Work Text:
"That's it!"
Clark looks up from the book he's reading. "What's it?"
Bruce is already grabbing the laptop, tapping out a message. "That case Stephanie mailed me about. The one with the serial killer who leaves a different raptor feather in the mouth of each victim. I think I know where they'll strike next." He finishes the mail and hits "send." "Let's hope she and Cass can get there in time."
"I'm sure they will," says Clark. He's curled up on the couch, a leather-bound copy of Proust in his hands. A La Recherche du Temps Perdu--the original French, of course. He's wearing jeans and a flannel shirt that compliments his eyes. There's a fire in the library fireplace, crackling gently; Bruce can feel the warmth on his feet as he stretches out his slippered toes. Outside the bay windows the sunset's light is slanting across the long emerald lawns of the Manor. A cool spring night, crisp and mild at the same time, the best kind. From the library speakers come the first notes of Bach's Fugue in G Minor: Bruce smiles slightly at the familiar melody, one of his favorites.
The smile slips away as he looks at the messages on his laptop. "I still haven't come up with anything about that kidnapped girl, though, the one Helena's looking for. I just...can't seem to find a pattern."
Clark looks up from the book: a quick, sympathetic glance. "I'm sure you'll figure it out soon. It'll come to you when you least expect it."
Bruce can hear Dick laughing off in the kitchen, answered by Damian's grumbling voice. "Is Alfred in the kitchen with the boys?" he says. "I could use a cup of tea."
Clark stands up. "I'll get you one." Bruce frowns slightly as he leaves the room. Is something worrying Clark? He sounds the same as always, but there seems some indefinable distance between them, some connection not quite being made. Bruce casts his mind back: has he done something rude without noticing it? He can't remember anything. But no, Clark doesn't seem upset. Just...distant.
"Here you go," says Clark, emerging with a steaming cup of tea. Bruce smiles his thanks and reaches out to take it.
There's something wrong with his hands.
The impression of wrongness is gone the moment it crosses his mind. His hands are the same as always. He shakes his head. Has he been working too hard?
"Are you okay?" Clark's voice is worried.
"I'm fine," Bruce says. He takes a sip of tea, frowning. The delicate sound of an oboe fills the library: the opening notes of Bach's Fugue in G Minor.
Bruce stands up. "Where's Alfred?" he says. "I want to ask him something."
"Oh," says Clark, "He's out at the moment."
Bruce goes to the window and looks out across the lawn. He grasps the heavy velvet curtains and--
There's something wrong with his hands.
Turning, he stalks to the mirror on the wall and looks into it, scowling. His black hair is slightly rumpled, his face the same unpleasantly stern expression--Clark calls it "aristocratic," but it's just grumpy--as always.
"I'm going out," he says abruptly.
"What? But we're having such a nice evening," Clark says from the couch, a little sleepily.
"We are," Bruce says. "We always are. Clark--my hands."
Clark stands up quickly, his face without transition alert and cautious. "Bruce," he says.
Bruce holds his hands up between them, forces himself to concentrate, to look at them. His hands--
--his hands, wrinkled and knobby, with a scattering of dark spots on them. The hands of an old man.
Not his hands.
His hands.
Clark's arms are around him now, and Bruce's heart is pounding, the room swimming. He hears himself stammering, demanding, his voice cracking in panic.
"Please, Bruce," Clark's voice is saying. "Please. You'll hurt yourself. Please don't," and Bruce realizes that he's been striking at Clark's face with his shaking, traitorous hands. He goes limp, lets himself be led to the couch, gasping for breath.
The air fills once more with the implacably lovely opening notes of Bach's Fugue in G Minor.
After a while, he looks at the sad, handsome face in front of him, unmarked by time, and says, "How long ago was I diagnosed?"
"About ten years ago."
Bruce closes his eyes. Opens them again. "Show me where I am."
"Bruce--"
"--Please."
With a gesture, the gardens outside the windows fade away to reveal an icy landscape, swept by Arctic winds. The mirror shimmers briefly as well, but Bruce doesn't rise to look at his face in it. The sound of his sons arguing cuts off abruptly in mid-sentence, and the deep, resonant silence of the Fortress fills the desolate little library.
"Tell me," Bruce says. "Tell me again. I need to know the truth."
His companion stands up, his back to Bruce, his spine stiff. "At first we all thought the Manor would be safe enough. But when your mind wandered..." He turns around and sits down on the couch next to Bruce. "After Bruce Wayne was found wandering the streets of Gotham, looking for the Joker, you insisted on coming here. You were afraid that you'd let secrets slip, more afraid that you'd hurt somebody when you were confused." His voice is warm, affectionate: the distance between them seems to have vanished as if it never were, and Bruce's heart aches so that he has to press his hands to his chest.
"The children? They're--"
"They're all well. They used to come visit more often, but it began to...distress you, so now they mostly stick to voice and text."
A brief image flickers through Bruce's mind: Dick with gray hair at his temples, a young man with Damian's shy and sullen eyes. Beloved strangers.
Clark's voice, Clark's dear voice, is still speaking, explaining about the children's lives, about Bruce's routine, their life here together. Bruce cannot bear it. "When did he die?"
Silence.
"When did Clark die?" Bruce's voice quavers in the middle, but he finishes the question and waits, silent, for the answer.
The Superman robot's face is calm and sad. "About two years ago." The distance is back between them, indefinable and solid, now that Clark's recorded voice has been cut off from its lips.
"Tell me," he says. Or tries to, but his voice fails him utterly and his lips shape the words in silence.
"Brainiac attacked the Fortress while Superman was away," says the robot with Clark's face. "He hoped to destroy you. Kal-El came back and fought him. You used the Fortress AI to hack into his systems and halt him, but it was too late."
Another fragment: scarlet painted across crystal, a jagged edge of memory that slices across his mind and is gone again.
He stands up. "I'm leaving," he says.
He walks through the false Manor to the front door, which swings open to reveal the crystal cathedral of the Fortress beyond. His slippered feet make no sound on the crystal floors. The robot follows him to the entrance of the Fortress. "Bruce," it says with Clark's voice.
"I command you not to stop me," says Bruce. The Arctic waste stretches out before him, pure and cold. He will walk into it, walk into the blank whiteness until everything is gone, until he has escaped at last.
"I will not stop you if you choose to go," says the robot. "But I am required by my programming to tell you that in the last month you have helped the Justice League defeat Eclipso, identified two serial killers in Gotham, halted an epidemic in Metropolis, located four kidnapped children, and thwarted an assassination attempt on the life of Mayor Drake."
Bruce turns to glare at the robot. "Who programmed you to say that?" he snarls, but he knows the answer, of course.
There has only ever been one person in the world ruthless enough to design such a merciless trap.
The wind outside howls. Bruce watches it lift the fine powered snow into the sky like smoke. Then, with a great effort, he turns around and walks back into the Manor, letting the heavy door swing shut behind him.
He sits down in his chair in the library. The robot sits back down on the couch and picks up the Proust once more, but it's looking at Bruce. Its eyes are sad. "You were always the bravest of us," it says with Clark's voice, a whisper from long ago.
Bruce would say something scoffing and sardonic back to Clark, but this isn't Clark. Instead he picks up the laptop and checks for new messages. There's a thank-you from Stephanie: We caught him, B. You rock. Outside the windows, the false sunlight is flowing across the imaginary lawn again; a cool spring night. He looks at the older mails from Jason, Barbara, Diana, from younger people he only half-knows. Helena's email catches his eye, and he re-reads it. A kidnapping case. He rubs his eyes, feeling weary. But that little girl needs his help. He tries to focus on the case, but it's impossible.
The opening notes of Bach's Fugue in G Minor lift into the air.
He closes his eyes and tries to relax, letting his mind wander so that his subconscious can work on the case, can make the connections necessary to save that child. He listens to the instruments go around and around, the theme passed from one to the next, always changing, always the same. Each stanza building, rising, falling back. Returning. Returning...
Intuition kindles at the edges of his thoughts, a revelation almost-realized. There's something there, something about repetition, about themes. The kidnapping follows a theme, it's building on something...
He searches for the location the girl was last seen, the names of her family members. What she was wearing at the time of the abduction. The fire in the fireplace crackles, but it warms him less than his search for the truth. He can hear Tim and Dick talking in the living room, their voices teasing. He ignores them. He almost has it. Yes.
Yes.
He's figured it out, it all makes sense now. The motive, the kidnapper, the location of the girl. She'll still be alive, he knows it. A surge of relief. He's triumphed once more over chaos and entropy, triumphed over the darkness.
He looks up from his laptop.
"Clark," he says, "I've got it!"