Day 71, 08:14:21 hours
S. still compromised but not incapacitated. Not healing as quickly as hoped, but conditions here are not ideal. No infection.
Trap #2 productive as of 0600 hours. Small rodent, similar to arctic collared lemming acquired.
Storm is finally abating. I intend to seek out cave S. discovered upon his arrival.
11:06:17 hours Located cave. Full report to follow.
Bruce pulled off his furs as he entered base camp. He butchered the animal in the outer chamber, burying the entrails and refuse. Then he cleaned his hands and picked up the newly acquired roll of bandages with something that felt very close to a real smile on his face.
Clark, however, was not smiling. He half-sat, half-lay on the cot, big bare shoulders covered in nothing but the rags of Batman's cape, torn into strips to tie around and bandage his wounds. Slumped against a makeshift pillow, the Man of Steel nodded, but didn't say anything.
Bruce reached for a cup and poured some coffee from the pot on the fire. "Coffee?"
Clark sighed as he took the cup. "Yeah."
"Have some sugar." Bruce handed him a packet. Clark's eyes flicked to his, really focusing on him for the first time that day. "Can we spare it?"
"We're celebrating."
"What are we celebrating?"
"For starters, I went out—"
"Good thing one of us can," Clark said, almost under his breath.
Bruce poured himself the last dregs of the coffee. "Rabbit for dinner. Or breakfast. How are you today, by the way?"
"Been better."
"You've been a lot worse, too."
Clark didn't answer, sipping his coffee and staring off at one of the cave's shadowy corners.
"Speaking of," Bruce said, allowing himself the tiniest of flourishes as he produced the roll of gauze he'd been hiding, "We should change your bandages."
Clark's mouth dropped open for a second, then closed again as his gaze went from the bandages to Bruce and then back again. "Where the hell did you get that?"
Bruce pursed his mouth a little as he swallowed a mouthful of bitter coffee. "Hell? Really? Superman throws out iHell/i now?"
Clark scowled but did correct his language. "Where'd you get that?"
"I made it to the cave you found."
"They were there?"
Bruce nodded, downing the last of his coffee and putting down the cup. "Indeed. Plus… a few other things."
"You always such a tease?"
"Ah, there's the Clark I know." Bruce patted the uninjured part of the man's shoulder. "Lean up and I'll tell you while we do this." He started unwinding the roll of bandage and moved to wedge himself behind Clark, half sitting on the cot with a knee bracing the man's back.
Clark huffed out a harsh breath. "That my kidney you're digging into?"
"You tell me, alien," Bruce said, but he did shift his knee a little. "Hold this." He gave Clark the roll of gauze, reaching around to put it in his good hand, and pulled out his knife.
From his position directly behind the man, Bruce couldn't see his face, but Clark obviously heard the knife's snick as the blade extended. "So I guess it's the end of the Bat cape."
"Sorry to see it go?"
"It's iyour/i cape."
"Well only ione/i of us has a cape that's invinci—" Superman—Clark's shoulders tensed at that, so Bruce changed course. "Served us well." He slid the knife's blade between the fabric of the cape and the bare flesh of Clark's upper arm. "Going to start cutting. You'll feel a pull."
"I'm fine. The cave?"
Bruce ripped through the makeshift bandage. "Someone's been here before us."
"Yeah, I saw the set up, Bruce. A fire-ring, some tools—"
"Soviets."
"What?"
"You heard me. Deep breath." He pulled the bandage away from the wound.
"You don't have to go easy." Clark grumbled. "I can take it."
"There's some fresh bleeding. I should've… Hand me the gauze."
Clark reached behind himself with his good hand and did, and Bruce cut a square, pressing it to the spot that had been reopened, applying pressure. "Here." He passed the roll of bandages back. "Need both hands to re-wrap this."
"How…" Clark said slowly. "How'd they get here? And how long ago?"
"Not sure yet." He tested the gauze he'd been pressing to the wound. It had stopped bleeding; only two layers red with blood. He pulled it away, gently. "Stitches look good, Clark."
"Had a good surgeon. Tell me more about the cave."
"Pass me the end of that roll, please? You hold the rest. We're going to need to raise your left arm, Clark. How far can you do it yourself?"
"Not very." Clark's voice went husky. "I was practicing earlier."
"Show me," Bruce said softly.
Clark's biceps and triceps and trapezoids all flexed. Bruce could feel them move under his fingers—see the muscles working—but Clark's hand only lifted about six inches.
"That's right."
Then, in mid-air, it started to tremble, little shudders starting at the fingertips and spreading up the arm.
Bruce stretched out his own, extending it from behind Clark, holding it two inches higher in the air. "Can you touch mine?"
Clark was watching his progress, and Bruce watched the familiar set of Superman's jaw as he firmed his resolve. His arm began to shake harder, but he lifted it a few millimeters closer to his target.
"Almost there," Bruce said, feeling his own breath bounce off of Clark's cheek.
Clark's eyes closed as he concentrated. Sweat was forming—almost imperceptible, but Bruce saw it—on the side of his face, his forehead. His jaw line and neck. The man had to be grinding his teeth hard enough to shatter something. The palsy in his arm worsened until Bruce had to give in, had to close the distance between their hands, grasping Clark's in his own.
Clark opened his eyes and blinked, then looked away, turning his head so that Bruce couldn't read his expression. But he returned the pressure—some of it, anyway, as he squeezed Bruce's hand for a moment. His breathing slowly returned to normal and against his chest, Bruce felt the man relax. He watched the bicep and triceps ease their tension, then began winding the gauze around Clark's wound.
"Soviets," he said again. It came out a little ragged, so he cleared his throat. "I don't know how or why yet, but a team, looks like. At least four men were in that cave for a while."
"How'd they…"
"Get here? I'm not sure, but I have a hunch. I'm going to have—we're going to have to investigate further."
Clark sighed. "Look, ithanks/i, but don't sugarcoat it."
"What?" Bruce could hear the irritation growing in his own voice.
"iYou're/i going to be the one doing the investigating. I'm useless."
Bruce threaded the gauze for its last pass between Clark's torso and arm—a little rougher than all the other passes, then tore the strip off with his teeth. "Don't talk like that." He let Clark's hand drop to tie the bandage and tucked the ends underneath.
"It's the truth."
"No it's not." Bruce said, shoving Superman's weight hard enough to climb out from under him.
"I can't help in any—"
"Shut up, Clark." He rounded the cot and knelt by the other side to pull the fur away enough to expose a bare leg, bound with the black strips of his cape, and focused on getting the old bandage off.
"I can't even… I can't even take care of myself. Have to be shaved, helped to the bathroom, practically fed—"
Bruce glared at him. "Done feeling sorry for yourself?"
"Bruce, if you—if something had happened to you today while you were out—"
"What?" Bruce sliced through the shreds of fabric, gritting his teeth. "You'd be alone and helpless? You'd find a way, Clark. You could make it even if—"
"That's not what I mean." Clark scrubbed at his face.
Bruce looked up long enough to raise an eyebrow.
Clark sighed. "If you'd been… you'd been hurt somehow—attacked by some animal, dropped into some crevasse…" Bruce lifted Clark's knee to reach the underside of his thigh and the fur that covered his groin and jock shifted. Clark scowled, yanking it back to cover himself.
Bruce growled and shoved the thing over far enough to work on the leg, sliding gauze between the cot and the meat of Clark's thigh. "Yeah?" he finally said when Clark clammed up.
"I couldn't," Clark started, and now his voice broke a little. "You'd be all alone out there, and I wouldn't be able to help you. All alone in the cold and snow and I'd be in here, all warm and useless and not even knowing—"
Bruce snorted, finally making eye contact again. "Warm? It's freezing in here." He felt his mouth curve despite himself, just slightly.
"Well," Clark said, shrugging, then immediately wincing at the pain the movement caused. "It's not as cold as outside…"
Bruce gave him his most deadpan look and Clark's words trailed off, a smile creeping, slow and small, but it was there. More in Clark's eyes than anything else. Bruce's own smile grew a little too. "This the kind of fact-based reporting that passes for investigative journalism these days?"
"Don't mock my profession, Bruce." It was Clark's old tone of voice, and Bruce felt something in his chest that had been tense unclench a little at the sound.
He wrapped two more layers of gauze around Clark's thigh. "I'm so cold most of the time I can't feel my nose."
Clark grinned, leaning back in the makeshift pillow. "I wake up shaking at night sometimes."
"Should try the floor."
"Why iare/i you sleeping on the floor? Told you it's ridiculous. Coldest place you could pick."
Bruce shrugged, tying off the bandage and cutting the end, before carefully tucking the edges under. He stood. "I've got something to show you," he said over his shoulder as he headed for the outer chamber. In minutes, he was back, holding the animal carcass in one hand, two notebooks in the other. "Take a look at this." He handed Clark one of the books.
"What is it?"
"Found it in the cave." Bruce turned, putting his back to Clark while he skewered dinner on a pointed stick.
"Don't have to keep blocking my view when you do that," Clark said, flipping through pages. "I know those aren't rabbits that we're eating."
Bruce grunted a meaningless response. Then: "What do you think of the book?"
"I think it's a logbook of some kind."
"Thought so too." Bruce put the lemming on the spit and moved to look over his shoulder.
"But the code… any ideas?"
"Working on it, but no—not so far. How's your Russian?"
"Passable."
Bruce held out the other book he held in his hand. "This one's not in code. You want the decoding or translating from Russian?"
"Decoding," Clark said, not looking up from the page. I recognize something—a pattern."
Bruce handed him a pencil. "Take notes." On the floor beside him, Bruce leaned back against the cot, opening his own book and getting to work himself. The smell of roasting meat filled the cave and they passed the next hour in companionable silence, except for the sizzle of the fire, the scrape of scribbling pencils and the soft sound of turning pages.