FIC: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji: Winter (6/9)
Title: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji: Winter (6/9)
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji is a series set early in Batman and Superman's careers, shortly after the S/B annual #1. The full series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: On the old Tokaido Road, Batman and Clark Kent confront the assassin Kyodai Ken.
Word Count: 2500
I go out of darkness
Onto a road of darkness
Lit only by the far off
Moon on the edge of the mountains.
--Izumi Shikibu
The dock Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne alighted upon led to small highway looping by the lake. "Is this that Tokaido Road?" Clark asked as the two of them came to the street.
Bruce shook his head, his eyes flicking back and forth, scanning the crowd. He had been nearly joking with Clark on the ship, but he was all business now. Clark felt his mood shifting to professional to match it. He reminded himself of the costume under his clothes. He was Superman. That he looked like Clark Kent at the moment was unimportant.
"The Tokaido Road hasn't been a real road for nearly a century, Clark," Bruce explained as he moved through the crowd gracefully. "Some of this highway is its remnants, but the Prime Minister will be speaking at the far end of one of the preserved stretches of it." He paused. "Clark, I probably need to be in uniform for this. But you can't be, or Kyodai might make the connection."
"I understand. Like I said, I'm not entirely helpless as Clark."
A flash of teeth. "Hopeless, but not helpless." Then the space by his side was empty.
Clark ambled across the street to the place where the old road began. On either side of the path were ancient cedars, planted when the road was still in use. Needles littered the road, which was paved with irregular stones. The line of cedars quickly gave way to forested hill on the left-hand side of the path.
As Clark strolled, surrounded by other walking tourists, he listened carefully, hearing the sound of dark wings ghosting his progress, high up in the cedars. If he had looked up, perhaps he could have caught just a glimpse of black silk between the branches.
He didn't look up. He was just a friendly tourist, going on a little ahead of his playboy travelling companion. Innocuous and clueless.
Despite the crowds, it seemed oddly hushed, the blanket of orange needles dampening the sound of chattering sightseers. Up ahead Clark could see the crowd gathered around the podium set in the woods from which the Prime Minister would speak to announce a new project to restore portions of the Tokaido Road. It was still a ways off when he heard Batman whisper, too low to be heard by anyone by him: "Clark. I need you to find some excuse to step off the path to your left and wander about thirty meters into the woods." Clark cocked an eyebrow; he couldn't respond to Bruce easily, but he started to scan the brush to his left. Batman's voice again, apparently responding to Clark's curious expression: "There are motivations for Kyodai more powerful than the need to complete his contract." The low voice was perfectly level, so perfectly level that it was startling. "We're going to take advantage of that."
Clark eyed the side of the path until he saw a gap through the trees that could possibly be mistaken for another trail. He struck off through it cheerfully, just a stupid American tourist who didn't know enough to stay on the trail.
He could hear Batman in the trees above him and felt oddly reassured by the thought that the vigilante was keeping an eye on him. Kyodai Ken almost certainly could do nothing to harm Clark Kent, but it still felt good, somehow, to know the Dark Knight was keeping watch.
That was an unexpected reaction, and Clark was so busy mulling it over that it wasn't at all hard to act surprised when a dark shadow dropped down behind him and pulled his head back. "Don't move," snarled a sibilant voice in his ear. He felt a blade at his throat, cold and razor-sharp, and went as still as any regular human would at the threat.
Batman dropped down from a tree to stand in front of the two of them. "Let him go." In the distance, the Prime Minister started to speak.
Kyodai laughed. "Threatening the innocent always flushes you out, Batman."
"Let him go," Batman repeated.
The ninja's voice was both mocking and inquisitive. "Or is there something special about this innocent as well?" He knows. He's guessed my secret identity, Clark thought in a sudden panic, then realized that didn't seem to be what Kyodai was speaking of at all. "Shall I slit his throat quickly, like a butchered pig?" Kyodai continued. "Or shall I slide the blade into his stomach and let you watch him die slowly? As slowly as Seio-chan did? Give him a chance to beg me for mercy too?"
Batman's hands twitched, very slightly. "He didn't die slowly," he said. "I checked the body. It was quick. It was quick," he repeated with a strange, flat emphasis.
"It was slow enough for him to wonder why you weren't there. I made sure of that."
He couldn't see Bruce's eyes, but something about the man's stance, the slightly hitching breath he took at the ninja's last words, convinced Clark it was time to fulfill his duties as distraction. "Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me," he whimpered. Play to the man's obvious need to hear people grovel to him, make him smug and careless. "Please, please, just let me go. I haven't done anything wrong!"
Kyodai chuckled gleefully, clearly relishing his captive's cowering tone. "Oh, you've made one fatal mistake. You've let yourself become Bruce Wayne's fr--"
With no warning, Batman came at Kyodai Ken through the brush, silent as a thrown blade. Clark threw himself to the side as any smart civilian would.
He felt the blade brush across his throat, a brief kiss of metal across unbreakable skin, and hoped Kyodai would be too distracted to notice it had drawn no blood.
The ninja was indeed distracted, distracted enough that Clark was able to get his legs "accidentally" tangled with his as he tried to move away, throwing him off-balance. There was a crunching thump as Batman's boots connected squarely with the ninja's chest. Kyodai twisted out of the way under the blow and grabbed Batman's ankle, throwing him to the ground in turn, but his motions were sluggish and pained now. Batman picked him up and cracked him into a boulder; Kyodai went limp as his head connected with the stone.
Batman held him there a moment longer, hands clenched in the unconscious ninja's clothing. "It was quick, you lying bastard," he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. Then he dropped the body like rubbish, kneeling to snap restraints on his hands. The Dark Knight turned to look at Clark, standing along the dead bracken and evergreen brush, dirt in his hair and twigs on his shirt. "You might want to tell the Prime Minister's bodyguards there's an assassin tied up in the woods here." He turned to go.
"Batman--" The dark figure stopped and looked back. Clark suddenly wished he had been able to call him "Bruce" safely; he didn't know why. Then he realized he had no idea what he had meant to say. The silence stretched on too long, both men standing very still. Finally Clark cleared his throat and said, "Thank you."
The other man nodded once and was gone, his feet making no sound at all in the underbrush.
Clark crashed through the woods back toward the voices of the crowd to tell the police that Batman had appeared to save his life and presumably the Prime Minister's as well.
: : :
After the police finally released him, convinced he had told them all he knew, Clark made his way toward the dock again. From a distance, he could see a man leaning his elbows on a railing and looking out over the water, his back to Clark. Cold wind moved through his hair. He looked very solitary on the dock, the bustle of the crowd moving around him as he stood, unmoving.
As Clark drew closer, Bruce turned slightly, just enough to acknowledge his presence. "I've got us two tickets back to Tokyo. The train station's over there. Train leaves in about fifteen minutes." A gust of wind hit his face and he squinted slightly. "I also called the airline and got us tickets back to the States tomorrow. Flights were all booked to Metropolis, so I've got you coming to Gotham and taking a train down. Hope you don't mind." His voice was clipped and businesslike.
"I've still got a few days left in my vacation. I don't need to head back right away." Clark felt stupid the moment he said it.
"This wasn't a vacation for me, Clark. And it's over. I have one thing left to do and then I'm going home."
Clark leaned on the rail next to Bruce, looking at the other man's profile. He should just let it go, the other man clearly wanted nothing more to do with him, wanted nothing more than to be alone. He remembered the sudden shift in Batman's posture when Kyodai had almost called him Bruce's friend. The shift in his breathing when told that Matsunaga had suffered.
"Don't think you're getting out of showing me around Tokyo this last night, Bruce." Bruce shot him a surprised look and he kept his voice light. "I didn't let you drag me all the way to Japan to just ditch me in a spendy hotel room when you don't need me any more, Wayne."
"I dragged you here?"
"I figure you owe me some more sightseeing for all the inconvenience you put me through."
"I owe--" Bruce sputtered. "You've got to be kidding me."
Clark grinned at him. "Yes, I'm kidding you. But I thought it would be better for your pride than my announcing I wasn't going to let you mope in your room tonight."
Bruce stared at him. His mouth twitched very slightly. "All right, Kent, if I grant that I apparently owe you some more sightseeing, what would you like to see?"
Clark pushed off from the railing. "Oh, I trust you to figure out something," he said airily. He pushed up his coat sleeve and tapped his watch. "We'd better get to our train, hadn't we?"
: : :
The train rattled through the Tokyo suburbs while Bruce Wayne racked his brain for sightseeing choices. There was the Meiji Shrine, Clark might like that, although at this time of year it was a bit bleak. There was a little sword museum that was very nice--they had a few katana there that were even more valuable than they realized, and Clark might enjoy seeing those. There was always Tokyo Tower, but really the view from there wasn't terribly good--and there was always the chance it would get attacked by demons yet again, turning it into a work night for both of them. Bruce turned over various options in his head, analyzing them carefully. Part of him was annoyed, suspecting that Clark had set him this challenge on purpose to keep him from brooding..
Another part of him was just happy to have something neutral to think about.
The train pulled to a stop in Tokyo and Bruce still hadn't come up with a good plan. Frustrating. He could work out a perfectly good assault strategy against a squad of ninjas from the League of Shadows, but he couldn't come up with a sightseeing itinerary for one afternoon?
He just didn't feel like he knew Clark well enough to know what he'd enjoy. In desperation, he began to try and come up with the most repulsively esoteric dining experience he could think of; it was at least fun to find ways to make Clark squirm while eating. Bruce wondered if eel would be enough to do Kent in, or if he'd have to go for whale.
He was still lost in thought as they made their way through the streets of Tokyo, but not so absorbed he didn't hear the crowd noise change abruptly to a horrified murmur. He snapped to attention and followed the gaze of the surrounding people to where a window-washer's machinery had snapped, leaving him dangling fifty stories up. Bruce didn't even need to look to his side to know he was alone. He heard someone in the crowd gasp, "Hora! Sora wo miro--!" and smiled very slightly.
Then he looked up in the sky with everyone else.
As Superman lowered the terrified window-washer gently to the ground in the middle of Shinjuku, approximately a thousand cell phones were flipped open and clicking wildly. A few of the bolder schoolgirls in the crowd jumped forward, begging the Kryptonian to sign their notebooks. He obliged in polite Japanese, which caused a ripple of stunned approval to go through the crowd. Then one young woman threw her arms around his neck, asking her friends to take a picture of her with him. Kal-El quickly held up two fingers in the peace sign, and she squealed and kissed him on the cheek.
Superman blushed red and attempted to politely extricate himself from her adoring grasp, only to have one of her friends take her place and demand the process be done again. Superman's bright blue gaze raked the area around him until he met Bruce's eyes, pleading naked on his face. Bruce had no idea what Superman thought Batman could do to help--scare everyone away? He shrugged, knowing that Superman could tell Bruce was rather enjoying his predicament. The Kryptonian actually looked rather charming draped with uniformed Japanese schoolgirls. He also looked deeply uncomfortable and embarrassed.
He looked a great deal like awkward, gawky Clark Kent in a Superman suit.
The incongruity struck Bruce so oddly that he almost laughed out loud. Clark gave him a look torn between irritation and sheepishness, then turned his attention back to the signatures and photos. Bruce took advantage of that to slip away to their hotel. Clark could catch up later. He checked in for both of them and used the time to get caught up on some business correspondence. From time to time the image of Clark looking flustered and overwhelmed in his bright suit would appear before him and he would find himself smiling slightly. Which was annoying, but he decided he could live with it for now.
Almost an hour went by before Clark showed up at the hotel, knocking on Bruce's door. "Good grief," he said, flopping unceremoniously on Bruce's bed and throwing a forearm over his eyes, "I think young Japanese women have super-exhausting powers."
Bruce whacked one of the sneaker-clad feet. "No rest for the wicked, Kent. You wanted me to show you Tokyo, and I finally know exactly where to take you."
Clark peeked out from under his arm, glasses askew. "Where's that?"
"Akihabara, also known as Nerdvana." Bruce smirked. "I think you'll fit in just fine."
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji is a series set early in Batman and Superman's careers, shortly after the S/B annual #1. The full series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: On the old Tokaido Road, Batman and Clark Kent confront the assassin Kyodai Ken.
Word Count: 2500
I go out of darkness
Onto a road of darkness
Lit only by the far off
Moon on the edge of the mountains.
--Izumi Shikibu
The dock Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne alighted upon led to small highway looping by the lake. "Is this that Tokaido Road?" Clark asked as the two of them came to the street.
Bruce shook his head, his eyes flicking back and forth, scanning the crowd. He had been nearly joking with Clark on the ship, but he was all business now. Clark felt his mood shifting to professional to match it. He reminded himself of the costume under his clothes. He was Superman. That he looked like Clark Kent at the moment was unimportant.
"The Tokaido Road hasn't been a real road for nearly a century, Clark," Bruce explained as he moved through the crowd gracefully. "Some of this highway is its remnants, but the Prime Minister will be speaking at the far end of one of the preserved stretches of it." He paused. "Clark, I probably need to be in uniform for this. But you can't be, or Kyodai might make the connection."
"I understand. Like I said, I'm not entirely helpless as Clark."
A flash of teeth. "Hopeless, but not helpless." Then the space by his side was empty.
Clark ambled across the street to the place where the old road began. On either side of the path were ancient cedars, planted when the road was still in use. Needles littered the road, which was paved with irregular stones. The line of cedars quickly gave way to forested hill on the left-hand side of the path.
As Clark strolled, surrounded by other walking tourists, he listened carefully, hearing the sound of dark wings ghosting his progress, high up in the cedars. If he had looked up, perhaps he could have caught just a glimpse of black silk between the branches.
He didn't look up. He was just a friendly tourist, going on a little ahead of his playboy travelling companion. Innocuous and clueless.
Despite the crowds, it seemed oddly hushed, the blanket of orange needles dampening the sound of chattering sightseers. Up ahead Clark could see the crowd gathered around the podium set in the woods from which the Prime Minister would speak to announce a new project to restore portions of the Tokaido Road. It was still a ways off when he heard Batman whisper, too low to be heard by anyone by him: "Clark. I need you to find some excuse to step off the path to your left and wander about thirty meters into the woods." Clark cocked an eyebrow; he couldn't respond to Bruce easily, but he started to scan the brush to his left. Batman's voice again, apparently responding to Clark's curious expression: "There are motivations for Kyodai more powerful than the need to complete his contract." The low voice was perfectly level, so perfectly level that it was startling. "We're going to take advantage of that."
Clark eyed the side of the path until he saw a gap through the trees that could possibly be mistaken for another trail. He struck off through it cheerfully, just a stupid American tourist who didn't know enough to stay on the trail.
He could hear Batman in the trees above him and felt oddly reassured by the thought that the vigilante was keeping an eye on him. Kyodai Ken almost certainly could do nothing to harm Clark Kent, but it still felt good, somehow, to know the Dark Knight was keeping watch.
That was an unexpected reaction, and Clark was so busy mulling it over that it wasn't at all hard to act surprised when a dark shadow dropped down behind him and pulled his head back. "Don't move," snarled a sibilant voice in his ear. He felt a blade at his throat, cold and razor-sharp, and went as still as any regular human would at the threat.
Batman dropped down from a tree to stand in front of the two of them. "Let him go." In the distance, the Prime Minister started to speak.
Kyodai laughed. "Threatening the innocent always flushes you out, Batman."
"Let him go," Batman repeated.
The ninja's voice was both mocking and inquisitive. "Or is there something special about this innocent as well?" He knows. He's guessed my secret identity, Clark thought in a sudden panic, then realized that didn't seem to be what Kyodai was speaking of at all. "Shall I slit his throat quickly, like a butchered pig?" Kyodai continued. "Or shall I slide the blade into his stomach and let you watch him die slowly? As slowly as Seio-chan did? Give him a chance to beg me for mercy too?"
Batman's hands twitched, very slightly. "He didn't die slowly," he said. "I checked the body. It was quick. It was quick," he repeated with a strange, flat emphasis.
"It was slow enough for him to wonder why you weren't there. I made sure of that."
He couldn't see Bruce's eyes, but something about the man's stance, the slightly hitching breath he took at the ninja's last words, convinced Clark it was time to fulfill his duties as distraction. "Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me," he whimpered. Play to the man's obvious need to hear people grovel to him, make him smug and careless. "Please, please, just let me go. I haven't done anything wrong!"
Kyodai chuckled gleefully, clearly relishing his captive's cowering tone. "Oh, you've made one fatal mistake. You've let yourself become Bruce Wayne's fr--"
With no warning, Batman came at Kyodai Ken through the brush, silent as a thrown blade. Clark threw himself to the side as any smart civilian would.
He felt the blade brush across his throat, a brief kiss of metal across unbreakable skin, and hoped Kyodai would be too distracted to notice it had drawn no blood.
The ninja was indeed distracted, distracted enough that Clark was able to get his legs "accidentally" tangled with his as he tried to move away, throwing him off-balance. There was a crunching thump as Batman's boots connected squarely with the ninja's chest. Kyodai twisted out of the way under the blow and grabbed Batman's ankle, throwing him to the ground in turn, but his motions were sluggish and pained now. Batman picked him up and cracked him into a boulder; Kyodai went limp as his head connected with the stone.
Batman held him there a moment longer, hands clenched in the unconscious ninja's clothing. "It was quick, you lying bastard," he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. Then he dropped the body like rubbish, kneeling to snap restraints on his hands. The Dark Knight turned to look at Clark, standing along the dead bracken and evergreen brush, dirt in his hair and twigs on his shirt. "You might want to tell the Prime Minister's bodyguards there's an assassin tied up in the woods here." He turned to go.
"Batman--" The dark figure stopped and looked back. Clark suddenly wished he had been able to call him "Bruce" safely; he didn't know why. Then he realized he had no idea what he had meant to say. The silence stretched on too long, both men standing very still. Finally Clark cleared his throat and said, "Thank you."
The other man nodded once and was gone, his feet making no sound at all in the underbrush.
Clark crashed through the woods back toward the voices of the crowd to tell the police that Batman had appeared to save his life and presumably the Prime Minister's as well.
: : :
After the police finally released him, convinced he had told them all he knew, Clark made his way toward the dock again. From a distance, he could see a man leaning his elbows on a railing and looking out over the water, his back to Clark. Cold wind moved through his hair. He looked very solitary on the dock, the bustle of the crowd moving around him as he stood, unmoving.
As Clark drew closer, Bruce turned slightly, just enough to acknowledge his presence. "I've got us two tickets back to Tokyo. The train station's over there. Train leaves in about fifteen minutes." A gust of wind hit his face and he squinted slightly. "I also called the airline and got us tickets back to the States tomorrow. Flights were all booked to Metropolis, so I've got you coming to Gotham and taking a train down. Hope you don't mind." His voice was clipped and businesslike.
"I've still got a few days left in my vacation. I don't need to head back right away." Clark felt stupid the moment he said it.
"This wasn't a vacation for me, Clark. And it's over. I have one thing left to do and then I'm going home."
Clark leaned on the rail next to Bruce, looking at the other man's profile. He should just let it go, the other man clearly wanted nothing more to do with him, wanted nothing more than to be alone. He remembered the sudden shift in Batman's posture when Kyodai had almost called him Bruce's friend. The shift in his breathing when told that Matsunaga had suffered.
"Don't think you're getting out of showing me around Tokyo this last night, Bruce." Bruce shot him a surprised look and he kept his voice light. "I didn't let you drag me all the way to Japan to just ditch me in a spendy hotel room when you don't need me any more, Wayne."
"I dragged you here?"
"I figure you owe me some more sightseeing for all the inconvenience you put me through."
"I owe--" Bruce sputtered. "You've got to be kidding me."
Clark grinned at him. "Yes, I'm kidding you. But I thought it would be better for your pride than my announcing I wasn't going to let you mope in your room tonight."
Bruce stared at him. His mouth twitched very slightly. "All right, Kent, if I grant that I apparently owe you some more sightseeing, what would you like to see?"
Clark pushed off from the railing. "Oh, I trust you to figure out something," he said airily. He pushed up his coat sleeve and tapped his watch. "We'd better get to our train, hadn't we?"
: : :
The train rattled through the Tokyo suburbs while Bruce Wayne racked his brain for sightseeing choices. There was the Meiji Shrine, Clark might like that, although at this time of year it was a bit bleak. There was a little sword museum that was very nice--they had a few katana there that were even more valuable than they realized, and Clark might enjoy seeing those. There was always Tokyo Tower, but really the view from there wasn't terribly good--and there was always the chance it would get attacked by demons yet again, turning it into a work night for both of them. Bruce turned over various options in his head, analyzing them carefully. Part of him was annoyed, suspecting that Clark had set him this challenge on purpose to keep him from brooding..
Another part of him was just happy to have something neutral to think about.
The train pulled to a stop in Tokyo and Bruce still hadn't come up with a good plan. Frustrating. He could work out a perfectly good assault strategy against a squad of ninjas from the League of Shadows, but he couldn't come up with a sightseeing itinerary for one afternoon?
He just didn't feel like he knew Clark well enough to know what he'd enjoy. In desperation, he began to try and come up with the most repulsively esoteric dining experience he could think of; it was at least fun to find ways to make Clark squirm while eating. Bruce wondered if eel would be enough to do Kent in, or if he'd have to go for whale.
He was still lost in thought as they made their way through the streets of Tokyo, but not so absorbed he didn't hear the crowd noise change abruptly to a horrified murmur. He snapped to attention and followed the gaze of the surrounding people to where a window-washer's machinery had snapped, leaving him dangling fifty stories up. Bruce didn't even need to look to his side to know he was alone. He heard someone in the crowd gasp, "Hora! Sora wo miro--!" and smiled very slightly.
Then he looked up in the sky with everyone else.
As Superman lowered the terrified window-washer gently to the ground in the middle of Shinjuku, approximately a thousand cell phones were flipped open and clicking wildly. A few of the bolder schoolgirls in the crowd jumped forward, begging the Kryptonian to sign their notebooks. He obliged in polite Japanese, which caused a ripple of stunned approval to go through the crowd. Then one young woman threw her arms around his neck, asking her friends to take a picture of her with him. Kal-El quickly held up two fingers in the peace sign, and she squealed and kissed him on the cheek.
Superman blushed red and attempted to politely extricate himself from her adoring grasp, only to have one of her friends take her place and demand the process be done again. Superman's bright blue gaze raked the area around him until he met Bruce's eyes, pleading naked on his face. Bruce had no idea what Superman thought Batman could do to help--scare everyone away? He shrugged, knowing that Superman could tell Bruce was rather enjoying his predicament. The Kryptonian actually looked rather charming draped with uniformed Japanese schoolgirls. He also looked deeply uncomfortable and embarrassed.
He looked a great deal like awkward, gawky Clark Kent in a Superman suit.
The incongruity struck Bruce so oddly that he almost laughed out loud. Clark gave him a look torn between irritation and sheepishness, then turned his attention back to the signatures and photos. Bruce took advantage of that to slip away to their hotel. Clark could catch up later. He checked in for both of them and used the time to get caught up on some business correspondence. From time to time the image of Clark looking flustered and overwhelmed in his bright suit would appear before him and he would find himself smiling slightly. Which was annoying, but he decided he could live with it for now.
Almost an hour went by before Clark showed up at the hotel, knocking on Bruce's door. "Good grief," he said, flopping unceremoniously on Bruce's bed and throwing a forearm over his eyes, "I think young Japanese women have super-exhausting powers."
Bruce whacked one of the sneaker-clad feet. "No rest for the wicked, Kent. You wanted me to show you Tokyo, and I finally know exactly where to take you."
Clark peeked out from under his arm, glasses askew. "Where's that?"
"Akihabara, also known as Nerdvana." Bruce smirked. "I think you'll fit in just fine."