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The situation was deteriorating faster than Clark liked.
The anomaly itself was stable— for now— but it sat at the intersection of three fault lines, two shipping routes, and one densely populated coastal city. Not an immediate catastrophe, but close enough that Clark could feel the tension humming under his skin, the way the air pressure shifted before a storm. They had exhausted the usual options. Magic had been ruled out. Alien tech, inconclusive. Brute force would only make things worse.
They needed someone precise.
“Absolutely not,” Oliver said for the third time, chair legs scraping loudly against the Watchtower flood. “Last time we did that, we spent six hours arguing about contingency plans instead of actually fixing the problem.”
“That’s not what happened,” Hal shot back. “Sure the guys a wacko and emo, and— you get my point, but we spent six hours fixing the problem. Sure there was arguing, so it was practically a miracle in itself.”
Barry made a vague, unhelpful gesture with both hands. “I’m just saying, statistically speaking, whenever the dude is involved, my heart rate doubles and someone ends up glaring at me in the dark.”
Clark kept his eyes on the hologram, rotating the projection with careful precision. If they adjusted the angle of approach, minimized kinetic impact, and accounted for the energy bleed— no. That still wouldn’t solve the core instability.
Diana’s voice cut in, calm but firm. “Enough. Bickering will not improve our odds.”
J’onn hummed in agreement, the sound reverberating gently through the room. “We should focus on the expertise required, not our personal grievances.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “I don’t care who we call, as long as they know what they’re doing and don’t turn this thing into a pissing contest.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” Oliver muttered.
“Like you have room to talk,”
Clark pretended not to hear any of it. He was used to this part— the way discussions fractured when the answer was obvious but uncomfortable. He zoomed the display one last time, jaw tightening. Whoever handled this would need to think ten steps ahead, anticipate worst-case scenarios, and act without hesitation.
Clark already knows what this means.
Not because the data points align— though they do— but because this is the part where his instincts stop agreeing with consensus. Batman doesn’t brute-force problems. He doesn’t outmuscle them or outshine them. He waits, watches the shape of failure, and steps where no one else thought to look.
Clark doesn’t like relying on that. He does it anyway.
He turned toward the communications console.
The moment Clark’s hand hovered over the console, the room seemed to deflate.
“Oh, here we go,” Barry sighed, already slouching forward with his chin in his hands.
Oliver groaned outright. “Can we at least pretend this is a bad idea before we commit to it?”
Hal rolled his shoulders, trying for nonchalance and failing.
“Relax. Worst case, we get a lecture. Best case, we get answers.”
Diana closed her eyes briefly, as if offering a silent prayer. J’onn moved closer to the console, his expression unreadable but intent. Arthur muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like about time.
Clark keyed in the frequency.
The signal rang.
Once. Twice.
No answer.
That wasn’t unusual— not exactly. Gotham operated on its own rhythm, and the man they were calling was rarely idle. Still, Clark felt a faint crease form between his brows.
Gotham silence feels different than anywhere else.
Clark can hear cities breathe— traffic, heartbeats, the soft chaos of people living their lives, and it's beautiful. But, Gotham always sounds. . . layered. Tonight, through the comm line, there’s only emptiness. Not noise missed, but something withheld.
He doesn’t like that.
He tried again.
The second call stretched longer than the first, the low tone echoing through the Watchtower. The casual slumping around the room began to straighten, postures shifting, eyes flickering toward the console.
“Huh,” Barry said. “That’s… weird, right?”
Oliver didn’t make a joke this time.
Clark ended the call and immediately started a third. The silence on the other end pressed heavier now, an absence Clark could feel like a held breath. J’onn tilted his head slightly. Diana’s hand rested on the hilt of her sword.
Then—
“Yello! Gotham’s After Hours Hotline. You break it, we fix it, sometimes we yell at you. I’m Robin! How may I help you?”
. . .
Clark blue screens. And honestly? He doesn’t feel too embarrassed looking at the other Leaguers faces once he reboots. But, he is feeling some concern. That’s a literal child that just answered Batman’s super secure Justice League hotline.
Clark's first instinct is alarm. His second is shame for the instinct.
Batman does not make careless mistakes. If a child is here, then Batman put him here. That thought does not help soothe Clark.
“That’s a child,” Hal says faintly, both Barry and Oliver nodding with him.
“And that’s an ancient artifact!” The kid— Robin was it?— chirps back. “Does anyone else have a badge for being Captain Obvious that they’d like to share with the class or can we move on?”
“I— we, uhm,” Clark stutters, looking around at his colleagues' faces, flustered.
“Little one,” Diana cuts in sternly but softly. “Why are you on the Batman’s line?”
“Becayse someone has to answer it. That’s how a phone works, silly!” Robin replies promptly. “And B’s busy!”
That… does not help.
“Busy with what?” Barry asks, leaning closer to the console. Like proximity might make this make sense.
“Batman stuff.”
Hal lets out a weak laugh. “Okay, buddy. That’s not an answer.”
“It is if you know Batman.” The kid sing songs.
Which, honestly, touché.
Oliver points accusingly at the console. “This is insane. This is absolutely insane. Why is a kid answering a secure League frequency?”
“Because it was ringing,” Robin says, like this should have been obvious. “Also, you guys are being really loud.”
Clark rubs a hand over his face. “Robin,” he says carefully, “are you… authorized to be using this channel?”
There’s a pause. Just long enough to make everyone nervous.
“Author-ized,” he sounds the word out carefully. “Is a strong word. But I know how to use it, and no one told me not to. So.”
Arthur swears under his breath.
Diana straightens, her voice firm now. “Robin, can Batman come to the line?”
“Batman can’t come to the phone right now! Why? Because he’s dead!”
Clark’s blood runs cold.
The room erupts— chairs scraping, voices overlapping, Barry swearing. Hal demanding answers, Arthur already moving for the exit. Diana’s hand is on her sword. J’onn’s mind reaches out instinctively, alarm rippling through him. Clark can’t hear any of it. All he can think is dead, echoing over and over, and the fact that it came from a child’s mouth.
“Robin,” Clark manages, fingers digging into the console, “what do you mean—“
“Ohmagosh, calm down! It’s a Taylor Swift song. Are you guys so old you don’t know? That’s sad.”
The uproar dies down in confused fragments— Barry halfway through a sentence, Hal demanding clarification, Arthur already muttering something that sounds like a threat. Clark raises a hand, and gradually, blessedly, the room quiets.
Be exhaled slowly. “Robin. Thank you for… clarifying.”
“No problem!” Robin says cheerfully. “You guys should really work on your panic responses. If Gotham reacted like that every time B got stabbed we’d never get anything done!”
“Every time,” Hal repeats faintly.
“Focus!”
Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose. “We were just informed Batman was dead.”
“Yeah! But I fixed it. You're welcome!”
Diana steps closer to the console, posture straight, voice measured. “Robin. Is Batman injured?”
There’s a pause.
“Well,” he drawls, “he’s not bleeding anymore.”
Clark goes very stilly
“Not—“ Hal starts, then stops. “Anymore?”
“Yep! Penny1 said ‘no calls, no patrols, no frantic exits,’ and B tried to argue but he was already horizontal, so it didn’t really work.”
Barry leans in again. “Horizontal… like— asleep?”
“Duh. He’s in the med bay.” Robin says. “With the lights and the beeping and the grumpy silence.”
J’onn’s eyes glow faintly. “The Batcave contains a medical bay.”
“Oh yeah. We’re in Gotham, everyone would know our identities if we just used Gotham Hospital. But ours is super cool! There’s a button that tilts the bed, but I'm not allowed to touch it anymore.”
“… anymore,” Diana echoes.
Clark keeps his voice carefully neutral. “Robin. Why are you the one answering this frequency?”
“I already told you.” Clark could feel the eye roll. “It was ringing.”
“Yes, but—“
“And Agent A was busy!” Robin continues, unbothered. “And B said if it was you guys, it meant something weird was happening.”
Ha frowns. “How would he know it was us?”
“… because it’s literally the Justice League line?” Robin says. “You don’t label your phones?”
Oliver groans softly. “This is a literal nightmare.”
“No it’s not,” Robin giggles. “Nightmares have clowns. This is just a problem.”
Diana studies the console, then speaks carefully. “Robin. How old are you?”
“21!” He replies easily and instantly.
Clark shares a look with each of the League members. Oliver groans, shuffling closer, shushing them with a look that says ‘I’ve done this before,’.
“Yeah, mhm. Okay. Let’s play a game okay! It’s called twenty questions,” Oliver smiles. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Hmm, yellow, I guess.”
“What’s your dads favorite color?”
“Oo— I know this one! Black like his soul. He told me!”
Clark gapes.
Oliver struggles to contain his laughter, “Al—alright. What do you hate most about school?”
“English,” he replies instantly. “It’s so stupid, it’s nothing like all the other languages.”
“How old's your dad?”
“Uh, I’m not sure! Probably like a gazillion.”
“How old are you?”
“57!”
Oliver’s smile falls, an annoyed look overtaking his face. Hal coughs in a horrible attempt to hide his own laughter, Barry’s shoulders silently shaking. Even J’onn and Diana smile with amusement, Arthur not even bothering to hide his booming laughter.
“Oh I like this kid,” he says, wiping at his eyes. “He’s got spunk.”
“Arthur,” Diana warns, though there’s unmistakable amusement tugging at her mouth.
Oliver straightens, dropping the exaggerated friendliness like a switch flipped. “Okay. New game,” he says mildly. “It’s called stop lying!”
“I’m not lying!” He cries. “I’m estimating. Why do you need to know my age anyways? It’s not important! Just tell me why you called the hotline and we can be on our way because I’m sure it’s almost your guys' bedtimes!”
Clark watches the pattern take shape— jokes, exaggeration, misdirection. Not random. Defensive. The same tactics he’s seen witnesses use when they’re buying time, when the thrush would change how they’re treated.
Robin isn’t hiding his age.
He’s controlling the conversation.
The hologram flickers.
Not dramatically. Just enough that Clark notices the data lag by half a second longer than it should.
His stomach drops.
“We don’t have time for this,” Hal snaps, already moving. “Clark!”
“I know,” Clark says tightly, eyes scanning the readouts. The stress markers along the fault lines spike, red bands thickening, pulsing like a heartbeat. Too fast. Much too fast.
Barry straightens. “Uh— guys? That’s not supposed to be doing that.”
Diana’s head snaps towards the projection. “Clark.”
“The anomaly’s destabilizing,” Clark says. “Faster than projected.”
Arthur is already on his feet. “How fast are we talking?”
Clark doesn’t answer immediately. He runs the numbers again, jaw tightening.
“. . . minutes,” he says finally. “Not hours.”
The room explodes into motion.
“Okay, nope,” Barry says, hands flying. “That’s bad, that’s really bad—“
We need Batman now,” Hal says, voice sharp. “Kid, this stops being funny.”
Robin huffs. “It wasn’t funny to begin with.”
Oliver slams a hand on the console. “Listen to me very carefully. If you don’t put Batman in the line right now, people die.”
There it is.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Understanding.
Clark’s chest tightens as the silence stretches. He’s heard this pause before— on battlefields, in emergency rooms, in the half-breath between impact and aftermath. It’s the sound someone makes when they already know what the word die means, not as a concept, but as a memory.
Whatever Robin is, he isn’t naïve.
And suddenly Clark is painfully aware that hems speaking to someone small enough to joke, quick enough to deflect— and old enough, somehow, to carry this.
Then he realizes, with a hollow drop in his stomach, that Robin didn’t ask how many.
He already knows.
Clark notices the way Diana’s grip tightens on the edge of the console, knuckles white. J’onn’s eyes glow brighter, his focus stretching outward, already feeling the ripple of panic from the city below. Arthur mutters something vicious under his breath and turns toward the teleport pad like he’s seconds from leaving.
Clark forces himself to breathe.
“Robin,” he says, trying to sound softer but maybe come off as hysterical. “We are way past hypotheticals.”
“I know,” Robin stresses.
There’s something different in his voice now. Thinner. Still brave, but almost stretched.
“Then wake him,” Hal demands. “He doesn’t need to move. He doesn’t need to fight. He just needs to talk.”
“I can’t,” Robin says again. “Penny1 said no.”
Oliver scoffs. “Kid, with all due respect—“
“No,” Diana cuts in sharply. “Respect is not optional.”
She leans closer to the console, voice low and intense. “Robin. If Batman can soak we must hear him.”
“He can’t!”
Barry blinks. “Can’t . . . Or won’t?”
“. . . can’t,” Robin repeats.
Clark’s chest tightens. “Explain.”
Robin hesitates. Just a beat too long.
“He tried to sit up,” his voice wobbles slightly. Clark feels guilt instantly bloom inside his stomach. “Then he passed out again. Penny1 said if he wakes up before the bleeding's fully stabilized, it could start again.”
Arthur swears, loud and vicious.
Diana closes her eyes for half a second.
Hal runs a hand through his hair. “Okay. Okay. Then you need to hand the phone to Agent A or Penny1.”
There’s a slightly confused pause from the line, “uh, they're both calibrating the autodoc,” Robin replies, voice stronger. “Agent A told me not to interrupt unless the cave was on fire.”
Barry winced. “Is it?”
“No, but it can be!” Robin proclaimed.
“Not the best idea,” J’onn cut in.
The hologram spikes again.
A deep, bone-vibrating tremor ripples through the projection of the coastline. One of the shipping routes blinks from yellow to red.
Clark doesn’t bother hiding it now. “Evacuation thresholds just tripped.”
Arthur is already moving. “I’m going.”
“So am I,” Diana pledged.
“No,” Clark snaps, sharper than intended. “Not yet.”
They both freeze.
Every part of Clark wants to move— to be faster than consequence, stronger than collapse. That instinct has saved worlds. It has also broken them.
He forces himself still because this isn’t a problem you punch into behaving.
“If we move without a plan, we risk triggering a full rupture,” Clark continues. “One wrong shockwave and the fault lines cascade.”
Oliver looks back at the console. “Then what’s the plan, Superman?”
Clark’s mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
The silence is awful.
Robins fills it breezily.
“You’re trying to stop it,” he theorized. “That’s why it’s getting worse.”
Hal turns back sharply. “Kid—“
“No, listen,” Robin hisses, “Batsy says problems like this don’t explode because they’re evil. They explode because everyone keeps poking them.”
“That is not helpful,” Oliver snaps.
“Yes it is!” Robin fumed. “You're thinking of it like a bomb. It’s not. It’s more like— like when you shake a soda!”
Barry blinks. “Huh?”
“If you keep shaking it and then try to screw the cap on really tight, it just goes everywhere,” he rants. “But if you let it fizz out—“
“You lose pressure gradually!” Clark exclaims, eyes snapping back to the hologram.
The answer feels obvious in hindsight, and that’s the worst part. Clark hadn’t missed the data— he’d missed the shape of it. Batman always warned about that. So did…
Clark stops the thought before it finishes forming. This is Robin's moment, not Batman’s shadow.
“Yes!” Robin crows.
The room stills again.
“Clark,” Diana says carefully.
He’s already loving the projection, fingers flying. “If the anomaly is acting as a pressure value— not a rupture point— then containment is accelerating the imbalance.”
Arthur lets out a low breath. “So we’re choking it.”
“Yes,” J’onn says slowly. “The child may be correct.”
Robin perks up. “I usually am.”
Hal stares at the console. “We don’t have time to gently let it fizz.”
Robin's voice sharpens. “You don’t have time not to.”
Another tremor ripples through the hologram.
This one knocks two fault lines into critical.
Barry swears. “That’s it. That’s the line.”
Clark looks back at the console. “Robin! If we relapse pressure, where does it go?”
Clark is sure he seems frantic, maybe even hysterical.
There’s a pause.
Longer than before.
“. . . offshore,” Robin ventured. “Deep. Somewhere already loud.”
Diana’s eyes narrow. “You’re guessing.”
Robin bristles. “No I’m not. B showed me maps. He said if anything ever needed to break safely, it should break where no one lives.”
Arthur lets out a sharp laugh with a panicked look in his eye. “I like this kid.”
“Arthur,” Diana scolds automatically, but her eyes never leave the console.
Clark overlays the trench data.
The numbers shift.
Not perfect.
But . . . better.
“Oh,” Barry whispers. “Oh. Oh! That’s actually working!”
The projection steadies.
Not calm— probably never will be calm— but the violent red bands along the fault line a begin to thin, pulsing slower, like a heart easing out of tachycardia.
Barry lets out a shaky laugh. “Okay. Okay. I’m officially terrified of a child.”
“Pluh-ease,” Robin scoffs. “You were terrified before. Now you’re just informed.”
Hal squints at the phone. “No, no. I’ve seen this before.
“Seen what?” Oliver asks incredulously.
Hal points at the visual audio, “that’s the voice of someone who is going to take over the government one day.”
“Ooo— wait, write that down. I might need it later!”
Clark barely hears them. His focus is absolute now, hands moving with careful restraint instead of urgency, easing the pressure vectored outward, redirecting the energy bleed into the deep ocean trench Robin had indicated.
It works.
Not perfectly, not cleanly. (The kid had offered to literally set the Batcave on fire, Clark knew it wouldn’t be a clean save, but at least it’s working.)
But the cascade halts.
Shipping routes flicker from red to orange and orange to yellow until eventually it reaches green. Evacuation alarms downgrade. The coastline stops screaming at J'onn's senses.
Arthur exhales hard. “We’re not losing the city.”
Diana nods once, solemn. “We owe you our thanks, Robin.”
Robin hums, please. “You can Venmo me later.”
Oliver snorts despite himself. “I hate that I like you.”
“You’ll get over it,” Robin says breezily.
Hal squints at the console. “Okay. Timeout. Before anything else— how did you know that?”
There it is.
The real question.
Robin doesn’t answer immediately. Clark notices the same thing Diana does: It’s not hesitation from fear. It’s calculation.
“Because,” Robin finally discloses, voice casual, “Batman hates explosions.”
“That’s it?” Oliver says incredulously.
“He says if something’s exploding, you already messed up,” Robin counters. “Real problems don’t go boom. They unravel. Or suffocate. Or get pushed too hard in the wrong direction. Also that if something explodes, it means someone was stupid earlier and now everyone’s pretending it was inevitable.”
J’onn inclines his head. “That philosophy is. . . consistent with his prior consultations.”
Clark finally steps back from the console, shoulders loosening for the first time since this began. He looks at the communicator like it might grow teeth.
“Robin,” he says carefully, “you just helped avert a mass-casualty event.”
“Yup.”
“And you did it without access to our data feeds.”
“Yes.”
“And without waking Batman.”
“Mhm.”
Oliver crosses his arms. “I don’t like what that implies.”
Robin brightens. “Good! B says if people like implications, they’re usually wrong.”
Arthur barks a laugh. “Kid’s ruthless.”
Diana turns back to the console, voice steady but probing. “Robin. You understand why this concerns us.”
“Because I’m not supposed to be here?” He guesses.
“Yes.”
“But I am,” he retorted. “Because Batman’s not.”
Hal runs his face. “You shouldn’t be carrying this.”
There’s a sharp edge to Robin's reply, not angry, just resolved.
“I’m not carrying it. I’m holding the phone.”
That lands harder than anyone expects.
Clark has lifted contients. He has held collapsing buildings long enough for people to run.
This— this quiet steadiness, this refusal to drop responsibility just because it’s heavy— might be the bravest thing he’s seen all night.
Clark feels it settle in his chest, heavy and undeniable.
“Batman trained you,” Clark says quietly.
Robin scoffs. “No duh. Who else would?”
Oliver frowns. “How long have you been . . answering?”
“Oh, just tonight.” Robin says quickly. “Usually Agent A handles it. Or sometimes it just. . . rings.”
Barry grimaces. “That’s worse.”
“Yeah, kinda,” Robin agrees cheerfully. “But tonight was special.”
“Because of the anomaly,” Diana voiced.
“And because B’s down.” Robin acknowledged.
Another pause.
Clark chooses his next words with extreme care. “Is he going to be okay?”
The line crackles softly and Clark can hear fabric shifting. “. . . yeah,” Robin mumbles. Still certain. “He just needs time. And rest. And for people to stop setting the planet on fire.”
Oliver mutters, “we don’t do it on purpose.”
“Sure,” Robin giggles. “Neither do toddlers.”
Arthur laughs outright.
J’onn, however, is studying the signal— not the voice, but the mind behind it. There’s discipline there. Structure. Training layered over something raw and painfully young. He can’t see more, the child’s mind having its own walls of protection.
“You should not be alone,” J’onn says gently.
Robin snorts. “I’m in a cave with thousands of bats, a secret spy and the literal Batman. I’m okay.”
Diana steps forward again, voice firm but respectful. “Robin. When Batman recovers, he must contact us.”
“I’ll tell him,” Robin agrees immediately. “He’ll p’obably pretend he was going to anyways.”
Clark almost smiles.
Almost.
“One more thing,” Clark says. “If something like this happens again—“
“It p’obably won’t be me answering.”
Oliver sighs in relief.
“But, Gotham’s After-Hours Hotline,” Robin recites proudly. “We solve weird stuff when responsible adults are unconscious.”
Arthur shakes his head, grinning. “I’m telling you. Kid’s a menace.”
“A hero,” Diana corrects softly.
Robin clears his throat. “Okay, so— are we done? ‘Cuz Penny1 said if I stayed on too long, the call logs would get messy, and I already got in trouble for that once.”
“Once?” Diana questions with a grin.
“Not relevant!”
Clark reaches out, fingers hovering over the console again. “Robin.”
“Yeah?”
“. . . thank you.”
There’s a beat.
“That’s what we do, Superman.”
The line clicks. Gone.
The Watchtower is silent.
Barry exhales. “So. Hypothetically.”
“Yeah?” Clark sighs.
“If that kid ever decides to take over the world…”
“We’re doomed,” Hal nods.
“Speak for yourselves, myself and Arthur will be joining him.” Diana’s laughter booming.
“You would,” Oliver grumbles.
“He called us toddlers,” Hal says, offended.
“I— he’s not incorrect,” J’onn says judging.
“I’m a decorated intergalactic officer.”
“You argued with a child for twenty minutes,” Diana raises a brow.
“So did you!”
“No, we handled the situation, you were the one screaming at the poor child.” Arthur rolls his eyes.
“He said he wanted us to pay him.” He deadpans.
“Future supervillain behavior,” Barry nods solemnly.
“Future hero,” Clark corrects with a small smile.
“Same skill set,” Hal rolls his eyes.
Oliver drags a hand down his face. “I need a drink.”
Arthur laughs. “I need to meet that kid.”
Diana pulls her sword. “Not before me, you will not, my friend.”
Hal laughs as J’onn smiles softly.
Clark stares at the dead console, Robin's words floating through his head
That’s what we do, Superman.
Somewhere in Gotham, Clark imagines the quick patter of small feet on the cave stone— a child running to make sure his father is still breathing.
But a phone sits quietly.
Waiting.
Clark wonders how many times that phone has rung before.
How many times a small hand picked it up because no one else could.
. . .
That's what we do, Superman.