"I just want both of you to know that this is a safe place, and all the thoughts we have in this room are not meant to be hurtful, or mean, or . . . Jesus, I sound like my mother. But you get the fucking point. But I want you both to say how you feel. Get your feelings out there. Both of you." Bruce put a hand on Superboy's shoulder.
The clone continued to scarf down his ceviche, shoveling piles of dusty pink cubes of raw tilapia spritzed with lime juice, pieces of fresh cilantro stuck in his teeth. "Uh huh," he said absentmindedly.
Clark buried his head in his hands. "Superboy, for once in your life, could you take someone else's life into consideration? Could you STOP EATING?" He grabbed a hand full of Superboy's thick, glossy black hair and pulled his head up to look him in the eye. Bruce saw the fear in the kid's eyes, genuine, unfiltered fear, and he wondered if any of the Robins ever felt that way around him. Bruce's mind flashed back to all the times he had snapped at them, gripping them with his large, strong, adult hands, his face so close to theirs that their noses almost touched. And the yelling. When he yelled at them so loud his face was red and the veins in his neck pulsed so hard that they almost snapped. Bruce thought of Dick. Was their relationship just as fucked as Superboy and Clark's?
"I just . . . I haven't eaten in days," Superboy whimpered. His eyes hesitantly shifted towards Bruce. Superboy looked down at the table. "I'm . . . I'm sorry."
"Are you sorry? Part of me thinks you're never truly sorry, Superboy, about anything," Clark spat. "You know what you are? You're a burden. That's all you fucking are."
"I sense a lot of hostility here," Bruce said. "Where is this coming from, Clark?"
Clark's cold blue eyes glared at Bruce. "I never asked for a clone. His very existence makes me feel violated. Raped. For God's sake, if someone made another version of yourself, Bruce, would you feel comfortable looking at it? Raising it? Making it your own?"
"'It'?!" Superboy shot up from the table. "I'm an 'IT'?! Why can't you just treat my like a person, Dad? Why can't you just treat my like your son?"
"Because you're not my fucking son," Clark snapped. "You're not a person.
"You're my fucking clone."
–
Rich and Damian watched the city above, the city rampant with crime. Where did they even start? Did they stop Harley and Poison Ivy first? Or the drug shipment at the pier, with cocaine hidden in pineapples? What about Two Face, or the group of kids mugging the little old ladies coming back from their book club?
Damian rolled his eyes.
"Let's just do the easy stuff first, and then get to the hard stuff," Damian said, pointing at the young muggers. "This'll be over by the time we finish up with Harley and Poison Ivy, or the drug bust. So come on! What are we waiting for?"
Rich sighed. Damian was right; they had to do what they could, or nothing would be done. Rich was especially afraid of what Harley and Poison Ivy would do—his fear stemmed from their unpredictability. What would their motive be? Who would they target? Rich didn't even have an inkling.
"Ahem."
Rich and Damian turned around, and saw some of their old friends. Red Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, and Starfire stepped towards them. "We came to help," said Starfire. "We want to help."
Rich smiled and nodded.
Wonder Girl chose to fight the hoodlums alone and would meet Kid Flash to track down Two Face in a piano bar downtown, while Damian and Red Robin at the Industrial Park to take down Poison Ivy and Harley. Starfire and Rich would go bust the drug shipment at the pier in Manhattan.
Damian looked at Rich and raised an eyebrow. Rich ignored him.
"So, how've you been?" Rich asked Starfire, who looked own the passenger side window as he sped through traffic in the hand-me-down Batmobile. The gears didn't shift as smoothly as they used to, and with each change, the old Batmobile jerked, causing them to lurch forward and feel the seatbelts tighten and pull them back into the worn leather bucket seats.
"I've been accepted to Northwestern's botany program. I think I'm gonna go, and, you know, see if I like it," she said, tracing patterns on the window. Her green eyes glowed in the reflection. She turned to Rich. "What about you?"
"I, uh. I've been fine," he said.
Starfire frowned. "Very convincing," she said. "I thought you seemed unhappy."
"What do you mean?"
"I can sense it." She touched his hand. "Rich, when are you going to learn that you need to stop doing things for other people, just for the sake of pleasing them? When are you going to think about yourself?"
Rich glared at Starfire. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you can't take care of everyone, and that you should take care of yourself."
"I'm not a selfish bastard."
"That's the problem," she said. "You need to be selfish once in a while. No one else is going to live for you."
Rich opened his mouth, but then immediately closed it. She was right. He needed to do the things he loved, genuinely, passionately, not do the things he felt safe doing. Rich knew crime and how to fight it. He was strategic, clever, agile, strong—but was this really what he wanted for the rest of his life? Or was he just trying to please Bruce by following in his footsteps? Rich shook his head. What did he truly want? He wasn't sure.
He parked the Batmobile in an alley, and he and Starfire scoped out the area, finding the place teeming with armed guards. Rich silently took out some, covering their noses and mouths with his arm until they became unconscious. He and Starfire dragged the passed out guards away from the area, behind some shipment containers. If they kept going after a few at a time, it would take all night to finish the drug bust, and the leader would definitely learn that the superheroes were there once most of his henchmen were gone. Rich and Starfire were sure to get shot at, and they could be in serious danger. What they needed was a distraction, but what?
Rich ran back to the Batmobile and drove full speed towards the docks.
"IT'S THE FUCKING BAT!" someone shouted.
"THAT ASSHOLE'S RETIRED, YOU FUCK!" someone else replied.
"WHO THE HELL CARES? GET RID OF HIM!" a man in a white linen suit shouted, grabbing onto a guard's shoulder a shoving him towards the car.
The guards unloaded rounds and rounds of bullets into the Batmobile, some ricocheting off the dull black body, while others barely lodged themselves into the steel frame. Once out of bullets, the guards stopped and waited for the dust to settle, to see their impressive work before their very eyes. The Batmobile was utterly fucked. Dents everywhere, two of the tires flat, and all the windows partially shattered. Batman had to be dead; there was no way in hell he could live after that.
"Hurry up and grab all the goddamn pineapples," said the man in the white suit. "If you fuck one up, it'll cost you your life, just like Batty over there."
"Actually, I think it's best you leave, before it costs you your life," Starfire said. The huge, looming guards ran like raging bulls at her, but she easily flipped them, forcing them to land hard on their backs, creating craters in the concrete. The others stepped back, afraid of the young woman with green glowing eyes.
"Someone fucking shoot her!" the man shouted.
"None of us have any bullets, sir!"
"FUCK ME!" the man in the white suit shouted while the guards ran off as fast as they could, but it was too late. Gotham City Police had them surrounded, the cops swinging their handcuffs in their hands. They cuffed everyone they could, even the pile of unconscious henchmen, while Starfire opened the driver's side door of the Batmobile and discovered Rich bleeding in several places.
"Oh, sugar," she said.
Starfire helped Rich out of the car and took him home, struggling to fly in the air back to Wayne Manor with her former boyfriend. Before she could softly knock on the door, Alfred swung the door open and ushered the two of them inside, antiseptic, a needle and thread awaiting Rich in the dining room.
"Master Rich, you did a foolish thing," Alfred said, gingerly stripping the Nightwing suit off Rich. It didn't seem to fit like it used to, Alfred noticed. How strange.
"Alfred, don't tell Bruce," Rich muttered. He winced as Alfred pressed the antiseptic into a wound. "And not a single word to Damian."
–
Bruce held Superboy in his arms as the young man cried on the plane. Sobbed, really. So much sobbing that Bruce was surprised Superboy wasn't dehydrated. But anyway, Bruce's little therapy session didn't work at all. Clark hadn't realized anything except the justification for his negligence as a parent, while Superboy learned that he, no matter how hard he tried, would never win Clark's affection. That was just the way with some parents, it seemed. The well of love was dry, and it could never be filled. Bruce thought of Lois and her toughness, how she would live off Virginia Slims and red eyes for days, sipping that blend of coffee and espresso as she finished her articles. She wouldn't be able to give Superboy the kind of support he needed; she didn't have the patience, the interest, or the time.
"You can come to me for anything, Superboy," Bruce said, patting the kid's back. "You're always welcome in the Bat family."
Superboy wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at Bruce. The strong, square jaw, the cleft chin, the cold blue eyes, the jet black, side-swept hair —it was startling to take in all Superboy's features and see how he looked exactly like Clark in his younger years. Bruce knew he wasn't the best parent, but he could be better than Clark, more loving and open and warm.
"Thanks, Bruce," Superboy said. "And please call me Conner."
"All right, Conner." Bruce smiled. His linen shirt was soaked from all of Conner's tears.
Conner carried all the luggage back to Wayne Manor, while Bruce heaved himself up the steps. Jesus Christ, he thought he had told Alfred to get rid of some of them. Bruce knocked on the door, and Damian answered, opening the door with barely contained excitement.
"Did you bring me anything back from Juárez?" Damian asked.
Oh shit.
Bruce looked at Damian with alarm. He had completely forgotten about his son. The biological one.
Alfred handed Bruce the newspaper as he walked in, Conner trailing closely behind. Damian asked Conner a long list of questions about Juárez, about Superman, about deportation, which Conner, surprisingly, answered calmly and thoroughly. Bruce was impressed. Perhaps the talk in Juárez had provided some kind of closure for Conner, whether the kid consciously realized it or not.
Bruce read the front page of the newspaper. "THE ROBINS SAVE THE DAY!" the headline read, an image of Red Robin and Damian grinning like two idiots right in the center. "Who in the hell is Red Robin? Why would this idiot name himself after a burger chain?"
"That's Tim Drake, sir."
Bruce buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Christ." It looked like he had fucked up his kids worse than he had previously thought.