Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The city was burning.

Not just in isolated patches, not just the occasional car overturned and smouldering--the whole of Metropolis was alight, the skyline fractured by pillars of flame and thick, cloying smoke that turned the night air into something dense and suffocating. Skyscrapers that once gleamed with the clean, golden glow of city lights were now gutted, their glass façades shattered, interiors exposed like open wounds. Sirens howled through the chaos, sharp and discordant, their shrieks swallowed by the deeper, bone-rattling thunder of collapsing steel.

And above it all, the sky flickered red.

Bruce moved through the destruction with methodical precision, his muscles taut beneath the Kevlar plating of his suit, every step measured, every breath controlled. The heat was unbearable, radiating off the pavement in shimmering waves, warping the air like a mirage. His boots kicked up dust and ash as he landed, the weight of the battle pressing against him from all sides.

His cape flared in the updraft of an explosion behind him, a brief silhouette against the firestorm, before settling heavily against his back. The HUD in his cowl was struggling to keep up, flashing alerts too quickly to process--civilian casualties climbing, structural integrity failing, oxygen levels plummeting. His filtration system worked to keep the worst of it out, but the acrid scent of burning synthetics still curled in his lungs, sharp enough to sting.

It was carnage. Planned carnage.

This wasn’t chaos for the sake of chaos. This wasn’t an act of desperation. This was a strategy.

The enemy forces--whoever the hell they were--had come in fast, a coordinated strike that had cut through the League’s defenses like a blade through soft tissue. They weren’t the usual breed of mercenaries or extremists. These soldiers didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter, didn’t break formation.

Black ops, Bruce’s mind supplied. Military-grade precision. No wasted movements. No erratic decisions. No fear.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

And they were losing by choice.

Superman was in the air, his red cape a blurred streak of color against the smoke-drenched sky, cutting through the chaos like a warning, a promise. The city’s burning wreckage flickered beneath him, orange and gold reflecting off the crest on his chest like an ember waiting to ignite.

Bruce could hear him.

Not just the deep, concussive boom of his landings or the wind-ripping velocity of his movements--no, he could hear the impact. The shattering crunch of bodies breaking under force, the sickening snap of reinforced armor giving way like wet plywood. Bones cracking, concrete rupturing, the dull, meaty sound of fists meeting flesh at speeds human reflexes couldn’t hope to follow.

They didn’t stand a chance against him.

None of them ever did.

Bruce moved like a shadow through the battlefield, his own violence quieter, more deliberate. A soldier lunged at him-- too slow, too obvious. He caught the strike mid-air, twisting the man’s wrist sharply enough to elicit a crack before driving his gauntleted fist into his windpipe. The soldier collapsed, choking on nothing, and Bruce didn’t hesitate before flipping him over his shoulder and into the pavement, out cold before he landed.

Every movement was calculated, precise. His body ran on instinct sharpened to a knife’s edge, while his mind--his mind was always two steps ahead. Every encounter was mapped before it happened, every strike part of a larger plan, a rhythm he could predict.

And yet.

Something felt wrong.

There was a pulse beneath the violence, a rhythm to battle that Bruce had learned to read like a second language. It was the way a fight flowed, the way an enemy reacted --or didn’t. The hesitation before a deathblow, the subtle shifts in movement, the intent behind every attack.

And this one was just… off.

The enemy wasn’t panicking like they should have been.

They were well-armed, trained, organized-- too well-organized for a standard assault. They moved in coordinated waves, flanking, cutting off escape routes, funneling resistance into narrow pockets. This wasn’t an attack.

It was a strategy.

Bruce narrowed his eyes, the gears in his head turning too fast, too sharp. He’d fought enough wars to recognize this wasn’t about brute force. It wasn’t about destruction.

It was a delay.

But for what?

His comm crackled to life, a sharp burst of static against the chaos.

"Batman."

Clark’s voice. Steady. Unshaken. There was wind rushing past him, an ambient roar beneath his words, but no strain. No exhaustion. He could be standing in a quiet room for all the tension in his tone.

Still calm. Still in control.

Bruce glanced up, tracking him through the haze. Superman hovered just above, an unyielding figure against the rolling smoke, his body outlined in the dull glow of firelight. His cape billowed, torn near the hem where a blast had caught the edge, and a long tear ran across his side, fabric split to reveal unmarred skin beneath.

He was fine. He always was.

But Bruce wasn’t.

"Something’s off," he murmured, barely audible over the roar of collapsing structures and the distant wail of sirens. His cowl was feeding him a steady stream of data--heat signatures, enemy formations, movement patterns--but none of it accounted for the slow, grinding unease twisting in his gut.

They weren’t fighting for territory. They weren’t pushing forward or consolidating control.

They were stalling.

Bruce’s jaw tightened, his gaze locked on a spot above the horizon, his mind far away, piecing together the fragments of information that were clicking into place. 

Clark's voice cut through the haze, “They’re not aiming for a takeover. This is a--”

The words never finished.

A pulse--sharp and sudden, small enough that if Bruce hadn’t been watching he wouldn’t have noticed--rippled through the air, a flicker of energy that could barely be seen before--

Gone.

No impact, no sound, no warning.

One second, Clark was there--floating, whole, unshakable --and the next, the space he had occupied was empty .

Not blasted backward, not struck down. Not even a shift in the air, as if the world itself had simply erased him.

The wind still carried the faint echo of his last words over the comms, distorted and fading, but the man himself-- Superman --was gone.

That should have been the first clue that this was wrong . If he had been hit, struck out of the sky, Bruce would have seen it, heard it, felt it in the tension of the battlefield. But there had been no impact, no scream of displaced air, no flicker of red and blue plummeting from the heavens.

Bruce’s body moved before his mind could catch up, pure instinct overriding reason. His grappling hook fired with a sharp hiss, and he launched himself forward, muscles coiled, heart hammering against his ribs in a way he hadn’t felt in years.

Clark hadn’t been hurt .

He had just--

Vanished.

No body. No trace. No anything.

Bruce landed hard on the rooftop where Clark had hovered just moments before, his boots skidding against the concrete, his breath sharp against the filters of his cowl. He scanned the space in an instant--searching for something , anything --but there was nothing to find.

The air was static, untouched . No disruption of wind, no heat signature, no ionized particles or radiation spike. His cowl fed him a flood of data, scrolling too fast across his lenses, but every analysis came back the same.

Nothing.

His stomach lurched, an acidic twist deep in his gut.

"Superman, respond."

Bruce’s voice came out clipped, controlled, but his pulse was hammering against his throat, a brutal counterpoint to the silence pressing in on him.

No answer.

His fingers flew over his gauntlet, switching frequencies so fast the system barely kept up. He tried again. "Superman, do you copy?"

Static.

Nothing.

He swallowed hard, throat dry as ash.

"Clark."

Still-- nothing .

The silence was worse than any explosion. Worse than the whine of an incoming missile, worse than the thick, wet gasp of someone breathing their last through shattered ribs. It was the kind of silence that tore through you, jagged and empty, like something vital had been ripped out --leaving only the hollow echo of what was gone.

And then, in the space between one second and the next, Bruce understood exactly what had just happened.

This wasn’t an accident.

This wasn’t a battlefield casualty.

This wasn’t chaos.

It was precise .

It was deliberate .

It was planned.

His breath came slow and steady, but inside, his mind was a white-hot wire, running through possibilities, through every enemy capable of this .

Not brute force. Not raw firepower.

No, this had been the work of someone careful. Someone patient. Someone who had studied Superman-- anticipated him --and knew exactly what it would take to steal him away .

A cold weight settled in Bruce’s chest, heavier than the thickest Kevlar.

Because Superman didn’t just disappear .

He was taken.

Bruce clenched his teeth and forced himself to breathe , to think .

Panic was useless. It clouded judgment, slowed reflexes, turned men into corpses before they even knew they were dying. He knew this. He had trained for this.

But it didn’t stop the way his ribs felt too tight, like his suit had suddenly shrunk around him, pressing down against his lungs.

His hands moved fast, fingers flying over his gauntlet as he rerouted every available system, pulling a rapid environmental scan from every satellite and drone still intact. Infrared, ultraviolet, electromagnetic pulse detection--he ran everything , dragging the city’s digital veins through his fingertips in search of a pulse.

Come on. Come on, damn it--

Nothing.

Not a heat signature. Not a gravitational shift. Not the slightest energy disruption beyond the static hum of the battlefield.

Bruce’s jaw locked so tight his teeth ached.

Not possible. Not fucking possible.

There were rules to this. Even metahuman disappearances left a footprint-- something for him to track. A burst of kinetic displacement, a gravitational disturbance, residual energy in the air. Something.

His comm crackled again, sharp and static-laced, but this time, it wasn’t Clark.

"Batman, what the hell just happened?"

Diana.

Bruce exhaled through his nose, sharp and controlled, snapping himself back to the present. The battlefield below was still a warzone--metal screeching, explosions rattling the foundations of the city, the scent of ozone thick in the air--but it all felt distant now, muffled under the deafening roar of absence .

Clark was gone .

The thought pressed against the edges of his mind, a cold, sinking weight he shoved aside before it could settle. He couldn’t afford that--not now .

His fingers flexed against his gauntlet as he recalibrated his sensors, re-scanning, re-checking-- there had to be something, he had to have missed something--

"Batman."

Diana’s voice, firm but edged with something just shy of worry. He could hear the tension in it, the barely concealed urgency, the way she was keeping herself steady through sheer force of will.

She didn’t ask again.

She didn’t have to.

Bruce swallowed against the dry burn in his throat. His hands curled into fists

"Superman’s gone." Bruce said.  

A beat of silence. Then, a single word, edged with disbelief.

"Gone?"

Bruce’s jaw tightened. He could hear the moment she processed it, the weight of the word sinking in like a blade between ribs.

"Taken," he corrected, his voice flat. Precise. Because gone implied accident, implied uncertainty, implied something uncontrolled . This-- this --had been by design.

Diana swore, something sharp and guttural in Themysciran, and he almost welcomed the rawness of it, the way it slashed through the heavy, ringing silence in his head.

"Who?"

Bruce stood motionless, scanning the shadows below. He let out a long breath, frustration mounting. "I don’t know." He hesitated, eyes flicking back to the empty space where Clark had disappeared. "Yet."

And that was the problem, wasn’t it?

His fingers moved in a blur over his gauntlet, a rhythmic dance of urgency as he bypassed security protocols--his mind narrowing to a singular focus. This wasn’t the usual methodical check of systems--no, he was digging deeper now, plunging into every satellite feed, every scan, every goddamn piece of data that might have captured a trace. The usual paths weren't enough anymore. He switched frequencies with barely a thought, cross-referencing timestamps and analyzing fragments of static. His eyes flicked across the data streams, chasing the faintest hint of the pulse that had swallowed Clark whole. There had to be something. There was always something.

But there wasn’t.

Nothing. No energy displacement. No spike in teleportation readings. No atmospheric anomalies.

No trail .

His stomach coiled, tight and cold.

"Bruce," Diana’s voice cut through the static, steady and sure. "Where do you need me?"

He should have had an answer.

He always had an answer.

But Bruce was still standing there , rooted to the spot where Clark had vanished, his fists clenched so tight his gloves creaked. His mind was running a thousand calculations a second--angles, trajectories, possible technologies that could have pulled this off, who , why , how --but none of it was enough. None of it gave him anything .

And for the first time in years --goddamn years --Bruce felt something he hated.

Something cold. Something razor-edged and insidious, winding through the cracks of his control like a slow-working toxin.

Doubt.

Clark was gone, and Bruce didn’t know how to bring him back.

That was the simple, brutal truth of it. The fact lodged itself in his ribs like shrapnel, sharp and unrelenting. His mind screamed against it, fought to dissect every possible explanation, every conceivable method of retrieval-- but there was nothing. No trail to follow, no breadcrumbs to pick apart, no goddamn clue as to who had done this or how.

But he would find a way.

No matter what it took.

Because there was only one certainty in the chaos of this war-torn city, only one undeniable truth anchoring him through the storm of data and dead ends.

Superman had been taken.

The fires in Metropolis burned for six more hours. The city smoldered under the weight of its own ruin, the air thick with the acrid scent of melted steel and scorched concrete. Smoke coiled into the sky like a living thing, darkening the stars, choking out what little light remained. The battlefield had quieted--no more gunfire, no more shouts of resistance. The last of the drones had crumpled to the streets in twisted, sparking heaps, their artificial lives snuffed out one by one. The League was moving, securing the city, assessing the damage. The emergency response teams finally pushed through the wreckage, red and blue lights flickering weakly against the destruction.

Bruce barely noticed.

His world had narrowed, honed down to a single, empty space in the air. The spot where Clark had been.

It was wrong. All of it was wrong. The battle had been brutal, but this--this was surgical. A clean cut. A perfect, bloodless kill. Clark’s voice had cut off mid-sentence, not even a flicker of static to mark the break. One moment he was there , the next--

Nothing.

No light. No struggle. No trace.

His fingers flexed at his sides, the sharp scrape of gauntlet against gauntlet barely audible over the distant wail of sirens. The wind carried the lingering bite of scorched metal, the chemical tang of ozone clinging to the back of his throat. Smoke still hung low over the city, curling in ghostly tendrils around the broken skyline, swallowing the distant figures of first responders as they moved through the wreckage. It was all background noise. Static.

His focus was locked on the feeds still flickering across his HUD, data streaming in endless loops. He cycled through them again. And again. And again.

A teleportation anomaly. A spike in energy. A distortion in the footage.

Something. Anything.

But there was nothing.

No distress call. No body. No disruption in the air. No lingering radiation, no gravitational shift, no heat signature fading into the distance.

Clark had vanished as if he’d never been there at all.

It had been clean. Precise. The kind of extraction that didn’t just happen --the kind that took weeks, months to plan. The kind that anticipated every variable.

Someone had orchestrated this. Someone had waited for this moment.

And Bruce had missed it.

The League was speaking over the comms, their voices a steady hum of reports and commands threading through his earpiece--damage assessments, rescue coordination, casualty counts. It all blurred together, distant and unimportant. White noise.

None of it was this.

"Batman."

Diana’s voice, cutting through the static. Steady. Controlled.

He didn’t turn.

The impact of her landing was barely a whisper against the ruined rooftop, her lasso catching the firelight in a brief golden gleam. The scent of smoke clung to her armor, streaked dark with soot and battle.

"You should get some rest," she said after a moment, quiet but firm.

Bruce didn’t acknowledge her.

His fingers moved over his gauntlet, calloused tips flying over the console as data streamed across his HUD. He didn’t have time for rest. Rest was for people who had the luxury of waiting. Of hoping.

There were still angles. Still doors left unopened, still shadows left unsearched. The world had its secrets, but so did he. And he would gut every last one of them open if it got him even an inch closer.

Through every criminal network, every black-market transaction, every classified file buried so deep it had been meant to stay forgotten.

He would go through everything.

"Bruce."

His name, this time. Not Batman. Not a title wrapped in duty, in expectation. Just his name, spoken with quiet weight, edged with something too close to caution.

A warning.

His lenses dimmed as he finally turned his head, meeting her gaze. Diana stood with the unwavering stillness of a warrior, shoulders squared, stance solid. But her eyes--her eyes --were softer. Watching him with the kind of patience he had no use for.

Concern.

Pity.

He hated it.

“We missed something,” he said, the words rough in his throat. Too many hours spent barking orders through comms, breathing in the acrid smoke still thick in the air. “I need access to the Watchtower’s full records. Every captured metahuman, every classified experiment, every--”

“Bruce.”

She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t harden her tone, but there was steel in it all the same.

“You’ve been running scans for hours,” she said. “If there was a trace, we would have found it.”

She meant let it go.

He exhaled sharply, jaw tight. No.

“Then we keep looking.”

There was a flicker of frustration in her expression--barely there, barely more than a shift in her brow, a slight press of her lips. But he caught it.

“Bruce,” she tried again, voice steadier now, firm but not unkind. “Even you can’t run on nothing. You need to rest, regroup--”

“Clark doesn’t get that option.”

The words snapped out, harsh and final, slicing through whatever argument she was about to make.

Diana exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over her face. For a moment, she said nothing, just looked at him, something unreadable shifting behind her eyes. He knew what she was thinking. He knew what everyone was already thinking.

That Clark was gone.

That he was chasing a ghost.

He needed to stop before he drove himself into the ground.

But they didn’t understand.

Clark had been right there. Speaking. Breathing. Alive.

And then--

Bruce turned back to the city, the glow of distant fires reflecting in the lenses of his cowl. The skyline was fractured, broken, pieces of Metropolis still burning like dying embers in the dark. Smoke curled upward in thick tendrils, twisting through the skeletal remains of buildings that had once stood tall. It smelled like charred metal and ozone, like something gutted and left to rot.

“I’ll have J’onn keep scanning for anomalies,” Diana said finally. Her voice was quieter now, but it held the weight of something immovable--something final. “But you need to step back. Just for a few hours.”

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t even acknowledge her.

She studied him for a long moment, her gaze lingering. Then, without another word, she was gone--the sound of her footsteps lost in the howling wind, swallowed by the distant wail of sirens.

Bruce barely noticed.

His mind was already racing through possibilities, through calculations, through the countless what ifs and what nows.

He wasn’t going to stop.

Not until he found Clark.

Days blurred together, indistinct and restless, bleeding into one another like ink in water.

Bruce had worked cases for days at a time before, had pushed his body beyond exhaustion and kept moving on sheer willpower. But this--this was different. This wasn’t a case. This wasn’t something that could be neatly contained within evidence files and crime scene reports. This was Clark.

And Clark was gone.

His body ran on caffeine and raw determination, his mind trapped in a relentless cycle of footage, reports, theories--every lead turning to dust in his hands. The numbers on his screens blurred at the edges, his vision tunneling as he picked apart every detail, every frame, every half-second of data leading up to the moment Clark vanished.

Every second was spent looking.

Hacking through private databases, breaching government black sites, forcing his way into places even the League had been barred from. His fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling classified experiments from the depths of abandoned programs, exposing underground facilities buried beneath bureaucratic red tape, combing through old League records for anything-- anything --he might have overlooked.

And when the digital world failed him, he turned to the streets.

The criminal underworld learned very quickly that Batman was looking for something-- someone. And he was not patient. Informants found themselves cornered in dark alleyways, whispered rumors were dragged into the light, supply lines were disrupted with surgical precision, entire operations were obliterated in his wake. A shattered jaw here. A broken wrist there. Every encounter left behind a warning--raw, bloody, and undeniable.

But still, there was nothing.

Not a whisper. Not a trace. Not a single goddamn thing.

Every time he sat still, his mind played it again.

That moment. That exact moment.

Clark’s voice, mid-sentence--something ordinary, something unremarkable, something Bruce should have remembered but didn’t, because everything after had erased it. That second of sound, then-- nothing.

The space where he had been.

The unnatural stillness in the air, like the universe itself had taken a breath and held it.

The silence afterward.

It was the kind of silence Bruce had only heard once before-- Crime Alley, fresh snow, warm blood. A silence that came when something irrevocable had been taken.

And every time he closed his eyes, his mind whispered:

What if he’s dead?

A simple thought. A quiet one. But it coiled inside his ribs like barbed wire, wrapped around his lungs and tightened every time he inhaled. What if he’s dead? What if Clark wasn’t just missing, wasn’t just gone, but--

Bruce clenched his teeth, shoved the thought aside with brute force.

No. No, he couldn’t-- wouldn’t-- accept that.

The comm crackled in his ear.

“You’re going to break yourself.”

Diana. Low, steady. Measured, the way she always was when she thought he was about to do something stupid.

Bruce didn’t look up. His fingers flew over the keys, his cowl’s lenses reflecting the cold glow of the monitors. Satellite scans flickered across the screen, streams of data running faster than human eyes could track. Energy signatures. Displacement readings. Something. Anything.

“Then I break,” he said.

The League started to accept the worst.

Bruce didn’t.

The first week, they had searched with him. Side by side, combing through every lead, running every possible analysis, tearing through the data at speeds even Barry could barely keep up with. They coordinated sweeps, pored over security feeds, scoured the city, the country, the planet.

The second week, they searched for him. Not Clark-- him.

Their voices were quieter, their reports less frequent. They urged him to rest, slipping concern between the cracks of their words. They started handing off tasks, taking things off his plate without asking, trying to lessen a burden they didn’t understand he needed to carry.

By the third week, they had stopped mentioning Clark at all.

Bruce noticed.

Noticed the way reports shifted to League activity, city recoveries, damage assessments--anything but this. Noticed the way J’onn no longer sent him scan results unprompted, the way Diana’s updates became vaguer, the way Barry hesitated before saying his name.

Noticed the way, when they spoke about Clark, it was in past tense.

Bruce’s jaw locked.

“Bruce, you need to stop.”

Barry, hesitant. Uneasy.

“We’ve searched everywhere. If he was alive, we would have--”

“We keep looking.”

A pause. Silence stretching too long, too thick.

He could hear it in the way Barry faltered, in the weight of it pressing against the comms. The unspoken, quiet certainty that the rest of them had already settled into.

Bruce didn’t care.

He wasn’t stopping.

He kept looking.

He started chasing ghosts.

Every lead turned to ash in his hands, every trail ran cold, but his desperation only sharpened, honed into something razor-thin and cutting. It wasn’t just about searching anymore--it was about hunting.

He combed through his enemies, through past threats, through every name scrawled in the margins of unfinished battles. Who had the resources? Who had the motive? Who had wanted Clark gone badly enough to orchestrate something this clean ?

One name stood out.

Amanda Waller.

Bruce’s mind locked onto it with the force of impact. Waller was a strategist, a manipulator. A woman who didn’t just eliminate problems--she erased them. If anyone knew how to make a man disappear so completely he may as well have never existed, it was her.

And if she had taken Clark--

If she had even touched him--

Bruce moved through the shadows of the ARGUS facility like a phantom--silent, relentless, a force of nature wrapped in Kevlar and fury. The guards never stood a chance. They crumpled before they could sound the alarm, taken down with brutal efficiency, their weapons stripped, their radios cut to static.

By the time Waller arrived, her security detail lay sprawled across the cold floors, some groaning, others utterly still. The heavy doors to her office hung open, the reinforced steel bent and wrenched out of shape like cheap tin.

She barely looked surprised.

Her gaze flickered over the damage, assessing, calculating, before settling on the dark figure standing in the wreckage of her doorway.

“Batman,” Waller greeted, her voice smooth, unreadable. Not an ounce of hesitation. Not a flicker of surprise. Just the same calm, measured indifference she always wore, like a second skin. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Bruce didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He was a statue carved from shadow and fury, the dim office lights catching the sharp edges of his cowl. His voice, when it came, was low. Unforgiving.

“Superman’s missing.”

No preamble. No wasted words. No room for negotiation.

Waller didn’t so much as blink.

Which meant she already knew.

The tension in Bruce’s shoulders coiled tighter, his breathing controlled but shallow, chest rising and falling in slow, measured intervals. His hands twitched at his sides, the ghost of movement suppressed through sheer force of will. He could feel the weight of his batarangs, the comforting solidity of his gear. A dozen ways to make her talk. A dozen more to make her regret staying silent.

He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, his boots heavy against the polished floor.

Waller stayed rooted in place, expression unreadable. But he could see the way her fingers flexed at her sides.

Good.

She wasn’t afraid.

But she was preparing for something.

"Where is he?"

A beat.

Just long enough for the air to go razor-thin between them. Just long enough for Bruce to catch the flicker of something behind Waller’s eyes--calculating, assessing.

Then-- the faintest hint of a smirk.

"You're getting warm, Bats."

The words had barely left her mouth before Bruce moved. Fast. Precise. Merciless.

The impact sent a violent crack through the room as he slammed her against the desk, the force rattling everything in its path. A pen holder hit the floor, scattering across the polished tile. Papers burst into the air, fluttering down in a chaotic mess. The overhead lights flickered, casting sharp, stuttering shadows along the walls.

Waller didn’t struggle.

Didn’t fight.

Didn’t flinch.

Bruce’s forearm pressed hard against her throat, pinning her in place. His grip was ironclad, but controlled--always controlled. He could feel her pulse under his wrist, steady and deliberate. Like she wasn’t the least bit surprised to find herself here.

Like she had expected this.

She tilted her head slightly, expression unreadable, but there was something almost amused in the way she spoke, her voice smooth despite the weight against her windpipe.

"You’re slipping, Wayne," she murmured, every syllable slow and deliberate, like she was indulging him. "You don’t make threats you won’t follow through on."

His breath remained even, controlled. A predator waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Lethal.

"Try me."

The words came low, edged with something dark, something final. A promise, not a threat.

A tense beat of silence followed, stretching between them like a wire pulled too tight.

Then Waller exhaled, slow and measured, shaking her head with something between amusement and inevitability.

"He's alive."

The words slammed into Bruce like a live wire. A jolt. A spark. A violent shock to a system that had been running on nothing but raw, fraying determination.

His grip tightened without thought, his gauntlet creaking against the pressure of his own strength.

"Where?"

Waller only smiled, slow and sharp, her eyes gleaming with something unreadable.

"That’s the question, isn’t it?"

There was a challenge in her tone. A dare.

And Bruce--Bruce had never backed down from a fight in his life.

His heart pounded like a war drum, each beat rattling against his ribs, reverberating through the hollow spaces exhaustion had carved into him.

Clark was alive.

Alive.

And that meant Bruce wasn’t stopping. Not until he had him back. Not until he saw him, heard his voice, knew for certain that Waller wasn’t playing him, wasn’t dangling false hope in front of him just to watch him snap.

The nightmares started that same night. As Waller’s words sank in, as they settled --as they took root in the restless, ragged corners of his mind.

"He's alive."

Over seventy-two hours without sleep, but his body didn’t care. His mind was still a machine, still grinding forward on raw willpower, but his body--his body betrayed him, dragging him under before he was ready.

And in the space between waking and unconsciousness, something shifted.

Something broke.

It wasn’t a normal dream.

This was something else. Something deeper. Something real.

At first, there was nothing--just a void, humming low and steady, thrumming like a distant heartbeat beneath his skin. It rattled through his bones, seeped into his lungs, settled heavy in his chest.

Then--flashes.

Metal glinting under harsh, artificial light. The sterile gleam of smooth steel, stretching out in tight, suffocating corridors. A smell--something metallic , something wrong , curling in the back of his throat like blood on his tongue.

A cell.

A red sun cell.

Bruce could feel it before he saw it--the oppressive weight of it pressing down like a lead blanket, leeching the strength from the air itself. The walls hummed , pulsing with energy, dull red light bleeding through the reinforced seams.

There were chains. Thick, industrial, bolted deep into the walls.

And there was Clark.

On his knees. Wrists shackled. Head bowed.

His shoulders moved with slow, uneven breaths, ribs rising and falling under the dull glow of the overhead lights. His hair hung in damp strands across his face, slick with sweat, sticking to his skin.

Bruce couldn’t see his eyes.

But he felt him.

And something was wrong.

Not just the chains. Not just the way he was kneeling--spine hunched, arms taut with tension--but the sheer, suffocating wrongness of him. Of this.

Of Clark Kent--Superman--brought to his knees, shackled, caged.

And it felt like something was crawling under Bruce’s skin, digging in sharp, needle-thin claws, whispering the same, sickening thought over and over again.

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here.

But he was.

The dream bent around Bruce’s awareness, warping, twisting--pulling him in until he was there.

Not an observer. Not a specter watching from the edges of consciousness.

He was standing just beyond the containment field.

The air inside the cell was wrong. Thick. Heavy. Red sun radiation buzzed through the walls like static, a dull hum vibrating in the back of his skull. His throat felt tight, muscles locking up as something deep in his instincts screamed at him-- move, do something, get him out of there--

His foot lifted. Stepped forward.

The second it crossed the threshold, Clark flinched.

Not a subtle shift. Not a twitch.

A flinch.

Bruce froze.

The reaction hit him harder than it should have. Clark never reacted to him like that. Not in a fight. Not in an argument. Not even at his worst, not even when Bruce had pushed and prodded and provoked.

But this Clark--this Clark didn’t recognize him.

"Clark."

His own voice sounded distant. Warped. Like it didn’t belong to him.

Clark stirred. The chains rattled, a sharp clink breaking the heavy silence.

Slowly, sluggishly, he lifted his head.

Blinking through the haze of exhaustion and pain, eyes unfocused, pupils blown wide under the dim, red light.

His gaze found Bruce’s.

And his entire body went rigid.

Not just startled. Not just tense.

Rigid.

Like a wire stretched too tight, one wrong move away from snapping.

"Bruce?"

Clark’s voice was hoarse, cracked at the edges, like his throat had been wrung dry. Like he hadn’t spoken in days.

His brows knit together, confusion flickering across his face--faint at first, but growing, deepening into something unsettled. Something not quite right.

Bruce took another step forward.

Clark’s posture didn’t ease. If anything, it got worse. His muscles coiled, his shoulders tightening, the shackles biting deeper into his wrists. His breath, already uneven, hitched.

His eyes darkened.

The confusion shifted.

And Bruce saw it--the moment it changed.

The moment confusion wasn’t confusion anymore.

The moment it became something else.

Something Bruce recognized in criminals on the streets, in cornered animals, in people who saw him as a threat.

Not shock. Not relief.

Not trust.

Something that made the base of Bruce’s spine go cold.

"You never came."

The words barely carried, nothing more than a whisper.

But Bruce felt them like a blade between his ribs.

His breath stuttered, chest tightening in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion, nothing to do with the red glow soaking into his skin.

Clark’s form flickered. Just for a second.

The cell warped--walls stretching unnaturally, chains shifting, the entire space twisting like something out of a nightmare. The red sun lights pulsed, a heartbeat of dull, suffocating energy, and Clark--Clark looked wrong .

His body was slumped, but his eyes--his eyes burned.

Bruce took another step forward.

The red light flared.

Clark blurred.

And then the cell shattered--swallowed whole by the dark.

Bruce woke up gasping.

The Batcave’s ceiling stretched above him, vast and cold and suffocating. For a moment--just a moment--he wasn’t sure where he was. The glow of the monitors painted the cavern walls in shifting light, the low hum of the Batcomputer filling the silence, but it felt wrong. Too distant. Too hollow.

His pulse slammed against his ribs. His breath came short, uneven.

It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real.

His fingers curled against the cot, the fabric bunching under his grip. His body was stiff, muscles wound tight like he’d been fighting in his sleep. Like he was still there, still trapped in that cell, watching Clark bleed red light.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

But he could still hear it. That voice--hoarse, broken, accusing.

"You never came."

The words stuck like a splinter under his skin, like a wound too deep to heal.

Bruce exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his face.

Then he stood.

He didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

The next time Bruce stepped into the Watchtower, Diana was already waiting.

She stood near the main console, her arms crossed, her posture rigid. The glow from the monitors cast long shadows across her face, highlighting the sharp edge of her frown, the way her brows pulled together. She wasn’t just waiting. She was expecting him.

Hal was there too, standing just off to the side, his ring dim against his knuckles. His usual easy confidence was gone--replaced by something heavier, something uneasy. His jaw was set, tension running through his frame like a drawn wire.

Bruce didn’t slow.

He didn’t need to. He knew exactly what this was.

He’d seen that look before, felt the weight of it pressing down on him too many times to count. It was the look people gave before a talk. Before they said things like you need to stop and you’re going too far and this isn’t healthy.

An intervention.

His teeth clenched.

Diana’s gaze never wavered as he approached.

Bruce barely spared them a glance as he moved past, his steps precise, unhurried. Purposeful. He crossed the room in a few strides, heading straight for the nearest terminal, already scanning through the information he’d left running overnight.

“You haven’t slept in days,” Diana said. Her voice was even, steady, but he could hear the tension beneath it. The unspoken this isn’t sustainable.

"I don’t have time to sleep."

His fingers flew over the keyboard, inputting commands before the previous ones had even finished processing. Satellite feeds, surveillance logs, ARGUS files--he ripped through them at a relentless pace, searching for something. Anything he hadn’t already seen a hundred times. Anything that wasn’t another dead end.

The data blurred in front of him. The same timestamps. The same security reports. The same nothing.

Behind him, a chair scraped against the floor, loud in the quiet hum of the Watchtower. Hal sat down heavily, exhaling like he was bracing for something.

“You know,” he said, tone edged with something that wasn’t quite humor, “I used to think you couldn’t get any more obsessive.” A pause. Then, flatly: “I was wrong.”

Bruce ignored him.

Diana stepped closer, her voice quieter now, deliberate. “Bruce.”

His hands hovered over the keyboard, but he didn’t type.

Didn’t move.

“We all want him back,” she continued, each word measured, careful, like she was speaking around something fragile. “But you--this isn’t just about Superman.” A pause, heavy, pressing into the space between them. “This is about Clark.”

His jaw tightened.

The air felt thinner.

Like the pressure in his chest had turned physical, a weight pressing down on his ribs, making it harder to breathe.

Hal leaned forward with a sigh, elbows braced against his knees, watching Bruce like he was waiting for something--some sign of life, some crack in the armor. “It’s not just the League talking about it,” he said. “Gotham’s noticing.”

Bruce didn’t react.

Not outwardly.

“You haven’t been home in weeks,” Hal continued. “There are rumors you’ve left the city permanently. You’re not even pretending to keep up appearances.”

Bruce’s fingers curled against the desk, slow, deliberate.

Hal exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “Dick’s wearing the cowl again.” His voice dropped, like he didn’t want to say it, like he already knew it wouldn’t make a difference. “People know it’s not you.”

Diana’s expression flickered, her frown deepening. “And Damian? The kids?”

Silence.

A beat too long.

“They’ve worried about you,” she said, quieter now, careful. “We all are.”

Tim. Dick. Damian. Alfred. Even Jason, in his own Jason way. They had been calling. Checking in. Showing up at the manor even when it was empty, when it had been empty for weeks , as if they thought he would just be there one day, like he always was. Like they could will him back through sheer stubbornness alone.

Diana waited.

Hal waited.

The air in the Watchtower stretched, too still, too heavy.

And then Bruce turned back to the screen, fingers flying over the keyboard, already pulling up another set of feeds, another round of satellite images, another series of reports he had already memorized.

Because Clark had vanished--too cleanly, too seamlessly, too perfectly.

No distress signal. No warning. No evidence, not a shred of proof that he had been taken at all. It was like he had never existed in the first place, like someone had erased him with surgical precision, cutting away every trace, leaving only empty space where he should have been.It was too perfect. Too deliberate. Too much like someone had orchestrated it down to the last detail, ensuring that even he --with all his resources, all his knowledge, all his relentless, unyielding drive--could find nothing.

And now--now, the dreams.

The flickering, fractured images that clawed into his mind every time he let his guard slip. The sterile, artificial glow of red sun radiation bleeding into the air, pressing against Clark’s skin like a second, suffocating layer. The sharp scent of metal and something else--something worse, something wrong. The way Clark had lifted his head in slow, agonizing increments, his eyes unfocused, shadowed with something Bruce had never seen there before.

The way he had flinched when Bruce moved toward him.

The way his voice had cracked on words that Bruce could still hear, still feel, rattling through his skull like a blow he hadn’t been fast enough to block.

"You never came."

Bruce exhaled sharply, but it did nothing to ease the tension coiled tight in his chest. His nails bit into his palm, deep enough that the sting barely registered.

He had to find him.

He would find him.

Diana sighed, the sound heavy with something almost like resignation. “Bruce, you--”

“I’m not stopping.”

The words were quiet, clipped, but there was no room for argument in them. No space for doubt. They weren’t a plea, weren’t an explanation--just a fact, cold and immovable as stone.

Diana hesitated. Her gaze lingered on him, searching for something--hesitation, uncertainty, anything that might mean he could be reasoned with. But there was nothing. Just the same sharp focus, the same relentless, ruthless edge that had driven him for weeks .

Then, finally--she exhaled, stepping back, her shoulders settling with something like reluctant understanding.

Hal shook his head beside her, rubbing a hand over his face. “Man, I really hate when you get like this.”

Bruce didn’t answer. There was nothing to answer. He was already moving again, his hands flying over the console, pulling up the same data, the same reports, the same leads that had taken him nowhere before. But it didn’t matter. He’d go through them a thousand times, ten thousand if he had to.

Because Clark was alive.

And Bruce was going to find him.

The breakthrough came at 3:47 AM.

Bruce had been awake for sixty-two hours.

The Watchtower was silent. Too silent. The kind of silence that didn’t exist on Earth, that shouldn’t exist anywhere, pressing in from all sides like a vacuum waiting to collapse inward. A silence so absolute it felt alive, watching , settling deep into his bones, stretching out in the space between his ribs.

Beyond the reinforced glass, the stars burned cold and distant, scattered against the void in a way that had never unnerved him before. But now--now, they felt wrong . Endless, unreachable, empty. A reflection of something he refused to name.

The only sound was the quiet hum of the servers, the whisper of data streams threading through miles of cables, the distant buzz of the oxygen systems cycling through the station. His own breath, steady, measured, mechanical.

His fingers moved across the console, each motion sharp, precise, calculated--but his body was beginning to turn on him. His eyes burned, raw and gritty from strain, every muscle wound tight from hours spent locked in place. His stomach twisted, protesting the absence of food, of water, of anything but caffeine and sheer force of will.

He ignored it.

Ignored everything that wasn’t the screen in front of him.

Because there--

There it was.

A flicker. A pulse. A distortion buried so deep in the data that it was almost imperceptible.

Almost.

Bruce exhaled slowly. His fingers went still over the keys, his posture locked in place. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, waiting for the signal to move. To act. To do something . The restraint it took not to react immediately was suffocating, pressing against his ribs like iron bands, holding him back when every instinct screamed at him to go now, now, now--

He had spent ten weeks tearing through everything .

Every surveillance feed, every satellite scan, every scrap of intercepted communication from criminal networks and black-market channels. He had run every conceivable algorithm, rewritten entire code sequences just to squeeze another fraction of a percentage out of his search parameters. He had combed through the League’s old case files, looking for even a whisper of something familiar, something that matched the seamless, impossible way Clark had vanished.

He had chased down ghosts .

Broken into systems no one should have been able to break into. Pushed his mind and body to the edge, and then past the edge, because stopping wasn’t an option.

And it had led to nothing.

Whoever had taken Clark had been careful. Too careful. This wasn’t just about covering their tracks--it was about control . They hadn’t merely erased evidence; they had designed its absence. Crafted it like a masterwork, layer upon layer of obfuscation, every missing fragment precisely engineered to lead nowhere.

Not just that. They had left something behind.

A false trail. A carefully curated mess of meaningless blips, empty leads, dead-end signals meant to waste his time, to bleed him dry in a chase that could only ever spiral back on itself. That was what had driven him to the edge--what had scraped away the last of his patience, whittled him down to something raw and sharpened. This wasn’t just a kidnapping. This wasn’t just an attack on Superman.

It was a message.

One specifically crafted for him .

They had taken Clark. Erased him. Wiped away every trace so cleanly that even he-- he , with all his knowledge, all his resources, all his relentless, crushing determination--could find nothing. And then, just to make sure he kept running in circles, they had given him this . Carefully placed misdirection. A distorted whisper of something just real enough to chase, just false enough to break against.

Deliberate.

Calculated.

And that meant only one thing.

They had never planned for him to find the truth.

But Bruce had spent his entire life breaking through the impossible. He had built himself out of sheer force of will, clawed his way through every barrier placed in front of him, carved a path where none existed. He had made a career-- a legend --out of seeing what others missed, out of finding cracks in the perfect facades of gods and monsters alike.

No one could hide forever.

Not from him.

His fingers pressed against the console’s edge, the tension thrumming through his muscles so tightly it felt like he might snap. The screen in front of him flickered, feeding out raw data--unassuming at first glance, just another endless stream of numbers and reports. But Bruce knew what he was looking at.

It had taken ten weeks.

Ten weeks of tearing through every satellite feed, every communications log, every classified document he could get his hands on. Ten weeks of dead ends, of running in circles, of grasping at ghosts. But here-- here was something. A fracture in the silence. A single inconsistency buried so deep in the power grid records that most analysts wouldn’t have looked twice.

A fraction of a percent. A fluctuation so small, so insignificant, that it was almost laughable.

Almost.

But Bruce had personally overseen the shutdown of every LexCorp black-site. He knew their energy signatures the way he knew Gotham’s skyline--the exact pulse of their systems, the way they had been powered before being decommissioned. And this?

This was wrong .

The facility had been marked as dismantled. Officially, it didn’t exist anymore--no power, no personnel, no operational systems. Just another abandoned LexCorp husk, gutted and left to rot like the rest of Luthor’s discarded projects.

And yet, there was a power draw.

Small. Controlled. Barely more than a whisper beneath the standard fluctuations of the grid, hidden so neatly within expected variances that it would have been dismissed as nothing. A rounding error. Background noise. But it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a pulse--steady, deliberate. Just enough to sustain something.

Or someone.

The realization struck like a physical blow. Bruce exhaled sharply, chest tightening as his mind spun through the implications. It fit too well, slotted into place with the kind of precision that made his stomach twist.

If he were going to hide someone--if he needed a facility erased from government records, one fortified with the exact tech and infrastructure required to keep Clark contained, to keep him weak and unable to fight back--this was where he would do it.

And whoever had taken him?

They had counted on Bruce never looking there.

His hands curled into fists against the console, nails pressing deep into his palms. The pressure bit into skin, sharp and grounding, but it wasn’t enough to settle the fire tearing through his veins. His heartbeat remained steady--too steady, too controlled--but his blood was burning.

They had Clark.

They had Clark --and for ten weeks, they had kept him locked away, erased from existence, buried in the dark under what Bruce knew had to be red sun radiation. Weakened. Isolated.

Seventy days.

Seventy days of silence. Seventy days of waiting. Seventy days of Clark expecting him to come.

And he almost hadn’t.

A breath ripped through his lungs, sharp and jagged. His body wanted to move. Needed to. His muscles coiled, every fiber wound tight as a drawn wire, a predator locked onto its prey. His nerves were electric, his mind already three steps ahead, calculations flashing behind his eyes--routes, strategies, entry points. He could feel the suit settling over him, the weight of the cowl, the press of the gauntlets against his wrists.

But he didn’t move.

Not yet.

His body was coiled, primed, every muscle ready to launch into motion, but his mind held him back. Because this --this was the moment. The one that decided everything.

His fingers hovered over the console. A single command, and the League would be here in minutes. He could bring in Diana, Barry, Hal. Mobilize every resource they had. Coordinate a full-scale operation, flood the facility with powerhouses who could tear through whatever security had been put in place.

But that wasn’t an option.

The people who had taken Clark had planned for the League. They had planned for Superman. They had calculated every possible response, covered every contingency. But they had left a trail for him.

That meant something.

It meant they were waiting. Watching. It meant that if they saw an army coming, they would be ready.

And if they were ready--if they even suspected an attack was imminent--Clark would be the first casualty.

Bruce’s jaw locked, teeth grinding hard enough to ache. His lungs dragged in a slow breath, forcing restraint into his bloodstream. No hesitation. No second thoughts. He had already made his decision, and there was only one way forward.

This wasn’t just another mission. It wasn’t another case to solve or another enemy to outmaneuver.

This was personal.

They had taken Clark from him.

And he was going to take him back.

Alone.

Chapter Text

It was well into the night by the time Bruce reached the front of the facility.

The darkness wasn’t clean here. It hung low and heavy, more like a physical presence than an absence of light--thick with fog and damp air, weighed down by the stench of rot and ozone. Everything felt waterlogged. The earth beneath his boots was soft and gummy, spongy with decay, like it had been soaking in still water for days. Each step left behind the sound of suction, like the land itself was trying to drag him down and bury him with whatever else had been forgotten here.

Fog clung to the ground like smoke that didn’t know how to rise. It twisted around his ankles, creeping up over the sickly, dying vegetation scattered like the shed fur of some diseased alley cat. Bits of brittle moss and rotting leaves tangled in the undergrowth, pale in the washed-out silver of the moonlight. There was a raw, animal silence to it all, broken only by the occasional tick of distant machinery or the creak of old metal in the wind.

It was lighter than he liked. The gibbous moon--bloated and leering--cast a dull, greasy shine over everything, throwing low, warped shadows that made the world look stretched and wrong. Visibility was poor, but not poor enough. Not for what he needed.

He crouched low behind a patch of overgrowth, the plants crunching under him, brittle like bones. His eyes scanned the compound’s battered exterior through the rising mist, lenses narrowing automatically to adjust for the shifting light. He didn’t need perfect visuals--he'd memorized every angle of this place on the way here, pored over every grainy satellite photo, traced each schematic like they were maps to a tomb meant to be cracked open with his bare hands. Every vent, every conduit, every foundation flaw that could be twisted into an advantage lived behind his eyelids, etched into muscle memory.

But being here... standing on ground that felt wrong beneath him, breathing in air that tasted like poison... it was different. The terrain felt alive under him, alive in the way that corpses sometimes twitched after death. It breathed through the fog, exhaling secrets in wet, rattling sighs, whispering to him from the hollows and the shadows.

And Bruce, who had made himself a weapon against fear, didn't have the time--or the luxury--to listen.

A few meters down, the chain-link fence slumped into itself, metal torn inward like something had pushed through with desperate, animalistic force. The ends curled back like snapped ribs, twisted and rusted, jagged with old blood or oxidized rain--he couldn't tell which. It didn't matter. The violence of it lingered, heavy in the air, like it had been scorched into the metal itself. Something had broken in here once. Something that hadn't come back out. Something that maybe shouldn't have.

He moved toward it, steps slow and measured, his breath controlled and quiet, each exhale barely more than a thread of vapor in the freezing air. Even that small trace felt wrong, like he was leaving pieces of himself behind. His boots carved thin trenches in the soft, waterlogged earth, dragging through patches of dead moss and matted weeds that stuck to the tread like damp cotton. Every part of him was tuned to the silence, skin prickling beneath the armor, his instincts clawing at the inside of his skull. Listening. Always listening.

Footsteps.

Low, muffled voices, like phantoms in the mist. Somewhere near the southern building, just skimming the edge of his periphery. Not close, but not far enough either. A warning shot across the bow.

He halted just before the breach in the fence, body lowering instinctively, muscles coiling tight under the suit like a spring ready to snap. His breath shortened without thinking, slipping silent between his teeth as a pair of armed guards materialized through the fog like phantoms--blurred silhouettes at first, half-dissolved by the mist, and then solid shapes, sharp with the brutal certainty of movement. Their armor was matte black, drinking in the sickly moonlight, helmets gleaming with a dull, cold sheen. The rifles they carried were heavy, built for killing, not for warning shots. Not for mercy. Even in the shadow of moonlight the marks of use were prominent, well worn.

They moved like soldiers. Real ones. Not the kind of cheap muscle you paid to stand outside a warehouse and pose for security footage. Their steps were measured, deliberate, falling into an easy rhythm that spoke of training drilled so deep it had replaced their instincts. Boots hitting the damp earth without hesitation, without a misstep. Too sure. Too at home in this rotting skeleton of a place. Ex-military, maybe--no, something worse. Private contractors, maybe even ghost units, bought and sold like merchandise with black-budget clearance. High-level danger. The kind that didn’t ask questions. The kind that didn’t leave survivors.

Bruce shifted, just barely, a whisper of motion no louder than the fog curling around his ankles. His heart beat louder, heavy against his ribs, but he ignored it. Filed it away like everything else. He watched the guards track a lazy, sweeping path across the edge of the compound, their rifles swinging with casual authority. The distance between them was too wide, and the ground he’d have to cross too open--flat and betrayed by the pale light of the bloated moon hanging overhead like a judge. No cover. No shadows deep enough to hide him, not unless he moved too fast to see. And if he moved too fast--if he made even one mistake--

They’d see him. They’d raise the alarm.

And he couldn’t be seen.

Not yet.

Not when he was this close.

The guards paused, boots grinding into the soft earth, and exchanged a quiet word--low, clipped, the kind of communication that didn’t waste time on full sentences. Just enough to pass an order or a warning. One of them reached up, fingers ghosting over a bulky device strapped to his shoulder--likely a comm unit or a biometric reader, its tiny indicator light blinking green in the gloom--before returning his hand to the stock of his rifle. A small movement, but deliberate. Comfortable. They weren’t expecting anyone tonight.

But they were ready anyway. Always ready.

That was what made this difficult.

He resisted the impulse to move, even though his body wanted to--needed to act , to do something, to end the tension tightening his muscles like a wire about to snap. Not out of fear--never fear. Bruce didn’t know what fear felt like anymore. No, this was calculation, colder than the night bleeding around him. Sharp-edged and ruthless. He could feel it thrumming under his skin like a second heartbeat.

He was a scalpel tonight. Not a sledgehammer. Not a wrecking ball crashing through walls just because he could . Not here. Not now.

If he rushed it, if he broke cover, they’d cut him down before he made it three steps. And even if he survived the first volley, even if he won --it wouldn’t matter. The alarms would scream, the facility would lock down, and Clark would stay buried under six hundred tons of reinforced concrete and radiation.

No. That was what they wanted.

This place wasn’t built to stop ordinary threats. It wasn’t even built to stop him . It was built for someone else. Someone stronger. Someone invulnerable--until he wasn’t. Every inch of this rotting hell was calibrated to break Kryptonian bone, to rupture Kryptonian lungs.

Which meant it would kill someone like Bruce with almost casual indifference. A misstep here wasn’t a mistake. It was a death sentence.

He exhaled slowly, letting the sharp cold of the air fill his mouth, sting down his throat, ground him. Focus.

Earlier--hours ago, though it felt like another lifetime--he’d circled the southern warehouse, mapping routes, memorizing patrol patterns. He’d slipped behind a sagging outbuilding with its roof half collapsed and buried a sonic lure deep into the rusted carcass of an old generator casing. A little trick, wired and armed, its timer set with surgeon’s precision. Just in case.

He reached for his belt--silent, practiced--fingers ghosting over the familiar shapes embedded in the compartments. Each piece of equipment mapped into his muscle memory so thoroughly that he didn’t even have to look. Flashbang. Mini EMP. Grapple.

There.

The casing of a second lure, smooth and cool against the leather of his glove, tucked snug between the flashbang and the EMP like the final card up a gambler’s sleeve. Compact. Targeted. Directional. Built not to cause chaos--but to guide it.

He didn't hesitate.

Click.

The trigger engaged with the softest pressure. Almost anticlimactic, how easy it was. No fanfare, no mechanical whine. Just a simple, deadly click.

Somewhere behind the southern warehouse--out past the fog-choked ruins of the old generator casing--a sudden sharp crack tore through the stillness. Brutal in its suddenness. Brutal in its effectiveness.

It sounded almost natural , like the heavy snap of a branch under the weight of something large--something that shouldn’t be there. Loud against the dead air. Loud enough to jolt every living thing within earshot to attention.

The guards froze mid-step, bodies coiled with instant tension.

One of them lifted his rifle, movements jerky, a little too fast--the nerves bleeding through his training. The other barked something clipped and harsh, words too muffled to catch, but the meaning clear enough in the urgency of it.

A decision made in a breath.

Then they moved--both of them peeling off toward the noise, rifles raised to their shoulders, silhouettes melting back into the fog as if they'd never existed at all.

Gone.

Just like he needed.

The night swallowed them whole, and Bruce didn't waste his chance.

He slipped through the torn fence, smoke bleeding through a hairline crack, not so much stepping as seeping , his body threading through the jagged ribs of wire without a sound. Not even the mist stirred in protest. The fog clung to his boots like silk dragged through milk--thick, wet, cloying--but he left no trace behind. Nothing that would last. Nothing that anyone could follow.

The sonic lure had done its job, just like it was built to. Clean distraction. Calculated misdirection. The guards had taken the bait without hesitation, vanishing into the distance like hounds on phantom scent trails. Chasing echoes. Hunting nothing. Ghosts left to haunt an empty house.

And now–

Now the compound was quiet. Not empty, but blind. Or at least close enough.

The building loomed ahead, squatting like a corpse too big for its grave, all sharp corners and poured concrete, stained and streaked with the evidence of years it was never meant to survive. Watermarks spidered down its face like old scars, the color of iron and bruised mold. Above the main entrance, a broken slab of awning sagged like a busted limb, struggling to hold itself up.

One light still burned--just one--hanging crooked from a rusted socket, its glass warped and insect-buzzing like it was stuck in the moment right before death. Faint yellow pulses stuttered against the doorway beneath it, catching on rain-rusted hinges and a keypad dusted with cobwebs no one had bothered to clean.

And just to the right--there it was. The camera.

Mounted like an indifferent eye, it ticked left and right in slow, predictable arcs. The movement was lazy, not careless--just automated. Programmed. Unthinking. The same rhythm over and over, like a song stuck looping on the last note.

Bruce had timed it.

Every sweep. Every pause. Every glitch in the loop where the camera hesitated just a breath too long before shifting back.

Down to the half-second.

He knew exactly how long he had before it turned its dead, glassy gaze back toward the door. And that was all he needed.

Just enough space.

Just enough breath.

He was already moving--low and fast, shoulders angled, cloak of shadow stitched tight around him. His heartbeat didn’t rise. His breath didn’t stutter. He wasn’t a man in that moment--not one made of flesh or nerve or brittle bone.

He was smoke. He was silence.

He was already gone.

The door waited at the top of three crumbling concrete steps, its steel surface worn smooth around the handle, pitted with age. Reinforced. Locked from within. But that was fine.

He’d planned for that, too.

One gloved hand came up, fingers already curling around the compact multi-tool clipped to his belt. No sound. No light. Just pressure, precision, and speed.

The camera swung past behind him.

And Bruce was at the door.

He crouched low beside the keypad, half-hidden in the shadow it cast against the wall, and reached for the lock.

Seconds. That’s all he needed.

The door in front of him was locked, of course. Reinforced with a keypad and biometric scanner--military grade. Any tampering would trigger an alert. But Bruce wasn’t here to tamper.

He was here to break in.

From his belt, he drew a thin length of wire and a data spike--not WayneTech issue, not League-standard. These were custom. Black market tech he'd... repurposed. Slipping the spike into the edge of the panel, he waited for the internal click, then fed the wire up through the gap and touched it against the circuit beneath the biometric scanner.

A soft pulse of green light flickered.

It took three seconds.

The lock disengaged with a heavy clunk, bolts retracting with a mechanical groan. Bruce eased the door open just enough to slip through, then shut it behind him, sealing the dark once more.

The air inside hit him like a brick wall.

Hot. Thick. Dry.

The scent of metal and coolant clung to everything--heavy with the sterile bite of machinery. It was silent in that dead way that only secure facilities could be--no hum of lights, no idle chatter of servers. Just his own breath and the soft rustle of gear as he moved forward into the darkness.

He didn’t turn on his flashlight. Didn’t need to.

The lenses of his cowl shifted, filtering into infrared, then low-light. The hallway unfurled ahead of him, long and narrow, the walls dull concrete lined with pipes and old ventilation grates. A thin trickle of condensation ran down the side of one, dripping steadily onto the floor in a rhythm that echoed like a heartbeat.

There were no windows. No signage. Just blank steel doors and long stretches of corridor that led to nowhere.

It was a cage.

Or a tomb.

He didn’t let himself think about Clark. Not yet. Not here.

If he let his mind go there, he’d lose his edge. And he couldn’t afford that. Not when the people who had built this place had done so with one purpose--to keep Kryptonians inside.

And if Clark was here--if he was really here--Bruce was going to find him.

Or he’d tear this whole place down trying.

Bruce’s footsteps were muffled against the grimy floor as he moved deeper into the facility, each step a reminder that everything in this place was designed to keep him out. The air, thick with dust and chemical residue, clung to his skin, heavy and almost suffocating. His boots left faint marks on the floor--traces of his passage, already being swallowed by the shadows. He took the hallway in long, purposeful strides, eyes scanning every corner, every dark crevice. His mind was clear, but there was something creeping in the back of it, gnawing at him like a rat in the dark: What if this is too late?

The walls were coated in layers of grime, streaks of water running down them in thin rivulets, like the place had been forgotten. Old rust clung to the steel beams above him, the metal creaking and groaning under its own weight. Every flicker of his infrared lenses revealed the remains of an operation that had been built for one thing--containment. There were no signs of life, nothing alive but the machines that hummed with an almost imperceptible pulse. They hadn’t been powered down; they had simply been left to decay .

A sudden scraping noise echoed in the silence ahead, a distant reminder of how alive this place truly was. His senses heightened. There was something wrong about this stillness. It was a fake kind of silence, one that only existed because it had been manufactured to be that way.

He moved past another junction, this one leading deeper into the heart of the facility. A faint clattering sound made him pause, his ears straining, listening, catching the echo of the sound as it ricocheted down an unseen passage.

Someone is here.

He didn’t need to see the figure to know it was a guard--a lone one, patrolling, thinking himself unseen. Bruce slipped into the next room, a dark, cold storage area filled with rusted crates and long-forgotten supplies. He watched the guard from behind the door, boots scraping against the floor, flashlight sweeping lazily across the walls. Bruce’s fingers tightened around a small, nondescript device on his belt--a tranquilizer dart loaded with a fast-acting sedative. He’d been prepared for this--he would use it if necessary.

The guard stopped outside the door, flashlight trained on the floor.

Bruce froze.

From the shadow of the storage room, he watched the beam sweep steadily across the corridor--pausing, backing up an inch. The man’s stance shifted subtly. Alert. Not panicked, not suspicious. Yet something had tripped his instincts. Maybe the faint scuff of Bruce’s boots on concrete. Maybe just the gut sense of being watched. Either way, Bruce knew that stillness wouldn’t last. The guard was trained. He’d check the room.

And if he opened that door, there’d be no silent takedown--just an open line to whatever comm system this place still had, and then the lockdown would start.

No alarms. That was the deal.

Bruce’s hand drifted down, calm, deliberate, fingers curling around the compact dart gun strapped to his thigh. A flick of his thumb primed it--silent. No click. No hiss. He was already stepping closer, silent as a shadow gliding through water.

The guard took one cautious step forward, peering into the gloom.

That was enough.

The dart buried itself in the base of the man’s neck with a whisper of air.

The flashlight clattered first. Then the guard followed, knees folding inward before his body slumped in a slow-motion spiral. Bruce was already there, catching him before the full weight hit the floor. A hand braced against his chest, lowering him gently, preventing even a grunt from escaping.

Still breathing. Pulse steady. He’d wake in a few hours, head fogged and memory scrambled. But no alarm. No shots fired. No radio call.

Just silence. The silence he wanted, the silence he made .

Bruce dragged the unconscious man back into the room, settling him between two crates, hidden from the corridor. He picked up the fallen flashlight, shut it off, and placed it beside the body with mechanical precision.

Then, just like that, he vanished into the hallway once more.

The dart had cost him fifteen seconds.

He wouldn’t waste another.

The further he went, the more the walls began to change. The metal grates gave way to smooth, sterile surfaces, the air becoming increasingly dry and cold. It felt wrong--too pristine, too controlled. This was where the heart of the operation had been laid out. And somewhere beneath it all, in the deepest parts of this metal prison, Clark was waiting.

A sharp clank of boots striking metal echoed from a side corridor up ahead--too sharp, too coordinated to be a lone wanderer. Bruce stopped mid-step, dropping low behind a large steel pipe that curved along the wall, half-shrouded in shadow. He didn’t breathe.

Voices.

Two.

Male. Speaking in low tones, too muffled to make out--just the cadence of habit. Casual, not alarmed. He let the sound roll through him, grounding himself in its rhythm as he pinpointed their location. They weren’t patrolling. They were cutting through toward another section--an internal check, maybe. Routine. They’d be within view in seconds.

The hallway narrowed at the bend, the perfect choke point.

Bruce reached down, plucked two small spheres from his belt--magnesium flashbombs. Non-lethal. Disorienting.

As the guards rounded the corner, their flashlights slicing through the dark, he counted their steps.

Three... two...

He tossed the bombs forward. They clattered on the concrete once--twice--

Then burst in a blinding flood of white.

The guards cried out, reflexively shielding their eyes, but it was already too late. Bruce was on them before the sound faded. One went down to a strike to the solar plexus--brutal, silent, efficient. The second staggered, drawing his weapon, but Bruce caught his wrist mid-motion and slammed it hard into the wall. Bone cracked. The gun clattered to the floor. A choke of pain was silenced by a precise jab to the neck.

Both were down within six seconds.

Bruce stood still, listening.

Nothing.

No alarms. No movement.

Still clean.

He moved fast, dragging the bodies into the shadowed nook behind the pipe, checking pulses--alive. He zipped a cord restraint around their wrists and left a sedative patch on the larger one’s neck just to be safe. They wouldn’t be waking up any time soon.

He didn’t linger.

The longer he stayed, the more chances he gave the place to wake up around him. He slipped back into the corridor, breath steady, boots light. The flash from the bombs still glowed faintly on the walls, fading into the dark behind him as he moved toward the lower levels.

Another turn, and another corridor opened before him--one that felt different. This wasn’t just a hallway; it was purposeful . The door at the end was more reinforced than anything he’d encountered so far--marked with heavy security locks, biometric scanners, and a small, sealed window through which a dim light pulsed faintly. He could almost taste the danger in the air now. This was where they kept him.

Bruce couldn’t hesitate. Not even for a second.

He moved to the door, already reaching for his tools. The biometric scanner whined as he approached, its green light flaring to life. A thin smirk tugged at the edge of Bruce’s mouth. He was already five steps ahead. Without a sound, he inserted the wire into the terminal. He didn’t even need to look at it. The light flickered briefly--green to red, then back to green--and the locks slid open with a soft thunk .

Past the door, the lights were dim but sharp, painfully sterile. The walls were white, almost blinding, the floor polished to a glassy sheen. Every inch of the space screamed control . Everything had been designed to be efficient, to be perfect. It was so pristine that Bruce couldn’t help but feel like it was a mockery of life itself. Like the cold, impersonal nature  of the place would seep into everything, even his very thoughts if he wasn’t careful.

There was no time to stand in awe of the sterile hellscape. His goal was simple. He scanned the room, every corner, every shadow. A single table sat in the center of the room, a metallic slab that looked like it belonged in an operating room. The light above it flickered, casting distorted shadows on the floor.

The shadows writhed across the floor with a life of their own--sharp-edged and jagged, mimicking movement where there was none. Bruce didn’t look directly at them. He knew this place could twist what he saw.

He moved past the table, the sound of his own breathing suddenly deafening in his ears. His boots made no sound against the slick floor, even noise had been stripped from this place. It wasn’t just a holding cell. It was a sanctum--surgical, calculated, precise. Every tile, every fixture was built for one singular purpose: suppression.

Another door waited at the end of the room, beyond the table, recessed slightly into the far wall. Unlike the rest, this one didn’t advertise its strength. No flashing security panels. No alarms. Just a heavy white slab of reinforced polymer that seemed to blend with the walls around it--like it didn’t want to be noticed.

But he noticed it.

More than that, he felt it.

A faint, sickly glow pulsed beneath the surface of the door--barely there, but unmistakable. Green. Cold. Subtle enough not to trip alarms, but persistent enough to bleed into the air like poison. Not a light source. A warning. A deterrent.

Kryptonite. Threaded into the very molecular structure of the door.

Designed not to keep people out--but to keep something else in.

Bruce’s jaw tightened. His gauntleted fingers hovered just a breath from the surface, and even through the suit, he could feel the low thrum of radiation. It wasn’t enough to harm him, not directly--but Clark? Clark wouldn’t have stood a chance. Not against this. Not for long.

The scanner was smaller this time. Subtle. Disguised in the trim of the wall like a whisper. He found it anyway, kneeling beside the seam and pulling a different spike from his belt--thinner than the last. Quieter.

This wasn’t brute force. This was finesse.

The lock fought him. Slower this time. The security here wasn’t just mechanical--it was smart. Adaptive. But Bruce had already read its language. He fed in the code, rewrote the signal on the fly, and timed the current with the pulse of the scanner’s beat.

A green flicker. Barely perceptible.

Click.

The door slid open with a hiss.

And beyond it silence.

Not the silence of emptiness.

The silence of containment .

The corridor that unfurled in front of him was a far cry from the rust-choked halls above. It was seamless. Immaculate. Lit from within the walls themselves, an eerie, pale glow with no visible source. It had no ceiling fixtures. No sound. Just the hum of unseen machines working just beneath the surface, alive and breathing.

He stepped inside, and the door sealed behind him.

There was no going back now.

The corridor curved gently, a deliberate architectural decision--no straight lines, no direct path. It disoriented. Forced movement without a destination. There were no windows. No signs. Just that same sterile light and the haunting sound of his own heart keeping rhythm in his ears.

As he rounded the curve, his cowl caught movement. A surveillance turret retracted silently into the ceiling before it could lock onto him. It hadn’t fired. That was luck--or the last guard’s clearance still cycling through the system.

Keep moving.

Bruce ducked low, cutting across a room partitioned by glass--observation chambers. Each one was empty. But that didn’t make them safe. The rooms were filled with restraints. Some hung from the ceilings. Some were built into the floors. All clean. All polished.

As if used recently.

As if waiting.

There were readings on a console nearby--biometric logs, redacted names, and power signatures. Bruce didn’t stop to decrypt. He didn’t care who else had been here. He only cared about one name.

The corridor narrowed again.

And then came the sound.

Soft. So soft it could’ve been imagined.

But he knew better.

A breath. A scrape. A whisper of movement.

Something… alive .

And it was close.

Bruce stopped moving.

The air shifted. Subtle, but real. He could feel it against the edges of his cowl--less like temperature, more like tension. A pressure. A presence.

The corridor ended in another door. No keypad this time. No scanner. Just a recessed grip and a reinforced frame etched faintly with serial numbers. The glow behind it was red.

Red, soft and pulsing, bleeding around the seams like a dying star. Red sun radiation.

His stomach turned.

The kind of red that leached strength from Kryptonian blood. The kind that left gods as nothing more than men.

Bruce pressed his palm to the seam. Cool. Too cool. It was chilled from within, the heat of life sucked out and replaced with calculated, clinical indifference.

He opened it.

The hinges whispered, and the red light bloomed--flooding over him, warm in color but void of comfort. The room inside was stark. The walls were smooth, seamless, made of some dull alloy that hummed with low-frequency suppression tech. No corners. No shadows.

And in the center, against the far wall--

Clark.

Slumped. Barefoot. Wrists bound in front of him by restraints that buzzed faintly with embedded Kryptonite mesh. A chain lay limp across the floor, connected to a ring in the centre of the room and snaking its way around Clark's cuffs. His suit was gone--replaced with thin, gray fabric stained in places with things Bruce didn’t want to identify. His hair was longer. Matted. A split at the brow hadn’t scabbed right. His head hung low, chin to chest, breathing shallow.

He didn’t move.

Bruce took one step. Then another.

No response.

He crossed the room in silence, knees dropping to the smooth floor beside him. His gloved hand reached out--hesitated an inch from Clark’s cheek--and then, gently, pressed to it.

Too cold.

No reaction.

The red light painted everything in soft horror, flattening every feature into something surreal. Bruce’s throat tightened.

“Clark,” he said, barely above a whisper.

Nothing.

Then--

A twitch. The smallest flinch. Eyes opened, just barely. Bloodshot. Clouded. A thousand-yard stare, unfocused and wrong.

Clark didn’t look at him.

Didn’t see him.

“You’re not real,” he muttered. Voice cracked like a broken speaker. Dry. Fragile.

Bruce froze.

“Clark,” he said again, firmer. “It’s me.”

But the words didn’t land.

“You’re not real,” Clark repeated. A little louder. A tremor in his arms as he tried to jerk back from the touch, wrists straining weakly against the cuffs. “You’re not real.”

Bruce gripped his shoulders, not to restrain--but to anchor. His fingers dug through the thin fabric into skin and bone, grounding them both.

“Look at me,” he said, low and steady. “Clark. Look at me.”

But Clark’s gaze passed through him, like Bruce was smoke. 

A flicker of recognition warred in the lines of his face, twisted and frayed.

“I’ve seen him before,” Clark whispered. “You make me see him. Every time I start to forget, you bring him back. He's not real. ”

And Bruce--Batman--flinched.

Something inside him twisted, sharp and helpless.

This was worse than he’d imagined.

Bruce didn’t let go.

He could’ve. Should’ve. Maybe once, he would’ve pulled back, reassessed, calculated the next step with surgical detachment. But not here. Not now.

Not with Clark looking at him like a ghost.

Instead, he drew one of Clark’s trembling hands into his own--slow, deliberate--and pressed it flat against the emblem on his chest.

Kevlar. Armor. Reinforced carbon weave. But underneath all of it, heartbeat .

Strong. Steady. Human.

Real.

“Feel that?” he said, low. “That’s me. I’m here.”

Clark blinked slowly. His fingers twitched, brushing fabric, unsure. Like he didn’t trust his own senses, he kept waiting for the mirage to shatter.

“I’m real,” Bruce said again, quieter this time. “You’re not hallucinating. You’re not dreaming.”

Clark’s hand stayed there, caught between armor and disbelief.

Then--

Clark’s lip trembled. Just once. Barely noticeable. But the muscles in his shoulders shifted. Tension gave way to something rawer. Looser. Like his body remembered something his mind couldn’t grasp yet.

“Bruce…?” His voice caught on the name like it cut him. “You… found me?”

His eyes locked onto Bruce’s at last--truly locked, even if just for a moment. Still glazed. Still too wide. But something in them saw .

And Bruce nodded, slowly, ignoring the fact they could be watching at this very moment, that they could now know his name. “Yeah.”

That one syllable was nearly his undoing.

Clark let out a breath. Shaky. Uncontrolled. It didn’t sound like relief--it sounded like something between grief and disbelief, like every nerve in his body was short-circuiting.

“I thought I was--” He didn’t finish. The words tangled. Failed. His head dropped, forehead pressing against Bruce’s chest. “I thought I was gone.”

Bruce closed his arms around him.

Careful. Controlled. But tight enough to mean you’re not.

“You’re not,” he said, voice steady even though his chest felt like it might crack. “I’ve got you.”

Clark didn’t respond. Just let his weight collapse into the hold, like his body had finally given up fighting itself.

He was too light.

Too still.

But he was here. He was alive. And Bruce had him.

Now he just had to get him out.

Bruce didn’t waste time.

Now that Clark wasn’t fighting him, he shifted his focus downward--to the cuffs. He’d seen them earlier but hadn’t dared move too fast. Not while Clark was still lost in hallucination.

But now--now he could see what they were.

Thick, polished restraints, etched faintly with sigils he recognized far too well. A buzz hummed against his gloves as he touched them, low and mean. The embedded mesh laced inside was laced with something very specific.

Kryptonite.

Not as overt as shards or gas, no--this was subtle. Woven like filament into the cuffs, just enough to burn, to weaken . Too much, and Clark would’ve gone into cardiac arrest. Too little, and the pain wouldn’t have been any worse than what they had already done.

Bruce’s jaw tensed.

They knew. They knew.

These cuffs weren’t about security.

They were about pain.

He found the release mechanism, a magnetic lock that responded only to a rotating code and a biometric ping. Didn’t matter. He had already mapped the override from earlier. 

Click.

The cuffs hit the floor with a heavy clatter. Clark winced--more from phantom pain than anything else--and curled instinctively into himself.

Bruce placed a hand on his shoulder. “They’re off. You’re okay.”

Clark didn’t reply. But his breathing changed. A little deeper. A little less shallow.

Then Bruce’s eyes flicked to the wall just outside the cell--the timer.

He hadn’t noticed it before. Not really . He’d seen it. Registered it. Filed it as another system panel.

But now--now that he’d seen the cuffs up close--he understood.

The timer wasn’t for the cell.

It was for the restraints .

Counting down the minutes until someone came in to switch them out . Because red sun radiation alone could suppress a Kryptonian just fine. But the Kryptonite? That was cruelty. Torture. Deliberate. Measured, rotated out before it killed him.

Bruce’s blood turned to ice.

He turned.

The corridor.

Footsteps. Voices.

“…switch the cuffs out again?”

“Timer’s nearly up. I’ve got the sterile set ready.”

“Is he even conscious?”

“Doesn’t matter. They said keep the schedule. Pain’s part of the containment cycle. Keeps him passive.”

Something inside Bruce snapped .

He stood and stepped into the threshold of the cell, body angled to shield Clark--an instinct, automatic--and stared down the hall.

Two guards. Maybe three. One was holding the sterile cuffs, like it was a routine errand.

None of them had noticed him yet.

Then one did.

“Wait--”

Too late.

Bruce moved.

A blur of darkness, cape snapping like a thunderclap in the sterile air.

The first went down before he could raise his weapon--nerve cluster hit, lights out. The second barely got a breath in before Bruce drove him into the wall with the heel of his boot. The third fumbled for his communicator--got one panicked syllable out--

“Br--!”

--and Bruce crushed the device underfoot as he yanked him forward and slammed him into the ground.

But the damage was done.

Somewhere up above, an alarm began to wail.

High-pitched. Screaming. Unrelenting.

Red light bled into the white corridor like a siren’s breath, casting long, warping shadows. Automatic locks sealed overhead. Turrets began to deploy.

And behind him, Clark stirred, voice slurred from exhaustion.

“Bruce…”

Bruce turned, eyes already scanning for exits, calculating cover, weighing risks.

He stepped over the fallen guards, crouched beside Clark, and without a word--

Lifted him into his arms.

Clark was feather-light. Too light. Every breath sounded like it hurt.

Bruce clenched his jaw and said only one thing, steady and final:

“Hold on.”

Because now the storm was coming.

And Bruce was going to walk through the eye of it-- or burn the whole goddamn place down trying .

The hallway screamed around them.

Flashing lights strobed red over white tile, shadows jerking like broken film. Alarms howled in irregular, piercing bursts--system overloads reacting to the breach. Turrets snapped into position along the ceiling track, iris lenses rotating to lock on targets.

Bruce couldn’t hesitate.

He adjusted Clark’s weight over his shoulder--held tight with one arm, firm but careful, trying not to press against bruises he couldn’t yet see. Clark’s breath ghosted weakly against his neck, dry and ragged. Barely there.

Focus.

A burst of motion overhead--turrets priming, motors whining.

Bruce dropped to one knee and threw a flash-pulse in the opposite direction. It exploded in a blaze of white heat and screeching sound, shorting half the sensors in the corridor. The turrets shuddered, retracted, confused by the overload.

He was up again before they reset.

Every step was precise. Measured. One mistake, one wrong turn, and the system would lock down completely. And Clark couldn’t survive another containment cycle.

Another siren blared--lower, deeper. Movement alert. They knew he was mobile. They knew where he was.

Boots echoed through the upper levels.

Incoming.

He ducked through a side panel just before a second wave of guards poured into the main corridor. Their weapons were heavier. Not standard issue.

Kryptonian-caliber.

Bruce’s cowl pinged a threat analysis. He didn’t even need it.

He was already moving.

He ducked into a maintenance corridor--low ceiling, no lights. Perfect. Clark’s arm hung across his shoulders like a broken wing. Bruce tightened his grip and kept going.

Behind them, the guards swept the main hallway. One shouted. Another fired. The sound of gunfire ricocheted down the metal corridor, sharp and clinical. Bruce shifted, keeping his body between Clark and the impact zone. A shot clipped the wall beside him, sending sparks down the length of the pipework.

They were faster than he expected.

But he was angrier than they could possibly imagine.

He reached the junction where two corridors met--and stopped.

Trapped.

To the left: reinforced fire doors already sliding into place.

To the right: guards coming fast. Flashlights sweeping. Commands shouted.

“Stop!”

Bruce turned just enough to see the first guard raise his rifle.

Time snapped into focus.

He dropped Clark behind a support pillar. In one movement, he launched a smoke canister into the corridor, followed by a concussive pulse. The impact cracked the wall plating, lights sparking overhead.

He surged forward.

Elbow to the throat. Boot to the knee. The first guard collapsed.

Second came swinging--a steel baton meant to break bone. Bruce caught it mid-swing, twisted the guard’s wrist, disarmed, and flipped him onto the floor. A swift kick sent him sliding down the corridor, unconscious.

The third managed to fire. The round grazed Bruce’s ribs--hot pain flaring sharp.

Didn’t stop him.

He charged.

Grabbed the rifle, spun, slammed the buttstock into the man’s visor, and let him drop.

Clark stirred again--sliding sideways without Bruce to hold him.

“Don’t--” Bruce was already at his side, dragging him upright. “I’ve got you.”

The next corridor was clearer. 

He ducked into it, half-carrying, half-dragging Clark past exposed pipework and half-lit surveillance panels. Blood smeared against his armor--his or Clark’s, he couldn’t tell.

Another shout from behind. Reinforcements.

Bruce turned, spotting a steel door to the side--some kind of auxiliary chamber. He kicked it open, stumbled inside with Clark, and shut it behind them.

Locked it.

Breathe. Think.

He closed his eyes.

They were three levels down. He could either go back up through the east wing, or cut across the lower catwalk that spanned the geothermal core--the facility’s power source. Riskier. Hotter. Less monitored.

Unless the alarm had triggered the lockdown there too.

The soft sound of motion behind him.

Clark was trying to sit up. Trying to speak.

“Mmm… sun…”

His voice was sandpaper. Broken. But it clicked when Bruce opened his eyes.

Bruce turned to the wall panel--every surface of the chamber was flooded with red.

Red sun emitters.

He hadn’t realized where he was.

One of the primary radiation chambers.

That’s why the walls were too warm. Why the air buzzed faintly.

It wasn’t just containment. It was punishment .

Bruce growled under his breath. Pure hatred boiled low in his chest.

He moved to the emitter control panel, fingers flying. System locked.

Of course.

So he tore it open.

Ripped wires, disabled relays--manual override through sheer force and fury. Sparks danced over his gloves. The lights overhead flickered once--twice--then died .

And for the first time in 70 days, the red light was gone .

The darkness rushed in like a flood.

Clark gasped.

A faint hum trembled through his body. Barely more than a breath. But it was there.

His fingers twitched.

“Bruce…”

Bruce was already moving back to him, crouching low, one hand steadying his neck.

“I’m here.”

Clark’s eyelids fluttered. His pupils were unfocused, but clearer than before.

“You found me…”

Bruce didn’t speak.

Didn’t trust himself to.

Then a clang echoed outside the door. Followed by another. And another.

Reinforced boots.

“Move in on this level!”

The door behind them rattled.

Time was up.

Clark tried to stand, and immediately collapsed. Bruce caught him--arms locking tight, supporting his entire weight.

The door behind them exploded inward.

Smoke and red light poured through.

And they ran.

They didn’t get far.

Not with Clark faltering again--legs giving out beneath him as the smoke swallowed the corridor. Bruce turned, caught him, lowered him to the floor behind an overturned console.

Footsteps pounded closer.

No time.

Bruce stood.

The first guard cleared the smoke--rifle already rising.

Bruce slammed into him shoulder-first. Metal crunched. The man hit the wall with a wet grunt and slid down it.

Two more came through next--flanking, shouting.

Bruce was faster.

He caught the barrel of the left guard’s gun, twisted it upward, and drove an elbow into his throat. The man dropped, choking, as Bruce wrenched the rifle free and turned on the second.

Too close to shoot. Perfect range to break.

Bruce surged forward--ducked the swipe of a baton, struck once in the ribs, then drove a knee into the guard’s gut. The man folded.

Another emerged from the smoke behind--silent, professional.

This one moved differently.

Bruce saw the stance. Military. Former meta containment, maybe ARGUS.

Didn’t matter.

The agent charged, jabbing with a stun baton--Bruce twisted sideways, letting the strike glance off his armored forearm. Pain lanced through his elbow, but he kept moving. Ducked low, swept the legs, and as the man fell--

Bruce caught him by the collar and slammed his head against the floor.

One down.

He turned--another was coming.

Of course they were.

Bruce spun the stolen rifle, using it as a staff, and swept low to knock the incoming guard off his feet. He dropped with a crash, armor clanging against steel.

Bruce was breathing hard. He had been for a while now.

Not from exertion.

From rage.

He looked down the corridor--more shapes emerging. More weapons. They kept coming.

He changed his stance, tossing the stolen rifle into the darkness before turning to lift Clark from his position beside the console.

Bruce took off through the opposite exit--shoulder down, head low. His body screamed from the effort, from the weight, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t .

Behind them, the guards shouted. Fired.

One round caught Bruce in the shoulder--sent him staggering. His leg buckled.

Clark slipped.

Bruce dropped to one knee. Blood smeared across the floor. His fingers curled around Clark’s wrist, anchoring him with everything he had.

They weren’t going to make it.

Not like this.

Another shot rang out-- too close .

Bruce reached for another smoke bomb--

And then--

A low whine built behind him.

Heat. Pressure. A hum like rising static.

Bruce turned.

Clark was still on the floor--but his eyes had started to glow.

Faintly.

Unsteadily.

But burning .

“Get--down,” Clark whispered.

And then--

Heat vision.

It tore through the hallway in a blinding burst, slicing into the far wall and through the oncoming guards. The blast shattered glass, melted steel, sent alarms screaming as the system registered the damage.

The hallway shook.

A blast door caved in.

Smoke roared around them.

Bruce didn’t wait.

He grabbed Clark, hauled him upright--and ran through the breach.

The facility groaned behind them, the shriek of metal and concrete interlacing with the panicked voices of unprepared scientists.

They were out.

Barely.

Chapter Text

The sky was black.

Not in the usual way night was black--not the gentle hush of twilight or the soft velvet silence that blanketed Gotham’s skyline on rare, windless nights. This wasn’t the kind of darkness that invited dreams. It was the kind that dissected. Surgical. Clean in a way that felt inhuman.

High above the clouds, where the atmosphere thinned and the stars blinked without warmth, the sky turned from mystery into something hollow. Something wrong.

The Batplane didn’t cut through it so much as slip through the seams. No roar. No drag. Just motion--linear, perfect, mechanical. Like a scalpel gliding across skin.

Bruce kept it steady with a surgeon’s control. The yoke beneath his hand might as well have been part of his body, fused through pressure and resolve.

Inside, the silence felt thicker.

Not empty--never empty. The hum of the engines was dampened to a murmur, the cockpit lights dimmed to the bare minimum. But even those soft sounds felt too loud inside Bruce’s skull. Like echoes in a cavern that used to be full of purpose and now only rang with what he’d almost lost.

He sat hunched forward, the curve of his spine pulled taut from hours without rest. One hand locked tight on the controls, knuckles pale under the gauntlet’s reinforced weave. The other lay stiff in his lap, blood-slick, stained from elbow to fingertip.

Not all of it was his.

Most of it was.

And yet--he couldn’t even feel it. Not really. Not through the weight in his chest, the static behind his eyes, the way his pulse had been wrong ever since he’d hauled Clark’s broken body off that table. It beat out of rhythm now.

Too fast. Too shallow. Too much.

The auto-stabilizers had kicked in.

Altitude: steady. Flight path: locked. Systems nominal. The Batplane didn’t need him right now--it would fly itself straight through the dark, unflinching. But Bruce didn’t lift his hand from the controls. Couldn’t. His fingers stayed clenched around the yoke like if he let go, the entire plane might fall from the sky. Or worse-- he might.

Every time he even thought about leaning back, about loosening his grip, something in his chest twisted sharp and fast. And his gaze-- always --drifted to the rear of the cabin.

Clark was there.

Laid out like a ghost.

Strapped to the emergency stretcher, the harness barely cinched because his body had wasted down to something fragile, something unfamiliar. The man who could lift mountains with a heartbeat now looked like he’d snap in a strong wind. The thermal wraps clung to him like a second skin, reflective silver crinkling around his limbs, seams glowing faint red under the low light. Heat-mesh. Emergency grade. Not made for this kind of damage. Not made for him.

His arms were limp at his sides, palms open and facing the ceiling. His head had slumped to one shoulder, chin tucked slightly into his chest like gravity meant more here than it used to. A lock of hair--damp, dark, matted with sweat--clung to his forehead, unmoving.

Too still.

He hadn’t stirred once since they lifted off.

The only sign he was still alive was his breath. And even that was wrong.

Shallow. Inconsistent. Like a thread unraveling. The kind of breath Bruce had heard too many times before--on fields soaked in smoke, under rubble, in the cracked backseats of med-evac transports. It was the breath of people teetering on the edge, not knowing which way they’d fall.

Survival hanging on by atoms.

And Bruce was supposed to watch that?

He blinked hard. Once. Twice. But the image didn’t change.

Clark was still there. Still broken. And Bruce didn’t know if he’d forgive himself for how close that had come to never being true again.

He should’ve been awake by now.

Should’ve been blinking against the cabin lights, maybe groaning softly, should’ve been cursing the tight confines of the stretcher. But instead, Clark lay still, a fragile statue carved from pain and silence. Left unreachable in the space between consciousness and something darker.

Bruce’s jaw clenched so hard it sent a dull ache rippling through his skull. The muscles beneath his skin tightened with every passing second--each one dragging him closer to the edge of something he didn’t want to name.

His eyes flicked away from Clark and back to the instruments in front of him--the altimeter’s steady pulse, the compass needle unwavering, the radar’s quiet blip marking their path home. Each gauge was a reminder that time kept moving. That the world kept spinning. That Clark’s body was still hooked to it, tethered by threads Bruce was terrified might snap at any moment.

His eyes found their way back again.

Just for a heartbeat.

Clark hadn’t moved.

Except--there. A flicker. A twitch.

His fingers curled, just barely. Not enough to grasp, not enough to reach. But enough to prove he was still there. Still fighting.

Bruce exhaled, slow and steady.

His hands reached to the control panel, moving on instinct more than thought.

He dialed the cabin pressure down two notches--just enough to ease the strain on lungs used to a denser world, to a different gravity.

The temperature followed, sliding lower, settling into the cool, thin air that Krypton’s atmosphere had once offered--something Bruce had programmed into the Batplane years ago, a little-known feature meant for emergencies like this, though he’d never imagined it would be needed like this.

He hadn’t thought he’d ever need it at all.

Not like this.

Not for him .

A light blinked on the console.

Comms.

The familiar crackle of Alfred’s voice filtered through the speakers--crisp, precise, calm as always. But to Bruce, it cut sharper than any blade, slicing through the thick fog of his thoughts like a wire drawn tight against his chest.

“Master Wayne. Flight log shows eastbound at FL320. Shall I prepare the Watchtower’s med bay for arrival?”

The question hung in the air, calm and clinical. But beneath it, Bruce felt the weight of every expectation, every possibility.

A beat.

Then his voice came out low, rough--something carved from stone and exhaustion: “No. The Manor.”

Another silence followed, thick and heavy. The kind of silence that demanded nothing more.

Then, finally: “Understood.”

Without another word, Bruce flicked the comms off with a deliberate motion, the faint click echoing in the tight space.

He didn’t want questions--not now.

He wasn’t sure he even had the words to answer them.

Clark murmured.

It wasn’t a word. Not really. Just a sound--fractured, fragile. A breath cracked in half at the edges, caught between unconsciousness and pain. Something that might’ve been the beginning of speech, or maybe just the echo of something dreamt. It slipped out of his throat like it didn’t belong in the world anymore.

Bruce moved before he even realized it. Instinct faster than thought. His seat creaked as he twisted sharply, his body following the reach of his arm. Gloved fingers found the side of Clark’s neck, pressing just beneath the curve of his jaw.

There. A flutter. Weak. Inconsistent. But it was there.

Still there.

Bruce exhaled through his teeth, just once, just barely. Relief didn’t come. Not really. Not when the skin beneath his fingers felt cold. Not when Clark’s body still looked like it had been built from glass and dust and bruises that hadn’t started to fade.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t allow himself to whisper a name or offer a comfort Clark wouldn’t hear.

Instead, he turned back to the wraps. Fingers quick but gentle, pulling the edges tighter, tucking the layers down again with meticulous care. He resecured the stabilizer band over Clark’s chest, checking its fit. The heat it pushed out wasn’t enough. Not fast enough. But it was all he had.

His hands moved with surgical precision. Every touch calculated. Every movement smooth.

But the pulse in Bruce’s throat throbbed unsteadily--wild, uneven, as if his body didn’t know what to do with the adrenaline still burning through his veins. There was nowhere to put it. No one to fight. Nothing left to break.

Only Clark.

And this.

His mind wouldn’t stop replaying it.

That room.

Not just a memory. A loop. A sickness. It unspooled behind his eyes every time he blinked--white walls too bright to be real, a light that felt more like a scalpel than illumination. The cold taste of red sun radiation bleeding into everything, humming against Bruce’s skin like poison. The air had felt wrong in there. Like it wasn’t meant to be breathed, like the walls themselves had teeth.

And Clark.

Curled in the far corner of that cell like a myth unmade. Bones too sharp beneath skin too pale. Shadows bruised into the hollows of his face. His lips had cracked when he spoke, but he had spoken. Barely. A voice scraped raw from screaming alone.

You’re not real.

Bruce’s breath caught, a silent hitch in his throat. His hand faltered mid-adjustment, hovering just above Clark’s chest. Just for a second. One second. Enough to hear that voice again--ragged and breaking, filled with the kind of disbelief that could only be born from suffering. The kind that didn’t heal clean.

He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw tight, and pressed the heel of his palm to his temple. Hard. As if he could crush the memory out. As if he could drive the shaking back into his bones where it belonged.

It didn’t work.

Nothing could dull that moment.

Clark stirred again beneath the thermal wraps. A small twitch--brows pulling together, lashes fluttering against cheekbones that had once carried sunlight. His face moved like it didn’t remember how. Each muscle fought against sleep like it was gravity.

But Bruce didn’t speak for now.

Didn’t interrupt the fragile silence.

He just sat there, staring at a man who had once been the strongest thing on Earth--and now looked like he might not survive the next breath.

Then--

Bruce leaned in, low.

Not fast, not sudden. Like reverence. Like something inside him was trying not to crack open as he moved. Every inch of distance closed between them felt like stepping through glass--thin, sharp, fragile. His voice came out rougher than he meant it to, quieter too. Like the word wasn’t safe to say aloud.

“Clark,” he said, softly. Too soft.

Like prayer. Like confession.

He hadn’t said his name in hours. Not out loud. He’d said it in his head, hundreds of times, like a metronome counting the seconds Clark hadn’t spoken back. But now--here--it slipped past his lips with the weight of something sacred.

There was a flicker.

Just the faintest shift. A breath snagged deep in Clark’s chest, the kind that stuttered like a faulty engine--half-start, half-collapse. His head tilted toward the sound, not fully, not with any strength, but just enough to prove the name had reached him. That he had reached him.

Bruce held still, afraid even breathing might break the moment.

But that was all.

No voice. No answer.

Clark’s eyes didn’t open. His body didn’t move again. Just that small turn of the head--and then nothing.

Back into the silence.

It closed over him like water--thick, suffocating, absolute. Bruce lowered himself into the pilot’s seat again, the motion more collapse than control. The metal groaned beneath his weight, and for a second, he just sat there, hunched, hands limp at his sides, shoulders pulled taut beneath armor that felt too heavy now. Too real.

Pain pulsed under his skin like a second heartbeat.

His ribs screamed. Every breath came shallow and edged with fire. The bruises across his back and chest throbbed with a dull, rhythmic insistence, as if they, too, refused to let him forget the cost of what he'd done. And the laceration running beneath the edge of his armor--it had long soaked through the undersuit, dried in sharp, crusted streaks that stuck like glue to his side every time he shifted. He could feel the tug of skin pulling, breaking, reopening.

He didn’t care.

Not even a little.

Pain was background noise. His body, a ruin. But none of it mattered. None of it felt real compared to the singular weight behind him, stretched out on that cot like a ghost wearing Clark’s face.

Bruce’s eyes slid closed for half a second. Just half. A blink that didn’t bring rest. Just more noise.

That room. The glow of red sun light. The hollow way Clark had said, “You’re not real.”

Bruce’s fingers twitched around the control yoke, then stilled. He didn't look down at them. He only stared at the canopy glass ahead, where the dark of the sky met the vague outline of the Earth below, just beginning to swell on the horizon.

He felt the space between one breath and the next like a cliff edge--impossibly wide. Uncrossable.

And what lived in that space, what burned in the quiet, was just one terrible thought:

What if he stops breathing before we land?

Bruce didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just listened to the fragile, faltering rhythm behind him--Clark’s chest rising, falling. Not steady. Not strong.

But still moving.

Still there.

The plane dropped altitude like a held breath being released--controlled, deliberate, but edged with something tight and desperate underneath. A plunge toward gravity. Toward home. If home was still a thing Bruce could name.

Below, the mouth of the Batcave yawned open in the rock face like a wound re-opening--silent, seamless, invisible until the last second. The camouflage plating slid back with mechanical grace, black stone parting like the Earth itself had been waiting for their return. The jet disappeared into the dark like it belonged there. Like it had never left.

Camouflage panels sealed behind them with a hydraulic hiss. The metal interlocked with a finality that felt like the world was stitching itself shut again--patching over the scar, trying to forget it had ever split open.

Inside, the cave took them in without fanfare.

Not true silence--not the dead kind. No. This was the breathing kind. The kind built into bone. Old stone held its breath in here, cold and watchful. The hum of ancient machines slept beneath the surface, threads of motion and memory folded into the walls. Water moved somewhere deep in the limestone--steady, endless, the cave’s hidden pulse.

Bruce didn’t slow. Didn’t speak. His hands guided the plane on instinct.

Landing gear deployed with a soft thud. The wheels kissed the platform. The plane sank into place like it was too tired to hover another second. The engines exhaled once--long, low--and then shut off for good, the last coils of warmth bleeding out into the vast chill of the Batcave.

It was done.

They were home.

If that word still meant anything.

He didn’t move for a second.

Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

The weight of the last hour--of the last seventy days--pressed down on his shoulders with a silence that roared. His hands were still on the controls, still tense. His body refused to believe it was over. Not yet. It never was over, not for him.

Then he heard it.

Faint. Fractured. Barely there at all.

A sound like pain remembered mid-breath, like something soft cracking in the chest.

Clark.

Bruce was moving before his mind caught up. Instinct, fast and honed. The crash of his boots hitting the platform echoed off the cave walls--sharp and final, a declaration. He crossed the narrow length of the cabin in four long strides, silent but thunderous in his urgency.

The restraints clicked free beneath his fingers. Then Clark was in his arms, weightless. No resistance. No sound. Just there .

He felt wrong.

Too light, like half of him was missing.

Too soft, like his bones had forgotten strength.

Too cold, like warmth was something he'd once believed in and now couldn't quite recall.

Clark’s head slumped against Bruce’s shoulder with all the strength of wilted paper. His curls were damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead. And there, along the sharp line of his jaw, the skin was angry red--burned through. The edge of one of the manacles must’ve slipped just enough to bite in. A reminder. A brand.

Bruce didn’t flinch.

Didn’t allow himself to.

He just adjusted his grip, arms locking around Clark’s frame with careful, practiced strength, as if he could hold together what someone else had spent seventy days breaking.

There was no hesitation in his steps as he descended from the landing platform and walked straight toward the cave’s medical wing. Not a flicker of doubt. Not a glance back. His pace wasn’t rushed, but it wasn’t slow either--it was deliberate . The kind of movement that came from muscle memory honed in war zones, from too many nights carrying bleeding allies through smoke and rubble. But this wasn’t just another extraction. This was Clark .

The cave’s lights tracked him as he moved, cold white beams snapping on with soft clicks in his wake. They framed him in sterile golds and blues--cutting shadows sharp across the contours of his armor, the jagged tear at his side, the blood still drying in dark patches against his suit. But they never touched Clark. Not a single bulb. Bruce adjusted his body just enough to block each one--his cape, his frame, anything to spare him the exposure. It felt wrong, somehow, to let harsh light touch him now. Like it would be another wound. Another violation.

The medical wing unfolded ahead of him--quiet, polished, too clean for how often it saw pain.

Alfred was waiting.

He stood beside the med table with calm precision, already in surgical gloves, a tray of instruments prepped behind him. He’d known. Of course he had. He’d read between the silence on the comms. He always did.

But Alfred didn’t speak. Not at first.

He didn’t startle at the state of Bruce--splattered in someone else’s blood, armor dented, chest rising and falling with too-shallow breaths. He didn’t recoil at the sight of the man in Bruce’s arms--pale, nearly naked beneath the clinging heat wraps, bruised in places no one should be able to bruise.

It was his voice that gave him away.

Soft. Like a prayer not meant to be heard.

“My God.”

Bruce didn’t answer.

He laid Clark down on the table like a relic, like something sacred he didn’t dare drop. Every movement was deliberate--measured not in seconds, but in breaths, in heartbeats. The metal beneath Clark’s body was sterile and cold, but Bruce made sure his hands never were. He didn’t let go until the very last moment. Even then, his fingers ghosted along the curve of Clark’s shoulder, reluctant, like letting go would undo the fact that Clark was here--real and breathing, however faintly.

Then he stepped back.

But not far.

Just enough to let Alfred in.

He hovered within reach, still blocking part of the overhead light, casting a shadow across Clark’s torso as if shielding him from even that. His stance was too rigid, the air around him pulled taut with a tension that hadn’t eased since the moment they’d escaped. He didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe properly. He was coiled so tight he might’ve shattered from one more whispered word.

Alfred approached with the gravity of a man walking into grief. He wasn’t just a butler here--he was a surgeon, witness, priest. The gloves on his hands made no sound as he moved closer, his eyes scanning Clark’s broken body with a calmness that wasn’t apathy, but control.

“I’ll need to examine him fully,” Alfred said, gentle but firm, the kind of tone used for people barely holding themselves together. “There could be internal trauma. You said red sun radiation?”

“Seventy days,” Bruce said, and the words scraped out like crushed gravel, low and hard and unsteady. “Starved. Isolated. Drugged. Interrogated. And--”

He stopped.

His jaw locked so tight the muscle jumped along his cheek. His mouth pressed into a line that didn’t let anything else through. There were more words. He could’ve said vivisected . He could’ve said tortured . But even thinking it turned his stomach and knotted his fists.

Alfred’s brow pinched faintly, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. He understood too much to require elaboration.

“Help me with the wraps,” Bruce muttered.

They worked in silence.

Together, they peeled the thermal fabric away, layer by layer, as if unwrapping something not quite dead and not yet living. The heat-foil clung to Clark’s skin like it didn’t want to let go either. Static cracked. The faint scent of scorched flesh lingered beneath the medical-grade plastic and blood.

And then there he was.

Clark, underneath it all. Not Superman. Not a god. Just a man too thin for his own frame, with sharp collarbones and ribs mapped in bruises, each one blooming in angry purples and sick yellows. His skin was mottled where restraints had cut circulation, where injections had been forced into veins that had once held sunfire.

Old scars ran across his side--crude, healed wrong. Not Kryptonian regeneration. Human methods. Sutures. Blade work. Branding. The kind of scars that didn’t just form--they were given .

Bruce’s breath hitched without warning.

The sight was unbearable. Not just because of the damage. Not just because he looked fragile --Clark, who once held back tectonic shifts, now curled inward like he didn’t know how to take up space. But because every wound had a hand behind it . Someone had done this. Chosen it. Calculated it.

Bruce couldn’t forgive that.

Not now.

Not ever.

Clark stirred.

It was subtle--barely more than the flutter of air shifting--but Bruce felt it like an earthquake beneath his skin. Every muscle in his body tensed. His head snapped toward the motion before thought could catch up, eyes locking onto Clark’s face like a man sighting land after weeks lost at sea.

His breath caught. Clark’s had, too.

A sharp, shuddering inhale scraped through raw lungs. His arm jerked--small, unfocused--but it was movement . Not reflex. Not neural noise. Real .

Bruce leaned in instantly, a hand reaching out on instinct more than reason. His palm settled against Clark’s shoulder--steady, anchoring, as if his grip alone could tether Clark back to consciousness. The heat under his glove was too faint. Skin that once glowed golden under the sun felt like damp ash beneath touch.

He didn’t expect words. Didn’t dare hope .

But Clark spoke.

“J’onn?”

It came out broken--hoarse, ragged, like he was dragging it up from the bottom of a well filled with glass. A name wrapped in confusion. Muddled recognition. He flinched, eyes shifting, voice softening to a low ramble: “No, no… you’re not… you’re…”

The words frayed out, unsaid. Bruce saw it happen--saw the disorientation crumple into something deeper. Not fear. Not quite. Just an ache too wide to fit into language.

Clark blinked, slowly. The effort looked monumental. His lashes trembled against skin that had lost its usual warmth, its glow. And then his gaze, sluggish and dazed, drifted sideways… and found Bruce.

Found him .

There was no spark of understanding. No relief. Just the dull glaze of pain and exhaustion and something too close to emptiness . Clark didn’t say anything else. His lips parted--no sound. Just breath.

But even that…

Even that was a miracle.

His chest rose again. Fell. Then again. Each inhale a reluctant surrender. Each exhale too shallow to comfort. As if breathing itself was an act of war, and he was still unsure he wanted to win it.

His fingers twitched--one, two--curling ever so slightly toward the place where Bruce’s hand still rested on his shoulder. Not a grasp. Not even a reach. Just the faintest motion. Like he was trying to remember what it meant to be held.

Bruce didn’t breathe.

He didn’t move .

He just stared--absorbing every inch of the fragile shell left behind. The bruises. The ribs. The hollows beneath Clark’s cheekbones. The shadow of a man who had once held continents in his hands and now couldn’t even keep his eyes open.

And all Bruce could do was watch.

Watch , and hope he hadn’t been too late.

Clark’s skin was pale beneath the clinical lights.

Not the healthy sort of pale that came from winter chill or low sunlight--but the kind that screamed of too many days without real warmth. Too many days without light. His complexion had lost every trace of gold, that faint sun-touched glow that once radiated even in shadow. Now it was all wrong--ashen, gray-blue at the fingertips, almost translucent beneath the harsh fluorescence. The color of blood slowed down. Of life pared back to the barest thread.

His breathing was there, yes. But it was shallow.

So shallow that Bruce found himself instinctively syncing to it--holding his own breath when Clark did, waiting to hear the next inhale before he let his chest rise again. Every pause between those strained exhalations felt like standing on the edge of something sharp, tipping forward, wondering if this would be the moment the thread snapped. If this was the last breath Clark would take.

“Sir,” came Alfred’s voice, soft but steady, from just behind his shoulder. “We should begin the scans.”

Bruce didn’t answer right away. His jaw was locked tight, every muscle in his face carved into something unrelenting. Finally, he gave a single nod--tight, stiff. He stepped back, but only by a fraction. Enough for Alfred to move forward. Not enough for Bruce to stop watching.

Alfred worked with that practiced grace he always carried--decades of triage experience in his fingers, and something far older in his restraint. He moved like someone who knew too well how to care for the broken without letting it break him .

A cold sensor pad was gently affixed to Clark’s temple. Bruce didn’t miss the faint twitch of his brow at the touch, the flinch barely visible beneath exhaustion. It was enough to make Bruce’s hands curl into fists at his sides.

The scanners came next--quiet machines rolled forward from their housings in the wall. Familiar to Bruce in make and function. He’d overseen their construction himself. Regular X-ray. High-res MRI. And finally, the Kryptonian-adapted diagnostic array he’d had custom built after a particularly harrowing event--an event they never spoke about, but that had altered everything. A machine Bruce had hoped, truly, to never use.

It activated with a low hum.

Blue light swept slowly across Clark’s body in waves. Radiation in low pulses. Energy fields tuned specifically to Kryptonian physiology. On the monitors, layer after layer of Clark’s internal systems began to render in sharp, horrifying detail.

The skeletal readout came first.

Bruce’s breath caught.

Stress fractures. Tiny cracks spider-webbed along his ribs--too many to count.

Then the thoracic view.

A partially collapsed lung. Internal bruising. No wonder his breath was so thin.

The musculature scan loaded slowly, the system struggling to adjust to tissue density that had thinned. Some of it… missing. Eaten away by starvation, by cellular degradation.

Next came the worst part.

Scar tissue.

Not the kind that came from heroics. Not the kind that healed beneath sunlight or vanished after a good night’s rest. These were deep. Layered. Cold.

Linear cuts. Surgical. Some cauterized. Some not. Some along nerve lines, as if someone had mapped him.

And still worse--malnutrition indicators so severe they corrupted the software’s predictive analysis. The system struggled to calculate his vitals properly, couldn’t even recognize the caloric loss as natural. It wasn’t. It was manufactured. Forced.

Bruce didn’t move.

Didn’t breathe.

He just stood there--silent, still, watching the images load.

Alfred didn’t tell him to turn away. Didn’t offer comfort. He knew it wouldn’t help. He knew Bruce wouldn’t take it.

He just kept working.

And Bruce kept watching.

Because someone had to.

“Sir,” Alfred said quietly, not turning his head. “You’re bleeding.”

Bruce blinked--slow, delayed. As if the words took longer than usual to make it through the wall of static in his brain. He followed Alfred’s gaze without meaning to and finally felt it: the dull throb along his right side sharpening into a full pulse of pain, rhythmic and deep. The gash above his hip had soaked through the undersuit, blood drying in a jagged bloom along the seam. Further up, an ugly swell of bruising spread across his ribs in purple-black arcs. Pressure bruises. Fracture bruises. He couldn’t tell how many.

A baton, he remembered. Riot-class. One of the guards--desperate, wild-eyed--had swung it with both hands when Bruce was already running, Clark barely conscious in his grip. The impact had driven straight into the side of his armor. He hadn’t registered it then. He couldn’t afford to. But now, with the cave cold settling in and his adrenaline thinning into exhaustion, the pain was harder to ignore. It was there--real. Tearing. But still, he barely felt it.

Because none of it mattered. Not compared to Clark .

Clark--who still lay silent and sunken beneath sheets of sterile wrap. Who looked like he’d been carved down to his bones and left there. Clark, whose breath had stuttered and hitched again while Bruce stared across the medbay, caught between the past and something dangerously close to helplessness.

He didn’t argue when Alfred stepped forward, one hand guiding him with quiet insistence to the padded stool near the sink. His body moved without resistance, muscle memory doing the work when his brain was too focused elsewhere. The moment he sat, the weight in his spine collapsed into something heavier. Bone dragging on bone.

Alfred knelt, hands already pulling medical supplies from a nearby tray. The antiseptic was cold. It soaked through the shredded tactical fabric and into the wound like fire through snow--sharp, purifying. Bruce didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. He wasn’t present enough in his own skin to react.

“I’ll need to stitch this,” Alfred murmured, reaching for clean gloves with the same deliberate calm he used for everything--calm even now, as if Bruce hadn’t just dragged Superman’s broken body out of a LexCorp tomb. “And tape your ribs.”

Bruce didn’t answer. Not even a nod.

Because his eyes hadn’t moved. Not once. They were still locked on the adjacent table. Still tracing the curve of Clark’s cheek where it met the oxygen cannula. Still watching the way the monitors blinked green and steady, and still daring them to falter.

Let it hurt. Let the blood run. Let the bones crack under strain.

As long as he’s breathing, Bruce thought, I can survive anything else.

Clark lay still as stone beneath the tangle of IVs and biometric monitors, his body a quiet warzone of bruised skin and deeper things broken beneath. Nutrient lines threaded into both arms--one delivering slow-drip transfusions, the other feeding liquefied solar particles into his bloodstream: synthesized sunlight, manufactured in underground labs buried deep beneath Gotham’s soil and stockpiled for a day Bruce had hoped would never come.

The machine responsible for it all emitted a soft, steady hum. A low-frequency vibration that buzzed faintly through the floor and up into Bruce’s boots--a frequency tuned for Kryptonian cellular absorption, delicate and exact. Bruce had helped design it. Helped fund it. He remembered arguing over the prototypes, over whether they’d even work. He remembered slamming a folder onto Lucius’s desk and saying, build it anyway.

And now, here it was. Hooked into Clark like a lifeline. Like a prayer.

His skin-- Clark’s skin--had started to lose its grayish tint. Barely. Almost imperceptibly. The pallor had shifted just enough that Bruce wasn’t sure if it was the light or hope making his eyes lie to him. He caught himself watching for it with every passing second, like some part of him needed proof that Clark was still there , buried beneath the silence and the scars.

Bruce exhaled slowly. Not relief. Not yet. Just the kind of breath you let out when your lungs start to forget how to hold air properly.

Alfred worked in silence, his fingers deft against Bruce's side.

The stitching was clinical--precise. His fingers moved with steady confidence as the suture thread pulled through torn flesh, again and again, with quiet, deliberate rhythm. The sound was barely audible, a whisper of pressure and thread through skin. It should’ve hurt more. It probably did . Bruce didn’t comment. Pain wasn’t important.

When Alfred finished, he wound gauze over the bandage and pressed medical tape along Bruce’s ribs with the same gentleness he might have used several decades ago, when Bruce came home from alleyway brawls too proud to say “I’m hurt.” He wiped down the dried blood from Bruce’s gauntlets next--his movements efficient, but respectful, as if even cleaning felt like an intrusion in a moment like this.

Only when the worst of it was done did Alfred glance over his shoulder, back toward the table.

“He should remain down here,” he said softly, voice low in the hush of machines and rock and flickering LED lights. “The cave systems are reinforced for medical. If anything changes--”

“I’m not leaving him down here,” Bruce said.

It wasn’t an argument. It wasn’t even a refusal.

His tone was quiet. Leveled.

But final.

Like a lock snapping into place.

Alfred met his eyes. He didn’t push. Didn’t try to reason. He didn’t mention how unstable Clark’s vitals still were, how moving him posed risks they hadn’t even fully calculated yet. He didn’t ask what Bruce planned to do if the machines needed recalibration, or if Clark’s condition turned again in the middle of the night.

He just looked at Clark. Then back at Bruce.

And gave a small, understanding nod.

“Of course not,” he said.

Bruce stood, slow and stiff, as if every inch of him had been carved from the same stone the cave was built into. His body protested in silence--bruises aching, stitches pulling, muscle fibers trembling from exhaustion and strain--but none of it mattered. He moved anyway.

The pain was background noise. A hum behind the roaring static of adrenaline and everything else he couldn’t name.

He crossed the medbay in four steps.

Four steps that felt longer than the ones before.

And then he bent, carefully, methodically, and gathered Clark into his arms again.

The weight was different this time. Not physically heavier, no--but something about it was. Something in it. The press of every exposed rib beneath Bruce’s forearm, the sag of Clark’s head against his shoulder, the subtle shift of medical tubing as the portable IV clicked into place and activated travel mode.

It was like carrying a ghost.

But Bruce held him like a lifeline. Like a promise not yet broken.

He adjusted his grip to protect Clark’s neck, then again to anchor the IV unit’s position at his back--because even unconscious, even now , Clark deserved better than anything careless.

The ascent began.

The staircase was long--carved into the stone years ago, reinforced, fortified. Bruce knew every uneven edge, every jagged wall that scraped elbows on bad nights. But tonight, it felt eternal.

Every step up was a negotiation between pain and necessity.

Each time his foot hit the stone, his body jolted--stitches tugging, ribs flaring hot beneath the wrap, his breath catching for a second too long. The world around them was dim, bathed in cold light from the cave’s underfloor glow. Shadows spilled like ink across the walls, and Clark’s IV stand trailed behind them with a faint electric whirr, keeping pace.

Alfred followed in silence.

Not offering help. Not asking questions.

He knew better.

This wasn’t about strength.

It was about refusal.

Refusal to let Clark be alone. Refusal to leave him in the dark, in the cold, in anything that resembled that cell.

And Bruce--

Bruce would carry that weight.

Even if it broke him.

The manor above was still.

That kind of stillness that felt heavy, like the walls had been holding their breath, like the shadows themselves paused in reverence. No footsteps echoed. No wind brushed the windows. Just the soft thrum of ambient light, distant, warm, and hushed--as though even the house knew.

The lights were low, casting long silhouettes across the floor. Bruce’s own footsteps were muffled on the hall’s old wood, softened by years of quiet grief and older memories.

He didn’t stop.

He carried Clark through the hallway like something precious, like something already halfway gone. Past portraits and dusted sideboards, past silent doors and the familiar arch near the stairs. Not to the master suite. Not to the wing on the other side of the manor set aside for guests. But to the guest room across the hall from his own.

The door opened with the soft groan of century-old hinges, barely audible over the gentle mechanical hum trailing behind them.

Inside, everything was already prepared.

Of course it was.

Alfred had turned the sheets down--clean linens, pale gray, soft against the clinical lines of the machines now folding out from the wall. Pillows stacked neatly. The room was warm. Safe. Human. A place made for healing. Not survival.

Bruce stepped in and didn’t pause.

He moved carefully, lowered Clark with the same caution he’d use disarming a bomb or handling a blade too sharp for bare hands. One arm cradled behind Clark’s upper back, bracing his weight; the other adjusted his legs with surgical precision.

Clark barely shifted.

The blankets whispered as they fell into place, curling over bruised skin like they could shield him from the world.

The IV line clicked into the bedside port with a small mechanical chime, syncing with the in-wall med rig. The nutrient stream reengaged--solar filtrate, warm and steady, the next best thing to sunlight.

Bruce checked it. Twice.

Then adjusted the soft oxygen tube beneath Clark’s nose, making sure it sat gently against his skin. Just in case.

Because he didn’t know what else might go wrong.

Because he couldn’t take the chance.

And then Bruce sat.

The motion was mechanical. His knees bent with a groan of armor and overworked joints, the weight of the night dragging him down more than gravity ever could. His body screamed at him--stitched flesh too tight against bruised bone, cracked ribs throbbing under gauze and tape, his suit still soaked in sweat and blood, both his and not. But he didn’t feel it. Or maybe he did--just not enough to matter.

The chair beside the bed was antique--Victorian oak, high-backed, hand-carved a century ago with ornamental flourishes worn smooth by time and use. It had no cushion, no warmth. It wasn’t meant for comfort. Bruce didn’t need comfort.

He sat like he belonged there. Like stone settling into stone. Like maybe if he stayed still enough, the house wouldn’t notice the war he’d dragged in through its veins.

Clark didn’t stir.

Not a twitch. Not a breath out of rhythm. Just that soft, fragile rise and fall of his chest, and the faintest tremor in his fingers beneath the blanket. Machines clicked and hummed beside the bed--oxygen flow, solar infusion, vitals. A steady rhythm of survival Bruce didn’t trust.

And Bruce didn’t look away.

He couldn’t.

Because there’d been too long where he hadn’t had this. Where Clark’s face had been missing, blurred in surveillance footage or distorted in screaming memories. Where there had been no body to rescue. No hope to cling to. Only nightmares.

So he watched. Committed every detail to memory like evidence--because evidence could be catalogued, cross-referenced, protected .

Alfred lingered in the doorway, silent. His presence was quiet, unintrusive, but heavy with understanding.

“I’ll be downstairs,” he said after a moment, low. “Call if--when--”

Bruce gave a faint nod. Barely that. The motion didn’t reach his eyes.

There were no words for this kind of gratitude. Or this kind of grief.

Alfred didn’t press.

The door shut behind him with a soft, final click.

Bruce sat alone in the dark.

The only light came from the faint green and blue glow of the monitors, casting thin, fractured halos across the room--reflections off polished furniture and worn floorboards, the walls holding their breath with him. The machines murmured in soft, endless loops, the kind of sound that didn’t pierce the silence so much as fill it, like breath in the lungs of something larger.

Beside him, Clark lay suspended between sleep and something deeper. Something heavier. His breathing barely lifted the sheet, each inhale a quiet miracle, each exhale a silent question.

And for the first time since Bruce had pulled him out of that hell--since he'd ripped the door from its hinges and seen Clark curled on the floor like something no longer meant to be alive--he let himself breathe like he wasn’t still in a fight.

But only just.

Because it still felt like a battlefield. A different kind of war now, fought in inches instead of blood.

The chair didn’t creak beneath him.

Bruce hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. Maybe more. Maybe an hour. He didn’t know. Time had blurred into background noise, measured only in machine beeps and the soft tick of the grandfather clock above the fireplace. Its sound was deliberate, old-world, patient--marking time with a kind of grace Bruce had never known how to live by.

Each tick sank in like a blade.

The machines kept up their steady, unfaltering rhythm. A language Bruce had memorized long ago, back when he first learned how fragile the human body really was. Back when knowing the difference between a good number and a bad one could mean saving a life.

Now, he knew every number on Clark’s readouts by heart.

Oxygen saturation: 91%.
Pulse: 42, thready.
Solar conversion rate: 2.6%.
Not enough. Not yet. But stable.

Clark hadn’t stirred again.

His face--once something untouchably strong--was sunken now with the kind of exhaustion that didn’t come from sleep deprivation, but from something far crueler. There was a hollowness beneath his cheekbones, bruises painting his skin in sick shades of gray and yellow. The stubble along his jawline caught the light with every faint rise and fall of his chest, but it did nothing to hide the deep-set lines of pain that had taken up residence there.

There was still dried blood at his collarbone.

Bruce hadn’t cleaned it. Couldn’t bring himself to. He’d wiped away the worst of it, yes. Enough to treat the injuries. Enough to make sure it wouldn’t infect. But something in him had frozen when his eyes landed on that smear of brown-red, crusted just above the pulse point on Clark’s neck.

It felt like proof. Like evidence. That Clark had bled. That he’d suffered. That he’d been made to suffer.

A medical lead ran down from a patch just beneath his jaw, disappearing into the soft hum of the monitor beside him. It flashed numbers, unbothered by how sacred this all felt. The feeding line moved in slow pulses, thick with a blend of amino acids, solar-infused plasma, and god knew what else--a nutritional cocktail Bruce had spent two years developing in case something like this ever happened.

It had felt paranoid, then.

Now, it felt like salvation in a bag.

Clark’s body didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He absorbed it slowly, like he was relearning how to live molecule by molecule.

Bruce stayed seated. His fingers twitched occasionally--half wanting to reach for Clark’s hand, half afraid of what he’d feel if he did.

The silence didn’t press on him.

It held him.

And still, Bruce didn’t look away.

He sat hunched forward, elbows digging into his knees, spine curved like a collapsing structure too stubborn to fall. His hands hung loose between his legs, fingers curled inwards, blood-streaked gloves still tacky in places where the fabric clung to dried red. His head was bowed low, chin nearly to chest, the shadows under his cowl like a shroud.

It looked like prayer. It wasn’t.

There were no gods left for Bruce to pray to. Not ones that listened. Not ones that answered .

He was calculating. Always calculating. Reconstructing every second of every hour he’d spent clawing toward this--toward him . Running scenarios in his head like broken film reels, timelines branching and fracturing like splintered glass. Seventy days. Seventy fucking days. He hadn’t slept through a single one of them.

And every one of them… every single one… had something he’d missed. Some clue that had come too late, some delay, some distraction. Something that had bought Clark another hour of captivity, another interrogation, another injection, another scream behind lead walls Bruce couldn’t hear .

He’d failed. Over and over again. Every scenario his mind conjured up ended the same way: too late. Too slow. Too human .

His ribs ached beneath the pressure of his posture. Bruised and cracked, each shallow breath felt like a knife sawing along bone. The gash above his hip pulled every time he shifted. But he didn’t move. Didn’t lean back. Didn’t let himself rest for even a moment.

Pain was easy. Familiar. It kept him sharp. It punished him the way nothing else could.

He didn’t blink. Couldn’t. His eyes were locked on the blanket drawn up over Clark’s chest, on the faint twitch of it every time he took a breath. Too light. Too slow. Not enough .

So Bruce sat. Stooped like a gargoyle in his own goddamn house. Armor stiff with dried blood. Joints screaming. Mind racing.

Waiting for the next breath. And the next. And the one after that.

A shadow shifted in the doorway--subtle, but unmistakable. Bruce felt it before he saw it. That familiar shape, carved by old habits and older grief. Measured footsteps muted by carpet, frame cast long in the dim lamplight that barely reached past the edge of the bed.

“Sir,” Alfred said, voice soft but sharpened by concern--thin as a scalpel. “Your side is bleeding through the bandages.”

Bruce didn’t look up. He didn’t answer.

There was nothing to say. The pain had dulled into background noise, another thread in the symphony of his exhaustion. He hadn’t even noticed the warmth soaking through his suit, hadn’t cared when it began to stick to the chair beneath him.

Alfred didn’t sigh. Didn’t scold. He simply crossed the room the way only Alfred could--quiet, efficient, practiced. Not like a servant. Like a surgeon. Like someone who’d been here too many times before .

He set the medical kit down on the nightstand, just beside the low, steady hum of the IV monitor that mapped Clark’s vitals in soft pulses. He didn’t tell Bruce to move. Didn’t ask him to lie down. He just knelt beside the old chair, slow and careful, and opened the case.

The scent of antiseptic spilled into the room.

Alfred’s fingers moved with the kind of patience Bruce had always found unbearable--because it was undeserved. It was the same patience he’d used when Bruce had come home with broken ribs at seventeen, when he’d stitched gunshot wounds into neat rows across muscle and bone, when he’d sat beside a hospital bed after Jason--after everything .

Bruce didn’t stop him.

The utility armor was still half on, buckles jammed, plates cracked where impact had buckled them inward. Blood had dried along the seam where gauntlet met elbow, and his side--already wrapped--had bled through the gauze in a slow, angry bloom.

Alfred peeled back the layers with steady hands, shears glinting dull silver in the dark.

“I cauterized the worst of it,” Bruce said, low. His voice barely sounded like him. Rough from grit and silence. A man-shaped wound trying to speak.

“You shouldn’t have,” Alfred replied, not unkindly.

He said it the way someone might tell a child you shouldn’t run on broken legs --not angry, just sad. Tired.

Bruce didn’t argue. He never did with Alfred, not when it counted. Because there was no justification. Not this time. Not when the damage was already done.

He just sat still, eyes never leaving Clark, while blood was cleaned from his ribs all over again.

Alfred worked in silence, his hands steady, movements sure. The antiseptic soaked into the gauze with a muted hiss as it met skin gone taut from strain and pressure. He pressed it to the gash along Bruce’s ribs with the practiced care of a man who’d treated countless wounds but never quite stopped feeling the weight of them.

The sting burned, sharp and acidic, burrowing past nerves Bruce had trained himself to ignore. He didn’t move--but his breath caught, shallow and uneven. A flinch, small but there, bled through the armor of control he wore tighter than any suit.

Then he spoke. Low. Quiet. Gravel lining every syllable.

“He’s too quiet.”

Bruce’s eyes didn’t leave the bed. Not even for a second.

“Even for him.”

Alfred didn’t look up, but his voice was steady. Thoughtful. Clinical, but kind. “It’s shock. Physical. Psychological. You’ve said he was under red sun radiation for over two months. That alone would reduce his powers to nothing. He’s Kryptonian, yes--but his body still remembers .”

Bruce’s jaw flexed, a muscle ticking near the hinge of his cheek. The shadows carved under his eyes deepened as his gaze swept once more across Clark’s face--the stillness of it, the way his chest barely rose, like he was afraid to take up space.

“That wasn’t all they did,” Bruce said. The words landed like broken glass. He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t have to.

Alfred’s hands paused only for a moment. Long enough for the silence to thicken between them.

“No,” he said softly. “I don’t imagine it was.”

There was no comfort in the words. Only truth. And maybe-- maybe --the echo of sorrow neither of them would name.

The silence stretched again, wide and heavy.

Outside, the wind rattled faintly against the windowpanes. Somewhere deeper in the house, the heating system kicked on--air through old vents, barely noticeable.

Alfred finished rewrapping the ribs with careful pressure, his hands as precise as they’d been decades ago, even if the joints in his fingers creaked slightly when he moved. The final bandage was smoothed down with a sure palm, no wasted motion. Then he straightened, slow but measured, his posture still refined despite the years pressed into his bones.

Alfred turned to gather the bloodied wrappings, the bent needle caps, the half-used antiseptic bottles. His footsteps were soft against the old floorboards. His presence never loomed--just lingered, a quiet force holding the space together.

Then he stepped through the doorway.

And left Bruce in the silence.

Bruce stayed seated. Hands folded, fingers locked tight, the bones of his knuckles pale beneath scarred skin. His back was bowed low, the weight between his shoulder blades growing heavier with each hour that passed. The chair beneath him might as well have been welded to the floor; he hadn’t moved. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not while Clark lay there, tethered to life by machines and the thin thread of Bruce’s own focus.

He wouldn’t sleep. He didn’t deserve to.

And he wouldn’t look away.

Clark-- his Clark, because there was no one else left to claim him--lay unmoving in the bed. Bruised. Battered. Breathing. Still here.

It was the still here part that kept Bruce from shattering.

His vision blurred sometimes--fatigue, dehydration, maybe the concussion he’d ignored--but he kept his eyes open. Kept them fixed on every rise and fall of Clark’s chest. Every twitch of a finger. Every nearly imperceptible shift beneath the blankets that meant he was still fighting, even if only in sleep. The world could collapse outside those walls and Bruce wouldn’t notice, not if Clark so much as murmured a breath.

So when Bruce’s body finally betrayed him, when the tremble in his spine collapsed and the pounding behind his eyes stole the last of his vigilance, he didn’t even realize it.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

But hours passed--hours he could never get back--and when his eyes finally opened, the world had shifted.

His neck burned with tension. The muscles in his lower back screamed, locked into place after too long in one position. Cold sweat clung to his collar. The fire in the hearth had guttered low, casting faint orange shapes across the hardwood floor.

The bed was empty.

The sheets had been pushed back, one edge folded as if someone had done it gently, deliberately. The pillow bore the ghost of a head. The machines still murmured--IV, oxygen, vital monitors--all steady. All on.

But the line from the IV port had been yanked loose. Not torn. Not violently. Just half -ripped, like Clark had woken confused, or cautious, or determined to leave quietly.

And he had left.

Bruce’s breath stalled in his throat. His hands twitched on the arms of the chair, ready to spring up--and yet he didn’t. Not yet. Not until he was sure. Not until he could be sure.

Panic didn’t spike. But it was there.

In the marrow. In the space behind his ribs.

Waiting.

Bruce stood too quickly, instincts overriding pain, adrenaline burning its way through torn muscle and cracked ribs. The sudden movement sent white-hot sparks behind his eyes, but he didn’t feel it--not really. The only thing he could register was the sound. Faint, distant, just enough . A brush of movement. The subtle shift of air in the hallway.

He followed it like a lifeline.

The manor was mostly dark, lit only by the dim amber of hallway sconces and the occasional spill of moonlight through arched windows. The hush of it pressed in around him, thick and expectant, like the house itself was holding its breath.

Then he saw it--light bleeding under the kitchen door. A hum, quiet and low.

He pushed the door open.

And there he was.

Clark stood in the middle of the kitchen--barefoot, his posture a curve of too-thin bone and bruised muscle, hunched over the granite counter like gravity had found new ways to punish him. The hospital shirt Bruce had dressed him in hung loose, slipping off one shoulder. His left hand was braced against the counter, trembling so hard it looked like it might give out at any moment. The other kept reaching for the fridge handle, fingers curling but never quite managing to grasp it.

Each breath looked like it took effort. Each second upright looked like war.

His knees buckled once--just a shift, a stagger--but he didn’t fall.

Bruce stepped into the room, slow but steady, the ache in his side drowned by the sight in front of him.

Clark looked up. Glassy-eyed. Pale. He was sweating, jaw tight, hair curling damply at his temple. There was something wild behind his expression, something raw and stretched thin--like the part of him that had learned how to be still had cracked straight through.

“I was hungry,” Clark said.

His voice wasn’t a voice. It was a sound half-formed, half-apology and half-need, spoken like he wasn’t sure he had the right to say it at all.

And for one second--just one--Bruce felt the floor tilt beneath him. Because Clark, standing in his kitchen, looking like a ghost trying to remember how to be alive, had never looked further away.

Bruce didn’t answer. Not immediately. Not with words.

He just crossed the kitchen, slow and steady, like approaching a wounded animal. His eyes never left Clark--not once--as he reached for the fridge. Fingers brushed the handle, curled around cold steel, and pulled it open with a soft hiss of suction and chilled air.

Inside, the light spilled over rows of neatly packed meals. Alfred’s work, of course. Always prepared, always ready--for anyone but this. Not for this.

Bruce’s hand hovered for a second. Then he grabbed one of the glass bottles Alfred had labeled in precise handwriting: Nutrient Compound: Solar Enrichment, Kryptonian-Compatible. The liquid inside was thick and golden, sunlight turned tangible. Condensed energy, forged in sterile labs beneath Gotham and kept here just in case.

Just in case.

He didn’t say you shouldn’t be standing . He didn’t say you could have collapsed halfway here and no one would’ve found you . He didn’t say I was right there.

He just set the bottle on the counter with a soft thud and said, “Sit.”

Clark hesitated.

There was a moment--a flicker of pride, or maybe fear, or maybe just that slow-burn survival instinct that hadn’t quite learned it was allowed to let go now. But eventually, with the same agonizing effort it had taken him to stand, Clark eased down onto the nearest stool. His bones moved like they’d forgotten how to fit together. Shoulders shaking, jaw tight, one hand braced on the counter for balance. He looked like a statue sculpted mid-collapse.

Bruce slid the bottle over.

Then, quietly, deliberately, he unscrewed the lid and nudged it closer.

Clark took it in both hands like it might vanish if he wasn’t careful--like he didn’t quite believe it was real. And then he drank. Slowly at first. Then faster. Like his body remembered what hunger was and wanted to fill every part of the ache it had held too long.

Bruce watched the whole time.

He didn’t sit. Didn’t blink. His arms stayed crossed, his weight shifted subtly forward as if ready to catch Clark again, should he fall.

He didn’t unclench his jaw.

Not even when the bottle finally hit the counter, empty. Not even when Clark slumped forward with it, his forehead resting against his arm, breath gone ragged again from the effort. His shoulders heaved with each inhale, exhaustion pouring off of him like steam.

They didn’t speak.

But Bruce stayed where he was. Unmoving. Unflinching. A silent sentinel in the glow of the kitchen lights, eyes locked on the only thing in the room that still felt real.

Bruce carried him back.

Didn’t speak. Didn’t scold. Didn’t let the fury in his chest boil over. Not yet.

He just gathered Clark into his arms like gravity had chosen to forget him again, and Bruce--stubborn, exhausted Bruce--refused to let him fall. Clark didn’t fight it. Didn’t even lift his head. He let himself be held, like part of him knew . Like part of him needed to remember what safe felt like.

The next time, it was the stairs.

A week had passed. Seven days of forced rest. Of nutrient blends and brief, fractured sleep. Of watching Clark shift beneath the sheets like the nightmares were stitched into his bones. Bruce had kept vigil for all of it. At first beside the bed. Then pacing the halls. Then with cameras--reluctantly, respectfully--installed in the corners of the room for when he had to step away.

And still. Still.

He caught him again.

This time, Clark had made it to the third stair. Barefoot, sweat-slicked, gripping the railing with the desperate focus of someone trying not to drown. His knees shook with every breath, and yet he kept going . The IV port on his arm was freshly sealed. No torn tubing, no yanked wires. A clean removal.

Calculated. Purposeful.

Bruce’s voice was low as he stepped into the light at the top of the stairs. Calm. Measured. Like the snap of a blade sheathed in silk.

“Where,” he asked, “were you going?”

Clark froze. One hand braced on the railing. His head turned, slow, almost reluctant. He looked up--not defiant. Not ashamed. Just… tired. So tired , and underneath it, something brittle. Cracked down the center. A mask Bruce knew well. The one a man wore when he didn’t know if the strength to stand was coming from will , or from anger , or from nothing at all.

“Downstairs,” Clark muttered. His voice was quiet, but the words were solid. Intentional. “To the cave. I needed--”

“You don’t need anything but rest,” Bruce said, stepping forward.

Clark’s jaw clenched.

“I need to move .”

“You’re not ready.”

Clark exhaled through his nose. Rough. Shaky. Like the words were cutting him on the way out.

“I’ll never be ready if I don’t try .”

And that-- that --was what did it. That was what landed the punch harder than any Kryptonian fist ever had. The way he said it. Not with fire. Not with stubbornness. But with a kind of quiet hopelessness Bruce had only ever heard from soldiers trying to walk again on shattered legs.

He stopped one step below Clark. Close enough to reach him if he fell again. Close enough to see --really see--the rawness in his face, the storm in his eyes, the pieces he was trying to hold together with nothing but spit and spite and the barest scrap of control.

And in that moment, Bruce didn’t see Superman.

He saw Clark.

Fractured. Failing. Fighting.

And trying anyway.

Bruce’s hand flexed at his side, fingers twitching like they were searching for something to hold onto--something he could fix. But there was no gear to turn, no wire to reconnect, no code to break that would make this easier. Just Clark. Breathing, standing, burning with a need to do when all he should be doing was healing .

“You don’t have to train,” Bruce said, voice low. Tired in a way that settled behind his eyes. “Not now. Not for anything.”

Clark didn’t answer right away. He didn’t look at him either. Just stared past him--eyes flat, distant, as if already watching the next disaster crawl over the horizon. As if he had to.

“There’s always something,” he said finally, quiet. Not bitter. Not loud. Just true . A simple admission with the weight of the world behind it.

Bruce stared at him. Long. Hard. His jaw locked, but his shoulders fell just slightly, like even that answer had taken something out of him. And then--without a word, without another argument--he stepped forward. Bent down.

Clark saw it coming half a second too late.

“Don’t--”

But Bruce was already lifting him again.

Clark tensed in his arms, fists braced weakly against his chest, one foot dragging against the stair. “Bruce-- Bruce. Put me down.”

“No.”

“I can walk --”

“You can barely stand.”

Clark let out a low breath through his nose, shoulders taut. “You don’t get to decide when I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Bruce snapped, harsher than he meant to.

There was a beat.

A flicker in Clark’s gaze. Then--cold, sharp: “And you are?”

That one landed like a hit to the ribs.

The rest of the climb happened in silence.

When they reached the guest room again, Bruce laid him down. Not rough. Not violent. But not gentle, either. Not like before. The sheets rustled beneath Clark’s weight. He shifted, trying to sit up, but Bruce stepped back too fast, too sharply.

His hands still ached from the carry. His side burned where the stitches had pulled again.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t offer a word. A look. A warning.

He just turned, walked out, and shut the door behind him. Hard enough for the latch to echo. Not hard enough to wake the house.

It should’ve ended there.

That door slam--that moment of unspoken fury and aching restraint--should’ve been the closing note. The end of the confrontation. The final say in an argument neither of them had the energy to keep having. It should’ve been enough.

But it didn’t end.

Because nothing ever ended with Clark. Not when he still had breath in his lungs. Not when there was something-- anything --left to prove.

Bruce came back an hour later, jaw set, arms laden with clean gauze and antiseptic. The hallway was dark now, thick with quiet, the kind that pressed against your skin like humidity. Alfred had gone to bed. The manor was asleep. But Bruce’s body wouldn’t stop ringing. Ache in his side, his shoulder, dull throbbing he’d ignored since the second he’d seen Clark swaying on that stair.

It wasn’t until he felt the wet warmth seeping through the side of his shirt that he even realized he’d reopened his own stitches.

Typical.

He pushed the door open softly, fully expecting to find Clark passed out or fuming in bed.

The bed was empty.

The sheets were undisturbed.

And there--on the floor, in the cold hush of the moonlit room--was Clark.

He wasn’t collapsed.

He wasn’t dizzy.

He was doing push-ups .

Bruce froze in the doorway, hand still clutching the medical supplies, breath catching in his throat like it’d been sucker-punched out of him.

Clark’s palms were flat against the hardwood, fingers splayed wide, arms trembling with the effort it took just to lower and lift himself. Slow. Controlled. Agonizingly slow. Each movement was like dragging weight through wet cement. Sweat clung to his temple, dripping down the arch of his cheek, catching in the corner of his mouth. His back quivered under the strain. His shoulder blades cut harsh shadows in the low light. Every part of him looked like it was threatening to buckle--and yet, he kept going.

Five visible bruises ran across his ribs like ink blots. Deep purple. Angry. From where blood had settled while he lay still for days. They shouldn’t have been exposed. He shouldn’t be exposed. The bandages around his abdomen had slid down at some point, curling at the edges, no longer hiding what Bruce had tried so hard to protect.

Clark’s teeth were clenched tight, his jaw locked, nostrils flaring with every breath he dragged through his lungs. Not once did he glance up. Not once did he stop. As if admitting he couldn’t do this-- shouldn’t be doing this--would cost him something more than pain.

Bruce just stood there, caught in the crossfire of pride and fury and something else he couldn’t name. Something worse. Something sharp that lodged itself behind his sternum like a splinter.

Because Clark looked like he was trying to wrestle his way back into control.

Like he’d rather break himself than let anyone see how broken he already felt.

Bruce dropped the bandages. They hit the floor with a papery thud, rolling slightly on impact before settling, forgotten.

Clark didn’t look up.

His body trembled with the effort of another slow push-up, arms shaking, face turned toward the floor like he was trying to disappear into it. Like acknowledging Bruce’s presence would somehow unravel the fragile thing he was still clinging to--his will, his control, his last shred of pride.

“Don’t,” Bruce said, his voice low and sharp. A blade dulled by fatigue but still capable of cutting clean.

“I’m just--”

“Don’t say it.” The snap in his voice wasn’t anger. It was desperation. It was grief . He couldn’t hear it again. Couldn’t bear another excuse wrapped in guilt, another half-lie Clark told himself so he could keep pretending he wasn’t breaking .

“I have to--”

“You don’t have to do anything, Clark!” The words erupted from him, unfiltered, furious. The sound ricocheted through the room like a gunshot, like shattering glass in a cathedral. Bruce was already moving before he realized it, closing the space in three long strides, crossing the room like it owed him something.

“You’re not invincible,” he hissed, not because Clark didn’t know--but because he needed to say it. Needed Clark to hear it. Needed the truth to land somewhere between them like a hand grenade.

Clark grunted as he pushed himself up one more time, muscles trembling violently beneath the strain. His voice was thin, splintered. “Neither are you.”

And that stopped Bruce cold.

His hands clenched uselessly at his sides, the rage flaring under his skin stuttering into something rawer. His mouth opened--then shut. Then opened again, quieter this time. Like the words had to fight their way through every wall he’d ever built.

“I know,” he said, almost to himself.

Clark blinked. Breath hitching.

“I know I’m not,” Bruce repeated, voice low and hoarse, dragged from somewhere deep in his chest. “You think I don’t feel it? Every time I fall? Every time I hit the ground and wonder if this time... if this is it? If one inch more and I’m dead?” He inhaled shakily, jaw tight. “I feel it every time, Clark.”

Clark’s arms gave out. He slumped back onto his knees, breathing hard, fingers curled against the floor like claws, like if he let go of something , he’d fall apart completely. The silence pulsed around them, thick and electric.

“I know you blame yourself,” he said finally, voice so soft Bruce almost missed it. “For what happened.”

Bruce’s jaw clenched. He looked away, eyes dark. “Don’t.”

“I wasn’t strong enough,” Clark murmured. “I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t protect--”

“You think I was?” Bruce snapped, spinning back toward him. “You think I did any better?”

Clark looked up, finally, their eyes locking like it hurt.

And Bruce--he couldn’t hold it back anymore.

“I killed people getting you out,” he said.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even emotional. It was just true . Just the bare, brutal weight of it dropped between them like lead.

Clark’s breath caught.

“I didn’t want to. I wasn’t supposed to.” Bruce’s voice cracked on the edges. “But I did.”

It hung in the air like smoke. Like ash. Not a confession, not a plea. Just the wreckage of a choice he’d made, laid bare and bleeding.

And Clark just stared at him. As if seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time.

Bruce stepped back, breathing hard. The words he’d just said echoed through him like an aftershock, reverberating against something deep and sore beneath his ribs. Like a bruise . He could feel them lodged there now, growing weightier with every second--less like something he’d thrown at Clark, and more like something that had been torn out of him.

“You’re not fine,” Bruce said again, quieter now, like it was a truth he was offering instead of an accusation. “I’m not fine. But I didn’t bring you back for this.” His voice thickened, caught in the rough edge of everything he hadn’t said for days. “I didn’t risk everything just to watch you break yourself trying to be what they took from you.”

Clark’s shoulders jerked faintly, like the words hit somewhere he couldn’t shield.

His hands trembled at his sides. Not from weakness--no, this was something else. Something older and deeper. Something that had nothing to do with muscles or blood. “I can’t just… sit here,” he whispered, as if even saying it hurt. “I can’t be helpless again.”

Bruce’s heart snagged on the word again . He wanted to tell him it wasn’t the same--that now, here, he wasn’t alone . But Clark wasn’t asking to be comforted. He wasn’t even asking to be heard. He was trying not to drown. Clinging to motion like it was the only thing keeping him above water.

“You’re not helpless,” Bruce said, the words ironclad. “You’re healing.”

Clark exhaled, shaky, uneven. “I don’t know the difference anymore.”

The room fell still.

The air between them stayed sharp, charged with all the things they weren’t saying. Things that wouldn’t fit into words. Anger and fear, exhaustion and guilt--burning quietly beneath the surface like a power line downed in a storm.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Bruce turned.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a storm-out. But his shoulders were tight with something coiled and volatile, something halfway between fury and grief. His face gave away nothing, eyes blank like a blackout screen. Not unreadable-- untouchable .

And he left.

The door didn’t slam this time. It clicked softly shut, almost like an apology. But the silence that followed was deafening. It filled the room like water, pressing in on every side, soaking into the walls and bones and breath until it became the only thing that existed.

Clark stayed on the floor.

He didn’t cry. Didn’t curl up. Didn’t speak.

He didn’t lie down.

He didn’t move.

He just sat there, surrounded by too much space and too much quiet, his pulse throbbing in the hollows of his throat, his back, his ribs. Still breathing. Still here . But feeling like some piece of him had been left behind in that silence--and hadn’t come back.

The Manor had long since dissolved into that particular, echoing quiet only found in homes too large for the lives that lingered inside them. It wasn’t peaceful--it was heavy , the kind of silence that gathered in corners and behind doors, stretched out across shadow-drenched floors like a second skin. Every sound felt distant, dulled, as if the world itself were holding its breath.

A storm had settled in over the hills, creeping in like a slow, deliberate thing. Thunder rumbled far off in the dark, not loud, just a low and constant warning that never quite arrived. The moonlight, once silvering the windows, had vanished behind a curtain of thick, unmoving cloud. In the hallway, the grandfather clock ticked in deep, hollow tones, carving out the hours like gravestones. Somewhere deep in the old pipes, the heating system let out a tired sigh, too soft to follow.

And then, from the guest bedroom--sharp, ragged--a breath broke through the stillness like a body shattering the surface of water after staying under too long. Not a gasp in fear. Not a startled awakening. Something worse. Something primal.

Bruce heard it before he saw it.

Clark dragged in a breath that sounded stolen. Ripped. Like it hadn’t come willingly, but clawed its way free. His body lurched forward in the bed, drenched in sweat, shoulders pulled tight with something he was trying--and failing--to keep buried. His eyes were wide and glassy, pupils huge, darting toward nothing, seeing everything. His chest rose and fell too quickly. His hands trembled in the sheets, curling as if unsure what they were supposed to hold.

Bruce stayed still.

He felt it before it fully registered--the old instinct, a twitch of something deep and protective firing up from the hollow of his chest. Not panic. Not even surprise. Just that click--that razor-edged awareness that something was wrong. That Clark was in freefall, right there in front of him.

Clark’s fingers jumped to his face. Searching. Panicked. Looking for something that wasn’t there--no mask, no restraints, no lead prison sealing him away from the sun. No chains digging into his skin. No sickly green glow.

Still--he flinched. Still, he recoiled as if expecting pain.

“Clark.”

Bruce’s voice barely rose above the quiet. It was low, steady, grounded like stone--something meant to anchor, to hold.

Clark’s head snapped toward it.

Bruce didn’t blink.

He watched Clark look at him like a ghost. Like he wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating or back in some place that didn’t obey rules like time or physics or mercy. Bruce said nothing more. There was no need. The moment stretched, balanced precariously on a wire between them.

Because Bruce had never left.

He had come back. The second the door had closed behind him earlier that night, the guilt had sunk its teeth in. He paced the hallway in the dark for fifteen minutes, forced himself to leave the room again--again--only to circle back like a restless shadow and ease the guestroom door open hours ago, silent as fog.

He hadn’t wanted to wake him.

Hadn’t wanted Clark to see what he was doing-- watching . Just watching , like it would somehow keep the nightmares at bay if someone else was in the room to carry the weight of them too.

So he’d taken the chair by the window, still half dressed, one sleeve rolled up, arm propped against his knee with a glass of water he hadn’t touched. He hadn’t moved since.

“You’re awake,” Bruce said, the words low and steady, careful as a match struck in the dark.

He watched Clark blink--slow, unfocused, like someone wading up from the bottom of something deep and heavy. His throat bobbed with the effort of swallowing whatever sound had caught there, something raw that never made it past his lips. His hands-- God --his hands clung to the edge of the blanket like it was the only thing tethering him to the moment. Like if he let go, he’d vanish.

“I--” Clark tried. The word scraped its way out, cracking on the edges. “I thought you left.”

Bruce didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He let the silence settle just long enough to anchor the words before answering, voice rough and quiet and resolute.

“I didn’t.”

Clark swallowed again. His shoulders were trembling now--barely, just a ghost of a quake that passed through him like something breaking loose from the inside out.

“You were gone.”

The words landed like an aftershock. No heat. No blame. Just the empty echo of something bruised and scared, spoken like a truth Clark couldn’t quite un-feel. It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t even a protest. It was a hurt , and it was old.

Bruce breathed in, slow and deep. Let it out through his nose like he could exhale the ache clawing at his chest. The room suddenly felt  too tight. He reached down--deliberate, unhurried--and set the water glass on the floor. Then he leaned forward, closing the last bit of distance between them, crossing that fragile line like it wasn’t burning underfoot.

He reached out.

His fingers found Clark’s hand with a weightless kind of care, like even the slightest pressure might shatter something that hadn’t finished healing. Clark’s wrist was cold. The bones sharp. But his fingers were real-- there --and Bruce gripped them like a tether, like proof.

“I’m here.”

Simple. Honest. It was all he had. All he could give.

Clark looked down like the sight didn’t make sense. Like he couldn’t trust it. Their hands-- together . Skin against skin. Something tangible. Something unshakable.

Then--slowly, painfully slowly--Clark’s fingers moved. Tentative at first, then more certain. He curled them around Bruce’s, like someone testing the strength of a bridge they didn’t believe could hold.

But he didn’t let go.

And neither did Bruce.

He just sat there--anchored, immovable, steady as gravity itself--his presence woven into the air like something elemental. Bruce barely even breathed as he watched Clark slowly begin to settle. It was in the smallest things, the almost imperceptible slackening of his shoulders, the faint release of tension in his jaw where the muscle had been locked so tight it looked carved from stone. There was a tremble in every breath Clark took, still haunted in the way he held himself, like his body hadn’t quite realized it was allowed to rest. The shadows under his eyes hadn’t faded, and Bruce doubted they would for a long time. Not the kind that came from sleepless nights, but the kind that were born of absence . Of privation . Of being made hollow and having to walk around inside that hollow shell pretending it was still yours.

“You’ve been sitting there all night?” Clark asked eventually, voice sandpapered raw, like the words scraped their way out against something sharp.

Bruce didn’t answer immediately. He let the silence draw out for a beat, not heavy, just present . Then, with a small shrug that betrayed more than he meant it to, he offered, “Didn’t trust you not to try another training session.”

It was dry. Wry. An attempt to carve space into something too brittle for sincerity.

But it worked.

It earned the faintest tug at Clark’s mouth--an almost-smile, flickering like the last glow of a fire in the coals. Barely there. But real . And God, that was enough. That hint of light. That reminder of something human beneath all the wreckage.

Clark’s fingers tightened around his. Just once. Just enough to say don’t go . Don’t vanish. Don’t slip out of reach the way everything else had.

And Bruce didn’t.

He stayed exactly where he was, spine leaning into the curve of the old chair, the wood creaking quietly beneath him. His body was tired--aching with hours of stillness and the kind of sleep-deprivation that frayed the edges of thought--but he didn’t move. Not when Clark’s hand was still wrapped in his. Not when the storm outside had deepened, wind coiling against the glass like it was trying to pry its way in. Inside the room, the atmosphere was thick with quiet. Sacred in its stillness. The soft, mechanical hum of the medical equipment filled the space in gentle background rhythm--pumps and monitors feeding nutrients, fluids, strength into veins that had forgotten what it meant to carry power. To feel alive .

Clark’s eyes drifted shut again. Not with fear. Not with the haunted dread of someone slipping into unconsciousness against their will. But with something softer. Something closer to trust.

Bruce watched him until his breathing evened out, slow and deliberate, just a touch too shallow but no longer desperate. Not whole, not healed, not yet --but stable. Real.

Safe .

Even then, even when the silence had settled deep into the walls and the darkness pressed close, Bruce didn’t move.

He held Clark’s hand like a vow. Like a promise made in stillness.

And he kept it.

Chapter Text

He didn’t sleep.

The storm had long since softened to a hush, the kind of lingering mist that clung to the windows and curled at the corners of the night. Hours had passed, but Bruce hadn’t moved. Not really. He sat in the half-dark of the Manor’s recovery room, elbows resting on his knees, fingers wrapped around Clark’s hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the present.

Somewhere in the distance, the grandfather clock let out a low chime--elegant, restrained, as if it, too, understood the quiet around them and didn’t want to be disturbed. Bruce didn’t glance up. Couldn’t. His eyes stayed fixed on the steady rise and fall of Clark’s chest, the barely-there movement that told him alive . That told him still here .

And he was--Clark was--but Bruce couldn’t shake the feeling that it might change at any second. That the stillness was borrowed. That if he loosened his grip, even for a moment, this thread he’d clung to would slip through his fingers and he’d be left in silence again. That Clark would disappear like a mirage conjured by desperation.

Eventually, Clark stirred. It wasn’t dramatic--just a flicker of movement, the smallest curl of his fingers inside Bruce’s palm. A breath pushed, slow from his lungs, and his brow furrowed faintly, like even in rest his body remembered pain.

Healing was coming. Bruce knew that. But it was slow. Unforgiving. A crawl through brokenness that didn’t let you forget what caused it. The bruises were fading--yellowing into the sickly aftermath of violence, the swelling beneath his eye receding--but the worst of it lingered where no one could see. Bone-deep. Quiet and cruel. Not just physical hurt, but something heavier, something rooted. The kind of pain that made a home in the spaces between joints and memories.

Bruce didn’t speak. Didn’t shift. But something inside him--something he’d kept locked and rigid for so long-- moved .

It wasn’t a grand awakening. It was subtle, the way all the most dangerous feelings were. A warmth in his chest, faint and persistent, like the last stubborn ember of a long-dead fire. He hadn’t let himself feel it before--not really. Not in the cell. Not in the hours after the rescue. He’d buried it under mission reports, under cold logic, under the necessary brutality of survival. But now… in the quiet, in the dark, with only Clark’s breathing and the ghost of rain on the windows… there it was.

Softness.

It snuck in, uninvited. In the way Clark’s fingers unconsciously curled toward his. In the almost imperceptible way the air shifted when he exhaled. In the stillness between seconds, between heartbeats.

Bruce hadn’t known he was capable of softness anymore. He wasn’t sure he’d deserved to be. But the ache in his chest wasn’t guilt. Wasn’t even grief.

It was something else .

Something terrifying. Something warm.

It started small.

So small, in fact, Bruce might’ve missed it if he hadn’t been looking--hadn’t been waiting, unknowingly, for something to change.

A glance, at first. Just that. The kind that lingered too long, brushed the edge of familiarity, and stayed even after it should’ve passed. It wasn’t unusual for Clark to look at him--he always had, always with that quiet intensity--but this was different. This wasn’t just recognition. This was understanding . The kind that stripped Bruce bare without a single word spoken. The kind that saw too much.

And it made him pause. Made him feel something catch in his throat like a thread pulled too tight. A breath half-taken, suspended, waiting to see what would happen if he let it out.

When Clark looked at him that way--like he knew him, the real him, the one buried under the mask and the guilt and the bloodstains--Bruce didn’t know how to look back.

The silence between them wasn’t silent anymore.

It shimmered. It crackled . It moved with something alive, something unsaid but unmistakable. A current, magnetic and low-burning, pulling Bruce forward when he should’ve been retreating. There was a time when quiet had meant distance. Discomfort. Now it felt like the only language they had left--and somehow, it was enough.

And Clark--Clark reached for him.

Never dramatic. Never pleading. But in the smallest, most telling ways.

When his breath hitched and he didn’t want anyone to hear it. When the pain curled too sharply under his skin and his jaw clenched against it. When his hands trembled in the dark, almost imperceptibly. In those moments--unguarded, raw--his fingers would seek Bruce out. Like instinct. Like truth . No hesitation, no calculation. Just reach .

And Bruce let him.

Every single time.

He never flinched. Never pulled away. Never reminded himself of the boundaries he’d once kept like a fortress wall. With anyone else, he would’ve left--after the danger passed, after the fight was won. He would’ve handed them off to Alfred or the medbay monitors and vanished back into the shadows where he belonged.

But with Clark, he stayed.

He stayed like it meant something.

Hours passed and Bruce would still be there, seated beside the bed, his eyes following the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of Clark’s chest. That simple movement had become everything--proof of life, of survival, of hope .

And maybe it wasn’t just about making sure Clark was still breathing. Maybe Bruce was measuring himself against that rhythm. Letting it fill the silence in his own mind. Letting it anchor him.

Because it mattered. God, it mattered more than he could say.

And that was the most terrifying part.

He kept telling himself it was about guilt.

That this-- whatever this was --was just the aftershock of a mission he should’ve handled differently. That the tightness in his chest, the weight that settled behind his ribs whenever Clark grimaced in pain, was just the price of responsibility. He’d come too late. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t planned enough. Hadn’t been enough .

So he made it clinical. Tactical. Cold.

Clark was his rescue. His failure. His burden . Just another ghost added to the ever-growing ledger he carried in his chest, beneath the kevlar and scars. This was just clean-up, he told himself. Extraction protocol, extended.

The mission wasn’t over yet. That’s all.

But that wasn’t it.

It wasn’t.

And no amount of strategy or justification or whispered excuses could smother the thing clawing its way through the walls he’d built around himself.

He knew. Even if he hadn’t said it aloud. Especially because he hadn’t.

Even if the words burned behind his teeth every time he tried to give them shape. Even if he couldn’t quite bear to look it in the eye, to name it, to let it live in the light.

Because when the world went quiet--when exhaustion won out and he let himself close his eyes, just for a moment--the cell came back.

Not the blood. Not the gore or the cracked ribs or the sound of fists meeting flesh.

Clark.

Clark, half-conscious and shaking, shackled and starved of sunlight. Clark, whose voice had barely been a whisper when he said Bruce’s name like it was something sacred. Like he knew Bruce would come.

That was what haunted him.

Not the horror, not the fight, not even the risk.

The sound of his voice.

It played on a loop in Bruce’s head some nights, quiet and cracked like an old record. Ruined, rasping, fragile through a throat gone raw from silence and strain. There’d been nothing heroic in it. No thunder behind the syllables, no godlike weight. Just breath. Just struggle. Just Clark, barely hanging on.

And then--his name.

Spoken like a lifeline.

That flicker of recognition, faint and flickering behind the bruises and exhaustion, had undone him. Not in some operatic way--there’d been no sharp gasp, no cinematic pause. It was quieter than that. More lethal. A soft kind of unraveling, one thread at a time, from somewhere deep inside his ribs.

Because Clark had seen him. Through the haze, through the pain-- he’d seen Bruce. Not the cowl. Not the war machine. Bruce.

And then he’d fallen into him.

Not stumbled. Not recoiled. Not collapsed in panic or fear or trauma-spiked adrenaline.

He gave himself over.

Like trust was muscle memory. Like his body knew, before his mind caught up, that Bruce would hold him. That Bruce was holding him. And not out of obligation, or necessity, or even pity--but out of something wordless. Something real.

Bruce had cradled him without armor, without distance. His hands had been too gentle, too human for this to be about Superman. Because in that moment, he wasn’t. He wasn’t the last son of Krypton or the broken idol of a dying world or the man who once stopped a war with a look.

He was just Clark.

Breathing. Bleeding. Shaking.

And Bruce had pulled him close like that was enough.

It hadn’t been strategy. Hadn’t been a calculation filed away under contingencies and protocol. He hadn’t run through the scenario, weighed the optics, or planned his next step.

He hadn’t thought at all.

He’d just moved.

Because it was him.

Not the mission. Not the world. Not the headlines or the aftermath or the need to keep anyone else alive.

Just Clark.

That was the axis everything had shifted on. That was the name he kept circling back to, in every silence, in every breath.

And the worst part--the part he still couldn’t name, still couldn’t look directly at--was that none of it had felt like a burden.

Not one second.

Bruce had walked through fire. Through hell. Through the locked jaws of a world that had tried to grind Clark into dust--and he’d done it gladly.

Not because it was right. Not because it was his fault.

But because somewhere along the line, it had stopped being about saving Clark.

It had started being about not losing him.

And that-- that --terrified Bruce more than any battlefield, more than any death, more than the yawning dark he called home. Because if it wasn’t duty--if it wasn’t the mission--

Then what the hell was it?

Something older. Deeper. Something he couldn’t control.

Something dangerously close to devotion.

And once that word took root in him, it didn’t let go.

The hours bled together.

Not drifted. Not slipped. Bled.

They oozed through the cracks of the night like something wounded, dragging time behind them in pieces. Bruce didn’t remember falling asleep--if he even had. There was no transition, no drift into unconsciousness, only the jarring, gut-deep wrongness of waking to emptiness. The cold, echoing absence of Clark’s presence beside him sent a jolt down his spine before his mind could catch up.

He sat up too fast. His breath came sharp and tight in his chest, like he’d surfaced from drowning. The room hadn’t changed, but everything felt off. The chair beneath him had gone cold, bone-deep cold, like it had never known warmth. The fire, once steady and alive with crackling light, had burned itself down to a hushed bed of coals--glowing softly like dying stars. The shadows on the walls were longer now, and the silence in the Manor had grown dense , like the air itself had gained weight. Every corner of the space seemed to watch him. Listen. Wait.

The whole house felt suspended--held in that strange, aching stillness just before something gives way. And for the first time in a long while, the Manor didn’t feel like a place. It felt like a body . A breathing thing. Heavy with memory, saturated with ghosts. The walls pressed in, expectant, like they, too, were holding their breath.

Bruce rose slowly. Every joint protested with muted stiffness, a quiet punishment for having sat so long without moving, for letting himself forget-- for daring to rest. His knees ached, his back popped, and he hated how human it made him feel. How tangible . But he moved anyway, brushing the sleep--or the phantom of it--from his eyes.

He wasn’t worried. That wasn’t what this was.

It was practical. Logical. Clark could’ve woken disoriented. Could’ve tried to get up on his own. The stairs were steep. The hallways unfamiliar. It only made sense to check, to make sure he hadn’t-- God forbid --collapsed somewhere, trying to reach the kitchen or the bathroom or--

Stop.

Just the hallway. That was all.

Not worry. Not panic. Not that gut-pulling thing rising in his throat that felt too much like fear.

He didn’t get far.

The study door was already ajar when he reached it.

Just slightly. Just enough for a sliver of golden lamplight to cut across the dark hallway like a blade. It spilled onto the carpet in a line too warm, too precise, like an invitation held under glass. Bruce didn’t think much of it at first--he had left lights on before, had wandered back to this room so many times without remembering why.

But then he heard the rain again.

Soft. Unthreatening. It pattered gently against the windows, a steady hush like breath over bare skin. And beneath it--quieter still--was something else. The subtle sound of life. The near-silent shift of weight against hardwood. The whisper of breath not his own.

He moved before he could think, each step padded, instinctive, until he stood in the doorway.

And then he stopped.

Clark was there.

Alive, upright, present --standing in the center of the room like a ghost that hadn’t decided whether or not to stay. One arm hung loose by his side, fingertips barely grazing the fabric of his sweatpants. The other was curled around the back of a leather chair, tense--not gripping it like support, but like it tethered him. Like it was the only thing anchoring him to the space, or to this moment. Bruce couldn’t tell if he needed the chair to stay upright , or if he needed it to keep himself from running.

His posture was uneasy, shoulders pulled slightly in, like he hadn’t meant to be seen. But he didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. His eyes lifted the moment Bruce crossed the threshold--dark and sharp, reflecting the lamplight, catching the golden edges like a mirror turned toward a storm.

They were aware.

Not clouded. Not distant. Not lost behind fever or exhaustion. Awake in a way Bruce hadn’t seen in days. In too many days.

And God--he looked wrecked . But he looked there .

That recognition caught Bruce off guard harder than it should have. Because the last time he’d looked into those eyes, Clark hadn’t known him. Hadn’t known anything . There had been pain and confusion and nothing else, just a body fighting to stay alive.

But now?

Clark saw him.

And Bruce felt the moment hook into his chest like a fish to a line.

He hadn’t heard him get up. Hadn’t felt the shift in the house. Hadn’t registered anything until the light--and now he was here , upright, breathing, watching Bruce like he was trying to measure the space between them and whether it still mattered.

It didn’t.

Bruce stepped fully into the room.

Because Clark was here now.

And nothing else mattered.

Bruce opened his mouth--half-formed instinct more than intent. Maybe to ask what he was doing out of bed. Maybe to ask if he needed anything. Maybe to close the distance and do something, say something, anything that might steady the strange ache pressing into his ribs.

But Clark beat him to it.

“Why did you come alone?”

The words were quiet. Not hushed, not hesitant--just soft, and stripped of anything unnecessary. No heat. No demand. No pain warped into accusation. Just the barest thread of sound slipping into the quiet of the room like it had always been waiting there. Like Clark hadn’t just asked it, but had uncovered it.

Bruce froze.

His breath caught halfway up his throat and stayed there, stuck. Every muscle in his body stilled like the question had tripped a wire he hadn’t seen. The last of the firelight barely touched Clark’s face from where he stood, but it didn’t matter. His expression was unchanged--composed in that impossible way Bruce had always hated. So calm it bordered on cruel. Not because it was , but because Bruce knew what it meant when someone held themselves that tightly.

He knew what it took to ask something you already knew the answer to.

Clark didn’t blink. Didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on Bruce with a steadiness that made the walls feel too close. That made everything feel too close. And behind that steady gaze wasn’t judgment or suspicion or even confusion--it was knowing.

That quiet, unbearable knowing.

Like he’d already put the pieces together.

Like he’d known from the moment his eyes had opened in that cell, barely conscious, half-broken, and found Bruce’s in the dark--shattered, there . Not a team. Not a rescue squad. Just Bruce. Alone.

But even so, Clark had to ask.

He needed to hear it. Out loud. Not just the facts of it-- not just that Bruce had come alone , but why . Why him. Why no one else.

Why the one man who should’ve let someone stronger, faster, better do the job had walked through that hell on his own, teeth clenched around the scream in his throat like it was something holy.

And Bruce… couldn’t answer.

Not yet.

Because the truth was far too big to say quickly. And far too dangerous to say at all.

But Clark had asked.

And Bruce had never been able to lie to him.

Not where it mattered.

Not now.

“You should’ve brought the League,” Clark said. “You should’ve had a plan. But you didn’t.”

His voice wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t gentle either. It was measured , level in a way that forced Bruce to feel every syllable--because there was no anger cushioning it, no emotional static to hide behind. Just truth. The kind that didn’t need volume to echo.

Bruce’s jaw locked hard enough to sting. The bones in his neck pulled tight. He looked down, not because he was ashamed--at least, not only because of that--but because it was easier than meeting Clark’s eyes. Easier than risking what he might see in them. What he already knew.

His fingers curled without thought. First one hand, then the other--tight, silent fists trembling at his sides. It was muscle memory more than control. The only thing he could do .

The silence between them stretched. Not tense. Not awkward. Just undeniable. The kind of silence that made it impossible to lie, because there was nothing left to distract from it.

Rain tapped steadily at the windows--soft, unhurried, like time itself had slowed down just for this moment. Bruce didn’t move. Clark didn’t either. He didn’t follow up. Didn’t push. Just stood there , rooted like he was waiting for something he already knew would come, and was giving Bruce the space to reach it on his own.

“Why?”

That was all. One word. No edge. Just the final stone placed with care atop a question already carved into the space between them.

Bruce closed his eyes.

He could have lied. It would’ve been easy, by now. Second nature. He could’ve pulled something rehearsed from the catalogue of tactics and excuses he’d built over the years: said it was a calculated risk, a necessity born of time and distance. A window too narrow to wait. The League was spread thin. The intel had been shaky. He was already en route. No other option.

It would’ve been clean. Distant. Efficient.

But when he opened his mouth, the lie didn’t come.

Because it was Clark. And Bruce had never been good at lying to Clark.

Especially not when Clark was looking at him like this--still, silent, and unblinking .

Like he saw the answer in Bruce’s chest already, and all he wanted was for Bruce to stop running from it.

Something in Bruce’s chest twisted--sharp and sudden, like a splinter driving itself deeper through the muscle with every breath. Not clean pain. Raw. Jagged. It lodged there like it had been waiting, like it had always been there, just waiting for the right moment to twist.

“I couldn’t lose you,” he said.

It came out wrecked. Barely a sound. More breath than voice, like his throat had forgotten how to form the words properly after holding them back for so long. It wasn’t a declaration. It wasn’t even a confession. It was an admission , hollowed and hoarse--too honest to be anything else.

But it was enough.

Clark didn’t answer. Didn’t look away. He just stood there, shoulders drawn but steady, watching Bruce like the answer had landed in a way that didn’t surprise him, but still meant something.

And Bruce--Bruce forced himself to look up.

The study was dim around them, lit only by the soft spill of lamplight and the sheen of rain on the windows, but Clark’s gaze cut through it all. Still. Unmoving. And impossibly clear.

There was no pity in it. No shock, no confusion, no soft-eyed sorrow. There was only clarity --the kind that felt like standing in the center of a storm and realizing you’d been walking toward it all along.

Bruce felt it hit him in the chest, like a strike with no wind-up. Nothing to brace against. No time to defend.

His pulse thudded loud and hot in his ears. Like it wanted to break out of his body. Like it didn’t know what to do with itself now that the words had been said. He didn’t try to speak again. He couldn’t. Not yet.

Because the study was holding its breath with him.

The air felt different--thick and suspended, like the moment itself had chosen to stay, unwilling to pass. The walls, the carpet, the distant tick of rain--they all held the words like they were sacred . Like they couldn’t be undone now that they’d been spoken aloud.

And Bruce… Bruce couldn’t take them back. Didn’t want to. But he wasn’t sure if he could survive what came next.

So he said the rest.

Because the silence didn’t just wait--it demanded . It clawed at him with teeth made of absence, unrelenting, unforgiving. It pressed in from all sides like a closing vice, and Bruce felt the weight of it in his ribs, his throat, his spine. Clark demanded it too, in that quiet way he always had--never with force, never with expectation. Just presence . Unmovable. Absolute.

“Because it was you.”

He didn’t look up when he said it.

He couldn’t.

If he did--if he met Clark’s eyes--he might not be able to say anything else. He might see understanding there, or grief, or worse, that same calm clarity that had already gutted him. So he kept his gaze lowered, fixed somewhere near the edge of the carpet, where shadow met lamplight in the vague shape of his own outline. As if grounding himself in something tangible might keep him from coming undone.

“I couldn’t lose you,” he said again. Softer. Thinner. The words had already torn through him once, but this time they came from deeper. Somewhere old and buried. Somewhere he’d never meant anyone to touch.

It was barely more than a whisper, like if he said it gently enough, it might slip past the part of him that refused to need anything.

Clark stayed silent. Stayed still. Just listened-- really listened. Like he recognized the exact sound a man made when he was standing at the edge of something he couldn’t climb back from. And maybe Clark had always known Bruce would get here eventually. Maybe he’d been waiting.

“I’ve lost so much,” Bruce muttered, the words leaking out now, slow and uneven like blood through gauze. “Friends. Family. Time. Pieces of myself I won’t ever get back.”

Every syllable scraped.

“I kept telling myself it was part of the mission. That it was worth it. That sacrifice was necessary --that if I just held the line long enough, stayed sharp enough, I’d make the loss mean something.”

His throat closed around the next breath. The back of his mouth burned. The words tasted like rust and regret and something older than both.

“But it wasn’t. Not this time.”

And that was the truth of it.

Not some righteous cause. Not strategy or contingency. Not the cold calculus of war. This hadn’t been a mission. It had been personal , and that should’ve made it weakness. Should’ve made it foolish.

But all it made it was real .

And for once, Bruce didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

A breath caught in his chest.

Not the kind that choked or gasped--but the kind that held . The kind that didn’t know if it was supposed to break into words or shatter into silence. It lodged behind his ribs, jagged and raw, as if speaking would make something irreversible.

“You weren’t expendable, Clark.”

The words came like gravel--thick and heavy, scraped up from somewhere deep and old. And his voice--God, his voice --cracked on the name like a fault line giving way. He didn’t try to hide it. He didn’t even flinch. Because this wasn’t the kind of moment that allowed for pride.

“I know I should’ve had backup,” he said, fast, as if racing the weight of it. “I know it was reckless. I know exactly what it cost me--what it could’ve cost you .”

Each confession fell harder than the last, like stones breaking the surface of still water. He wasn’t listing mistakes. He was bleeding them.

“I couldn’t wait, I--”

His voice faltered. Then stopped altogether.

He pressed a hand over his eyes, palm hard against the bone of his brow, like the pressure might somehow crush the rest of the words before they escaped. Like it might push all that wanting --all that fear --back into the void where it belonged. But it didn’t work.

Nothing ever did.

“--I wouldn’t have made it if you’d died in there.”

The admission dropped into the room like a lit match. Bare. Uncontrolled. Unforgivable.

He meant it. Every syllable. Not as drama, not as indulgence. But as truth in its rawest, ugliest form. He knew what he was saying--what it meant . That the mission, the code, the long-honed detachment-- none of it would’ve mattered . If Clark hadn’t made it out, Bruce would’ve followed him down, in one way or another.

Clark still didn’t move.

But something shifted. Not in his posture--not in the way his eyes stayed level and quiet and watching --but in the air itself. That constant stillness Bruce had come to expect from him, the impossible restraint of a man who could break the world with his hands but never did-- that wasn’t just control now. It wasn’t tension.

It was listening.

Real listening. The kind you could feel with your whole body. The kind that saw through armor and years and silence and said I hear you anyway .

Bruce felt it in his ribs. A slow ache giving way to something warmer. Not comfort. Not absolution. Just the echo of being understood .

Like blood returning to frozen limbs.

“I’ve spent so long convincing myself I can do everything alone,” Bruce whispered, voice frayed like thread pulled too tight. “That I have to.”

He wasn’t sure if he was speaking to Clark or the shadows on the floor, but it didn’t matter. The words had momentum now--ugly, irreversible truth clawing its way out of his throat after years of discipline keeping it buried.

“That if I let people in,” he went on, quieter, “I’m just giving the world new ways to break me.”

It wasn’t melodrama. It wasn’t self-pity. It was a fact --bone-deep and clinical, like the file he’d written on himself years ago and buried under encryption. But saying it out loud tasted worse than he imagined it would. Like ash. Like blood. Like the underside of grief.

A bitter breath broke past his lips--sharp and trembling, as if his lungs didn’t know whether to hold the air or spit it out.

“But I keep surviving,” he said, barely audible. “And that terrifies me more than dying ever did.”

The admission hit him even as he said it. Terrifies. He’d never used that word about himself before. Not even in his worst nights. Not even at the edge of death. But it was the truth. Survival wasn’t the victory people thought it was--it was the punishment. The sentence.

“Because surviving means I have to feel all of it.”

He exhaled like it hurt.

“Every loss. Every failure. Every person I couldn’t save. Every moment I told myself it was for the mission when all it really did was hollow me out.”

The silence in the room stretched, tense and sacred. Bruce let it.

“And now--”

He looked up.

And for the first time since the words started pouring from him like water through a cracked dam, he met Clark’s eyes.

The blue in them was steady. Unflinching. And something in Bruce’s chest cracked wide open beneath the weight of it.

“And now there’s you.”

The words landed like gravity.

The room went quiet.

Not just the kind of quiet you notice. A full stop . Like even the storm outside--lightning-fractured and furious only moments ago--had held its breath to hear him say it. Like time itself recognized what had just been spoken.

And Bruce--bruised and aching and scraped raw from the inside out--didn’t flinch. Didn’t deflect. Didn’t try to take it back, even though every part of him had been trained to do exactly that.

He just stayed there . Hollowed out. Honest.

Open in a way he hadn’t been in years. Maybe longer.

And the silence, impossibly, held him.

Clark stepped forward--slow, careful, like he knew the floor might give way beneath them if he moved too fast.

No cape. No armor. Nothing between them but borrowed clothes and bruises and that quiet kind of strength Clark carried when he wasn’t trying to be Superman. His curls were damp with sweat, his movements loose with exhaustion, and yet he looked at Bruce with a gaze so direct, so unflinchingly human , it stole the breath right from Bruce’s lungs.

He didn’t say a word.

He didn’t need to. Not when the silence between them was humming with everything they’d both left unsaid. Not when his eyes were that impossibly open, cutting through Bruce like he was made of glass and not the thousand-layered fortress he’d spent a lifetime becoming.

And then--barely more than a breath--his hand brushed Bruce’s.

Fingertips, warm and steady. A touch so light it could’ve been an accident. But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t asking for permission. It wasn’t assuming forgiveness or begging to be held.

It was offering .

A quiet, wordless gesture that said I’m here. I stayed. You can, too.

Bruce’s throat burned.

His instincts screamed to pull away--to retreat behind logic and armor and the thousand good reasons he’d told himself why this couldn’t happen, why he didn’t deserve softness. But the moment was already breathing for him. And the dam inside him had long since shattered.

He reached up.

Not with the precision of Batman, but with the hesitance of a man who didn’t know if he was dreaming.

His fingers touched Clark’s hair--slow, reverent. The strands were softer than he expected, damp at the roots, curls falling loosely against his forehead. Bruce let his hand rest there, tentative and open, like a man trying to believe that the ghost in front of him was real. That this wasn’t a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and pain and a heart left too long without warmth.

It was barely contact at all.

But it was a question--one asked in the quiet space between atoms, in the breathless tremor of presence. A question that said Are you really here? Am I allowed to be, too?

And Clark didn’t pull away.

So Bruce stepped forward. Just enough.

And then--

He closed the space.

The kiss didn’t explode.

It unfolded .

Like light filtering through the cracks of a long-closed door, or the first notes of a song remembered only in fragments. There was no rush. No crashing together of mouths or wild, desperate heat. Just the slow, unspoken ache of something breaking open inside them both.

Soft.

Slow.

Careful in a way that made Bruce’s chest twist, because no one had ever touched him like this--not in all the years he’d clawed through the dark, not in all the moments he’d stolen and buried and labeled as weakness.

Clark leaned into it with the weight of someone who had finally found ground beneath him again, like gravity had remembered his name. Like Bruce had.

And Bruce--Bruce breathed into him like it was the first full breath he’d taken since the cell. Since the mission. Since Metropolis . His hand curled, just slightly, against the side of Clark’s jaw, fingers brushing a patch of healing skin. He could feel the echo of every fracture still knitting itself whole beneath the surface.

But right now, in this moment, Clark wasn’t breaking.

Neither of them were.

It wasn’t about want. Not really. Or not just .

It was about return . About the sensation of a world righting itself, molecule by molecule, in the quiet aftermath of everything they'd survived. It was about relief --raw and overwhelming, spilling through every touch, every quiet breath. It was about letting themselves be human for once. Just human. Unmasked. Unburdened. Unseen by anyone but each other.

Allowed.

And neither of them pulled away.

Not yet.

The storm whispered its hush across the windows, soft as a secret. The world outside seemed to pause, suspended in that breathless stillness that always followed disaster--a silence that held, waiting. Inside it, they remained anchored, not as legends or phantoms, myths or martyrs, but as themselves.

Just two men.

Alive. Present. Holding on.

And for once, Bruce didn’t brace for the fall.

He stayed.