#or a survival tactic of self sabotage that he's unconsciously adopted

[unshallow-feelings]

I think there's an essay to be written about Mizi and Ivan both believing that Till doesn't care about them but both of them want to form some connection with him and vice versa.

[terresdebrumestories]

Clark Kent, of Krypton - 2/4: Shadow

FANDOM: DC’s cinematic universe. RATING: Mature. WORDCOUNT: 20 640 (Fic total: ~98k words) PAIRING(S): Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne (main focus is on Clark, though). CHARACTER(S): Kal-El | Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Jor-El, Lara Lor-Van, Kara Zor-El, Zor-El, Martha Kent, Alfred Pennyworth, Diana Prince, Barry Allen, Arthur Curry, Victor Stone, John Stewart, J’onn J’onzz, plus a quick cameo by Lois Lane. GENRE: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), transition fic with romance. TRIGGER WARNING(S): A great deal of anxiety and self loathing, especially in parts one and two. Some descriptions are heavily inspired by my experience of dysphoria-induced dissociation. SUMMARY: Batman crashes on Krypton a few days before the Turn of the Year celebrations and Kal-El's life takes a sharp turn to the left, on a path that will ultimately lead him to becoming Clark Kent.

OTHER CHAPTERS: [I. Kal-El] [III. Superman] [IV. Clark Kent] ALSO AVAILABLE: [On AO3] [On Dreamwidth]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thank you, still, to @stuvyx for the wonderful illustrations and to @susiecarter for the beta :D

“Can you see him?”

Shadow leans a little harder on his hands, peering over the curve of the Citadel dome to survey one of several guest quarters’ balconies. In the sky, Krypton’s moons shine crimson over the lands, their light like blood spread over the planes of the jagged mountains and the pale stone of the Citadel, the balconies below painted in a burgundy darker than even Shadow’s suit.

“Not yet,” he tells Support, his own voice too loud in the confines of his helmet. “Maybe he’s just not in the mood to come out tonight.”

“You would know better than me,” Kara replies, slipping out of her more professional tones. “I am not his friend.”

The truth is, neither is Shadow. He may have brought Batman out of his destroyed spacecraft and into the Els’ residence, but they have not talked to one another—nor, indeed had any contact at all—since that fateful winter day. It is easy for Shadow to remember it: the bitter cold biting at the tips of his fingers after the suit had to divert power away from temperature regulation for a while. The ache in his limbs even as he set dreams of his bed aside and decided to push himself through another rescue. The burning heat of flames licking at his face once he pulled Batman out of his destroyed spacecraft and willed his helmet off to examine the man’s wounds. Batman, on the other hand, was unconscious for the whole process, and kept under for over a day after his rescue. What little connection exists between him and Shadow is one-sided, at best.

Not that Shadow has not been paying attention to the shipwrecked man. He has kept a close ear to the gossip spread about him, just in case curiosity should have turned into resentment. In the end, though, the ever-faster advance of the Melokariel Proposition has kept most of El—and Shadow—far too busy to worry about a lone alien who does not even have the decency to look different from regular Kryptonians. This, of course, proved to be an oversight once Batman, smarter than most Kryptonians and in a far better position to notice the abnormalities in the Principality’s political proceedings, started noticing something was amiss and taking an interest in the situation.

As it is, though, there is nothing Shadow can do about it but be wary of Batman’s involvement. It is rumored that Pol Vea-Ry, the Wise Queen of Warriors, will call for another vote on the matter soon; and, like Kara, Shadow is inclined to agree with those who speculate that Tsiahm-Lo will vote with her...and with two Council members out of five in favor, it is likely that those in El who would rather not see the project come to fruition will continue on the same road they were already taking, only at a harder pace than before. There will be many families reaching for the colonies in the months to come, and more militia—Ellon or otherwise—doing everything they can to prevent that. There is blood on the walls of the Citadel. Some of it, Shadow helped put there. More often than not, though, he failed to save those who spilled it, and in the urgency of the situation, Batman, like many of the pettier offenders Shadow used to worry about in the beginning, had to fall low on the list of priorities.

Until, that is, it was discovered that the alien has had dealings with the Green Lanterns.

“There he comes,” Shadow says.

Not a moment too soon, either. The suit is strong enough to help with most physical tasks Shadow has to perform, but sticking to the wall like an overgrown spider requires a lot of muscle control, and the effort never fails to leave Shadow stiff and uncomfortable.

“Is he alone?”

Shadow waits until Batman crosses the balcony and braces his arms against the railing, gazing over the outer city and the mountains beyond, before he answers in the affirmative.

“Good,” Kara says. Then, in a grumble: “I wish the repairs on my handscreen weren't taking so long. I hate being unable to see what is going on on your end.”

“I’d offer to describe everything,” Shadow retorts as he braces himself for a jump, “but I’m afraid that would make me sound a tad more insane than I’d like to appear.”

He smirks when Kara snorts. Then he pushes against the Citadel wall and, in a small shower of everlasting concrete, drops a dozen feet downwards. He can almost hear Kara’s eyes roll when he puts the elasticity of his suit to good use and sticks the landing with very little impact to his joints. Vain, he realizes, but still much faster than crawling downward—and much more dignified too.

“I was wondering if you’d show yourself,” Batman says, quiet and unsurprised, as Shadow rises to his feet.

And here Kara thought Shadow enjoyed dramatics.

He takes a step closer to Batman, careful to remain in the part of the balcony that can’t be seen from the inside, and does not put much effort in disguising his amusement when he speaks.

“You could have said something,” he replies, adopting the grammatical forms of a middle-class man addressing an equal.

He rolls his eyes when Batman chooses stony silence over even a simple shrug. Part of Shadow wants to wait the man out, but he decides to be the bigger masked creature and ask:

“Do you know who I am?”

“I’ve heard of you.”

Batman falls into silence again. Under his helmet, Shadow's mouth opens in disbelief. Theatrics can be useful, he will admit to that much, especially where civilians are concerned. That Batman would use the same tactics on him, though? It rankles more than Shadow would have anticipated, and his shoulders stiffen in response. He manages to suppress a scoff at the last second, and then goes to stand at the railing, careful to stay out of view from the room, just in case.

Kal-El, of course, would shrink from such a chilly welcome and sink into himself. Shadow knows he cannot afford to let himself be defeated so easily, though, and so he ignores both Batman’s reservation and Kara’s comment—“How in Rao’s name did you of all people manage to draw this man into a conversation?”—before he reaches into his pocket and produces the Green Lanterns’ bracelet.

“I think this is yours,” he tells Batman.

He does not change his tone—casual, but polite. A simple conversation between strangers of equal ranking, though technically it is something of a demotion for Batman; but the other man still gives him a sharp look before he takes his bracelet back. His expression, mostly unchanged, seems grimmer than usual but not outright hostile, and Shadow waits the silence out, solid as a stone and patient as the sun. Shadow is not a petty creature—cannot afford to be—but he cannot be the only one to make a move here.

“The Els say you brought me here.”

This is not the reaction Shadow was hoping for, but it is not rejection, either, and so he shrugs as he says, “I thought this would be where you’d have the best chance of survival...if any. Would you rather I’d left you where I found you?”

“How did you know they would take me in?”

“Gods, he is starting to remind me of Queen Ra-Ul,” Kara sighs in Shadow’s ears.

It is not a compliment.

“The Prince and his wife are well known for their devotion to Rao,” Shadow says, ignoring Kara's comment. “Assuming they would help you didn’t seem like that big a leap of faith.”

It is difficult to say whether Batman means for his scoff to go unnoticed or not, but Shadow hears it either way. He knows better than to react to it, though, and says instead:

“I would have had more reservations, if I’d known you were working with one of Krypton’s oldest and most prominent enemies.”

The only entities Krypton—especially its upper classes—resents more than the Green Lanterns are Feyar, Paom, and Koahu: three planets who formed an alliance to fight their way free of Kryptonian dominion long before the Lanterns were ever a dream. Still, fourth on the list of mortal enemies of your host planet is nothing to scoff at, and Shadow knows for a fact that Batman is smart enough to realize that.

“I knew some people would be unhappy about the connection,” Batman says. “I did not expect you to be one of them.”

“Do you always evade questions, or are you just giving me special treatment?”

“I like to keep my options open.”

On the other end of the line, Kara groans. Shadow does not react in any way that will be obvious to Batman, but he is rather inclined to agree. He rolls his eyes again, but does not quite manage to prevent his shoulders from tightening a fraction. He had been expecting some evasion on Batman’s part. He would have attempted the same if their positions were reversed. But what Batman is doing now is starting to verge on sabotage, and neither Shadow nor Kara—nor, he suspects, Batman himself—have time to waste on this particular dance.

“I’m not here to antagonize you,” he tells Batman, pausing to give him the time to absorb the new word. “You’re right, I work with the Lanterns too. Or I work with people who work with them, to be precise. I do still need to know what you’re doing here.”

“I’m not a spy,” Batman says.

“’That’s what a spy’d say’,” Kara says in an exaggerated version of Shadow’s more casual grammar, her voice dropping a half-octave at least.

Under the helmet, Shadow rolls his eyes.

“That, I can believe,” he says, ignoring the slap of what he assumes is Kara’s hand hitting her forehead. “You have still been asking too many questions about the Melokariel Proposition, and you've been seen in places you shouldn’t have been visiting.”

Batman has also been seen leaving his rooms at night, via this very balcony. Sending Kryo to spy on him was not an easy decision to make, and a sliver of Kal’s shame pricks at Shadow’s conscience, but he pushes it aside. The literary association between him and The Shadow may not have been his choice, but he does take the role seriously, and one whose mission it is to protect an entire realm cannot afford to let even friendship stop them.

“Maybe you don’t care about the consequences that could have for the House of El—”

“No one would suspect them of colluding with me,” Batman cuts in with a slight snap to his voice. “Everyone at court knows the only one of them who will spend any time with me is a timid simpleton. They will assume he couldn’t have guessed anything, and they will be right.”

Batman has gone back to higher-class inflections for this last sentence, the sudden distance he puts between himself and Shadow a stark reminder of Kal’s experiences at court, and it takes more effort than it usually would to ignore the wound and remain Shadow.

“Be that as it may,” Shadow says, relieved to hear no tightness in his voice, “I need—”

“Kal!” Kara all but shouts at him, “say something, for Vohc’s sake! You are not a simpleton!”

“The Els have been helpful, in their way,” Shadow tells Batman without acknowledging his cousin, “and considering their potential replacements, it’s in the Principality’s best interest that they stay in power, at least for the moment.”

“If you say so,” Batman says.

His face has not changed, but Shadow has heard Batman’s voice enough to recognize the smirk in his tone. It gives the impression of something more behind the word, some sort of double meaning, almost suggestive. Shadow’s face heats up beneath his helmet, and he finds himself abruptly glad that Batman cannot see him. Not that it does him any good, as his blush is perfectly audible when he answers:

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not what’s happening here.”

“If you say so,” Batman repeats, mild and unconcerned.

“That,” Kara sighs into her communicator, “was pathetic.”

Shadow is not the type of creature whose shoulders hunch at the slightest provocation, but that does not mean he disagrees with his cousin’s words. It is hardly a surprise that he lost the upper hand several questions ago. He knew, after all, that this was Batman’s aim, and allowed the conversation to progress anyway because he felt cooperation would be a better way to proceed...and also, in large part, because he thought Batman would reciprocate. He did not, though, and now Shadow realizes he will need to pry if he wants to leave this conversation with any clear information.

The problem being, of course, that he has no idea how to do that.

Shadow was never meant to interrogate anyone, especially not someone who evidently knows his way around inconvenient questions. Militia men, for the most part, expect brute force, because this is what they were trained against, which makes it easy to trick them with more subtle tactics. And in any case, half of the time either Kara or Kal can glean more precise information through their superiors, anyway. Interrogating Batman, though, let alone in a meaningful way? Shadow never learned how to do that. At first, it was naivety. Shadow once thought the Militia members who hurt citizens during arrests, or were unnecessarily violent with them, were rogue elements, and that bringing them to justice with sufficiently obvious proof would be enough to shatter what he believed was inertia on their superiors’ parts. This happened often in the beginning, hope holding out against all else, even proof at times. But as time went on, it became apparent El’s police forces—and, later, the Council’s Militia—did not focus on criminals with nearly as much zeal as they did on reminding the whole of El that the Wise Council loved them, protected them, and deserved nothing less than their utter respect and total obedience. Eventually, Shadow saw enough of these visits—often reasonably scheduled, but just as often happening late at night, or other times when citizens would not have expected to be visited.

One day, one such house call ended with the police dragging an entire family away from their home in the middle of the night, pushing them all into an aircraft, and spiriting them away over the mountains. Shadow stood and watched as it happened, a weight like stones in his guts telling him he ought to intervene. The younger, more hopeful part of him—the one that still believed the way the members of the court rejected the lower classes’ grammatical forms of Ellon so completely as to make them almost into a foreign language had to be a bug rather than a feature—told him to wait. Wait, make sure. Trust that things would turn out all right. But then a week passed. The family did not come back. One week became two, became three, and if would have taken many more to convince Shadow if Queen Oa Ni-Col—Kara’s mother, whose independence of thought and outspoken nature had always been noted at court—had not made the unexpected decision to overcome a debilitating fear of heights in order to fling herself off her bedroom balcony into the mountains, hundreds of feet below.

“Batman,” Shadow tries again, “I realize you don’t care about the Els. That’s your right. But your actions will have an impact on more than just them if you’re not careful, and I won’t be able to mitigate the consequences of you being caught if I don’t know what you’re doing.”

Shadow’s voice is pitched lower than Kal’s. It rings clearer, too. This time it rises on the last few words though, pleading bleeding in at the edges, and for a moment Shadow almost fears he is about to be unmasked. What happens instead is a long silence before Batman eventually nods. Shadow has practice hiding his relief by now, and so his body language does not change. But the rush is still there, and it takes him a moment to realize Batman is staring at his helmet with almost frightening intensity.

He has rarely been this glad for the two-way mirror effect of his visor.

“I am not here to hurt anyone,” Batman says, sounding as if it is costing him some effort to reveal even that much. “But there is something strange about the Melokariel Proposition.” He pauses and then, even more reluctantly than before, finishes: “Whatever it is about.”

“He’s been investigating all this time and he does not know what it would do?” Kara exclaims on her end of the line. “What a—Kal, you have to keep him off the field!”

Shadow tends to agree, but to tell her so would be to reveal her to Batman, and he would rather avoid that as long as possible. The fewer people who know Shadow does not work alone, the safer Kara will stay.

“There is,” Shadow tells Batman, “and I’ll explain as soon as I can. I don’t have the time for it tonight—there are other things I need to do—but I’ll explain. All I ask in exchange is that you stay inside tonight, and wait for my instructions.”

“Does he look like he intends to cooperate?”

Batman’s shoulders have tightened. His neck stiffens and, by his side, the fingers of his right hand clench together. Shadow can’t tell Kara as much, but he suspects she has a fairly good idea as to the answer anyway. It is not, after all, that surprising. Batman has been too invested in this research, is too strong-willed to give up when someone asks him to. And if these were not indications enough, there is the matter of his obvious disdain for and disappointment with Kal-El’s lack of interest in politics. None of that speaks of Batman being able to let go of the topic.

Besides, Shadow thinks in a surprisingly detached, distant way, if even Batman does not think twice about Kal-El’s lack of knowledge after spending such an extended amount of time with him, no one else will. It is reassuring information to have, even if it will do nothing but fan the flames of Kal’s shame.

None of that, of course, makes the matter of Batman’s involvement with Krypton’s political issues any less of a problem...or a mystery.

“I mean it,” Shadow insists, hoping despite an increasingly loud sense of resignation that Batman will decide to surprise everyone and actually cooperate. “You don’t know enough about Krypton or the Proposition for this to end with anything other than you dead in a ditch.”

That is, after all, where Shadow would have ended up more than once, if not for the suit and Kara’s support. Batman, however, does not seem all that disposed to see it, and Shadow restrains himself from sighing. He steps onto the balcony railing instead, orders the suit to shift into its gliding form and, as soon as the batons on his back have melted into wings, jumps down and to the right, as if aiming for the more populous areas of the outer city.

“It is a good thing we never made you into a politician,” Kara says. “That went terribly.”

“I noticed, thank you,” Shadow says, the part of him that still belongs to Kal even while in the suit shriveling with humiliation.

“You are welcome. There is no improvement without feedback.”

Kal does not reply to that, too focused on his second-least-favorite part of gliding in the suit: the landing. The maneuver is tricky enough when he aims for a horizontal surface and has enough room to use a proper parachute—to land on the Citadel’s outer wall, with its near verticality and smooth surface is another exercise altogether, and he is never as grateful for the suit’s gripping claws as when he has to perform this specific operation.

“Almost no roll this time,” Kara teases, more good-natured than dismayed now. “You are getting good with this thing.”

“And here I thought not dying in it on the first try was already a sign of competence,” Shadow retorts.

Kara snorts at the quip and, Shadow is pretty sure, mutters something about him needing to be like this more often. He ignores it, used to that sort of remark by now, and makes his way back toward Batman’s balcony.

“You are panicking again.”

“I’m not.”

“Kal, this suit monitors your heartbeat.”

“I know,” Shadow retorts, “and I know I’m scared, but this is still not me panicking.”

Shadow, unlike Kal, does not panic. It would be a lie to say he is unaffected, of course, especially when the smallest slip could easily mean a death as gruesome as his aunt’s—and as Shadow, he has a better understanding of what that would be like than most. Nevertheless, he is not only still moving, but also in full possession of his wits. This is nothing close to panic.

“All right, then,” Kara concedes. “Are you nearly there? Distances are harder to judge on two dimensional displays.”

“I am,” Shadow says.

Down below, to Shadow’s complete lack of surprise, Batman is still standing on his balcony...or, more precisely, on the balcony’s railing. The moons shine overhead, irregular shadows casting Batman in dramatic shades of crimson and black as his cape flares out in the wind, jagged ends like daggers slicing the air. Kal watches the man’s ramrod-straight posture, the set of his shoulders, the angle of his neck as he surveys the western half of the outer city, and sighs.

“Is something the matter?” Kara asks.

“Nothing,” Shadow says.

Part of him wants to tell her she is not allowed to call him overdramatic again, but the thought feels bizarrely like a betrayal, and so he keeps it to himself. Besides, to speak his mind here would do nothing but spark a discussion they have already had a thousand times between them. No, it is not his fault Zod’s engineers conceived the suit as a body-tight armor. No, it is not his fault crimson is the best camouflage in El’s particularly clear nights, and no, it is not his fault the shape of his helmet—the only one he has found that allows for a clear panel of display beads while still protecting him—makes Shadow look like a vengeful bug. He knows it, and he knows Kara knows it. It prevents neither Kara teasing him about it every chance she gets, nor Kal feeling irrationally insecure about it. Deciding that silence is the better part of honor, Shadow keeps his mouth shut and focuses on not losing his grip on the wall instead.

“Does it look like he is about to leave?” Kara asks after a short pause. “Did he bring some sort of rope?”

“Nothing I can see, but he does seem to be bracing for a jump.”

“You can’t be serious,” Kara exclaims, her breathing disrupting the connection for one uncomfortable moment. “There is at least six thousand feet between that balcony and the city! He can’t possibly make that jump!”

“I’ve made it before,” Shadow points out, and is not surprised when Kara hisses:

“Against my advice! And you are wearing the best armor Krypton has to offer—what does Batman even have? A fancy cape.”

“I don’t know how he plans to survive the drop either. I mean, the nearest rooftops are only about two thousand feet away but—”

“That does not make the situation any better!”

Kara is making a fair point, here, but before Shadow can concede it, Batman takes a deep breath and, with one powerful push of his thighs, throws himself off the balcony. Shadow, heart rising in his throat, forces air back into his lungs even as he jumps off the wall, letting the suit rearrange the material of his wing to absorb the worst of the impact. He rolls to his feet in the same movement and runs up to the railing just in time to see Batman, cape extended into a makeshift glider that slows his descent, shoot some kind of line at a decorative beam below and a few feet in front of him.

A moment later, the line tenses. Batman’s entire silhouette—clearly meant to evoke a particular image—glides into a curved trajectory like a bird turning in the sky. From Shadow's vantage point, there is no sign Batman even considered the possibility of failure. He must have, just as he must have carefully considered the precise trajectory needed for this specific jump. Yet not an ounce of fear, or even hesitation, shows through in him, as if the men of Batman’s planet were always meant to move this way. Batman’s line shortens as he goes, bringing him into a curve short enough that it is easy—or looks easy—for him to let go of his handle on his line, flip in the air and, catching the beam with his gloved hand, right himself upon it as if on any regular floor.

The technique in itself is actually similar to Shadow’s own mode of travel in the city, though with very different tools. The elegance of it, however, the complete confidence Batman has in his own body and proprioception—Shadow, mouth and throat abruptly dry, swallows hard.

“He took the jump,” Kara says with a sigh, “didn’t he?”

“He did,” Shadow says, not surprised in the least by the way awe tinges his tone. “He looks fine.”

Better than fine, even, but Shadow doesn’t quite know how to describe the feeling that seized his heart and squeezed at his chest at the sight, has no idea what contracted his stomach in such a way. He takes a silent, fortifying breath rather than attempt the exercise and announces:

“I’ll follow him tonight. Let the Dark Sun know I won’t be able to make the run.”

“That’ll push the next ship back three days, at least,” Kara says, the frown easy to hear in her voice.

“I know, and I’m not happy about it either, but we need to know what his intentions are. I don’t think we’ll get a much better opportunity than this.”

“Fine,” Kara replies with an explosive sigh. “I will let them know. Switching to one way audio, now.”

Shadow thanks her for the courtesy even as his audio input clicks off. It is a silly superstition—or an impractical hangup, depending on the nature of his mood at the moment of description—of his that he cannot take complicated jumps while he can hear Kara talk, or breathe, or indeed make any noise at all. It is not her fault and, though Shadow knows the habit displeases her, it is not a true choice on his part, either.

Eight years he has been Shadow now, six with this suit, and even before that—when he had to climb down the entire service elevator shaft and then climb back up the roofs of the outer city—the slightest diversion of his attention would halt his first jump. There comes a point during the night, when he is focused enough—when he is Shadow enough—that silence is not such an absolute prerequisite. A point where he loses himself in his suit and his self-imposed mission, so deeply that he can ignore the distraction. But never for the first jump. Not while he steps away from the balcony railing, not when he briefly asks Rao not to let him fall. Not when he takes off at a running start, jumps up to the railing, and, using his momentum to add to the force of his jumps, gives a great push against the balcony railing, throwing himself into empty air and the sickening lurch of freefall.

It is not possible to shut off natural audio feedback from the helmet—not with the way Shadow programmed the suit, in any case—and so despite the slowing mechanism, similar in effect to Batman’s glider cape, the wind screams past his ears as the glittering lights of the outer city hurl themselves at him. There is just enough time for him to wonder if Batman, too, has to fight the gut-clenching fear that this time will be the one he misses and does not come back.

Then the moment to catch himself comes, and Shadow sets all thoughts of Batman aside. The extra material of his suit shoots forward, nanobots so attuned to Shadow’s needs they almost feel like a living thing, and with a similar curve to the one that caught Batman, Shadow lands hard on the decorative beam.

Now, to find Batman. The man is at least as comfortable swinging from roof to roof as Shadow is. It is also quite possible—almost certain, really, judging from what Shadow has seen—that Batman is much more at ease than he is with this exercise...which means the technical difficulty of any given path won’t be any help in determining whether Batman went that way or not.

Shadow allows himself a small sigh, surprised when Kara does not immediately ask what is wrong, and forces himself to think. There are two obvious routes from where Shadow stands: straight forward, going away from the Citadel wall and into the wealthier areas of the outer city; or backward, closer to the more impoverished neighborhoods. Going forward would be easier, for decorative cornices and railings become more numerous as the city goes on, and the lodgings there are easier to climb. At the very least, the risk of having those crumble underfoot is much lower than in the inner circle of the city, especially this far away from the Citadel’s main gates. Batman, however, has been researching the Melokariel Proposition for far too long to forget it now, and since as far as Shadow knows the project is almost exclusively discussed in terms of what it will do for noble families and noble pockets….Shadow starts toward the wall.

“Shad—damn it—Shadow do you hear me?”

Shadow grunts as he pulls himself on a curved roof, scanning his surroundings with one practiced sweep of his gaze. No trace of Batman, and now this.

“That’s the third time we've lost contact this week.”

“I am aware,” Kara sighs. “The vote has yet to be called, but Zor-El has allowed three different soundings already. Your installation is functional enough, but it cannot compete against that.”

Behind her, there is the low, regular buzz of a mechanical fan, and Shadow sighs. He does not have the technical skills to compete with his uncle’s police, let alone the Council’s Militia. He is...not quite incompetent, but he does not have it in him to make technological miracles. What he did have however, especially back when he first prepared himself to become Shadow, was a lot of time and unlimited access to ancient tomes on primitive technologies such as radio waves and binary coding. It took him quite a while and even more trial and error, but he did manage to build himself a central database no one on El would ever think to scan for, its near-prehistoric workings the very source of its secrecy. Later on, when Kara joined him as Support, she positively laughed at the setup, though Shadow could never quite figure out why she did.

In any case, the installation has worked well for them so far. There is no way to secure it against official forces’ technology, of course, but that is almost a non-problem in the sense that Shadow’s entire existence hinges on absolute secrecy and everything turning out as well as possible each and every night. Were he someone else—an independent Lord, perhaps, or a more ordinary citizen—there might be ways to justify the scrapes and bruises that come with his nocturnal life...but how do you explain serious injuries on someone who, like Kal-El, barely ever sets foot outside of his parents’ extremely secure residence, and even then almost exclusively to visit the extremely secure Stateroom of Peace? You do not. If Shadow makes one wrong move, every scrap of what little help he can bring to the citizens of El will be lost.

“I’ll look into alternative solutions,” he tells Kara. “Radio waves, maybe.”

Kara mutters something about sticks and stones, but Shadow ignores her. There, barely a dozen feet away from him, is Batman.

“I found him.”

The man has perched at the crumbling edge of a crumbling house’s domed roof, precariously balanced with a foot against the wall while the other rests on the rusted remains of an escape ladder that must have been abandoned for quite a while now. Batman seems unused to the architectural configuration, positioned in a way that will leave him much sorer than necessary come morning, but he seems steady enough all the same. Which explains why Shadow, seeing no reason to hurry, is only about halfway to Batman when they both hear the scream.

Altering his course, Shadow reaches the source of it a fraction of second before Batman does. A woman on the ground, a soldier’s gloved hand in her hair. Behind, three men: two armored, one screaming but otherwise paralyzed. In the distance, a window closes.

“Please, don’t take her!” shouts the man.

There is a wet crunch. He falls to the ground, clutching his nose. One of the armored men raises his weapon in the direction of the fallen man's head, aims—Batman falls on him from above, like Vohc himself descending from the stars. He is practiced, that much is clear. No hesitation. Not a single wasted move. He would win the fight in seconds if Ellon soldiers didn’t operate in groups of five.

Shadow jumps from his perch a second before the first soldier releases the woman and raises her rifle at Batman’s back. He runs. Jumps, suit extending on either side of him. Throws Batman to the ground when the impact shoves him backward.

“What was that?” Kara asks on her end of the line.

The suit must have fully reconnected, then.

Shadow does not answer her, though. He rolls to his feet—ducks a hit to the head, punches a second armored woman in the gut. Swords come out, and part of the suit turns into a familiar pair of batons. The blades shine and sing—miss Batman by inches in one corner of Shadow’s vision, spark against his suit in another. Shadow parries, ducks, strikes back. Rao, please let him get out of this alive. He is not good enough for this. There is a reason he prefers stealth, and—another duck. Close call, this time. He holds his ground, but only by virtue of having an extremely smart suit and very flexible weapons he has been using for the past eight years. Duck, duck, parry—shout in pain when a quicker sword strike catches him before he can have the suit rearrange itself, and slices his arm underneath. Parry again. One last strike, a solid kick in the shins—four soldiers leave in a profusion of curses, the fifth one unconscious on a comrade’s back.

Shadow allows himself three heaving breaths before he turns back to the people they just rescued. They have fallen to the ground, Batman standing guard while the man clings to his wife and babbles about someone left inside—children, Shadow realizes. He means children. Batman, much quicker on the uptake, is about halfway to the door when Shadow catches his wrist.

“We don’t have time—”

“You’re the better fighter,” Shadow hastens to explain. “If they come back before we can leave, you’ll be more useful here. Besides, the kids will know who I am.”

A small part of Shadow wants to grin when Batman’s impatient snarl turns to surprise, but the man was right. They do not have time for frivolity. Ignoring some pleased surprise of his own—he was halfway expecting Batman to argue against a plan that wasn’t his own—Shadow rushes inside. It is a mess, of course. The house was clearly ransacked for evidence. Broken furniture, papers strewn about with almost methodical madness. Nothing out of the ordinary, here. The soldiers made no mention of children, though, which means they must have hidden somewhere the police did not think to look at first glance. Either somewhere creative and complicated, or...Shadow crouches in front of the cabinet under the sink, and gives a soft greeting to the two little girls he finds there.

They have the same green eyes, the same wide rings under those eyes. The oldest one slaps his wrist when he reaches for them, and Shadow praises her for her bravery. Said bravery becomes a little less practical when he reaches for her and she tries to bite him, but these are harsh times for El, and so Shadow does not reprimand her.

“I’m not an enemy,” he says instead. “I am the Shadow of El. Your parents are waiting outside, and we need to go now, quietly.”

Miraculously, the children stay quiet as Shadow carries them outside. They all but fall over themselves when their father comes within reach, one of the girls almost falling to the ground in her hurry to reach familiar arms.

“Thank you,” the man tells Shadow between kisses to his daughters’ heads, “thank you so much!”

“Please, don’t. You’re not out of trouble yet.”

A few feet to the side, the woman looks between Batman and Shadow with a stony gaze, no trace of tears or fear on her face. She gives Batman a short, stoic nod before she goes to gather her family and tells them to brace themselves.

“The Shadow is right. We are still in danger, here. We need to leave.”

“I can help you with that,” Shadow says. “I know a place where people will help you.”

There is no scheduled convoy tonight but the Dark Sun, Shadow has learned, keeps shelters ready for families in transit, and these people will be safer there than anywhere else in the city. They can stay there and wait for the next departure to the deserted borders with Ul, and from there, to the stars and the safety of the Green Lanterns’ space territory. It is a good plan, but Shadow is not surprised to find both the woman and her companion eyeing Batman with undisguised wariness. Shadow cannot blame them. The citizens of El have learned to be wary of outsiders in recent years and a family suspected of treason—rightfully so, judging from their expressions and the traditional printing material Shadow saw inside—would be even warier.

Shadow cannot make a pleading face through his helmet, but Batman must pick something up from his body language because he nods, walks to the nearest rain pipe, and starts climbing. Shadow sighs.

“At least he is being cooperative,” Kara says, almost making him jump.

She was so quiet throughout the fight, he somehow managed to forget she was there at all. Or perhaps he simply didn’t hear her. Either way, her voice is a comfort, and Shadow feels his shoulders unwind a little as he tells Batman, “I’ll see you where we first met.”

He waits for Batman to turn around and look at him before he jerks his head to the left, away from the Citadel dome. Batman’s answering nod is curt and small, but it is a sufficiently explicit agreement for Shadow to settle further. He listens to the click of Batman’s boots on the rain pipe for a while, giving the family some space to organize themselves. Then, once the man has gone back inside for what looks like a long-ready travel bag, Shadow leads them to one of the Dark Sun’s safe houses.

“Is there any sign that they intend to pursue you?” Kara asks a few hours later when Shadow comes back to the house.

The place is buzzing with activity, but there is no sense of victory in the air, no feeling of a pack on the hunt.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like they found anything on the Dark Sun, either. We got lucky.”

“That you were,” Kara replies hotly. “I don’t know how we missed that raid—”

“I’ll go by our informant’s house before I come back,” Shadow promises.

They are supposed to have this neighborhood covered, after all. This did not feel like a scheduled raid—not enough coordination for the soldiers to be an official team-up—but if there are overzealous rogue elements in the city’s police, their contact will need to know about them. And if, for some unfathomable reason, the authorities decided to send a newly minted team on a scheduled raid—improbable, but still not to be discounted—it is vital for Shadow and the Dark Sun to figure out how that could have passed them by.

“I will contact whoever I can,” Kara says. “In the meantime, you should go and give your friend a good telling-off.”

Shadow, already on his way over the rooftops, does not answer...but he does not miss the frown in Kara’s voice when she speaks again.

“Kal—”

“I’m glad to know the line is uncompromised.”

Not that it would do them much good, should anyone start scanning for audio frequencies, but it is always reassuring to know they are not being listened to.

“Kal,” Kara insists, “you are going to tell him off, aren’t you?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Shadow hedges. Kara’s grunt is more than enough to let him know what she thinks of that. “I know what he did was risky—”

“Risky? If anyone recognizes him—”

“He was trying to save those people!” Shadow protests, feeling his voice rise into a more Kal-esque register despite himself. “You can’t blame him for that!”

“I recognize that he had noble intentions,” Kara says, “but that does not excuse his recklessness. You have got to talk to him, Kal.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Shadow repeats.

Kara does much more grumbling than usual when she signs out.

Once Shadow finds Batman again, he wastes neither time nor words and strides toward the mountains with Batman close on his heels. The alien is physically fit, impressively so by Ellon standards, but Shadow is surprised to hear his breathing grow heavier after the first half hour. Whatever Batman does on his planet must not include much trekking, then. He does not complain, however, and about half an hour later they are both standing at the darkened mouth of a narrow crevice of jagged rocks. To the left, the Citadel glows a pale red in the moonlight, the outer city swallowing its feet in a mass of inky darkness that not even the light of the moons, so bright in the mountains, can penetrate.

Shadows orders the suit to rearrange one of his gloves into a flashlight and, once Batman has caught his breath—a short process, despite his insistence on maintaining proper posture and sacrificing practicality for dignity—he steps inside the crevice. Inside, it gets narrower for a while, the stone above low enough to force him to duck. At one point, he hears Batman’s head hit the stone and smirks. When they reach the first chamber—quite small, compared to what comes after, but still just wide enough for two adults to camp in—Shadow stops.

“Where are we?” Batman asks, sitting down while Shadow detaches the flashlight from his suit and settles it on the ground. “Your base of operations?”

“I wish,” Kara mutters, the connection clicking back to life in Shadow’s ears.

“One day, it might be,” Shadow tells Batman, perhaps more of a smile in his voice than he meant to put there. “For now, it’s just a cave I found when I was a kid.”

It would be a lie to say that he was less timid back then, but his parents had insisted he see the outside world, and later on his martial arts instructors had declared it good for his health to run around the mountains. In between, Kal explored. And scared a few adults in the process, but that is hardly the point.

“It’s not very interesting, geologically speaking, but it does offer some privacy.”

Batman hums, and Kara clicks her tongue.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Right,” Shadow says, and winces internally when Batman cocks his head at him. “I almost forgot,” he covers, “I wanted to thank you.”

“Thank him?”

“Thank me?”

“For stepping in, earlier. You didn’t have to.”

“Kal, this is not what we said—”

“It was reckless,” Batman says before Shadow can debate whether he should ask Kara to let him speak. “But armed men dragging a woman by the hair in the middle of the night is not a good sign, back on Earth.”

“It isn’t a good sign here either,” Shadow sighs, “but this isn’t your planet. No one would have resented you for staying out of this.”

“I would have.”

The words carry a kind of life-defining finality that makes Kara hum and Shadow bow his head. They both know the feeling, after all. It would be hypocritical of them to contradict Batman on that point, even should they want to.

“Well,” Shadow says at last, “thank you anyway. If you hadn’t helped—”

“I am usually more on the punitive side of things,” Batman says.

It is not hurried, not urgent...and yet Shadow cannot help the feeling it is meant as a dismissal somehow. Specifically timed to make sure Shadow could not finish his sentence.

“In that case,” he says rather than force his way through the rest of his intended words, “you did well, for someone outside of their comfort zone.”

Shadow grins under his helmet, unable to help himself. His only responses are the warmth of his own breath on his face and Batman’s expression remaining so immobile as to make Shadow doubt the exchange even happened, but he is glad he said it all the same. Shadow’s belief in telling people when they've done well might be primarily a result of Kal’s needs, but that does not make it any less strong, nor is it dependent on Batman acknowledging the compliment. Not that Shadow would have complained if he had, but to each their own.

“Though to be honest, sometimes I wonder if a punitive figure wouldn’t be more useful around here.”

Shadow...tries to be one, sometimes. Well. He tried. Nothing short of a solid beating seems to deter militia members, though, and that is simply not something Shadow is truly capable of delivering. It is not a matter of training, although he is definitely lacking in that area. No; the truth is, for all that Shadow plays at being strong it is just that: a play. An illusion cast on the people who meet him to help things go the way he wants them to. But in his heart of hearts, Shadow, much like Kal, does not have it in himself to rise to the level of violence the militia is ready to use. He does become violent, sometimes, when no other options remain. He does. He also spends a significant amount of time retching, afterwards, and so he avoids physical confrontation as much as he can.

Batman’s gaze on him pulls Shadow off that particular train of thought. The blank whited-out lenses of the man’s cowl have fixed on his face—or his helmet, rather—as if they can somehow divine his secrets through the power of staring alone. Shadow is not sure what it says about him that he finds himself fearing they might succeed.

The silence stretches between them, darkness shivering with the faint echo of their voices. There is a sense of anticipation in the air. Not quite an antsy silence—although Shadow is definitely getting there—but somehow expectant, all the same. It is as though Batman, immobile as he is, manages to project the sense of waiting for more. Of waiting out someone’s nerve, to discover what they want, and Shadow….

“You are about to cave in, aren’t you?” Kara sighs in his ears.

He ignores her, out of necessity as much as personal preference.

“They want to mine the planet’s core,” he tells Batman. “That’s what the Melokariel Proposition is about. The expectation is that this will revive the entire planetary economy and bring some life back into what’s essentially—”

“A decaying former colonial power incapable of accepting its lack of relevance in the modern universe.”

Well. So much for thinking Batman would be delicate about this.

“It is,” Shadow admits nonetheless. “The Independence War’s been over for more than seven hundred years now, yet most of our nobility still acts like that was yesterday. The Wise Council is even worse. There are even people who hope the Melokariel Proposition will help Krypton reestablish its dominion over the galaxy.”

“Only because they have no more sense than tchkay plant,” Kara mutters.

“It may not sound like it,” Shadow tells Batman, trying not to let his helpless grin bleed into his tone, “but El is actually one of the more moderate Principalities.”

“And yet your king is accepting quite a lot of bribes, in the form of gifts.”

“On behalf of his father,” Shadow says. “Kor-El is the Wise King of Thinkers, and he tends to vote with Tsiahm-Lo because they are old friends. People think winning one of their votes means winning the other...but you can’t gift anything to the Wise Kings and Queens directly. It’s against the Council laws. So people work around it. There’s been an increase in the number of gifts Tsiahm-Lo’s family receives, too.”

It took quite a while, confirming that last information. Kor-El lives primarily in Kandor and is hard to meet, even for his closest relative. As for Tsiahm-Lo, he lives on the other side of the planet. Kara has contacts in many places, however, and Kal’s clumsiness is often more helpful than one might think, genuine though it is. The proof, when it came, was a hard blow for Shadow and Support both. Batman, however, takes the news quite well. He has, of course, proven his ability to remain stoic in most circumstances several times over, by now, but the demonstration is no less impressive for it, and Shadow holds in a sigh. What he would not give, for that kind of mastery of himself!

He wondered, once, whether Earthlings were simply much less emotional creatures than Kryptonians. Not every sentient species is created equal where sentiment is concerned, after all. Batman was too kind to Kal, though, and for too long, for it to be faked. Mastery it must be, then, and Shadow can only admire it, knowing he will never be able to grasp it for himself.

“That explains Zor’s remarks,” Batman mutters to himself. Then, a little louder: “What about the Green Lanterns? Why do they have that kind of reputation?”

“You said it yourself,” Shadow explains with a shrug. “Krypton is a decaying ex-colonizer that can’t accept times have changed, and the Lanterns were the ones who beat them. That would be bad enough by itself, but now they’re taking Kryptonian refugees under their protection….”

“And Krypton does not pursue?”

The way Batman asks the question makes it feel like he might already know—or strongly suspect—what the answer is, but Shadow answers anyway:

“The Peace Treaty we signed after the war doesn’t allow them to. Once the refugees are within the Lanterns’ space territory, they’re out of reach.”

“If I did not know you so well,” Kara remarks in Shadow’s ears, “I might believe this history lesson will finish with ‘and that is why you must remain uninvolved’. But you are going to let him keep going with his investigation, aren’t you?”

“I would say you are putting too much faith in that treaty,” Batman says, voice overlapping with Kara’s, “but if your government is already too proud to increase commerce with its ex-colonies when the planet is literally dying, assuming they will be too proud to ask for permission to go and catch their own traitors does not seem that far-fetched.”

Shadow nods. The words are not quite those he would have chosen to explain the situation, but they are accurate enough. It would be futile to dispute them.

“Our main difficulty here is to help those who need to flee to join the escape networks. After that, I’m told things become easier.”

“I take it you are not privy to that part of the operation.”

Shadow shakes his head. “It’s safer if we don’t know too much about the things we’re not directly involved in,” he says. “Besides, the Shadow of El is more useful in the city.”

Batman does not ask any questions, but Shadow knows what he said calls for an explanation all the same...and even if it did not, he is not hoping for Batman to remain uninvolved anymore. This means he will need information, and, well. The story of the Dark Sun and its Shadow is nothing the general public does not know. Even Kara does not protest the decision, though she does remind Shadow he only has about three hours left until the sun rises.

“So what I hear,” Batman says once Shadow is done with this retelling, “is that you are alone in ensuring those who need the Dark Sun can find them safely.”

“Yes,” Shadow says, and winces when Kara yelps in protest. “More or less.”

“Thank you,” Kara says. “’Alone’...what am I, chopped silten?”

Batman seems to ponder the answer for a moment, head bowed over Shadow’s makeshift flashlight. At the mouth of their hiding place, the sky is still dark, but it will not remain so for much longer. Shadow breaks the silence:

“To tell you the truth...I could use your help.”

Batman looks up, sharp and fast, and Shadow makes himself keep his shoulders straight. If nothing else, he will at least be able to tell Kara, truthfully, that he offered a partnership rather than begging for help.

“It seems pretty clear you won’t let go of your investigation, but you know nothing about Krypton—”

“Almost nothing,” Batman corrects. “Kal-El is a fool, but he is not entirely incompetent.”

“You really are not going to defend yourself at all, are you?” Kara sighs, but Shadow only swallows.

It is, he tells himself again, a good thing that Batman thinks so little of Kal. Less risk of discovery, this way. With that in mind, Shadow nods, conceding.

“My point is, you could work on your own, but that would take more time than you’d like. And besides, it would be a waste of energy when we could just as well pool our resources.”

“It sounds to me like I would be the one with the most to gain from that,” Batman says. “More information, more material, a better knowledge of the local culture...what do you get from it?”

“You’re a better fighter than me,” Shadow says, matter-of-fact. “And clearly you’re a skilled detective, or you wouldn’t have progressed as far as you have with a limited Ellon vocabulary. Clearly, there’s a lot you could teach me...and when this is done, the Dark Sun will help you leave.”

Batman and Kara hum at the same time, although not for the same reasons at all.

“I need time to think this over,” Batman says at last, and Shadow nods.

“Fine. But not tonight—dawn’s coming, and there’s something else I have to do before then. Let’s meet here tomorrow night. Two hours after sundown.”

“Very well.”

Together, they walk back to the entrance of the cave, where the crimson glow of the moons is paling, slowly bleeding out of the sky to give way to the orange copper of daylight. Shadow pauses to admire the sight of the mountains to the east, and when he turns back, Batman is gone.

With a grin at the alien’s flair for the dramatic, Shadow shakes his head and strides back toward the city. He does, after all, have a militia lieutenant to call on.

The next night, Shadow arrives at the crevice in the mountain only to find Batman already there, standing at the entrance with his head raised to the sky, the dim light of the moons turning his mouth and chin almost copper. He does not flinch, or indeed react in any way when Shadow steps up beside him, except to say:

“There is conflict between two of your neighboring planets. Leaark and Axor. They wanted an impartial judge, so they asked for our help. I was on my way back when I crashed on Krypton.”

“’Our’ help?” Shadow asks, puzzled. “Is your planet known for its good judgment?”

Kal knows that it is not. Shadow, however, has heard nothing of this place, and must therefore show interest in Batman’s past if he wishes to make use of that knowledge.

“No. Earth does not have political representatives in space. We do have….” Batman’s voice trails off for a moment, as if he were hesitating. The thought is incongruous, knowing what Shadow knows about him, but hesitation it must be, because Batman sounds rather reluctant when he says: “We have a group of superheroes whose reputation reaches beyond the borders of Earth. They are called the Justice League.”

Shadow blinks.

“Isn’t that a good thing? To have so many heroes dedicated to the protection of your people and the defense of justice among them?”

“There are only seven of us, actually. And the name sounds—ridiculous.”

‘Ridiculous’ is, most likely, not what Batman would have said in his mother tongue. Something worse, perhaps? Either way, the sentence leaves him frustrated, the slant of his shoulders familiar from many a language lesson. Shadow smiles at the sight, but takes care to push it out of his voice before he says, “A lot of people here would find it ridiculous, too. I think it sounds quite noble. I’d be glad if Krypton could have something like that.”

Batman looks at him again, lips pinched tightly together, but Shadow does not move. Shadow and Kal-El are very different—for all that they share a body and a mind—but their values are the same, and neither one would be ashamed to admit as much. Batman may find the concept, in its nakedness, to be ridiculous, but Shadow would argue perhaps the problem lies in him rather than in his League’s name itself.

“Mm,” Batman says, rather than answer Shadow’s question. As deflections go, it is far from his best; strangely, Shadow appreciates it all the more for that. “I have given some thought to your offer.”

Now Shadow’s heart picks up, anticipation tingling in the creases of his palms as he waits out Batman’s dramatic pause with bated breath. Eventually, just as Shadow is considering breaking the silence himself, Batman says:

“I find it acceptable. I will help you train and deal with the Melokariel Proposition. And when I ask you to, you will help me leave Krypton, whether this business is finished or not.”

“Of course,” Shadow says.

Kara, he suspects, will strongly disapprove. What good is it, to involve a man who might choose to leave next week? But Batman could have demanded to be let off Krypton right away, and he has not. He would have had every right to it, after more than three months so far from his home. Yet, despite that, he chose to stay on and help. It would be more than unfair for Shadow to ask more of him than that, and so what he does instead is bow his head and say:

“Thank you. I’m looking forward to our cooperation.”

“You might yet live to regret it,” Batman says. “Do you have somewhere we can use to train you?”

“Yes, actually,” Shadow says with a grin. “It’s the reason why I wanted us to meet here. Come with me.”

They make their way back inside the crevice and then further into the mountain, until they reach the first truly significant cave. Their footsteps echo there, every noise magnified until even the small drizzle of water at the back sounds like a river. The space is quite wide, almost large enough to contain Kal-El’s bedroom—far more than they will need to setup sparring mats and physical training equipment. The ceiling is not very high, but it is comfortable enough, and when Shadow’s flashlight touches it the crystals embedded there come alive with cold white flashes.

“This seems acceptable,” Batman says. “From what little I can see.”

“I thought you’d say that,” Shadow replies with a smile. “Just a moment, please.”

It was, perhaps, a tad overdramatic of him to hide the fire figs under a blanket. The effect when he uncovers their glass cases is so magnificent, though, that he feels no guilt about it. He brought only four bushes, but their light is enough to reflect and refract in the overhead crystals and fill the cave with multicolored beams of light, along with a softer and more natural orange glow. White lights will have to be brought in later on, as supplements, but for now this light is enough, and Shadow smiles when he realizes even Batman’s jaw has gone a little slack.

“What do you think?” he asks.

Batman swallows.

“It is...adequate,” he says.

Shadow chuckles.

“Well. Let’s get started, then.”

“If you feel ready.”

All jokes about Batman’s flair for the dramatic aside, he does display a level of intensity even Shadow was wholly unprepared for. For the three hours following his and Batman’s agreement, Shadow does nothing but jump, run, crouch, and crawl all over the floor. Sweat pours out of every pore he has, chafes at his skin under the suit, and by the time Batman is done with him, his limbs feel ready to drop him to the ground at any moment. When he requests a break, he barely even waits for Batman’s permission before he kneels next to the thin stream at the back of the cave and lets the bottom half of his helmet melt away into the rest of the suit, drinking his fill and then some without, somehow, managing to feel like his thirst is quenched.

“I thought you were ready,” Batman says when Shadow is done drinking and back to panting.

There is no apology in the man’s voice, not even an ounce of regret, but Shadow hears the disappointment loud and clear. His fists clench.

“Clearly,” he says, struggling to keep his voice even, “I miscalculated.”

He shouldn’t have. He has seen enough of Batman, by now, to know better. He should have anticipated the hard work, and more—and to tell the truth, he should have been better prepared regardless. The Shadow of El should not let itself be stopped by something so mundane as lack of endurance, and in the privacy of his own mind, Shadow resolves to do better next time. After all, if Batman can do it, why should Shadow not even attempt it?

“How have you even survived all this time?” Batman asks.

The disappointment is gone from his tone now, his voice back to perfect neutrality. Shadow, who has not been naive enough to imagine a neutral tone meant neutral feeling for a long time, asks himself the same question. The suit is many things, after all, but magic is not one of them, and if this training session has proven anything, it is that Shadow must have been much luckier than he had ever thought...that, and that he was right in deciding never to discard the suit for his patrols.

“I’m usually more of a spy than a vigilante,” he tells Batman, breathing still ragged.

He manages, just barely, to keep the apology out of his voice. It does not do much for the blooming sense of inadequacy at the pit of his stomach, but it does preserve the dignity of the Shadow of El. Besides, he is starting to suspect that to apologize for his shortcomings, at this point, would accomplish nothing but driving Batman to push him even harder. Not that it would not be useful! There is, after all, a reason Shadow suggested this partnership in the first place, and contrary to what Batman seems to think, Shadow is fully convinced he is the one who has the most to gain from this endeavor. Batman has full access to the royal library, after all, and Shadow is starting to suspect he could have found his own way back to Earth, given enough time.

Fighting is simply not something one can properly learn on their own.

“Focusing on information-gathering,” Batman is saying, as Shadow returns to his feet, nanobots reshaping into his helmet just in time to hide the last of his chin as he turns back around, “does not mean you can afford to be useless in a fight. Your suit may do a number of amazing things, but it is still nothing but a suit, and you cannot afford to rely on it. You must be able to defend yourself, even if you are caught without it.”

Shadow, feeling like a child scolded for failing to put enough effort into his homework, resists both the urge to protest that he is always wearing his suit—as it is both beside the point and a piece of information best kept between Kara and himself—and the urge to bow his head. There is no time to be self-pitying. He is here to learn, after all. That means taking whatever Batman has to throw at him, and using it to grow. If it also means Shadow must go through more physical drills in the upcoming weeks than he has in his entire life up until now, then so be it.

“Just be careful who you share this with,” Kara teases when Shadow recounts his first training session later in the night, on his way to pick a family up from their home and lead them to the nearest safehouse. “There would be no explanation for your sudden transformation into a high-level athlete.”

Not, of course, that she truly has to worry about that. The only person Kal-El could ever talk to about his progress in martial arts would be Batman, and Batman does not want anything to do with him. Shadow bites down on a peevish retort anyway.

Shadow...keeps up, somehow. He trains with Batman for three hours every evening and emerges from the cave, exhausted and drenched in his own sweat, only to go around the city, gathering intelligence on the militia’s movements, interrogating whoever he can with Batman’s help—and oh, how these conversations go faster with someone who is actually skilled at drawing answers out of reluctant participants!—and leading more and more prospective refugees to the Dark Sun’s safe houses. The Melokariel Proposition was voted into effect three weeks ago, precisely three and a half months after Batman’s arrival on Krypton, and Batman's failure to publicly involve himself one way or the other in that controversy has mostly silenced those at court who whispered that he might be an envoy of Vohc. He almost snorted, when Kal related this news, and chuckled when he shared that tidbit with Shadow later the same day.

Of all the things collaborating with Batman has changed in Shadow's life, receiving regular updates on his own life from an external perspective is, without contest, the strangest. He knows how to deal with being interrogated, both as Shadow and as Kal. Hearing himself described on a semi-regular basis is another thing entirely.

Mostly, though, Shadow struggles. He gains muscle, but loses weight. He fights better, stands straighter in the night. But when daylight comes and he turns the suit back into Kal-El’s lab coats and refined fabrics, his shoulders slouch further than they ever have in his life. It is...fine, at first. Exhausting, yes, but important, and Shadow—he keeps up. He manages. Not brilliantly, maybe, but efficiently, and who cares if Kal suffers for it? Certainly not Batman, and certainly not Shadow. For the first six weeks after Batman started to train him, Shadow manages.

After that, though, the training starts to take its toll. Shadow feels it in his bones, perceives it in the tightness around Batman’s mouth, a sense of defeat hovering around the alien in a way it never has before, in all four and a half months he has been on Krypton. For a while, Shadow tries to believe Kara and entertain the thought that Batman might, perhaps, simply be homesick...but if it were only that, then why not simply ask to go? Or, at the very least, go to Kal, whose eagerness to learn more about Batman’s home planet could not be more pathetically obvious if he tried? No, all the evidence points to Shadow himself being the source of Batman's displeasure.

Gradually, the giddiness he had felt over this arrangement—the beauty of all the things he would learn to do, and do better—fades. Shadow goes through the motions of his and Kal-El’s lives on autopilot, faced with the bitter realization that even he is not enough. There is nothing there—a sham, at the most; an illusion the people of El cling to well past the time it should have been cast aside, merely because there is nothing else to count on. Because they have put too much faith in it, by now, to turn back without consigning themselves to a life of shame. There is nothing there except the thin ghost of a wish, an ideal that could be put to better use by better hands.

Batman could do it. He does not say as much, and speaks little of his own work on Earth to Shadow—but Kal is a timid fool, and there is no danger in sharing secrets with him. Batman could do it; but Shadow cannot, and so he applies himself to helping Batman as best as he can...or, failing that, to making sure he does not hinder the man’s work, at least.

Together, they infiltrate houses and places Shadow would never have dared to take on alone. They scare Kara half to death—or rather, Shadow does. He has yet to reveal her existence to Batman; part of him is still wary of the consequences should someone else find out about her, and another part is disturbingly unwilling to let Batman know he is being observed, when Shadow knows the alien would retreat even more than he already does if he were aware of it. Shadow is unpracticed, at first, and then he is tired and stumbles where he needs to be sure-footed. He muddles through the thick fog of his brain, when he should be sharp and alert, and blinks himself from the brink during patrol.

They are few, these moments, and far between at first. It is like...like Shadow detaches from himself, somehow. Like his soul remains trapped in his head, while the rest of his body moves on with life, a puppet made of empty, mechanical parts, until these divided pieces of him finally reunite in the sweetness of oblivion. These moments, few and far between—until, somehow, they aren’t.

Time numbs Shadow to his own purpose. Caring becomes harder. It takes more effort than it used to, to fear for the people he helps, to mourn for those he loses. It is not so much that they are not important, but rather—rather that everything is important. Stopping the violent expulsion of citizens is important. Gathering evidence of the corruption that led to this predicament is important. Helping those willing to do the work to inform the rest of El of the dangers of mining Krypton’s core is important. Everything is important; everything claws at Shadow’s attention, pulling at his soul until it all blurs into a thick feeling of guilt for his inability to care more...and then Shadow shuts down.

He does not mean to do it. Does not plan to sit at his desk, and blink so slowly two hours have gone by before he opens his eyes again and picks up his pen. He does not mean for Kal to lie on his bed in the morning and think he should go and wash himself, feed himself, read—turn his head away from the ceiling, at the very least, but even that proves beyond his strength, and so Kal-and-Shadow both remain where they are and let time pass them by. Neither part of him means for that to happen, the space where they meet horrified and desperate to stop it, to move, to do anything but—anything at all. But that space where Shadow and Kal-El meet is a sad thing, shriveled and pitiful, and while the days it manages to take over do not, at least, feel like they are spent watching fresh paint dry, they are the kind of days that make both Kal and Shadow regret the numbness.

That part of Shadow—that small, terrified part of him that makes even Kal sound...functional, somehow—wonders with despair how far it will all go. What it will take to wake him up, even just a part of him. It watches as Shadow-and-Kal go through the motions, present but not. He-they go through the motions—must perform with some success, seeing as no one thinks to ask what is wrong with them. Him. Inside, though, it feels more and more like Shadow—like Kal, like both of him—is trying and failing to pry a locked door open with his bare hands. He sleeps. He does what he must at night and during the day, protecting those who count on him and attending what official occasions he is expected to. He does forget to eat, now and then, if nothing pressing requires him to make sure he has some sustenance. It is not a problem.

Or, to be precise: it is not a problem, until Kal faints in the royal family’s private library. He does not mean to faint, much like he has not meant to do many other things. One minute he is looking for a book, somewhat lightheaded, and telling himself he will go lie down as soon as he finds what he needs to prepare for Batman’s Ellon lessons, and the next something deep and dark opens behind his eyes, pulls him down—he blinks, and has to think hard for a minute or two before he realizes the reason that particular green velvet loveseat looks so strange is because it is not meant to be seen with one’s head lying on the ground.

There is a low sound in Shadow—no, Kal. There is no red at his wrist, no warm moisture on his face. He is meant to be Kal. It is just as well. He pushes himself up on his wrists nonetheless, surprised when something on his shoulder forces him back to the ground.

“Stop trying to get up, you imbecile,” a low, rough voice is saying, close to his head, when he manages to recognize words again. “Lie down.”

Kal blinks, head spinning again even as he tries to figure out whether anyone else was present when he—blinked? Fell? It is hard to tell. He remembers where he was before, but it is difficult to understand how he came to be where he is now...wherever that is, exactly. To make sense of what he hears, right now, is beyond his ability. Not that it truly matters, in the end, for before Kal can truly understand what he is being told, a strong pair of arms seizes him under the armpits, lifts him up off the ground—Kal is on a sofa. The green loveseat is nearby, cozy but too small to lie down on in full. Kal closes his eyes, opens them again and focuses on the ceiling when the abyss inside him turns out to be much closer than he thought it would be. He does not try to sit up.

“I called for honeyed tea,” Batman-in-his-Nightwing-suit says when Kal finally manages to find his face. “You need sugar.”

It is quite probable Kal actually does need that. From the feel of things, though, he also needs some ice for his head and a thousand years of sleep. Better yet: he needs to go to bed, and never wake up at all. It is a tempting thought. Burying himself under the covers, forgetting there is a world outside...but that would not be acceptable, of course, for a prince of El. Not even for the pathetic offspring of a lower branch. So what Kal does instead is apologize, squinting when it becomes clear Batman did not understand him.

“I am so sorry,” Kal repeats, to no better result. “Your lesson….”

It takes Kal tremendous effort, to seize control of his own mouth again and force the words into some semblance of shape, but he manages. This time, Batman understands. He does not...scoff. Not truly. He does not roll his eyes either, although a part of Kal is acutely aware that the cowl makes it terribly hard to be certain of that. Besides, the man’s stoic silence gives the strong impression that, though he considers himself too dignified to roll his eyes, a significant part of him wants to. That prompts Kal to apologize again, only for Batman’s mouth to pull downward.

“Do not apologize,” he says, laying a gloved hand on Kal’s clammy forehead. “These lessons are not life-or-death anymore.”

Kal, whose throat and chest feel like someone is trying to squeeze them into some terribly undersized container, manages to keep a hold of himself long enough to say:

“You are right. I suppose you do not need me anymore.”

He remains conscious just long enough to take his tea before sinking into a long-needed nap. In his dreams, Batman stays by his side—brings him water when he wakes up, and pushes the hair out of his eyes as he sinks back into sleep—but when he wakes up, this time in his bedroom, there is no sign that he has been anything but alone.

Shadow groans when Batman pulls him, none too gently, to his feet. He is not, thankfully, dizzy enough to have trouble standing, although it certainly did not help him during the fight. Part of it might be that Shadow has yet to grow used to how much fighting they have to do, these days. It has been six weeks, now, since the Melokariel Proposition was adopted. Five months, almost to the day, since Batman landed on Krypton. Why he remains, Kal has no idea, but he does carry the knowledge of how invaluable Batman’s help is on his shoulders and in his guts, every day.

Barely a night passes, now, without them having to put themselves between people who refused to sell their homes to the first mining companies and those who would intimidate them into leaving. Desperate men and women left everything they had in poorer Principalities to come and work in El, where, they were told, life would be easy and plentiful—and where they are instead welcomed with insults, closed doors, and employers who could not care less what happens to the lowest layers of Krypton’s social strata. Farmers on the outskirts of the city are losing cattle, the noise and dust of the first mining shafts stressing the animals too much for them to remain productive; not to mention the sudden influx of Ellon citizens who can no longer live around the Citadel but still can’t, or won’t, attempt to make their way in exile. All around the Principality, the consequences of the Melokariel Proposition are already proving disastrous, and the only people who seem to care are either unable to act directly, like Kara, or pathetically, impossibly outnumbered, like Shadow and Batman.

Every morning, Shadow comes home with new bruises, new cramps. He sinks into exhaustion and numbness for the rest of the day, and struggles harder and harder to exit itwith every night that passes...he is, overall, not very surprised that the intimidating line of Batman’s mouth seems distinctly chilly tonight. He did not wait to see as much before beginning a familiar litany of self-recriminations, of course. He is, after all, perfectly aware of all that he is doing wrong—perfectly aware of what would have become of that woman, if he’d failed to keep the Kandori soldiers away from her. He is also perfectly aware of what would happen to him, should he fall into their hands, although that at least he could live with. Metaphorically speaking.

The overarching point of all of this is: Batman is unhappy. So is Shadow. How could he not be? He sees what he is doing wrong—how woefully short he falls of upholding the simple standard of making himself useful to the people around him. What is the point of there even being a Shadow, if all he does is add to the mess? What is the point of pretending, of forcing Kal into an ever deeper isolation, if Shadow cannot even accomplish the one thing he has ever truly tried do for his people?

“What in the — is wrong with you?” Batman hisses as he all but drags Shadow away from the safe house they left their rescue in, the foreign word strange and yet perfectly understandable to Shadow’s mind.

Shadow could give Batman a long list, a very long list, of the things that are wrong with him. Long enough to fill the whole trek to their cave in the mountains, and then the rest of the night after that, but they do not have that kind of time. To be honest, Shadow does not have that kind of strength, either. The honest, ugly truth of it is: he is barely even surprised. There had to come a time when he couldn’t fool himself anymore, let alone the people around him. The thought bows his head even as he follows Batman out of the city and into the jagged mountains around them, half his energy focused on putting one foot in front of the other and the other half spent on keeping his spine straight enough to avoid tipping his red suit over the line from majestic to clownlike.

“Shadow,” Batman says again, sterner this time.

Shadow draws a breath in.

“I think I was right, you know. That first night. You’re much better suited for this than I am.”

They have reached the outskirts of the city by now, sharp boulders surrounding them in ever closer ranks as they stride through the mountains. Batman has grown used to the trek in the past few weeks, and he does not trail behind like he did on that first night; but he does leave a step or two between Shadow and himself, and that is something for Shadow to be grateful for. The peace does nothing to soften the silence, though, and with silence comes an ever-lengthening list of things Shadow should have learned by now—should know how to do better, faster. It is a list Kal has been very familiar with for many years, but it is the first time Shadow has had to go through this painful a reading of it, and so he tries to keep it at bay by saying:

“Perhaps Kal-El was right in his description of you. You do seem like you could be Nightwing come again.”

Batman snorts, but there is no humor in it, and he does not wait for the palm of Shadow’s suit to turn into a flashlight before he steps into the crevice under the mountain.

“I know,” Shadow says as he hurries to keep up, “Kal-El is an imbecile, but—”

“Kal-El is looking for meaning where there is none,” Batman interrupts. “He thinks if I am Nightwing come again, I will lead him out of his miserable existence somehow. He is wrong, and you need to get a hold of yourself now, before you start believing the same things.”

He steps into the cave with an angry gesture, the curtain they installed to keep the light in rattling in protest at his abruptness.

“I didn’t mean—“ Shadow starts, but Batman cuts him off in a hiss.

“You nearly destroyed that operation. You cannot slip up like that again.”

It takes a few seconds before Shadow finds it in himself to nod, chastised. He has no excuse for it, he knows, no way to explain his actions except sheer incompetence. He knows—has known since he saw Batman leap off the Citadel—what a true hero should look like. What standards Shadow must be held to, before he can be said to fulfill his purpose. He has tried to meet those standards—he has. But he has fallen woefully short, and it is, perhaps, time he faced the facts and did the last helpful thing he can think of: retire.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

The words sound strange in Shadow’s lower, harsher register. Apologizing does not fit the image of him any more than it would fit Batman. Who would fear someone who apologizes, after all? And isn’t that what Shadow is meant to do? Strike fear into the hearts of those who would harm the people Shadow is meant to protect?

No. It never truly worked like that. No one ever flinched from him the way they flinch from Batman—or Nightwing, as some have called him, no matter how much he dislikes the connection. There was a time when Shadow—when Kal himself, hidden far inside his own heart—could pretend that it worked. Could tell himself he was doing what he was meant to...but perhaps it is best, now, that he finally let go of his illusions. That he start making his decisions with a clearer head. A sounder mind. It is what is best, for everyone.

“Don’t be sorry,” Batman tells him from where he went to crouch beside the little stream, tone far gentler than Shadow deserves. “Be better.”

“But how?”

That...was not meant to come out of Shadow’s mouth. Not where anyone could hear it, at the very least. It is one thing, after all, to know that he is a failure, but it is quite another to beg for Batman’s pity. As if the man did not have far better things to do than to indulge Shadow’s weaknesses in both aspects of his life! But the question did come out, and Shadow cannot take it back. He breathes in, deep and unsubtle, and does not allow his neck to bend, even though his gaze plunges low enough that the tip of his nose and the inside of his helmet are the only things he can see.

Batman, for his part, has frozen. Stunned, probably, that Shadow has the audacity to ask that sort of question. To be that pathetic. It would make sense. Probably.

“I do what has to be done,” Batman says at last. “And if something is a problem, I work at it until it is not one anymore.”

Shadow nods. That makes—a lot of sense, actually. And if he is honest, he knows it would be best for him to leave his whining behind and work on the things that are problems, but...well, the thing is, everything seems to be a problem these days, for Shadow and Kal both. Eating is a problem. Showering is a problem. It is not that he does not do these things anymore. He does. But where such tasks used to be perfunctory, so automatic as to go unnoticed, it sometimes takes him hours to brace himself for the journey from labs to shower, from shower to bed. In the morning, the journey back is just as hard. Neither Shadow nor Kal—to say nothing of the creature in between—has enjoyed a meal in weeks, let alone any kind of activity beside that.

If Shadow were a better man—a stronger man—he would get a hold of himself and pull himself back into working order, but he is not. He is not, and he cannot. He has disappointed Batman tonight, and he will disappoint him again, that much is easy to see. And...it would not be so bad if Sh—if he had known better than to allow his hopes to grow in the first place. It would not have hurt so much if he had remembered that the truth of him lies not in Kal, not in Shadow, but in that dark and shriveled space inside. If he had known better than to let himself think this part of him could possibly hope to rise from the mediocrity clinging to its bones, even to fulfill the only purpose he thought he had. If he had been smart enough not to expect anything more than passable performances, then failing would not have been so painful.

But he did not know better, and the bitterness of reality burns at the corners of his eyes, the edges of his cheeks. It slides down the bridge of his nose and onto his neck without his permission, even as he struggles to keep his breathing even, his voice controlled. There is a cold, grim pride in realizing there is no trace of tears in his voice when he says, “You’re right. I have to—I’ll do better.”

He has no idea how, yet, but he will figure it out. After all, he can hardly do worse.

It takes Shadow more time than usual to climb up the disused elevator shaft, but he does manage it eventually. He collapses at the foot of it with a relieved sigh, thankful for once that Kryo’s security protocols mean he is to survey the top of the stairs and is, therefore, nowhere to be seen. There is too much of a mess in Shadow’s head to bear the thought of a witness. He does not have the strength to deal with it and with his hunit at the same time. Showering, in itself, is an ordeal. He goes through it with mechanical gestures, wiping the snot from his upper lip and the blood from his knee, where the suit’s rearranging circuitry cut him during a false move. When he emerges, he is...slightly less of a walking piece of waste, perhaps. It is a good thing, and, clinging to that, Shadow mostly settles himself down into the hunch of Kal’s shoulders, his more timid intonations. Kal is still unable to stomach the thought of walking as far as his rooms, though, and so once Shadow’s suit has shifted into more princely garments, he alters his course and goes to collapse in the nearest library.

They have entered the small hours of the night, now. Everyone, even Batman will be asleep—or at the very least pretending to sleep. There is little risk of being disturbed, or even found before the household wakes. It leaves more than enough time for Kal to dismiss Kryo and let the suit’s sleeve rearrange into a communication screen to type a quick message saying he is home, safe and sound. The rest of the night hardly matters, and Kal is not planning to discuss it until Kara writes:

What’s wrong?

Kal blinks, display beads blurring in front of him as exhaustion takes over and makes him slouch even further, and raises his knees to his chest until only half of him is even taking any space at all.

Nothing, he types.

You have not been punctuating.

Kal’s nose itches. He sniffles a little, just enough to dislodge the dust stuffing his nostrils. Just enough to try and swallow around the knot in his throat.

I’m fine

Kal. What is it?

Just tired

There is no way to know whether Kara is even looking at her handscreen anymore. She might have gone to sleep, for all Kal knows. She would be right to, even. But much as Kal dreads the turn their conversation has taken, he can’t quite help himself from feeling like a drowning man clutching at a buoy when the material of his sleeve forms into a new line of text:

You have been tired for months, now. Perhaps it is time you allowed yourself some rest.

From what? There is little enough for me to do, here

From your projects. You have been doing nothing but that for weeks on end. Perhaps it is time you stopped following my advice and found something else to do. It would do you good to spend a little more time with Batman.

He has no interest in me

Gods, the self-pity, even in the written words, is unbearable. Kal grits his teeth just seeing it on the screen. Has he not had enough? Has he not shown how pitiful he is often enough already? He should stop here, and he knows it. But instead of bidding his cousin goodbye and going to bed, Kal watches with some horror as his fingers keep typing as if on their own:

He has no interest in shadow either

he is right

Where in the Sixth Heaven is that even coming from? Kara sends back, almost instantly.

Nowhere, Kal tells her. I suppose I am a little

tired

I almost caused our doom tonight

one day, I actually will

I suppose I am tired of wondering if today will be the day

You must be exhausted indeed to say that sort of nonsense, Kara sends after a long pause. You need to take time to rest, Kal. Everyone has their ups and downs, you simply need to pull yourself together.

Kal gapes as the screen, shocked as if by a slap. There are—he does not know that there are words to describe the hollowness gaping in his chest, the pressure around his throat. His eyes burn again, hotter than before. When he breathes in, it sounds ragged. Painful and laborious, like a wounded animal. He forces himself through it—then through another, and another, until he feels composed again, and can...until he is somewhat composed again. Held together as if with gossamer, but composed nonetheless. Adult. Mature. Rational.

He has every intention of being exactly that: of thanking Kara for the advice and going to heed it as soon as possible. But then his eyes catch the words again, and nothing in the world can stop the tears from spilling.

It takes Kal a while to realize he is not alone, caught up as he is in the aching burn of tears down his face. It is as if the world vanished in his sobs, somehow, swallowed whole by a thing Kal should have known better than to let grow so vast—should have known better than to succumb to. He cries, and cries, and cries, and does not notice there is anyone there until a hand settles on his shoulder, light and too tight at the same time as if its owner couldn’t quite tell what sort of pressure would provide the most comfort. Kal shrinks away, at first. He buries his face deeper in the hollow between his knees, arms coming up to cover his head and shield the burning heat of his neck from the rest of the world.

Eventually, though, the tears run out. They leave him empty, wrung out, as if after two days without sleep. In his chest, Kal’s lungs echo with cold wind, a wet and pale feeling where there should be warmth and sun. Despair left with the tears, though, and Kal may be cold but he is also settled, somewhat, mind cleared just enough to make him feel almost coherent as he runs a hand across his face and turns to whoever decided to stay with him. He is perhaps more surprised than he should be, caught somewhere between gratitude and mortification, as he discovers Batman’s cowled face looking down at him with a frown. It seems the Gods have decided today will not be his day.

“Do you feel better?” Batman asks before Kal can think of anything to say, proper grammar still firmly in place.

The shift from talking to Kal like an equal to talking to him with the respect due to a prince greatly improved Batman’s quality of life in the palace, but Kal’s stomach has yet to learn not to drop with disappointment every time it happens. It makes him ache for the night, and the way Batman at least sees Shadow as an equal, if one of little use.

Kal nods, unable to make himself speak. He wants to stay the way he is—to coil tighter and tighter until he disappears and people forget he ever existed at all. To vanish into the night and become...the wind, maybe, or something equally untouchable. His parents would disapprove, though, and the weight of their gazes is on his mind as he gathers what little dignity he has left and forces himself to uncurl. Bit by bit, Kal straightens up, bare feet resting on the plush carpeting, toes digging into the fibers as if he can find strength down there. He is acutely aware of the itch in his face, the splotchy heat in his cheeks. How ridiculous does he look? There is nothing here he can use to fix his appearance, but he cannot help but wonder. At least if he could see himself, he would be able to assess just how disappointed Batman must be in him. Assuming he can still be disappointed in Kal, that is—assuming there is a greater depth to which his opinion of Kal could possibly sink.

There is no point in dwelling on the topic, however, and Kal makes himself take a breath. Batman is going out of his way to give Kal some attention when he cannot possibly want to be doing that. The least Kal can do is to make this encounter as short as possible, and let Batman be on his way.

“Thank you,” he tells the man, relieved when the tremor of his voice does not grow to a full tremble. “I am fine now.”

He cannot possibly look fine. Even without the tears—and those, Batman cannot miss—the lack of sleep must be easy to read in the hollows of his face by now. Kara, he knows, would be marching him to bed at this point, pulling promises of sleep from him before they even reached his bedchambers. Kara has long been familiar with short nights herself, before she even discovered Kal and Shadow were one and the same, but she has always been adamant about sleeping for a six-hour stretch every night, and has never hesitated to bully Kal into following the same rules.

Batman is not Kara, however, and where she would be sending him to sleep, he stands by Kal’s side without a word, solid and surreal in the darkness of the library. The top of his head, silhouetted against the ocher light of the moons, looks like stone, and it seems like he could wait forever for Kal to speak. Perhaps it is the comfort—or threat—of it that makes Kal blurt out:

“Truly, I am fine. Sometimes things are—I am fine. I will take care of this.”

“If that is what you want,” Batman says, voice entirely neutral, hand immobile. “We could also talk, if you would prefer. It does not have to be about...this.”

The carefully nonspecific phrasing makes Kal snort, as he wipes the last of his tears on the heels of his hands and resists the urge to lean into Batman like a tired child. He should be better at this. Batman, he is sure, would never be caught in this sort of state. He is too professional—too controlled—for it.

He did offer, though, and it might be that he is only acting out of pity—a part of Kal thinks, perversely, that Batman might be hoping to have the library to himself, but he shuts it down. It feels somehow ungrateful to listen to that voice for too long. Out of pity or not, however, Batman did offer to listen, and where else is Kal going to find someone to confide in? The only one who would be willing to listen is Kara, but she is busy, and does not seem to realize her advice of pushing through the pain and being normal again will not work for Kal. And, in all honesty, what harm could possibly come of confessing to someone who considers him uninteresting already? If worst comes to worst and the conversation proves unhelpful, well. Kal has learned to deal with that.

“It is nothing,” he says with a small shrug. “It is—I suppose I am...frustrated, sometimes. That I am not—”

It does not feel right to say ‘good enough’. Too self-pitying, too overt a demand for attention. Too desperate a plea for an absolution Kal does not deserve. He changes tack:

“That I do not have a Guild.”

There is a pause, heavy and cold, and Kal bites his lip. Why did he have to say that, and why did he have to say it to Batman, of all people? Crying about his Guildlessness is not going to make Kal sound any less pathetic; quite the opposite. Besides, he chose it, did he not? He could have followed Kara and his parents’ advice and dedicated himself to the learning of a Guild of his choice, and then perhaps...oh, but who is he trying to fool? No amount of work would ever have compensated for an absence of genetic markers, and while Kal might have spared himself some suffering if he had chosen that path, he might as easily have made his life worse. There is no real way for him to know, and, from what he knows, no basis of comparison in Batman’s culture, so what is the point?

“I apologize,” he tells Batman. “I know you do not care for that system.”

The alien has been discreet about this in public, but there was a time when he did not shy away from sharing his opinions with Kal. Even now, as he smiles—or gives the impression of a smile—Batman does not seem overly invested in the topic.

“Evidently, you do,” he says anyway.

There is a short pause, as if Batman were chewing on his words before he adds:

“So does the rest of Krypton. A great deal, from what I understand.”

“They do,” Kal admits, head bowed almost without his consent. “I know I should heed Kara’s advice and ignore them. I know I am too sensitive, but—”

“With...all due respect to your cousin,” Batman says, slipping out of his more formal grammar and into the familiar forms he used to use to talk to Kal, “it seems to me like it is quite flippant of her to call this easy to ignore when she has a Guild to belong to.”

Kal blinks, raising his head to look at Batman again, jaw slack with surprise. Never, in his entire life, has he been told anything like this, and in less than a second his throat clenches again. He breathes through it, and swallows hard.

“I do not—I have no idea what it is like not to have a Guild on Krypton. But I do know how it feels when everyone you meet has been convinced you were an idiot long before they ever met you.”

This time, when Kal blinks, there is a distinctly deprecating grimace on Batman’s lips, as if he has just swallowed something incredibly bitter. Kal understands the sentiment, of course. Of course he does. But the thought of Batman—quite possibly the smartest, most competent person Kal has ever met—being regarded with anything but awe and respect? Let alone the same sort of disdain the rest of Krypton has for Kal? Impossible.

“Please,” Kal says, voice smaller than he likes, “do not feel like you must pretend on my behalf. You—”

“I’m not—” Batman breathes in, deep and long, and when he speaks again his tone is entirely stable: neutral to the point of blankness. “I am not pretending.”

He is controlled, the emotion gone from his voice, and a part of Kal admires that. The rest of him, though, focuses on the tightness of Batman’s jaw. On the way his fingers dug—briefly, but hard enough to bruise—into the meat of Kal’s shoulder. On the way his other hand has clenched into a tight fist. Kal sees all of this and realizes with a dismayed sort of awe, that Batman is, indeed, telling the truth.

“On Earth, I—most people do not...see me as a very smart person. You could say I am something of an idiot.”

“You are not!” Kal protests, more vigorous than he would have anticipated. “I may not have known you long, but—”

“I know,” Batman says, not an ounce of arrogance in the tone. “My point is—just because a group of people deems you useless does not mean you are. Sometimes people are wrong, even as a group.”

Kal’s mouth opens and closes before he can even figure out what he wants to say. It seems, however, that Batman sees something in his expression, because the next time he speaks—quiet, collected, but with what sounds a little like regret in his tone—he says:

“I can be wrong, too.”

Kal clamps his mouth shut at that, teeth clicking together as he lowers his head again. It takes longer to get himself under control this time, more effort to push the words aside and keep them for later examination. Some words—some gifts—cannot possibly be appraised at a glance.

“Thank you,” Kal manages anyway, the words all the fainter for having to squeeze their way through the tightness of his throat.

He gets to his feet, then, breathing fast, eyes burning. He may be able to set Batman’s words aside, but his heart cannot, and despite Batman’s noise of protest—or what Kal thinks, hopes, is a noise of protest—he bows in gratitude.

“It is late, and I do not wish to impose on you any further,” he says. “Thank you for your kind words. Good night, Batman.”

This time, the alien does not try to stop him. Kal makes his way back to his apartments on quiet feet, one hand pressed over his mouth, and cannot quite tell what sort of tears he spills as he cries himself to sleep.

Batman spends more time with Kal, after that night in the library. It is...awkward, in a way their language lessons never were. Part of it is that it is impossible to disentangle the sudden resurgence of interest from what felt like one of the most humiliating encounters of Kal’s life; but another, not insignificant part is also that Batman himself does not quite seem to know what he is trying to do. Or rather it feels like he is trying to help, but does not quite know how to go about it, as if his kindness were a long-unused muscle he has not yet figured out how to train. The thought is touching, and Kal knows to appreciate the sentiment—he does! But there is a sense of purpose in these encounters, a feeling of reaching for a definitive goal, that wasn’t there back when they simply exchanged ideas and asked questions about each other’s culture.

Kal is grateful for Batman’s help. He is. But quite aside from the fact that every one of their conversations makes it more obvious that Batman is better suited to leadership positions—much as the Nightwing associations continue to chafe at him—there is also a part of him that misses the days when Batman treated him not as a mission, not as someone to fix, but as a friend.

Still, they continue on, and it is soothing to have someone to talk to again. Not as much as it used to be—not nearly enough to compensate for all of Kal’s shortcomings, both in and out of Shadow’s costume—but enough at least to lull him into a sense of—of misplaced optimism. Just enough for Kal to think that maybe, if he gives himself enough time, he will manage to fix his flaws. To stop being sorry, and start being better.

Life, as it is wont to do, proves him wrong less than two weeks after the incident in the library, the night before his thirtieth birthday.

He knew—from the very start, he knew his poor sleeping habits would become a major problem, given time. He knew this, and still he refused to do what needed to be done, too worried about the dangers of sleeping medicines to accept that they were the only solution to his problem.

Now Shadow is running after a group of Kandori soldiers, the data sticks in their pockets containing enough information to bring down a significant portion—if not all—of the Dark Sun’s escape routes, and he is losing ground. His lungs burn with the effort of keeping up with Batman, or at the very least keeping the alien in his line of sight; his legs scream in protest with every movement. By his sides, his arms pull at his shoulder blades as if to split him in half. He is drenched with sweat under the suit, panting for breath even as he calls out Kara’s directions as to where to find the people they pursue, grateful that she is here to keep track of his suit’s readings when he is too exhausted to focus on anything but the chase.

Several feet ahead, Batman is all but flying. Every line of his body screams competence, confidence. Earlier, when the Kandori soldiers split up—two leaving, while the other three remained to take care of the so-called terrorists—Batman was the only reason Shadow got out of the fight at all, let alone unscathed. Even now, when the soldiers make a wrong turn and shove themselves into a dead end, it is Batman who catches up with them first, all but gliding into immobility. What his uniform is supposed to represent, Shadow does not know; but he cannot blame the two Kandori for recoiling from it, both the color and the shape far too reminiscent of Nightwing—and, by extension, the wrath of Vohc—to leave any Kryptonian indifferent. Even Shadow shivers as he takes his place by Batman’s side.

“Kal, you have to sit this one out,” Kara warns in his helmet. “Your readings—”

“I don’t really have a choice,” Shadow mutters between two heaving breaths.

To his left, Batman gives him a sharp look, but does not speak. Shadow allows himself two more lungfuls of air before he speaks in Kandori:

“Give us the data. We will let you go unharmed.”

Neither of the soldiers answer, but one of them spits on the ground. No need to translate that. On Shadow’s left, Batman stiffens.

“Kal, please,” Kara insists, just as Batman says:

“Fine.”

Batman jumps into the fight without hesitation. Behind him, Shadow scrambles—grapples with one of the soldiers to pull her off Batman’s back. Lands in a puddle with a hiss. Rolls back to his feet. When he raises his head, the soldier—a captain, her uniform says—is smirking at him. Why shouldn’t she? Batman is busy, and Shadow has already demonstrated he is not up for this fight. He braces himself when she comes for him. Dispatches the material of one baton to reinforce the suit. He ducks a punch. Catches another in the shoulder; the suit absorbs it. But not the third, or the fourth. He falls to his knees.

“Kal!” Kara calls out in his ears.

He shakes his head.

“Kal, get up!”

He tries to obey. Under him, his knees refuse to move. When the electrified knife comes for him, he does not know how he dodges it. A roll of his shoulder, a ripple of his suit. A lucky swing. The soldier falls to the ground with a cry. Shadow drags himself to his knees. Strikes her in the stomach with a baton while her partner passes overhead and crashes into the nearest wall. He is wearing a corporal’s uniform.

“Nightwing,” he tells Batman, gesturing to the woman even as he tries to hold her to the ground, “the data—”

“You have a bigger problem,” Kara warns.

Inside the helmet, the bead display morphs into an arrow and the words ‘danger, multiple unknowns’.

“Shadow!” Batman barks as he catches the soldier’s electrified knife seconds before it hits Shadow in the face. “Pay attention!”

“There’s more coming,” Shadow gasps in return, head turning to the right again. “We need to go.”

“I have the sticks.”

Batman pulls the woman’s handcuffs off her belt and forces her wrists into them. The man, still struggling to even sit up, they leave alone as they hurry out of the dead end, only for a loud, angry cry to echo through the streets.

“Shit,” Batman hisses.

From the corners of his eyes, Shadow counts six soldiers—three Ellons, three Kandori—and swears in turn before he catches Batman’s cape and they take off into a mad dash through the streets.

“We have to get to the roofs,” Batman yells.

Shadow does not answer. There is not enough breath left in him for it. He runs, lungs burning, legs aching, arms screaming, and prays to Rao to send something, anything to help them—prays to Vohc to spare Batman, at least, to leave El and Krypton a fighting chance in the near future. What he gets instead is a long series of bright blue riffle lights, and a piece of stone crashing into his helmet as he drags Batman into the nearest side street, relief coursing through him when he spots an emergency ladder, eight feet up in the air.

“Support,” he gasps as he steps into Batman’s hands to reach the bottom of the ladder, “we’re going to need extraction!”

“You had reinforcement this whole time?” Batman exclaims under him.

“I have your position,” Kara retorts, a rustling sound echoing behind her, “but you need to get to the mountains!”

“On the way,” Shadow manages.

Every inch of him protests when he jumps from the roof he and Batman emerged on to the next, muscles straining past what he ever thought was possible; but they have no other choice. He has no other choice. Every gap between houses is too wide, every roof too slick—but still he jumps, and catches himself, and scrambles up because if he does not, he will die. Roofs explode around them, the militia’s rifles blasting ancient walls into rubble, and with every one of them Shadow’s panic rises, his heart beats faster, his jumps grow messier.

“Nearly there,” Batman shouts.

He must have guessed where they are going. Shadow nods under his helmet. Pants, gasps, scrambles to the very last roof, and, without hesitation, dives into the air. The suit rearranges around him, carries him farther than he could ever have hoped to go on his own. Shadow shouts in joy when a bug lands less than a yard away from them, the bright blue of its engines shining like a small sun in the night.

“Shadow, get down!”

There is the dull sound of a body throwing itself to the ground. A bright blue flash, from behind. Shadow falls, the breath stolen from his lungs. Behind him, a cry of triumph, and then the shrill scream of sound cannons echoing over the mountains. Shadow gasps, tries to breathe, to shield his ears, to move, but he can’t, he can’t, it hurts too much, he can’t—

He cries out again when Batman seizes him. The world falls away, the loud, harsh sound of his ragged breathing filling his helmet until he can’t hear anything else. His vision goes gray, then black, then gray again. By the time he manages to focus on anything else, he is lying on the ground at the back of the bug, wind screaming past him through the open doors. Overhead, Batman is pawing at his shoulders, his neck.

“Come on,” he growls, something odd in his tone, “there has to be a way—”

“Excuse me,” Kal says, forgetting to adopt Shadow’s lower timbre, “may I help you?”

Batman freezes. Stares at Kal’s helmet through the cowl, hands and mouth gone slack. Kal coughs, and orders the suit to initiate its wound management protocol. He yelps when the first nanobots gather on the burnt flesh itself, hissing and biting his lip as the pilot tells them they are only five minutes away from their departure point.

“Departure point?” Batman asks.

Kal barely hears him through the rush of his blood in his ears. Half his skin crawls with the rippling movement of the suit, nanobots pulling away from unnecessary areas—his batons, first, then his helmet—to put pressure on the wound and reinforce the armature around Kal’s legs, his lower back. His head falls back and hits the ground when he loses support to his neck.

“No—ow—no material in—”

“But the Palace!” Batman shouts—Kal think he hears their pilot gasp. “There must be a doctor, a—anyone! You cannot have been working without some kind of safety—”

“Support—on the way,” Kal manages, struggling to keep his eyes open now that the blood loss is making itself known. “Not a doctor.”

“Then someone else!” Batman hisses.

Again, that tension in his words. Something in his voice...if Kal did not know better, he would be tempted to call it anguish. On Kal’s behalf. How unexpected.

“It’s okay,” Kal says, distantly relieved when his voice remains steady.

He knew this could happen. From the very first day, he knew. There is no surprise, here, except the absence of tears in his voice, the utter dryness at the corners of his eyes. Perhaps it is the pain that swallows them. Perhaps his body, trying so hard to pull him into oblivion, does not have the strength for them. Regardless, his voice is steady, and it remains steady when he says:

“I’ve been curious about Earth for a long while now.”

A short silence, while Batman absorbs Kal’s words and then, in English:

“You utter reckless idiot!”

“Batman—”

“Do not ‘Batman’ me!” Batman almost shouts, back to Ellon now. “What kind of stupid idea—”

The bug lands, lurching to a stop with a hiss as its grips anchor it to the mountainside. Inside the suit, Kal’s entire left side throbs, and he loses himself in the pain.

He opens his eyes to a higher ceiling and no wind, no smell of grass, no red moonlight around him. There is the soft feeling of a mattress under him and, to the right, someone tall and blonde working the controls of a healing pod. The suit still presses down on the wound, but even with it Kal’s vision remains frightfully gray. With a terrible effort, he gasps, and Kara turns—she pushes one last lever and, in a hiss of machinery, strides toward Kal and stands by his bedside. Her cheeks glisten.

“I was afraid you would leave without saying goodbye,” she says with a shiver in her voice. “Not that they should be very long—you have lost rather a lot of blood.”

There is a loud click, and the cot under Kal buzzes to life, the vibration strong enough to make him wince—to make him gasp, grasping for a breath that isn’t there, that won’t come, and his eyes widen with fear. Kara’s hand on his brow feels warm, almost too warm, and Kal leans into the touch with a sigh. He wants to stroke Kara’s hand—to hold her fingers one last time, but when he tries it feels like his arm has turned into a mix of lead and rubber, and all he succeeds in doing is making his hand flop out of the bed. He heaves a breath in.

“Kara….”

Kara’s face, haloed in golden blond in a sea of dark greens and near-black grays, squeezes tight, her eyes shining. Her hand leaves a burning trail from Kal’s forehead to his cheek.

“Oh, Kal,” she says, and breathes in hard.

Under him, the cot vibrates harder, and someone moans. It takes Kal a moment to realize that it is him.

“Batman is starting the ship, now,” Kara says the effort she makes to keep her voice steady pitching it much higher than normal. “Kryo will help him pilot. You will only have to say in the pod and heal.”

There will be no last look at Krypton, then. No sight of the mountains from above; no image of the Citadel, red against the darkness of El’s mountains, to treasure in Kal’s exile. Kal tries to take a breath—it feels like swallowing seawater and makes his throat tight, makes his eyes hurt. For the first time tonight, tears come to him, unbidden.

“You will be fine,” Kara says above him. “You will survive, and you will heal. And you will write to me.”

“Kara,” Kal manages.

It is more whine than word and it hurts—it hurts so much, tearing at the back of his throat, squeezing his lungs. Tears burn at his temples, tracing a searing path from his eyes to his hairline, and when Batman and the anonymous pilot come to move Kal’s bed toward the pod, panic seizes every last inch of him.

“Kara,” he repeats, “please, I don’t—”

His throat closes before he can finish his sentence, but she understands, Kal is sure of it. For years, Kal has told himself leaving Krypton would be a boon, his one chance at building a better life for himself. The only way for him to find a place he could fit and belong in. Now that moment is here and his heart recoils—clings to the steep slopes and the sharp edges of El’s mountains, the red light of the two moons. The northern winds, cold and deadly, and the smell of elderfir on the warm air of summer nights. Countless days spent sitting on a balcony, looking at El from above and pretending he could see Ul, far in the South. There will be no more of that for Kal, no more of anything; and here, at last, at the edge of leaving, he finds himself sobbing for a loss he never truly believed would pain him.

“Be safe now,” Kara tells him as the two men transfer Kal onto the pod’s bed. “Be happy, if you can.”

She presses a bruising kiss to Kal’s forehead, and he wants to answer—wants to look at her one last time and keep this, at least, in his heart. There are too many tears in his eyes now, fear gripping his heart too tight to leave room for anything else, and he squeezes his eyelids shut against the bright white light of the pod.

The last he sees of Kara is barely more than a small blonde dot in his peripheral vision.