Part 3
For all of the usual standard pre story things see part 1.
An hour and a half later, the car pulled up outside the Kent's farm. Clark was already waiting outside the farm for them to arrive having heard the car approaching with his super hearing. Walking towards his friend and colleague as he got out of the car, Bruce gave one of his rare smiles at Clark as they shake hands.
"Hi Bruce, I didn't expect you to come, you know."
"I know, but it pays to do things unexpected of you."
"Is it all about the mission with you?"
Grunt
Smiling to himself, Clark turned to the rest of the group greeting them all in turn and showing them all inside – glad to see that, at least for the time being, Dick and Barbara were happy and together.
Inside Ma and Pa Kent were laying the table with the help of Kon. Tim went over and greeted his friend. While the two were doing an extremely long and complicated hand shake devised by Kon, Ma and Pa went to greet Dick and Babs and see if they wanted anything to drink.
Outside Bruce and Clark were talking about why he was visiting.
"Bruce he may be a clone, but he's a good boy. He's trying so hard to be a hero, trying to make me proud… I feel like he's my son at times. I know that Lois and I can never have children, but maybe with Connor we can have a family."
Bruce just stared out into the night thinking about what Clark was saying before replying, "I don't really think of him as your clone. It's just that whenever I see him, I think about how we all came so close to loosing you after Doomsday. It shook all of us to the core and I felt like I had lost my parents again… I'm not good at coping with my feelings. I hide them… and that hurts others."
"You know Bruce, that has got to be the longest sentence I've ever heard you say." Clark replied smiling. "But Bruce, I know it's hard for you, but Tim and Kon are friends. Couldn't you give him some slack? It's hard for the younger ones to be with people of their own age with the secret identity. I know when I was younger it was difficult lying to my friends about everything, but they can be themselves with each other in their own groups. Even though you haven't raised Tim like you did Dick, I can see a lot of him in you. He could very easily end up as shut off from the world as you are: so for his sake could you at least let Kon come into Gotham occasionally to hang out and be normal with Tim? I think we could all do with some normality in our lives?"
"I don't mean to bring these children into my world, it just kind of happens. But I see what you mean. I'll try it for Tim's sake under one condition… NO powers or the deal is off."
"Well, that is more than I should have expected from you. Shall we go inside and just try and be normal for once? It could be good for us all to do this once in a while."
"Let's go."
Back inside Jonathon and Martha where chatting to Dick and Babs, asking how things where going and if there was any chance of a specific party in the near future. At the mention of this Dick looked embarrassed and replied, "We haven't really talked about it. We're just seeing how things are going first getting used to living together and making sure we won't kill each other anytime soon. Wouldn't you agree dear?"
At hearing this hated name for her, Babs punched Dick in the ribs and said; "That's right pixie boots and if you ever call me that again you won't live to see the near future, I can promise you that."
They could all tell this was all good natured so chuckled away except Dick, who just rubbed his ribs.
During dinner the conversation moved away from work and stuff and was just a group of people catching up with each other. Just after the washing up was done Babs' laptop beeped showing that someone in the superhero world wanted her help so Dick and Babs went outside to sit on the old swing bench on the veranda so she could reply to the message in peace.
However when they got outside they found that it was just Dinah wanting to get any gossip from the meal that she could pass off to the rest of the worlds superheroes which ended in an instant messaging conversation with some private comments just for Babs added by Dick which thankfully Dinah could not hear.
Inside Bruce and Clark where watching out of the window at the happy couple when Clark asked, "So how are things with Selina?"
"Why's Lois not here?"
Obviously flustered at this change of tack Clark said "She's on a story in a Moscow."
"So it's not that she saw the latest newspaper article suggesting that you and Diana are together?"
At this point Clark turned the subject away from this topic and on to far easier subjects like the last intergalactic threat to the planet.
Across the room Martha went to Tim and Kon asking if they would like to use one of Clark's old board games.
"What have you got?" asked Tim
"Well he always used to like to play Risk"
At which point Bruce said in a dead pan voice "Really Clark? You used to play at taking over the world?"
So Martha said "Well we also have Clue."
"That sounds like fun. Can we all play?" asked Bruce.
"It's alright, we won't play. It's not really fair you playing against us at a detective game when, well… you're you!" responded Kon.
In the end they decided to play Twister with Babs and Martha spinning the wheel while Jonathon looked on and laughed. After Kon was caught flying so that he would not fall over Bruce decided that a no power rule should most definitely be enforced whenever Kon comes to Gotham. By the end of the night Bruce realised that he had not had this much fun for a long time without it including purple leather clad cat burglars on roof tops. With this realisation he smiled and thought that when he got back he may try and see if he could get Selina to agree to a short trip in a few weeks so he could maybe make their relationship a bit more solid.
The End
Thank you to everyone who has left me reviews after the last two chapters and I'm sorry about the delay for this chapter it has been due to many different reasons. I hope that everyone has enjoyed my first little foray into the world of the Dark Knight and the DC world and I hope to post some more stories soon as long as my university schedule allows. So I know this is late but to everyone here's too a less dark Dark Knight and Nightwing may DC let them have a love life.
