You would have fought very bravely, and died very quickly. Who then, would avenge your brother?
Who: Superdad isitablurred and Batboy kingofrooks / rookminor
When: June 25th 2011
Where: The streets of Gotham I mean Siren's Port. Sector 9.
Summary: Bruce is determined to keep patrolling even though he is 8 years old. Clark finds him on the street. Eight year olds have no defense against bullets.
Warnings: Violence, swearing, superheroes making up, flashbacks to Bathistory. Oh ( Read more... )
When: June 25th 2011
Where: The streets of Gotham I mean Siren's Port. Sector 9.
Summary: Bruce is determined to keep patrolling even though he is 8 years old. Clark finds him on the street. Eight year olds have no defense against bullets.
Warnings: Violence, swearing, superheroes making up, flashbacks to Bathistory. Oh ( Read more... )
His eyes were still blank, and he could barely see. Images in front of him. The smell of aftershave, sick and cloying and thick. Cheap aftershave- except it no longer existed. Alfred had the entire company bought out, all the bottles recalled and burnt in a giant bonfire. Never again.
Never again--
Where was he?
Bruce blinked. Interior. Right. Inside- he was inside. Couch behind him. Red and blue- Superman in front of him. He was at an alley, there was a man with a gun- and he reacted. The man probably had a shattered pelvis. He should call an ambulance- which street was that on in Sector 9 again? Damnit, his brain needed to start working and he needed to stop remembering.
He took a long breath, careful to not let it hitch. Bruce reached up and rubbed at the side of his eyes, first right, then left- they were burning slightly, and despite his apparent age, he refused to cry.
When he spoke, his voice was soft. Almost too soft to be heard.
"Go back. Bring that guy to a hospital. And make sure that the gun can't be used again."
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Clark stepped back, more out of shock than anything else, watched the man - boy - stumble forward, disorientated, confused, held his distance well away from him. No lecture. That definitely meant something bad, though to be fair this was only the second time he'd seen Bruce act out of character. Third? Well. It probably only meant that he simply hadn't had enough time to register his character, that this was all just a part of it, and he hadn't known, hadn't noticed.
They'd only known each other two months. A little less.
Taking the man to hospital and bending the gun clean in half took a little over six seconds. Clark stood at the door on his return rather than come closer, leant against it and frowned, unsure.
"Are you planning to explain any of that to me?"
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He moved towards the side of the safehouse, pulling a chair with him to switch on the light. And he just closed his eyes for a moment, leaning against the concrete of the house, his hand against the doorframe. Soaking in the chill of it, and he was breathing out slowly, calming himself. Pulling his mind away from the memories.
When Clark came back, he was already starting to jump down from the chair, and pulling it back to the couch with him. He didn't answer for a long moment, just hearing the horrible screech of wood on concrete as he dragged the chair. More differences. He grounded himself by them, and set the chair back into position and sat himself on the couch.
He should tell Clark that he owed him no answers. But Bruce was tired, and this was a terrible gamble to make. Why didn't he think that this would happen- perhaps that it had been nearly thirty years since it had happened. But the memories were as sharp as ever, the wound as raw- maybe even more so, infected and bloody with time. He closed his eyes, turned away.
"Tell me everything you know about the Bruce Wayne of your world," and it wasn't that he wanted answers, really. It simply was that- he explained to Edgeworth, and that was enough explanation for a lifetime.
(And for a moment, he truly missed Alfred. He had always been able to fill in the words that Bruce never could voice.)
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Bruce's obsequience.
It was weird, like Batman wining and dining golddiggers would be weird. Completely, unrelentingly odd. He hadn't been shouted at for snatching them both out of the alleyway. For interfering - more than those first few comments - for not leaving when Bruce clearly wanted to be alone.
He was so...
--That was it!
Human.
"Bruce Wayne, the heir to the Wayne legacy, named inheritor of the Wayne billions and its companies. I think he's thirty-five next year. A playboy billionaire by all accounts, but a charitable man none the less. The Gotham press love him, because he's always giving them plenty to write about. Fortunately I write crime, not gossip.
"He...lost his parents when he was very young. He saw them killed in front of him. Murdered. I can't remember the details, I hadn't even arrived... Well, I mean. I must have been a baby." Flying through space. "I remember my parents talking about him. And I was in high school when he vanished. You know... I didn't pay nearly as much attention to the news as I ought to have?"
"He caused a big stir coming back to Gotham a few years ago, but I had a lot to deal with so I wasn't really..." And of course the quest for the Stones of Power and his relationship with Lana. It had all sort of focused his attention inward, rather than let him pay any attention to the bigger picture.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you any more than that."
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And- a chraritable man. The Gotham press's 'prince'. Bruce smirked a little - the cover hadn't changed. The basic story hadn't either- even though... disappeared? He was in high school... which meant that Bruce Wayne was twenty-five or thereabouts... was that when he had started for his training? It was the same with Bruce - he 'disappeared'. A prodigal son going all over the world, careless and brainless.
What about Dick? What about Jason? Tim? Steph? Cass? All of his children- what happened to them? What of his enemies? The Joker waited for no men, neither did Ra's, or Scarecrow. What happened to Gotham while they were waiting years upon years for their Batman. Bruce debuted when he was twenty-one.
"That's enough. He is- different from me." A dry smirk. "As much older than you as I am, and yet not prominent enough for you to have sought him out yet.
"But we share a story." He folded his hands in his lap. "You should know which."
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God, he's talking to a child about Batman's legacy. A child Bruce Wayne. A baby version. Tiny. He doesn't want to think of him that way, but it's hard to imagine his Bruce--
No. Not his Bruce.
When did he become his Bruce. It's ridiculous. It's... Totally ridiculous. They'd just went over the part where Bruce Wayne in his world wasn't really the same Bruce Wayne at all. So this Bruce - the one standing smirking at him now - wasn't his Bruce at all. It was all ridiculously confusing; no wonder Bruce was uncomfortable with how different Clark was.
Clark folded his arms, and dared to step down from the doorway into the room proper, tilting his head slightly to one side.
"What happened to them?"
He already knew, of course. The incident in the alleyway... It was easy to work it out.
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When he had been a child he had fallen into the caves, and the bats, frightened, had flown at him, and the sensation of a thousand wings against his face had made him shriek. It was fear- and he never wanted to go back again. That was what had given him the idea - fear as a deterrent. Fear as a signifier. Something that scared you while you were committing a crime- and you would never go back, because you were afraid.
Sometimes he wondered if the people he fought with were mad simply because they didn't know fear- or they didn't know fear because they were mad. It didn't matter now.
Bruce turned his head, avoiding those eyes. He looked at his hands - they were still too small for comfort. For reassurance that this was real.
This was a mistake. Too many uncontrollable variables, too many dangers, too many pitholes and landmines he had no map to navigate. Damnit.
"I didn't realize you are sadistic." Clark knew. After what he had seen, Clark would've been an idiot to not know. And despite the fact that Bruce had called him an idiot a thousand and one times, he wasn't one.
He would've known by now.
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Which was - if Bruce was paying attention - why Clark stayed perhaps at the edge of his limit for Kryptonite radiation. Subconsciously, he wasn't taking any chances.
But it was obvious, wasn't it? Bruce Wayne's parents had been shot, and the click in the alleyway, the perspective that Bruce had had on the man, it had all come back in some horrible way to haunt him. He had seemed more dervish than human, powered by his fear, face pale, eyes unfocused, moving out of instinct. He'd broken bone with sheer force while still being a little over three foot high. And how? Because he didn't want it to happen again. Adrenaline, fear, instinct.
His gaze was piercing, even from a distance, nevermind that Bruce wasn't looking at him.
"You don't have to explain. I understand--it's not something you'd want to share, let alone with me."
Underlining the differences between them meant asking for permission to bring them up; to talk about the things that they hadn't discussed so far. What was their relationship now? Where did they start rebuilding their trust? How? It was also more than that. It said: I'm willing to try if you are, and if you're not, then I'll step back into my corner, no questions asked. Leaving the power in Bruce's hands was foolish if he wanted things to change, but it also seemed fair, after all while Bruce had only destroyed his trust, Clark had seared permanent, physical marks onto his body. It was a lot harder to forgive.
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That was the pocket with the green kryptonite. It might not affect Clark at the distance he was keeping, but if he got closer then Bruce would take it out and keep him at a distance. It wasn't that he didn't trust him to have control his powers- it simply was that Bruce had stopped trusting him to not use them on him.
(The funny thing was- when he first met Clark, he was able to turn his back fully on him without a second thought, and that was when he had barely known anything about him. He just knew that he was Clark Kent, and he didn't have that signature crazed look in Ultraman's eyes- and if he was Clark Kent, he could be trusted.
Looking back, it was so incredibly ironic right now. That the more he interacted with this man, the more he knew about him- the less he trusted him. The complete opposite of the road he had travelled with the Clark he knew back home.
[And it was odd, how he had stopped thinking of that man as 'his Clark'.] )
And he knew that it was his own fault, the fact that Clark was staying away and his own lack of trust. It was him who put the red kryptonite on Clark's neck, to goad him into doing what he did- and it was him who foolishly trusted Clark when he asked him to trust him. When he said that Bruce could be saved. That he could always be.
Bullshit.
If Bruce could be, then he wouldn't be on the island at all. If he could be, then he wouldn't have taken that gun and shot Darkseid. If he could be, then he would've succeeded at least once when he tried to save his parents. If there was even a chance that there was someone out there who could drag him out of the abyss he had gotten mired into nowadays- then he wouldn't have been in it in the first place.
Dick used to be able to. Tim. Even Jason, when he was Robin. But Bruce had sunk deeper and deeper, closer and closer to crossing that one line from which there would be no return. None at all.
Clark was right to not trust him. But for Bruce to not trust Clark was- odd. It wasn't entirely Clark's fault and he knew it. He knew it. And if Clark was keeping away because of the kryptonite-
He wasn't willing to talk about it. With Edgeworth, he had only said four words: My parents. They died. It was the furthest he could go, the most he could give, and Clark knew that already. Bruce wasn't one for sharing his stories and tragedies, and he refused to be. His pain he kept locked inside- not because he didn't trust Clark enough, but simply that he had never said the words.
Words cheapened it. Made it cut and dry and simple when it never was. Words could never fully describe what happened and what he remembered. The sight, the smells, the sounds, the touch, the emotions- and even if he delineated each other and described them to full accuracy it would not be possible to explain what the full effect was. Not even to Clark. Especially not to him.
Bruce stood up, jumping down from the couch. He stepped forward and tugged off the belt, and silently threw it at Clark's feet. His aim wasn't impeccable, but it did the job- and none of the pockets opened. Then, he leaned back against the couch without speaking a word.
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Carefully Clark stepped forward, picking up the belt quietly. Bruce had been fingering the pockets, and Clark knew well enough which one had the Kryptonite in it--he'd memorised it by instinct. Quietly he lifted the belt up and sprung the catch.
For such a cheap-looking green glowy rock, it really did make him feel violently ill. Especially this close. Inside his veins, he knew, his blood was bubbling as though held over a hot flame. His face tinged with green, his hands clenching tight around the belt, around the pocket, grimacing, forcing his teeth sharply together. There was only white noise in his head, stomach twisting violently and he felt more than sick--as always, when he was exposed to Kryptonite, he felt like he was dying.
But he'd been exposed to it so often now that he'd found ways to push through, ways to continue to function even through the agony. Lana had absorbed Kryptonite into her Prometheus suit and Clark had battled through the pain of reaching her just to kiss her one last time. This was different--this wasn't nearly as bad as it had been that day.
He took several steps forward, even though he wobbled a little more with each, and when he reached Bruce he stopped, snapped the lid shut, and sank down to one knee to lay the belt down in front of him.
What did he have to be afraid of?
Clark looked back up, found Bruce's gaze, but he didn't rise back to his feet. He was, after all, ridiculously tall in comparison to Bruce right now, but there was something more to it than that; capitulation.
"The universe has a way of making us relive the worst moments of our life over and over again. You can't ever escape them. After his heart-attack, I held my dying father in my arms as we drove him to hospital. Years later I did the same for my birth father. He was only a clone but he looked like him, sounded like him, felt like him. He told me that he was proud of me, and then he died."
He lowered his head. It was painful, yes, but part of him felt it was necessary. Sharing these words with Bruce was similar to the act of throwing the belt across the room to him. It was trusting. More trusting than he was with anyone else. These were things he hadn't told anyone else in the League, things that only those with him at the time would have caught a glance of, let alone guess how much it hurt.
"I stood on Krypton and watched it crumble around me, watched it fall apart, knowing that there was nothing I could do. That if I made the choice to save them, I doomed the Earth. So I put my baby self into the spaceship, closed the lid and sent me away, knowing how lonely it would be, how much I'd miss a family that I never knew.
"How does anyone make that kind of decision? How does someone choose one planet's right to survive over another's?"
He looked up, not at all expectant. The correct answer was you don't.
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"You know as well as I do the trials that each of us have to go through. And we have to do it alone. There's nobody there to second guess you when the chips are down, nobody to tell you that your decision is the wrong one. If you step into a burning building and see two people in need of rescuing, and by rescuing one you fail the other, then saving a life doesn't matter--you still made a choice that as good as took another. The burden that we bear is unique, and if we weren't strong enough to bear it, it would cripple us."
Clark shifted back, dropped his other knee onto the floor so that he was essentially sitting on his feet, and mustered all of the determination he could into his eyes when they met Bruce's again.
"That's why this has to end. We're the only ones on this stupid island that really understand each other, and if we're going to destroy that trust when it's only just begun then we're idiots. We'll get ourselves killed, and we'll deserve it. I may not have your experience, and I may not be...quite the man you expected, but if you give up on me then you're not the man that I expected either."
It was much, much too much talking, but maybe he'd gotten his point across. Either way, they'd strayed from the subject of parents, brought the topic onto something firmer and more topical, and if Clark hadn't broached the subject now, he knew he would regret it for the rest of his stay. Possibly forever.
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So he didn't say a word, didn't move as Clark moved over. When he dropped the belt at Bruce's feet, Bruce took it up and immediately slung it around his shoulders again, leaning back- and he dropped his arms back to his side, leaving his posture to be a little more open than usual.
And when Clark spoke, he listened.
And he realized that- he was wrong. Wrong to think that Clark- this Clark- wouldn't understand how it felt to have a parent die in from of them and do nothing about it. To blame himself and focus so entirely upon that one scene, that one memory- and have it on eternal loop during his nightmares. Perhaps- perhaps Clark would understand what it meant.
Perhaps Bruce could trust him to understand his story, as badly as he would say it. Clark was always better - even though Bruce could tell that these words were new, that he had never told anyone about what happened- even though Bruce knew that the memories must be new and the wounds raw, Clark had been better able to vocalize his pain. To tell Bruce his story; to make him understand that- yes, we are still the same; yes, I know your pain.
But even when Clark shifted the topic to something more general, more about them instead of their stories- Bruce couldn't extricate himself from the thought of his parents. Of what happened. What Clark knew. Because Clark was talking about trust, and-
He trusted him with he was easier here, because a name was merely a name, and there was no recognition, no remembrance in Clark's eyes when he said 'Bruce Way', no memory of tragedy, no immediate knowledge. He trusted him with a name and a face because the name carried none of its baggage here. None of the countless words said into the air when someone picked up a newspaper after his parents' deaths.
His parents died in front of him. Oh, the poor boy.
The poor child, that is so horrible.
I feel so sorry for him.
A thousand and one sympathies and pities and no one in the world didn't know Bruce Wayne's story. They said that the murder of the Waynes was the start of Gotham's Dark Age. The era in which the police - unable to catch the assailant - slowly lost power and the mob took over. Bruce Wayne, orphan. Bruce Wayne, the poor boy. Whoever he told his name to in his world, they knew his story. They knew his family. They knew his weaknesses. They knew how to dig at him. They knew why.
Here, there was nothing. It was so much easier to trust him with a name and a face. To even the odds, except the odds had never been even in the first place.
Bruce closed his eyes.
"I can't forget the smell of his aftershave," he looked away. The Bruce Wayne he read about wasn't him; the story might be different, but it was the details that clung onto his memories like cobwebs. "Or the sounds. Gunshots. The release of a safety. Bodies hitting the ground."
No. He couldn't do it. Bruce shook his head- tried another tack. He started walking, turned his back and walked away. "I was given chances to save them- but if I do, then the world is doomed. The enemies I fight would crush the world beneath their fingers while I laid idyllic and happy with my parents bringing me up.
"I chose the world over them."
I know how that feels. He closed his eyes.
"I haven't given up on you."
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And then Bruce looked away. Looked away and spoke, and his words were heavy, as heavy as his heart probably felt.
These weren't facts, they were memories. The jarring moments that reached up out of the every day and hurt when he least expected it. The smell of aftershave, the sound of the safety on a gun, the snap of gunshots, falling bodies. They were visceral and powerful, and for Batman they were sounds and smells that he would fight every day. Everyday memories that would time and time again reach out and remind him of what he didn't have.
And no wonder. No wonder the universe would reach out and give him those chances, would think to tempt him that way, the way it had Clark. It was a pain that Clark knew was hard to live with.
What if I could save them?
And Bruce had had to make that decision too. He had had to overcome that pain and make the hard choice, because if he didn't millions - billions - of people could die.
His silence was understanding. He didn't need to offer Bruce pity, or words of thin hope. Silence was better. Silence said that he understood, because what could he possibly say that would make it better? That wouldn't cheapen it? The same had gone for his father. Even if talking about it to other people had helped, most of his healing had been done alone. In silence. The first times he'd been able to face it, speak about it, it had been like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Bruce was different. He'd been so young when he'd lost his parents. He would have had years with that weight his to bear alone. And being as rich as he was, there might have been counsellors, benefactors who wanted to somehow make it better, who pitied him. He would have heard it all before.
There was no doubt in Clark's mind that as a child Bruce would have been canny and resourceful--he would have to have been to become the man - not quite literally - standing in front of him today.
So he was silent, and merely stood up, stepped forward.
There was nothing to say. Not on that subject, at least.
"The night's not over yet."
An invitation.
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The thing was- there was always a part of Bruce that wondered if his parents would be proud of him. He had asked Alfred before, when he was younger and still vulnerable, not yet burying his pain into a festering pile of wounds from which he drew strength from with his teeth gritted. He asked Alfred with his eyes averted from the portrait of his parents in the library and his hands clenched, and Alfred had moved to him, placed his hands on Bruce's shoulders, and said:
You're saving lives, Master Bruce. Of course they would be.
But would they be? Bruce never knew; couldn't know. Whenever his parents lived, Batman never appearance. They never knew what he had become without their presence- and Bruce, in his darkest hours, thought that they would be ashamed. Ashamed at what he had put his family name through; ashamed at all the playacting, all the lies. Ashamed about the gypsy boy he had brought home; ashamed about the dirty street child; ashamed of the lower-income blond child with a bright smile and a criminal father; ashamed of the little girl who couldn't speak and whose parents were killers. In his darkest hours, he looked around himself and laughed bitterly, humourlessly, that he was everything that his parents - beautiful, upper-crust, pristine - would have hated.
(Hurt had tried to trash their images. Thomas Wayne as being a drunkard. Martha Kane as a drug addict. Trying to ruin their names, their reputations, even after they were dead, just to get at his son, to get at Batman. Then, Bruce cut off Bruce Wayne, became someone else, and won.)
He looked at Thomas Elliot and all that he wanted; the illusions and rosy glasses that he saw Bruce's life through. Carefree with endless funds. An endless flow of adventure and dangerous, gorgeous women and good alcohol. But Bruce knew that was distorted, because Bruce would wish his life on no one else. The clones Darkseid made of him killed themselves when they received his memories- he knew that perfectly well.
With a life like that, which parent would be proud?
Sometimes he had hope. When he looked at how far Gotham had grown; at the resilience of her people; at the fall of the mobs and the cleaning up of the police force- when he realized that behind Gordon's back there was a group of good men and women with clean hands and strong determinations- that was what he helped change. Inspire.
Sometimes he had hope. A wish to change. To do better. To do all that he made Batman for. Everything he had become in order to achieve the results that the city around him needed. There wasn't time for him to wonder if his parents would be proud; to mourn over the fact that they most likely wouldn't be.
He had a job to do- and at Clark's words, Bruce knew that he understood. That despite what he had said at the beginning of the night, he knew. That this was what Bruce had to do. That it was a necessity- not just stubbornness, not just pride.
Bruce took a breath. Tugged on his goggles and drew the cloth over his nose and mouth. And he walked- still too small, too young, next to Clark.
"Just this once." He exhaled that breath he took, and deliberately didn't look at Clark; didn't raise his voice. Clark knew who he was talking to.
"Let's go." It was- invitation, in return: fight with me.
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The air was like water, and Clark felt like somehow - maybe - he should be able to float in it, lift his head up and turn and glide through it. He's spoken, Bruce had listened, and now they were taking a new path, a different one. He could almost forget that Bruce was three foot high; could almost forget the feeling of stinging betrayal and the smell of burning flesh and the way that Bruce had spat get out as though he were disgusted that Clark existed.
Almost.
He stepped away, quite earthbound, went to the door and gently pulled it open, pausing to type in the alarm code that Carrie had given him for this particular safehouse. Then stepped out, knowing he didn't have to wait for Bruce.
"Just this once." Fight with me. It wasn't an invitation that many people would get, and it meant more than he could possibly say. An invitation to fight beside Batman, even a miniscule man of might, such as he was now, was still an invitation to fight beside Batman. Sure, it didn't make him a Robin, and that was probably for the best because Clark would give Bruce hell if he started treating him the way he treated Carrie--but it was an invitation to fight as an equal none the less.
It made him feel capable of being one, genuinely, rather than the false bravado he'd been applying to their previous...aquaintances.
Sharp ears picked up a disturbance to the south, but Clark waited, forming a question in his mind that he didn't quite want to speak out loud for fear of breaking the equilibrium. Right.
How are you going to keep up?
Bruce would kick him in the shin.
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And he was walking out, not even bothering to protest about Clark holding the door open for him. He had the height and the strength, and Bruce knew advantages when he saw them- and weaknesses, on his height. Of course, he had his skills, and like hell would he offer to keep him as an equal if it meant that he had to act as lower to him.
(Bruce had never acted lower than anyone. Not as himself. Certainly not to Clark - it might give him ideas.
Because- he had thought once, watching him, that Clark had the powers of a god, and he frequently came up against god-like figures and won. There were people in the world who saw him as a god- so it was truly lucky that he didn't, and there was no way Bruce was going to change that.)
He tipped his head up, raising his grapple gun to shoot. To the south - Clark was obvious enough with his distractions - and he was already flying off, tiny body flying through the air.
"Are you going to stay there?"
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