AUTHOR'S NOTE: And Clark POV again. He can be all the superhero he likes, but when it come to my writing of the Trinity, I still think he's the weakest link...

Aftermath

- calculated -

She was sitting on Bruce's bed in the dawning light, eating toast and coffee.

He saw that much before he looked away, unable to take the churning in his stomach when Bruce made a comment and she half-smiled at it.

And when she arrived back in Metropolis, she was as polite and distant to him as a stranger who just happened to be wearing the ring he'd given his wife on their wedding day.

Her bruises looked livid in the broad light of day, and their presence quelled a good portion of the anger he was feeling at the thought of her in Bruce's room.

Diana was one thing - she was a team-mate and one of his closest friends, as well as...well, as well as his one-time lover. But she wasn't his wife.

The wife whom he'd bruised last night, too eager to have her in his arms again, to get over what he'd done and forget the guilt that niggled at him in the corner of his mind.

The wife to whom he'd betrayed himself last night.

"I'm sorry," he said as she put her keys down on the table.

She looked at him with a semblance of calm, although her pulse was beating madly and she was in a state close to panic. "You said that last night." Her voice only trembled a little, she had control of it now, even if she looked exhausted.

In spite of the voice that told him, quite firmly, that Bruce would never have touched Lois like that, Clark was uncomfortably reminded of himself promising to Lois that he would never touch Diana like that - that they were just friends.

He reached out to touch the bruises at her throat and wasn't entirely surprised to see her flinch. Instead, he indicated his own throat and shoulders. "About those," he clarified. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, if you hadn't been screwing around with your supergirlfriend..."

"She is not my supergirlfriend," he said immediately, and stood. That was a mistake. Standing, he had the advantage of height and build, and intimidation had never worked with Lois. "Look, it happened once. It was a mistake, and I'm sorry."

And he was sorry. He'd put his friendship with Diana on the line if her withdrawl was any indication, and he'd put his relationship with Lois on the line if her withdrawl was any indication.

She snorted, in disbelief. "Yeah. You're sorry. I can see that, Clark. You're so sorry you didn't even tell me."

"Lois..."

"Tell me something, Clark. Was she as good as you've been imagining all these years we've been married?"

"Dammit, Lois, will you stop making it about Diana and I?"

"Kind of hard," she replied, harshly. "Considering you were the one that slept with her!"

His patience only had so long a leash. "So what were you doing on Bruce's bed this morning?"

She tossed her head, "What did it look like? We were eating breakfast."

"And you just happened to be in his room?"

"I just happened to open my door as Alfred was taking him breakfast and offered to take it in for him. Besides, I wanted to talk to him."

"What about?"

She snorted, "And he thinks he's the paranoid one." Without answering his question, Lois crossed the room and vanished into their bedroom. "I don't want to talk about this now."

"Then when?" He followed after her, caught her arm and felt her muscles tense even before she gasped in pain.

He'd done it again - forgotten his strength in the force of his emotions.

Gently, almost painstakingly, she pulled out of his grip. "Look, Clark, don't bother going in to work today," she said. "I'll tell Perry you're sick."

"Lois..."

"Clark, not now." Her voice was brisk and brusque; she didn't want to deal with him and he hated it.

He put a hand across the bathroom door before she could go in. "Then when? Set a time when we'll talk and we will."

She sighed and her shoulders fell. "It's taking everything I have to just talk to you right now, Clark. I can't handle anything more - I need some time to deal with it."

"How much time?"

"I don't know how much time! I've never had to deal with my husband sleeping with a work colleague that he told me was just a friend." Her voice broke and she turned away, "I'm hurting, Clark, and just looking at you now hurts."

Looking at her hurt, too - because she was hurting and he was the reason she was hurting.

He knew he should just turn away, should just leave and let her alone for a while, but he had to know. "Are you going to stay?"

She looked up at him, only briefly, before she shook her head. "I don't know. Ask me another time."

He had to be content with that answer, at least for the moment.

That first day was the worst.

To mark time, he went up to the Watchtower, restless and a little bit angry. Ordinarily, he would have sparred with Diana, but when he offered it, she refused, citing other commitments. He wasn't so sure he could blame her, either. After a stilted inquiry about Lois and a stilted answer, they stared at each other for a long moment, then started when Green Lantern came into the room, and hurriedly went about their other duties.

He was very much aware when she went back down Earthside around midday, back to the embassy and her work there. They'd always been aware of each other, now they were too aware of each other in ways that they shouldn't be.

He loved her, yes. If it wasn't for Lois, well, who knew?

He just wasn't sure he could totally give her up. They had to work together, after all, he was the putative leader of the League, she was his second-in-command - they worked together well, and always had. And if there'd been the sparkling attraction that arced between them from time to time...well, he knew that she felt things for Arthur and Bruce, too.

Except now he really knew what she felt like - and tasted, sounded, and smelled like.

And that was dangerous - for more than just proximity's sake.

It might have lost him Lois.

Lois was out until very late after work, and when she did come back, she took one look at him in the bed, and took herself out to the couch. And before she fell asleep, he heard her mutter, "Should've taken him up on his offer."

That thought haunted him most of the night.

Never mind that his intellect told him that Bruce wouldn't have offered her anything more than somewhere to sleep, the tendrils of his jealous imagination could picture a lot more. Satin sheets, wine and roses, a man whose reputation among women was legendary - and he had to have gotten that reputation from somewhere.

She'd once commented on the attraction of the tall, dark, handsome brooding type, making a joke of it. Clark, she'd said, simply lacked the brood factor.

Bruce didn't.

It was stupid to compare himself to Bruce: the two of them were miles apart, from different worlds, opposite ends of the spectrum. But right now, Bruce was the one dragging Diana through the streets of Gotham, chasing after the criminals of that dark, unlovely city; and Bruce was the one spending time with Clark's wife. Clark's lovely, driven, wholly-human wife, who was trying to get over her husband's betrayal.

He tried not to think of what measures 'getting over' his betrayal might entail.

Clark buried his face in the pillow and didn't think of Diana.

Morning brought no relief; only another curt dismissal from Lois. Clark was reported in sick and went back up to the Watchtower, like a husband relegated to the doghouse. It was a more apt metaphor than he cared to admit.

At lunchtime, he considered calling Lois, then realised he didn't know what to say. And he was afraid of being fobbed off yet again. That didn't stop him from looking for her, though. X-ray vision was a blessing.

She was in the middle of a lunchtime interview according to her diary. No name, just the time and 'lunch interview at Akiras'. Another appointment had been crossed out to make way for this one, so it was a recent change. Akiras was expensive though, so she had to be interviewing someone fairly important.

When he found her on the top-level terrace of the luxury restaurant, she seemed pale-faced and a little tired. What was odd, though, was that she wasn't taking notes. Her palm pilot was out and so was her recorder, but she wasn't half as intent on the interview as she usually was.

Then he saw who she was 'interviewing'.

More than one woman in the newsroom had sighed over Bruce Wayne at some stage or another. Sighed, and then commented on his atrocious track record with women. And certainly the playboy was gaining more than a few sideways glances from the women seated at the tables around him and Lois.

And one increasingly angry glare from Lois Lane's husband out in space.

He tried to look away, and couldn't. Not when Bruce was bringing out all the little things that he used to charm women: pushing back the lock of hair that fell down over his eyes, touching her hand when he wanted her to listen to something he said, smiling with a knowing look in his eye, and paying for the bill.

Lois, damn her, sat there and lapped it all up.

Contrary as the woman he'd married was, she rarely let anyone else pay her bill. Even Clark came under suspicion of 'patronising' her - and he was her husband!

But he watched, jealousy slowly creeping through his senses, as Lois let Bruce pay, let him put on her coat, and let him escort her out of the restaurant - all without so much as a single word being written on the 'interview'.

He couldn't hear what they were talking about, not from this distance, and he wasn't sure he wanted to hear either. Bad enough to witness the quick kiss Lois gave Bruce before Alfred opened the door to let her out of the limousine. On the cheek, yes; but there had been a moment her mouth had almost hovered over the other man's, and Clark had felt hot and cold and tense all over.

It had been one thing when Diana started spending time in Gotham. Surprising, a little unexpected, and more than a little uncomfortable - especially since Clark couldn't quite rid himself of the knowledge that Bruce loved Diana just as fiercely as he did.

But this was Lois.

She had a history with Bruce - there was no secret about that; but that had been before - long before she married Clark. And she'd assured him that nothing had really happened. A few kisses and some light petting, but they'd never slept together.

But now, he wondered.

He wondered as Bruce grabbed Lois' hand just before she exited the vehicle and kissed it, a quirk to his mouth as he grinned. He wondered as she tugged her hand back from Bruce, rolling her eyes as she took her bag and walked back into the office. And he wondered as he watched her sit at her desk, wool-gathering, for a whole two minutes before she heaved a sigh and began typing up her story, ignoring the rest of the interested newsroom.

Bruce was paranoid. That much was known.

Had Lois lied to him about Bruce?

He sat in the hover-chair in the monitor room, barely paying attention to the screens that flickered up around him, too busy nursing his grudge against his team-mate.

A few hours later, when Batman stepped out of the transporters, Superman was waiting for him.

"We need to talk."

He could see the eyebrow that quirked, even as Batman walked past him. "We do?"

"I don't appreciate your appropriation of my wife, Bruce."

"And I don't think you appreciate that she's not a chattel to be appropriated, Clark," the other man returned as he crossed the hallway. "She wanted some time and space and someone to talk to." He shrugged. "Since the circumstances of her husband's affair are...unusual, she needed someone to talk to who could understand the difficulties of it."

"And you just happened to be there?"

The faint smile he got was lightly feral, "I offered myself as an ear to chew."

The thought of Lois literally chewing on Bruce's ear was not a happy one. Clark stifled a quiver of rage and merely asked, "A shoulder to cry on?"

"Among other things."

He knew it had to be a goad, but his emotions were in control of him at this moment. One hand came down hard on the other man's arm. He could crush flesh to bone if he wanted. He didn't. Instead, his voice had a flaying chill to it. "Exactly what 'other things' are we talking about?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" Definitely a goad.

"I think it's definitely my business," Clark said. "More my business than your interference between Diana and me."

Batman slipped out of his grip nimbly enough and kept walking. "And I repeat. It became my business when she came to me and asked for my help." He didn't even look back at Clark as he added, "You really should keep better hold of your women, Clark. Two for two is not good history."

The part of him that was rationally pointing out that this was all a goad tried to warn him against his anger.

The part of him that ran older and fiercer and far, far deeper than his rational mind reacted upon instinct.

Batman tumbled into the training room, rolling over and over and climbing to his feet. "Is this really necessary?" The voice wasn't quite Batman's no-nonsense tones, nor Bruce Wayne's innuendo-laden ones. There was a cruelty in the tones that stung him; he'd never heard such a tone from either Batman or Bruce Wayne. "It's not my fault you can't keep your wife."

I can keep her if not for meddling playboys who should know better! He swung the second blow, expecting some kind of retaliation for his action; a batarang, or maybe a handful of red kryptonite in the face.

There was none.

It had to hurt, even glancing off the other man's cheekbone as Batman dodged the blow. In toys and gadgets and knick-knacks, Batman was supreme. When it came to pure strength, there was no doubt who would win.

However, Batman wasn't pulling out any of his toys. He was dodging the blows - but only just, and only because Clark wasn't hitting at super-speed.

Come on, Bruce! Clark thought, angrily. What are you waiting for?

There had to be something else going on behind that mask. Something else that Clark hadn't thought of - that Bruce had in waiting. Because there was no way that Bruce would just let Clark whale on him like this.

Except that he was.

Superman, do you know what you are doing?

Be quiet, J'onn, and get out of my head. Angry, and just getting angrier, Clark fisted his hands and followed after the tumbling form of his team-mate. From the smirk on Batman's lips, he had the feeling he was being played; the sensation that this was all a joke of some kind. He was going to get the bottom of this and he didn't care what he had to do to get there.

He caught the other man by the throat, careful not to crush the windpipe - not yet, anyway. "What's this about, Bruce?"

The adam's apple was working hard, even as the gauntleted hands gripped Clark's wrist. He wasn't trying to make Clark let go - he knew better than that, but he was easing the strain on his throat.

"Kal!" That was Diana, coming up behind him. She caught at the arm holding Batman up, hauling it down - the only one with the strength to challenge him like that. "What are you doing?"

"Stay out of this, Diana," he warned.

Ignoring him, she interposed herself between him and Batman. "I will not stand by and watch you beat-"

She got no further than that. The smirk that crawled across Bruce's face was intolerable.

He felt no compunction in brushing her out of his way. He and Diana were well aware of how much battering the other could take where necessary. He heard her cry of shock as she went flying, the thump as she hit the wall and slid to the floor, but his attention was on Batman.

"Another woman who'll have a set of bruises with your name on them." The sneer was a Batman-patented special. "Are you like Lex now? Need your women to match?" He dodged the next blow. "Of course," he noted, vindictively. "That would mean I'd have to actually sleep with Diana."

It was like a knife through his soul, like kryptonite in his veins.

Lois in Bruce's bed, either now or then, lying to Clark, making him believe there'd been nothing between them, letting him marry and love her and never telling him the truth that his friend knew exactly what it was like to sleep in her arms, to move in her body, to listen to her breathless laughter, so many years and all the time they'd been lying to him...

A red haze covered his vision, and this time, Batman barely managed to dodge the blow. No cry came from the other man's mouth, though, and he didn't falter as the toe of Superman's boot caught him in the ribcage, tossing him head over heels across the room.

The only thing in his mind was to make Bruce pay for claiming not only Diana but Lois. They had gone to him in the aftermath of that night, and each woman had found what they were seeking from him - something Clark could not give them.

Did you sleep with her? He'd asked once in a moment of honesty, needing to know so he could deal with the answer. And Bruce's response had been dry, The playboy is a useful reputation to have; not all of it has to be fact. No, I didn't sleep with her.

Lies. All of it. Lies in friendship and lies in marriage. Two people he'd loved and trusted - and he'd been betrayed by both of them.

Anger swirled through him. He barely registered the voices of his team-mates yelling at him, barely saw the glow of the construct that Lantern tried to put in his path. It broke with a flurry of blows and Clark strode forward, seeing only the man who rose to his booted feet, wiping blood from his mouth.

One fist drew back to deliver a single blow that would snap Bruce's neck, even as the other man reached up in a gesture that would be no defence at all against this punch.

It was not intended to be defence against the killing blow. Instead, Batman yanked his mask from his face, tearing it back from his forehead and hair as he stared Clark full in the eyes.

There was no way Clark could avoid looking into the eyes of the man whose death sentence flew through the air to his cheek.

Bruce Wayne's eyes were blue and calm, even in the midst of such an uneven battle. For a man who'd watched the woman he loved go to Clark instead, who'd found himself in the role of comforter and mainstay for Lois in the face of her husband's betrayal, there was no resentment or jealousy in the handsome face. For a man who'd secretly set up protocols to stop his fellow League members from ever becoming a danger to the world they'd protected, there was no deceit in his expression now. There were no secrets, no lies, no prevarications; just a man's eyes regarding his killer with an expression of absolute trust.

Six billion people on Earth knew of Superman, looked up to him, trusted him. The face of the man before him was one of them - one of the multitude Clark had promised to protect with the powers that his parents had taught him were a gift to be used in the service of all humanity.

All humanity. Even the ones who betrayed him. Because he was Superman and they were not.

But that was only one half of the blow.

The other was a connection, set up by J'onn, linked between him and Bruce, with only one thought resonating clear and firm and honest between them - no lies from mind to mind: We never did, Clark.

Clark's knuckles stopped a hair's breadth from smashing the perfect cheekbone into splinters.

Bruce never so much as flinched. Damn the man.

Clark dropped his fist, suddenly trembling with the reaction of everything he'd just felt and everything he'd been made to feel by the careful planning of the man who looked into Clark's eyes and simply blinked, veiling and unveiling themselves with languid calm.

When the dark lashes rose, Bruce's expression stood with the grim regret of respect lost and friendship faded. Deliberate, of course - the man did nothing without due thought. And Clark looked beyond the face of the man he'd once called friend, and saw the lost respect of billions in Bruce's eyes.

You let your emotions rule you, Clark, Bruce said, still through the link. You can't afford that. None of us can.

The 'us' was inclusive - hinting at more than just the two of them.

And Clark looked around the room, and saw the echo of Bruce's regret on the faces of their team-mates staring from the windows of the training room, witness to an unexpected fight between two of their own. He saw horror and revusion in their faces, quickly masked; a deep, terrible sadness in the alien planes of J'onn's face; and the gleam of unshed tears in Diana's eyes as she picked herself up from the floor where he'd tossed her like so much debris.

It was almost more than he could take.

He couldn't deal with everything at this moment. He wasn't Bruce to process a dozen thoughts in an instant and follow through the logical course of those thoughts.

But before he could move, a gauntleted hand caught his forearm with a grip that was hard for a human.

"It's all about control, Clark," Bruce said quietly. "And what happens when you lose it."

Clark turned on his heel, wrenching his arm from the other man's touch as he walked out, unable to bear his team-mate's gaze. Bruce had orchestrated this, and he should have been angry.

He'd been angry. Driven to it, goaded to it, allowing his instincts to take over, and losing the control his parents had taught him.

It's all about control - and what happens when you lose it.

In that statement was contained the fullness of his mistake with Diana - the fullness of his mistake in letting his jealousy take him over.

He wasn't sure where he walked, only that he passed through the corridors alone, seeking somewhere where he could stand and think - truly think about what all this meant and how he was going to deal with it.

He'd nearly killed a team-mate - out of an imagined jealousy that his mind had known was impossible, but which his emotions had overruled; and further back - out of a moment's desire, passion and abandon that might yet cost him three of the most precious relationships in his world.

He'd once accused Bruce of splitting the League with his distrust and suspicion.

Humiliating to discover that even Superman was better at pointing out the splinter in another's eye than attending to the beam in his own.

Clark found a window that overlooked the globe of the earth, and put his head into his hands.

- TBC -

NOTES: I have no idea what the history is between Bruce and Lois in comics continuity and admit to knowing only the most fragmentary background in the animated universe. However, I like the idea of Lois having dated Bruce, knowing Bruce is Batman, and them being friends...or as close to friends as Bruce gets with people.