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Clark lands near-silently on the rooftop, but Jason notices anyway. He tilts his head. Takes another drag of his cigarette and blows out the smoke. Clark never knew Jason that well, but he expected to be noticed. He was trained by Bruce.
“You’re not supposed to be in Gotham.”
“No,” Clark agrees.
“The Big Bad Bat will be pissed.”
“We go back a little ways,” Clark says. “I think he’ll forgive me.” He’s dressed as Superman, because the risk of being caught flying as Clark was worse than being caught in Gotham as Superman. Bruce would know he was here, but he would have anyway. Otherwise, he’s banking on the sun setting keeping them out of sight of civilians.
Jason flicks the ash off the cigarette tip. “So?”
“I heard you were alive.” This is the polite way to put it. He does not mention Bruce showing up at his apartment in a state, scaring his neighbors, probably compromising them both. The way Bruce had shaken on his worn couch. He’d only spoken when Clark had turned his back to start tea.
“He’s alive,” he’d said, and told Clark the whole horrible story in a flat voice before stumbling out again. The kettle had sat cold and silent as Clark listened, hands braced on the stove.
“Glad you and B are still talking,” Jason says, and takes another drag. “He’s a little abrasive, if you ask me.”
“He’s so—he’s overjoyed you’re alive,” Clark says.
Jason laughs. “You sound like Dick. If that was overjoyed, I’d love to see what ‘pissed’ is.”
He drops his cigarette to the rooftop and puts it out with his heel. “Nice talk,” he says, and shoves past Clark.
“He missed you. When you died—I’ve never seen him like that before.”
“Yeah?” Jason snarls. “He replaced me. The Joker is still alive. How fucking much could he have missed me?”
---
On a sun-bleached day in Ethiopia, a lifetime ago, Clark arrived at the scene of an explosion.
Clark tried to give other heroes their privacy. But he kept a little more of an ear out for familiar voices, filtering up through the pleasant minutia of billions of people living their lives.
And that day he’d heard an inhuman sound that he knew in his gut was Bruce in agony. He broke the sound barrier to get there and landed on high alert. But there was only Bruce, holding a little broken body.
It was obvious Jason was dead. But Bruce hunched over him, the whole body of Batman a shield, as if Bruce could hide him from death itself.
“Bruce,” he said. Bruce’s gaze snapped to him, and his arms shook. Jason’s head lolled back and forth with the motion.
“You’re late,” Bruce said, toneless. “All that power, and you can’t save one boy.”
It stung. Bruce knew. Bruce knew how Clark felt about his powers, about his body. Even though he knew Bruce wasn’t talking to Clark, not really. He was talking to Batman.
But he froze. When Clark was still, when he wasn’t thinking about it, he was as immobile as rock. It took effort to match the imperfect stillness of a person, the way humans rock and fidget. He saw Bruce’s eyes rove over the perfect statue he made, the way his lips curled into a sneer. He took a deep breath past the sudden shame in his stomach.
“I can’t leave you like this,” Clark said. “Either of you.” His eyes caught on a bloodstain on the ruined warehouse floor. Jason was still bleeding, sluggishly, and Bruce’s suit was shiny with it. He looked away.
“You can,” he said. “I can take care of my own fucking family.” Bruce lurched forward a little and caught another glimpse of Jason’s face. He sobbed, once.
Clark was never as good a man as Bruce insisted he was. He fled.
---
“He wanted to die,” Clark says to Jason on the rooftop. He has to blink, hard, to clear the vision of a dead Jason from his eyes. It’s an unseasonably warm spring day, even with the sun setting. The humid warmth on Clark’s arms is a glaring contrast to the ice in his stomach.
This Jason says nothing, just sighs and lights another cigarette. Clark tries again. That’s his and Bruce’s problem. Neither of them know when to quit.
“He was taking risks. The Justice League was going to intervene until Tim found him.”
Jason whirls around. “Don’t fucking mention that name to me.”
“You were dead,” Clark says, steady, but with compassion. “We all thought you were dead.”
“He’s the world’s greatest detective,” Jason says. “He should’ve known.” He takes a drag. “Did you know,” Jason says, conversationally, “that I was in a coma in Gotham for a year? That when I went under I was asking for Bruce?”
Clark’s stomach turns over. He thinks, absurdly, of how long a year is in terms of his childhood: long enough for Ma and Pa to plant the crop and reap sweet corn from it. To leave the fields lying fallow for a few months before doing it again.
“You didn’t,” Jason says, flat, and turns away. It’s a wonder Clark can keep his secret identity. Ma always could read anything off his face, and Bruce and his kids were just as bad. “Wonder if he did,” Jason mutters, to himself. “Wonder if that’s better or worse.”
“He didn’t,” Clark says, the words bursting out of him. “He wouldn’t have left you there.” He’s a little horrified Jason thinks he would have. Jason must read that on his face, too, because he turns away and asks, “You seen the plaque in the Batcave?”
“Yes,” Clark says.
---
He came to the Manor as Clark Kent at least three times the week after Jason died. It was ill-advised for all of their identities, though he supposed if pressed he could lie that he was working on a story about Jason’s death.
Alfred answered the door, looking as drawn and pale and old as Clark had ever seen him. It was uncomfortable. It gave him the same feeling in the pit of his stomach that he got when he went back to the farm and Ma and Pa were older, all of a sudden.
“Master Bruce isn’t taking visitors,” Alfred said, tone laced with implicit apology.
The first two times Clark accepted it well enough, asking after Alfred and promising to come back, but the third time he had had enough.
“I’ll sit on the doorstep until he lets me in. Don’t think that I won’t. He’s lucky I haven’t kicked down the door of the,” Clark said, and leaned in, “back entrance.”
Alfred’s eyes glinted with approval.
“Very good, sir. I am sure Master Wayne will see you, under those conditions.”
He was ushered inside. He hadn’t been in Wayne Manor much. Usually he met Batman in the Batcave, not Bruce in his home. It was strange. He sipped his tea and looked at the art on the walls.
“I thought I was clear the first two times,” Bruce said from behind him.
“You can’t isolate yourself like this,” Clark said. “You have to at least come out to the funeral.”
Bruce went still for a moment.
“It happened already.”
Clark was suddenly, horribly angry. He breathed. He pressed it down. He did not shatter Alfred’s beautiful teacup. He placed it on the saucer and walked a step towards Bruce.
“Did you think to invite anyone from the Justice League?” Clark said, soft.
“There was no way, without compromising your identities—”
“We would have figured something out!”
Bruce looked just past Clark. He hated it.
“You buried your son alone, and you want me to be fine with it?”
Bruce snapped his gaze to Clark’s, agonized, and looked away again.
“Alfred was there,” he said, flat.
There was a horrible feeling in Clark’s stomach. Bruce loved nothing more than lies of omission. “Dick?”
Bruce shook his head. “Off-world.”
“Did you tell him?”
Bruce didn’t move a muscle. “He knows.”
Clark filed that away to pick apart later. For now, he needed to make sure Bruce knew he could talk to him. That he wasn’t as alone as he always felt. Always tried to be.
“You can let people help you, Bruce.” He was using his earnest Clark Kent trying to get a source to talk voice, and he knew Bruce knew, but he couldn’t turn it off. “I can’t imagine, but—”
“No,” Bruce said. “You can’t imagine.”
“Then tell me,” Clark said, frustrated. “Tell Alfred. Tell Diana. Tell someone. What’s the point of the League if you can’t even trust the people in it?”
“We’re upstairs, Clark,” Bruce snapped. “We shouldn’t be talking about this.” But while he was right Clark saw through it. Stop talking.
“I don’t give a shit, Bruce.”
For a moment Clark thought Bruce would hit him. If that’s what Bruce needed, Clark would let him and bandage his broken hand afterwards. But Bruce’s expression collapsed instead. He dropped his forehead onto his hands, laced together.
“Everyone around me gets hurt,” Bruce ground out. “Everyone dies.”
“Not me,” Clark said.
Bruce looked at him, eyes hooded.
“Stick around long enough and I’ll find a way to hurt you, too.” He turned on his heel.
“Alfred,” he called. “Please show Clark out.”
Clark left. He put a hand on Alfred’s shoulder before he went. Probably overly familiar, but Alfred’s face lost that hollow look for just a moment. He swallowed.
“Take care, Master Clark,” he said, and he shut the giant wooden doors.
---
Clark came back as Superman months later, and stayed in the Batcave. That’s when he saw it. Clark had stared at it longer than he intended to.
Bruce ignored him, pointedly. Clark couldn’t move, ice in his veins.
“A good soldier?” he asked, finally.
“I can’t,” Bruce said, eyes sliding closed. “I can’t discuss this.”
“He was your son.”
“If I think about that,” Bruce said. “I’ll lie down and won’t get up again. Please, Clark.”
He’d dropped it for the night. Called Diana and told her. Worried, and gotten busy and distracted, and when he’d looked up again there was another Robin. Clever boy by the name of Tim Drake. And Bruce wasn’t the same. He never would be. But he was functional again. So Clark left it alone, even if he hated that case.
---
“Good soldier,” Jason mutters. “That’s all we are to him. So that's why—no use for broken toys.”
"He would have come for you had he known. I swear,” Clark says. “Ask anyone. Ask Diana. He wanted to die without you.”
Jason might believe him. He’s standing straighter, or more carefully, head tilted. His heart rate has picked up.
“But. I told him the same thing, once, in not so many words. When I saw it. That that’s what it made it sound like.”
“Yeah?”
“He didn’t know how to say what you meant to him without losing his mind.”
Jason thinks about that for a long moment, then snorts. “Sure. Tough.”
They stand there for a few minutes. Jason’s cigarette smoke curls over their heads like a sleeping cat. Jason is standoffish and prickly, bristling at the slightest insinuation of something he doesn’t like, but he’s rational. He’s funny. He’s Jason. It settles something in Clark’s gut.
“What are you doing now?”
Jason shoots him a sideways glance.
“Bruce tell you what went down in Gotham?”
Clark nods.
“And you’re not putting me down like a rabid dog?” He blows smoke out of his mouth.
“I believe people can change,” Clark says. “So does Bruce. That’s part of the reason he doesn’t kill in the first place.”
Jason is avoiding his eyes, looking straight out over the city. Clark moves closer.
“You can come home, Jason.”
Jason laughs, a little hysterical. “I’ve killed people. And I’m not going to stop. The Joker deserves to die. Rapists deserve to die. People who sell drugs to kids. Bruce will never accept that.” Clark notices he doesn’t say I don’t want to.
“He won’t,” Clark says. “You’re still his son.”
“I beat Robin half to death!”
“We’ve all made mistakes,” Clark says, very softly.
“That’s a pretty big one!” Jason is looking at him like Clark is going to crack a smile and tell him that he’s right, Bruce hates him and never wants to see him again. He’s looking at him like he thinks Clark will hit him.
Clark has a hand outstretched. He puts it down. He forces himself to slip back into more casual body language, and shrugs.
“You’ll understand when you’re responsible for the kids around you. It-you can’t turn that off. No matter what.”
“Like you’ve done such a good job with Superboy.”
So he’s been keeping tabs on Metropolis. Clark isn’t prepared for that one. He should have been. He takes it like a physical blow. “Like I said,” Clark says. “We’ve all made mistakes.”
He sighs. It’s not quite a laugh, but close. “You two are really just alike,” he says, not meaning for it to be anything but the truth, but Jason takes it as a slap in the face.
“Great. Got your insults in. Checked I’m alive for my superior officer. Are you done yelling at me on a roof or do you want me to call Dick? Sure he’d love to join.”
“I wasn’t there for you, when you were a kid,” Clark says, evenly. “Not like I was for Dick. I want to make it right.”
Jason goes very still. He must have picked it up from Bruce. Clark wonders for the first time if it’s something Bruce picked up from his own parents.
“I died,” Jason says. His heart rate is up, but even if Clark couldn’t hear it, he can see Jason’s hand shaking when he holds the cigarette to his mouth. “I don’t think there’s any way to make that right.” They both stand there a moment. Jason doesn’t actually take a puff of the cigarette, he just breathes.
“But,” Jason says, at length. “This is between me and Bruce. You’re doing the same fucking thing he does,” and it sounds a little fond, despite everything. “Taking the whole world on your shoulders. Everything’s your fault.”
Clark tactfully does not mention the times when the whole world has almost literally been on his shoulders. He clears his throat. “If I had heard you—”
Jason laughs. “I was a stupid kid, acting out. I shouldn’t have died for it,” he says. This time he does take a drag of the cigarette. A long one, probably to calm himself down. “But I don’t even really blame Bruce for not—for that. I blame him for everything that happened afterwards.”
“I see.”
“And he knows it. I told him.” Jason hunches into himself, a large man making himself look smaller. Clark still does the same thing to hide his secret, but the way Jason does it makes him look like a wounded animal. He wants to reach out, to help. You and Bruce, he reminds himself. Don’t know when to stop.
“So you can report to Bruce that I’m alive, okay. And that he knows what I want, and I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Bruce doesn’t know I’m here. We talked about that.”
“Easier to believe before you started the whole good guy speech on me.” Jason’s lips quirk up at the side, and for a second Clark remembers a charming, frustrating kid with the same smirk. He feels so old. None of them deserved this.
“Don’t tell him where I am.” He turns his head to the side, looking down the city block. There’s a healing wound on his neck.
“I had to hurt him,” Bruce says, in Clark’s memory. “The way he gasped—I’ll never forgive myself—”
Clark’s stomach turns.
“I won’t.” Clark pauses and watches him for a moment. “He’s made some mistakes too.” Jason scoffs. “But he’s still your dad.”
Jason’s whole body goes ramrod straight, not still like earlier. It’s different. This isn’t Bruce’s body language.
“He’s not my dad.”
“Just,” Clark says, and sighs. “Just trust me on this. He loves you.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Easier than it is for Bruce,” Clark agrees. “But, you know what they say. Superman never lies.”
Jason makes a face like he just tasted a lemon, and Clark laughs. It makes him look his age.
“I mean it. But if you ever need anything, you’re obviously keeping tabs on me. Your dad doesn’t have to know.” He weighs making the same offer on Dick’s behalf and lets it drop. He turns to fly away when Jason speaks.
“Remember that time you gave me your autograph?”
Clark does remember. Jason was so excited, and so little. He’s surprised Jason does, though.
“I do.”
Jason nods, like that was what he’d expected. “It was nice of you.”
He stubs out his cigarette and throws it on the roof. Clark isn’t going to ruin a nice moment with a lecture on littering, so he just watches as Jason throws up a hand in farewell and climbs down the fire escape.
If Clark wanted, he could follow him. He could find him from back in Metropolis, just by the sound of his heartbeat. He could look for him with x-ray vision. It would be easy, and he could tell Bruce where his wayward son has gone, and they could be a family again, just like that.
He won’t. That’s not how families work.
He flies home, slower than usual, the taste of cheap cigarettes in his mouth.