up to the other heroes enough that they were too busy being glad he wasn’t around to notice how little time he actually spent with Ted. Most of them anyway.
“Look,” Dick said, disposing of the needle and securing everything in its proper place as Ted rolled down his sleeve, “I know you think it’s not my place, but what’s going on between you and Booster-“
“You’re right,” Ted cut in sharply, “it’s not your place.”
The line of Dick’s jaw went steely. “He’s upset.”
“Thank you, Son of the World’s Greatest Detective- I never would’ve figured that out.”
“Would you stop being an ass? I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”
“And what are you going to tell me that I don’t already know?” Ted looked at the other man fully, hands braced on his hips and expression hard. “What would he tell you that I haven’t already figured out?”
“Figured out,” Dick shot back just as sharply, “because he didn’t tell you?”
That got him teeth bared in a silent growl. With a deep sigh, Dick forced the aggression from the hard ridges of his body. “I’m not trying to pick a fight, Ted. I’m honestly worried about Booster and why he’s...”
“Being particularly Booster-ish?”
“That’s probably the simplest way to put it, yes.”
Ted snorted, arms dropping to his sides. “Good luck with that. It’s... look- could you take that cowl off? I know Bruce is gone but I’m still trying to get used to the idea and the fact that you move and act completely different but still wearing the batsuit is throwing me off. Besides, as bad as I feel about the fact that he’s missing or whatever, I’m still pissed about the satellite thing, so trying to get me to be civil when you’re dressed like that isn’t going to work.”
A rueful half-smirk quirked at Dick’s lips, but he complied. The face beneath the cowl was far older than Ted remembered last seeing it- or rather, as Nightwing. Stubble lined his jaw and lines were etching in hard on his brow, threatening to give him the permanent scowl that marked Bruce’s face for so much of his life. Looking at Dick- not so much younger than Ted himself -made all the aggravation seep right out. Everyone always looked so much more human under the masks- more vulnerable. It reminded Ted that he wasn’t dealing with Nightwing, trying to passive-aggressive Ted away from Robin and Barbara, neither was it Bruce trying to intimidate Ted into compliance when his patience had run out. It was just young, overtaxed Dick Grayson who really didn’t have the emotional strength to spare on everyone around him but found the ability to do so anyway.
With a sigh, Ted sat on the edge of a table, idly motioning Dick to do the same. “I want to deal with this, I really do, but Booster hasn’t been making this easy. I took him away from the timelab, trying to cut him off from escaping into the timestream every time I tried talking about this, but now I’ve just been stuck here, dealing with one thing after another.”
“And he’s been making himself as scarce as possible without drawing attention to himself.” Dick shook his head, remembering what everyone kept forgetting- Booster was more calculating and observant than anyone gave him credit for. “The rest of us haven’t exactly been making it easy for you, either.”
“Never a moment’s peace around here.”
“We could probably do something about that, you know,” Dick said, leaning forward, elbows to knees. “J’onn’s already made comments that you’ve been getting increasingly high-strung. If we convince him it’s because you’re tired of being observed and poked at all day and could just use either a day to break or just overall less time in the labs, we can get the rest of the League to go along with it.”
That was a promising idea, but Ted asked, “What about detractors? Wouldn’t they just say that it’s a sign of the imposter breaking character?”
“Well sure there’s a few who are vocally skeptic but, well, I’m sure you can guess who they are.”
“Meh. Every group needs their cynics and their paranoids, I guess. Honestly though, if you want to help,” Ted grimaced slightly, wondering how things had gotten so out of hand that he was reduced to asking someone’s assistance for this, “I need some way to pin Booster down in one place and actually get him to talk.”
“The talking part I don’t know if I can do anything about,” Dick conceded, “but I can at least help locate him and get you some time to get him to talk.”
Ted looked at Dick for a long, considering moment and saw nothing but sincerity and compassion in return. Then he gave a big, friendly smile, sticking out his hand so suddenly it made Dick pull back a bit. “Well, Mr. Grayson,” Ted said warmly, “you drive a hard bargain, but I do believe we can do business together.”
For a moment, Dick just looked back with a confused eyebrow raised as if waiting for the punchline. But that quickly turned into his own grin and he shook Ted’s hand. “As we will in the future, I’m sure.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
~*~*~*~
At some point in the future, Ted was going to look back at this all and laugh. Right now though, when he didn’t feel annoyed he felt like a stalker. It took a great amount of will not to start narrating in his head like some Animal Planet special. Elusive Gold: The Search for Booster.
Who seemed to have an innate Ted-radar because every time he got to wherever Dick said Booster was at, the man was gone by the time Ted got there. By the fourth time that happened, Ted told Dick over the comm, “He’s gotta sleep sometime. I’m just going to wait in his room.”
“/Good luck with that/,” was all the reply he got back.
Boy did Ted begin to regret that decision. Being that these were temporary quarters for non-fulltime League members, there was very little in there asides from basic furnishings. Even the computer had limited access- something Ted had no doubt he could fix, but he didn’t want anyone lecturing him about hacking the Watchtower (again) when he had someone far more important to talk to.
So he waited, swinging between boredom and ‘argh, hurry up!’ when he wasn’t doodling some random equations or the beginnings of a schematic. He felt like he was slowly going mad (far too slowly- madness had to be better than boredom). He wasn’t even certain when Booster would even return to his quarters- Ted was always conked out from the day’s examination before hearing Booster enter the other room.
When Booster did finally show up, Ted jumped up with an almost frantic, “It’s about time!” He internally grimaced at how much it seemed like he was eager to be confrontational but he’d been bored, dammit. An argument would be a welcome reprieve to the vast amount of nothing he’d been doing.
Booster eyed him, shocked at his presence and equally wary of it. “Shouldn’t you be in the labs?”
“If I was, I’d be there. Or you’d have seen someone beating down the door, trying to get at me.” Ted tried to figure out how to get between Booster and the door without having to body toss him (though it was a last resort). “We need to talk.”
“Why,” Booster asked, deceptively light and not really moving from the door, “something interesting come up during your testing?”
“We need to talk about you.”
“What for? Not like anything of interest happened to me since I’m stuck here.”
“Would you knock it off?” Ted edged forward, noting how Booster was balanced on his feet, just one weight shift away from running. “I want to know what’s your problem with me!”
“A problem? Why would I have a problem?”
“You’ve been avoiding me ever since I’ve come back. You don’t look at me, you don’t talk to me-“
“I’m looking and talking to you right now.”
“You don’t even want to be here!” Ted jabbed an accusing finger at Booster. “You used your duty as Time Master to avoid me, but guess what, buddy. You can’t use that excuse now and I’m not letting you go until you talk to me.”
“You’re making such a big deal out of nothing.”
“Then humor me.”
Booster rolled his eyes, arms crossing over his chest. “What do you want from me, Ted?”
“Do you wish I wasn’t alive?”
“What? No!” Ted had to take some amount of relief that that, finally, got some genuine emotion out of Booster.
“Are you glad that I’m back?”
“Of course I am!”
“Then why do you keep running away from me?”
Booster threw his arms into the air, “Because I’m afraid, okay?”
“Of what?”
“You!”
It was like someone had put Ted’s heart in a vice and squeezed until it burst. “Me? Why me?”
“Look- I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Yeah? Well tough! You can’t say you’re afraid of me and then not say why!”
“Because you... you were smiling” Booster said, sounding devastated. “When you went back to fix the timeline, you were smiling when we were fighting that... your... corpse, you were smiling and every time you- I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“What other shoe? I’m here, I’m back- what can I do to make you believe that?”
“How should I know? It’s not like I can forget you died overnight!”
“Okay, one- you’ve had almost a month to come to terms with my not-deadness. Two- I never actually died.”
“You were gone for two years!” Booster shouted, grief turning into frustration and fear into anger. “We had a fucking funeral for you! To everyone, you were dead! And now you just come back, like nothing happened, like nobody cried their goddamn eyes out and you expect everyone to be magically okay with this?”
“Everyone is ‘magically okay’ with it!” Ted snapped, his own anger feeding off Booster’s, just as it fed it right back. “You’re the only one that’s not and you know what would make this easier? If you fucking talked to me!”
“Talk to you? You try pretending that nothing happened! You act like your death wasn’t real!”
“It wasn’t real!”
“It was real to me!”
Silence cracked the air with all the sharpness of a whip. It fell heavily over Booster’s trembling shoulders and Ted’s beseeching expression. Ted reached out, aching to hold his best friend, to soothe everything away until they were smiling and laughing and comfortable and together again. “Booster-“
Booster flinched back, skirting Ted’s hand widely, not even bothering to hide the depths of his emotions and fears anymore. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, voice thick, “I don’t want to talk to you.”
He all but ran from the room and Ted, like a fool, let him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-04-26 08:54 am (UTC)(Holy fucking sheet - another TF2 fan out of nowhere? MY DAY KEEPS GETTING BETTER. <3)
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Date: 2010-04-26 04:48 pm (UTC)(i do love tf2 very much but i really can't play it because i get motion sick :<)