At least I'm getting a little better at streamlining these things: THE IDENTITY PORN BEGINS. :D Also the angst, because—well. Bruce, amirite? I promise we'll get to the hooking up at some point. And just fyi, the travel time is so totally handwaved, but apparently it's canonical somewhere that at least one version of the Batplane can do like Mach 5? SO WHATEVER. I'M NOT COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT. \o? Obviously Bruce has made SOME kind of ongoing arrangement with the FAA.
He manages to shave a good five minutes off that estimate—no mean feat, considering how hard he'd already been planning to push the Batplane to get to Kansas that fast.
From outside, the house looks normal. Bruce hadn't quite had a hand to his phone for the entire flight, but not for lack of trying. He hadn't been able to shake the thought of Martha calling again, panicked, when the thing finally did turn on her—of sitting in the Batplane's nigh-impenetrable shell, engines screaming but still too slow, and listening to her die—
But from outside, the house looks normal. There are no holes in the walls, the roof. The windows are intact.
There's dirt on the front porch.
Bruce doesn't let himself try to decide whether it matches his memory of the color, the texture, of the dirt that had been shoveled over Clark's coffin. He steps over it and raps once, sharp, on the frame of the screen door, and he doesn't wait for Martha to answer before he opens it. (For all he knows, she can't.)
But she's there when he walks inside—right there, she's put Clark on the sofa where the afternoon sun has just begun to slant in, and she's kneeling down beside him. She turned her head at the knock and she's staring at Bruce, a hand pressed over her mouth, her face caught somewhere between reckless joy and complete bewilderment. "Bruce," she whispers, between her fingers, because—
Because it's Clark.
He is covered in dirt: it's smeared dark along his hands, his arms, where the suit he was buried in has torn. He looks awful, pale, sallow in the way kryptonite can make him—except Martha's wiped his face carefully clean and the sun's soaking into him almost visibly. (For all Bruce knows, it's not an optical illusion or a trick of the light. Clark might literally be glowing a little bit where the sunlight's touching him.)
And he's alive. Even as Bruce looks, Clark tilts his face a little further into the light; his throat bobs as he swallows, and then he pulls in a breath so full it makes the seams of that moldering suit tear a little bit at the sides, the shoulders. And Clark doesn't need to breathe, Bruce is pretty sure. But right now he wants to, he's reveling in the ability. After this long, the air left in his coffin couldn't have amounted to much—
Clark blinks his eyes open, turns his head—he must have heard the knock, too, but maybe he hadn't realized what it meant, if he's as disoriented as Martha said he was. And then he looks at Bruce, and Bruce realizes the moment their eyes meet that it was a huge mistake to come here.
"Mr—Mr. Wayne?" Clark says. "I don't, um—what are you doing here?"
Good question, Bruce thinks.
"Sorry, that was rude," Clark adds blearily, "sorry," and Martha reaches out to touch his arm.
"Shh," she says, "it's all right, I—I'm sure Mr. Wayne won't hold it against you." She looks up at Bruce, and her gaze is uncertain: she'd forgotten too. She'd forgotten Clark didn't know.
Which is understandable. She's known the truth almost as long as Clark's been dead. Together, he and Diana had brought her Clark's body, before the government could swoop in for it the way they had Zod's. But Lex had kidnapped her: she hadn't had a way to get herself back to Kansas, let alone a corpse. She hadn't even had anywhere to stay, and Diana Prince had nothing in Metropolis except a hotel room she'd already checked out of. The only answer had been the lake house.
So Martha had met Batman and Bruce Wayne both on the same day, and learned they were each other just hours after. She'd known it every time she'd seen him; every time they'd talked since, she'd remembered to ask after Alfred, after Diana, to say she'd seen Batman on the news and was he sure he was all right. And in the rush of finding Clark alive—it would have been more surprising if she had remembered.
It's Bruce's failure that grates. He should have realized.
They can't even be sure how much Clark remembers about the day he died. And the last thing he needs right now is to know that the man who tried to kill him is standing over him in his mother's house.
Bruce can't ask Martha to lie to her son. But he meets her eyes and holds them, hoping she realizes why this is necessary, as he says easily, "I'm not exactly Lex Luthor's favorite person myself, Mr. Kent—your mother wasn't the only person he took hostage during that little meltdown of his." And to explain why she would call him, he just has to tell the truth: "There were some logistical issues I helped her sort out, after everything." He smiles down at Clark a little too brightly. "Zod's body got sold to LexCorp and cut up. Yours didn't. I'm the reason why."
He's expecting Clark to flinch a bit, to find the way Bruce has said this unpleasant—to, on a gut level, dislike Bruce Wayne just a little more than he thinks he should, from this moment forward. But maybe he's overestimated how well Clark is processing: Clark blinks at him twice, swallows, and then says faintly, "Then I guess I owe you one." He swallows again, and then his gaze swivels back to Martha. "And—Lois? Is she all right? Where is she?"
"Oh, honey," Martha says gently, and takes one of Clark's dirt-streaked hands. "It was so hard for her, after you were gone. She came to see you all the time, but she couldn't bear it forever. She needed a break. She's in South Korea for another three months—but we can call her, and—"
"South Korea?" Clark says, bewildered. "When did she—I, I," and then he swallows again and whispers, "How long was I dead?"
Christ.
Martha's throat is working now; she says, very low, "A while, sweetheart—a while," and presses her forehead to the back of Clark's hand. She needs a moment. Bruce knows her well enough now to guess that the last thing she wants to do is sob all over Clark while he's still helpless, disoriented.
So: "Beg pardon," he says, interrupting—verbally and physically, stepping forward to break the visual line between them. "But I imagine you'd like to get clean, Mr. Kent. And get out of that suit, considering how long you've been wearing it."
"I've," Martha says, and then presses the back of one wrist to her mouth, sucks in a long breath through her nose and lets it out, before she can finish: "I've got some of your things still boxed up in the basement. And we'll need some more water, towels," she adds. She squeezes Clark's hand and then grabs for the washcloth she must have used on his face, and steps out toward the kitchen.
Clark watches her go, looking shaken; but when he turns that helpless blue stare on Bruce, all he says is, "You tell me, Mr. Wayne, if she can't. How long have I been wearing this suit?"
Bruce does tell him. Bruce tells him everything. It's the least he can do for Martha, answering all Clark's smaller questions, filling in everything Martha's been struggling to move past alone without making her dig it all up again. Except it's dug itself up, Bruce supposes, and then doesn't let himself imagine how long it had taken Clark to do, weak as he is. (And that's another thing that should be dealt with, when Bruce gets a chance to place a call to Alfred. Nobody else visiting that graveyard should see whatever hole Clark left on his way out.)
The answers are easy enough to give. Five months, nearly six. Lois really is fine. What Clark did worked; he stopped the destruction, Zod didn't get up again after and keep going. Metropolis is still a little the worse for wear, but not the way Clark remembers. Stryker's Island no longer looks like it got firebombed. Lex Luthor is in prison, though LexCorp's managed to stagger on without him. The Daily Planet is fine, everyone who works there is fine. "In fact," Bruce adds, "they did a very impressive feature on Superman a week or two afterward." He makes a face, inconsiderate, because Bruce Wayne would. "Little hagiographic for my taste—but then that's the second time you've saved Metropolis from being the epicenter of global destruction, so I suppose I can't blame them."
Clark blinks twice and clears his throat. "And Superman, um—"
"Died very, very publicly," Bruce fills in. "There were already a couple news helicopters close enough to Stryker's to catch it. Lovely ceremony over an empty coffin in Arlington. I'm sure there's plenty of footage, if you'd like to—"
"No," Clark says unsteadily, "no, that's—I—no."
Bruce shrugs, because it makes no difference to Bruce Wayne. "I'm sure his adoring public would be thrilled to see him again," he says, "but there's no rush."
"No—?"
Of course it hasn't occurred to Clark, Bruce thinks. Always so goddamn eager to shoulder every weight. "No one knows you're back," he says aloud, and shrugs again. "At least not until you put on the uniform and somebody sees you. You might as well take your time, Mr. Kent. Doesn't look like you're up to it at the moment anyway," he adds, with a significant glance along Clark's body, the way he's draped limply over the sofa.
"Not really," Clark admits, voice rough, letting his head tip sideways a little further into the sunshine.
He's closed his eyes again; his face has relaxed in it, peaceful, still glowing faintly gold like—like maybe Bruce was right to call it hagiography: like he really is a saint. He's right there, alive, whole, and that's the last thing Bruce ever deserved to get to see in this lifetime.
It's almost spellbinding, and Bruce doesn't realize how far it's drawn him in until Clark drags in a breath, closes his hands into fists against the tops of his thighs, and says, "And what about—what about Batman?"
FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (2/?)
He manages to shave a good five minutes off that estimate—no mean feat, considering how hard he'd already been planning to push the Batplane to get to Kansas that fast.
From outside, the house looks normal. Bruce hadn't quite had a hand to his phone for the entire flight, but not for lack of trying. He hadn't been able to shake the thought of Martha calling again, panicked, when the thing finally did turn on her—of sitting in the Batplane's nigh-impenetrable shell, engines screaming but still too slow, and listening to her die—
But from outside, the house looks normal. There are no holes in the walls, the roof. The windows are intact.
There's dirt on the front porch.
Bruce doesn't let himself try to decide whether it matches his memory of the color, the texture, of the dirt that had been shoveled over Clark's coffin. He steps over it and raps once, sharp, on the frame of the screen door, and he doesn't wait for Martha to answer before he opens it. (For all he knows, she can't.)
But she's there when he walks inside—right there, she's put Clark on the sofa where the afternoon sun has just begun to slant in, and she's kneeling down beside him. She turned her head at the knock and she's staring at Bruce, a hand pressed over her mouth, her face caught somewhere between reckless joy and complete bewilderment. "Bruce," she whispers, between her fingers, because—
Because it's Clark.
He is covered in dirt: it's smeared dark along his hands, his arms, where the suit he was buried in has torn. He looks awful, pale, sallow in the way kryptonite can make him—except Martha's wiped his face carefully clean and the sun's soaking into him almost visibly. (For all Bruce knows, it's not an optical illusion or a trick of the light. Clark might literally be glowing a little bit where the sunlight's touching him.)
And he's alive. Even as Bruce looks, Clark tilts his face a little further into the light; his throat bobs as he swallows, and then he pulls in a breath so full it makes the seams of that moldering suit tear a little bit at the sides, the shoulders. And Clark doesn't need to breathe, Bruce is pretty sure. But right now he wants to, he's reveling in the ability. After this long, the air left in his coffin couldn't have amounted to much—
Clark blinks his eyes open, turns his head—he must have heard the knock, too, but maybe he hadn't realized what it meant, if he's as disoriented as Martha said he was. And then he looks at Bruce, and Bruce realizes the moment their eyes meet that it was a huge mistake to come here.
"Mr—Mr. Wayne?" Clark says. "I don't, um—what are you doing here?"
Good question, Bruce thinks.
"Sorry, that was rude," Clark adds blearily, "sorry," and Martha reaches out to touch his arm.
"Shh," she says, "it's all right, I—I'm sure Mr. Wayne won't hold it against you." She looks up at Bruce, and her gaze is uncertain: she'd forgotten too. She'd forgotten Clark didn't know.
Which is understandable. She's known the truth almost as long as Clark's been dead. Together, he and Diana had brought her Clark's body, before the government could swoop in for it the way they had Zod's. But Lex had kidnapped her: she hadn't had a way to get herself back to Kansas, let alone a corpse. She hadn't even had anywhere to stay, and Diana Prince had nothing in Metropolis except a hotel room she'd already checked out of. The only answer had been the lake house.
So Martha had met Batman and Bruce Wayne both on the same day, and learned they were each other just hours after. She'd known it every time she'd seen him; every time they'd talked since, she'd remembered to ask after Alfred, after Diana, to say she'd seen Batman on the news and was he sure he was all right. And in the rush of finding Clark alive—it would have been more surprising if she had remembered.
It's Bruce's failure that grates. He should have realized.
They can't even be sure how much Clark remembers about the day he died. And the last thing he needs right now is to know that the man who tried to kill him is standing over him in his mother's house.
Bruce can't ask Martha to lie to her son. But he meets her eyes and holds them, hoping she realizes why this is necessary, as he says easily, "I'm not exactly Lex Luthor's favorite person myself, Mr. Kent—your mother wasn't the only person he took hostage during that little meltdown of his." And to explain why she would call him, he just has to tell the truth: "There were some logistical issues I helped her sort out, after everything." He smiles down at Clark a little too brightly. "Zod's body got sold to LexCorp and cut up. Yours didn't. I'm the reason why."
He's expecting Clark to flinch a bit, to find the way Bruce has said this unpleasant—to, on a gut level, dislike Bruce Wayne just a little more than he thinks he should, from this moment forward. But maybe he's overestimated how well Clark is processing: Clark blinks at him twice, swallows, and then says faintly, "Then I guess I owe you one." He swallows again, and then his gaze swivels back to Martha. "And—Lois? Is she all right? Where is she?"
"Oh, honey," Martha says gently, and takes one of Clark's dirt-streaked hands. "It was so hard for her, after you were gone. She came to see you all the time, but she couldn't bear it forever. She needed a break. She's in South Korea for another three months—but we can call her, and—"
"South Korea?" Clark says, bewildered. "When did she—I, I," and then he swallows again and whispers, "How long was I dead?"
Christ.
Martha's throat is working now; she says, very low, "A while, sweetheart—a while," and presses her forehead to the back of Clark's hand. She needs a moment. Bruce knows her well enough now to guess that the last thing she wants to do is sob all over Clark while he's still helpless, disoriented.
So: "Beg pardon," he says, interrupting—verbally and physically, stepping forward to break the visual line between them. "But I imagine you'd like to get clean, Mr. Kent. And get out of that suit, considering how long you've been wearing it."
"I've," Martha says, and then presses the back of one wrist to her mouth, sucks in a long breath through her nose and lets it out, before she can finish: "I've got some of your things still boxed up in the basement. And we'll need some more water, towels," she adds. She squeezes Clark's hand and then grabs for the washcloth she must have used on his face, and steps out toward the kitchen.
Clark watches her go, looking shaken; but when he turns that helpless blue stare on Bruce, all he says is, "You tell me, Mr. Wayne, if she can't. How long have I been wearing this suit?"
Bruce does tell him. Bruce tells him everything. It's the least he can do for Martha, answering all Clark's smaller questions, filling in everything Martha's been struggling to move past alone without making her dig it all up again. Except it's dug itself up, Bruce supposes, and then doesn't let himself imagine how long it had taken Clark to do, weak as he is. (And that's another thing that should be dealt with, when Bruce gets a chance to place a call to Alfred. Nobody else visiting that graveyard should see whatever hole Clark left on his way out.)
The answers are easy enough to give. Five months, nearly six. Lois really is fine. What Clark did worked; he stopped the destruction, Zod didn't get up again after and keep going. Metropolis is still a little the worse for wear, but not the way Clark remembers. Stryker's Island no longer looks like it got firebombed. Lex Luthor is in prison, though LexCorp's managed to stagger on without him. The Daily Planet is fine, everyone who works there is fine. "In fact," Bruce adds, "they did a very impressive feature on Superman a week or two afterward." He makes a face, inconsiderate, because Bruce Wayne would. "Little hagiographic for my taste—but then that's the second time you've saved Metropolis from being the epicenter of global destruction, so I suppose I can't blame them."
Clark blinks twice and clears his throat. "And Superman, um—"
"Died very, very publicly," Bruce fills in. "There were already a couple news helicopters close enough to Stryker's to catch it. Lovely ceremony over an empty coffin in Arlington. I'm sure there's plenty of footage, if you'd like to—"
"No," Clark says unsteadily, "no, that's—I—no."
Bruce shrugs, because it makes no difference to Bruce Wayne. "I'm sure his adoring public would be thrilled to see him again," he says, "but there's no rush."
"No—?"
Of course it hasn't occurred to Clark, Bruce thinks. Always so goddamn eager to shoulder every weight. "No one knows you're back," he says aloud, and shrugs again. "At least not until you put on the uniform and somebody sees you. You might as well take your time, Mr. Kent. Doesn't look like you're up to it at the moment anyway," he adds, with a significant glance along Clark's body, the way he's draped limply over the sofa.
"Not really," Clark admits, voice rough, letting his head tip sideways a little further into the sunshine.
He's closed his eyes again; his face has relaxed in it, peaceful, still glowing faintly gold like—like maybe Bruce was right to call it hagiography: like he really is a saint. He's right there, alive, whole, and that's the last thing Bruce ever deserved to get to see in this lifetime.
It's almost spellbinding, and Bruce doesn't realize how far it's drawn him in until Clark drags in a breath, closes his hands into fists against the tops of his thighs, and says, "And what about—what about Batman?"