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1. Arthur
By the time the situation in Amnesty Bay is taken care of, the sun has begun to set over the Atlantic and the water reflects dark amber and gold.
The mess has mostly been cleaned at that point, but the League don’t seem to be in a hurry to leave. Bruce turns his attention to Arthur, in particular, whose gaze is longingly fixed on the lighthouse that stands on the cliffside of the port.
Over near the docks, the boy who has been introduced to them as Aqualad is hanging precariously over the side of fishing boat, ripping open the nets.
Arthur had introduced him as his son, but the two of them look nothing alike. The boy’s hair is dark and neatly kept where Arthur’s is blonde and freely flows over his shoulders, and his eyes are a curious shade of purple unlike Arthur’s sea blue. It’s not the strangest thing Bruce has seen — not by a long mile since they founded the League — but it is something without explanation, and that’s enough to pique his curiosity.
Part of the League is stood on the pier, presumably to keep an eye on the child who’s over the shore, though Arthur’s eyes are still transfixed on the rocky cliff. Oliver, whose hood has since fallen from his head after he got drenched in sea spray, slowly approaches the Atlantean’s side.
“He gets his looks from his mother, then?” Oliver asks, not usually one for subtlety in the company of friends.
At the very least, that’s what Bruce assumes they all are, since there’s no real commitment keeping any of them here.
“What?” Arthur blinks, his head turning quickly, like he’d just woken from a dream.
After a second, he shakes himself, a fond smile taking over his face, “Oh, no. He’s not mine.” At the confused silence that follows, he amends, “Not biologically. Not that it really matters.”
“I didn’t know Atlantis had a foster care system.” Bruce says, because this is something he feels a comfortable expertise about.
Arthur’s answer is short; “We don’t.”
Then, with a long sigh, he continues, “His parents abandoned him. I adopted him on…” he motions his hands out to the coast around them, “On land law.” He scratches his chin, “Atlantis doesn’t work like that.”
“Whoever left him out like that must’ve been a real piece of work,” Oliver grumbles, and to Arthur his nods his head towards the boat, “He’s a good kid.”
“I know,” Arthur smiles. It seems to quell whatever moodier feeling was overtaking him, thinking about his homeland.
Bruce makes a mental amendment; presumably his homeland. He seems to have some connection to here, too.
All of a sudden everything seems too close, too personal, beyond the masks. The League had made promises never to violate each other’s civilian lives and yet Bruce feels that standing here he is stepping over all the boundaries.
Arthur was fine saying it, though.
“I’ve, uh, adopted.” Bruce blurts out in a moment of compulsive thinking.
The two heroes stood slightly ahead turn towards him sharply. Oliver with his arms crossed and Arthur with his eyes widened.
“You have kids?” Arthur says.
Suddenly the sentimental haze they’d all shared before is broken. Bruce feels frozen in place.
“Um.” He swallows. He’s Batman, he’s not afraid of a little social interaction, “Yes. Two boys. Nine and fifteen.”
Oliver seems to relax a little more, the initial shock bleeding into amusement,“They from a foster home?”
“No,” Bruce shakes his head, “I — Nightwing watched his parents die in front of him, and Robin, well — his living situation wasn’t safe.”
“Wasn’t planned. It kind of just happened?” Arthur summarises.
“Exactly.”
Oliver hums. He’s got Bruce’s least favourite look on his face, the one where it means he’s flip-flopping between the decision to point something out or leave it alone. The latter, if it can make Bruce squirm, he never usually does.
Finally, he says, “So if I go home and look up ‘Batman’, I’m gonna see two miniature vigilantes at your side?”
Bruce doesn’t answer, but his grimace betrays enough.
Oliver and Arthur break out into laughter.
“Well, Mr. ‘I Work Alone’, you are full of surprises.”
2. J’onn
The meeting concludes slowly, and painfully. Bruce doesn’t rise from his seat like he’d usually do when it’s over.
Instead he stays seated, only that invisible string that was keep him postured snaps and he falls slightly forward, face into his palms. He digs his fingers underneath the cowl, trying to massage his scalp without pulling at the kevlar. He wants to tear the cowl off his head, but it isn’t the time nor the place. He’d hate for the League to meet the real him now.
It’s hard. Everything is hard, unjustly so. Bruce wants to curl into a ball and hide away from the world. He wants to retreat to somewhere he cannot go; a moment from months before, a book in his hands and his youngest son, sleeping on his shoulder. But Jason’s presence won’t leave him, not like his being did.
In the midst of whatever inner turmoil makes his body feel like it’s collapsing in on itself, he almost misses the feeling of a hand on his shoulder.
“Batman?” A voice calls. The weight of the hand on his shoulder grows heavier.
Bruce emerges from the small sanctuary he’d caved himself in — his eyes and mind shielded from the world by only the palms of his hands and his eyelids — and turns to see J’onn standing over him, red eyes creased into something alike concern.
“Are you alright?” He says.
Bruce suppresses a groan. He does not want to entertain anyone’s company at the moment, nor does he want to have to go through the pain of explaining his loss, the pain of listening to sounds of pity. He wants to be left alone. He wants to be back where he used to be, or not be acknowledged anywhere at all.
“I’m fine,” he growls, and leaves it at that.
He expects J’onn to take it as a sign to leave. The man is an empath beyond telepathic abilities, after all. Bruce envies his easy understanding of others. Instead, he takes a seat next to him, and leans slightly into his space.
“I know you are not comfortable with me looking through your mind,” he begins quietly, “And I would never purposefully betray you that way, but the pain you’ve been projecting these last couple days is so loud it is impossible to ignore. Perhaps even more so since I recognise the same brand of pain inside myself.”
Bruce leans back in his chair slightly, uncomfortable. He feels raw and exposed.
“You know?” He asks hoarsely.
“I understand.” J’onn corrects. His gaze slips somewhere over Bruce’s shoulder, and he wears a faraway look that Bruce knows means he is thinking about his home planet.
Of course he understands, Bruce realises. He’s lost so much more.
“I know my fear of fire may seem irrational to you all. I would like to argue it is instinctual, but it is partly emotional, too. H’ronmeer’s Curse took everything from us. The fire eats every last thought until your mind devolves into chaos. I hate to think about what pain K’hym would have felt, in her last moments. She was young to bear it.”
“K’hym?” Bruce echoes.
J’onn’s mouth curls into a frown. Suddenly his green skin and large orbital ridge don’t matter. He looks very human.
“My daughter.” Is his answer to the unspoken question, though Bruce could’ve guessed it already.
It’s still hard to hear.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His throat feels dry.
“So am I,” J’onn brings his hand to rest on Bruce’s shoulder again, more firmly, “If you ever need to confide in somebody who has.. an understanding of your pain, I am here.”
“I see,” Bruce swallows.
Aside from the pair, the room is empty. In the endless vacuum of space, the Watchtower is too quiet.
“Thank you.”
3. Oliver
The penultimate reason Bruce sorely regrets ever telling his peers his secret identity is occasions like this. A night of mock espionage encased in hours of meaningless chatter and empty pleasantries.
Then again, he reconsiders, no gala has ever been quite as interesting as this one.
Most of the League are here in their civilian identities. Bruce and Oliver as contributors to the charity in which the event is for and as general high society, Clark as press, Barry as Iris’ date, Hal as Carol’s date, and Diana as the Princess of Themyscira which has provided… a very large distraction.
He had greeted her warmly when he arrived, perhaps flirted as much as the public would expect him to, but they cannot truly speak to one another. Bruce does not have an excuse to speak to the majority of the League as if he knows them, and it’s proving more difficult than he originally expected it to.
He spends most of the night drifting to Oliver’s side as a result. It’s much less unusual for the two of them to be seen together, given their well-known status as childhood friends. But Bruce isn’t so arrogant that he can’t admit he hadn’t been taken aback at the man Oliver had grown into since his disappearance, once he had initially figured the Green Arrow’s identity out.
Watching Oliver play the role of the floozy he had been years ago all night only further serves to highlight the drastic change between him and his past self. It makes Bruce grit his teeth whenever Oliver laughs at something he’d normally scoff at, or offer a consolidating smile to a grating comment instead of a rational counter-argument.
Bruce expects the rest of the night to play out the same way. At the moment, he and Oliver are in the inner circle of a large crowd that’s gathered teetering just at the edge of the dance floor. There’s been sugar-coated smiles and touches of promise, but Bruce hasn’t taken anyone out to dance. He’s in a quite sour mood.
Oliver, on the other hand, is entertaining the crowd in a way not too dissimilar to a showman. He gets laughs and witty responses at all the right places, and it makes Bruce content just to watch.
Miss Thompson, a recently widowed woman who also graduated from Oliver and Bruce’s private school, giggles into a glass of wine as Oliver concludes his story, “Honestly, Queen, the places you end up… I can’t imagine how you get yourself into these situations.”
“A married man with kids, too,” The older man stood to her left sighs, “My wife would never let me get away with being so adventurous.”
At the mention of his family, Oliver smiles. It’s a touch more genuine than any expression he’s pulled before this crowd, not that anyone but Bruce notices, “Dinah and I aren’t married,” he says placatingly, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”
Miss Thompson frowns at him, batting her eyelashes, “Well, how do you raise the kids without a mother?”
“Er—“
A man by the name of Mr Anderson, who lingers at the edge of the crowd and finds Oliver considerably less amusing than his peers, snorts.
“Those kids?” He sways a little in place, more than enough of an indication that whatever comment he’s about to make will be unsavoury, “You’d need more than a mother to fix them.”
There’s a ripple of small shock throughout the crowd, and Bruce feels it too. He winces slightly, glancing over to his friend, whose face has fallen from the personable mask to a look much more piercing.
“What do you mean by that?” Oliver twitches.
“Well—“ Anderson coughs into his fist, his mouth curling into a smile. Something ugly with anticipation pools in Bruce’s gut, “Ollie, come on—“
“Don’t you ‘Ollie’ me, you pompous—“
“Okay!” Bruce gives his most picture-perfect smile to the crowd, “I think you’ve had enough of us tonight, huh?”
There’s a weak murmur of phoney resistance as Bruce descends upon Oliver, getting a good grip on his arm and butting their way out of sight. It’s significantly harder than it should be, but the rest of high society have gathered around them like flies to open garbage.
They love a show.
Bruce pulls Oliver into an empty hallway, where he knows it’s too late for waiters and other staff to come peddling through. As soon as the heavy doors fall shut and curious eyes are off of them, Oliver wrenches his arm out of Bruce’s grasp.
He’s sneering, but not at present company. His focus is on something farther away from them, impossible to reach.
Bruce bites the bullet and presses, “What was that about?”
Oliver grumbles something in response, but it isn’t discernible.
“Oliver,” Bruce calls again, louder and using more of Batman’s imitating growl, trying to pull his attention back to reality.
After a moment, Oliver’s demeanour shifts. His shoulders drop, and his expression changes to something like shame, or regret.
“He was — They’re my kids, Bruce. You have to understand that.”
“I understand wanting to defend your family, what I don’t understand is why you reacted so badly. He was pushing your buttons, Oliver. He wanted you to blow up at him and you just about fell for it.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Oliver scoffs and begins to pace a few feet away, back turned, “I don’t care how it makes me look, okay? I have to defend them. I can’t let anyone think they can get away with talking about Roy or Mia like that.”
“Why?”
Something in Bruce’s tone must tip him off, because Oliver stills, “You know why.” He says, his tone accusatory.
Bruce doesn’t. Hypothetically he could. Any of them could. But the League had agreed to share any information on their private lives only through themselves, and Bruce wanted to do his best to keep that promise. They’d kept it for him.
(Of course there was the matter of Oliver’s identity. But once you noticed things, you couldn’t really un-notice them. And Bruce is a detective first and foremost, so of course he’s going to.)
“I don’t,” and so in elaboration, he adds, “You never told me.”
Oliver blinks, and then slowly exhales out a breathy, “Right.”
Moments pass filled with silence. During that time, Bruce begins to consider that perhaps that’s all they’re going to discuss. Oliver will take a minute to collect himself from an evidently vulnerable state and Bruce won’t pressure him to address the core of the matter, because he clearly doesn’t want to be provoked.
But then Oliver turns, and fixes his eyes on the painting on the wall — a gold-rimmed one featuring an overly detailed landscape, the outside of a church or perhaps a monastery — and talks.
“He was calling them street trash. Some classist bullshit about them being broken. Don’t get smart with me, Bruce, I know he didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. Everyone knows,” He lets out a shallow breath, “Everyone who listens to the gossip knows, at least. Roy was a Heroin addict. I blew up at him when I found out, and I’m not proud of it, but I am proud of the effort he’s put into recovering — you can’t even imagine the guilt I felt, never noticing. It scared the shit out of me. And Mia, doing what she had to on the streets… shooting up god knows what just to stay awake, and the H.I.V—“
His speech is disrupted with a shaky inhale, and Oliver pinches his nose, trying to control his breathing. Bruce is unbelievably still because he doesn’t know how else to demonstrate that he’s listening respectfully.
Oliver seems too caught up to care about Bruce’s posture, anyway.
“I feel like I failed them,” he admits, “I feel like I failed them both and at the same time I can’t do shit to make up for what either of them have gone through, so… so at the very least I’ve got to defend them.”
Oliver turns to look at him with a face so sincere Bruce can’t help but feel affected by it.
“You can understand that, can’t you?”
“I can.” Bruce admits, averting his eyes to the floor, because it’s too much.
He understands all too well, that feeling of failure. His children might not have the same struggles as Oliver’s, but he’s failed them all the same.
Or one in particular, he supposes.
“The guilt of not knowing sooner,” Bruce says roughly, “I get that. I do.”
“So what aren’t you telling me?” Oliver mentions suddenly, and disrupts Bruce’s mumbling that had only begun because of his unfettering train of thought.
The corner of his mouth is curved into a knowing smirk, one Bruce is more acquainted with on Green Arrow’s face than his childhood friend’s. Perhaps because it’s slightly more affectionate, and Bruce hadn’t known Oliver to be grateful of his company. Not back then.
“Jason,” Is all Bruce responds, voice barely a whisper.
Oliver’s face flickers through a spectrum of emotion, his eyes hardened on him. Bruce doesn’t mean to trigger a realisation, but his present company is something of an investigator, too, and perhaps he isn’t used to it in such a social setting.
“Did something… happen?” Oliver asks.
Bruce averts his gaze, feeling a creeping sense of guilt. It’s enough to tip Oliver off, anyway.
“He came back? Or — He’s alive?” His voice climbs higher, “And you didn’t say anything?”
“It was Batman-related. There was no need to get the League involved.”
“Of course there was a need to get the League involved. It’s important to you. Anytime you need help, we show up. That’s what it’s there for,” Oliver yells, “Fuck you, for being too proud to say anything.”
“It wasn’t pride,” Bruce frowns, “I — I didn’t want to make him feel more cornered than he already was.”
“Cornered?” Oliver echoes.
The ambient chatter that had been coming steadily from the other side of the door had lessened, to a noticeable degree. No doubt because their conversation was working its way up to a shouting match. The words faded into silence.
Bruce stood and waited, tense.
Oliver looked at him, frowning, “What did he do?”
“He’s… manic,” Bruce sighs, “I didn’t notice the signs before, and now the worst of it has come and people have gotten hurt. He won’t let me help him. He keeps having episodes.”
“Bipolar?”
“I’m no psychologist,” Bruce concedes, perhaps a little begrudgingly, “But he displays the majority of the symptoms.”
The sounds of mingling on the other side of the door had picked up, slightly. It makes Bruce acutely aware of the space he’s in. Just him and Oliver, stood in a dimly lit and overdecorated hallway.
The gala is in Star City. But some miles away — a whole plane ride — Jason is somewhere, alone, unsupported and suffering through the madness.
Oliver snorts, “Some five fucking star parents we are, huh?”
4. Diana
They’ve been calling themselves the Titans.
“Shame they didn’t get together sooner,” Hal remarks from his chair, “Teen Titans is some nice alliteration.”
“Hal,” Clark calls out in some weak lieu of scolding.
“What?” Hal bunches his shoulders so high they almost reach his ears. Clearly, he finds the situation amusing. He’s trying to suppress a smile as he talks, “So all your secret and not-secret children got together and made a Junior Justice League. It happens! It’s why I keep my niece and nephews as far away as possible from any lantern stuff.”
Barry lifts his head from where it was buried in his arms to helpfully supply that, “Jane has, like, a whole room of your merch. Plus there was that whole Spectre thing with Helen—“
“Well that’s why I said ‘as possible’, Barry, jeez.”
“Well,” Diana slams down both her hands on the table, cutting any other conversation short, “Donna is a grown woman. She can do what she wants. I see no reason why we shouldn’t let them continue as such.”
“You’re not worried?” Bruce sputters at her — though he’d be remiss to admit he did anything so uncouth — mouth falling open with surprise. He’d thought Diana, of all people, would’ve realised the risk here.
Diana raises her chin at him defiantly, “Why should I be? I oversaw her training myself. She’s perfectly capable. Are you saying that’s inadequate?”
“Well,” Bruce gapes, “No, of course—“
To his left, at the very edge of the table the glowing green construct of a shovel appears, helpfully within his gloved hand’s grasp.
Bruce shoots Hal a disdainful glare.
“For the hole you’re digging yourself into,” Hal remarks.
Oliver, who’s been re-stringing his bow all meeting and trying and failing to look like he cares about the subject, barks a laugh.
J’onn finally brings himself forward from where he was comfortably surveying the reactions of his teammates, smiling, “I would have to agree with Diana. They are all adults, and perfectly capable of defending themselves.”
“Gatherings like this attract chaos,” Bruce says through gritted teeth, the creeping knowledge that he’s losing this debate making his mood sour, “They can handle themselves on their own. They don’t know what they’re getting into as a team.”
“By that logic the League should be disbanded as well,” J’onn argues.
Bruce reclines into his seat with a huff.
“Therein lies the answer,” Diana says cheerily, “If they get into bigger trouble than they can handle, they can call on us for help.”
With the issue seemingly solved, Barry darts out of his seat. He disappears into a red streak of lightning for a quick moment before he zips back into his chair, arms full of junk food and other fridge items that he disperses throughout the table.
The smell of Martha Kent’s apple pie in front of Bruce makes his sulkiness waver, but only minutely.
He accepts a plated slice from Clark anyway. He’s quite hungry.
The rest of the room dissolves into meaningless, friendly chatter. As he digs into his piece, Bruce leans forward towards Diana, captivated by curiosity.
“Why aren’t you more concerned? I would’ve thought you and Darkstar would be close.”
The two certainly looked alike. Making the connection that they were related wasn’t a leap at all. And Bruce couldn’t imagine Diana feeling needless resentment towards anyone. Except a marginal amount to Circe, perhaps.
Diana took a neat slice of the pie and chewed on it with delicacy, which was in sharp contrast to Barry beside her, who was scarfing down multiple food items supposedly at once and dripping burger sauce onto the table.
“I think you are under the mistaken belief that my feelings towards Donna are maternal,” She began casually, “In reality, she’s much more like a little sister to me.”
It did make sense, Bruce thought. Darkstar had looked like one of the oldest of the Titans. It would align that Diana didn’t think of her as a child.
But another thing was grating at him.
“Where…” he swallowed some pie, thinking of how to frame the question, “Did she come from?”
As far the extent of Bruce’s knowledge of Amazons went, they couldn’t asexually produce children. At least not through any scientific means — Diana herself had shared that she was made out of clay. Perhaps the case was the same for Darkstar.
Between them both, Clark, who evidently wasn’t thinking of the matter that way, cleared his throat. The tips of his ears were pink.
Diana just laughed, “She’s human, actually. Or she was born that way. I rescued her from a burning fire as a girl and took her back to Themyscira, to be raised by my mother. She was…” something flickered on Diana’s face, and her smile dropped, her demeanour growing more somber, “I think she was caught in the midst of something terrible, before. She was an orphan and, well…”
Then Diana shook her head, and her usual jovial face returned, “She is alright now, and that’s all that matters. I’m proud of her. Every time I think of how horrible it must of been to grow up in such an environment, my heart aches.”
Beside her, Clark’s eyebrows crease with concern. He wants to comfort her, clearly, but he is unsure how. He glances at Bruce.
Who is, himself, trying to consider some sort of consolidation. But Bruce knows how the suffering of loved ones affects you all too well, and isn’t fond of the empty noises of sympathy that are followed when sharing that grief.
Instead, he shares, “my daughter was the same.”
Diana and Clark’s eyes both alight at the mention. He’s spoke of his sons a few times before. Cass is a recent development, and frankly one he’s more protective of.
“Her biological father was a terrible man. The environment he raised her in was inhumane. But she’s grown past it,” at Diana, Bruce smiles, “I believe above all else she is thankful to be out of that situation, somewhere she’s loved.”
Diana looks at him softly and nods. They resume eating their pie.
5. Barry
Titans Headquarters is messy, loud, and disorganised.
Bruce and Barry arrive unchecked and unremarked through the zeta tubes, which prompts their IDs to be announced through the speakers to be then otherwise unacknowledged. As they walk through the headquarters, Bruce comes to the realisation that the announcement was probably overshadowed by whatever Nu Disco cacophony was blaring out of the large loudspeakers they had arranged just outside the entrance.
The lounge area — one of many, it seemed — is littered with baskets of trash and half-full containers of snacks, and the small television they had propped up was recklessly wired to about six different kinds of devices, to the point where the TV stand was drowning in wires.
“There must be about seventy of them here,” Barry had remarked when they first passed through, looking in awe over his shoulders as costumed teenagers ran past them, barely stopping to greet them.
Five of them were piled onto a couch in the lounge that certainly only sat three. Bruce barely catches one of them falling by the t-shirt when he and Barry are walking through.
Above all else, they’ve settled into being a family with much more grace than the League had.
“We should find Nightwing and Wally,” Bruce says, omitting Dick’s non-costumed name even though Barry certainly knows it by this point.
“Yeah,” Barry agrees, taking a sip of a canned soda he wasn’t holding a minute ago.
He turns his back to Bruce and toward another costumed teenager, beckoning them with a tap on the shoulder. A boy turns to face them, dressed head-to-toe in blue with the occasional black and a giant ‘F’ on the front of his costume.
He looks at them blankly, “Yes?”
“Have you seen Nightwing?” Barry asks, completely unperturbed by the boy’s emotionless face.
Something about the teenager makes Bruce’s head itch.
“Yes,” He nods, and points down the hallway, “They’re outside.”
Just as quick as he appeared, he leaves, and Bruce and Barry continue in the direction where he pointed.
It leads them to a large, unusually empty hallway with windows completely covering the sides. Bruce looks down on the outside of the Titans’ headquarters to see Dick stood there in his costume, twirling a baton in the air for an audience of excitable super-powered children.
Unwillingly, his mouth curls into a smile.
Wally is there with him, covering more ground on the pitch. He flits between numerous recruits who are sparring with one another and training with whatever newfangled technology the team have made for themselves. Bruce can only watch for a few seconds when Wally appears at a kid’s side, smiling and giving pointers. After five more rounds around the pitch he zips to Dick’s side, hands on his knees, panting heavily. Dick snickers.
“I think he’s faster than me, now,” Barry says, unprompted.
The statement confuses Bruce a little. He moves his head to glance at his companion, but the other’s eyes are still following Wally’s red streak blazing across the grassy field. They’re a little watery, Bruce considers, but perhaps that’s the sunlight in his eyes.
“If you want,” Bruce offers, unsure, “I can get a timer—“
“No,” Barry raises a hand in a stop motion and laughs, “It’s fine. I just meant — I’m just proud of him, y’know. He had to learn to do it on his own. And now he’s better than I’ve ever been.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Bruce retorts.
His friend just shrugs, face looking a little defeated, “He needed me, and I wasn’t there to teach him. Now I’m finally back, and he doesn’t need me at all.”
The words linger in the air between them. Bruce looks back over to Dick, at the head of a small crowd. Smiling and laughing and joking around with his teammates.
This cheer — it comes so easily to him. This kind of mentoring. Bruce can’t imagine darkening his sunny disposition with a heavy cowl and cape, now.
He certainly can’t imagine where Dick got it from. Not Bruce, not in the least.
“Neither of them are very much like us, when you think about it,” Bruce shares, to which Barry perks up his head, “Dick is more trustworthy where I am withdrawn. It’s integral to my image; to the Batman’s image, to be a symbol first and foremost. Dick is too personable for that; he prefers to know people. Wally is more impulsive where you are thoughtful, but he makes up for it with perseverance. Neither of you ever give up. But you need each other to be reminders of that, when things get hard.”
He lets the thought settle between them. Barry’s eyes drift to the image through the window again, and Bruce can tell he’s deep in his head, just processing the information.
Then he lets out a small laugh, “Well, Bats, it seems like you’re good at knowing people, too.”
6. Clark
“You have to admit,” Bruce says with a smile, “He got all his looks from Lois.”
They’re sat on the front porch of the Kent family farm, where golden hour seems to go on forever.
Bruce has got another one of those delicious pies sealed away in a container and ready to be brought home to his family. They’ve just had dinner, and for once he’s in no rush to leave.
Martha is inside washing the dishes with Conner. The dog, Krypto, is flying and running back and forth from the open doorway all the way to the barn. Where Jon and Jonathan Sr. are trying to haul out an old tractor. Jon is lifting the hulking piece of machinery over his head like it’s as light as a feather as the older man tinkers with the underside of it.
Clark sits across from Bruce, a coffee in one hand and his glasses abandoned on the table.
He watches his son fondly, smiling, “Yeah, he’s the spitting image of her. Ma and Pa say he’s got my smile, though, missing teeth and all at that age.”
Near the barn, Jon is hopping on one foot, the tractor wiggling on top of him.
Clark laughs, “I don’t remember being that excited to do chores, though.”
“Think he gets that from his mother, too?” Bruce asks.
“Lois?” Clark’s nose scrunches into an unsightly snort, “God no. I have to bribe her just to pick her dirty socks off the floor.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose like the glasses are still perched there. It’s a tic Bruce noticed when they first joined the League, after so many meetings together. He hadn’t known what to do with the information.
He knows at this point he should probably tell Clark about it so he can stop, but he’s become strangely fond of the quirk.
“It’s crazy,” Clark chatters on, leaning back in his chair, which creaks under his weight, “He’s so much like me and yet nothing like me at all.”
And that single sentence is enough to transport Bruce back to one day in the past. When the uncertainty of Clark’s future had looked like something darker, more clouded by doubt and regret. A young boy; the absolute double of him, except for those grey eyes…
“You said the same thing about Conner.” Bruce tells him, because he can’t let it go.
For a moment, Clark’s face is blank. And then he blinks, “Oh, yeah. I did.” He laughs, “I guess that’s just kids for you.”
“Kids,” Bruce chuckles, the word giving into some agreement, but his thoughts are trailing off.
Clark says something to him, but he misses it.
“Do you think he’d be good?” He repeats again after a moment.
“A good what?”
“A good Superman.”
Oh. Well, in that case…
“Clark,” Bruce smiles, setting a comforting hand on his arm, “He’d be incredible.”
His friend lights up at the words, so Bruce guesses he said the right thing.
“I didn’t know you were thinking about retirement,” he brings up the subject quite sombrely.
He’d be remiss to admit that he would miss the League. He hadn’t ever envisioned them ever fully retiring. In Bruce’s head, at the very least, they’d all be marching against Darkseid until they were ninety, like the JSA.
“You’ve never thought it?” Clark says with a knowing look, “Who’d take over for you if you ever wanted to rest?”
Unbidden, the vision of Dick’s head hanging lowly in that cowl comes to mind. Bruce shivers. Only one good thing had come of that — his relationship with Damian — and weighing that burden onto Dick could’ve been wholly unnecessary towards it.
Perhaps many years ago, when he was young and foolish enough to make the last testament that he did. But he knew better now; knew that Nightwing was something else and something greater than Batman could contain, that Jason left alone in the role would be distraught, that Tim, perhaps, had potential, but had proved himself to be his own greater detective. Cassandra wouldn’t crumple under the pressure, Bruce was sure of that, but she had her own unconnected life that deserved commitment. She didn’t want to be tied down to Gotham.
He thought of Clark’s words again, and thought of another young boy who had lost his parents to the darkest depravities of his home city. Joker had wanted to recreate Bruce’s parents’ deaths for his own sick amusement, but in doing so, he had lit a spark in another child of Gotham, one who could shine brighter than any artificial light in the sky.
“I think it’d be Duke,” Bruce answered after an extended silence.
Clark evidently hadn’t expected Bruce to answer, his hand skewering and knocking into his glasses.
“Your new—“ He furrowed his brows at the other, looking intensely, “Duke? Really?”
“It’s like you said,” Bruce smiled, “He’s so much like me and yet nothing like me at all.”
+1. Hal
By the time they arrive at the gallery, the sky is black and the stars are shining brightly over Coast City. And there’s an obscenely large crowd gathered around the entrance.
“Are you sure Hal wanted us to go here?” Tim asks him, shivering slightly despite the fact his coat is lined with fur and he’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt underneath.
But Tim is pale, and used to the fog and high altitudes of Gotham’s Bristol as opposed to the clear skies and ocean breezes of the unofficial Lanterns city. So Bruce doesn’t begrudge him for his uncharacteristic shivering.
“I’m sure,” Bruce answers curtly. His eyes drift over the list of shows on tonight, and surely enough his eyes catch onto Kyle Rayner.
Without announcement, he hauls Tim inside by the crook of his elbow, ignoring his yelp of surprise, tipping the doorman a couple bills and manoeuvring their way to the showing.
They enter the exhibit, and Bruce realises this might be the largest gathering of superheroes in one place that he’s ever been to.
The very front of the room is blocked off a pack of vaguely familiar aliens, and Bruce and Tim bump into a large pink and vaguely bovine humanoid on their way inside.
He flicks one of his ears at them and grunts. Bruce looks at him blankly and slowly backs away.
He’s flanked by a purple humanoid woman with short black hair, as well as a man who would look incredibly human if not for the odd shape of his head, paired up with sandy-skinned reptilian and a pink-skinned woman with purple face markings.
The aliens almost blend in the surrounding craziness that fills the rest of the exhibit, though. Bruce spots the celebrated artist in question further ahead, held under Conner’s arm (Clark’s Conner, not Oliver’s), who, at second glance, seems to be trying to give him a noogie.
Tim predictably perks up at the sight of one of his best friends and leaves Bruce to venture the chaos alone without so much as a goodbye.
Well, Bruce supposes he should get a start on what he asked to do. He approaches one of the displays with less of a captive audience — four small portraits arranged around each other. His eyes catch onto the colours first; they’re neon, electric, calling to your attention even from far away.
It’s clear how much being a Lantern influences Kyle’s work, there’s touches of space and the obscure everywhere. Bruce notes, looking at a less surreal piece, he seems to be heavily inspired by a lot of old nineties cartoons. It reminds him of home.
He glances over his shoulder. Apart from the aliens, all present company tonight would be unrecognisable for someone not involved in the superhero community. Bruce can pick apart most of them even out of costume.
He wanders through the room absently, in a sort of awe at the sheer volume of people gathered there. Someone flickers past him just as a beam of light. Bruce inspects the trail keenly, hoping for traces of Barry, but he thinks he catches the end of a blonde ponytail instead.
In one corner of the room, to his right, he spies a familiar head of dark raven hair. He approaches slowly, not particularly eager for conversation. An art exhibit is for observing, after all.
Three of the Titans stand gathered around one of the longest canvas’ Bruce has spied since he entered the room. The colour palette is a lot of the same electric shades, if only with a slightly softer tone. The painting depicts what looks like a peaceful evening on an alien planet. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d guess it was Oa.
The boys stood in front of him are discussing it out loud.
“The anatomy’s not even right,” Wally scoffs, his arms folded across his torso.
Dick, to his left, snorts.
“It’s an alien, I think it’s supposed to have three fingers.”
“Would it kill you to admit it looks good?” Connor (Oliver’s son) asks, elbowing Wally in the arm.
“It might!” Wally squawks.
It’s only shaking with laughter that Connor’s eyes latch onto him, and after a second of processing they widen.
“Mr. Wayne!” He says, a smile creeping onto his face that Bruce can’t discern is genuine or just polite.
He supposes it depends on how similar Connor is to his father.
Wally and Dick follow Connor’s line of vision — Wally a little shaken, but Bruce taught his kid better than to be caught unawares. Dick offers him an easy grin.
“Hal drag you here too, old man?” He jokes.
Bruce’s eyebrows furrow in thought, “Hal told the Titans to come as well?”
“Well we would’ve anyway,” Connor shrugs, “but yeah.”
The information makes something in the back of Bruce’s mind itch. It’s curious, really, and he’s powerless against a bit of harmless curiosity.
“Have you seen him?” He hopes this line of enquiry will lead him down a straightforward path.
But then all Wally says as an answer is; “He’s in the Lantern-pile.”
Which isn’t very helpful at all.
Still, Bruce thanks them and leaves them be. Hal can’t be impossible to reach in this room of all places.
Bruce walks ahead, past several Justice League members and numerous JSA ones, all laughing and mingling between themselves. It could almost make him feel warm inside, if the density of the room didn’t feel so suffocating at points.
Come to think of it, that warm feeling may only be the heat.
He wanders until he catches sight of Hal himself, squashed in the middle of a small crowd of all the lanterns of Earth’s sector. Wally’s ‘Lantern-pile’ comment from earlier makes more sense, given the man is located in the midst of a very energetic crowd.
Bruce manages to (politely) push his way through, grabbing Hal’s attention with a hand on the shoulder.
His fellow League member is dressed in casual jeans and his usual flight jacket.
“Oh, hey, Spooky,” he greets, unbothered by the intensity of this art exhibit.
“You didn’t say it was going to be such a popular exhibit,” Bruce accuses, “In fact, you made it sound like the opposite.”
Hal just laughs in his face, patting his shoulder in some silly display of comfort. Or perhaps pity is more fitting.
“I knew you wouldn’t come if you saw the guest list,” he teases.
Bruce decides not to hold it against him tonight. Clearly the event means a lot to him.
“Does Kyle have any family?” Bruce asks, hoping his tone is not betraying his (mostly) innocent intentions and coming across as judgemental.
He feels a presence come up behind him, and spies a shock of red hair that can only be Guy Gardner standing proudly at Hal’s side.
“He’s got family,” Guy grunts at him, defensive.
Hal pushes the other Lantern away with a friendly shove, “Relax, Guy, you know what he meant,” to Bruce, he says, “Nah. Nobody like that.”
In one distant corner, Bruce can spot one of Hal’s brothers and his sister-in-law, lifting up a little girl to look at a painting.
“But your family is here,” Bruce points out.
“And Jim should thank me for it. I’m giving them a little cultural education,” Hal remarks.
Bruce decides to go for a less direct approach against Hal’s steadfastness, “You should be proud. They’re beautiful.”
For perhaps the first time in weeks — or ever, if you only count their interactions outside the battlefield — Hal gives Bruce a genuine smile.
“They are, aren’t they?”
“Could I buy one?” He asks, because who is Bruce if he isn’t upstaging his friends.
To his surprise, Hal laughs in his face. Again.
“If there’s any left,” he brags, and then begins pointing at the other occupants around the room, “Alan bought two, Michael bought one, Dick bought one for Titans tower and I’m pretty sure it’s on your credit card—“
“Ah.” Bruce gapes. He is suddenly acutely aware that he is not the only rich man here.
It’s an odd sensation. It’s not one he’s particularly fond of; for his pride’s sake or for what being with other rich men entails.
“Did you buy one?”
He’s sure Hal would, if he had the monetary assets to. Hell, Bruce is certain if he asked Oliver the other would purchase it on Hal’s behalf.
“Didn’t need to,” Hal shrugs, but not in an uncaring way — rather, there’s something slightly flustered about it, “Kyle gave me one ages ago. I hang it up in my apartment,” quietly, Hal adds, “when I have one.”
In that second, a million responses fly through Bruce’s head. Some are more pointed and some perhaps offensive, whilst others are too sentimental for him to comfortably share.
Instead, he ignores the noise of his head and just smiles at Hal.
“He must love you like one of his own,” he says.
Hal’s face shutters into something — something else. If it was an expression on anybody else’s face, Bruce would say he was frightened.
“I — Yeah.”
Hal meets him later, outside. Bruce doesn’t mean to wait for the other to come for him, he just means to catch his breath.
The sky is clear, the stars are bright. Bruce loves Gotham like it’s a family member within itself, but he could reject his pride for a moment to confess that Coast City is possibly more beautiful.
Behind him he catches the sound of a door squeaking as it falls shut, and the soft putter of footsteps.
“You know he blew up Oa the first time he met me. Thought he’d gotten rid of me for good.”
Well, Bruce thinks, leave it to Hal to give you a hell of an opener.
He shifts to look at his friend just as the other man leans his body over the glass edge of the balcony, looking at the stars. They’re not especially close to the beach, but it’s night and so the world in front of them is quiet, and Bruce can hear the waves crashing against the rocky coast.
Hal continues his story, Bruce doesn’t interrupt; “He said, ‘Man, what happened to you? Every kid on my street wanted to be you when they grew up’.”
He laughs a little at the rebuttal. He supposes he can, now. Hal is so much more like himself nowadays it’s hard to see the traces Parallax left in him.
“What’s bothering you, then?” Bruce presses, because he’s been through enough of these conversations at this point to know how to get to the root of it, “You think you’re not good enough for him because he was your replacement when you messed up.”
“He didn’t replace me, he saved me,” Hal retorts, the words slightly snappy but holding no real heat, “Hell no, I’m not good enough for him. If I had it my way, he’d have a family that actually cares about him.”
“He does,” Bruce argues.
Hal flicks on him the head.
“Knew you were gonna say that, sappy bastard.”
Bruce would laugh if he weren’t worried about shattering the fragility of the moment. Instead, he just sighs. Gives one last glance across the horizon. Looks at Hal.
“We’re having a barbecue on Father’s Day. You should bring Kyle.”
He says it softly, without any weight to it. Hal can decline if he wants.
But if Bruce knows the man — and he likes to think the does, considering Hal is arguably the most stubborn man on Earth — he won’t.
His teammate scoffs, “Why? So your creepy kids can hit on him? Not that I care who he dates. I mean — it’s not any of my business — not that any of your spooky spawn are good enough for him.”
“Sure,” Bruce says with a consolidating pat on the shoulder, and leaves it that.
“I’ll bring him,” Hal says, because he doesn’t like to lose an argument, even one that’s mostly happening in his head.
Bruce, as usual, is right.