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The wind was sharp on the rooftop.
Even with Gotham's ever-choking smog muffling the air, Clark could still taste winter clinging to the steel beams like regret. The sky above them was inky and heavy, stars swallowed by clouds, the moon barely visible behind them. The city below flickered in patches — windows glowing warm, then cold, then warm again — like a heart trying to beat but never quite getting there.
Clark stood still.
Batman, across from him, was a silhouette against the dull skyline. Perched on the edge of the building, his cape moving with the wind like liquid shadow. His cowl was turned toward the street below, but Clark could feel his eyes on him. Not kind. Not cruel. Just watching. Observing like he always did — not looking to be understood, not daring to hope for softness in return.
Clark had always been soft.
That was his curse. His heart, always too full. His hands, always too gentle.
And right now, that heart was hurting.
Because he couldn’t stop watching him.
Not Bruce. Not the billionaire playboy. Clark didn't know that part of him. He only knew Batman. The Batman who never smiled but always came back. The Batman who stitched his own wounds in silence. Who gave Gotham more than he gave himself. Who fought like he hated everything, and stayed like he loved something.
He was so achingly human.
And Clark — alien, god, whatever he was — had never been more hopelessly in love.
He cleared his throat, but his voice caught anyway.
"Batman?"
The name felt too sharp in his mouth. Not the one he wanted to say. But it was the only one he had.
Batman didn’t turn to him. He almost never did.
"Hm."
A sound. That was all. But Clark took it as permission.
He stepped closer. His boots barely made a sound. But Batman noticed. He always noticed.
They had just finished a patrol — if you could call it that. Clark hovering above the alleyways, Batman stalking the shadows. They’d moved like separate pieces of the same story. Clark smiled at the thought — how even when they didn’t speak, they understood. He liked that. That quiet rhythm. That tether.
But it wasn’t enough anymore.
Clark didn’t want to orbit anymore.
He wanted to land.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began, voice too soft for a man who could break buildings with his breath.
Batman’s silence was expectant. Tense. Like he knew what was coming. Maybe he did.
Clark swallowed. “About… us.”
Batman turned then. Not fully. Just enough for Clark to see the sharp line of his jaw beneath the cowl, the gleam of his eyes behind the white lenses. And still, it was like staring at a wall of armor. No cracks. No kindness. Just a silent, cold question.
Clark’s fingers twitched at his side. He wanted to reach out. He always wanted to reach out.
“I don’t even know what to call this,” Clark whispered. “We fight together. Watch over cities. Save lives. And then… we stand here. You, quiet. Me, pretending I’m not looking.”
No response.
Clark laughed, bitter and low. “I always look. That’s the thing. I can’t stop.”
The wind cut between them again. But Clark wasn’t cold. His body didn’t allow it. Only his heart felt it — the ache that had grown over months, years, in the dark rooftops and quiet missions. The ache of loving someone who only ever let you see their shadow.
“I think about you when I’m flying over Kansas,” he murmured. “I think about you when I wake up in Metropolis. You’re always there, in the back of my head. And I tried to ignore it — I did, I swear. But it’s not going away.”
Batman shifted, barely, but to Clark, it was everything. A ripple in the stillness.
“I don’t love you because you’re perfect,” Clark said. “I love you because you try. Because you hurt, and you keep going anyway. Because you’re the grumpiest, most frustrating, most selfless person I’ve ever known.”
He stepped closer again. Almost reaching now.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Clark’s voice trembled now, words clumsy and soft and too full. “I’m in love with you. I don’t know who you are under that mask, and maybe you don’t want me to. But I know you, and that’s enough for me.”
Silence.
Thick and aching.
Clark’s eyes searched him. He had said it. There was no going back now.
And still, Batman didn’t speak.
Not for a long time.
When he finally did, it was only one word.
“No.”
Clark blinked. “What?”
Batman’s voice was flat. Cold steel. “No.”
“No what?” Clark took a step forward, desperation creeping in. “You don’t feel the same? Or you… you just don’t want—”
“I said no.”
Then Batman turned. Just like that. As if the rooftop were suddenly too small, too quiet, too honest.
Clark stood frozen, heat blooming in his chest and throat, like something was cracking open inside him. He opened his mouth, some half-formed plea slipping through —
“Wait—”
But Batman was already walking away. Cape trailing behind him like the aftermath of a storm. And even though he moved with purpose, Clark saw it — the stumble. The slight pause before he vanished into the night.
Shaken.
Not untouched.
But still gone.
The rooftop felt colder than it had before.
Clark didn’t move. He just stared at where Batman had stood.
Something hollowed out in his chest. Not like pain. Not quite. Like absence. Like he’d just held his heart out with both hands, trembling and beating, and had it handed back to him — still whole, but not wanted.
He stood there for a long time.
He could have flown away. Sped through clouds. Buried himself in stars.
But instead, Clark just stood there, heart still stupidly full.
And the night — always cruel in Gotham — said nothing.
-
There were two cities.
One swallowed the night.
The other worshipped the sun.
And Clark moved between them like a ghost.
**
Three months.
That’s how long it had been since the rooftop. Since the wind in Gotham felt like it could peel his skin off. Since Clark had laid his heart out, trembling and clumsy, and watched it get crushed beneath a word that weighed more than any villain ever could.
No.
He’d played it over a thousand times since then.
No.
No.
No.
The sound of it — so simple, so cutting. But what haunted Clark most wasn’t the word. It was the way he said it. How Batman hadn’t even raised his voice. Hadn’t sneered. Hadn’t said anything cruel at all.
He just… walked away.
Like Clark’s love was a fire he couldn’t afford to feel warm beside. Like he was afraid it might make him feel human.
Clark had tried. God, he had tried.
He’d flown to Gotham almost every night for the first few weeks. Not to hover. Not to beg. Just to be nearby. In case.
Once, he’d even waited in the shadows near Crime Alley — hidden, completely still, only letting his heartbeat betray him. When Batman appeared, tall and silent and cruel as ever, Clark had stepped out into the dull yellow of the streetlight and just said softly, “Hey.”
Batman didn’t even flinch.
He turned. Not sharply. Not violently. Just slowly. Like looking at Clark physically hurt. Like it scraped him raw.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Clark had smiled, weak and unsure. “I just… I thought maybe you could talk. That we could—”
“No,” Batman had said, and leapt into the night.
That was the second time he heard it.
It hurt worse the second time.
**
Clark never broke their promise.
Not once.
When they’d first started working together — two titans stitched from different myths — they’d made a pact. No masks. No unmasking. No digging.
They weren’t friends yet, not then. Just wary strangers with matching scars.
“We keep this clean,” Batman had said. “We don’t cross lines.”
Clark had nodded. “We trust the person, not the name.”
And now?
Now Clark was still keeping that promise.
Still didn’t know who Batman was.
Still hadn’t tried to find out.
He could have. Easily. One X-ray glance. One scan through the caves.
But he didn’t.
Because Clark Kent was still Clark Kent — still stupidly good. Still too gentle. Still too full of aching, blinding hope.
**
What he didn’t know was that Batman had already broken the pact.
That on the night Clark said I love you, Batman had gone home, shaken and too silent for Alfred to speak. He’d gone into the cave, turned off every light, and stared at the monitors until the sun rose.
And then he’d typed one name.
Clark Kent.
It had been that easy.
One search. One match. And there he was.
Smiling on bylines. Holding coffee. Reporting on disasters with hope like it was something you could fold and mail to someone. Writing articles about decency and justice and truth.
Clark Kent. The man behind Superman. The boy from Kansas who still believed the world could be saved. The farm-raised miracle who once wrote a column about forgiveness and had cried in front of a courthouse bombing.
And Bruce had stared at those articles like they were indictments.
Because the moment he saw Clark — truly saw him — the truth gutted him:
He wasn’t saying no to Superman.
He was saying no to Clark.
Clark, who loved so loudly. Who had offered his heart like it was a gift, not a burden.
And Bruce had still walked away.
Because Bruce had never felt like a gift.
He had only ever felt like a grave.
**
He watched Clark after that.
He knew he shouldn’t. It was wrong. A violation. A betrayal.
But he couldn’t stop.
He watched Clark come home after saving lives, eyes tired but still gentle. Watched him at the Daily Planet, brushing ink off his sleeves, laughing at jokes that weren’t funny. Watched him write articles about the people others forgot — janitors and volunteers and mothers carrying their kids through rubble.
Watched him be good.
And Bruce couldn’t breathe.
Because that’s who had said “I love you.”
Not a god. Not an alien.
A man. A soul. Someone real.
And Bruce had still said no.
He told himself it was mercy.
That he was protecting Clark from himself.
That love from him — from Batman, from Bruce — was a curse.
Clark deserved someone better. Someone soft. Someone who didn’t have blood on his hands and shadows stitched into his bones.
Someone who didn’t scream in his sleep.
So he pushed Clark away. Every time. Even when it broke something in him.
Especially then.
**
Clark stopped reaching out eventually.
Not because he stopped caring. But because even he — even Clark — had limits.
Hope could only stretch so far before it snapped.
By month three, he only hovered at Gotham’s edge, no closer than the clouds. He didn’t speak Batman’s name aloud anymore. Didn’t answer when Lois asked why he looked so tired. Didn’t tell anyone that his heart still beat like it was waiting.
And yet, even from afar, Bruce could feel him.
Could feel the heartbreak radiating off him like solar heat. Could feel the ache in every gentle word Clark wrote, in every smile he forced at press conferences.
And Bruce wanted to scream.
Because this was the first time he had been loved.
Really, truly, without a mask or a mission.
And he couldn’t accept it.
Because he didn’t know how.
Because love like that — soft, unconditional, unearned — terrified him more than any villain ever could.
**
One night, Clark sat alone on a rooftop. Not the Gotham one. A different one — somewhere between Metropolis and nowhere.
The stars were bright that night.
And he whispered into the wind, like a prayer or a plea:
“I would’ve stayed. You didn’t even have to say it back. I just wanted to be near you.”
The wind didn’t answer.
But maybe, somewhere in the shadows, someone was listening.
Someone who had loved him in silence.
And still told himself it wasn’t enough.
-
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Not with silence.
Not with earth turned to ash.
Not with Clark dead beneath it all.
It had been a Thursday.
That was the first thing Bruce would remember for the rest of his life — how ordinary the day had been. Gotham’s sky was overcast. Wayne Tower was quiet. Alfred had brought tea at precisely 9:05 a.m. The monitors were steady. Nothing screamed. Nothing burned.
And then the alerts started.
Alien presence. Cosmic anomaly. Trajectory: Earth.
Estimated impact: 3 hours.
Survival odds: 0.02%.
The League assembled like muscle memory.
Clark had flown in first, hair still damp from the rain in Metropolis, smiling like he always did — too soft, too bright, too much. Like he didn’t know the world was ending. Or like maybe he did, but it didn’t matter. Not to him.
Because Clark never cared about surviving. Only saving.
**
Bruce remembered the moment before it happened.
Clark had stood next to him, arms crossed, his cape brushing against Bruce’s shoulder like it always did when he stood too close.
Bruce hadn’t said a word.
He never did anymore.
Clark had turned slightly. Their eyes met — just for a moment. Just enough for Bruce to see it: the exhaustion, the knowing, the quiet goodbye that Clark never said aloud.
And Bruce had just looked away.
Because what do you say to someone you love when you’ve spent months convincing them you don’t?
**
The battle had been blinding.
The cosmic force was beyond anything they’d faced — pure entropy, a godless storm eating planets like sugar. It ripped through the Earth’s upper atmosphere like it was paper. Every satellite gone. Power grids dead. Gravity glitching.
And still, Clark had gone first.
He always went first.
He didn’t hesitate. He never did. Not when someone needed saving. Not when pain waited. Not when it meant burning alive to keep others breathing.
He flew into the heart of the storm.
And it swallowed him.
The rest — Bruce didn’t remember clearly. Only flashes.
Diana’s scream. The sky ripping open. A sound like the world sobbing. And then — nothing.
**
The next morning, the sun rose over Metropolis.
And Clark didn’t.
**
They found him in the crater.
Body broken. Cape shredded. Hands curled like he’d been reaching.
No one touched him at first.
Even the League stood back — because how do you bury a god?
Bruce didn’t speak for six days.
Not to Alfred. Not to Diana. Not even to the wind.
He went home and locked the cave. Punched through every training wall. Smashed every screen. Ripped the suit from his body like it was made of poison.
And then he sank to the floor and broke.
But it wasn’t loud.
It was quiet.
A kind of grief so deep it doesn’t scream.
It just hollows.
**
The funeral was national. Parades. Speeches. Doves. Presidents. Poets.
Bruce didn’t go.
He waited until the next night, long after the world had turned off its candles and wiped its cheeks.
Then he walked, alone, through the small cemetery just outside Smallville, where the real Clark — the man, not the myth — had been buried.
There was no crowd here. No gold statue.
Just a headstone that read:
Clark Joseph Kent
Son. Friend. Light of the world.
Bruce stood there for a long time.
Then he sat down in the dirt, knees folding like old paper.
And for the first time in decades, he spoke.
“You asshole.”
The words were hoarse. Quiet. Torn from something deep.
“You stupid, perfect… goddamn idiot.”
He laughed. Once. It cracked halfway through and never finished.
Bruce looked at the grave like it might open. Like Clark might sit up, grin, and say something smug and sweet like “Miss me?”
But the grave didn’t move.
Bruce pressed his hand to the cold dirt.
And finally — finally — he told the truth.
“I loved you.”
His voice trembled. He didn’t care.
“I loved you so much I couldn’t breathe near you.”
The wind stirred the grass, soft like a sigh.
“You stood there, that night… telling me you’d stay. You said you didn’t even need me to say it back. You just wanted to be near me.”
His eyes stung. He blinked once. Twice.
“I wanted to say it. I did. But I thought if I said it, I’d ruin you. I thought you’d fall apart because of me. Because I break everything I love.”
He swallowed.
“I’ve spent my whole life making sure no one got close enough to die because of me. And then you — you, you goddamn miracle — you got too close.”
His voice cracked completely.
“I was so afraid of loving you.”
Silence.
Only the rustle of wind in the wheat fields.
“I watched you, you know,” he whispered. “After that night. I broke our promise and I watched you. You were so good. So good it hurt. You never stopped caring. Even after I pushed you away.”
He leaned forward, forehead against the headstone now, hands clenched into the grass.
“I kept telling myself you deserved better. Someone whole. Someone clean. Someone who didn’t live in a cave with ghosts.”
A breath.
“And now you’re gone.”
His body shook. Small, broken tremors.
“You died thinking I didn’t love you.”
Silence.
“I hope wherever you are… you know.”
Another pause. Then a whisper so quiet the night almost missed it:
“You were the only thing I ever wanted.”
Bruce stayed until morning.
And when he finally walked away, there was nothing left of the Batman in him.
Just a man who had loved the sun so fiercely
he didn’t know how to live in its absence.