Three's a crowd
He often wonders why he isn’t more afraid of this room. Sometimes it becomes frightening when he stares for too long at a wall or feels his mind confuse reality with make-believe. He can see faces carved into the flat white paint, and he can see the words he’s sure someone spoke to him once printed in bold on the back of his eyelids. His dreams are only getting stranger as time passes. Maybe that's why the room isn’t scary, because his own brain is the real thing he’s worried about.
Considering he has been held in this room against his will for an unknown period of time, he’s in relatively good spirits.
He vaguely remembers something he was told once, a flash of dark hair and a glint of red dance in front of his eyes whenever he tries to remember it. Something something ‘when trying to keep track of time, use your heartbeat-’ something something. God, he really wishes he could remember the rest of that sentence now.
He had spent most of his time sleeping, it was all he could think to do. He would get up, pace, either Bruce (he would never call him Batman) or Alfred would come in to check his bandages, give him a meal, and back to sleepy land he goes. Small talk along the lines of ‘how are you feeling?’ and ‘remember anything yet?’ would ensue, the answer was always ‘fine’ and ‘no’, and off they would go. He thought a few times about trying to bust out, take down one of them as they were about to leave and find a way out. But somehow, that felt like a monumentally idiotic plan. So the routine continues, person in, food, bandage, person out, sleep.
That is, of course, until the routine changes.
As he sits on his table, voices from outside the room catch his attention, starting distant and slowly getting louder as they move closer.
“This is a monumentally stupid idea, Dickie.” A deep voice catches his attention first, gruff but somehow smooth at the same time.
“Well if you want to back out, now’s the time.” The other voice responds, much more chipper than the other. As their footsteps continue to grow closer the first person speaks again.
“Obviously I’m not gonna back out, I’m just saying this is an incredibly stupid idea”
“Yeah well, when has that ever stopped us before.”
The first voice heaves a long-suffering sigh before simply saying “Let’s just get this over with.”
The voices are right outside the door when the second voice speaks again “Tim says the cameras are looping just in case, let’s do this before B’s meeting is over.”
“I’ll give it 15 minutes.” With those final words the door slides open and two men step into the room. One of them is stupidly tall and looks about as solid as the door they just opened. His shoulders are wide enough that they almost take up the entire doorway on their own, his jaw is clear cut and a dusting of white hair sits against his forehead. The other man couldn’t be any more different, he’s still tall and looks muscular but in a very different way. While the other man is wide this man looks athletic and lean. His rich black hair causing his blue eyes to stand out like beacons against his tan skin.
They stand in the doorway for a moment, seemingly unsure how to proceed, the whole thing is supremely awkward.
“Uh- Can I help you?” The sound of his voice seems to remind the two men what they are here for, the larger of the two leans himself up against the wall by the door while the other man walks towards him, sticking his hand out.
“Hiya!” The man sounds very excited for some reason so he puts his hand in the outstretched one in front of him.
“Hello…” He responds, the man squeezes his hand, shaking it up and down before letting go and stepping back. “Who are you, sorry?”
“Well I’m Rich, and this is Jay. We wanted to come down and introduce ourselves, say hello and all that, y’know?” he can confidently say that no, he doesn’t ‘know’, but that feels rude to say out loud.
“Oh well… thank you?” Is the best response he can come up with. The larger man, Jay, snorts from his place against the wall
“You’re freaking him out, Rich” The tone Jay uses is nonchalant, but he can tell the man is studying him closely. Taking in every single detail, dissecting his every movement and facial expression. That’s fine though, it’s not like he has anything to hide. At least if he does, he has no clue what it is.
“I am not” Rich’s tone borders on a whine as he turns to glare before turning back around “I am just trying to make a friendly introduction.”
“It’s fine, I’m not freaked out.”
Jay scoffs again from his place against the wall. “You’re being kept in a windowless room in the basement and you’re not freaked out?”
He’s in their basement?
“I’m in your basement?”
“That’s beside the point,” Rich cuts in again, stepping in front of the other man. “The point is, we wanted to get to know you a little better. So we thought we’d play a sort of game if that’s okay with you.”
He considers this for a moment before responding “...a game?” Rich brightens immediately
“It’s called 20 Questions, have you heard of it?” It sort of rings a bell, but he has no idea what the point of the game is.
“Sort of? He admits. “I can’t remember how you're supposed to play it, though.”
Rich laughs a little at this. “It’s exactly how it sounds, I ask you a question, you ask us a question, and we do that over and over until we get to 20.”
“But how do you win?”
This time, Jay laughs “You don’t win, it’s not that kind of game.” he blushes a little at this, this might not be as fun as Rich seems to think it will be.
“Oh… okay. That’s fine.” is all he says before the room goes quiet again for a moment.
Remembering himself, Rich claps his hands before sitting cross-legged on the floor between Jay and the table. “I’ll go first. Question one; What’s your name?”
He is getting really sick of being asked this question at this point. “No idea.”
“Really? Not even a hint of an idea of what it might be?”
He thinks for a moment before responding “I don’t think so. I can’t really tell what my mind is making up and what is actually real.”
“What do you mean your mind is making things up?” Jay starts before he cuts him off
“My turn to ask a question, right? That would count as two.”
Rich laughs as he says this, turning towards Jay with a smile “Yeah you’re right kid, fire away it’s your turn.”
He thinks for a moment before finding his question “How did you find me?”
“Do you mean before coming in just now? Or before that?” Rich asks, he thinks for a moment before responding.
“Right now.”
Jay takes the lead in responding this time. “We work with the guy who brought you here, we were around the place when you uh- appeared.” He pauses before landing on the word ‘appeared’, like he couldn’t quite figure out how to word it.
“You guys know Bruce then?” This makes them both do a double take.
“Do you know Bruce?” Rich asks incredulously.
“I mean, yeah. He comes in here every now and again.” This seems to throw them for a loop again.
“You’re saying Bruce comes in. Not someone else with a different name starting with B?”
“Oh no, when he came in he was wearing this fully black suit thing, big cape and everything. He said his name was Batman but Alfred called him Bruce so yeah…” He trail
“Alfred called him Bruce? With you in the room?”
“I mean, they were out in the hallway so-” Both men simply look at him for a moment before Rich speaks again.
“I think we’re really bad at the ‘take turns asking questions thing’ so why don’t we all just throw some questions around.”
This seems like a much better idea, he tells them as such and the questions continue.
“Do you remember anything about where you’re from?” Jay starts.
“Nope, just like the name thing. How long have you two been working with Bruce?”
“Oh gosh, for me 15 years at this point? Jay has been, let's say on and off for 10 years now.” Rich looks slightly uncomfortable for the last part of his answer, he decides it’s best not to question that.
“Yeah? You must’ve been young.”
Jay scoffs again, that seems to be his go-to reaction to most things he says “Yeah, he basically grabs them from the cradle at this point.”
He also has no idea how to respond to that “That’s- something.” Rich snorts at that.
“So,” Jay starts up again, “What happened to the table.” He startles at that, he had completely forgotten about the table.
“I crushed it, a little bit, maybe.” He mutters, absently playing with the mangled fingerprints on the metal. As seems to be the trend with everything he says, the two men look somewhat stunned.
“You crushed it? With your hands?” Rich asks, looking at Jay with, actually, he has no idea what that expression is.
“Yeah.” He admits, slightly shamefully. Before the two men can speak again he asks another question.
“You two aren’t supposed to be in here, are you.” He doesn’t look at them when he asks, he looks to the top left corner of the room once more. The white triangle in the corner is shifting again, something it hasn’t been doing at all since Jay and Rich first entered the room.
“Why do you say that?” Rich asks, he makes eye contact with the man.
“The words ‘this is an incredibly stupid idea’ and ‘I give it 15 minutes’ from you earlier tipped me off pretty quickly.” He looks at Jay this time, curious if the man’s expression will shift at all. He is impressed when the change is so minute he doubts he would’ve picked it up if he wasn’t searching for it.
“I said that in the hallway,” Jay responds.
“You did.”
Rich looks like he’s about to speak when a chime comes from his pocket, he pulls out a device of some kind, reading whatever is on the screen. He grimaces slightly before turning to Jay.
“Speaking of time, I’m afraid we’re out of it.” he laughs at this, Rich’s expression looks very uncomfortable, a stark contrast to what he’s seen of the man so far.
“I guess I’ll see you around then.” he glances between the men as they move towards the door, their eyes still on him.
“Yeah maybe. Stay safe, kid.” Jay speaks over his shoulder as they move, the door sliding open and shutting as soon as they clear the frame.
He was all alone again, but maybe thinking about his new guests would keep the nightmares away for a while.
Before he could think too much about that though, muffled voices began to speak outside the door. They had moved further away thinking he couldn’t hear them.
He hears Bruce’s voice first. “What were you two thinking? I told you to stay away, he’s dangerous.”
“I very strongly doubt that. He looks like he’s just a kid with some serious powers.” This was Jay’s voice.
“He fell from the sky and doesn’t remember a thing. He could be another Kryptonian for all we know.” Bruce’s voice is slightly quieter now like he is trying not to get angry.
“Bruce, I get where you’re coming from but is it smart to keep him locked up in there? He’s being compliant for now but what if he gets sick of it and snaps.” Rich fires back, he sounds upset for whatever reason.
“Then we’ll deal with it. He won’t be in there much longer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rich asks, hints of caution in his tone.
“Clark is coming. He will deal with him however he sees fit.”
“You called Clark? This is a kid Bruce you didn’t need to call in the fucking Superman.” Jay spits at Bruce, like Rich, he sounds progressively more unhappy as the conversation continues.
“We’ll see.” Bruce ends the conversation there, footsteps that are presumably his retreat further away until he can’t hear them anymore. Jay and Rich don’t move from their place, silent and likely contemplating.
“This is fucked up, right?” Rich asks. He doesn't get an audible response, their footsteps eventually retreat.
He doesn’t know who ‘Clark’ is, but something in the back of his brain is frightened.