#i'm scrolling through the longest posts of all time here folks. jesus. kids these days

[phantomsolotour]

superman trailer got me thinking about superbat (KISS KISS KISS) and superbat got me thinking about this fic i never finished from a while back. it was a superman au thing and then turned into superbat and i was only writing sort of general ideas at first and then it became an assortment of disjointed scenes spread out over years and i simply do not have the kind of focus to bring the complete fic out of my brain and onto the page SO i'm just gonna post what i have bc i think it's neat.

i was inspired by the opening passage of l. frank baum's the wizard of oz so i've included that at the top! also it cuts off at kind of a sad place sorry. around 8k, not heavily edited, etc etc

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cooking stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar―except a small hole, dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen elsewhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy’s merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.

Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.

* * *

thinking about a different kind of superman. one who was raised by jonathan and martha but not in smallville, or at least in a very different smallville―on a secluded property way out in the middle of nowhere, so he never had any friends his age or even met many people other than martha and jonathan, who taught him kindness and compassion but not as much warmth or joy; they were weary, weathered folk who instilled in him the sacredness of living things and the importance of being a good and decent person, but maybe not the awe of a beautiful sunrise or the lighthearted fun of jokes and games. he called them by their names, not mom and dad.

a kal-el who learned of his origins before he learned of his powers, martha showing him the ship he landed in, and the wealth of information on krypton it contained, before he was even tall enough to ride a horse. a tan, curly-haired kid in plaid, studying kryptonian and hovering cross-legged in the fields, practicing phrases over and over, muttering and proclaiming to the cows until the words felt right in his mouth, until kal-el felt more natural than the name martha and jonathan gave him.

a young kal-el who scrutinized his reflection for any way it might differ from the human faces he’s seen, scooching up close to the mirror to look at his eyes, bluer than the sky (though the kansas light always seemed grey anyway), sharper and more striking than any other color he’s seen in his life. he doesn’t even know if humans can have blue eyes; he asks martha once and she says, “not near as blue as yours.”

the farm was so isolated in the desolation of the kansas plains that kal-el never needed a birth certificate, a medical record, a driver’s license; there was no one around to ask questions, so kal-el simply existed, and didn’t question it either.

he asks jonathan to sew him a set of clothes in kryptonian fashion, so jonathan sits by the fireplace in the evenings and squints at the needle in his calloused hands, guides it through some leftover scraps of fabric until it loosely resembles the drawing kal brought to him, and he wears the outfit with pride, puffs out his chest, and jonathan doesn’t quite smile while he looks at him, this faraway boy he took in all those summers ago, but there’s something like pride in jonathan’s eyes, too.

-

a kal-el who slips into the wider world―younger than martha and jonathan wanted to see him go―knowing he is not of it, a kal-el who has always known he is not human and therefore has never felt human, doesn’t understand the laughter, the politics, the flirtation, the pettiness, the wonder, the selfishness, the silliness. he’ll protect it anyway. life matters to him, humanity matters to him, even if he doesn’t belong to it, never will.

he doesn’t bother coming up with a human cover story, a secret identity―he doesn’t need the name kent, he doesn’t need a job or an apartment or anyone to talk to. no one speaks his native tongue anyway.

when he’s tired, he dozes off on the domed roof of metropolis city hall with one eye half-open, lulled by the flutter of pigeons’ wings and the whipping of flags around him, flying to his feet at the first sign of danger he can ward off.

when he’s hungry, he shoots through the sky to find dawn breaking over a small island in the tropics that no one else has ever set foot on; kal-el drifts through the trees, the edge of his cape brushing over the dewy grass, and gathers fresh fruit.

when he wants to bathe, he finds a hot spring in japan, or an icy waterfall tumbling over alaskan rocks, the birds and bears alike eyeing him carefully and keeping their distance.

when he needs to travel unnoticed among humans, he shrouds himself in whatever nondescript clothing he can find, rustles up a pair of glasses or sunglasses to dim his too-blue eyes, and steps carefully through the crowd, slowing his stride to match it.

metropolis is good for that―being big and busy and bizarre enough, as large cities often are, that it’s not too tough to blend in. it’s a bit of a danger magnet, so he’s never bored. and there’s something about all the noise and motion, unceasing, so deeply unlike the desolate dregs of kansas; sometimes he hangs in the air above the tallest buildings and looks into the night sky and imagines he’s in some glittering, breathtaking kryptonian city, that the street sounds and voices below him are those of his home, that if he waits patiently and pays close attention, the wind twisting through his hair will carry the scent of flowers from another world.

-

he’s been in metropolis for two years before lois lane manages to track him to one of his favorite rooftops.

he’s floating a few feet from the ground, surveying the city below, trying to discern whether one person on the street is actively following another, or just taking the same route by coincidence. lois calls to him, asks if they can talk, says everyone has so many questions for him.

he turns, looks at her for a heartbeat, then flies away from her without a word, straight toward the sun so she’s briefly blinded when her gaze follows him, blinking away the glare until perry calls to ask where the hell she is, and is she really still chasing down that supposed superman for a story? lois says she found him, but there is no story. there’s nothing else there.

her articles on superman are penned with appreciation and admiration but also a sliver of something like unease. she encounters him more than once but can only describe the emptiness of his gaze, the way his impossibly blue eyes flash over you when you’re face-to-face, his gaze scanning across the rooftop and through the sky and then zeroing in suddenly on something you couldn’t hope to see; she writes about his unsettling silence, how his feet are never fully on the ground, and metropolis trusts superman, they’re grateful for him, but they don’t understand him.

a kal-el who floats above the clouds for hours, drinking in the sun and the silence, who soars all the way beyond the atmosphere and watches the wildflower he carried clutched in his fist as it deteriorates in the sub-zero void. he is not unhappy. he is not happy.

-

one night, superman, out of boredom more than anything else, follows a lexcorp spy drone across the bay to gotham, where he encounters batman. the man growls his questions―who are you, what are you, why are you in my city―so furiously that they sound more like threats.

kal-el doesn’t feel threatened. he cocks his head at this very unusual human he’s been hearing about for a while now―a year at least―and doesn't answer, just pulls the wrecked drone from his cape and holds it out to batman. kal-el imagines he can handle it from here, do something to hinder lexcorp to some extent. the details aren’t really important.

when the shadowy figure does nothing but glare at him with suspicion, kal-el says, “take it,” english sitting strangely on his tongue like it always does; he wonders if batman hears it too.

after a moment, kal-el places the drone on the ground and flies into the clouds, toward metropolis, since apparently this city is off-limits.

-

a few months go by, and kal-el has just delivered the last human from a burning skyscraper to the ambulances on the ground, drifts into the air above the street, scans the building one more time for anyone still among the flames, assesses the (murmuring, pointing, picture-snapping) crowd below to make sure everyone is far enough back to avoid any falling wreckage. just as he’s deemed his job done, he hears a familiar call.

“superman,” someone says, miles away but clear as crystal in kal-el’s ears. this time, though, they don’t sound desperate, or even afraid. they sound demanding. irritated. and kal-el recognizes the voice―the growl―right away. he soars in its direction, catches the thump of the heart beating close to it, and follows that sound until he’s once again face to face with the batman of gotham.

the man grumbles a few clipped sentences and it takes kal-el a moment to realize he’s indirectly, begrudgingly asking for help investigating a recent lexcorp cover-up. kal-el simply nods, and batman mutters short instructions.

kal-el nods again, and watches the man shudder into deeper shadow and step off the rooftop. he imagines other humans must find that unsettling, alarming. they can’t see batman moving through the dark the way kal-el can. they can’t see how perfectly, normally human he is beneath the shadows and the cape.

they work together on occasion, in the years that follow, whenever gotham’s criminal element oozes across the bay, or some metropolis villain is hiding out in batman’s turf―though “together” might not be the right word. usually batman calls for him, explains his objective, and kal-el returns to him when he has something to report back, like that first case with luthor. sometimes superman finds batman first, hands him a scrap of evidence that he knows batman can turn into a lead, sometimes gestures toward certain buildings in the gotham skyline, and trusts that batman will know what he’s asking for.

but they’ve fought side-by-side a handful of times, superman timing his strikes to land between the zip and zoom of batman’s gadgets, shielding him from bullets and fire, pulling him back to safety even when batman digs in his heels to stand his ground.

kal-el has learned that batman is also known as bruce wayne, and that kal-el is probably one of very few to possess that information. he understands why bruce would keep the batman separate from his civilian identity, but is glad he doesn’t have a ruse of his own to keep up.

-

one afternoon, kal-el is stretched across a beam underneath one of the bridges that cuts through metropolis, enjoying the sharp gleam of the sun bouncing off the metal bolts and rods, when he decides to check in on batman.

he hasn’t heard from him in a month or so, though he listens for his heartbeat every so often to know he’s alive and healthy, usually during quiet moments like this. batman is the closest thing kal-el has to an ally, he supposes, and anyway, it’s easier to hear him than to hear martha and jonathan back on the plains―but he checks on them too, listens to martha curse the dry summer while she sizes up the crops, to jonathan whistling for the dog to follow him around the side of the barn.

kal-el closes his eyes and focuses on batman’s heartbeat, lets the rest of the world fall away underneath it. he finds batman―bruce, more appropriately, as kal-el has long-since noticed that batman belongs to the moonlight, and the dazzle of daylight is reserved for bruce wayne―his footsteps soft but steady on a gotham sidewalk, and his voice, a world away from the cold tone kal-el is used to, his voice is gentle, soft, intimate, and it makes kal-el’s brow furrow.

bruce is talking to someone―a child. kal-el can hear both of their shirtsleeves, bruce’s and the boy’s, rustling at the same time, in the same rhythm, and thinks they must be holding hands, the boy’s hand moving so that their arms swing together, as kal-el has seen adults and children do. beyond them, kal-el can hear a small sea of other voices, footsteps, laughter, engines idling, car doors clicking opening and thudding shut.

the boy, his voice vibrant and pure, is telling bruce about a joke his math teacher made in class that day, and bruce chuckles. kal-el briefly imagines what it would be like to make batman laugh. bruce says, “wait, alfred will want to hear this,” and kal-el hears a car door open and a new voice saying “good afternoon, dick. how was school today?”

later, kal-el makes his way into the archives at the daily planet office, thumbs through the last two or three hundred issues to learn that bruce wayne recently took in an orphaned child named dick grayson.

kal-el lingers on a photo of the two of them, in black tuxedos and shiny shoes, bruce’s hair combed in careful waves and dick’s hair hanging barely off the floor as he stands on his hands in the middle of a ballroom, a big grin on his face while bruce eyes him with a mix of wariness and amusement. some of the elegant men and women in the background look amused too, but some seem annoyed, even disdainful. the caption reads: “wayne’s ward turns foundation gala upside-down.”

it dawns on him then, that batman, despite what he and kal-el have in common―fighting for good, protecting their cities, even when those cities might not understand them, even the way they both keep their voices low and prefer to communicate in nods―despite all of that, batman is also bruce, is human, has a real family. he feels the companionship, or whatever understanding he found in batman, slipping away in light of this revelation. they’re not the same. there is still no one else on the planet who kal-el can relate to.

-

kal-el is in the clouds, listening to a mother cry in the hospital as she’s told that her daughter died of injuries sustained in an explosion that kal-el couldn’t get to in time. there are tears on his face, too. he hates this part. when he was the one person who could have saved someone, and he failed.

he thinks about the time when he was seven, and practicing his x-ray vision on the horses, and noticed something strange on the lungs of one, a dark brown mare who kal-el could always tell was jonathan’s favorite. he thought some horses must just have lungs that look different, like how their teeth don’t all look the same, or their hair is different colors. he didn’t think anything of it, didn’t mention it to anyone. and then she got sick, and then she died, and it all happened so fast, barely a month after kal-el saw what he learned later were tumors, and martha tells him there’s no way he could have known, and that it was too late for them to help her anyway, but kal-el can’t stop sobbing anyway.

becoming superman made all of this a million times harder. so he listens to this woman cry, and he cries with her, thousands of feet apart from her in the sky.

-

before long, kal-el starts hearing dick’s heartbeat alongside bruce’s when batman is out on patrol, and it’s no surprise when the boy is a half-step behind bruce on their way to meet superman at the edge of gotham city.

robin, as the newspapers call him, stands in bright colors next to the black monolith of batman and fixes wide, glittering eyes on kal-el, who suddenly realizes that all three of them have blue eyes. bruce’s and dick’s are nearly as vivid as his own.

“penguin,” kal-el says quietly, especially uncomfortable with the word because it has no kryptonian equivalent.

“the arms trafficking?” batman says, more an acknowledgment than a question. “i’m looking into it.”

kal-el is distracted, his gaze continually dropping down to meet dick’s awed stare. but he remembers himself, holds out a list he wrote on lined yellow paper, a notepad borrowed from lois lane’s desk, his handwriting odd and slanted from years spent writing more kryptonian than english. bruce can read it, though, kal-el knows.

“contacts in metropolis,” he explains, then nods toward the boardwalk where the ferry to metropolis is currently docked. batman glances that direction and kal-el watches his eyes move, scan, then focus on the dock.

“eight am,” kal-el says.

“and the cargo?” bruce asks. kal-el nods and gets a nod in return.

“we’ll handle it,” bruce says, and kal-el can feel him about to turn away and take to the shadows like always, and dick must feel it too, because he tugs on batman’s cape, finally tearing his eyes from superman to look up at batman and whisper, “ask him.”

bruce glances at the boy, then at superman, then sighs so quietly kal-el is sure that even dick, with a hand still on batman’s cape, can’t hear.

“robin wants to know how many front-flips you can do in a row,” batman says, his voice flat as ever. robin smiles.

“without flying,” batman adds, “of course.”

kal-el blinks, thinks for a second. “i’ve never counted,” he answers. “i could try now,” he offers. dick’s eyes, somehow, get even brighter.

“no,” batman says, “that’s not necessary.” robin tugs at his cape again, insistent, but batman ignores him and holds up superman’s list, says, “i’ll get back to you on this.”

now kal-el is the one about to take off, tilting his chin toward the night sky, when dick stops him by blurting out, “is it true you’re from outer space?”

kal-el’s gaze tracks from the stars, the haze of clouds, the jagged breast of the city skyline, back to dick’s face: earnest, eager, unabashed, unafraid. that last observation hits kal-el with a jolt. people, and especially children, usually regard superman with some degree of apprehension, especially after a few moments in his presence, seeing him up close, and on rare occasions, hearing him speak. but robin is stepping out from batman’s shadow, toward superman, and batman doesn’t stop him. both of their heartbeats are steady.

dick has freckles on his cheeks, behind the mask. his skin is almost as tanned as kal-el’s. “the kids at school think you’re from mars,” dick says, “but i think you’re from a different solar system, maybe even a different galaxy.”

kal-el has never had this conversation before. he has trouble remembering the last time he had an actual conversation, not sure if his rendezvous with batman count. what did he used to talk to martha and jonathan about? the farm? the weather? he’s talking about himself, now.

“you’re right,” he says.

a pigeon lands on the other side of the rooftop, a refrigerator whirs in an office break room six floors below them, robin grabs the sides of his cape in excitement, the yellow fabric bunched in his hands, and asks, tentative but wholehearted, “how long have you been on earth? how long―how long did it take to―to feel like home?” bruce’s breathing is briefly arrhythmic.

“it doesn’t,” kal-el says.

dick says, softly, “oh,” and falls silent again.

after a beat, batman says, “let’s go, robin,” and the two of them set off into the heart of the city while kal-el hovers motionless, his feet barely brushing the rooftop, watching them go.

-

robin is with batman almost always after that, sometimes asking superman questions, sometimes quietly observing. once he brings kal-el a rock, a smooth grey stone no bigger than dick’s palm; “it reminded me of your emblem, look, it’s the same shape, kind of! you can keep it if you want.”

kal-el keeps it, brings it all the way to a cave in the north pole where he puts the scant few things he wants to hang on to. (the ship from krypton and all of the artifacts it contained, the blanket jonathan sewed for him when he was a baby, books, newspaper clippings, and some odds and ends that he’s borrowed from lois lane’s desk at the daily planet. she somehow knows it’s him pilfering her things and has started leaving notes for him with questions, times to meet; he saves the notes, too.)

sometimes kal-el listens in on them from across the bay, when bruce is asking dick where he wants to go for dinner or telling him to get down from the chandelier, but to hear them like this, outside of their vigilante identities, puts a strange, uncomfortable feeling in kal-el’s chest.

-

one night, batman calls superman to gotham to impart the key discoveries from his surveillance of lexcorp’s new warehouse in gotham; he sounds frustrated, his voice falling heavy on the grey rooftop, and kal-el recalls reading that bruce wayne tried to prevent lexcorp from operating in his city but was thwarted by luthor’s legal team. (kal-el reads the daily planet every day now, and sometimes the gotham gazette, and always pays special attention to anything about bruce wayne and dick grayson and batman and robin.)

robin is there too, practicing one-handed handstands while batman gives his report. kal-el is listening to batman but watching robin, his arms slender but strong, unwavering, his face scrunching up with focus when he switches hands. he has bruises on both knees, and band-aids on both elbows.

kal-el finds him so interesting―this bright, fearless boy who seems born to fly, this flash of joy and color next to the dark, stoic batman. batman was already interesting to kal-el―the feats he accomplishes as a regular human, his limitless determination to answer questions and solve problems―but batman and robin as a duo have been occupying his thoughts lately.

they make sense together, somehow. kal-el isn’t sure what to call it.

when dick lifts all the way up on his fingertips, curiosity overtakes kal-el, and he interrupts batman to ask robin, “did you learn to do that in the circus, or did bruce teach you?”

they both tense immediately. kal-el notices and tenses too. he’s never used their other names before. he doesn’t know why he did this time. he’s reminded suddenly of the time he lifted jonathan’s tractor out of the mud when he was young; they all knew kal-el was strong, but he’d never moved anything so heavy before, and jonathan froze, just for a moment, before saying thank you, kal, and wiping the mud away.

it’s been a long time since kal-el has surprised anyone in this way―doing something he shouldn’t have been able to if he were human, or if he knew how to act human.

robin lets his legs swing down to the ground and stands, looks at batman.

batman looks at superman, studying him, and after a long moment, he says slowly, “the circus.”

kal-el doesn’t know what to do next, worries he’s ruined something he didn’t even know was there to be ruined, when robin speaks up. “do you have a secret identity too?”

batman’s eyes haven’t left superman, and robin’s gaze is now fixed on him too. kal-el glances over batman’s shoulder, in the direction of kansas, then cocks his head slightly toward metropolis. the places he is most known, where he is named. usually he doesn’t think much about identity, about who he is to others, to himself, because the earth starts to feel impossibly large and impossibly small at the same time. bruce and dick are looking at him like they can figure him out if they stare hard enough, learn all his secrets just by looking. kal-el finds he’s not convinced that they couldn’t.

but he doesn’t have secrets, not really. he’s just never been in a position to introduce himself, to explain himself, never thought it would be necessary or worthwhile. it feels worthwhile now, now that he knows bruce and dick and they...they know him. or could.

“i...” he trails off, swallows. is this...is he nervous?

“i am...kal-el. son of jor-el, of krypton.” dick’s eyes go wide, while bruce’s narrow.

“krypton,” dick repeats in awe.

there’s a moment of quiet, and kal-el feels a heaviness in his chest slowly disintegrate and float away. he hadn’t realized it was there.

then robin explodes with questions, occasionally supplemented by clarifying inquiries from bruce, and kal-el answers, tells them everything they want to know, until his voice is almost hoarse from speaking so much more than usual, more than he has in the last several years combined, maybe. he has to stop and think a few times to recall the english word for something, his thoughts having been largely in kryptonian for so long.

robin has said “whoa” twenty-two times; batman has said “hm” thirteen times.

they’re trying to learn a kryptonian phrase that caught dick’s attention, an expression about burdens that are worth bearing; kal-el can’t remember how it came up in the conversation, but he’s in the middle of adjusting their pronunciation when he hears a scream from eight blocks away and his head snaps in that direction.

batman has seen this before, says, “how far?” and then they’re off, the three of them tangled in another moonlit battle. then a bank robbery, then a bomb threat, then a kidnapping, and superman doesn’t usually team up with batman (and robin, now) for an entire night like this, but tonight is different. kal-el has no desire to leave, and batman isn’t telling him to.

eventually, though, the night draws to an end. the sun’s nearly up and kal-el can feel it, knows it’s easing over the horizon, though you’d never guess it from the cramped dark of the alley they’re standing in.

bruce says he needs to get robin home, and kal-el nods, having already scanned both of them for any serious injuries. robin waves and says, “good night, kal-el!”

batman departs with his standard nod, and kal-el is left in this little rivulet of gotham, trying to make sense of the tears in his eyes. his feet are firmly on the ground.

-

kal-el is back in smallville for the first time in a while. a year, maybe. martha and jonathan are cooking and occasionally calling a question to kal-el across the small room, where he sits in a faded armchair―though he’s actually hovering a millimeter above it, knowing the frame wouldn’t hold his weight. they must forget that he can hear them easily over the sound of knives on cutting boards and spoons scraping bowls, the cicadas and the wind outside, the chickens clucking inside the wire fence thirty yards away.

his answers are short, as always. no, no kryptonite lately and yes, i’m eating.

a question of his own occurs to him, and rather than raise his voice, he crosses the kitchen to stand next to jonathan and asks, “am i your ward?”

jonathan jumps, startled. kal-el forgot to make noise when he moved. it was second-nature when he lived here, but he’s out of practice. jonathan looks at him, then at martha.

“ward,” jonathan repeats, musing. “hell. we never knew what to call you, kal.”

kal-el blinks, looks down at the tomatoes on the counter.

“we think of you as our son, in a lot of ways,” martha says, hesitant. “but we’ve never known if that’s what you wanted to be, so we didn’t―you spent less and less time with us as you grew up, and―” her voice shakes, a little, and she stops, fidgets with the edge of the counter. kal-el gets the feeling that she’s been waiting a long time to talk about this.

“we love you,” jonathan says, almost apologetically. “and we tried to take good care of you. that’s all.”

kal-el tries to remember his early childhood, before he knew what he was. it’s so distant in his mind, like his life didn’t really start until he learned his real name, until he left the ground easy as breathing.

he knows martha is right, that he fixated on his kryptonian heritage more and more over time, so much so that he gave up on building a real life on earth; the idea of his home planet became a dream he didn’t want to wake up from. he was always under the impression that martha and jonathan not only didn’t know what to call him, they didn’t know what to do with him, and it seemed easier to be by himself than to figure out how to fit beside them. but maybe they just didn’t want to force it, to keep him on the ground when he wanted to fly.

he remembers martha laughing when he climbed onto the fence to reach one of the cows standing at the edge of the pasture and put jonathan’s straw hat on the cow’s head.

he remembers when he was frightened by a storm twisting and raging on the horizon, the animals all uneasy, rain and wind whipping the house and lightning cracking the sky, the boom of thunder so, so loud that it shook the windowpanes and he felt it in his bones. he was curled up in the armchair that can’t hold him now, and martha was fussing with the fire in the fireplace, and jonathan came in from his last check on the barn and took one look at kal-el and crossed the room to kneel by the chair and say, “everything’s gonna be alright. you’ll see.”

kal-el looks at the two of them now―their hair greying, their hearts quieter than they used to be, but just as strong. he swallows. he wants to say “i love you, too.”

“thank you,” is what he says instead.

after they’ve eaten dinner, kal-el says goodbye but doesn’t go back to metropolis yet; instead he flies around the farm and fixes what needs fixing, replaces loose boards on the roof of the barn, pressing the nails in with his thumb so there’s no sound to startle the animals or alert jonathan and martha. he thinks it would be nice if he did more to take care of them, since they took care of him for so long.

maybe he should visit kansas more often. maybe he should start thinking of it as home.

-

tonight is one of the worst nights superman has ever had. every choice he made backfired, every move had unintended consequences, and by the time a kryptonite spear-tip shatters in his shoulder, he starts to wonder if there really is a god like some humans think, and if that god has decided they are tired of superman.

luckily, he had already brought metallo to the brink of defeat; the kryptonite pulled from his chest and fastened to a makeshift spear was clearly a last-ditch effort. batman and robin, who spiraled down through a skylight to join the fight halfway through, are able to complete the takedown with some well-placed electric volts, while superman, on the other side of the vast room, stumbles backward into a pillar and slides shakily to the ground.

it’s not his first experience with kryptonite, but it hasn’t gotten any easier to cope with the sudden exhaustion, the pounding in his head, the way he feels ten times heavier, the effort it takes to heave air in and out of his lungs, and, in this case, the screaming, stabbing pain in his shoulder that sends shockwaves through every inch of his body. kryptonite has never invaded him like this before, never shot through his bloodstream like ice before.

batman tucks his weapon back into his utility belt as robin bounds forward, clicks a pair of handcuffs around metallo’s wrists―probably out of habit more than real need to restrain him at this point―and starts dragging him across the museum floor toward the entrance, where the shriek and glare of police cars seep through the glass doors.

kal-el is used to it by now, the way batman and robin act in tandem, following a protocol that they each know so well it doesn’t need to be said aloud, but it’s still fascinating to observe: robin simply knows his role is to bring metallo out to the metropolis police, and batman knows that robin knows, and robin knows that batman knows...and then kal-el can’t keep track of who knows what. he’s dizzy. what a strange word.

“robin!” batman calls, moving towards superman, somehow three steps closer every time kal-el blinks. his voice echoes off the marble in the now-quiet hall, all the cacophony of the fight still ringing in kal-el’s ears. “don’t let mpd inside until i say so. obstruction plan delta, if necessary.”

robin sends a worried glance at superman’s crumpled form and hesitates for a second, then says, “i’m on it, b,” and when kal-el looks for him again, he and metallo are gone.

a sudden pressure on his arm makes him gasp, twist away from the touch before he realizes it’s bruce’s. he lifts his head, tilts it back to rest against the pillar, and watches as batman studies his injury, frowning.

“seven main shards,” he says. “about a dozen smaller splinters.” he reaches for something in a compartment on his belt without looking, the kryptonite’s green glow reflected in his eyes and skin but swallowed by the black of the cowl and cape. kal-el can feel blood spilling warm down his arm and chest, but his body feels colder and farther away with every exhale.

“i’m guessing this is gonna hurt,” batman says, though he sounds more like bruce now, kal-el thinks, and that’s all the warning kal-el gets before he is brutally yanked back to his senses by a searing, wrenching pain in his shoulder. before he can think better of it, he looks down to see a bloody piece of kryptonite, caught in a pair of tweezers, being pulled from his wound by batman’s steady hand. it feels cold, dragging through his body, like a thousand sunless winters condensed into a sliver of rock.

kal-el has never vomited before, but the turbulent feeling in his stomach suggests there’s a first time for everything. he tries to focus on his breathing, which isn’t hard, because breathing is unfathomably difficult in this moment, especially when he’s interrupted by gasps of pain that tear out of him against his will.

he keeps his eyes closed, closes them tighter to try to shut out the sickly green glimmer, but it still finds him, and he realizes the glow is inside him now, has burrowed into his vision. he opens his eyes in alarm to see his whole world cast in faint, unbearable green.

batman is lowering a fragment of kryptonite into a small lead case and looking at kal-el with concern.

“just the small ones now,” he says. kal-el blinks at him until his vision looks more like normal. with the larger shards gone, the worst is behind him, and he tries to think about other things while batman returns to his task. kal-el becomes aware that batman’s left hand, the one not wielding the tweezers, is pressed firmly against the bloodied emblem on kal-el’s chest, holding him still.

“my―mother,” kal-el starts, not sure how much of the hesitation in his speech is due to his weakened state and how much is due to the still-strange notion that martha is his mother, “gets migraines.”

bruce’s gaze doesn’t leave kal-el’s injury, but his eyes narrow just slightly, as they always do when he learns something unexpected. kal-el has never referred to martha or jonathan as family before.

“you shouldn’t talk,” bruce says, his voice gravelly and soft at the same time.

“always think of her,” kal-el continues, ignoring him, “when...with...kryptonite.”

there’s no answer from batman. kal-el fixes his gaze on batman’s face, tries to let his vision shift and lock into place, to see through the cowl and look at bruce underneath it, but his powers are still out of reach. his senses are sharpening, though, and he listens to each tiny plink as the last scraps of kryptonite are dropped into the case. he searches for bruce’s heartbeat and finds it, thumping away like it should be.

“i don’t know if...the pain is the same,” kal-el manages. “but maybe―maybe close.” he’s never told martha that, wouldn’t have even worried her by telling her about kryptonite if she hadn’t read it in the news.

kal-el breathes a sigh of relief when batman finally closes the lead case. it feels like a torrent of rain just melted away on the wind. he feels warm again.

“don’t try to move yet,” bruce says.

as if on cue, robin pokes his head in through the front doors and shouts, “batman! they’re getting antsy out here, should i―”

“two minutes,” batman answers, still kneeling by kal-el, his hand still on kal-el’s chest, and robin disappears again. this time, kal-el can hear dick’s footsteps, his voice as he argues with mpd officers outside.

kal-el’s mind is clear enough now to finally comprehend why batman and robin have been keeping everyone out of the museum while he was down. he can’t think of anyone other than batman who is really equipped to deal with kryptonite, but a dozen first responders would’ve swarmed around superman to help anyway, asking questions and making everything worse.

plus, superman is a symbol. kal-el realized that a long time ago. the world needs to think of him as stronger than anything. batman knows that, understands it maybe better than kal-el ever will.

despite the pain and disorientation of the last few minutes, kal-el never felt threatened, the way he would have if batman hadn’t been close by to tend his wounds, if robin hadn’t been holding the world outside at bay.

in his first encounter with kryptonite, superman had managed to defeat his foe, but was left defenseless in the aftermath, stumbling and then crawling away from the unfamiliar rock until the distance was enough to free him. he had been alone, as always, but now terribly aware of it, and he had been afraid.

this time he had allies at his side, and the difference it made was profound, staggering.

“can you stand?” bruce asks, jolting kal-el from his thoughts.

after a deep breath, kal-el gets to his feet. bruce rises with him, watching him closely.

“and―?” bruce says, eyeing kal-el.

the heaviness has left his bones and kal-el feels strong again, sharp and bright again. he rolls his shoulders, the injured one maybe a little stiff but otherwise fine, his suit bloodstained but the wound itself already healed.

he nods, and bruce pauses a moment, then smiles such a tiny smile that kal-el thinks he would’ve missed it if his heightened perception hadn’t returned.

“we left it open for you,” he says softly, then turns and starts for the doors, to back up robin and maybe, if the swarm of officers was lucky, answer one or two questions.

“thank you,” kal-el calls after him in kryptonian. it feels important to say it, for batman to know that kal-el appreciates him―not just his help, but his presence, the way kal-el feels seen for the first time in his life when bruce is around.

batman slows, stops, and the swish of his cape settles to stillness around him. kal-el is reminded of a story in the gotham gazette about some human traffickers who were ambushed by batman, transporting victims right in front of him after mistaking his motionless figure for a statue.

he glances at superman over his shoulder, and kal-el suddenly knows what it’s like to be on the other side of this moment. how many times has someone shouted gratitude toward his already-retreating figure, how many times has kal-el continued to fly away because he didn’t know how to respond?

but bruce knows how, he knows exactly what to say, and it haunts kal-el for days, like sweet smoke floating all around him.

bruce answers with the first kryptonian phrase kal-el ever taught him, the night they stood on the rooftop with robin for hours―the idiom about the burdens you bear because they’re worth it.

then he heads for the exit again, and kal-el flies straight up through the open skylight to find a quiet place to spend the night until he can bask in the sunrise and feel fully like himself again, bruce’s voice echoing in his mind all the time.

-

there’s something odd as they descend the stairs. kal-el likes to keep his feet on the ground when he’s in a new place for the first time, and every footfall seems softer than the last; the air is getting quieter, emptier. by the time they reach the cave itself, he’s figured it out. the cave is soundproofed, with something even kal-el can’t hear though, and when bruce closes a heavy door behind them, kal-el can’t hear anything beyond the walls, and he knows nothing within the cave can be heard from outside.

he wonders briefly at his timing, to have always been able to find bruce’s heartbeat when he wanted to over the years, never at a moment when he was here, out of reach.

the silence is incredibly calming. kal-el feels his shoulders loosen, some tension leaving his jaw. this is the most quiet he can remember ever experiencing on earth. even his hideout in the north pole, far from civilization, has the rush of water, wind, marine life thriving and thrumming in every direction, and he can still hear metropolis if he tries. but here...

“kal-el?” bruce’s voice cuts through the silence. kal-el blinks out of his revery. bruce, paused a few yards away, lifts a hand toward a cluster of computer monitors deeper into the cave. kal-el follows.

an hour later, kal-el has sifted through seven years of archived footage from the casino vault, and found nothing to help solve the latest mystery. bruce is a few feet away, halfway through a formidable stack of papers and photos, ongoing or potential cases he’s still trying to break open. at some point, alfred wandered in with a tray of soda and sandwiches, which smelled too good for kal-el not to eat, and bruce had followed suit.

it’s pleasant, just working near someone, no pretenses or formalities. unfamiliar, but pleasant, and kal-el settles into it after a while. bruce taps his toes inside his shoes when he’s thinking, and hums quietly when he’s noticed something new. this is the longest kal-el has ever seen bruce out of uniform. a black t-shirt hangs from his shoulders, so soft and loose compared to the kevlar.

kal-el comes to the end of another video file; still nothing. frustrated, he pushes away from the desk, a little harder than he meant to, and the glass of soda he’d been drinking tips, tumbles off the edge, and he grabs for it before anything spills, and bruce’s hand lands on top of his a half-second later.

after another half-second, bruce pulls his hand back, picks up whatever document he’d been looking at a moment ago. kal-el tilts his head when he notices that bruce’s eyes stay on kal-el’s hands.

“nothing?” bruce says, his voice barely above a whisper.

“nothing,” kal-el answers in kryptonian.

but there is something. there’s something in bruce’s eyes that kal-el has never seen before. there’s something about the way his bare hand felt on kal-el’s, unlike any other time they’ve touched―kal-el pulling bruce out of harm’s way, or bruce putting a steadying hand on kal-el’s chest while he pulled out kryptonite shards with the other.

“nothing,” bruce repeats. kal-el watches his lips form the word. his pronunciation is nearly flawless, but he frowns as soon as it leaves his mouth, knowing that he didn’t get it quite right, and in the blink of an eye, kal-el has closed the space between them and stops three inches from bruce’s face, waiting for him to move next. the desk chair he leapt from spins slightly in his wake.

their eyes lock for a long moment, both of them searching for something in the other’s face. then bruce starts to lean forward, and kal-el rushes to meet him, and bruce’s lips are soft and yielding under his, and kal-el has stopped thinking entirely, drowning in the sound of bruce’s racing heartbeat, and his hands come up to touch bruce’s jaw, his hair, to drag along the fabric of his t-shirt, warmed by body heat. then he feels bruce’s fingertips on his cheek, and it’s like a million tiny lightning bolts connecting with his skin, and he pulls bruce closer, and closer, and then bruce makes a small sound that sends fire down kal-el’s spine until he registers it as a sound of pain, or at least discomfort. he realizes his grip is too tight, and probably bruce needs oxygen, and kal-el lets go in a daze, disentangles their arms and puts a little space between them again.

bruce starts to move, as though to pull kal-el back in, then stops. his eyes are on the floor.

for a minute or two, the only sound is bruce quietly catching his breath, his heart slowly returning to a normal pace, and the low thrum of the computers surrounding them.

kal-el can’t take his eyes off bruce. his face is flushed, his pupils dilated, his lips reddish-pink and swollen. kal-el thinks he remembers biting bruce’s lips at some point. how long were they kissing? ten seconds? sixty? he feels like he just woke up from a dream.

for a split second, bruce’s eyes flick up to kal-el’s, then he turns back to the desk, starts fidgeting with his case files. kal-el wants to touch him again but doesn’t think he’s allowed.

once his head stops spinning enough to form thoughts again, kal-el remembers all the reasons why what just happened might be a bad thing. each one hits him like a raindrop, and he watches bruce’s face crystallize into a perfectly stoic expression and knows bruce got to that realization a few moments before him, put his defenses back up just that little bit faster.

“you can take a break, if you want,” bruce mutters, so quiet that he’s not so much breaking the silence as putting pressure on it. “or...i can go through the rest of the footage, let you know what i find.” he picks up a pen and puts it back down.

kal-el knows that bruce knows that he doesn’t need to take breaks, and that he can get through the footage ten times faster. bruce doesn’t say things that don’t make sense unless he really means something else. in this case, it’s easy to tell that bruce is asking kal-el to leave, so he does.

he leaves the cave, leaves wayne manor, leaves gotham. it feels odd being in that city when he’s not with batman. he flies back to metropolis, stops a subway car from derailing, and sits on a crane to watch the sun set between a couple of skyscrapers. he lets himself listen for bruce’s heartbeat just once, and doesn’t find it.