His cheeks were itching; tacky and crusty despite him having only a half hour ago taken a shower for the express purpose of washing the uncomfortable feel of them away. It wasn't surprising anymore, he'd come to expect it even, to find work arounds so the aching, hollow feeling in his chest didn't consume him. To look for work arounds at least. Nothing really helped. He could scrub away the evidence, shore himself up in his work, pave over all the cracks and pretend none of it oozed through… but the second he idled the waves would crash against his pathetic fortress and, made of paper and brittle glass as it was, the whole thing would come down on top of him, drowning him even as the broken shards cut into every part of him forced him to suck in a watery breath.

This time, it had been a literal shattering of glass that had done him in. Bruce had been down in the cave, alone but for the enraged shrieking of bats in the deeper parts of the system, unhappy that he'd still been there hours after they'd returned from their nightly hunt. His own hunt had yielded little, bruised, bloody hands that soaked the protective padding of his gloves and some small amount of evidence from a scene he'd compromised before he'd even thought to look it over. His attempts to analyze said evidence were going poorly as well.

Some kind of acid Dent had used on… something in a run down apartment - it had looked so much like one Bruce had found Ja… there'd only been traces of it left once Bruce had 'neutralized' the henchmen who'd been left behind on clean up, and those traces had only remained because they'd literally been burned into the walls.

Identifying at least a few of the components that remained should have been short work, even with what little of the substance Bruce had to work with, if not for his hands. Stiff and swollen, no amount of willpower was going to grant him the dexterity necessary for delicate lab work. He'd dropped the sample, the thin slides fallen to the ground in a tinkling of glass that might well have been a crash, and in his frustration he'd flung the remained of the the equipment to the ground in a far more literal crash and a more violent shattering of glass that spread the pieces all across the ground, and for a moment he'd thought…

Jason was always coming down here in the mornings he didn't find Bruce in bed to see what he was working on, oftentimes barefoot. And for a second, Bruce had let himself think he needed to clean up the broken glass before his son stepped in a piece and got hurt.

But Bruce's son would never be getting hurt again, he couldn't, despite the clawing, horrifying twisting of Bruce's chest telling him he was wrong, and that Jason needed him right now Bruce had to know it wasn't true and now he was reminded of why all over again. Reminded that this feeling was never going to go away, because how could it? Sweeping up all the glass in the world wasn't going to help in the slightest, beating every low life into the ground, righting every injustice, fixing everything that was broken, did it even matter?

Bruce could do it all, when he worked, when he kept going and didn't let himself think, or breath, he could believe it was all adding up to something. As soon as he stopped, and he remembered…

"Bruce."

The voice, coming from a short distance ahead startled him like it shouldn't have, hadn't for years before this, if he'd cared enough to care, he might have cursed his own inattentiveness.

"Clark." He responded, looked back at the glass and debated internally on whether or not a guest - unwelcome or no - merited cleaning it, a knot in his throat warned Bruce against trying. "I'm busy." His voice was tight, his cheeks still wet, he needed Clark to leave before he picked up on anything worse.

"I have a sample I need analyzed." Clark pressed, holding out a vial of viscous red - blood, Bruce guessed - for inspection. "It shouldn't take long."

"A dozen facilities would be happy to help you." Hell, Clark could likely do it by sight alone, he didn't need Bruce for this. Bruce headed for the computer, brushing past his friend, and Clark was his friend, he was also the first friend he'd dealt with after Jason… Bruce didn't need another reminder of how that had ended, he didn't need more pity and soft words, he didn't think he could handle it.

"It needs to be yours," Clark followed after, he didn't put himself in Bruce's way, but didn't let him pass by either, he offered Bruce the vial again, "He… I need you to trust that this is real," he looked at Bruce, his eyes filled not only with sorrow or pity as they had been before, though those were still present, but desperation, "please, Bruce."

Wordlessly, Bruce held out his hand to accept the vial. Once he reached his secondary equipment, his voice sounding exactly as tired as he was, he asked, "What am I looking for?"

"You'll know it when you see it." Clark followed along after Bruce like an anxious child.

Cryptic; Bruce didn't appreciate it, but he was also too worn down to bother mentioning that, Clark would know, he always did.

Still, Bruce was careful, more so than he'd been with his own more delicate lab work only minutes ago. Bruce divided the sample in case he had another accident, then divided further so as many tests as possible could be done at the same time and he could be done with it. Once the automated tasks were running he plucked a vial from the beeping centrifuge and did the manual, but all a slide under the microscope told him was that he was looking at a perfectly healthy, seemingly normal drop of human blood. Whatever it was Clark wanted Bruce to see, he wasn't seeing it anymore than he'd seen Clark pick up the mess Bruce had made of his other equipment, but the mess was gone and Alfred was asleep - and even he couldn't work that fast.

The initial chemical analysis similarly came back with nothing, no foreign substances present in the blood. Still, nothing out of the ordinary.

Then the DNA profile flashed across the computer's screen, it had found one match in the system, Bruce looked up to see his dead son's masked face grinning down at him. 'MATCH'.

"Clark." Bruce croaked, his legs going weak. It was impossible, the blood had been fresh, no preservatives to keep it looking that way after six months. God, it had been six months now. He needed to check the sample again, run all the tests over again, find the source and… but he took one step towards the reserved samples, and he fell. In a blur of red and blue, Bruce was seated in the medbay. "What is this?" His tone was accusing, his arm shooting out to hold Clark in place as if there were anything he could actually do to that effect.

"I heard him…" Clark swallowed, his own hand coming to rest on Bruce's shoulder, vulnerable and earnest, "I heard him coming back to life in his grave." Haunted.

"How…"

"I don't know." Clark said, his presence anchoring Bruce in place, his hand and wrist real and there disabusing Bruce of the notion that this might have been a dream.

"It can't be." Bruce was shaking now, his cheeks wet again, the world wasn't kind enough for this, but it was just cruel enough to pretend it was.

"It is." Clark insisted, "I swear it Bruce, it's him, and for his sake you need to believe it's him, he needs you now there isn't time for you to doubt him."

All the tests… Bruce had run them himself and there had been nothing there to tell him it wasn't wasn't real, he had no reason to believe it was a trick, but that the world had never been this kind to him.

"He was screaming for you when I found him." Clark swallowed loudly, his features going tight, pained, "Jason's calling for his dad now. You need to get to him... before it's too late."

"Where?" Bruce asked, his previous thoughts melting into the background, the empty ground where shattered glass had laid staring back at him. Calling for him… Clark wasn't lying, and more than just the physical evidence, Bruce could feel it, had felt it earlier that night even, that something was different. It had been too late before, if it was again, if Bruce lost… Even this smallest of chances, Bruce knew he needed to take, no matter any risk, this spark of hope was worth everything.

"You need to change out of the suit first," Clark released his hold on Bruce, but left Bruce's hold in him intact as he stepped back, "And get a car. It needs to be Bruce Wayne showing up, not Batman. I'll tell you more on the way."