Chapter Text
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Clark's POV
The first time I saw him, he was just a shadow that moved wrong.
Gotham was crawling with noise-sirens, thunder, the hum of neon signs-but he moved through it like silence had chosen him. I was there chasing a lead for The Daily Planet, a series on urban vigilantism. Perry wanted something gritty. Something that sold.
"Metropolis has its shining god," he'd said, tap ping my shoulder with a cigar. "Gotham's got its devil. Go find out why people still believe in both."
So I went.
I wasn't expecting the rain to taste like rust. Or the air to carry that strange ache-as if the whole city was built on secrets that couldn't be buried deep enough.
And him...
He didn't belong to the skyline so much as he was the skyline.
I'd heard the stories. A man dressed as a bat, breaking bones and vanishing into the fog. Half the city swore he was a myth. The other half whispered his name like a prayer. But seeing him in person-standing on the ledge above Crime Alley, cloak catching the wind like a bruise-it was different.
He looked like he was holding the city together by will alone.
I called out once-"Batman!"-and he turned just enough for lightning to sketch the edge of his cowl. But he said nothing. Not even a threat. Just one long, unreadable look. Then the thunder came, and he was gone.
No one believes me when I say he's quiet. Everyone imagines something monstrous, dramatic. But what I saw that night was restraint-the kind that comes from being too tired to break, but too stubborn to stop.
So I started writing.
Not a profile. Not yet. Just notes. Observations. I told myself it was research, but that was a lie. I was fascinated. Maybe because Gotham had made him into something the world could fear, and still, he stayed.
And then, somewhere in the middle of all that darkness, I met someone else.
Bruce Wayne.
The city's favorite contradiction. Lavish, careless, every headline calling him a spoiled heir or a tragic recluse, depending on the week. But up close, he wasn't what I expected either. When I met him at a charity event-one of those chandelier-and-champagne nights where no one breathes real air, he smiled at me like he knew something I didn't.
For a moment, I thought he did.
There was something familiar in the way he watched people-not with judgement, but calculation. Like someone who'd learned to memorize every face in a room, just in case.
He spoke confidently, his voice steady yet somewhat worn, like it had carried too many late nights. And when he shook my hand, I felt a strength there that didn't belong to someone who spent his nights in boardrooms.
Still, I didn't think much of it then.
Two different men. One made of shadow, the other of gold. Both hiding something the world wouldn't understand. And maybe that's what caught me-the way they mirrored each other.
When I left Gotham that night, my notes were a mess of contradictions:
"The city's guardian - brutal yet human."
"Bruce Wayne - aimless, but watchful."
It was absurd, but I couldn't shake the thought that if the two ever met, they might understand each other.
Or destroy one another trying.
As for me... I didn't know what I was getting myself puled into yet. I just knew that every time I came back to Gotham, I was chasing two ghosts-one in the dark, one in the light-and yet somehow, they both made me feel like I was the one being seen.