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It's Dick who approaches Clark. Not Bruce.
Clark is as happy to see him as he is disappointed.
"You know it's always great to have you here, Dick," he says, sitting across from him in a bright, cheerful cafe in Metropolis, focusing on the steady heartbeat of the young man in front of him against the eternal chatter of the city that tries to drown it out. "But, uh. I kind of feel like you're not just in town to catch up."
Dick runs a hand through his hair sheepishly. His fingers brush the strands with the oil-softness he knows comes from an overdue shower. "Geez," he sighs. "I really do need to visit more, don't I?"
Clark smiles sympathetically. I, Dick says. Not we, not anymore. The bats are so closed off about themselves — Clark's knowledge of Dick and Bruce's relationship these days is based entirely on little scraps and clues like this.
"Is everything okay?" he asks, lowering his voice. "Is Bruce…?"
"Yeah, yeah, he's fine," Dick says, immediately flashing back a smile that's only a little dimmer than Clark knows it should be. "Or, I mean…" he makes a small, jerky gesture with his hand. He swallows, a sudden wet flex of muscle.
Clark leans back, cupping his mug of coffee as he gives him space. Behind them, the milk steamer hisses to life. "We're coming up on the one year mark," he says, understanding.
"Yeah," Dick sighs. "He's doing okay, really, as far as… you know. I think as much as anyone could expect him to be doing. Tim's helped a lot."
For the first time, his smile looks truly genuine, and Clark feels relief. I'd like to meet him some time, he almost says out of politeness, but doesn't.
Someday, he'll be able to say it honestly. Right now, the memory of the last bright, cheerful bird to wear that uniform is still too fresh in his mind.
"I'm glad to hear that," he says instead. He leans forward again. "What can I do to help?"
His best friend hasn't responded to his attempts to reach out. Clark keeps trying — he tries to send an email or a text at least once a week, though he has no idea if Bruce actually reads them. But he hopes Dick isn't relying on Clark having any sort of link to him that he doesn't.
Dick gives him a grateful look.
There's a trafficking ring, Dick explains. It's based in Gotham, but they've traced tendrils of it to Metropolis too. It's the kind of multi-headed beast that Batman could lose himself in, easily.
Batman is looking for places to lose himself.
He'd like Clark to keep an eye out, here in his city. That way they can keep the scope of their own investigation limited to Gotham's borders — one less thing for Bruce to worry about.
Clark accepts gladly. It's not his typical kind of work, but it's his city — he'd do it even if it weren't for a friend, and even if his ready acceptance didn't make Dick's face brighten out of its tiredness, bringing him just a little closer to the boy Clark knew him as, just a year before.
Clark wishes it were as simple as lying in bed at night and listening until he heard a trafficking ring at work.
Unfortunately, it's a little more complicated than that.
The city is a churning white noise of sounds and voices, layered on top of an entire planet's worth of the same. For every heartbeat fluttering in fear, there are a thousand more pounding away in excitement, in nervousness, working out or having sex or just a hard conversation.
Something like this needs Clark Kent more than it needs Superman.
Clark makes good on his promise to start digging on the very same day Dick gives him the file they've got so far, edited down to what Dick thinks could be relevant to Metropolis. There's some names and locations for him to check out, and he has a few sources he can reach out to to see if they can tell him anything.
But detective work is slow work. And he can only afford to be part time, given that he's already got several stories of his own he's working on, including a promising lead on a burgeoning corruption scandal that he's been chasing for months.
His half of the wall where they hang their best framed work is looking rather sparse compared to Lois's — he's overdue to write something that'll end someone in government's career.
All told, it's nearly two weeks before he gets a real lead, another three before he finds a link to where they're likely stashing their victims before they're sold.
The anniversary of Jason's death comes and goes somewhere in the middle. Clark leaves off work early to spend the evening with Lois.
He sends Bruce a text.
I hope you're okay. Call me if you need anything.
He doesn't expect to hear back. And he doesn't.
Some publicly available real estate documents and a helpful tip from an old source take him to a warehouse in the lower East side that has far more warm bodies in it than any supposed supply depot should at two in the morning.
He hovers in the sky above, jaw tight and cape flapping around his boots as he watches the movements of the skeletons inside. The largest bodies are gathered in a loose — the smaller ones, nearly twenty of them, are in a large, chain-link pen. Like dogs in an over-stuffed kennel.
He flinches with them at the clang of the cage door as one of the men drags two of the victims out into the middle of the circle. He can hear bets being placed as the slight, cowering figures are made to face off.
If Clark were a bat, maybe he'd linger for longer, gathering intel. He decides he's seen enough before the first blow can be thrown.
He moves so fast there's still money caught between hands by the time he throws the last of the traffickers into an empty shipping container and welds the lock shut.
He knows he breaks some bones. Staring at the wire pen full of hollow-eyed, bruise-marked victims, he can't find much guilt in himself.
Most of them can't be older than twenty at the high end.
The smallest ones look no older than eleven or twelve.
"It's okay," he says softly, hands held out reassuringly.
Clark's throat is almost too tight to speak. But he forces himself to keep talking softly to them, a steady stream of soft words as he scans for any urgent injuries.
It's unsettling how silent the group is. Other than the pounding of their hearts and the soft rasps of their breaths, there's hardly a sound from them, not even the brush of skin and fabric as they shift.
Finding no critical injuries at a glance on any of the kids in the pen, he turns his attention instead to the two boys who'd been forced into the ring.
He had acted before either of them could strike the other.
So Clark is taken aback by the amount of blood covering the smaller of the boys.
"Whoa," he breathes, stepping closer to the kid — and it is a kid, he can't be older than fifteen — where he's cowering against a shipping crate, dark, matted hair hanging down around his gaunt face, covering his eyes. "Hey, it's okay, I'm here to help. Where are you hurt?"
His shirt, his pants — they're splattered with the stuff, his hands and the pale skin of his throat stained with it as though rusted. Though, as he looks closer, he realizes most of it is already well-dried.
He takes another cautious step, and at the scuff of his boot on the concrete, the boy flinches, hard — the rasp of his breath rattles as though a rib might be out of place.
Clark stops in his tracks.
Hesitantly, he turns his attention instead towards the other boy — several years older and broader, standing hunched and tense in what had been the middle of the ring.
His nose is bleeding and he's got more than a few bruises under his tattered clothes, but he looks at Clark with the dawning, painful hope of someone realizing it's over.
So Clark gives him a tentative, tight smile. "Hey," he says, just as gently, relieved when this boy actually meets his eyes — gaze wide and terrified, but at least aware. He nods towards the kennel with the other kids. "Can you do a job for me?" After a moment, the boy jerks his chin yes. "Can you check on them, and see if any of them need anything?"
Clark knows they all need many things. Food, water, medical care. Therapy.
But right now, he just needs to give the boy something to do.
The boy nods again, quicker this time.
A flash of Clark's eyes, and the latch melts off the gate, leaving the door open and unlocked for him.
He turns his focus back to the bloody boy.
"Easy," he murmurs, as he comes closer, slow and soft. "Hey, buddy. I'm Superman. I'm here to help. It's over now."
He's close enough now to touch him. The boy still is staring at the floor. The jagged pounding of his heart is almost deafening to Clark's ears, breath coming in wheezy rattles.
Clark reaches out to him. His fingers brush the bare, blood-flaked skin of his arm.
So quick that it startles even Clark, the kid moves.
He leaps at Clark like a feral thing.
Clark allows his body to fall backwards with the boy's weight, trying to keep him from hurting his already bruised skin against Clark.
He doesn't make it easy.
He snarls, teeth snapping as he tries to bite at Clark's throat, clawing at Clark's face, his chest — everywhere he can reach. Clark catches flashes of blue eyes, scarred skin.
His fingernails, already broken and torn, tear further, leaving bloody smears across Clark's uniform.
The scent of iron is so thick in Clark's nose he can taste it.
"Easy, easy, Jesus —"
He wraps a hand around the boy's too-skinny wrists, trying to be the softest handcuff he can be, desperate to stop him from hurting himself further. The boy throws himself against his grip so hard his bones creak as Clark rolls them over, trying to pin him down as gently as possible.
To Clark's horror, he can feel the harsh lumps of old breaks under the fragile skin where the boy has healed wrong.
"You're going to hurt yourself —" he says desperately.
The boy screams at him in answer, a single, wordless shriek of rage and fear.
The strength seems to leave him quickly. Clark's surprised he had this much to begin with. His voice dies off to a weak moan, and he slumps back against the floor, small, fragile chest heaving.
His blue eyes are unfocused.
His face is familiar.
"Jason?" Clark chokes.
Superman leaves the children — all of them — with the medics that swarm the warehouse along with the police.
Clark Kent shows up at Metropolis General Hospital within the hour in rumpled clothes and bedhead, following a tip about a human trafficking bust.
"I heard from a witness that the younger son of Bruce Wayne may have been found alive among the victims," he says to the nurse at the front reception area. "Do you know if it's true? Has Bruce Wayne been contacted?"
He knows the idea that the catatonic boy whose heartbeat he can hear a floor above in the pediatric ward might be Bruce Wayne's son, a boy who the entire world still believes to be dead, won't have crossed anyone's mind. Superman couldn't tell the police at the scene that he knew him, and Jason has yet to speak a single word to anyone.
Clark's been listening.
The woman's face remains severe as she tells him firmly that she can't disclose anything about any patients. But he sees her eyes widen.
He steps out to wait out in front of the building, and listens to her make a call.
There's an awful, cowardly part of him that wants to wait here for things to run their course. They'll DNA test Jason — expedited, once the rumor that they may have the lost son of a billionaire in their care reaches the right ears.
And when they figure out who he is, someone from the hospital — some kind-voiced social worker — will call Bruce, and tell him they have Jason. Alive.
But the better part of him knows that Bruce deserves to hear it from a friend. Not a stranger.
He makes the call.
He calls three times. All three ring all the way to voicemail.
The fourth time, he calls the Manor itself.
Alfred picks up. "Wayne Residence," he says in a clipped, professional voice that Clark isn't used to hearing from the butler.
"Alfred," he says, and has to swallow a lump down before he can continue. "Hey. It's been a while."
"Mr. Kent," he says, after a brief moment of surprise, and there's the warmth Clark had missed hearing from him. "It has indeed. Is everything alright?"
"I'm fine," he assures him. "Nothing's, um. I mean —" he lets out a breath, pinching his nose. "I don't want you to worry. But it's really important that I talk to Bruce, and he's not picking up his phone, and I, um. I found… something."
Upstairs, Jason's heartbeat remains elevated but steady.
On the other side of the bay, he can hear Alfred's pick up.
"I'll fetch him," he says, tone now completely serious. "He'll call you back from his personal phone."
A secure line, Clark understands it to mean.
"Thank you," he says, and waits until he hears the click of the receiver to hang up himself.
He sighs, leaning back against the wall of the hospital, listening to the people inside move and talk and breathe as he waits.
He hates hospitals. Even out here, he can smell the stench of blood and disinfectant.
A nurse steps out, a pack of cigarettes in her hand, and the scent of the hospital wafts out with her through the open doors.
He turns and shuffles around the corner where the air is fresher and there's no one to listen in. He tilts his head back, listening, and realizes he's put himself right under Jason's hospital window.
He can hear a male and a female voice speaking, just a little more muffled than the fluttering heartbeat closest to the window. It's rude to listen in, but he can't help himself.
"We'll keep him sedated for the time being," the man murmurs. "Even with the restraints, I'm concerned about him hurting himself. Given the signs of malnutrition, we may also be looking at mild osteoporosis, and the last thing he needs is a broken wrist right now if he tries to struggle like the EMTs report he did."
Clark closes his eyes.
"We should have the DNA results back soon, if they match anything in the system," the woman's voice replies. A moment's hesitation, a soft intake of breath. "Did you hear he could be — ?"
The phone in Clark's hand buzzes. He picks up, grateful for the interruption.
"Kal," Bruce's voice says, sharp, and the gratitude is replaced in an instant with nerves. "What's going on?"
"Bruce," Clark says, and is remarkably proud of how steady his voice is. "You need to come to Metropolis immediately. The — the police are going to be calling you soon. But… I thought you should hear it from me first." The steadiness falters. "I found Jason, Bruce," he says softly. "He's alive."
Bruce doesn't bother to get Clark's location from him. Clark honestly wouldn't be surprised if he's got some sort of a tracker on his phone — it would be a very Bruce thing to do.
Clark listens idly to the two overlapping heartbeats — one above him, one tearing down the highway towards Metropolis at a terribly unsafe speed for a human.
The call from the hospital comes when Bruce is at the outskirts of his city.
This, Clark tunes out. He doesn't think he has the right to that — it's too hard to tell how much of Bruce's shaking voice is Brucie Wayne and how much is Bruce.
Bruce almost clips an ambulance on its way out when he finally roars into the hospital lot. He parks half in a space, leaping out of the car before the engine's even shut off.
"Clark," he rasps as he stumbles up to him, his usual grace all but gone. His eyes are wild. "You saw him?"
"I saw him," he says. "I found him. He was in — Dick asked me to look into a human trafficking ring that was shipping — merchandise, across the Bay." He swallows. Bruce's eyes scan across his face desperately, searching for truth. "He's in pretty rough shape, Bruce," he says softly. "I don't… I don't think he recognized me. He's sedated right now, but… they're calling him catatonic."
Bruce steps back away from him, breathing hard. His hands flex, and Clark can hear the tightening of his tendons in his knuckles. His hair is mussed — Clark wonders how many times he ran his fingers through it as he drove here. "I buried him, Clark," he rasps. "He was —"
"I know." Clark's eyes are burning. "I know, Bruce. I know he was. But I know his heart, Bruce. It's above us right now. And it's beating, Bruce."
Another big step back. Bruce is turning away from him — he's gotten all he can get out of him.
He needs to see for himself now.
He doesn't say another word to him. Clark thinks he's already forgotten he's even there by the time he reaches the front doors of the hospital.
Clark doesn't try to follow.
He just listens as his best friend barrels his way through the hospital to get to his son.
He hears the harsh intake of breath as he reaches the room upstairs, the thump of a hand gripping the doorframe. His heart is pounding like it's trying to escape his chest.
Jason's heart, sluggish from the drugs they've given him, picks up, just a little.
Clark isn't breathing himself as he listens to Bruce's slow, faltering footsteps on the linoleum. The hospital bed creaks as he sits down, fingers rustling against the scratchy sheets.
For just a minute, the world feels quiet.
Another soft breath, hitched and small. A raspy, weak voice.
"Dad?"
Clark tilts his head back to rest against the brick. The stars above are soft and blurred.
It almost makes him feel human.