Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was a flurry of activity outside 12 East 69th Street as Clark approached the townhome. He shrugged on his bureau windbreaker over his, admittedly, unremarkable black suit, lifted a hand in acknowledgment to the officer posted by the entrance, and jogged up the front stairs two steps at a time.

Inside the building was even busier. Clark ducked under two agents moving an elaborately framed oil portrait of Arlington Sinclair, narrowly avoided colliding with a junior agent with an armful of banker boxes stacked so high she couldn't see in front of her, and stepped into the drawing room. Which was, in Clark’s opinion, just a pretentious name for a living room.

In the center of the chaos stood Arlington Sinclair himself. He was leaning casually against the wall, arms crossed over his chest; the perfect picture of a mildly inconvenienced one percenter. Occasionally, he would threaten an agent when they walked within earshot. He’d rambled on about all the lawsuits he would file for any scratches or scuffs he found. Clark understood why so many people chose to remain on the premises while warrants were executed. Overall, he didn’t really mind what people decided to do. Typically, the more entitled the suspect, the better the look on their face when presented with the evidence that would finally hold them accountable for a lifetime of wrongdoing.

As an added bonus, they also had the habit of unknowingly telegraphing exactly where they didn’t want you to look. That was always fun. Clark was certain he would still have been able to find things on his own if he had to, but it helped when he had something concrete to point to. Saying something like ‘The suspect kept diverting their gaze towards the south eastern portion of the room’ was easier to put in a report than things like ‘I could smell she was lying’ or ‘I could see the temperature difference behind the wall and knew that had to be where the server farm was.’

"You’re late," Agent Lacour snapped as Clark entered the vacuous space. Clark had visited the room twice before when speaking with Sinclair. It was strange to see the room without all the gaudy baubles Sinclair was so fond of hoarding.

The first time, it had been nothing more than a standard interview about an item Sinclair had been outbid on in an online auction. There was so little documentation on the piece Clark had hoped the man might be able to provide more insight on the item he had been willing to spend over $750,000 on.

The second time he visited was because Clark was certain he knew what kind of man hid behind Arlington Sinclair's generically handsome face. Clark was determined to expose him.

Agent King offered Clark an apologetic half-smile from across the room along with a tiny wave. She aborted the hand movement half-through the third oscillation and looked down briefly at her palm like it had betrayed her.

"I had court," Clark replied, choosing to politely ignore whatever crisis King was going through. It was often the most efficient approach. Less embarrassment for all sides. She would get over it after spending enough time with him. They always did. (Though, since abandoning his loud, beloved thrift store suits for boring black, the waiting time seemed to have increased exponentially.)

He pushed up the sleeves of his jacket to his elbows and glanced around the room. Clark had tried for weeks to get the warrant pushed through. Of course, by the time he finally found a judge willing to sign off on a warrant for one of the city’s wealthiest men with some very compelling, albeit mostly circumstantial evidence, he had other obligations. With Sinclair’s connections it was only a matter of time before he would learn about the warrant, so they couldn't hesitate on this one.

Clark’s team had executed the warrant at seven that morning. Lacour’s scowl told him nothing, since his face usually looked like that in Clark’s presence. Judging by King’s nervous smile, they hadn’t found anything of use yet.

"There is nothing here Kent," Lacour continued through clenched teeth, "We’ve been at it for hours. No one has found shit, Kent. This was a waste of bureau resources and all of our time. Why can't you ever admit when you're wrong?"

King took a step forward and had the decency to lower her voice when she said, "It took so long to get the warrant, he might have moved anything incriminating. He had a head start on us. This isn’t the end, Clark."

Arlington Sinclair beamed from his spot across the empty room.

"I can’t wait to end your career over this," Sinclair crooned. "The FBI’s Golden Boy undone by his hubris. How positively Icarian." He drawled out the last word, eyebrows raised in a clear challenge. Sinclair was a handsome enough man in his late 40s, but the effect was somewhat ruined by being a terrible human. At least for Clark. Some people seemed to find that type of cruelty attractive.

Clark tilted his head and smiled at the man. He took a step forward; King’s dark eyes widened and she reached her hand towards him, but her fingertips barely brushed over the slick fabric of his jacket as he left her reach.

"I always thought Icarus got a bad rap," Clark spoke conversationally as he slowly crossed the distance of the massive, echoing room, "You have to remember, he wasn’t flying for fun. He was escaping a prison. Icarus was a prisoner his whole life because of what his father could do. Can you imagine how awful that must be? Your whole life, trapped in a tower?" Clark stopped when he was toe-to-toe with Sinclair. He straightened his shoulders, looming slightly as he looked down at Sinclair. Sinclair was the type of man who was five foot eleven, but wore lifts in his shoes and said he was six one. Clark suspected it wasn't often he was loomed over.

There were parts of Clark he needed to keep carefully locked down. There was a difference between justice, punishment, and revenge. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. Sometimes those things leaked out despite his best efforts to keep it all contained. Sometimes he got so furious his pupils tinged red

"And, finally— finally," Clark lowered his voice, "you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin for the first time, the heat sinking into your bones, the kiss of wind against your face. After years of being locked away in the dark, you’ve got the whole, bright sky in front of you. Can you really blame him for chasing that feeling?"

Clark reached his right arm forward; Sinclair flinched back away from him, smacking sharply back into the wall. It echoed through the room. Clark smiled.

"Me?" Clark asked as he slowly placed his palm flat on the wall next to Sinclair’s head, "I can’t imagine how awful it would be. Locked away for years, not being able to see the sun. I bet I’d fly right toward it too."

Clark could hear Zamora, the newest agent on their team, whispering "Should we stop him?" to King and King’s answering headshake. Lacour let out a huff, clenched his jaw, and turned away. "Fuck," Lacour grumbled to himself, "of fucking course he did. Fucking again. Jesus. Fucking asshole. How does he always know?"

"This is where you hang your portrait, right, Arlo?" Clark asked cheerfully and rapped his knuckles across the drywall. He tapped a few times, mostly for show, until he narrowed in on the hollow thud of a hidden space behind the wall Sinclair had been standing in front of.

Clark turned back to his team, beaming as he asked, "Who wants to do the honors?" Zamora’s hand instantly shot up, which was to be expected. It was their first raid after all. Lacour was glaring with his arms crossed over his chest, but that wasn’t anything new. King was smiling, but less nervously now. He saw the shift in her expression move from excited to frightened and realized what was happening. Oh, how boring. And predictable. Cornered animals always reacted the same.

Before anyone else could move, Clark had flipped Sinclair over his shoulder and down onto the marble floor. The Academy had been good for Clark. He’d been untrained before, back when he worked at The Daily Planet and wrote for a living. Superman had the benefit of being fast, strong, and nearly indestructible. It wasn't anything he’d needed before. After learning proper technique, he’d found taking down villains much easier. It was easier to lie now too when he stopped people without the cape.

"Great," Clark said cuffing the struggling man, "We get to add assaulting a federal officer to the list. Now, Arlo, I’m not really betting man, you see, my Pa says it’s a waste of time and money and I'm inclined to agree with him. But, I’d bet, in addition to all those counterfeit bills I’m expecting to find in there, there will also be that missing Vermeer, and that locket. Something also tells me I’m going to find the statue you used on Jamison."

Clark looked up and over at Zamora.

"Go ahead," Clark urged them on with a proud smile.

Zamora nodded seriously and then cleared their throat.

"Arlington Sinclair," Zamora began, "you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you—"

"Great work, Clark," King said, stepping up beside him. She swayed into his side, pressing her shoulder up against him. Since she was a good foot shorter than him, she was mostly pressing against his bicep. "We should go out to celebrate. My treat."

"Oh, I’d love to," Clark replied easily, "but I've got a meeting with Richardson and Lui in about—" Clark looked down at his watch and then cursed. Well, he didn't really curse. He said ‘dang it’ with such force it might as well have been one.

"Oh, gee. Oh, no. I need to—I'm so sorry, Micah," Clark rushed, "I’ve got to run. You all got this handled, yeah?

He didn't wait for a response before weaving his way out of the building. He stopped briefly to give Zamora a fist bump and to tell them they'd done an excellent job and then disappeared down into the subway station.

Clark was ten minutes late to a meeting with his boss and his boss’s boss, which Clark could admit, was not a great look. He burst through the conference room to see his boss’s boss’s boss was also sitting there at the long conference table.

Dang it.

Clark wiped away at his forehead, like he’d seen others do when they sweat. It had been one thing to pick up on it in high school gym class; it was another watching trained professionals during Academy training. It had been amazing to find even subtler ways to pretend to function the way the rest of the world did.

"Thank you for your patience," Clark folded his arms above his head and took in a deep breath, "I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. I was—"

"Take your time, Kent. You want a glass of water?" His boss, Supervisory Special Agent Fiona Richardson, greeted indulgently and proceeded to pour Clark a glass of water. "Great work on the Sinclair case. They really found a Vermeer?"

"I left before everything was inventoried," Clark replied, "I was already running late."

"We’ve all been there before; don’t worry. And court this morning too? We’ve been keeping you busy, haven’t we? How did that go?"

"Good," Clark replied, "Good, yeah. I uh," Clark laughed breathlessly and accepted the glass of water from Richardson, "Court was good. Another few days of trial, but I think the evidence is too much for the jury to overlook. And I, uh, I managed to catch the train from Sinclair's. I didn’t want to keep you all waiting once we had him in custody."

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Robin Lui gestured to the open seat at the table across from Special Agent in Charge Émile Baptiste. A man Clark had taken great lengths to not be perceived by. As a rule of thumb, Clark tried to avoid anyone who could fire him on the spot. Clark downed the water and took his seat.

"We wanted to congratulate you on your work," Lui continued, "Not only your recent work on the Sinclair case, or the recovery of the missing Van Gogh, or the Abernathy case."

"You’ve been at the Bureau for four years now?" Baptiste asked.

"Yes, sir," Clark confirmed, "five this August."

"And you were a… journalist before this?"

"Yes, sir," Clark nodded, "I was a junior reporter for the Daily Planet."

"Impressive," Baptiste remarked, looking at Clark so intently Clark straightened more in his seat; he'd been trying to be better at that since switching jobs, "what prompted the career change?"

”I was interviewing Lex Luthor when I realized the Rembrandt reproduction in his office was genuine."

"And how did you figure that?" Baptiste pushed, "Just from looking at it?"

"When the The Storm on the Sea of Galilee was stolen from the Gardner, it was cut out of its frame. I noticed the painting was a little smaller than the original. I couldn't think of any reason Lex Luthor would have a less than perfect reproduction. I’d been investigating him for years at that point and I was familiar with the type of man he was. He would only tolerate a flaw like that if it were an original." Clark had then used his vision to authenticate the paint, but that wasn't something he could easily explain to the room, so he left that part out.

"I’d known Luthor was involved in all sorts of unethical and illegal activity, but I never had enough to prove anything. That stolen painting… it opened him up to closer investigation.

"It was hard to do my job after that. Everyone knew I helped get Luthor arrested. No one wanted to talk to me, because they’d seen what happened to Luthor. I couldn't get any good leads. I spent the next six months as an editor. That was when Supervisory Agent Richardson suggested I could be a good fit for the FBI."

"We’re lucky to have you, Agent Kent. You've done a lot of great work already."

"Thank you," Clark replied, waiting for them to get to the actual point of the meeting. There was no way these three senior officials had joined in today just to tell him he was doing a good job and ask him questions that could have been answered by skimming his personnel file.

"We have one more thing for you, Kent," Baptiste said, "if you're amenable." Ah, there it was. The real reason they’d scheduled today’s meeting.

Clark nodded along diligently, "Of course, sir, how can I help?"

"Are you aware of another agent working out of Quantico? An Agent by the name of Bruce Wayne?"

Clark opened his mouth to speak and then let out a soft breath. Bruce Wayne.

Everyone who had been conscious in the 90s knew who Bruce Wayne was. The news had been everywhere, even in rural Kansas.

"Only by reputation," Clark finally answered. It seemed like the best way to navigate the minefield of Bruce Wayne's civilian life. "He didn't teach during my time at Quantico. I think he was working on a case at the time, so there was someone else teaching his regular classes. It was…" Clark trailed off and closed his eyes for a moment while he remembered what high-profile case had been closed only a few weeks after his graduation, "The Star City Strangler, I think. He’d found a similar case in Keystone and identified the killer based on a car wash receipt."

Clark had followed the case closely. It had truly been outstanding detective work.

"There's no speaking out of turn here," Baptiste pushed, "what else have you heard? Be frank with us."

"He has the second highest closure rate in the FBI," Clark said, obviously not mentioning that Clark’s was the first, "which is very impressive considering he primarily works on cold cases. Difficult ones. The ones other agents deemed unsolvable."

Clark took in the expressions of the people across the table from him. He refilled his glass of water to have something to do with his hands and took a few sips before he spoke.

"I've also heard he is—" Clark sucked in a breath through his teeth, clicking his tongue; Baptiste had told him to be frank, but he still wanted to choose his words carefully, "he hasn't had a consistent partner or team since he joined. He teaches forensic classes in between his cases. He’s written several monographs on a variety of subjects. They’ve all had statistical significance in overturning wrongful convictions across the country. He's brilliant and capable, but has shown aversion to teamwork."

They nodded along politely. Clark chose not to bring up the tabloid highlights of Bruce Wayne's life at this point. It seemed… unseemly.

"He’s asked for you to consult on a current case," Richardson said, "Is that something you would be willing to do?"

"With me?" Clark asked, blinking rapidly in response. Bruce Wayne, notorious lone wolf, had asked to work with him? "I… I work Art Crime. I don't— the type of cases he works—"

"Son," Baptiste chuckled as he cut Clark off from his rambling, "for a man who works on our Art Crime team, you’ve solved more murders than most homicide detectives."

"Oh," Clark shook his head, even though he'd just added one more to his tally less than an hour ago, "No. Most of that was just collateral," Clark deflected, "the venn diagrams of people who traffic in stolen art and people who commit violent crimes, um, well, there is a lot of overlap." It was mostly organized crime, paramilitary groups, and the people who were so rich the laws rarely applied to them.

"Now is not the time to be humble," Richardson said and subtly jerked her head in the direction of Baptiste. Right. Yes. Of course. Being too humble in front of the head of the division was probably not a great look.

"Uhhhh, sure…" Clark said slowly, then remembered he was speaking with three highly-ranked government officials, "I mean, yes. Yes, of course. If he thinks I can be helpful on a case, then I'm happy to consult."

"We were hoping you’d say that," Richardson replied as she rummaged through her bag. She placed a manila envelope on the table and slid it across to Clark.

Clark opened the envelope and examined its contents. A boarding pass for a direct flight to the DC airport that left in six hours. A hotel booking for the next five nights

"Oh," Clark replied, "this isn't necessary. I can drive it's only four hours. I could—

"The flight is already booked," Lui replied, "finish up anything you need to for the Sinclair case and then head to your place to start packing. They're expecting you at Quantico bright and early tomorrow morning."

"Right, yes,” Clark smiled tightly, hoping the discomfort would go unnoticed, "Of course. I'll be there. I'm happy to go where I'm most needed."

"Wayne is…" Baptiste started and Clark saw a thousand different words flicker behind his eyes: a liability, a menace, a risk, a headache, a wild card, a nuisance, a lawsuit waiting to happen, one of the best agents they had, "...Wayne can be curt. Don't take it personally."

"Thank you for the advice, sir."

Clark stood, shook hands with each person on the other side of the table, and then made his way to his desk to finish up his paperwork for the day.

Bruce Wayne wanted Clark to consult.

Clark had read every one of Bruce’s monographs. (Which was maybe not particularly impressive because there were only twenty-six and he could read War and Peace in the blink of an eye.) Typically, those types of work were written by someone in the field. Wayne was an interesting exception. He didn't focus on a specific subject the way other specialists did. Based on a larger picture Clark could piece together from his vantage point following Wayne's career, when Wayne encountered an anomaly in a case, he dove deep down, down the rabbit hole until he re-emerged triumphant having solved a mystery others thought unsolvable. Then he wrote down everything and published it so it could be used as a source for other investigations.

It was inspiring. And he wanted to work with Clark.

There was no return flight, so Clark packed for a week. That was the current length of the hotel booking they'd given him. He could pop back to his place at night to water his plants and sleep in his own bed if he wanted to, but it would be suspicious if he arrived with no luggage and wore more than one suit.

That was another added benefit of working for the FBI; Clark had learned to spot the things that made people stand out. He was better now at blending in. While Clark had found it harder to fly under the radar as Clark Kent with the work he did now, he had found it easier to look human. At this point, he had learned not to worry too much that the attention on Clark Kent would somehow get tied to Superman.

Clark Kent had been across all the major papers and no one had said anything. Not even any online comments saying ‘Doesn’t that buff nerd in the glasses look kind of like Superman?’ People didn’t look for Superman on the ground. They looked for him in the sky.

The flight was blessedly short. Only an hour and a half in the air and no natural disasters that needed Superman’s intervention, thankfully.

Clark hated flying in planes. It made him feel so utterly useless. Also the seats were cramped and if he wasn't careful he'd break something. Luckily, he was in an emergency exit row which gave him a little extra room. He wasn’t sure what he would do if there had been an emergency. Blast his way out of the bathroom and then repair the damage from the outside? He still hadn’t perfected his mid-plane escape plan while also not sacrificing his human identity. He preferred to avoid the problem altogether by not flying in a pressurized cabin in the first place.

They hadn't booked him a return flight so he could avoid flying back. Trains were a lot easier. It was much simpler to sneak off and then sneak back on a train than an airplane. And it tended to be relaxing with beautiful scenery if he did stay on it.

Clark caught a taxi from the airport to his hotel though he would rather have walked. Thankfully, he remembered to get a receipt so he could expense it when he returned to New York.

Check-in took more than half an hour because the person working the front desk kept chatting at him, and Clark felt too uncomfortable to escape. Eventually, the bells above the lobby door rang and he used that distraction to quickly sneak out.

Clark could sprint around the world in an hour and a half, but flying commercial was soul-crushingly exhausting. He flopped facedown on the bed in the hotel room and briefly thought about sneaking back to New York, but it had been a busy day and he was tired. Instead, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and quickly fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Clark woke up to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. He raced off to help evacuation efforts and then diverted the lava from inhabited areas and into the sea. He spent a moment admiring the interaction of the lava hardening into volcanic rock and thought of all the slow-growing islands all throughout the oceans. He thought about Surtsey, the island out there the scientists had been monitoring since its formation in the sixties. He thought of the plants that were starting to grow there now. He thought about the erosion that might one day cause it all to sink beneath the sea again. He tried not to let his mind wander as he thought about what the world would look like in another hundred years. Another thousand. Whether it would be a blessing or a curse to still be around to see it.

He was fast approaching an existential spiral, but then the Globe Theater caught on fire again, so he had to race off to London and he pushed the whole thing from his mind.

Then there was an avalanche in the alps, a bridge collapse in New Orleans, and a kidnapping attempt in Luxembourg.

He returned to his hotel room a little after 4:00 a.m., took a shower to wash off the smell of smoke still clinging to his hair and skin, then promptly went back to bed.

Clark woke up at 8:53 a.m., well-rested, but already antsy. He was supposed to meet with Agent Wayne at 11:15 that morning, but with nothing else to do except wait around for the meeting, he headed to Quantico early.

Wayne taught a 9:00 a.m. seminar on abnormal psychology and a ten o’clock on identifying substances that didn’t register on standard tox screens.

Clark slipped easily into the lecture hall, careful to sit in the back and avoid disrupting any of the trainees. His own time at the Academy simultaneously seemed 1,000 years ago and also yesterday.

The buzzing chatter in the room stopped immediately when Bruce Wayne entered the room, striding purposefully down the pathway to the lectern. He was so much older than Clark expected.

It was a stupid thought. Of course he was older. Bruce Wayne was three years older than Clark and Clark was approaching thirty-four. Of course he had grown up when the world wasn’t looking. It was just that when Clark thought about Bruce Wayne, he thought about the blank-faced teenager in cuffs getting perp walked out of the Gotham police headquarters after his arrest for the murder of Martha and Thomas Wayne.

Clark remembered the trial clearly. It had been everywhere, even in rural Kansas in the late 90s. The judge had allowed cameras in the courtroom and the Wayne murder trial quickly became a spectator sport. It had all the elements of a riveting story: attractive, rich, semi-famous white people, old money, scandal, depraved violence, and in the center of it all: Bruce Wayne.

Restaurants and bars that typically played the game on their oversized screens played the live trial coverage instead. Instead of small talk about the weather, it was small talk about the latest court day. It was nearly universal: practically everyone thought he'd done it.

Wayne's prints were on the knife. Their blood was on his hands. He lied about his alibi. Open and shut, everyone had said.

Clark’s parents hadn’t ever tuned into the actual trial; they only watched the nightly news, but even there Bruce Wayne’s somber face dominated the airwaves for months.

Back then Clark had felt something for Bruce Wayne. Something deep in his bones when he saw a boy not much older than him with so much grief clearly on his face.

He’d watched the prosecutor drag out every unsubstantiated rumor as fact; watched as a man in his 40s screamed in the face of a teenager calling him an ungrateful, spoiled sociopath; watched every desperate objection by the defense quickly overruled by the uncaring judge.

Clark didn't know how other people looked at him and didn't see the sadness, didn't see the devastation, the loss that radiated off of him. They all called him cold. Unemotional. It couldn't have been further from the truth.

His best friend’s mother had it on constantly. She'd tut-tut and talk about the evils of those godless east coast elite turning from Christ. Mrs. Ross looked for any excuse to talk about how the influence of Satanists would destroy the country.

Clark had caught bits of the trial when he was at Pete’s, unable to look away when Bruce’s face was on the screen. Clark was fourteen. Wayne was a teenager at the time too, but they tried him as an adult. They’d sought the death penalty. More people tuned into the trial than the Super Bowl that year. After only an hour of deliberation the jury reached a decision. Bruce had been found guilty on all counts.

Clark still remembered watching Bruce's face as the verdict was read by the foreman. Remembered how Bruce had barely reacted to the verdict. And then came the sentencing from the judge who monologued about the heinous nature of the crime, meandered into a rant about the state of corruption in the world, and then sentenced him to death.

Clark remembered how he had looked after the final gavel… How Clark thought Bruce looked almost relieved. How he had looked almost grateful to hear the news.

It had broken Clark’s heart.

Clark was seventeen when the conviction was overturned. The chain of custody on the key evidence had blatantly been broken and then so inadequately covered up it was insulting. The judge who oversaw the trial had "retired" that same year. He also had been taking lavish trips and purchased a new home that his salary wouldn't have afforded him. No one brought that up. The D.A. had been reelected, but mysteriously vanished a few months into his term. It wouldn't be for another five years that the evidence of his torrid affair with a mobster’s wife would surface. He was probably floating in the depths of the Gotham Bay.

Bruce’s release hadn’t made front page news. It wasn't played in every diner and bar in Smallville, Kansas. Everyone had already moved onto the next scandal and Bruce Wayne was mostly forgotten, relegated to the back of the mind as that satanic teenager who had callously murdered his parents.

Bruce had kept a relatively low-profile after that. University in France, medical school in England. He’d done his residency at the Mayo clinic. By all accounts, Bruce had been on track to be a world-renowned trauma surgeon, just like his father, before he had abruptly abandoned it all to join the FBI. He’d had to sue for the right to apply, and with his inheritance finally coming back into his possession after all those years being tied up in court, he had more money to burn than even the US government.

Within his first year as an agent he’d washed through six partners, foiled a terrorist plot, solved five cold cases, and in the process exonerated two wrongfully convicted men. He’d only upped the pace over the last six years. It was inspiring.

And yet, there were rumors about Wayne. Persistent. Insidious. He’d gotten away with murder on a technicality, but he couldn't stay away from it. He’d gotten a taste when he was younger and cold-blooded killers like him? They never stopped craving it. They could never be satisfied. They were always going to do it again. What better place to ensure he was never caught again than on the other side of the investigation?

He’d been a surgeon, they said, because he still needed to cut into people, but it hadn't been enough. Not when he was saving them instead of killing them. Wayne did the work he did in the FBI because he liked it. Because he enjoyed it. He got off on it. He was so good at the work because he had the mind of a killer. It was easy to sniff out his own kind.

Clark mostly ignored those rumors. Partly out of his good upbringing, but mostly because Lacour was one of the people to spout them and if Clark knew anything, it was that Lacour was a jealous, spiteful bastard who would talk shit to anyone who would listen.

Despite all the uh… infamy surrounding Bruce Wayne, he was reportedly an incredible teacher. One of the Academy’s best. Clark was pleased that morning to learn those rumors about Wayne, at least, were true. His lecture was one of the best Clark had attended either at Met U or the Academy.

Bruce was informative, concise, and answered any questions clearly without the patronizing hint that subject matter experts were often prone to when discussing foundational content with amateurs.

Clark was particularly fascinated by the toxin lecture. He hadn’t been falsely humble when speaking with his chain of command yesterday; he had stumbled into most of the murder cases he solved during his time in the FBI. It wasn’t that he started out trying to solve any particular murder, it was just that the pieces of the puzzle led him exactly to it when he tracked down his leads. Sure, he often found puzzle pieces others had no clue existed, but it wasn't where he started his investigations.

After the second lecture ended, Clark was one of the first out of the room. He took care of a bank robbery in Baltimore before sneaking back in with a few minutes to spare. At 11:08, he was stationed outside of Bruce Wayne's office. He knocked on the closed door, but nobody answered. Nobody was inside.

A few minutes later, he heard the soft scuff of dress shoes on linoleum. Clark debated when to turn at the noise, but the decision was made for him when Bruce Wayne spoke.

"You were in my classes today," Bruce stated flatly as he approached the door. Purely observational. He didn't seem to feel any particular way about that.

"I was," Clark agreed, "you were on assignment during my time at the Academy— the Star City murders. A car wash receipt," he repeated with a small shake of his head, "amazing work. I’d heard good things about your lectures and I always wanted to attend. I hope it wasn't an imposition. The neo-toxin lecture was particularly— oh. No. I’m getting ahead of myself," Clark stuck out his right hand in greeting. "Clark Kent. It's a pleasure to meet you, Doctor Wayne."

"Don't do that," Wayne replied, ignoring the hand and unlocking the office door. "Doctor Wayne was my father."

Clark resisted the urge to apologize. That sort of fumbling tended to unnecessarily extend awkward moments.

"Do you prefer your first name then?" Clark asked evenly, "Or Agent Wayne?"

"Agent Wayne," Wayne replied. Clark nodded. Okay. That was fair. Plenty of guys liked being called solely by their last name; usually it was the ex-military ones, but he could see a doctor falling back on that rigid level of professional distance.

"You can call me whatever," Clark replied before he could help himself. He followed Wayne into the room, "Clark," he said, "Kent," he added after, "anything but Clark Jerome Kent, because that sounds like I’m in trouble."

The full name thing usually got a genuine chuckle out of people. At least a pity chuckle. Mostly pity chuckles, if Clark was being entirely honest with himself. It got absolutely nothing from Wayne. Not even derision.

The office was modestly sized and in a far-away corner of the building on the top floor. Given Wayne’s apparent level of social skills, Clark couldn’t help but wonder if the remoteness was viewed as a positive by the man. (And the rest of the teaching faculty.)

There were tall floor to ceiling bookcases on every bit of wall space, excluding the door and lone window underneath which sat Wayne’s desk. His desk looked clean. Much less chaotic than Clark's own desk back in New York. Clark always made sure to sweep any sensitive information into his locked filing cabinet, but that didn't help with everything else. He started to wonder if he’d accidentally left his favorite mug out on the desk when he left. It felt a little silly to peek, but then it felt even sillier to call up Agent King and ask her to put it away. At least he’d only been drinking water. He resisted the urge and reigned his focus back into his surroundings.

At first glance there was no clear organizational order to the books on the shelves. Each wall seemed to hold a different subject, and the shelf was then further divided by speciality and author’s last name.

Wayne’s forehead furrowed as he stared at Clark. He said nothing further and gestured to a much smaller desk on the other side of the office. It was clear this office was intended to be shared, but everything in it was Wayne's. There was no hint of another personality in there.

Clark walked over to the desk, standing beside the standard issue office chair. Wayne had a different desk and chair. A much fancier one that he’d presumably bought with his own money.

"Is this what you want me to look at?" Clark asked as he approached the set of document boxes on the desk. He unstacked them so they laid out in line across the desk.

"Yes," Wayne replied sharply. Clark did his best to remember everything he'd been told yesterday. Wayne can be curt, Special Agent in Charge Émile Baptiste had told him less than twenty-four hours before, don't take it personally.

Don’t take it personally.

"Did you have something in particular you wanted me to be looking for with these?"

"I don't want to bias your results," Wayne gritted out. Okay, sure. Clark could understand that approach. It wasn’t his favorite, because Clark could be objective.

"These are all copies?" Clark asked and popped off the lid on one of the document boxes.

"Yes," Wayne replied just as curtly, but the second one stung a little less because he was prepared for it.

"So you're okay if I group them differently than how they're currently organized?"

Wayne’s frown twitched. He looked like speaking with Clark physically pained him.

"Knock yourself out, Agent Kent," Wayne responded and then sat down at his desk and turned his attention to his computer.

Clark nodded and turned his focus to his desk. He stood as he flicked through the first box, then the second. He did an initial pass on all the papers and then got to work in earnest.

He was careful with his speed. He always had to be in situations like this.

It usually helped to flip through everything first. It looked normal, but typically he could familiarize himself with it all at a high level then start working it out from there.

There were probably only a handful of reasons Wayne would give a stack of written documents to a man renowned for his ability to spot forgeries, so he focused first on the handwriting. During his first passthrough, he identified at least four different penmen.

He made sure to count to ten before sorting each page. He let his hearing wander until he found a busker in New Orleans and tuned in on that and continued to sort through each new document. Partway through, he realized there was something he missed at the beginning, so he started back at the beginning and reviewed everything he’d already done.

It was only the consistent call of his name that brought him back. Clark looked up from the papers and returned to himself. Quantico, Virginia. Agent Wayne's office. 4:39 p.m. Oh, he probably should have eaten. Usually people had eaten by now. Except Wayne hadn’t either, so maybe it was fine?

There was a young woman sitting across from Wayne. The two of them had clearly been speaking for some time and they were both looking at him expectantly.

"Sorry?" Clark asked, pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. They must have asked him something.

"I was telling Agent DeMar that her questions about the Abernathy case would be better answered by the case officer."

"Oh, gee. Yeah! Sure," Clark set the papers down, spun in his chair so he was facing them both across the office at Wayne’s desk. "Hello, I’m Clark Kent. Nice to meet you. What did you want to know?"

"Marie DeMar," she replied, "I wanted to know what your first inclination was. You saw something in the interview with the bank manager that no one else did. What was it? How did you know?"

"That is an excellent question," Clark replied to stall for time. He clicked his tongue and leaned back in his seat. The chair noticeably squeaked. He tried not to flinch.

"There are certain tells people have when they're not being truthful," Clark finally said after a few more seconds, "Some people are better than others at hiding it, but I've always been pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me. It’s obviously not a perfect science," he continued, "it's a lot of observation and it varies between people. It’s really mostly pattern recognition."

"Could you give me some concrete examples?" DeMar asked.

"Uh," Clark’s eyes flickered over to Wayne who appeared to be preoccupied with something on his computer, "sure. Just uh, it helps to get a base before getting started. So is your name Marie DeMar?"

"Yes," DeMar responded. Clark took in her entire appearance. Medium-brown skin. No makeup. Short curly hair. Going a little gray even though she was only in her mid twenties.

"That’s true." Clark said, "What’s your favorite color?"

"My favorite color is blue," DeMar responded evenly.

"Lie," Clark replied and caught DeMar’s slightly frustrated reaction. She’d evidently hoped to fool him with a low stakes early lie.

"How did you know?" she asked.

Clark typically reverse-engineered his tells off of a grand combo of pupil dilation, heartbeat, stress hormones, and a hundred other tiny things most people would miss because they all happened in a fraction of a blink of the eye. He didn’t have enough evidence to back anything up yet other than what he would call a ‘gut feeling’ to his colleagues when he knew something to be true, but couldn't explain it in a way that sounded true.

"Well, I didn’t know for sure," Clark answered, "but you confirmed it right now. I have an idea, but I’d need a bigger sample set to know if I’m right."

"Okay," DeMar responded, leaning forward in her seat and looking very serious, "I had a pet rabbit named Hairy Houdini."

"True," Clark replied.

"I’ve never broken a bone."

"Lie."

"I’m terrified of sharks."

"True," Clark responded.

"It’s because I watched Jaws too young," she elaborated.

"You," Clark said after a moment and touched his left hand to his bottom lip, "have a twitch in your lip before you lie. Like you’re trying to suppress a smile."

DeMar covered the lower half of her face with her hand. It had been something she’d done unconsciously. Maybe that would serve her better one day knowing what could have given her away.

"Not everyone reacts the same," Clark continued, "and what looks like deceit on some people is genuine and vice versa. Intuition is preconscious thoughts, something you’ve picked up and haven’t put into words. Look around you to understand what factors made you feel that way. Be critical. If you think someone is lying, keep looking. Keep digging. If they are lying, you’ll be able to find something that confirms that."

They chatted for another few minutes, discussing what Clark had seen when talking to the bank manager, and then the steps he had taken so he could prove it enough that a judge would issue a warrant. Clark was always happy to chat with trainees and new agents. It still only felt like yesterday that he was rolling up to Quantico himself, questioning whether he’d made a mistake by abruptly quitting the Planet and coming here.

DeMar glanced at the clock and seemed shocked by the time.

"Thank you for your time today, Agent Kent," DeMar said.

"It was an absolute pleasure to meet you, Agent DeMar. If you’re ever in the New York field office, make sure to say hi."

"I will, Agent Kent," she responded as she grabbed her bookbag off the floor next to her chair, thanked Wayne for his time, and headed out. That was true, at least in the way that in this moment she had every intention of doing that if she was ever in New York. Whether or not she followed through remained to be seen. Either way, he had work left to do.

Clark opened a drawer in the desk to find a set of yellow, pink, and blue post-it notes. Perfect. He started organizing the sets of documents across the table, writing them down different labels on each note.

"It's a parlor trick," Wayne derided.

Clark glanced up from his stack of post-it notes and then over at his watch it was nearing 6:00 pm.

"Sorry?" Clark kept writing the rest of the remainder of his note.

"That thing you did with DeMar? It's a parlor trick. Cold reading. A carnie could do it."

"It's a little more complicated than that," Clark replied slowly. He pulled off the post-it note off the stack and began to place each note on its corresponding pile.

"Is it?" Wayne asked, before continuing, "My name is Bruce Thomas Wayne."

"True," Clark replied, eyeing Wayne suspiciously as he flipped to the next post-it note in the stack.

"My favorite color is blue," Wayne stated. He sounded sincere.

"Lie," Clark replied easily.

"I had a dog named Ace when I was a little boy."

"True," Clark answered.

"I broke my arm—"

"True," Clark replied, focusing on writing out the rest of the categories on the post-it notes. He’d done a secondary level of color-coding levels of certainty for each.

"—when I was twelve years old."

"Lie," Clark answered again without looking up.

"I killed my parents," Wayne stated.

That made Clark look up suddenly. Wayne stared back at him, blank-faced and calm. Clark's mouth froze because that sounded… that sounded true.

"How did you do it?" Clark asked.

"You know how I did it," Wayne replied. "It was all over the news."

"All the same," Clark answered, "tell me how you did it. Tell me how you killed them."

"I stabbed them," Wayne answered without hesitation. There was almost no emotion on his face. If Clark weren’t what he was… he might have believed him.

"Lie," Clark replied after a moment.

Something complicated warred across Wayne’s features. Something a little like disbelief, something a little like shock, something a little like… hope?

"Why did you ask another question?" Wayne pushed, "You didn’t do it with anything DeMar said or any of my other statements. Could you not tell if I was lying or telling the truth?"

"Is it lying if you think it’s true?" Clark asked, "Even when you’re wrong?"

Wayne looked back at him, considering. He was searching for something in Clark’s face.

"I’ve finished my first pass of all the documents," Clark announced, he removed his glasses to rub at his eyes with his fist, "I sorted them based on time period and likely author, along with likelihood of certainty. I’ll do a second pass with fresh eyes tomorrow. Was there anything else? Before I headed out?"

"I know you typically stick to art crime and forgeries," Agent Wayne said. He spoke in that disarming monotone he’d carried through most of their conversation, "would you be willing to look at some other crime scene photos?"

Clark hesitated for a moment and then nodded. He slid his glasses back on.

"If you think I can be of any help," he responded. It had been hard at first, learning how to shut down that part of himself. To bear witness to someone he was too late to help in any way that truly mattered. This was all just clean up.

Wayne rolled out a carousel slide projector, fired up the machine, and cut the lights.

Clark stoically watched through the progression of images, absorbing as much as he could of each image as they flashed systematically across the wall with a kuthunk, shhh with each new image.

"They’re so far away," Clark mumbled when the third body flashed across the projector.

"Why do you say that?" Wayne asked.

"The first one was West Coast, right?" Clark asked. Wayne stared at him, but said nothing. Clark barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. At least it was dark enough that Wayne probably wouldn’t have seen it.

"The crime scene photos. The spot. In the first photo. It’s above the alpine treeline. There are only a few spots in the US. Based on the look of the terrain, I’d hazard it’s the Sierra Nevada range, so either California or Nevada. There was Spanish Moss," Clark added, "in the second. That doesn’t grow west of Texas or North of Virginia. And that last one. That one is easy. It’s the prairie. The Kansas Gayfeather is blooming."

"You know a lot about regional flora," Wayne commented.

"My parents are farmers," Clark replied. He also had read through several botany and geography books in his first few semesters at Metropolis University when he thought he’d study land management and go back home to Smallville to take over the farm. Of course that was before he’d taken an elective English course the second semester to round out his credits, changed his major, and decided he would be a journalist.

That had been going great right up until it hadn’t. Until he’d managed to write himself into a corner. After breaking the story that landed Lex Luthor behind bars, Clark’s investigative journalism career hit an unexpected wall.

He became as much of the story as Lex. The intrepid journalist who’d solved an infamous decades old art heist. He became too famous for his own good. Sources were afraid to be seen with him, rich people with things to hide avoided him like the plague, and his interview pipeline dried up. Clark knew it was truly over one eventful afternoon when he was turned away from an open press event with no further explanation.

Perry’s offer of Managing Editor at the Planet should have felt like a reward, but it felt like a punishment instead. Facing down the horrifying prospect of thirty-something years behind a desk, when Agent Richardson had asked if he’d ever consider working for the Art Crime division, Clark impulsively said yes.

And here he was now. Not a farmer, not a journalist. At least he was still helping people.

"Where?" Wayne asked.

"Kansas," he replied with a half-smile. He was certain Wayne couldn’t see it in the dark room.

Wayne nodded curtly and reversed through the slides and started again on the first.

"Freddie Simon," Wayne stated, "an accountant from Gotham. On vacation near Reno, Nevada. His wife reported him missing. Found by park rangers after the snow started to melt. 2005." Wayne flicked through the photos again.

"Georgia Dreamont, a highschool student from Marais, Louisiana. Discovered by bloodhounds in a wetland after she failed to return home for dinner. 2012." Wayne flicked through the slides to the third victim.

"Eugene Walters," Wayne announced, "a farmer from Trego county, Kansas. 2014."

"But they’re all the same person," Clark said in disbelief.

"What do you mean by that?" Wayne’s tone was carefully blank, but Clark could hear the barest hint of interest behind it.

"The pattern," Clark said vaguely, gesturing at the images, "the movement. The," Clark sighed, "the brushwork for lack of a better term. It’s the same hand. The same person did all of these."

"There is no connection between any of the victims," Wayne countered.

"Sometimes there isn’t a connection," Clark argued, "sometimes people hurt others indiscriminately. Sometimes people hurt others because they can. They don’t have more motive than that."

"It can’t be the same person," Wayne said. He sounded like a damn robot. "They caught Dreamont’s killer. The boyfriend. He’s serving a life sentence in prison."

"What evidence did they have to convict?" Clark asked.

"He confessed," Wayne replied simply.

"That’s…" Clark shook his head, "That can’t be right, because Eugene was killed after Georgia."

"Bold of you to assume that they’re wrong when they have a signed confession."

"I am right," Clark replied, "And confessions mean nothing when they’re coerced."

"It was the boyfriend," Wayne said, "This type of murder, you would have needed a personal connection. Half of all murdered women are killed by their intimate partner or family member. "

"Yes, that’s true, but there’s still the other half. Obviously most people aren’t killed by serial murderers like this, but you have one.

"There’s a lot of violence here," Clark agreed, "The method: Yes, sometimes it is opportunistic. Crimes of passion, Disorganized thinkers. Sometimes that means it’s someone the killer knew, but…" Clark let out a breath and took a step closer to the image.

He looked at Eugene Walters, out in the field. Clark tried to imagine the type of person he would have been. It was easy. He’d spent his whole childhood surrounded by men like Eugene. When Clark had started working for the FBI, heck, even earlier than that, back when he was working on 'if it bleeds it leads' stories so he could keep a job at the paper, Clark had vowed to never forget that every victim, every body, was a person. Someone who had a whole life. Who had people he had cared about and who had cared about him. Eugene had been dumped out in the prairie like he was disposable.

Clark closed his eyes and kept the heat vision trapped behind his eyelids until he could calm his breathing, until the red faded away from the edges of his vision.

"There are five stab wounds," Clark said after a moment and opened his eyes again, "that the killer started with. Here, here, here," Clark pointing out each spot on the image, "here, and here. There are the same wounds on the other three."

"Apophenia," Wayne declared dispassionately, clinically, "Each victim had over twenty stab wounds. You’re making patterns when patterns don’t exist. It’s your own cognitive bias. A clustering illusion."

"I’m not seeing things that aren’t there," Clark replied evenly, trying to match Wayne's calm tone, "I know exactly what I’m seeing here. These people were all killed by the same person using the same method. It even looks like they used the same knife."

"lt’s an essential part of human cognition," Wayne said, using his lecture voice as he continued speaking; Clark bristled, but kept his mouth shut. "We’re hard-wired for it," he continued, "we see meaning in everything, like it will unlock the secrets of the universe. Don’t feel embarrassed; it’s survival instincts. It’s that innate desire to understand the world around us and to predict outcomes so we can stay safe. Those who could understand that certain things meant danger meant they learned how to survive and passed that behavior on to the next generation. The trick is to recognize when it’s true and when it’s meaningless."

"It’s the same person," Clark repeated, "And I would think you," Clark emphasized, "of all people would understand the significance of this. There is an innocent man in prison for a murder he didn’t do," Clark insisted, "and you’re going to let him rot there because some local law enforcement decided he did it?"

"Here’s another one," Wayne clicked to show a different slide. Clark turned his attention to the image projected on the screen.

It was a much older photo. At least fifty years old based on the quality of the photo and the style of furniture in the background. It looked very similar, but it wasn’t the same. Yes, they had those first five stab wounds but after that… Clark shook his head. It was so obviously not the same, It was like looking at a Rothko and a Frankenthaler. Yes, they were both abstract expressionists who used color, but their approach was different. The way they interacted with the canvas was different. It was two different people with two wildly different approaches to the same work. There was a seriousness in the ones Wayne had shown first. There was almost a… god, it felt sick to even think it, but a playful quality in the older.

"That one is different," Clark replied, "the killer here is… different. The angle too," Clark added, "it’s different. It’s the same spots, but the angle of the blade— it’s steeper. Someone swinging up most of the time rather than down. I’d guess someone shorter here. Different types of knives too. The first group only used one knife. This person used multiple. Left and right hand. Yes, the approach is similar, those five targeted wounds first, but it’s… it’s different after that. It’s not the same person. There might be a connection between the two killers, but they're not the same person."

Wayne nodded and shut the slide machine off, plunging them briefly into darkness within his office before he flicked the light.

"Thank you for your time, Agent Kent," Wayne said sharply, "That’s all I need from you. You can head back to New York now."

"But I—"

"I don’t need anything else from you," Wayne repeated.

"I—" Clark started again, but closed his mouth and frowned. He wasn’t sure what it was he wanted to say. Nothing polite. Nothing his Ma would approve of.

"Okay," Clark said, grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and slung it over his shoulder. He paused at the door with his hand on the door knob.

He looked back over his shoulder. Wayne had returned to his computer, like the entire conversation hadn’t happened. Like they hadn’t uncovered something huge minutes before.

"You’re wrong," Clark added, "about this. You’ve got at least one killer out there with Lord knows how many other victims and an innocent man in jail for the crime. I hope you’re prepared to look past whatever strange bias you have that is keeping you from seeing the truth and do the right thing."

Clark didn’t slam the door. He couldn’t slam the door. Slamming the door meant ripping the whole thing off the hinges. Instead, Clark closed it quietly behind him. With his hand still on the doorknob, he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath through his nose. He let it out slowly.

He went back to the hotel, packed up his room, checked out, and decided to walk home.

Chapter Text

Clark was sidetracked on his walk home from Virginia to New York. He helped with a mudslide, a capsizing fishing vessel, and then diverted an asteroid that was a little too close to the earth for comfort. After the asteroid, he grabbed his suitcase from where he’d stored it on the top of a mountain in Maryland and flew the rest of the way back to New York.

He fell asleep fitfully in his own bed, unable to shake the thoughts that lingered after seeing the crime scene photos.

He was up early the next morning. With nothing else to do, and no disasters around, Clark headed into work.

Clark’s boss smiled at him when she walked by his desk that morning. He tried not to read into it, but it certainly seemed like a pitying smile rather than a generic good morning acknowledgement smile. Clark still couldn't believe he didn't last more than one day working with Wayne. Yes, he had been given all the warnings by three levels of management, but even then he thought— Well, it didn't really matter what he thought.

What mattered was that Wayne didn't need him anymore. He had made that abundantly clear. So, Clark was back in New York where he belonged.

"Back so soon?" Lacour asked, eying Clark over his mug of coffee from across their desks. He was using Clark’s favorite mug. He knew he was using Clark's favorite mug and he wanted Clark to know he knew it was Clark's favorite mug and him knowing that it was Clark's favorite mug was the entire reason he was using it instead of his own actual favorite mug. Agent King and Zamora were off meeting with a contact about an antiques smuggling operation, so there wasn’t the usual buffer there keeping them separated. Clark should have called King last night and asked if he could tag along. King would have said yes. King said yes to pretty much anything Clark asked. It would have been so much better than this.

Clark decided to be the bigger man and not rise to Lacour’s bait. He was an adult after all.

"Yes," Clark replied simply. "Agent Wayne told me he didn’t need anything else from me after I finished up my initial report. I'm touched you missed me so much, Julien. It's nice to know I’m appreciated. Thank you."

Lacour snorted. Clark chose to ignore him. Bigger man and all that.

That was another problem with Lacour, aside from being a terribly malicious gossip. Clark had pieced together when talking to his Ma about why one of the members on the team seemed to hate him so much.

Julien Lacour was tall, handsome, and smart. He had graduated from Harvard Summa Cum Laude. He had a law degree from Yale. He had been President of his academic fraternity. Yes, he was tall, handsome, and smart, but he wasn't as tall, as handsome, or as smart as Clark. (Not to brag.) He wasn't used to ever being shown up and it was obvious. He was a sore loser.

So Clark wasn't ever going to acknowledge any of Lacour's snide comments or backhanded compliments because that was the most effective way of getting under Lacour’s skin Clark was a bigger person and he would never stoop to Lacour’s tactics. Never. Never ever.

Lacour kept talking and Clark did his best to tune it out entirely. Luckily, the London Symphony was in the middle of a rehearsal and it was much better to listen to than Lacour, even though the woodwind section was having a bit of an off day. (Clark may have accidentally overheard that the bassoonist and the saxophonist were going through a messy divorce.)

Clark caught up on the paperwork from the Sinclair case, humming along to Mahler. Like he’d expected, Sinclair wasn't saying anything, but the evidence was overwhelming. Zamora had filled out the majority of it already and they’d done a good job. Clark only had to make a few minor corrections before he could finish it off and submit it.

He combed through a few other reports, pushed forward a few more requests to different intergovernmental organizations , scheduled some interviews, and replied to too many emails. Clark chatted politely with a few coworkers about weekend plans and the weather. He took a quick look over any cases folks were struggling with and wanted a fresh set of eyes on.

It was a standard day in the office when no case was near breaking. It was fine. Clark was fine. He could do this. This was easy. Just like any other day. It was fine.

Clark was fine.

It was fine.

After lunch, Clark tried to get back to the cases on his desk. He did. Really. For about fifteen minutes. Then he accessed the National Crime Information Center's database to find the specific cases Bruce Wayne showed him the night before. He submitted requests to each separate agency to receive full copies of their files.

Depending on the agency, their attitude, their time zone, etc, etc, it could range from a reply in an hour to dragging it for weeks before Clark showed up with a court order.

But that was fine. It's be good to get those files, but Clark didn't need it. He was a journalist and he still had connections. If Bruce Wayne was going to ignore this, then Clark was going to do whatever it was that needed doing.

He spent the rest of the afternoon, slowly, and systematically, approaching every avenue he could. He even called his Pa to ask if he'd be able to see if he knew anyone over in Trego county that knew anything about what happened to Eugene Walters.

Clark called Lois from his cellphone as he walked the three miles from the office to his apartment after work. Naturally, she answered the call by accusing him of being a traitor, because when she emailed his official FBI address he'd responded ‘No Comment’ to her questions about the FBI’s investigation into Arlington Sinclair.

"I met Bruce Wayne," he said as he reached the cross street for his apartment and turned the opposite direction, following the path of the East River, drinking in the dying light of the evening.

"The Bruce Wayne?" she asked. Her knees popped as she stood up from her desk and made her way across the empty office.

"Yes," Clark answered, "He teaches at Quantico."

"You’re in Virginia?" She asked, "Didn’t you just arrest New York’s richest man yesterday?"

"Fourth richest," Clark corrected, "and I did that two days ago. I was at Quantico yesterday. I’m back in New York."

"Busy boy," she hummed. Clark heard the still-familiar little squeak of the fridge in the Daily Planet’s break room.

"Spill," Lois commanded as she rifled through the fridge, "I want the details."

"Are you stealing Cat’s leftovers?" Clark asked. He took a seat at a bench with a view of the river.

"No," Lois denied a little too quickly as she bit into a carrot, "this isn't about me. Bruce Wayne. Details. How did you meet him? What's he like?"

"He’s—" Clark started. He was… he was what? He was clearly brilliant. He was good at lecturing. He’d solved cases others deemed impossible. He was curt, dismissive, downright rude. But underneath all that there was… There was something Clark couldn’t place. Something he hadn’t been able to put into words at fourteen and was still struggling to at thirty-three.

"I didn't get a good read on him," Clark finally admitted.

"You didn't get a good read on him?" Lois asked incredulously as she snapped into another carrot, "Mr. Human Polygraph?"

"Polygraphs don't mean anything," Clark countered, "they're unreliable and not admissible in court."

"That's not what I mean. Stop being pedantic. You've never met someone you couldn't get a read on. Within three minutes, whether they said shit or not, you had their whole life story figured out. I’ve never seen you spend more than ten minutes figuring out if someone was hiding something or not. You walked out of your first meeting with Maxwell Lord and knew he was hiding something."

"Well," Clark shrugged helplessly on the other side of the phone, slowing down once he reached the bridge, "Wayne was hiding something, but I get why he’d do that. A lot of his life story is already out there. Did you watch his trial?"

"Did I?" Lois laughs sharply, "Who didn't? My Intro to Journalism professor had us writing papers on it through the whole semester. I got a B minus, which I’m still furious about. Apparently ‘spelling counts.'" She snapped another carrot between her teeth.

"He seems…" Clark trailed off, "complicated," he finally settled on.

"Complicated?" She slammed the fridge door shut and walked over the four steps over to the coffee pot. He could hear her heels clicking across the linoleum.

"Yeah," Clark repeated, "he’s… he carries a lot of guilt and shame."

"You don't think he did it, do you?" Lois asked and proceeded to chug a cup of what had to be tepid coffee.

"No," Clark stood for a moment gazing out across the horizon, back towards Quantico, back towards Bruce Wayne’s office in the furthest-away corner of the building on the top floor, "No. He didn't do it. But he is hiding something."

The next day found Clark heads-down in the NCIC database again. He scoured through the records for anything even vaguely familiar. Clark liked to cast a wide net. It was always easier to review all the information and exclude things later. Which someone who wasn’t able to read at lightning speed might not agree with, but it worked for Clark.

There were at least two separate actors, potentially three. He hadn’t figured out how to think of them yet. Original and Copycat felt uncomfortable. Master and Apprentice felt even worse. Clark tried to avoid the sensational names the media was prone to, even when he’d worked in the press. It’d always felt slimy and exploitative.

He’d been sorting them into two separate piles in his mind A and B.

The furthest back he saw with the pattern was from 1925; it was the same hand as the fourth murder Wayne had shown him. He hadn’t been too far off with his estimate for that killing either; that murder had happened in 1959.

A’s killings continued through the years. Infrequent across the decades. Years would go without anything and then there might be a rash of killings over the span of a night or two. Some years they almost seemed to be like clockwork, happening every four months for a few nights and then silence. They were primarily contained to the Eastern Seaboard.

Clark sat back in his seat, hands steepled under his chin.

There were two murders in Gotham that fit the profile. He didn't need to dive any deeper into the case file. It had been all over the airwaves in the late 90s. It had been nearly impossible to escape. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t connected the dots earlier in Wayne’s office; he supposed he had just been too busy looking at the cases in front of him to start thinking of others that fit the profile.

This… Well, it didn’t change everything. But it was certainly interesting.

Clark was startled by a knock on his door around 7:00 p.m. that evening. He’d just settled down to watch the Metropolis Meteors square up against the Coast City Angels. Coast City would probably destroy them, but even after almost four years in New York, Clark still couldn't bring himself to root for the Yankees. It just felt wrong.

Clark looked through the door and his hands froze as he touched the doorknob. He hesitated, because on the other side of Clark’s apartment door stood Bruce Wayne.

For a moment, Clark considered ignoring it. He thought about walking away, sitting back down on the couch, and turning up the volume on his second-hand TV.

But, alas, curiosity and the cat and all that. He opened the door.

"What are you— Why?" Clark asked as Wayne stood there quietly in Clark's hallway. You needed a key to get into the building. Had he slipped in when someone entered or exited? Had one of his neighbors buzzed him in?

Had he flashed his badge? That seemed the least likely. He was dressed down somewhat casually in a black turtleneck sweater and a pair of slacks instead of a full suit.

"You’ve been requesting case files," Wayne said.

"Yes," Clark agreed, "I have." There wasn’t point in denying. It wasn't like Clark was doing anything wrong. In fact, he'd been doing it all above board and exactly by the book. If Wayne had a problem with Clark, he could file a complaint with Clark’s supervisor. Richardson would have his back.

Wayne looked searchingly at Clark, his own face a careful mask.

"Why?" Wayne asked.

"Because it needs doing," Clark answered, "and you gave me the impression you weren't going to do it."

"Good," he replied mirthlessly and walked, uninvited, into Clark's apartment.

"What are you—"

"Show me what you have now," Wayne ordered.

"I don’t have them on me," Clark replied, "I don't take case files home. Everything I do have is either at the office or saved on my work computer. Why are you here?"

Wayne glanced around the modest apartment and took a seat on the couch, "Because your neighbors wouldn't appreciate us talking about this in the hallway."

"No, not in my apartment. Well, yes in my apartment and on my couch, but I meant New York. What are you doing in New York?"

"You didn't let the cases go," Wayne replied,

"No," Clark agreed, "I didn't. And I don't need your permission to look into them."

"I'm difficult to work with," Wayne stated.

"I gathered," Clark replied as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at him.

"People don't know how to work with me," Wayne stated.

"I don't know, Wayne," Clark replied dryly, "seems like the common denominator in the situation is you."

Wayne ignored that line, but there was the smallest twitch around the corner of his mouth.

"I need someone who isn't afraid of me. Who isn't going to hold back."

"Was that all some elaborate test?" Clark asked. He couldn’t help but feel a little angry at Wayne for putting him through this, but also a little pleased that he seemed to have passed.

"No," Wayne replied easily, "it wasn't particularly elaborate."

"I don't need you," Clark announced, "and I’m not your subordinate. I don't report to you."

Wayne smiled victoriously; the jerk knew he’d already won.

Clark sighed, shook his head, and picked up an old Triple A map he’d snagged on a road trip with Jimmy that he’d never had the heart to get rid of.

He spread it over the coffee table and pulled three highlighters out of a pencil holder.

"I'm not done researching," Clark said, as he started marking Xs across the map using the different colored pens, "I only started looking yesterday."

"What is the blue?" Wayne asked.

"They’re similar to the 1959 Arkham murder," Clark answered, "but they're all after 1990." Clark hesitated for a moment before using the blue pen to mark an X in Gotham.

Wayne stood up suddenly from the couch. Clark didn't look up at him.

"Our flight down to Louisiana flies out of LaGuardia tomorrow at noon."

"Our?" Clark repeated, eyebrows slightly raised. Wayne simply nodded.

"I'll meet you at the airport," Wayne said and walked out of Clark’s apartment without a second-glance.

Clark watched the closed door for longer than he’d like to admit before he called up his boss to make sure he wasn't going to get fired if he followed Bruce Wayne on down to Louisiana tomorrow morning.

Clark's hands were gripping the armrest. He’d had to reshape the metal under his hand several times. This flight was going to be worse than the last one. Twice as bad, at least.

"Did you know your odds of dying in a commercial air crash are one in almost eight million?" Wayne asked casually, like he hadn’t just told him how likely it was he would die.

"Jesus," Clark laughed out in stunned disbelief, "how is that helpful?"

"I’m pointing out that it’s an irrational fear. The chances of a fatal air crash are miniscule. If you were to take one flight a day, everyday, you would need to fly for almost 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash."

"I’m not afraid," Clark repeated through gritted teeth, "I don’t need your statistics. I just don’t like flying."

"If you want to be paranoid about something, you should worry about car crashes," Wayne supplied, "You were much more likely to die in the drive to the airport—"

"I don’t like flying," Clark snapped. He then immediately realized he had snapped, which flooded him with a surge of guilt. He took in a deep breath, "I don’t like flying," he repeated, much more calmly this time, "that’s all. I’m not scared."

"Sure," Wayne replied, and Clark could hear the mockery under his tone. His guilt quickly evaporated.

"Do you know what your problem is, Wayne?" Clark asked, turning in his seat to look at Wayne. Wayne looked back at him.

"I'm sure you'll be all too happy to enlighten me," Wayne answered, eyebrows slightly raised in haughty defiance. He turned.

"You think everyone hates you or has some bias against you because of your reputation," Clark said, forcing his tone into something calm, and sickly-kind. It was the sort of ‘oh, honey, no’ that was perfected by older church ladies. He dropped the whole pretense immediately and spat out, "but actually everyone hates you because you're a fucking dick," before turning his whole body away from him and curling against the window.

Even over the flight attendant coming over to explain what to do in case of emergency, Clark could hear Wayne’s chuckle. It felt so wrong to get all those reactions he associated with flying as Superman while sitting down. The swoop in his stomach. The weightlessness. It all felt wrong.

As the plane launched to take off, Clark flinched when he felt something touch his hand. Then he opened his eyes, to see Wayne’s hand extended over the empty middle seat towards Clark, palm up in offering.

Clark hesitated for a moment. Wayne seemed sincere in the gesture. He didn’t seem to be mocking Clark. Clark wasn’t afraid of flying. He just hated it because he spent the whole time worrying about what he could do if there was an emergency he needed to get to without endangering the lives on the plane. It wasn't the same as actually being afraid. It was— the plane jolted and Clark snatched Wayne’s hand out of the air. It was fine. He didn’t need to save anyone. It was just turbulence. The engines were fine. The flight attendants were calm. The pilots were discussing dinner plans. Everything out there in the world was okay. No one needed saving. It was fine. Everything was fine. Clark was fine.

He could do this. It was going to be fine. He concentrated on Wayne’s hand. On the calluses on his hand. The small callus on his trigger finger. Wayne was probably right-handed. He could feel Wayne’s heartbeat through his hand. He squeezed Wayne’s hand. Wayne squeezed back. Clark let go of Wayne's hand a few moments later when the turbulence settled. Wayne went back to reading his book like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"Thank you," Clark finally said, and then he leaned over their middle seat to get closer to Wayne so he could lower his voice.

"I’m sorry I called you a… a—"

"A dick?" Wayne supplied helpfully, glancing up from his book with a smirk.

"Yes, I— I apologize for my language. It was inappropriate."

Wayne smiled fondly over at him, looking at-ease as he devoured Clark’s discomfort.

"You don’t ever have to apologize for stating the truth, Clark," he said before returning to his book.

Louisiana was hot, humid, and sticky. Clark didn't sweat like humans did, but even he struggled a little. It seemed like there was just enough moisture in the air that his skin felt constantly damp and the fabric from his clothing stuck against his skin. It reminded him of the corn sweats out in Kansas. But somehow so much worse.

It was raining by the time they landed. Marais was still hours from the airport. When the radio signal was strong enough, they listened to NPR. Otherwise, the drive passed in silence. The rain came in and out throughout the hours.

"We should get food," Clark piped up as the rain started coming down in sheets, "before places start shutting down for the night. Marais is pretty remote, so we might not get another chance."

Wayne pulled off into a small truck stop diner just off the highway. Clark was kicking himself for not remembering to bring an umbrella and his windbreaker was still packed away in his suitcase, so he subjected himself to getting drenched from the walk from the parking lot to the diner.

They ended up side-by-side at the counter drinking burnt coffee as the storm raged outside.

"Most people have asked me by now," Wayne stated.

Clark pushed his glasses up on his forehead and scrubbed at his face with one hand.

"Sorry?" he asked. It'd been a long ride and he was exhausted even though Wayne had been driving. Probably especially because Wayne had been driving.

"You don’t have to apologize," Wayne replied, stabbing at his food.

"No," Clark laughed as he took another bite of his meal, "I wasn't apologizing. I wasn't listening to you. I was zoning out. What did you say?"

Wayne glanced sideways at him; the shock was evident on his face before it eased back into its blank neutrality.

"I said by now, most people have already asked me." Clark didn't need to get him to clarify anything further.

"I don’t need to ask," Clark replied, "it’s none of my business. I’m not a reporter anymore and curiosity isn’t a valid reason to dredge up someone’s worst days."

Wayne looked down at his salad and stabbed at a cherry tomato.

"You're the reason Luthor is at Blackgate."

"One of," Clark replied. He couldn't take all the credit. He’d only been able to help prove the stolen painting at first. The rest of the investigation had happened in earnest after that. Sure, Clark had handed over his hundreds of files and dozens of unpublished stories to the proper authorities and they’d finally been able to do something.

"Good," Wayne stated, "I always hated that prick."

"Me too," Clark agreed. "Did you—" Clark started, hesitated, and then said, "did you want me to ask? Did you want to talk about it?"

"No," Wayne replied sharply.

"Okay," Clark nodded, and "How was your book?" Clark asked.

"My book?"

"The book you were reading on the plane. How was it?"

Wayne shrugged.

"Fine," he replied and went back to eating. Clark waited two minutes to see if Wayne would elaborate. When he didn’t, Clark snorted, shook his head, and focused on his own meal.

"You’re a riveting conversationalist, Wayne," Clark mumbled, and turned back to his food.

"I’m aware of my shortcomings," Wayne replied, "but you talk enough to carry the conversation for both of us."

"Fine," Clark huffed, "Fine. I’ll shut up.”

"No," Wayne said softly, "that’s not what I meant. Tell me about your…" Wayne seemed to struggle for a moment grasping for a topic, "your favorite art crime."

"My favorite art crime," Clark repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. He saw something odd in Wayne, a slight hardening in his demeanor, a sharpening in his shoulders. Wayne opened his mouth to speak.

"Amelia Crowne’s portrait," Clark said before Wayne could say anything else. "How much do you know about it?"

"The basics," Wayne answered, "It was an oil painting by Gustav Klimt. It was one of his last completed works. Amelia Crowne was an heiress of one of the Five Families, the founders of Gotham. They commissioned it as a betrothal gift." Clark chose not to comment that Wayne was counted amongst those founding families.

"The basics, he says!" Clark called out, shaking his head.

"Sorry I—"

"No," Clark interrupted, he caught the waitress's eye and she walked over, "A warm up, please, and two slices of pie, your favorite and the best seller. Thank you." She nodded and refilled their mugs before walking off.

"First off," Clark continued, "you should split the pie with me, because I’m getting it regardless, but I won’t feel as rude about it if you have some too. Second– don’t apologize. I was so mad you weren’t teaching during my Academy class, I’d love to hear another one of your lectures."

"You were mad?" Wayne asked, sounding confused by the prospect.

"Maybe mad isn’t the right term. You were solving a case, so I wasn’t mad, but everyone talked about how good your lectures were. I was disappointed I wasn’t learning from the best while I was there. So come on I—" Clark smiled, "I want to hear your take on it. You might have a unique perspective on it, being from Gotham."

Wayne looked over at him, curiously. He studied Clark for a few more beats before he spoke.

"She was renowned for her beauty," Wayne explained, "Her eyes, in particular, were remarked upon in several historical sources. She was striking. The portrait was unveiled at her engagement party. It was an exquisite piece, of course, but it never would have been as notable of a work as it became if it wasn’t for the circumstances surrounding it. A week before her wedding, Amelia Crowne disappeared."

Clark settled into his seat and watched Wayne as he continued to speak. Wayne quieted for a moment when the waitress stopped by and dropped off two plates of pie; one blueberry and one pecan. Wayne studied Clark as he divided them both in half and had one portion of each on a plate.

"Have some pie," Clark offered as pushed one plate over to Wayne. Clark didn’t wait to see if Wayne actually had any before tucking into his own. They were both very good pies.

"There are a lot of theories about her disappearance, of course," Wayne explained and took a small bite, "The leading rumor at the time was she’d been romantically involved with a man well below her station. A street performer: William Cobb. There were rumors she’d run off with him to join the circus. Nothing was ever proven, of course. There were records of Cobb after her disappearance; he’d been performing with the circus out in... I want to say Chicago, but I might have that city wrong."

He was close. It had been Cincinnati on the night she disappeared, but Chicago was their next destination.

"The painting was locked away by the family. With no direct heirs and some shoddy estate planning, most of the fortune was tied up for years. Eventually, the portrait made its way to the Gotham Museum of Art. It was one of their central pieces in their Art Nouveau exhibit.

"Until Halloween night, 1959," Wayne announced as he poured way too much sugar into his coffee, stirring it with his unused butter knife, "the painting was stolen. This in and of itself wouldn’t have been particularly remarkable, not as far as art crime goes. At the time, it wasn’t even close to the most expensive piece in the gallery. What makes the story is that sometime the following night, November 1st, 1959, the painting was returned... Or what was left of it anyway. The charred remnants were put back exactly where they’d been removed from the gallery wall.” Clark had seen photos of the portrait and the crime scene. The painting had been beautiful, the remnants of it were haunting.

"Did I miss anything?" Wayne asked.

"No, you covered it. But there is one coincidence I found interesting," Clark added, "Harriet Arkham’s murder took place October 31st, 1959. One heiress of a Founding Family was murdered and the memory of another destroyed on the very same night in Gotham."

"Mmm," Wayne hummed as he finished off the rest of his pie and flagged down their waitress for the check, "Never thought about it that way before."

"I hadn’t until you showed me the crime scene photo. The police didn’t find any connection," Clark said, "but I think Gotham law enforcement often leave much to be desired."

"Who knows," Wayne declared as he pulled out his wallet and dropped cash down on the counter, "maybe you’ll be the one to finally solve it."

Wayne missed the exit for the motel and they had to double back. The rain hadn’t let up and Wayne needed to circle the parking lot twice before parking off on the side of the road when it was clear there were no remaining spots.

"I’ll grab the bags," Clark offered, "And meet you inside."

Clark jogged across the street as quickly as he could without looking like Usain Bolt or a complete blur. He managed to move fast enough their luggage was damp, but nothing soaked through. He stood beneath the awning watching the downpour. Lightning lit up the horizon and thunder rumbled six seconds later.

Clark was approaching as the man behind the front desk was reaching over to offer Wayne a key.

Wayne took it and waited expectantly. Nothing happened.

"And the second room?" Wayne prompted. The young man behind the front desk stared at him in mute horror and went to check the computer.

"I booked two rooms," Wayne’s voice was calm. Almost unnervingly so. The receptionist scratched the back of his neck, a slow dawning panic washing across his face.

"I’m sorry, sir. We only have you for the one room for your stay with us. I— We’re fully booked for the night, with the storm as bad as it is we had a lot of people stopping here early for the night."

"There aren't any other rooms available?" Wayne asked.

"No, sir. We’re fully booked for the night; y’all are the last room for the night to check in."

"How did this happen?" Wayne asked.

"I’m not entirely sure, sir. And I do apologize for the inconvenience. We just switched to a new reservation system and we’ve been having some trouble with it. I understand this is not what you expected and I want to make it right." Outwardly, he was handing it well, but he stunk of nerves; Clark didn’t blame him, "I can start calling around to see if I can find accommodations at a neighboring facility."

Nearby was a bit of a misnomer. A quick scan told him the closest place was still at least thirty miles out. The rain battered against the windows. Lightning flashed and three seconds later thunder rumbled. Wayne looked like he was about to ask something, so Clark interrupted.

"How many beds does the room have?" Clark asked.

"Uh, let’s see," the young man glanced at the room number, "that one is a double queen, sir."

"Perfect," Clark responded and snatched up the key from Wayne, "I know this isn’t your fault, but we’ve been traveling all day, we’re exhausted, and we have an early meeting tomorrow. We’ll stay in the one room that was booked tonight. If anyone checks out tomorrow, could you prioritize giving us that reservation? We’d really appreciate it."

"Yes, sir," he replied quickly, "I’ll put in a note and see what I can do. And again, sirs, I do apologize for the trouble."

"It’s really no trouble," Clark assured him, "thank you for trying to help us fix it." Clark turned around and made his way to their room, staying under the awning to prevent from getting doused with any more rain. With the winds as strong and wild as they were, it hardly mattered. He still entered the motel room damp.

He hated being damp. It made the clothing cling and rub. It was distracting. He could feel every thread sticking and rubbing against his skin. He couldn’t wait to change.

Wayne frowned as he followed behind Clark. The room was labeled as no smoking, but there was the lingering smell of cigarette smoke clinging to the carpets and drapes. It looked like any other motel in the middle of nowhere. A kind of sepia toned mix of wallpaper and paint. Tan carpets, white linen, white duvet, and one of those useless yellow bed scarves draped at the foot of both the beds.

"Pick whichever bed you want, I don’t care. Set the thermostat to whatever temperature you want, I don’t care. Lights on, lights off. I. Do. Not. Care. I can sleep through anything. But I’m taking a shower and I’m going to sleep. If you want to go drive in this storm hoping to find another room at another motel Lord knows where, that’s between you and God. If you need to piss I recommend you go now or wait thirty minutes."

Wayne stared at him in stunned silence for a moment.

"Take your shower," Wayne relented.

Clark didn’t get dirty the same way humans did. His body was a hostile environment that didn’t support the right bacteria to develop much of a smell. He didn’t sweat. His skin didn’t produce oil, but eventually enough stuff gathered on his skin he needed to wash up. And sometimes, like today, enough of the different things he’d accumulated were impossible to ignore.

Clark used the tiny travel-sized toiletries provided by the hotel. He hadn’t bothered to pack his own, because it usually didn’t matter. It was nice to get out of his clinging damp clothes. If he’d had to stay in them a moment longer he was liable to go mad.

He wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped out. Wayne had taken the bed furthest from the door and was folding his clothing neatly in the dresser. Clark snorted and shook his head.

"What?"

"I never use the drawers," Clark replied as he opened his suitcase, "Always afraid I’ll forget something during check out." He slid on a pair of boxers before moving the towel to drape over his shoulders now he was semi-decent. He proceeded to dry his hair with the towel while observing Wayne.

"Is there any hot water left?" Wayne asked.

Clark rolled his eyes, "Yes, I saved you some."

He grabbed his toothbrush out of his toiletry bag. This was another thing he probably didn’t need to do, but he couldn’t go to sleep without it.

"What time are we meeting tomorrow with Fontenot?" Clark asked around his toothbrush, leaning in the doorway of the bathroom as he spoke to Wayne’s back.

Wayne appeared to be ignoring him, but Clark could see him watching Clark in the dark reflection on the TV. Clark thought he’d imagined the slight shift in Wayne's heart rate, but—

No. He had a job to do. There was no time to entertain a stupid, impossible, one-sided schoolboy crush.

"We’ll leave at nine tomorrow," Wayne announced primly and decisively slid the dresser drawer shut.

Wayne stood up, grabbing a neatly folded stack of clothing, and headed for the bathroom.

"Hold on," Clark said around his toothbrush following Wayne into the bathroom, "you've got to let me spit first."

Wayne waited impatiently tapping his foot on the tile for Clark to finish.

Clark relaxed back into the space. He could hear Wayne on the other side. He thought about calling his folks, but they were over at the neighbors having dinner. Instead, Clark turned on the TV and flipped through the channels and stopped when he found an episode of Golden Girls.

When Wayne emerged from the bathroom showered and fully dressed, Clark picked up the remote to turn it off.

"Leave it on," Wayne said as he settled down into his bed. Clark shrugged and put the remote back down on the nightstand positioned between the beds.

Clark woke to the acrid smell of fear in the air. It took a moment for him to orient himself and realize it was coming from Wayne’s side of the room. He glanced over. Wayne’s body was tense, his heart beat, his breathing a little erratic; he was in the middle of what appeared to be a nightmare.

So Clark got out of bed, making sure to squeak the mattress as he did. He headed to the bathroom letting weight slip into his footstep and closed the door, just a tad too loud and clumsy. It did its job; Wayne sat up suddenly and caught his breath. That horrible scent of fear didn’t dissipate entirely, but it lessened considerably now that it wasn’t radiating off of Wayne.

Clark flushed the toilet then went and washed his hands. He could hear as Wayne peeled off his sweat-damp shirt and downed a bottle of water from the mini fridge.

Wayne pretended to still be sleeping when Clark reopened the bathroom door, so he tried to look like he was being careful not to wake him as he slid back between the sheets, rolled over on his side, and tried, unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep.

Chapter Text

It was during the drive to the prison that morning that Clark realized that Wayne had not secured a meeting with Felix Fontenot before flying them down to Shreveport and driving over three hours in a summer downpour.

And, it was during their arrival, even clearer that the prison was not thrilled to have a federal agent there looking to speak to one of their inmates. Clark had hung back a little, eavesdropping on the frustrating conversation between Wayne and a member of the correctional staff who was doing everything she could to get Wayne to give up and leave. Clark predicted they would be at this for the next few hours. He impatiently checked his watch.

"Don’t worry," an older woman whispered to him, "as soon as visiting hours start Marcel comes over and opens up the other window."

"Thank you," Clark answered, smiling politely back at the woman. He checked his watch again. Wayne had been arguing for thirty-six minutes with no sign of slowing down.

True to her word, as the clock flicked over on the hour, another man joined the front desk and motioned for Clark to step forward.

"Who are you visiting?" the guard asked, vaguely disinterested.

"Felix Fontenot," Clark replied.

"Is he expecting you?"

"No," Clark said and decided to fall back on an old routine, "I'm Clark Kent from the Daily Planet." The guard looked momentarily less bored. Clark wasn't sure if he recognized his name or the name of the paper.

He dug his press pass out of his wallet. Lois had been ribbing him for keeping up his USPA membership even though he’d had absolutely no use for it the last four years. Joke was on her.

"Fill out these forms," the guard explained, "Drop them in the box over there when you’re done. Wait until your name is called."

Clark got started on paperwork. The woman behind him in line, a frequent visitor by the looks of it, was quickly escorted in. A few minutes passed before Clark’s name was called.

Wayne was too absorbed in his current standoff to notice Clark’s departure.

The years had not been kind to Felix Fontenot. He couldn't have been older than twenty-three, but he looked ancient. He was worn out. Tired.

"They said you're a journalist?" Fontenot asked as he sat down across from Clark in the visiting room.

"I'm sorry," Clark said, "I wasn’t fully truthful when I came in today. I don't work for the Daily Planet anymore."

Felix frowned over at him.

"You're not a journalist?" he asked slowly.

"No. Not anymore. I work for the FBI now. I had a few questions for you."

Felix moved to stand; Clark reached a hand out and placed it gently on Felix’s forearm to stop him. Usually this was when a guard would yell ‘No touching’ but no one had noticed it yet.

"No, please," Clark said, "they weren't going to let me in otherwise. I’m guessing there's rampant corruption here and they're worried that's why we actually showed up out of the blue like this. Right now, my partner is probably still arguing to arrange an interview with you. And I do have a contact at the Planet who still owes me; she’ll cover your story if you want that. I need you to hear me out, okay? It's important. Please, Felix. For Georgia."

Felix stilled, but didn't fully relax. Clark didn't blame him. This wasn’t a place that allowed for relaxation.

"I don't think you were involved," Clark offered, "I don’t think you killed Georgia."

"No," Felix responded, "I didn't kill her. I loved her."

"I'm so sorry," Clark said and gave Felix’s forearm a gentle squeeze before he pulled his hand back moment before one of the guards turned to face their table, "I believe you. I don't want to give you false hope, but I'm going to do everything I can to get that truth out there and get you home."

Felix blinked slowly at him. His eyes had been so much brighter in the photos of him standing beside Georgia.

"What do you…" Felix started and swallowed, cleared his throat, "what do you need from me?"

"Everything you know about Georgia. Anything she was doing, anyone who was spending time around her, anyone or anything that stood out as out-of-place or unusual. Walk me through her regular habits. Tell me everything you know about the day she was killed. I know they didn't listen to you, but I'm here because I know you didn't do this and you shouldn't be here."

The killings seemed random, but there had to be something that connected them. And he was going to find out what that was.

"Georgie loved birds," Felix said, sad eyes downcast at his cuffed hands, "she was going to be an ornithologist."

Wayne was glaring daggers at the empty front desk when Clark walked back in.

"Where the hell have you been?" Wayne groused.

"Visiting hours," Clark replied and took a seat beside him.

"You're fucking kidding me," he breathed out.

"Georgie liked birds," Clark said, "she’d been going to that wetlands for years for bird watching. Every Sunday morning. Like clockwork. She’d go out with her DSLR and take photos."

"That wasn't in the file," Wayne murmured.

"No," Clark agreed, "it wasn't."

"She wasn't found with her camera," Wayne added.

"No," Clark agreed again, "she wasn't."

"You think she saw something she wasn’t supposed to?" Wayne asked.

"Yeah," Clark said after a long moment, "I think there’s a pretty good chance she did."

It was another hour and fifteen minutes before they reached the wetlands where Georgia’s body was found. Wayne used the rental car’s GPS to direct them down the long, mostly desolate road, but Clark had brought along a paper map all the same. The last sign of civilization was a gas station and an unmarked building with a large parking lot.

When the GPS cut out, Clark was able to direct them the rest of the way down the dirt road to the spot Georgie always parked. Felix had told him he tried to go birding with Georgie about once a month and had gone with her two Sundays before. He had planned on going with her the next week. He’d recounted the path they usually took which Clark had translated onto the map while Wayne drove.

It was sunny and bright as they parked, a nice reprieve from the overcast summer rain. Clark got out of the car and surveyed the scene. It was years too late for any real evidence at the crime scene, but Clark was never going to skip on an opportunity for more information.

Wayne turned in his seat to grab a gym bag from the back of the car and pulled out a small bottle of SPF 70 and began to apply it to his neck, face, and hands.

"Do you want sunscreen?" Wayne asked as he exited the car.

Clark leaned over the top of the car, arms folded over the hot metal, and grinned over at him.

"You burn easy, don’t you?"

"Fuck off," Wayne huffed as he slid on his sunglasses on and pulled down his bureau ballcap, "You want some or are you trying to get skin cancer?"

"I’m good, but thanks."

Wayne shut the car door with more force than necessary.

"You still have your license, don't you?" Clark asked.

"I've been driving us for the last two days," Wayne deadpanned.

"Not your driver's," Clark clarified, "your medical."

Wayne glanced over at him as he started walking away from the car. Clark could see his own reflection in Wayne’s sunglasses.

"Why do you ask?" Wayne sounded suspicious.

"I’ve got this weird mole…" Clark started. Wayne’s mouth twitched in a frustrated frown. "I’m kidding, I’m kidding!" Clark threw his hands up laughing, "Professional curiosity, in the sense that I am professionally curious, I guess. I wanted to know why you keep it up if you don’t practice right now. Is it something you’d like to do again?"

"Why do you still have your press pass?" Wayne countered.

Clark shrugged and started to carefully pick his way through the tall grass, easing his weight to not crush the plants too terribly.

"You know, if you’d asked me this morning I wouldn’t have had a good reason, but it sure came in handy, didn’t it?"

"Mmmm," Wayne replied.

There wasn’t a lot to gather out there in the field. Well, there was a lot, but nothing particularly helpful to the case this many years out.

"I’ll never get over how flat some places are," Wayne muttered as he crouched down. He seemed to be looking around for landmarks. Comparing it to the crime scene photos he’d shown Clark that first day working together back at Quantico. He was about four feet off from the exact spot.

"Prairie madness," Clark agreed.

"This is where they found her," Wayne said after a moment; Clark could see him squinting behind his sunglasses as he looked over at the dirt road in the distance. The vegetation was tall, nearly up to their mid-thighs, and a few trees dotted the landscape, but the car was still clearly visible. An average human, with average eyesight, would have been able to spot them from the road.

"Not very far from the road," Clark commented.

"Mmm," Wayne hummed.

"I didn’t see any other cars on the road for the last twenty miles, easy."

"Hmmmm," Wayne intoned again, "someone knew her movements and followed her out here. They were bold enough to assume no one else would be there. This wasn’t someone’s first kill."

"No," Clark agreed, "no, it wasn’t. As hectic as the attack appeared on paper, this was all planned. He knew what he was doing and he knew no one would be around to witness it."

They diverged and walked in opposite directions. Clark had walked less than half a mile before he spotted something. He called out to Wayne who made his way towards him.

There were a few ‘No Trespassing’ signs and a temporary chain link fence. Wayne pulled out a camera and began to take photos.

"Any idea who owns the land?" Clark asked, "Looks like development hasn’t broken ground."

"Not yet," Wayne replied as he stowed his camera away, "but we’ll get it soon."

"Stop at the gas station," Clark ordered as they returned from the dirt path onto asphalt. Wayne obeyed without question.

"This is the only road in or out for miles," Wayne observed as he unbuckled his seat belt, "they both would have had to go past that junction."

Clark headed into the small convenience store at the gas station with Wayne trailing behind him. Clark introduced himself to the woman behind and flashed his badge. Some people loved talking to FBI agents, even if they hardly had anything useful to say. She was clearly one of them.

She never worked Sundays you see, because she was a good God-fearing Christian. The country was going to hell in a handbasket because more people didn’t follow God’s great will. No, she couldn’t remember who worked back then. A series of no good teenagers; she was certain they’d been stealing from the till.

"Can you tell me anything about the business across the street?" Clark asked, "How long have they been there? Do you know the owners?"

"Bunch of sinners and deviants," she spat out.

"Thank you for the warning, ma’am," Clark said with a strained smile as he handed over his business card, "we appreciate your time today. If you remember who worked here back in 2012, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We would like to speak with them."

Wayne’s jaw twitched; he didn’t say anything until they walked outside.

"Camera?" Wayne asked, inclining his head towards the security camera outside of the building across the street. Clark nodded in response.

"It looks like it could have a good view of the street. Let's hope they save their footage."

Clark wasn’t sure what brand of sinners and deviants the people across the street were. It was a quaint bar with a tiny dance floor, a few booths and two tops were scattered around. It looked like it could maybe fit a hundred people.

The woman behind the bar was easily Wayne’s height. She was in the middle of restocking. He noticed a small rainbow flag sticker on the corner of the bar mirror. Ah. That brand of sinners and deviants.

"Excuse me, ma’am," Clark started and pulled out his badge. The woman didn't turn to look at him. Clark caught her eye in the mirror over the bar.

"No cops," she replied.

"I assure you my partner and I aren't here to harass you or any of your patrons. We’re not ATF."

"No? Then what the hell are you here for?" She turned around and crossed her arms over her chest leaning against the bar. Her long, auburn hair was pulled up in a loose bun, "Where were you the first time our window got smashed? The second? The fifth? The time we got a bomb threat? Where the hell were you then?"

"Well, ma’am," Clark replied, "I usually work out of the FBI field office in New York, and I'm genuinely sorry the local law enforcement hasn't been doing their job, but I do know some folks who work in the Civil Rights unit and investigate hate crimes. I would be happy to put you in contact with them if you believe you’re being targeted."

"You think passing the buck is going to try and get you some sympathy? I told you. No cops. Get out."

"No," Clark answered, "I wasn’t expecting any sympathy, but there's a young man in prison for a crime he didn't commit and I’m inclined to ask you again for your help."

"Does the name Georgia Dreamont mean anything to you?" Wayne asked and took a seat at the bar. Clark remained standing beside him.

"Of course," she replied and went back to restocking the bar, "The girl that got murdered out in the field a few years back. Her boyfriend did it."

"He didn't," Wayne stated, calm, but empathic. "I’m Special Agent Bruce Wayne, this is my partner, Special Agent Clark Kent," Partner. Clark couldn’t help but preen a little. It was stupid. It was just that… that Wayne had never really had a partner before. Seemed to think of it like a dirty word to use around him. But here he was, calling Clark his partner like it meant something. LIke he trusted Clark and the work he could do.

Like they really were going to solve this thing. Together.

"Bruce Wayne?" she asked, "Like that rich kid out of Gotham? The one that—" Clark shook his head trying to subtly discourage her without drawing Wayne’s attention, before realizing Wayne could see him clear as day in the mirror behind the bar.

"Yes," Wayne answered, his eyes meeting Clark’s in the reflection, "exactly like that."

"I’m Jolene," she replied hesitantly and shook Wayne’s hand.

"My partner and I are trying to figure out what really happened to Georgia. You already know how incompetent the state and local police are here. They fucked up the investigation and we’re trying to fix it, but we’re already years behind and doing everything we can to try and catch up."

"What’s any of this got to do with me?" Jolene asked.

"The only way to get to and from the place she was killed is through the intersection out there. I couldn't help but notice you had security cameras and they appear to face out to the street."

"Of course I've got security cameras" she replied, "we kept getting our windows smashed in. Cops won’t do shit with the footage, but at least the insurance coughs up faster when we’ve got video."

"So how long have you had them?" Clark asked, "Did you have them back in 2012? Do you still have copies of the recordings?"

She nodded slowly.

"Would you let us have a copy of the files for the weeks surrounding the murder?" Clark asked.

"Absolutely not," she responded, "not without a fucking warrant."

"You’re within your rights to refuse a search," Clark pulled out his cellphone and began to look through his contacts.

"What are you doing, Kent?" Wayne asked.

"Figuring out which judge could get us a warrant fastest," Clark murmured, "I was thinking Hallison out of the 2nd circuit. I had less for the Sinclair case and she signed off on it. Unless you know someone closer?"

Clark turned to the bartender, "You wouldn’t happen to have a fax machine here, would you? Or know where I could find the nearest one?" Libraries were usually a good spot. The motel might have one as well.

Wayne turned his attention to Jolene.

"Do you really want us to come back with a warrant?" Wayne asked, "We can and we will. We truly believe this is the best path forward to free an innocent man and bring the right person to justice. But what if we found a compromise? What if we watched them here?" Wayne asked, "Fully supervised? I could order a bottle of that scotch up there," he gestured up to a top-shelf bottle Clark didn’t recognize, "What's the going rate for one of those?" Wayne asked as he reached into jacket to pull out his wallet, "five hundred a bottle?"

"Six," she countered, eyes narrowed suspiciously at Wayne.

"Seven fifty," Wayne smiled and quickly counted out the bills, "I'm not going to forget to tip. And if we find something relevant, you would send us a copy of only that time stamp? We’re not trying to target your patrons. I understand how important privacy must be in an environment like this."

She frowned, but eventually reached out and took the cash, dropping a hundred in the till and then pocketing the remaining cash.

She turned around, swiftly grabbed the bottle, dropped two glasses down in front of them, and headed into a back office.

"It’s five o’clock somewhere," Wayne said with a shrug and poured himself two fingers of scotch and then did the same for Clark’s glass.

It was 2:37 p.m.

"Slow down," Wayne ordered and Clark hit the space bar to pause it. He switched the speed back to 1.0, backed up a few minutes, and resumed playing. They’d been scrubbing the footage for hours now on Jolene’s laptop.

The patrons had started to make their way inside as the day went on and Jolene had told them to go loom at one of the tables so they weren’t keeping folks from ordering.

The dark green sedan turned into the gas station, pulled up to the pump, and… and then… and then…

Nothing.

"He's just sitting there," Clark observed. Wayne laughed bitterly, his arm brushing against Clark's as he reached over the laptop's keyboard to pause the video. He turned in his seat to put his full attention to Clark.

"You have no idea what he's doing, do you?"

Clark's attention flickered between Wayne's face and the glowing laptop screen.

"No," Clark agreed, "I don't know what he's doing."

"Of course you don't," Wayne continued, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "why would you know it? You've never lived in New Jersey before. You've probably never even visited."

Clark expected Wayne to fill him in, but he didn’t say anything further.

"No," Clark answered, "I've never been to New Jersey before and I don't understand what is happening."

"This man," Wayne explained, pointing at the laptop screen his shoulder bumping into Clark again, "this man is waiting for a gas station attendant."

"A—" Clark frowned, "he's waiting for a what?"

"A gas station attendant! It's illegal in New Jersey to pump your own gas. This is someone who is so used to not being able to pump his own gas, that he even though he is out of state, he is waiting for someone to come over and pump his gas for him."

The man sat for five minutes before he opened the car door and walked inside the building. A few minutes later he emerged with the cashier, a lanky teen, who pumped his gas for him and then headed back inside.

Even with his vision, there wasn't much Clark could do with the quality of the image. The security cameras were good, but the distance was too far away for a sharp image. It was grainy no matter how he looked at it. There was no way they would get a strong enough image to run it through any of the facial recognition databases.

With the height of the car for reference, they were looking at a bald white man, 5’8 or 5’9, with a lean build.

"This is a week before her murder," Clark whispered.

"What do you want to bet we see that same car the following Sunday?" Wayne asked.

Jolene did end up emailing them the requested footage. Wayne dropped another fifty in the tip jar and leaned casually against the bar. He looked relaxed. Clark wondered if this was what he was like when he was in a good mood. If this is what he looked like when pieces of the puzzle started slotting in place.

They weren’t out of the woods yet, but this was a solid lead. This had to be at least enough to get an appeal hearing for Felix. It was clear the local PD had bungled the investigation; they hadn’t spoken to anyone here despite it being one of the areas you would have to drive through to make it to the crime scene. Clark was thanking whatever was out there that Jolene hadn’t dumped any of the footage. Sheer luck. This might hinge on a bar owner's willingness to store years of security footage.

"Jolene," Wayne called out, plunking the remaining bottle of scotch down on the desk, "there’s no way we’re finishing this bottle tonight. Would you be so inclined to give the rest of your patrons a round of it on us? We appreciate all your help today."

"You got it, hun," she replied with a friendly wink before walking over to ring a cowbell. The patrons all perked up and turned towards her.

Wayne took this as their cue to exit. Clark followed after. It was still raining in patches. A drizzle, a downpour, overcast and muggy, sprinkles, another downpour. It was a misting drizzle, but seemed to be starting to come down with more force.

"What do you want for dinner?" Clark asked, pulling his windbreaker on while they stood under the awning. He’d realized his mistake the first day and wasn’t planning on getting caught in the rain again.

Clark’s ears rang with a diatribe of hateful slurs coming from an inebriated man camped out in the parking lot. Wayne walked straight up to him.

"What did you call me?" Wayne asked, calm and even. The rain was coming down a little harder now, but Wayne didn’t seem to mind. His dark hair was plastered against his pale skin. His white shirt was nearly translucent. Clark could not take his eyes off of him if he wanted to.

"You heard what I fucking said," the man spat out.

Wayne smiled. Clark took a step back.

"Say it again," Wayne taunted and took a step closer, "say it to my fucking face."

"Wayne," Clark called out and jogged over to step between them, placing his hand flat on Bruce’s chest to gently push him back, "come on, man. He’s not worth it. Take a beat. Walk it off."

"Yeah," the man hissed, "listen to your fuckin’ boyfriend, you coward."

"I’m not his boyfriend," Clark corrected, readjusting the windbreaker to keep the rain from dripping between his jacket and collar, "he’s my partner."

"Partner," he growled, "you’re disgusting. Call it what you want, you’ll still burn in hell."

"Dear lord, you’re a slow one ain’t you? Can you not read? It's only three letters. Your mama not teach you to count either?" Clark asked, gesturing at his jacket emblazoned with the bold yellow letting across his chest. It was dark, but the sodium-yellow light of the lit street lamps was bright enough to show off the insignia.

The man took a swing at Clark. There was always a delicate calculation Clark needed to factor in anytime someone tried to hit him. How far to move, how fast to move enough to get grazed, so the man’s hand wouldn’t shatter on impact.

Except he didn’t have time for that, because Wayne slid in and took the hit on the jaw. Wayne had the man by the arm and pinned against the car in less than three seconds. Clark didn't even have time to plan before it was all simply done.

"Listen you pathetic, useless, little prick," Wayne growled out as he shook the struggling man in his grip. He looked biblical in the rain; like the anger and grief of The Fallen Angel. The man screamed and thrashed uselessly against the hold.

Clark watched the scene in front of him and didn’t move to interfere. He couldn’t move. He was rooted to the asphalt. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from Bruce’s face in the rain. Watching the slow trickle of blood from the corner of his lips surrounded by raindrops. He could have written sonnets about the curve of his jaw.

"Listen," Wayne hissed again and shook him, "do you know how easy it is to dislocate your shoulder? To tear your rotator cuff? Have you done it before? It’s agonizing. You might be in enough pain to puke. You keep it up and you’re going to rip your own arm out of its socket and fuck up your tendon. It’ll be months of recovery, thousands of dollars in medical bills, and it’ll all get written off because you’re the idiot resisting arrest, so stop fucking moving." The words weren’t meant for him, but they sent a shiver through Clark’s body all the same.

"Good," Bruce smiled, once the man had slumped down. "You’re under arrest for assaulting a federal agent," Bruce said and pulled his handcuffs out and proceeded to give him his Miranda warning.

"I’ll get you some ice," Clark announced once they’d made it back to the motel. He was still a little in awe of how Bruce had handled the arrest. He’d sat the man down on the curb outside the bar and headed back inside. Clark focused in through the din of patrons, Dolly Parton, and listened in on Bruce’s conversation with Jolene where he asked for all the footage of the vandalism because he had a suspect in custody. She’d happily passed it over.

He’d been especially vicious with the officer working the night shift at the county jail. He’d explained if there weren’t charges filed for the vandalism, terrorism, and the assault, he’d be back to see what else this town was trying to cover up. It seemed to do the trick. Clark wasn’t convinced Bruce wouldn’t be back anyway to see the whole thing through.

"Mr. Kent!" The receptionist from the previous night called over to him as Clark walked by with a bag of ice from the ice machine. His nametag read Bobby.

"Hey there, Bobby," Clark offered a tired smile, "how is your night going?"

"Very, well, sir and thank you for asking. I have good news. A room opened up for you," Bobby excitedly announced and handed over the keys. "Should I use the same card on the initial reservation for the incidental hold?"

"Mm," Clark nodded, because Wayne seemed like someone who had an expense card, or, at the very least, loved filing expense reports, "yeah, that works. Thank you."

Bruce stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom examining the damage. He’d stripped off his button-up and was standing in his damp, white undershirt.

There were flecked blood stains at the neck of Bruce’s shirt. Heat radiated off his jaw where the blood was busy forming a new bruise. The florescent motel bathroom lighting washed him out his already pale skin and the redness was starkly evident. Bruce's reflection made eye contact with Clark in the mirror.

"You didn’t have to take the hit for me," Clark said softly and reached forward to gently press his fingertips under Bruce’s chin; he coaxed Bruce to turn his head so he could get a better look. Bruce diverted his gaze to the side as Clark touched him. "Your poor face," he murmured as his thumb gently brushed up against the split lip, "You're still bleeding."

Clark looked up from Bruce’s busted lip to his eyes and froze. Bruce was looking back at him now with an intensity Clark couldn’t parse. Clark didn't move, but Bruce pulled away sharply as he took a step back. Clark watched as Bruce’s tongue slid over his cut, right over the spot Clark’s thumb had been.

"I’m fine," Bruce announced and abruptly turned and left the bathroom.

Clark couldn’t explain why he brought his own thumb to his lips and licked away the drop of bright red blood on it, why he watched his reflection while he did it, or why he couldn’t shake the look that Bruce had given him the moment before he turned away.

Clark offered to take the new room because he’d never unpacked. Bruce had agreed with a grunt that Clark actually could only assume was agreement, but since he’d gone on into the bathroom and closed the door, it was tacit approval enough for Clark to grab his suitcase and head next door.

The room looked like a mirrored copy of the other. Same vaguely sepia colored walls. Two queen beds with those stupid yellow bed scarves. Clark tossed his suitcase on the bed closest to the door and went to take a shower. He went through the rest of the nighttime rituals, brushed his teeth, and settled into the bed furthest from the door after raiding the spare one for all the pillows.

He thought about calling his parents, but it was already late enough in the evening they’d most likely already fallen asleep and he didn’t want to wake them. He wouldn’t have had anything to say anyway. He just wanted to hear a familiar voice.

Clark flipped through all the channels on the TV three times, stopping for a few minutes every so often before the restlessness in him overrode his ability to focus on the program and he’d flip to the next channel. After realizing he was on his fourth round, he turned the TV off, clicked off the lamp on his bedside table and tried to sleep. The restlessness did not leave him.

It was much quieter than his apartment in New York, which you might have assumed was good, but unless it was as quiet as that remote farm out in Kansas, he preferred it louder. It was easier to ignore individual sounds when there were so many it became dull background noise.

The motel was just in that awful middle of the road level of quiet. He could hear all the water in the motel as some people turned on sinks or showers. He could hear Bobby in the lobby, flipping the pages of a magazine. Three different TVs were on, each on wildly different channels. Someone on the other end had rented something on pay-per-view and was giggling with a partner. He could hear a woman five rooms over who evidently talked in her sleep and was saying something nonsensical about getting the dragons out of the fireplace.

But then there was the noise that rose above all that. The one sound that was so much more distracting than all the others combined — the one he couldn’t shake despite his best attempts — was that of Bruce Wayne next door.

After Clark had left Bruce had taken a shower and then wandered around the motel room. He’d heard the cry of the metal springs of the mattress sinking under his weight. The scrape of plastic across wood as he moved the remote. He realized that Bruce had laid down on the bed Clark had slept in last night.

He could hear Bruce next door, his heart rate increasing and breath becoming more ragged. For a brief moment, he thought Bruce was having another nightmare. Except the smell…

Bruce was in the bed Clark had slept in last night. And he was… he was…

Clark’s hand slipped beneath the covers, snaked under the elastic of his boxers. He sucked in a sharp breath as he pressed down. He felt the tendrils of all of his attention encircling the globe snap sharply back center into himself, he felt it all recede in on the current moment. He could hear everything so clearly, like Bruce was centimeters from him rather than in another room. He could hear every pause, every hitch of breath through the wall separating them. He moved his hand in pace with Bruce’s, echoing his movements. Matching his breath. He reached his left hand back and pressed it flat against the headboard.

It’d be so easy. All Clark had to do was turn his head and look through the wall. He’d see everything. He could imagine it right now. Bruce in the bed Clark had slept in, one arm slung over his head, bringing the pillow closer to him so he could smell Clark, the other hand touching himself, legs splayed open and needy over the covers.

"Fuck," he heard gasped out on the other side of the thin motel room wall, Clark could make out the sound of Bruce’s toes curling against the sheets the strangled, hitching little cry as Bruce came across his chest, "Clark."

Clark bit down hard enough on his hand to leave an imprint of his teeth behind. He couldn't stop thinking about Bruce's eyes in the hotel bathroom mirror. He couldn't stop thinking about that look in his eyes as Clark touched him. He couldn't stop thinking of the taste of Bruce’s blood on his tongue.

He came with a suppressed grunt against his palm.

The guilt and shame flooded him a moment later. He took another shower.

Chapter Text

The next morning, they had their meeting with the warden. Clark let Bruce do most of the talking. Well, actually, he let Bruce do all of the talking. Clark had memorized all federal laws early on during his time at the Academy. He’d memorized all state-specific law regarding visitation with inmates early on in his journalism career.

Bruce seemed to have done the same thing, so he didn’t need Clark’s help.

It took a solid eight minutes of excruciating, uninterrupted silence before they finally got their interview granted.

"Take his cuffs off," Wayne ordered. The guard looked over at him, clearly confused by the demand.

"It's policy," he replied.

"I do not care," Wayne repeated, "Take his cuffs off."

The guard looked at him; Wayne didn't blink.

"Your funeral," the guard grumbled, unlocked the cuffs around Felix's wrists, and stepped out of the room. The door buzzed with an alarm before shutting closed.

"I know you," Felix said looking directly at Wayne, "you’re Bruce Wayne. Is this…" his attention flickered over to Clark, like he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing was real and he needed Clark to validate him. Clark gave him a subtle nod of assent.

"Is this what you do now?" Flex asked, "Try and help people like you out?"

"I work for the FBI," Wayne answered, "this is my partner, Special Agent Clark Kent. Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. We’re looking into the murder of Georgia Dreamont. Would you like your lawyer to be present during this interview?"

"I don’t have a lawyer," Felix answered.

"Mr. Fontenot," Bruce began, "I would recommend you find a lawyer. There are several organizations that would gladly take you on as a client with no cost to you. Can you remember a number and call it as soon as possible?"

"Yeah," Felix responded, "I can do that."

Bruce gave him the number, had him repeat it back to him several times, before it was firmly memorized. He wouldn’t be surprised if Bruce quizzed him again on the phone number before their interview ended.

Bruce had Felix answer a lot of the same questions as Clark had asked him the day before.

"Do you know if they recovered her camera?"

"I don’t, um…" Felix clicked his tongue and nervously bounced his knee up and down, "Maybe— maybe they gave it back to her parents? I remember she—" Felix closed his eyes, a wretched smile at the corner of his mouth, "She’d been so excited about some new bird she saw. She’d— I knew she went out to CVS in Rayville to print some more photos. She was supposed to show me Sunday night and I… I never saw them. Her parents might have them."

They walked quickly through the rain in the parking lot and scrambled into the car. Wayne had his hands on the steering wheel, but wasn’t moving. He was staring forward blankly as the droplets battered the windshield.

Clark’s palm itched to rest on Bruce’s shoulder.

"You okay?" Clark asked.

"Fine," hissed out.

"He was your age," Clark commented. He meant when he had been tried and convicted for his girlfriend’s murder. He’d only been seventeen. He’d been tried as an adult.

"I noticed," Wayne replied dryly.

"And I noticed that you’re acting weird," Clark countered, "So, what do you want me to do, Wayne? Do you need a minute by yourself? Do you need to talk about it? Do you want me to ignore it and pretend I didn’t see it?"

Bruce turned in the driver’s seat to glare at Clark. Clark glared right on back. This was a challenge he would not be backing away from.

It went on longer than he would like to admit. He was fairly certain Bruce was treating it as a staring contest; he lasted fairly well, but there wasn’t ever any beating Clark in a staring contest. He’d learn that eventually.

"I need something to eat," Bruce sighed.

"Do you want me to drive?" Clark asked.

"Absolutely not," Bruce replied and started the engine.

They ended up at a small roadside restaurant about halfway between the motel and the prison.

Clark excused himself to the restroom and pulled a little girl out of a river. He held her against him, patting her back and soothing her until she calmed down and then passed her over to her frantic mother, checking her over to make sure she didn't have to worry about dry drowning.

He checked himself over in the bathroom mirror before washing his hands and walking back to the table.

Bruce said nothing. The silence stretched on. Clark read through the menu six times.

"Can we talk about work?" Clark asked during the waiting period after the waitress taking the menus, but before their food showed up.

"Please," Bruce answered.

"I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the ‘why’, you know? There’s always been a why. Or, there’s a— sometimes it’s as simple as they wanted to and they were there, but… I don’t know… What if we're thinking about this wrong?" Clark asked, frowning at his coffee, "What if there is no singular motive for this guy because the person doing the killing isn't the same person who wanted them dead? Y’see, I called my Pa—"

"You called your Pa," Wayne parroted, drawing out the word like it was a foreign language.

"Look," Clark snapped and glared up again at Wayne, "you think a group of old farmers in rural Kansas are going to trust a bunch of outsiders? Let alone a fucking fed? Not all of us can bribe a surly bartender with five hundred bucks. I use my contacts when they make sense. And Jonathan Kent," he emphasized his father’s name, rolling his eyes at Bruce, "has been part of the agricultural community in Kansas for years. He’s not an outsider. He's trusted and respected. They would talk to him long before either of us."

Wayne's mouth twitched and he crossed his arms over his chest. He seemed resigned. Maybe even a little chastised. Good.

"Continue," Wayne sighed, moving one arm to wave on Clark in a way that Clark did his very best to read as something other than pompous. Unfortunately, his very best wasn't good enough in this instance.

"Of course, sir," Clark replied, derision in his tone as he rolled his eyes, "thank you for the permission."

Wayne scoffed, but didn’t say anything else.

"Like I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, I called my Pa and asked if he could find out anything about Eugene Walters. It's a few counties over, but Pa knew some folks who knew some folks. Turns out Eugene was sitting on a mountain of resources. He was a sorghum farmer. Real old school. That land has been in his family since 1854. He’d been approached by a couple different companies over the last few years who were interested in buying or leasing the land for fracking. Each time Eugene told them to go kick rocks and shove their offers where the sun don't shine. Most gave up pretty quick, but there was one company that kept trying: Wycliffe Industries."

"They're based in Gotham," Bruce said.

"Yes," Clark agreed, "they are. And that first murder— the one outside of Reno? He was from Gotham too."

"Yes," Bruce nodded, clearly listening to Clark now.

"Year after year. Each offer higher than the last. No matter what they tried to do to sweeten the deal, Eugene always said no. He was never going to sell. Wycliffe Industries must have gotten tired of waiting and taken matters into their own hands. As soon as the estate was settled, the papers were drawn up and the sale happened. It’s shaping up to rake in millions over the next few years."

"You think someone from the company had him killed?"

Clark shrugged, toying with the mug in his hands, focusing on the movement of the drink in the white ceramic rather than on Wayne’s face.

"I think lots of people at the company wanted him dead. The question is who wanted it badly enough to arrange for someone else to take care of the problem for him? And how did he go about hiring him?"

"You think these are paid? You think this is a hitman and that it’s connected to our case here?"

"I don’t know," Clark answered truthfully, "but it feels awfully suspicious that we’ve got a driver who might be from Jersey spotted twice on an incredibly remote road on the same days as our victim, who had a very well known and established routine. Two is easy to write off as a coincidence, but three? That’s starting to feel like a pattern."

"We need to follow up on the car," Bruce declared, "We can probably make out a partial, see if it was stolen or a rental. If it’s a rental company, they'll have a copy of his license; even if it's a fake name, the picture has to look a bit like him. I’ll get started on a warrant."

Clark nodded in agreement and downed the rest of his coffee.

"If we can get that picture of his license, maybe someone will have spotted him. It was two years ago, but Trego county is only a couple of thousand people. Outsiders are easy to spot."

"Do you think she knew something?" Bruce asked, sounding familiar to how he did in his lecture, "She was a seventeen year old high school student. What could she have known that was worth killing her over?"

"I can’t answer that yet," Clark replied. "But it’s suspicious her camera was missing? And you saw those ‘No Trespassing’ signs over in the wetlands. Someone owns the land out there."

"We need to visit her family," Bruce said as the waitress set down his salad in front of him.

Clark wiped his hands off with his napkin and reached out for his po’ boy.

"We need to go to Gotham," Clark announced.

Something complicated passed over Bruce's face.

"Yes," he agreed, "We do."

Before they could leave for Gotham, they needed to visit Georgia’s parents.

Mr. Dreamont was visiting his elderly mother and Mrs. Dreamont was not pleased to see them. Clark could understand. As far as she and the rest of the world were concerned, her daughter's murderer was already locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life. Justice had already been served.

The worst thing in the world that could possibly happen to her had already happened. Her life had been torn to shreds and each time she’d sat in court, it was ripped again. Each time a journalist tried to talk to her. Each birthday that passed with her daughter in the ground. Each holiday, each milestone.

She'd managed to bundle the damage together and function through life, but it was a fragile hold.

These types of cases were difficult. Clark had never dealt with one as law enforcement before, but he had from his time as a reporter.

Most folks assumed that he was some sort of emotional vulture picking over the corpses of their loved ones instead of letting them stay buried in peace and dignity. A modern day resurrection man.

As far as Clark was concerned, there was no real healing from it if the truth was still undiscovered. Collateral damage was… well, it was awful. It was painful. But it was never as bad as an innocent person suffering for something they didn't do.

He was in the middle of his speech. He’d done it a lot over the years. Always tailored a little to each situation, but the crux of it was about how the best way to honor the memory of her daughter was to ensure that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the person responsible for the crime was the one serving the sentence. And there was so many unanswered questions around Georgia’s death—

"That photo—" Bruce interrupted right as Clark was starting to sway her. He gestured to a framed photo of a bird in the foyer, "Did your daughter take that picture?" Without waiting to be invited inside, Bruce passed through the threshold and stood in front of the photo, studying it intently.

The poor woman tore her focus away from Clark to look at Bruce dumbfounded.

"Why does it matter?" she asked, exasperated and near tears.

"It could be extremely relevant," Bruce said, "if your daughter took that photo in the wetlands. Can you tell me, do you know if she took that photo?"

Mrs. Dreamont nodded.

"It was the last batch of photos she had developed before she—" Mrs. Dreamont trailed off. She couldn't bring herself to say it again.

"I’m going to need the location of where she had those developed," Bruce said, "I’d like to make a copy of what you have. If you still have the receipt, if you have the other photos, maybe the CD, please. It’s important."

"You'll have to help me out," Clark said, once they were out of the house and headed to the car parked outside the well-manicured front lawn of the Dreamont house.

"All your flora knowledge and no fauna," Bruce said forlornly, but with a smirk that felt both a little inappropriate and entirely thrilling, "Your fatal flaw."

Clark glared at him over the rental and yanked the car door open, careful to not damage anything.

"Just shut up and tell me about the bird," he grumbled as he slid into the passenger’s seat.

"Grus americana," Bruce provided, seeming to revel in the Latin.

"For those of us who aren't ornithologists?" Clark asked once Bruce was in the driver’s seat.

"It’s commonly referred to as a whooping crane," Bruce explained.

Great. A crane. He had already been able to tell that much from the picture. Clark could tell it was a crane because, well, y’know. Long legs, long neck, and kind of…. Crane-shaped. There had to be something important about the species. He couldn’t imagine why else Bruce would be so fixated on it otherwise.

"Is it a rare bird?" Clark asked. When this was all over, he was going to buy the Audubon Guide and memorize every damn bird in North America just so he could one-up Bruce.

"Incredibly," Bruce replied, "In the 40s, it nearly went extinct. They were down to twenty-one birds in the wild and two in captivity."

Clark nodded, absorbing the information. They needed to find out who owned that land with the ‘No Trespassing’ signs. They were certainly going to be a person of interest.

"Georgia found a highly endangered bird on the wetlands that someone is planning to develop on," Clark stated, "If it got out, it would have made the land worthless. No development."

Clark clicked in his seatbelt and looked over at Bruce.

"She was a smart kid," Clark continued, "she’d been accepted to Cornell. She would have told someone what she found. Maybe someone from Fish and Wildlife? Maybe a professor at Cornell?"

"Mmmhmm," Bruce replied as he turned over the engine.

"We’ll need to find out who she was in communication with," Clark leaned back into the seat and let out a sigh. "Someone could have sold her out."

"Yes," Bruce agreed.

Clark wasn't human. He’d learned that a long time ago in an old storm cellar in an abandoned barn out in Kansas. He understood a lot of things, like joy and anger and love. He’d never been able to comprehend greed.

Maybe that was easy for him to think that way because he'd never been hungry, never been cold. Maybe it was easier for him to be above it all because he'd never get hurt.

"There were really only twenty-one wild cranes left?" Clark asked.

"Mm."

Clark watched Bruce in profile as they drove them from the Dreamont’s property out the highway. He watched the setting sun illuminate Bruce’s pale skin. He studied it as the miles blurred by in the background in minutes.

Bruce’s features were still. Clark wondered what he was thinking about. Wondered how he was handling this all. They would be heading to Gotham soon. Clark wasn’t sure if Bruce had spent much time there since his conviction was overturned. He’d gone to Europe for all his schooling and then when he returned it’d been to Minnesota and then Virginia.

Clark wasn't sure what possessed him to ask the next question. There was something freeing with both their attentions ostensibly focused mainly out on the golden horizon. Clark had heard the front seat of a car described as a sort of confessional booth before.

"Do you think they’ll ever truly recover from what people did to them?"

"I have hope," Bruce responded, he was quiet for another moment before he cleared his throat, looked over his shoulder to change lanes, and repeated himself. This time Clark could hear the fierce conviction under the words.

"I have hope."

Bruce arranged their airfare, a red eye to Archie Goodwin International on the outskirts of the city. As they started taxiing out of Shreveport, Bruce reached his hand over the empty seat between them out to Clark. This time, Clark did not hesitate to take it.

Chapter Text

Clark let out a low whistle as they entered the hotel. It was a testament to Gotham's Gilded Age. The giant, open lobby towered for floors up to a brilliant skylight. Everything seemed to be either marble or gold leaf.

"I have this sneaking suspicion this place might be out of budget," Clark mentioned as he leaned against the marble desk. It was four in the morning, so no one was immediately available.

Bruce took his time to pull his wallet out of his jacket and remove his Virginia State Driver's License and a black American Express credit card. He placed them each evenly spaced in front of him down on the counter. Then he followed the instructions on the sign to ring the bell for service.

"I’ll cover the difference," Wayne replied.

"I'm not going to pretend to even offer to split that," Clark grinned, "You picked the place, you pay."

"In my defense, I picked it because it's the closest, good hotel in Gotham to the precinct."

"Isn't the precinct on the other side of town?" Clark asked. He could hear movement from the office. The night attendant would be out in just a moment to give them their rooms.

Bruce's lips twitched. It might have been a smile, Clark wasn’t sure.

Clark had just finished scrubbing out the remainder of mud from his hair when there was a knock on his door. It was Bruce. It could have been worse timing. He could have still been in South America dealing with the earthquake.

"Be there in a sec!" Clark called out over the water. It was a very nice shower and Clark was reluctant to leave it, but the day called and it would be there when he got back.

Bruce didn't react much visibly when Clark opened the door with one towel wrapped around his waist and the other draped over his shoulder. There was the smallest, sharp inhale, the slight dilation of his pupils, the blush of increased blood flow to the capillaries in his cheeks.

"Hey, good morning," Clark greeted casually, "Come on in." He stepped to the side to allow Bruce to enter and closed the door behind him.

"Be out in a jiffy," Clark offered, "just gotta finish getting dressed." Clark walked into the bedroom, not bothering to shut the door. Clark still couldn’t believe Bruce had booked them each their own suite. It was easily twice the size of Clark’s apartment in New York.

"We're going to be here a while," Bruce said as he walked over to the small table near the window, "you should consider unpacking."

"Sure," Clark responded, a little dismissively as he pulled on his undershirt directly from his opened suitcase.

Bruce took a seat at the table near the large balcony doors that overlooked Gotham. Clark had finished buttoning his slacks when there was another knock at the door. Clark looked over at Bruce curiously through the doorway.

"Come in," Bruce called out and then turned to Clark and announced, "I took the liberty of ordering us breakfast." He gestured for Clark to take the other seat. "Please, Clark. Sit."

A moment later the door to the room opened and the bellhop entered with a rolling cart. Still seated, Bruce shook the bellhop’s hand. Clark figured if he bothered to use his vision, he’d see a fifty dollar bill clasped there.

The bellhop removed the silver cloche from over their dishes with a flourish Clark had only ever seen in movies before.

In front of Clark was the second most delicious looking batch of waffles he'd seen in his entire life. (The first being his Ma’s, of course. But this looked and smelled like a close second.)

"Oh, wow," Clark smiled, "thanks." The bellhop gave them both a short bow and pushed the cart out of the room.

"You eat like an unsupervised child at a birthday party," Bruce commented as he started in on his too healthy looking egg-white and spinach omelette.

"You ordered this for me," Clark said as he poured them both coffee from the french press.

"Because I've seen how you eat."

Clark made sure Bruce was looking when he added three sugar cubes to Bruce’s mug before sliding it over to be within Bruce’s reach. Bruce’s mouth twitched.

Clark took a sip of his coffee and studied Bruce across the table.

"Do they know we're coming?" Clark asked.

Bruce shook his head. He looked very pleased with his coffee, as much as he tried to hide it. Well, very pleased for Bruce which meant his mouth had done that little lower-corner twitch thing a second time.

"It's harder for people to say no to your face," Bruce explained, "especially with the badge."

Clark inhaled deeply, shook his head and decided this was not his immediate problem and took another bite of his breakfast.

"I'm going to call Richardson," Clark stated after he'd finished his waffles, "so she has an idea of what we’re getting her into."

"There’s no need," Bruce announced, "I already have blanket approval from my supervisors."

"Blanket app— what do you mean blanket approval?" That wasn't… a thing. There were forms and approval flows and meetings about meetings about meetings.

"I mean, Clark, that at this point they know better than to question anything I do. If Commissioner Gordon calls up my boss or my boss’s boss and asks if they approved this, they’re going to say yes."

"Aren’t they…" Clark searched for what he was trying to say, "worried, I guess? About being liable after being kept out of the loop?"

"No. They want results. Do you think they would keep someone like me around if they didn't trust I could deliver in a way that would hold up in court?"

"What do you mean by that? Someone like you?"

"I meant exactly what I said. Someone like me. Someone who is abrasive. Ruffles feathers. Someone difficult to work with. A dick, in other words."

"I don't know," Clark said as he speared a strawberry with his fork, unable to look up at Bruce as he spoke next, "maybe you just hadn't found the right partner yet."

Bruce squared his shoulders and took a deep breath before ascending the stairs to GCPD Headquarters. Clark was struck suddenly by the memory of Bruce emerging from the headquarters paraded in cuffs, still covered in his parent's blood.

"I’m Special Agent Bruce Wayne," Bruce said calmly at the receptionist, "This is my partner, Special Agent Clark Kent. We’re with the FBI. We’ll need to speak with the Commissioner today. It's an urgent matter."

Commissioner James Gordon's hair was more gray than anything else now, but hints of reddish-brown peaked through when the lighting hit just right. Clark remembered what he looked like when he’d been younger. Now he had the body of a man who used to have more time to think about diet and exercise than he did now. Still strong, still capable, but much softer around the middle than he probably ever dreamt he’d get.

"Gentlemen," Gordon greeted from behind his mountain of paperwork, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Clark took a seat in one of the chairs across from the desk. Bruce remained standing.

"We’re going to need to review case files for every stabbing death in Gotham where the victim was stabbed at least five times, regardless of its classification," Bruce replied, "We’ll start with the last thirty years, but we may need to go back further."

"That's a lot of files," Gordon cautiously said.

"Then you ought to set us up in the conference room," Bruce replied, "Thank you, Commissioner. That will be all." He turned then beelined out of the room. Clark turned his head to watch Bruce’s abrupt exit. He turned back to Gordon.

"You’ll—" Clark smiled, the edges a little tense, "you’ll have to excuse my partner."

"It’s—" Gordon started.

"You see," Clark interrupted, still smiling, remembering how other primates used it as a threat, "when he was a teenager you led the investigation that put him behind bars. The one where the evidence didn't follow chain of custody. The one that was eventually overturned."

"And we're here," Clark continued, "because there's a serial murderer under your nose that your joke of a police department has failed to notice."

Gordon got up from behind the desk and crossed the room to shut the door. He came back to take a seat on the corner of his desk so there was no barrier between them.

"Wayne's trial was a shit show," Gordon announced plainly, "the D.A. was up for re-election; he wanted to look tough on crime, show the public he was willing to go after anyone who broke a law regardless of their money and status. The judge was retiring, I couldn't prove it, but I’d bet my life he took a bribe to let those cameras in. He looked guilty and a jury was never going to see anything different. He was covered in their blood. He lied about the alibi. By his own admission, he took hours to call the police after finding them."

"It didn't help," Clark said, "to release those photos of him. To parade him in front of the press like that in handcuffs. It was done intentionally to poison the jury pool."

"My boss did that," Gordon said, "I couldn't stop him. I did what I could to block it." Another image of Gordon flashed in Clark’s memory. He was so much younger then, maybe even a year or two younger than Clark was now. He’d had one hand straight out, like an offensive lineman, standing in front of Bruce as he tried to block the cameras and part the sea. But even then, Clark could still picture Bruce's traumatized face, clear as day. His slack expression, the haunted look in his dark eyes. He was so, so young. He was a child.

"It wasn't enough," Clark practically growled.

"You don't think I don't know how badly I failed that kid?" Gordon asked, voice raising, "You don't think that still keeps me up at night?"

"They kicked me off the case," Gordon wasn't yelling, but Clark was certain their muffled voices behind the door might invoke that impression in passerbys, "because I was asking too many questions. I couldn't do my job. The brass wouldn't let me."

"But you knew," Clark insisted, his own volume rising, "you knew they were falsifying evidence. You knew and you did nothing."

Gordon sighed, tilted his head at Clark curiously. He brought his fist to his chin and leaned forward. He looked at Clark right in the eyes.

"Who do you think told his attorney?" Gordon asked.

The anger and tension in Clark lessened slightly. He was telling the truth.

"I'm not your enemy, son, and I'm sure as hell not his. His case showed me how rotten this place truly was and I've spent twenty years fighting an uphill battle trying to fix it so it never happens to anyone ever again. I'm not done. I know I'm not even close to being done. Hell, kid, I spend half my nights staring at a ceiling wondering if anything I've done so far has been worth a lick of good, but I'm trying. God, I’m fucking trying."

Gordon pushed off the desk and rounded it to take his seat again.

"Whatever resources you need," he emphasized looking down at Clark through his glasses, "consider it done. And during the course of this, or any other investigation, if you get a hint that any of my officers did anything illegal, I want you to throw the fucking book at them."

He turned his attention back to some paperwork on his desk, clearly indicating their conversation was over. He signed a form. Then another.

"I’ll have the case files sent to the conference room. Welcome to Gotham, Agent Kent."

Detective Harvey Bullock was appointed as their liaison. He was… Well, he made sure they got their files without too much hassle and that was good enough.

Gordon hadn't been lying. There were a lot of files, enough that the conference room wouldn't hold them all at once. They’d quickly devised a system of trading out chunks.

It'd been three weeks of poring over cases. It had resulted in six piles spread out across a credenza that was filled with excess office supplies.

They'd gotten into a good groove together, making sure every file was reviewed at least twice by both of them before it was officially sorted.

The six piles had taken shape organically over the weeks.

Pile 1: Return to the archives. Solved, unrelated. Unsolved, but impossible to solve with the current level of evidence.

Pile 2: Easily solvable ‘unsolved’ killings that ought to be reviewed by someone competent. (They’d been slapping on sticky notes with their conclusions. Clark hoped to review those personally with Gordon.)

Pile 3: Wrongful convictions. (They’d also been slapping sticky notes with their conclusions on those. Bruce was the one who wanted to review those with Gordon and Clark was gently trying to talk him out of it. He hadn't yet shared what Gordon had told him, because he wasn't sure if it was something Bruce should hear from him or not.)

Pile 4: Killer B

, the man who had killed Freddie Simon, Georgia Dreamont, Eugene Walters, and at least thirty other people in Gotham.

Pile 5: Killer A, the person responsible for the 1959 murder of Harriet Arkham. The one whose earliest killing Clark had identified as 1921.

Pile 6: The exact same M.O. as Killer A, but after 1990 all the way to the present day. The most recent murder had been seven months ago.

They had finished reviewing all the cases available and it was time to return everything in Pile 1 and acquire the next year's worth of cases.

"We’re ready for the next transfer," Clark greeted Bullock. They'd done this enough times by that point that Clark didn't need to explain himself. Bullock would know what he wanted.

There was a copy of the Gotham Gazette with a headline about Superman. Speculation that the Man of Steel has taken on Gotham as a pet project after his first stint in Metropolis. Clark hadn't thought about any of that when he went out to help. He could hear people who needed help and that was really the extent of it. Bullock seemed far more interested in the sports section.

"Why doesn’t Wayne ever come out of here and get them his damn self," Bullock grumbled. He looked up at Clark, folding the paper before dropping it on the trash heap of his desk. "What? You like his assistant or somethin’? His bitch?"

Clark’s hand twitched and the GCPD mug he was holding shattered in his hand.

"Oh," Clark said dispassionately as he looked at the jagged pieces of the ceramic mug in his hand and now on the linoleum floor, "Would you look at that? Whoopsie daisy."

He approached Bullock’s desk, shoved over a pile of old takeout wrappers and menus onto Bullock’s already crowded workspace to clear a space for him to sit down.

"Did you know if a ceramic has even the tiniest crack in the glaze, it’s structurally unsound for carrying liquids? Liquid slowly starts to seep into the cracks. With the temperature changes, it expands and contracts and those cracks grow and grow, like a spider web, until the smallest bit of pressure can make it just…" Clark let the moment drag out as he stared directly into Bullock’s eyes, unblinking, "shatter."

Bullock was wide-eyed, terrified but trying to hide it. He stunk of exhaustion, bottom shelf whiskey, American Spirits – the light blue kind– and now fear.

"What was that you said, Detective Billock?" Clark smiled over at him, polite and unnervingly still. He made sure to draw out the wrong vowel in his name.

Bullock gulped.

"Uh… y’said… y’were ready for the next stack?" Bullock asked.

"Yes," Clark answered, clapping a hand onto Bullock's shoulder, "Everything from 1989. Thank you very much for your help, Detective. We truly appreciate it. You can drop them off in the conference room when you're ready."

"Can you please move those two piles further apart." Bruce asked with a jerk of his head to the credenza where Pile 5 and Pile 6 were overflowing towards the other. Like a split card deck looking to recombine.

"No," Clark responded.

Bruce looked up at Clark, clearly surprised. It'd been seven weeks of this in Gotham, close quarters in the precinct. Adjoining hotel rooms. Breakfast together every morning, lunch outside so they made sure to see some sunlight during the day, dinner at the conference room table. Exercising side-by-side in the hotel's fitness center, watching in fascination as the sweat dripped off of Bruce. Timing it just right so he'd always answer the door without a shirt because he liked the way it made Bruce smell. Pretending he wasn't straining past the range of human hearing so he could listen to Bruce late at night.

"Would you care to enlighten me?" Bruce prompted.

Clark opened his mouth, ready to launch into his manifesto. He’d had it all mapped out. All practiced to get Bruce to believe him.

"They're all the same killer," he said instead.

"You have almost a hundred years worth of case files," Bruce countered.

"And I’ll keep going as far back as I need to until I find the first one."

"This isn't the X-Files," Bruce argued, "there is no way that was all the same person for the last ninety-something years."

"An alien punched an asteroid out of the sky two months ago," Clark replied flatly, "you really can’t conceive of any possible way someone may have an extended life span?"

Bruce rolled his eyes.

"Bruce," Clark started and stopped trying to decide the best way to get the words for this together, "I'm... I'm serious. And I need—" He sucked a breath through his teeth and then let out a small sigh. Bruce looked at him curiously. Clark reached a hand out and placed it on Bruce’s knee. A soft look swept over Bruce's features and it made Clark’s heart ache with what he had to say next.

"Bruce, I’m going to need to review your case. It's tied to that pile and I think you already know that."

Bruce didn't respond at first. He merely stared at Clark, searching his face for something. Clark wasn't sure what, but he desperately hoped Bruce could find what he was looking for.

"Okay," Bruce agreed and tentatively placed his own hand over Clark’s, "I’m ready."

"No, Bruce," Clark said, trying to keep the tone professional while balancing it with the sympathetic one that always leaked in when he spoke with the families, "you don't need to look at it again. You're too close to it. Let me handle it."

Bruce ripped his hand away and turned violently in his chair. Clark released his hold on Bruce’s knee just in time to let go of him.

"Fine," Bruce said flatly, "Go."

On that first day, when Clark initially approached Bullock about gathering the case files for the last twenty years, he had specifically asked him to exclude the murder of Martha and Thomas Wayne. He didn’t go through Bullock for this request, he headed downstairs to the records department and got them himself.

He brought the boxes into one of the only rooms with a TV capable of playing a VHS. They’d had a tech upgrade in the last few years and replaced everything upstairs.

Clark killed the lights. He sat for a few moments alone in the shadows of the tiny room in the bowels of the GCPD headquarters. He hit play.

The screen illuminated the room casting deep shadows. There was Bruce, seventeen years old sitting in the corner of an interview room, blank faced and unnaturally still.

To Clark, he was clearly in shock. His breathing was infrequent; he’d tense up and then take a sharp inhale before repeating the process over and over again.

He was dressed like plenty of teenagers had been at the time in jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt. He was covered in blood. It was on his clothes, his hands, around his face where he’d brought a hand to his mouth. There were clear streaks where the tears had eroded away at the blood, but there were no tears in the video.

Bruce sat eerily silent unless prompted to answer a question and even then he was short and confused. He’d trail off and repeat himself. He kept looking down at his hands and then asking if he could change his clothes. He kept being told not right now, they needed to ask a few more questions.

They got him a bottle of water. He couldn't look away from his bloody hand print left behind on the cheap plastic bottle. The detectives had to call his name three times before he looked up. This happened multiple times.

He answered their questions, what the crime scene was like when he found it, had anyone or anything out of the ordinary happened over the last few weeks, like he was trying his best to understand what happened and to help give the police what they needed to solve the crime.

He retold the story about four or five times over the course of several hours. New people would file in and out and ask him the same questions. Nothing much changed in Bruce’s answers other than an occasional small detail he would remember upon review.

Bruce said he stayed on campus last night and drove to the house late that morning.

(Was that unusual? Gordon has asked, Did you usually stay Friday nights?)

It wasn't unusual, sometimes he stayed over the weekend. It depended on the social calendar and school work. They made him come home most weekends.

The house was dark when he arrived, Bruce had said, which was a little unusual, but he didn't think much of it because Alfred was on vacation and usually he woke up first and turned on all the lights. Alfred was— he worked for his parents.

Bruce wasn't really thinking about it much, like maybe they were still sleeping or maybe they’d gone out for something and they weren't back yet.

(Was it typical for them to sleep in?)

Not that late, but sometimes. Sometimes they were out late for events. His father had worked night shifts sometimes too. Usually covering for a short-staffed ER.

He dropped his stuff off in his room, he had an essay he needed to work on so he'd thought he’d go to the library. He came downstairs and grabbed something to eat in the kitchen because he skipped breakfast on campus.

(Why did you skip breakfast?)

They always made French toast on Saturday morning and he didn't like the texture.

(What did you do next?)

After that, he went back upstairs to go to the library to listen to records and work on his paper. That was when he noticed the door to his father's study was cracked open.

(Was that unusual?)

Yes, his dad always had it closed. Always. He usually had it locked. He had patient files in there sometimes. He cared about doctor-patient confidentiality. He’d been a proponent of HIPAA that passed that summer. He’d spoken in front of congress in support.

That was the moment he thought something was wrong. He called out for his parents then. He didn't get a response, so he walked to the door and pushed it open and… and that was when he found them.

They were on the ground. There was blood everywhere.

He went to see if they were breathing. They weren't.

(Did he touch them?)

Yes, he felt for their pulse, but there wasn't anything for either of them. There was blood everywhere and they weren't breathing and they didn't have a pulse.

They were dead.

(Were they cold?)

Maybe. He thinks so. It didn't feel right when he touched them. He can't really remember how much colder, but he knew it didn't feel right. He wasn't thinking about that when he touched them then, he just wanted to know if they had a pulse or if they were breathing. He wanted to know if he could still help them. He wanted to know if they were still alive.

They weren't.

(Around what time was that?)

He didn't know, but he remembered looking up at the grandfather clock and seeing 10:16, but he didn't know what time it was before then. Maybe 9:30, 9:45. Something like that. He left campus around 9:00 and it was a twenty minute drive.

(If he saw them at 10:16, why didn't he call for another hour?)

He didn't… he didn't know. He sat down when he realized they were dead and he... He just sat there. They were already dead. There was nothing to do. There wasn't any saving them. He froze and he just... sat there. Time wasn’t— it didn't feel normal. There was so much blood.

(Can you tell us where you were last night, Bruce?)

He was on campus. He stayed the night. He left around 9:00 that morning. The weekend breakfast wasn't very good.

(You were on campus?)

Yes.

(The whole night?)

Yes.

(And you didn't leave campus until around 9:00 that morning?)

Yes.

(Bruce, we've had detectives speak with your roommate. You didn't come back to the dorm last night.)

He was on campus. He was there.

(Your roommate is saying he didn't see you after dinner. He’s saying you never came back.)

He's wrong. I was on campus. I didn't leave until the morning.

(We spoke to the whole floor. No one remembers you being there last night.)

...

(Where were you last night, Bruce?)

That was when he informed them he wouldn't answer any questions without a lawyer present.

And then Bruce sat through hours more of interrogation, totally silent until the family lawyer finally showed up.

It was an older video tape and the quality wasn’t perfect, so Clark couldn't use his usual tools of the trade to determine if Bruce was lying or not. He couldn't hear Bruce's heartbeat and he couldn't see the micro expressions on his face, but he was certain that Bruce wasn't lying. He was on campus that night.

He was on campus, but he never specified he was in his dorm.

The tape ended. The blue glow of the screen illuminated the room. Clark sat quietly for a few more minutes, ejected the tape, and returned the case file.

In their conference room, Bruce was hunched over the table. His shoulders were impossibly tense as he reviewed the file in front of him. He didn’t acknowledge Clark as he entered or when sat down next to Bruce.

"Bruce," Clark started quietly. Bruce did not respond.

"Bruce," he tried again, this time reaching out a hand to rest on Bruce’s shoulder.

Bruce tensed, relaxed, and then tensed up again like he’d realized what he'd done, what effect Clark’s touch had had on him.

"What?"

"Do you want to do this now?" Clark asked, "It can wait until tomorrow."

"No," he said, spinning in his chair so Clark had to let go of his shoulder, "do it now while the questions are still fresh."

"Okay," Clark replied, "Okay."

He pulled his hands into his lap and leaned back in the chair, careful to keep himself from instinctually reaching out to comfort Bruce again.

"You mentioned that your father would sometimes bring home patient files, but that he’d lock them in his office because he took patient privacy seriously."

Bruce nodded.

"The bottom drawer of his desk was partially open in the photos. There was no mention of any of its contents in any of the reports. From the photo, it looked empty."

Bruce stood up suddenly enough his chair toppled over. Clark tracked his movements as he proceeded to the stairwell and then up towards the rooftop.

Clark sat quietly in the conference room he’d started to think of as ‘their office’ and did nothing. It lasted for four minutes and twenty-seven seconds before he stood up and followed Bruce’s path up to the rooftop.

The sun was just starting to set over the horizon. Bruce was leaning against the railing stoically staring out across the dramatic Gotham skyline out towards the Bristol district where Wayne Manor and the other Industrial Age power houses had built their stately mansions.

"Hey," Clark called out tentatively and moved to stand next to him. Bruce turned to look over at him, but said nothing.

Clark moved forward and Bruce placed both hands on Clark’s chest to push him back.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Bruce asked, clearly appalled by this development.

"I'm giving you a hug," Clark replied, "so shut up and tell me when you want me to stop."

Clark swept Bruce into a hug. Bruce was silent and tense, but twenty five and a half seconds into the hold he very slowly began to relax against Clark.

Two minutes in and he had fully collapsed into it. The only thing keeping him vertical was Clark's hold. They stayed like that for a while until the sun had set and civil twilight dominated the sky.

"I need to go home," Bruce whispered into Clark’s neck. Clark pulled him in tighter.

"Okay," Clark answered, "okay."

The ivy covered gates felt ominous. A monolith to what should have been a bygone age.

Bruce entered a code into the intercom. Nothing happened. He tried again. He put the car in park and removed the keys from the ignition.

"Follow me," Bruce commanded smoothly as he exited the car.

"What are you–?" Clark stopped talking, because it was incredibly clear what Bruce was doing. He was scaling the twelve foot fence that surrounded the property.

Clark hesitated for a moment and then climbed up after him.

It was summer so the soft light of twilight was still clinging to the Earth as the two of them made their way down the tree lined path. Clark had visited botanical gardens smaller than this place. It was a little over two miles to the house.

They didn't talk much during the walk. Clark listened as Bruce mentioned he hadn't been back since he moved to Europe, but then he’d fallen back into silence, the scream of cicadas and the chirp of crickets dominated the soundscape.

The shadow of the manor loomed in the distance. It was easily the largest house Clark had ever seen. Which was impressive given he’d personally raided several mansions during his tenure at the bureau.

Clark knew all about the Waynes’ history; no one in the 90s had been able to escape it. He knew all about Thomas’ role as a world-class cardiothoracic surgeon; how he’d put Gotham General on the map as a destination medical center. Martha Kane became the sole heir of the Kane family fortune after her brother Jacob had a falling out with the family and joined the military. Martha had dedicated her time to charity work and several libraries, parks, and scholarships bore her name.

When they reached the front door Bruce hesitated before he grabbed the door handle.

Evidently, it was locked. And he didn't appear to have a key because that was when Bruce pulled out his wallet and had a lock picking set in his hand. He knelt down in front of the door and got to work.

Clark looked down at Bruce, shaking his head with ill-disguised affection.

"Do you technically own this place or not?" Clark asked, "Should I be worried about being an accessory to a B&E?"

Bruce laughed, quiet, but real.

"I wouldn't make you an accessory. Everything is mine. All the assets were held up in court cases for a few years after they— after. Once the conviction was overturned, it all ended up coming to me."

The door opened suddenly and a man with a shotgun stood in the foyer, the barrel pointed out towards them. Clark stepped in front of Bruce instinctually, hands up placatingly.

Looking boyish as he peaked past Clark’s knees up at the man, Clark saw Bruce offer a small, hesitant, genuine smile up at the man pointing a gun at them. It was a type of smile he’d never seen on Bruce's face before. It was a type of smile Clark hadn’t realized Bruce was capable of.

"...Hey, Alfred," Bruce said, sounding easily ten years younger, like his hand was in the cookie jar instead of picking a lock, "Been a while, huh?"

Chapter Text

Tea was a tense affair. Conversation was stilted between them all. They were seated in a surprisingly informal dining area in the industrial grade kitchen. Clark's brain supplied that this spot was probably where the help took their breaks, but Bruce looked far more at home here than he did in the grand foyer.

Bruce was tracing his thumb over a small indention in the wooden table. A near-faded mark, one probably made with a ballpoint pen. It was small enough Clark had to focus to see it. B+H.

Clark felt horribly out of place. Like an interloper. All his instincts were screaming at him to flee. Like Lana’s Babcia always used to say ‘Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy.’ Not my circus, not my monkeys. This was certainly not his circus. He knew that much for sure.

Clark thought about leaving every three minutes, except every time he was about to slap his hands on his thighs and say ‘Welp, this sure has been nice, but I better get to getting’ Bruce would turn towards Clark and give him this small, vulnerable look. A request for backup, for support. A much needed buffer for this first reunion in Gotham.

Alfred was clearly more than someone who ‘worked for Bruce’s parents.’ And, from the sounds of it, this was their first time seeing each other in at least a year. Most likely more. Alfred had made a comment of missing him the last few Christmases in England. Bruce dodged the question, but Clark could smell the grief and guilt radiating off of him.

From the little bit he could gather, Bruce appeared to have been avoiding Alfred somewhat after joining the bureau. If Clark had to wildly speculate, it would be that Bruce was worried Alfred would be disappointed in his choice to give up his career as a trauma surgeon. Clark was fairly certain Alfred worried after Bruce's health and safety more than he cared about any lost prestige.

Hopefully, the two of them could have an extended discussion when Clark was not present and eating more than his share of tea sandwiches.

After they’d finished their tea, Alfred declared he would prepare their rooms for the night. Clark made sure not to make any reference to the fact they had been in Gotham for over a month already. He would let Bruce commit that faux pas himself, if necessary.

Bruce stood abruptly and hugged Alfred. The older man stiffened for a moment and then returned the hug. Clark turned away to give them the illusion of privacy, even though he could hear Alfred’s soft ‘I have missed you, my dear boy,’ and Bruce’s whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Alfred.’

Clark couldn’t sleep. It was easily the most spacious, luxurious, comfortable room he had ever stayed in, even counting the suite he’d been in for the last seven weeks.

The bed was perfect. The temperature was perfect. It was quiet. And still, Clark could not sleep.

Alfred had presented Clark with spare gym shorts and a t-shirt, both a size too small, and promised to return his suit, pressed, by tomorrow morning.

After an hour of staring at the ceiling, he got up, walked out of his room, and began to quietly pad through the property.

It was unnerving. Half-mausoleum, half-museum, almost every room was closed down with white sheets covering almost two centuries worth of gathered family history.

Clark continued his journey rambling through the property, hovering centimeters above the ground so his footsteps wouldn’t disturb anyone. There were already enough ghosts in this house. He didn’t need to be another.

He lingered longest by the door to Dr. Thomas Wayne’s study. The door was locked, but that didn't keep Clark from looking through the intricately carved heavy, oak door to see inside.

Much of the interior was the same, but the ornate Persian rug they were found on had been removed and some sections of the parquet flooring looked to have been replaced too. Some stains were impossible to get out.

Under the sheets, Clark could see the desk was much the same, but the bottom drawer was shut. No files were in there, but, curiously, there was a separate compartment under a false bottom filled with patient records. There were easily thirty there. Thirty-five to be precise.

He would need to speak with Bruce about that later. He would ’accidentally’ uncover the secret compartment, and together they could see if it held the key to why the Waynes were targeted.

Clark headed downstairs for a glass of water, but stopped when something out of the window caught his eye.

An imposing glass enclosure, easily two stories high, stood out in the garden. It was the only light Clark had seen all night, like a beacon drawing him toward it, like a will-o'-the-wisp. He was certain he could hear splashing in the distance. The building was full of lush greenery, ferns, and a smattering of flowers.

As he approached, he identified the source of the light as a small swimming pool in the enclosure. He spotted Bruce in there, arms spread out and floating serenely in the blue illumination of the water.

Clark thought about moving on, pretending he hadn't seen him and leaving him to his solitude, but Bruce waved at him through the glass beckoning him inside.

In for a penny…

Clark took a seat on the pool edge and let his feet dangle in the water.

"Hey," he greeted.

"Stop looming and get in," Bruce demanded from the other side of the pool. His words echoed with the splashing of the water in the towering glass enclosure.

Clark hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. He left behind a set of damp footprints as he walked over to the small wrought iron bench. He stripped off his borrowed shirt, folded it neatly, and placed it on the bench to keep it dry. He paused for a few seconds before pulling down his borrowed gym shorts and adding them to the pile. Clark reasoned his black boxer-briefs covered up just as much as the shorts would have and that it would be nice to wear the dry shorts back to his room once they parted ways.

Clark lowered himself into the water, careful not to splash too much onto the deck, and then kicked off the wall and swam over towards Bruce.

"Couldn't sleep?" Clark asked. They were both treading water. The lights from the pool made them both awash with a soft blue glow.

"Clearly," Bruce replied.

"This place is gorgeous," Clark said, admiring the collection of plants and statues. The glass work on the building itself was mixed with thin, intricate metal.

"It was a gift," Bruce explained as he kicked up his feet to resume floating on the water. Clark copied the movement. The manor was far enough away from the rest of the city you could still easily make out stars in the night sky without all the light pollution of downtown Gotham.

"It’s been modernized of course," he added, "but, let’s see, this would have been, late 1840s, early 1850s? Ferns were all the rage in England. Solomon Wayne built it as a wedding present for his third wife before she came over to New Jersey. She was a talented artist and there are some watercolors of hers displayed in one of the gallery rooms. My grandfather was the one who installed the pool when he was a young man. There used to be a pond here before that, or at least that was what I was always told."

"I usually swam in a pond back home," Clark offered, "It was on the property a bit far out. It was perfect in the summer. Still there, not as big as I remember, but your perspective changes when you grow."

Clark smiled over at Bruce, took an exaggerated breath, and then disappeared under water. He counted down from fifty and lazily drifted down. The bottom of the pool was decorated in an elaborate mosaic. The style of the design leaned more art deco than the mid-Victorian vivarium they were inside.

He still had thirty seconds before he should head back. He took the moment to gaze up at Bruce from the bottom of the pool. Bruce had flipped over to look down at him for a moment before he rolled back over to his back. That was the moment that Clark realized despite sharing a hotel room with Bruce for a night, he had never seen the other man shirtless. It was clearly intentional.

He broke the surface and instinctively reached out to Bruce through the water, his fingertips brushing over the ugly, jagged scar across his abdomen.

"Christ, Bruce, are you okay?"

Bruce remained floating on the surface of the water.

"It was years ago," Bruce replied dismissively.

"That didn't answer the question," Clark replied.

Bruce sat up and began to tread water again. Clark didn't remove his hand and Bruce didn’t pull back from him.

Bruce’s hair was plastered down over his forehead, water running down and dripping back into the pool. Clark was reminded of the fight in the rain outside the bar in Marais. Bruce’s bottom lip had healed. It wouldn’t leave a scar. Clark thought about the taste of Bruce’s blood on his tongue. He thought about Bruce’s breath on the other side of the paper-thin motel room wall, in the bed Clark had slept in. His hand on his—

Bruce kicked forward and kissed him. Clark had thought about this many times over the last few weeks, since that fight in the parking lot. Since he tasted Bruce’s blood on his tongue and hadn't been able to forget the way Bruce sounded with Clark’s name on his lips.

Clark grabbed Bruce firmly with both hands encircling his waist and pulled the other man against him.

Between the heat and humidity of the pool, Clark was reminded of Louisiana. It was far easier to deal with the humidity without any clothes on.

Clark was laying flat on the pool deck looking up at the starlight through the domed glass roof. His fingers combed through Bruce’s damp, dark hair. Bruce was on top of him, legs tangled up together, face buried in the crook of Clark’s shoulder.

"The prosecution wasn’t wrong," Bruce murmured against Clark’s neck.

"Mm?" Clark blinked briefly over at Bruce, craning his head back to see him a little better. It was a little hard to do with their current positions. It was easier to watch them both in the reflection in the glass.

‘"The prosecution wasn’t wrong," he repeated, "I had been fighting with my parents."

Clark remembered that part of the trial. The character assassination. He’d been kicked out of one school and failed out of another. He'd been picked up twice for underage drinking. Gotham Prep only took him because Thomas Wayne offered a large endowment. Despite being so close, he’d been staying on campus during the week with the out-of-town boarders instead of his family's home.

The rumors were he was about to be written out of the will entirely. They were poised to disown him and that was why he killed them.

Clark freed his other arm to wrap it around Bruce and hold him closer.

"I told my parents I was bisexual when I was sixteen," he said, eyes focused up on the night sky through the domed ceiling.

"Anytime I tried to talk about it, my mother would ignore it. She’d not respond. Look right through me like she couldn't hear or see me. She was a Kane and an Arkham. She was… very good at ignoring horrible things and pretending everything was fine. Nothing to see here. If you don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist.

"And my father? He would change the subject. At first, I thought they needed some time. That they were good people that loved me. But it kept on like that for a full year. It got to the point where I couldn't handle it anymore. We were either fighting or silent. They sent me to Excelsior, but I knew it was to separate me from…" Bruce exhaled sharply and rolled off of Clark to sit up. He had his chin on one knee, the other leg out straight.

"I got out of there as fast as I could and back to Gotham. I didn't want anything to do with them by then. It was so hard knowing how close I was to leaving it all behind. When you're that young, six more months feels like a lifetime. I just needed to graduate and then I would never have to talk to them again." Bruce drew up his other knee and wrapped both arms around his legs, hunching in on himself.

"I didn’t want all of this," he said gesturing around the expanse of the manor, "I didn't want their money. I didn't want their things. Their impossible legacy. I didn't want this whole life they had mapped out for me. I wanted out of Gotham. I had it all planned out too. I had a trust, one that they couldn't take from me. I’d get it when I was twenty-five. I was going to use it for collateral to get student loans. I was going to get as far away from here as I could. So I would be—" There were tears slowly streaking down his face mixed in the droplets of water from the pool and beads of sweat.

"They kept insisting we were this perfect family, but half the time my mom was ignoring me and dad couldn't look at me and—" Bruce buried his face in his knees.

"And then they died,” Bruce whispered hoarsely.

Clark couldn’t think of what to say. He watched Bruce in the quiet echo of the room. He placed his hand splayed flat across Bruce’s back.

"I’m sorry," Clark finally said.

"The fuck are you sorry about? I was fine. Better off than most. I had security that others couldn't dream of and I— I—"

"I’m sorry that you went through that," Clarks said, "and by the sounds of it, that you went through that mostly alone. It sounds like you're still going through that all alone."

"I did the alone part to myself," Bruce replied, scrubbing at his face, "like you said on the plane. I'm the reason people don't like me."

"You…" Clark shut his eyes closed. He turned his head to look up and over at Bruce sitting next to him, lit up with the rippling light of the pool.

"I’m here," Clark finally said, "If you want me to be. I promise. I won’t go anywhere."

Something had shifted between them. It was most obvious in Bruce sneaking into Clark’s bedroom. There was a maze of servants' passages and Bruce had them memorized and was easily able to slip into and then out of the guest room Clark was staying in.

Outside of the bedroom, it remained very similar for an outside observer. They took their breakfast together, came into work together, hunkered down in the conference room together, ordered in lunch, and left late in the evening.

But there were small things, like the way Bruce would smile at him in approval when he thought Clark had done something insightful. The way he’d bump his knee against Clark's under the table. How he could guess exactly what Clark would want from any of the rotating restaurants they ordered in from.

Clark could get used to falling asleep with Bruce next to him, even if most mornings he’d wake up on the other side of the bed already cold.

Clark had to head back to New York to deliver testimony for a counterfeiting scheme he’d uncovered two years back. It was beyond Clark why they hadn't taken the plea deal. They were all going to end up in prison for far longer at this rate.

For the six days of trial, Clark split his time in the courthouse, the New York FBI office, and wherever in the world needed him most. He slept in his bed in his noisy little apartment. Tried to sleep, at least. His full-sized bed felt too big without another body beside him.

Since sleep was illusive, he spent most of his solitary nights looking into the identities of the patients whose files Thomas Wayne had hidden locked away in a secret compartment in his desk. From what he could gather, all of them appeared to have been people of means at one point, but none of them had happy endings. Clark tilted his head back and rubbed at his eyes, thinking back onto the information that had been on those patient records.

They’d all been patients at Arkham. He’d have to talk to Bruce once he returned to Gotham. They’d need to get more information, but Clark could see the same pattern that Thomas Wayne had undoubtedly uncovered. People all across Gotham had been involuntarily committed and their assets seized. Wayne had files going back to the late 50s.

Clark couldn't help but think about Harriet Arkham’s murder back in 1959. The police had never convicted anyone. They'd never even managed to have suspects. And then thirty-seven years later, Thomas Wayne and his wife had been killed the exact same way. By the exact same person. By someone who'd been killing people in Gotham for almost a hundred years. This was so much bigger than even he guessed.

None of those murders had been random. They'd all been carried out on someone's orders. They’d been meant to silence someone.

There was a nursery rhyme he’d heard some of the children of Gotham singing to each other in hushed tones to frighten the other kids at playgrounds and sleepovers. Clark hadn't paid it much mind before, but it echoed in his thoughts that night as sleep evaded him again.

Beware The Court of Owls,
that watches all the time,
ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch,
behind granite and lime.
They watch you at your hearth,
they watch you in your bed,
speak not a whispered word of them,
or they'll send the Talon for your head.

Clark had intended to hop on the train or pick up a taxi when he arrived at the airport, but Alfred was there waiting for him. He refused to let Clark carry his own bag. It was late, but since Bruce was still at the station, it seemed like the place Clark ought to be too.

When he opened the conference room door, Bruce’s head shot up with a frown firmly in place. He looked ready to bark out an order. The transformation on Bruce's face when he registered it was Clark was endearing. It made Clark's chest hurt.

"Miss me?" Clark asked, leaning in the doorway.

"Hardly," Bruce huffed. His pleased, affectionate look betrayed him.

"What did you get up to when I was gone?" Clark asked.

"Served an arrest warrant for Alberto Falcone," Bruce replied and closed the folder in front of him.

"What?" Clark exclaimed, “What for? He’s not our guy, is he? You didn't even call me?" He tried not to be offended. If Bruce has found the killer, he obviously should arrest him as soon as possible. Clark had selfishly wanted it to be a thing they did together. A shared victory.

"No, he's not our guy. It was in the second pile. He killed an ex-girlfriend in college."

"Oh the strangulation the M.E. messed up on?" Clark asked. That one was so blatantly wrong he was convinced the M.E. had to have been bribed. There was simply no way someone was that incompetent.

"Mmm," Bruce replied.

"Daddy paid them off?" Clark asked.

"Bingo."

"Dinner?" Clark asked, using his thumb to gesture behind him, "I could use a walk after being on the plane and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you worked right on through lunch without me here to remind you."

It was late enough the day shift had made way to the swing shift.

"Let’s go somewhere quieter tonight," Clark said, "There was something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Jade’s, Dawn’s, or Mak’s?"

Clark hmmed loudly and spent too long trying to decide between the three options. The problem was they were all delicious. He had half a mind to peek at them each to see which one was the least crowded at the moment.

They were only a few feet out of the precinct when someone called Bruce’s name.

"Mr. Wayne!" A blonde woman cried out, smiling wildly as she followed up after them in clacking heels, "Mr. Wayne!"

Bruce turned to glance over towards her. She was an unassuming woman in her mid 40s. Floral sundress, light, tasteful makeup, and her fading blonde hair styled in a french knot. She looked like she might be a member of the press. Or maybe a lawyer.

She pulled her hand out of her small purse already holding a gun.

"Carmine says hello."

Clark tackled her before the bullet left the chamber. She got one more shot off before Clark ripped the gun from her hands and slid it out of her reach.

"Clark!" Bruce’s voice rang out through the early summer night air, guttural and raw. Clark’s hands shook as he cuffed her. She was screaming in pain now. Clark had certainly broken or torn something when he’d tackled her.

"I’m fine," Clark insisted, standing and moving to Bruce. He placed a hand on either side of Bruce’s face. "I’m fine," he repeated again and again until Bruce was able to understand. Bruce leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Clark’s. His breathing was erratic, hitching and then nothing and then a rapid inhale.

"Hey, hey. I’m fine. I’m fine, okay? She missed. She didn’t get me. Are you okay, Bruce? Are you here with me?" Bruce didn't respond, so Clark prompted him again.

"Yes," Bruce answered on the third repeat, "I’m good. I’m good."

It hurt to pull away from Bruce, but two gunshots on the GCPD headquarters could not go unnoticed for long. Uniformed officers stormed out of the front ten seconds later.

"So much for dinner," Clark commented with a disappointed frown. Bruce smacked his shoulder.

It was hours of processing before they were done for the night. They’d given their accounts. Clark was still thinking about whether or not he needed to submit an incident report to the New York office or if he could just get away with saying he thought Bruce would be filling it out as the senior agent between them. He didn't want to pass the buck, but he also would rather smash his face through a plate glass window than fill out paperwork today.

That was a problem for another day. Now he just wanted to change out of his clothes and crawl into his bed. It would be at least a forty minutes to make it back to the manor from here. Clark couldn’t wait that long to change. He needed to get out of the ripped suit immediately.

"I’m going to take a shower," Clark informed Bruce before heading to the locker room. He’d ripped the left knee on his pants and torn the sleeve up all along his forearm. He might be able to save the slacks, but the shirt wasn’t good for much anymore.

Bruce followed Clark’s lead, undressing alongside him.

Clark stored the pile of ruined clothing in his temporarily assigned locker. He was grateful he'd have a pair of his fresh workout clothes to change into after.

He grabbed a towel and headed toward the shower stall. He’d just turned on the spray when he heard the sound of the shower stall opening and shutting again behind him.

"I have to see," Bruce whispered as he stepped into the spray, his voice was almost drowned out under the sound of the running water.

"Of course," Clark answered, his own voice low and soothing, "of course, Bruce, whatever you need." Clark took ahold of Bruce’s hand and guided it towards his unmarred chest. Bruce’s hand roamed across Clark’s chest and stomach searching for something he would never find. There wasn't anything for Bruce to find. Not even a scratch.

"Don’t ever do that again," Bruce commanded, but his voice shook. It would have been imperceptible to anyone else in the world, but Clark knew Bruce, had learned his tells over the last few months. (And also he had superhuman hearing.) "Don’t take a hit meant for me."

"I didn’t," Clark grinned, hoping to ease the growing tension as he clasped a hand on Bruce's shoulder, "she missed."

Bruce went to smack him again, but Clark caught his hand and pulled him closer. Clark pulled him tightly to him so he could feel Bruce’s body against his. So he could feel Bruce's heartbeat in his own chest. He ran his fingers down Bruce’s back from his shoulder down to his hips and then back again and again.

"I know I got lucky," he lied, "But I’m never going to apologize for protecting someone. Especially not you."

Bruce tilted his head, nudging at Clark’s cheek with his nose so he’d turn his head to the right and kiss him.

"Please," Bruce gasped into Clark’s mouth after their lips met, "Please, Clark. I need this. I need this."

Clark had never thought he would see the day when Bruce asked for what he wanted, but Clark was all too happy to oblige. Bruce was asking for comfort and Clark would provide exctly that, in whichever way Bruce needed.

"I’ve got you," Clark murmured against Bruce’s lips and lifted him in his arms. He pressed Bruce back against the tiled wall of the shower stall. Bruce let out a gasping, hitched inhale as his bare skin made contact with the cold tiles. Bruce’s nails were digging into Clark’s shoulders, strong enough they might have bruised someone else. Might have made someone else bleed. Clark wanted more.

Bruce begged for Clark to touch him, to hold him, to fuck him. He wanted it harder, he wanted it faster, he wanted it right now. He needed Clark. He needed him. Fuck, he needed him. Clark was thankful for the water. It camouflaged the tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

Clark clapped a hand over Bruce’s mouth when he heard the locker room door open, muffling the desperate whimpers trying to escape Bruce’s mouth. He kept his hand over Bruce’s mouth while he fucked him through the slam of the locker door, the retreating footsteps, the swing of the door, right through Bruce's own orgasm.

Bruce was a shivering, quaking mess in his arms. Not for long of course. He only needed a few minutes before he gathered himself and left. But not before he glanced over his shoulder back at Clark and said, "If you ever pull something like that again I’ll kill you myself."

I think I already love you, Clark didn’t say as he listened to the sound of Bruce’s locker opening with a resonant bang. Underneath the sharp noise, he heard a second locker open, much quieter than the first. It was in the middle of the shift. There was no one else in the locker room besides the two of them.

Clark heard the hiss and slide of fabric as Bruce dressed. There was a long pause then, two, maybe three minutes, where Bruce lingered in front of their lockers. He heard Bruce kneel down on the tile, then the rustle of more fabric. Bruce’s heart rate spiking erratically. Another pause, Bruce holding his breath. Then Bruce inhaling deeply through his nose. Another spike of fear. Clark wanted to rush to him, but he stayed in the shower.

Then, slowly, he heard Bruce calming himself. His breathing and heart rate returning to the baseline Clark had familiarized himself with over the last few months. There was still the occasional spike and shapr breath. Finally, he heard the sound of metal again as the locker doors shut, one, and another a quarter of a second later. He listened to the retreating sound of Bruce’s shoes clacking on the tile. Clark remained under the spray of water until it was cold and then some time after that still. I think I already love you, he didn’t say, I think I have for a while.

That night, Bruce laid down beside Clark in bed and stayed there until morning.

Chapter Text

"He works for one of the families," Clark mumbled around his pen as he idly tapped the plastic against his teeth, "he has to. Probably not Falcone though. He’d have sent him after you instead of that woman."

They'd arranged a timeline across the whiteboard and with everything chronologically, the M.O. was explicitly clear. The wound pattern was repeated with each person, with one new wound included with each subsequent victim, like a growing crescendo, an expanding medley.

The other killer, the one whose work went all the way back until at least the 1920s, started each kill with the same five wounds and then from there seemed to handle each murder uniquely.

"Mmm," Bruce hummed in what might have been agreement or might have been acknowledgement, or might have only been Bruce making a small noise with his mouth to appear like he was listening to Clark when really he was off in a totally different world. Bruce brought his mug of coffee up to his mouth and took a sip. Clark watched the movement in Bruce’s throat as he swallowed.

He tried not to think of Bruce coming into his bed the night before. His hands in Clark's hair, his mouth on Clark’s—

Clark bit down and his pen exploded in his mouth.

"Ah, shoot," he grumbled, sitting up and tossing the mess into the trash. His hands were covered in blue.

Bruce leaned back in his seat to glance back at Clark. He snorted.

"Did you just eat your pen?" Bruce asked.

"Shut up," Clark grumbled and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. All it managed to do was smear more blue ink onto his skin and all over his chin. He tore out a few pages from his notepad and used it to absorb the worst of it before tossing them crumpled into a garbage pail.

Bruce stood up and crossed the room. He grabbed Clark firmly by the jaw and brought a handkerchief up to his chin and began to clean off the remainder of the ink. Clark blinked up at him, a little overwhelmed at having Bruce so close and looking down at him like that with a mixture of fond exasperation, outside the comfort of Clark’s guest room.

"You’re going to die of ink poisoning," Bruce grumbled.

"Not if the skin cancer gets me first," Clark beamed. Bruce snorted again.

"We need to figure out who Simon worked for," Clark continued, "There’s no way an accountant who isn’t a senior at a big four firm could support his lifestyle. He was working for someone. Probably cooking the books. Probably skimming something too by the look of the house he’d bought before he died."

Bruce paused in his ministrations. He was unnaturally still for a long time.

"I know someone," he finally said.

"We’re here to speak with Harvey Dent," Bruce greeted, leaning casually against the front desk. The receptionist looked up at them quizzically. Clark went to reach for his badge, but the look Bruce shot him stilled his hand. Clark nodded tersely and took a step back.

This was Bruce’s city, this was Bruce’s contact. Clark knew when to step back and let Bruce do his thing.

"I’m sorry," she replied, unfailingly polite as she clicked her mouse several times. Clark could see the reflection of a calendar in her glasses, "Mr. Dent doesn’t appear to have any meetings today. Was he expecting you?"

"Tell him Bruce Wayne needs to speak with him," Bruce replied.

Clark saw the flash of shock across the young woman’s face. Saw it twist into confusion, back to recognition, a little bit of horror, then guilt, before managing something almost professional, but changed enough it was clear to Clark, and most likely Bruce as well, that she knew exactly who he was.

"I will… I’ll let him know you’re here." She cleared her throat before picking up the phone and dialing an extension.

Clark heard the confident and friendly greeting coming through the other end of the line. He wondered if it was loud enough for Bruce to hear too. Bruce was incredibly perceptive, more so than any other agent Clark had worked with before. He seemed to have slightly-above-average hearing, so he wouldn’t be surprised.

"Hello, Mr. Dent. Bru-uh," she hesitated for a moment, and got quieter and faster, like she didn’t want to draw attention to what she was about to say, "Bruce Wayne is here to see you."

Clark heard the subtlest freezing in the man’s breath. Then a small exhale a moment later. The friendly, joyful tone was gone. Replaced with something coolly professional, but under that Clark could hear dread and… longing.

"Send him to my office," Dent commanded.

"Yes," she replied, swallowing, "of course." The other line clicked off. The receptionist placed the phone back in the cradle. She took a deep breath and then looked up at them, smiling brightly.

"Right this way," the receptionist said, standing up to walk them to Dent’s office.

"No need," Bruce said, smiling viciously, as he patted his hand dismissively on her desk, "I know where it is."

Harvey Dent was handsome. Almost distractingly so. He was 6’1, well built, and his features were so incredibly symmetrical that Clark did a double-take. He looked to be about Bruce’s age, but his chestnut brown hair was starting to gray in small patches, the largest bit was near his left temple.

"Bruce Wayne," Dent greeted, back to the kind and pleasant tone he’d answered the phone with, but it was faintly strained, "as I live and breathe. It's been years." His heart was hammering loudly enough to be distracting.

"Hey, Harv," Bruce greeted, soft, boyish. Like nothing Clark had seen before. There was something in Bruce’s expression that knocked the air right out of Clark at the same time Dent’s already thundering heart picked up.

It took Dent a moment to notice Clark, but once he’d spotted him, his features hardened into something generically polite and distant.

"Special Agent Clark Kent," Clark greeted, offering out his hand. Dent’s handshake was the perfect practiced one of a politician, “Pleasure to meet you Mr. Dent."

Dent sat back down in his seat, opened his arms, as he spoke and asked, "To what do I owe the pleasure, gentleman?"

"I need access to some files," Bruce stated.

Harvey chuckled politely. Clark could hear the tension under his forced laughter.

"I don’t think you need my help filing a request."

"I need to know about Freddie Simon. He was turning state’s witness, wasn’t he?"

"Bruce I— I can’t give you that. You know I can’t hand that over to you. It’s highly unethical and not to mention it could jeopardize my job."

"What does it matter now? He's been dead for eleven years. And," Bruce added, dispassionately, "You owe me."

Harvey’s breath caught again and he did that same thing again, a quick punch of an exhale.

"How long are you going to use that on me?" Harvey asked, all of the fight had left him.

Bruce’s mouth quirked up at the corner, a sad, mockery of a smile.

"Until it stops working," he replied honestly.

Clark wasn’t sure where to look. He felt like he was watching a Wimbledon match. There was… so much there between them. An open chasm of grief and hurt and guilt. A graveyard of things they never said.

Clark realized, quite suddenly, as Dent’s shoulder slumped and said, "Tell me what you need," that whatever was happening between these two men must have been the reason Bruce had lied about where he was on the night of the murder all those years ago.

What had… what had happened? What had those two been up to that night? What kind of secret was big enough to send one of them marching straight towards the slaughter?

B+H, Clark remembered, engraved into the tabletop.

They had a name.

"Are you—" Clark started, stopped, started again, "Are you— How are you?" Clark finally managed.

"Fine," Bruce replied flatly, "Why wouldn’t I be?"

"Well," Clark started, clicking this tongue, "I know that when I emotionally blackmail elected officials I usually need a breather."

"It’s not like that," Bruce replied glumly, hands shoved in his pockets.

"It was exactly like that," Clark countered.

"It’s exactly like that," Bruce agreed a moment later. He brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose and let out a deep breath.

"I need a cigarette," Bruce announced.

"You don’t smoke," Clark corrected. Bruce didn't smell like tobacco. He’d never tasted like it when they kissed. He’d specifically sought out non-smoking rooms when they'd traveled.

"I smoked when I was a teenager."

"And presumably quit for a good reason," Clark answered.

"Yeah," Bruce laughed, "I got out of prison."

"Let's take a walk," Clark said and inclined his head towards the general direction of the GCPD headquarters, "it's not that far."

"It's five miles," Bruce scoffed.

"What?" Clark smirked, "Has it been that long since your Academy days? I'll race you."

"I'm not going to—" Bruce started, but Clark was already limbering up and something fiercely competitive took over Bruce's entire face.

"Three," Clark started and Bruce hopped up and down in place, quickly stretching each of his hamstrings.

"Two," he couldn't keep himself from grinning as he crouched into a starting position. Bruce did the same

"One," he gave Bruce a nod and they both started running.

They only ran about a mile and a half because Clark’s nose caught the scent of kettle corn and he directed them through the park. Bruce looked too amused to be annoyed at him.

He also bought a soft pretzel.

They wandered through the park, Clark peppering Bruce with questions about landmarks and monuments that Bruce answered like an overindulgent tour guide. They ended up over by one of the central ponds.

"Did you know there are turtles here?" Clark called excitedly as he looked into the water.

"Yes," Bruce answered, "don't get salmonella."

"I'm not going to get salmonella," Clark replied with an eye roll, but was instantly distracted when he noticed one of the turtles was wrapped up in an old fishing line.

"Oh, hey there little buddy," Clark cooed as he dipped his hands into the pond to pull it out, "let me help. That can't be comfortable."

"They're snapping turtles, Clark," Bruce warned from his spot on the bench.

"A risk I'm willing to take," Clark declared magnanimously. The small turtle was snapping at him aggressively; Clark was careful to keep the little turtle's mouth away from any part of him. He didn't want to hurt it. What if it broke one of its little turtle teeth? Wait, did turtles have teeth?

"Do turtles have teeth?" Clark asked as he carefully snapped through the worst of the knotted fishing line and began to delicately loosen it off the turtle.

"You have a turtle right there," Bruce grumbled, "why don't you ask it?"

Clark lifted the turtle gently and examined it for any other damage or stray fishing line.

"Do you have teeth, little buddy?" Clark asked. Bruce snorted.

"He definitely has teeth," Clark called back over his shoulder.

"No, he doesn't," Bruce argued, "they have beaks. They're made of keratin."

"Ha!" Clark cried out triumphantly as he placed the turtle back into the pond, "I knew you knew."

The turtle reemerged from the pond and bit Clark’s shoelaces. Then it settled down next to him and basked in the sunlight. Clark scratched gently at its shell.

"I'm going to get one of those frozen lemonades," Clark announced ten minutes later when a silent alarm was triggered at a nearby pawn shop, "Do you want anything?"

"Unsupervised child at a birthday party," Bruce sighed, but the warmth was obvious.

"Just for that, I'm getting two and I'm not sharing."

Clark jogged off and whisked himself across town before the robbery had a chance to go any further south.

Clark was sunning happily on a patch of grass a few feet away from the pond. Bruce had left his bench and was a few inches away from him, reclining with his back against a willow tree, protected in its shade.

"Freddie Simon embezzled from Dragos Ibanescu," Bruce recapped again, because they'd both found it helpful to recite facts and talk through timelines, "Then he turned to law enforcement for protection and immunity in return for testifying against Ibanescu. In the middle of them hammering out the deal, he leaves the state without protection. They don’t find his body until the snow melts in the late spring"

"What are you thinking? Ibanescu knows this guy is stealing from him, so he sends out someone to take care of the problem?"

"Mmm," Bruce acknowledged, eyes closed behind his sunglasses, empty cup of frozen lemonade by his hip, "exactly what I'm thinking. Ibanescu is practically a criminal concierge service. Drugs, sex, money, you name it and he’ll get it for you. I’d be surprised if murder for hire wasn't one of his many services. And he’d use his in-house guy for something tricky like this."

"Ibanescu’s name… it was in another file. Thirty years ago," Clark started, turning on to his side and propping his chin on his hand to look over at Bruce.

"The Zsasz case," Bruce finished opening his eyes.

"The son was found with the bodies. Eight years old. It’s in our maybe pile. The husband’s wounds all match, if a little shaky, but the wife… the angle was different."

"I remember," Bruce agreed, "they were sloppier. Hesitant. They didn't look professional."

"He went to live with his maternal uncle after," Clark recounted.

"Dragos Ibanescu," Bruce confirmed. The look on his face was serious enough Clark sat up straight.

"We’ve talked about this," Bruce continued, referring to their weeks of conversation as they'd combed through almost every stabbing case in Gotham in the last forty years, "how the second killer— how it felt…. Rigid. Pathological. Escalating. How each new kill was the next step. There were five on the father, six on the mother, and the earliest victim we found had seven stab wound, but that wasn't until almost a decade later."

"Let's head back to the station," Clark announced, standing up and extending a hand out to Bruce, "what are your guesses Zsasz grew up to be a bald, white man somewhere between 5’7 and 5’9?"

"Astronomical," Bruce replied and took Clark's offered hand.

Watching Bruce work with a suspect in mind was a revelation. A true master class in detective work. Clark was good, of course, he had to be. He wouldn’t have managed to, as Arlington Sinclair implied, flown too close to the sun as a journalist if he didn’t have an investigative mindset, but Bruce seemed to be fully in his element, grabbing scrap after scrap of information and slowly knitting a picture together. The things he’d been able to find— tax returns, missing persons reports, digital footprints of both the victims and Zsasz, a smattering of news reports — it all supported their theory.

Victor Zsasz was becoming a more compelling suspect by the minute.

Alongside all that he’d found on Zsasz, Bruce had also acquired the FBI’s and Gotham PD’s files on Dragos Ibanescu. He was a known trafficker— drugs, weapons, papers, antiquities, humans– but he’d never been charged for any serious crime. He’d clawed out an empire in Gotham’s East End and despite everyone knowing exactly what he did, he still operated unimpeded.

His front businesses were all legitimate on one level, but they were primarily laundering schemes for his most unsavory dealings. Sure, he’d pleaded out to a few misdemeanors over the years, dodging anything that would ever amount to any serious jail time or increased scrutiny. It wasn’t even a slap on the wrist. It was barely even lip service. It was further proof of their broken justice system.

Ibanescu had to have someone in the GCPD on his payroll. The DA office too. Probably a judge as well. Someone in the FBI, maybe.

They’d built out everything they could from all the sources they could get without a warrant, and it was all solid work. But, everything was circumstantial. There was nothing in the timeline or the facts that proved Victor was behind the killings.

But it was clear to the two of them that at least half of Zsasz’s victims had been orders from Ibanescu, either on behalf of a third-party or directly from him to protect and expand his criminal empire.

Clark wasn’t sure what to make of the whole thing. What sort of uncle takes in his traumatized nephew and then inducts him into his criminal empire? Lets him become his bloodied right hand?

Had Ibanescu known what Victor had done? Had he orchestrated it and forged him into his weapon? Clark doubted that. From what he could gather Ibanescu adored his younger sister and been friendly with her husband.

That first killing, the one just like Bruce's parents, matched scores of cases all through Gotham starting as far back as the early 1900s. Except the movements in the killing of Victor’s father had been slower, less precise, almost like someone holding another’s hands as they taught them how to draw. Victor’s mother’s wounds looked like they were done by someone else, like the training wheels were off.

Had that been what had changed him? Or was there… was there something… something wrong about Victor before it had all happened? Had Ibanescu simply noticed the propensity for violence early on and tried to redirect it into something that would benefit him? Keeping your attack dog on a tight leash rather than sending him out to roam? Or had he seen a transformation after and tried to protect Victor in the only way he knew how? By trying to control the impulse.

It hardly mattered now. They needed more than they had. They needed enough to ensure Zsasz couldn’t do anything like this ever again.

Clark held his interlocked hands up against his mouth, frowning against his knuckles.

"We don't have enough to arrest him," Clark said.

"I know that," Bruce replied.

"We don’t even have enough for a warrant," Clark continued.

"I know that," Bruce answered again, frustration bleeding through and soaking deep into his words.

"We need more," Clark said, tapping his knuckles against his teeth, staring at the board in front of them.

"I know!" Bruce snapped. Clark startled and looked over at Bruce. He watched as the other man closed his eyes, slumped down in his seat, and buried his head in his hands.

Clark stood and rounded the table. He cast a furtive glance in the direction of the windows. It was quiet and no one was looking their way. Clark knelt down next to him, placed a hand.

"We’re going to get him," Clark said, imbuing it with as much clarity and confidence as he could. He wanted Bruce to believe it as much as Clark did. It was a certainty. It was inevitable. They were going to set things right. Or as right as you could given the circumstance. They would free Felix and the person responsible for Georgia’s murder would be held accountable instead of an innocent man.

Bruce looked over at Clark unspeaking, something curious and thoughtful behind Bruce's eyes. Too curious. Too thoughtful. Clark felt intensely self-conscious. Had he… had he sounded too much like… like the other version of himself? Had something in him slipped?

Bruce placed his own hand over Clark's and leaned his head to the side so his cheek pressed against their joined hands.

"We're going to get him," Bruce repeated.

With no other legal moves, Clark and Bruce started to tail Zsasz.

Staking out Zsasz’s place wasn’t that bad. It was, oddly enough, almost a little pleasant.

It was actually quite pleasant. Zsasz lived in one of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the East End. Across the street from his apartment there was a spacious coffee shop with free wifi. It didn’t hurt that the fresh baked pastries smelled phenomenal. It was a popular gathering spot of the neighborhood. The clientele was a mixture of retirees, young professionals, and artists. People would nurse drinks for hours while they chatted, or pored over their books, or focused intently on their laptops.

They posted up at adjacent tables just out front. Bruce looked strange dressed so casually in jeans and a black athletic zip-up sweatshirt. Clark felt out of place in sunglasses and his favorite X-Files t-shirt.

On the second day of being posted up next to each other, Clark leaned over towards Bruce.

"I’m writing a novel," Clark said, smiling brightly. Bruce rolled his eyes and turned his attention briefly to Clark and then away again.

"Great," Bruce deadpanned and continued to type on his own laptop.

"Aren’t you going to ask me what it’s about?"

"No," Bruce responded.

"Rude," Clark murmured, but couldn't keep his smile off his face, "it's going to be an urban fantasy story. Told from an alien’s perspective — a changeling that’s just found out the truth of their heritage. I think it could be a really cool character study."

"Riveting," Bruce responded flatly.

"I’m Clark by the way," Clark smiled, offering his hand out to shake. He could see the warring intentions in Bruce. One wanted to remain focused and quiet, but it’d been two days of sitting near each other and not talking, pretending they had no idea who the other was. Frankly, it was boring.

"This is usually when you introduce yourself," Clark prompted.

"Bruce," he said, “my name is Bruce."

"You lived in Gotham long, Bruce?"

"Just moved back," Bruce answered after a moment, eyes focused on his laptop, "you?"

"Visiting for work," Clark responded. "What are you working on?" Clark asked, indicating his head towards Bruce’s laptop.

"A book."

"About?" Clark prompted.

"You wouldn’t be interested," Bruce answered abruptly and shut his laptop.

"Come on" Clark goaded, "that’s not fair. You have no idea what I’d be interested in."

Bruce shook his head and turned his attention to his coffee. He didn’t look up.

"You going to make me beg, Bruce?" Clark pitched his voice a little lower and the tips of Bruce’s ears went red.

"It’s a portion of a larger book. I’m working on a chapter about how ambient temperature affects lividity in corpses."

"Oh," Clark responded, realizing in that moment that Bruce wasn’t lying to him. Wasn’t joking like Clark had been, at least not about that. He had been working on exactly what he said he was in the downtime while Victor Zsasz sat in his apartment watching reruns of Love That Baby and doing his quarterly taxes. "Are you like… a doctor or something? A medical examiner?"

"Something like that," Bruce answered.

"Hey," Clark was beaming, "maybe I could get your number? Or your email? In case I have any weird medical questions. You know, for the book I’m writing?"

Bruce eyed him suspiciously.

"I thought you said your story was fantasy. Why would you have any medical questions?"

"The best fantasies are still grounded in the reality of their own universe. There are still rules you ought to follow in fantasy, those rules happen to be unique to the setting, but they still apply.” Bruce’s suspicious glance turned thoughtful.

"Can I get you another coffee, Bruce?" Clark asked, "I’m about to get myself another round."

Bruce’s cheeks flushed the same shade of red as his ears.

"Fine," he answered and opened his laptop again and went back to typing, "I want a vanilla latte."

At the counter, the barista took Clark’s order with a knowing smile.

"He’s cute," she stated. That was the moment he clocked the pink triangle sewn onto her denim vest.

"Yeah," Clark agreed, blushing to his roots, "yeah, he is."

It was another two days of that, sitting near each other chatting throughout the day while they both worked on their laptops. He snuck into the bathroom a few times to go save the day all across the world. It had the added benefit of keeping up appearances of a normal human man who was drinking potentially too much coffee for one day.

"I’ve read everything you’ve published," Clark confessed.

"What do you mean you’ve read everything I’ve published?"

"I mean, I’ve— Don’t be too flattered, " Clark defended, "I’m a very fast reader. I mean that I’ve read everything you published. I knew about your— about your work before you asked me to consult."

Bruce didn't say anything.

"I was so disappointed when you sent me away after that first day, because I really wanted a chance to work with you. I knew we would make a great team." Clark had the good sense to leave out the part that there had been a small part of him that had, against his better judgment, fallen in love with him when he’d first seen him, seventeen years old and hopeless. Clark had wanted to save him. Bruce had managed to do that by himself.

Bruce looked dumbstruck. He was saved from any embarrassment from his speechlessness as something ripped Clark’s attention away from him. Clark turned his head a moment before the door to the apartment building swung open and Zsasz exited into the street.

He hadn't left his apartment in the four days they’d watched him.

He was so unassuming. He wasn’t a particularly large man, a smidge below average and wiry.

"He’s got his knife on him," Clark whispered.

"How do you kn—"

"Trust me," Clark pleaded, "just trust me. Now. We need to go now."

Bruce’s hesitation felt palpable. Objectively, excruciatingly long, until Clark realized it hadn’t even been 750 milliseconds by the time Bruce nodded at him, face set in grim determination.

"I’ll go around through the alley and cut him off," Clark commanded, "tail and keep an eye on him so we don’t lose him." Bruce gave him another curt nod and Clark rushed off.

"Victor Zsasz," Clark called out as he approached the man, hand on his badge, "I’m Special Agent Clark Kent with the FBI. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Victor looked up at him. Despite Clark having just spent the last four days staking outside his apartment, despite looking through every scrap of evidence they could find on the man, he wasn’t truly prepared for what he saw.

Victor Zsasz was human.

Clark had fought aliens. Superhumans. Giant robots. Witches. A dinosaur once. An extra dimensional being on more than one obnoxious occasion. Victor Zsasz was none of these things. He was a pale, slender man in his late thirties. He might have even been considered handsome with his oval face, strong bone structure, straight nose, and curved smile. Except for the emptiness behind his dark eyes. The unbuttoned collar of his shirt exposed a set of deliberately scarred lines right under his collarbone.

Clark looked through the fabric of the shirt. There were forty-nine of them in total across his chest and arms. The oldest two started over his heart, somewhat faded for being thirty years old. And then the third scar that joined was closer to twenty years old. The most recent one was only made a handful of months ago. Tally marks, Clark realized in horror.

There was no other explanation for them, for the number, for the age. They were tally marks for each murder.

Victor smiled at Clark, eyes still unnervingly calm as he whipped around and lunged towards Bruce, knife drawn.

Bruce was reaching for his gun, but he wasn’t going to get it before Victor plunged the knife into his gut.

Clark was there in a flash. He was certain he’d moved too quickly, but he couldn’t even think to slow down, not when the blade was jabbing up towards Bruce. Not when Clark couldn’t shake the image of the horrible, jagged scar already there. The one Bruce didn’t talk about. The one Clark gathered he’d acquired in prison and the reason he’d spent so much time in protective custody.

Victor’s wrist shattered under Clark’s grip as easily as crumpling an aluminum can. He felt the nerves rip and the knife clattered to the ground. Clark continued with the momentum, dropping him to the ground in a tackle. Victor howled in pain under him. At least with the tackle on record, he’d have a better explanation for how Victor’s wrist broke.

Bruce’s voice was calm as ever even as his heart hammered against his ribcage, "You’re under arrest."

The blue and red lights lit up the streets. It had been laughably easy to get a warrant after that.

Gordon had lent them a group of hand-picked officers. Ones he had personally vetted and believed in. Clark and Bruce still went in first and stayed posted up making sure no evidence mysteriously disappeared.

It was late by the time they cleared out Zsasz’s apartment. Clark was overseeing the final movement of seized evidence while Bruce spoke with one of the uniformed officers. And for just a moment Clark could have sworn he caught a glimpse of something moving in the shadows on the rooftop above them. A flash of black and a glint of gold, but as soon as he turned towards it, it was gone.

"You good Kent?" Bruce asked a moment later after he’d finished his conversation. Clark shook the cobwebs from his brain and looked over at Bruce, face lit up in contrast by the lights. He was so handsome. Clark wanted, irrationally, to embrace him there out in front of everyone, to pull him against his body and feel him safe and protected in his hold. His chest ached with the need. This must have been what Bruce felt after the night on the prescient steps, he realized.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm good,” his voice cracked.

Clark could not sleep that night. When Bruce slid out of bed as the sun began to rise, Clark closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

As good as he was at it, he wasn’t sure if he fooled him.

It took almost four hours and seventeen pins and screws to repair Victor’s shattered wrist. Clark waited for the guilt to hit him, but it never did.

Then he then waited to feel guilty about not feeling guilty. That never surfaced either.

Clark couldn't find it in him to be even the least bit remorseful. That was the hand that had killed Georgia Dreamont out in Marais and by their current guess, at least forty-nine people in total.

They'd found Georgia’s camera among his possessions. Bruce had called up Felix’s new lawyer to let her know. Between that, the knife, the security footage, and the testimony of two FBI agents, Clark couldn't imagine they would keep him in prison much longer.

But sometimes people who were wrong doubled down despite overwhelming evidence. He was ready to fight for Felix if it came down to it.

The doctors informed them Zsasz was on strong painkillers, and that he may not be entirely coherent. He would be transferred to Blackgate later that evening, but they could speak to him now.

"I have nothing to say to you," Victor said as soon as they neared his hospital bed.

"It doesn’t matter what you have to say," Clark pressed, “we know what you’ve been doing. We don’t need your confession to prove you killed those people."

"I didn’t kill them," Victor mumbled, head lolling to the side he looked up and over at the ceiling.

"Victor," Clark spoke quietly, "we can tie the knife that you tried to stab my partner with to almost every person you’ve killed over the years. Do you really think you didn’t leave any evidence behind on any of them? By my count, we’re up to the high forties."

"I didn’t kill them," he repeated, a little firmer this time, "I freed them."

"You freed them?" Bruce parroted back to him, reminding Clark that despite it all, he was still a doctor.

"An angel approached me," he said, a look of fondness on his features, "bathed in white light with glowing, golden eyes." His smile was unnerving. Clark felt an urge to take a step back.

"She placed the holy instrument in my hand. She guided my movements, showed me what I needed to do to help my father ascend. Then she watched as I sanctified my mother. I waited years for her return, but she did not come."

"I saw the joy in my mother’s eyes," Victor continued, "as she slid into the embrace of freedom. I knew then, my purpose."

"Tell me more about your purpose," Bruce prompted.

"I shepherded them past the veil. Through this false life into true becoming. I helped them ascend, and soon, I too will follow."

”Can you tell me more about your ascension?” Bruce asked.

"I will ascend," Victor repeated, "my angel will return to me."

He jerked violently against his restraints. Neither Bruce nor Clark flinched.

"I will ascend," he repeated, "the angel will return, and I will ascend."

A nurse rushed in and cleared them out of the room as doctors descended on him.

His screams echoed after them as they left the building.

Chapter Text

Victor Zsasz died in his jail cell. He had fifty-five stab wounds. Allegedly, self-inflicted

Conveniently, the security camera only captured a portion of Zsasz’s cell. Bruce and Clark watched the recording through three times. The man stood in frame at first, appearing to speak to someone out of frame, but the camera didn’t record any audio and the quality was too fuzzy for either of them to read his lips.

Then, Zsasz smiled, extended both arms out wide and walked out of frame towards the direction he’d been speaking to.

And then, nothing.

At least until the blood began to seep out under the door and into the hallway. That was when a passing guard sounded the emergency.

They both knew Victor was a compulsive creature of habit. Each of his kills had been the same. Same knife, same pattern. He’d always used his dominant hand; the one Clark had shattered so badly it had to be reconstructed. It was going to take months, if not years, of physical therapy to learn how to write again. There was simply no way he’d have been able to do this to himself. Not to mention no weapon was found, which the state police were conveniently overlooking.

Someone, something, had slipped into his cell at Blackgate and tied up a loose end. Something he had greeted like an old friend.

"This just means there’s more to the story," Bruce said, "I’m ready to keep digging if you are."

"We’re not stopping," Clark agreed, "Not until we know the whole truth."

"Gentleman," Commissioner Gordon greeted and stood up from his desk. He crossed the room and offered his hand to them to shake. Bruce pointedly ignored it, but Clark reached out to shake Gordon’s hand.

Bruce stood beside a chair, rigid enough to look like he was standing at attention. Clark tapped him lightly on the shoulder and then indicated towards the chairs with a subtle nod. Bruce hesitated for a moment, but finally took a seat. Clark joined him, bumping his knee against Bruce's thigh as he sat down.

Gordon closed the door to his office, walked back over to the desk, and took a seat on the edge of it.

"Congratulations on the excellent work, agents."

"Do you think this is over?" Bruce snapped, "we proved Zsasz was behind thirty-eight murders in Gotham alone, most of them on Ibanescu’s orders, majority of those whose deaths were bought and paid for by Gotham’s elite, and now that he’s dead, it's just ‘Case closed. Good job, gentlemen?’" Bruce was furious. Two decades worth of anger simmered to the surface. Clark touched a hand to Bruce’s bicep; he flinched, but settled. Still angry, still justifiably angry, but back in the driver's seat.

"No," Gordon replied, "I don't think this is over. But Blackgate is a state run prison and the NJSP wants this to quietly go away. I don't have any jurisdiction, but you both do. And you also have a compelling case for seizing Dragos Ibanescu’s assets with the full force of the Bureau backing you. You have access to a forensic accounting department. You’ll be able to trace where some of those payments came from and start building out conspiracy cases."

"And you'll do what?" Bruce asked, "Sit back and let us clean up the mess for you? Like we already did with a pile of unrelated cases we spoon-fed you the answers for?"

"Son," Gordon started, but Bruce cut him off.

"Do not call me that," Bruce spat out.

"Dragos is unhinged," Gordon continued, not addressing Bruce’s outburst, "for all his faults, he loved his nephew. He’s grieving, and we're about to destroy his empire. He’ll be desperate. He’ll be unpredictable. Falcone and his son are behind bars, his daughter and her uncles are infighting, and we have no idea how big of a blast radius that’ll have." Gordon crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at them both through his glasses.

He looked tired. He looked old. He looked like he ought to have retired years ago.

"The other sharks will smell blood and start circling. I’m going to have my hands full keeping the fighting from spilling out into the streets. I’ll have an increased presence in the East End and Tricorner until this all plays out."

"What does this have to do with us?" Bruce asked.

"The conference room is yours," Gordon declared as he circled back around to sit in the chair behind his desk, "as long as you want it."

Bruce spent the next eight days combing through the Zsasz case files. He had lead suspects for each file. He would coordinate with the forensic accountants and start combing over the records to find a financial 'smoking gun’ so all those people who had paid Ibanescu to eliminate their problems would face the consequences.

Clark on the other hand, wasted his time watching the footage of Zsasz's cell so many times he was starting to lose count. That wasn't entirely true. He was on review 4,797… or was it 4,798?

What did it even matter? It looked the same this time, just like it looked the 3,196th time and the 239th and the 11th time. (The 2,320nd through 2,723rd times he’d scrubbed through the footage he thought it had looked different, but it turned out to just be the sunlight reflecting off a smudge on the monitor. After he cleaned it off, it looked the same as all the others.)

Clark yanked off his glasses and slammed them down a little too hard on the table. He was lucky he hadn't shattered his glasses apart, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He was at a dead end.

There was nothing on that video. No evidence. A ghost.

An angel.

Those wounds on Victor looked just like the ones on Harriet Arkham. And Thomas and Martha Wayne. And hundreds of other bodies throughout the years.

Out in the city, in a cramped living room, a group of school aged children gathered in a blanket fort, daring each other to tell scarier stories.

One child started to sing that darn nursery rhyme, the others joined in by the third line, echoing behind in a discordant chant.

Beware The Court of Owls,
that watches all the time,
ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch,
behind granite and lime.
They watch you at your hearth,
they watch you in your bed,
speak not a whispered word of them,
or they'll send the Talon for your head.

Bruce’s hand landed on his shoulder just as an adult flicked on the living room lights and told the kids to quiet down.

“Are you okay?” Bruce asked.

“I'm just tired,” Clark confessed bitter and frustrated, “I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights.”

“Come on,” Bruce said quietly, squeezing on Clark's shoulder. Clark drooped and rolled his head to press against Bruce's hand. "You're not going to find it tonight. Take a break. Call it a night. We'll figure this out soon."

"Mmm," Clark replied with a deep breath.

"We're going to get them," Bruce assured Clark, "all of them."

Clark brought his hand up to rest over Bruce's, fingers curling under the other man's palm. He stroked his thumb over the back of Bruce's hand slowly. He lifted Bruce's hand off of his shoulder and brought it to his mouth

"We're go to get them," Clark repeated.

Clark woke as soon as the sharp-taloned gloves clinked against the window pane. He kept his eyes closed, watching the scene through his eyelids.

The figure was in some strange armor. The face was covered by a mask and a pair of glasses, along with a metal that roughly resembled an owl.

The same golden-flare he’d seen across the rooftops after they had arrested Zsasz. It almost felt like he was observing someone else's night terror, frozen still in the bed as the figure slithered in through the window and crawled, silently, across the floor towards the bed.

Years of practice made it easy to roll with the hit, to catch his scream in his throat, the kind of aborted gasp that happened when the pain was sudden and overwhelming. He palmed the knife, kept it pressed in place.

The figure looming above him tilted its head dispassionately.

"Who–?" He gasped through labored breaths, "Are… What?" He swallowed and looked around the room frantically.

"This is a dream," Clark said, feeling really impressed with his own delivery, "wake up. Just wake up. You're okay. You're okay. You're okay."

"Oh, I'm afraid you're already awake, Mr. Kent. You’re a hard one to track down," the figure said, voice gleefully calm. A leather gloved hand reached up to peel back the mask. There was no mistaking the face.

Clark had seen it before, in an old oil painting that had been stolen sometime in the 50s only to be returned the next night, the charred remains of the frame slapped back onto the wall like nothing had happened. No one back then had been able to make heads or tails of the crime. Multiple people had written theses on it, how it could have happened, who might have done it…

Clark was now certain every single one of them was wrong.

"Amelia… Amelia, please you don't have to do this," Clark said, one hand held up in placation, the other firmly keeping the knife in place. It'd be suspicious if it moved and fell over. It was supposed to be embedded in his gut right now. The first wound on all the victims.

Her skin was corpse-pale and pitch-veined. Luminous in the moonlight. She was cold and her heart beat sluggishly in her chest. There was a silver looking molar in the back of her mouth, but it wasn’t any metal he recognized. It had to be some sort of alloy. And her eyes…

Amelia Crowne was a beautiful woman and people had spoken often of her dark blue eyes. The artist had used phthalo blue with a sprinkling of silver leaf to capture them in his infamous portrait. There was no hint of this in the creature above him. Her eyes were jaundiced and the irises wolf-yellow.

"Of course I don’t have to do this," she replied with a sultry smirk as she pulled another knife from the leather bandolier, "but I'm certainly going to enjoy myself."

She dragged the tip of the knife down across Clark’s temple, down his jaw, and then the side of his neck.

Clark waffled between terrified shaking and frozen still. Ultimately, he went with frozen because it was much easier to maintain position that way. Shaking was harder, it needed to look genuine, and be needed to make sure he didn't accidentally shake too quickly for human eyes to see. Though, with her eyes, with the size of her pupils, he wondered what she could see that others wouldn't.

"What did they do to you?

"They elevated me," she preened, "they transformed me. They helped me ascend. Made me achieve my true purpose. I was always meant for this, don’t you see?" She flipped a push dagger in her hand, "My family would have held me back. Kept like a useless trinket in a display case, pulled out for parties to be paraded around. Meant to sparkle and shine, to bear babies for their legacy, but nothing else. I’m much better as a talon, as the sharp point of a blade. Can’t you see?" Her smile was jarring, a rictus grin on her deathly pale skin.

"If I stab you just right," she purred as she pressed the tip of the dagger below his belly button, the second spot on all the victims, "it’ll sever your spinal column, but it’ll miss all the major arteries and take you hours to bleed out. Then I get to take my time without all the squirming," she confessed, "When they put you to sleep it’s so boring!" she sing-songed and stopped with her knife in the dip of Clark’s throat.

Clark swallowed, withdrawing from the blade as much as he could.

"But when they wake us? That’s when the real fun is to be had."

"Us?" Clark asked, "there are more of you? How— how are there more of you?"

A lot happened at once. The servants door split open in a shower of splinters, Bruce emerged from it, gun drawn shouting warnings. Amelia arced the blade to slit Clark's throat. Clark couldn't move any further back to avoid it and the knife scraped against his skin. Sparks lit up. Three shots rang out, both bullets ripped through Amelia Crowne and she collapsed on top of him.

"No!" Clark cried out, reaching for Amelia’s body, "What did you do? I wasn’t finished with her. I had it under control!" Clark snapped.

"Under control?" Wayne parroted in disbelief, "She was about to slit your throat, Clark!"

"I was fine," Clark insisted as he leaned forward and examined her. No pulse, but she'd barely had one as she oozed in through the window.

"Who is it?" Bruce asked, "What is that?"

"Bruce Wayne, meet Amelia Crowne."

"Amelia Crowne? Like the turn of the century heiress?"

"Exactly like that," Clark said and moved the comforter, corpse and all, onto the floor.

"What the hell are you talking about, Kent? Amelia Crowne has been dead for more than a hundred years."

"Grab one of her teeth," Clark snapped, "or some of her hair and test it. You’ll see. I'm right. They did something to her. Kept her in some sort of stasis. She mentioned something about them putting them to sleep. She’s not the only one. They’ve got others like her, but you shot her before I could get any more information out of her!"

Bruce walked over and knelt next to the bed. Clark was too preoccupied to watch what he was doing.

"Show me your neck," Bruce ordered and took a step forward.

"I’m fine," Clark replied, "but we need to figure out what to do next. I don’t know how to explain this, who to report it to. They’re going to— Someone would try to cover it up."

"Show me your neck," Bruce repeated and grabbed onto Clark's shoulder.

Clark shoved Bruce off of him. Bruce was back in a moment, kicking Clark’s legs out from under him and tackling him to the ground.

They struggled until Bruce was in a position that if he continued to struggle, he would snap his own wrist. Bruce did not stop struggling, so Clark rolled with it to keep the other man’s bones intact. This resulted with Bruce back on top of him, Amelia's discarded dagger now held firmly in Bruce's fist.

Clark watched in mute horror as Bruce slowly pressed the dented dagger down into Clark’s sternum. He didn’t seem shocked to see it begin to slowly bend as he shoved down. Bruce lifted his free hand and punched down against the his fist that handle of the blade. It tore through Clark’s shirt and the blade snapped against his chest.

"Tell me what you are," Bruce hissed, "why you joined the bureau. Why you’re partnered with me. What’s your mission? What’s your endgame?"

"You reached out to me," Clark spat back, shoving Bruce off of him and scrambling to walk away. He hadn’t figured out where yet, but anywhere other than this room seemed like a good start.

Wayne was right behind and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Don’t touch me!" Clark spat out, pulling away from Bruce and heading once more towards the door.

"You're not leaving. You’re going to tell me what's going on," Bruce demanded. Bruce blocked the doorway. It would have been easy enough to shove Bruce aside. But then what? Try to spend the rest of his life avoiding him? They had just closed a huge case together, and another one they were making enough progress that assassins were being sent to take them out.

"I need assurances," Clark insisted, "that this stays between us."

"You’re not in the position to be negotiating here, Kent," Bruce hissed out.

"I’ll ruin Dent’s career," Clark announced impulsively. "I’ll let everyone know the reason you lied about where you were that night was because you’d snuck into your boyfriend’s room." That word came out with so much more derision than he’d meant. "I’ll let them know he’s been leaking information to you for years."

"You wouldn’t," Bruce replied. He said it emphatically, but there were the slightest notes of fear tumbling under his otherwise calm exterior.

Clark hesitated for a moment, wondering if he really would do that; he hoped he didn’t need to find out what kind of man he was when the chips were down. Clark always imagined himself a good man, a righteous one. But with a threat in front of him, he was lashing out the way cornered animals always did.

"Fuckin’..." Clark laughed, feeling delirious, the corpse of a long-dead heiress of the Five Families was lying lifelessly on the guest room floor, "fuckin’ try me, Bruce. You do anything to harm me or my family, I’ll ruin your life. Do you understand me? I’ll ruin you."

Clark looked over at Amelia’s corpse. Even with a portion of her skull missing, it was somehow less-unnerving to look at her now that she was completely dead. The color was right at least, well, the skin color was. The blood was still pitch-black; thick and oozing more like cold molasses than blood. It was going to be a hell of a clean up job.

"Let’s go to your room," Clark announced, "I’m not having this conversation in front of her. Let me make sure she’s…"

Clark leaned down and gently turned over the corpse, he saw the spark when her tongue hit against that strange tooth. Not even a second later, she lunged at Clark.

Clark shoved a hand down on her chest and held her down.

"Did you kill Victoria and Dumitru Zsasz?" Clark asked.

"I’ll kill you," she hissed out, struggling ineffectually under his grip, "I'll slit your throat and bathe in your blood."

"Did you kill Harriet Arkham?" Clark stared down at her, feeling out of his body as he did. Hundreds of people, Clark thought, this person was responsible for hundreds of people’s deaths.

"Did you kill Martha and Thomas Wayne?" Bruce asked. His voice wavered.

"Do you want to hear about how I immobilized them first? How I took my time? Took turns? One then the other. How they tried to comfort each other? How brave he tried to be? Do you want to hear how I—"

"You’re not coming back from this, Amelia," Clark said as he reached his hand inside her mouth and yanked out the strange metal tooth. She collapsed, like a marionette with its strings cut. Nothing. A corpse again.

Clark removed his glasses, blinked as he adjusted his vision, and then focused on Amelia. Her body was cooling. Nothing. No reaction of her strange pupils to light.

That odd jolting spark that seemed to be the only thing warm about her was gone. He grabbed an evidence bag out of his luggage and slipped the tooth into it.

Nearly a hundred years after her disappearance, Amelia Crowne was officially dead.

"How are we going to fix this?" Bruce whispered, mostly to himself, as his eyes lingered on Amelia.

"I’ll take care of it," Clark replied absentmindedly as he walked through the busted door. He’d mapped out the blueprints of the manor on the second night they stayed there. He walked to Bruce’s room despite never having been in it. It was a good thing Alfred was in New York with his theater troupe; this fiasco was going to be hard enough with only two people. "Our biggest problem is her handlers are going to know something is wrong when she doesn’t report back tonight."

"Handlers?"

"Court of Owls," Clark replied, "I started looking into it a few weeks back. They don’t seem to like that very much."

"You're delusional. The Court of Owls is not real. I looked into it after my parent’s death. There was nothing. If they’re coming after you, they would have come after me when I first looked into them."

Bruce took a seat on his un-made bed. Clark’s fight had clearly abruptly woken him from slumber. He’d rushed to try and save Clark. Then he’d jabbed a knife into his sternum.

"The Court of Owls isn’t real," Bruce stated plainly, "it’s just a bedtime story. A bogeyman to keep kids in line."

"Why do we frighten children?" Clark asked casually. He felt strange looming over Bruce and decided to settle down on the bed too.

"Are you going to start monologuing," Bruce asked flatly.

"Yes," Clark replied, unashamed. "We do it to keep them safe. We tell them tales of creatures in the forest and the rivers to keep them safe. The creatures, the spirits, they’re often made up, but the danger? That’s real. Children get lost in forests. There are predators in the woods. They drown in rivers, so we teach them fear to keep them safe. The rich and powerful won’t ever face the same consequences as you, so we teach our children to be wary of those in power."

"It's not real, Clark! It’s not anything," Bruce insisted, "I looked into them after my parents— after they— It’s a conspiracy," Bruce insisted, "that’s all. Like lizard and mole people. It has no basis in reality. It’s a shared delusion. There’s no secret elite society calling all the shots."

"Explain that corpse in your guest room," Clark demanded, "explain why her blood is black. Explain how she came back after you unloaded two rounds in her heart and one in her skull. Explain how— Explain how a woman who went missing over a century ago is only now lying dead in the other room."

Bruce said nothing.

"You can’t explain it, but I can. They have… they have something that can reanimate a corpse." Clark held up the tooth, glad he’d been able to drop it in one of the evidence bags he kept on hand, even here in Bruce’s stately home, "I don’t recognize the metal. It’s an alloy of some sort I’ve never seen before. I don’t know the specifics of how it works, but something about it triggered her to come back. Talons, that’s what they call their assassins, are kept on ice and brought out when they have assignments."

"This is…"

"We’re going to have to hide the body," Clark announced.

"Hide the—?" Bruce started, “No," Bruce interrupted, "No we’re not going to hide a body–"

"If we go through the proper channels, if this ends up in the morgue, The Court is going to get her back and whatever tech or magic they have to bring them back. We have to keep her isolated, I’m thinking Ant—"

"Stop!" Bruce interrupted, "Stop. Stop it. Stop talking. You’re going to tell me why the the fuck her knife dented on you. Why it broke. Why nothing seems to hurt you. How you got, how you got shot– fucking, fuckin weeks ago and you keep pretending nothing happened! I saw the fucking bullet holes! The powder burns on your shirt! I could smell the gunshot residue! She couldn’t have missed at that range."

"Fine," Clark huffed, "fine. I’ll tell you, but what I said before is true. If you hurt my family—" he let that linger. He looked down at the glasses in his hand. He had closed his fist at some point and they’d shattered. He walked across the room and dropped the remnants in the trash can.

"A journalist in Metropolis," Clark began after a moment, leaning in the doorway of the bathroom, "she called me ‘Superman’ and the name sort of stuck."

"Superman is an alien," Bruce said, "Your file said you were the son of farmers in Smallville. Martha and Jonathon Kent—"

"If you touch them—" Clark interrupted.

"They’re real?" Bruce asked, "they’re not some… some deep cover thing?"

"They raised me," Clark admitted with a sigh, "My birth parents… they knew their planet was on the verge of destruction. They sent me to Earth; they thought it was my best chance of survival. Ma and Pa took me in. They raised me since I was an infant. They’re my family and I would do anything I needed to to keep them safe."

"I’m not going to say anything,” Bruce promised, "You keep your mouth shut. I’ll keep mine."

"Why are you—" Bruce started to ask, but then stopped abruptly.

"Why am I what, Bruce?" Clark prompted exhaustedly.

"Why are you working for the FBI? You’re… You’re Superman. Why do you have a job?"

"Not all of us can be independently wealthy. Some of us have student loans."

Bruce rolled his eyes at that and Clark sighed. He slipped the tooth into the pocket of his sweatpants.

"I can’t…." Clark admitted after a pause, "Be that ideal all the time. I’d fall apart under the pressure. I spent most of my life thinking I was normal, well, up until I shot lasers out of my eyes. I couldn’t isolate myself all the time like that. It’d break me."

"I thought my teenage years were tough,” Bruce deadpanned.

"I used to be a journalist, you know that. I did it because I liked being able to expose corruption and help people, in ways Superman couldn’t. After Luthor’s trial, I couldn’t do my job anymore. I was the story. Supervisory Special Agent Richardson offered me a job and I— I said yes. I still don’t— I worry, sometimes, about what I’m doing. If I’m doing the right thing. If I’m making a difference. There is so much corruption inherent in this system. And what would it mean if the world found out about me, would evidence I found inadmissible because of what I can do?"

"Well," Bruce said, "Never get found out." Clark laughed despite himself. That was fairly solid and straightforward advice. Leave it to Bruce.

"Sure. Okay. I’ve only screwed up once so far, so my overall track record is pretty good."

"No one— no one else knows?"

"Only my parents," Clark said, "and now you."

"How did you…. About Harvey?" Bruce ventured, "How did you know?"

"I guessed," Clark admitted, "you said he owed you. He clearly feels guilty about something that happened between you in the past. Guilty enough to break the rules even though it could cost him his career if it came out. It had to be something big for him to violate people’s privacy like that."

"I never had a right to privacy," Bruce spat out, "Over a hundred million people watched my conviction. Happy I was supposed to get the needle. I was seventeen."

Clark must have lost something in his control over his face, because Bruce looked over at him sharply.

"Were you one of them?" Bruce asked.

"I was," Clark admitted, "My friend’s mom had it on all the time. I thought you looked— I thought you looked relieved when you heard the sentencing."

"I was," he replied, looking over at Clark; he had that young, wounded look on his face, "because it meant it was over."

Clark felt that ache in his chest again. He crossed the room to stand in front of Bruce.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Bruce jerked back.

"I’m hugging you," Clark said and pulled him against his chest, "you know the drill."

Bruce slumped quickly against Clark. Clark held him close. He calmed his breath and heart rate to a good base, tried to encourage Bruce to do the same.

"I found something," Clark said a few minutes later once Bruce was steady.

"What?"

"In your dad’s study. There’s a hidden compartment in his desk. It’s still locked but I, I looked through it. I was going to tell you when I came back from New York, but, well, you know. There were stacks of patient files. Wealthy folks, mostly. Put into conservatorship. Most of these murders, they’re part of a bigger landscape about centralizing wealth and power—"

"Jesus Christ," Bruce sighed and rubbed at his face, "Superman. You used your x-ray vision. I can't—"

"Don't call me that," Clark whispered, voice desperate despite his best efforts, "that's not my name. I didn't pick it. Please."

"Clark," Bruce said after a moment and then slumped back against him.

"You’re… handling this. Better than I thought someone would."

"I had suspicions about you. I knew after you were— I knew there was something off. There were two bullet holes in your shirt. I— I couldn't let myself think about it too hard. There were more important things going on, but it was hard to ignore. Superman responds to major crises all over the world, but he tends to respond to lower-takes things in a regional pattern. It used to be centered on Metropolis. Then it was New York. And for the last two months it's been Gotham."

Clark had always worried about that risk, but he couldn’t let it hold him back. He couldn’t ignore someone who needed to be saved on the off-chance they would become some data point that would lead to revealing his identity in some hypothetical future. Though that hypothetical had just slammed right into like a dagger to the chest.

"Why didn't you ask me?" Clark asked, "After the shooting. Why didn't you ask me?"

"Would you have told me the truth?"

Clark opened his mouth ready to say, of course he would. How could Bruce even question that? Then he thought better of it. He’d been willing to threaten the career of one of the only decent district attorneys in Gotham's long, sordid history to keep his secret safe.

"I like to think I would," Clark answered, "but I got really good at lying over the years. I had to."

"Yes," Bruce nodded in agreement, "Yes," he repeated "So did I."

"Why did you—" Clark started, then hesitated, "why did you stop being a surgeon?"

"It wasn't enough," Bruce said, "it didn't matter how many lives I saved. Not when I knew innocent people were imprisoned because of a corrupt system. Not when whoever killed my parents was still out there."

"If it's any consolation," Clark said, "I think she's dead dead in the other room now."

Bruce looked at Clark, unspeaking, And then folded in on himself. Clark thought it was a sob at first, but after a moment he realized it was peals of laughter.

"No. It’s not done yet," Bruce said, sitting up straight and rubbing at the corners of his eyes, "she's the murder weapon. She's not the one pulling the strings."

"This whole… this whole thing is big, Bruce," Clark said, "bigger than either of us realized when we started this thing together. They're going to send more people after me. They won't stop until I'm—Well, they’ll find out I’m hard to kill pretty quickly and that’s a whole other host of problems."

"They're… this is—" Bruce looked up at the ceiling, "you're telling the truth? You’re telling the truth. About the Court?"

"I am," Clark affirmed, "There’s something here."

"They're the… they're the real reason my parents are dead."

Clark nodded.

"They are."

"They're… they're the ones who called the shots. They're the ones who wanted my parents dead. Because of what he found out with those patients. Because of what he tried to stop."

"Yes," Clark answered, "it was them."

A long tense quiet spread between them.

"I’m sorry I stabbed you," Bruce said quietly.

Clark tried to keep it together, but the whole thing was so ridiculous. He started laughing. A short, strangled giggle. Then another. He brought his hands over his mouth to try and suppress it, but all that managed to do was muffle it. And another laugh, one more he couldn’t control. Bruce’s warm hand pressed flat on Clark’s back, right between his shoulder blades. Clark chased after the touch.

"I’m sorry I— I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. I wanted to after... After, in the pool. But I was—"

"I understand," Bruce answered, "I know why you didn’t. We can… we’ll talk about this tomorrow. You said you’d take care of it?" Bruce jerked his head towards the open door. Right. Amelia Crowne.

Clark nodded.

"Come to bed when you’re finished," Bruce said, but the question was hidden in there.

The clean up was simple enough, he stored the corpse out in his base on Antarctica. He torched his clothing, the affected bedding, and the remnants of blood on the floor. He melted the cut glass into place. It was like nothing had ever happened. All traces of it simply gone. Vanished.

And then he took a quick shower.

Clark hesitated at the doorway, but Bruce threw the covers back in invitation. Clark crawled into the bed behind Bruce.

"After Felix," Bruce said, slotting into place in Clark’s arm, "after he's out. This is all I’ll do. I have to find them," he said, "I have to drag them out of the shadows. I have to destroy them."

"I’m here," Clark said, "If you want me to be. I promise. I won’t go anywhere."

Chapter Text

The elevator ride was strange. He’d taken it so many days the last four years. It had become familiar without him realizing. Now that he wouldn’t be returning in the foreseeable future, he was distinctly aware of each moment now in this small space that he’d committed to memory without conscious thought. The beep of approval as he badged in. The feel of the button under his fingertips. The small shake before the jolt up to his floor. The moment of pause before the doors finally opened up into the office.

"Hey, hey everyone!" Clark beamed as he approached their cluster of desks.

"Clark!" King exclaimed so suddenly it made Zamora jump in their seat and knock into Lacour who dropped Clark's favorite mug. Clark reached out and caught it before it hit the floor. He winked at Lacour.

He wondered how petty it would be to pack up the mug with the rest of his desk. His apartment was already empty. Everything has been boxed up and packed up by the movers.

There were a lot of good mugs in Gotham. He handed it over to Julian with a smirk.

"You seem to be in a good mood for someone who got fired," Lacour sneered.

Clark rolled his eyes and smiled over at Lacour as he started to clear off his desk.

"I didn’t get fired," Clark replied. King and Zamora were talking over each other as they asked essentially the same question at different levels of excitement and volume.

”Thank you for taking such excellent care of Audrey 3,” Clark directed at King as he picked up the beloved orchid he’d found on the side of the road. King flushed and stuttered out a barely coherent reply.

"A word, Kent?" Supervisory Special Agent Fiona Richardson called out from her office.

"Yes, sir!" He deposited the framed picture of his parents in front of their sunflower patch into the box and made his way through the open desks to her office.

"Told you he got fired," Lacour mumbled. King shushed him. Zamora, very quietly, mumbled under their breath that Lacour wanted to fuck him so bad it made him look stupid. Clark barely repressed a snort. Which was good, because Richardson was looking over at him with a very serious expression on her face.

"I’ve been told you're being transferred to headquarters," Richardson stated, employing those famous interrogation techniques she’d passed on to him when he first started. She wasn’t his boss anymore, so he could start thinking about her as Fiona.

No. No. Absolutely not. No, that felt really weird. Richardson it was. Besides, she still out ranked him.

"Yes," Clark answered, "I have."

”And you’re indefinitely on assignment in Gotham," she added. Clark nodded. Clark waffled for a moment about how much information he should give her. Clark had been reporting to her for over four years now and he trusted her. But even still… He didn't know how far down this whole thing went. Telling her too much could put her in danger. It was best to keep things vague, but true.

"There’s a— there’s a RICO case down there," Clark hesitated, "it’s... Big. Really, big." Richardson looked over at him, patient as ever.

After a moment he added, "Bigger than Gotti and Phillip Morris big."

Richardson let out a low whistle.

"Wayne treating you okay?" Richardson asked.

"He’s not so bad," Clark answered, keeping the smile off of his face, but probably not out of his words, "once you get to know him."

Clark chatted with Zamora and King as he finished packing his desk. Nearly half the detritus on his desk was a collection of notes to himself he’d never need to reread, but he’d taken anyway out of habit. He sorted some into case files and sent others to the shredder. All he really wanted was the picture of his parents and his orchid. And the mug, but he was being the bigger man and would leave it behind.

"I gotta get going," he explained as he fitted the top on his moving box, Audrey 3 just barely fit laying on her side, but he knew she’d been through much worse, "but don’t be strangers! If you’re ever in Gotham, make sure to give me a ring. And I’m always happy to be a second set of eyes on any of your cases."

Zamora clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a heartfelt thank you for all the work Clark had done during their training; how they couldn’t have asked for a better mentor. Lacour looked like he would have preferred to stay seated and ignore Clark, but the need for decorum overtook him and he stood and offered Clark a brief, perfunctory handshake. Clark exactly matched the pressure, causing Lacour to wince slightly and try to subtly shake his hand out after they'd let go.

And King… dear Micah, she engulfed him in a bear hug that might have bruised a lesser man and held on… so much longer than she should have. Clark brought a hand up to give her a friendly pat on the back before he pulled away. She still hesitated for a moment to let go.

"It was great working with you all," he called out from the doorway, nearly dropping his box as he waved.

Bruce was parked outside the steps of New York’s FBI field office. He was technically in a No Parking zone, but no one seemed to be giving him any trouble. He stood outside of the car on the passenger’s side, leaning against the hood of a black Lamborghini Murciélago, arms crossed over his chest. As Clark approached, Bruce opened the door for him. Clark climbed in, placing the box down at his feet.

When Bruce was situated in the driver’s seat Clark looked over at him.

"You know I could have flown," Clark said, "you didn’t need to come all the way up here only to drive me back to Gotham."

"You don’t like flying," Bruce said with a wink as he started the car. Clark looked away, covering his mouth with his hand to hide his smile.

"I don’t mind," Bruce added, probably aiming for blasé, but a little sincerity escaped containment as he flicked on the radio to NPR. Bruce reached over to open the console center between them. He dropped an unopened bag of chips and sour candy in Clark’s lap, "I like the company."