Well, apparently you all would have loved to roll around in Bruce's sads some more! :D But we're taking a break for Clark sads + Batman + Diana. Hope you aren't too disappointed. ;) Also, uh, if any of this explicitly contradicts what was shown in the movies ... let's pretend it was on purpose?




There's a robe in the west bathroom, Clark knows: Bruce's, so of course it's black and silky and feels embarrassingly good on bare skin. Clark gets it and then goes and fills himself a glass of water, and takes it out onto the balcony.

The moonlight by itself would probably be enough to let him shake off the last shreds of the dream—but there's also all the brilliant lights of Gotham below him, and even being a zillion floors high doesn't keep a few shouts and honks, loud laughter, someone singing, from drifting up to Superman's ears.

In the dream it had just been him and Batman. Half a memory, Batman shoving him down and cutting his face open, except this time he'd been shoving Clark down into the coffin, holding him in—he'd have finished with Clark and then closed it over him, and Clark wouldn't have been able to get out—

Clark reaches for the balcony railing (stretches his arm out in front of him; the coffin had been much too small for that) and takes a long cool sip of water, and makes himself breathe slow.

It was just luck he hadn't hurt Bruce. And he can't go back in, can't risk falling asleep in there again—next time he might smash Bruce through the wall instead of just into it, and Bruce is only human.

It's easy to forget that, with the way he can pick Clark up and move him, with how weak Clark sometimes feels under him or being touched by him. Earlier, god: how careful Bruce had been, how slow, easing Clark's shirt off like that, hands everywhere, his face and his eyes so intent—Clark had felt like he was falling, dying; like he was coming back to life again.

And then he'd rewarded Bruce for all that unexpected tenderness by throwing him across the room. A half-second of laser vision, and Clark could have killed him outright. Jesus. That can't happen again.

Which means he has to move past this thing with Batman. They're supposed to be part of a team, now, and Diana's clearly found a way to work with him—Clark needs to do the same. Batman saved Mom, and must have proven himself dependable enough to meet Diana's standards. There has to be something to the guy besides a growl, bad judgment, and a lot of black Kevlar. Clark just has to find out what it is.

And maybe once he does, he can sleep next to Bruce again sometime.




Bruce is a little weird in the morning, a little distant—Clark's kind of surprised that that's all. He doesn't flinch when Clark moves toward him, doesn't tense up under Clark's hands when Clark kisses him. So maybe he really isn't afraid.

(Maybe he just hasn't thought it through. Clark doesn't make mistakes very often, and definitely hadn't with Bruce until last night. Maybe he still doesn't realize what Clark could do to him without even trying.)

Clark's careful with him anyway. Bruce doesn't stay for breakfast, makes some excuse about not wanting to be late for that morning meeting—and it is an excuse, because he's never been a stickler for punctuality, but Clark doesn't mind. Bruce needs a little space, and that's okay. The thing that's not okay is Clark grabbing him and slamming him into a wall, not Bruce's reaction to it.

Besides, it's going to work out just fine. Clark is about to have to give Bruce some space anyway, because he couldn't spend tonight at the penthouse even if Bruce invited him to.

He's got a Batman to find.




It's weird to suit up at night. Not that Clark hasn't stopped disasters at all hours, when he needs to—but tonight is quiet and he's going out anyway.

In the end, Batman isn't as hard to track down as Clark might have feared. Clark doesn't have to worry about searching Metropolis for him, because as far as he can tell, Batman only crosses the bay when Wonder Woman needs him to. And: tonight is quiet. There's nothing going on that would draw Batman out of Gotham.

So Clark flies out over the water and listens. Anything will do—the characteristic hiss-thunk of Batman's grappling lines, some lone heartbeat way up on the corner of a building where no one but Batman should be sitting at this hour—

Or a thud, cries of pain and surprise, the grunt and wheeze of someone getting the breath knocked out of them. Either it's Batman, or someone else is beating up ten people at once.

One way or the other, Superman probably ought to drop in.

After a moment's consideration, Clark goes ahead and presses through the sound barrier: just for a moment, just enough to force a quick deep boom. He has the impression that Batman doesn't care for surprises. Probably best to give him a little warning.

Then again, maybe not—when Clark lands, eight criminals are already on the floor of the warehouse, and Batman promptly throws the ninth right at him.

"Whoa," Clark says, and catches the guy; letting him just hit Clark head-on, at that speed, would be about as kind as stepping out of the way so he met the cement. Instead Clark grabs onto him and then swings around with him, the motion of the turn absorbing the velocity, until it's safe to press in a little at the throat, a short harmless choke, and let him drop.

Should he consider that a gesture, Batman letting him help? Or—

Yeah, probably not, Clark thinks, as he turns back around and is met with the tenth. He has to duck and then use a touch of superspeed to catch up, so he can guide the dude safely down to the floor. And that one was already unconscious.

Which means—Clark glances up from the body. It's dark in here, but x-ray doesn't show any sign of Batman either, not inside. A distraction.

He wants to talk to Batman. But he supposes he should have realized that wouldn't mean Batman would want to talk back.




He catches up to Batman about thirty seconds later, almost all the way up the side of the taller neighboring building. It's actually pretty impressive how fast he is. He might be in the 99th percentile, but he's still working within the limits of a normal human body.

"Not much good at taking a hint, are you," Batman says, in that low dark voice, before Clark can even open his mouth.

Don't rise to the bait. "Not really," Clark agrees. He keeps his tone cool, level, and tries to sound gracious when he says, "Speaking as your teammate, I think we need to—"

"You don't know what necessity means," Batman growls. "I need to finish climbing—" and he does, catching one last handhold and then propelling himself upward in a burst. Clark can't even work out how, but he twists in the air, cape swirling around him, and manages to land facing Clark, in a shadowy crouch on the corner of the roof. "—and you need to get out of my city. Now."

He doesn't even sound out of breath. Clark would think it was the modulator filtering it out; except when he stretches his hearing beyond it, catches the soft rasp of Batman's breathing, it's as regular as if he were just walking down the street—

And Clark needs to cut that out. If Batman gets even a hint that Clark's using the supersenses on him that closely, he'll probably shoot Clark in the face with kryptonite again.

"The Justice League—" Clark tries.

"League or no League," Batman says, "Gotham's mine. Get out."

He sounds like he means it, Clark thinks. And if Clark stays here anyway, keeps badgering him—what will that do? It won't make him more cooperative or more likely to listen. Somebody needs to be the one to bend, and Clark knew already it wasn't going to be Batman.

As your teammate, he'd said. But if he doesn't listen to Batman, doesn't respect what matters to him, then what kind of teammate is he? And they have to start somewhere.

"Okay," Clark says, raising his hands palm-out, giving in. "All right. Sorry. I—didn't mean to interfere."

Batman huffs, skeptical, but doesn't leave—he stays there on the roof, watching, as Clark drifts up and away.

Probably just to make sure Clark doesn't turn around. He's going to need to find a new angle to approach this from.




He doesn't get any bright ideas, but he does get lucky: when he steps out of the Planet building a couple days later, Diana Prince is waiting for him.

"Clark!" she says, and when he jerks and looks around, she waves. She's as impeccably put together as she was at the gala, though of course her clothes are a little more everyday, earrings gleaming and hair up in sort of a plaited twist. For a second Clark almost balks at the idea of walking up to her like this, plaid flannel and all; but when he does, she smiles and doesn't hesitate to take his elbow.

"Diana—what a pleasant surprise. I, uh, I didn't—"

She laughs, and then squeezes his arm and leans in and says, "Relax, Clark, it's all right. Plenty of people saw us get introduced at the gala. We're friends."

That's right—god, he's been so twisted up about Batman he'd almost forgotten. "Right," he says, and blows out a breath.

She pats him on the back of the hand, and then guides him into a walking pace along the street. "I was just talking to your mother the other day, and she mentioned she'd told you what happened to," and Diana delicately clears her throat before saying, "the yacht."

The—? Oh, the ship. "Right, of course."

"As it turns out, there's been a bit of a snarl with the paperwork. Do you have time today to sort it out?"

Clark thinks. He should still be back in plenty of time to go see Bruce tonight, unless there's something really wrong—and if there were something really wrong, Diana would have chosen a different way to let him know. "Sure," he says.

"Wonderful," Diana says, and then, without looking away from his face, turns them abruptly into the next alleyway. "Then let's be on our way."

"What—oh," Clark says, "sure," and glances back out: but no one's looking, so it's safe for them to take off.




Diana looks as much at ease standing on the ice of Antarctica outside an alien ship as she had on the sidewalk in Metropolis. She walks up to the scout vessel; and Clark's not sure what he's expecting to happen when she touches the side, but it isn't the smooth voice saying, "Welcome. Would you like to resume command of the ship?"

"I would," Diana says, and it opens for her.

She glances back at Clark.

"Wow. That's—definitely more than I ever got it to do for me." Not that he'd had much of a chance to interact with it without Jor-El—Father?—the Jor-El program smoothing the way for him. He'd never learned what the ship's default interface was like; he'd taken the Jor-El projection when he left, and then there had been the crash. And Clark Kent hadn't been able to afford to get caught poking around Kryptonian anything. Somebody might have started asking why he was so interested.

"It took some trial and error," Diana confesses with a grin. "We had—some trouble getting it to listen to us, after Luthor was taken away."

"He—resumed command of the ship?"

"He took command of it," Diana says, serious now, running a hand along the inside of the hull like she wants to soothe the ship's bad memories away. "It was already confused, damaged. It wanted a commander; and then he required it to disobey its own internal guidelines, bringing General Zod back like that in the genesis chamber. It was—I suppose I should say disordered," she admits, "but I want to say distraught."

"But you got it here."

"Yes. We had to—discuss some things with it first. But it permitted me to accept command in the end, once it understood that Luthor wasn't coming back." She shoots Clark a small smile and then touches a panel, and oh, he recognizes what's on the other side of the door: the command deck. "And it should let me transfer control to you, now that you're back to receive it."

They step in together, and the floor—ripples a little under Clark's feet, in that way Kryptonian things seem to have of coming apart and then forming themselves back together.

And it's stupid, that that's where his head goes, but at the same time he's had Batman on the brain for two days straight. So maybe it's not that surprising that he opens his mouth and finds himself saying, "You were the commander."

"Yes?"

"But Batman used the ship. Batman repaired my—I mean, the Superman suit."

"He did," Diana confirms. "He agreed that command should fall to me. He did need my authorization before the ship would follow his instructions, but I was able to give it by satellite radio."

"He didn't take it?" It seems bizarre. Somebody who'd believed the worst of Clark, thought his abilities were a threat, just—letting someone else have full control of something as powerful as the ship? After seeing what the genesis chamber was capable of—

"He saw what Luthor did with it," Diana says. She reaches out to touch the back of Clark's hand, looking at him with steady serious eyes. "Clark, you have to understand: what he feared in you he also fears profoundly in himself."