"Do it," Bruce dares, forcing the last of his air through Superman's titanium grip. He'll asphyxiate before long, he realizes—not a bad way to go, in the scheme of things. Then again, there's always a worse way to die.
Bruce has never bothered to consider the possibilities—not like this, not in terms of unpleasantness, always most likely and least likely and prevention and necessity. He berates himself for being selfish, and wishes that Kal would just snap his neck already.
"No," Kal snarls and Bruce registers surprise before his skull hits the ground.
/
Bruce wakes under glaring lights, staring up at a stark white ceiling. He feels strange, his instincts honed from years of fighting crime scream danger and—
And he cannot move at all.
"Subject conscious," a mechanized voice announces. Brainiac.
Something is horribly wrong, he thinks, and then he moves. He is sitting up, eyes wide and dry, his legs are sliding over the metal surface in jerky movements. It's nerve control, tapping into the top of the spine to control impulses to the body and controlling it from there.
"He's awake," Kal announces, and he strides into the room with Victor Stone following a cape's length behind. Bruce's body takes jerky, childish steps towards him, arms limp, eyes fixed on a single point.
"You sure he's in there?" Stone asks. He's out of Bruce's line of sight now.
"Oh, yes," Kal says. He moves towards him, knocks mockingly against the bat symbol on Bruce's chest. "You can hear me just fine, can't you, Bruce?" The awful grin again, and then he turns on his heel. Bruce follows along the corridor, and something begins to burn in his gut, climbing up along the back of his throat.
It's not panic—Bruce stripped himself of panic years and years ago before he even put on his suit. No, this is horror, the stuff that John Constantine talked about, the cold knowledge that the universe is wrong and you are helpless against it.
/
They parade him around, sometimes, a green-and-black Batman with an implant in the back of his neck, unnatural movements obscured by distance or by one of the other superheroes—no, not heroes, because Kal stopped being a hero when he stopped being Clark. But a show dog in a batsuit isn't enough for Kal. Not by a long shot.
Mind control is where the money is, according to Brainiac and Grodd and now Kal. Or, not the money, because the world doesn't run on money anymore. It runs on power and prestige and the whim of what used to be the Justice League. And you can't take advantage of a life's worth of martial arts skills with a jerky neural hack connection.
So they put a chip in his head and say kill.
Bruce has trained for mind control. It's a possibility, always has been, and there are ways to resist if you have will enough. Bruce has will enough.
Batman has been resisting the urge to kill ever since he fell to his knees in a dirty alley and saw pearls stained red with his mother's blood.
/
(Some people, Grodd explains, resist. You have to break their mind and their will and strip them of hope.)
/
Kal drags members of the insurgency into the cells next to Bruce when they are caught. Too many of them are, and Bruce feels the weight of responsibility—after all, he wrote the contingency plans for the Insurgence.
("So you never really joined them, huh?" Leonard Snart asks. "Think they'll mind control me, too?"
"Most likely," Bruce replies.)
He's right, they do, and then Leonard falls under Superman's heel, burned from the inside out as Bruce watches from inside his cell, every inch of him screaming.
It's not the first person Bruce cannot save. This is different. Kal taunting him, hurting him, needling at his weak points.
/
Bruce eyes Sinestro. "You've stooped to torture, Kal? And here I thought you couldn't fall any further."
"It's worth a try," Kal sneers.
/
Bruce refuses to break.
"There's one last thing to try," Diana says. Kal turns on her.
"Elaborate."
She fingers the golden lasso always at her waist. "The most powerful breaker of men, my dear." Her smile is all teeth. "The truth."
/
The door slides smoothly open as Kal enters, the cape billowing behind him as he strides imperiously along the corridor. Diana is at his side, murmuring to him in low tones, with his same purposeful gait. It's bad news to see them there together, and Bruce knows they're there for him.
The figure that enters behind them wears red and black, guns holstered at his sides, a white streak of hair on the right side of his face.
"Jason," Bruce says, and he is on his feet and staring through the reinforced glass at his son. My last son.
Kal comes to a stop in front of the large window to Bruce's cell. Diana and Jason flank him.
"Nice place, B," Jason says. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, red stark against the white walls and ceiling.
"You too?" Bruce asks, and he sounds more resigned than he should.
"I haven't been on your side for a long time," the Red Hood replies.
"But I didn't think you condoned the murder of innocents."
"We're here to ask you a few questions, Bruce," Kal says, smoothly interrupting the dialogue. Bruce's eyes flick to Diana's waist, where her lasso hangs. His mind runs through the possibilities. What do they want out of this? Why bring Jason along?
The door to Bruce's cell opens with a hiss. He's tempted, briefly, to step back, but instead faces Superman with inches between them.
"Diana," Kal prompts, and then Diana's lasso is wrapped around his wrists, squeezing tightly. My intel on the Insurgency is months out of date. I know not to trust Jason.
"Let's start easy," Kal says. "Who are you?"
The word crawls up through Bruce's throat and fall from his lips before he can stop it. "Batman."
Jason raises his eyebrows at Bruce. He looks bored.
"Who are we?"
Bruce doesn't fight it. Not for the moment, at least. "Kal-El. Diana. My son, Jason." Jason stares at him. He looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it.
"Do you remember, right after the Joker's death," Kal says, "when I found you in your cave?"
Bruce narrows his eyes as his mouth moves. "Yes." After you murdered him.
"I asked you a question, then. Do you remember what it was?"
You're not sitting in the dark mourning Metropolis. Bruce's mouth is suddenly dry. "Yes."
Kal is right up against him now, blue eyes boring into his. He pulls the lasso tighter. "So tell me, Bruce," he asks, "was I right?"
You loved him, didn't you?
"No," whispers Bruce, and he's not speaking to Kal, and his wrists burn and something is awfully, horribly wrong. He tries to pull away but Kal tugs tighter on the lasso and pulls him in.
"Did you mourn him?" Kal snarls, low and dangerous. "Did you miss him? Do you want him back?"
No! he screams but the lasso burns and it skewers his thoughts and shines a blinding light behind his eyes that can't be ignored and then it pulls the answer out through his lips.
"Yes."
"And did you love him?"
Bruce's head swims and his stomach lurches. He bites down hard on his tongue and his mouth fills with the iron taste of blood.
No, no, no, no, no!
Something is born in the pit of his stomach and claws its way through his bloody throat and Bruce bites down as hard as he can but it bursts out anyways, barely a whisper but still enough to damn him.
"Yes."
The side of his face explodes in pain with a sick crack. He is jolted into the bed of his cell, skin giving way under iron and velocity. His arms are yanked forwards by the lasso tying his wrists. When he stares up at Kal, it is from his knees.
"I almost hoped I was wrong," Kal says, fury and disgust embellishing every syllable. The same emotions are echoed in the pit of Bruce's stomach, a loathing that threatens to drown him.
"Bruce," Jason says, and Bruce looks up into a pale face. Jason's voice hovers. "Bruce . . . who?"
Bruce tries to unwind his wrists from the lasso, from each other, from the truth, but it's too late and he feels it pushing through his mind with horrible inevitability.
"The Joker," pushes out and Bruce stares at the golden rope around his wrists, something awful overwhelming him as he can't meet Jason's eyes.
Something cold and round presses to Bruce's forehead and he is right back in the alleyway but this time there is a cold, high, awful laughter on the dark and dirty alley. The gun barrel shakes, and so does Jason's voice.
"You really did love him more than us—than me."
"No," Bruce says, closing his eyes and willing them to understand, "No, not more . . ."
The gun cocks.
"I'm afraid we still need him, Red Hood." Kal's voice. Long seconds pass before the gun is lowered. Bruce's heart still pounds in fear. "You really are a piece of work, aren't you, Bruce?" Kal sneers. "Diana was right when she said that truth would break you."
Bruce's face turns upwards, mouth twisting. "I'm not broken." He feels the truth in the words. "You will not break me." Kal feels their truth as well. He pulls on the lasso, and it begins to unwind at the will of his holder, but Bruce holds onto it in his fist. "You will never break me, because I will never stop fighting." Kal snarls and rips the lasso out of Bruce's hands, scorching the palms with friction.
Kal stalks out of the cell, which whirrs shut behind him.
Bruce stays on his knees, watching his blood drip onto the pristine floor.
/
Time passes as slowly as it always has. Bruce sits in his pale prison uniform and contemplates the wall. He even pulls up some of the meditation tactics he learned when he was first traveling the world, ones he dismissed as meaningless time wasters. Now, he appreciates the ability to center himself and let time flow past him like a quiet river.
You'll never be free of me, Bats! Joker laughs from beyond the grave. We're stuck together, you and I! Forever and ever and ever!
It's not Joker who stings, really. Bruce can cope with enemies. He has dealt with people more powerful than him, though it feels odd to say that he's faced anyone more truly dangerous.
You miss him.
Bruce remembers days and days cooped up in the Batcave, examining every part of the Joker, punctuated by fights filled with unrivaled intensity and violence and Bruce jolts back from feelings of satisfaction only to land in a worse truth:
I loved him.
It's not right but it is and the worst part is that it's true, a part of his consciousness dredged up by Diana and Kal and placed on display for all the world to see his shame. He hurt his family, over and over and over and killed Jason, and Bruce has never let go of him for even one minute and if you hadn't loved him Metropolis would still be here Clark would be alive and Tim and Dick and Oliver Queen and the Joker and I'm listing Joker in as someone I've lost.
Bruce rarely sees the point in contemplating what could have been but now, alone with only himself and the bleached white cell, he cannot let go of it. Bruce has never pretended that he was a good person but this isn't even righteous hate and rage, it's love, something Bruce never considered would bring him this low. Love is what heroes fight for but Bruce wants nothing more than to tear it out of his brain and let it breathe its final breaths on the cold ground. The Joker is a horrifying madman, the worst of humanity, the terror of Gotham and a natural disaster who cannot be summed up in words and what does this say about the man who loved him?
The man the Joker loved—not a man, after all, but a bat, a beast, the worst parts of Bruce that he hid from everyone except the people he fought. The thing that slipped through the cracks, the thing that Jason saw in him.
I loved him, and he loved me back.
The thought is terrifying and horrifying and maybe exhilarating and Bruce can't blame Kal for wanting him dead.
/
Kal-El doesn't come back to interrogate Bruce after the incident with Jason. He doesn't send anybody else either, and Bruce is left alone for a whole month, staring at the wall. They don't even bother to try to exert their control over him again. The pin drops in the form of Nightwing.
Damian walks in with a straight back and cold eyes. He reminds Bruce painfully of his grandfather, Ra's al Ghul. He stands in front of Bruce's cell, arms crossed limply, staring.
"Batman," Damian says, finally.
"Damian," Bruce acknowledges. The boy—no, man—shifts, almost awkwardly. Bruce wouldn't notice it if he didn't know him well. The knowledge stings, and in seconds Damian is back to being almost as impassive as Bruce.
"You really loved him?"
"Yes." He has to force the words out. It doesn't get easier to admit. Most likely, Jason already told Damian. There isn't disgust as a reaction, not like what he got from Kal and Jason.
There is another, longer pause, and then—
"You have one week." It's not an ultimatum, but a statement.
"Until?" Might as well be sure.
"Until he kills you." Bruce lets out a breath. It hangs between them. There is a . . . sort of relief in knowing for sure, a sort of relief in knowing he won't have to watch any more innocents die or feel any more pain. "I thought you should know, at least."
"Thank you," Bruce says, and means it.
/
It drops in the form of Supergirl, red and blue outfit highlighted in green just like Kal's, standing outside his cell. The partition whirrs open and she floats through, takes Bruce's wrists and snaps the cuffs on them. They're Bruce's own design, repurposed by Kal with Brainiac's abilities, meant to contain metahumans.
Kara's eyes are clear and she meets his, dropping her gaze to the floor from the microsecond she realizes he sees.
"You aren't under his control—" Bruce begins.
"He has a chip in my head too," Kara snaps, and her eyes begin to glow under her blonde hair. "I have to obey him either way, but at least now . . ." At least this way I have a choice. Her eyes meet his, staring through at him, looking for validation? Comfort?
Bruce's eyes are ice. "Fight it."
Kara looks sadly at him as she pushes the point of a needle into his arm, pushing down the top as whatever liquid in it travels into Bruce's bloodstream. Her blue eyes are the last thing he sees before he collapses from the sedative.
/
When Bruce wakes up, he is in the dark. The floor is dusty and the small room—smooth all around, Bruce feels the outline of the door but no handle or lock—smells old and unused. When he rises, he feels an unusual but familiar weight on his body—he reaches up to touch his face, but as he suspected, gloves only reach the top portion of his cowl.
He checks the suit, and as he suspected, there is no trace of his tools, even the ones sewn into the lining by Alfred. He curses Kal, not for the first time, for knowing all his tricks. The suit is an older model, too—not one of the ones fitted to fight with Kal, nor the one refitted by Kal in green. They've been in the Batcave, then. Intellectually, Bruce knows that they gained access to the place a long time ago, but it still worms its way into his gut.
Focus on the present, Bruce. Why am I here? Why in an old model Batsuit?
Probably not a rescue. Definitely not anything good. Why would Kal dress him up again? The only time he's done it is for show . . .
Oh, of course…
The room whirrs to life, the door to the room turning a bright blue around the edges. "Batman secured," informs the mechanized voice that Bruce recognizes, albeit vaguely, as Victor Stone.
The door opens onto a span of hard-packed dirt almost as large a football field, and Bruce steps out into sunlight—real sunlight, the kind he hasn't seen in almost a year, with real air. He can't stop himself from breathing deeply the scent of damp earth.
The sun glints off the tens of small cameras on different parts of the field, which is ringed by an imposing iron wall, almost twelve feet, just too high for Bruce to clear without a rope.
And facing him, hovering in bright blue and red and green, is Kal.
…this is a public execution.
"Hello, Batman," Kal sneers. He sets down, his boots hovering in the grass, not quite on the ground. Bruce pays attention to him and everything else, scanning his surroundings and coming to the inevitable conclusion that he stands no chance. Which is, he supposes, the point.
Bruce has never been the sentimental type, but it's nice to be out of the small, cramped cell where he's spent so much time locked away, at least for a little bit.
"This is the day you die, traitor," Kal says.
"Save the posturing," Bruce snarls, ducking out of the way of Kal's first punch. His long-honed fighting skills, which don't know the meaning of "hopeless situation," work into gear as smoothly as always despite the time since they were last used. He takes a step back, away from the door he came out of, towards the steel walls that surround the place. He ducks another punch, stepping back again, but the next one grazes his cheek, snapping his head back. Bruce tries to roll with it but Kal grabs him by his arm, pulling him upwards and throwing him into the ground. The wind pushes out of him but Bruce is back on his feet in a second, backing up yet again. Maybe a few broken ribs. Doesn't matter.
Kal's smile never falters. He's barely using his super speed, or his strength—he could have shattered all of Bruce's bones when he slammed him into the ground, but instead he let him get up again. It's the same reason Bruce is wearing the Batsuit—Kal wants to put on a show.
Well, Bruce has been putting on a show since his first year as Batman, and he was always ten times better at it than Clark.
Kal is on him again, up on his side, cape flapping in his own wind and dust. Bruce feels the air from a fist over his head on his chin, ducks as Kal flies at him and slides between his legs, using his momentum to pull on Kal's cape. Already off-balance, Kal wobbles, and Bruce jumps to his feet, suit stained with dirt.
"That all you got, Clark?" he goads. The iron wall is less than ten feet away now, and he jumps out of the way before he even sees Kal move, a blur of blue and red that blows dust into his mouth and then slams into the wall with the loud shrieking of metal, punching through it with predictable force.
Bruce runs towards it, sweeping his cape up to avoid breathing in the dust, and then a pair of blue eyes bore into his as he flies through the air for almost half a second.
Bruce's body smashes into the other side of the arena, indenting the metal. There is a sickening crunch and he coughs blood into Kal's face, feels his organs constrict. Breathing is suddenly harder as he tries to redirect the force pressing on his chest with one hand. Kal's fist closes over the gauntleted wrist and, with a cracking noise, the bones snap.
Kal licks Bruce's blood from his lips, reminding Bruce suddenly of Joker. "You cannot resist me," he growls.
"I do," Bruce tells him. Blood drips down his chin and then onto Kal's hand, closing around his throat. Kal lifts him up by his chin. Bruce feels his windpipe constrict. It hurts to breathe and he claws with his one good hand at the throat, an instinctive reaction. Kal slowly steps back, turning Bruce to the center of the arena.
Bruce swings his legs forward, pushing off of Kal's chest and using every ounce of his strength to catapult himself straight out of Kal's iron grip. He sprawls in the sand, throat burning, jolting whatever things inside himself Kal had already shattered. He's barely on his feet before Kal crashes into him again, too fast to comprehend. Dark spots dance in front of Bruce's eyes as he stares up at the symbol of the house of El. He pushes himself up with his one good arm with slow difficulty only to have it snapped out from under him by one of Kal's sharp kicks.
"Stay down, Bruce," he says, aliases forgotten. "It'll be over more quickly—"
Bruce uses his own momentum to get to his feet using only his legs, staggering in front of his old friend. There's nothing he's able to do, no possible mode of attack that will hurt Superman at all, but Batman is nothing if not persistent, and he takes a step forward—
And then there is a flash of red and his legs fall out from under him. Bruce collapses, legs folding senselessly. He kneels now, blood dripping onto the dirt.
"I've severed your nerves," Kal's voice buzzes. Bruce stares up at him, bares his teeth, feels blood trickle down his chin. They regard each other, for some seconds, here at the end. Kal reaches down, yanks the cowl off Bruce's face in one fluid movement.
"The Insurgency doesn't end with me," Bruce says.
Kal runs his fingers through Bruce's hair, curls it into a fist. He leans down, placing a hand on Bruce's chin, almost intimate. "Rest, Bruce," Kal murmurs.
He twists once, viciously—Bruce knows no more.