Woodstock's indefatigable good humor is a high note.
The rest of it, though.
"I don't know how to answer that."
Because he hasn't thought about it before, and now that he is, there's a lot to sift through. He wishes there wasn't. More damning, in his own mind, is the fact that his brain had skittered to certain old dreams, when the ones about Superman began. But he'd set them aside, unable to draw a correlation. Now it's there in an increasingly un-shadowy corner, nagging at him.
Bruce's knee presses against him. Maybe footsie-ing away tension would help. (No.)
"One I had for a long time, was..." ugh, man. He feels stupid. He watches Clark a little, then lets his gaze wander, absent, observing the bird traversing its way around broad shoulders. "The cave system under the house had all these little sinkhole entrances, and of course I fell in one. Disturbed a bunch of bats. I had dreams for ages after about them flying me back up out of it, into the light, where everything was better. I suppose I thought of it, later." Bruce glances at him. For Batman. "But there's nothing groundbreaking about a kid dreaming about escaping a scary hole in the ground full of spooky animals."
Silent nonverbal responses: Clark's eyes crinkling at the corners as Bruce struggles his way towards an answer, a little familiar with the way it feels; a slight tip of his head along with the description of this dream; a subtle wrinkle at his brow for I suppose I thought of it, later.
"But they weren't," says Clark. "Spooky animals."
He's trying not to smile. It's not a smiley subject. But, like, Bruce. "So it's like it showed a definitive future. Nothing about it you'd want to change, so it stayed the same, each time you dreamed it."
Bruce gives him a look. Don't you go maligning how spooky bats are.
"It showed me," he says pointedly, "a fantasy. A nebulous, undefined feeling of 'better'. Because it was a dream, and that's all."
The nightmares about Darkseid, and the way that 'world' changes, are very detailed. Annoyingly, as soon as he has that thought, another follows on its heels: well, you started having these after your brain's been fully formed for a lot of years.
Alright, alright. He draws a breath, tries to take it seriously, without wriggling away from himself.
"I dream about cases. Sifting through things I think about too much. Memories. One particular hallway in the manor I played in a lot, as a kid. I don't actually dream of my parents very much. If anything it's.. the mountains, training, the brutality there."
Clark tolerates this first part as gracefully as he can while Batman who definitely dreams about the future (the futures) dismisses the bat dream he had over and over again as a kid, which is to say—pretty gracefully. Drinks the last of his beer, sets the bottle aside, quietly tsks at Woodstock for whistling over the top of Bruce's words.
He's preparing to double-down on his theory that Bruce experiences magical prophetic dreams actually before Bruce says that last part, to which Clark replies, "How so?"
Bruce reaches out, offers Woodstock his fingers. The bird hops aboard and bobs his head around as Bruce moves, bouncing his hand. A little less delicate than Clark is, which is something. But Bruce has his own awareness of the fragility of living things, and how much they can take. Settle down, birdie.
"'How so' what?" Is he this much of a shit interviewee when he does press for Wayne Enterprises. Incredible. "I'm sure I've told you about Tibet. At least some."
Altitude. Horrible tea. Low oxygen. Tourist remarks; he has never discussed training.
Which would be enough of a prompt, probably, with interview subjects who are there specifically to speak to a journalist. Less so with the kinds he has to hunt down, but not all the time, where it's human nature to want to fill the silence, or tell someone kind and listening things you might not normally.
But Bruce isn't his subject. Bruce is his colleague, and boyfriend, and whatever more ineffable thing they are to each other. "Not enough," he says, with a raised eyebrow. For its mention now to make a natural sense to him, he means. "What kind of training?"
Beak vs thumb - Clark really is teaching Woodstock some bad habits, though Bruce's lack of reaction is just part of being a stubborn weirdo who doesn't react to minor pain stimulation. But he does wiggle his hand in chastisement, the principle of the thing, and Woodstock flutters away to the back of the kitchen counter, prowling along, looking for abandoned grapes and preening.
Fighting, is the answer, and also not even remotely close. It doesn't explain anything.
Bruce watches the bird. It really is pretty.
"Unlearning the human experience, and reforming it into something else. How to vanish, to endure without heartbeat, how to sever a body from pain and sensation. How to unmake an opponent, physically, in a moment. Or over the course of a long time."
Once in a while, Bruce misses it. That life was simple. Horrible, but psychologically easy to understand. This suffering, for once, has meaning.
"My instructor was a monster, shaped like a man. The most educated, aristocratic, and effective person I'd ever met. He took people and shaped them into things. Like me. And it was electrifying. I excelled. Finally, life made sense."
This feels further afield than the starting topic, but that's alright. Clark listens from his corner of the couch, leg still idling against Bruce's ankle, the same negligently warm affection of a sleeping dog. Not negligent or sleeping, though, up here, as several things fit together.
It's a given, that Bruce had to learn everything he is from somewhere, and if someone had asked Clark how Batman came to be Batman, that's maybe what he'd say. Some part of him, though, seemed to imagine him as self-made, innately powerful, the way the rest of the Justice League is. Even as Bruce paints this picture, of a place and a person, Clark still does. And not just because of the dreams.
It's a lot, though. Different from the things Diana has told him about Amazon training drills and athletics, maybe even different to the regimes he has imagined someone like General Zod went through. He wants to hold Bruce's hand, so he does, reaching over to take it and drag it into his territory.
Not all of what Bruce says is so alien, anyway.
"What was the purpose? His, I guess." It doesn't sound like 'what's the point' so much as an honest question. The work, the mission, whatever it might be called. He calls it purpose.
"Retribution against evil by inflicting a different kind of evil," Bruce says, shrugging. "Sometimes, ecoterrorism. It was angry. And I was angry, so I devoured it. But that's the kind of thing I'll have ordinary 'bad dreams' about, not so much my parents, or anything from childhood. More than bats, and ... nonsense."
Just normal bad dreams. He does that Kill Bill thing sometimes, punches something in his sleep, transported back to having to hit a post eighty bajillion times. There is real trauma there, and deep, strange things; Bruce is nearly fifty years old and it seems like every year is packed with more significant events than the average person's whole lifespan. It's perfectly reasonable that he has nightmares, that sometimes his analytical mind puts things together, that he is occasionally guided by the things that rise to the surface of his subconscious. He did not dream a warning about the murder of his parents, or the murder of his son.
"What would the point even be," he says, transparently agitated, all of a sudden. "Of 'seeing the future', and having none of it be constructive. To have horrifying visions that threaten to send me into fits of—"
(Somewhere, Woodstock is marching back and forth across kitchen countertops, peering at himself in anything shiny, tik-tiking it with his beak.)
And Clark squeezes Bruce's hand, offering no answers. They can speculate forever, but that sounds a little like it'd only add to the tight spirals of frustration that seem to emerge when this topic is broached. But he does say, "That's not going to happen," about the fits of, dot dot dot. Whether it's Superman murder, something else.
"But I think that's a good question," a shift, along with a physical one, just a readjustment of his sit on the couch. "And you deserve answers about it. Is it possible—"
Hmm. He laces his fingers between Bruce's.
"Say it's not nonsense. Say there's a key to understanding these dreams on their own terms. A way to control them, to make them make sense or control when and where you let them in, or if there's any precedent for dreaming like that. Where would you start?"
He doesn't answer. For a while, he doesn't say anything at all; instead, he finally engages with Clark's hand entwined with his, squeezing back at those linked fingers, and shifting his weight on the sofa. Not looking away or leaning forward, but grounding himself in the moment - or more accurately, using Clark to ground himself, looking down at where his thumb presses against the joint of one finger, a still point in spinning.
A part of him wants to scream. You're such a good person, what the fuck are you doing.
Bruce takes a breath, and releases it in a slow sigh. Internally doing some, stupid battle, about the kinds of things that are safe to say. As if an admission will make him vulnerable, instead of his feeble mortality. As if Clark hasn't seen the worst parts of him already.
"Does it have to be real?" He will get to that question. Maybe. He has started, before, and it was bad. It will still be bad. But—
"If it isn't real, do you worry that a part of me is still afraid of you?"
It'd be easy to dismiss that, of course not, and Clark takes a breath like he might sigh it out, but he does neither thing. Faces the question instead, allowing the focus to pull to him for a moment.
"No," does feel important to say, regardless. "You wouldn't have bet the world on bringing me back if you were afraid of me. If any part of you was."
Clark keeps that hold on Bruce's hand. It feels odd, to say that out loud, because it feels like a given truth but also weighted and leaden. He knows the responsibility Bruce feels for him dying in the first place. Having his life in Bruce's hands, even a year and a half after the fact, is just the other side of that coin. But that's all to say: that he lives and breathes feels like a testament to trust. They hadn't known each other, not until it was all too late.
He drops his attention to their joined hands, letting his thoughts unwind down this path, letting the conversation divert and feel its way around. "When I came back," he says, "when I could think straight, anyway, I knew you'd done it for a reason. And once I worked that much out, all I wanted to do was learn what it was. And show up."
Even the part of him that wanted to lay down in a cornfield with Lois Lane for ten years was willing to wait a minute.
Clark is right: Bruce wouldn't have done what he did. He had to push through the doubts of others, not just from his newfound allies but from Alfred, his only confidant, and keep an iron grip on faith that it was the correct path even in the face of Superman's hostile, mindless return. If his trust wasn't perfectly complete, if he had even a spark of fear, he wouldn't have been able to make himself, much less bodily haul the rest of them along.
He thinks about that, and watches Clark, his expression grave and grateful. Taking it deadly seriously, as it is. Bruce squeezes his hand. He might lean in for a kiss, but just leveling him with this look, mood laid bare, feels even more intimate.
Thank you. You're right. I'm sorry. This has been more than anyone should be asked to shoulder.
Bruce feels less out to sea, appreciative of the light (and possibly imaginary) reproach over— of course this matters to Clark beyond it merely upsetting Bruce, or a nebulous 'maybe' of something unimaginable. He treats his own resurrection with such easygoing disregard sometimes that Bruce has, apparently, found himself fooled into going along with that.
So.
That question.
(Woodstock: pingpingping, on the countertop. Cheery.)
"If they're not nonsense," he begins, with careful deliberation, "and I am looking for a sense of control, where I start is with the man who killed Jason."
Clark would not say out loud that shouldering more than what most people typically do is a little bit the point of him. Maybe his eyebrows might do something that communicates this, a half-smile, but it'd be fleeting anyway. He is not quite as superpowered about every aspect of human existence, but he would like to be.
His expression had gentled from that serious-stern-thoughtful configuration, but now shifts back to that as Bruce circles back around to an answer. It's a surprising answer, even if he's not sure what an unsurprising answer would be.
"Okay," Clark says. "Why him?"
There are many more questions he could ask there, but they can wait for a minute, more interested in following Bruce's train of thought.
A conundrum for people like them; willing to sacrifice it, rarely willing to accept that anyone else might do the same. Perhaps shouldering too much is the point, or at least a point, of Clark. (Certainly being in a relationship with Bruce Wayne is shaded under that same umbrella.) It should be easier for you, Bruce thinks, even while he's made certain that nothing about his own life even carries the potential for ease.
Maybe the unsurprising answer would be 'nothing'. Continuing to deny.
Why him.
From a list of reasons ten miles long, he must choose strategically.
"He's starting to show up, more and more. Closer and closer. As though a simple hypothetical fear of Superman is no longer unnerving enough; this malleable future has begun to craft the worst betrayal I could commit, and see me forced to work with him to achieve an end that, it suggests, would topple Darkseid."
You know. Nightmare shit. Bruce shifts, though, and looks at Clark. The word is tangible in the air before he continues, "But, he's stealing something. Why would he be stealing something."
The people you love, dead. The person you share something extremely specific, intimate, addictive, turned into a monster. The person you hate the most, an ally. If Clark was not already convinced that these dreams meant something, it'd be easy to see how they could simply be nightmares and nothing more, strange subconscious expressions from an overactive mind.
But. If they're visions of the future first, then they're only nightmarish for what they portend.
Really, though.
"Is it possible he knows something about all this? Already." There was a window of time in which Darkseid's influence in the form of Steppenwolf and his parademons had touched down on earth. So far, they've been fortunate in that the narrowness of the mission seemed to keep it neat and locked down, but information has a way of spreading. Maybe an infection's already set in.
"If anyone in this world would," he says, his voice grating with exhausted disdain. He's mentioned Joker before, and of course the clown's shadow looms dark and large even over an already-shadowy place like Gotham. And closer to home. Joke's on you, Batman, scrawled on the body armor of his dead child, preserved in a place where Bruce has to look at it, every day.
But, he shrugs. It's not that, specifically. Quiet again, for a moment. That shrug was not casual, despite the effort he's putting into the appearance of being fine with this conversation. (Stupid. Clark knows he isn't, and he's safe with Clark.)
"I almost married the greatest living thief on Earth." His thumb passes over Clark's, an absent touch, as if some part of his brain is thinking about Mr and Mrs Lane-Kent. Bruce Wayne is the ultimate bachelor. Surely he's fine with all the times he nearly nailed down a committed relationship only to have it blow up in his face. "In the dream, I feel ... inescapably cornered. I'm furious, and exhausted, and the most resentful I've ever felt. I don't have any more limbs to gnaw off in the fucking trap. I'm drowning, and yet I still find it important to let Joker know his former lover defected to me. The only reason— the only reason I wouldn't ask Selina Kyle to help me is if she were dead. If this is real, I think he's going to kill her. I think he figures out who Batman is, and finds her. To make sure he's the only option."
"To steal something," Clark says, mostly to demonstrate he's followed along.
A little grim, but thoughtful. It's a winding kind of path but one more intricately rendered than he might have anticipated. His hands idle, returning absent touch with gentle little sweeps and fidgets, playing with the vital anchor they've forged by just holding hands on the couch, on a rainy Metropolan evening. Eventually, he thinks, they're going to have to work out the hows and whys of Lois Lane's death too. One thing at a time.
He says, still in the spirit of following along: "And so what happens if he never does any of that. If he's killed first." Which might be blunter than the general public might expect from wholesome heartland crayon colours, but Clark doesn't equivocate much, in practice.
His tone is quiet, cautious, but not wary. That Joker is still alive sounds like a decision that Bruce must have made, for himself or for Jason or maybe for the simple fact that their line of work can't always become about execution.
Either way, sometimes the easy fix isn't easy at all.
Bruce tips his head. To steal something, technically. But it would have been anything, he thinks; whatever Bruce needed, Joker would make himself necessary, purely to force him into it. Something vile wriggles in his stomach, cold and uncomfortable. An endless hellscape of violations, again and again, with that monster.
"I nearly did, once." The look he gives Clark is frank, and tired. He doesn't expect any saintlike distance about killing. Zod was necessary and never a part of his madness against Superman. Steppenwolf was also necessary. There is a difference between murdering a criminal and denying them due process, and war. The question is what world does Joker inhabit. "It was a near thing, with intervening forces being what stopped it, not any morals of mine. He's kept his distance since, and I haven't pursued it because I..."
His face does something.
"I don't know if I can. Or should. What going there deliberately would do to me. You've already seen me out of control, and with him it'd be justified. Would I just be giving him what's left of my sanity?"
"No," Clark says, instinctive but not easy, but then pauses, thoughtful, despite himself. He does think of Zod, inevitably, of how he doesn't have any doubt now that he'd done the right thing—had even spent too long trying not to, crucial minutes, but he can't agonise over the instinct not to kill a person. More to the point, there had been something breaking about it, in the moment. He hadn't felt grief like that since he was a teenager.
But it's complicated. Zod represented some last connection to something he didn't have, while Joker sounds like something that just severs, cleaves. Zod had been a threat to the human race, while Joker is, in the cosmic scheme of things, not such a globally looming terror. Joker is a choice, where Zod was not.
Still—
"I don't know if you should either," Clark settles on. "If it's what needs to happen, but maybe it is. Maybe you should. Either way, you're not that person who loses control. It's something that happened, but it's not who you are. And whatever happens next, whatever you decide, you're not gonna be alone with it."
You're not that person who loses control, Clark says, and it touches Bruce that he thinks so. Makes him worry a little, too. Because he is that person. He keeps himself under such extreme control because he knows the consequences of losing it; he knows what he's capable of, and he knows he isn't infallible.
Joker is a choice. One that carries the significant risk of making Bruce feel like that's an acceptable choice to make.
Over his son. Over a dream. Revenge? A preventative measure? What's next down the line, for someone else? Does a creature like that deserve this kind of moral questioning? Is he a person anymore? What right does Bruce have to decide?
He's never been able to answer those questions for himself. Not well enough to do anything with.
Bruce raises their linked hands, kisses Clark's knuckles. Fuck, this is all stupid. He looks away, carrying a look of tension around his eyes. Clark shouldn't have this kind of faith in him.
"Agonizing over it, and it's just bullshit dreams."
Clark's fingers fan a little after they're kissed, but settle into a comfortable hold around Bruce's hand. There's the sound of flapping, and Woodstock flutters across the room to land on the outside of his cage, performing some easy acrobatics to get at the cuttlefish bone wedged between bars. These antics earn a glance out of Clark, mostly to make sure nothing terrible is happening to his parrot.
Back to this, though, and Clark finally lets a smile crack across his face, subtle and crooked, as he says, "Or you just don't want to admit you have superpowers."
He leans in, his aim to kiss Bruce on the head, and then go about putting some dishes away. Hosting sensibility being to break up a little of the tension that's begun to form crystals in the air.
Dishes and leftovers in glass containers (far more sustainable), Bruce does not ask about wine, but makes coffee, and later, they're pretending to be people who need sleep, or sleep at normal hours. In the moonlight streaming into the bedroom from tall windows, Bruce's hair looks much more grey than it does normally. Peering down at Clark from his perch sprawled partially on top of him, arms crossed over the younger man's bare chest.
Sleeping is out, it'd never work. But it's nice to pretend, and to have the intimacy of being together in whatever state; talking quietly about nothing, wondering if the rain will let up. The bedsheets smell like the kind of detergent Lois likes. Bruce always feels like an intruder here, even on rare occasions when it's the three of them. He hopes he always will. He never wants to lose the seriousness with which he respects their marriage, and the priority of that bond.
(What would it have been like, if he and Selina worked out?)
Silent observation. He wonders how clearly Clark can see him in the dark.
The grey is good. Not because Clark has a thing for ~older men~ (probably?) or anything, it's just nice to look at, and nice to do this, which is: carding his fingers through it, lazily and gently, meditative. He thinks this is probably annoying sometimes, for Bruce, but probably not as many times as it's fine, or desired, just for the intimacy of it. It's a nice kind of no thoughts head empty activity, while they fail to sleep.
The question pulls focus, though. Clark can see him fine. His hand stills, trying to bend his brain around the shape of that question.
"If you have superpowers," he says, slowly, like untangling a logic riddle, "then what I want is for you to be okay about having them."
That's not the answer to the question so much as twisting the question around.
He might end up with a thing for older men from here on out. Only the future can say.
Clark's hand stills, and Bruce leans his head into it. Watching him and thinking about that answer, turning it - and this entire issue - over in his mind. With less tension than earlier. Sometimes he just needs some distance, and the room to be less ticked off. Difficult, when the thing in contention is so disorienting. But it helps to have Clark; something reliable in the mess of his head. The younger man deserves better than to be his crutch, in this or any scenario, but Bruce is (mostly) evolved enough to grasp that these are the kinds of things committed partners do for each other. Only a little residual internal squirming.
"The possibility of it isn't something I can deny," he murmurs. "Especially not given the way we're all pulled together like magnets. But if it's real, I can't control it. If it's a power, then it's just over me."
And it is no fun coming to terms with that. Something he thinks Clark understands, at least in part.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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The rest of it, though.
"I don't know how to answer that."
Because he hasn't thought about it before, and now that he is, there's a lot to sift through. He wishes there wasn't. More damning, in his own mind, is the fact that his brain had skittered to certain old dreams, when the ones about Superman began. But he'd set them aside, unable to draw a correlation. Now it's there in an increasingly un-shadowy corner, nagging at him.
Bruce's knee presses against him. Maybe footsie-ing away tension would help. (No.)
"One I had for a long time, was..." ugh, man. He feels stupid. He watches Clark a little, then lets his gaze wander, absent, observing the bird traversing its way around broad shoulders. "The cave system under the house had all these little sinkhole entrances, and of course I fell in one. Disturbed a bunch of bats. I had dreams for ages after about them flying me back up out of it, into the light, where everything was better. I suppose I thought of it, later." Bruce glances at him. For Batman. "But there's nothing groundbreaking about a kid dreaming about escaping a scary hole in the ground full of spooky animals."
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"But they weren't," says Clark. "Spooky animals."
He's trying not to smile. It's not a smiley subject. But, like, Bruce. "So it's like it showed a definitive future. Nothing about it you'd want to change, so it stayed the same, each time you dreamed it."
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"It showed me," he says pointedly, "a fantasy. A nebulous, undefined feeling of 'better'. Because it was a dream, and that's all."
The nightmares about Darkseid, and the way that 'world' changes, are very detailed. Annoyingly, as soon as he has that thought, another follows on its heels: well, you started having these after your brain's been fully formed for a lot of years.
Alright, alright. He draws a breath, tries to take it seriously, without wriggling away from himself.
"I dream about cases. Sifting through things I think about too much. Memories. One particular hallway in the manor I played in a lot, as a kid. I don't actually dream of my parents very much. If anything it's.. the mountains, training, the brutality there."
no subject
He's preparing to double-down on his theory that Bruce experiences magical prophetic dreams actually before Bruce says that last part, to which Clark replies, "How so?"
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"'How so' what?" Is he this much of a shit interviewee when he does press for Wayne Enterprises. Incredible. "I'm sure I've told you about Tibet. At least some."
Altitude. Horrible tea. Low oxygen. Tourist remarks; he has never discussed training.
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Which would be enough of a prompt, probably, with interview subjects who are there specifically to speak to a journalist. Less so with the kinds he has to hunt down, but not all the time, where it's human nature to want to fill the silence, or tell someone kind and listening things you might not normally.
But Bruce isn't his subject. Bruce is his colleague, and boyfriend, and whatever more ineffable thing they are to each other. "Not enough," he says, with a raised eyebrow. For its mention now to make a natural sense to him, he means. "What kind of training?"
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Fighting, is the answer, and also not even remotely close. It doesn't explain anything.
Bruce watches the bird. It really is pretty.
"Unlearning the human experience, and reforming it into something else. How to vanish, to endure without heartbeat, how to sever a body from pain and sensation. How to unmake an opponent, physically, in a moment. Or over the course of a long time."
Once in a while, Bruce misses it. That life was simple. Horrible, but psychologically easy to understand. This suffering, for once, has meaning.
"My instructor was a monster, shaped like a man. The most educated, aristocratic, and effective person I'd ever met. He took people and shaped them into things. Like me. And it was electrifying. I excelled. Finally, life made sense."
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It's a given, that Bruce had to learn everything he is from somewhere, and if someone had asked Clark how Batman came to be Batman, that's maybe what he'd say. Some part of him, though, seemed to imagine him as self-made, innately powerful, the way the rest of the Justice League is. Even as Bruce paints this picture, of a place and a person, Clark still does. And not just because of the dreams.
It's a lot, though. Different from the things Diana has told him about Amazon training drills and athletics, maybe even different to the regimes he has imagined someone like General Zod went through. He wants to hold Bruce's hand, so he does, reaching over to take it and drag it into his territory.
Not all of what Bruce says is so alien, anyway.
"What was the purpose? His, I guess." It doesn't sound like 'what's the point' so much as an honest question. The work, the mission, whatever it might be called. He calls it purpose.
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Just normal bad dreams. He does that Kill Bill thing sometimes, punches something in his sleep, transported back to having to hit a post eighty bajillion times. There is real trauma there, and deep, strange things; Bruce is nearly fifty years old and it seems like every year is packed with more significant events than the average person's whole lifespan. It's perfectly reasonable that he has nightmares, that sometimes his analytical mind puts things together, that he is occasionally guided by the things that rise to the surface of his subconscious. He did not dream a warning about the murder of his parents, or the murder of his son.
"What would the point even be," he says, transparently agitated, all of a sudden. "Of 'seeing the future', and having none of it be constructive. To have horrifying visions that threaten to send me into fits of—"
You know. Fits of trying to murder Superman.
:/
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And Clark squeezes Bruce's hand, offering no answers. They can speculate forever, but that sounds a little like it'd only add to the tight spirals of frustration that seem to emerge when this topic is broached. But he does say, "That's not going to happen," about the fits of, dot dot dot. Whether it's Superman murder, something else.
"But I think that's a good question," a shift, along with a physical one, just a readjustment of his sit on the couch. "And you deserve answers about it. Is it possible—"
Hmm. He laces his fingers between Bruce's.
"Say it's not nonsense. Say there's a key to understanding these dreams on their own terms. A way to control them, to make them make sense or control when and where you let them in, or if there's any precedent for dreaming like that. Where would you start?"
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A part of him wants to scream. You're such a good person, what the fuck are you doing.
Bruce takes a breath, and releases it in a slow sigh. Internally doing some, stupid battle, about the kinds of things that are safe to say. As if an admission will make him vulnerable, instead of his feeble mortality. As if Clark hasn't seen the worst parts of him already.
"Does it have to be real?" He will get to that question. Maybe. He has started, before, and it was bad. It will still be bad. But—
"If it isn't real, do you worry that a part of me is still afraid of you?"
Demons to exorcize.
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"No," does feel important to say, regardless. "You wouldn't have bet the world on bringing me back if you were afraid of me. If any part of you was."
Clark keeps that hold on Bruce's hand. It feels odd, to say that out loud, because it feels like a given truth but also weighted and leaden. He knows the responsibility Bruce feels for him dying in the first place. Having his life in Bruce's hands, even a year and a half after the fact, is just the other side of that coin. But that's all to say: that he lives and breathes feels like a testament to trust. They hadn't known each other, not until it was all too late.
He drops his attention to their joined hands, letting his thoughts unwind down this path, letting the conversation divert and feel its way around. "When I came back," he says, "when I could think straight, anyway, I knew you'd done it for a reason. And once I worked that much out, all I wanted to do was learn what it was. And show up."
Even the part of him that wanted to lay down in a cornfield with Lois Lane for ten years was willing to wait a minute.
"That hasn't really gone away," rueful.
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He thinks about that, and watches Clark, his expression grave and grateful. Taking it deadly seriously, as it is. Bruce squeezes his hand. He might lean in for a kiss, but just leveling him with this look, mood laid bare, feels even more intimate.
Thank you. You're right. I'm sorry. This has been more than anyone should be asked to shoulder.
Bruce feels less out to sea, appreciative of the light (and possibly imaginary) reproach over— of course this matters to Clark beyond it merely upsetting Bruce, or a nebulous 'maybe' of something unimaginable. He treats his own resurrection with such easygoing disregard sometimes that Bruce has, apparently, found himself fooled into going along with that.
So.
That question.
(Woodstock: pingpingping, on the countertop. Cheery.)
"If they're not nonsense," he begins, with careful deliberation, "and I am looking for a sense of control, where I start is with the man who killed Jason."
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His expression had gentled from that serious-stern-thoughtful configuration, but now shifts back to that as Bruce circles back around to an answer. It's a surprising answer, even if he's not sure what an unsurprising answer would be.
"Okay," Clark says. "Why him?"
There are many more questions he could ask there, but they can wait for a minute, more interested in following Bruce's train of thought.
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Maybe the unsurprising answer would be 'nothing'. Continuing to deny.
Why him.
From a list of reasons ten miles long, he must choose strategically.
"He's starting to show up, more and more. Closer and closer. As though a simple hypothetical fear of Superman is no longer unnerving enough; this malleable future has begun to craft the worst betrayal I could commit, and see me forced to work with him to achieve an end that, it suggests, would topple Darkseid."
You know. Nightmare shit. Bruce shifts, though, and looks at Clark. The word is tangible in the air before he continues, "But, he's stealing something. Why would he be stealing something."
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But. If they're visions of the future first, then they're only nightmarish for what they portend.
Really, though.
"Is it possible he knows something about all this? Already." There was a window of time in which Darkseid's influence in the form of Steppenwolf and his parademons had touched down on earth. So far, they've been fortunate in that the narrowness of the mission seemed to keep it neat and locked down, but information has a way of spreading. Maybe an infection's already set in.
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But, he shrugs. It's not that, specifically. Quiet again, for a moment. That shrug was not casual, despite the effort he's putting into the appearance of being fine with this conversation. (Stupid. Clark knows he isn't, and he's safe with Clark.)
"I almost married the greatest living thief on Earth." His thumb passes over Clark's, an absent touch, as if some part of his brain is thinking about Mr and Mrs Lane-Kent. Bruce Wayne is the ultimate bachelor. Surely he's fine with all the times he nearly nailed down a committed relationship only to have it blow up in his face. "In the dream, I feel ... inescapably cornered. I'm furious, and exhausted, and the most resentful I've ever felt. I don't have any more limbs to gnaw off in the fucking trap. I'm drowning, and yet I still find it important to let Joker know his former lover defected to me. The only reason— the only reason I wouldn't ask Selina Kyle to help me is if she were dead. If this is real, I think he's going to kill her. I think he figures out who Batman is, and finds her. To make sure he's the only option."
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A little grim, but thoughtful. It's a winding kind of path but one more intricately rendered than he might have anticipated. His hands idle, returning absent touch with gentle little sweeps and fidgets, playing with the vital anchor they've forged by just holding hands on the couch, on a rainy Metropolan evening. Eventually, he thinks, they're going to have to work out the hows and whys of Lois Lane's death too. One thing at a time.
He says, still in the spirit of following along: "And so what happens if he never does any of that. If he's killed first." Which might be blunter than the general public might expect from wholesome heartland crayon colours, but Clark doesn't equivocate much, in practice.
His tone is quiet, cautious, but not wary. That Joker is still alive sounds like a decision that Bruce must have made, for himself or for Jason or maybe for the simple fact that their line of work can't always become about execution.
Either way, sometimes the easy fix isn't easy at all.
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"I nearly did, once." The look he gives Clark is frank, and tired. He doesn't expect any saintlike distance about killing. Zod was necessary and never a part of his madness against Superman. Steppenwolf was also necessary. There is a difference between murdering a criminal and denying them due process, and war. The question is what world does Joker inhabit. "It was a near thing, with intervening forces being what stopped it, not any morals of mine. He's kept his distance since, and I haven't pursued it because I..."
His face does something.
"I don't know if I can. Or should. What going there deliberately would do to me. You've already seen me out of control, and with him it'd be justified. Would I just be giving him what's left of my sanity?"
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But it's complicated. Zod represented some last connection to something he didn't have, while Joker sounds like something that just severs, cleaves. Zod had been a threat to the human race, while Joker is, in the cosmic scheme of things, not such a globally looming terror. Joker is a choice, where Zod was not.
Still—
"I don't know if you should either," Clark settles on. "If it's what needs to happen, but maybe it is. Maybe you should. Either way, you're not that person who loses control. It's something that happened, but it's not who you are. And whatever happens next, whatever you decide, you're not gonna be alone with it."
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Joker is a choice. One that carries the significant risk of making Bruce feel like that's an acceptable choice to make.
Over his son. Over a dream. Revenge? A preventative measure? What's next down the line, for someone else? Does a creature like that deserve this kind of moral questioning? Is he a person anymore? What right does Bruce have to decide?
He's never been able to answer those questions for himself. Not well enough to do anything with.
Bruce raises their linked hands, kisses Clark's knuckles. Fuck, this is all stupid. He looks away, carrying a look of tension around his eyes. Clark shouldn't have this kind of faith in him.
"Agonizing over it, and it's just bullshit dreams."
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Back to this, though, and Clark finally lets a smile crack across his face, subtle and crooked, as he says, "Or you just don't want to admit you have superpowers."
He leans in, his aim to kiss Bruce on the head, and then go about putting some dishes away. Hosting sensibility being to break up a little of the tension that's begun to form crystals in the air.
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Dishes and leftovers in glass containers (far more sustainable), Bruce does not ask about wine, but makes coffee, and later, they're pretending to be people who need sleep, or sleep at normal hours. In the moonlight streaming into the bedroom from tall windows, Bruce's hair looks much more grey than it does normally. Peering down at Clark from his perch sprawled partially on top of him, arms crossed over the younger man's bare chest.
Sleeping is out, it'd never work. But it's nice to pretend, and to have the intimacy of being together in whatever state; talking quietly about nothing, wondering if the rain will let up. The bedsheets smell like the kind of detergent Lois likes. Bruce always feels like an intruder here, even on rare occasions when it's the three of them. He hopes he always will. He never wants to lose the seriousness with which he respects their marriage, and the priority of that bond.
(What would it have been like, if he and Selina worked out?)
Silent observation. He wonders how clearly Clark can see him in the dark.
"Why do you want me to have superpowers?"
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The question pulls focus, though. Clark can see him fine. His hand stills, trying to bend his brain around the shape of that question.
"If you have superpowers," he says, slowly, like untangling a logic riddle, "then what I want is for you to be okay about having them."
That's not the answer to the question so much as twisting the question around.
"I just don't think it's so crazy."
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Clark's hand stills, and Bruce leans his head into it. Watching him and thinking about that answer, turning it - and this entire issue - over in his mind. With less tension than earlier. Sometimes he just needs some distance, and the room to be less ticked off. Difficult, when the thing in contention is so disorienting. But it helps to have Clark; something reliable in the mess of his head. The younger man deserves better than to be his crutch, in this or any scenario, but Bruce is (mostly) evolved enough to grasp that these are the kinds of things committed partners do for each other. Only a little residual internal squirming.
"The possibility of it isn't something I can deny," he murmurs. "Especially not given the way we're all pulled together like magnets. But if it's real, I can't control it. If it's a power, then it's just over me."
And it is no fun coming to terms with that. Something he thinks Clark understands, at least in part.
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