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Batman hated magic users.

It was obscene that one amateur wannabe with a magic stick could become a Justice League level threat. Glowing purple flashes, everyone starts screaming thinking they're going to be turned into a pig or some such bullshit, and then the idiot gets so self-conscious that they actually do start turning people into pigs.

A tricky situation, but nothing the League hadn't handled before. Zatanna was leading the strike team, casting her own counterspells and coordinating everyone's approach as they narrowed in on the magic user.

They had just breached the building, pulsing with violent purple, when Superman decided that he should join the party.

Against Batman's explicit orders.

"I told you to stay out of this fight," Batman growled as he dodged a lightning flash that descended from nowhere.

"I can help," Superman insisted.

"You're not needed."

Superman gave Batman an unimpressed look, hundreds of words in a single glance. Then he grabbed a flying frog out of midair and tossed it towards Zatanna, who reversed the spell and turned the frog back into a human.

"What's with the animals?"

Batman grunted and didn't reply. Served him right for coming in against orders.

"Hey, Superman," Zatanna greeted as she approached, "Thought you were sitting this one out."

"I figured an extra pair of hands can't hurt."

"They can if the hands are vulnerable to magic," Batman retorted.

"Everyone else here is as vulnerable as I am. Except Z, probably."

No use trying to explain it on Superman. Common sense was wasted on him these days.

They'd only just recently got him back. They couldn't risk anything happening to him now. It would endanger the entire team. The world. People needed him in a way that couldn't be replicated by anyone else.

But God forbid Superman follow basic instructions. No, much better to ignore all reason and jump into the fray like a headless chicken.

They made their way through the building and entered the scene to find their magic user in a full blown panic.

"Henry!" Zatanna cried, descending before them, "You don't have to do this!"

The magic user, Henry, spun on the group. Their eyes went wide with fear. "Don't hurt me!"

"Put the wand down and let's talk about this," Superman said.

"No! I have– I have an agenda to fulfill! Equality must be established! Only by becoming the animals they are can people become motivated to save the earth!"

Poison Ivy knockoff. At least she had the decency to be cohesive with her agenda. Batman unclasped his utility belt and armed himself with a flash grenade. He glanced at Zatanna, who nodded in agreement.

Then Henry turned to Superman. Their eyes went wide with a plan. They gripped their wand tighter and said, "Oh. That's it."

Superman looked down at the wand, fizzing with purple sparks. "You don't want to do anything you'll regret, son."

"I could wield the power of a thousand suns," they murmured, and aimed their wand directly at the shield on Superman's chest.

When he was pressed to explain it later, Batman would give half-truths and objective facts. But in the moment, he didn't think at all.

Superman stood potential victim to a magic spell, one of unknown origin but presumably with intent to gain, steal, or subvert his powers.

Batman stood at his side, having been someone with the power to change the course of events as it unfolded.

As mentioned previously, they'd only just got him back. What good would that be if the world lost him again?

And really, what did Batman have to lose? It was Clark's life at risk. Nothing could be more important than that.

It was simple cost-benefit analysis.

Batman darted forward, lobbing the flash grenade at their perpetrator. With the other hand, he shoved Superman out of the way, putting himself in direct line of fire for the spell.

It would have been perfect, if Superman hadn't grabbed onto his wrist.

He felt the spell ripple through him, and then arc down his arm. Purple lightning sparked between both of them. They met eyes, just for a brief moment.

There was an inconceivable horror in Clark's eyes, raw and blue and afraid.

Then everything went black.

Bruce woke up on a cot. He recognized his environment instantly as the Watchtower medbay.

He took a moment to assess his body, searching for anything tingling or injured. All seemed fine, which was good.

"I know you're awake," Clark's said.

Bruce cracked open an eye and found Clark sitting on the cot adjacent to him. He still wore his Superman gear, boots and cape and all. Bruce was in his Batman suit, sans cowl.

"Did the villain get taken down?"

"They're in custody now."

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Oh, am I alright?" Clark said, signaling exactly what kind of conversation this was going to be with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. "I'm not the one who jumped in front of an unidentified magic laser beam and got both of us knocked out."

"Well you wouldn't have been affected if you hadn't grabbed onto me like an idiot," Bruce hissed, rising to stand. If they were going to do this, he wouldn't give Clark the high ground.

"Of course I grabbed onto you, I'm not just going to let you take a hit for me," Clark snapped, getting to his feet as well. He advanced towards Bruce. "You don't even know what that spell was supposed to do."

"It was obviously supposed to affect your powers or transfer it to the magic user."

"So you heard that and thought you should jump in front of it? It could have killed you!"

"Clearly, it didn't." Overdramatic idiot.

"That's not the point!"

"I'm the only one of us present that didn't have powers. I was the least likely to be affected by a spell of that nature. It only makes sense that I take the hit."

Clark made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat. He stepped forward and said, "You. Are. Infuriating."

"You've said before."

"Ever since I got back–" and it took everything in Bruce's power to restrain his instinctual flinch at the memory of a world without Clark, "–you've been acting like you don't even trust me. You never let me go on missions–"

"This mission posed a unique risk to your life–"

"It wasn't unique at all!" Clark cried, "All of you there had the same vulnerabilities. There was no reason I shouldn't be there apart from your orders."

"My orders should be enough."

"We're supposed to be a team, Bruce. I'm not going to just blindly follow orders. I'm not one of your little Robins."

At that, Bruce couldn't hold back a grimace. It was small, barely a flicker of his jaw. But he knew Clark would notice.

The wound there was still raw. Still bloody and sore, prone to infection that had to be lanced with fire-hot needles. There was an absence in the shape of Jason Todd, and it was everywhere he looked. He carried the ache in his chest, a physical force that seemed to weigh Bruce down each time he got out of bed and each time he donned the cowl. It was agony.

Never one to be placed on the back foot, Bruce stepped forward and jabbed Clark in the chest. "Maybe if you were better at following orders, you wouldn't have died and left your city in need."

It was, perhaps, a cut too deep. Clark hadn't been following orders at all that day, but rather had made the best choice he could and acted in defense of the world.

But damnit, if he'd just called Batman– called anyone, maybe they could have helped him. He didn't have to die that day. He could have lived, and then he would have spared Bruce– spared the world this twin agony.

He'd been there at the funeral. Black armband on his bicep, but it wasn't enough. Bruce could have thrown himself into that casket and fused his body with Clark, and it wouldn't have been enough.

Clark's hurt was laid open and bare on his face, heart on his sleeve as always. But he quickly masked it with anger and smacked Bruce's hand aside. "That has nothing to do with this."

"The team changed while you were gone, Superman. Things are different now."

"They don't have to be," Clark said, his voice low. Bruce understood then that he wasn't just talking about the Justice League, but something far greater.

Admittedly, he and Clark had been growing closer. They trusted each other more than perhaps anyone else in the world. They shared things with each other. Clark was there to give advice on reconnecting with Dick after he went to Blüdhaven, and Bruce was there with Kara, to help him understand what it meant to be a pseudo-parent to someone who didn't want a father but who desperately needed someone.

It was the mundane things too. Clark would come by on late nights to give his perspective on whatever case Bruce was working. If they crossed paths at a gala, they'd find twenty minutes to escape onto a balcony and allow themselves to breathe, just for a minute.

Bruce had noticed the charged way that Clark looked at him sometimes fresh off a sparring session with Dick. He felt the same awestruck bolt of want when he saw Clark lift a building with a single hand.

They had been approaching something, before. Water rising to a boil, gently at first and slowly building until it felt like a rush. Before everything, they'd stood on some precipice, and Bruce hadn't figured out if he was strong enough to jump.

But then Clark died. And things changed.

And then Jason died.

Whatever version of Bruce had existed for Clark must have died, if not with him then with Jason.

"Grow up, Clark," he said, bitter vitriol masking an ocean of something he was not going to look at.

A brief flash of hurt laid bare on Clark's face, there and gone in an instant. He scowled and reached out his own finger, jabbing it this time at Bruce's forehead. "When are you going to get it through your thick little skull that you don't have to do this alone? You don't have to take the hits for people all the time, Bruce."

"This discussion is going nowhere," Bruce decided. "What verdict did Zatanna give?"

Clark looked at him for a long moment, apparently debating whether to continue the argument. "She's still busy reversing all the spells. She said that she can sense magical energy in us, but it's not clear if it'll manifest. She told us to monitor the situation and then call her if anything changed."

Bruce hated monitoring the situation with no clear action plan. He scowled. "Then if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to."

He opened the door of the medbay, making his way down towards the zeta tube. He was, of course, interrupted by Clark coming to a screeching halt in front of him, having flown around. He simply couldn't help but be a fucking nuisance, it seemed.

"Your life is too valuable to for you to keep doing this," Clark said. He no longer had the look of someone trying to start an argument, but instead pity.

Pity was much, much worse.

"I have no intention of sacrificing my life for someone as air-headed as you, no need to worry."

Clark cocked his head. "Then why take the hit?"

Bruce didn't answer that. He slipped inside the zeta tube and entered the Batcave. Jason's memorial case stared blankly down at him as he passed it by, and the ache in his chest grew tighter.

It wasn't any of Clark's business why he took the hit. Again, it was just cost-benefit analysis. The world was unequivocally worse off without Clark in it; this was just fact.

Everything else was window dressing.

Bruce woke up in Clark's bed.

For a split second he thought he might be dreaming, purely for the sheer insanity of the moment. He had imagined, in fleeting and quickly stifled thoughts, what it would be like to be in Clark's bed. Would it be difficult to sleep on a mattress that wasn't his own, high grade one? Or would Clark's presence make it worth it? Would Clark wake him up with the dawn, or would he silently move around out of politeness? Would he snore? Would he press little kisses into Bruce's nude back and shoulders to bring him awake?

It occurred to Bruce after a couple bleary seconds that Bruce was not dreaming, nor had he entered into some kind of affair without his recollection. At least, he was fairly sure of that, given the opposite side of the bed was empty. And he distinctly remembered going to his own bed at three in the morning after a cathartic night of patrol.

He glared briefly at the light streaming through the wide-open windows, offended by the dawn. On instinct, he turned into the sheets and inhaled. The same crisp scent of ozone and sunshine as Clark, plus faint traces of whatever detergent he used and his shampoo on the pillowcase.

Bruce reached down to pull back the covers and investigate the situation when he noticed his hands.

His own hands were mottled with thin scars along his knuckles and hard callouses from too many years of wearing gloves and sparring. These hands were smooth along the sheets, not a callous in sight. They were also just the slightest bit broader than Bruce's.

He would know these hands anywhere.

Being a detective, and someone who prided himself on evaluating every potential outcome and cause of a situation, Bruce didn't panic. He very slowly and deliberately got out of bed, and he went to the bathroom in an orderly fashion to confirm his first hypothesis.

Indeed, the figure that looked back at Bruce was not his own. The shoulders were broader, the jawline softer. His hair was curly by default, raven black without the streaks of grey that Bruce was familiar with. None of his teeth were false, all perfectly straight and even. His eyes were still blue, but no longer the pale blue he recognized. Instead, it was a crystal, alien blue, unlike anything else in the world.

He glanced down at the countertop to confirm a familiar brand of hair gel, and an even more familiar pair of dull, back frames.

Bruce looked back at his reflect. A deep exhaustion welled in his chest.

"Goddamnit," Clark Kent's voice said.

"Well, this sure is a pickle," Zatanna said with poorly hidden glee.

He and Clark – Bruce? No, best to be consistent – had both agreed to convene at the Watchtower. Clark had woken up significantly later than Bruce did, leaving Bruce little to do except snoop. It was only the smart thing to do, to see if there was any pertinent findings to their situation.

It was very strange to hear his own voice speak back to him over the phone. Had he always sounded like he chewed rocks first thing in the morning?

It was equally weird to be looking at his own face. The strangest thing kept happening every time Bruce looked over at himself, a little skip of his heartbeat and a pulsing in his throat. Once, when Clark laughed in his body, he felt an odd stirring in his gut.

He decided that it was disgust, because seeing all his humanness from the outside eye seemed like the worst thing that could happen to him. His scars, the light stubble on his face, the exhausted bruises under his eyes, the coarseness of his hands, they all seemed so pale in comparison to the body that Bruce currently inhabited.

Zatanna arrived shortly after they did, and quickly diagnosed them with a body swap. Which was not helpful at all, because they had both already arrived to that conclusion. He said as much, and Zatanna looked at him with a weird expression in her eyes.

"You know, it's really weird to hear the Batman growl in Superman's...cheeriness. The vibes don't match at all."

Bruce scowled. This was quickly shaping up to be a bad day. "What can you do to resolve this?"

"I'll do a counterspell if I can, and I probably can. I just need to examine the nature of the magic at work to determine if there's something bigger going on we should keep in mind."

Bruce twitched his hand. Get on with it.

"Thanks, Z," Clark said with a smile. Bruce had to admit, it was jarring to see his face smile so broadly.

Zatanna stepped forward and reached out her hand, a glowing orb of light settling in her palm. She closed her eyes, muttering under her breath.

She was probably speaking too quietly for most to hear, but this body was of course positioned to hear every word. Bruce curled his hands into light fists, wondering if he was supposed to tune it out and how.

He didn't tune it out, obviously. It was beneficial to know Zatanna's process.

"Interesting," she mumbled.

"What's interesting?" Bruce demanded.

Zatanna opened her eyes, looking between both of them. "It looks, for all intents and purposes, like a simple body swap spell."

"That makes sense," Clark said, "Since he was trying to get my powers."

"That part, yes, that makes sense. But there's some kind of," Zatanna pursed her lips in thought, "I'm not sure how to explain it. A tether? There's something deeper at play than a body-for-body exchange."

"Deeper how? Is it a danger?" Bruce asked.

"I don't think it's a danger. It just looks...very strong. Actually," Zatanna tilted her head, twisting her fingers and making the orb of light grow brighter. "Huh. It looks like the body swap is influenced by emotional connection."

An awkward, silent pause passed. Bruce refused to look at Clark. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, spells cast by an amateur can sometimes feature an emotional aspect, especially if the caster is at a heightened emotional state. Which they probably were, given they were ambushed by the Justice League and angry in general. When a spellcaster is unable to separate their emotions from the intention of the spell, we can see this messy little entanglement in the spell."

"Does that mean Bruce and I are going to hate each other?" Clark asked

"No, it just means that you'll feel some habitual emotions from the body you're inhabiting."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Feelings live in the body, which is something we all know instinctively but a lot of people don't internalize. So it just means that if the body is accustomed to feeling a certain emotion at a certain trigger, you'll also experience that."

There were a lot of very messy things that lived inside Bruce's body. He would rather die than reveal them to someone, even to Clark.

"Reverse it, then," he said.

Zatanna gave him a wry look, unexpectedly full of mischief. "Yeah, yeah, Superman. I'm on it. You might feel a tingly sensation, don't worry."

She stepped closer and held out her orb of light, shifting it to a purple glow reminiscent of the original spell blast. True to her word, as soon as she started speaking, pins and needles raced up Bruce's spine.

"Nruter ot ruoy seidob, eht eno uoy llac sruoy."

A blinding flash of light swept over the room, and all Bruce could see was white.

The glare faded. Bruce looked down at his hands, expecting the see the scars and callouses he knew, but he was instead greeted by the smooth, broad palms of Superman.

He looked over at Clark and saw his own face, similarly confused.

Bruce looked to Zatanna, who was smiling sheepishly.

"Look, in my defence, I used a lot of my magic stores yesterday trying to clean up that whole mess. I'm pretty worn out."

"So the spell didn't work," he surmised.

"It worked, it'll just have a delayed effect. Two days, maybe? No more than three, for sure."

"You want us to be in the wrong bodies for 48-72 hours."

"I'm sure she did her best, B," Clark admonished.

"Thank you, Clark," Zatanna said with a pointed look at Bruce, "Look, it won't be so bad. Walk a mile in each other's shoes, or something. It's only a couple days."

"What if we call in another magic user to work in the meantime?" Bruce asked.

"Wouldn't recommend that. Having two counterspells active at once could do some crazy things. Just be patient, Bruce. Isn't that Batman's whole thing?"

Bruce scowled darkly at her, and then at Clark. "You can't possibly expect him to operate as Batman during that time."

"Hey!" Clark frowned, "I could be Batman, if I needed to."

"You could not," Bruce said, and didn't say, Please don't burden yourself with this.

"Whatever you guys work out for your superhero duties, that's your business," Zatanna said, and brushed her palms together as if washing her hands of the situation, "If three days have passed and you haven't experienced the switch, call me. Maybe you could use this time to sort things out on that emotional connection front, huh?"

"Thanks for your help, Zatanna," Clark said, which was especially jarring from Bruce's mouth. Thinking back on it, he wasn't sure when the last time he'd said thank you to anyone that wasn't Alfred was.

"You're dismissed," he growled, which didn't quite have the same affect in Clark's tenor.

Zatanna stepped out of the room, leaving Clark and Bruce alone. They glanced at each other, and then away.

"I really could go out as Batman, if necessary," Clark insisted.

"Out of the question. You're not used to operating in a human body. You'd be a disaster."

"Don't sugarcoat it," Clark said, raising his eyebrow without amusement, "You have all the muscle memory in this body, how hard could it be?"

"Muscle memory is useless without the practical application," Bruce replied, "If you're ambushed, you'll freeze."

Clark wrinkled his nose. "I don't freeze."

Then it was Bruce's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Well, if you're so sure. Spar with me."

"Well, that's just ridiculous. You'll crush me like a bug."

"We spar frequently, and you have yet to greviously injure me," Bruce pointed out, ignoring the fact that he wasn't Clark, and therefore the point was moot. Whatever Clark could do, he could figure out just as well.

"I have decades of practice holding back with humans. You don't know any of the finer points of having Kryptonian powers. I say again, you'll crush me like a bug."

Bruce stared him down. Clark glared unblinkingly back.

It made sense why people were so intimidated by a Batman glare.

He pressed his tongue into his cheek. "Then demonstrate for me. Tekki Shodan, now."

Clark narrowed his eyes. Obviously he didn't know what that kata was supposed to look like, but he'd never admit it. So Bruce waited for him to get up and make an idiot of himself.

His victory was soured as Clark stood out of the chair and immediately grimaced, protective hand going to his lower back.

"You're fine," he snapped.

Clark looked at him with an indecipherable expression, not quite pity but something much worse. Bruce ignored it, gesturing at the open floor.

Clark settled with his feet shoulder width apart, and then stepped forward.

"Wrong."

Clark stepped back into position, then stepped back.

"Wrong."

Step to the left. Foot raised in the air for a kick–

"Wrong."

Clark gave him a filthy glare. "You want me to do the hokey pokey first?"

"I want you to do it right and prove me wrong."

Clark crossed his arms. He pressed his tongue into his cheek. "Fine. You've proved your point. This body hurts enough that I wouldn't want to pull something anyway."

Low blow. Bruce refused to flinch, but he felt his jaw tighten.

"Glad we've established that. I'll continue your work as Superman–"

"Hold on. How come you get to go out but I don't?"

"Superman has to go out. Incalculable lives could be lost if there was a crisis and you weren't there to intervene."

It was Clark's turn to clench his jaw. "You don't know how to be Superman any more than I know how to be Batman."

"I'll figure it out. My comfort isn't worth the lives of innocents."

Clark tilted his head, considering. "It's not just comfort, though. You could kill someone if you don't know how to control these powers."

"Then come here."

"...Why?"

"We can test this."

Clark approached with a stiff set in his shoulders. Hard to say if it was the awkwardness of the situation, or he was just experiencing the limits of a human body like Bruce's. He didn't comment on it, instead reaching out.

Bruce clasped hands with Clark, feeling a weird jolt in his stomach at the press of his own callouses. He squeezed at his best approximation of what human strength would be. It was a little jarring to realize how easy it was, how shallowly this simple act dipped into his well of strength.

"Good?" He asked.

"A little lighter," Clark said. Bruce stared down at their clasped hands. Concentrating, he eased his grip ever so slightly. "Better."

"It's not so hard," Bruce said, trying to make it sound like a taunt. But as he said it, he looked up to find Clark staring directly at him.

A charged moment, like lightning passing through their connected palms. Bruce dropped Clark's hand.

Clark cleared his throat, glancing away to say, "It's different when it's a crisis. The adrenaline makes control harder."

"I'm used to adrenaline," Bruce pointed out.

Clark looked at him again. Bruce wanted him to stop doing that. "I guess you are."

"It's necessary."

"Yeah. Just...promise me you'll go out in a real crisis. It's, um. It's not easy to be Superman, sometimes."

Despite himself, Bruce felt a pang of something sticky against his ribs. How very like Clark, to try and spare people from himself. He had the awful urge to say something stupid, something like, It's worth it.

He didn't. He just nodded his agreement, knowing that he would go out whenever he damn well pleased. Bruce wasn't someone to be contained.

"Are you sure I can't be Batman? I don't have to do anything crazy, I can just, like, perch on the rooftops like a gargoyle or something. You're always saying that Gotham needs your presence."

Bruce considered this. He tried not to scowl as the only real option occurred to him.

"I'll call Nightwing. He can cover for a couple nights."

Clark's eyes widened. "Are you sure?"

"He'll say yes," Bruce said, because he knew it was true. For whatever messy thing lay between them these days, for how hard Dick was working himself, he could always count on him.

They were partners, once.

Bruce stepped forward and reached into a pocket in his utility belt, pointedly not thinking about how close it brought them. It wasn't sexy to be standing next to yourself, he said, even as he knew instinctively that it was Clark looking at him from those pale blue eyes.

He pressed the alert on the comm. A moment of silence passed as he waited for Dick to pick up. He might not have been awake, Bruce considered as he glanced at the time. But he'd pick up.

"Who's dying?" Dick asked, voice groggy and coming in double. Bruce checked the comm for a second before realizing that he was hearing Dick all the way from Earth and in the comm. He shook his head and tried to center on one sound, though couldn't really seem to stop straddling the line. An unfamiliar experience, to say the least.

"Nightwing."

"Clark? Is that you? What's going on? Is Bruce okay? I can be there in ten minutes, wherever he is."

The overt concern – nay, fear – in Dick's voice made Bruce blink in surprise.

Things had been getting better, he thought. But Dick was still so resistant to his presence in Blüdhaven, or his life in general. Any correspondence with Bruce was curt, and any questions about his life was met with hostility.

Strange, then, to know that Dick still cared for him like that.

He cleared his throat, refusing to meet Clark's eyes. "Code Purple-12." Magic-Body Swap.

It was half a test, he could admit. He had more than a hundred different scenarios written into that code, most of which they'd never used before.

But Dick recognized it instantly. "Bruce? Is that you?"

"It's me."

"Oh," Dick said, noticeably more clipped in tone, "What do you need me for? I'm sure you have Zatanna's number."

"What's he saying?" Clark hissed, stepping closer, "I can't hear."

"Is that Clark in your body?" Dick asked. Bruce twitched his hand at Clark, gesturing him away.

"Yes. And we've already secured Zatanna's help, whatever that was worth."

"Play nice, B," Dick chided, though the bite in his words faded.

"Hm. I'm calling in your support for the situation."

"I've got my hands pretty full over here in Blüd. One of the JL members can't help you?"

"I need someone to patrol Gotham in my absence."

A pause. "Oh. And you want...me?"

"You're the best candidate," Bruce said honestly.

"Aw, you know how to make a guy feel special."

"Primary objectives will be to keep things contained. Make sure Robin stays safe. Don't work on any open cases."

"Right. Sure. I should just count myself lucky to wear the cowl at all, huh?"

"Under no circumstances are you allowed to put on the cowl. Nightwing will patrol only."

Another pause, far more sour than the last. "Yeah, fuck you too. I don't know why I bother. I guess at least you didn't call Jean Paul, huh?"

"It's not the same," Bruce insisted.

Dick didn't reply.

"Nightwing?" Bruce took a step forward, as if he could reach out to him directly. "Do you copy?"

Dick sighed. "Yeah, I copy. I'm on my way to Gotham. Text me when your bodies swap back, I guess. Nightwing, out."

The line went dead without another word. From all the way down in Blüdhaven, he heard Dick toss the comm onto the table and whisper, "Fucking Bruce. God forbid we let Dick take some responsibility in his life."

A lump formed in Bruce's throat, but he swallowed around it. It was more difficult in this body; Bruce's own body was well-equipped to shove his feelings aside.

"What did he say?" Clark asked.

Bruce cast his hearing wide. "You're dismissed. Do not leave the manor until the counterspell takes effect."

Clark narrowed his eyes. "Bruce, are you–"

Bruce was gone before he could finish. He heard the rest of the question, of course, but it wasn't relevant.

What was relevant was the fires in California he heard burning.

The thing was, Bruce had always been very good at losing himself in the work.

It was remarkably easy to adapt here; this body didn't need to sleep, after all. It could go without complaint, which was a welcome reprieve. Bruce usually had to bully his body into doing the work after a certain point, especially after Bane. Oh, it cried from anger and exhaustion, but he was well used to that from his own body. He could ignore emotions until it buried him, and he would do so gladly.

In the aftermath of the whole thing, without the benefit of an eidetic memory, Bruce wouldn't remember the next thirty-six hours in their entirety. Instead, he would see them as flashes of sight, and sound. He'd remember the agony, most of all.

The wildfire in California: he arrived to the smell of ash on his tongue, and if he squinted he could see each and every tree along the Yosemite valley burning. It was unlike any enemy he'd faced before; faceless, nameless, forces of nature that would work at their whims. On instinct he reached for his utility belt, but there was no batarang or smoke grenade that would solve this. Instead he called up Superman's frost breath, and it was barely a thought before his mouth filled with a biting chill. He didn't sign any of the autographs shoved his way, but he remembered the tears in some firefighter's eyes as they thanked him for the help.

A car crash in Egypt: twelve car pile up. This smell of smoke was different, made rancid by fear as people tried to push and shove out of their cars. The metal bent like soft butter under his hands, and he didn't dare reach for the people for fear of being unable to control himself. Instead he cleared paths for people to make their own way out. He sat with four of the victims as they shook apart with shock. It felt strange to comfort someone in broad daylight rather than under the cover of the moon. He felt sure that he should give them a coat to wrap around their shoulders, and so he unclasped his cape. It didn't feel like enough.

A child who got tugged into a riptide along the Mexican coast: he ran to the sound of a screaming father, a sound he knew all too well. He knew nothing of ocean currents and riptides. He knew nothing of how to solve this, except to grab him and hope for the best. What would Clark do? No, what would Superman do? Years ago he'd pulled a child from the Gotham River, but this time it wasn't because Harley Quinn knocked a hapless bystander aside as she and the Joker swept through the city. Instead, it was just a boy who failed to listen to his father's advice to stay in sight. The boy he rescued looked nothing like Jason except for the sooty brown hair, but he smiled with the same innocent glee that Jason once did. He waited for the grief to hit his doldrums, but this body knew nothing of that grief. That too was loss, though he couldn't have said why.

Then an apartment building collapse in Metropolis: again, the calls of Superman were heard, and he flew hard and fast. What was the alternative? There was no alternative. He arrived in time to see a thick rebar come crashing through the air. He dove under it, expecting for a moment to feel the agony of being stabbed with rusty metal. Instead, of course, nothing happened. He grabbed each and every person in the building, and then went back for their pets because it seemed like something Superman should do. At each touch, he kept expecting the feel the familiar revulsion of skin-to-skin contact, but it never came. This body was used to being touched, it seemed.

A mugging in some darkened alleyway: he didn't even know the city, he just flew towards the nearest scream. Probably still Metropolis, then. This was something he knew how to do. This was routine for him. But as he pulled the man off the victim, he realized just a moment soon enough that he couldn't go for the punches he always did. Retribution could hold no place here, not when retribution could so quickly turn to death. So instead he shoved the perpetrator out into the main road and let him run. If it were Batman, he would have taught him a lesson. He would have shown him fear. He wasn't sure if the way the victim looked up at him in the aftermath was worth the trade off. He smiled and dusted her off and did his best Superman impression, which felt woefully plastic. Bruce wasn't someone who was supposed to do this. Here he was.

And between all of this, in each millisecond between crises: the quaking, heaving sound of humanity. Each heartbeat, each gasp of breath. Every word spoken from stranger, friend, lover, neighbor, child, coworker, mentor. There were some heartbeats that rang familiar to this body, snippets of conversation tied to them that he couldn't help but overhear. Bruce had never been by nature especially sensitive to people's privacy.

He was shocked to find the most familiar heartbeat tied to an even more familiar voice.

"Just look at the number of sightings over the last 24 hours–"

"Indeed, Mister Kent, though I'm not sure what you intend to do about it."

Bruce ignored them. He focused on the screams, of which there were many. So many he could drown under them. It would be so easy to follow their current until he lost himself to the fervor.

So he did. It was the same playbook as Batman, after all.

Dozens of crises due to human carelessness or cruelty, and he responded to as many of them as he possibly could. He continued to smile, because it was what Superman would do. It continued to feel strange to smile so much, especially under such dire situations.

His breaking point was the blockade.

Over thirty-six hours running back and forth across the globe, fighting the rising tide of his exhaustion. His body begged to stop, even for just a moment. But if he did stop, he wouldn't be moving.

Bruce was always moving.

He heard them first in the background, a few screams, a child's cry. A young girl who said, "What if we ask Superman for help?"

And so one voice cried out. Then another. Until Superman arrived.

A group of people stood on the shore, trying to wave down a boat of some kind. The boat in questions was being blockaded by a small fleet of military vessels.

"What's wrong?" he asked as he landed on the beach.

"That boat has food, water, medicine," one man told Superman, "we've been waiting for it for weeks. We were told that it would be allowed to land, but they won't let it get through their blockade. They won't tell us why."

Batman's problems were usually far less broad than this, but he knew this story nonetheless. Anyone with half an eye on politics would know this story. He landed on one of the vessels without too much gentleness, denting the floor of the boat slightly.

"Why is that vessel not being allowed through?" he demanded.

The soldier looked at him with a trusting eye. "We have reason to believe they're ferrying arms or intelligence to their terror cells. Orders are to keep them back until they agree to a sweep of their vessel."

And take the best of their medicine, no doubt. He looked out at the boat, x-ray vision showing nothing. "Would it suffice if I investigated myself?"

He'd been losing some of the Superman cadence. At first he'd held it strong; he knew Clark's tonal patterns as well as his own, which was something of a revelation.

The soldier shrugged. "I'll talk to my CO. Guess it couldn't hurt. Who'd object to Superman helping out their country, huh?"

Distinctly not what was happening here. He didn't comment on it, instead jetting over to the small humanitarian boat.

"Oh, thank God," a woman said, wiping her brow with a dusty bandanna. "Superman's here."

He tried for a reassuring smile. "Have you been told the concerns of the blockade?"

"They want to search us. But if they decide to take any of the supplies we have, we won't be able to stop them once they're aboard."

Exactly his concerns. He nodded. "I'll speak to them."

Back on the military ship. "They're clear. You can let them pass."

The soldier said as much into his walkie talkie. "All clear?"

"Negative, private," said a gruff voice into the walkie talkie, "They don't pass until they concede our authority."

On and on it went, for over an hour. Superman insisted that there was nothing wrong. Whatever politician was in charge of the whole mess kept stubbornly trying to win the game. Meanwhile, people were starving. People were dying.

He could hear them, further inland. The sick and weak and weary. People who needed medicine for pneumonia, who needed gauze for shrapnel wounds. People who were dying of hunger and thirst. People who didn't have clothes their size, and shivered in the corners of the building huddled for warmth.

And the soldier had the audacity to look at him and say, "Apologies, sir. Orders are orders."

The words lit something deep inside Bruce, something he recognized from himself. Something greater, too. For a split second, he didn't understand why his vision was going red. He blinked hard, painfully aware that his anger had consequences he wouldn't be able to live with.

As Batman, his anger was a vessel. Here, it was a weapon. Too dangerous for this world.

He took off from the ship before he could wrap his hands around the soldier's throat and break him in half.

Damn the consequences.

He first swept every soldier off every boat within range to attack. He dumped them unceremoniously in their capital city and took off without a word, ignoring every cry of, "I thought he was on our side!"

Then he crushed the entire military fleet in his hand, diving below the water to cut through the hull with his laser vision and watching them sink with vicious glee. This was far more Batman. Vengeance never stopped being sweet.

That was the easy part. The hard part lasted for hours upon hours, as he distributed supplies to every person he could reach. The man on the beach and the woman on the aid boat both directed him towards the areas that needed the most help, the hospitals in greatest need. So he went where he was needed.

He pressed coats into small children's hands, and passed out fresh water bottles to every person he saw. In the hospital he walked between the beds. He stayed with one man until he died of a completely preventable illness, if only they'd had the resources to save him.

It was agony.

There were people that needed him, he told himself as the last blanket was distributed to a small boy with the same floppy hair as Tim. But he couldn't bring himself to run towards any of the voices that cried for help. The entire world seemed to press on his shoulders, and if he so much as breathed wrong he would freeze the globe over, or else crush it in his hands.

Far too much for one person to bear.

So Bruce shot up in the air as fast as he could bear. Until the cacophonous roar of noise faded to a dull murmur. He stood in front of the blazing sun, pleasantly warm on his skin.

He stayed there for what felt like a long time. It couldn't have been more than half an hour. Admittedly, half an hour was a long time when he hadn't stopped moving in more than a day.

The call was low, barely a flicker among the hum of noise from Earth. There were plenty of people calling Bruce at much louder volumes than this. But this voice didn't make Bruce's heart skip a beat in his chest.

"Hey, uh, Bruce? Superman, I mean? If you're out there, I could really use your help."

It was his own voice, which hadn't gotten less weird to hear. But that didn't explain the double thump of his heart.

He knew exactly what the explanation was, and it was the same reason that Bruce didn't hesitate to come down to Earth.

Clark waited for him in the cave. He was dressed in the Batsuit, sans cowl. He held a familiar, lead-lined box in his hands.

"I hope you won't make me use this on you," he said.

"Depends on what you're going to tell me," Bruce replied. He crossed his arms in anticipation of another battle, though he wasn't sure how much more he could manage before he collapsed.

"You're going to beat yourself into the ground if you keep going like this. Trust me, I know. And to be quite honest with you, I don't want to get back into my body just to take a three day weekend on Mercury to recharge. Got me?"

Bruce clenched his jaw. He rebalanced his weight and debated the merits of just flying towards the nearest emergency. It wasn't like he had a shortage to choose from.

"Isn't this part of the job? Saving people's lives?"

"Yeah. It is." Clark looked Bruce dead in the eye. "But I don't help anything by solving every crisis in the world. People have to live their lives."

"So I should have just left those people to die?"

"No, of course not. But constantly searching for someone to save is only going to give you more people to save. You ever give people a chance to save themselves?"

It was the heart of what made him Batman. People had to save themselves. People had to be given the chance to change.

He conceded the point with a twitch of his jaw. He knew Clark saw it.

"You can't keep going like this. I know you, B. I know when you're running yourself ragged just to prove a point."

"I'm not trying to prove a point."

"You definitely are, don't lie to me."

"Maybe the point is that you should be working harder."

Clark raised an unimpressed eyebrow. His grip tightened on the lead-lined box. "Forgive me if I don't use you as a baseline for hard work."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, I just– look, can I put this away. It's giving me the creeps thinking about using this on myself."

Bruce looked at Clark long and hard. The exhaustion bruises under his eyes were worse, and the way he held himself was too familiar. He was in pain, trying to hide it. Trying to hide it out of that body's habits, or just because he didn't want Bruce to see?

He gave a curt nod. Clark let out a slow breath and pushed the box away. He gave Bruce a small smile.

"Are you trying to punish me for disobeying orders, or whatever you think happened that night?"

"Should I be?"

"No, because that's ridiculous and you know it. You would have done the same thing in my position, and I know this because you have done the same thing in my position."

"And you always make sure I hear about it," Bruce pointed out.

"Well yeah, someone's gotta hold you accountable," Clark said with a wry smile, "Your hypocrisy would know no bounds if I didn't."

Despite himself, Bruce felt a laugh pressing at his tongue. "You're one to talk."

"World's Finest Hypocrites."

There it was again. This time Bruce couldn't hold back the laugh. It wasn't at all like the laugh in his own body, hard-won and caustic. This laugh didn't come with a price.

Clark was looking at him with something nakedly fond in his eyes. Bruce felt his lips twitch into a broader smile, heart skipping a beat at the glimmer in his eyes.

It was his own face he was looking at, which hadn't gotten less bizarre. But he knew instinctively it was Clark. He could never feel this in his body for anyone other than Clark.

"How do you stand it?" he asked, slipping through his teeth without permission.

Clark tilted his head. "'It?'"

Bruce pushed a hand into the cape, making it flutter behind him. It was the only sound in the cave beyond the chitter of bats and the drip of stalactites. Still, he could hear the entire world.

But Clark was in front of him. That was the entire world.

Clark's eyes went soft with recognition. He huffed a quiet laugh. "That's funny. I was actually going to ask you the same thing."

"Me?"

"Yeah, I mean– I thought I knew what you were like, before. But I don't think I really did."

Bruce could relate. He understood Clark, with all his idiosyncrasies and his tendencies to take on too much. His kindness and compassion, all the things that made him who he was.

But he didn't really understand how much of a toll this life took on him. How could he have? It was literally alien to him.

"The person you are," Clark said, "it's more than I could have known. The anger, your grief–"

"You feel that?" Bruce asked, horrified.

"I thought it was just soreness. I don't experience all the aches and pains your body does very often. But I realized..." Clark looked over to Jason's memorial case, "there were triggers. Like Zatanna said. And then it clicked."

On principle, Bruce hated the idea of being known like that. Laid bare like some whimpering dog. But this was Clark, looking at him with the same kind solidarity he always did, even under a different face.

He swallowed. "You shouldn't have had to go through that. I'm sorry."

"Come on," Clark scoffed, stepping closer, "How many times have I begged you to let me share your burdens? As far as I'm concerned, this was overdue."

Bruce flinched. "It's not your grief to feel."

Clark looked at him, eyes trailing up and down the suit. He rubbed his breastbone, the familiar place where Bruce's grief sat. "It kind of is, though."

Fuck. He was feeling Bruce's grief for himself.

That was too much.

"It's mine," he snapped. "Don't pretend you know what it's like."

"Of course I know what it's like," Clark replied, mouth twisting in a soft scowl, "Ever since I came back, everyone looks at me like– they look at me like I'm still dead, sometimes. The civilians I save grab my hands like I'm...Jesus, or something. It's weird. It's so weird. Of course that grief is mine."

Thinking back on it, the awe in those faces could easily have been relief that their hero was alive. It must be horrifying, to see reminders of your death in every corner of the globe you turned to.

"But you never looked at me like that. You didn't even let me see you out of the cowl for months. It–" Clark laughed, running a hand through his grey-streaked hair, "it drove me crazy. You were just cranky and rude, and you kept acting like I didn't know how to do my job at all. It was nice to not be looked at like I was going to drop dead, but– I thought I must have imagined what we were working towards, before."

Bruce felt his jaw tighten on instinct, approaching something too tender too fast.

"But I didn't imagine it, did I?"

He couldn't look at Clark. He couldn't bear it. This world that unfolded before him seemed impossible.

Clark stepped closer. Under the gauntlets, the hands that reached for him were too calloused, far unlike what he wanted those hands to be. Bruce jerked away.

"Come on, Bruce. Say something."

"I'm not the same man I was then," Bruce murmured, "Whatever affection you have is misplaced."

"It's not misplaced, it's still you."

"I can't be what you need."

"You already are what I need."

Bruce finally looked into his own eyes. He felt his heart skip a beat meeting them. He heard Clark's heartbeat skip in turn.

How strange, that their bodies carried this instinct. Did Clark's body know how to love him even from within the grave? Did he emerge still with the same butterflies about Bruce's eyes and hands, or did that have to be remembered?

"It was already agony when Jason died," he said, admitting it from the very depths of his soul, "But I think when you died, I died too."

Clark let out a gasp, mouth dropping open. "Bruce–"

"I'm not telling you this to be romantic. I still dream about you dying. It can't happen again. And I'm not the person who you loved, before. Your death killed him."

"Tell me you love me."

Bruce blinked. "Didn't you hear–"

Clark stepped forward, gripping his own cape. "Just trust me. Tell me you love me."

"Clark–"

"I'll say it first, even. I love you, Bruce."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Bruce would have lost his balance with vertigo if Clark hadn't been holding onto him. On horrific, love-bound instinct, Bruce replied, "I love you, Clark."

It was then that Bruce realized the vertigo he'd been feeling was literal, not metaphorical. He stumbled again, and a bright flash of purple erupted from nowhere.

The world went dark, and when Bruce woke up it was to the sound of silence.

No heartbeats, no screams. The weight of the world no longer sat between his shoulders. When Bruce stripped off his gauntlets, his hands were blessedly calloused and scarred from years of using them as a weapon.

He looked up to see Clark, heart skipping a familiar beat at the eye contact. Bruce took a moment to look him up and down, relieved to see everything as it should be.

This was the Clark he knew.

"How did you know that would work?" he asked.

"I asked Zatanna while you were in the middle of your tirade against the universe what she meant by sorting things out." Clark shrugged sheepishly, cheeks faintly pink. "She said she was sick of us playing will they, won't they."

Damn meddling League. Bruce was going to have to have a very stern word with her about the severity of the work. It couldn't be impacted just because she wanted to play matchmaker.

"Stop plotting her demise," Clark said, rolling his eyes, "We should be sending her a fruit basket. Now, can I just–?"

Quicker than Bruce could blink, Clark wrapped an arm around his shoulders, yanking him up and into a bruising kiss.

Bruce had his fingers curled in Clark's cape on instinct, pulling himself that much closer. Clark smelled the same as his sheets, ozone and sunshine and his cheap shampoo. He traced his fingers up his neck and jaw, savoring the soft skin.

Clark kissed him the way he imagined you would give a last kiss, one of those big sweeping romantic kisses from the movies or a fantasy novel. The kind of thing the heroine would give the hero before he left her, whispering, "Come back to me," as they parted.

And so Clark did.

"Mm, Clark," he gasped.

"Thought about doing this for so long," Clark whispered against his lips, "Years I've sat there fighting with you thinking about how bad I want to kiss you."

"You want to kiss me when we fight?"

"I always want to kiss you."

Bruce surged forward at that. Clark eagerly took his weight as he kissed him, tongues sliding against each other in a curious, sensuous press.

"This is a bad idea," he said.

"This is actually the best idea we've had to date," Clark argued, rolling them slightly to pin Bruce on the ground. He grinned. "In fact, I have a couple more ideas."

"We should update the team on our situation," Bruce insisted as Clark bent to kiss down the column of his neck. He ran a hand through Clark's curls, stripping them of that gel he used as Superman. "There's the incident report to finish and then file, and we need to–"

"You're ridiculous," Clark said, rising with a lovesick grin. "I don't know why I put up with you."

"Not sure either," Bruce grunted.

That sobered Clark slightly. "Hey. You know I meant it, right?"

"I know. The magic wouldn't have worked otherwise. Besides, you're an awful liar."

"I'm a good liar."

"Not with me."

Clark smiled. "No, not with you."

That shouldn't have felt so romantic. Bruce scowled.

"You really want this?" he asked, "Me?"

"Of course."

"I can't lose you again, Clark. Especially if– it was one thing to lose my best friend. But you–"

"Bruce," Clark said, lowering his head until their foreheads connected, "I swear to you that I will always come back to you."

"You can't make that promise."

"I already resurrected myself once for you, didn't I?"

It wasn't for him, Bruce knew. And as far as he understood it, Clark came back from the dead entirely outside of his control. Still, the notion sent a flurry of something fragile across his ribs.

"Promise me the same," Clark demanded.

Bruce wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him deeply. The same way Clark kissed him just minutes ago. "I swear it."

Clark kissed him again. The world was blissfully silent, and the ache present ache under Bruce's chest faded to something just a little softer.