Work Text:
A long moment passes after Clark knocks on the door of Bruce’s private quarters in the Watchtower, and Bruce can’t seem to make himself press the button that opens the door, or even give verbal permission for the door to open. He can’t move, and his breath comes shallow, and he shuts his eyes behind the cowl. He wonders how worried Clark must be, wonders whether he’s worried enough to try to sic J’onn in Bruce’s direction, like maybe the psychic can forcibly check on Bruce’s mental and emotional wellbeing if Bruce refuses to give Clark the information freely. It feels like a breach of privacy, but, then again, Clark hasn’t done it yet. Bruce is only imagining he might do it. I would, Bruce admits to himself privately, if the situation was reversed.
He flexes his fist in the nonverbal cue that lets the door open, then returns it to position folded into his crossed arms. Superman stands outside the door in the light of the hallway, bright in Bruce’s eyes. Right, he reminds himself that he hadn’t turned on the lights, what a picture I must make right now. Standing in the dark, alone, in my own room, backed up against the wall like a cornered animal. No wonder he’s so worried.
Bruce wants to drop his arms and resume some presentation of normalcy but his elbows are stiff and he can’t move. Won’t move. Still, he manages to school his voice and face into the familiar scowl. “Yes?” he asks.
Clark is looking at him, seeing through him. “I heard what happened with the girl.”
“Ace,” Bruce interjects immediately.
“Ace,” Clark affirms. “How are you?”
Bruce’s stomach lurches at Clark’s sincere, frank question, and his mind immediately supplies her hand was so small. I watched the life leave her body, I watched her die right there in front of me and there was nothing I could do. “Mm,” he says instead, noncommittally, his throat tightening up. “Fine.”
“Yeah, I can see how ‘fine’ you are,” Clark mutters, then shifts his stance to lean against the door frame. His eyes are attentive, and sad. He asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”
At that, Bruce manages a tight huff of a laugh under his breath, under the cowl. Clark responds almost in kind, his mouth quirking into something bittersweet. That was a stupid question, they both know. It’s not that Bruce never opens up about his feelings, it’s just that he doesn’t respond well to direct questions like that. He doesn’t have his thoughts in order, yet, he wouldn’t be able to verbalize she knew she was dying, and she was scared. She held my hand. I was the last person she saw, the last person she spoke to. She didn’t want to be alone. I couldn’t breathe, I listened to her breathing when it slowed, and stopped, and I still couldn’t breathe, because it was so silent and she had died right there in front of me. He isn’t smiling anymore. He still can’t breathe.
No, no, he can breathe on his own, steady, inhale, exhale, remain calm. It sounds forced even to his own ears, he knows Clark can hear this thing Bruce has in his chest that eats away at his vocal cords and makes everything stiff with grief.
Clark finally steps forward out of the door frame, and the door shuts behind him. “Hey, come back to me now,” he says, because through the darkness of the room he can still see the distance in Bruce’s eyes, and then he says “Watchtower: lights to 20%.”
This settles a soft sunrise-like glow over the room without stealing Bruce’s shadows. Clark sits on the edge of the bed (tight sheets with tucked corners – Bruce hasn’t slept in that bed in at least six months.)
“Bruce,” he tries, “are you with me?”
Elbows crossed tight over his hands, still standing resolutely with his back against the wall and with his voice stuck halfway down his throat, Bruce nods.
Clark says gently, “It sounds like she was lucky to have your friendship, in her last moments.”
“Don’t.” The aneurysm ruptured and she fell from the swing into my arms, shaking fingers reaching up to cradle her own head…. It was hurting her, she was in pain. I held her, I didn’t know what I was saying, “Ace, Ace, it’s going to be okay, I’ve got you, it’s alright,” and yet I don’t remember why I said those things, because surely they were more to comfort myself than her. She read my mind, she must have known how uncomfortable I am with death. That must have made her even more afraid, I couldn’t… help, I couldn’t help her… In Bruce’s mind’s eye, he can see her trembling turn into the seizure, her eyes rolling up into her head. She won’t be conscious of anything else after that point. In some ways, she was already dead, as her body thrashed in his arms and he held her and listened to her breathing, so fast, and then… slower, and then no breathing at all.
“Bruce, you’re shaking,” Clark tells him quietly. Bruce hadn’t noticed, couldn’t notice, as he was too focused on his meditation techniques; inhale, hold, exhale, hold, inhale – Clark’s face looks full of worry, and pity, and compassion. “Can I touch you?”
Bruce is concerned, again, amidst the shaking in his bones and the burning in his throat and the memory of Ace’s tears like ice chilling his stomach, that Clark won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, will touch him regardless. Resenting that possibility, Bruce says, “No.” He won’t be able to push Clark away if he ignores Bruce’s ‘no,’ especially considering Bruce can barely move, with his arms locked against his chest.
But Clark just nods and says, “Okay.” And Bruce’s body is still stiff, and he might feel like he’s caving in on himself, but at least he doesn’t have Clark in his personal space trying to upset the balance. He can hold it together from here. Inhale, hold, exhale.
He carried her – dead, dead in his arms, and he carried her. It wasn’t the first corpse he’d seen. Far, far from it. But it wasn’t the fact of her death that was giving him so much trouble, it was the act of dying. How she held his hand and channeled all her fear into gripping his fingers. She was in so much pain.
From the edge of the bed, Clark asks “Will you at least sit with me?”
“Can’t.”
“I…” Clark whispers, “I don’t know how to help you. Tell me what I can do for you.”
Don’t let anyone else die. Bruce can feel his composure breaking, as he watches his own helplessness reflected in Clark’s face. He removes a hand from his crossed arms and uses it to grip the cowl, press the stiff fabric against his nose and eyes and forehead so the pressure will abate the tears. Inhale, hold, exhale. “Tea.”
The word doesn’t register for a moment, but then Clark’s eyes light with purpose as he jumps to the kitchenette. He pulls the simple steel kettle, a JLA mug, a sugar packet, and the tin of ginseng from the cabinet above the sink – these are the only objects in the cabinet. Clark could fill the kettle with cold water and boil it with his heat vision, but, to Bruce’s relief, he just uses the hot water spout, and then lets the tea steep, waiting in the kitchenette rather than returning to the bed. He does glance over his shoulder at Bruce, but he doesn’t say anything. Bruce’s fingers tighten on the face of the cowl.
I couldn’t lie to her, I couldn’t tell her that she was going to a better place. I didn’t know what would happen to her, if anything at all. She was going to die. Clark, I was scared, and she was in pain. She told me about the hell her life had been, and I couldn’t even promise her peace in death.
Still, she… seemed at peace. Resigned. Brave. She didn’t deserve to die. The world is cruel like that.
“Here.” The dim, yellow-white lighting dulls the colors of the Superman suit into deep blue and red, regal and calm. It takes a moment to rally his body to work, but Bruce eventually accepts the mug of ginseng in one hand. Clark sits again on the bed so he isn’t crowding Bruce. “I tried my best,” he adds. Neither of them pretend that Clark’s tea is going to be any good – that’s not the point. The point is that the steam smells like herbs and the heat makes Bruce’s arm warm. Inhale, hold. The pain in his chest doesn’t go away, but it softens, and when he sips the tea and lets the heat slide down his throat, it soothes his voice, and makes him feel like maybe he won’t suffocate.
He can hear Clark breathing, very quietly, slow. Living and breathing, and… and respectful, and quiet, and kind.
When he can feel his knees again, Bruce turns around and sits beside Clark on the edge of the bed. The movement is disorienting – he’s been standing still and stiff for at least half an hour facing the opposite direction. His thumb strokes across the mug’s JLA logo. “Thank you.”
Clark only nods, and maintains his restraint. However reluctantly, he doesn’t touch Bruce, just sits beside him. “If you want, you can take off the cowl. The door-”
“No.” God, he thinks bitterly, if I’m on the verge of falling apart as Batman, who knows what kind of emotional fallout I’d be forced to endure as Bruce? It’s not just that, though. He doesn’t want to feel any more exposed.
“Okay,” says Clark, and Bruce’s throat spasms.
Clark is doing everything Bruce asked of him, being so patient, and respectful, and thoughtful. Even just his presence is comforting. I wish it had been you, he thinks regretfully, you could have done so much more for her. You could have been so much better for her. Maybe she wouldn’t have been scared with you there. You could have promised her heaven, Clark Kent, you could have promised her the world.
On some level, Bruce doesn’t feel like Clark’s efforts to console him are warranted. It isn’t going to work, and it’s a waste of Superman’s time and energy to push against the overwhelming tide of despair that Bruce is trying, almost successfully, to quell on his own. But, at the same time, he doesn’t want to keep pushing Clark away, he doesn’t want to put him through that same feeling of helplessness that Bruce had been forced to endure like a knife to the stomach this evening.
So he says, after a deep breath with knuckles white around the mug, “You can touch.”
When Clark’s hand settles between Bruce’s shoulders, and doesn’t hurt Bruce, and doesn’t push through his spine with nightmarish force, Bruce sighs shakily and grips the ceramic tighter. Clark’s palm warm, soothing, stroking his spine.
The thing in Bruce’s throat is going to make him choke. I don’t want to watch anyone else die. Not like that. Not again. Why did it have to happen again?
An inhuman, breathy noise escapes him, and he’s shaking again, and it’s all coming apart, and he’s going to spill this tea, he needs to – he passes the mug back to Clark who sets it on the nightstand and immediately steadies Bruce with another hand on his shoulder. And then it burns through Bruce like acid, and he’s gripping at the cowl, pushing it desperately against his forehead, covering his eyes, the tension returning to his elbows and shoulders as a sob escapes and it’s… it’s all downhill. His composure shatters, and Clark’s arms are around him, and his own voice, though it doesn’t sound like his own, whispers thickly “How could anyone kill her? How could anyone- she was in so much pain…”
And Clark holding him, rocking him, stroking the fabric of the cowl firmly so Bruce will feel it, and sounding so sympathetic and vulnerable and quiet when he says “It’s going to be okay, I’ve got you, it’s alright.” The words are familiar. Bruce claws at red fabric and grips it as hard as he can manage.
Bruce chokes, “No.”
“It’s – it’s going to be alright.”
“She’s dead.”
Clark gathers Bruce more fully into his arms and sighs, nuzzling or nodding affirmation against the cowl. “Yes, she’s dead. But you were there. She wasn’t alone.”
“Scared.”
“Of course she was scared. But - but she wasn’t alone. You were-” he cuts off, when the shaking begins again, “oh, Bruce...”
Bruce admits to himself, later, that he doesn’t deserve a friend like Clark. That Clark’s boundless patience is more than anyone deserves, and his gentleness sweet enough to comfort children, and the overwhelming feeling of safety in his arms is something that should feel unnecessary to Bruce, to Batman. He scolds himself for allowing Clark to waste time on him, attention that others need so much more.
“I wish it had been you,” he says aloud finally, when his body calms and he can manage complete sentences again, still held against Clark’s warmth, steady and soothing.
“I know it’ll sound selfish,” Clark says, “but I don’t. I don’t envy you this pain. It must have been so hard.” Clark’s hand smooths over the cowl again and Bruce makes a face, obligingly pushes it back off of his face to rest on his shoulders, allowing Clark to see his face. Clark’s eyes shine in the low light, and he threads his fingers through Bruce’s hair. It feels… like a relief, like the purest communication of affection and fondness.
“You would have been better at it.”
“No,” Clark says, “she trusted you, not anyone else. I imagine it meant a lot to her, to have you there.” Bruce winces, shakes his head and tries to sit up, pulling away. But Clark holds him back, and says, “We can stay like this a little longer, if you want.”
Lying against Clark, in Clark’s arms, is like a feeling of comfort and safety Bruce has never felt in his whole life. Impervious to bullets, like a Kevlar blanket, but at the same time warm and reassuring and human(like) and soft. He doesn’t have it in him to say no, he doesn’t have the strength to pull himself away from this feeling. What he says, then, with his cheek and the corner of his lips pressed against the Superman suit and Clark’s fingers in his hair again, is, “I never want to have to go through that again.”
Clark replies softly, “I wish I could promise you that you wouldn’t have to.”
“What I mean is…” Bruce clarifies (even though, the truth is, he meant exactly what Clark thought he meant) “we need to work with the government. Prosecute metahuman genetic engineering with extreme prejudice. They can’t… they can’t keep treating these kids like test subjects.”
Clark hums in agreement. He grabs their tablet computers, and they spend the rest of the evening curled together atop the bedcovers, working and working to end Ace’s suffering posthumously, to put Bruce’s mind at ease.