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“Bruce, just listen to me, please. You can’t go on like this.”
Clark is aware that he’s practically begging at this point, something desperate and fragile in his tone, but he’s at his wits’ end.
He knows Bruce is grieving; that losing a child is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person, but the way Bruce is acting as of late…it makes Clark fear that he will have to attend another funeral very soon, and he simply can’t sit by any longer and watch as his best friend destroys himself.
His fervent words are met with the cold, impassive lenses of the cowl, Bruce’s mouth a straight line, his posture rigid, and Clark feels his heart sink at the lack of a reaction.
“If you have nothing more to say pertaining to the mission, this meeting is over,” Batman says, his tone flat and dismissive.
And it is Batman talking to him, not Bruce. Clark hasn’t seen Bruce, the real Bruce, since he had stood on the grounds of Wayne Manor six months ago and watched as a too small coffin had been lowered into the earth, something dying in Bruce’s eyes with every drop of heavy soil onto the polished wood.
Since then there had only been Batman and his ever growing rage and recklessness.
Batman stands up, not even sparing Clark a last look as he marches out of the conference room and towards the zeta tubes.
He’d return back to Gotham, to a house where a butler was fruitlessly trying to keep his son alive even though he was struck down with grief himself, where a child’s bedroom sat empty and untouched. He would go back out into the night, alone and without any care for himself, and one of these nights he wouldn’t return home.
It may not be this exact day or the next, but Clark is absolutely certain that Bruce will get himself killed and that is something he simply can’t stand by and watch.
Clark hadn’t been there when the bright fifteen-year-old he had loved like his own had been beaten to death, scared and alone, far away from his home and family, and this failure weighs so heavy on him he sometimes doesn’t know how he can still stand upright. Failing Bruce now…he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed that to happen.
When Clark makes it to the zeta tubes he only just sees the bright glow recede and without thought he steps into another one, inputting the commands for the Batcave. He doesn’t know what more he can say to Bruce to get through to him, but he at least has to try.
The Cave is jarringly dark and cold after the well-lit interior of the Watchtower and the first thought on Clark’s mind is how much the space has turned into a tomb without the flashy colours and cheerful quips of one of the Robins there to lift the gloom.
Now there is only Batman, who seems to actively embrace the darkness, who is slowly becoming a part of it while the man underneath the mask disappears a little more each day.
Batman is already looking at Clark when he steps out of the zeta, and for the first time in a long while he can see emotions flicker across his friend’s face as he closes the distance between them.
Clark can read annoyance in the downturn of Bruce’s lips and anger in the tight coil of his muscles, but any reaction right now is better than the blank impassivity of the last few months.
If it takes a confrontation between them for Bruce to finally face his grief then Clark would gladly bear the brunt of it, would take whatever Bruce had do dish out in order to start to heal - Clark would take anything if it meant he didn’t fail his best friend the way he had already failed Jason.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” Bruce says, voice hard and forbidding, but he should know that Clark isn’t so easily intimidated.
“I wasn’t finished earlier.”
“I was,” Bruce replies as if that’s all there is to it, turning around and beginning to walk away from him.
Clark doesn’t plan on doing it, doesn’t even really notice that he is moving until he has grabbed Bruce’s arm and spun him back around to face him.
“Let go of me,” Bruce growls, his tone icy, and there is something lurking underneath, the rage that has been burning through him for months just barely held in check.
“No,” Clark replies, firm and resolute. He won’t back down this time; this is too important.
“Superman, I said-“
“I won’t let you go until you listen to me, Bruce.”
Clark expects to be ordered to let go. Expects fury and harsh words directed at him, cutting in the way that only Bruce can manage. Expects maybe even an attack, some kryptonite Bruce surely has on his person used against him to force him into backing off. He expects anything but not the sudden way in which Bruce deflates, his voice empty when he says “Then talk.”
For a moment Clark flounders in the face of such easy acquiescence. This isn’t the Bruce he is used to, who could drive him nuts with his relentless counter-arguments and pig-headedness and over-preparedness and…
And that is exactly the problem: this isn’t the Bruce he is used to.
The man standing in front of him is a mere shell of himself, an echo, a shadow, and if Clark doesn’t get through to him, soon his best friend will be gone entirely.
“Bruce,” Clark begins, trying to come up with the right words and somehow knowing that this is his last chance. If he can’t get through to Bruce now his best friend would most likely be dead within a month.
“Bruce, I’m worried about you. You’ve become reckless, you’ve been injured a lot more, you don’t eat or sleep or even take off the suit most days. Please Bruce, you can’t go on like this, you have to take care of yourself. I know you’re still grieving but the solution isn’t to get yourself killed too. Jason wouldn’t want that.“
Clark knows the instant those last words leave his mouth that they were the absolutely wrong ones. Where Bruce has been passive and almost docile he snaps to attention in an instant, his spine stiff and fists balled at his sides.
“Don’t talk about him,” Bruce hisses, the fury in his voice enough to make even Clark take a step back. “Jason doesn’t want anything anymore, because he is dead, Clark. My son is dead and you don’t get to use him like that, do you understand me?”
All Clark can do is nod, swallowing as he tries to find his voice again.
“Okay,” he settles on eventually, keeping his voice as calm as possible, “okay Bruce. But there are other people who care about you. What about Dick and Alfred? They need you, Bruce. They can’t lose you too.”
That at least has the intended effect of making Bruce settle back down, the aggression draining as fast from his body as it had come.
Still though, when Bruce just says “They know the risks of this life. They can go on without me.” Clark wants to scream, wants to hit something, wants to shake this man and make him see sense.
“No, they wouldn’t! They’d be devas-” Clark begins fervently, the words breaking out of him, and then he just stops, because…because did he just hear someone scream nearby?
He tilts his head to the side, the motion not really necessary but so ingrained in him to let his teammates know that he is using his super-hearing that he automatically employs it.
As such Bruce stays silent, but he also turns away, no doubt using this opportunity to end their conversation as he strides towards the Batcomputer.
Clark would stop him, tell him that they aren’t done, if he wasn’t listening so intently. He could have sworn he heard…There!
It is faint at first, the voice he hears sounding scratchy with disuse and slurring a little as if drunk, but there is definitely someone yelling close by. The more Clark concentrates the better he can pinpoint the sound, and the moment the words coalesce into something meaningful a chill runs down his spine – because it isn’t words the person is yelling, no, it is a name. One single, desperately yelled name.
“Bruce,” Clark echoes that voice, his eyes wide as he stares at his friend.
Bruce doesn’t even turn around to look at him, obviously intend on ignoring him from now on so he can get back to his self-destructive spiral, but Clark isn’t having any of it anymore.
He’s across the Cave in a heartbeat, the sound of Jason crying out for his father ringing through his head, of fists thumping dully against mahogany, of breaths getting sharper with panic and desperation.
Clark doesn’t know if he's losing his mind, but if what he's hearing is true he would never forgive himself if he didn’t act right now.
Bruce lets out a startled “What are-“ when Clark grabs him, but before he can say anything else they are already outside, in front of three gravestones that belong to people who were taken too early from this world.
Clark doesn’t even register that it is raining, that it’s the middle of the night, that the ground is muddy and slick, he simply drops to his knees and begins to dig with his bare hands. A distant voice in his head questions whether getting a shovel wouldn’t be faster, but he can’t bring himself to stop digging for even a second to go get one.
Then a not so distant voice asks, “Clark, what are you doing?”
Bruce sounds horrified and belatedly Clark realizes that he hasn’t told him yet, that Bruce doesn’t know yet that his son is alive and calling for his father.
“He’s alive, Bruce. Jason is alive and trapped in his coffin,” Clark yells, and he knows he must look like a lunatic, covered in mud and still digging with his bare hands.
“Clark,” Bruce says so softly that even he can barely hear it over the pouring rain, “that’s not…please Clark, don’t…”
He knows in this moment that it will break Bruce if they open that coffin and Jason isn’t alive in there. But Clark also knows what he is hearing and that is a terrified teenager begging for his father.
“I swear on my parents, Bruce,” Clark says, looking up and meeting those flat lenses, “he’s alive and calling for you.”
The words haven’t even fully left Clark’s mouth before Bruce is beside him in the hole, digging just as desperately. With Clark’s speed and strength it doesn’t take long before they are deep enough that even Bruce can hear the sound of flesh hitting wood, of Jason’s voice calling out his name over and over again.
“I’m here,” Bruce yells back, his voice nearly cracking as the dull thumps stop all of a sudden, “I’m here, Jay. I’m getting you out.”
The second it is visible Clark digs his fingers into the coffin’s lid and wrenches it open and despite hearing him for minutes, the moment he lays eyes on the living, breathing teenager inside he could swear his heart stops.
“Jay,” Bruce cries out, and he sounds just as torn open as Clark feels. “I’m here, son. I’m here.”
Jason is blinking up at them, tears staining his cheeks and blood crusting his hands where he is shielding his eyes from the sudden light, but at the sound of Bruce’s voice he instantly surges upwards, beginning to sob uncontrollably as he cries out "Dad."
Bruce meets him halfway, his arms engulfing the boy as he hugs him tight against his chest, Jason in turn clinging just as desperately to him, and with a shove Bruce gets rid of the cowl and presses his face into Jason’s curls.
Clark can tell that they are both crying, can hear the quiet whispers Bruce murmurs into Jason’s hair, the promises to never let him go again, the assurances about how much he loves him.
He feels like an intruder for witnessing such a scene, but he cannot make himself look away, his need to make sure that Jason is really okay too great.
Eventually though Bruce looks up, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy but still filled with happiness unlike anything Clark has seen on him in the last six months. When their gazes meet Clark feels caught, as if he should apologize for bearing witness to this moment, but before he can say anything Bruce is already speaking.
“Thank you,” he says, and it sounds so honest and heartfelt that Clark has to blink back the tears that are suddenly in his eyes. “Thank you, Clark.”
Clark just nods, unsure if he could even speak past the lump in his throat. Instead he reaches out and lets his hand rest softly against the back of Jason’s head, stroking gently through the curls with his thumb and revelling in the warmth of the living teenager before him.
“I’ll always look out for your boys, Bruce,” Clark says, repeating an old promise and watching with a smile as Jason turns his head a little more into the contact.
He might have failed Jason once six months ago, but now he had a chance to make up for it and he would rather die than fail him again.
He’d listen for the rest of his life if he had to; he’d never fail to hear him again.