Work Text:
When Clark Kent overhears the Gotham rumors about the Waynes being possessed by the Bats, he knows there’s a story there. He expects his boss to be overjoyed at the news that he’s finally thinking of writing a celebrity scandal piece, but Perry’s shocked dismay is… not that.
“Have you gone mad, Kent?” he demands. “When I said stop writing dry pieces on all the lead paint in Metropolis buildings, I didn’t mean you should go after Gotham.”
“I’m not,” he says, confused. “This piece is on the Waynes.”
“Exactly!” Perry throws up his hands when Clark stares at him. “Whatever. It’s your neck on the line. Call if you want to use a sick day tomorrow, but be here the day after or you’re fired.”
“I won’t need-”
“Shut up, Kent,” he says. Clark shuts up. “Out of my office. Lane!”
Lois pokes her head into Perry’s office. “Hm?”
“I need you to explain to your boyfriend why he’s making the worst decision of his life.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit dramatic?” Clark says as Perry shoves them out. Perry just looks at him and slams the door on his face.
He expects Lois to commiserate with him, to offer him some kind of explanation for Perry’s weirdness. But when he explains that he has a scheduled interview with the Waynes in a few hours, just enough for him to prepare and fly over to Gotham, she looks at him with concern.
“The… Waynes?” she says slowly. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Not you too, Lois,” he groans. “I thought you’d see through their crap in a second.”
Lois shrugs. “I work with an alien. What’s so unbelievable about possession?”
He frowns. “Don’t you think it’s more likely they’re faking it? Maybe they’re vigilantes. Maybe they’re just humans or- or something close enough, like me-”
“I don’t think you’ll find a kindred spirit in the Waynes,” she says slowly. “If that’s the only reason you’re going there-”
“It’s not the only reason,” he protests. “Don’t you like this sort of thing? Finding out when rich people are lying?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ll report about their corruption the second they do something corrupt,” Lois shoots back. “But I’m never going to Wayne Manor. I hear the people who go in don’t come out the same.”
“What are you talking about? Come on, just come with me,” he wheedles. “I’ll let you share the byline.”
“You could not pay me to walk into that den of beasts, Smallville,” she says. “But good luck. Try not to die.”
It’s with that ominous sentence still ringing in his mind that he walks up an enormous avenue to the imposing double doors of Wayne Manor. He hesitates, straightening his tie and suit, taking a few deep breaths- and then before he can ring the ornate doorbell at the front of the house, the door swings open.
“Oh!” Bruce Wayne gasps, bringing a hand up to grip at his heart. Clark notes absently that the man’s heart rate isn’t actually all that elevated. “My, you startled me!”
“Hello, Mr. Wayne,” he greets awkwardly. Bruce Wayne’s dressed in a black button-down and dress pants, hair ungroomed and a polite smile tilted awkwardly as if it’s about to fall off his face. He doesn’t look possessed. He mostly just looks rich. “My name is Clark Kent. I’m from the Daily Planet.”
“Oh! Is the underwear yours?” Bruce looks at him up and down, lips quirked. “I think I’d remember sleeping with you.”
“Uh, no,” he says, flushing. “I- I called ahead? I’m a reporter?”
Bruce stares at him for a few more seconds - this man was slow on the uptake, wasn’t he? - before his face clears. “Ah, yes! Mr. Colt! Come on in!”
Clark decides to take the win and steps inside. The front hall is ominously dark and cobwebbed, looking almost abandoned. Weird. “Thank you, Mr. Wayne.”
“So,” says Bruce - Brucie, Clark is already thinking, taking the nickname from Gotham’s gossip rags, because possession aside it is clear that there is no brain inside this man’s skull - “fair warning, I might get excited, because for whatever reason reporters never come to the house! What did you want to talk about? Is it my charity work? My company policies? I will say, Timothy sort of manages alllll of that,” he twirls the words in his mouth, dizzying, “but I can give you whatever quotes you need-”
“Uh, neither, actually, Mr. Wayne,” Clark says, feeling as though he’s losing control over the conversation. “I wanted to speak to you about the Bat.”
And there. There, before his gaze melts back into blank placidity. Clark doesn’t think a human could have caught the microexpression he’d seen, but that’s definitely uncertainty. Brucie knows more than what he’s saying.
“I’m sorry,” Brucie says, turning to him with a fixed smile. His head is tilted at an odd angle. “I don’t think I caught that.”
“The Bat,” he repeats, and again that little spasm. As if Brucie had heard him, almost understood, and immediately forgotten what he’d heard.
“The what?”
“The Bat of Gotham,” Clark rephrases impatiently. “The vigilante. You must know what I’m talking about. He captured rogues from the latest Arkham breakout just yesterday. Look!” He swipes up the Gotham Gazette from where it rests on a side table. Sure enough, BATS AND BIRDS SAVE GOTHAM is plastered across the front page. “What do you know about them?”
Brucie laughs, gaze skimming over the newspaper and visibly not taking in a word. “I don’t really read the news, Mr. Colt. No offense. If you want to know about animals, you’ll have to talk to my youngest. He’s not here right now, though- only a few of my children are in the house at the moment, actually-”
“They’re- they’re people! And they’re right here!” Clark says, shaking the paper at him. “What are you even-”
“Master Wayne,” a cool voice interrupts, and Clark turns to see an elderly British gentleman standing in the entrance to the hall. “Is everything quite alright?”
Clark falters. Brucie waves the man over. “Of course, Alfred!” he says cheerily. “Oh, meet Mr. Colt! He just arrived!”
“Clark Kent,” he corrects, because if he’s identified the voice correctly, this is the man he talked to on the phone this morning and he seems like he’s got a good head on his shoulders. “I think we talked earlier. It’s good to meet you in person.”
“Indeed,” Alfred Pennyworth says, with the tone of voice that seems to indicate he doesn’t feel the same way. “The plan currently is for you to walk freely through the public areas of the manor for about thirty minutes, after which you’ll join us for dinner. We understand that everything we do and say is, ah, on the record. Is that amenable?”
No-nonsense, then. Clark hasn’t heard much about the Waynes’ butler in the rumor mill - at the very least, he hasn’t heard anything about him secretly being a Bat - so it’s fitting that this man seems more intelligent and discerning than his master. He straightens and nods. “Yes, sir.”
“This family and home has not welcomed your kind for decades,” Alfred Pennyworth says. He says your kind as if Clark is a particularly offensive wild animal. Clark assumes he means reporters, but it’s honestly unclear. “While you are present here, you will not hurt the Waynes. You will not cause them undue amounts of stress. You will be, above all else, on your best behavior.”
It’s not ‘you should be’. It’s ‘you will be’. Clark, cowering before this frail man he has never seen before, is reminded of the unexpected thrill and fear he felt the first time he encountered kryptonite. The order itself is mildly condescending, but something about Alfred Pennyworth’s unsmiling, somber countenance makes it clear that he is not a man to be taken lightly. Clark doesn’t even consider protesting, and he tries not to think about how strange that is. “Of course.”
“Very good, sir,” Alfred Pennyworth says, and takes his leave. Clark looks around for Brucie, but he’s disappeared to who knows where. He’s been left entirely alone.
This is… not the welcome he expected. He’s not entirely sure what he expected, but-
He hears a clicking noise no human would ever hear, and he whips around to see- no one. Something hisses underneath his feet, and he activates his x-ray vision on instinct, but there’s nothing. Only neatly laid wooden floors and the blankness that means there’s about the normal amount of lead in this building for a manor house built a few hundred years ago. But there’s still clicking, and he swears he just heard wings flapping and air rushing, but there’s nothing and no one, and when a hand taps him on the shoulder he nearly jumps out of his skin.
“Whoa!” says a young red-haired woman who puts her hands up when she sees his wide eyes. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you!”
No one startles Clark, ever. It’s been years since- and she’s in a wheelchair, one that squeaks minutely when it moves, how on earth had she-
“No worries,” he says when he realizes he’s been staring at her for too long. “I, uh, guess I’m a little jumpy right now.”
“Ha! Yeah, this place does that to you,” she says warmly, sticking out a hand. “Barbara Gordon. Nice to meet you.”
He relaxes, shaking her manicured hand. “Likewise.”
He’s worked with Jim Gordon once or twice in the past for an article, and his daughter seemed a lot like him - calm, amiable, and levelheaded. Gothamites had suspicions about her being a host for Augur, the Bats’ eyes and ears without having consciously consented to being either, but that was obviously absurd. The woman was in a wheelchair, for god’s sake.
“Are you a reporter?”
“I am,” he says. “I came to interview the Waynes, but, uh-”
“Did Brucie disappear on you?” Miss Gordon guesses. “Yeah, he does that. No presence at all, I swear.”
“And yet he’s a billionaire,” Clark says, smiling. “Strange, that.”
Miss Gordon shrugs. “I suppose.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions while I have you here? You can say no- I know you’re not really part of the family.”
She turns the wheelchair so she’s facing him, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I-” Why is he flushing? He’s done his research. There’s nothing tying Miss Gordon to the Waynes at all besides a short stint tutoring the oldest Wayne heir, hence her “possession” seeming the most unlikely. “I wanted to ask about the Waynes and the Bats. Have you ever seen them together?”
Assuming they’re vigilantes and this is all some big cover-up, it makes sense for Barbara to respond in the affirmative. It’s more of a rhetorical question than anything else, something to set the stage before he asks something more pointed.
So it startles him when she squints at him, a dazed look crossing her face before she cocks her head. “Sorry, seen who together?”
“The Waynes,” he says slowly, “and the Bats. The vigilantes of Gotham.”
She blinks. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Sorry.”
Huh. That’s… interesting.
“Have you ever seen the Bats?” he presses. “Maybe near Wayne Manor?”
“Oh, I don’t come here much,” she says vaguely. “I mean, I didn’t even mean to come here today.”
What is that supposed to mean? “But you’re here.”
“I am,” she says, and smiles at him. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The architecture? You could just…” She trails off, staring at nothing. “…stay here. Forever.”
Clark takes a step back. What. “Maybe,” he says, laughing politely, because what else is he supposed to say to that? “It’s so large, though. I feel like I’m developing agoraphobia under these, uh, tall ceilings.”
“Ha!” she says, snapping out of whatever trance she’d fallen into. “Yeah, this place does that to you.” She sticks out a hand. “Barbara Gordon. Nice to meet you.”
He stares at her uneasily and slowly shakes her hand again, ignoring the stirrings of deja vu. “Likewise.”
“What did you say your name was?” she asks, a sheepish smile on her face. “I don’t think I caught it.”
“Oh! Clark Kent, Daily Planet.”
Immediately, her eyes flash a pure, unnatural white. “Clark Kent,” she repeats, voice suddenly hoarse and knowing- and then she smiles, her vivid green eyes glinting oddly in the light. “Nice to meet you,” she repeats for the third time in as many minutes.
Clark swallows hard. “I, uh,” he says. “I’m going to check out the other rooms. Okay?”
He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it’s not okay.
“Sure, sure,” Miss Gordon says, waving aimlessly, and he tries not to sigh in relief. “I’ll… see you, Clark Kent.”
She says his name normally, like every other human on earth might say it. It still makes him shiver. He can’t flee the hall fast enough.
Leaving the stale air of the hall for the air-conditioned sitting room kicks his brain back into gear, and he quickly convinces himself that he’d imagined whatever he’d seen. A trick of the light, he thinks, and Miss Gordon must have a memory problem, poor woman, but it had nothing to do with what he was here for.
Nothing’s off here. He’s- He’s just being paranoid. It’s all messing with him, Perry’s irritation and Lois’s concern and Brucie’s strangeness- it’s fine. It’s all fine. He’s Superman, for god’s sake, and an accomplished reporter to boot- he can handle a few weird rich people and their off-beat attempts to intimidate him.
When he sees a young man in a suit and tie open a door, he jerks up from where he’d been leaning against a wall. “Excuse me!” he calls, and the man looks at him dispassionately. His hair is perfectly coiffed, his chin lifted, and his watch alone looks worth more than Clark’s entire career.
“Ah, of course,” he says, an alien smile crossing his face, not in the sense that it looks like Clark’s but in the sense that smiling seems alien to him, like he hasn’t quite gotten enough practice. His lips are too stiff. His teeth are too white. “Mr. Kent of the Daily Planet, I presume. It’s a pleasure.”
The man - boy, really - can’t be older than fifteen years old, but he holds himself with the formal bearing of a man three or four times that. His face is sallow and sunken, as if he’s never spent time in the sun. It’s more than a little eerie.
He chuckles, trying not to show how unnerved he is. “I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage. Might I ask for your name?”
“Of course. Timothy Drake-Wayne, CEO of Wayne Enterprises,” he says, and Clark’s eyebrows shoot up.
This was Timothy? The rumors said he was Robin, or at least some iteration - Red Robin, maybe? Weren’t all robins red? It was all a little confusing to Clark - but to compare this sickly, soulless-looking young businessman to a dynamic vigilante was impossible. And more pressingly, this little kid was a CEO? There was no way, right?
“Uh, could- could I ask you a few questions, sir?”
Sir, he thinks, and to a teenager. He’d said it on instinct. Clark’s only excuse was that there was something distinctly of Alfred Pennyworth about Timothy - both of them looked unassuming, unthreatening, apart from how they stared at you. Their eyes were pale, translucent, milky- they were either half-blind or seeing straight into you, and it was impossible to know which.
Timothy raises an eyebrow, looking faintly amused. “That is your job, isn’t it?”
“It’s about your connection with the Bats, si- uh, Timothy.”
Timothy, unlike the others Clark’s talked with so far, doesn’t stop paying attention at the first mention of Gotham’s vigilantes. Instead, his gaze focuses somewhat. It’s a relief. “I see.”
“There are rumors,” Clark says tentatively, “suggesting that the Waynes are the Bats and Birds of Gotham.”
“I see.”
Well. In for a penny, and all that. “Is there any truth to these rumors, Mr. Drake-Wayne?”
“I have no idea,” Timothy says immediately. “You’ll need to speak to our lawyers.”
Wh- What? “Your-”
“The personnel of the Wayne Enterprises Legal Department will handle all inquiries related to or deriving from a suit substantiated in part or at large by potential sources of libel, slander, or other forms of defamation including but not limited to personal and corporate disparagement,” Timothy recites blandly without pausing once for breath, sending Clark reeling. “Here’s their card.”
He pulls a sleek white business card from nowhere. Clark takes it automatically.
Timothy nods stiffly, as if a conversation has occurred. “All further inquiry is subject to review and may be held indefinitely for audit purposes. Good day, sir.”
“I- I was just asking, that’s all!” Clark calls, once he’s recovered the use of his mouth, but Timothy is already leaving. “Just- the Bats! Do you know them? Are you one of them?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Timothy says, turning slightly. Clark assumes it’s businessman bluster before he meets Timothy’s blank eyes, sees his utterly indifferent posture, and understands that he’s telling the truth.
He doesn’t know what Clark’s talking about. He hides it well, almost impressively so- but just like Brucie and Miss Gordon, he hasn’t understood a word of what Clark's said about the Bats.
How is that possible?
“If that’s all, Mr. Kent?” Timothy says crisply, eyes empty of emotion. Clark nods dumbly, and the boy leaves.
He hadn’t known what to think of the Waynes being described as faded in the stories he’d heard, but now he thinks he understands. Bruce, once a man of wisdom and business acumen, cracking away piece by piece until all that was left was a playboy who didn’t understand anything about the world around him. Miss Gordon, once a bastion of young intellect, now barely remembering the details of her own conversations. Timothy, a child, with all the blank detachment of a drained adult.
And the lack of any meaningful reaction, from all three of them, to any mention of the Bats.
Clark doesn’t actually think they’re possessed, of course. That’s- that’s just impossible. But it is… strange, to say the least.
He leaves the sitting room, following the sound of a person’s heartbeat past an empty dining room, a few bathrooms, and another hall before turning the corner and spotting its source.
It’s another young man, older than Timothy but younger than Brucie, which means this must be Dick. Brucie only has one living son older than Timothy, after all. He’s doing stretches on a yoga mat, contortioning his limbs until he looks barely human and barely panting at all at the effort.
“Uh, hello?” Clark says, and Dick startles and stumbles jerkily to his feet.
Despite his athletic physique, his cheeks and jawline are soft with remnants of baby fat, giving him a youthful appearance, as if he never grew up completely. He has a dimpled face seemingly built for smiling, laughing, innocence- which makes it all the more startling when his features darken with wariness and suspicion.
“Who are you?” he says, snatching up a nearby water bottle and holding it to his chest like a shield. He doesn’t meet Clark’s eyes, choosing to stare at his feet. “How did you get in here?”
“I’m from the Daily Planet,” Clark says. “My name is-”
But Dick is already shaking his head, stepping backwards. “No. No reporters. I don’t- I can’t-”
“Okay,” Clark says hastily, putting more distance between them. “That’s fine. I just wanted to talk.”
Dick is visibly anxious, fidgeting and curling in on himself, which- which makes absolutely no sense. This man has lived independently from his family since before he was a legal adult. He’s a cop in Bludhaven. Gotham whispers about him being possessed by Robin and then Songbird, but they also whisper about how he’s the most “normal” of all the Waynes, able to “break away” from the Bats’ control enough to set up a meager life in its sister city however much he’s drawn back over and over to the cesspool that is Gotham whenever Songbird’s possession needs to sink its claws in deeper. Dick isn’t Dick in Gotham, they whisper- he’s something else. Richie, they call him here, someone jittery and fearful and just self-aware enough to know something is deeply wrong, but not strong enough to fight it.
Yeah, right.
Far more likely Dick just isn’t up to the nonstop vigilante lifestyle or the pressure of constantly pretending to be lesser than he truly is when in public. Clark knows the toll both those burdens take on a man, and Dick here, weak and avoidant, doesn’t seem like the type of person able to cope with either.
In Clark’s experience, the most unassuming person in a conspiracy is either the best or the worst actor, and he’s willing to bet money on Dick being the latter. Clark is sure he can get him to crack.
“No thank you,” Dick is saying nervously. “I’m- Um, I don’t really want-”
“We’ve met before,” Clark lies. “In Bludhaven.”
Dick’s head jerks up, what looks like genuine surprise passing over his face. He stares somewhere around Clark’s shoulder nervously. “We- We have?”
“It was for a piece I was writing. I was there to talk to your superior officer, but I believe we shook hands at least. You don’t recognize me?”
The best lies are mostly truth. Clark has been to Blud a few times to talk with the police chief there. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Dick before, but it’s not like it's totally out of the question for them to have crossed paths.
“N-No,” Dick says. “Um. Sorry.”
“Shame,” Clark says lightly. “You know, in Bludhaven, I remember thinking you were the quintessential protector. Everything about your posture, your expression, the confidence you carried- has something happened to you since then? You seem… off.”
An educated guess, this. There are unusually few pictures of Dick as a police officer online, but all of them are of a straight-backed, laser-focused young man championed by the entirety of the department for his quick wit and physical prowess. What is standing in front of Clark is… not that.
Dick laughs roughly. He pushes a few limp strands of hair out of his face. “I- Um. I’m different, in Gotham.”
“Different how?”
Dick bites his lip, looking away and drawing in on himself. He has a white-knuckled grip on his forearms. Stress of being so close to discovery, possibly? “I- I-”
“Vigilante different? Bat different?”
Dick looks at him for the first time then, eyes looking up through his eyelashes. It almost looks like his eyes whiten out before Clark blinks and sees that they’re blue, just unusually pale. “What? No, I-”
“Let’s just cut to the chase,” Clark interrupts. “You graduated at the top of your class in the Bludhaven Police Academy. I know you’re an intelligent man.”
“Th- Thank you,” Dick whispers.
“What do you know about the Bats of Gotham?”
Dick’s expression spasms just like his father’s had, albeit for long enough that any human could have caught it. What looks like actual pain flits across his features. “Uh- nothing. Sorry, I can’t help you.”
“I think you can,” Clark says, stepping forward. “Is there something you’re hiding from me, Richie?”
“Don’t call me that,” he says nervously. “I’m- I’m not-”
“What should I call you, then?” he presses. “Richard? Songbird? Robin? Were you the first Robin?”
Dick chitters in response, tongue forming inhuman birdlike syllables, and then slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide and pupils shrunken. “N- No,” he says unevenly. “No. I’m- I’m Dick. I’m just normal, really-”
“You’re more than that,” Clark snaps. He’s so close, he can feel it. “Come on, Dick, you can trust me. You’re a vigilante, aren’t you? Tell me the truth.”
“Please,” Dick gasps, doubling over. “Please, please, I can’t- it hurts-”
“You’re Songbird! Admit it!”
Dick SCREAMS, high enough that Clark hears glass crack. He cries out himself at the noise, and then at how Dick’s crumpled on the floor, hands over his ears, eyes a brilliant, glowing white.
“NO!” Dick shrieks, and Alfred Pennyworth appears out of nowhere, sending Clark a look of utter disdain as he kneels before his charge.
“I thought I made it perfectly clear you were not to harm the Waynes,” Alfred Pennyworth says frostily, cupping Dick’s shaking face.
“I- I didn’t mean to,” Clark says hastily. “I was just asking him a few questions-”
“It’s- It’s too strong,” Dick gasps, inhuman clicking and chirping escaping his mouth even as he begs his butler for help. “I- I can’t-” He sobs. “Alfie, please-”
“If you would remove yourself from Master Dick’s vicinity, sir,” Alfred Pennyworth snaps, and Clark flees. The last he sees of Dick is him falling into Alfred Pennyworth’s arms, shaking, a full-grown man reduced to crying on the floor, a shattered wreck of himself for a reason Clark can’t even start to fathom, unless-
It can’t be. Possession isn’t real. There’s no way-
But could he have- miscalculated, somehow?
Could it be true?
A minute later, he’s staring at himself in one of the Wayne Manor bathrooms, bracing himself on the sink.
“Get it together, Kent,” he mutters. “Maybe the Waynes are possessed. Who cares? You’ve been through weirder.”
He’s a superhero, for crying out loud, though he’s too well taught to blurt that out in an unfamiliar location just because he’s questioning everything he knows about the world. (What’s next, ghosts are real? Other dimensions? Half-human half-Kryptonian clones?)
He splashes his face with water, forcing himself to relax. This is good, if anything. He’s still not totally convinced this isn’t some big con, but on the off chance it isn’t, he’s the best reporter to make first contact. He’s Superman, and even if the Waynes aren’t totally human that only makes them more similar. It’s fine. He’ll come out of this with a story after all, and maybe some new friends too.
He thinks about the way Brucie’s eyes glazed over the newspaper headline. About the way Barbara’s and Dick’s eyes had seemed to flash white. About how Timothy, so young, seemed like only a shell of the vibrant boy he should have been.
It’s too strong, Dick had said, voice breaking and gaze haunted.
Clark shivers.
“It’s fine,” Clark tells himself, trying to sound confident and falling short of the mark. “It’s- They’re probably just… like me! Different! It’s fine.”
He leaves the bathroom a few minutes later, a little steadier. He’s surprised he hasn’t been kicked out of the manor entirely after- whatever he’d done to Dick, but he doesn’t see Alfred Pennyworth or the eldest Wayne son anywhere, so he takes it as a win.
By this time, a delicious smell has started to permeate through the air, something that reminds him of a meal back home - cornbread, bean chili, greens, cherry cobbler. Not his favorite foods, not really, but it reminds him of an uncomplicated time before he was anything but a growing boy who always licked his plates clean at the dinner table. Without quite realizing it, he starts to calm down.
It’s fine. This is- it’s all fine. He’s a superhero. He’ll survive this.
Clark hesitates when he rounds a corner and sees Timothy speaking quietly to a young woman his age, heads bowed and hair obscuring their expressions. The woman has blond hair with quirky pink highlights, and Clark quickly recognizes her as Stephanie Brown. It’s suspected in certain circles that she’s the current Batgirl - something about her going missing for a time as a child and Batgirl appearing around that time, as if there weren’t at least a dozen other young blonde girls in Gotham that fit that description, crime hotspot that the entire city is. The ditzy smile she gives him as she turns doesn’t make him more inclined to humor that particular rumor.
“Oh, Mr. Kent,” Timothy says, spine straight and hands politely clasped behind his back.
It doesn’t seem like he’s heard his brother screaming, which Clark is grateful for and astonished by in equal measure. Dick had been loud, after all. Or perhaps he’s just… not acknowledging it? But why?
Timothy clears his throat, gesturing towards the woman beside him. “Please meet Miss Brown, my former partner. Miss Brown, this is Mr. Kent, of the Daily Planet.”
“Former partner?” he says hesitantly. Timothy looks so stiff and distant he can’t possibly mean romantic partners, but he hasn’t heard of Stephanie Brown being involved in anything to do with Wayne Enterprises. That leaves… “You mean, as Robin and Batgirl?”
Timothy blinks in the strained way high society does when they’ve smelled something particularly rancid. “Who?”
“Oh, Timmy here is so formal!” Stephanie Brown says delightedly, clutching his arm. “He means I’m his ex-girlfriend!”
Clark stares at how Timothy - Timmy? - seems no more or less formal with his supposed ex than with Clark himself. “You are?”
“Is that such a surprise?” she giggles, draping herself over Timothy’s stiff form.
“No, not at all,” he lies through his teeth. “It’s just that- seeing as that’s the case, I wouldn’t have expected to meet you here, Miss Brown.”
“Oh, I’ve tried to leave Timmy’s side half a dozen times by now,” she says airily. “I haven’t managed it yet.”
That’s… oddly phrased. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s just this manor,” she says, running a tongue over her sharp white teeth. For a moment, her canines look almost too pointed, but when he checks with his x-ray vision, there’s nothing amiss. “There’s something about it that, like, sticks to you. Gets in your blood, you know? No matter how hard I try to leave it behind, I keep… coming…” Her gaze goes distant. “…back.”
You could just stay here, Barbara’s voice echoes in Clark’s mind, chilling him from the inside out. Forever.
And before Clark can react to one of the most unintentionally frightening things he’s ever heard, she erupts with ditzy laughter.
“Like a boomerang or something!” she says to Timothy, head tossed back with the force of her hilarity. “I keep coming back! I don’t have a choice!”
“Very nice, Ms. Brown,” Timothy says stiffly. He seems completely unfazed by her clearly unstable mental state. “Dinner is nearly ready, Mr. Kent. May I show you to the dining room?”
“Uh, yes,” he says awkwardly. “Sure.”
He’s… not sure what to think as Timothy leads him to the dining table. His article is the farthest thing from his mind, at this point. Con or not, he doesn’t feel comfortable here in this manor. Around these people.
He doesn’t think, suddenly, that people is the right word.
“Ah, Mr. Colt,” Brucie says, grinning from where he sits at the head of a dining table laid with a Midwestern-style meal. Miss Gordon sits at his righthand side, Dick beside her. Stephanie Brown and Timothy silently take their seats on the other side of the table. “I’m so glad you could join us.”
Clark hesitates at his spot opposite Brucie, glancing at Dick. He’s staring at a spot on the table, his gaze strangely vacant. “Uh, it’s Mr. Kent, sir.”
“Yes, yes,” Brucie says dismissively. “Sit down, won’t you? Alfred’s just bringing in the last of the food.”
“Uh…” Clark swallows. “Is that okay, Dick?”
Dick startles, looking up at him. His eyes are so… empty. Their blue looks even duller than earlier. “Sorry, what?”
Clark feels awkward about how he’s put the man on the spot, but doesn’t want to distress Dick any more than he already has. “Can I sit here?”
Dick blinks, looking around the table as if he’s just realized he’s seated at it. He meets his siblings’ gazes, then Bruce’s, then swings back around to Clark. “Sure, I guess.”
Clark pulls his chair out and sits tentatively. Brucie and Miss Gordon are chatting quietly, waiting for Alfred Pennyworth to come in, and Timothy sits stock-still as Stephanie Brown sprawls in the chair beside him, giggling faintly. Clark leans over towards Dick while they’re all distracted. “Listen, Dick?”
Dick hunches slightly, but manages a small smile. “Yes?”
“I know it’s not enough, but I wanted to say, well, I’m sorry. About earlier, I mean. I really didn’t mean to hurt you, but I still shouldn’t have pushed.”
“What are you talking about?” Dick asks, mouth still stretched in a smile. He turns to Timothy across from him, who’s looking fixedly at the wall across from him. “Tim? What is he talking about?”
Timothy raises a severe eyebrow, saying nothing.
“Earlier,” Clark says dumbly, looking between them. “When I- When I asked about the- You were screaming.”
“Screaming?” Dick says, his smile growing. It has teeth now. “Me?”
“And finally, dessert,” Alfred Pennyworth announces, entering the room. He places a reddish cobbler dish on the far side of the table. Clark avoids eye contact, heart beating too quickly.
The Waynes watch him leave without saying anything. Clark feels slightly awkward and moves to break the silence. “The cobbler looks good. Family recipe?”
Brucie laughs jovially. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask Alfred.”
“I might,” he says, smiling as the man’s children seem to take that as an invitation to serve themselves and dig in. “Um. Thank you for letting me eat with you. I’ll keep the questions to a minimum here, I promise.”
“Oh, you haven’t asked us much of anything at all,” Miss Gordon says airily. “What were we even talking about before?”
Clark is afraid to say it for a full second before he realizes how absurd that is. “Uh, the Bats of Gotham, ma’am.”
Every other person at the table visibly tenses. Then all in unison, their gazes swing towards Clark.
“I don’t know who that is,” Brucie drawls, his lips curling up into a sharp-toothed smile that raises Clark’s hackles for no reason Clark can detect. “Do you?”
He’s addressing no one in particular, but every other person at the table shakes their heads in eerie unison without breaking eye contact with Clark. Their faces are completely slack. He can’t find any hint of soul behind their eyes.
“Well,” Brucie says, straightening his black suit jacket. His smile has too many teeth, Clark realizes with a flash of panic. Humans aren’t supposed to have that many teeth. “That’s the end of that, then.”
Clark nods, swallowing. He looks down at his food.
“I, uh,” he says, throat dry. “I can leave.”
“No, please,” Timothy says, reaching forward to lay a cold hand on Clark’s. It’s the first time Clark has seen the boy smile, and he wishes he hadn’t. His lips are bloodlessly white. “You wouldn’t want to be rude, Mr. Kent.”
No. He wouldn’t, not here. Not to the Waynes.
“Uh, but I’m- I’m not very hungry,” he tries.
“Not hungry?” Stephanie Brown cackles. Her voice is a little more manic and a little less vapid than Clark remembers. She gestures jerkily, like a glitching machine instead of a person. “But I’m starved. Come on.” Her eyes flash white. “Take a bite.”
Clark gulps, raising a shaking fork to his mouth. “It’s- it’s good,” he says vaguely, although it tastes like ash in his mouth. He’s not even sure what he’s just eaten.
“Stephanie?” Dick says pleasantly, not turning his head enough to meet her eyes. Clark feels as though he’s watching a puppet show, empty shells acting for an audience. Dick’s smile, like his father’s, has far too many teeth. “Could you pass the cobbler?”
“Of course,” she says, equally emotionless, and leans over to move the dish towards him. It screeches across the surface of the table, a horrible sound that makes Clark cringe.
“Thank you, Stephanie,” Dick says, serving himself.
Stephanie Brown clicks back, a birdlike sound that Dick doesn’t react to at all.
“Uh,” Clark says as he sees the ends of her hair drip with red, “I think your hair fell in the cobbler-”
He freezes.
Stephanie Brown’s hair oozes red. But it’s not cherry- her pink highlights, from roots to tips, have darkened, thickened. The liquid that falls to the table sings with the smell of iron.
“Is something wrong?” Dick asks, turning his head at an angle that would snap a human neck. His eyes are a vibrant white. His voice is not his own, vibrating and buzzing in a way that rattles Clark’s teeth. “Eat, Mr. Kent. Aren’t you hungry?”
“N-No,” Clark says, shaking. His heart pounds in his chest. “I’m sorry. I- I don’t-”
There’s a feather at Miss Gordon’s neck.
Growing from Miss Gordon’s neck.
Clark’s chair screeches back, but he can’t stand. He can’t stand. His legs are weak, his breathing is too fast, his eyes are- are failing- is it becoming darker?
“Oh my god,” he says, entirely involuntary. Miss Gordon’s eyes flash white. Timothy’s businessman smile has needle-sharp teeth that drip with blood. Brucie Wayne has somehow grown wings of pitch black, made of feathers and scales and inhuman, twisted bones.
Dark spots dance in front of Clark’s eyes and he can’t tell if it’s panic or the actual, literal darkness overtaking the room. He feels as though it’s suddenly night, yellow sun blinking out in the evening sky- he can’t breathe, he can’t move, he feels faint-
He’d made a mistake, coming here. He’d thought- well, even if the rumors were true, he could handle it. He was a non-human in human form too, wasn’t he? Maybe the Waynes were like him. Maybe they could… connect, or something.
Now, half-blind with terror, trapped by their soulless white eyes as they transform into winged and fanged creatures of horror, all he wants to do is get away.
“I swear I won’t- I won’t say anything,” he begs. “I won’t write the story, I won’t-”
Brucie is standing. When did Brucie- no, when did the Bat stand up? Darkness writhes around him - it - like something out of a nightmare, its teeth gnashing like knives, blood spilling from its white eyes as it places a hand on the table and crawls, animal-like, towards him. Where- where’s the food? The table is empty.
Clark is losing his mind. Wasn’t there-
“Outsider,” the Bat snarls in his face, breath rancid, voice echoing until there’s nothing else in the world but Clark and his insane fear. “You don’t belong here.”
“No,” he thinks, maybe says, god, god, his heart is a thousand beats a minute and only getting faster, “no, please, wait!” He fumbles at his neck, unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt with fingers that shake. “You don’t get it! I’m like you!”
Every Bat’s gaze shoots instantly to the Superman suit under his neck. For a long moment, no one breathes.
This is it, Clark thinks deliriously. They’ll understand. We’ll- We’ll talk, and I’ll leave- just a misunderstanding-
And then Batgirl tilts back its head, letting out a manic burst of clicking laughter.
In perfect unison, all but Augur and the Bat stand.
“Like us?” Augur cackles. Gone is the Miss Gordon that he’d once idiotically thought not really part of the family, gone is Dick and his inexplicable anxiety, gone is ditzy Stephanie and businesslike Timothy and Brucie with no presence at all, I swear, and in their place stand Augur and Songbird and Batgirl and Red Robin and the Bat at the center, nothing human about any of them.
“We,” hissed Dick, but it wasn’t Dick, it was something wearing his body and warping his voice, “are nothing like you.”
Of course they aren’t. These are creatures of Gotham, eldritch monsters borne of the city and its strife and its heart and its blood. And Clark? Clark is nothing but an interloper, an imposter in a world that doesn’t belong to him.
Through the black at the corner of his vision, he sees Alfred Pennyworth standing behind him. He fumbles for the man’s hand, gaze blurry. “Alfred,” he gasps, “let me out. I can’t stay here.”
Alfred Pennyworth frowns as severely as ever. Couldn’t- couldn’t he see the darkness in the room? The beasts writhing and shrieking inside it?
“Alfred!” he pleads, desperate. His shirt’s still open. His secret identity’s out to this man too, then, but he’s never cared about anything less. “They’re monsters!”
“I would thank you not to speak about the Waynes in that manner, Master Kent,” Alfred Pennyworth says placidly as a menagerie of horrors click and hiss behind him.
Clark sags, numb horror overcoming him, and when he looks up Alfred Pennyworth is gone. Clark’s uncertain if he was ever there. He summons all his strength and staggers upwards, a white-knuckled grip on his chair. He’s never felt so weak.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I’m so sorry, I’ll never come back- let me leave, please-”
A clawed hand grabs his shoulder.
He shrieks, whirling.
Blocking the door stands a creature of nightmare with a mouth of iron blood and gruesome scars carved into his chest and arms and head. All twisted limbs and broken wings, all a promise of pain and devastation, but Clark’s attention is all on its expression, twisted in a rictus of pain and splattered with long-rotten blood, its eyes glowing a furious, poisonous green the color of kryptonite, and underneath it all, the human face-
“Jason Todd?” Clark gasps. The floor tilts beneath him. “But- but you’re dead!”
The thing wearing a dead boy’s face sneers, revealing rows of broken, bloody fangs, and screeches in exultation.
These monsters could bring the dead back to life?
“LEAVE THIS PLACE,” the possessed corpse howls, knife-fingers digging gashes into Clark’s shoulder. The lights flicker forbiddingly as it points towards the open front door. “LEAVE AND NEVER RETURN.”
Clark begs for forgiveness, cries in thanks, overcome with so much fear and relief he can’t think straight. He doesn’t remember finding the door, only falling outside into the yellow sunlight and throwing himself forward into flight as fast as he can. He thinks about going to the police - but what would he even say? - or to space - even the thought of being surrounded by that much darkness sends him spiraling - and ends up crashing back into his Metropolis apartment, finding a tight corner to watch the room in with the lights on bright enough to blind an entire city block.
It’s three full hours of mumbling to himself and running through every calming technique he knows until his fingers have enough feeling in them to tap out his boss’s number.
He leans towards where his cell phone’s been dropped on the floor, unable to pick it up between the tremors that ratchet through his hands whenever he thinks too hard about- anything. “Hi, uh. Perry?”
“Damn, Kent,” Perry’s voice crackles through the receiver, and Clark nearly cries at the familiar voice. “You sound like you’ve been through hell.”
Clark laughs hoarsely. I have, he wants to say, but the words don’t come out.
His gaze drifts to the drops of blood he’d left on the tiled kitchen floor from the still-open wound in his shoulder.
Possession. God. If that’s true, what’s left?
“Clark? You there?” Perry sounds concerned. He’s never concerned. “What happened in Gotham?”
Even hearing the word makes him flinch. “The story, uh, fell through,” he says vaguely. “Dead end.”
Perry doesn’t sound surprised. “Should I mark you down for a sick day?”
It- it almost sounds like Perry’s encouraging to allow him to take time off. He didn’t even do that when Clark was banged up from fighting Zod last spring, and he’d been suffering from kryptonite poisoning then.
He’s so tempted to say yes. But- but he’s Superman. He can always bounce back. If he can’t-
If this has messed him up so much that he’s lost that legendary resilience, maybe lost everything that he is-
“Nah,” he says, trying to sound casual. He leans his head back, closing his eyes. “I’ll be in tomorrow.”
“You’re a brave man, Kent,” Perry says, and it sounds like he means it. “Do me a favor and stay in Metropolis from here on out.”
Clark’s smile feels more like a grimace. “Yes, sir. No problem with that.”