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I.
The problem with dying, Clark found, was that it seemed to be frustratingly temporary. He stood again in the warm dusk of the endless room, floating; there was no sun, but he could see, no air, but he breathed. There was a strangely woodsy musk, like the flesh of the earth, pressed in all around him like a vault.
“There you are,” said his father - his birth father, Clark corrected. Jor-El was also floating, though his feet seemed planted down, his hands folded gravely before him, robed in the same, eye-wateringly complex robes that he had worn in the AI projection. “You were gone for a while.”
“I was?” Clark said, then he blinked, as a memory curled in, a cool strand. “They hit me with a nuke!” And then he had proceeded to revive and… get himself stabbed while affected by Kryptonite? Was this the afterlife?
“Ah,” Jor-El lifted one shoulder into a wry shrug. “Humans. You cannot blame a child for being violent, when its parents are violent creatures.”
“What do you mean?” Clark asked, bewildered.
“Humanity, of course. Here.” Jor-El turned his head, very slightly, and a woman walked out of the dark. She was a full head shorter than Jor-El, and nearly as broad, powerfully built, her hair buzzed down to her skull. She wore a silvery, blocky uniform that looked vaguely reminiscent of a NASA astronaut’s, save slimmer, with a graceful hump-like pack that hugged up from her spine to her hips. She had a spherical, transparent helmet tucked under one gloved arm. “Kar-El. Our ancestor.”
Kar-El frowned critically at Clark. “So you’re the boy. The last Kryptonian. Hmph. You don’t seem like much.”
“What am I seeing?” Clark fought the urge to retreat to his father’s side, like a child. “Ghosts?”
“‘Ghosts’, feh!” Kar-El spat to her side. “The last of our House, raised by primitives. He believes in ghosts. Don’t worry, boy,” Kar-El added, slightly more gently. “There’s still time for you to learn the basics of a civilised education. Quantum physics, quad-dimensional psychometry-“
“Kar-El was part of the New Wave,” Jor-El explained blandly, as though Kar-El hadn’t spoken. “Colonists. Our House has always heavily funded space exploration. A very long time ago, of course. Eventually, the Phantom Wave caught up with them and upgraded their drives, and they found Earth. Yellow sun, almost breathable air. But they chose not to terraform.”
“Terraform tech was wildly unstable in my day,” Kar-El grunted. “Rough up the biosphere and you cause a catastrophic cascade. Then you’re pretty much living on a dead mudball. Delayed death sentence.” She spat again, to her left. “‘Course, that’s why a lot of the New Wavers failed to colonise the worlds that they found. Tried to make those more like Krypton, the sad idiots. Don’t know why they bothered. We left the sorry place. Sun was already starting to go to krud.”
“Zod tried to terraform,” Clark said, a little reproachfully.
“House Zod? They still around? Their assholes are so tightly clenched, not even air gets through.” Kar-El sniffed disdainfully, and despite himself, Clark started to laugh.
“Really, Jor. Your family.” Clark turned. The newcomer was tall and willowy, a woman with a fierce warmth to her eyes and rich dark hair, also in those fluidly alien robes. As she came closer, Clark knew all of a sudden who she was, and was struck dumb by it, abruptly made hollow. “Oh my love,” said his mother, clasping his hands. “Grown so tall.”
“Lara,” Jor-El said, but Clark already knew her name, somehow. Kar-El had faded away into the dusk, as though she had never been there. “I was trying to teach a point.” He sounded amused.
Lara sighed. “Your father and his ‘points’,” she told Clark, a little playfully. “Talks me into getting pregnant - a heresy, mind you, on our homeworld: there hasn’t been a natural birth in well over a century - and then gets himself killed while slingshotting you off in a spaceship with a phantom drive… with an AI imprint only of himself. All to make a point.”
“It was logical at the time.” Jor-El sounded slightly injured.
Lara patted Clark’s knuckles. “If you ever develop any neural disorders, they’re from your father’s side of the family-“ she laughed, delighted, as Clark abruptly hugged her to him, picking her up. She was weightless, and though she should feel warm, she wasn’t, and when he buried his head briefly against her neck, into her hair, he smelled nothing.
“If you’re both not ghosts, what are you? Am I dreaming? Or dead?”
Lara balanced her arms over Clark’s shoulders, leaning back to look into his eyes, sober. “You’re not dead, Kal. But that crazy father of yours stole the Codex of Krypton and coded it within you. Our Ark of the ages, the genetic imprint of every post-evolutionary Kryptonian who has ever lived. If we are ghosts, then you are made of ghosts, my love. Within you are all the Kryptonians who ever were, and the key to all of us who ever could be.”
“What do you mean by that?” Clark asked, frowning. “Zod - I think Zod tried to extract it. This Codex. But it didn’t work.”
“Trying to use base-surgical splicers to extract DNA encoding,” Jor-El sighed. “Soldiers. The very best of post-evolutionary bio-engineering, and none of them yet bothered to take any classes in-“
“So this Ark, it could still be removed? Without me dying?” Clark asked quickly.
“Not with human tech. Maybe the K’rnn, but they’re not likely to wish you well.” Jor-El paused. “There’s no point, in any case. Krypton is gone. You’re human now.”
“No I’m not. Not in the least.”
“Of course you are. You think like one of them, speak like one of them, act like them. You are one of them, everywhere that it counts. Only the rest of you is Kryptonian, as we know it.” Lara said gently. “But the original humans were also Kryptonian. That’s why you have the resemblance. They are your people. Just as we are your people. You are the bridge.”
“Somehow,” Clark said weakly, “I don’t think scientists expected their missing link to fly and shoot lasers from his eyes.”
“He’s your boy all right,” Jor-El said affectionately, as Lara chuckled. “That sense of humour.”
“So where am I now?” Clark had to change the subject: he had to, or it felt like his heart would burst. This, at the end of it all, felt far too much like what he had always wanted.
“Where you still are,” Lara said, her smile cryptic, and faded away in his arms: Clark was left grasping air, choking down a cry of protest.
“I didn’t mean for the Codex to do what it did,” Jor-El said quietly, now standing beside him, his hands pressed behind his back. “To take you beyond Death itself.”
“How was that possible?”
“I don’t have the tools to confirm my hypothesis, but I suspect that the Codex bound itself far more intricately to your bioengineered DNA than it should have. That’s why Dru-Zod couldn’t even splice out a sample without killing you. The sum collective of the rest of us seems to have instinctively overwritten the base code of your bioengineering. We’ve improved it far beyond what it should have been capable of.”
“So I…” Clark trailed off. “I can’t die?”
“Direct solar energy acts as an accelerant to the healing process, but yes, at present, you’re still already beginning to repair yourself.” Jor-El eyed him soberly. “I’m sorry, Kal.”
“Why? Isn’t this a good thing?”
“Ask yourself that again in twenty years, in fifty, in five hundred,” Jor-El said softly. “I’m so sorry, my son. I tried to save your life, but in doing so I took life itself away from you. If you cannot die, you cannot live: you cannot begin to understand the sweetness of life that comes from knowing mortality so intimately. Someday, not now, but in a hundred years, three hundred, a thousand, you will come to understand that. Bitterly.”
1.0.
Going back to ‘the old crimefighting life’, as Alfred succinctly put it, seemed… mundane. In the past month Bruce had met a God (and a Goddess), fought a God, contributed to the death of a God, and now maybe this was hell, to be shoved back into the morass of his old life, with nothing gained but more regrets. Diana had disappeared somewhere after the trail of the fish-man, with only a terse ‘I’ll contact you’ when Bruce had last politely asked her about it.
At least Gotham was quiet today. Bruce had sunk himself gratefully into the ergonomic spinal chair before Computer, aching. It was a cold day, and old injuries were playing up, particularly in the persistent damp of the Cave. When he had been young, stupid and considerably more arrogant he had once perched on the rooftops of his city, feeling invincible, waiting for the signal. Now, Bruce preferred to scope matters out through CCTV hookups and tip off the police if it looked like they could handle it. Under Commissioner Barbara Gordon’s watch, the better-trained police force didn’t usually need much help anyway.
“Peaceful night, sir?” Alfred slid a mug of coffee onto the desk.
“Seems like it. Couple of small-time burglaries. Tipped off the cops.”
“Ah,” Alfred smiled faintly. “Gone were the days when you’d go haring off after the smallest lawbreaker, I see.”
“What’s the point,” Bruce yawned, picking up the cup. “There was a cop car close by, and lately the police are more likely to shoot at me than at a perp.”
“That might perhaps have something to do with your preferred modus operandi of terrifying even your allies, Master Bruce.”
“Fucking trigger-happy, that’s what they are.”
“Be as that may.”
“Besides,” Bruce added testily, wondering if Alfred was making some sort of veiled jab, “It’s not like Barbara wants my help. She took the sign down, first day on the job.”
“Unsurprisingly, given her outspoken opposition to vigilante justice even prior to being named to the role.”
“She wasn’t the only one who lost someone to the Joker.” Saying that out aloud was like tasting an old wound, prying open the stitches, but it seemed to hurt less today. The world itself seemed to grate less on Bruce’s nerves now. Superman’s death had been more than a surprise: it had been, somehow, an utter shock. One month on and Bruce still felt disoriented. “Alfred,” he said, as Alfred turned to go.
“Sir?”
“Before, you mentioned… something about helplessness making good men cruel.” Bruce didn’t look over, watching instead the gritty CCTV coverage, as a pair of cops caught and pinned the burglars. The stolen coffee machine boxes lay partly loaded onto a white van, parked on the kerb. Amateurs.
“So I did sir.” Alfred said mildly.
“Do you think… is that still the case? This past month?”
“Master Bruce,” Alfred noted wryly, “Helplessness, vengeance, hatred, it’s been a part of you for so long that I think there’s no helping it now. As much as I tried to fix that at the start, I’ve been as much of an accomplice to what you’ve become as you are.”
Bruce glanced sharply over at Alfred, who managed a thin smile, mirthless. “We’ve done some good,” Bruce said uncertainly. “Haven’t we?”
“As you’ve said. Criminals are like weeds. Pull some up, more will take their place. We have done some good. But I’ve started to question our methods,” Alfred added quietly. “You almost always get the results that you’re looking for. But the collateral damage in between can be untenable. Somewhere along the line, we both seem to have stopped caring. Knowing that… it sometimes troubles me a great deal, sir.”
“I see,” Bruce said uncomfortably.
“The truth is,” Alfred said wearily, “You are getting on in years. We both are. I know you’re in pain, when it gets cold. You have a spinal injury that still hurts you some mornings, and you’ve gotten slower. You now need monthly physiotherapy for old wounds to your knees, therapy for your back. And on top of all that, you drink.”
“So what,” Bruce growled testily. “Retire?”
Alfred met his stare unflinchingly. “Before, as Bruce Wayne, you managed to get results that you couldn’t as the Batman. I’m beginning to think that perhaps your resources could be better applied towards the same ends.”
“What, employ mercenaries to patrol the streets?”
“Private militia aside,” Alfred retorted, “Crime doesn’t generally rise out of a vacuum, sir. I should know. I grew up dirt poor, in as bad a neighbourhood of Gotham as you can get, most families broken rather than not, gangs running the streets, recruiting kids. I got lucky, enlisted, straightened out. Most of the other children my age weren’t so lucky. And it was circumstances that put them there. A cycle that they could not break.”
“People make conscious choices to break the law. Just because you’re poor or disaffected doesn’t mean that you’ll definitely become a criminal.”
“That’s right,” Alfred agreed evenly. “Still. Sometimes society makes that conscious choice a lot easier. I know what it's like to want revenge. But even after all that’s happened? Somedays I wish that you understood people. Sir.”
II.
“Your father’s a pain in the aethyr,” Dru-Zod told Clark. “One time, when he was half your age, he blew up the Eastern wing of the Gamma-Dormitory at the Academy.”
“No one was seriously hurt,” Jor-El protested. Dru-Zod rolled his eyes. Straight-backed and severe, he was wearing the same strange, skin-tight black uniform that Clark had last seen him in, his face as ascetic and as cold as ever.
“On hindsight, I’m not surprised that you ended up committing high treason and high heresy.”
“The two of you were friends?” Clark asked cautiously. Zod’s haunting, or whatever it was, had been deeply disturbing at the start, but now nothing was really surprising him any longer.
“Oh yes,” Jor-El said calmly, even as Dru-Zod sniffed disdainfully and muttered, “Friends,” darkly under his breath.
“Didn’t he kill you? And maybe my mother?” In the Void, as Clark was beginning to think of this place, frozen between life and beyond, it was easier to think of Lara Lor-Van as his mother, a co-entity with Martha Kent, both of them loved, both of them now distant and yet part of him.
Dru-Zod visibly bristled. “I never laid a hand on Lara. She’s my cousin. Twice removed. So technically, you’re my nephew.”
“Pure Line Houses,” Jor-El said brightly, “We’re all so terribly inbred.”
Dru-Zod groaned. “Even in death you speak heresy, Rao save us, the genetic lines are closely watched and matched, honestly, Jor, this is why you were frozen out of the council-”
“Says the other Pure Line scion frozen out of the council for being disagreeable over the Oort boundary policies.”
“That’s not the same!”
Clark watched, bemused, as Jor-El and Dru-Zod bickered, with the comfortable cadence of old friends. “I’m sorry I killed you,” he said uncertainly, during a lull.
Dru-Zod shrugged. “I wanted you to. Come now,” he said dryly, when Clark blinked. “I have spent all of my years training in the ways of war. The atmosphere was poisonous to me, but I overcame it quickly with discipline. With that same discipline I could have killed you if I wanted to. You’re a green boy, and you’ve never trained in war, I presume. You fight like a Houseless brawler.”
“You were doing a… very good impression of trying to kill me,” Clark pointed out warily.
“Because if it was clear to you that I wasn’t, we would’ve just fought to a standstill. As it so happened, we did.” Dru-Zod paused. “Also, might I add, it’s incredibly depressing what happened to my body. You could have at least tried to dispose of my remains.”
“Sorry. But uh. They told me that they kinda wanted to figure out how to cure cancer by reverse-engineering our cells.”
“Why aren’t they cutting you up, then?” Dru-Zod shot back. “Humans.”
“I wish you’d told me,” Clark frowned. “I didn’t want to kill you.”
“That’s House Zod for you,” Jor-El said mildly. “Always with the dramatics.”
“Says the one who shot his infant child off into space in a pod,” Dru-Zod snarled.
“You should have said something,” Clark persisted. “I wish I’d known.”
Dru-Zod shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand me. I would have quite willingly sacrificed your life to extract the Codex. But had there not been the need for that…” he trailed off, folding his hands behind his back. “Blood of my blood,” he said, at last, then he sighed. “When you wake up, seek out that warrior woman. She can fight. Even if she’s apparently some sort of enhanced primitive.”
“That’s not a nice way of referring to Kal’s friends,” Jor-El said reproachfully.
“Look where being nice got you,” Dru-Zod snapped, and as they bickered, they started to fade, until they were gone, and Lara was in their place, smiling gently, hands outstretched. Clark took her palms, squeezing lightly.
“You’re going to have to wake up now, Kal,” Lara said softly.
“I don’t want to,” Clark blurted out, in a rush. “I know you said that humans are my people too. But. That’s not. I did want to be one of them. So much. Especially when I was growing up. But I’m not one of them. Even if it’s just here, talking to ghosts… I’ve never felt like this. Like there’s people whom I belong with.”
“Oh, my love,” Lara pulled Clark over, and tiptoed, kissing his cheek. “Belonging is as much choice as circumstance. Give them another chance. I know it’s hard. But they’re all you have left. And you are all they have.”
“Me?”
“Against what is to come,” Lara stroked his cheek, her hand firm, not cool, not warm. “Someone is coming, from beyond the stars. And He is hungry.”
2.0.
Bruce was on the rooftop of the Eureka Hotel, about to cross around and back to the car, when Clark dropped out of the sky, nearly startling Bruce into falling off the edge. “Shit!”
“Sorry,” Clark smiled tentatively. Bruce tried not to stare too obviously at Clark’s chest. The uniform had been repaired, but there was a faint distortion over the ’S’ where it had been fixed.
“… Good to see you,” Bruce said slowly, uncomfortably. What did you say to someone who had risen from the fucking dead? A real, live, immortal? Clark really was a God, and just the sheer thought of that was patently insane. The global media had been thrown into total chaos for days, ever since Clark blithely announced his resurrection by floating dramatically over the White House.
“I’m upsetting you. Your heart rate,” Clark explained, a little sheepishly, as Bruce frowned under his cowl. “It’s picking up.”
“It’s not every day that I get to meet Jesus Christ,” Bruce drawled. “You’re meant to have risen on the third day, by the way. Missed the fucking memo?”
“Please don’t,” Clark said, and then he started to laugh, a little helplessly, rubbing a palm over his face as his shoulders shook. There was something of hysteria there, maybe. Bruce tried not to tense up. “God. The global press. And my mother… even my, even Lois was so… awed by it. It’s not magic.”
“Son,” Bruce said dryly, “Ever heard of the so-called Third Law? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Give it a month, people are going to start building temples. And then they’ll possibly start smiting the unbelievers. When you get around to writing your Holy Book, try to be real careful about the wording, just saying.”
“You’re not like the others,” Clark noted curiously.
“Call it an overdeveloped sense of cynicism. Alien technology brought you to Earth, alien technology wrecked parts of Earth and resurrected General Zod as some giant craggy… thing… and now alien technology has resurrected you in turn, except with less cosmetic surgery involved. I’m a bitter old man. Your miracles are becoming commonplace.”
Clark let out another shaky laugh. “You have no idea how good this is. I think this is the first normal conversation I’ve had since I pushed myself out of that grave.”
“If this is your idea of a normal conversation, you fucking need therapy.” Bruce paused. “I can probably recommend someone.”
“No thanks,” Clark said pensively. “When… before that whole matter with Luthor? I was actually investigating you. The Batman, that is. I’d read Commissioner Gordon’s statements, the transcripts of her interviews. You’ve become increasingly violent. There’s been a standing warrant for your arrest for years, ever since the unexplained death of the Joker in Arkham. And branding criminals?”
Bruce narrowed his eyes, wary now. If it was going to come to a fight, he was unprepared. He had kept that kryptonite spear, of course, if only because circumstances had proved that the government couldn’t be trusted not to outsource its handling of alien tech, but it was in the Cave.
“I see you did your homework,” Bruce said eventually.
“It’s part of my day job.”
“I tried to do things the ‘honorable’ way at the start,” Bruce noted evenly. “Non-lethal, nothing permanent, criminals left to the police. I maintained a relationship with the last Commissioner, often deferring involvement until I was invited. I worked with the DPP even, sometimes. Broke up drug rings, trafficking, drove the Sicilian Mafia out of Gotham.”
“Then the Joker happened.”
“You’ve definitely done your homework,” Bruce repeated, with a snort.
“He killed the previous Commissioner, I know that, but-“
“But you haven’t done enough research,” Bruce grit out. “The Joker killed twelve people that day. The Commissioner was one. Some police, some civvies… he blew up a hospital, it’s a wonder there weren’t any more casualties. But it was all a diversion. The Commissioner, the hospital, everything. He wanted to keep me distracted while he lured my adopted son out into a warehouse and beat him to death with a spiked bat.”
Clark paled. “Bruce-“
“So you can try all you want to do right by the world,” Bruce bulled on, venomous. “But it always catches up with you to screw you over when you least expect it. At the very end, it’s never you who’ll have the last laugh. So fuck it. And fuck you. Gotham isn’t Metropolis. You want to judge me? Fine. But take a good look at yourself first, Superman. There’s so much suffering in the world, and all you choose to do is save a few handfuls of people from fires and floods? Hah!”
“What do you expect me to do?” Clark demanded, annoyed now. “I can’t intervene in global conflicts. I’ll make things worse.”
“That’s some comfort to the murdered, the enslaved and the raped. Must be nice to be able to fly so high up in the clouds,” Bruce spat, “That you can afford to be wilfully blind to everything else. Fuck off.”
Thankfully, Clark went, though he did looked visibly hurt as he jetted off. Slowly, Bruce unclenched his fists, letting out an unsteady breath. In his ear, Alfred murmured, “And to think that only a rather short time ago you were waxing poetic with Diana over having ‘failed’ him.”
“It’s always easier to remember someone fondly when he’s dead. Seemingly dead. Hell. I forgot how much he pisses me off just by being there.”
“What an excellent start to a working relationship.”
“Working? No one said we were going to be working together.”
“Strange, I do recall you positing an interest in finding the other ‘posthuman’ people in Luthor’s files.”
Bruce let himself quietly down the side of the building, grappling down smoothly. “Now that Superman’s back, there’s probably no need for it. Besides, there’s a whole island of women like Diana out there. Collectively speaking, compared to that, what’s the point of a man who can move very fast, a man who can breathe underwater and some robot? We’re better off persuading some of her sisters to move on over into ‘Man’s world’. It’d be less of a boys’ club and probably considerably more efficient.”
“Why did you send her away then?”
“Because, more than Superman, Diana scares the hell out of me,” Bruce grunted, landing in a crouch.
“Ah yes, I do remember your rather juvenile attitude towards unusual women.”
“Laugh it up, Alfred.”
III.
Fuck off. Bruce’s last words still rang in his mind as Clark lay down on the roof of the Kent house, closing his eyes. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to return to the Void. Within the dark of his mind, there were no more ghosts.
“Clark?”
Clark sat up abruptly in surprise, peering over the edge of the roof. Lois waved up at him, her smile wan. “Lois? What are you doing here? I didn’t… I didn’t hear you drive up.”
“Yeah. Your mum said you’ve been distracted lately.” To his horror, Lois looked around, then started to haul herself up to the roof by climbing up a set of stacked crates. Hastily, Clark helped her up, and she sat on the edge, grinning as she surveyed the darkened fields. “Damn, this takes me back. When I was a little girl, I used to run wild with a pack of kids. Climbing trees, everything.”
Clark tried to imagine that. Playing with other kids, all of them his equal. On Krypton, perhaps, had he not been sent here, had his world still existed. On Earth, rough-housing with other human children? He could not quite imagine it. Humans seemed incredibly fragile. “That’s nice,” he said finally.
Lois eyed him with a faint frown. “All right, Smallville. What’s eating you? By the way, Perry will take you back, probably. You can run some amnesia story-“
“Won’t it be very obvious who I am?”
Lois sniffed. “Clark, you got the job at the Daily Planet because of your government connections. As a cover, remember? I know you don’t have a college degree in journalism. Perry probably does too, from your work: he’s been an editor for decades. He has to suspect something by now. Besides, there’s an awful degree of coincidence between the content of your articles and Superman’s latest exploits.”
“I guess I…” Clark trailed off, exhaling. “I still need some time off. To think about things.”
“Of course.” Lois tentatively patted Clark’s knee. “You nearly died. Twice in a day.”
“Lois,” Clark began, stopped, then sighed. He nearly told her about the Void, about the others, about his other parents. Out here, in the cold light of reality though, it just felt like crazy talk.
“What?”
“Nothing. Thanks for coming.”
Lois shot Clark a nervous smile. “Your mother calling me… that wasn’t the only reason why I came here. I’ve been thinking as well. Clark, I mourned you. I buried you. I thought I’d never see you again. I’m glad you’re back, I really am.”
“…but?” Clark prompted slowly.
“None of what happened was your fault. Hell, some of it was mine. The number of times I nearly died… But I got kidnapped and pushed off a building, for fuck’s sake, just because some dickhead wanted to get your attention. Watching you die, and then watching you come alive again… I just.” Lois managed an uneven smile. “I think I still need to process.”
“You want some… space?”
“Don’t say that like you read it off the cover of Cosmo,” Lois said, with a watery laugh. “I know. I feel like a total asshole for springing this on you right now, right after you’re back, but. I felt like you deserved honesty. After everything. I’m sorry.”
Instead of anger, or grief, somehow, Clark felt only a hollow sort of relief. He loved her, but he hadn’t been blind to the cracks that had started to show, even before he had intervened in the militia compound; he just hadn’t known how to deal with it. In Lois, just as in the children Clark had known when he was young, there was the same human fragility, that same, all-too-human uncertainty in the face of the total unknown. Hers was just deeper down. And now, as before, Clark had only ever known how to back away.
“I understand,” Clark said quietly, and watched relief burst over Lois’ face, heard her heart quicken.
Lois rooted nervously in her purse. “I guess you’ll be wanting this back.”
“Keep it,” Clark assured her, before she picked the ring out. “I’m sorry about how it got to you. Worst proposal ever.”
It was a wan joke, but Lois was still so relieved that she laughed. “Parcel post, arriving after your death? Clark, you’ve set the bar as low as it could go.” She hugged him, a little convulsively, then she started to get off the roof, and Clark helped her down. He stayed seated on the edge, feet dangling in the air. Lois stared up at him, her lips compressed into a thin line, then she exhaled. “Take care of yourself.”
3.0.
“You,” Bruce growled, as he skidded around the corner into the Cave’s armoury. As the internal CCTV had indicated, Clark was standing inside, studying the glass case that held the spear. The alarms had gone off when Clark had blithely pried open the lake entrance and let himself into the Cave, the asshole.
Clark didn’t even glance over. “You kept it. The spear.”
“Surprised?”
“No. Not really.” Clark wasn’t dressed in his suit, oddly enough: he was in a grubby-looking trench, worn over a crinkled white shirt and dark blue jeans, stupid glasses and all. He looked strangely disheveled. Reduced.
“Pissed?” Bruce asked warily.
“Not that either. Better you than the government. Or at least, the bit of the government that probably gave Luthor access to Zod’s body and the spaceship.”
“Better the cynical asshole who tried to kill you than parts of the American Government. I’m flattered.”
Clark let out a startled laugh. “Did you see who’s running this year?”
“Fucking hell, Clark, you’d have to be living under a rock with no internet access not to know.” Bruce forced himself to walk over, thumbs shoved in his pockets. “So. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?” he asked acidly.
“I just wanted to talk to someone.”
“And you pick me?” Bruce snorted. “Half the world out there would kill to talk to you.” He paused. “‘Course, the other half would probably shit their pants if you tried.”
“And which half are you?” Clark smiled faintly.
“Funny. So.” Bruce leaned a shoulder against the steel rail of the stairway up. “You want to talk? Talk.”
“You’re really not like the others,” Clark stuck his hands into his coat pockets, turning to face him. “You’re not afraid of me. You’re not even remotely awed.”
“Hated your guts for two years. That helped.”
“And now?” Clark didn’t even seemed fazed. “Do you still hate me?”
“Eh,” Bruce lifted a shoulder into a shrug. He probably shouldn’t have had vodka this morning, but it had been a vodka day, or so he had felt, waking out of sleep bruised with murky dreams, always one flavour of madness or another. At least vodka didn’t smell, but it made him reckless. “Still thinking about it.”
Clark chuckled, and it even sounded genuine: he ducked his head, shoulders shaking, and Bruce watched him, bemused, until he trailed off. “I’ll tell you a secret,” Clark offered. “Something I didn’t even tell my mother. I didn’t want to wake up.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “When you were… in the ground?”
“Yeah.”
“… Could see why that would be tempting.”
Clark blinked at him, as though thrown by his answer. “Really.”
“The world did its best to screw you over. Protests, Congressional hearing, kryptonite weapons, nuclear missile… if I were you, I probably would’ve decided, fuck it.”
“Somehow, I don’t think so. You seem like the stubborn sort.”
“All right, fine,” Bruce smirked faintly. “But I can logically see why it would’ve been tempting just to take a long, long nap. Or leave the planet.”
“That wasn’t why it was tempting. When I was born, my father encoded the genetic code of every Kryptonian who had ever lived within my own DNA. It’s had… strange side effects.”
“So that’s it,” Bruce grunted. “Zod died and didn’t come back. You did.”
“If you were living a dream,” Clark persisted, “Where you could see your parents again. Would you wake up?”
Bruce stiffened, lip curling, ready to snap, until he saw the desperation in Clark’s eyes, the wounded tension to him. It was, illogically enough, a serious question. “That what you were doing?” Bruce asked gruffly. “Dreaming? While your body repaired itself?”
“Not really. I told you. Side effects. It wasn’t a dream. But they were there. Others, too. People I’ve never met. Ancestors. Strangers. Even Zod.”
“Huh. Kicked his ass a second time?”
“He’s rather more civil in my head.” Clark smiled wryly. “Sounds crazy, I know.”
“What, the bit where you can defy gravity, shoot lasers from your eyes, punch through steel, and come back to life on a whim? Or the bit where you have dreams of the dead?”
“When you put it that way,” Clark looked away, back towards the spear.
“To answer your question though,” Bruce ventured. “If I knew it was a dream? I would want to wake up anyway.”
“Why?”
“Dreams are lies that your brain tells itself when you’re asleep. What’s the point. I’ve always found reality more interesting.”
Clark was silent for a long time, then he sighed. “I see. Thanks. For the talk. Sorry I broke in.”
“What are you going to do now?” Bruce asked cautiously. “Maybe you should go and talk to Diana.” If anything, she was probably going to be a more steadying influence.
“I don’t know. What I was doing before, maybe. Except. I’ve been told that something is coming. From beyond the stars. I think Lex Luthor set up a beacon of sorts, from the ship, that revealed our location to everything else out there.”
Bruce groaned. That would be exactly something that the crazy weasel would do. “I’ll go read Luthor’s prison transcripts. Are you sure your source is reliable?”
“I… yes. I think so.”
“Then you’d better go and find Diana. Persuade her people to get involved. I’ll keep you updated if I find something.”
Clark blinked at him in surprise. “I thought the jury’s still out on whether you still hated me.”
Bruce scowled. “Fate of the world and all that. Also, I’m probably too tipsy to fight you right now. It’s too early in the morning.”
“Isn’t it too early in the morning to be tipsy?”
“Don’t you start, farmboy. I’m old, I deserve my bad habits. Now go away. And stop breaking into my house.”
IV.
“I’ve informed my sisters. We will keep watch on the stars,” Diana said, as they leaned close to the prow of the expeditionary yacht she had chartered. A small submersible was winched to the left hull, and the engines churned the waves into froth behind them, leaving a jagged wake of foam. “Our instruments are far more sensitive than Man’s.”
“So there’s something to be worried about?” Clark asked.
“Not that we can see, as yet. But the Queen was rightfully worried about Luthor having broadcast our planet’s location. As a whole, Earth is at the very cusp of the space age: the way we understand it, we are still far too primitive to join the Galactic Nations. Primitive worlds have fewer rights. That makes our disclosed location dangerous.”
“As above, so below,” Clark noted grimly.
“Just so. The battle may come soon, or it might come in centuries. Either way, my sisters and I will still be here.” Diana eyed Clark curiously. “You as well, I think.”
“How… how could you tell?”
“You have a look about you. The deathless. I too am deathless, after all.” Diana smiled, and there was weariness to that smile, something of the bitterness that Clark’s father had referred to.
“Is it so bad? To live forever?” Clark asked softly.
“It is not so bad at first. And then you start to outlive those you love, over and over. You will watch them sicken and waste away and die while you remain hale, helpless, and that,” Diana clasped Clark’s shoulder gently, “Is when you will truly know the meaning of pain.”
Clark was subdued, later, when he told Bruce what he had learned. Bruce merely frowned, his eyes narrowing to slits behind his cowl. They were close to the wrecking zone where they had fought Luthor’s monster: Bruce had been in the middle of investigating leads on another human trafficking ring, apparently.
“Could’ve told me that in a phone call,” Bruce said finally, acerbic as ever. “Don’t have a phone?”
“I don’t have your number.”
Bruce rolled his eyes and rattled it off, eyeing Clark with open irritation as Clark made a show of typing it in. He was in his civvie clothes again, and once he was done, he shoved the phone back into his coat pocket. “Any reason why you feel the need to fly incognito in Gotham nowadays? Don’t want to be seen with the Bat?”
“I didn’t feel like it,” Clark admitted. “I’ve been wearing the suit less and less,” he added.
“Saw the news recently? Apparently churches set up in your name get the tax exemption.” Bruce’s lip curled into his usual uneven smirk.
Clark winced. “Yes. I saw.”
Bruce waited, silent for a long moment, then, impatiently, he added, “Anything else?”
“What else?”
“Any reason why you’re still here?” Bruce asked, blunt as ever.
“I could help,” Clark said, unthinkingly, and when Bruce stiffened, he added hastily, “I’ve got the suit here, I could change into it and-“
“What’s your problem?”
“What problem?”
Bruce let out a frustrated exhalation. “I told you, Gotham is my city.”
“I’m just offering to help.”
“Don’t bother. I can handle this,” Bruce snapped. “And if you’ve got so much time on your hands, why don’t you help the people out there whom no one else can reach?”
“The White House told me not to get involved. I spoke to General Swanwick about it as well.”
“Cowardice. That’s all I hear.”
“What about you?” Clark said stiffly. “You have resources. You’re a billionaire and-“
“And I have my limits. Because I’m human. I’ve thought about it, actually. Mapped out a plan. But there’s only so much one person can do, tech or no tech, money or not. I don’t have a plan that won’t also have to account for a high casualty rate. So. I try to fix the problems within my reach.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone anymore,” Clark shot back. “And if it’s just me out there? I think I’m going to be tempted.”
Bruce paused in the middle of turning away. “Better,” he said, more neutrally. “The truth, under all that bullshit. Thing is, you’ve already contributed to the deaths of thousands. What more a few slavers and rapists and human scum to the mix, hm?”
“I guess I… what I wanted to say is. I want you to go with me.”
“Flattering, but I know I’ll only get in the way.” Bruce frowned at him, hands twitching. “Spit it out, Clark. What do you really want?”
“I don’t know,” Clark admitted, disoriented all of a sudden, adrift. Life had once segmented itself neatly into ‘Kansas’, ‘Daily Planet’ and ‘Superman stuff’. Now one piece was out of the running and Clark felt unmoored, perhaps irrationally so. Bruce had been right that there was far more suffering in the world than victims of the occasional natural disaster. But so much suffering could not be so easily solved. Not without bloodying his hands.
And not for the first time since he had seen sunlight again, Clark wished that he had never had to wake up. In the Void, the world was simpler.
Bruce eyed him in chilly silence, as still as one of the gargoyles that dotted his city. Then he exhaled, annoyed. “Fine. You can tag along. Just tonight. And then maybe we should make a trip east. I have an idea.”
4.0.
Bruce should’ve known better than to give Clark any leeway. ‘Just’ tonight turned weekly, then more, and they made trips out to the darker places of the world whenever Bruce’s schedule could afford it. Clark didn’t actually need Bruce to be there. But whatever purpose Bruce’s presence was serving, it was, perhaps, working. Slowly, the lost cast to Clark’s eyes was fading; he stopped being so meek.
“We’re not helping,” Clark said evenly, floating several inches off the ground as Bruce wearily hauled himself out of the cockpit of the Plane once it was safely docked in its cradle.
Bruce ached all over, he was in a caffeine deficit, and quite possibly a vodka deficit as well, which put him in no mood for dealing with Clark. “I’m fairly sure we just shut down another one of those militant slaver strongholds today.”
“We did. But what’s the use? Those women we saved. Many of them no longer have homes. They're shunned when they get to a camp. I could hear that. ‘Sambisa women’, they're called-“
Bruce held up a hand. “That’s all very interesting, but what’s your point?”
Clark let out a frustrated, incredulous sound. “We aren’t-“
“Look,” Bruce snapped, as he lowered himself painfully to the ground, rubbing a knot in his back and grimacing, “You want to stop, it’s up to you. It’s easier to save people than to fix them. And this, for me, has never been about fixing people. Besides, we’re doing things by the general American playbook. Swoop in, fuck things up, save some civilians, swoop off.”
Clark set his jaw stubbornly. “You have the means to do more.”
“I’m rich, but I’m not that rich,” Bruce said dryly. “I can’t rebuild infrastructure for entire countries. Take away corruption. Reeducate communities, find a way to police them to make them safer…” he counted off the points from his fingers. “Need me to continue? You can’t do that as a private citizen. You need governments to care. People, collectively.” Bruce shrugged, and winced again, rubbing a little higher. “And as a whole, most people out there just aren’t really equipped to give that much of a damn about everyone else. Fact of life.”
Clark was frowning at him. “Are you… are you hurt?”
“This? Just old age.” Bruce climbed up the steps to the computer and workbench floor, and to his annoyance, he realized that Clark was following him. Alfred was coming down the stairs, a tray of hot coffee and hot cocoa in hand, with sandwiches, and Bruce grabbed coffee and a sandwich and settled down with a groan into his ergonomic chair. The cowl felt like it was smearing dirt to his face with sweat as he pulled it off with relief.
“Thanks Alfred,” Clark said politely, as he ate his own sandwich, slowly at first, then enthusiastically. Alfred nodded mildly and slunk off. He’d never seemed particularly comfortable around Clark.
“Know who could build basic infrastructure? You. Learn some basic engineering and carpentry, and you could probably at least put shelters and some wells together with your bare hands at superspeed. I could talk to some contacts and see who's willing to donate some solar panels. But honestly, since you’re not willing to kill, the problem’s just going to recur.”
“This was never about killing people.”
Bruce snorted. “Then we’re just going to be delaying everyone else’s death sentence. But if that’s what you want, fine.”
“I won’t… I won’t kill anyone. Not anymore.”
“First time’s always the hardest. You’re already two up on a direct kill, you can’t be squeamish.”
“Two?”
“Zod was the first, the craggy thing was the second. Both times were justified. You don’t seem torn up about the second one.”
“The monster that we fought together, you mean.”
“‘Monster’ is really a point of view, son. If we go around assuming things are OK to be killed purely because they look different…” Bruce chuckled mirthlessly. “Story of human civilisation, I guess.”
This shut Clark up, at least, made him quiet all the way through the rest of the sandwich and the cocoa, and he mumbled a brief ‘goodnight’ before jetting off. Huh. Bruce studied Computer, fell asleep in his chair, and woke up to Alfred pointedly and aggressively dusting around him: Alfred’s passive-aggressive nature had been fine-tuned to a sharp point over the decades.
Thankfully, so had Bruce’s growing tendency not to give a flying fuck. He hauled himself to the closest shower, washed off all the grime and blood - other people’s blood, at least, today, changed into a bathrobe, and dragged himself upstairs to bed. It was, Bruce noted wearily, already the late morning, bright and warm. Sanity was clearly for other people.
V.
Clark knew that he should stay away. There was something poisonous about Bruce’s presence, far past all his vicious, jagged edges, past all that cynical fatalism. Clark could see it echoed in the vandalised death shroud that hung in pride of place in the Cave’s armoury, so uncomfortably small, a boy’s armour.
It was obvious that deep down, Bruce knew that he was far better at breaking things than fixing them, and somewhere along the line, he had stopped caring. Had the breaking point been the death of whomever had once owned that child’s armour? Or had it been far earlier, when Bruce had decided to dress up to physically fight crime instead of taking the saner, normal path, like lobbying for gun control? At the very beginning, Bruce had chosen the violent path. Decades on, perhaps it was inevitable what the Batman had become. Someone used to violence inexorably became more and more desensitised with time. Bleaker.
And yet it was hard to stay away. Away from Bruce, Clark felt unmoored, even when he was in the middle of a rescue, even when he was home. Gravity was no longer able to chain him to the earth. By the same measure, it sometimes felt like Clark was detached from the world, held in place only by a handful of tenuous lifelines. Some days he looked up at the stars and imagined flying towards them. Vacuum had not bothered him: and somedays Clark felt ridiculous for not leaving. He stood on the very shores of the stars themselves, with the means to touch them, and yet he stayed with his feet on the ground of a world that neither birthed him nor particularly cared for him.
Some days he thought about returning to the Void, to talk to his birth parents again. Clark knew where the spear was, after all.
And yet - when the wanderlust got too hot, or when the loneliness got too great, instead of reaching for the stars, Clark would go to Gotham. Watching Bruce’s face crinkle up a little in irritation whenever Clark dropped in on him somehow made reality more bearable. Maybe whatever breed of madness driving Bruce was contagious.
“You’re quiet today,” Bruce said gruffly, as they left the unconscious batch of drug traffickers near the closest precinct, with their stash of highly illegal flakka.
“You’ve been ignoring me for hours,” Clark pointed out.
Bruce grunted as he rappelled up to the roof. “Usually that doesn’t seem to faze you.”
Clark followed easily, floating up to the rooftop as Bruce swung himself silently past the edge. “I was thinking about leaving.”
“Good. Go away.”
“Leaving Earth,” Clark clarified. “Space didn’t affect me at all. I could fly out there. See the other planets. The rest of the solar system. Further.”
Bruce eyed him without any hint of surprise. “So why don’t you?”
“Funny,” Clark said, a little hurt. “I thought that… given what Luthor’s done, you would’ve wanted me to stay.”
There was a snort. “Obviously yes, tactically it would be better for whatever it is if you stayed, assuming it actually happens. But you don’t have an obligation to stay. This isn’t even your planet. So why don’t you go?”
“I don’t know.” Clark frowned at Bruce. “Would you? If you were me?”
“I’m not that interested in whatever’s out there,” Bruce said bluntly. “If you’re only curious about space, I could put you in contact with NASA, whoever you want. But if you want to see it all for yourself?” Bruce glanced up briefly at the stars. “Go. Might as well ask a bird not to fly.”
Realisation was like a wave. This was why Clark was helplessly drawn to Bruce, after all. Clark had met no one else in the world who had actually tried to understand Clark, as the sum total of all his parts and all of his flaws, rather than just the version of him that they wanted to see. Not even Martha Kent. “Thanks.”
“For what?” Bruce growled, then he let out an indignant hiss as Clark impulsively dragged him over into a hug. Hands shoved against Clark’s shoulders, and Bruce squirmed angrily against him, but Clark held on, closing his eyes briefly, breathing in. Leather and blood and sweat.
“I needed to hear that.”
Bruce subsided, sullenly, and then, to Clark’s surprise, a hand rubbed up over his cloak, patting him awkwardly and stiffly on his back. “I’m beginning to think that you really do need therapy.”
“Coming from you, that’s rich.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bruce retorted, though he sounded amused rather than annoyed.
“Nothing. You’re an amazing person.” The hug had gone on far too long for a platonic hug, Clark was now keenly aware, but Bruce made no effort to try and worm free.
“Now you’re starting to worry me.”
“Thanks. For being there.”
“Not like I had a choice,” Bruce said gruffly, though he grew silent for a while, then he sighed and pushed again at Clark’s shoulders. This time, Clark let up. “Come on,” Bruce added, unexpectedly. “It’s a quiet night. Alfred can make supper for two.”
Clark was distinctly aware that he was probably starting to grin foolishly. “You take Alfred for granted.”
“Of course he does,” Alfred said in Bruce’s earpiece.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Back at the Cave, the moment Bruce stripped back the cowl, Clark pulled him close again, more gently. This time, Bruce didn’t even struggle, only frowning slightly to himself as he was tugged flush. Even wearing ruthlessness, Bruce was breathtakingly handsome, with that square jaw, those sharp cheekbones, that mouth. Clark felt frozen on the precipice, as though this was as far as he could go. And then Bruce’s mouth curled up, into a faint, sharp smirk, and Bruce was leaning up, pulling him over with a hand around the back of Clark’s neck, the kiss as hard and as merciless as the rest of him.
They kissed as they stumbled towards the Cave’s shower, shedding capes and cowls and boots, and under the steam, stripped to nothing but scars, Bruce smirked again up at Clark, on his knees. Clark groaned and knocked his head back against the tiles as Bruce clenched one roughened palm into a tight fist at the root of his cock and stroked up, then he whimpered as Bruce sucked in the thickened head, scraping teeth lightly against the folds, rubbing his tongue against the slit. Bruce didn’t bother to take more into his mouth, using his hand on the rest, all brutal jerks, but even this felt like the filthiest thing Clark had ever done, Bruce on his knees, mouth stretched over Clark’s cock, frowning in concentration. Bruce on his knees.
The world was off-kilter again and this time Clark welcomed it. “Bruce,” he panted, begging, “God, Bruce.” On the tiles, Bruce chuckled, low and muffled and harsh, lust scraping through Clark’s nerves to his bones. “I’m, please, I’m already close, I-“ his words broke into a whine of protest as Bruce pulled off, teeth bared, stroking Clark harder when his hips twitched up.
“I’m going to, on your face,” Clark breathed, wondering wildly if this was what Bruce wanted, so much like being marked and debased, but Bruce was laughing silently instead of getting the hint, a hyena’s laughter, all teeth. Orgasm felt tainted. Bruce sat back on his haunches, ignoring his own heavy arousal, swiping a streak of come off his cheeks with his elegant fingers, popping it into his mouth. He glanced up sharply when Clark let out an embarrassingly loud whine, and smirked around his fingertips, tongue curling lazily against them, exquisitely profane.
5.0.
Waking up in the soft hours of the morning was… strange. Bruce stared out at the lake, blinking away disorientation.
“You have a weird house,” Clark said behind him, and Bruce flinched violently; he would have fallen right off the bed if he wasn’t tangled in the sheets.
“Jesus fuck!” Bruce groaned, and buried his face in the pillows. That’s right. For some insane reason Bruce had sucked Clark off in the shower before letting Clark give him a very careful handjob, and then they had… gone to bed?
Alfred was going to be very passive-aggressive this morning.
“Not a morning person?” Clark asked, laughter in his voice, which somehow led to Bruce pinning Clark down on the bed to kiss him, sour morning taste and all, because clearly he had no self-control during the morning, either. He ended up curled over Clark, knees braced against Clark’s ribs, taking Clark’s cock down his throat while Clark licked at Bruce’s cock, all sloppy enthusiasm, no practice. That shouldn’t have been as much of a turn-on as it was. Bruce let Clark choke him with his cock, twitching into Bruce’s mouth, the excess dripping down, staining Bruce’s jaw.
Clark let out a raw and satisfied noise as Bruce licked it up and found himself flipped onto his back, blinking, nerves strung tight. Then Clark was sucking him down, whining when Bruce twisted fingers into his hair and bucked, roughly enough that Clark choked and gagged and tears pressed into the corners of his eyes. Big hands cupped Bruce’s ass and edged up to his hips, but didn’t hold him down; this was Clark trying to let Bruce hurt him. Gods. It shouldn’t have felt as good as it did. At least it was over quickly.
Afterwards they had breakfast on the landing overlooking the lake, the morning’s air still crisp. Alfred had served up eggs and fresh bread, pastries and bacon, the works. Clark ate, while Bruce pushed food absently around his plate to show willing and drank coffee, checking his emails on his phone. The borrowed shirt was too long for Clark at the wrists and too tight at the shoulders; barefoot and rumpled, for a moment the illusion of domesticity was complete.
Bruce, however, had never had patience for illusions. “I’ve got word back from WayneTech,” he said briskly. “There’s a couple of Columbia University astronomers who think they have a way to hide Earth from alien attention.”
“Isn’t it a bit late?”
“It depends on how they’re targeting us. If they’re looking at light dips that’ll tell them there’s a planet out there orbiting a star, a laser system could cloak that point of navigation. And hide us from everyone else.”
“Assuming that’s how they’re targeting Earth. Whoever they are.”
Bruce tapped out a reply. “It’s relatively cheap and can even be powered with solar energy. Good enough for me. Besides,” Bruce said dryly, “If it turns out that it didn’t work, you can move right back on to the original plan.”
Clark nodded slowly. He finished his coffee, and held the empty cup soberly in his hands. “Bruce. About… us.” Bruce blew out an exasperated sigh, and Clark twitched. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“Good.”
“I’ll still like to… come along on patrol and… on the other things, and…” Clark trailed off uncomfortably when Bruce simply stared at him.
“It’s not like I can stop you.”
“Sorry,” Clark bit out, resigned. “You could just tell me. If you don’t want me around.”
There it was. A way out, if Bruce wanted it. For a moment, he was tempted. It would be one less complication, and Bruce had no patience for Clark’s problems: he had no interest in being a therapist, or an outlet, or whatever it was. And yet Bruce did not seem to have a choice. Something greater than gravity seemed to have drawn them both together, all unbidden, and Bruce had always been pragmatic about the inevitable.
So he sipped his coffee and went back to checking his phone, and ignored Clark’s sudden unguarded relief. They had built the start of their alliance at the edge of a spear, and somehow it had softened down, though nowhere near all the way, still brittle. But it was there. Necessity was a strange beast.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about infrastructure,” Clark said, and as he talked, the morning crept past with silent ease, cold to the touch.