Archive of Our Own

At the cemetery, Bruce keeps his distance.

He stands back at the tree line, far enough away from the funeral congregation that he won't be noticed by anyone who isn't looking, as he watches Clark's coffin being lowered into the earth.

On a purely practical level, it's the smart, reasonable choice. The richest man in Gotham has no business attending the private funeral of a reporter whose path he crossed only once. Bruce Wayne's presence would inevitably draw attention and make a spectacle out of the ceremony. Martha and Lois deserve the privacy and the quiet to mourn in peace. They deserve much more than that. They shouldn't even have anything to mourn, because they should never have lost Clark to begin with.

Another death on Bruce's conscience; another person he's failed, and this time he knows he won't be able to channel the guilt into anger. His anger is what fueled him after he buried Dick, what kept him alive and made him go back out there every day. But his anger is also what got them here.

"We can rebuild," he tells Diana. "We can do better."

He wants to believe that's true. It's why he donned the cowl and the cape in the first place, why he keeps fighting even when faced with impossible odds, even when the losses are piling up.

But on a bleak, grey morning like today, with the chill of frost hanging in the air and the sense of a storm brewing that they might not be able to weather without Clark at their side, the words taste a little like lies.

A little over a month after Clark's death, he gets a visitor at the lake house.

It's a rare thing by itself. He doesn't make a habit of receiving visitors at home, and never unless they have an appointment. Even when they do, Bruce has Alfred turn them away more often than not. All of Gotham knows that Bruce Wayne is a flake with no sense of responsibility or regard for other people's time, which means he gets to cheerfully ignore the fake social niceties of Gotham's elite whenever it suits him, or just to play up the persona.

If Alfred has let anyone through, it means that he either must have considered the occasion important enough to abandon protocol, or that Bruce has pissed him off badly enough that Alfred wanted to teach him a lesson.

Or both, Bruce thinks wryly, as Martha Kent steps into his office.

The two times he's seen her before were under.... difficult circumstances, to say the least. She almost looks like a different person now: well-put-together, her smile friendly and serene, her posture immaculate. But he recognizes the way she holds herself, so rigidly as if she's afraid she'd crumble under the weight on her shoulders if she were to let go even a little.

Bruce has seen that look before, too often to count. It's why he avoids catching his reflection in the mirror whenever he can.

He stands and walks around his desk, extending a hand towards her. "Bruce Wayne. Pleased to meet you."

Her palm feels small and delicate in his, but her fingers wrap firmly around his own and give them a squeeze. "Martha. But I believe we've met."

He freezes for a moment, holding on to her hand for a couple of seconds too long, before he realizes what she must mean. "Right. I was at your son's funeral. My condolences. He was a good man."

The look she gives him is a little pointed and a little amused. It's familiar, Bruce realizes. He can see where Clark got his attitude from.

"Yes, I saw you there, slinking around at the back. You were the anonymous donor, I take it? You should have stayed for the reception and given me the chance to say thank you. Then I wouldn't have had to come all the way out to Gotham to get a hold of you." Before Bruce can tell her that there was no need, her expression sobers, the twitching corners of her mouth stilling. The gentle teasing tone drains from her voice.. "You said you were his friend."

He didn't say that at the funeral. Bruce Wayne never said that at all. Batman did, when he was covering Martha's body with his own to protect her from the blast, his cape stretched over both of them like a shield. Bruce remembers the way she held on to him; her smile when she teased him about the cape.

He feels instinctively compelled to outright deny any link between himself and Batman. It's not a situation he's familiar with; the vast majority of people simply aren't observant enough to make the connection, which means Bruce never has to come up with a believable renunciation. He isn't sure there is one, not when faced with Martha's matter-of-fact proclamation that doesn't appear to leave room for denial.

"I did," he confirms, averting his gaze. That was the easy part. It's the rest that's making him feel awkward and wrong-footed, words like lead on his tongue that almost make him wish he'd insisted that he had no idea what she was talking about, just to avoid this conversation. "But I— I lied. I wasn't his friend. I was—"

How does he even begin to describe his involvement in the events that led to Clark's death?

He presses on, breathlessly, too fast, unable to meet her gaze. "It's my fault he's dead."

"Oh, honey." There's no anger in Martha's tone. He thinks it's pity at first, but when he forces himself to look at her again, the sadness in her eyes hits him like one of Clark's punches. "You're a lot like him, aren't you? He could never stop feeling responsible for things that were out of his power either."

She reaches out and squeezes his arm, firm enough that he feels it through layers of expensive wool and cotton. He's so unused to being touched that it takes him a moment too long to muster up a protest.

"That's not—"

Martha shakes her head. "He was very powerful. You gotta know that. The things he could do... If he had no way of saving himself, why would you think that you did? You're only a man."

From anyone else, it could be an insult. She makes it sound like comfort.

Before Martha leaves, she extracts a promise from Bruce that he'll stop by for dinner.

Despite himself, he doesn't let the agreement fall to the wayside along with all the other social commitments made out of politeness and obligation, all the cordial yes, of courses that become regretful some other times.

She serves warm, home-cooked farm food with a side order of no judgement and no expectations.

It's... nice. It's nice being able to be himself around someone, a few hours reprieve from hiding away behind the masks of the playboy billionaire or the relentless vigilante. Getting to be someone who maybe, with time, could have been Clark Kent's friend.

When he's sitting across from Martha, eating her food and smiling at her stories, he can almost believe that he could have been that man.

She doesn't tell him about losing the farm until it's already too late, and even then she only drops it like an afterthought, like it doesn't matter at all.

"I can get it back for you," Bruce immediately offers, already thinking about who to sweet-talk and whose hands to grease, but Martha waves him off.

"Don't bother. It was too big for me anyway."

He frowns. "It's not a big deal, I can—"

"Bruce. Don't." There's an unfamiliar steel in her tone.

He doesn't understand it; why she'd choose to lose her home rather than accept his help, and he can't help thinking it must be something he did wrong, something she blames him for that makes her refuse his involvement.

The self-reproach must be reflecting on his face, because she takes one look at him before she sighs and deflates. Her shoulders slump, like she's folding into herself. The hand she runs across over face is shaky. "Please don't get me wrong, Bruce. It's a very kind offer, and I appreciate it. But every memory I have from the farm is connected to Clark and Jonathan. Living there— It was like living with ghosts. It's time to move on. To start something new, at a new place. I owe it to them and to myself to keep moving forward."

Moving forward.

Bruce thinks about Robin's ruined suit in the Batcave, and he wonders if he's failing Dick once again by keeping the memento of his death alive like that, letting it define who Batman— who Bruce has become and what he does.

"Can you?" he asks. A quiet rumble, as if not to disturb the dead, and his throat feels as raw and tender as the insides of his chest. "Move on, I mean. How do you do it?"

Martha shrugs, pragmatic as ever. "I don't know. But I sure won't find out until I give it a try."

"Alfred has let me in."

The voice at his back startles Bruce, and his gaze snaps up.

He twists around on the cot where he's sitting as he attempts to wrap a bandage around his shoulder. The dizziness from the pain and the blood loss must have left his situational awareness so badly compromised that he hadn't even heard the door open or the sound of footsteps down the staircase. For a moment, he wonders if he's hallucinating, or if Martha Kent is really standing inside the Batcave.

It's strange to see her down here. In his mind, Bruce associates her with homey spaces, with warm colors and the rich smell of roasted food. She looks out of place among the brutal, sterile steel and whirring electronics.

He blinks, and from one split second to the next, his perception shifts. The cool white neon hues cast by the overhead lights suddenly seem a little warmer, as if Martha's presence alone had changed the place.

"I saw the news," she says as she steps closer, and it's only then that he realizes how frantic she looks.

The news— He frowns.

He hasn't had time to review the footage from the fight yet, but he can only imagine what it must have looked like on TV: the Batwing crushed, Batman getting himself impaled by that creature, claws piercing right through the kevlar. Batman will have to make another appearance soon, show his face to let Gotham know that he's fine. Even if fine is not exactly how Bruce would describe himself right now. But Batman doesn't have the luxury of being anything else than fine regardless of the circumstances. Even after a close call like today.

Martha takes the bandage out of his hands and starts undoing his sloppy wrapping to fix it properly. Her hands are steady even when her shoulders are shaking.

Her voice, when she speaks again, is quiet. "I can't lose anyone else."

"I'm hard to kill," he says automatically, before it registers that he somehow has become a person someone could lose.

He never meant for that to happen, never meant to make those kinds of ties, emotional connections that mean he could inadvertently hurt people he cares about. If Batman died, Gotham would mourn its dark knight and suffer from having one less hero to balance the already lopsided scales, but there would be no one left but Alfred to feel more than polite, perfunctory regret at Bruce's passing. There wasn't. Not until he let Martha in, despite himself.

Her lips are a thin, hard line. "Clark was hard to kill, too."

"I'm not Clark." As soon as the words cut through the silence of the Batcave, he winces when he realizes how they sound. Like he's better than Clark, when the opposite is obviously and painfully true. "I mean, I'm not that important. If I die, it's not—"

She doesn't let him finish.

"Don't you dare," she interrupts, her voice all steel again, anger layered over desperation and affection.

She shifts so she's standing right in front of him, her hands settling on both sides of his neck, and Bruce can't look away. "You have to try a little harder, you hear me. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for the people you lost."

She motions up towards where he knows Dick's old suit is displayed. He doesn't turn his head; he doesn't have to see it to know how it looks, the ugly yellow letters scrawled all over the chest plate. He keeps meaning to take it down, but whenever he thinks that today is going to be the day, he always finds something else that needs his attention. Maybe one day he can bring himself to do it.

"And if you can't do it for them, then do it for me," Martha adds.

Her eyes are green like the sea at Gotham harbor on a stormy day, and her slim, calloused fingers dig into the taunt, sore muscles of his neck so hard that it almost hurts.

If Bruce were a less selfish man, he'd regret not keeping his distance. He'd push Martha away, tear these ties before they can fester and turn painful. Do it quickly, like ripping off a bandage. Only, he gets the impression that she wouldn't let him anyway. In her own way, she's every bit as stubborn as he is.

"Okay," he quietly agrees.

She smiles a brittle little smile, and he leans in to taste it. It's just a press of lips against lips, tentative at first, and chaste, and a little awkward. Seeking a connection. Sealing a promise. He can feel the curve of her mouth, the stutter of her breath. And then she steps closer and her warmth envelops him, like a shield against the chill of the Batcave, and when she deepens the kiss, he readily responds.

He thinks about moving forward, and about rebuilding.

Maybe they can try together.