I hope that last chapter made sense.

Unbeta'd. Mistakes are mine.

"The Godparents can, however, contact Bruce's personal phone anytime, and initiate a conference call with him in this room," said Dick as a closing remark. "Clark, you are also not yet allowed to establish communication with Bruce and Conner. Any kind of sensory contact might pull him over the edge," he put the cowl back own, and Wally followed.

Everybody was sitting upright suddenly, as if their alter egos have taken over. It wasn't that Dick was channelling Bruce's aura, it was just…they, his teammates, especially Dick, were disappointed in him. Disappointed didn't even cut it.

Clark half listened as Dick continued on the things that were new in the Watchtower, such as member seniority, and that missions were assigned according to experience. Or that the seniors had rotations on who had to train who in the junior roster.

"Superman," Dick looked at him through the cowl's lenses. "Mr Terrific will assign you to where you are needed. Only I can assign monitor duty," he pulled up a screen behind him and something that looked like a spreadsheet appeared. "You are given only one shift a week, no overnights unless you want them. Mr Terrific can void your hours if and only if you are demanded somewhere else,"

Batman closed the screen, and turned back to Superman. "I trust getting back into field work won't be a problem. Welcome back to the Justice League, Superman. Meeting adjourned." And with that, Batman left the room.

He was left there on his own in the conference room, standing by the window looking down at earth. He could hear Bruce reading to their son, and Conner repeating the words after him. He could hear him blowing raspberries on their son's neck. He could hear them laughing. Bruce's was low, happy and genuine. Their son's was high pitched, excited and rambunctious.

He pulled out the photo from the pocket he had in his cape. He'd been staring at it since he received it from his Ma. He feared he might accidentally burn it. He just couldn't stop staring at it. He'd always found reproduction amazing. How two people could get together and make something as precious as life. And now he was looking at a child in a photo, laughing and happy and alive, and Bruce made that for him.

A life. Made out of Bruce and him. A little ball of energy and giggles and love, who needed both parents to teach him his first words, to help him make his first step. He didn't know whether to cry or go find an asteroid ten times as big as Earth and start mashing it to pieces.

His friends wouldn't look him in the eye. Bruce retired. He wasn't even allowed to be in the same city with them. That was how much he fucked up, and he still couldn't fathom, let alone absorb the amount of fuckery he'd done.

He sighed and went to the living quarters. Clark was a little relieved the seniors' quarters were a level above the sophomores' and juniors'. It was going to be really awkward walking into Superman looking down in the dumps.

Clark had been lying on his bed staring at the ceiling four about five minutes when he succumbed to restlessness, went to the hangars, and exited out one of the gates. He headed for Metropolis. Someone's cat was stuck up a tree.

After a long day of trying to at least greet the people of Metropolis, he went come, tried to avoid the brown envelope of documents, and cleaned his apartment. He didn't do it at super speed, or blew all the dust away with a breath. He did it the old fashioned way.

Being gone so long wasn't a good thing for his house. He didn't know what to call the monstrosity that used to be a bar of soap in the soap dish in the shower. He had no idea what kind of liquid was inside the shampoo bottle when he drained it. He had to throw away some canned goods in his pantry, and half a box of cornflakes made its way into the trash bin as well. He had to vacuum every inch of his apartment.

He even had to go out to buy some household cleaning products in the middle of the night. There was a twenty four hour mini-grocery store nearby so that was easy. He didn't hurry. With groceries in both hands, he took the stairs down, and he took the stairs up.

At least it killed off time. When he was cleaning out the barn and the stables back in Smallville, he wanted to take his mind off the shitstorm he came home to. Now, he just wanted the time to pass by so he could go see Bruce, as unready as he was to meet his son—as unready as he was to face the responsibility of a life that was to depend on him, to mould a mind, to be an example and a role model more than the face he was the public.

Did Bruce even mention him to the child? Had his older sons said anything negative about him? Then again, he deserved those bitter words. And maybe, he thought, the child didn't deserve to hear anything like that either. To be told he had a father who left his mother; to feel that he was unwanted by the very person who had to care and protect him; to feel like his father wanted nothing to do with them.

But he wanted everything to do with them. He wanted every single thing. That child was his. His blood, his flesh—a member of his house.

An El.

Did Bruce give him a Kryptonian name? Did Bruce even think of giving him a Kryptonian name? Would Bruce even let him give the child a Kryptonian name? Would Jason let Bruce let him give the child—Conner—a Kryptonian name?

Suddenly there was a crack. When he looked at his hands, he had crushed one of his dishes. He had a dishwasher, but what was the point of doing everything the old fashioned way?

He sighed and pulled put the broken plate into the trash bin. He was probably going to break a lot of things in his house.

Tomorrow he'd wash his clothes and bring his sheets to the dry cleaners.

Commissioner Gordon, Clark heard from the TV when he used the news as background noise while he was still straightening up his apartment a few days later, had helped the police of Metropolis to clean up the mess in the warehouse the League found Bruce and his son in.

"Mr Wayne and his son," he heard Gordon speaking as cameras clicked and flashed, "Are safe and resting,"

He was ironing his clothes. He turned off the iron and stepped out from his room and into the living room. He grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned the volume up. But he found raising the volume was useless since Gordon was already going down the stairs through the sea of reporters.

"Commissioner!" a female reporter almost shoved her microphone in his face. "Is this kidnapping about the alpha who fathered Mr Wayne's son?"

"No comment," Gordon shoved back at her, and he slid into a police cruiser.

He sighed and turned the TV off. He still had to iron the rest of the week's clothes.

Clark avoided getting assignments that required him to go to Gotham. He'd been given short assignments. Random articles about random events in the city. Besides, it wasn't like Bruce took any more people to interview him. Most of the time, as he had discovered, Dick, Jason and Tim spoke on behalf of him, but never answered questions about Bruce or Conner. Nothing was ever disclosed about them.

Some people were just too hungry for information about Bruce. The only thing that came out though the people's efforts was Conner's name. Dick was probably on the street talking to Bruce on the phone when the name slipped.

Still, as high up on the social ladder as Bruce was, a pregnant omega was frowned upon. Clark thanked every divine being in the heavens that Bruce had amazing children.

Frowned upon. Badly talked about. Lowly thought of. Rao, what had he done?

He also wasn't given any missions near Gotham. There weren't any apocalyptic situations, so the senior members were rarely put into a mission together. Rather, on some not so gravely threatening instances, more experienced members are paired up with less experienced members as part of training. The seven seniors being mixed up with different juniors and sophomores.

Right now, a week after his return, he was wandering about the Watchtower because he hadn't been assigned hours on monitor duty yet. He had just arrived when several of his teammates were simultaneously deployed with junior members. He hadn't seen Dick around anywhere either.

He wandered around some more, and ended up in the cafeteria, where he was about to bite into a bagel when he heard J'onn's voice in his head.

Superman, said the Martian, come to the conference room please.

Clark dropped the bagel and flew out of the cafeteria. When he got there, there was only him and J'onn. The Martian locked the door.

"Uh…J'onn?" he said cautiously.

"I have just been informed that Bruce has gone into heat,"

Conner curled into Jason's chest. The alpha held the frightened child close, whispering reassurances that his mother was going to be alright. Bruce had to be restrained so that he wouldn't hurt himself. They wouldn't have had to restrain him if he weren't injured. But he was, and thrashing like that and he'd tear his stitches open and injure his shot leg further.

Only Alfred was allowed in Bruce's room. A few times every day, to feed him and clean the mess. Alfred said his heat might last longer than the last one that conceived Conner, because his body knew he had an alpha. The boys prayed it was just going to be a few days. Hopefully it wasn't going to be longer than a week, because Bruce's body was already too weak to go through that. And being unconscious the whole time wasn't going to help; it was only going to be more stress on Bruce when his heat ends and he regains consciousness.

"Mommy hurting again," Conner cried. Mommy sort of comes out when he's worried or scared.

"No, mommy's not hurting again," said Dick, coming into the room with three coloured glasses, a small one for Conner, and a huge Tupperware of Conner's favourite brownies: butterscotch.

Well, technically he was, but not in the way Conner was thinking.

Tim, who had a gallon of cold milk in one hand, was behind Dick and closed the door. "His body is just preparing for something, okay?" he poured milk into Conner's no spill cup, and handed it to him.

"Alfred says it's about Mommy being a 'mega," he sniffled, as he took the cup from his big brother. "You're a 'mega, Timmy," he frowned, big fat tears threatening to spill from his eyes once again. "You'll hurt too!"

"No, no," said Tim, taking the child from Jason. He held him close, and started swaying around lightly, and rubbing circles on his back as if he were putting a child to sleep to calm Conner down. "It's okay. It's part of life. I promise, Bruce will be back before you know it, okay? And you'll be able to sleep beside him again and read stories with him,"

Dick took the cup before Conner let it go, and wrapped his arms around Tim's neck. He wanted to frown too. His poor baby brothers. Tim was closer to getting into his first heat. Jason was probably stressed as fuck. And the littlest brother was so scared Dick didn't know what to do.

"Give me that!" Jason grabbed the Tupperware from Dick's hands, popped it open and shoved a brownie into his mouth. "I sweh fis is gon ta bee a yong yeek," he said as he chewed.

Dick pulled a Gibbs on him. "Don't talk with your mouth full!"

Jason swallowed. "You watch too much NCIS!"

"Guys," said Tim, looking very unimpressed with immature big brothers. "Crying, scared child here,"

"Sorry," both men chorused. Jason glared at Dick as he put another brownie in his mouth. Dick stuck his tongue at Jason.

Okay, so maybe the brownies didn't work. Dick thought it might make Conner feel better. Obviously it didn't. It only made Jason's caveman tendencies arise. Now he felt worse because, his baby brother was crying and goddamn he felt guilty as fuck.

"Don't hog it," Dick snatched the Tupperware back from Jason and put a square into his mouth. He sat beside Jason on the bed, and Tim went to the rocking chair by the window to help calm Conner.

Tim continued rubbing circles on Conner's back. He'd been crying since he realized he hadn't seen Bruce for a while, and when his hearing kicked in and he heard Bruce's cries of pain. He even tried to punch Bruce's door down.

It's going to be a long week, and Tim could only hope that his brothers would be able to keep it together.

If anybody wants a firing squad to shoot me, you're welcome.

I have no idea what I'm doing anymore.

I don't think Clark has suffered enough.

Let me burn one of his tweeds.