#aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA 'superbat is fundamentally a tragedy'

[bruciewayne]

And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone

— The Song of Achilles

Bruce will admit, if pressed, that there have been many, many times where he would sorely enjoy punching Clark in his idiotic, perfect face. Though all of those times, bar one, he hasn’t followed through with it, and the one time he did, he rolled with it, turning his head so Bruce only bruised his knuckles and didn’t shatter his hand.

At this particular moment in time, Bruce thinks, he’ll punch him a second time. Except he won’t, because even though he’ll survive it, and he’ll survive anything, up to and including the eventual heat death of their solar system as they currently know it, he won’t, he won’t and he can’t.

And that terrifies him, it terrifies him down to the very depths and fundamentals of his being. He is the only one who can stop Superman, because Superman– because Clark himself willed it so, he is the only one who can stop him, on paper, in theory, as a hypothetical. He is the only one who can stop him and yet, and yet, he can’t.

He knows, in the very depths and fundamentals of his being, that when, if, the time comes, he won’t be able to stop him, if the worst was to ever transpire, if Clark, kind, gentle Clark who lived off the sun and smiled like a thousand stars, like he could outshine a quasar, if Clark– if Superman had turned evil, for a given value of evil (as if Bruce has a checklist, as if Clark himself gave Bruce a certain set of parameters), Bruce, current owner of all (all but 4.3 grams) the kryptonite on the planet, wouldn’t be able to utilise it.

Because, and here’s the kicker, here’s where one takes a long look at Bruce Wayne’s life, at both his lives together, where one decides the kicker in this scenario would be: he can’t stop Superman, because Superman no longer exists. And where one would be wrong.

Superman, Kal-El, Clark, currently, is staring straight at him, expression like barbed wire through the heart Bruce pretends he doesn’t have and acid on the soul he pretends doesn’t exist. He’s almost surprised that he’s not coated in blood, a red river winding down from his chest. Almost.

“You can’t,” he says, softly, though for all intents and purposes he could have shouted it: it would echo in the empty cave the same way, it would echo in his heart and head and soul.

He’s terrified to ask, terrified of the answer, but he does, what else does he have to lose? “Do you? Have you even ever?”

Clark stares down at the floor, at the rough stone, at the atoms. If he squints he could burn a hole to the center of the world. If he smiles, he could burn a hole straight through Bruce.

“Wasn’t it obvious?” Soft, yet deafening, quiet and gentle and like a grenade to a building in the center of a city.

Why else would Bruce tear his chest in half, crack his ribs open and present his heart, bloody and beating?

“Why?” Bruce resolutely doesn’t stumble over the word, he doesn’t stutter, there’s no inconsistencies in the intonation. It's the same voice he uses in the suit, under layers of modulation, undetectable to the human ear. Except it’s Clark.

He smiles. It reaches his eyes, makes the unearthly blue of his irises, or, at least, what look and act like irises, sparkle. He smiles and it’s like all the photons from the sun are expended back out, he’s the sun and Bruce is his moon: he can feel his own lips, without his permission, curving into some facsimile of a smile. He smiles and the room brightens by a good few lumens.

“Have you seen yourself?”

Bruce looks straight into his eyes and shakes his head by the smallest humanly possible degree. He’s fairly sure that it happened, like the facsimile of the smile, without his express permission. Clark understands though, without a spoken word, with the smallest humanly possible change.

The room dims.

“You.. you shouldn’t.”

Bruce gets some sick satisfaction from the way Clark stumbles over his words, a small human part in the one guy who could destroy everything, if he were so inclined. He wears his heart on his sleeve, without a disguise or cowl.

Why would he? When it can’t be broken, why bother protecting it?

He’s too preoccupied hearing him, watching him, to listen.

“Have you seen yourself?”

Clark grants him a small smile. He swallows. On the verge of tears, Bruce realises, like a gunshot to the chest.

“Bruce,” Clark says, brokenly, “we can’t. I can’t do that… not to you.”

Logically, apodictically, they can’t be together publically, of course they can’t, the logistics would be a nightmare alone.

Bruce knows that Clark isn’t a mind-reader, he knows that, because he knows Clark.

“Not.. not because of that, Bruce, I don’t care about the public.”

And Clark knows him.

“Then what the fuck, Clark?” Fundamentally, it’s the simplest thing to him, he tells him as much, “I love you, and you love me, and we’re not… this isn’t some Romeo and Juliet bullshit!”

“They both die at the end,” Clark says, because he’d thought that Bruce knew.

“So will we,” Bruce says, simply, because it's a fact. A fundamental fact of human life.

Like a gunshot to the chest.

“You will.”

Before me, and I’ll watch everyone we know, all the kids, the kids’ kids, die and disintegrate before I even get a single grey hair.

The truth rings around them like the aftermath of a nuclear reaction, like the ripples in a pond, left in the wake of skipped stones.

Bruce almost asks if it matters, if, really, truly, it matters. But he’s not the one who’ll be left alone.

The thing, regarding falling in love with an alien, with his best friend and teammate, the thing is he was in the middle long before he’d realised he’d even begun loving him. At this point, he would, without question, without even considering any other possibility, go to the end of the universe with him.

The thing is, regarding falling in love with Clark Kent, is that he knows, he knows like he knows the exact amount of kryptonite on this planet, like he knows exactly why Clark kept 4.3 grams, he knows that Clark loves him to the same extent. To the end of the universe. To his own destruction.

“Are you going to stop?”

“Stop?”

“Loving me.”

“No.”

He’s decisive, confident. Maybe naive, maybe too hopeful, too optimistic. Or maybe he’s just in love. It’s so, so painfully Clark, it perplexes him how… just how he exists, still like this, despite everything, in the face of the sheer abundance of evil and violence and corruption. An invincible summer in the midst of a perpetual winter.

“I’m not going to stop, either.”

Decisive, confident. Brought about by proof, logical, cogent evidence. Brought about by love, pure, unfiltered, unending, unconditional love.

That’s where they are.

“I love you, and I… I think I’m incapable of stopping, and you love me, and you’re not going to stop.”

Be with me, even if my life is blip on the line of your life, be with me, let us be happy for decades, even if you live for millenia.

“You’re going to grow to resent me.” Decisive. Confident.

“Aren’t we past hating each other?”

And they are. So far flung from it Bruce can barely see it.

Superman, Kal-El, the alien from a far-off planet, the alien who could destroy the world with a squint, who could live out his considerable days anywhere of his choosing. Who could, utterly and wholly and completely, destroy Bruce, soul and body, with one look, with one gesture, looks into Bruce’s eyes, and says, “I’m scared.”

Clark Kent, his best friend, teammate. The man he loves beyond measure and reason, loves beyond the boundaries of the universe and time, looks into his eyes, bright blue, and nothing else matters, the world around them, the universe, falls away to leave just them, alone and infinite.

“So am I.”

Terrified, actually, down to the depths of his core and being and soul.

Clark looks at him the way sailors used to look at the north star, he looks at him the way astronomers now look at the stars, impossibly infinite.

His world falls away to leave the feel of Clark’s waist, hard and firm, under his hands, the gentle, so fucking gentle, way Clark’s hands card through his hair (and if he concentrates, can feel the kryptonite ring Clark refuses to take off around him), his eyes, wide and terrified and determined, the curve of his nose, one black curl. His body, warm and firm and solid and there. The feel of his lips moving against his.

  Even when he buries him, and his children, and his children’s children, he can’t bring himself to regret loving him. Even if, technically, it’ll barely be a blip in the line of his life, even if, for the rest of it, he’ll never find anything like him, like what they had, he doesn’t regret it, he doesn’t resent him for leaving, he doesn’t regret loving him or the life they had together.

Later, long after civilisations have crumbled and humanity and Earth has ceased to exist, long after Clark found a decent use for all the kryptonite, a hand slips into his, warm and solid and there. Impossibly infinite.

“You took your time.”