Chapter Text
Clark was so tired.
Clark was so, so tired, and hurting, and broken, and he just didn’t have it in him anymore to resist a new master.
This new Batman, the man who'd emerged from the portal, was almost a mirror image of Clark's master. But he was brawnier, and faster. His tech looked more advanced. He’d taken down Clark’s master like it was nothing, had him tied up and bleeding on the floor of the Batcave within minutes.
He'd need none of those advantages to hurt Clark, of course. There was no point torturing himself over whether this man could hit even harder, or what new, worse tools he might have brought along in that sleek utility belt.
Clark had been in this cell for a year, red light blanketing his body, the kryptonite collar leeching the strength from his bones. There were burn marks all over his skin from the shock stick, cuts on his back from the whip, a still-oozing brand on his chest.
His master could already hurt him as much as he wanted, and much more than Clark had the strength to bear. He didn’t need advanced tech or an extra twenty pounds of muscle for that. So the only question that mattered was this: how much did this new Batman want to hurt him.
Clark was tired. He hurt all the time. He didn't want to be broken in again. He didn’t know how he'd get through another round of punishments.
Maybe it was contemptible. Maybe he was a coward. He’d fought the first time. But all he wanted now was to try and be good, to see if he could win some scraps of leniency with this new master.
So when the new Batman came up the stairs towards the cell, he arranged himself into as neat a kneel as he could manage. As soon as the energy barrier flickered out, he folded himself down with his forehead to the ground at the man's boots. One of the whip marks on his back split open again when he moved.
Please. It hurts. No more.
"Hello, sir," he said.
Batman drew in a sharp breath. At the gesture? At the ugly mess of Clark's back?
Either way, it wasn't a happy noise. Not the right move, then.
Clark cringed internally, but he had one more good attempt in him. If that was wrong, too, if that got him hurt, at least he'd have tried.
He knelt up. Blood trickled slowly down his back. It took everything he had to force a smile onto his face.
"Please, sir. If you tell me what you like, I can make it good for you."
He brought one hand up, so so slowly, trying with every cell of his body to communicate that he was being good, not a threat, and gently cupped the codpiece of Batman's suit. Batman wouldn't be able to feel it through the protective cup, but Clark hoped the gesture was clear enough.
Anything you like. Please don't hurt me. Please.
"Stop," Batman said harshly, gripping Clark by the wrist to pull his hand away. "Don't do that."
Clark hastily dropped his hand. Batman didn't usually like it when he showed initiative, but he'd wanted, so badly, to show that he was willing. He'd thought maybe it was worth the risk, with someone new, who wouldn't know how well he was trained.
And maybe it was, because there was no slap, no punch, no crackle of a shock stick. He was being pulled to his feet, firm hands under his elbows. It hurt to move. Batman didn’t rush him.
"Clark. I'm from another dimension. Things are... very different there. Where I'm from, we – my Superman and I – we work together. I'm going to get you out of here."
Work together, Clark thought, with a guilty stab of hope. His master had tried to make Clark work for him, too, back when Clark had been newly captured, and stubborn, and unbroken. He'd refused, of course; hadn't given an inch. He'd been very stupid about it.
There were still things he wouldn't do, even now. He wouldn't kill for Batman. He wouldn't lend himself to assisting the murder of innocents. But not everyone Batman fought was an innocent. The rulers of Gotham’s underworld had constant power struggles amongst themselves. Clark was long past the point where he'd refuse to fight a monster simply because it was another monster who’d told him to.
Of course, by the time he'd broken enough to come to that realization, his master had lost interest in trying to use him for anything but entertainment.
If he could have another shot at it now –
This Batman had a Superman of his own already, but surely he'd like another one. And maybe Clark and that other Superman could even help each other.
It would be good to have an ally, someone to teach him how to please this new master. Maybe the other Clark would like it, too, having someone to share the load. If he wasn't Batman’s only entertainment, it would mean longer breaks, more time to heal.
"If there's anything here you want to take, tell me now," Batman said.
"There's nothing, sir. But thank you," Clark said, in startled gratitude. Oh, it would be so good to have a master who wanted his cooperation, who'd consider what he wanted, if only to have a reward to dangle.
"Do you have clothes somewhere?" Batman asked, looking around the barren cell as if there might be a hidden storage option somewhere in a ten by ten foot space that contained a cot, a sink, a grate in the floor, and otherwise not so much as a blanket.
"No, sir," Clark said, very carefully and deferentially and with absolutely no trace of the "obviously not" that wanted to creep into his tone.
Batman's jaw tightened. "Don’t call me sir," he said.
He jerked his cape off his shoulders and pressed it into Clark's hands. "I don't know if you can stand to have anything on your back. If not, you can wrap it around your hips."
"Thank you, s– Batman," Clark managed, with barely a pause.
The cape's fabric was heavy and stiff, and he didn't actually want to find out how it'd feel on the open wounds on his back. But Clark hadn't had anything to cover himself with since Batman had cut the suit off him on his first day in the cell. The cave was always cool and damp. Draping the heavy, body-warm folds of the cape around his hips and legs was a pure sensory pleasure in a body that hadn't felt anything like pleasure for far too long. The sensation brought a prickling heat to his eyes.
"Thank you,” Clark said.
Batman put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, warm through the leather of his gauntlets. Clark was going to be so, so good for this man.
“I'm taking you through the portal. It's not a great way to travel. I passed out, the first time through. Try to stay calm, if you can.”
“I will,” Clark said. If there was anything he'd learned in the past year, it was how to stay calm through pain and terror. Screaming didn’t help; struggling made things worse.
The portal was a wavering circle of lights in the middle of the cave. It was nauseating to look at. Something about the geometry of it was wrong. His eyes kept insisting that it shouldn't exist, his brain screamed to run from it. But Batman had a hand on his elbow and towed him steadily towards it, and Clark could still manage not to fight.
They stepped through the lights, and then reality went wrong, everything warped and twisted and inconceivable. It was a relief, to let himself stop perceiving it.
Clark woke up face-down, flat on his stomach. He was cradled in softness, enveloped in a boundless sense of physical wellbeing.
He was in a room. It was obviously still a cell: windowless, a bank of red lights on the ceiling, the slow blinking light of a camera in the corner. But it was also a room, four solid walls around him. Clark luxuriated in the comforting lizard-brain illusion of privacy, of a safe little space, instead of a glass wall looking out into cavernous darkness.
There was a mattress under him. He was lying on soft sheets. The blanket covering him was so light it didn’t even aggravate his wounds –
No. The wounds were gone. Some time while he'd been unconscious, he must've been put under sunlight lamps. The pain was gone, all of it, a year’s worth of constant, layered, grinding pain: the split and tear of the skin on his back when he moved, the constant soreness between his legs, the oozing raw flesh around his neck where the kryptonite collar sat. The brand on his chest. Gone.
No collar at all, no nausea.
He'd been bathed, and dressed in soft flannel pajamas that covered him from his neck to his ankles.
His body still felt battered all over, every muscle sore, exhaustion written into every cell. It would take a week in the sun to wipe it all away entirely. But there was nothing that qualified as true pain. The wounds were gone.
Clark turned his head into the pillow and let hot grateful tears drip out unseen.
A room. A bed. Blankets. The pure sweet bliss of not being in pain.
Some of these privileges would be taken away again, but surely this meant he could earn them back. And either way he had them right now, his to enjoy for as long as they lasted.
The last year had taught Clark to get through things moment by moment, one second at a time. No point thinking about how long anything would last. He could enjoy these moments just the same way as he'd endured the other ones, untethered from time.
Clark drifted, one blissful painless moment at a time. Somewhere deep beneath the surface of his blank, unthinking peace lurked the knowledge of how much worse it would be when the pain came back. It would be harder to bear, with this moment for contrast. And this time, he’d know exactly how bad things could get.
But he’d become very good at not thinking about things. He wasn’t going to let fear of the future ruin a perfectly good present.
Eventually, there was a quiet tap at the door. Batman came into the room.
Clark would've gone to his knees, but Batman held up a hand as soon as he started pushing himself up.
"Don't get up."
He didn't object to Clark turning over onto his back – which he could do painlessly, comfortably. Intact skin on a soft mattress, not even the pull of a badly-healed scar –
"How do you feel?" Batman asked.
"Wonderful," Clark said, letting himself smile at Batman with all the genuine gratitude he felt. "Thank you."
I'll be good, I'll be grateful, let me keep earning this –
"I'm glad," Batman said, his hard face softening as much as Clark had ever seen it.
He held out a bottle of water and then simply stood by and let Clark drink as much as he liked. The water was cool and crisp, fresh from the fridge. It was a rare treat getting to wash the fuzzy feeling from his mouth. The cell had had a sink, but running water was a privilege to be earned, and Batman hadn't been pleased with Clark much, lately. There'd been very little water for a while now.
“Do you know my identity?” Batman asked, when Clark had drunk his fill.
“Bruce Wayne. If it's the same, here,” Clark said, because he wasn't going to attempt a lie that would be so easy to catch him out on. Batman had spent a while downloading things from his master’s computer, and Clark knew his master had kept meticulous notes.
Batman reached up and pulled off the cowl. His short hair was tousled. It made him look softer, less dangerous. That was a trap, of course: Bruce Wayne was the mask, not Batman. The cowl’s permanent frown was closer to the reality of the man than Bruce Wayne's movie star good looks.
For all that he had the same face, this Batman looked like a stranger. The facial expressions, the way he held himself, were entirely different from Clark’s master.
Batman pulled up a chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, intent.
"Clark –"
This was it, then. The first request. Let it be something he could make himself do. It was so good not to hurt, to be warm. He really didn’t want to lose his privileges just yet.
"I know I promised I'd get you out of there. And I haven't," Batman said confusingly.
He’d taken Clark to a whole different universe, to this comfortable room: what had he been talking about, then, if not that?
"This is a very different place than you're used to. I'm a different person from the Batman you know," Batman said. The corner of his mouth curled a bit, wry, inviting Clark to share in the colossal understatement of it. Clark smiled at him and watched that grim mouth soften even further.
Batman continued: "You're a different person from my – the Clark I know."
Clark noted the correction with pleasure, the way Batman had chosen not to call the other Clark "his Clark" as the way to distinguish them – because they were both his Clark now. Batman hadn't said “different” like it was a bad thing, either. Clark hoped he could be enough like this Batman's Clark: the one who got to work with him, and not just bleed in a cell.
“I know you've been through hell. And I know that even one more day in a cell right now –”
Batman paused, swallowed hard, and waited, as if to give Clark a moment to say something here. One more day in a cell… what?
Oh. So ‘out’ meant all the way out? Into the sunlight, or maybe at least to be allowed the run of Batman’s cave? He expected Clark to be impatient for it – because he’d had the training of his Clark from the beginning, of course, and Clark had been impatient, once, rash, stubborn. Batman didn't know how well Clark was already trained for him, how far all that was behind him.
“There's people in this universe that you might've fought in yours, who might have hurt you, who are good people here. And I know you've been hurt, and you have every right –”
Batman broke off again, and this time Clark genuinely couldn't guess the ending to the sentence.
“You're Superman,” Batman said, starting over. “I'd like just a few days, to get to know you, and for you to get to know us, before I send you out there. Can you understand that?”
God. Batman looked so worried about it, and meanwhile Clark was almost afloat on the cloud of relief, that this thing Batman had asked for, this first request that would set the tone of their interactions, was something it would be so easy to give: be good, be patient.
It would've been hard, once, for the old, far-away Clark he could barely remember being. It was the easiest thing in the world, now.
“Of course,” he said easily, “of course, si– Batman. You don't know me, of course you can't just trust me.”
Batman deflated, his tense shoulders coming down. He looked tired, exhausted to the bone. Clark thought he probably hadn’t slept, with new information to go through from the other Batman’s files, and Clark's recovery to oversee, under the sunlight lamps that couldn't be allowed to overshoot their goal. And he must've been braced for a fight, for having to teach a lesson. Batman would think of these first few interactions as setting a tone, as well.
“There’s no hurry. I like it here already,” Clark said.
Batman smiled back at him. It was so good, so easy, to please this Batman. It wouldn’t always be this easy, but right here, right now, it was. Clark slotted the relief of it into the row of his beautiful, painless moments.
“What would help?” Clark asked. “Do you need any blood samples?”
“That would be helpful,” Batman said.
Clark wasn't surprised. This was a very different Batman, but alternate dimension or not, he didn't think you could be Batman without some degree of obsessive control. An unenhanced human couldn't go toe to toe with metahumans the way he did without meticulous research. Of course Batman would want to know everything, to study him, to put samples under a microscope. He'd have the other Batman's notes, but he'd want to see for himself.
Clark held out his arm. Batman took a dozen vials of blood and some skin cell samples, watching him carefully as if he was worried Clark might object. But it was just a single pinprick and a scratchy metal spatula scraping over the underside of his arm, not anything like pain. Batman seemed pleased by his cooperation.
“It's there anything I can bring you, for in here?” he asked when he was done, so there was even a reward in it.
Clark asked for a second blanket, and got it: it was the warmest, most wonderful thing, heavy soft wool in a muted cream-and-grey pattern.
“I can turn up the temp a bit in here,” Batman said, watching bemusedly as Clark wrapped himself in a blanket cocoon. “I just don't think of you as someone who feels the cold.”
Clark almost regretted the blanket, then. He'd rather Batman had kept thinking of him as someone who didn't feel the cold. He felt it acutely, when the kryptonite collar was on: a grinding, full-body misery, almost worse than the sting of the lash because it was so all-pervasive. Turning the temperature down in the cell had been a favored punishment when his master wanted something that wouldn't leave marks.
But there was no kryptonite collar right now, and no cold, and thinking of things that might happen was only going to spoil Clark's beautiful, painless moment.
Batman left him for a bit. Clark drifted, carefully not thinking about anything. Eventually Batman came back bearing food.
His master had fed him, sometimes. There was no way around it without sunlight to nourish him. But it hadn't been like this: real food, chicken noodle soup with homemade broth, bread so fresh it was still warm inside. Clark almost burst into tears again over it.
“Slow,” Batman admonished him. “You're malnourished. Don't make yourself sick.”
So Clark went slowly, obediently, and savored it, and curled around the satisfied ache of his stomach, after, and slept, in the soft warm bed. That night he almost managed not to think at all about what the cost would be.
When he woke up, some more of the heavy exhaustion had dissipated. Clark flexed his fingers and felt his muscles move smoothly, easily. He looked up at the ceiling, where the glow of the red lights almost concealed the second battery of darkened bulbs behind them: inactive now, but Clark was pretty sure Batman had pulsed the sunlight lamps for him again while he'd slept.
He smiled and gave the camera a little wave good morning.
Batman brought him breakfast: scrambled eggs and toast, simple food, but again obviously homemade with care. Clark wondered who cooked for this Batman, and if they might be another ally, in time.
Clark knew that his master had had a butler, once, but the man had died before Clark had ever been captured. Clark had always assumed Batman must’ve killed him in a fit of temper he’d later regretted. Batman tended to hold his staff up against some impossible standard that was a bit too specific to be entirely fabricated.
This Batman clearly had a better grip on his temper. Maybe he kept his servants around.
Clark folded that hope up neatly and put it away, and then tried to do the same with the memories. He'd tried to keep Batman’s attention on him, when there was some mishap or other, but there was only so much he could do from a cell, and sometimes –
No –
“Clark,” Batman said urgently.
Clark's attention snapped to him immediately.
“Stay with me,” Batman said, holding his gaze. Suddenly it was easy to let the memories go, all his focus back on Batman where it was trained to be. Clark shuddered with gratitude as Batman pulled him back into his painless moment: food on his plate and a blanket around his shoulders.
“I thought you might want to take a shower,” Batman said when Clark was done eating. He nodded towards the door at the back of the room, and then shifted slightly, shoulders coming up.
Clark braced himself: he could already recognize the stance this Batman took when he was about to say something he thought there might be some resistance to.
“There's a camera. It's only infrared, low resolution.”
There was a moment's pause.
“Okay,” Clark said, feeling his whole body relax when it became clear that that had been it already. He actually had to think about it, what Batman even thought the problem might be. But of course there'd been a time where Clark would've cared if someone watched him showering. The Clark who'd never spent a year naked in front of a glass wall.
Of course there was a camera. There must be others in this room as well, in addition to the visible one. Batman wasn't going to have a blind spot in one of his cells. He might be lying about infrared only. It didn't matter. It was like Clark's lovely room, with the four solid walls: just the illusion of privacy was a gift.
“What's the time limit?” he asked tentatively. He didn't always get to know the rules, and even asking for them sometimes annoyed his master. Clark thought it was probably because a clear rule was a piece of control he might have to snatch back out of Clark's grip, if he felt like changing his mind.
Batman snorted, a quick bark of a sound that made Clark startle; he'd never heard Batman laugh like that before.
“We're not that far off the grid, Clark. There's unlimited hot water. You can take as long as you want.”
“Thank you,” Clark said, smiling back at him.
He kind of wished Batman hadn't reacted so badly, yesterday, when Clark had tried to show initiative. He'd gladly have gone to his knees just then, made some more physical gesture of gratitude.
When Batman wanted him to do something, he'd undoubtedly be told. Trying to hurry things along was another way Clark was grasping for control, he knew that perfectly well. He could be patient.
“I'd like to run some scans after,” Batman said, back to the cautious tone.
“Okay,” Clark said immediately, and then, “Are you sure there's no time limit,” the words bursting out, stupid, stupid, thoughtless, asking to have a rule repeated was definitely grasping for control. Obviously, obnoxiously so, and to no purpose whatsoever. What was he gonna do if Batman got impatient and felt like yanking him out of the shower halfway through? Tell him “But you said –” like a child?
But Batman didn't smack him down, even now. “It's nothing urgent,” he said, in his steady, hard-to-read way. “All the blood tests came up clear, and I scanned you for devices when we came in. I want to make sure I’m not missing anything, but it can wait a bit. I've seen your counterpart shower before, Clark, I'm fully aware you'll be in there for an hour.”
Clark looked down quickly, because his eyes were welling up again, at Batman's patience, and the pointed way he'd made it clear showers would be a privilege he could earn, a privilege the other Clark had earned. There had never been rules clear and consistent enough to let him keep on his master's good side. He’d wanted Clark's fear and pain more than he'd wanted his cooperation, at least once he'd trained him out of the habits that really pissed him off: the mouthiness, the fighting back.
There'd never been work Clark had been willing to do for him.
But this Batman had a purpose for him. And his Clark went along; which might mean anything or nothing, because of course this Clark might be as different from himself as this Batman was from his master.
But it was nice to think that maybe privileges could be earned, here.
Long hot showers had been one of his half-guilty pleasures, back before. They’d had an ancient creaky monstrosity of a water heater at the farm, growing up. It had held just enough water for the three of them to get clean on a good day, supplemented with a bucket of water and some judicious application of his heat vision whenever it went on the fritz. After that, there’d been a variety of cheap hotels around the world, and then his rickety Metropolis apartment, where the hot water didn't run out but the water pressure was a trickle.
So when he was in a hotel somewhere with a really good shower, he did like to indulge. Except every time he zoned out in the warmth for too long, he thought ruefully about what Mom would’ve –
No.
He forced his attention back to Batman, pushing the memories aside.
The shower was weirdly nice, for something attached to a cell. It wouldn't have been out of place in a luxury hotel: dark grey tiles and half a dozen jets. Steam rose immediately from the force of the spray.
Batman had hosed him down sometimes, but this was a very different thing, to be able to wash himself slowly, thoroughly, hands running over all the places that had been broken and bloody. The memories kept trying to creep up. He found his hands slowing as he worked his way down his body. There were places that he didn't want to touch at all. And after all, no one was making him. He could simply stop, and brace his hands against the wall, cool tiles a lovely contrast to the pounding force of the hot water, and give himself up to drifting in the moment again.
“Clark. I can afford the water bill, but it's been ninety minutes. You ok in there?”
Clark startled violently at the sound of Batman's voice coming out of the speaker. He'd let himself droop more and more, head hanging down between his outstretched arms, feeling the water pound down on his back. When he straightened up abruptly, the world greyed out around him.
“Sit down,” Batman barked.
Clark's legs folded underneath him without any conscious input from his brain.
Darn it. He hadn't been keeping track of time. He’d taken himself out of time on purpose. He’d gotten too used to being in his cell, waiting for things to happen or waiting for things to be over. He’d have to get rid of that habit in a hurry if he wanted to keep the privilege of being on a slightly longer leash.
“Sorry,” he managed.
The water cut out. Clark felt a tired spark of amusement under the dread. Who had a remote-operable shower? He'd been right, when he’d thought this Batman must be just as much of an obsessive control freak as his master.
Clark had automatically put his hands on his thighs when he'd gone down, proper kneeling posture, so he could see how wrinkled and pruned they were. His whole skin was flushed, but with the water shut off he was cooling down rapidly.
A shiver ran through him.
“Sorry,” he said again, faintly.
“You okay? Clark? If you're dizzy, put your head down – for fuck’s sake. You try to give people some privacy, and then you're stuck with goddamn blurry infrared when they pass out in the shower,” Batman growled.
He didn't actually sound that angry, but Clark put his head down just in case, pressing his forehead against the tiles.
He'd gotten away with it this time, he was pretty sure. Batman hadn't been sitting around impatiently waiting for him to emerge from the shower, or he'd have noticed sooner that Clark had been in there too long and cut him off.
He was waiting around now, though, watching Clark on what apparently really was a low-res infrared camera, which couldn't be very entertaining. So Clark had better get himself together quickly.
“I'm okay now,” Clark said.
“Sit up slowly.”
Clark shifted back up to kneeling and waited for the head rush to pass. He'd really done a number on his blood pressure.
“Do I need to come in there and get you?”
“No! No,” Clark managed. “I'm coming out. Sorry.”
“Stand up slowly.”
Clark could do that. He climbed slowly to his feet and had to wait again for the shower of black sparks to fade from his vision. He toweled off hurriedly and finally walked out into his room.
There was a stack of clothes on the bed. Clark put a hand on the flannel shirt, swallowing hard. Warm, soft fabric. Three different outfits: T-shirt, hoody, sweatpants; flannel shirt and jeans; slacks and a turtleneck. Clothes, and a choice.
He'd left the pajamas on the bathroom floor, habit from another life, because this life didn't have a framework for what to do with clothes at all. He'd walked out bare, into the main room where the camera was not blurry infrared, without thinking about it at all.
He didn't go hide in the bathroom to get dressed. It was fine if Batman wanted to look. Clark would still happily go to his knees for him, for all this.
The actual price seemed likely to be a bit steeper than that, given how much time Batman was giving him to settle in and get used to all those privileges. He clearly wanted Clark invested.
Well, he was fully healed now, and rested. Hopefully he'd be able to take whatever Batman wanted from him without messing up.
He put on the slacks and the turtleneck, which was dark grey wool, probably cashmere or something, soft as a cloud. They weren’t clothes Clark would've ever picked on his own, and therefore were probably something Batman had picked for him and might want him to choose.
It made him look strange in the mirror: expensive, sophisticated. Bruce Wayne’s type of clothes.
Clark looked up at the camera. “I'm ready. Where do you want me?”
“Sit on the bed, please.”
Clark sat, hands by his side in plain view.
Batman came in, took one look at Clark in his clothes, and went unreadable.
Clark tensed. Wrong choice. Had Batman not been watching him get dressed?
“I can get changed, if –”
“It doesn't matter for the bioscanner. It’s not an MRI, you can have metal on you. It's just not what I would've expected you to choose,” Batman said. “You're different from the Clark I know.”
Clark still couldn’t parse the expression on his face.
“Bad different?” Clark asked, trying to keep his voice light, unsurprised when it came out anxious and small.
“Well-dressed different,” Batman said lightly, so lightly Clark could tell perfectly well it wasn't an answer.
Batman pulled something out of his pocket. Blue light spilled over his hand. Clark’s whole body went on point like a hound that had sighted a hare.
Reward collar.
Clark almost always wore the green kryptonite collar outside the cell. It made him weak, nauseated, easy to handle. The blue took his powers away, but no more. Without his powers Clark was still a tall, muscular man; not equal to Batman and his martial arts training, but strong enough to make things difficult. So the blue collar only came out for special occasions, the rewards that were meant to be memorable.
His master had taken him out of the cave five times, in the year he'd had him: a handful of chances to see the sky, to feel the sun on his face. They'd been hard-won prizes, every one of them: rewards for being very, very good through something very, very difficult.
In the context of going for a scan, that probably meant deep tissue samples. That was all right. Batman could cut out as many pieces of Clark's liver as he wanted, if he’d take him outside after.
Clark ignored the queasy slide of sweat down his back. Right now there was no pain, and a chance at outside time. That made right now a good moment. He could stay in it, and not think about what might or might not happen in the medical lab.
Especially because if he did freak out and make a scene, Batman would still make him do the testing. He'd just also have whatever injuries Batman inflicted while forcing him to cooperate, and no reward after. So Clark would be good.
Clark tilted his head for the collar, and then caught the weird look Batman was giving him and froze again.
“It goes on your ankle,” Batman said slowly.
Which, looking at the collar again, made much more sense: it was too small to fit around Clark's neck. It was just a weird concept. Reward anklet.
Clark pulled up the leg of his slacks and held out his leg for Batman, and didn't think about what Batman needed unobstructed access to his neck for. He wiggled his toes, felt his mouth twitch up. Reward anklet.
Okay. Clark would have to watch it. He was getting too giddy just from the potential for outside time, which he couldn't be sure he was going to get. There had been plenty of times when Clark had promised himself he'd be good through something tricky, and then broken in the moment and pissed his master off.
Batman was watching him bemusedly. Clark felt the smile slip from his face in a hurry. Grinning to himself over weird stupid inside jokes was not the kind of thing that ever went over well with a man who hated not knowing things, and it wasn't like Clark could even explain his train of thought. I'm just so happy I might get to see the sky would be worse, when he hadn't been promised any reward at all.
Batman didn't call him on it. He did the thing with his shoulders that meant brace yourself, Batman preparing for potential opposition, and then he pulled something else out of his belt. A blindfold.
Okay. Clark hated being blindfolded. Losing so much of his senses to the kryptonite already left him feeling half-blind, numb, locked in: nothing but what few waves of light and sound filled the single room around him, cutting off sharply at the walls where the whole world should’ve been. Being blindfolded made it so much worse, intensifying the unsettling absence of all the other senses that should've come in to compensate.
But he could certainly be good for the blindfold.
Clark tilted his head again, and the tense set of Batman's shoulders relaxed. Batman put it on him, heavy fabric with pads over his eyes, cutting off all traces of light. He felt Batman's fingers brush over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose as he checked the fit.
“All right. Come on,” Batman said, taking him by the elbow.
It was weird, having Batman guide him along instead of drag him. More efficient, though. It was almost funny, how the contrast with this new master made it obvious how much energy the old one had wasted with pointless cruelty. Obviously making Clark stumble and fall and walk into things had been the point, Batman had enjoyed it. But then he'd also get impatient when Clark slowed him down, or curse about it when he got stuck dragging around two hundred plus pounds of deadweight.
This Batman just led him along with a light grip and the occasional quiet warning: “banister to your right,” “two steps up now,” “gurney's right in front of you.”
Clark laid down for the scan and held still. He listened to the hum of the machine, to Batman's steps moving around him, the quiet clink of instruments in a metal basin. He clung to the moment by his fingernails, this moment where things didn't hurt, and didn't think about tissue samples.
The sound of Batman’s fingers clicking on a keyboard. A quiet humming noise. Batman's voice, careful: “I could get better images with a contrast agent. There'd be some discomfort –”
Clark stuck his arm out immediately. Batman made an approving noise. Cool swab against his arm, the pinprick of a needle going in. “You might feel a burning sensation –”
Wow, that was weird: a sensation as if he could suddenly feel his own veins, traced out in warmth all through his body. Metal clinking on metal again. Clark took a deep breath, braced himself for the pain to come. Outside time, if you’re good. Be good, be good –
Another approving noise from Batman. The hum of the machine powering down. Tug of the needle leaving his arm.
Hand on his elbow. “Come on.”
He followed the tug, confused. “What –”
Don't ask. Let it happen.
“All done. I'm taking you back to your room.”
No!
Shit, shit, he hadn't meant to, but there was no way Batman hadn't already noticed: two hundred pounds of muscle suddenly locked against the grip on his arm. Clark’s body had completely frozen up on him.
Move, he told himself.
Batman had been happy with his scans, so he didn't need the samples. He didn't need Clark to do anything hard, so there wouldn't be a reward. That was good. That was a relief. There'd be no pain.
Move! Clark told himself viciously.
God, he was messing this up. He was going to be in so much trouble. He tried desperately to remind himself that he liked his room, his nice solid walls, his little illusion-of-privacy space. Except suddenly it felt like a cage, and Clark's stupid body didn't want to go in there.
“Clark –”
Sharp warning tone, and Clark ought to be grateful to even get a warning, because this was flat-out disobedience, at the worst possible time: outside of his cell, with the reward collar on. Batman was going to put him down hard, and Clark couldn't get it together.
“Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry, can I just have a minute. I'm not fighting. Sorry –”
“What's the matter?” Batman sounded baffled, concerned more than angry, so maybe Clark could still salvage this, if he pulled himself together quickly. “You seemed fine during the scan.”
“I thought we were going outside,” Clark confessed miserably, because it probably wouldn't make things worse at this point. Batman liked it better when he understood what was going on in Clark's head.
“Clark. I can’t –”
“Sorry,” Clark said hastily, because Batman sounded so, so unhappy with him now, and this was going to end badly, and he'd brought it on himself. “I know. I'm not fighting. Okay. We can go now.”
He made himself take a step towards the cell and came up short again at the tug on his arm: Batman hadn't moved with him. That wasn't great. Clark's self-control was hanging by a thread, and now he’d have to restart the process of making himself walk towards the cell from scratch.
“Could we just go outside for a minute?” he asked plaintively. Not because he had any doubt of the answer, but because he needed to hear it outside his head so he could go ahead and accept it: outside wasn't happening. Clark had essentially asked for the correction he was about to get. At this point the best that might happen, if Clark was really lucky, was that he'd get to nurse his wounds in peace in his room, after.
Now that he'd misbehaved in the reward collar, the green one was probably going on and staying on.
“Sorry,” Clark whispered. God, he was an idiot. Whatever insanity had overcome him had passed. It was sinking in what he'd done, and for no reason: what had he hoped to accomplish with this little tantrum? When had defiance ever done anything but egg his master on? When exactly had he forgotten to appreciate not being in pain?
Batman made a quelling noise.
“At this point, if there's any trackers or devices in you I haven't found yet, it'll be something my alternate has been hiding from me specifically. The tech’s similar enough, he'd know where the weak spots are. It'll take me at least another hour to run the analysis, and I want you under shielding till it's done.”
Batman said it firmly, in his warning tone, and Clark nodded and nodded, barely listening: yes, he'd be good now, he understood, he was very sorry. Of course they weren't going outside.
“Clark,” Batman snapped. He could always tell when Clark wasn't listening, and he hated it when Clark went away in his head. “Can you wait?”
Could he wait? Clark frantically rewound the memory: another hour, Batman had said.
“We'll go outside in an hour?” he asked tentatively. He thought that's what Batman had meant, but it seemed so unlikely now.
“Possibly slightly longer. It's a lot of data to analyze.”
“Yes. Please. Please.”
“All right. Come on. The sooner I can get started, the sooner it'll be done.”
Batman tugged his elbow again.
“Could I just wait here?” Clark blurted.
Asking to stay near his master sometimes worked, when Clark was feeling really desperate not to go back to his cell. Well. It sometimes worked when his master was sated and indulgent, and Clark hadn’t just been a complete nightmare.
Batman sighed.
“Sorry,” Clark muttered.
“I'd have to put a chain on that cuff. I'll need to concentrate if I want to get this done. I can't be watching you.”
“Please,” Clark said.
“Come on, then.”
Batman tugged him the other direction this time, and Clark went easily. There was the sound of a chair being pulled across the floor.
“Sit,” Batman said.
A tug on his ankle. Something clicked. Clark sat. The darkness was absolute. The only sound was Batman's hands moving rapidly on the keyboard. Clark kept absently tugging on the ankle cuff, not to get away, just to feel the steady pull of the chain.
The sounds of typing paused. Clark guiltily went still. Had he been making the chain clink? He wasn't sure, now. Possibly he had. What was wrong with him today?
“Here,” Batman said. There was a jingling noise.
Clark tentatively held out one hand. Batman handed him something metal and complicated.
Clark tried to get a handle on it with his hands. A whole bunch of shapes all connected to each other. It felt like they were meant to fold together in a specific way, but every time he tried, something got blocked and it fell apart into yet another configuration.
“I’m – Sorry, I'm not sure I can –” Clark said anxiously. Maybe he'd be able to figure it out if he had his eyes, but as it was –
“Stop,” Batman said, stilling Clark's anxious hands. “Relax. It's just one of the Flash’s fidget toys. They're all over at this point. You haven't tried to hold a security briefing until you've done it with a speedster vibrating at you at Mach 3.”
He sighed, sounding exhausted. “I thought it would be better than you bruising your ankle. You don't have to solve it.”
“Sorry,” Clark said. He didn't mean to be exhausting. He'd had all sorts of good intentions for the day.
“Stop apologizing.” Batman's voice was sharp now, and fair enough; apologies were pretty worthless if you kept fucking up.
There weren't even that many rules here, and nothing complicated: go where Batman told him, don't make trouble. It shouldn't have been hard.
Batman went back to typing, and Clark to his puzzle, which was significantly nicer as a way to keep his hands busy than as a task to be accomplished quickly.
It took him a while, but finally he got the shapes twisted together just right. They clicked into a solid cube in his hand in a deeply satisfying way.
Batman’s typing paused. His chair creaked, as if he'd turned to look over. He made a displeased noise.
“Sorry!” Clark said automatically.
“I genuinely don't understand what you're apologizing for half the time. I gave it to you to solve,” Batman said curtly – and he'd just told Clark to stop apologizing, damn it. “I was just hoping it'd take you longer. Might have to see if I can make it more difficult. That's not going to keep the Flash busy for long.”
“You made this?”
Batman grunted vaguely. He was already typing again.
Clark fiddled with the cube until it clicked and came apart into all its little shapes again. He ran his fingers over the smooth, twisting lines. It was just that it had been made with such obvious care and patience.
But then, his master had been capable of care and patience. He’d built plenty of complicated things. He was always tinkering with the car.
Maybe one of the main differences was that this Batman was willing to extend that same patience to people, to keep trying until he'd figured out how to make them work for him. No point smashing up a tool for not working right on the first try.
At this point, it would be a relief if Batman could figure out how to make Clark work. He didn't know what kept going wrong in his brain that made everything so hard.
The typing stopped again.
“You're clear,” Batman said.
The rush of relief was more intense than Clark would’ve expected. Clark knew he’d have trackers in him either way. He'd been unconscious for hours when he'd first come here, and then there’d been the sunlamps, to wipe the traces of the incisions away. No way to know where to even start looking.
But they’d be this Batman’s trackers; his master’s last hold on him was gone.
He shifted in his chair. He knew he ought to be patient. Somehow, patience had become impossible.
“Can we go outside now?”
“I'm taking you to the garden. If you try to run, leave the garden, attract attention to yourself, or mess with the ankle cuff, I'm using a tranquilizer dart and putting you back in the cell.”
“I won’t. Thank you,” Clark said immediately.
Batman somehow managed to exude such an aura of skepticism that Clark could tell while blindfolded. Understandably so: he'd managed to break basically all of what few rules he had today, and now there were a number of new ones.
He really seriously was going to be good, now.
Batman took him by the elbow again, up a set of stairs, out a door.
Wind brushed gently through his hair. Clark stumbled to a halt. He could hear birds chirping, the wind in the leaves, the rustle of grass. When he tilted his head up, the sun warmed his face around the edges of the blindfold.
He dragged in a deep, shaking breath, smelled autumn leaves and wet earth. He heard himself make a noise, almost more an animal sound than a sob.
Batman's hand tightened gently on his arm. “Come on. Few more steps.”
He wasn't tugging in the direction of the house, so Clark followed him easily.
Leaves crunched under his feet. He hadn't known it was autumn.
He'd thought it had been a year, but it hadn't been autumn when he was taken. He'd tried to keep track of time; apparently he'd lost even that.
A door closed behind him. “Sit down,” Batman said, nudging him down onto what felt like a wooden bench. “Close your eyes for a moment.”
A tug on his hair as the blindfold came off. Clark slowly opened his eyes, blinking against the near-painful brightness.
They were in a small, walled-in cottage garden. The flowerbeds were heavily overgrown but still vivid with color, blues and purples and reds. The wall was too high to see over, weathered stones covered in ivy. Small clouds scudded across the sky, never obscuring the sun for more than a moment. In the lee of the stone wall, protected from the wind, the sun had enough strength to warm him all over.
Clark pulled his feet up on the bench and pressed his face against his knees. He kept his breathing even with an effort, letting the tears soak into the fabric of his slacks.
When he finally had himself under control enough to raise his head, Batman had set himself up at the small garden table, two laptops open in front of him, at an angle to Clark's bench. He wasn’t looking at him at all.
Clark couldn't hear anything else: no far-away buzz of cars. No hum of a city on the horizon. No contrails visible in the sky. Wherever this was, it wasn't the Batcave, and Gotham wasn't anywhere nearby. A safehouse, then.
“Walk around if you like, just don't leave the garden,” Batman said without looking up from the screens.
The garden was maybe thirty feet by fifty, and Batman would be able to see the whole of it from where he sat. Clark wandered around the flower beds, brushing his fingers over the leaves and smelling the flowers, startling a butterfly off a late rose.
Eventually he sat back down on the bench and tipped his face into the sun, eyes closed.
Batman was working steadily, seemingly paying no attention to him at all. He kept switching between his two laptops, occasionally making faintly annoyed noises under his breath. Clark assumed he was used to working on something very similar to the enormous six-screen setup his master had had. But Batman didn't suggest going back inside.
The sun disappeared behind the wall. The air started to get noticeably cooler. Clark pulled his knees up on the bench again and tried to stop himself from shivering. Any minute now Batman was going to notice and make him go back in.
He'd go; he'd be good. Clark was perfectly well aware he’d used up all possible grace for at least the next month.
“There should be blankets in that chest over there,” Batman said without looking up.
Clark took two blankets for himself. He carried another one over to Batman, holding it out uncertainly.
Batman took it and slung it over his shoulders without comment.
The blankets kept him comfortable for another while, but the sun must be near the horizon now. It was starting to get dark. The air was damp and chilly, and a single bright star had appeared just over the edge of the wall.
Clark was starting to think maybe Batman just wasn't going to say anything.
Batman had made that fidget toy so the Flash wouldn't annoy him in briefings. Maybe he was letting Clark have his fill of outside time on purpose: giving him this like he'd have filled up a car that was low on gas, or oiled a squeaky gear.
And maybe he was waiting for Clark to indicate that it was enough.
Clark tipped himself sideways on the bench. He looked up into the darkening sky, the handful of stars that were visible now. He slowly pulled himself back into the moment. Right now he felt still and quiet and at peace, drunk on the sun and the stars, and whether this was something he'd get to have again wasn't for him to think about.
He sat up and took a deep breath.
“I'm ready to go back in, if you like.”
“Thank fuck,” Batman said, in the fervent tones of a man who saw a six-screen monitor set-up in his immediate future. Or possibly a man who'd just completed a dicey training exercise to his full satisfaction.
The next morning, Batman brought him a tablet with breakfast.
“Set a timer when you shower. Whatever time you like, but today wouldn't be a good time for you to pass out in there.”
He sounded terse and stressed, and looked worse: sallow, dark circles under his eyes, shoulders tense.
Clark fought the urge to cringe back on his bed. Those sort of scared prey motions always set his master off, even if he didn't really have the time to have a go at Clark. If there was one thing worse than getting fucked by a man who liked to watch him cringe too much, it was getting through all the horror of the assault and then having his master be pissed instead of sated after because he'd fucked up his schedule.
Batman held up the tablet. “This has information on the League as it exists in this universe, including your counterpart. I'd like you to look this over. Some of it is going to be familiar, but there's significant differences in how things work here. If you have questions, write them down. No interruptions today unless it's urgent, but you'll have a chance to ask questions later.”
The tablet confirmed what Clark had suspected: all the genius Clark's master used to bend tech to his will, this Batman had for doing the same to people.
There was footage of Clark's double, the other Superman, dated as recently as two days ago: fully powered, flying, using his superspeed and laser vision to rescue people from a burning building. Returning unhesitatingly to Batman's side at a barked command just as the building crumpled in on itself behind him.
The video was surveillance footage, grainy black and white, so Clark couldn’t read the words from Batman’s lips, but he could see him lean in to say something: a mild reprimand, judging by the way he put his hand on the other Clark's forearm and the sheepish, apologetic smile he got in return.
There was footage from a press conference, a different occasion, the aftermath of some battle: crisp HD video of Superman, shoulder by shoulder with Batman, deferring to him as the press shouted question after question, until Batman finally nudged him forward:
“I may have been the person on the ground, but we'd never have succeeded without Batman’s tactical guidance.”
There was other footage, other interviews, many of them with no Batman on the video at all, but it was obvious either way: when Batman was there, after the battle Clark would always put himself at Batman's left shoulder. If there was a press conference, he'd make it a point to mention Batman's contributions, to make him look good.
The rest of the League was a bit less obvious about it, but the general trend held: the battle plans were Batman's more often than not. Their headquarters were located in his mansion.
This Batman didn’t just have a pet Superman. He had a pet League.
Some of them were more subtle than others. Aquaman and Cyborg didn't seem to believe in giving interviews, which made it harder to get a read on them. But they still followed his calls in battle.
The Flash constantly orbited around him, gazing at him with such puppyish devotion it made Clark feel awkward to watch it. Wonder Woman called him “a wise leader” with warmth in her voice.
Clark wondered how he'd done it. But he wasn't surprised. He didn't know yet what Batman had that kept the other Clark to heel despite all his powers, but he could feel the shape of it already: the clear firm rules, already so easy to follow; the knowledge that he'd be found no matter where he chose to run. Some additional leverage, probably, but it wouldn't take much: the work Batman had him do would be its own reward. Helping people, saving lives. Making him look good to the press later was hardly such a high price to pay.
And then Clark opened the folder marked “affiliated civilians,” and the question of the leverage answered itself:
Lois Lane. Martha Kent.
In this universe, Batman had left them alive.
Of course the other Clark did whatever Batman wanted.
Lunch that day was a collection of haphazard sandwiches.
Batman shoved the tray on the table and would've walked right back out. He was moving noticeably stiffly, which Clark knew meant he had to be hurting badly. Pain didn’t usually show on him until it reached a level that would've had a normal human flat on their back in bed.
It would be worse by tonight. Batman clearly hadn't slept. He’d probably spent the night in his desk chair in front of the computer, after spending the previous day doing the same thing on a hard garden chair. And he clearly wasn't planning to get any rest now.
By tomorrow, he'd be in excruciating pain and correspondingly foul-tempered for days.
Clark took a deep breath. Batman's other pet Kryptonian clearly had some amount of leeway when it came to taking initiative.
“May I make a suggestion?”
Batman paused. He leaned against the door with his arms crossed. “From your tone, I'm not going to like this one.”
“Probably not,” Clark said, wincing. “May I?”
“Go ahead,” Batman said warily.
“I can help with your back pain,” Clark said.
Of all the things he'd done for his master, this had been the one most likely to blow up in his face. Batman hated it. He hated the vulnerability of Clark noticing his pain at all, hated accepting help, seemed to think of the whole process as a humiliation Clark was inflicting upon him. And he always overcompensated in making it clear who was in charge, after.
But usually he wouldn't say no, when it was this bad. And usually it was worth it. Not right away, not when Batman still remembered to be angry about it. But eventually, he'd be a little more mellow with the lack of pain.
With this Batman, who clearly had much more capacity for mastering his short-term reactions when he wanted a specific payoff, he hoped it would be worth it more quickly. Clark was well-rested, as healed as he was ever likely to be. He could sacrifice some comfort now for a longer-term payoff.
Batman’s mouth twisted, wry. “You were right, I do hate that.”
“Please. I'd like to help,” Clark said.
Batman gave him a long, unreadable look, and then seemed to come to a decision.
“So how does this work?”
Clark almost gasped in relief. That was way less begging than he'd ever done for this. This was already going pretty well.
“It would be easiest if you'd sit down there,” he said, gesturing to the stool beside the bed, and then had to stop himself from staring in shock when Batman just… went and did it.
Batman had never let him at his back before without the green kryptonite collar around his neck and the remote in Batman’s hand.
With his powers dampened down, Clark didn't have active x-ray vision. But he could still perceive the occasional glimmer of what little natural background radiation made it past the lead-lined walls. They'd been outside the shielding yesterday, with Batman sitting still for a very long time: it had been enough to get a sort of ghostly image of the shattered mess of his spine, the pins holding it all together, the two vertebrae that always slid out of place. Enough to confirm that the damage was in the exact same place.
He came up slowly behind Batman, careful to make his steps nice and loud. No surprises.
“I'm going to touch your shoulder now.”
Batman grunted; grudging permission.
Clark set one hand on his shoulder and slid it down from there, along rock-hard muscles. He didn't bother pointing out that this would be easier if Batman could manage to relax. That wasn't happening, and this would work okay either way.
He got a good hold and guided the arm backwards, braced between his side and his elbow for leverage.
“Tell me if this is uncomfortable,” he said, trying to move as slowly as possible. The position apparently felt enough like the lead-in to a joint lock that Clark had set off Batman's reflexes more than once, gotten himself flipped over that shoulder and slammed into the floor.
“Just get on with it,” Batman said.
Clark had to wait another moment for the next little glimmer of a stray gamma ray to light up the exact spot where the metal plate sat in the spine.
He set his knee against that spot and slowly pulled Batman's arm further back, twisting his back into the position he needed, squinting at the wayward vertebrae: he could do this blind if he had to, but it was so much easier if he could catch even a glance of how things were moving in there –
Another little glimmer, there, and he could dig his fingers in and search for just the right spot –
“This is the bit that hurts, sorry,” he said, and then he pulled and twisted and pushed, focused entirely on the ghostly outline of the bones, until something shifted. He felt Batman's whole body flinch in well-controlled agony as the vertebrae slid back into place.
Clark slowly released his arm.
“Fuck,” Batman hissed. He sagged forward, both arms braced against the bed, panting. “Ahh. I didn't actually think that would work.”
He straightened up slowly and pulled his arms up into a stretch, back arching. Something else settled into place with an audible crack, now that the situation in the lower spine wasn't blocking it anymore, but Batman was moving too fast for Clark to see what was going on in there.
“How did you know how to do that?” Batman asked.
“Uh. I can just see where the bones are out of place,” Clark said.
Batman went still. His eyes cut up to the ceiling, where the red sunlight lamps were still blazing.
“Just with the passive x-ray vision,” Clark added hastily.
“Passive x-ray,” Batman repeated slowly, dangerously. “Your counterpart never mentioned that ability.”
Oh god. The last thing Clark wanted was to get the other Clark into trouble with Batman for hiding information.
“He might not know,” he said hastily. “It took me at least a month without my regular x-ray vision to figure out I could still sometimes see something. It’s really faint, it takes a lot of focus, and I didn’t even know there was anything to focus on.”
“Until you’d spent a month in a cell,” Batman said quietly, in a tone that said he was unhappy about something.
Clark didn’t know how long Batman had had the other Clark locked up. He suspected this Batman had managed to get his Superman trained up a lot more quickly. Everything about his methods seemed vastly more efficient and thought through.
“I assume what you’re perceiving is the background gamma radiation?” Batman asked.
“I think so,” Clark said.
“The thing is, I know the problem isn't visible on x-ray. I’ve done imaging on my back.”
That was the dangerous tone again. Clark tensed.
“It wouldn't be, if you're standing up straight. I can only see it when you're bending.”
He mimed the way Batman had hunched over the laptop.
Batman huffed out a breath. “I guess that's what I get for trying to play my own radiologist. Alfred's going to be thrilled, he's been after me to see a real doctor for months.”
Clark didn't comment on that; Batman certainly wouldn't want his input there, if it was already a sore spot.
He didn't know if the injury had happened the same way, here, but he knew that part of the reason it had been so bad, in his universe, was that the doctor who'd put Batman's spine back together had done something to him.
“I can do that again any time, if it gets bad again,” he offered instead, because it seemed unlikely that Batman would actually go to a doctor now that the pain was better, when he hadn't before.
Batman stood up slowly. He twisted from side to side, testing. He still didn't look comfortable, but there wasn't that terrible stiffness anymore. The muscles would be able to relax more over time, with the bones back in place for now. At least until Batman threw it all out again in the next fight.
“Thank you,” Batman said, unexpectedly.
“Oh, um. I'm glad it helped.”
“I do have to get back to work. I'm close to being done, I promise.”
“Okay,” Clark said, carefully neutral: that's what he needed, Batman having more time to spend on him.
Except maybe it was. It would be a relief to find out what Batman wanted from him. To find out if there was a way out of this cell he could stand to live with.
On the third day, Clark woke up to the red lamps turning off with a loud click. A moment later, a second set of lights flared to life, blazing painfully against Clark's unprotected eyes.
He curled into his pillow on instinct, and then froze. He felt the light like a physical touch on the back of his neck: full-spectrum yellow sunlight lamps.
His eyes had already stopped aching. Nothing hurt.
Clark kicked the blanket off, flipped onto his back, and smiled up at the camera, basking.
As far as tests went, this one was neither complicated nor subtle. Clark didn't need to rip the door off its hinges and get a faceful of kryptonite to know that there'd be a secondary containment system.
He cautiously extended his senses for Batman. Spying was almost certainly against whatever as-yet-unwritten rules governed how to behave while fully powered. Clark wasn't a very good actor, and didn't want to set himself up for an extended charade where he had to pretend not to know about a bunch of things he'd overheard. Batman would notice if he slipped up, no matter how subtly. “Oh, you must've forgotten you already told me that” wouldn't work on him.
Just a little glimpse, though, just to get a read on his mood. Good, Clark hoped. Hopefully his back would’ve eased up a bit more overnight, and he'd be pleased that Clark wasn’t messing up the sunlight test.
The walls were lined with lead all the way around, so he still couldn't see through them, but he could hear Batman just fine: his breathing, the beat of his heart, leather creaking as he clenched his fists. Clark's stomach twisted. Batman was really, really upset.
“There wasn't any way around it,” Batman snarled.
“There wasn't a way around locking him in a cage for three days and hiding it from all of us.”
That was Clark's voice, ice-cold with anger. Oh god, it was the other Clark who'd made Batman so upset, what on Earth was he doing?
Clark had sat up at the realization. He found himself frozen, hovering uncertainly at the edge of his bed.
He didn't know what to do. If Clark tried to leave the cell and set off the containment system, that would at least provide a distraction. It was also going to piss Batman off even more, and then they'd both be in trouble. But he didn't want to sit here and do nothing, either.
There weren't any sounds of pain, no signs the other Clark was paying for his tone. When Batman spoke his voice was measured and steady, and it was only because Clark was listening so carefully that he could even tell how unhappy Batman was.
“Clark. In his universe I was a serial killer, a torturer, and a rapist. Your counterpart… he’s a victim of horrible abuse, but that didn't prove he was an innocent. He's got all the same powers you do. You know what that means. If I'd let him go, and it turned out he was as twisted as… the other me…. I had to be sure.”
“And now you're sure? Spent enough time staring at him on a surveillance camera?”
Clark hadn’t bothered to modulate his tone: the vicious sarcasm rang out like a bell. Clark could picture him easily, glaring at Batman, righteous and offended. He could remember what it was like to feel like that, to go at someone without fear of consequences. That memory seemed very far away. His stomach clenched up small and afraid just hearing that tone in the other Clark's voice.
“I've finished analyzing my counterpart's data. He had extensive records on all members of the League or their equivalents in the other universe. Including Superman. None of them differ substantially in personality from the versions we know, taking the circumstances into account. The one major point of divergence in that universe appears to be him. Me.
“The other Clark... He's like you. He's just been through something awful. Be patient with him.”
“Me,” the other Clark said, in ominous tones. “Because now that you're done locking him up for the greater good, you'd like me to whisk him away to my Fortress of Solitude. For his own good – or so you don't have to deal with looking him in the eyes?”
Clark heard the minute swish of Batman's suit jacket, the creak of his chair: Batman had flinched. But his voice was very even.
“It's one of the options I'd like to offer him. As we've established, I'm the worst possible choice to help anyone through trauma recovery, never mind a man who associates me with his abuser. He doesn't have an identity here yet. I can set up whatever he'd like, but he might want a few days to recover somewhere that's not a cell before he has to start making choices about where to live or what to do with the rest of his life. He may well want to return to his original universe.”
The other Clark sighed, sounding exhausted. “So when are you going to free him, Bruce?”
“I already have.” Batman didn't raise his voice, but his tone changed. “Clark, the door is unlocked. The exits will all let you out, if you just want to go. Or you can join us here.”
Clark stared up into the blazing lights.
So. He'd misunderstood. The universes were more different than he'd thought.
He tried to contemplate the idea of Batman as just… a normal person. No captive Kryptonian. No pet League. A man who didn't keep anyone prisoner, didn't manipulate the whole world to his own ends, didn't have extensive and invasive surveillance systems on everyone including his own allies. It was slow going; he couldn't really make it fit.
He tried not to think about the flipside, his own part in the misunderstanding: how pathetically eager he'd been to debase himself for someone who… just wanted to keep everyone safe, apparently.
Well. Lying here being mortified wouldn't fix it.
Clark stood up and got dressed. He did it at a human pace, because he wasn't going to run from the confrontation, but he didn't have to superspeed towards it, either. No one was going to make him.
No one was going to make him do anything, apparently, which should probably be an enormous relief and a great joy.
Right now, he mostly felt empty and ashamed. There was nothing left of the morning's uncomplicated enjoyment, the happiness he'd felt basking under the sunlight lamps in his prison cell.
He probably didn't want to know what that said about the state of his mind.