Outwardly, he looks vaguely harassed by that smile, like Clark's sunshine personality is tiring. (It is.) Internally, his pulse does That Thing again, briefly.

C'mon, Smallville, let's put you through your paces again.

"Ten years ago," he says, after watching Clark throw a few punches in slow motion. "And twenty-three years ago." There is a gap in the Bat's activity, a decade prior to today, but not a large one. And it might not look like a gap at all but an uneven shift, like whoever was running around in armor for those months didn't quite have the same skillset.

Maybe he was on vacation.

"How did you like France?"

Bruce is bad at this: talking, getting to know someone. He doesn't really know how to do it without it being like an interrogation.