Hardcode

by grapepop

Summary:

“I repeat, Batman to all points. Does anyone copy?”
His comm responds with a weak crackle. Nothing but static. Waste of time. Bruce measures out a breath, ignoring the shudder of fear in his chest. And oxygen.
Ten minutes remaining until critical levels are reached. Immediate resupply is required.
Ten minutes, and no one is coming to repair the javelins. The main station is lost.
He’s had better odds.

Hardcode (v.): To integrate data such that the original program must be modified to remove it.
To embed beliefs, values, or otherwise in an individual such that it becomes integral.

a fic for bad things happen bingo, prompt: taking you with me!

Notes:

I took some liberties with the science of this whole thing seeing that I'm dealing with 1) sci-fi robots and 2) a comic in which batman reentered the atmosphere with just the batsuit and a mask, so go easy on me lol. I really tried

thank you scarlett and nova for beta reading!

Chapter 1: Control

Thirty minutes remaining until critical levels are reached. Immediate resupply is required.

The Javelin pod is only getting colder. With every breath the windows fog, obscuring the deep space beyond. 

Bruce’s eyes burn from exhaustion, white stars blinking in and out of view. 

The stars aren’t stopping. 

A black expanse yawns before him, dotted with crippled chunks of debris floating aimlessly past him. Jagged metal glints faintly in the light of a distant sun. And beyond it, real stars, thousands of burning holes in the black curtain of space. 

Bruce wills his hand to steady as he fumbles for the comm link in his helmet. 

“Batman to all points. Do you copy?”

Silence. 

He tries the system again, waiting for anything, any spark of sound. His eyes squeeze shut with concentration, half-trying for a telepathic S.O.S. As if J’onn were even in range to receive it. 

Nothing. Whatever Failsafe had done while in the Watchtower, it had effectively left Bruce stranded after his escape. He doubts it was an accident. 

Bruce shudders, chilled from shock. A half hour of oxygen and what he could only hope was a full tank of water were the only vouchers for his survival. A quick glance at the dashboard says life support is intact, but the fuel tanks are near-empty. 

How? He couldn’t have been in the Watchtower for more than ten, fifteen minutes. Even less before Failsafe’s arrival. 

If that was his arrival. 

The skeleton of the Watchtower continues to unfurl before him, its mangled metal limbs adrift. Even half-healed from Arthur’s treatment, the Watchtower had been a priority. With Failsafe in pursuit and unable to bypass the transporters’ security, Bruce had figured he’d have a little more time to lock the place down, slowing Failsafe’s approach. 

Knowing its programming, it would have been privy to a few too many files hosted on the tower’s servers—not to mention the armory. Best to keep it out of the loop if possible. 

And yet. One count of Grand Theft Spacecraft, and it had found its way on board. Now no communications, no Watchtower, and soon no fuel. No chance, if Bruce is being pragmatic. 

Where the hell was all the fuel?

---

Failsafe hadn’t even bothered with the docking ports. As soon as Bruce had begun encryption in the Watchtower’s hub, the dashboard alerted him to the breach. It was here, and it was coming fast. 

His boots skidded against the tower’s floor as he made a beeline for the armory, jamming the code into the keypad with enough force for it to spark. The automatic lights flickered on, and Bruce was already scanning the room for his target when the sound of scraping metal rang in from the hall. 

Bruce pinned himself to the inner wall of the armory, right arm grasping for the weapon nearest to him. His fingers grazed a trigger. Breathless, he mounted the weapon to his shoulder and squeezed at the shadow darkening the doorway.  

A blinding beam cut through the air, crackling with burning light. It split the shoulder of Failsafe’s armor with a resounding crack, alighting on the wires covering its body. Its metal skeleton shuddered at the impact. The red light of its faceplate fizzled out for one blessed, brief moment into a blank slate of black. 

And then it returned. Brighter than before, Bruce thought, but maybe that was the blast burning away his corneas. 

Shit.  

Bruce tossed the blaster aside, not bothering to check the remaining charge. Whatever the cooldown was, it wasn’t fast enough. 

By his count, there were two halls leading back toward the main hub. The shortest was the one Failsafe was currently standing in. 

The other had an airlock. 

Bruce lunged toward the second hall just as burning metal grazed his boot, still hot from the blast. He kicked it away. The exit’s glowing sign burned in his peripheral, beckoning him. His side skinned the frame of the exit as he stumbled inside. 

The inner door of the airlock greeted him as he jammed an elbow into the controls. It opened slowly, too slowly, and Bruce could feel the scraping of Failsafe’s metal limbs against the hall in his teeth before the hatch gave way just enough to slip through. He pressed himself against the outer hatch, baiting the bot inside.

Failsafe crammed itself into the airlock's chamber. Its metal plating scraped against the ceiling like nails on a chalkboard as it dragged itself through the narrow walls, all the while focused on Bruce. He couldn't move, not yet, not until it was in range.

There.

Failsafe swung at Bruce a split second too late. Bruce dove between the bot's legs, rolling out into the main hall before clambering up the wall, his back pressed to the cool metal.

Bruce’s hand grasped at the empty air. The outer hatch crank grazed his palm and he took it, yanking it down with as much force as he could muster. The hatch began to seal, still agonizingly slow, and Bruce watched it barrel toward him up until the final inch had been sealed off.

The depressurizer hummed to life beyond the door. Bruce could feel Failsafe bucking at the hatch in response. Not that the lack of air would be the thing to finally disable it—Bruce was hoping the next part would take care of that.

The door bulged behind him, dented metal molding itself to his back as he held the door shut. Bruce hissed in pain as another blow shook its way down his spine. Please , he begged through his teeth, please hold .

Another hit, two, and finally the blessed hiss of the outer hatch opening drowned out Failsafe's struggle. Then...

Silence.

Bruce gasped, bracing himself against the wall so he wouldn't slide down to the floor right then and there. Adrenaline clutched his heart in a burning fist. Right about now, Failsafe should have been floating past the underbelly of the Watchtower. Perfect.

It gave him two minutes, tops.

Bruce burst into the main control room not a minute later, having bolted down the main hall as soon as the inner hatch sealed. It had only taken seconds for the rhythmic thump of the bot's claws against the outer hull to beat through the ship like a metallic pulse, mirroring Bruce’s thundering steps. Failafe must have been clinging to the outer hull, likely tracking his heat signature toward the main hub.

The doors to the control room appeared around the corner just as the wall to his left bulged outward, metal puckered from the blow outside. Failsafe was trying to break his way back in. Bruce ducked as two more dents formed on the inner walls. Twenty feet, a dozen, and he’d be at the controls. Behind him, the Tower groaned against the force of the bot beating its way through the hull. 

He skidded past the doors to the control room, mashing every other button on the keypad in the hope that at least one of them would be the lock mechanism. The doors began to slide shut slowly, too slowly , and Bruce swore under his breath. His two minutes were long since up. 

The Tower's dashboard flickered weakly across the room. Bruce's hands stuttered over the keys, searching for the data on the nearest ports, coaxing any possible exit strategy out of the system. The monitors above flooded with errors—at least half of the Javelins were out of commission, and the ones that weren’t were docked in compromised ports. Bruce scanned the screens, sweat stinging beneath his cowl.  

There. A flash of green in his peripheral was all the hope he needed. Hangar Six, just a couple hundred feet from the main hub, was intact. Three of the five pods were registered as docked. He would only need one.

Bruce lifted his head, gaze trained on the doors at the opposite end of the hub. A short hall beyond that, and he’d be at the hangar. He turned, ready to make a run for it just as an iron grip closed on the back of his skull and smashed it into the console below. 

A flash of white bleached his vision. Pain exploded behind the cowl, and in a moment of panic Bruce fumbled for a Batarang from his belt and clawed blindly at the air behind him before gripping Failsafe’s arm and wedging it between the casing, severing something on its way in. Its grip tightened for a moment, electric muscles contracting at the shock, and Bruce choked back a scream before Failsafe finally let go. Bruce gasped, staggering backward as blood flowed freely from his nose. Distantly, he could sense that his most recent rhinoplasty had just been undone. 

He caught his breath, slowly calculating exactly how much shit he was in while Failsafe reconfigured. If it had reentered the Tower, that meant it had been breached. Judging by how fast Failsafe had found him, it was somewhere close. A gaping hole in the hull, sucking oxygen out of the ship—he'd be feeling it any minute now. No way to seal it off quickly if he had no idea where exactly it was.

There was nothing left for him here. He had to get out. 

In the corner of his eye, Failsafe lurched forward, and Bruce ducked just as it buried its hand in one of the monitors behind him. Sparks sizzled in the air. 

He had an idea. 

Bruce dodged and weaved closer and closer to the power core of the controls. Failsafe could likely sense he was on to something—it did have his mind, after all—but its programming couldn’t override a chance to complete its objective. That is, there was no passing up a killing blow. 

Its fist crashed through the outer casing and instantly seized. The shock lanced up its arm like lightning as thousands of volts charged through its system. The bot shuddered, its arm caught in a net of wires, and Bruce swore he smelled smoke as he barrelled past and through the doors for Hangar Six. 

Air seemed to pass through his lungs, never truly feeling like he’s breathing. However big the breach had been, wherever it was, it had already started to depressurize other parts of the Tower. His broken cowl was slick with sweat. With Failsafe recovering behind him, hypoxia was now the second-biggest threat. No telling which would be faster. Hopefully, it would be Bruce . 

Hangar Six stretched out before him as he bolted through the last few feet of the hall. Three Javelin pods, still intact, were docked at their stations. Bruce lunged at the closest one, half-slipping in a pool of who-knows-what and wrenching its door open. His joints screamed in protest as nitrogen bubbled between his bones, the pressure loss begging to pull him under. 

Bruce clambered into the pod and engaged the lock. Just a few seconds more to get it running and off the Tower. 

The shadow of Failsafe lurches into the doorway of the hangar. Bruce prays, or something close to it. 

It stumbled into the dock, one unsteady foot in front of the other, and in the span of seconds it was sprinting toward Bruce’s pod. He braced the hatch with his legs, knowing they'd break from the force before the glass could, watching the closing lock with bated breath and sweat-stung eyes as it slowly, painfully sealed the moment Failsafe jammed its claws beneath it. 

The door stopped, shuddered, and the bot’s fingers were severed with a resounding crunch.  

Bruce slumped into his seat, focusing on slowing his heart rate rather than the remains of Failsafe’s hands scraping against the glass. It was over; the pod had engaged immediately after the lock. Bruce closed his eyes and let himself feel the pod launch from the hangar and into the abyss, alone.

---

Fifteen minutes remaining until critical levels are reached. Immediate resupply is required.

There’s still no destination set for the pod. 

He’d been adrift not fifteen minutes, taking the first moment since Arthur’s for damage control. The entirety of the Watchtower, for starters. The write-off for Wayne Enterprises was going to be impossible. 

He takes a cursory glance at the pod’s monitors. Pressure and oxygen are stable, for now. No errors, no flashing lights. Good. 

Bruce lets his chin fall to his chest, forcing himself to breathe. A deep, unrelenting nausea—from depressurization, from stress, from breaking the Tower’s controls with his face —roils in his gut. He stares at the floor of the pod, willing it all away. 

Something dark and wet stares back. 

What?

Slowly, Bruce tilts forward until he can see his boots. Dark stains creep into the fabric, yet unnoticed. 

And there it was. The puddle in the hangar, the one in the pod: Fuel. He’d stepped in fuel. 

The cold clutches at his lungs as Bruce’s chest heaves at the realization. The first time he saw Failsafe may not have been the first time it set foot on the station. The time Bruce assumed it took to find him after landing had been spent draining the pods’ reserves. 

Of course the tanks were empty. Why else would the pods be left for him? Better yet, why left intact?

Bruce grinds his teeth behind his visor. I know why, you bastard. Because why confront him in the station, with its systems and security all geared to Bruce’s advantage, when it could isolate him completely. It knew Bruce could find a way out. It let him. And it led him here . 

His head snaps back up for a closer look at the monitors. They only prove him right. Nothing urgent, not yet, but a study of the fuel reserves reads a staggeringly low percentage for what should be a new pod. It will sustain him, for now, but never long enough to do anything with this borrowed time. 

Bruce is, finally, at a loss. 

Watching the fog of his breath plume against the surface is something focused, meditative to stave off the panic growing in his chest—at a time like this, proof of life is somewhat of a comfort.

He focuses on slowing his thudding heart, pushing the little oxygen left through his body. It pulses in time with the throbbing ache from where he’d hit the console. There’d be a concussion and nasal fracture to deal with, at least, but not before hypoxia if the oxygen continues to drop. Really, he’s spoiled for choice.  

“I repeat, Batman to all points. Does anyone copy?”

His comm responds with a weak crackle. Nothing but static. Waste of time. Bruce measures out a breath, ignoring the shudder of fear in his chest. And oxygen.  

Ten minutes remaining until critical levels are reached. Immediate resupply is required.

Ten minutes, and no one is coming to repair the javelins. The main station is lost.

He’s had better odds.

Chapter 2: Alt

Summary:

Bruce gets a lift back to Earth.

“Ba…t…m...n?”

Bruce jolts upward in the pod, bathed red in the light of its monitors. Nausea radiates from the base of his skull, mind still reeling from the earlier impact. His breath reeks of stale blood. Had he been out? How long? What was—

“Br…u...ce?”

He fumbles blindly along the floor of the pod until he finds his communicator. Bruce raises it to his ear with trembling fingers. 

“Hello? Does anyone copy?”

He holds his breath and waits. No response. It’s a small craft, but he still manages to throw the communicator with enough force for it to hit the window with a sharp crack. 

“Damn it. Damn it,” He gasps. “Useless.”

He turns to the pod's monitors just in time to watch the last seconds tick down. 

The ringing of the pod’s alarms fade in as Bruce starts to reorient himself. Maybe the voice wasn’t what woke him. Maybe it was just the first thing he actually heard. The pod’s monitors flash fervently, zeroes lighting up across the screens. Its announcement system scolds him flatly with none of the urgency that was now burning in his chest. 

Critical levels reached. Evacuate immediately. 

His heart picks up a beat. However long he was out was time wasted. With ten minutes, he might have figured something out. With five, he might have gotten halfway there. This? It was just long enough to realize how fucked he was. 

“Br…uce!”

The communicator crackles weakly from the floor of the pod. Bruce isn’t proud of how he scrambles toward it, auditory hallucination be damned. Right now he needs a miracle. 

He’s turning the earpiece over in his hand, fumbling fervently for the talk button when a shadow passes over the window of the pod. It grows, blocking the unobstructed sunlight filtering through space, and Bruce looks up just long enough to catch the golden “S” hovering outside the glass.

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

The glowing heat forming around Clark’s suit makes him look like a star, lost among the million pinpricks of light peppering the black space around him. It’s not until he’s only yards away that Bruce allows himself to believe it, forcing his strained eyes to focus on the ones hurtling toward him. Clark’s eyes are red-rimmed, glassy, most likely a product of incomplete radiation therapy assuming Tim had been able to activate it within the Fortress.

Or tears. Both are equally probable. 

“Clark?”

There’s no way he can hear the awed whisper slipping from Bruce’s mouth—the communicator had dropped from his hands, and not even Superman could with the vacuum of space between them stealing the sound. But Superman smiles as if he had, and the frantic beeping of the craft fades into white noise around him.

He got his miracle. 

Now he just needs to get home. 

He clambers for the earpiece and brings it to his mouth.

“Superman?” He asked, with considerably more composure this time. “I can hear you, but the signal’s weak. The Watchtower is down. Do you read?”

Bruce watches as Clark listens, brows furrowing at the inevitable static on his end. He nods slowly. 

“Co…py. Go…ng to…get y…out of he…re.”

“No fuel. Oxygen’s depleted. Can you make it fast?”

He waits, clutching the earpiece as the message relays. Clark pauses, then smiles.

”F..ster than…speed..ng bullet.”

The line goes quiet. 

Superman ducks out of view and moments later the pod lurches forward while the monitors continue to beep in protest.

Bruce ducks his head against the window and sees a hand planted against the underbelly of the pod.

There's only one way they're both getting out of this, really, between an empty tank and an alien running on empty himself. He resigns himself to the latter, bracing himself against the seat. He gets in one measured breath before the pod starts accelerating, Superman propelling them toward Earth on half a prayer with just enough consideration for Bruce not to white-knuckle the seat. 

The only indicator of distance is the stars smearing outside the windows until a soft shell of heat forms against the nose of the craft to announce their reentry into the atmosphere. It burns against the outer hull and Bruce eventually has to squeeze his eyes shut behind the cowl as oxygen burns in front of him. 

The pod bucks against the force, but Superman's hold doesn't falter, and eventually Bruce's vision clears just enough to face the vast expanse of white rapidly approaching them both.

Clark’s hold falls away, there then gone, and Bruce doesn’t have time to breathe before the snowy earth rushes up to greet him. Not even the thick drifts of snow can deafen the impact of another body slumping to the ground, Clark’s knees forcing a miniature tremor through the ice.

Bruce pops the hatch and stumbles outside, ignoring the drilling pain in his skull until it drives his knees into the snow. He lurches forward, grasping for the door to steady himself before pitching face-first into the snow.

"Bruce?"

He can hear Clark sift through snow next to him, making his way over. A warm hand clasps his shoulder.

"Just a second." Bruce mutters into the ground. One more second to let the cold numb his body to the battering ram in his brain.

“Sorry.” Clark wheezes, shoulders hunched as he struggles to regain his footing. “I kept getting these patchy signals from my communicator. Figured it had to be you and that you'd need backup. But my plan might have been…a bit much, considering Tim almost wouldn’t let me leave to find you in the first place. Said that—”

“Your recovery wasn’t finished.” Bruce exhales into the snow, scattering flakes with his ghost of a laugh. “So he does listen to me.”

The snow forms against his cheek like a thousand of the stars he’d seen above, each exploding on his skin as bursts of cold eat away at the heat fading from his body. If he squints, he won’t have to acknowledge the freezing Earth that’s so kindly greeted him with a faceful of ice. 

Still, though. He has to get up.

A trembling hand claws for purchase in the shifting snow, sinking Batman deeper into the welcoming numbness. His joints creak as he hauls himself up onto his elbows, and then his knees, until the glittering hulk of the Fortress rises into his line of sight just above the drifting white mounds. From here, it’s nothing more than sticks of ice leaning against each other for support. Weak, unstable. Useless against what he’s running from, at best, and a pile of daggers for it to use at worst.

He has to get up.

The ground wants to swallow his footsteps whole, inhaling the shifting sound of his boots and spitting it back out into the wind. He’s sinking with every motion, sliding back into the snowdrifts beckoning him to bed, promising to make it so that he was never here. Failsafe would never find him. Except that he would.

“Bruce, how—what happened ?” Clark pleads, extending a hand. Bruce waves it off, favoring instead to brush the coating of snow off of his suit. “I wouldn’t have made it to you in time even if I’d heard your reentry. Only reason I knew to go was the comm link failure. Why did they go down?”

“Had an altercation with Failsafe at the station,” Bruce supplies curtly. “It destroyed most of the transports and communications. I expelled it along with the rest of headquarters by destructing the Tower—”

“You what?”

“—But it’ll be back. We have to move.”

Clark’s hand grips his shoulder just as Bruce turns to start the trek toward the Fortress. He may still be somewhat weakened, but it’s enough to stop him in his tracks, the wind already rushing forth to hold him there. Bruce locks his gaze with Clark’s, willing the snow in his eyes not to sting so that he can hold it.

“Bruce. You’ve been chasing this…being chased by this for days. Don’t you think we’re entitled to know what on Earth you’re up against? You need help .”

Bruce swallows thickly, snapping away from Clark’s gaze to look skyward. It’s quiet for a heartbeat and a half, and then:

“Right now we need to move. The more time we waste standing here, the more ‘on Earth’ it’s going to be, assuming it’s traveling from the station unobstructed.” He shrugs off Clark’s hand, watching it hover over the empty space for a moment before turning towards the endless white drifts surrounding the Fortress. “You still keep the key under the welcome mat?”

Clark huffs indignantly, but a few moments later his footsteps fall in tune with Bruce’s as they make their way onward.

The key is indeed still there. Bruce steps aside to allow Clark to retrieve it. A deep crevice yawns in its place, a testament to the dwarf star metal he’d fashioned it in. The crystalline door opens to reveal a column of vibrant red among the pale light of the Fortress, and Tim’s head whips around to observe the potential intruders, already sizing them up before realization dawns behind his mask.

“Bruce.” Tim whispers, shock sapping the sound. 

Bruce nods, more a product of the crushing weight of his body than of affirmation.

“You’re here!” Tim snaps, weaving himself between him and Clark. He wraps his arms around him before instantly pulling away to analyze the charred and peeling bits of armor. “What—what happened?”

“I needed a pickup from the Tower,” Bruce interjects, already shouldering his way inside and leaving Tim to bob along, a rapid stream of questions pouring from his mind and into the air around them. Bruce stops short a few yards away from the main hall and pivots to face the other two. He raises a placating hand to Tim, and the stream of questions slows to a trickle. 

“I can explain when we’ve got the time.” He turns sharply to Clark.”I need a favor.”

Clark’s shoulders heave upward, equal parts exhaustion and mock exasperation. 

“Did the first time I fought this thing not count?” He prods, a half-smile tugging at his mouth. Bruce’s expression remains unchanged. 

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you could handle it. You have alternate suits, yes?“

“For the kryptonite? Yeah. Yeah, I do.” A chilled gust of wind washes over them as Clark phases out of his spot beside them, only to return moments later clad in an armored variant of his old suit. He lifts a hand to slide the visor over his face, nodding to Bruce behind the glass. “More your style than mine, but it’s functional. Haven’t had to pull this one out since the League met—”

“Clark. I need you to stall the bot. Buy Tim and I some time. You should have the defenses to hold out long enough for us to move in and neutralize it.”

Clark shifts from one foot to the other, testing the weight of the new suit. Tension runs through his shoulders as he flexes them, prodding old aches from his last encounter with Failsafe. 

“Neutralize it how, exactly?”

“I’ve got it under control.” Bruce steps forward, tilting his chin upward to meet Clark at eye-level. “Will you do it?”

Clark sets his jaw and nods, disappearing in a burst of chilled air. Bruce’s throat burns, filling with the icy wind that ushers itself inside the moment Clark leaves. He glances at Tim. 

”Follow me.” His cloak sweeps against the floor as he turns to the opposite wing of the hall. “I’ll explain on the way.”

Notes:

I'm back.. this chapter was pretty quick, mostly building up the final installment(s? this might be 4 chapters) but hope you enjoyed! no estimate for the next update as of now, I'm fighting some serious self-cringe at the thought of writing and trying to beat it and live in peace and harmony with myself but I will keep working <3

Chapter 3: Delete

Notes:

last chapter! thanks for waiting!

“What exactly is the plan here?”

Tim darts behind Bruce as he strides toward the nearest computer. The Fortress' technical setup is leagues behind the Cave’s—not much more than a handful of monitors off to one side, more for Clark’s day job than any extraterrestrial analysis. Still, they aren’t in any position to be picky. 

“Failsafe is barely responding to physical attacks, and when he does, it’s not enough. We’re going to have to work from the inside out.” Bruce pushes a chair aside, some worn hunk of office furniture that’s almost absurd among the crystalline architecture of the Fortress. Tim silently pulls it aside for himself as Bruce leans toward the monitors, fingers flying across the keyboard. “It’s not much, but this is all we should need to do it. That, and time.”

“Yeah, well.” Tim draws a silver capsule from his belt. One click, and it snaps into a full-length staff, propped against one shoulder. “Not much of that left.” 

Bruce stumbles through the computer’s interface, missing the meticulously organized database of the Cave as he sifts through Clark’s desktop. It’s not much, but he ekes out what they can only pray is some functional code and is slotting an empty drive into the computer’s port before another tremor rocks beneath their feet. 

“I’ve synthesized a small dose of an extended program for Failsafe.” Bruce ejects the drive and rotates it between his thumb and forefinger, watching the light glint off of the casing. “If not to override it, this should slow it down.” 

A green glove extends to meet Bruce’s and he passes it down to Tim, who turns it over in his palm. 

“You should keep this on you. It’s less likely to track you than me.” Tim nods. “We only need one chance to implant it.” Bruce turns to the Fortress' entrance as the ground shudders, sending hairline fractures through the floor. “And we might just get one.”

“So Superman is the bait? And he knows it?” Tim sighs, his breath forming a cloud between them. “That's cold.”

“He's not Failsafe's target. It shouldn't do any more than immobilize in order to get to me, and the suit negates its main offense. He can handle it.” Has to. 

Tim straightens up and hops out of his chair, leaving it spinning weakly in front of the desk. 

“There should be a port near the base of its neck, if I remember correctly. It won’t be easy to get to, but we only have to do it once.”

“Are you sure you’re up for it? No jetlag from your flight or anything?”

Bruce shoots Tim a cutting glare. Tim shrinks back, but only just. “Sorry I asked.” 

Bruce presses a button on the wall as they reach the Fortress’ entrance and silently thanks God there's a mechanism to reopen the Fortress doors from the inside that doesn't involve bearing the weight of a dwarf star. The El crest carved in the surface creaks and splits down the center, a blinding sliver of the outside world widening as the walls retract. Bruce is already searching the snow for Clark in every inch the doors allow him. Either Clark, or the enemy. 

Right on cue, the blizzard parts just long enough to reveal a flickering shadow stalking toward them. Bruce tenses, hand already grasping for the pockets of his belt, and the faint rustle at his side tells him Tim is doing the same.

But before either can draw their weapons, a blur of blue streaks past them in the distance, sending shockwaves that shift the snow at their feet. Less than a hundred yards off, Bruce can make out the explosion of powder as Superman drives the bot into a cliff of ice, darting away before the dust can settle. 

It's almost too much to track with the naked eye, Superman circling Failsafe like a planet in orbit, never sticking long enough for the bot to find its mark. Even from the narrowing gap between them can Bruce see Failsafe's gears whirring, the inevitable sensors he'd planted working overtime to anticipate the alien's movements.

Bruce nods to Tim and they both sprint toward the fading cloud, weapons in hand. Bruce watches the blue streak ricochet off of walls of ice, sending a low crackle through the air, but even at mach speed he can see how Superman starts to slow. As they draw closer to the fight, Bruce can actually start to make out the ice crusting his suit, the hair blown into his eyes from the rapidfire flights. And if Bruce can see it, Failsafe likely already clocked it ten minutes prior.

Clark is getting tired.

His opponent, being a machine, was clearly not. Bruce forces his heels into the ground, willing himself to move faster.

Another mushroom cloud of snow bursts from a crater not a hundred feet off, and Bruce has a half-second to register his knees cracking against ice as he and Tim are thrown to the ground by a violent tremor.

“Superman!” 

Bruce can see him clearly now, as much as he wishes he couldn’t. The constant dodges to avoid a hit, even with the suit, have taken their toll. The closer Bruce gets, the more he’s pushed back by the blows. The distance between them is closing now, only a few dozen feet more, and he draws a Batarang from his belt and launches it against the wind so hard he feels his elbow click. It’s not even enough to get Failsafe to turn his way. He watches desperately as it swerves off-course and fades into a speck in the air. Useless. They need to get closer. 

Superman lunges forward and locks hands with Failsafe, boots digging into the snow, slivers of red sinking in the sea of white as Failsafe thrusts him back. 

“Clark!” Bruce screams over the roaring winds. 

Failsafe’s head snaps to face where Bruce stands, still locked in the battle for ground with Superman. Bruce watches the light behind its faceplate sharpen, no doubt honing in on his heat signature. He sees himself as a glowing red spot reflected against the cold slate abyss of the screen, blue heat blooming from its chest with every beat of his heart. 

Clark sees Failsafe’s attention shift, sees it see Bruce, and digs his heels into the ground before heaving forward and pushing the bot onto its back, their fingers still entwined as he collapses on top of its metal frame with a muffled crunch. Snow billows around their bodies as they sink into the crater below. 

Bruce lunges toward them and nearly stumbles over the snow. Distantly, he can hear the click and grind of Failsafe trying to reconfigure beneath Clark’s grasp. The red of Clark’s cape whips in the wind, just barely visible over the deepening pit forming around their struggle. 

Bruce leans over the edge of the pit, his gloves sinking into the snow as he peers over the edge. Superman straddles Failsafe, pinning it beneath him with a hand over each of its arms, leveraging his weight against it and pushing it deeper into the bank. 

“Bruce?”

Clark pauses, lifting one arm for a blow to the bot’s head, to turn and meet Bruce’s eyes just as Failsafe's arm juts outward, gripping Superman's suit. It yanks him forward, pulling until the sharp sound of seams popping cuts through the air. A window to the blue of his original suit peels open the moment sliver of kryptonite unsheathes itself from Failsafe’s torso and finds its mark in the center of Superman’s crest with a wet shnk. 

“Clark!” 

Clark still holds their gaze, expressionless, before slumping into the side of the pit with the soft crunch of the snow at his back. Blood bubbles up at the point of entry, rivulets feeding into the snow and washing it a pale pink. Bruce scrambles over the edge and slides down to meet him, tossing a smoke pellet from his belt if only to cloud Failsafe's sensors for a second. He barely gets a hand around him before Superman goes limp in his arms. 

“Clark?” Bruce pats his face with an ice-crusted glove, the other moving to pull the shard from his wound. “Stay with me, Clark. I’m removing it now.” 

“What happened?” Tim’s voice drifts from above the bank. The wind wears it thin, but the pitch of anxiety carries over. “What’s his status?”

‘Working on it.” Bruce barks in reply. The shard, slick with blood, almost slips through his fingers as they fumble to extract it from its resting place between Clark’s ribs. Bruce slips it into a pocket in his belt. Behind them, the slow popping of metallic joints creeps into the silence. “It’s out,” he murmurs, more for himself than anyone. “Clark, we need to—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish. In that moment, a vise grip seals around the back of his neck, gears clicking as metallic joints lock into place against his throat. Bruce gasps, his breath cutting off halfway. Each mechanical curve bores into the carbon fiber of his cowl.

Below him, Clark stirs, eyes peeling open in time to watch Failsafe hoist the Bat’s body into the air. Bruce scrambles for purchase on the metal cage around his neck. “Bruce?” He mutters, voice garbled by the blood gathering on his lips, but Bruce can barely hear it over the pulse hammering in his throat. 

“Bruce!” Clark cries, clearer this time, and in the corner of his eye Bruce watches the man struggle against the blood-soaked wall at his back. Clark wavers, fist curled into the wound at his chest, and locks eyes with the bot from across the pit. “Drop him. Now.”

It'd be nothing more than scolding a dog if not for the pinprick of fire budding behind Clark's eyes, a weak spark at first that erupts in a clear-cut beam of heat. Bruce watches it burn through the frigid air, as if in slow motion, and can barely manage a scream before he feels Failsafe's joints whir to life, lifting his body to shield it from the beam. Heat explodes across his chest, radiating through the layers of the suit, and the pain lingers long after the bean stops abruptly, Clark's eyes clearing enough to see the scorched symbol on Bruce's chest.

“Oh, God.” Clark staggers forward. “I'm so sorry. I couldn't see...Bruce, I'm—” He stumbles, knees buried in the pit. A fresh spout of blood leaks into his suit.

“Do not interfere.” Failsafe's voice buzzes to life in Bruce's ear. “Threats will be redirected accordingly.”

Failsafe jerks forward as the force of an unseen impact hits them from behind. The grip around Bruce’s neck tightens reflexively, forcing a groan from between his teeth. They turn, Failsafe’s axis bringing them to face Tim, who stands with another Birdarang already reloaded in his hand. 

“Let him go! ” Tim screams. Bruce struggles to crane his neck, trying to meet the kid’s eyes, but the vise grip only tightens. Failsafe’s head tilts with a sharp click , almost human in its inquiry. Tim tenses, rocking uneasily with one hand clutching his staff. Even behind the mask, Bruce can track his eyes darting between him and Clark, weighing his options. 

He can only watch as Tim’s other hand slowly reaches behind his back and into his belt, hunting for a weapon, feeling Failsafe’s cameras follow them both, and in the split-second one is drawn the bot pivots to face Tim. Its body creaks, torso swiveling on an axis to keep Tim in its sights, and Bruce is yanked along with it. His body hangs like a ragdoll, numbness creeping into his legs. 

Tim freezes. The edge of a Birdarang is clenched in his palm as Failsafe’s gaze casts a red wash over the snow where he stands. For a moment, no one moves. 

“Robin.” Bruce hisses through gritted teeth. “The…drive.” 

Tim's chest heaves, sending rolling clouds into the air between them. As if in slow motion, his arm reaches into the nearest pocket of his belt, and before Failsafe can react Bruce bucks against its hold, sending the back of his head crashing into the bot's faceplate. The glass fractures on contact, fragmenting its red light into a dozen laser points.

Bruce swallows back the bile flooding his throat from the impact. The ringing in his ears from the hit at the Tower returns full-force. His vision swims. It takes all his focus to find Tim in the blur of fleeting white and watch as he launches the drive toward him. Bruce reaches out, one arm grasping at the glinting edge of the drive, nearly lost amid the sleet raining down. The other pins Failsafe's free arm with his own, the former still wrapped around his neck.

His frozen fingers close around the drive and in the same motion he swings his arm up and back, grasping at the air behind Failsafe's neck before jamming the drive into its port.

Failsafe jerks, thrashing against Bruce’s arm as it breaks from his grip and clamors at the back of its neck.

“Go!” Bruce gasps. Tim reels backward, stumbling in a knee-deep snowdrift. “Get help…for Clark. Fortress.” Tim’s mouth gapes in protest. “Go!”  Bruce growls, voice grating against his throat.

Tim nods once, holding Bruce’s gaze for a moment more before turning in a full sprint for the Fortress. 

If nothing else, it’s one less at risk if the code fails; it’s enough to ease the mounting weight in Bruce’s chest, if only for a second. Even so, he’s not dead yet. He claws at the hand around his throat, jamming his fingers between Failsafe's grip and the warping plastic of his cowl. Pressure bores down on his windpipe, forcing out frigid air. Come on, he begs the shattered face in the corner of his eye. Praying to a machine programmed without mercy. 

For a moment, there is nothing but the numbing fingers at his throat. Just beyond them, the labored breaths of Clark. The lack of his own. 

Suddenly, Failsafe shudders.

“System processing.”

They are, without a doubt, the two sweetest words Bruce has ever heard. 

The rush of oxygen sends his head spinning as Failsafe’s grip falters and twitches against the cowl as mixed signals wrack its wires. Metal flexes against his throat one final time before Bruce's stomach drops as gravity pulls him back to Earth. He gasps, the freezing ground embracing him. Everything is white. Whether it's the snow or his vision, he's not sure.

Bruce chokes on his swollen tongue and rolls onto his back, fingers still prying at his cowl. In the corner of his eye, Failsafe keels forward, arms grasping at empty air. Its broken voice fades in between clicks and grinds.

“New...program...detected.” Its hands falter at its neck. “Importing...data.”

The machine actually begins to spark with the effort. A robotic rigor mortis sets in to its joints as Failsafe buckles and falls to its knees, arms dangling limply. Bruce watches the long shadow inching over his body and thrusts himself aside just enough to dodge the bot crashing down beside him.

The snow practically sizzles around it.

Bruce lies face-to-face with the bit, with himself—the worst of him. Failsafe's screen reflects the fractured image of his own face. It's not a reassuring sight.

“Shit.” There’s the soft rustle of snow behind him. “Bruce?”

Clark. It has to be. It's not worth craning to see him given the uncharted damage to his neck, but the sound of his voice beams at him like the sole ray of sun in a storm.

The feeling is fleeting. Bruce opens his mouth to argue, already working through the list of reasons why Clark shouldn’t aggravate his own injuries and to stay put effective immediately, but his voice is nothing more than a whistle in the wind. 

Clark peeks into the edges of his vision, oblivious to Bruce’s silent protests. Ice clings to his cape. 

Bruce lifts a hand, not without effort, and presses it to the tear in Clark’s suit the kryptonite had created. Other than the dried red crusting its edges, there’s no bleeding left to stop.  

Good, Bruce thinks. Aside from the crushing pressure in his chest, one less thing to worry about. Even with Tim here, there's a slim chance they could get Clark back themselves with Bruce being ninety-eight percent deadweight on his own.

Clark presses a hand over his. Bruce doesn't pull away, against his first instinct. It's the first warmth he's felt since crawling out of that godforsaken pod.

“Don't move, okay?” Clark squeezes his hand before setting it aside and reaching for his cowl. “I’m taking this off, okay? I'm going to, uh, do my best to stabilize.” He traces the seam in the cowl, fumbling with the clasps on the side of the neck guard until finally it cracks open and a gust of freezing air hits Bruce’s throat. He gasps, choking on his own breath. 

“Easy. Breathe slow.” Clark turns anxiously to the smoking pile of scrap beside them. “You're sure it's out for good? No contingency?”

Bruce blinks, slowly. None that I know. 

For now.

Sleet stings his face. The ground is leeching the heat from his body, his bones are carved from ice. A warm palm cups his cheek and despite the screaming in his neck he can’t help but lean into it. 

Clark murmurs something from above, likely something or other about how passing out now would be the worst possible thing for Bruce to do right now. 

He’s made worse mistakes. 

---

Bruce hates the Fortress.

He hated the concept of the thing when Clark first explained it, a base unguarded, open in that empty expanse. Too many points of attack, too bright and exposed. He hates it now, the blinding light of its crystal walls forcing his eyes open approximately twenty years before he'd have liked them to.

Cold seeps into his bones from the cold slab at his back. He sits himself up, bandages tugging at the raw skin of his chest. Distantly, he registers the upper half of his suit folded beside him.

“Damn it, Bruce.” Tim mutters from across the room—some Kryptonian version of a nurse’s office, from what Bruce can tell—perched in Clark’s desk chair with a blanket swaddled around his shoulders and a steaming mug of something between his hands. “Couldn’t have held out until I got back? You scared the shit out of us.” 

Bruce draws a half-breath in reply and ends up doubled over as a coughing fit wracks his body. There’s nothing much in the way of rebuttals when he’s got all the bravado of a creaking door. 

“Jesus. You alright?” Tim stands, the blanket slipping off his shoulders. Bruce holds out a palm to hold the kid at bay. Fine. I’m fine. Stay. 

“You’re awake!” Around the corner of an open door, a head peeks into the room as if summoned by the noise. Clark strides forward, swiftly dropping an armful of scrap to join Bruce at his side. “Sorry I left. Thought you and Tim would be alright for a couple of minutes. How are you feeling?”

Bruce straightens up, swinging his legs over the edge of the slab. His back twinges at the motion. A hand brushes over his Adam’s apple, sending a spark of pain burning in his throat. It doesn’t take a mirror for him to see the spiderweb of petechiae crawling up his neck. 

That said, he also feels a pulse. So, an indisputable win. 

Bruce shrugs off the question, motioning instead to the warped heap of metal Clark had set aside. Tim jumps at the unspoken question. He strolls over to the pile and plucks out a fragment of shattered screen. 

“Clark and I collected Failsafe’s remains while you were out. Figured they’d be worth studying. Also, I don’t think Superman takes kindly to litter, even in the arctic.” He passes the piece to Bruce, who turns it over in his hand. He sees himself a dozen times over in the splintered glass. More than anything, he sees a mistake. His mistake. 

“Or, you know,” Tim adds, gathering up the rest of the load in his arms. “We can always fit another trophy in the Cave.”

Notes:

im leaving the house in like three minutes so I did a lightning round proofread just to make sure this got posted. if you see a flub no you didn't until I get back to check lol
appreciate you if you made it this far! thanks!
may be a few odds and ends I need to polish but this wip has genuinely taken me so long I just need it out there. I need to be free. but despite its best efforts this project has NOT made me quit writing and I will be back. eventually. better luck next time

Notes:

this fic has been sitting almost two years (since the original issues came out) and I've finally managed to get my rewrite polished and posted. I had SO many questions concerning the original plot (using bat-trunks as space gear??) that I reworked it a bit out of my own curiosity. hope you enjoyed!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 10 of Bad Things Happen Bingo!