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A man made of sunlight reaches his hand out to blood-smeared knuckles. For a brief moment he wonders where the gauntlets are but as the rays of moonlight hit the water, he finds that the thought quickly vanishes.
“Find the body,” Bruce says, and Clark wonders if somebody without his abilities would’ve been able to hear it.
He wants to stay. He wants to look Bruce in the eye and beg for his forgiveness but all he can do is as he’s told. He scans the area of the explosion and finds several bodies, but only one catches his eye. Superman gently lowers Bruce to the dock and watches as his knees buckle ever so slightly. There’s an almost imperceptible shake to those hands, and Clark does not want to let go.
“Find the body,” Bruce says again.
Clark lets go.
He can’t find it in himself to use his speed, and as he manoeuvres throughout the damage, through the debris and blood and bone, he wishes he could. He wishes he could turn this carnage into a blur; wishes his memory wasn’t so vast and permanent. This is not the first time that Superman has experienced the overwhelming stench of burnt flesh but, much like every time before this, he wishes for it to be the last.
He takes a moment to check for survivors and finds that there are none. He does not ask himself whether the lump in his throat is from smoke or emotion. He does not know the difference right now.
The body he’s searching for is the most grotesque of them all. Already scarred and disfigured, the fire has turned the pale white skin into an awful combination of red and black, blistered and broken. He doesn’t want to see the blood-soaked skin falling from mangled limbs. He struggles to look away.
It takes mere seconds for him to decide that nobody else will see this particular body. The other men may have families, may have people who care for them and love them, may have somebody to identify and claim them. He knows that this one does not. He takes the body in his arms and attempts to ignore the way his sense of touch operates in microscopic detail. He fails.
By the time he arrives back at the dock, the body has been taken away and Bruce is still standing in the same spot, barely moved, and the shaking has yet to cease. To the untrained eye, Bruce looks calm. The untrained eye, the sight of someone not intimately familiar with the set of Bruce’s currently absent frown, would see nothing amiss. Clark does not have this luxury.
Clark is uniquely aware of the fact that he is not human – has felt it so deeply since he first drifted away from the grass beneath his feet – and yet he has never felt quite so alien as in this moment. There are no words in any language he knows that can encapsulate everything that he is feeling. There are no words to express his regret, or his bitter approval, or his all-encompassing love. There is nothing for him to say, and so he chooses to say nothing.
Instead, he holds out his hand.
With a barely conscious blink, Bruce stares at the offering. His cowl covers his eyes and Clark knows that now, of all times, is not when he should betray his friend’s shield, but he is overcome by the urge to know what’s behind those white lenses. He needs to know what Bruce is thinking but he already knows that even if he possessed telepathy, he would have no chance of disentangling the muddled mess of Bruce’s mind.
Clark makes Bruce’s decision for him and wraps his arms gently around his waist. Bruce’s arms remain flat at his sides, and Clark doesn’t know whether the lack of sudden tensing is a good sign. Together, like this, they fly through the skies, the dark of the night providing a cold embrace of cover. Not a word is shared over the roaring of the wind.
He isn’t sure where to take him. Surely Bruce would prefer the comfort of his own home, but could he tolerate that right now? Could he deal with a house void of the laughter that once filled its too many halls? Clark didn’t get a chance to truly know Jason, but he’d heard enough from Bruce.
He can find joy in the smallest things, Bruce had once said, lips curled in a small grin that Clark had been beginning to miss. He never stops laughing.
Clark’s out of his league here. He tries to ask himself what he would want in this situation and finds that he can’t even imagine it. He’s seen many versions of Bruce over the years but never one so steeped in grief. There’s only one person that he can think of; one person who might know what to do.
He lands soon after, tries to keep the jostling to a minimum, but does not put Bruce down. It concerns him that Bruce has nothing to say about this, usually so passionately against being cradled in such a way. It’s demeaning, he’d say, and Clark would usually reply, I can see inside of you, Bruce. You’d hold yourself too, if you could see the state of it.
This is the issue with abilities such as his, he thinks. He can see physical wounds better than any machine, can see when something is out of place or needs treatment. He can see, just from a quick glance, that Bruce nearly broke both arms from the angle of which he dove into the water. Any other man would have. He is not invulnerable, Clark knows, no matter how much Bruce would like to pretend otherwise, but Clark is often quietly astonished at just how much his body can take.
This is not relevant to him at the moment. This is not a wound that Clark can diagnose. All this power and nothing that can help.
He approaches quietly but the man is already waiting. Clark had expected nothing less.
“My boy,” Alfred says, staring at the limp body held in alien arms. Suddenly, his eyes widen and his mouth drops slightly open. There’s something there, something knowing, but with a clearing of his throat, it’s gone before Clark can examine it. “Set him over in the medical unit.”
Clark does as told, walking through the cave and laying him gently on the bed. Again, he does not want to let go, but with a brief squeeze of the other’s hand he does. He drifts back over to Alfred, standing just outside the door that closes behind Clark. The room has a large window that he knows can be covered with the push of a button, but neither man reaches to press it.
“Mister Kent,” Alfred starts, somehow looking more solemn than Clark has ever seen him. “I am going to ask you a question and I’d like a simple answer.”
“Anything.”
“Where is Master Jason?”
Clark does not speak. He cannot.
“Mister Kent?”
He tries to find the words, tries to search through his infinite memory for something, anything, that tells him what to say, and finds that there is nothing.
“Clark. Clark, I need to know. Is Jason okay?”
His mouth opens and closes a few times of its own volition before his voice forces its way through the lump in his throat. “Alfred, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Alfred nods, as if he had already known the answer. He clears his throat, once and then again, and blinks hard, his lips forming a grim line across his face. “Very well,” he says. “I shall relay the information to Master Dick, though I suppose I should first tend to Master Bruce. The boy is off-planet at the moment and it’ll probably take some time for the message to reach him. I’m unsure of the extent to which Master Bruce is wounded, however, so perhaps the message should come first, or perhaps it would be best to await his arrival. This should be a more personal conversation than words on a–”
“Alfred,” Clark interrupts. Much like his former ward, Alfred maintains a blank exterior. This means nothing to a man who can hear the blood rushing through his veins or see the attempted refusal to hyperventilate. “Alfred, take a breath. Just–... Just take a breath.”
There’s a moment where he’s not sure if Alfred will listen, where a certain fire lights in his eyes that he’s seen in Bruce’s times of defiance. It’s extinguished quicker than it was lit.
“Alright, that’s good,” he says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Take a look at Bruce first; he dove headfirst out of a helicopter. Dick should be told in person. If he’s gone for longer than planned, we can reassess later. Bruce isn’t in any immediate danger. You can take a minute.”
In a rare display of being human, Alfred sighs and drops his face into his hands. He stays there for a few seconds, and then inhales deeply, visibly stiffening his shoulders back into his proper posture and steeling himself as he looks back up.
“Thank you, Mister Kent. I’ll be attending to my duties now. Feel free to make your way up to the manor. I can make a late dinner if you haven’t yet eaten.”
“Alfred, you can call me Clark. For today, at least, you can call me Clark.”
There’s a heaviness to Alfred’s gaze as it lands on him - something weary and aged, brought low by something deeper than sadness. This is what grief looks like, Clark thinks, on a man who has more headstone inscriptions memorised than phone numbers. “Thank you, Mister Kent.”
He turns and walks away, and Clark doesn’t know what to do beyond watch. As he reaches Bruce’s door, he pauses. He says, without looking back, “The person responsible. Where are they now?”
Clark bites back his initial response.
“A place where he can never hurt anybody ever again.”
Alfred nods. “Very well.”
He steps into the room, and the windows cover behind him. Clark is left in the cave, alone and lost. He wants to follow Alfred. He wants to hold Bruce’s hand. He wants to feel the warmth of the manor.
He leaves.
A week passes and Clark hears nothing from Bruce. This isn’t unusual. It isn’t rare for there to be long stretches with no responses until he receives a text at three in the morning on a random Thursday, often an answer to a question he doesn’t recall asking. It’s how they work when Bruce is low and it isn’t something they speak about; Bruce’s low moments not something they even acknowledge. Clark will text every now and again to keep the line of communication open, and eventually Bruce accepts. If Clark called, however, he knows that Bruce would always answer.
This time is different. This time, he cannot wait for that acceptance. He needs to see Bruce, needs to hear his voice, needs to know how he’s doing. It’s just that he isn’t sure if Bruce would answer his call, and he isn’t sure if he truly wants him to. He isn’t sure he deserves it.
Even if Bruce did answer, what would he say? He knows that if he called and heard the silence on the other end of the phone, apologies would spill from his lips like blood, cascading down his chin and staining his chest until it reaches his fingertips and turns everything he touches red. Bruce doesn’t need that right now. Bruce doesn’t need any more blood.
Clark keeps an ear trained on Wayne Manor. He doesn’t listen in on any conversations, instead choosing to focus on a heartbeat that doesn’t change. He just needs to know that it’s still beating. The steadiness concerns Clark in a way that it probably shouldn’t. He has no precedent to look to for guidance here. He’s listened to Bruce’s heart during his low periods before and there was always variation: it’d have moments of speeding up almost inhumanly fast and moments of being so slow that Clark has, on several occasions, almost flown to Gotham just to check that he isn’t bleeding out in a ditch somewhere.
This isn’t that. On some level, Clark knows that this isn’t just a low period. He knows that his friend is suffering beyond his comprehension. He just wishes he knew what to do. He wishes he had someone to speak to; someone who could tell him what to expect and how to help, but there is nobody that Bruce wouldn’t deem a betrayal of trust.
It’s difficult to go about his daily life. He sits at his desk and thinks of the new scars lining Bruce’s knuckles. He goes home and cooks food that he doesn’t need and wonders if Bruce is eating. He lies awake at night staring at the ceiling and fights a Sisyphean battle to cast the image of unblinking eyes from his mind.
Then there are the screams. Clark will never grow used to hearing the cries of agony and terror from all points of the globe, helping when he can and hating himself when he cannot. It’s worse now, he thinks, because when he hears those howls all he can imagine is a young boy in a torn costume that he had not yet grown into.
He knows what people sound like when they’re alone in their last moments. He knows that some people pray, and some call for their families, and some are silent in their bitter resignation of inevitable death. He wonders what Jason did. He wonders if he called for Bruce. In his lowest moments, he wonders if Jason called for Superman. He despises himself for not knowing.
Nearly a month after that first fateful day, Clark cracks.
He’s signing out of his computer at The Daily Planet, Lois talking a mile a minute about something she's investigating, or maybe something she's already investigated, or maybe what she's going to have for dinner. He’s not too sure, actually. Her words seem to be struggling to navigate through the fog around his head.
He forces himself to tune back in just in time to hear her say, “Come on, Smallville. What’s going on with you lately?”
“What do you mean?” He focuses his gaze on the papers he’s shoving into his bag. There’s probably something there that requires careful handling but he gives it barely a passing thought. It’s a problem for future him, he reasons.
“Did something happen? Something… not quite so super?”
It’s a code that he’s rejected time and time again, but to attempt to stop Lois Lane from doing what she wants is an attempt to do the impossible.
“No. No, nothing’s happened. Just tired, I guess.”
“’Tired’? You’ve been ‘tired’ for, like, a month now. I’m worried.”
“The great Lois Lane worried about little old me?” He smiles. “I’m honoured, but really, there’s nothing.”
She sighs. “Look, as much as I would like to push this, I do have some self-control. If you want me to drop this, I will, but can you just give me something so that I know nobody’s dying?”
He doesn’t reply at first, instead biting hard on the inside of his cheek until something metallic reaches his tongue. Immediately, he gags. It’s too similar – it’s too much – it’s the taste of burning flesh and guttural screams of pain and corpses that are more wound than skin. It’s what he – and Bruce – and the Joker – and Jason and—
He retches into the can that’s somehow appeared in front of him.
“My God, Clark, I didn’t even know you could throw up,” Lois says when he finally lifts his head. She’s stood before him, the can held in her hands, with her eyebrows furrowed and a frown that he’s not used to seeing.
“Yeah.” He takes the can from her and spits the last bits into it. “Me neither.”
“Alright, sit down.” He doesn’t want to. He wants to fly away. He wants to never return. He wants to see Bruce. He sits down. “Give me a second.”
She turns away, but he isn’t paying enough attention to know where she goes. Instead, he closes his eyes and refocuses his hearing on that same heartbeat, still beating as steadily as it was minutes ago. When Lois returns, he’s slouched in his desk chair, legs stretched forward with one arm hanging down and his eyes covered by the crook of his other.
“Here you go.” She places a glass of water onto the table, and he glances at it but makes no move to pick it up. Lois sighs again, a small huff of breath with something almost sad about it. “Clark, please, what’s wrong?”
For a moment, he doesn’t move. He stares into the blackness of his closed eyes, fighting against himself. He knows what he wants to do. He just doesn’t know if he should. Eventually, it’s his turn to sigh before he drops his arm onto the table, glances around the room and casts his hearing out. There’s nobody close enough to listen. It’s just him, Lois, and that damn heartbeat.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he says slowly, like he’s not sure if the words are right, “and I’m going to be very vague about it. I’m sure you can understand why.” Lois nods, drags a chair over to him, and gently rests her hand on top of his as she sits. “I have this friend. Something bad happened to him. A lot of bad things have happened to him, actually, but this one – I don’t know if he can come back from this one. And because of this bad thing, he did something that he swore he would never do.”
Lois’ head tilts slightly, and he can tell it’s the investigative instinct in her trying to parse out his meaning. She could probably figure it out but he’s trusting her to not dig into it, and he knows that, despite her being the most incredible journalist he has ever had the joy of knowing, his trust is not misplaced.
“And you’re… worried? About this friend?”
“Worried isn’t quite…” It feels too small to describe the pit of concern deep in his stomach; doesn’t quite show the extent of the anxiety and the all-consuming fear. “Yes. Yeah, I’m worried about him, and I don’t know what to do. He’s with someone who knows how to take care of him but he’s not really one for being taken care of, you know? He’s stubborn like that.”
“I know the type,” she says with a small smile.
Clark lets a huff of laughter slip. “As if you’re any better.”
The momentary levity leaves as Lois talks again with hesitant words. “Have you reached out to him at all?”
“No.”
“Why not?” There’s nothing malicious behind it, and yet Clark still feels as though he’s been dealt a physical blow.
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“What doesn’t feel right about it?”
“I don’t know, Lois,” he lies. “It just doesn’t.”
She can see through his words, knows that they aren’t wholly true, knows that there’s something he’s holding back beyond secrets that aren’t his to share. He can almost hear the cogs turning in her mind as she debates pushing further. He hopes she does. He hopes she doesn’t. He hopes she knows how much he adores her.
“Clark,” she says, and he braces himself. “Why doesn’t it feel right?”
He doesn’t speak for a long moment and when he does, his voice is almost too quiet to hear but steady in its certainty. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to talk to him.” He doesn’t know how he looks as he lifts his head, but he can see the way her face drops. “It’s my fault, Lois. It’s all my fault.”
Lois opens her mouth to reply but before she can, he’s already out of his seat and flying through the open window. She may have yelled something, probably his name, but he can’t hear her above that one sound that has drawn his attention.
The heartbeat has changed.
Clark follows the rapid thump-thump-thump beating against his eardrums, finding himself suddenly under a sky much darker than the one from mere seconds ago. That’s the thing about Gotham: despite having been face-to-face with evidence to the contrary, sometimes Clark thinks that it has a completely different sun to Metropolis; a different fire that lights the sky, one that’s harder to see through all the gray clouds and deep fog but one that persists, nonetheless.
He doesn’t see Bruce at first. He’s expecting a figure wrapped in armour, fist drawn back ready to swing for however many henchmen he’s surrounded by. Instead, he finds somebody slouched against a brick wall that’s covered in what seems to be several years’ worth of graffiti. His head is between his knees, hands locked together and pressing harshly into the back of his scalp.
Clark knows that this is Bruce, knows the back of his head like he knows the back of his own hand, but as he sees those usually steady shoulders shaking as if they carry the weight of the world upon them, he hardly recognises him. It’s at this point that the sounds finally register – sharp, wet gasps, like the air is refusing to enter his lungs, like a man who doesn’t quite know how to cry.
“Bruce?”
The breaths stop altogether.
Clark knows that Bruce can hold his breath for far longer than the average human, but he isn’t currently willing to find out just how long. “Bruce, it’s Clark. I’m going to sit next to you. You don’t have to talk, and if I get too close you can shove me away, but I’d like to just sit with you. If that’s okay with you,” he adds, somehow more nervous than any supervillain has ever made him.
Bruce doesn’t react. Taking this as the closest to permission he’ll receive, he slowly takes a seat a few feet away from Bruce, legs stretched out in front of him and head resting against the cool bricks behind him.
He knows how he’s supposed to react. He knows how to talk someone through a panic attack and how to treat newly traumatized civilians. As both Superman and Clark, he’s been in that situation more times than he can count. This, though? When it’s Bruce? There’s no script for this. He doesn’t know what to do here, which, he realises, seems to be a running theme for his life lately.
He wants to talk. He wants to fill the silence but he knows that not only does he have nothing to say, but that there is probably nothing Bruce wants to hear right now either.
And so they both sit, and neither of them speaks for a long time.
“This is where we met,” Bruce says eventually, a hoarseness to his voice that Clark has only heard after battles that waged many hours. “He was stealing my tires.”
“You’ve some nice cars, to be fair. Can’t blame him.”
“Not one of those cars. The batmobile.”
A barked laugh breaks from Clark’s throat. “He tried to steal the tires from the batmobile?”
“Yes,” he says, and Clark can’t see his face from its hiding space between his knees but he knows the sound of Bruce’s smile. “Would’ve managed it too, if I’d gotten back just a little later. Already had two of the tires off. He’s the reason the car has so many more security measures now. I’d implement something new and have him attempt to remove them, but he just kept learning.”
“Seems like a smart kid.”
“Yes,” he says. “You would’ve loved him.”
Maybe it’s the finality in Bruce’s words that breaks him. Maybe it’s the way that Bruce still hasn’t looked him in the eye, hasn’t even lifted his head. Maybe it’s the slow build of the past days, weeks, years – he hardly knows how long it’s been since he flew away from the Joker, permission slipping from his lips without hesitation.
Whatever it is, whatever makes him say it, is something that he cannot fight against.
“I’m sorry, Bruce. I’m so sorry. I should’ve been there. I should have heard him. I’ve got— I don’t— I have all this power and I should have done something with it and I am so sorry that I didn’t—”
“Clark, what the hell are you talking about?”
The name fights against the lump in his throat for a long moment. “Jason,” he says. “I could have saved him.”
Bruce lifts his head. He finally looks him in the eye, and Clark wishes that he hadn’t. His eyes are wet, unshed tears fighting against the will of Batman to fall, but his face betrays no emotion. He works his jaw. “Yeah. You probably could have.” His gaze turns to the wall opposite them before returning. “Diana could have, too. Or Wally. Or any one of the lanterns.”
Clark tries to speak, not knowing what he’s about to say, but Bruce beats him to it. “It’s not your job, though. It’s not your job to keep him safe. He’s my son. My Robin. My partner.” Bruce shakes his head, back to looking anywhere but at Clark. “I should’ve—” His voice cracks, and Bruce squeezes his eyes shut. “I should’ve saved him.”
Clark flounders. “It’s not your fault, Bruce.”
“It is,” he says quietly, and Clark gets the sense that Bruce is yelling. His voice is blank and solid, but there’s a power behind it. “He should have never gotten involved in any of this. He should have never gotten involved with me. If I had just taken him to someone else…”
“Bruce, no. You can’t really believe that. You brought him into your home to help him—"
“I brought him into my home to help myself. That’s it. He—” Bruce chokes on his words, dropping his head back between his knees. For a minute or two, there is only the sound of deep breathing, occasionally cut off by the struggle to find air. “I wanted to take care of him,” Bruce says, not moving his head, “but I wasn’t looking for a son in him. I was looking for a Robin. He became my son, he did, but he wasn’t at first. I should’ve never brought him home. He deserves so much better. Clark, he deserves so fucking much better than I could have ever given him.”
“Bruce…”
“No. No, I know what Batman means. I know the dangers of my life and I chose those dangers. Jason was a kid. Jason was a boy I took in off the streets. What was he really going to do if he didn’t want to be Robin? Would he have told me, those first few weeks, not knowing whether I’d still let him stay if he said no? Does it even fucking matter if he wanted to be Robin? I know he did. I know he wanted to be Robin. He loved being Robin, but I know what Batman means and I know that Jason shouldn’t have been anywhere near it.”
The rant had started off at a murmur but as the aggression grew, so did the volume. He’s still not quite yelling, but Clark feels as though it’s echoing from building to building regardless. Bruce’s head lifts again, dropping back to hit against the wall behind him, eyes searching the sky for something that Clark cannot see. Bruce’s arms wrap around his knees, holding tight.
He continues, voice quavering but losing its harshness, falling into something that Clark, for all his skill in writing, can only describe as profoundly sad. “He was so kind, Clark. He was so good. I took that from him. I did that, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.”
Clark wonders to himself, sometimes, about how he would describe Batman if he ever wrote a piece on him. It's a habit he's had since he first started working at The Planet, something suggested to him by a more seasoned journalist to help him practice and improve. He's gotten pretty good at it, he thinks. The one person he has always found himself lost on, however, is Bruce. How exactly do you summarise The Batman? Now, looking at the man curled up beside him, he knows the answer.
Batman is suicide personified. It is the choice of a boy so young but already too experienced in death. It is the choice of a man who says, "If anybody has to die tonight, it will be me." It is a choice made of grief and hope and anger and love, so much love, and it is a choice that set a boy in Death's sight from the very second that he whispered his vow to someone who would never hear his voice again.
Clark edges closer, shuffling along the rough concrete until their arms are mere inches apart. Bruce doesn’t seem to notice the change.
“How about we head back to the manor? Or you can spend the night at mine.”
Bruce’s head lolls to the side, and for a moment his face doesn’t change. Finally, a small, bitter smirk stretches his lips. “You think you can stop me,” he says, not as a question but a point of fact, and Clark can feel his own heart jackrabbiting in his chest.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bruce. Let’s just go home. It’s cold out here.”
“I’m fine, Clark.”
“That’s a lie.”
“You’re right. My son is dead. Of course it’s a lie.”
“Bruce. Bruce, you can’t do this.”
“Yes, I can.”
Clark stops slouching against the wall, back falling straight and stiff as he stares at Bruce. “Why would you—”
He cuts himself off as he realises what a stupid question it is, but a sardonic laugh has already been ripped from Bruce.
“Why would I? You know damn well, Clark. Why the hell wouldn’t I? I can’t be Batman anymore, and what the fuck is Bruce Wayne any good for? I don’t want to be Bruce, and— and if I’m not Batman and I don’t want to be Bruce, what else is left?”
Clark feels like his ribcage is being pulled apart, like someone has wedged the jaws of life between his bones and nicked his heart in the process. His chest is flooding, and it’s difficult to speak when his throat is filled with blood.
“Be Dick’s father,” he says, quietly, desperately, frantically. “Be his father, Bruce. He needs you.”
Bruce is already shaking his head. “No, he doesn’t. He’s better off without me.”
“That isn’t true. That isn’t true and you know it.”
“Listen to me.” There’s something intense in Bruce’s eyes as his head shifts closer, but there’s something unfocused too, as if his gaze can’t quite catch Clark’s. “He is better off without me. He deserves better. I can’t stop him from being a hero, but I can remove the danger of me.”
“But what about— what about Gotham? Gotham needs Batman.”
“She does, but I’m not Batman. I can’t be him anymore, Clark. I became Batman so that nobody else would die and not only did I not save the one person who deserved it more than anybody else, but… you know what I did. We haven’t spoken about it, but you know what I did.”
Clark doesn’t look away, but he doesn’t respond either.
Voice abruptly much lower, Bruce asks, “Where’s his body, Clark? Where did you put him?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Somewhere far from here.”
“I need a location, Clark. I need to know that he can’t come back.”
“He can’t.”
“And how are you so sure of that?”
“Because I threw the body into the sun.”
“You—” Bruce pauses. “You threw it into the sun?”
Clark shrugs, suddenly unsure. “I didn’t want to risk it.”
Bruce stares at him, eyebrows furrowed and lips turned down and looking suddenly so much more like himself that Clark could cry.
“Let’s go back to the manor,” he says, and the frown becomes much more intense, confusion leaving to make room for something closer to annoyance.
“You can go home. I’d like to stay here.”
“I’ll stay here with you then.”
“Clark,” he sighs. “You don’t need to put me on suicide watch.”
“So you aren’t going to kill yourself?”
They’ve somehow moved closer, Clark realises, feeling the press of Bruce’s arm against his. Neither of them is looking at the other now. There’s more graffiti across from them, sharp white lines reading ‘welcome to hell’, and he wants to tear the whole wall down in a single punch.
Eventually, Bruce replies, “Not tonight, I don’t think. I’ve gotten almost everything squared away but there’s a few more things I need to finish.”
“So not tonight, but soon?”
“Yes. Soon.”
“How soon is soon?”
“Before Dick gets back.”
Clark looks at him from the corner of his eye. “Does he know yet?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“We could go find him, y’know. Grab a ship. Put on a suit and I’ll fly us. Whatever. We could find him and bring him home.”
“No. It’s better for him to find out about both of us at the same time.”
He drops his chin to his chest and squeezes his eyes shut. “So you’re really set on this, huh?”
“I’m stubborn like that.”
“Bruce,” he whispers. “Please don’t do this.”
Something gently touching his hand causes his eyes to fall back open. Slowly, Bruce’s fingers curl around his. His hand is cold, and Clark wonders just how long he’d been sitting out here. This isn’t the first time he’s touched Bruce’s hand; it’s not even the first time that he’s held it, but feeling those calluses pressed softly against his skin, knowing that Bruce was the one to reach out, makes something in him crack wide open. Bruce’s hands are already torn and scarred from years of violence and yet here he is, letting Clark hold him, knowing that he could break every bone in his hand and wrist before he could even shout for help. Clark does not take this for granted.
“This is the way it has to be, Clark,” he says, and drops his head to rest on Clark’s shoulder.
“I’ll stop you.”
“I’ll never forgive you.”
“I can live with that, as long as I don’t have to live without you.”
Once again, they fall into silence. Clark listens idly to the cars driving past and cats fighting over the last scrap of food. A few blocks away a man is getting mugged, and he has to fight against every fibre of his being to stay seated. He knows he’ll never tell Bruce.
“Hey, Clark?”
“Yeah, Bruce.”
“My son is dead.”
“Yes. He is.”
“My son is dead.”
Clark doesn’t respond, just tugs him closer as his breathing quickens. Maybe if he holds him tight enough, Bruce will stop shaking like a looming tower built on an unstable foundation, a wind’s blow away from crashing at any moment.
“My son is—” There’s a great gasp, and Bruce turns his face to press it into Clark’s shoulder. “My son is dead. My son is— My son is dead. He’s dead. Clark, he’s dead.”
His shoulder is growing wet and Clark can do nothing but raise his arm, holding the back of Bruce’s neck with their joined hands trapped between them.
Bruce is still talking, and Clark can hear his words just as well as he can feel them being pressed against his shirt. “I’m sorry,” he’s saying. Clark doesn’t know how to respond. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have— My son is dead. Jason is dead. I’m so sorry.”
As he realises who the apologies are for, he grazes his lips over Bruce’s hair. There is nothing for him to say. All he can do is try to hold him together.
It’s difficult to ignore the fear thrumming through his veins. Bruce’s words earlier were so certain, but so were his own. Bruce could dive off the ledge time and time again, but Superman would be there to catch him from every single fall. He’d hate him for it, but Clark can accept that. He just wishes that it hadn’t come to this. He wishes that he hadn’t failed so badly.
Bruce cries again, a guttural wail of grief and sorrow. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Clark murmurs against the top of Bruce’s head. “Me too. I’m so sorry.”
Here, in the alley where a father met a son, they sit. Here, together, they weep.