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Bruce didn't give himself time to think about it back then, in the rubble, when he’d still been shaking with anger and confusion, leaning over the alien who had croaked out his mother’s name – both their mothers’ name, as it had turned out. He had connected the dots when miss Lane, another reporter from the Daily Planet, had barged in. He’d seen it then: fluff up his hair, put some glasses on him and make him hunch a little, and the so-called-god on the floor was the same man as the young upstart reporter at Luthor's party who’d been asking about “the bat vigilante”. If he had given himself time to reflect on it, perhaps he would have wondered how he hadn't seen it sooner. How no one else had seen it.
But there hadn't been time for those thoughts. There had been battles to fight. Bruce had been too young, too helpless to save Martha Wayne, but he had saved Martha Kent. Maybe there was such a thing as fate after all. Maybe there was such a thing as redemption.
Then again, he hadn't been able to save Clark Kent. Instead of a son left standing over his parents’ dead bodies, the Kent family had been reduced down to Martha Kent, living in that big empty house on that big empty plain, surrounded by photos of her husband and her adopted son.
The coffee cup rattled in front of Bruce.
“I remember adopting a baby alien. I don’t remember adopting a full-grown man. What’s bothering you, Bruce?”
Bruce smiled up at Mrs Kent, mercifully shaken from his thoughts.
“Only the usual, ma’am.”
She was younger than Martha Wayne would have been, had she lived, but not by more than ten years. Like her namesake, she could see through Bruce’s bullshit like nobody’s business. He could see it in the way she looked at him, even when she didn't call him out on it.
“How’s the recruiting coming along?” she asked instead.
Bruce shrugged. “Still no lead on our underwater warrior. Diana tracked down the speedster, though. She wants me to go talk to him. But, if I'm honest, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to drag him in to this. He’s just a kid, Martha.”
He couldn't keep himself from looking at the pictures on the mantelpiece across the room. Little Clark Kent, holding up a fish. College age Clark Kent, in grey sweats, being served breakfast and birthday cake in bed. Bruce had asked, and Martha had told him that they’d celebrated Clark’s “birthdays” on the anniversary of the day they’d found him. The little baby alien, dropped out of the sky onto a field in Kansas, like a Dorothy in reverse. Alone in the universe, and alone in this brave new world if it hadn't been for the Kents. Sitting here, in Martha Kent’s living room, it was hard to understand that Bruce had ever wanted to kill that child – even if he had grown up to become a man more powerful than anyone had ever been able to imagine. The man whose dead body Bruce had wrapped in his own red cape. The man who’d had two funerals.
*
Bruce made sure to visit Martha regularly, in between his ’research trips’ with Diana, keeping up with the never-ending criminal life of Gotham as the Batman and putting in his obligatory appearances as Bruce Wayne, businessman and playboy. It was nice, to take a break from those busy worlds once in a while and sit down in a worn but sparkling clean Kansas country kitchen and be served coffee and asked about his well-being. It was like stepping into a world he had thought no longer existed; an idyllic dream of the American heartland. Bruce told Martha about whatever progress he and Diana had made in finding and recruiting other meta-humans, or aliens, or whatever they turned out to be (Martha laughed at him when he recounted his first meeting with Arthur Curry to her). Martha told Bruce about how she was and her day-to-day life, but mostly she told him about Clark. Through Martha’s tales, her photos, even her preserved letters, Bruce was gradually getting to know a man who was already dead and gone. The man whose chair he was sitting in, and whose mother kissed him on the cheek as he left, promising to be back soon.
“When I said I wanted you to have a woman in your life,” Alfred said one evening, “I meant neither playing talent scout with an Amazonian warrior nor having weekly coffee parties with an old widow in Kansas.”
Bruce tutted at him in mock-disappointment, while scouting the suspected mob lair. “Come now, Alfred. You just say that because you haven’t tasted Ma Kent’s apple pie.”
“Hm. You may have a point there, Master Wayne.”
*
He sat on Martha Kent's couch with a flower patterned coffee cup in his hand the day there was a knock on the door. Before either of them could get up, they heard the door open and footsteps in the hallway. Bruce immediately gestured for Martha to stay where she was, got up without a sound, grabbed a Batarang from under his suit jacket and moved through the house. Whoever had entered wasn't hiding their presence at all. And then …
“Mom?”
Bruce turned the corner and came face to face with him just as he heard Martha gasp and run out of the living room. He had seen a lot of things the last few months that he would never have deemed possible a couple of years ago, but this – this was the first one to take his breath away.
“Clark?” Martha’s voice waivered.
Bruce wanted to reach out and grab her, tell her it was a trick, it had to be, a cruel trick – but he couldn't. It was Clark. Covered in dust and dirt, clothes torn, earth under his nails. And underneath all that dirt – nothing. Not a scratch. Not a bruise. Not a blemish. Just that perfect, Kryptonian skin, radiant. Radiating health and life.
Clark looked as confused as Bruce felt, studying him over his mother’s shoulder as she clung to his chest, crying. Then he turned his face down, whispering to her, telling her it was okay, that it all would be okay, until she stopped shaking.
“We thought you were dead!” she sobbed. “Oh my God, Clark, we buried you alive! All this time! I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm …”
“No!” Clark replied. “I don’t think so, I don’t … I don’t know. Maybe. Mom, it’s okay.”
“Are you hurt?”
Clark smiled. That big, hundred-watt smile, and Bruce had a sudden vision of a hundred times and more that Martha had asked that question to her son over the years, always to get the same answer.
“Of course not. But … I'm kind of hungry.”
So Martha ran off to get something to eat for her son that had just risen from the dead, and Bruce was left alone in the hallway with Clark. He opened his mouth, not quite sure what was about to come out of it.
“I never believed in a savior, but I gotta admit, a part of me was watching the news wondering if you would rise on the third day. After that, though, … God, Clark. And Luthor thought people would start a religion around you before.”
Clark looked almost like he would take offence, but instead of accusing Bruce of sacrilege, he asked: “How long has it been?”
“Weeks. Months. Almost half a year.”
Clark’s eyes widened. “I thought … So, what are you doing here?”
Mercifully, Martha came back at that moment with a wet cloth to wipe the worst of the dirt off of Clark’s hands and a big sandwich that Clark tore into like a starving lion.
“Bruce has been checking in on me, making sure no one else would go after me. Here, honey.” She handed over a big bottle of water. Clark drank it all in one go, and looked back at Bruce.
“Thank you.”
“It was the least I could do.”
*
Bruce was still sitting on the couch, cup now empty, when Clark had showered, changed into clean clothes, and came into the room carrying a big tray of food. He sat down in the chair opposite Bruce and began to eat with the same fervor as before, looking between Bruce and Martha between bites. Martha, on her hand, had gone quiet and was sitting in the other chair, silently watching her son’s every move, drinking it in.
“I guess you weren't kidding about being hungry,” Bruce said.
Clark blushed and licked his fingers. The sight made something deep in Bruce’s belly swirl, God help him. Clark looked so different without his Kryptonian suit: younger, softer, more human. The glasses and dorky outfits of the reporter Clark Kent were a mask, Bruce was sure of that, but this man, in jeans and a blue squared flannel shirt – this felt real. This was the boy on all those photos, all grown up. His wet hair was beginning to curl. The top two buttons on his shirt were undone, and Bruce could see chest hair. That surprised Bruce a bit, he had kind of expected the alien to be smooth all over. Why, he had no idea.
“I guess I needed to catch up,” Clark mumbled.
“So I guess you don’t live off of sunlight alone.”
Clark studied him.
“You've been doing your homework.”
“I had a good source,” Bruce said, nodding towards Martha.
Clark smiled at his mother.
“You've been giving away all my secrets while I was away?”
Away. That swirling heat in Bruce’s gut was quickly turned into a heavy cold. The smile faded from Martha’s face. Clark immediately looked apologetic.
“Only the good stuff, Clark,” Bruce said.
Another look passed between mother and son, and Bruce finally felt too out of place sitting on this family’s worn out couch in his three-piece suit in the middle of their reunion. He stood up.
“I should go now, let you two have some time together. If you need my help with anything, anything at all, you know how to reach me.”
Martha got up and hugged him tight. Small as she was, Martha’s embrace made Bruce feel like a little boy, completely enveloped in his mother’s arms.
“Thank you, Bruce.”
“You’re welcome,” Bruce said, and added “don’t worry, I’ll see myself out” as he saw Clark getting out of his chair.
“No, I’ll walk you,” Clark insisted.
Bruce heard the determination in his words and just nodded.
*
When Clark closed the door behind them, Bruce waited. For a while, they both looked out over the fields and the dirt road leading away through them.
“Seems like you've been spending a lot of time with my mom. Should I be worried?”
Bruce scoffed. “How old do you think I am?”
There was that smile again. That smile that could make anyone believe that this man didn't have an ounce of darkness in him. Maybe they’d be right. Maybe Bruce had been wrong. Maybe there were good men who couldn't turn bad. For the first time in years, he found himself hoping so. Not just because of how powerful Superman was and what a threat he would be if he went bad, but because Bruce really, really wanted to believe in Clark Kent.
”Diana and I have been … busy, while you were gone. Trying to put together a team. Martha can tell you a bit about it, when you've had some time to catch up. Obviously, you have an open invitation.”
Clark looked at him as if trying to look through him. Bruce suddenly remembered that Clark literally could, and had to fight the urge to fidget or run from the steady gaze.
”’Obviously'? The last I remember, we weren't exactly on friendly terms. You agreed to help save my mother because she was an innocent civilian and to fight Doomsday because he was the bigger threat. We didn't exactly become best friends.”
Bruce had to look away from those blue eyes, put his hands in his pockets and look out across the fields again. Some way off, a couple of magpies took flight.
”Well, I guess you proved yourself, Kent.”
Clark chuckled. It was a warm, comforting sound. ”You know, I still have my problems with some of your methods, ’Batman’.”
Bruce smiled. He hadn't expected anything else.
”I'm sure there'll be time to discuss that.” Bruce couldn't keep himself from looking Clark over, up and down. ”At length, if you'd like.”
Clark nodded.
”Sounds good.”