"I did the Appalachian Trail when I..." Clark trails off there, unsure exactly how to put words around that unique compounding of frustration and loneliness and desperate need to figure things out in a way that doesn't sound, you know, melodramatic. He gives up on that quickly enough. "Well, I'd been wanting to do it, made it something to work towards. Took about six months to fund it, and we're talking-- pocket change, by the time I was ready."
Most would have run out, midway through, maybe less. It takes months. He knew then he didn't need things like people needed them. "It's not all solitary. Cabins, camp sites, other hikers, even the noise? Of woodlands like that? But there's the portion around the Tennessee-North Carolina border, where you can see all around, mountains and forests, indifferent and ancient."
He then stops, thinks, says, "It was beautiful, but. Maybe that's not a favourite place. Just a favourite time.
"What about you? Or is Gotham just weirdest and best?"
That's when his father died, not because anyone's told him, even though he's sure someone's mentioned the year or he's read it. But because he knows the exact look of that pause, knows the shape of the unanchored feeling intimately. Bruce remembers, stupidly, that he'd felt like an alien on earth - had thought those words exactly - because of how misshapen everything had left him inside. Clark, meanwhile, has always been exactly how he should be, and has just been mistreated over it.
For a moment he's quiet. It should be an uncomfortable understanding, but it isn't.
"Lower Manhattan for the weirdest," he says. "Before the--" he makes a vague gesture. "I hate the word 'gentrification', it sounds so benign, but before that. It's even weirder now with that, but as somebody from Jersey, it was too unnatural."
What a stereotypical thing to say. And yet it's true; topical, even, though he doesn't say so, Ted Grant having taught him these very punches. Got his face flattened a dozen times a day.
Having talked himself away from the thinking about dead parents, Clark's smile communicates something like how isn't it neat that Bruce likes remote mountainous locations too. They're practically twins.
Maybe more than that. It's not lost on him, the slight oddness and suddenness of the conversation, questions like a stick digging around in the sand, even if he's not entirely sure what Bruce is looking for. Something to understand, maybe, and he's happy to oblige, to fall into the odd rhythm of it just as he is trusting in the over-slow movements of punches and blocks.
"I'd never been overseas until I figured out how to fly," he says, presently. It's a good thing that the ancient Kryptonians touched down in Canada. "When was Tibet?"
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.
Clark has done his homework too, although isn't currently doing the math. There's an inquiring look at the numbers -- yeah? -- before concentrating on what he's doing. Fighting very slow phantoms. Starting to get it, though, less just miming and more concentrating on the intricacies of the movements, how he's balanced, what he's doing with the rest of himself when he pulls his right arm back to deploy a strike.
And if chest hair shows up during as neckline tugs with movement, these are the sacrifices we have to make.
Another smile, this time more crooked than the last. "France was fine," sounds genuine, despite the fairly tepid descriptor assigned to a whole nation. "First time I actually touched down there that I can recall, but didn't get up to much sight seeing. Diana was pretty set on not destroying any property while we practiced. Startled some cows instead. They got nice country."
"That's nice of her," he says blandly. It's interesting to him, the care these demigods and messiahs have to take. How it can be reduced to something like remembering to stretch before jogging. Hopefully Clark will connect that sentiment with what they're doing here, since Bruce doesn't want to have to rub his nose in it and make it feel like a lesson to be shirked when he's inevitably annoyed at him.
"Some."
Trying to talk to Bruce is mostly like trying to interview a bored brick wall about mid-term election prospects during a no-contest year.
Well, this time, Bruce's foot catches on an immovable object, Clark instinctively setting heel to floor without thinking about it beyond a muscle memory desire to escape the indignity of last time. Topside, he doesn't cheat as much, other arm coming around in a deflection designed to buckle Bruce's strike, leaning backwards.
Belatedly, that foot lifts to step out of the grapple, this side shy of sheepish.
The problem with the bored brick wall effect is that it does not change the ways Bruce is, personally, in action and history and existence, endlessly fascinating, and still impressive. Clark should find it off-putting, the deflection, the blanking. He mostly finds it frustrates his curiousity without doing anything to quell it.
Without prompt, Clark goes to do as Bruce did: foot to ankle, hand to arm, mostly to see what he does as opposed to ardent desire to put him on his ass.
Ah he thinks, with a kind of incredulous longsuffering quality he mostly ascribes to Alfred, and does not dart away - instead he flips through options for what he'd do if anyone got a decent throw hold on him (and Clark's, while far from form-perfect, counts purely because he might break his own arms trying to get out of it). If Clark were human Bruce could twist to one side and get him in a headlock, or simply not move. He opts to let gravity do the work, allowing himself to fall back, but keeping hold of Clark's borrowed shirt at one shoulder and a grip on his other arm.
In theory, this will allow him to roll back and throw an opponent over his head, and away. He's curious as they go down what exactly will transpire. He suspects Superman might not have the ordinary vs-gravity buoyancy to be flipped.
Satisfaction of apparently having Done The Thing effectively enough to catch Bruce out -- because even if he had activated his X-ray vision, it does not give Clark insight into the branching scenarios almost lazily contemplated inside of his opponent's skull -- quickly turns into a flutter of panic about what he's supposed to do next by the time Bruce's hands tighten on shirt and arm. In normal scenarios, remaining perfectly in place is a likely given. Flying backwards another one.
Presence of mind to have kept those tabled, Clark responds to full-bodied tug by startling, pitching forwards.
Bonk.
Any roll-back momentum is too immediately countered by Clark Kent landing heavy on top of him, a half-aborted attempt at breaking grip laying forearm against a shoulder, knee jabbing thigh and the other braced against mat, other hand flung out wildly to absorb some of his own weight onto the floor next to Bruce's shoulder. Face to startled face as Clark jerks his head back by an inch, zero idea of what to do next has him going still in place.
They're both lucky that Bruce speaks physical violence better than he does English, so when Kryptonian knee meets human thigh he's able to position as to not end up with his leg in two pieces - though perhaps concerning is the way he doesn't seem to find those points of contact painful, like the response is simply absent, having spent too many years getting the shit kicked out of him for this to rate.
Bruce's pulse does that thing it's been doing. It evens out - albeit at a quicker than normal pace - at the sight of Clark so startled. Rudely finding his own peace at the expense of the other man's nerves.
Beneath him, he relaxes. Broad hands are smoothed out against perfect skin and borrowed cotton. He looks at Clark, looks in those bright blue eyes and that little speck of warm brown-- he wonders if that tiny blip of heterochromia is what's supposed to have set him apart from other Kryptonians and their genetically encrypted destinies. Look, says some long-dead alien radical, he's completely natural. Ordinary. Fucked his eyes up and everything.
Nevermind the rest of him shames Greek statues.
Bruce moves one hand, slow, like approaching a wild animal. Raises it up towards Clark's temple and the wavy dark hair there -
- shoves his knee into the other man's chest and torques his body, flinging him aside.
Bruce relaxes. Clark does too, a little, making only a subtle adjustment to make the position less physically awkward, if no less-- otherwise awkward. He awaits instruction, complaint, signal to move -- should probably not wait for any of that and just roll off like a normal person -- and thinks that even with the ability to telescope his vision to identify where subtle silver has threaded itself into Batman's five o'clock stubble from two blocks away, it's different up close. Mutual absorption of detail.
Detail coming attached with opinion, like how his age suits him, how brown eyes no longer seem as murky and walled off as they usually do but like wood cut to transparency and brought to a polish, and wondering what else it might take for Bruce not to school his expression so perfectly.
Beside Bruce's shoulder, his fingers curl inwards, as conscious as a wild animal of movement, brow pulling at the centre. Tension returning, kindled differently.
And then a knee to the torso, too densely made for it to drive the breath out of him but his breath still hitches anyway. Clark rolls as heavily as a log and lands with an over loud thump of his shoulders hitting padded ground. The next breath is a semi-laugh, head falling back against the ground. Cool cool cool.
Unlucky, that Bruce speaks physical so well, now wholly cognizant of the not-nothing of that moment. He's more at ease with it than he'd be if the moment had been, heaven forbid, mid-conversation, but there's still a frisson of strange as he sits up halfway on his elbows.
Stranger still, how beautiful Clark's laugh is, how easily it throws him. Briefly, Bruce tries not to smile. Again. He turns his head away to cover it, significantly less subtle than before.
Clark looks at him from where he remains on his back, sort of playing at an exhaustion or defeat he doesn't feel. Feet slack at the ankles, hand idling on his stomach. His smile closes, less toothy, but still there. You ever feel ways about the people who trained you?
Is not an appropriate follow-up, but it scrolls through his brain like a news ticker. Considers the ceiling again, does not make comparisons about how quickly his body sheds sensation, no twinges, no aches, in contrast to where his knee thumped down on Bruce's thigh, because he lacks the proper frame of reference.
Doesn't mean he's going to forget much about it, though.
"Makes sense."
There's no Bat Academy, after all. No one thing that made Bruce what he is. The world wasn't equipped to do it, in the way Themyscira grew her soldiers, or Krypton forged gods. He remembers something, in his Kryptonite memory haze, about how Bruce had to force the world to make sense.
The feeling of Clark's weight above him, his warmth through nothing but thin layers of workout clothes, his closeness, the energy between them - it'll haunt Bruce, like his laughter. Like the feel of his dead body with a gaping hole in his chest being lowered from beside the Kryptonian monster into Diana's arms, into Lois's embrace.
Maybe, some traitorous voice whispers in his mind, you will forget what that felt like, with enough exposure to feeling him while alive.
A thought so revoltingly selfish that it casts a chill on him. A chill that should have been with him all along. Reality. Bruce sits up, rolls to his feet. Something creaks in his left knee.
Smooth.
"Showers are in with the locker room," he says, "if you're so inclined. I have a long day of wrangling construction idiots coming up in a few hours, so I should pretend to sleep for a little while."
Clark gets to his feet as Bruce does, his expression just a touch expectant that the other man will say something less utilitarian. Foolishly. Mention of showers sort of tips his brain in a whole other wrong direction but corrects itself quickly enough, frowning at the shift that's taken place instead.
Not shocking, though.
"Of course," he says, midwestern manners in place, a handwave to assure he can see himself out and everything. There's probably some disaster waiting for him in another timezone, maybe one he missed while wrestling bat. The shadow of responsibility on his time has its ebbs and flows.
Clark steps aside, even if he doesn't all the way want to, and throws out a last hook with, "Bruce," followed by, "thanks for this. Until next time?"
Query is met with a look that's searching-- as though inspecting Clark for signs of insincerity. Bruce nods. Sure. Next time.
For Bruce, the rest of the night involves a freezing cold shower and punching the granite wall during it hard enough to leave bruises on his knuckles. Stop it, he tells himself, vicious in his desire to sever the impulse under his skin to cling to the evening spent, honestly, in good company, enjoying himself. As if it's in the same universe as that simple.
He could have reached out and taken his face in his hands. He could have kissed him. He knows it.
Fuck.
You've already gotten him killed once. Stop it.
He will. He has to. No matter what Clark might think - and surely it's something misguided, if he's looking at Bruce like that at all - it's not worth letting him into, at best, the emotional blast radius of his fucking disaster of a life. Clark deserves infinitely better and-- has it, surely. (Why do you assume everyone but you is monogamous, says the same mutinous voice from earlier. Shut the fuck up, he tells it.)
It's a busy week. He's glad to lose himself in it.
Clark doesn't shower. He sheds clothing, leaves it folded somewhere obvious in a gesture of thanks, tugs on his suit, and goes a different way he came.
Because the temptation he is warring with is a different kind, the kind that wants to follow on quiet footsteps and see if they can't continue this conversation, well into the night, careless and selfish of him, really. The kind that wants him to glance through walls, and is too fully aware of that heartbeat tracking around the lake house like an echo, somehow more powerful and resonant than Alfred's resting rate.
But Clark does follow one impulse, as nosy as the others. In the quiet early hours, he takes to the sky, only to slowly lower himself where some of the roof has caved in of Wayne Manor.
Dry leaves and dirt flutters around where his feet touch down and heavy cape hem sweeps. It's cold in a way the outside is less. Cold shadows, cold marble, cold columns. The only associations that Clark Joe has with a place like this is a museum. Or a mausoleum. Hard to picture it with a fire in the hearth over there, made cosy with furniture, with a childhood lived out in these halls. Christmas decorations, a tree, a wreath on the door. Severed, he thinks, given the rate of decay, but isn't sure when. Everyone lives some kind of way, he supposes. Normal is what you're used to.
His wander is curious, a little aimless, simply looking, maybe taking the walk that he interrupted Bruce from taking. There's no focused pursuit for evidence or artefacts.
He sometimes wonders what it was like for the children of Krypton. What it might have been like for him. Wide open spaces like these, maybe. Perhaps the scout ship is as far apart as the architecture as a space shuttle would be to an earth home. Maybe they're as varied as earth homes, although he doubts it. Didn't seem a lot of room for cultural variation, from what he'd managed to learn from ghosts of the past.
He roams hallways, pushes open doors, but does not enter rooms, let alone ransack them. His treatment is at as deferential as it is invasive. Thoughtful, reflective. CCTV footage won't be able to pick up on what he's thinking, after all.
Returning to his landing spot, Clark takes off again, leaving only displaced leaves and a few dusty foot prints behind before disappearing into the night sky.
Edited (all these edits is what you get for these rude comics) 2017-12-13 10:44 (UTC)
It's shocking how quickly the world can turn back to nature without the direct interference of humans - or perhaps, it's just shocking how much work goes into maintaining the basic integrity of a building on a regular basis. Wayne Manor has been abandoned for decades, and though it seems like there should be an 'only' in there, the truth of it is that leaky ceilings and rotting beams can destroy a structure in a small handful of years. Helped along in this case by harsh eastern seaboard weather (exacerbated by Climate Change), and the age of the manor in the first place. She needed extra care. She received none.
To say nothing of the obvious fire damage.
There are portions of the house worse off than others; perhaps, before it was left empty entirely, a small family unit lived only in the bedrooms closest to the kitchens, instead of having the run of the whole palatial grounds. It would be sensible and considerate. Saving power. Carbon footprints. The Waynes were known for their good natures.
Were.
What are they known for now? Eccentricity. Excess. Decay.
The network of CCTV cameras on the expanse of his property does not have thoroughly paranoid coverage in the ruins - against type, but Bruce didn't have the heart. It's just enough to know if any drunk teenagers from the city proper have made the double-dog-dare trip out to loot a brick. Just enough to watch the last son of Kryptonian move carefully through the crumbled skeleton of his childhood.
Bruce plays the footage again and again, trying to draw concrete meaning out of his wandering, trying to will away the ache of understanding. He pushed away from a moment in which he could have pressed his mouth to Clark's-- is he pushing away a moment where he can reach out and touch the back of his hand, say We're both orphans?
Construction teams arrive. The first thing they do is clear away debris and dirt and pull out all the infringing plant life, leaving the ancient structure looking like an open wound waiting for stitches. Bruce hates looking at it. He sends updates to Diana and leaves Alfred in charge of it, relocating for the time being to his penthouse in the city.
Coward, he listlessly tells his reflection in the tall windows.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"I did the Appalachian Trail when I..." Clark trails off there, unsure exactly how to put words around that unique compounding of frustration and loneliness and desperate need to figure things out in a way that doesn't sound, you know, melodramatic. He gives up on that quickly enough. "Well, I'd been wanting to do it, made it something to work towards. Took about six months to fund it, and we're talking-- pocket change, by the time I was ready."
Most would have run out, midway through, maybe less. It takes months. He knew then he didn't need things like people needed them. "It's not all solitary. Cabins, camp sites, other hikers, even the noise? Of woodlands like that? But there's the portion around the Tennessee-North Carolina border, where you can see all around, mountains and forests, indifferent and ancient."
He then stops, thinks, says, "It was beautiful, but. Maybe that's not a favourite place. Just a favourite time.
"What about you? Or is Gotham just weirdest and best?"
no subject
That's when his father died, not because anyone's told him, even though he's sure someone's mentioned the year or he's read it. But because he knows the exact look of that pause, knows the shape of the unanchored feeling intimately. Bruce remembers, stupidly, that he'd felt like an alien on earth - had thought those words exactly - because of how misshapen everything had left him inside. Clark, meanwhile, has always been exactly how he should be, and has just been mistreated over it.
For a moment he's quiet. It should be an uncomfortable understanding, but it isn't.
"Lower Manhattan for the weirdest," he says. "Before the--" he makes a vague gesture. "I hate the word 'gentrification', it sounds so benign, but before that. It's even weirder now with that, but as somebody from Jersey, it was too unnatural."
What a stereotypical thing to say. And yet it's true; topical, even, though he doesn't say so, Ted Grant having taught him these very punches. Got his face flattened a dozen times a day.
"I liked Tibet."
no subject
Maybe more than that. It's not lost on him, the slight oddness and suddenness of the conversation, questions like a stick digging around in the sand, even if he's not entirely sure what Bruce is looking for. Something to understand, maybe, and he's happy to oblige, to fall into the odd rhythm of it just as he is trusting in the over-slow movements of punches and blocks.
"I'd never been overseas until I figured out how to fly," he says, presently. It's a good thing that the ancient Kryptonians touched down in Canada. "When was Tibet?"
no subject
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.
no subject
And if chest hair shows up during as neckline tugs with movement, these are the sacrifices we have to make.
Another smile, this time more crooked than the last. "France was fine," sounds genuine, despite the fairly tepid descriptor assigned to a whole nation. "First time I actually touched down there that I can recall, but didn't get up to much sight seeing. Diana was pretty set on not destroying any property while we practiced. Startled some cows instead. They got nice country."
Of course they do.
"You trained in Tibet, or?"
no subject
"Some."
Trying to talk to Bruce is mostly like trying to interview a bored brick wall about mid-term election prospects during a no-contest year.
How about they try that throw again. Bonk.
no subject
Well, this time, Bruce's foot catches on an immovable object, Clark instinctively setting heel to floor without thinking about it beyond a muscle memory desire to escape the indignity of last time. Topside, he doesn't cheat as much, other arm coming around in a deflection designed to buckle Bruce's strike, leaning backwards.
Belatedly, that foot lifts to step out of the grapple, this side shy of sheepish.
The problem with the bored brick wall effect is that it does not change the ways Bruce is, personally, in action and history and existence, endlessly fascinating, and still impressive. Clark should find it off-putting, the deflection, the blanking. He mostly finds it frustrates his curiousity without doing anything to quell it.
Without prompt, Clark goes to do as Bruce did: foot to ankle, hand to arm, mostly to see what he does as opposed to ardent desire to put him on his ass.
no subject
In theory, this will allow him to roll back and throw an opponent over his head, and away. He's curious as they go down what exactly will transpire. He suspects Superman might not have the ordinary vs-gravity buoyancy to be flipped.
no subject
Presence of mind to have kept those tabled, Clark responds to full-bodied tug by startling, pitching forwards.
Bonk.
Any roll-back momentum is too immediately countered by Clark Kent landing heavy on top of him, a half-aborted attempt at breaking grip laying forearm against a shoulder, knee jabbing thigh and the other braced against mat, other hand flung out wildly to absorb some of his own weight onto the floor next to Bruce's shoulder. Face to startled face as Clark jerks his head back by an inch, zero idea of what to do next has him going still in place.
no subject
Bruce's pulse does that thing it's been doing. It evens out - albeit at a quicker than normal pace - at the sight of Clark so startled. Rudely finding his own peace at the expense of the other man's nerves.
Beneath him, he relaxes. Broad hands are smoothed out against perfect skin and borrowed cotton. He looks at Clark, looks in those bright blue eyes and that little speck of warm brown-- he wonders if that tiny blip of heterochromia is what's supposed to have set him apart from other Kryptonians and their genetically encrypted destinies. Look, says some long-dead alien radical, he's completely natural. Ordinary. Fucked his eyes up and everything.
Nevermind the rest of him shames Greek statues.
Bruce moves one hand, slow, like approaching a wild animal. Raises it up towards Clark's temple and the wavy dark hair there -
- shoves his knee into the other man's chest and torques his body, flinging him aside.
Bonk.
no subject
Detail coming attached with opinion, like how his age suits him, how brown eyes no longer seem as murky and walled off as they usually do but like wood cut to transparency and brought to a polish, and wondering what else it might take for Bruce not to school his expression so perfectly.
Beside Bruce's shoulder, his fingers curl inwards, as conscious as a wild animal of movement, brow pulling at the centre. Tension returning, kindled differently.
And then a knee to the torso, too densely made for it to drive the breath out of him but his breath still hitches anyway. Clark rolls as heavily as a log and lands with an over loud thump of his shoulders hitting padded ground. The next breath is a semi-laugh, head falling back against the ground. Cool cool cool.
no subject
Stranger still, how beautiful Clark's laugh is, how easily it throws him. Briefly, Bruce tries not to smile. Again. He turns his head away to cover it, significantly less subtle than before.
"I trained in a lot of places."
no subject
Is not an appropriate follow-up, but it scrolls through his brain like a news ticker. Considers the ceiling again, does not make comparisons about how quickly his body sheds sensation, no twinges, no aches, in contrast to where his knee thumped down on Bruce's thigh, because he lacks the proper frame of reference.
Doesn't mean he's going to forget much about it, though.
"Makes sense."
There's no Bat Academy, after all. No one thing that made Bruce what he is. The world wasn't equipped to do it, in the way Themyscira grew her soldiers, or Krypton forged gods. He remembers something, in his Kryptonite memory haze, about how Bruce had to force the world to make sense.
no subject
Maybe, some traitorous voice whispers in his mind, you will forget what that felt like, with enough exposure to feeling him while alive.
A thought so revoltingly selfish that it casts a chill on him. A chill that should have been with him all along. Reality. Bruce sits up, rolls to his feet. Something creaks in his left knee.
Smooth.
"Showers are in with the locker room," he says, "if you're so inclined. I have a long day of wrangling construction idiots coming up in a few hours, so I should pretend to sleep for a little while."
no subject
Not shocking, though.
"Of course," he says, midwestern manners in place, a handwave to assure he can see himself out and everything. There's probably some disaster waiting for him in another timezone, maybe one he missed while wrestling bat. The shadow of responsibility on his time has its ebbs and flows.
Clark steps aside, even if he doesn't all the way want to, and throws out a last hook with, "Bruce," followed by, "thanks for this. Until next time?"
no subject
For Bruce, the rest of the night involves a freezing cold shower and punching the granite wall during it hard enough to leave bruises on his knuckles. Stop it, he tells himself, vicious in his desire to sever the impulse under his skin to cling to the evening spent, honestly, in good company, enjoying himself. As if it's in the same universe as that simple.
He could have reached out and taken his face in his hands. He could have kissed him. He knows it.
Fuck.
You've already gotten him killed once. Stop it.
He will. He has to. No matter what Clark might think - and surely it's something misguided, if he's looking at Bruce like that at all - it's not worth letting him into, at best, the emotional blast radius of his fucking disaster of a life. Clark deserves infinitely better and-- has it, surely. (Why do you assume everyone but you is monogamous, says the same mutinous voice from earlier. Shut the fuck up, he tells it.)
It's a busy week. He's glad to lose himself in it.
no subject
Because the temptation he is warring with is a different kind, the kind that wants to follow on quiet footsteps and see if they can't continue this conversation, well into the night, careless and selfish of him, really. The kind that wants him to glance through walls, and is too fully aware of that heartbeat tracking around the lake house like an echo, somehow more powerful and resonant than Alfred's resting rate.
But Clark does follow one impulse, as nosy as the others. In the quiet early hours, he takes to the sky, only to slowly lower himself where some of the roof has caved in of Wayne Manor.
Dry leaves and dirt flutters around where his feet touch down and heavy cape hem sweeps. It's cold in a way the outside is less. Cold shadows, cold marble, cold columns. The only associations that Clark Joe has with a place like this is a museum. Or a mausoleum. Hard to picture it with a fire in the hearth over there, made cosy with furniture, with a childhood lived out in these halls. Christmas decorations, a tree, a wreath on the door. Severed, he thinks, given the rate of decay, but isn't sure when. Everyone lives some kind of way, he supposes. Normal is what you're used to.
His wander is curious, a little aimless, simply looking, maybe taking the walk that he interrupted Bruce from taking. There's no focused pursuit for evidence or artefacts.
He sometimes wonders what it was like for the children of Krypton. What it might have been like for him. Wide open spaces like these, maybe. Perhaps the scout ship is as far apart as the architecture as a space shuttle would be to an earth home. Maybe they're as varied as earth homes, although he doubts it. Didn't seem a lot of room for cultural variation, from what he'd managed to learn from ghosts of the past.
He roams hallways, pushes open doors, but does not enter rooms, let alone ransack them. His treatment is at as deferential as it is invasive. Thoughtful, reflective. CCTV footage won't be able to pick up on what he's thinking, after all.
Returning to his landing spot, Clark takes off again, leaving only displaced leaves and a few dusty foot prints behind before disappearing into the night sky.
no subject
To say nothing of the obvious fire damage.
There are portions of the house worse off than others; perhaps, before it was left empty entirely, a small family unit lived only in the bedrooms closest to the kitchens, instead of having the run of the whole palatial grounds. It would be sensible and considerate. Saving power. Carbon footprints. The Waynes were known for their good natures.
Were.
What are they known for now? Eccentricity. Excess. Decay.
The network of CCTV cameras on the expanse of his property does not have thoroughly paranoid coverage in the ruins - against type, but Bruce didn't have the heart. It's just enough to know if any drunk teenagers from the city proper have made the double-dog-dare trip out to loot a brick. Just enough to watch the last son of Kryptonian move carefully through the crumbled skeleton of his childhood.
Bruce plays the footage again and again, trying to draw concrete meaning out of his wandering, trying to will away the ache of understanding. He pushed away from a moment in which he could have pressed his mouth to Clark's-- is he pushing away a moment where he can reach out and touch the back of his hand, say We're both orphans?
Construction teams arrive. The first thing they do is clear away debris and dirt and pull out all the infringing plant life, leaving the ancient structure looking like an open wound waiting for stitches. Bruce hates looking at it. He sends updates to Diana and leaves Alfred in charge of it, relocating for the time being to his penthouse in the city.
Coward, he listlessly tells his reflection in the tall windows.