Fic: Claim #154
Title: A World Without Superman
Author: sasha_anu
Claim No.: 154
Prompt: Movieverse - Set during Clark's five year absence, Bruce deals with the absence. The "how" is up to the writer.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 973
Note: Beta by arch_schatten.
:-:
Bruce has never been able to deal with his emotions very well.
After watching his parents fall lifeless to the ground, their blood pooling around their rapidly cooling bodies, his response is to shut down emotionally, and never allow himself to feel anything other than the pain of their loss.
Superman is the first person to break through the protective barriers Bruce has built around his heart, through his purity of spirit and the sheer sense of wonder he inspires in everyone he meets.
Although he is successful in resisting Superman, the hero, he has a harder time rejecting Clark, the man beneath the cape. So when both men set their sights on him, and decide to pursue him in earnest, Bruce is not taken completely by surprise by his eventual capitulation to the desires of a man who can incite trust and faith in even him.
So when his lover takes off to visit the remains of his home planet, Bruce understands his reasons for doing so. He understands because every year, on the anniversary of their deaths, he visits the spot where they died, paying tribute to them with a pair of long-stemmed roses. But what Bruce has a harder time understanding is why Clark couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye. He doesn’t find out about Superman’s imminent departure through an emotional conversation and a long kiss goodbye the night before. There’s not even a note left by his bedside or in the cave where Bruce can easily find it and read his message of goodbye. No, he finds out just like everyone else does in the middle of a press release, starring the hero himself, just moments before he takes off in search of his home planet’s remains.
To say that Bruce is hurt by Clark’s actions would be a vast understatement of how he truly feels. He can understand how Clark might have found the thought of saying goodbye in person too painful of a task to complete, choosing instead to employ a more indirect means of passing a message along to him. But to say nothing at all, to let him find out like the hundreds of other people in Metropolis, as if he is not even worth the effort of a private goodbye, pains him more than he’s ever thought possible. And that doesn’t even come close to touching the surface of how he feels about his abrupt return to singledom.
Bruce’s reaction to Clark’s departure is completely dysfunctional, yet true to form, because instead of withdrawing further into himself as he normally does, he overcompensates for the sudden hole left in his life by immersing himself in everything related to Clark and Superman.
His first stop is to the Fortress of Solitude, where he spends every available moment perusing the files in the database and looking at the holographic projections, until he can quote them by heart, sometimes going back to reread the contents of a certain file or rewatch a particular holographic projection over and over again.
He spends so much of his time at the Fortress that Alfred expresses his concern about the amount of time he is spending there, but it isn’t until Bruce notices how much his performance as Batman is beginning to suffer that he finally heeds Alfred’s advice and stops visiting the Fortress. Of course, cutting off his trips completely only serves to bring home the fact that time is slowly eroding his memories of Clark, making it harder for him to recall what his voice sounds like or remember what he looks like without the aid of a photograph or a video. And that realization is something that manages to break him in a way that Clark’s desertion did not, because he did not understand just how much Clark truly meant to him until just now.
Bruce knows that it is not healthy, this fixation he has on Clark, but he can not help himself. For in order for him to truly move on, he would have to stop thinking about Clark, accept that he is gone and may not come back to him for a long time, but he finds he can not do that anymore than he can cut off his own arm, so he seeks out another somewhat healthier solution to his problem.
A solution that presents itself in the form of Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor.
Lex is a complicated man with many facets to his personality. He is never completely what he seems to be and yet, sometimes he is exactly so, which is a paradox unto itself. Bruce finds watching Lex a highly educational experience, because the man is as fascinating as he is hard to understand. Against the advice of his family and the few friends he has, he starts up a tentative relationship with the one person on this planet, aside from Lois Lane, who can truly understand and accept his obsession with Metropolis’ former Boyscout.
Bruce doesn’t tell Lex the details of his relationship with Superman, but then again he doesn’t have to. Luthor is a perceptive man and he works out most of it on his own. The only connection Luthor can’t seem to make is why the hero would choose someone with Wayne’s playboy reputation, a question Bruce often asks himself since Clark left.
Despite the objections everyone might voice about their relationship, Bruce and Lex manage to find a modicum of happiness with each other. Both men are as honest and upfront with each other as they are capable of being, even with the ghost of Superman’s presence lingering in the background to haunt them.
Even though time and distance have done their part to heal Bruce’s broken heart, Lex’s trust in him is still a fragile thing.
It is something that is easily broken by Superman’s return.
Author: sasha_anu
Claim No.: 154
Prompt: Movieverse - Set during Clark's five year absence, Bruce deals with the absence. The "how" is up to the writer.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 973
Note: Beta by arch_schatten.
:-:
Bruce has never been able to deal with his emotions very well.
After watching his parents fall lifeless to the ground, their blood pooling around their rapidly cooling bodies, his response is to shut down emotionally, and never allow himself to feel anything other than the pain of their loss.
Superman is the first person to break through the protective barriers Bruce has built around his heart, through his purity of spirit and the sheer sense of wonder he inspires in everyone he meets.
Although he is successful in resisting Superman, the hero, he has a harder time rejecting Clark, the man beneath the cape. So when both men set their sights on him, and decide to pursue him in earnest, Bruce is not taken completely by surprise by his eventual capitulation to the desires of a man who can incite trust and faith in even him.
So when his lover takes off to visit the remains of his home planet, Bruce understands his reasons for doing so. He understands because every year, on the anniversary of their deaths, he visits the spot where they died, paying tribute to them with a pair of long-stemmed roses. But what Bruce has a harder time understanding is why Clark couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye. He doesn’t find out about Superman’s imminent departure through an emotional conversation and a long kiss goodbye the night before. There’s not even a note left by his bedside or in the cave where Bruce can easily find it and read his message of goodbye. No, he finds out just like everyone else does in the middle of a press release, starring the hero himself, just moments before he takes off in search of his home planet’s remains.
To say that Bruce is hurt by Clark’s actions would be a vast understatement of how he truly feels. He can understand how Clark might have found the thought of saying goodbye in person too painful of a task to complete, choosing instead to employ a more indirect means of passing a message along to him. But to say nothing at all, to let him find out like the hundreds of other people in Metropolis, as if he is not even worth the effort of a private goodbye, pains him more than he’s ever thought possible. And that doesn’t even come close to touching the surface of how he feels about his abrupt return to singledom.
Bruce’s reaction to Clark’s departure is completely dysfunctional, yet true to form, because instead of withdrawing further into himself as he normally does, he overcompensates for the sudden hole left in his life by immersing himself in everything related to Clark and Superman.
His first stop is to the Fortress of Solitude, where he spends every available moment perusing the files in the database and looking at the holographic projections, until he can quote them by heart, sometimes going back to reread the contents of a certain file or rewatch a particular holographic projection over and over again.
He spends so much of his time at the Fortress that Alfred expresses his concern about the amount of time he is spending there, but it isn’t until Bruce notices how much his performance as Batman is beginning to suffer that he finally heeds Alfred’s advice and stops visiting the Fortress. Of course, cutting off his trips completely only serves to bring home the fact that time is slowly eroding his memories of Clark, making it harder for him to recall what his voice sounds like or remember what he looks like without the aid of a photograph or a video. And that realization is something that manages to break him in a way that Clark’s desertion did not, because he did not understand just how much Clark truly meant to him until just now.
Bruce knows that it is not healthy, this fixation he has on Clark, but he can not help himself. For in order for him to truly move on, he would have to stop thinking about Clark, accept that he is gone and may not come back to him for a long time, but he finds he can not do that anymore than he can cut off his own arm, so he seeks out another somewhat healthier solution to his problem.
A solution that presents itself in the form of Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor.
Lex is a complicated man with many facets to his personality. He is never completely what he seems to be and yet, sometimes he is exactly so, which is a paradox unto itself. Bruce finds watching Lex a highly educational experience, because the man is as fascinating as he is hard to understand. Against the advice of his family and the few friends he has, he starts up a tentative relationship with the one person on this planet, aside from Lois Lane, who can truly understand and accept his obsession with Metropolis’ former Boyscout.
Bruce doesn’t tell Lex the details of his relationship with Superman, but then again he doesn’t have to. Luthor is a perceptive man and he works out most of it on his own. The only connection Luthor can’t seem to make is why the hero would choose someone with Wayne’s playboy reputation, a question Bruce often asks himself since Clark left.
Despite the objections everyone might voice about their relationship, Bruce and Lex manage to find a modicum of happiness with each other. Both men are as honest and upfront with each other as they are capable of being, even with the ghost of Superman’s presence lingering in the background to haunt them.
Even though time and distance have done their part to heal Bruce’s broken heart, Lex’s trust in him is still a fragile thing.
It is something that is easily broken by Superman’s return.