Koslov's journal, translated from Russian:
20.6.1972: Three days here. Craft damaged beyond repair, abandoned for cave shelter. Radio salvaged but damaged. Mashchenko has broken rib, blood loss and head injury. Baranova, myself unaffected. No sign of crew of Voskhod 7.
21.6.1972: Possible distress call received. Origin unknown, Baranova unsure as to whether it is a true call or anomaly based on weather conditions.
22.6.1972: Radio cannot yet send messages. Three more distress calls received, standard code: Mayday. Identifying source: Voskhod 7. Pinpointing origin of signal.
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Steam rose around him and Clark tipped his head back, leaning against warm rock worn smooth by millions of years of water, wearing it away drop by drop. He looked up, where once he could have seen through a mountain to see the sky. To see the sky and the sun and the sun beyond it and the next sun beyond that one. But now there was only darkness there, and all he could see was what was near him, surrounded, like he was, in an amber sphere cast by the golden glow of a torch. Once he could have heard the sounds of the storm outside, or even something close, like Bruce moving around in a cave above him, preparing food or repairing equipment or tending the fire. But now there was only silence, broken by the occasional drip of condensation.
He forced himself to stay in the water, just a few minutes longer; let it do its work. Let it soothe and repair his aching muscles so that he could tear and build them again, make them stronger. The climb was going to start with glaciers, and there was no way he was going to be the liability on the lifeline. At least, he didn't want to be.
Somewhere above him in the pitch black cold, water seeped through miles of stone. It filtered and dripped down stalactites hanging hundreds of feet above. A drop fell beside him in the water, sending out ripples of gold across the surface of the small pool, and Clark dragged his finger through the tiny waves, disrupting the perfect, concentric rings. He gripped the rim of the pool and pulled himself up out of the water. Enough waiting. Toweling off as best he could he grabbed his shorts and the heaviest of the makeshift barbells.
He was halfway through his second routine when his entire right side locked up, and that, of course, was the moment Bruce chose to join him. He dumped a bundle of sticks near the pool and came closer. His flight suit was grimy at the knees so he must have been crawling around on the floor of the cave sketching again and although Clark barely had the energy to finish his set, he fronted. There was a reason nobody knew Clark Kent was Superman. He was a damn good actor. "Any progress on the map?"
"I want you to come and debrief me again on our guy's route. " Unzipping his flight suit and stripping down to his boxers, Bruce dusted his hands. "You translated his plan post-treeline." Bruce hefted the other weight in the pile before looking up to study Clark closely, eyes unreadable. "How many more?"
"Three," Clark lied, working to keep his movements smooth. He inhaled on the flex, exhaled on the release and got through the next
rep without his arm trembling, but only just barely. Concentrating hard, he startled when Bruce's hand came down on his right shoulder, cool against place where his injury had been, palm catching a little on the scar left behind, and right over the taunt ball of angry muscle and nerves, where the real injury still lay.
"You're planking," Bruce said, or something like it. Clark didn't know what that was and he didn't have the energy to ask but he nodded, arm frozen in place for a moment, glad it was a steam room down here already, hiding the sweat he could feel forming on his forehead.
"Overcompensating for the injured muscle." Bruce reached for the weight he'd held and Clark's hand made a fist around nothing.
Focusing, Clark gracefully brought his hand down to his lap, as fluid and smooth as he could, fighting back a shudder. "We're running out of time."
"I thought you were the optimistic one. How's your leg?"
"It's fine."
"You overdo that one too? Lie back."
"I thought you wanted me to look at the map."
Bruce grunted something about later, and Clark followed the downward press of Bruce's hand on his shoulder. The stone was cooler than his heated skin and smooth under his back.
"Let's see your range of motion." Bruce crooked Clark's bad leg, bending it at the knee, and wrapped his hand around his foot to push it up toward his stomach, back and forth. "Pretty smooth."
"One more set, if you'll quit playing with my leg."
"No, you don't," Bruce said, stretching it leg back out. "Turn over." He nudged Clark's hip and shoulder.
"What?"
"Turn over."
"Why?"
"I'm going to show you what you're doing wrong."
"What a refreshing change of pace."
"That a joke?"
"You tell me," Clark said, but he rolled over.
"Being in pain makes you a little testy I think. This one," Bruce said, digging his elbow into the knot on Clark's back hard enough to make him yelp, "is doing all the work for ithis/i one." He ran his hand along his shoulder.
"Well thank you, Dr. Batman."
"It's an interesting side of you, Clark," Bruce said blandly, unperturbed, his hands pressing harder against sore muscles. "All this sarcasm."
"Ow, stop that!"
"Be still." Bruce batted Clark's hand away and started in with a rubdown, a palm on each shoulder like a boxer's trainer in the corner ring.
Clark snorted and put his arms up to pillow his cheek. It did feel good. Bruce's hands were strong and cool . Firm, but for the most part, gentle, kneading slowly. Even when he hit a sore spot he seemed to know what he was doing, and Clark felt muscles he didn't even know he'd been holding tight loosen up. "I thought millionaires were usually on the other end of these."
"Billionaires, Clark. Billionaires."
"This what you do in the Batcave between cases?"
"This and manicures."
Bruce put a fist on either side of the knob at the top of Clark's neck and began working his knuckles up and down his spine before going back to the worst of the tension. He dug into the cramped muscle with his elbow again and Clark gasped, but he followed it with more gentle pressure , teasing out the soreness, soothing the tension until it melted away, slowly dissolving. Clark closed his eyes and felt himself melting into the ledge he lay on, relaxing in tiny increments.
When Bruce spoke, it was very soft. "When I broke my back… "
Half-asleep, Clark blinked, tensing under Bruce's hands, struggling to explain that of course he knew this injury couldn't compare to—
Bruce spoke before he could say it. "You're worried about the trek. I am too, and I didn't get attacked by a tiger."
"I don't want to let you down."
"You won't."
"A team is only as good as its weakest member."
"You get that out of a fortune cookie?"
"You said it at the last League Meeting."
"I wasn't talking to iyou/i."
"That was then."
"Good Christ, so you can't fly. You don't have heat vision. The rest of us seem to do alright without it. Join the regular people, Clark."
"Says the billionaire."
"Touche." Clark could hear the smile in his voice.
"And that's not what I mean."
Bruce was silent for a while, using the sides of his hands to pound up and down. Finally he spoke. "When I broke my back, I thought I'd never be able to wear the cowl again." He slipped his thumbs under Clark's shoulder blades, working up and down the space there. "But I had to try. Sometimes I overdid it, working myself into a wreck, trying to become what I once was." His hands slowed, stilled. "I couldn't become what I once was."
If Clark had been Robin that would've been his cue. But he wasn't, so he waited, eyes closed, listening to Bruce's voice. "That first night I went out alone, truly alone, after the boys stopped watching me to make sure I wasn't going to fall off a building—that first night, I got into trouble. I was outnumbered and surrounded. I took hits I would have normally dodged with no problem, I got disoriented and confused, and badly wounded. " He sighed, working on the back of Clark's neck. "One of them stabbed me. It got through my Kevlar, somehow. There was a flaw in the Batsuit. I've since fixed it." Bruce's hands stilled and his voice dropped even lower. "I doubled over from the pain, and from the shock of it. And then, when I looked up, I was looking down the barrel of a gun."
It was warm, but Clark had to fight a shiver. "What did you do?"
Bruce's hands went back to work. "I did the only thing I could do. I was not going to die in an alley killed point blank by some hoodlum because of self-doubt. If I'm going to die…" He stopped, corrected himself. "iWhen/i I die, I want it to be because of some error, or even chance. Something that makes sense. Not because of doubt. And not because I haven't done everything I could do to stop it."
"So you did."
"I did the only thing I know how to do. Just like you do, Superman."
Clark didn't know the last time he'd heard Bruce talk for so long, or give so much away. Not even as Bruce Wayne. He turned his head toward him, watching the man straighten, taking a deep breath, his own body as stiff as Clark's felt. "I think I'm going to use the weights now. Maybe take a sauna." There was the slightest hint of a smile around his eyes, but what it was private and small. He moved to the bundle of sticks he'd brought with him into the cave and swept them into the pool. "After I take those back out."
"What's our scout project tonight?"
"It's your turn to work on Koslov's journal. Me? I'm stringing snowshoes. The clock is ticking."
