Parry. Parry. Thrust. Parry. Jab.
Watch his feet. Watch his shoulders. Watch his wrists.
Parry. Turn. Thrust. Thrust. Parry. Jab. Twist. Jab.
Clark dropped to the floor and grabbed Bruce's foot, then launched himself back to his feet, holding Bruce's foot at eye level a moment before tossing it back to the floor and using the moment before his opponent regained equilibrium to disarm and yank his wrist behind his back and twist it into a control hold.
Clark couldn't help but smirk a bit—it was rare indeed that one of them got the upper hand when they trained against each other. After two years at the Temple, they knew each other, knew their tells, their inclinations, preferred techniques. They made a good team when they paired up to 'fight' other trainees.
Leaning on the banister above, Ducard chuckled, clapping in his condescending way. Clark wondered how long they'd had an audience. It was alarming, the ability to be snuck-up on. Usually, his slightly better than average hearing made it incredibly difficult to surprise him, but after so long with the kryptonite turtle in his back pocket things were fading. His ears had been ringing for three days, his joints throbbing for twice as long.
The only one who had noticed was Bruce, and the charming bastard had pressed his advantage. Blunt, fast, forceful attacks, ringing blades crashing, clashing. The noise alone had his head throbbing, and absorbing the force of the attack was the last thing his joints needed.
One thing for sure was that Yao would be waiting another day at least for the far rack of scrolls to be organized.
"Tell me why you lost, Bruce," Ducard said, making his way down the ladder to the floor where Clark had just levered Bruce to his feet.
"I didn't react fast enough and was disarmed."
"A confrontation doesn't end at the loss of a weapon."
"Well, it was the beginning of the end of the confrontation, sir," Bruce said, smirking in Clark's direction. Ducard smirked himself, chuckling.
"Kent, tell him why he lost."
"Because he wasn't expecting a form of attack made without the sword."
"Correct," Ducard had lost any hint of the laughter. "You have yet to grasp the concept of merging techniques, Bruce. You expect your opponents to follow rules that only exist in your mind."
Bruce took the criticism silently, looking straightforward stoically. Clark remembered a similar lecture a few days into his own training. It was a good mark on Bruce that he didn't react to the patronizing words, as they'd both heard them before.
"Keep practicing," Ducard instructed, looking at Clark. "Break him of this ridiculous habit."
Clark nodded, feeling his neck throb in protest.
Bruce was frowning when Clark glanced over at him after Ducard had left. Clark handed the saber back, trying to smile reassuringly around the headache.
"With me, it was the violence. I was raised on a farm, had to leave on the day we killed the chickens," Clark smirked, rolling his shoulders.
"Do you have arthritis or something?" Bruce asked, dutifully raising his saber to a ready position.
"What?"
"Arthritis. But it wouldn't be arthritis, it's in your ears, too."
"Uh…"
"Do you have the flu? You're acting like you have the mother of all migraines and the joints of an eighty-year-old."
"I'm not that bad," Clard frowned. It wasn't as though he was hobbling around, after all. He was just a bit sore.
"No, but it's close."
"Clark scowled and pressed the attack, ignoring the screaming protest from not only his eardrums but from every bone in his body. They had to stop a few minutes later due to a nosebleed that just wouldn't quit, sending Clark to the mostly-bare room that served as an infirmary at the Temple to have cotton shoved up his nose to staunch the blood.
-
It was merely a week later that Clark left the League of Shadows. He'd finished reading the texts on the very back shelf of the Chronicler's library and been horrified with what the new information had clarified. The League destroyed cities. They took history and civilization into their own hands, infiltrating society, destroying, pruning it was called in the texts, cities, economies, communities as Ras al-Guhl saw fit.
It had been after midnight when Clark had finished his reading. Horrified, he'd packed away the kryptonite figurine in its little lead case, thrown his scant collection of belongings into the knapsack he'd arrived with, and stalked for the exit.
He had planned to simply leave and never look back. He hadn't planned to confront anybody or even alert them to his departure. However, Ducard was in the large chamber with the main door through which Clark had planned to exit. He and Bruce were doing the modified sort of yoga the members of the League ended every day with, relaxing muscles and mind for sleep.
"Leaving us, Mr. Kent?" Ducard asked when Clark's hand touched the door handle. "Sneaking out in the dead of night after you know all our secrets?"
"Abandoning an abomination after I realized the truth, the reality of said abominable organization," Clark responded, realizing he was clenching he teeth and willing himself to relax. Once upon a time, before the League, he'd have had more trouble controlling himself and his abilities, but he had learned all of the League's secrets, and some were not so horrible as the most recent that had come to his attention.
"Leave us," Ducard instructed, shoulders tense. Bruce nodded dutifully and disappeared through the far arch, but they both knew he was still watching, listening. "An abomination, you say?" Ducard asked, taunted, switching to the antiquated, nearly dead, language in which those last scrolls had been written.
"The world is not your canvas, your playground. It is not for you and yours to decide who lives and who dies, which cities rise and which fall. Which prosper and which are destroyed. It's not your place to do the destroying."
"Somebody, an incorruptible third-party, needs to regulate civilization or the mistakes of a single society will bring them all down," Ducard hissed. Clark glared. He could feel the intangible power that was always within him swelling, could feel it all coming back, feel the last traces of the kryptonite taint ebbing away. For the first time since he'd arrived at the Temple, his eyes burned dryly, the precursor to heat vision. He clenched his teeth, forcibly controlling himself and wondering what Ducard would see.
"People must be allowed to learn from their mistakes, to be allowed to make mistakes from which they can recover and move on!"
"That process takes too long. The League has been in place for centuries, long before you or I were even alive. The League has spent those centuries studying cultures and cities, watching, interfering when necessary. The League has developed the wisdom to see when people need to be shocked, to be destroyed before they destroy themselves and bring down the rest of the world. The League has been around to serve justice to the faltering and build them back up stronger, with the righteous at the core."
"Maybe you should spend less time on your mountain-top—secluded places only contain the minimum of wisdom, and usually only in the movies," Clark said, the foreign words sounding clipped from his mouth. There was no translation for 'movies' in the old tongue, but he didn't care about substituting in English. He didn't care which language they argued in.
"Where is this wisdom, then? A farm?" Ducard mocked. Clark clenched his fists, keeping himself from destroying the ornate door behind him or one of the support pillars nearby.
"In the world," he hissed, then shouted, "If you plan to make a place 'better' you sure as hell better understand a bit of it first."
"You have seen all the documents," Ducard raged. "All the scrolls and books, all the careful notes. We understand these places better than you, better than anyone, could hope to!"
"No," Clark frowned, willing himself calm. "No, you don't understand them. You just have the raw facts, the surface material. You have no right to administer what you call justice, and certainly not by the means you choose. You are just as corruptible as anybody else."
Ducard fumed, striding forward, looking as though he was about to explode. "You could've led the League. Are you saying you are corruptible?"
"I will have no part in this."
Something in Clark's posture must've given Ducard pause, because he stopped advancing. His expression was still furious, but he seemed unable to rage further. Clark gave a mocking half bow.
"I thank you for what you've taught me. I hope we never meet again."
Then he left, slamming the door so hard that the entire building seemed to shake at his departure.
Bruce remained at the Temple for another two years, training with Ducard instead of Clark. Ducard never spoke of Clark after he was gone, and Bruce didn't dare bring him up, didn't dare read more than the bare minimum of the scrolls from the Chronicler's library in the event that he would provoke Ducard's wrath.
When he was asked to execute a man, Bruce finally left. He paid his debts, rescuing Ducard from the flaming Temple and death over the side of the cliff, but he, like Clark, did not look back after he'd finished with the League of Shadows. And, like Clark, he had the beginnings of a purpose growing in his mind when he left Tibet.