Part I: Metropolis
If one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it. - Graham Greene

Bruce lay in the darkness and watched Clark Kent get dressed.

When he didn't think anyone was watching, he moved like a lion, a hawk, any predator comfortable in its own skin. Bruce wondered what it would take to make a man like that hide himself.

He was not without a sense of irony.

At least Kent probably wasn't secretly the scourge of Metropolis. Metropolis's scourge didn't even wear a mask, and he looked nothing like Clark Kent.

After the disaster that had been Selina, he'd sworn off people with secret identities. There was only room for one split personality in his bed. And since everyone carried strangers within, that meant sticking to one-night stands, meaningless motions designed only to cement Bruce Wayne's sybaritic reputation.

Unfortunately and unpleasantly, Bruce Wayne hadn't responded obediently to the Batman's diktat. A few months back, he'd found himself putting his hands over a debutante's face, fingers splayed to curve over her cheeks. It looked just like a butterfly mask. She thought he was caressing her, but that wasn't it at all. He'd known then that it was time to take Bruce Wayne out of circulation entirely for a bit.

Thus, Kent had been something of a surprise.

"I'm not always a journalist, you know," Clark Kent said, leaning forward just enough that Bruce felt hot breath in his ear. Sidelined, half-hidden from the dance floor by a seven-foot-high cardboard cutout representing the firemen the fundraiser was meant to honor, they were in no danger of being discovered.

Bruce turned, and saw an answering spark in Kent's eyes. "What are you when you're not a journalist?"

"Just a man, with the same needs ... desires ... as anybody else." Kent was staring at his mouth. Subtle, he wasn't.

"Well, I'm not always a playboy," he said, enjoying the thrill of an unheard confession. He put his champagne glass down on an abandoned table without taking his eyes from Kent's.

"You want to get out of here?" Invitation accepted. Kent didn't waste any time. Bruce liked that.

He nodded and turned to go, feeling Kent a pace and a half behind him.

In Bruce's experience, if he found himself with a desire to see someone again, that meant trouble, so he went down to the cave and started researching Clark Kent. "A reporter with the Daily Planet" was, as he'd suspected, false modesty. Three Pulitzers shared with his writing partner (romantic partner?) Lois Lane, a host of other awards, and, more than that, two resignations from state-wide office, three major public works projects cancelled or reconceived, five kingpin-level arrests, and a host of other reforms made as a result of the duo's reporting.

One of the good guys, or so he seemed.

A local boy, from a suburb of Metropolis with the rather unimaginative name of Smallville.

Bruce knew that name. Lex Luthor had also emerged from Smallville, like a poison moth unfurling from its chrysalis. After Kent and Lane's second Pulitzer, Lex's name had begun to come up in Metropolis politics, as a new face untainted by prior corruption. Kent and Lane had written some nasty things about him, but unlike their other reporting, it hadn't stuck.

He started looking for a connection.

The Smallville Ledger online went back only to mid-2005, a few months after Lex had moved back to Metropolis. Clark Kent showed up exactly three times in its archives, once in 2006 back from his freshman year at Met U, helping in the reconstruction after a freak storm leveled half of Main Street; once at the wedding of two high school classmates, Lois Lane in tow; and once attending the funeral of his father.

None of the news services carried the Ledger further back, and neither the University of Gotham nor Met U had microfilm. Bruce was willing to bet that no one did, at least for that critical few years early in the century. Lex was plainly hiding something. For his own safety, Bruce had to assume it concerned Kent.

He started a program that would trace Kent's finances and those of his widowed mother.

The phone rang. "Yes?"

"Master Bruce, Mr. Lex Luthor is on the line. Shall I put him through?"

That was surprising. Both because Lex never should have been able to trace Bruce's queries back to him, and because Lex knew better than to confirm the connection with such an overt act. "Please do, Alfred."

There was a click. "Hello, Bruce. How are you?" The voice was, if anything, smoother than he remembered, rich with the promise of sex, power, and danger.

"I'm well. And you?" He tapped his fingers against the console, feeling ridiculously exposed, as if Lex could see him in the cave.

"Also well. I'd appreciate it if you'd curb your enthusiasm for Clark Kent."

This was all wrong, too unsubtle. "Why? Is he one of yours?"

"Not in the sense that he's been yours, no." Lex sounded as if he were smiling. So he'd had them watched, last night, at least at the party. Bruce thought that the Manor was proof against surveillance, but if anyone could have gotten audio or visual of their encounter, it would have been Lex. "But I thought we'd agreed to a division of territory. I don't interfere with visitors from Gotham, and you let Metropolis take care of its own."

Bruce could make out the edges of his own reflection in the computer screen, dark and poorly defined. "Are you threatening me?" After LexCorp had swallowed LuthorCorp, Lex had grown more aggressive in his acquisitions, but he had maintained a careful distance from Wayne Industries.

Lex laughed. "Don't be ridiculous, Bruce. You're smarter than you are pretty, whatever you pretend to Gotham's high society. Believe it or not, I retain some fondness for you from our schooldays. Clark is an incorrigible, incorruptible do-gooder, true to his image, but people who get too close to him tend to end up dead. Or deeply resentful."

The computer beeped, finished with its task.

"That search you just ran isn't going to find anything. You've never felt the need to extend your wings further than Gotham, and this is no time to start."

Bruce froze in his chair. Lex had always chosen his words carefully.

"Bruce? You still there?" Lex's voice was not quite merry.

"Of course. Do you think Superman would tell me the same story you just did?"

There was a pause. "Superman tells many stories." Now Bruce had the sense that Lex wasn't quite talking to him, at least not only to him. "As I'm sure you've -- heard, he doesn't have much tolerance for amateur do-gooders." That pause was another red flag - Bruce remembered only too well Superman's reaction to the Batman's decision to stay out of the so-called 'Justice League.' It was then that he'd begun to take steps towards compiling his own stock of mystery mineral. Just in case.

With the elder Luthor out of the picture, Lex was his biggest competitor in that market.

"If Clark is being a bad boy, Superman will send him to his room without any dessert. Let it go, Bruce." Lex's voice had softened, become rougher, almost sincere.

"You're almost guaranteeing that my interest is piqued."

Lex let out a breath, loud over the telephone wires. "It would have been anyway. Clark is like that, you think you'll just peel back one more layer and then you'll know what it is about him. And maybe a new obsession would be good for you. But not this one, not Clark Kent. There's enough insanity in Gotham. Stick with the kind of crazy that ends up in Arkham, not the kind that walks the streets of Metropolis."

Bruce leaned back in his chair, staring at Kent's nondescript finances. "Thanks for calling, Lex. We should stay in touch."

That earned him a snort. "Feel free to call me when you realize what you've gotten yourself into. I so rarely give advice, I'm looking forward to saying 'I told you so.'"

The phone clicked, and Bruce found himself listening to a dial tone.

That had been disturbing on any number of levels. Bruce stood, seized with the desire - the need - to patrol. The Batman could puzzle over Lex's bizarre warnings and implications while taking out his nightly dose of criminals.

After Bruce checked in to the Metropolitan Grand Hotel, scandalizing the bellhop by insisting on carrying his own bag, he headed over to LexCorp, a few hot city blocks away. His name got him to the executive floor. His name and a request for a meeting got him fifteen minutes in a waiting room, a drink offer that he declined, careful scrutiny by a blonde woman who moved like an assassin, and, finally, entrance to Lex's office.

Lex rose from his desk as the door closed behind his stunningly beautiful assistant. The blonde had tried to follow Bruce in, but Lex had waved her back.

"Bruce," Lex said, walking up to him and standing too close. He didn't extend his hand. "You shouldn't have come here."

Bruce made no reply. In person, Lex was a slightly bulked-up version of the boy he'd known. If he was still ghost-haunted, it no longer showed to casual observation. His eyes, fixed on Bruce's face, were gunmetal-gray.

"I have business in town," he said at last, stepping to one side. Lex swiveled to follow, his hips like ball bearings - that, he remembered too.

"Mmm," Lex agreed, a bit too indulgent for Bruce's comfort. "I don't think Clark likes to be referred to as 'business,' though he wouldn't be happy with 'pleasure' either. He's hard to satisfy that way." His hand came up and tugged at Bruce's tie.

Bruce knew he should be reacting, but it was impossible to pull away from Lex's unblinking stare. The hand was almost an afterthought. Lex loosened the tie and pulled it down as Bruce swallowed against his knuckles. Then he unbuttoned the first three buttons of Bruce's shirt, pushing the fabric aside and seeking out the bullet scar under Bruce's right collarbone. The fact that Lex obviously knew what he was looking for, even more than the heat of his fingers, made it difficult not to tremble.

"Did it hurt?" Lex asked, dreamily. His fingertip traced the puckered circle, and only the last dregs of Bruce's training kept him from panting, or fleeing.

"With all you've done, I'm surprised you haven't been shot yourself," he said severely.

Lex smiled, slow and secretive. "I have been. I want to know if it hurt you."

"Of course it did."

"Of course," Lex repeated, and stroked his fingers down to where Bruce's shirt opened, then began rebuttoning it.

It was at this point that Bruce realized that he was aroused to the point of half-insanity. The reason criminal madmen did so well, he thought, was that they were hypnotizingly unpredictable. You didn't want to kill them, because then you wouldn't know what happened next. Bruce tried not to let the potential for redemption interfere with practicality, but the existence of Arkham, instead of another graveyard, was evidence of his weakness as much as it was proof of his vow not to kill.

"Would you like to spar, Bruce? Work off some of that tension?"

He hated that mocking tone, guaranteed to reduce the Dalai Lama to a high-school geek who'd just spilled milk down his pants in front of the entire cafeteria. Hitting Lex sounded like the best idea in creation, even if it did come from Lex himself.

Lex's blonde bodyguard followed them from the conference room to a large gym on a high floor of the building. There were clothes in Bruce's size waiting, and he and Lex changed quickly, without taunting looks, which left him equally relieved and disturbed.

"No interventions, Mercy," Lex ordered as Bruce followed him to a section of the gym that was just black rubber matting. The bodyguard looked fractionally more unhappy, but didn't protest.

"What about gloves?" he asked as Lex backed away, settling into a defensive stance.

Lex's lips twitched. "I don't think I have any that would suit you." Bruce could see padded red boxing gloves draped over a chair near the wall, so this could be another suggestion that Lex knew who Bruce really was, designed to keep him off guard.

"Fine," he said, and lashed out with his right fist.

Lex dodged and spun into a kick, which Bruce took on his hip and grabbed Lex's ankle, sending Lex to the mat. Lex sprang up as if his shoulders were magnetically repelled by the floor. The parameters of the fight were clear. He had a longer reach than Lex and a hell of a lot more strength. Lex was fast and in no way considered this a game.

They traded and dodged blows for several minutes. Lex did substantially more dodging than Bruce. He was stronger than Bruce initially thought, as Bruce discovered when he let Lex close enough to land an uppercut. And the left-handedness was useful for training purposes.

After five minutes, Bruce's right ear was ringing and he could taste blood from his lip and nose. Lex's left eye was already swelling closed, and he held his right shoulder back in a way that suggested moderate damage. He was still just as fast as he'd been in the opening seconds, though, and Bruce was beginning to wonder whether he'd have to let the Batman out to win.

Then Lex zigged when the smart money was all on zag, and Bruce's fist caught him on the side of his chest. Bruce could hear the snap of ribs breaking, and he pulled away in horror as Lex looked down at his fist with a genuine smile.

The noise continued, and it wasn't Lex's ribs but a window shattering inwards.

What was Superman doing here? Lex followed Bruce's stunned gaze and smiled wider, even as his hand went to his chest in instinctive, belated self-protection.

Superman was glaring at him with what looked weirdly like betrayal - he spared a moment to turn the same expression on Lex's bodyguard - and Bruce briefly wished for the lead-lined vial of mineral he'd added to the suit for this trip, though it was back at his hotel with everything else.

"What are you doing? You could kill him."

Bruce couldn't contest the accusation, because he could and he'd wanted to, and what that said about his sexuality -- and probably his sanity -- was not at all pleasant.

"Don't worry, Superman. I'm saving myself for you." There was blood on Lex's chin after he finished speaking.

The bodyguard was muttering into a phone.

Superman pretended to ignore Lex. "Mr. Wayne, I don't know what you do in Gotham, but in Metropolis we frown on this type of behavior."

"In other words," Lex said helpfully, "Superman says to go pick on someone your own size. I started the fight, alien," he paused to turn his head and cough into a clenched fist, "and I'll heal. I always heal; like fucking Tithonus, asked for health but forgot to ask not to get hurt."

"Luthor," Superman said, his blue eyes shining with regret and worse.

"Heroes," Lex said with contempt and started walking to the door, even as it opened and admitted two worried-looking people with medical kits. He moved as if he'd break open if he wobbled even a bit.

Superman's hands twitched, as if he wanted to reach out. When Lex and his attendants had left the room, he turned his attention back to Bruce. "Lex Luthor is - he's not well, Mr. Wayne. I don't know why you're here, but I advise you to stay away from him."

And the gym was empty except for Bruce himself, shattered safety glass like sharp drops of water across the black mat. Bruce blinked, looked out at the view of the Metropolis skyline through the destroyed window, and then examined his bruised and split-knuckled hands.

This is going swimmingly, the Batman whispered. This city doesn't want you. Go home.

Yet he hadn't figured out the mystery of Clark Kent, and now there was the equal mystery of why Superman was acting as Lex Luthor's belated guardian angel. Luthor was going global, and the Batman couldn't pretend that Gotham was separate from the rest of the world. Ra's al Ghul had shown him that.

If Superman and Luthor were more than simple nemeses, Batman would have to be aware of that. Obsession, especially reciprocated obsession, was more dangerous than any rational villainy or heroism.

Selina and Harvey had shown him that.

But neither Harvey nor Selina could punch a hole through a mountain, no matter how bad things got. He couldn't say the same about Superman. No, the Batman needed more information.

He tried to shake off the feeling that his presence itself was somehow destabilizing as he headed towards the elevators, out of the LexCorp complex. Superman follows Luthor and Luthor follows Kent. So was there a third side to the triangle?

"I'm very pleased that you contacted me, Mr. Wayne," Lois Lane said, wrapping her hands around her coffee. Her manicure was a few days old, the polish the color of a robin's breast. "But my sources tell me that you never give interviews. What's changed? And please," she leaned forward, her blouse parting a fraction more, "don't tell me that it's my charm and grace, because I hate to walk out on a man so soon after I've met him."

Bruce smiled his brainless playboy smile at her. "I met your partner Clark Kent in Gotham recently, and he spoke highly of you."

Lane leaned back and took a sip of coffee, her bright eyes missing nothing as she stared at him. "Clark didn't mention you."

He shrugged. "My reason for contacting you is rather embarrassing." He paused long enough for her to school her face into a welcoming, friendly expression that didn't quite hide the shark fins cruising behind her eyes. "You've interviewed Superman."

She nodded.

"I - I want to know what he's like. In person."

"You want to know what Superman is like," she repeated, as if he were a bit slow.

He nodded sincerely. "The behind-the-scenes story, the things that don't get into the published interview. He's a hero - well, I don't need to tell you, but - I admire him tremendously. So, if you'll tell me -"

Lane looked at him skeptically, doubtless wondering if he were a front for someone trying to find Superman's weaknesses. As long as she was worried about that, she wouldn't pay much attention to his other questions.

At last, she leaned forward, her nails grazing the surface of the table. Bruce almost expected to hear the screech of metal scratching. "All right, Mr. Wayne. A backstage pass, in return for an exclusive interview on Wayne Industries' recent activities."

He smiled. "You might be disappointed. I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing, but I'll tell you whatever I can. And, please: call me Bruce."

After that, the interview went smoothly enough. He said nice things about his board of directors, and she told him useless Superman trivia, like the maximum number of people he'd rescued in any one day. He described the glittering life of a useless multibillionaire, and she recapitulated the material in her published interviews with Superman. He gave her boarding school stories, which led to a question about Lex that required actual deflection and denial, and she gave him behind-the-scenes anecdotes showing that Superman was just as nice a guy - an alien - in private as in public.

Bruce recalled some of Kent's editorial comments, which weren't as favorable to Superman as the average Metropolist columnist's, and certainly not as glowing as Lane's hagiography. No direct criticism, nothing like what Lex Luthor risked saying against the world's most popular superhero, but always a tone of distance, surprising in someone who'd had as much direct contact with Superman as Kent had. He asked Lane whether Kent shared her high opinion.

She shrugged, her shoulders drawing together as if she were slightly uncomfortable. "They really respect each other, but they don't hang out much. I think Superman's a little goody-two-shoes for Clark. All that wholesomeness intimidates him."

Bruce raised an eyebrow, smiling with just a hint of incredulity. "Clark doesn't seem like the type to be easily intimidated."

"Off the record, Bruce?"

"Yes?" His expression was pleasant, unthreatening. He knew which muscles were contracted.

Lane stared at him; he could almost feel her gaze bouncing off him. "About Clark. You know how some people repress because they think if they start something, they won't ever be able to stop? That's Clark. Right after he started at the Planet, he discovered sex. He's never really slowed down. Some woman or man is always calling to see whether he's available, or to see what happened when he didn't show up for a date. He tends to blow people off when something better comes along, and by 'something better' I mean 'someone he hasn't already hooked up with.' I love him dearly, but not even FEMA and the Justice League combined could clean up the disaster that is his personal life. I think he's worried that if Superman knew him better, he'd lose respect. Superman isn't the type to break promises or treat the Metropolis white pages as his version of a little black book."

Bruce kept his face distantly amused as he wondered just how much of a fool he was. "To be honest, Clark sounds like he's a lot more my speed than Superman. I'm more about variety than commitment."

Lois Lane was a good enough reporter that she didn't show the contempt she must be feeling. "I guess it's a good thing that not everyone can be Superman. It gives us someone to look up to."

Bruce nodded politely and turned the conversation to more social matters.

After the interview, Bruce went to the main branch of the Metropolis Public Library to access the minor local papers that weren't archived anywhere else and to review the material that his research assistants had put together for him, each of them responsible for only a small piece and unaware of the others' existences. It was a methodology that had served him well in the past, allowing him to assemble relevant information and synthesize it without needing to rely on the discretion of someone who knew where Bruce's interests really lay. He sat at a terminal in the corner of the main reading room, quickly breaking through the library's security so he could make the computer do his bidding, and emanated enough hostility that no one came near him while he worked.

He reviewed the earliest reports about Luthor's struggles with Superman. Luthor had managed to suppress most such accounts, since they weren't consonant with his image as Metropolis's prodigal son, but he hadn't been able to get at the Department of Homeland Security.

Superman had been active in Metropolis for several months by then. He'd given two exclusive interviews to Lois Lane, and the full-page headlines and one-hour news specials had fallen back to two-column pieces below the fold and five minutes on the nightly news.

Then Superman had destroyed a research facility engaged in illegal animal testing - preparatory, Bruce was sure, to illegal human testing. The company was a LexCorp subsidiary, about five miles of paper insulated from Luthor, but his nonetheless. According to the janitor who'd talked to the investigator two days after the incident (and who had disappeared shortly after that), Superman had smashed the medical equipment and melted the computers to slag. Then, what looked like a mighty wind swept through the cage room, after which all the doors were open and the rats and monkeys began pouring out of their prisons, adding to the chaos. The janitor didn't know what was being tested, but Superman must not have thought the animals were dangerous. Either that, or he didn't care.

Superman was corralling the researchers, putting them with admirable efficiency in the very cages he'd just emptied, when a black-clad security force arrived. They'd been wearing masks. The janitor had thought they were US Special Forces, and the interviewer had done nothing to enlighten him. Superman's eyes had narrowed and he'd started towards the newcomers. To the janitor's shock and dismay, he stopped halfway and took a faltering step back. His face, the janitor reported, showed no fear, only resolution and - it seemed - disappointment. The people in black had been carrying thick staves, like police riot sticks but tipped with something strange and green, their guns holstered at their hips.

"You've had your fun," the lead person - woman, the janitor emphasized, as if he couldn't believe it himself - had said. "Now get out."

And Superman had gone, shakily. When he'd left, the glowing stones embedded in the commandos' nightsticks had faded to a dull dark green.

The NSA had concluded that this was Luthor's security force. Industrial espionage and bribery revealed that Luthor had a large stockpile of the green stones, but their provenance was still unknown.

Before now, he'd been focused on getting his hands on a weapon against Superman; he hadn't considered how Luthor might have acquired the stuff before that.

Bruce had resources not available to the NSA. He'd been able to track the mineral back to LuthorCorp holdings in Metropolis as early as 2002. In 2002, Lionel Luthor was still in charge and Lex was in exile in Smallville.

Smallville, home of Clark Kent.

Bruce pulled up other databases. Government surveys, property records, news reports. There was a point at which absence of information became as telling as the presence of suspicious data. There was a hole in recorded history, a hole in the middle of Kansas.

Smallville, site of the largest meteor strike in the US in the past hundred years. Smallville, where death rates had been more appropriate for a war zone than a Kansas hamlet and large insurance claims more common than county fairs. Common wisdom held that LuthorCorp Plant #3 was responsible for the many and varied ways in which people met their dooms in Smallville, but Bruce had never found common people to be all that wise.

Working hypothesis: Luthor's mineral came from the meteors, which were related to the fact that Superman first appeared in Kansas. As for all the deaths, maybe meteor residue was equally dangerous to humans.

It was all confusing, illogical, tangled and ugly, with the promise of something uglier still behind the alien's perfect face.

The NSA report also revealed that the government had approached Luthor to get its own supply of the mineral. When Luthor politely told the feds to fuck off, the FBI (with the highly illegal assistance of actual Special Forces) had raided seven LexCorp facilities simultaneously, to no avail. The refined bars of mineral so carefully documented by the snitches were gone, dissolved into air, or at least hidden by more reliable employees. Only a speedy invocation of the Patriot Act III had kept Luthor's lawyers from publicly crucifying the government.

As it was, Luthor ended up with five very lucrative no-bid military contracts, while the NSA sulked and plotted to seize samples the next time Superman confronted a LexCorp operation. This meant, however, that Luthor's research installations were de facto guarded by the best American technology had to offer, and whether for that or some other reason, Superman had yet to revisit any of the LexCorp operations of which the NSA was aware.

Combined with what Bruce had witnessed during his visit to Luthor the other day, the facts suggested an odd symbiosis, each protecting the other from the rest of the world. Or was the antagonism fully feigned, the two playing an even deeper game, Clark Kent some sort of accomplice? No, Bruce couldn't believe that what he'd seen was play-acting. Lex's contempt had been too raw, and he'd always had a far worse poker face than he liked to think.

Times like this, Bruce could have used a sidekick to discuss the possibilities, to offer a more human perspective. Bruce was never entirely sure he understood how people thought - and while that was irrelevant to Superman and quite possibly to Luthor, he still would have liked to hear a trusted person's opinion about the whole mess.

But to trust another person, someone who wasn't Alfred, who hadn't spent his life with Bruce, who'd have an agenda of his own - it was dangerous, and not worth thinking about.

"Clark Kent."

Bruce hesitated, though he hadn't meant to. "Clark, it's Bruce Wayne."

"Bruce!" He sounded sincerely pleased, if a little surprised. "How have you been?"

"I've been well," he said, trying to relax into his role as empty suit. "I'm in Metropolis on business, and I wondered if you wanted to have dinner."

There was a pause. "I'd ask what business," Clark said, "but I'm guessing you don't really want to tell a reporter." His tenor voice had no cajoling in it, only amusement.

"Come on, Clark," he said, "you know I don't have much to do with the day-to-day operations of Wayne Industries. Anyway, I just gave an interview to your lovely partner, so there's nothing left to investigate. The only question you should be asking me is where I'm taking you to dinner."

Clark chuffed, somewhere between charmed and exasperated. "Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint you."

In the event, Clark was thirty minutes late, much as Lois Lane had suggested. Bruce hadn't had that happen to him in - ever, in fact. He should have found it a useful lesson in humility, but he felt wounded instead. It made him wonder about the women he'd stood up over the years, when the Batman was too busy to come up for air. Had they felt personally insulted? He'd always thought their protests were mostly for show, because they hadn't known Bruce at all, not really, so they couldn't be too hurt. The curious emptiness he felt as he nursed his slowly warming chardonnay suggested that he might have been wrong.

When he finally arrived at the restaurant, Clark's wide grin as he caught sight of Bruce was almost enough to make Bruce forget the last half hour. There was nothing to suggest that Clark's charm was cultivated. It was more effective for seeming natural.

Bruce stood and shook Clark's hand. It was warm, the skin soft in the way he hadn't thought a farmer's son's could be. Clark didn't even have a writer's callus, he noticed - a real child of the computer age.

They made not-quite-idle conversation through dinner. Clark had spent considerable time in Africa, as Bruce already knew from his researches, and his travels had left him with a number of entertaining stories to share. Bruce matched them with stories from his perambulations in Asia, the ones that didn't reveal too much about him other than a taste for adventure.

When the dessert plates and coffee cups had been cleared, Bruce looked across the table. "Come back to my hotel."

Clark smiled, and if Bruce hadn't known better, he would have sworn that the room got brighter. "I was hoping you'd say that."

When they'd collected their respective briefcases and overcoats, Clark suggested that they walk back - it was only six blocks, and a beautiful night, the moon brighter over Metropolis than it ever seemed to get above Gotham. Bruce agreed. Well-lit or not, the night always had a calming effect on him.

They walked past cozy restaurants and then hit a block of businesses closed for the night. A neon sign flickering in a copy shop window made Clark's face shine red and blue, the colors of flashing police lights.

The street was empty except for the two of them, passing by unoccupied parking meters and trashcans newly emptied and ready for tomorrow's commuters.

Bruce automatically noted the footsteps behind them. Three men, walking quickly, one whose foot dragged a little. No talking, which was a bad sign.

"Hey."

Preying on two fairly large men, a worse sign. Bruce turned and saw two men with guns and a third who just had a bad attitude. Clark was stiff beside him, frozen either in fear or in hopes of preventing any accidental escalation.

"Give us your wallets," the man in the middle demanded. He had one of the guns; the guy on his right had the other. The third, that was the problem - he was bouncing up and down on his feet, high on something and ready to create a fight. One part of Bruce's mind recorded their descriptions, cataloging moles and scars and clothing, while another prepared to fight.

He stepped forward and in front of Clark, shielding him.

"Bruce, just -"

"Run," he said as he threw his briefcase to the side; he would have used it as a weapon, but it was awkwardly sized. Instead, he just kicked the man in front of him as his right hand swept out to knock the gun out of the second man's hand. The one in the middle collapsed, losing his grip on his gun as he struggled to breathe; he'd be out of the picture for a good thirty seconds minimum.

Left hand punch - the third man wasn't so high on drugs that he couldn't dodge, though. The rattle of footsteps behind him suggested that Clark had wisely taken Bruce's suggestion. He was smart enough to call the cops as soon as he was at a safe distance, so Bruce had better make this quick.

The second man was still on his feet, looking for his gun on the sidewalk. Bruce took another step forward and slammed his fist into the side of the man's head, sending him toppling back into a parking meter.

A side kick kept the man on the ground where he was, and then there was just the third. Unpredictable, possibly not sensitive to pain - and, Bruce saw, holding a knife in each hand, shifting his feet with the grace of an experienced fighter. He didn't need to see the prison tattoos to know that this one was the worst of them.

Bruce leaned back, avoiding the first, almost casual thrust. The man smiled at him, predator to prey, and darted forwards, close enough that Bruce could see his blown pupils. Bruce ducked to one side and twisted, managing to get his hand on the man's upper arm and shove. The momentum pushed them apart as Bruce pivoted and brought his leg up for a solid kick on the outer thigh, which caused the man to stagger back a step.

His teeth were bared as he recovered his balance, twirling the knife in his right hand in a way that was probably supposed to be frightening. Twirling with only one hand meant his left was weak, nondominant, unlikely to be good for precision - Bruce didn't think this guy was good enough to be playing him. Bruce took the opportunity to shrug off his overcoat and wrap it around his arm. He missed his real suit, but this would provide some protection from slashes.

"Pretty boy wants to play, I'll play," the man said, just a little bit louder than conversationally.

Bruce nodded at him, and he rushed forwards. Bruce dropped down, braced on his hands, and swept a leg out, tripping the man and then somersaulting forwards, out of the way of the strike he delivered on his way down. His left-hand knife clattered on the sidewalk as he released it in order to keep from falling face-first. Bruce jumped to his feet, spinning, and managed a good kick just below the man's left shoulder before having to break off the attack to deal with assailant number two, who was moving around at the edges of Bruce's vision. Bruce spun, grabbed him, and shoved down so that the back of his head met the top of the parking meter with a meaty thunk.

Then he had to dodge around the parking meter and the slumping body as the third man, now armed with only one knife, came at him, face purpling with fury and effort. Bruce threw his arm up, feeling the blade catch on his sleeve and then drag through the coat as he twisted it, locking their arms together and trapping the knife so it couldn't do further damage. He pulled until he could see the man's back, his dirty neck and ragged-collared sweatshirt, and wrapped his left arm around the man's neck, squeezing so hard that consciousness left within seconds.

Bruce disentangled himself, collecting the knife on the way, and pulled back, letting the man slump to the ground with his compatriots. He looked at his forearm - the overcoat and suit jacket were destroyed, but the dress shirt underneath was only frayed, and he'd probably get away with less than a welt.

While he waited for the police, he retrieved the other discarded weapons and examined the attackers. Number one was conscious, but in no mood to go anywhere; he looked up at Bruce and ducked his head like a beaten dog.

They didn't look like Luthor's goons, which might have been part of the point. If Lex had wanted to see him in real action, as opposed to sparring, he might have sent them. Or it might be just another random violent incident, the kind that he seemed to attract the way other people were particularly vulnerable to mosquitoes.

"Bruce!"

"Clark," Bruce called back, without taking his eyes from the bodies on the street. Clark moved fast and light, slowing to a halt about six feet away. "You called the police?"

"Yeah - my God, what did you -- ?"

"I hope they get here soon. I don't want to press my luck."

"Are you all right?"

Bruce decided he liked Clark even more, based on the honest concern in his voice and the fact that he had yet to mention turning this into a story. "I'm fine," he said, letting some amusement into his voice. "My coat's a mess, but that's what tailors are for."

"You were - really impressive," Clark said, edging around so that he could see Bruce's face. "I mean, what I saw of it." He didn't seem to know where to look, his gaze bouncing from the would-be muggers to Bruce's face to his arm.

Bruce shrugged, then decided that his role required something more boastful. "I've taken some self-defense classes, and of course I stay in shape."

A frown. "Still, I wish you had just given them what they wanted."

"They didn't look like they'd be satisfied with that," he said.

"You think your money makes you invulnerable," Clark continued, as if Bruce hadn't spoken. "It just makes you a bigger target."

"Maybe I know that, and I'm ready," Bruce suggested.

Clark shook his head with what looked like regret. "It's more dangerous than you think. It always is. You can't control - you could have been shot."

"But I wasn't," he pointed out.

At that point, the sirens of the approaching police car took over, and they waited for the cops.

Unfortunately, the officers insisted that Bruce go down to the station to give his statement - understandable, given that he'd taken down three attackers, but still cramping his style, and Bruce was careful to play the nonchalant and jaded aesthete, distantly amused by all the fuss, not quite understanding that playing his martial arts games in a real-life situation had put him in danger. The sergeant in charge got angry with him, another unpleasant necessity, but he managed to keep his flippancy under control so that he got out with only a five-minute lecture and a promise to return to town should his testimony be needed at trial.

When he was finally released, he was not shocked to find Clark Kent waiting for him, his coat on his lap and his eyes behind his glasses observing every detail of the waiting room.

"This must be familiar territory to you," Bruce said as he pulled out his phone to call for a car.

"Yeah, I worked Metro for a few years when I - have you been checking on me?" Clark blinked at him, intrigued and a few inches from suspicious.

Bruce finished the call and smiled self-deprecatingly. "I wanted to see how you wrote. Prize committees are one thing, keeping my interest is another - and you are good."

"Thanks," Clark said wryly.

"While we're waiting to be picked up," Bruce suggested, sitting down next to Clark on an ugly orange chair whose graffiti dated it to no later than 1978, "why don't you tell me some of your favorite stories from the Metro section."

Clark looked skeptical, but didn't say more about Bruce's snooping. As a reporter, he had to have some sympathy for researching a potential subject.

"When I was just starting at the Planet," he said at last, leaning back into his bowl-shaped plastic chair, "Superman was still pretty new. There were lots of - human interest stories, I guess. How are grade schools being affected by Superman's existence, how's fashion affected, the stock market, the Billboard Top Ten, the price of tea in China. Everything had to have Superman in it to get any attention. Oh," he said and checked Bruce's expression, almost too quickly for Bruce to catch it, "Lois says you're a big fan, and it's not anything against Superman, just the reaction to him - which was a little over the top. Anyway, there I was, stuck on the Metro beat.

"So I followed this one officer around for a week. He helped organize a neighborhood watch, talked to kids at a couple of schools, investigated some muggings - ordinary stuff. Meanwhile, Superman was saving lives, defusing bombs - I remember he gave CPR to a dog that had nearly drowned in Central Park." Clark winced in involuntary sympathy, as Bruce was tempted to do - smelling a dog's breath was bad enough without mouth-to-mouth.

"That was the same day Officer Frank walked into a convenience store in the middle of a hold-up. I'd been called away on other business, so I didn't see it, but he talked the robber into putting down his weapon. And then the store owner, who'd had his unlicensed handgun pointed at the guy under the counter, got so excited that he squeezed the trigger and shot Officer Frank in the arm. When I got there, the EMTs were treating him, and I knew the dog was going to be on the front page and he was going to be in the middle of the Metro section."

Bruce leaned further towards Clark, drawn in by his evident passion, the throb of injustice in his voice.

"I asked him what he thought about Superman. Whether he resented Superman, whether he thought Superman was making his job seem silly. He said Superman and the metahumans like Batman and the Flash made his job even more important, to remind people that you didn't have to be superstrong or superfast or invulnerable to do the right thing. That it was important to protect and serve other people even though it put you in danger. Even though you were no different from anyone else. Because you were no different from anyone else.

"I wrote my story about him, and Perry White put it in the Sunday commentary section." Clark smiled now, his eyes unfocused as he remembered. "Lost a few subscriptions, people who couldn't hear a word that implied that Superman wasn't the be-all and end-all. But we got a lot of thank-yous from firefighters and police officers, too."

"What happened to Officer Frank?"

Clark's smile widened. "He retired a few years later. I get a Christmas card from him every year. He still talks to kids at public schools."

Bruce had expected a rather worse end to the story. In Gotham, Officer Frank would have ended up stabbed by some fifteen-year-old punk.

He was also, as always, amused to hear Batman referred to as a metahuman. He was very much in agreement with Officer Frank about the need for humans to fight their own battles - though to be fair, being a billionaire didn't hurt his ability to get the right equipment to enhance his capabilities.

"Bruce," Clark said quietly. Bruce looked at him. "You don't mind that I ran?" Clark was shy now, afraid that he'd shamed himself.

Running was a lot better than standing frozen, waiting like a rabbit for whatever fate a criminal decided to inflict. "Of course not. As you pointed out, it's not sane to stand up to armed men."

"You did," Clark pointed out.

"I'm a little bit crazy." Bruce smiled, to make clear that he wasn't taking any of this seriously. "And insanely lucky, as that cop was happy to tell me at length. I don't think the reality of it has set in - it feels like a game, or a play."

Clark opened his mouth as if to ask a question, then shut it. Bruce's phone buzzed to let him know that the car had arrived.

"Shall we go?" He rose, and with a sweep of his hand invited Clark to precede him out the door.

The car turned out to be a long black limousine. Bruce Wayne couldn't afford anything less flashy.

The driver rushed out to open the door for them.

As the car started to move, Bruce turned, leaning over Clark, braced with one arm as his other reached for Clark's glasses. "Maybe you can take my mind off reckless endangerment."

Clark let his head fall back further, his lips parting. Bruce carefully removed the glasses, noting as he folded them and put them on the seat that the prescription must be extremely mild; the view through them seemed undistorted. Clark was either mildly hypochondriacal or convinced he'd look more reporterly with glasses.

The kiss was warm, comforting, as if Clark thought he needed to take care. He moved until his hands cupped Clark's shoulders, pressing him into the softly creaking leather. Clark opened his mouth and started kissing back in earnest. His hands rose up, brushing Bruce's upper arms. Hot mouth, big hands. It was nice to be with someone who didn't seem little and fragile, even knowing that he could crush Clark's windpipe with one blow.

They were playing, wrestling one another for dominance. Clark tried to pull Bruce's shirt off, which would have been a bad idea with the lights on because of all the scars and bruises.

He pulled away from Clark's mouth and bit kisses over his chin, down his neck, over his Adam's apple. Clark made a soft noise and arched up.

Bruce was flexible, but he was in an awkward position. He slid down so that he was on his knees between Clark's legs, undoing his belt and trousers and burying his face in the crease of Clark's thigh, where his scent was strongest.

He smelled - earthy, with a strange hint of ozone, the smell of new wood exposed by a broken branch.

Clark groaned and Bruce stopped teasing, moving his mouth to suck on the fabric above Clark's hardening cock. "This is turning out to be a really good day," Clark said to the ceiling.

Bruce wondered if Luthor had managed to bug the limo. The good thing about being rich, dumb and pretty was that he didn't have to worry about blackmail. So he sucked men off in limousines; no one would stop inviting him to the best parties if pictures showed up in the Gotham Gazette. Actually, it might even improve his image. Clark wasn't vulnerable to that sort of pressure, either, not if Lois Lane was right about his promiscuity; and Bruce already knew that Lex had some obsession with Clark, so if he did track them he'd keep Clark's secrets for his own private enjoyment.

Maybe he should have said something about possible surveillance, Bruce thought as he tugged down Clark's boxers and licked down his cock. Just because Luthor wasn't going to go public didn't mean Clark wouldn't object to being observed. Clark moaned, his hands resting gently on Bruce's hair, as Bruce ran his tongue back up along the shaft and sucked him in.

After a few minutes, he was able to relax into the moment, alert for surprises but otherwise focused on the feel, taste and sound of the man underneath him. It was even better than fighting, because there was little need to plan ahead, just letting their bodies negotiate towards pleasure.

Clark's hands rubbed over his shoulders, a mere graze but enough to make him open his jaw and take Clark's cock as far down as he could.

"That's really good," Clark said, as if he were surprised. "Suck me, yeah, been thinking about this since you called -"

Bruce worked his tongue up and down, and Clark shifted to grunts. His muscles were long, lean and solid under his awkwardly fitting clothes; he needed a tailor.

Wet sounds, along with Clark's panting breaths, filled the back of the limo. It was dark and warm; his fingers sought out Clark's thighs, damp with sweat as he pushed Clark's legs apart against the resistance of his trousers.

"Oh God," Clark managed. "You - you are so - that's so good - harder, now!"

Bruce was amused at the disappearance of Clark's good manners, but he complied, hollowing out his cheeks with the force of the suction.

With one last, drawn-out groan, he came, pumping down Bruce's throat, his hands raised to clasp his own head as if holding himself together.

Bruce pulled away with a smile just as the limo came to a halt. With Clark slumped against the seat, it was up to him to rearrange Clark's clothes, making him decent in time to allow the driver to open the door and let them out.

Clark stayed in the car a moment, recovering his breath, but he followed Bruce inside the hotel with a smile on his face.

"I want to fuck you," Bruce said when they were in his suite. Clark's attention had been wandering to the view over Metropolis, which was glittering like a dragon's hoarded treasure in the darkness below. Bruce's declaration got that focus snapped back to him.

"Sounds like fun to me," Clark said, smiling. It was a blinding smile, wide and toothy and careless. Bruce found himself staring. He'd known beautiful women and men, but mostly they'd acknowledged their beauty and polished it to a fine gloss or, blaming it for their pain, tried to destroy it. Clark Kent wore his like it was a blessing to be shared with other people, but nothing to him in itself.

His eyes were dark, wide with desire, the city lit up behind him making him seem to glow around the edges.

Bruce crossed the room in three long strides, his mouth on Clark's almost before his hands found the broad shoulders, turning that smile into something more specific. His hands tugged at Clark's shirt, unbuttoning and sliding it half off, his fingers moving across Clark's skin. Even on his shoulders and back, that warm skin was as soft and fine as talc, so different from Bruce's callused hands that they might have been different species. He nipped at Bruce's mouth as Bruce backed them towards the bedroom.

Their progress was halted when Clark tripped over his own feet, wobbling precariously. His arms flew out to the sides for balance. Bruce grabbed his shirtfront and held on, not having to fake a smile at the comically dismayed expression on Clark's face, so different from the suave man who'd approached him in Gotham. Rocking forward almost to the point of pitching into Bruce's arms, Clark barely managed to right himself and Bruce let go.

"Sorry," Clark said, smiling again. "You're kind of distracting."

"I could say the same for you," Bruce said, hearing how his voice had roughened and deepened with lust.

The smile edged towards a smirk. Clark shrugged the shirt from his shoulders and let it fall as he turned to precede Bruce into the bedroom. Bruce heard the click of a belt buckle, then watched Clark cast his leather belt to one side with the carelessness of a very messy man. The muscles of his back stood out in golden relief above the tan slacks. There was a slight gap between the fabric and his skin, a line of shadow like the terminator between night and day.

Bruce followed, tugging at his tie. Despite the sound of Clark's pants falling to the floor, he carefully rolled the tie, took off his cufflinks, and hung his shirt and pants in the closet before turning to the bed. It was worth the wait; Clark lay naked on his back, one knee drawn up and tilted to the side in a classic pinup pose, his head pillowed on his bent arms. His smooth chest reminded Bruce of Michelangelo's David, or perhaps an athlete on a Greek vase, ruddy against the dark hotel bedspread. His cock, half-hard, lay against his thigh, a shade darker than the rest of his skin.

Clark grinned up with him with complete confidence - and complete justification, Bruce had to admit. Before joining Clark on the bed, he walked to the lamp over the nightstand and turned it off, leaving only the lights of the city to illuminate them. Light in Metropolis seemed somehow brighter than light in Gotham.

He rolled onto the bed and over Clark, retaking his mouth as if there'd been no interruption. He rested most of his weight on his arms, bracketing Clark, but pressed their lower bodies together. Their legs rubbed against one another. Bruce liked the friction, the feel of the hard lines of their shinbones and the yielding heat of the muscled calves.

Clark had a gorgeous chest, the pectorals outlined like an anatomy diagram. Bruce licked and bit his way across, sucking at one nipple until it was as red as Clark's lips. Clark's head was tossed back against the pillows, the line of his throat like a rainbow's arc.

"Like this," Bruce said, pulling back and urging Clark to turn over on his hands and knees. It was a good position, one where he could see the beauty of the man beneath him, see and not be seen.

Bruce stopped to grab the bottle of lubricant he'd left by the bedside when he unpacked. It was cool and shiny on his fingers, and he rubbed them together to warm them before moving between Clark's legs and pressing inside. Clark made encouraging noises while Bruce squeezed the back of his thigh with his free hand. The skin there, damp with sweat, was just as sleek and perfect as the rest of him, the large muscle yielding when he ran his fingers down, not quite hard enough to raise a welt. Bruce slid his hand down to caress the crease at the back of Clark's knee. "Ah!" Clark said, and Bruce pressed a little harder.

But he wanted to be inside Clark, so he took his hand back and grabbed a condom, also waiting by the bedside, ripping it open with his teeth and sliding it on himself as fast as he could.

Clark sighed with satisfaction when he removed his fingers and spread Clark's cheeks with his hands, and sighed again as he slid inside. Bruce watched the muscles in Clark's back, like a map of some unconquered country, the broad shoulders narrowing to the waist, the slight widening at the hips, the sweet dip at the small of his back leading down to his tight and welcoming ass.

"Any time you're ready," Clark said, his voice strained, and Bruce began to move.

They found a rhythm quickly, Bruce braced with one hand on the bed and the other between Clark's shoulders, Clark moving back in counterpoint with Bruce's thrusts. Clark had balanced himself on one arm; he jacked himself with the other, the wet sound like a backbeat for Bruce to pace himself with.

They were racing, together and separately, towards the horizon. Clark's pleased grunts were easy to interpret, his body shaking beneath Bruce's every time Bruce pushed into him. Bruce moved his hand down Clark's side and curled over him, breathing in the scent at the nape of his neck, tasting him there with tongue and teeth. Cocoa and oranges, sweeter than Bruce would have expected but somehow just right. The rest of the world fell away, leaving the two of them locked tight, moon and planet orbiting each other, Clark pulling him in with the force of high tide.

When Clark stiffened and called out wordlessly, his hips jerking out of rhythm, Bruce followed, the orgasm rushing out of him in white waves. Only his hand at Clark's waist prevented him from collapsing where he was; instead, he pulled off, quickly disposing of the condom, rolling onto his back while Clark slumped face-forward onto the bed.

If he'd moved to avoid the wet spot, Bruce would have let him get closer, but he appeared content as he was.

The noises from outside, distant sirens and the background hum of a working city, seeped back into Bruce's consciousness as he laid back. The lights from outside played across Clark's back, false bruises. Clark's eyes were open, observing Bruce and the rest of his surroundings.

This was a chance for a reporter, or even a lover, to ask more intimate questions, learning more about his real beliefs and wants, getting information so he could develop theories about who Bruce was and why. Clark stayed silent.

An ordinary man might have felt ignored or unwanted, but Bruce liked the idea that Clark wasn't trying to know him. He had secrets, but he wasn't hiding them from Clark in particular, any more than he was keeping secrets from anyone else whose life only knocked up against his. Saying otherwise would be like saying he was hiding from a person he bumped into on the subway because that person never knew his name.

He liked Clark's lack of curiosity, and at the same time it made him curious himself. As if maybe Clark was too wrapped up in his own secrets to pay attention to anyone else's.

He hadn't forgotten that Clark Kent was mixed up with Lex Luthor somehow, but he was fairly sure that Clark was not on Luthor's side.

"What do you think of Lex Luthor?" Bruce asked.

Clark blinked. "What do you mean?" He lifted his head from the pillow, leaning on his forearms, looking at the headboard rather than at Bruce.

Bruce hadn't expected stonewalling. "You've written about him, you've followed his rise over the years." He wasn't going to mention their youthful connection - wouldn't want Clark to get the idea that Bruce was checking up on him that seriously. "I'm interested in your perspective on the man you've studied so closely."

"Oh." Clark's eyes dipped. "He's dangerous."

"You can't stop there, not after such a provocative statement."

"He'll take every advantage - he doesn't believe in rules, only in not getting caught. And he wants it all, power, wealth, public approval, fear, obedience. There's a hole inside him, Bruce. I think he knows nothing's ever going to fill it, but he keeps trying anyway. That's what makes him dangerous: he wants so much and he doesn't know how to stop."

"And your mission is to keep him under control."

Clark rolled over, making his distractingly well-formed back into a wall between them, turning his face away. "My mission is to let everybody know the truth and hope that that's good enough."

Bruce started awake, the rattle of pearls on rain-damp concrete fading into the prosaic nighttime creaking of strange hotel furniture.

Someone was watching him.

He turned to find Clark, stretched out with one hand propping up his head, his expression thoughtful, as far as Bruce could tell in the near-blackness.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Clark asked.

"No," he said automatically. It was always the same dream. His parents were falling, falling, and he knew that when they stopped the world would end. There were a thousand bats, swirling above them like the funnel of a tornado. They were calling for help, and Bruce couldn't move.

The bats screamed out for help, never his parents. It was already too late for them. Bruce couldn't remember his mother's face, a blur in the dream, though the color of her dress that night came through every time. He remembered so little of them. He remembered watching his father shave, the gleam of the straight razor and the silken smoothness of the shaving cream. The smell of pine always took him back to that steamy bathroom, that interrupted ritual.

"My parents -" he said. "I was just - remembering."

"I'm sorry," Clark said, entirely sincere. "I was orphaned when I was very young. I don't remember my biological parents at all. I've often wanted to know what they were like, to have some memories of my own. But memories always have a price, I guess."

Bruce wondered whether he'd trade his knowledge of what he'd lost for Clark's complete uncertainty. Neither was right, neither was fair. He shrugged, as best he could with one shoulder pressed into the bed, and flipped the sweat-soaked sheet off of his body. In the night, his scars were invisible. He reached towards Clark, who was so hot that it was like putting his hand to a radiator, the warmth tangible from inches away. "Well, while you're up -"

Clark's voice held a smile. "I'd really like to, but I have to get going. Lois is going to be at my apartment in an hour or so for a stakeout, and I do not want to disappoint her. Even you aren't worth her wrath."

He sighed, already thinking about the patrol he'd do when Clark was gone. He couldn't afford to take a night off, even in a strange city. It was too easy to let his edge dull.

Some might say that was proof his weapon was too weak for the purpose to which he put it. But they'd never say that to his face.

Clark squeezed his shoulder and rolled out of the bed, his feet hitting the floor with a thump that sounded too gentle for a man of his size. Bruce let his hearing track Clark's actions in the dark, pulling on his clothes, very definitely not fumbling for his wallet or his shoes, as if he knew exactly where he'd put them before Bruce turned off the lights.

A spy, maybe? Pulitzer-winning journalist wasn't a particularly muted cover, though. And Clark had no military record. It was a puzzle.

Bruce just didn't know if he was the one to put it together.

Patrolling was risky. Specifically, it put Bruce Wayne at risk. His presence in Metropolis along with Batman's invited correlation.

The Batman knew it, but he went out hunting anyway. He needed - he needed to see that Gotham wasn't the only sink of human misery on the face of the planet, that things were bad even amongst the glitter and polish of Metropolis.

He stopped four muggings and sent a pimp to the very hospital that would have taken his girl if the Batman hadn't shown up.

He waited in the shadows for Superman to appear.

Superman didn't.

Superman wasn't as big a fan of the night. Didn't need concealment. In fact, it was better for him if everyone saw his total arrogant invulnerability, bright as one of those poison butterflies whose colors warned the world: touch me and die. There was no man behind the mask. There wasn't even a mask. Superman was the real thing, needing no myth, the kind of hero the Batman could never hope to be.

In the morning, all he had was the stink of Metropolis's back alleys on him - it had been a hot, rotten summer - and a blurred picture in the Inquisitor asking "Is Batman Here?" Back in Gotham, the Joker had robbed a bank.

Bruce rose as the tall man in the elegant gray suit approached his table. If he didn't miss his guess, the suit was made by the same Hong Kong tailors who made Lex's. "Mr. Grossman?" He held out his hand. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

Grossman' grip was firm, businesslike. "It's my pleasure, Mr. Wayne."

They sat.

"So why did you call me, Mr. Wayne?"

Bruce didn't offer his Christian name. "I'm trying to find out some information about Lex Luthor."

"And you thought I'd know it?" Grossman raised his eyebrows. His blue eyes sparkled with interest, and some merriment.

"You are the only member of the former LuthorCorp board to remain on the LexCorp board," Bruce pointed out.

Grossman smiled wryly and looked down at his plate, shaking out his napkin and putting it on his lap. "Thus you conclude that I must know something of value."

"I want to know why Clark Kent and Lois Lane are the only people in this town allowed to criticize Lex Luthor." There was no particular reason to conceal his hand; Lex already knew, and Grossman might not care if Bruce wasn't trying to get confidential corporate information.

"I do have something to tell you, Mr. Wayne, but it's probably not what you want to hear. Do you know what I did the morning before the first meeting with my new CEO?"

Bruce clenched a fist underneath the table. "No, what?"

"I shaved off my beard. Not just for the obvious reason. Alexander the Great was clean-shaven, an anomaly at the time, and his circle imitated him."

This fellow was perfect for Luthor. "You're saying you cast your lot in with him."

Grossman looked almost disappointed. "No, not entirely."

The waiter chose that moment to come up. Grossman didn't look at the menu. "I'll have the market salad and the steak, medium rare."

"The same, but rare."

The waiter disappeared as if a magician had whisked him away.

"Then what is that story supposed to tell me?"

Grossman leaned over the table, his eyes hot. "I cast my lot, as you put it, with Mr. Luthor because he's going to succeed. And he's going to succeed because people like me follow him. The age of the individual is over, Mr. Wayne, if it ever existed. Da Vinci was a genius, but without an Industrial Revolution behind him, he left only sketchbooks and grand dreams. The great man who operates in isolation from the rest of the world, who holds himself apart and above, is the true enemy of progress. Mr. Luthor understands this."

Grossman was clearly speaking about Superman, but he could have well have been lecturing the Batman.

The salads arrived. They spent a few minutes eating in silence.

"That's an interesting philosophy, but I'm not sure what it has to do with my question."

Grossman speared a yellow pear tomato and popped it into his mouth. "People can say or write anything they like about Mr. Luthor. Ms. Lane and Mr. Kent simply disagree with the majority of people about the value of his various endeavors. Time will, no doubt, prove them in error."

Silence fell again.

Their plates were whisked away and replaced by the entrees. Bruce's steak was so rare that it could have fed a vampire bat. Pink, fatty juices pooled on his plate as he cut and ate. The silence didn't bother him. It was almost as good as being alone, if unhelpful.

"You know, Alexander the Great was responsible for his father's assassination," he said as he finished eating.

"That's one interpretation," Grossman said. "Others say it was his mother, or even that the assassin was one of the king's cast-off lovers. History is tricky business, Mr. Wayne." He pushed his plate away and looked up, smiling. "I'm afraid I can't stay for dessert."

Luthor's man stood, and Bruce emulated him. With a friendly handshake, a smile, and a proffered business card, Grossman left.

Bruce caught the waiter's eye and gestured for the check. The waiter, an attractive young man with dark hair that was just a little too short, hurried over. "Oh, no, Mr. Wayne. Mr. Luthor's instructions were quite clear that you were his guest."

Bruce smiled. Did Lex think him that stupid, that in need of overt reminders that Lex knew everything Bruce was doing?

So far, Lex was right. Bruce wasn't learning anything useful.

"Thank you for seeing me, Principal Reynolds," Bruce said, shaking the man's hand.

"It's been a long time, Mr. Wayne," Reynolds replied, resuming his seat behind his solid wood desk. His voice was heavy with age, his hair almost pure white against his dark skin. The man Bruce had known was swaddled in sagging flesh. But there was still steel there, underneath.

"What brings you to Smallville?" Reynolds' desk was covered with papers and knickknacks. Glass apples, marble squares with logos from teachers' organizations, brass pen sets.

Bruce looked at him. "I suspect the same thing that brought you."

"Luthors." It was a sigh, a curse, a confession. "Lionel Luthor had me fired from Excelsior. I made a new life - and years later, he came back, threatening to take it all away if I didn't come here. Smallville. Do you know that there are still people here who tell me that I'm a credit to my race?"

Bruce wanted to ask why Reynolds had complied with Luthor's demand, but it might shame him and make him stop talking. "What did he want you to do here?"

Reynolds had a look that said 'Your stupidity makes me weep for the future.' He used it. Bruce was amused to find that it worked slightly better on him now than it had when he was an invincible teenager.

"He wanted me to keep an eye on Clark Kent. I wasn't entitled to an explanation, of course, but it was obvious the first day Lex Luthor drove up with the boy in his car. Dropping him off late, the boy practically glowing - and he was always in the center of whatever trouble there was, and there was a lot of trouble. Fights, murders, fires - Clark Kent would have been in jail ten times over if it hadn't been for his relationship with Luthor."

That was hard to reconcile with his image of Clark; harder to reconcile with the image of Clark he wanted to have.

"Why are you interested?" Reynolds asked, steepling his hands on the desk in front of him.

Standard playboy dilettantism wouldn't cut it with Reynolds; this was a bit over the top for a casual interest. "I still keep a hand in the family business, and Lex Luthor has been making some moves in my direction. I'm trying to figure out what happened to him after I lost touch with him all those years ago. Know your enemy and all that."

"Chloe Sullivan had a number of interviews with him."

"Chloe Sullivan, the reporter?"

"One of our most prominent graduates," Reynolds said with no apparent irony. "She learned her muckraking skills right here."

"I'm interested both in the content of those interviews and in the fact that they occurred at all. I didn't know he'd ever given a voluntary interview."

"It was because she was close to Clark Kent, and so was Luthor," Reynolds said. "Best friends, they called it, and no one dared to say any different because Luthor could make your life very difficult in this town, on a whim even, and there was nothing whimsical about Lex Luthor and Clark Kent."

"Luthor and Kent don't seem very close now."

Reynolds snorted. "Did you really expect Lex Luthor to maintain an interest in anyone over the long term? Yes, by the end they were apart. But Lionel was convinced there was something special about Clark Kent. He had me give him access to the Torch computers - that's our newspaper," he said at Bruce's inquiring look, pride creeping into his voice - "so he could read everything Chloe Sullivan wrote about. She was obsessed with the strange things that happen in this town, most of which ended up in Clark Kent's lap one way or another."

Bruce remembered how hard it was to find out anything about Smallville. "Do you have any copies of the school paper from those days?"

Reynolds leaned back in his chair. "We should."

"I don't want to be another Lex Luthor to you," Bruce said. "But I would be very grateful if you'd let me see those stories. And if there's anything I can do for your school, I'd be happy to contribute."

"This is a LexCorp town," Reynolds said. "Your money's more trouble than it's worth. I'm going to get one of Luthor's stormtroopers here as it is, asking why you were here. Asking nicely, at first, then not so nicely. Just so you know, I'm going to tell the truth."

"I wouldn't expect anything else," Bruce replied, defensive despite himself.

Reynolds stood up, bracing himself on the arms of his chair. "Follow me," he said.

Bruce did, down hallways like something out of The Brady Bunch. Clean-scrubbed white faces, bright red-and-yellow school spirit banners, and posters for the Spring Fling and the prayer group. None of these kids would last a day at Gotham West, nor an hour at Gotham East.

The principal didn't bother to knock on the door labeled 'Torch' in six-inch-high letters. He pushed it open and Bruce followed him inside. There were multiple computers and high-speed printers; Bruce resolved to double his donations to the Greater Gotham PTA.

"Ms. Jenkins," Reynolds barked, startling a young woman out of her trance-like contemplation of her screen. She jumped and would have fallen out of her chair had Bruce not hurried to catch her shoulders. He let her go instantly, mumbling an apology as she looked up at him in surprise.

There were a series of framed articles along one wall, some from the Torch and others from the Metropolis Inquisitor; Bruce saw that the latter bore Chloe Sullivan's byline. There were no articles by Clark Kent on the wall.

"I need to look at the archives for 2001 through 2005," Reynolds told the girl.

She frowned, thinking. "Those aren't on disk, we don't have electronic copies until starting in 2006 - the older ones should be in the file cabinets." She waved a hand at the back of the room, where a row of cabinets - big, heavy dinosaurs - stood, half buried under stacks of loose papers and covered with sedimented layers of bumper stickers mostly concerned with quirky humor and radio stations.

Bruce let Reynolds go first. He started at the top left, while Bruce went right on the theory that the most recent pre-electronic editions would be stored there. He found file folders crammed with lunchroom menus from 2002 and 2005, others with football and swim team schedules, advertisements for local businesses, but no actual editions of the paper. Nearby, Reynolds was opening and shutting drawers with increasing agitation. He would have lost his composure entirely, Bruce thought, were it not for the girl watching him with fascination.

"They're not here," Reynolds said at last, unnecessarily.

Bruce couldn't find it in himself to be surprised. He could talk to Chloe Sullivan, and hope that her memory hadn't been revised the way the Torch's archives had been. But that was dangerous, bringing in another person who might be loyal to Clark or Luthor or both, and a reporter at that. She might even have been the one to destroy the records.

He was opening his mouth to tell Reynolds that it was all right when his beeper went off, meaning that the Bat Signal was flashing.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to have to leave. Please let me know if there's anything I can do for the school."

He left Reynolds standing in the back of the office, clearly wanting to curse but unwilling to do so. His wireless hand-held computer brought him the latest news from the Gotham Gazette's home page; the Joker was out again. A toy hunt being held to celebrate the opening of the Kane Memorial Park had been infiltrated - instead of ordinary toys, the Joker had substituted his surprises, from the merely startling to the deadly. Almost fifty families were being held hostage by his goons.

There was no way Bruce could get there in time, even if he had a jet in the Smallville High parking lot.

He'd decided long ago that his pride should never stand in the way of saving lives. He entered the number Superman had given him to call the Justice League; the connection was scrambled and he'd just have to hope the security on his end was good enough to avoid being tracked either by outsiders or by the League.

"Gotham needs help," he said to the deep-voiced man who answered. He explained the situation.

"Hang on," the man said. There was a pause; Bruce had time to consider the surreality of superheroes putting people on hold. "All right," the man said at last, "Superman has been informed and he will arrive in minutes. Shall I tell him to look for you?"

"He won't see me," Bruce said, which should imply that he was still in Gotham. It made him look like more of a weakling, but it concealed the other, more troubling weakness that had separated him from his city.

The car he'd rented had a television in the back. He went to CNN and found that they'd developed a "Joker Crisis" logo in purple and green. They didn't have any live footage, just an old picture from Arkham and a picture of the park entrance, surrounded with police cruisers and waiting ambulances.

Then they began to receive a feed from a hovering helicopter. Bruce could see the Joker's gaudy minions, circling around the families. There were at least three people lying on the ground, curled and broken.

A blur swept through the park, making the hostages disappear one after the other. Then, as the henchmen started to waver, Superman came for them as well, depositing them among the police - as a hasty switch to another camera feed revealed. Finally, Superman appeared in front of the park with the Joker, grasping him by the scruff of the neck.

"Where's the flying rodent?" the Joker asked, his mad eyes reaching for Bruce through the television. He twisted around, looking up at Superman. "No fair - no fair! I didn't want to play with you! You offend my eyes, you primary-colored freak!"

Superman frowned down at the Joker, whose colors did in fact clash badly with the superhero's costume.

"You took away my toys!" he continued to complain.

"And I'll do it again if I need to," Superman said, with the air of an aggrieved teacher. "Here you are," he told the police officers who'd gingerly moved towards them. "I really feel that prison would be more appropriate for this man. Even if he is mentally ill, surely he can be treated in a place where he can also pay for his crimes."

The Joker, not one for a moral debate, made a loud raspberry as Superman released him into the officers' custody.

Bruce, frustrated, headed back to Metropolis, driving as fast as human engineering would allow.

He would stay one more night, give Lex another try in the morning. He would go out to the Suicide Slums and beat up on some Metropolis criminals. Not that it would even the scales, but it would be better than nothing.

The Joker's tricks were a rebuke to him for leaving his city.

As it happened, he was able to do Superman a small favor that night. Tuning in to the police frequencies, he heard a report that some clown - literally, a clown, makeup and red rubber nose and floppy shoes - was terrorizing a high-end restaurant. Bruce was in the area, so he came in the back and went through the kitchen, where pots abandoned in the staff's mad rush away were boiling over. Through the crack in the double doors, he could see the clown collecting valuables from the well-dressed men and women frozen at the tables.

"Excuse me," a loud, commanding voice came, causing everyone but Bruce to look towards the front of the restaurant. "You're not being very funny."

The clown snarled at Superman, the painted red ring of smile around his lips making the grimace hard to see. "Clowns aren't really supposed to be funny. They're supposed to be scary." He started to swing something - a lasso? No, a sort of bolo, with a rock at the end. Every time it neared Superman, it flared neon green.

Bruce pushed open the doors and stalked towards them. One woman turned her head to him; her jaw dropped, but Bruce raised a finger to his lips and she quickly looked away.

"Are you scared?" the clown asked, advancing as Superman fell back. The look on his face was fascinating: a kind of resigned agony, as if he had a lot of prior experience with the rocks but hadn't built up any resistance to them.

Bruce slipped out a Batarang and sent it hurtling towards the bolo, clipping the rope so that the rock continued forwards and smacked into his waiting hand. He immediately put it into an insulated sample case on his utility belt. "Need any help?" he asked as the flabbergasted clown and an equally surprised Superman turned towards him.

"Thanks," Superman said, annoyingly sincere.

"I can take it from here," the Batman offered, stepping forward and slapping flexicuffs on the clown before he could reveal any more weapons in his arsenal.

Superman considered. "There's a hurricane off of Key West - if you wouldn't mind?"

The Batman nodded. It was a good excuse for Superman not to hang around where he was at risk from the rock - meteorite -- and he very much wanted to ask the clown a few questions.

As he patted the dismayed criminal down, taking away knotted scarves with razors in them, uninflated balloons, and a squeaky horn, he whispered his take on the man's situation into his ear. By the time the Batman was convinced that the clown had no more tricks up his puffy, polka-dotted sleeves, he was extremely anxious to talk.

"Where did you get that rock?"

The clown couldn't help a pleased smirk. "Lex Luthor has a big stash. Word on the street is that Superman's allergic, so I thought I'd give it a try. At Star Labs, there was a party for the staff's kids the other day; I came in, slipped out during the Clown Car trick, and grabbed some that was just sitting on some guy's desk. Stupid, leaving it out like that, like they wanted someone to take it."

Now there was a disturbing possibility. The Batman hoped that Luthor had merely hired a sloppy researcher; he'd check to see whether anyone had been fired over the incident.

The police arrived, and the Batman departed.

His secretary relayed the message that Lex wanted to see him. "At your earliest convenience, of course," she repeated, and Bruce could hear Lex's supercilious tones even in her dry recitation.

One last try at Luthor might be fruitful, now that he knew that the soil of the little town he'd left was fertilized with secrets. With so much hidden, something had to come to the surface eventually.

The trip to LexCorp was familiar to him by now. The LexCorp logo seemed to be everywhere, from the headlines on the Planet at the newsstands he passed to the commercials playing on the televisions in the window of a Best Buy to the signs noting that Luthor had paid to clean the streets. Metropolis was a fully branded, cyber-enabled, solar-charged, twenty-first-century city, and if Luthor was its genius, Superman was its avatar.

He needed to soak into darkness, back in a city that let him be an icon as well.

The bodyguard's scan for weapons was perfunctory this time. Bruce could only assume that this was pursuant to Lex's direct orders.

The man himself was waiting in his office, working at a tablet computer, when Bruce came in. He didn't get out of his seat.

"How's Clark?"

"Fine," Bruce said, letting Lex take that however he wanted. "I'll tell him you asked."

Lex smiled; Bruce had hoped for a twitch, but he was obviously well-prepared to discuss Clark Kent. "So you're still on speaking terms. I wasn't sure you would be."

Lex stood and crossed the floor to the wet bar near the window. He poured himself a glass of something amber from a decanter faceted like a diamond. He didn't offer Bruce a drink, just took a sip with the distracted air of a man performing a task so rote as to require no conscious thought.

Bruce could have waited Lex out - God knew the man liked to run his mouth - but he was anxious to return to Gotham. He'd been too long away from its dark places. "Why did you want to see me?"

"I just wanted to wish you farewell," Lex said. "That, and say 'I told you so.'"

Bruce stepped forwards, closing half the distance between them. "You have no idea about me." Unfortunately, this was only half strategic, designed to make Luthor's pride kick in so he'd reveal himself; the other half was actual angry posturing.

"Really? Because I think you're scared." Lex drifted closer. "You've realized that your fascination has led you out of your cave and left it unguarded. You're worried that any person could have that sort of influence over you." Closer still. "You're upset that he doesn't even seem to care that he has that power." They were almost touching now, close enough that Bruce could almost feel Lex's breath. "You're afraid that you'd have to change to have a relationship with him, or with anyone - but more than that, you're afraid that he might make you want to change.

"Still think I have no idea?" He stared into Bruce's eyes, unblinking.

Bruce's heart rate was increasing and his mouth was dry; he felt blindsided. He'd expected Lex Luthor, not some psychoanalyst. Even if Lex wasn't quite right, he was freakishly close. "You're a bastard," he said, because Lex knew he didn't want to hear this.

"If I had a million dollars for everyone who ever called me a bad name - Oh, wait." Lex grinned. "I do."

Abruptly, he turned away from Bruce and went to the floor-to-ceiling window that gave him a view of most of the city, including the globe of the Daily Planet.

"The thing is, you're too isolated, so afraid of connection that anyone who gets through even a fraction of your defenses seems to have the power to destroy you. Get a friend, Bruce. Or get a dog. You won't last another year like this."

"Now you've really lost me." Even if it was uncomfortable, Lex was revealing himself in his analysis of Bruce, and Bruce had learned to tolerate discomfort.

Lex sighed and leaned against the glass in an impressive display of confidence in its strength. "All you see is an endless line of victims, or people waiting to be victims. If you want to stay human, you've got to find someone specific to remind you."

"Have you told that to Superman?"

Lex's eyes were hard, like marble under seawater. "He's not human."

They stared at each other in silence, until Lex spoke again. "I sometimes envy you, you know."

Bruce willed himself to raise an eyebrow.

"You get to put the mask on and take it off. Sometimes you get to be Bruce Wayne, and then you're not. It's not the same as being Lex Luthor twenty-four hours a day."

He hadn't thought Lex would get that explicit. Though it was becoming clear that there were a lot of things he hadn't understood about Lex. "What makes you think Bruce Wayne's not the mask?"

Lex's smile was as thin as a garrote. "I never said I thought that."

Bruce was keyed up, adrenalin fizzing through his body like champagne bubbles, making him want to hit things. He didn't want to be vulnerable in front of Lex, especially when he could sense Lex's own vulnerability but not quite see the way to tap into it, not without committing himself to a closer tie to Clark Kent than he really wanted to risk.

Though there was always the obvious -

"Does it bother you, thinking about me and Clark? You and I have so much in common, after all; isn't it a little frustrating that he'd go after me instead?"

Lex only froze for half a heartbeat, his pupils contracting and widening as if he'd been hit by strobe lights. Then his face was serene, his posture more relaxed than before. "If you're inclined to think of yourself as a mere substitute, I won't fight you. But wouldn't you rather be with someone who wants you for yourself?" He paused, then continued, each word as sharp as if it had been cut out with scissors, "Of course, that would require you to know who you were, so maybe that's not an option."

Bruce stepped closer, almost up against the glass himself. The answer to the mystery was here; he'd have it out of Lex one way or another.

"Nice view," he said, not looking away from Lex. "If you're not afraid of heights."

Lex's eyes were the blue-gray of the old marble that made up half Gotham's civic buildings, ancient and modern all at once. This close, he could see the little wrinkles around Lex's eyes, the only thing that said that Lex was older than his early twenties.

"What do you want, Bruce?" The question was deceptively soft, inviting a confidence.

Bruce wasn't going to ask about Clark, of course, but he leaned in, so they were only centimeters apart. He could smell the scotch on Lex's breath.

Lex closed the gap between them, his teeth sharp on Bruce's lip. Bruce was surprised Lex had gone beyond teasing, for the first time - in school, the two of them had traveled in very different circles, and Bruce hadn't yet realized that he needed a dissolute image, so he wouldn't have responded to Lex's overtures had they been made.

Lex kissed like he'd gotten a Ph.D. in sex and was lecturing on the topic.

The secret was here, he knew it.

Bruce told himself that he wasn't making excuses as he kissed Lex back, shoving him against the cool glass hard enough to make clear that he wasn't just going along with Lex's desires.

"Come upstairs," Lex said into his mouth, pushing free so that he could turn around and start walking towards a side door.

Bruce wiped his wet lips, watching Lex's hips make promises - every inch the politician, Lex was, though Bruce rather thought Lex could deliver on these pledges. He was slightly shorter than Clark, less broad through the shoulders, but Bruce remembered from boxing the other day that his body was no less well-formed.

Lex reached the door and opened it, revealing a staircase. He looked back over his shoulder, waiting for Bruce to decide. His eyes gleamed, probably with mischief rather than arousal - possibly they were the same thing to him.

He followed.

"Upstairs" turned out to be a fully furnished apartment, though they went quickly through the living room. Bruce caught glimpses of a kitchen and a study before they were in the bedroom, which was dominated by a Caravaggio saint and, underneath it, a bed big enough to accommodate a harem.

This time, when Lex unbuttoned Bruce's shirt, he kept going, pushing it off Bruce's shoulders, pausing only to rub his fingers over the most visible scars. He made similarly short work of Bruce's belt and pants, sliding the elastic waist of his boxers over his hips with a caress that felt both precisely calculated and entirely casual. When Bruce was naked, Lex stepped back to contemplate him. Bruce endured the scrutiny; even the most attentive eye couldn't see past the trappings and the suits of Bruce Wayne's persona.

Lex opened his mouth; Bruce shook his head, and miraculously Lex stayed silent. "Take off your clothes," Bruce commanded. Lex smiled and stripped, revealing a body as pale and well-formed as a classical statue, without even the bruises remaining from their boxing match that should have been there. With that evidence, it was no surprise that Bruce couldn't see any bullet scars, despite Lex's claim to have been shot before. Like Bruce, Lex's body wasn't going to tell his secrets to anyone.

They stared at one another in silence that should have been uncomfortable, thick with challenge, until Bruce decided that he'd lose nothing by making a move and stepped forward, pushing Lex back until he hit the bed and fell back on it.

Lex smiled closemouthed up at him, propping himself up on his elbows, his flat stomach rippling as he waited for Bruce's next action.

"Turn over," he said. If Lex had any qualms about turning his back on Bruce, he didn't show them, just rolled over with lazy grace. Naked, his slenderness was revealed to be deceptive, long lean muscles testifying to usually-hidden strength. The baldness made his body into one smooth, uninterrupted line, from the crown of his head down to his feet. His half-hard cock was visible between his legs.

There were condoms and several bottles of lube in the drawer of the bedside table. Bruce chose one of each at random and didn't bother with any more foreplay, just planted his knees on the bed between Lex's legs and shoved inside hard enough to make Lex gasp.

He was tight, tighter than he had any right to be - unless that was part of his healing, too? - glove-tight, strong enough to set his own pace, taking Bruce along with him like a runaway horse.

Bruce struggled for control over his pumping hips. He couldn't lose the plot now, no matter how good this felt.

"He's got a magnificent ass, you know," Bruce said and squeezed Lex's to emphasize his point. His thumbs slid along the tight curves of muscle, somehow warmer than he'd expected.

He bent over, biting at the skin of Lex's back, then moving up so that he could speak directly into Lex's ear. "Do you want to fuck him, Lex? Or do you want to be him?"

There was no answer. Lex was rolling underneath him like a stormy sea. The heat between them was like a cloudless August day in Gotham, when the city baked in a concrete-and-marble oven of its own devising. Heat so great it built mirages in Bruce's eyes. His hands, clenched on Lex's hips, blurred in his vision. Lex was cursing him, wobbling as he tried to rest his weight on one arm to free the other to help himself out. Bruce used one hand to shove at Lex's upper arm so that the attempt failed, and Lex pitched forward, his protest muffled by his thousand-dollar pillows.

Bruce was close now, his hand resting between Lex's shoulder blades, the smooth sweat-dampened skin there marred only by the red marks of Bruce's teeth, already fading. There was just something about fucking a metahuman, someone who might be able to kill you a little more easily than the average villain. The bruises healing as if shown in time-lapse photography made him even harder, made his hand clench and scratch new lines down Lex's back just to see.

He'd bitten Clark too, he realized, hard, as if he could somehow own -

But there hadn't been any marks at all.

Clark Kent is Superman, he realized, and went up in white-hot flame. He was molten metal, blank golden ecstasy, scattered over the universe and coalescing into the heart of a star.

Eventually, he became aware that Lex was pushing at him, scrabbling for enough room to move. He pulled back just enough to let Lex roll away. Lex was talking, but Bruce couldn't possibly listen when he was too transfixed by his revelation.

It was amazing, really, that he'd been oblivious so long. Kent and Superman both had that ambiguous relationship with Luthor, that crusading goodness - the history of Smallville, with its meteor-and-something-else strike - Kent's lateness and harmless self-presentation, an almost impossible act for such a big man. Bruce should have seen how deliberate it was. The glasses, for God's sake.

What sort of alien technology, he wondered, was required to distort Superman's appearance so that their resemblance was reduced to similar runway-quality good looks?

More to the point - what did Luthor get out of allowing Kent to maintain the fiction? Because there was no way under Heaven Luthor didn't know. He'd spent four years in Smallville with the proto-Superman - which explained a lot about why he'd survived what by all accounts had been a war zone in which he'd been a major target of opportunity.

The knowledge also meant that Luthor's hints about Batman were probably based on actual information, since Luthor had to be acknowledged as an experienced cape-chaser. But most salient of all, Bruce had far more power than he'd thought, not just over Superman. What might Luthor give him in return for silence?

Bruce returned his attention to the present. Lex was sprawled on the bed, taking up more space than Bruce would have guessed possible.

"Thank you," he said, because he wasn't free of the desire to mess with Lex's head.

Lex raised a hand from the bed in acknowledgement, then let it fall. "Likewise, I'm sure."

"I didn't hurt your ribs, did I?"

Lex snorted into the sheets.

Bruce rolled off the bed and began gathering his clothes. "By the way, Lex," he said as he pulled on his pants, "you and I aren't the only ones with secrets. You might want to consider that before you go around spreading your innuendoes."

There was a second of silence during which the temperature of the room seemed to plummet to air-freezing lows. Then Lex sprang off the bed, facing Bruce with the savagery of a tiger, careless of his nudity and of Bruce's tensed muscles.

"Make one move against him -- think about moving against him - and I will kill you, raze Gotham, and salt the earth where it stood."

Luthor's vehemence almost made him reconsider. "I thought he was your enemy."

"He is," Luthor said, with what seemed like complete sincerity. "But whatever the proverb says, it's not an equation where you can be on my side because you're not on his. He's my enemy. That makes him mine, and that makes you a trespasser." He drew a breath. "And trespassers sometimes get shot."

It was the wrong threat to use with him. Bruce's hands twitched, closing on air. "You should be more careful. Even he couldn't protect you if I decided to take you down."

Luthor smiled, slow and vicious. "You could try."

But Luthor must have known this was a possible outcome as soon as Bruce had come to Metropolis. Bruce would have made a contingency plan under like circumstances, and he couldn't gamble that Luthor was less cautious.

"Don't make me decide you're an imminent danger," he warned, backing away so that he could reach his shirt and shoes.

Luthor had recovered enough composure to adopt a casual smirk, more suited to a conqueror in a boardroom than a naked man in a bedroom. "Likewise, I'm sure."

On that note, Bruce left.

Not all problems were solved in the first attempt - he could vary his stratagems until success was his. As the Joker would say, there was more than one way to skin a bat.

He got the hell out of Kansas.

End Part I

Part II: Gotham
So it is with this calamity; it does not touch me; something which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me and leaves no scar. It was caducous. - Emerson

Mercy stood in the doorway of Clark's office, her arms folded, looking larger than Clark knew she was. "What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice full of weary disgust.

She uncoiled, holding out a small envelope in her right hand. Like Lex, Mercy was a left-hander, and would never hold anything that wasn't deadly in her dominant hand. Clark knew this from bitter experience. That reminded him - he scanned her and found only two guns and no lead at all, a rarity for his encounters with her.

"Take it," she said. Her face had its usual determination, but her cheekbones looked as if they were about to cut through her skin. Two nights ago, she'd seemed tiny, sylph-like, splashed with Hope's blood.

"Why?" Clark prayed Lois would return with the coffee. He wished it had been his turn, though Mercy probably would just have waited.

Mercy rolled her eyes. "It's not Kryptonite, Mr. Kent."

No, just one last way to hurt me, Clark thought. "How is Hope?"

She looked away. "Recovering," she said huskily. "Thank you for asking." He noticed that she'd cut her hair, the neat braid replaced by a too-short style that still bore traces of a woman hacking away at herself in rage she couldn't otherwise express.

Turning back to Clark, Mercy stepped into the office, ignoring Clark's leap to his feet as only her due, and put the caramel-colored, unmarked envelope on the edge of his desk.

"The will's being read tomorrow at the LexCorp offices at three. I suggest you attend."

She turned around. Clark wasn't sure he'd ever seen her back. Her shoulder blades, prominent under her thin white blouse, were like folded wings. "I don't blame you," she said without turning, and left.

Clark sat and struggled to keep his Clark Kent face on. Lois might be back at any moment. Anyway, it wasn't as if he were a stranger to guilt.

When he looked into the envelope, he saw only a silver disc with Lex's handwriting on it. "C5," it said. Unwillingly, Clark rolled his chair over to the envelope, wondering about the fates of C1 through C4. He reached out, brushing his fingers over the smooth thick paper.

"Clark?" Lois fumbled with the coffees and bag of pastries at the doorway. Clark's hand automatically went to adjust his glasses as he hurried to help her. "What's the matter?" Their arms brushed as she looked up at him, her hazel eyes wide with concern.

It would be very easy to go home with her that night.

It would be much, much smarter to go to an anonymous club, one too tame for Superman to shut down, and head into the back room.

Clark was a smart guy.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Lois," he said, taking a cup from her, "but I could really use a hug."

Lois's expression dimmed. She blinked, hiding her eyes, then stepped forward to wrap her arms around him. "Sure, baby." Even her casual mischief was muted in response to his evident distress. Still holding a cup and the paper bag, she squeezed him tightly enough to interfere with a human's breathing and pressed her cheek against his chest.

Clark let his arms settle around her and closed his eyes. Lois smelled like sandalwood and oranges. She didn't ask - honestly, she must know, but Clark had a gift for keeping the people who loved him from talking about his plainest secrets - and she didn't let go.

A cleared throat from just outside the open door made Lois jump, and Clark let her go before she started to struggle. He raised his eyes to Perry's.

"Sorry to interrupt your little hug therapy session, but LexCorp's press office just announced a press conference in fifteen minutes," Perry said, gruff as ever. He believed that work was an anti-depressant. In his way, he wanted to help, even if he'd never understand Clark's grief.

"Sure, Chief," Clark said. Lois nodded, moving away.

"Son, a word -" Perry said.

"I'll get Jimmy," Lois offered, so Clark knew that he was visibly falling apart. Lois acknowledging nuance was a worse sign than a rain of toads. Taking her coffee, she swept past them, closing the door behind her with a thud.

Perry was looking across the office, staring at what Lois called the interstellar shipyard - awards of every size and shape, a miniature city in plastic, crystal and silver plate. He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "It's a terrible thing to know you'll never get to finish with someone. To think that, if you'd only had more time -"

"Sir -" He talked just to keep Perry silent. Perry couldn't know what he was saying to Superman. More time might have let him think of a better plan, a plan that didn't end with fire and a greasy black ash where a man once was. "Lex and I were friends a long time ago. I always hoped he'd change back."

Perry nodded. "In the end, it was his choice. You can mourn that, Clark, but don't blame yourself."

Clark almost couldn't suppress a snort. "Thanks, Chief."

Perry scowled. "Well, I've said about all I mean to say on the topic. Go get Lane and get out there. The world hasn't stopped turning."

"Yeah," Clark agreed, and abandoned his coffee and subpar bran muffin along with Lex's disc.

Clark sent the final draft down to the Business editor and leaned back in his chair. Lois had given up on him over an hour ago, after one last offer to buy him a drink.

The envelope peeked at him from under a pile of corporate disclosure forms he could have sworn he'd placed dead on top of it. Maybe Lex was playing poltergeist.

"Okay," he said to the empty air. "Fine."

He tugged the envelope free and ripped it open. Lex's script was efficient, bold.

Clark shook his head, angry at himself for mooning. He checked again to ensure that the door was locked and loaded the disc into his computer.

There was only one file, lastwords. Clark had a moment of disbelief at Lex's high drama and then double-clicked.

Ice ages passed while Clark waited for his video player to start.

Lex's image appeared on screen, perhaps three feet back from the camera recording him. "Hello, Clark," he said, staring into the lens.

"If you're watching this, my death occurred under circumstances for which you might feel responsible. This message is to disabuse you of that notion.

"I refuse to be saved by you. My choices -- ill-advised as this message may show them to have been -- are my own. My successes and my failures are mine. Don't try to make them yours. If my death wasn't my own doing, then neither was my life."

He paused and drew a deep breath, but kept staring as if he could see through the lens, into the future. The video wasn't good enough to show the true color of his eyes, only meaningless gray pixels.

"I'm not leaving you any money. The last thing you need is deep pockets. My will does give you a number of files. Don't ignore them. They contain my analyses for Superman's major living enemies and the other members of the Justice League. As you well know, even your best friends can turn on you, and I suspect Superman hasn't prepared for that contingency as well as the Batman." By the time he said 'Batman,' his tone was acidic enough to eat through metal.

"If your conscience rejects this, I suggest you at least share the files with the other League members. They might be interested to know their own vulnerabilities.

"I never forgave you for looking down on me," he said abruptly. Clark heard a crunch as the mouse pulverized in his hand. "You think it was the secrets, but it was the condescension. You thought I didn't understand your morality because obviously if I understood, I'd agree with you. So there must be something wrong with me, because my father screwed me up - oh, and I read your series on head injuries and criminality, for those of us not strong enough for free will. I refuse to be defined by your simplistic principles, Clark.

"I wish I could be around to see you learn that you can save lives, but you can't save people. Well," he leaned forward, half smiling, "in fact I wish I could live forever, but obviously I missed out on that. So good luck, and try not to let anyone else kill you. I'd be upset to see a lesser mind succeed where I failed."

The file froze on Lex's most annoying smirk, the one that made Clark want to grab some red Kryptonite just so he could give Lex the hiding he so thoroughly deserved. Clark stared at the image for a minute, then ejected the disc and melted it to slag in his palm. He wiped the remains on a wad of paper napkins left over from lunch, hid it and the crumbs of the mouse in the trash, shut his computer down using the keyboard, tidied his desk, rearranged the pens on his blotter --

And stood up, realizing that he was about to destroy his office with a few strategically aimed punches. He activated the image distorter to produce his uniform, flew out the window, and sped into the night.

Clark flew high, wanting to feel the cold, not breathing. The emotion started to bleed off as he sliced through the air.

What an idiot, Clark thought, veering off course and heading into space. He's being unfair. He's the one who talked about being saved. He's the one who elected me to be his conscience. And he does understand morals. He wants to be judged and found wanting.

These thoughts, and variations, cycled through his head as he flew to the asteroid belt, where he pummeled rocks into smaller rocks for a few hours, until he felt a little better.

"Duck!"

Clark obeyed Batman's command and felt the Kryptonite-tipped missile whoosh over him, leaving mild nausea in its wake. He kicked out, sending one robot crashing into the next, its purple beanie-like antenna spinning madly.

The little machines were no match for either of the superheroes, but there were hundreds of them. Cleaning them out of Gotham's main park was taking too much time, especially since they had to break off the systematic destruction every time one of the robots grabbed a hapless human and threatened to slice him or her to ribbons.

"What are these things, anyway?" he called out to Batman as the Caped Crusader vaulted over him and took out another three robots. Now that Clark thought about it, they resembled the creatures he and Lex used to watch on Robot Wars, all slightly different but equipped with cutting and crushing devices.

"Purple is the Joker's color, but he isn't usually this mechanical," Batman yelled back. He wasn't even breathing hard. Clark suspected that if he listened, he'd hear a resting heart rate. Batman was pretty frightening, even for a metahuman. Maybe lack of affect was part of his power set - which remained murky, even after months of on-and-off cooperation, since Batman was very fond of his gadgets and refused to engage in friendly banter about his abilities.

The robots were almost vanquished, most lying shattered around the park. He saw another missile heading towards him and swerved to avoid it.

Agony convulsed him.

As he plummeted, he realized that he'd been lulled by the one-missile-at-a-time strategy. The Kryptonite slurry from the missile he hadn't noticed had splashed all over his suit, sticking like mud.

Impact was worse than the first time he'd been hit by a car. Robotic apparatus stabbed into his back and legs.

Half-conscious, Clark rolled, trying to scrape off the Kryptonite. Even while he was biting on his lip to avoid screaming, he had to admire the tactic. Unlike the rocks, this Kryptonite had been modified somehow to make it sticky and clinging. Still, he was able to wipe most of it on the grass of the park.

"Need help?"

Batman stood above him, unsmiling, though Clark had the feeling he was enjoying his superiority.

"Got an extra cape?" he choked out.

Batman turned his head. "Better idea," he said and loped off. Clark let his head drop to the ground. He was inches from a robot head, its boxy purple form almost cheery now that it was attached from its killer body. Blue lights still winked from deep in the robot's eyes.

Clark tried not to throw up. Kryptonite never got any easier to handle.

A jet of water hit him with the force of a lightning strike, leaving him gasping and spitting water. The spray played over his body, washing the sludge away. He'd have to remember to get Batman to clean up the area.

Clark struggled to his feet, holding up his hand to keep the water out of his eyes. Not that it hurt, but it was annoying. Batman turned off the firehose and dropped it. Clark would have returned it to the firefighters, but Batman's town, Batman's rules.

"What's that smell?" he asked, shaking his head to throw off excess water. Because he could shake very fast, he was dry in under a second.

They looked around. Gray smoke was rising from the robot corpses, as if something inside was melting.

Acting on an intuition, Clark bent and grabbed the head he'd been staring at. It was soaked with water and didn't appear to be disintegrating like the others.

"I want to take a closer look at this," he said.

Batman shrugged. "Don't pay too much attention to the Joker's tricks, Superman. Part of being insane is that his acts are often meaningless."

Your acts are rarely meaningless, Clark thought. Still, he supposed he ought to be grateful that Batman had condescended to give the League a call; even if he was sneaky and sullen, he put the welfare of his city ahead of his paranoia, and that spoke well of him. Instead of saying anything, he launched himself into the sky, clutching the water-cooled metal.

The Fortress's lights flickered dubiously when Clark proffered the remains, which looked like a mechanical Medusa's head, trailing wires from the neck and silver chaff-like ribbons from its scalp.

"Can you tell who made it?" Clark asked, placing it in an alcove that conveniently opened for him.

There was a longer pause than Clark expected.

"There are no marks of geographic origin," the Fortress said. "But there is an anomalous configuration on the central microprocessor."

"Anomalous?"

A section of dove-gray, translucent wall turned white, then resolved into an image of a microchip.

"I don't -"

"Magnifying," the Fortress interrupted. The chip grew bigger in jumps. Finally, they were down to the molecular level.

"Oh God," Clark said, staring at the letters written on the corner.

A.J.L., surrounded by LexCorp's sunflower logo.

"This came from LexCorp?"

"There are no matches in my records," the Fortress replied. "In the past, LexCorp chips have been assembled in California and have borne manufacturer's marks that are absent here. None of the secret LexCorp labs of which I am aware could produce this type of chip."

Clark sat in the chair the Fortress extended for him. "Could there be other labs?"

"Naturally," the Fortress said, as if speaking to a slow child. "However, Mr. Luthor did appear quite confident of his computer security, and it seems unlikely that he would keep records of his genetic and Kryptonite-based experiments on his system and not of this comparatively mild project."

He closed his eyes, imagining Lex's skeletal hand reaching out from the grave to tug him into another disaster. Not that there'd been enough of Lex to bury.

"There is a match to other aspects of the construction," the Fortress continued, sounding almost wary. "The configuration is almost identical to the robotic soldiers used by the Joker two years ago to attack the First National Bank of Gotham."

Lex and the Joker had worked together? That didn't feel right. Lex had always relied on being the more unstable one in any alliance, to keep his allies afraid of crossing him. If they had joined hands, however, there might be other nasty leftovers from the alliance. It had only been three months since Lex died, and Lex always had plans in multiple stages of preparation.

"That Kryptonite sludge was pretty effective," Clark said, changing the subject because there was nothing he could do about Lex's unknown plans. "Do you have any countermeasures?"

"I do not."

The emphasis was bizarre. "What?"

The lights in the wall dimmed slightly, as if the Fortress were lowering its eyes in embarrassment. A building shouldn't have a personality, in Clark's opinion, but the Fortress rarely asked for that. "You instructed me to secure Mr. Luthor's files. You did not specify that I was not to assimilate their contents."

"Lex? Lex created that stuff, too?"

"I believe so. He also developed a formula to counteract Kryptonite. I can produce new uniforms impregnated with the formula, which should improve your Kryptonite resistance, though it cannot eliminate your vulnerability."

Clark gaped at the blank wall. "You didn't think to tell me before now?"

"You have not always been rational on subjects related to Mr. Luthor." Clark didn't know why the Fortress sounded so miffed. It wasn't at risk from the villain of the week.

"Well - just make me a new uniform, all right?"

"As you will, Kal-El."

Clark folded his arms and frowned, although it was a lot harder to do without a face on which to focus. Not rational? Lex's files were dangerous, which was why he hadn't read them. Clark Kent, he heard his mom's voice say, tell the truth now. Which was sort of ironic, since it wasn't the kind of thing she would really say, under the circumstances.

"Anything else in there I should know?" He could be rational.

"Nothing immediate, but I will analyze further. Some of Mr. Luthor's suggestions are quite promising. It is a shame -"

"Don't push it," he said, and the Fortress shut up.

Clark considered calling Bruce. Someone ordinary, if a billionaire could be called ordinary, to distract him from the things in his life that separated him from humanity. He went so far, once or twice, as to dial the first eight digits; if Bruce had been in the same area code, it would have been too late to stop.

Every scrap of sense remaining to him counseled against reaching out to Bruce. He didn't need to put a new obsession in place of the old one. And it could easily have slipped into obsession: too much of what he saw in Bruce was the surface smoothness provided by inheriting more money than God. He was looking for a dead man, and that was neither fair to Bruce nor likely to bring Clark any satisfaction, in the end.

Instead, he went out to meet bodies. Clark lost count of the people, lithe blonde women and gym-perfect dark men, splayed against graffiti-tattooed walls, bracing sweating hands on the doors of metal bathroom stalls, kneeling on concrete among cigarette stubs and broken bottles, grunting or sighing or saying words he wouldn't hear as he moved in the basic rhythm his kind shared with humans, little amnesias like a string of fireworks across the sky. His only rule was the same as always: no metahumans. At this point, the scan was second nature. It was simpler never to approach anyone whose cells screamed out mutation. Detecting the sometimes-subtle variations was a hard-won skill, developed to defend himself from potentially dangerous encounters.

A few times he chased the night halfway around the world -- all clubs are gray in the dark - returning to the Planet midday, still stinking of alcohol and ash, showering in the bathroom by Perry's office, coughing out some story to appease Perry and excuse his debauched condition, the words already dead black and white in his head before they appeared on the printed page.

He fucked until he was sick of it, not tired because Clark never tired, not any more. But when the contempt he felt at night began to spill over to the people he rescued during the day, he knew he had to stop. For a while.

He did not sleep with Lois. It was the one thing that made him think that he still might be a good man. She had such fire, lust for life and for knowledge, as if the two were entirely the same. He could have flown her above Metropolis and shown her the stars. But he was twisted out of true; he would have destroyed her, crumpled her like a lump of coal in his fist into something harder, brighter, and smaller, feeling the killing pressure all along.

Lex would have been happy. He'd finally managed to warp Clark's life as thoroughly as he thought Clark had mangled his.

Then the Joker released a virus that turned its victims hypoxia-purple, but didn't kill them.

"It is undoubtedly Mr. Luthor's handiwork," the Fortress said unhappily through its uplink to League HQ. "Portions of the RNA were taken directly from genetically modified organisms patented by LexCorp."

Batman's million-yard stare stayed unchanged.

"I don't understand," Clark said, pacing around the room. The stars, usually so beautiful to him, were just another distraction. "When did he have time to do all this?"

"He didn't," Batman said, over the Fortress's crisp, "Unknown."

Clark turned to stare at him. He tried not to look at Batman too hard because the man was, frankly, disturbing, but they were alone and Clark couldn't pretend to watch another League member instead.

"Did you see a body? I know they buried an empty coffin."

The wall of flame jumped up in Clark's memory, blue-white. The fire had been hot enough to melt brick. By the time he'd put it out, there'd been nothing left to bury. "I saw him on top of the building," he said. "There was no way -"

"Are you sure?" Batman pressed. Clark tried very hard not to clench his fists.

"It wouldn't make any sense," he protested. "Luthor had everything going his way - a popular public image, tremendous wealth - why would he fake his own death?"

"But could it have been done?"

Batman was, Clark reminded himself, far more experienced with crazies than Clark.

He forced his mind back to that awful day. The terrorists had appeared out of nowhere, taking two floors of LexCorp hostage and threatening to blow the entire building. They'd taken out Hope and separated Mercy from Lex, testament to their skills if not their ethics. Clark had suspected some deal between them and Lex gone wrong, but it didn't matter once innocent (or nearly so, given that they were mostly LexCorp employees) lives were at stake.

They'd prepared for an assault on Metropolis, each wearing chunks of Kryptonite cadged from who-knows-where - one reason Clark suspected a Lexian plot turned sour. They hadn't counted on Clark's specially constructed lead box, an innovation the Fortress had suggested, that could swallow the rocks easily. If Clark approached at speed with the box properly aimed, he could insulate the Kryptonite in an inch of lead before he had time to feel the effects.

He'd sped through the building like a character from a video game, gobbling Kryptonite, defusing bombs and knocking out terrorists faster than they could see to respond, but somehow he'd missed a few. Too many. By the time he got to the roof, where the ringleaders and Lex were waiting for a getaway helicopter, they must have known it was futile, and one of them had chosen death and dishonor, triggering the bombs planted all over the roof and a few floors down. Clark had arrived in the open just in time to see the conflagration begin and realize that he'd have to deal with eight separate rocks in close proximity where the terrorists were bunched together around Lex, too much to handle even with superspeed. Given time, he could probably figure something out, but the whole building might go as the structural supports melted and collapsed onto the lower floors.

Three thousand people worked in the LexCorp tower, and the terrorists had refused to allow evacuation, mining the entrance to deter rescue missions.

Clark had turned from Lex's expressionless face, already washed in flame, and plummeted to the ground to grab a truck filled with fire-suppressant foam and hold it in position over the burning roof.

One of the terrorists couldn't face death by fire, and jumped, probably dead before he hit. Clark doubted that he would have flown to the man's rescue if he'd seen him in time.

That was all beside the point. He focused on those last glimpses - he'd seen Lex and the others, and then been gone over three minutes, because the truck required some delicate maneuvering.

"He could have been pulled out," he admitted at last. "If someone was very careful and very lucky. Can we pull all the footage from the news copters? One of them might have caught a rescue attempt."

The Fortress took this as a command addressed to it. "There is no available record of the aerial view from that side of the building at the relevant time."

"That's impossible," Clark said. "It was like rush hour up there. I nearly banged into about five helicopters, and there were more not much further off." They'd been thick as fruit flies around a bowl of week-old apples, interfering with the firefighting. He hadn't been a good mood, to say the very least, and had actually thought of shoving the more aggressive ones aside as they tried to outdo each other in closeups of Metropolis's own hero saving the day, mostly, once again.

"There's no available record," Batman said. "That doesn't mean that no records were made."

"Only that they were deleted," Clark finished. "So, what now?"

Batman turned to look at the computer screen where he'd pulled up mug shots of the terrorists Clark had captured. "I think we ought to have a chat with some of these men, don't you?"

Clark was working on a story in his office when a wave of nausea hit him. He looked around and saw that the vault in the old LuthorCorp building was open. Lionel's old office was lit up, teeming with workers, as Kryptonite bars were piled onto pallets and removed. A dapper man in an elegant suit - or perhaps an elegant man in a dapper suit - watched over the operation with interest. Clark looked closer and identified him as a fellow named Grossman, one of the directors of LexCorp, someone who'd been with LuthorCorp for years before that. Someone who'd spent hours every day close to Lex and who'd probably never known who Lex really was.

Clark figured that with Lex gone, the new management saw no reason to spend so much money and time on this strange mineral with no known industrial applications. If LexCorp's corporate culture hadn't changed, the stuff would probably be dumped in some isolated location, the regulators bribed not to see anything, and Clark would have to find it and get the other superheroes to clean it up.

The vault swung closed and Mr. Grossman locked it, then made a call. Shortly thereafter, while Clark was feeling the Kryptonite as it moved down the building in a freight elevator, men started wheeling expensive furniture into the office. Lex had left the room unoccupied, maybe as a symbol that he wasn't his father and didn't need anything of Lionel's, but a location as attractive as that office couldn't have stayed empty without Lex's need for petty revenge. So now someone was moving up in the world, literally and symbolically.

It kept getting shoved in his face that Lex was gone. Pretty soon they'd probably change the company's name to something futuristic and focus-group-tested, and then there would only be the monument in the Old Metropolis Cemetery, that useless pillar of white stone, to show that Lex had existed. That, and a few pictures in his scrapbook, the pages stuck together because he hadn't looked at them in years, and a section of railing on a bridge just a little bit newer than the rest.

He busied himself cleaning up the office, throwing out all the piles of printouts from old stories and stories that never worked out. Ancient, dried-out coffee cups and crumpled napkins, white plastic spoons and sugar packets, Post-Its and pen caps, until he'd filled his trash can and the cans in the offices to both sides of his and had to go get a bigger bin from Maintenance.

There was so much he'd let slide. What had he been waiting for?

"Kent!"

Clark turned and looked up at Lois, standing in the doorway to his office. She was dressed in a black track suit with white racing stripes, a white exercise top - and open-toed chunky black sandals high enough to induce nosebleeds (not to mention fetishes).

Her toenails, he noted, were a candy-apple red that clashed with the burgundy of her nails.

"What?" she snapped.

The feeling that his balance was off from the Kryptonite, which had dogged him as he cleaned, now made him incautious. "You look like Sporty Spice."

She actually spluttered. Then she drew breath, like a dragon gearing up to spit fire. "I was going to the gym, and then Jimmy emailed about the LexCorp reorganization - I didn't have time to change, and I can run in these just fine, and what are you, the fashion critic?" The end of the sentence was a lot louder than the beginning.

Lois rarely allowed him opportunities like this. "You didn't have time to change, but you did have time for high heels. Wait," he said, pretending to have a sudden insight, "you just can't stand to be a centimeter shorter than possible, can you?"

She looked away, busted, her cheeks pink. "I hate you. You are hated by me. Just so we're clear on that." Her embarrassment fascinated him, since in general she not only had no shame, but actually generated some sort of field that sucked shame out of her hapless interviewees, which was the only explanation for half the things she got them to say.

"Absolutely understood." He hesitated, then decided that he was already in so much trouble that he might as well enjoy it. "Sporty."

She darted forward and thwacked him on the shoulder with her purse before launching into her latest theory of LexCorp's shenanigans. Reporting on the story, which involved the internal machinations of the board of directors and the heads of the three biggest divisions, consumed most of the next twenty-four hours. Lois got a chance to demonstrate that she could run in those heels, not that Clark had doubted for a second.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Metropolis had been a fringe right-wing organization for decades. The MPD had been extremely embarrassed when an investigation after the LexCorp incident revealed that it had classified the PFLM as a threat so minimal that no ongoing surveillance was required. According to the MPD, the PFLM was responsible for a few hate crimes and some minor property damage once every couple of years when the aging members got drunk.

"When did you join the PFLM, Jordan?" Clark stared across the table at the kid staring unblinkingly back. He was nineteen but looked younger, and would have been handsome if he'd gained fifteen pounds.

Jordan's face was set in a scowl and he was trying his best to do the serial-killer glare, the one that screamed "touch me and your hand will come back in pieces." Clark, however, was not only invulnerable; he'd seen the look from people