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His modus operandi was easy, comfortable and safe; there weren’t any surprises, any messes and he would never be blindsided. If a challenge dared to go up against him, Bruce knew he would be able to overcome it by immersing his time in the subject at hand. Sooner or later, he’d come to a solution to the current problem. That was how he’d become so good at his night job, why he was accepted in the League, full of mighty beings that levitated upon the earthlings. His money was a helping hand to his extraordinary mind and unwavering discipline.
He had done something similar when Dick came around. Not as exhaustive, there were boundaries Bruce dared not to cross even (especially) now, a title he didn’t want to own without the kid’s approval. But this time was different. Jason was different; he hadn’t had the nurturing and caring parents he (and any kid) deserved, he was forced to build an armour whereas Dick had been handed one, against his will. His task, now, was the same as that time, with the main difference that Jason would surely oppose resistance to Bruce’s attempts to get near him. Just because he had agreed to live with him meant he trusted Bruce; maybe, he liked Alfred, but that was being kind. A child that carried the weight Jason’s shoulders endured would not feel comfortable around adults after all the disappointments he had faced in his short life.
Dick had known tenderness, love and warmness since he first came into the world; Jason was thrown in a screaming match of two babies that resembled adults.
The only thing his two boys had in common was a pain no kid had to experienced, something Bruce knew too well and wished upon no one.
He had managed to bond with Dick because their pain shared name and surnames, but Jason’s came from a whole different family tree that left Bruce on a tightrope with no net beneath. It saddened him, more than ever, to feel Dick’s absence by his side; his former partner was not only light where Batman needed to be darkness but had the emotional intelligence Bruce could only dream of having. Most days, Bruce had wanted to do nothing else than pick up the phone, dial Dick’s number and call his boy, tell him all of what had happened and asked for help, as Alfred had made him practice so many times throughout his childhood, adolescence and adulthood.
But he wasn’t that incompetent in the field of emotions; Dick hadn’t taken the news of a new Robin well. Bruce didn’t have it in him to ask if it was because he got to know by some other source than him or because the whole ordeal in general. Something told him that would only earn him a punch. And Dick no longer came up to his wait neither was he a nine-year-old anymore. He was wrapped up in nostalgia each time he was reminded of the fact.
So, he was on his own. With Alfred’s loyal help, but on his own. He was the one who decided to bring that kid home, the one who decided to become a parent to a troubled twelve-year-old (a pre-teen, the easiest age to raise kids) and he would be the one to go through all the investigations, professional’s opinions, shared experiences and anything that he deemed useful.
His task started right after Jason was sent upstairs to get his needed sleep. It was easier after patrol, not only was the kid tired but also too busy retelling Alfred’s their night to dwell into his fears and anxieties. Right after he was left alone, he started to document each piece of advice, print and highlight interesting articles, purchase books written by prestigious specialists in the subject…
He had spent two months doing this regularly. Two months without being caught by the reason behind all this work. Two months reading, studying, writing down his own notes, practicing some in real life with positive results…
It had passed two months and two and a half weeks when it happened.
In retrospective, he couldn’t say it took him by surprise. There was this… hunch? No… This familiarity about what he had read, what he had come upon; some longing to the suggested courses of action. Like that feeling he got when he witnessed Clark spending time with his mother, receiving all the hugs and kisses and words of encouragement than Martha Wayne could no longer perform for her own offspring. It scratched in the back of his mind and knocked on his heart.
It washed over him, from head to toe, that night.
Maybe it had been subconscious. He was like a dog with a bone, he couldn’t stop once he got it in his power. He might’ve derailed to ease his agitated mind, to stop the unintelligible whispering in the back of his brain.
He was selfish to a fault. He’d been told as much.
The pen stopped, the ballpoint, mere inches from the half-used page of his notebook. The words registered, as they always did when he took notes, storing in his mind for later use. He repeated the last paragraph. Then, he did it a second time, shamefully slow for a man his age. He felt something dusty, resurrecting from some forgotten place, some far away corner of the left part of his chest; it beat to an aged melody, one he had buried but was still attached to his wrist by a thin, red thread that was now tightening to the point of cutting.
Bruce put the pen down, stretching his fingers. His eyes were glued to the words in his handwriting, his eyes going from left to right over and over, as if they were looking for something wrong with what they were reading. Bruce was. He was desperate, anxious to shake this insisting feeling off of him.
There were several images in the front of his mind, passing by at vertiginous speed.
His body turned off, all his energy going to his brain, which worked tirelessly, grateful for this sudden boost.
In his three decades living on this Earth, Bruce had remembered a lot of things, had been reminded of a lot of things. What happened that time… He knew it was a memory, but it performed in front of him strangely, as it had never had before. It was like watching a movie, projected on his eyelids. The machine was rusty for lack of use, the specks of dust floating at the verges of the image, which was almost achromatic. The sound was poor in quality, but understandable enough; a scream’s echo that had finally reverberated back.
The words – the symptoms, consequences – he had written didn’t happen one by one. No. They were merciless, falling on the top of him all at once, suffocating him. His chest constricted, unable to manage them. It exploded, the pieces of its organ going past the ribcage and blocking his larynx.
Numbly, he got up from the chair, not making a peep, and walked upstairs, in auto-pilot.
[“It resonated with me,” he admitted. “The w-the symptoms, they… Self-diagnosing is not advisable—”
“But you always do it.”
“I do it when all evidence points to the same thing. When there’s nowhere else to run to, no one, not even yourself, to convince you of the contrary.”
“You felt that?”
“Like there was no escape? Completely.”].
“Master Bruce, I thought we’d agreed on no costum—My boy,” his old friend’s voice cracked, the light reprimand on his tone dissipating once his eyes were laid on him. “What’s the matter?”
The microwave dinged, the glass filled with water stopped in the far end of the device, waiting in darkness until he reclaimed it. There was no sound, then. No leaves dancing with the autumn’s breeze, no furniture tautening, no typing from the Cave, no footsteps on the carpet. The night was coming to an end, the sun had a couple of hours left of sleep and Alfred was still awake, on the watch for him. He was standing right in front of the child he had sworn to take care of, to look after as his own.
That definition had never brought so many conflicted feelings upon Bruce as it did now.
“Bruce,” called the British man, daring to step into the kitchen, break the distance between them. A gloved hand landed on his forearm and it gripped as Alfred’s lips thinned. “I’m here, it’s alright.”
When Alfred pulled him, gently, into a tentative hug, just then, Bruce’s ears worked again. And he heard himself, gasping quietly, his chest going up and down quickly against Alfred’s calm one. His eyes stung, and he tried to convince himself that it was the sweat, streaming down his forehead and sticking his raven hair against his forehead and his suit against his skin. Anyway, he was held tighter when he didn’t reciprocate the gesture. The senses came back slowly, as if testing his limits. With each one, Bruce felt less alive, equally frozen in time.
“Get changed and go upstairs. Were you going to make yourself some tea? Let me take care of it, alright? Just go up and—”
Bruce didn’t give him the chance to end that sentence; he pushed his friend to the side and reached the sink, emptying his stomach.
[“The first thing I did when I was back was vomit.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, I’m not sick. I just—It was disgust.”
“At what?”
“At the situation, I guess. At myself, probably.”
“It’s not your fault, Bruce.”
“I can’t convince myself of that.”
“It’s—”
“I know. I’m trying to protect the image I had of my parents, my caregivers. There’s this—You told me once, Clark, when we just met and didn’t get along. You got mad at me for breaking your trust and you told me I was just a scared eight-year-old trying to stop two bullets and failing each time.”
“I’m deeply sorry for that.”
“I know. I forgave you as soon as you said it. But it was said. And… And I think I can’t forget it because it was true. You were right. I’m just an eight-year-old trying to keep the pieces of his fantasy together. But it’s crumbling.”
“Because it’s not a kid’s responsibility to keep a whole household together; less a false one.”].
“Was I neglected as a kid?”
The taste of vomit was still persistent on his tongue. Bruce took the steaming cup of lime blossom tea, leaning back on the cushions Alfred had set appropriately so his back would rest as much as the rest of his body, now in comfortable pyjamas that rested softly against his cleaned body.
Alfred’s hands stopped the blanket he was covering him up with right on his waist. The smell of the tea mixed with the one of his shampoo, emanating from the half opened bathroom door, was somewhat mesmerizing. The warmness of the cup wrapped his hands and the sensation spread to the rest of his body, his muscles relaxing as they had done under the sprinkler.
Throughout the years, Bruce had learnt a lot about words, especially the effect they had when unspoken. He’d paid the price for all the non-discussed issues with Dick, had lost friendships, ruined halfway romances and strained the bonds with his remaining family. He never spoke with just a suspicion at the table. He came to choose his vocabulary carefully so the receiver wouldn’t turn their back and run away from the conversation. Not that Bruce pictured Alfred doing such thing – that was more his thing – but, sometimes, silence with presence was worse than pure absence. And he didn’t learn that hard lesson from the hands of the butler.
“I am disinformed about whatever happened back at your uncle’s house, if that is what you mean, sir,” answered Alfred, going back into motion.
“I didn’t mean that time only.”
A vacillation in Alfred’s hands, smoothing the blanket over his legs. It might have been just his eyes narrowing, but, for a moment, Bruce thought the bedside lamp fell short to expectation, submerging his bedroom in a dim light that reached only their tense forms in the midst of the shadows that lounged around. The saturated yet weak yellow light drew a couple more of wrinkles on Alfred’s forehead, turning his scowl more prominent and fading the colour from his tired eyes.
“What brought you to this state of mind, if you don’t mind the question?”
“I was looking for ways to help Jason,” he admitted, knowing it would be easier than wait for Alfred to talk illy of his deceased friends. “Tonight it was more fruitful than the other times.”
“In which section?”
“The aftermath.”
“I see.”
“Did you know?”
“There were things in Master Thomas’ upbringing method that I did not agree with, but it was not my place to intercede.”
“You thought differently when it came to Dick and me,” pointed out Bruce, quite accusatorily. He swallowed before the impermeability of the older man. The seconds ticked by like hours and Bruce felt the cup in his hands reaching ambient temperature.
[“It’s normal if you’re angry at Alfred.”
“I’m not. I think. I’m… I’m disappointed.”
“That’s fine, too. I’m sure he understands.”]
“Were you scared of what I could do to him, to Jason?” That cracked something in the butler’s expression. “Is that why you intervene now?”
“No, dear God, of course it’s not,” assured Alfred, taking a seat on the bed and grabbing one of Bruce’s wrists. “I try to mend the hurt I indirectly caused to an innocent child, nothing more. I’ll never think of you as such thing.”
“I think Dick does.”
“No. Master Dick is going through a difficult age at the same time you entered a difficult state. Kids grow up gradually, but we only realise abruptly, when it’s too late. Add that to the unsteady ground you both always stand on regarding a touchy subject.”
[“He raised me. When nobody wanted me only for myself, just for the wealth under my surname, he wanted and raised me without asking anything in return. He’s my father, too. I’ve never said it out loud.”
“Now you have.”
“He’s not here to hear me say that.”
“He knows it. Alfred knows everything.”]
“Jason must not know about this.”
“Is that sensible, sir?”
“Very. He doesn’t need to think he’s more of a burden he already mistakenly does.”
“Perhaps, he would not focus on that matter, but instead benefit from seeing his new guardian act human. It might humble you in his eyes and forge a closer link between the two.”
“No, he will act as I fear,” insisted Bruce, saddened.
“Very well, sir,” nodded Alfred, in discord.
Bruce averted his glare, broke the physical contact by placing the undrunk cup on the nightstand and got up from bed.
“May I ask where do you think you’re going?”
“Out.”
“I supposed as much. What location out of the several there are outside the Manor?”
“Make something up,” he deflected, throwing the upper part of his pyjamas to the ground and changing to a black turtleneck. “Something coming up at WE, nothing Batman related.”
“Master Jason is not a stupid boy,” reminded the butler, gently.
“But he’s a boy, nonetheless. None of this is his problem.”
There was a loud silence at his back. Then, the springs of the bed whining right before the wooden floor.
“I’ll reheat this; have something in your stomach before going out.”
Bruce nodded, not turning around. Alfred took it as an unbreakable promise, closing the door quietly at his backs.
“And you came here.”
“I did.”
“I feel honoured.”
A wee smile was drawn on Bruce’s lips, the motion hurting after spending the last couple of hours pressed in a thin line. Clark got up from the island of his kitchenette, taking the now empty dish to the sink and washing it, not disrupting the quietness the complex was still under.
He hadn’t come to his friend’s apartment consciously, didn’t get in his car with the idea implanted in his head. He just drove. He drove until there were some people in suits already on the streets, taking up the lanes and the sidewalks, trying to free themselves from Morpheus’ claws. The sun was still resting under the effect of the time change typical of the cold season. It had started to taint the sky in soft orange now, Bruce could see it from the balcony of his friend, and so, the house came to life.
The rests of last night’s dinner were displayed on the short-legged coffee table, rounding the closed laptop. Bruce got up and made a beeline for it, taking the used glass and empty bag in his hands to then turn around to throw it away. Clark stopped him before he had the chance to get in the kitchen section, taking the things from his hands with an apologetic smile.
“You’re my guest,” was his excuse, right before doing what Bruce had intended.
“A very bad one.”
“Relax, you’re not even in the top 5.”
“I knocked on your door at 5.15 am.”
“You know I don’t need sleep.”
“Still, you’ll be late to work.”
“I’m late almost every day.”
“How can you? You’ve got superspeed.”
“It’s a paradox. Barry has the same issue.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t.” A bit of Superman slipped through his friend’s tone, erasing whatever words that had been piling on the tip of his tongue. “I don’t mind this at all. I always tell you can come to me whenever you need it, and I mean that.”
“I—Okay,” he ceded, unconvinced.
“But,” continued Clark, after a nod. Bruce’s lips thinned, knowing pretty well what was about to come now, “I’m in no way a psychologist. You might…”
“No.”
“Okay, okay, I’m just saying—”
“I’m not going to pay 80 dollars so a random person hears my personal problems.”
“It’s not about listening to you, but give you the advice you need to get better. That’s what you pay them for.”
“I know.”
“Besides, I doubt someone you choose would be—”
“I won’t, Clark.”
Batman, on his part, had Superman’s same effect, so Clark just clicked his jaw shut and nodded, more curtly this time.
“I won’t be able to help you the way you need it, B,” he simply said, sounding genuinely saddened.
“I just need you to be honest with me.”
“I just was, and you shut me up.”
Bruce ignored him with the expertise of years, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He tapped the screen a few times until it showed what he’d been looking for.
“How many of these things do you think Dick went through?”
Clark took the phone, reluctantly, and gave a quick look – skimmed through it, if he were an average human – at the text that had started all this spiral that was way out of control, much to Bruce’s dismay.
“Bruce,” began Clark, cautiously. “Are you really asking me if I think you were an abusive father to Dick?”
His silence spoke volumes, as it usually did.
Clark exhaled loudly through his nostrils, passing his free hand through his dishevelled hair, the hem of his striped pyjamas going up enough to show his abdomen.
“B, do you really think I, or any league member for that matter, would have stood by if that had been the case?”
“Alfred did.”
They locked eyes and, for a moment, Bruce thought the room was about to swallow him whole. The feeling was relatively comforting.
“He’s the person I trust the most and yet, he put other things before me. Just as my father did, as my uncle, especially did. As I did with Dick and with Jason now, too. I—” He cleared his throat, blinked a couple of times, made sure his voice would come out in one piece before talking again: “I don’t want to ruin them as I am.”
“You’re not ruined, Bruce,” assured Clark, assertively. “You’re hurting. That’s all. Hurt people hurt people, sometimes unconsciously.”
“What if it wasn’t unconscious? I knew what I was doing.”
“Not in that fashion. We all carry our demons, but we decide what we do with them. Some people use them to justify being the villains to somebody else’s story; you used your trauma and pain to be the adult you needed when you were a child. To Gotham and, more personally, to Dick and Jason. You’re a good man and so is Dick, thanks to you.”
“To his parents,” he corrected.
“As sad as it is, they could only be in his life for nine years. You took up the slack, altruistically, because you wanted to provide for the kid what you didn’t get.”
“That’s why he left.”
“I left too,” confessed his friend. “Around that age. I was—My parents gave their all to me, took me in out of the goodness of their hearts, always knowing that each day I was nearer to leave them. I left because I felt like I didn’t belong, like there was some piece missing in me, waiting for me out there.
“Seeing you like this helps me to have some perspective. Having my own children, hopefully, someday would have given it to me, too. But back then, I was a teenager two steps away to adulthood, and needed to do that, as egotistically as it was. And Dick had to, too.
“Not that we are all the same, but we all go through that phase of wanting to find our true self, to test our limits. The fact that Dick left is good, Bruce; you gave him enough freedom to leave if he thought it necessary, but still knowing he can call you anytime the situation requires it, because you will not hold it against him. That’s all the contrary to what an abuser does.”
“It’s not the same,” argued Bruce, subdued. “You left because you needed to find your heritage. Dick knows his. I made him leave, we fought terribly, he couldn’t stand it, stand me, anymore and left.”
“Do you think I left on good terms with my parents? Those were dark days for me, too.”
Bruce mirrored the soft smile on Clark’s lips. “Terrifying to know teenage years are intergalactic.”
Clark laughed. Then, looked back at his friend gently. “One thing that never changed, no matter how far I got from home or what I found out about myself: Martha and Jonathan Kent will always be my parents, just as Lara and Jor-El were.”
Bruce’s expression flattered. Clark gave him his mobile back.
“Call him,” he advised, “the phone works both ways and I’m not the one who can answer your question.”
“Do you have to go to work?” asked Bruce, going to his contact list tentatively.
“I can call in sick if—”
“No, I was just asking how much time you could stay. Leave when you need to.”
“I’ll stay as long as you need,” promised his friend, sternly.
Bruce nodded, dubiously. He looked down, saw the name of his foster son on the top of the list, his finger hovering over the contact.
“I’ll be in my room. Call me if you need anything.”
Bruce bit his tongue. Clark would be able to hear and understand the conversation as if he were right in front of him, regardless of where he decided to be throughout it.
He sighed once he heard the bedroom door at his left clicked shut. If he was going to do this, at least let there be someone with him that would stop him from fucking it up any further.
The phone rang three times before it was picked up from the other side. Bruce held his breath, in denial.
“Bruce?” Dick’s voice asked right in his ear. The utter disbelief of his tone broke Bruce’s heart. “Is everything alright?”
No. It was not. He just found out he’d been victim of emotional neglect and abuse during his childhood while trying to help Jason feel safe and comfortable in his new home, thought he had inflected it upon Dick, was angry at his most trusted friend in the entire world, had had an anxiety attack and a mild disassociation episode in the span of five minutes and the only thing he wanted more than anything in the world was to be capable of hug Dick and apologise appropriately for making him feel as alone and unfit as he had felt since too young to this very day. And he couldn’t even do the first half of that because he had been a shitty father, guardian or whatever the fuck Dick wanted to call it and had managed to push his son away from him.
“Bruce?” Dick called, more urgently. “What is it? Are you and Jay okay? Is Alf—?”
“Did you ever feel abused under my care?”
The line went dead. For a brief moment, Bruce was about to unglue the phone from his ear and make sure he had called Dick for real, because by the sounds of it, it felt like his mobile was turned off.
“What th—Whatever the hell happened? Where does that come from?” asked Dick, quite indignantly. Bruce swallowed thickly. Thirty seconds and he had already fucked it up. New record.
“I’ve been immersing myself in anything related to child abuse, neglect and the sorts. Because of Jason. I—I want to make sure I don’t ruin everything again.” All this had happened because he hadn’t been straight, honest enough. Better start trying something different if he wanted different results. “And I—”
Something got stuck in his throat; his eyes watered. This was sad. It was sad to hear Dick’s voice but not seeing him, not having him in front of him, as he used to. To just have an empty space, an empty room, as he had come used to after years of nothing but this.
“I think I might’ve been abused and neglected as a kid.”
It came out in one breath; the weight that had fallen upon him once the notion got through his head was lifted. Still, he prayed that Dick hadn’t understood one word, that he would ask him to repeat himself and so Bruce would make something up, would evade the question, would re-direct the conversation or simply end it.
“Well, fuck.” No such luck, of course. “Are you okay? Sorry, that was a stupid question… Where are you? Are you with somebody? Do you need me to come over?”
It was funny, in some twisted way. He expected Dick to ignore his call or, in the worst of cases, answering and dismiss him with a few chosen words that would haunt him at night, knowing a man that had robbed his family’s colours deserved no second of his time. It would’ve broken him, but Bruce expected nothing more because he knew he had earned nothing else.
Instead, what he got, way better than what his anxiety prepared him for, destroyed him from in and out. He felt his very soul falling to his feet, his body crumbling with the walls he had built since age eight. The same age he had been when he felt the tears before realising he had started to cry.
Two hands grabbed his arms, guiding to sit down on the couch. He looked up, seeing Clark, now changed in his working clothes and with his hair combed. There were no glasses on yet, so, amidst the water gathering in the corners of his vision, Bruce had a clear view of Clark’s two bright blue eyes, watching him with a frown that helped little to undo the knot in his chest.
A soft sob escaped his parted lips, and oxygen was welcome back in his body, his lungs remembered how to operate.
“I’m going home,” Dick declared, in a pause to take in some air. “Call Alfred, don’t be alone, okay?”
“He’s with me, Dick,” talked Clark. “We’re in my apartment. He just needed to let it out a bit more.”
“Okay. Good,” nodded the former Robin, voice tense. “Listen, I’ll be home in a couple of hours, max. Metropolis is farther—”
“You don’t have to come,” interrupted Bruce, after a couple of deep breaths. “I just—I just needed to call you and know—”
“Bruce,” Dick called, stern beyond his years. “You were not abusive towards me. You were everything but.”
“Calm down,” whispered Clark, going to draw circles on his back.
“I was awful to you,” continued Bruce, masochistically. “I was awful to this kid, and he’s worrying about me,” he explained, looking at his friend at a loss.
“You were kind of an asshole, but so was I,” shrugged Dick. There was some rustling in the background. Hangers hitting each other in quick succession.
“I saw you getting shot,” recalled Bruce, his voice going back to what it was supposed to be. “I saw my son being shot and, for a moment, longer than the gunshot itself, I saw you bleeding out in front me just as my parents did.”
Silence reigned in both sides. Clark’s hand stopped but remained on his back, his eyes going down to the floor.
“I’m sorry, Bruce,” said Dick, quietly. “I should’ve—”
“No. You shouldn’t have. I should have. I should’ve known how to react as an adult, but I did not and I hurt us more than that scare alone. I—I’m sorry I fired you. It was not my place.”
“No, it was not…” agreed Dick, a bit bitterly.
“But I did. I fired you. Of being Robin, not of being my son. I would never do such a thing.”
Two heartbeats before Dick said: “I know…”
“I will never ask you to come back and I promised never to bother you again, and I’ll fulfil that promise, but I needed to know. I need to. Because I know I messed it up with you, and I don’t want to mess Jason up either.”
“You didn’t mess me up. I’m sure professionals around the globe would debate about if dressing a kid in bright colours to fight crime in Gotham is a good coping mechanism, but the reality is that it saved me. You saved me, Bruce.
“And sure, I’m angry… Or, well, upset at you, for how you acted this last year. I’m angry at other things I’m still figuring out. I think I would’ve left anyways.”
“Shut up,” muttered Bruce when a presumptuous smile crossed Clark’s features.
“But Bruce, for God’s sake, what you’re asking… Bruce, you weren’t perfect: you’re too goal-orientated, standoffish and have a problem with wanting to have everything under control, but you never abused me.”
“I thought the same,” confessed Bruce, swallowing bitterly. “I thought… For a kid, their household is the norm, is what they expect when they interact with other people—”
“What was it?” interrupted Dick.
“What?”
“What made your brain click?”
“I won’t tell you.”
“Okay. What made your brain click regarding my childhood, then?”
“I acted in some ways that resembled the way I was treated as a kid.”
“For example?”
“I—I left you alone. Screamed at you. Lashed out. Would tend to evade conversations instead of going to talk it through with you. I couldn’t help you as you deserved.”
“Didn’t you?” questioned Dick, calmly. “Let me tell you what I remember from being a kid under your care. I remembered a total stranger taking care of giving my parents a proper funeral, taking me in, giving me a purpose, teaching me the difference between revenge and justice, how to redirect my anger so it would stop being destructive.
“I remember sleeping in your bed each night I had a nightmare. I remember you trying to distract me, thinking I didn’t notice, when I was having a sad day because I missed my parents. I remember your ease to forgive me when I ran my mouth or to forget any argument we’d had because you saw me hurt.
“I remember how you put my feelings before your own, your loyalty and morals from which I’ve learnt a lot. B, I told you that I didn’t want you to replace my Dad, but you did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I meant that as a good thing. You were never my father but acted as my parent. When you didn’t have to, when I did nothing else but being difficult.”
“You were not. You were just nine and grieving,” argued Bruce.
“Yeah, you made sure to remind me that daily. Were you ever told something like that?”
“No,” he admitted, after a painfully long pause.
“There you have it. You may have realised it now, but you always knew and acted in consequence.”
“You sure are your father’s kid,” commented Clark, in flat awe.
“Thanks.”
“I just—” spoke Bruce, hesitantly. “I don’t want you to realise years later, when maybe you can’t confront me about it and go through all of this. To hate me more than you hate me now.”
“Bruce, I don’t hate you,” countered Dick hastily, sounding affronted. “You get on my nerves, but I don’t hate you. I—I care for you. Just as I care for Alfred and Jay, that badmouthed little shit.”
“Don’t talk to your—Jason like that.”
“He uses my name against me. It’s fair play.” A loud thud. “I’ll be home for lunch.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Meh, I need to make sure my bedroom is as I’ve left it,” dismissed Dick, not sounding convincing at all. “I sent a text to Alfred, so it’s already decided.”
“I guess so,” ceded Bruce, smiling faintly.
“Love you, B.”
“Me too, chum.”
The screen showed the call coming to an end before their eyes. Clark’s hand moved to his arm and pulled him gently against him, in a half hug that provoked nothing but another wave of stinging in his eyes. Bruce covered his eyes with one hand, the other gripping his mobile for dear life, and Clark used his left arm to pull him closer, his chin resting on the top of Bruce’s head. He had commented about this once, casually, with a tint of concern, about how Bruce cried so quietly sometimes even Clark missed it if he wasn’t paying attention. Luckily, he had been doing nothing but in the last two hours, as smothering as it sounded.
Clark had made some other questions over the course of their friendship, all of them coming to mind now, all of them making sense now that Bruce bothered to look them in the eye. He guessed one of the main reasons he had come to trust Clark this much, as much as to go to him when a realisation of this calibre took place, was because he had formulated those questions, commented on his subjacent issues right in Bruce’s face, instead of talking about them at his backs, as the rest of the world had been doing all his life.
Subjects that cut deep, especially when one’s skin was new to this cruel world. When one’s age was a one digit number, and he overheard his parents discussing his odd behaviour and worrying introversion; when one was grieving prematurely and heard the two only links left to his mother complaining about his selfishness and incompetence of loving and caring about anyone but himself; when the world talked about him while knowing nothing more than his name and his most scarring experience.
Subjects that he had carried to adulthood, performed in his day-to-day life, with nobody but Clark questioning it, in that friendly and welcoming manner of his, genuinely interested in what might be wrong with him. It might be the reason why he opened up later in the day, why he only confessed to him the exact point that knocked over the trunk of forbidden memories; explained why it had broken him, driven him to a level of anxiety he had mastered before coming back to Gotham.
He talked about the bits he remembered, clear as day, about his father’s ego and cold approach, about his mother’s frustration and several attempts to understand him properly to no avail. He would admit how much he missed her, her fierce humanity of which he inherited none. What wouldn’t he give to have her back and be honest with her, hold her reached out hand and apologise for worrying and scaring her more than she deserved.
He spat when he compared that good nature to the sick way her brother twisted her will to help her hurting son, when he recalled the things he was called, the shame of having defended that man despite the unyielding rancour nesting in his chest, parroting his uncle’s words, knowing them by heart for the many, many times he had heard them during the years living under his care.
His blood boiled when he confessed the loneliness that accompanied him during that time, that was accentuated each time Alfred didn’t do more, but especially when his other uncle not only ignored what was happening, but also defended his brother’s actions, branding him as difficult and impossible to deal with.
And Clark just listened, not minding the hours, the long silences, the mood swings during his friend’s speech.
And Bruce ended the tirade as he started it, crying quietly, the only way he knew for all the times he concealed his tears in order not to disturb the adults that should have taken care of him and looked after his emotional needs, not the other way around. Just that that time, the salty water that reached his lips tasted like relief, washing over him as his undeniable truth had had what felt like ages ago. Because there were two children and a surrogate father waiting for him at home, willing to talk things through rather than throw what had happened in his face, because he had someone to turn to when he didn’t want to burden his immediate family, or found himself unable to put into words what troubled him, afraid he would offend them and break what they had achieved, because that someone would always convince him of the contrary and would always be right.
Because, when this rough patch were over, when the dusty memories and words haunted him, he wouldn’t fantasy of what he could never have to ease his soul, but instead would have the dream come true waiting for him back at home, willing to remind him time and time again that it was real and he had done something right despite the odds, had achieved to have his family. One that was not only glad to help him walk through this path but also grieve with him for the kid that lived within him, attached to a past where his present was just a silly chimera that, ironically, paled in comparison to what reality had in storage for him.