Fic: A Year Without Batman (2/4)
“Mr. Kent! Mr. Kent, are you alive?”
A voice that sounded suspiciously like Jimmy Olsen’s swam into Clark’s dreams. A second later, the reporter felt something cold and wet splashing against his face. Spluttering, Clark opened his eyes, and jerked upright. Water droplets rolled down his cheeks and neck, trickling beneath his collar.
“Oh, Mr. Kent, you’re all right,” Jimmy exclaimed, throwing his arms around the soggy reporter. Clark blinked, and gently extricated himself from the younger man’s hug. Looking around, he saw that he was sitting on the floor of his living room.
“Gee, Mr. Kent, you sure gave me a scare,” Jimmy was rambling now. He took a sip from the glass of water that he had apparently poured on Clark a moment before. “You really looked like you were dead when you were lying there. I thought for sure that maybe Luthor had sent someone to kill you. I mean, it’s no secret that you’ve been getting those threats …”
Clark glanced down at himself while Jimmy spoke. He was relieved to find that he was in civilian clothing-one of the three piece suits he always wore to the Planet. His face felt strangely naked, though. Raising a hand, he explored the skin around his eyes with his fingers. Where were his glasses? Aha! On the coffee table. Grabbing for them, he wiped some of the water from his face with the back of his sleeve, and slipped them on. For a moment afterwards, he closed his eyes, gripping his glasses as if they might run away once he let go. Waves of dizziness washed over him. What had happened?
“Mr. Kent? Mr. Kent, are you feeling okay?” Jimmy was asking. “Do you want some water?”
Jimmy held out the glass he’d been drinking from. Clark took it and drained it. He was terribly thirsty.
“Jimmy, um, what’s going on?” Clark set the glass down on the coffee table. He thought about standing up, but his spinning head seemed to have a different idea about that.
Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Uhh …“ Clark racked his brain for a suitable excuse for the state he was in. “I … I think I have the flu?” he finally offered, somewhat lamely. It seemed to be an acceptable answer for Jimmy, though, who pressed his lips together and nodded gravely.
“Jimmy, what are you doing here?” Clark asked, hoping that the photographer’s answer might shed some light on what Clark himself was doing here.
“Well, apparently you have some files that Ms. Lane is in need of, and you weren’t answering your phone and,” Jimmy lowered his voice, as if Lois might have bugged Clark’s apartment. “Well, you know how Ms. Lane gets. So I offered to try to track you down. I’m sure she won’t be too upset when she realizes you’re sick, though.”
“That might be a little too much to hope for from Lois,” Clark mumbled.
“Say, are you hungry?” Jimmy chirped, apparently eager to get away from the subject of Lois Lane’s wrath. “Why don’t you lie down on the couch here, and I’ll make you some soup. How’s that?”
“Don’t you need Lois’s files?” Clark asked as he obligingly dragged himself onto the sofa. He buried his face in a pillow. Soup did sound good. Jimmy said something in response to his question, but he couldn’t quite understand what the words meant. His mind was wandering in the dark again, returning to wherever it had been before Jimmy had thrown water on him.
God, what had happened? He remembered flying now-sweeping the globe in the hopes of finding Bruce. That was it. He’d been conducting searches every night since he’d learned of Bruce’s disappearance, although they had never yielded any results.
This time had been different, though. Clark had heard the other man’s heartbeat-his voice. The sounds had been muffled-rough with static-and Clark had wondered whether he had become so desperate to find Bruce that he had started imagining signs that his friend was still alive. There was nothing he could do, though, but to push aside all doubts, and speed towards that aural beacon.
Jimmy was asking him something. Did he want chicken soup, or tomato soup? Clark tried saying the word “tomato,” and assumed that he had succeeded when Jimmy didn’t rush back into the living room to check if he was still alive.
It was difficult to speak, though. He was remembering magic now. Magic. It had been so hard to reach Bruce; magic had kept Clark from him. He had flown as fast as he could go, with the rhythm of Bruce’s heartbeat both surrounding him and eluding him, its steady cadence everywhere and nowhere at once. It had been like chasing after a mirage-every time he was sure that he had come across the place where Bruce was, he had realized that nothing was there at all.
Clark didn’t know how long it had taken him to finally close in on Bruce’s location. If the journey before then had been a blur, the events that had followed were shrouded in an even thicker fog. There had been a cavern full of pale, glowing stalactites. Golden cages, and ebon bats. Clark had crashed through rocky walls, disoriented, and Bruce’s heartbeat had faded away into nothing. Spells had lanced towards him from all directions, and-
Clark sat bolt upright again. Jimmy was standing in front of him with a bowl, looking lost.
“I almost had him,” Clark gasped, not speaking to anyone in particular. “I was so close.”
“So close to what, Mr. Kent?” Jimmy inquired, setting the soup down on the coffee table.
“I was so close,” Clark repeated, too shocked to say anything else.
“Mr. Kent, I think you might be delirious,” Jimmy suggested.
:-:
The crash of glass as a window shattered. A shriek.
“Get it away from me get it away from me get it away from me!”
Clark started, purposely spilling punch down the front of his tuxedo shirt. As he set his drink down, a pink stain spread across his chest. Satisfied, he peered through the crowd to see what was causing the commotion. He hoped that it wasn’t anything too serious. As Superman, he had promised Lois that he wouldn’t make any appearances at her wedding, or at the reception, unless it was a life or death situation. This meant that if there was any trouble just short of murder, he would have to defuse it while keeping up the mild-mannered act. And that was no easy task.
“I wonder what’s happening,” Richard said from beside Clark. As the pilot spoke, he began heading towards the crowd that had gathered at the far end of the banquet hall. By now, though, Clark had already determined that the source of the ruckus was not a serious threat. It was just a bat that had flown through a closed window.
“Somebody kill it, somebody kill it,” the woman that had shrieked earlier-some reporter named Polly-was standing on a chair, cringing and pointing at the bat in horror. The creature was sprawled out on the floor, flopping around. It seemed to be injured.
Slowly, the Lane-White’s wedding guests gathered around the animal. Most of them kept their distance, but one brash young man advanced towards it with a broom, seemingly intent on striking the poor thing. Clark rushed forward to stop him, but was beaten to the punch.
“Don’t! Stop it, it‘s hurt,” Jason White protested. He dove into the circle of adults, putting himself between the bat and the broom-wielding man. He then turned to his mother, who had joined her new husband in seeing what all the fuss was about. “Mommy, can we take it home, please? It needs help. I can take care of it, I know I can. Can we keep it? It can be our pet. Please?”
“Jason, I’m afraid you can’t keep a wild animal as a pet,” Richard informed his son, sounding apologetic.
“Jason, you’re probably allergic to bats,” Lois added. “And don’t touch it, it might have diseases.”
“But mommy, it’s hurt. We can’t just leave it here. What are we going to do? Can’t we just keep it until it gets better?” Jason pleaded, blue eyes wide. A number of the adults present cooed and chuckled at the child’s display of emotion.
“Um, I could take care of it for you,” Clark offered, kneeling down to look at the bat. He remembered a cavern full of golden cages. He remembered a fierce man in black leather and Kevlar and rippling silk-a man whom he hadn‘t seen in so many years.
As Clark approached the bat, it stopped struggling. It was cut in several places, its fur peppered with shards of glass. It crawled towards the reporter, leaving a wet, red trail across the hardwood floor in its wake. A desperate noise welled up in the back of Clark's throat; he choked it down.
“Really, Mr. Clark?” Jason was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet at the news. “Can I come visit it? Can I?”
“Of-of course, Jason. I mean, if that’s all right with your mom, that is,” Clark scooped the bat up, cradling it in his hands, and turned to look at Lois, his plaintive blue eyes bearing an uncanny likeness to those of the little boy standing next to him.
“Lois?” Richard turned to his bride when she didn’t say anything.
Lois blinked, shook her head. “Sure, sweetheart,” she finally said. “You can visit the bat. But only if you have your inhaler with you. And will someone please do something about this damn window?”
:-:
“I used to live on a farm, you know,” Clark said as he taped some gauze over one of Bruce’s lacerations. “Animals got hurt all the time. Sometimes they had to be put down.”
That’s comforting, Bruce thought, although of course, Clark couldn’t read his mind, let alone detect psychic sarcasm.
“Sorry, I know that’s not very comforting,” Clark continued. He brushed a few more specks of glass from Bruce’s fur. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I know what I’m doing, so don’t worry. Well, I sort of know what I‘m doing … treating a bat can’t be that different from fixing up a cow, right?“
You did not just compare me to a cow, Bruce grumbled to himself.
“Okay, maybe not,“ Clark conceded. “But I’ll try my best.“ He swabbed at another one of Bruce’s cuts with disinfectant. It stung. Bruce tried not to wince.
“You really shouldn’t make a habit out of flying through windows,” Clark chided after another minute.
You try living as a bat in the wild for god knows how long, Bruce thought. See how well you do.
“You’re lucky you ran into me,” Clark went on, bandaging the cut he had just cleaned. “Imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t been there.”
Imagine what might have happened if you had actually been here for the last five years, Bruce snapped silently, but he wasn’t able to put much oomph behind the thought. Try as he might, he couldn’t be angry at Clark right now. It was nice to see Clark again, even under these odd circumstances. It was … so nice.
“I hope you like towels,” Clark was saying now. He seemed to have finished tending to Bruce’s wounds. Gently, he lifted the bat up, and set him down onto something that was unreasonably fluffy. Towels. And from the smell, freshly laundered ones, too. “I had-have-a friend who’s around bats a lot at work. I think he’d know what to do with you better than I do. He kind of knows everything-though if you ever run into him, don‘t let him know that I said that.”
Bruce felt like he should have been gloating over that remark, but instead, a pang of sadness struck him.
I’m right here, you idiot. I’m right under your nose, he mentally shouted at the Kryptonian.
Clark sighed. “Anyway, maybe you’ll be able to get some rest in my laundry basket? I promise to Google bats while you’re sleeping, and-hey! Stop flapping around like that. You’ll only hurt yourself more.”
Clark grabbed Bruce so that he couldn’t move, but Bruce kept struggling anyway. It did hurt, but suddenly, he desperately needed Clark to know who he was. He nipped at Clark’s fingers. If only the man hadn’t been invulnerable, Bruce would have bitten the initials “B.W.” into his skin.
“Hey, hey, calm down little guy,” Clark sounded somewhat dismayed. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
Mental pain, Bruce thought, considering how frustrated he felt. Earlier, when he had accidentally (and literally) crashed Lois’s wedding reception, he had been so dazed and relieved at finding Clark that he had temporarily forgotten about trying to solve his other problems. Now, though, his brain began racing through all of its various plans again. It shouldn’t be that hard to reveal his identity to Clark. All he had to do was move some objects into the shape of his initials, or type his name on Clark’s computer, or-
Morse code! Clark’s super-hearing could pick up the ultrasonic clicks that bats used for echolocation. Bruce could send Clark a message with those clicks.
Unfortunately, this was easier said than done.
“I think I’m hallucinating,” Clark told Bruce after he’d clicked in Morse code for the tenth time. Bruce sighed internally, and tried again. Clark just gave him a look.
“My friend, the one who works with bats-he disappeared last spring,” Clark said after a while. “Everyone thinks he’s dead. They had a funeral for him and everything. But I keep looking for him anyway. Lois-the lady who just got married-she thinks it’s driving me crazy. And maybe it is. A few weeks ago, I had the wildest dream that I found him in this enchanted cave full of bats-”
Bruce blinked. Clark had been the one to attack Von Rothbart’s lair that day. All of the disorientation spells set up around the place must have kept Bruce from running into the superhero. Momentarily forgetting his circumstances, he tried saying that it hadn’t been a dream, but the words only came out as a squeak.
“It was awful,” Clark continued. “It was like one of those nightmares where you’re running away from a monster, but you can’t run fast enough to escape. Only it was worse, because I was running towards him and I couldn’t get there no matter how hard I tried. And now look at me. I’m talking to a bat.” Clark laughed mirthlessly, and shook his head. “And I’m imagining that this bat is the friend I lost.”
Bruce clicked, jumping up and down as best he could with his injuries. He had a feeling that he was going to be very embarrassed about this behavior in the future.
“But you can’t be,” Clark told him matter-of-factly, holding the bat down again so that he couldn‘t get hurt further by flinging himself about. Bruce squirmed--why did the Boy Scout always have to be so dense? “Because if you were Bruce … if you were Bruce Wayne …”
Clark trailed off, his voice thick with emotion. A moment later, he disappeared from Bruce’s line of sight as the billionaire suddenly found himself changing form again. Bruce had a second to note to himself that the transfiguration spell he was under must be a kind of name magic. A second after that, he was sprawled out on Clark Kent’s kitchen table, fully human once more. Rolling onto his side, he spotted the Kryptonian sitting on the floor, gazing up at him with wide blue eyes.
“Bruce?” Clark whispered.
“Kent. Fancy meeting you here,” Bruce tried not to smile, but he couldn’t say whether he succeeded or not. He sat upright, and started peeling off the little bandages that Clark had stuck to him. As for Clark, he stared for a while longer before apparently realizing that Bruce was naked. Blushing, he grabbed one of the towels that had fallen to the floor, threw it at his friend, and dashed out of the room.
:-:
“This must only be the tip of the iceberg,” Clark said as he showed Bruce his files on the dozens of people who had gone missing in connection with Odile Rothman. “If the number of bats you saw in the cavern is any indication, then there could be hundreds of other cases that have never been reported.”
“Unless that was an illusion,” Bruce pointed out. He was sitting next to Clark on the living room couch, wearing the Kryptonian’s pajamas. “It’s possible that these people,“ Bruce gestured with a manila folder, “are the only people in Von Rothbart’s ‘collection,’ but that he uses magic to make the cavern look more populated. For purposes of confusion.”
“Since when do you know so much about magic?” Clark asked, a smile tugging at his lips. He was finding it hard to concentrate. Bruce was sitting on his couch, wearing his pajamas, rifling through his files. After all these years, Bruce was right beside him. Clark needed to focus on this moment, and this one, and the one after that. He needed to preserve their time together in his memory, lest it should slip away again. But he could barely concentrate.
“I believe you were the one who said I know everything,” Bruce reminded his friend, dropping the folder onto the coffee table.
“Who says I was talking about you?” Clark asked.
“’A friend who’s around bats a lot’?” Bruce quoted.
“Maybe I’m dating a veterinarian.”
“Who also went missing a few months ago?”
Clark shrugged. “It’s a dangerous world.”
A pause.
“Are you dating a veterinarian?” Bruce asked.
“What do you care?” Clark laughed, and hoped that the lighting in his apartment was low enough to hide the fact that he was turning red. Thankfully, Bruce didn‘t press the issue, although part of Clark was disappointed that the Dark Knight didn‘t answer his question as to why it mattered.
“Why don’t we call it a night,” Clark finally said, gathering up his files and sticking them back into his briefcase. It was easier to talk about work-or not working. Easier than talking about all the years he had missed, or about … other things. “You must be beat. I could take you back to the manor. Alfred would die of joy.”
Bruce considered that for a moment. “It would be nice to have access to the Batcave computers instead of limping along with this artifact,” he finally said, waving at Clark’s laptop.
“That’s not calling it a night, Bruce,” Clark pointed out.
“I work at night, Clark, or did you forget that while you were on your vacation to the stars?” Bruce growled, rising to his feet.
Clark felt a stab of hurt, but didn‘t take the bait. “You just came back from the dead, for crying out loud-”
“I was ensorcelled. Not murdered. There’s a difference.”
“Still, you should rest,” Clark insisted. “You’ll need it if we’re going after this owl … guy.”
“We can’t afford to waste time.”
“Fine, how about this, then: you see Alfred and get some sleep, and I’ll see if the Fortress can find where our magician is hiding. Okay? Deal?”
“What are you, my mother?” Bruce grumbled. “You can either work with me on this, or you can leave me alone.”
“I am working with you,” Clark protested. He realized that he was standing now, too. “I’m just … trying to look out for you.”
He reached out with one hand, intending to clasp Bruce’s shoulder. At the last minute, though, he decided that that might be awkward. Instead, he settled for picking some lint off of Bruce’s shirt. This turned out to be even more awkward, but it was something to do while Clark waited for Bruce’s inevitable insistence that the Dark Knight of Gotham doesn’t need someone to look out for him. The insistence never came.
“You think that the Fortress could pinpoint Von Rothbart’s location? Even if it’s cloaked with magic?” Bruce finally asked.
“Well … maybe,” Clark said. He rolled the lint from Bruce’s shirt into a little ball. “Kryptonian society was so scientifically oriented that there wasn’t much room for magic to develop. But they did study the occult arts more than Earth has.” Clark flicked the lint onto the carpet. “It’s worth a shot at least. I would have tried it before, after I’d found the cave the first time, but I hadn‘t yet recovered the crystals Luthor had stolen.”
“Wait-how did you find the cave the first time?” Bruce asked.
Clark opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t get the chance. There was a crash of glass as a window broke. A wind swirled into the room, so strong that both men were knocked to the floor. Leaves skittered in through the open window, brown and dry from autumn’s touch. Following close behind was an owl, its eyes burning.
“Tup yats,” the owl said to both men. It wasn’t actually speaking aloud, but the words it projected sounded strained nonetheless. It then turned to Bruce. “Tab a emoceb,” it intoned.
Clark watched in horror as Bruce began to shrink. The Man of Steel tried calling for his friend, but nothing came out. Frozen, he could only watch as Bruce dwindled away into apparent nothingness. Eventually, the only things left in the Dark Knight's place were Clark’s pajamas, limp and empty on the floor.
“Em htiw emoc,” the owl ordered. A lump rose up under Clark’s pajamas, and began to squirm. A second later, a bat emerged into the air. Clark tried to reach for it, but he couldn’t move. The owl swooped out of the window, the bat floating along behind it. The leaves rushed back outside. The shards of glass leapt back into the window frame, the cracks between them sealing until the window was whole again. Against his will, Clark’s eyes slid shut, and the night overcame him.
A voice that sounded suspiciously like Jimmy Olsen’s swam into Clark’s dreams. A second later, the reporter felt something cold and wet splashing against his face. Spluttering, Clark opened his eyes, and jerked upright. Water droplets rolled down his cheeks and neck, trickling beneath his collar.
“Oh, Mr. Kent, you’re all right,” Jimmy exclaimed, throwing his arms around the soggy reporter. Clark blinked, and gently extricated himself from the younger man’s hug. Looking around, he saw that he was sitting on the floor of his living room.
“Gee, Mr. Kent, you sure gave me a scare,” Jimmy was rambling now. He took a sip from the glass of water that he had apparently poured on Clark a moment before. “You really looked like you were dead when you were lying there. I thought for sure that maybe Luthor had sent someone to kill you. I mean, it’s no secret that you’ve been getting those threats …”
Clark glanced down at himself while Jimmy spoke. He was relieved to find that he was in civilian clothing-one of the three piece suits he always wore to the Planet. His face felt strangely naked, though. Raising a hand, he explored the skin around his eyes with his fingers. Where were his glasses? Aha! On the coffee table. Grabbing for them, he wiped some of the water from his face with the back of his sleeve, and slipped them on. For a moment afterwards, he closed his eyes, gripping his glasses as if they might run away once he let go. Waves of dizziness washed over him. What had happened?
“Mr. Kent? Mr. Kent, are you feeling okay?” Jimmy was asking. “Do you want some water?”
Jimmy held out the glass he’d been drinking from. Clark took it and drained it. He was terribly thirsty.
“Jimmy, um, what’s going on?” Clark set the glass down on the coffee table. He thought about standing up, but his spinning head seemed to have a different idea about that.
Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Uhh …“ Clark racked his brain for a suitable excuse for the state he was in. “I … I think I have the flu?” he finally offered, somewhat lamely. It seemed to be an acceptable answer for Jimmy, though, who pressed his lips together and nodded gravely.
“Jimmy, what are you doing here?” Clark asked, hoping that the photographer’s answer might shed some light on what Clark himself was doing here.
“Well, apparently you have some files that Ms. Lane is in need of, and you weren’t answering your phone and,” Jimmy lowered his voice, as if Lois might have bugged Clark’s apartment. “Well, you know how Ms. Lane gets. So I offered to try to track you down. I’m sure she won’t be too upset when she realizes you’re sick, though.”
“That might be a little too much to hope for from Lois,” Clark mumbled.
“Say, are you hungry?” Jimmy chirped, apparently eager to get away from the subject of Lois Lane’s wrath. “Why don’t you lie down on the couch here, and I’ll make you some soup. How’s that?”
“Don’t you need Lois’s files?” Clark asked as he obligingly dragged himself onto the sofa. He buried his face in a pillow. Soup did sound good. Jimmy said something in response to his question, but he couldn’t quite understand what the words meant. His mind was wandering in the dark again, returning to wherever it had been before Jimmy had thrown water on him.
God, what had happened? He remembered flying now-sweeping the globe in the hopes of finding Bruce. That was it. He’d been conducting searches every night since he’d learned of Bruce’s disappearance, although they had never yielded any results.
This time had been different, though. Clark had heard the other man’s heartbeat-his voice. The sounds had been muffled-rough with static-and Clark had wondered whether he had become so desperate to find Bruce that he had started imagining signs that his friend was still alive. There was nothing he could do, though, but to push aside all doubts, and speed towards that aural beacon.
Jimmy was asking him something. Did he want chicken soup, or tomato soup? Clark tried saying the word “tomato,” and assumed that he had succeeded when Jimmy didn’t rush back into the living room to check if he was still alive.
It was difficult to speak, though. He was remembering magic now. Magic. It had been so hard to reach Bruce; magic had kept Clark from him. He had flown as fast as he could go, with the rhythm of Bruce’s heartbeat both surrounding him and eluding him, its steady cadence everywhere and nowhere at once. It had been like chasing after a mirage-every time he was sure that he had come across the place where Bruce was, he had realized that nothing was there at all.
Clark didn’t know how long it had taken him to finally close in on Bruce’s location. If the journey before then had been a blur, the events that had followed were shrouded in an even thicker fog. There had been a cavern full of pale, glowing stalactites. Golden cages, and ebon bats. Clark had crashed through rocky walls, disoriented, and Bruce’s heartbeat had faded away into nothing. Spells had lanced towards him from all directions, and-
Clark sat bolt upright again. Jimmy was standing in front of him with a bowl, looking lost.
“I almost had him,” Clark gasped, not speaking to anyone in particular. “I was so close.”
“So close to what, Mr. Kent?” Jimmy inquired, setting the soup down on the coffee table.
“I was so close,” Clark repeated, too shocked to say anything else.
“Mr. Kent, I think you might be delirious,” Jimmy suggested.
:-:
The crash of glass as a window shattered. A shriek.
“Get it away from me get it away from me get it away from me!”
Clark started, purposely spilling punch down the front of his tuxedo shirt. As he set his drink down, a pink stain spread across his chest. Satisfied, he peered through the crowd to see what was causing the commotion. He hoped that it wasn’t anything too serious. As Superman, he had promised Lois that he wouldn’t make any appearances at her wedding, or at the reception, unless it was a life or death situation. This meant that if there was any trouble just short of murder, he would have to defuse it while keeping up the mild-mannered act. And that was no easy task.
“I wonder what’s happening,” Richard said from beside Clark. As the pilot spoke, he began heading towards the crowd that had gathered at the far end of the banquet hall. By now, though, Clark had already determined that the source of the ruckus was not a serious threat. It was just a bat that had flown through a closed window.
“Somebody kill it, somebody kill it,” the woman that had shrieked earlier-some reporter named Polly-was standing on a chair, cringing and pointing at the bat in horror. The creature was sprawled out on the floor, flopping around. It seemed to be injured.
Slowly, the Lane-White’s wedding guests gathered around the animal. Most of them kept their distance, but one brash young man advanced towards it with a broom, seemingly intent on striking the poor thing. Clark rushed forward to stop him, but was beaten to the punch.
“Don’t! Stop it, it‘s hurt,” Jason White protested. He dove into the circle of adults, putting himself between the bat and the broom-wielding man. He then turned to his mother, who had joined her new husband in seeing what all the fuss was about. “Mommy, can we take it home, please? It needs help. I can take care of it, I know I can. Can we keep it? It can be our pet. Please?”
“Jason, I’m afraid you can’t keep a wild animal as a pet,” Richard informed his son, sounding apologetic.
“Jason, you’re probably allergic to bats,” Lois added. “And don’t touch it, it might have diseases.”
“But mommy, it’s hurt. We can’t just leave it here. What are we going to do? Can’t we just keep it until it gets better?” Jason pleaded, blue eyes wide. A number of the adults present cooed and chuckled at the child’s display of emotion.
“Um, I could take care of it for you,” Clark offered, kneeling down to look at the bat. He remembered a cavern full of golden cages. He remembered a fierce man in black leather and Kevlar and rippling silk-a man whom he hadn‘t seen in so many years.
As Clark approached the bat, it stopped struggling. It was cut in several places, its fur peppered with shards of glass. It crawled towards the reporter, leaving a wet, red trail across the hardwood floor in its wake. A desperate noise welled up in the back of Clark's throat; he choked it down.
“Really, Mr. Clark?” Jason was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet at the news. “Can I come visit it? Can I?”
“Of-of course, Jason. I mean, if that’s all right with your mom, that is,” Clark scooped the bat up, cradling it in his hands, and turned to look at Lois, his plaintive blue eyes bearing an uncanny likeness to those of the little boy standing next to him.
“Lois?” Richard turned to his bride when she didn’t say anything.
Lois blinked, shook her head. “Sure, sweetheart,” she finally said. “You can visit the bat. But only if you have your inhaler with you. And will someone please do something about this damn window?”
:-:
“I used to live on a farm, you know,” Clark said as he taped some gauze over one of Bruce’s lacerations. “Animals got hurt all the time. Sometimes they had to be put down.”
That’s comforting, Bruce thought, although of course, Clark couldn’t read his mind, let alone detect psychic sarcasm.
“Sorry, I know that’s not very comforting,” Clark continued. He brushed a few more specks of glass from Bruce’s fur. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I know what I’m doing, so don’t worry. Well, I sort of know what I‘m doing … treating a bat can’t be that different from fixing up a cow, right?“
You did not just compare me to a cow, Bruce grumbled to himself.
“Okay, maybe not,“ Clark conceded. “But I’ll try my best.“ He swabbed at another one of Bruce’s cuts with disinfectant. It stung. Bruce tried not to wince.
“You really shouldn’t make a habit out of flying through windows,” Clark chided after another minute.
You try living as a bat in the wild for god knows how long, Bruce thought. See how well you do.
“You’re lucky you ran into me,” Clark went on, bandaging the cut he had just cleaned. “Imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t been there.”
Imagine what might have happened if you had actually been here for the last five years, Bruce snapped silently, but he wasn’t able to put much oomph behind the thought. Try as he might, he couldn’t be angry at Clark right now. It was nice to see Clark again, even under these odd circumstances. It was … so nice.
“I hope you like towels,” Clark was saying now. He seemed to have finished tending to Bruce’s wounds. Gently, he lifted the bat up, and set him down onto something that was unreasonably fluffy. Towels. And from the smell, freshly laundered ones, too. “I had-have-a friend who’s around bats a lot at work. I think he’d know what to do with you better than I do. He kind of knows everything-though if you ever run into him, don‘t let him know that I said that.”
Bruce felt like he should have been gloating over that remark, but instead, a pang of sadness struck him.
I’m right here, you idiot. I’m right under your nose, he mentally shouted at the Kryptonian.
Clark sighed. “Anyway, maybe you’ll be able to get some rest in my laundry basket? I promise to Google bats while you’re sleeping, and-hey! Stop flapping around like that. You’ll only hurt yourself more.”
Clark grabbed Bruce so that he couldn’t move, but Bruce kept struggling anyway. It did hurt, but suddenly, he desperately needed Clark to know who he was. He nipped at Clark’s fingers. If only the man hadn’t been invulnerable, Bruce would have bitten the initials “B.W.” into his skin.
“Hey, hey, calm down little guy,” Clark sounded somewhat dismayed. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
Mental pain, Bruce thought, considering how frustrated he felt. Earlier, when he had accidentally (and literally) crashed Lois’s wedding reception, he had been so dazed and relieved at finding Clark that he had temporarily forgotten about trying to solve his other problems. Now, though, his brain began racing through all of its various plans again. It shouldn’t be that hard to reveal his identity to Clark. All he had to do was move some objects into the shape of his initials, or type his name on Clark’s computer, or-
Morse code! Clark’s super-hearing could pick up the ultrasonic clicks that bats used for echolocation. Bruce could send Clark a message with those clicks.
Unfortunately, this was easier said than done.
“I think I’m hallucinating,” Clark told Bruce after he’d clicked in Morse code for the tenth time. Bruce sighed internally, and tried again. Clark just gave him a look.
“My friend, the one who works with bats-he disappeared last spring,” Clark said after a while. “Everyone thinks he’s dead. They had a funeral for him and everything. But I keep looking for him anyway. Lois-the lady who just got married-she thinks it’s driving me crazy. And maybe it is. A few weeks ago, I had the wildest dream that I found him in this enchanted cave full of bats-”
Bruce blinked. Clark had been the one to attack Von Rothbart’s lair that day. All of the disorientation spells set up around the place must have kept Bruce from running into the superhero. Momentarily forgetting his circumstances, he tried saying that it hadn’t been a dream, but the words only came out as a squeak.
“It was awful,” Clark continued. “It was like one of those nightmares where you’re running away from a monster, but you can’t run fast enough to escape. Only it was worse, because I was running towards him and I couldn’t get there no matter how hard I tried. And now look at me. I’m talking to a bat.” Clark laughed mirthlessly, and shook his head. “And I’m imagining that this bat is the friend I lost.”
Bruce clicked, jumping up and down as best he could with his injuries. He had a feeling that he was going to be very embarrassed about this behavior in the future.
“But you can’t be,” Clark told him matter-of-factly, holding the bat down again so that he couldn‘t get hurt further by flinging himself about. Bruce squirmed--why did the Boy Scout always have to be so dense? “Because if you were Bruce … if you were Bruce Wayne …”
Clark trailed off, his voice thick with emotion. A moment later, he disappeared from Bruce’s line of sight as the billionaire suddenly found himself changing form again. Bruce had a second to note to himself that the transfiguration spell he was under must be a kind of name magic. A second after that, he was sprawled out on Clark Kent’s kitchen table, fully human once more. Rolling onto his side, he spotted the Kryptonian sitting on the floor, gazing up at him with wide blue eyes.
“Bruce?” Clark whispered.
“Kent. Fancy meeting you here,” Bruce tried not to smile, but he couldn’t say whether he succeeded or not. He sat upright, and started peeling off the little bandages that Clark had stuck to him. As for Clark, he stared for a while longer before apparently realizing that Bruce was naked. Blushing, he grabbed one of the towels that had fallen to the floor, threw it at his friend, and dashed out of the room.
:-:
“This must only be the tip of the iceberg,” Clark said as he showed Bruce his files on the dozens of people who had gone missing in connection with Odile Rothman. “If the number of bats you saw in the cavern is any indication, then there could be hundreds of other cases that have never been reported.”
“Unless that was an illusion,” Bruce pointed out. He was sitting next to Clark on the living room couch, wearing the Kryptonian’s pajamas. “It’s possible that these people,“ Bruce gestured with a manila folder, “are the only people in Von Rothbart’s ‘collection,’ but that he uses magic to make the cavern look more populated. For purposes of confusion.”
“Since when do you know so much about magic?” Clark asked, a smile tugging at his lips. He was finding it hard to concentrate. Bruce was sitting on his couch, wearing his pajamas, rifling through his files. After all these years, Bruce was right beside him. Clark needed to focus on this moment, and this one, and the one after that. He needed to preserve their time together in his memory, lest it should slip away again. But he could barely concentrate.
“I believe you were the one who said I know everything,” Bruce reminded his friend, dropping the folder onto the coffee table.
“Who says I was talking about you?” Clark asked.
“’A friend who’s around bats a lot’?” Bruce quoted.
“Maybe I’m dating a veterinarian.”
“Who also went missing a few months ago?”
Clark shrugged. “It’s a dangerous world.”
A pause.
“Are you dating a veterinarian?” Bruce asked.
“What do you care?” Clark laughed, and hoped that the lighting in his apartment was low enough to hide the fact that he was turning red. Thankfully, Bruce didn‘t press the issue, although part of Clark was disappointed that the Dark Knight didn‘t answer his question as to why it mattered.
“Why don’t we call it a night,” Clark finally said, gathering up his files and sticking them back into his briefcase. It was easier to talk about work-or not working. Easier than talking about all the years he had missed, or about … other things. “You must be beat. I could take you back to the manor. Alfred would die of joy.”
Bruce considered that for a moment. “It would be nice to have access to the Batcave computers instead of limping along with this artifact,” he finally said, waving at Clark’s laptop.
“That’s not calling it a night, Bruce,” Clark pointed out.
“I work at night, Clark, or did you forget that while you were on your vacation to the stars?” Bruce growled, rising to his feet.
Clark felt a stab of hurt, but didn‘t take the bait. “You just came back from the dead, for crying out loud-”
“I was ensorcelled. Not murdered. There’s a difference.”
“Still, you should rest,” Clark insisted. “You’ll need it if we’re going after this owl … guy.”
“We can’t afford to waste time.”
“Fine, how about this, then: you see Alfred and get some sleep, and I’ll see if the Fortress can find where our magician is hiding. Okay? Deal?”
“What are you, my mother?” Bruce grumbled. “You can either work with me on this, or you can leave me alone.”
“I am working with you,” Clark protested. He realized that he was standing now, too. “I’m just … trying to look out for you.”
He reached out with one hand, intending to clasp Bruce’s shoulder. At the last minute, though, he decided that that might be awkward. Instead, he settled for picking some lint off of Bruce’s shirt. This turned out to be even more awkward, but it was something to do while Clark waited for Bruce’s inevitable insistence that the Dark Knight of Gotham doesn’t need someone to look out for him. The insistence never came.
“You think that the Fortress could pinpoint Von Rothbart’s location? Even if it’s cloaked with magic?” Bruce finally asked.
“Well … maybe,” Clark said. He rolled the lint from Bruce’s shirt into a little ball. “Kryptonian society was so scientifically oriented that there wasn’t much room for magic to develop. But they did study the occult arts more than Earth has.” Clark flicked the lint onto the carpet. “It’s worth a shot at least. I would have tried it before, after I’d found the cave the first time, but I hadn‘t yet recovered the crystals Luthor had stolen.”
“Wait-how did you find the cave the first time?” Bruce asked.
Clark opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t get the chance. There was a crash of glass as a window broke. A wind swirled into the room, so strong that both men were knocked to the floor. Leaves skittered in through the open window, brown and dry from autumn’s touch. Following close behind was an owl, its eyes burning.
“Tup yats,” the owl said to both men. It wasn’t actually speaking aloud, but the words it projected sounded strained nonetheless. It then turned to Bruce. “Tab a emoceb,” it intoned.
Clark watched in horror as Bruce began to shrink. The Man of Steel tried calling for his friend, but nothing came out. Frozen, he could only watch as Bruce dwindled away into apparent nothingness. Eventually, the only things left in the Dark Knight's place were Clark’s pajamas, limp and empty on the floor.
“Em htiw emoc,” the owl ordered. A lump rose up under Clark’s pajamas, and began to squirm. A second later, a bat emerged into the air. Clark tried to reach for it, but he couldn’t move. The owl swooped out of the window, the bat floating along behind it. The leaves rushed back outside. The shards of glass leapt back into the window frame, the cracks between them sealing until the window was whole again. Against his will, Clark’s eyes slid shut, and the night overcame him.