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It had been a long day, and an unusual one.
Bruce tipped his head back against the Batmobile seat, closing his eyes while he mentally catalogued hits he didn’t—no, couldn’t—remember taking. His left wrist was stiff and swollen. A puncture wound in his thigh bled sluggishly. His ribs ached. Dizziness and mild nausea suggested a concussion. In all, nothing out of the ordinary in the aftermath of a JLA call.
What was unusual was that he had not been present in his own body at the time the injuries had occurred.
Consciousness transfer , the alien leader had called it, before the sparking machine had caught Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in a field of crackling lightning and Bruce had opened Amazonian eyes and found a lasso in his hand. Diana had proven herself more than up to the challenge of wielding Superman’s powers, and Clark had performed commendably as Batman. Considering.
Bruce, for his part, had missed most of the fighting. Thanks to several days (and a few nights) of decryption and study prior, Bruce had become proficient enough in the alien language to find and dismantle the alien hive ship’s power source. So he had entered the ship alone and crept through the labyrinthine passageways while the others took on the footsoldiers and the giant robots.
As soon as the power source had gone up in shimmering, translucent flames, Bruce had opened his own eyes to an alien with a long barbed knife (finger? proboscis?) about to impale him through the gut. A well placed kick had sent the alien stumbling backward, but the fight was already over, as the robots that had been keeping Superman—Diana, now Clark—busy powered down and collapsed with the screech and crash of shearing metal.
Bruce was glad to have returned to his own body. He’d felt strange, and exposed, in the Wonder Woman costume, with long hair brushing his shoulders and slender limbs and curved hips and soft skin.
Diana and Clark seemed to have found the experience similarly unsettling. Before they’d all departed, Diana had joked about it with an undercurrent of relief. Clark had been uncharacteristically quiet, and Bruce had caught him stealing odd glances in his direction, worrying at his lip with his teeth.
The Batmobile slid into the cave, the engine purring, and parked itself. Bruce opened the door and pulled himself upright. As soon as he stood, the muscles around the stab wound in his thigh seized violently, and he had to cling to the roof of the car until the pain receded. Then he straightened and limped into the cave proper. Alfred was waiting.
A few hours later, Bruce was clean and showered and had changed into civilian clothes, casual jeans and t-shirt and a soft fleece sweater. Thanks to Alfred’s careful ministrations, his wrist had been splinted and secured in a sling and the stab wound in his leg had been cleaned, stitched, and bandaged. Alfred made sandwiches and a pot of tea.
Sleep beckoned, but there was more to do, so Bruce poured himself a cup of tea and settled into the seat in front of the large screen. The aliens had left technology behind, scattered across the cities where they had touched down. Now that the alien technology was inert, and not shielding itself, it would likely be possible to set up a trace based on the residual energy signatures. He was soon absorbed in the task. He’d always found satisfaction in solving puzzles. Detective work. Slowly, the potential locations were resolving into red pinpoints sprinkled across the city grids.
When the cave entrance slid open far above him, he glanced up from his work with the realization that he didn’t know much time had passed. He’d finished the entire pot of tea.
“Alfred?”
“He let me in.”
Bruce turned around sharply in his chair. Clark was descending into the cave slowly, still in his costume but taking the steps one by one.
“What are you doing here?” Bruce said.
Clark stopped in front of him and folded his arms over his chest, sounding uncertain. ”Alfred said you were down here.”
Bruce suppressed a sigh. “Why are you here and not home, in Metropolis?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” Clark said.
“What’s wrong?” Bruce said, his half-feigned irritation dropping away at the gravity in Clark’s voice. It wasn’t that Clark was never distraught after missions, but rarely unless something went truly wrong. A close call. A bad injury. A fatality, civilian or otherwise.
Clark unfolded his arms and slid into the other chair at the console, his broad shoulders slumping. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” Bruce said, letting his tone carry his confusion. He was fine. They were all fine.
Clark stared at him.
Bruce stared back.
“You’re not fine ,” Clark said. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands.
“I’m not,” Bruce echoed.
“I got you hurt today,” Clark said, looking up and gesturing at the sling around Bruce’s arm. “I tried to remember what you trained me to do when I lost my powers, but it wasn’t enough. I felt your bones break. I’ve never felt anything like that before.”
“Clark,” Bruce cut him off, resisting the urge to scrub his good hand down his face. “I am fine. You handled yourself well. I watched some of the video from the cowl. Consider me...pleasantly surprised.”
“But I—“ Clark glanced around the cave, but none of the bats dangling in the far corners came to his defense. “Your arm. You’ll be out of commission for weeks.”
“Days,” Bruce said.
The silence stretched out between them again. Bruce tried not to grimace.
“This is normal for you,” Clark realized.
Bruce raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgement, but he felt an odd drop in his stomach. As exposed as he’d felt in the Wonder Woman costume, he always felt more so as Bruce Wayne, in a sweater and jeans and sneakers and his arm in a sling. He couldn’t remember the last time Clark had been in full costume, and he hadn’t.
“Bruce,” Clark said.
“I'm a baseline human,” Bruce said. It was hardly a secret he was divulging, though the still-dawning horror on Clark’s face made it feel like one. “I get injured. I heal. It’s part of the job.”
“I don’t like it,” Clark said.
Bruce stared at him flatly. Most people wilted under his gaze. Never Clark.
“I know. I get that it comes with the territory. I just,” Clark sighed, spreading his hands helplessly. “I didn’t know how bad it was.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“What’s wrong with your shoulder, Bruce? Even before the fighting started. It hurt to move it.”
Bruce’s jaw tightened, and he sucked in a short, surprised breath. “Dislocated last month,” he answered flatly. “It’s almost completely healed. It’s not a problem.”
“Your knee?”
“Old injury. Flares up.”
“Hip?”
“Just a bruise.”
“Your back?”
Bruce paused. “Bane.”
“Oh,” Clark said.
Bruce’s lips thinned. He had long since accepted that pain would be a constant in the life he’d chosen. He’d simply...forgotten... that the lingering aches of old injuries would have seemed as alien to Clark as a lasso and a tiara had to Bruce.
“It’s like this every time?” Clark said.
“Yes,” Bruce said shortly. “I learned to manage pain a long time ago. None of this is any of your concern.”
“Of course it is,” Clark said.
“No. It’s not.”
“For once, will you—“
Bruce pushed to his feet, planning to put an end to the conversation by ushering him out.
Instead, the muscles in his injured thigh seized, pain burning suddenly and intensely from his knee to his groin.The jarring motion sent new agony shooting through his wrist and his ribs and he gasped, grabbing the back of the chair with his free hand to stay upright, his bruised knuckles turning white against the molded rubber. He'd been sitting for hours. Of course the muscle around the stab wound had stiffened again, like it had in the car. Amateur mistake.
At some point he’d closed his eyes and when he opened them Clark was right beside him, concern etched into his handsome features. He rested a steadying hand on Bruce’s arm.
“Are you okay?” Clark said.
The seizing in his leg had subsided to a bearable level. Bruce grunted.
Clark was close enough Bruce could feel him sigh, his hand shifting on Bruce’s arm. “Right. Silly question.”
Bruce tugged away and Clark, to his credit, let go, though he didn’t step back. “I’m almost done locating the remaining alien technology. I need to finish here.” He was still panting slightly and forced his breathing to calm before adding, “Preferably, alone.”
“The tech they left behind was inert,” Clark said. “We checked it out. Cleanup could wait.”
“Have to be sure,” Bruce said. “Anyone could stumble on it. Kids.”
“Hmm.” Clark peered over Bruce’s shoulder at the large screen, where maps of Metropolis, Gotham, and Central City were splayed out with red lights blinking where Bruce’s algorithm had identified potential alien energy signatures.
“Hmm?”
“I could get to all these sites in an hour or two. Let you get some rest.”
“I can--” Bruce started to say, then stopped.
He’d long been acutely aware that where the JLA was concerned, he was outclassed in objective terms by every member. To be worthy of membership in a lineup of the most powerful beings on the planet he had to be more than just a man. The myth of the Bat—powerful, all-knowing, and indefatigable—had to be believed. Any show of weakness was unacceptable. Batman never faltered or failed or asked for help. Batman delivered.
Clark had always known him better than the others--known him as Bruce Wayne, even--but Clark too had always thought of him as capable of the impossible. Except that now, Clark knew, and the myth of the Bat was shattered. Bruce was as vulnerable, and as breakable, as any other human.
Now, if Bruce insisted on completing the work himself, Clark would know it meant struggling through the fog of exhaustion and grinding pain simply to prove the futile point that he could. Perhaps it would even earn him a lecture about how foolish and reckless it was to go on like this. Or worse, how Clark had overestimated his ability to keep up with the rest of the League. He had to be thinking it.
So Bruce clenched his teeth, exhaled slowly through his nose, and said, “Go ahead.”
“Really?” Clark said. His shoulders sagged in palpable relief and that, more than anything, made something twist inside Bruce.
“You’re right,” Bruce said shortly. “I should... rest.”
Clark gestured vaguely at Bruce’s leg. “Could you, uh, use a hand getting upstairs before I go?”
Bruce was forced to consider his options again. He could make it upstairs under his own power, most likely, though his injured leg had started shaking when he’d stood and had yet to stop, and there was a non-negligible chance it would give out altogether on the stairs. He could wake Alfred and ask him for help. He could sleep in the cave. Or he could lean on Clark.
“Yes,” Bruce gritted. “I could use a hand.”
Clark closed the distance between them in an instant, wrapping his arm gently around Bruce’s waist. Bruce sucked in a sharp breath as his ribs shifted and his wrist was jostled. For a moment he felt shame, hot and sudden. He hated Clark seeing him like this. He hated even more that no matter how neutral he kept his expression, Clark knew.
“Okay?” Clark said.
“Fine.”
Clark didn’t scoop Bruce up into his arms and fly him up the long staircase to the mansion, but, as he walked him gingerly up the stairs, Bruce had the sense he wanted to.
The manor proper was warmer than the cave, and limping up the long flight of stairs—even with Clark taking most of his weight—had been taxing. Bruce leaned into Clark. He couldn’t stop himself and it felt strange beyond belief. Superman had carried Batman before, on the battlefield and off. But not as Clark and Bruce. Not ever in the manor.
“Where to?”
Bruce straightened as much as he could, blinking, then nodded down the darkened hall. “Bedroom’s that way.”
Clark supported him over the plush carpet of the hallway, past paintings that had adorned the walls since Bruce was a child. When they reached Bruce’s room, Clark walked him inside and eased him down to sit on the edge of the bed. Bruce winced, but it was a relief to be sitting again.
Clark went over to the dresser and pulled a t-shirt and a folded pair of sweatpants from a drawer, then set them on the comforter beside Bruce.
“You x-rayed my dresser,” Bruce said.
“Sorry,” Clark said, sounding not sorry at all. “Do you need any help getting those on?”
Bruce tucked the clothing under his good arm and glared at Clark until Clark said, “Okay, okay.”
Bruce stood without Clark’s help, wavered for a moment, then limped into the adjoined bathroom and shut the door behind him. He tugged the sling off and tossed it on the counter, then pulled off his sweater and shirt with a muffled hiss of pain that Clark undoubtedly heard. As he undressed he caught his reflection in the mirror—stubbled and pale and bruised, his lip split and dark circles smudged beneath his eyes—and couldn’t stop himself from wondering, briefly, what Clark saw. What he had ever seen. Then he pulled on the new clothes, brushed his teeth, splashed some water on his face, and didn’t allow himself to examine the thought further.
“You can go now,” Bruce said as he emerged, leaning against the doorframe. “I don’t need to be tucked in.”
Clark turned around toward him, frowning disapprovingly. “I wasn’t planning on it. Is there anything else you need before I go?”
“No. I’m fine. Go,” Bruce said. He made it back to his bed without incident and without Clark’s help.
The sun was rising outside his window, the pale dawn sunlight illuminating the grounds. The combination of injury and exhaustion was beginning to coalesce into a deep, undefined ache that seemed to have lost any particular point of origin in his body. He needed to sleep.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Bruce looked up at Clark, allowing his face show the sort of tired desperation he usually reserved for Alfred when Alfred drew back the curtains far too early and reminded him that Bruce Wayne had a stockholder meeting at eight o’clock sharp.
Clark didn’t wait for an answer. “Why didn’t you ever tell me how bad it really is?”
Bruce closed his eyes briefly. If speaking to a costumed Clark in the cave in civilian clothes had left him feeling oddly exposed, staring up at him in sweatpants in his own bedroom, in his own bed, left him stripped bare.
“You know I get injured on missions.”
“Yes, but I didn’t understand what it felt like. And I always assumed...you got better,” Clark shrugged. “I never thought you answered calls when you were injured. It didn’t even occur to me that some injuries might never heal. I didn’t know that every time you got hurt you were just going from bad to worse.”
Bruce’s jaw tightened again, meeting Clark’s concerned gaze with a steely gaze of his own. “There was no reason to tell you. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Clark let out a short sigh. “Which of us is about to fly to three cities and check roughly a hundred potential alien technology sites and dispose of whatever remains in under two hours?”
“Mm,” Bruce said.
Clark folded his arms.
“You want an answer?” Bruce said finally.
“Yes!” Clark said.
“I didn’t want you to know,” Bruce said. “I can’t do what you can do. What any of you can do. So I have to be...Batman.”
“Oh, Bruce,” Clark said softly. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside Bruce, the mattress creaking under his weight, then ran a hand through his hair, looking far more like Clark than Superman. “You thought I’d think less of you? See you as unworthy to be on the team with the rest of us?”
Bruce looked away, finally too tired to argue or dissemble. “Yes.”
“Bruce,” Clark said again, bracingly. “I just found out you’re in pain all the time, not letting injuries heal properly, pushing yourself past your limits, suffering, and I didn’t know. I feel like a bad friend. I feel like,” he paused, “an idiot.”
Bruce glanced up at him. “You’re not a...bad friend.”
“So just an idiot then,” Clark said lightly.
“It’s my choice,” Bruce amended. “It always has been.”
“Well, of course,” Clark said. “I’m not saying you should stop. I just,” he seemed to search for the right words, “care about your wellbeing, because I care about you.”
“Oh,” Bruce said, finding himself, for the first time, nonplussed.
“In any case, I thought it went without saying that you’re invaluable to the team,” Clark added earnestly. “We couldn’t have shut down the power source without your knowledge, and the tech cleanup? You’re right, of course. If there’s any chance of danger—even to one person—it’s worth doing, and it’s worth doing now. Sometimes I think the rest of us need someone with eyes on the ground to remind us of that. And the fact that you did so much of the work yourself, overnight, in the shape you’re in—I’d have been impressed if you’d done it with powers or super healing or even a good night’s sleep. I’m so much more impressed now. I’m grateful.”
“Hrn,” Bruce said.
Clark’s words had left him with a strangely buoyant emotion he couldn’t quite place, nor did he know exactly how to express. So he didn’t.
“Okay,” Clark said, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Get some sleep. I’ll let you know when the cleanup is done. And Bruce—”
“Yes?”
“In the future, don’t hesitate to call. You know I’ll come.”
Clark turned toward the window.
“Wait,” Bruce said.
Clark pivoted, his cape fluttering out behind him.
“Thank you,” Bruce said, then cleared his throat. For everything, he thought.
“Of course,” Clark said easily, his tone so free of judgment it would have sounded practiced coming from anyone else. Not Clark. “What are friends for?”
“Hrn,” Bruce said again.
Clark smiled, nodded, and was gone.
For several seconds after Clark had flown away, Bruce sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the window. The exhaustion soon pulled him down, and as soon as he sank into the soft mattress, he could feel himself drifting. Yet that strange, buoyant feeling remained, and as he closed his eyes, secure in the knowledge the streets would be safe when he woke the next day, he recognized it as a relief that had been a very long coming.