FIC: Gotham Nocturne (6/9)
Title: Gotham Nocturne: Chapter Six
Pairing: Clark/Bruce, Pamela Isley, Jonathan Crane
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: Gotham Nocturne is part of The Music of the Spheres, a combined Superman Returns/Batman Begins series. The whole series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: Bruce is needed at a charity event, so Clark has to keep a lookout for the Scarecrow.
Word Count: 3400
"There." Bruce pointed at the computer screen which currently had six different windows running footage from security cameras. He froze the image: a young woman with striking red hair in an emerald-green sheath dress slipping a glass of champagne. The keyboard rattled and the personnel records from Stagg Industries appeared: the same woman with her hair pulled back severely, her mouth set in a rather prim line. "Pamela Isley. She wasn't on the guest list."
"Perhaps she was someone else's guest, sir?" Alfred looked over Bruce's shoulder and raised his eyebrows. "I imagine she would have no difficulties finding a man willing to escort her."
"It might just be an interesting coincidence. Isley might simply be a biochemist with a rich boyfriend and a love of Art Deco hotels." His eyes narrowed. "But someone had to get that toxin into the hotel, and as far as I can tell Crane came nowhere near it." He glared at the images on the screen. "She'll require some close watching from now on. And if she wasn't someone's guest, how'd she get past the guards?"
: : :
"I want that dendrophobia formula, Crane!" Isley heard the shrill note in her voice and cursed herself as Crane merely smiled tolerantly. Call it women's intuition, but she could feel Fate preparing to close around them both like a Venus Flytrap. "I delivered the toxin like you wanted, now give me the one I need!" If she just had that formula, the world would change. The forests would remain untouched forever; people would regain the righteous fear of the great woods they once had. She would save them all, the redwoods, the rainforests--every day that passed another two hundred thousand acres of rainforest died! Couldn't Crane see that their time was running out?
Crane's calm was maddening. "I have some promising leads, Pamela, but it's just not perfect yet." He flashed a few spreadsheets and formula on the computer screen. "See, here? The neurochemical fluxes in the rat brains are still too unstable. It'll promote a flash of panic, maybe...but not the lasting terror you need." For a moment, he looked almost wistful. "None of this is what I'm after anyway."
Isley noted the dreamy quality of his eerie eyes. The inhibition-lowering enzyme in the air seemed to be doing the trick, just as it had against the guards at the hotel. "What exactly is it you're after, Dr. Crane?" She gritted her teeth over giving him the title, but she knew you had to give mammals and their status games their due.
"The Philospher's Stone," Crane said with a rapt smile. "The tabula rasa...the formula that can be transmuted into any fear at all with a bit of suggestion." His eyes glittered, not mammalian at all but reptilian for a moment. "Think of it. To be able to expose someone to it and then tell them what they're afraid of, and have them bend to your will irresistibly. It could become anything one needed. The seed of all fear." He sighed forlornly. "But I'd need more funds than I have...a better lab than this place, much better...and more time. Then they'll all bow before the Lord of Fear."
Isley almost sneered out loud. Such intelligence, such a mighty mind...and he wasted it with his petty dreams of controlling others, of putting himself on top of the pathetic pyramid of primate society. She knew she wasn't as theoretically brilliant as Crane, but she wasn't concerned with monkey games. The purity of her goal was more important than abstract knowledge. She would be the forest fire that razes in order to create new growth. She just needed a little more time...and that damn toxin.
Crane was still staring into space. An almost giddy smile grew on his face. "I think I'll be going out tonight," he said softly, reaching into a drawer and pulling out his ragged burlap mask. He pulled it on, picking up a couple of spray cans and fastening them to his belt. "I feel like hunting."
It was the enzyme, Isley knew, filling his head with vainglorious ideas and visions. "Crane, what are you doing? You'll ruin it all--"
Scarecrow turned to face her with a snakelike motion, and Pamela Isley's mouth went dry at the sight of the featureless mask, staring and silent. There was nothing under it but Crane's face, she reminded herself. There was no nightmare beneath that stained rough cloth. Fear was an animal's response to a threat, and she was no mere animal.
So there was no excuse for the way her knees trembled at the blank stare, the way she was unable to speak until the door closed behind Scarecrow with a soft click. No excuse at all.
: : :
"Are you sure you don't mind, Clark?"
Buckles, heavy and solid, tightening over his skin. Leather and kevlar encasing his neck. Clark pulled on the black gauntlets. "I can handle it, Bruce."
Bruce looked uncertain. "I've been on stakeout of Isley's lab for the last four days. It's my responsibility, not yours."
More buckles and straps making their way down the inside of his thighs. "Your father attended this fundraiser for the Sunninger Institute every year until his death. He was one of its founders and major contributors. When you're in Gotham, you don't miss it." He slipped one of the heavy black boots on, then the other. "Besides, you want to check on Dr. Sugiyama and the security there." The black cape slid around his shoulders with a sinuous rustle. "This way we can cover Gotham without Superman making a second appearance in a week."
Bruce's grin was wan. "We still need to stage a big confrontation to make up for you being here without my 'permission' last week." The smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "You've never done this before--played Batman. You've said it wouldn't feel right."
Clark smiled sunnily, well aware that the combination of his smile above the grim black suit would probably cause enough mental whiplash to keep Bruce from noticing how uneasy he really was. "I suppose it's time for me to face my fears and prove I can do this." He gestured at the still-lowered cowl. "Want to do the final honors?"
Bruce stepped close and tugged the cowl up over Clark's head, tucking the stray curl under it tenderly. His hands drifted over the armored shoulders, gathering two handfuls of black cloth and knotting in it. "You can do the voice?"
Clark pitched his voice as low as he could, feeling it rasp in his throat. He'd practiced this until the Fortress sensors could hardly measure the difference between his voice and Batman's. "I can do anything you need, Mr. Wayne," he grated.
Bruce's eyes widened for a moment before he got his face back under control. "Uh...okay, you can do the voice."
Clark let his smile become a bit smug and kept his voice low. "I believe I can perform...satisfactorily." Then he swept the cape around them both and kissed Bruce, lifting them both off the floor of the cave until they were hovering in the middle of the cavern. The bats, annoyed at the intrusion, swirled around them in a dark cloud, but Bruce ignored them and leaned into Clark's kiss as if embracing Batman while flying in the Batcave was perfectly natural for him.
He finally broke away, panting a bit. "No flying while on patrol," he noted as they glided gently back down to the floor.
"Don't worry," Clark said in his own voice. "I'm just going to keep an eye on Isley's lab, I'll try not to risk anything else." He shifted awkwardly. "This suit is uncomfortably tight under...certain circumstances."
Bruce kissed him again, lightly. "Now you understand why I usually don't keep the line open while I'm on patrol. Too risky."
Clark got into the Tumbler, starting its engine with a roar. "You do understand this is all just an excuse for me to drive your car."
The door swung closed on his grin and he revved the car out of the cave.
"Drive safely," Bruce said after him, knowing he could catch it with both his hearing and his transmitter.
: : :
"Nothing so far," Clark said softly for Bruce's benefit. He had the sound turned down but could still faintly hear the clink of china and chatter of people. "I stopped one mugging--I know I said I wouldn't risk anything else, but I wasn't just going to let someone get mugged." The look of stark fear on the mugger's face when Batman had leapt to the ground in front of him (being careful to land with an appropriately weighty thump instead of floating) had been both shocking and somewhat gratifying.
Bruce's voice went on talking about the benefits of Italian versus French shoes with someone, but an undercurrent of laughter ran under his voice for a moment.
Clark was crouched on a fire escape above an alley, keeping an eye on Pamela Isley's greenhouse. The greenhouse truncated to become the windowless room in back that was her laboratory. Was it possible that Crane was in there with her? He started to focus his eyes to check--then stopped. The idea of using superpowers while dressed as Batman, in Gotham, was...unnerving, somehow. Pretending to be Batman seemed to be straining some unspoken truce; using powers would violate it entirely.
He frowned at himself. This irrational personification of Gotham was keeping him from doing his job. Truces, promises, the crawling feeling of being watched--all phantasms If Crane was in that lab, he had to know.
Clark focused and looked through the walls of the lab. Inside he could see Isley talking to someone. His heart leapt until he realized she was just talking to a potted orchid on her desk, stroking its colored petals. She frowned and started putting on her coat. There were notes scattered about the room; he narrowed his eyes to get a better look at them--
"Well, well. What have we here?"
Clark whirled to see the Scarecrow standing on the ground below him, gazing up, his cloth-covered face unreadable. Deciding not to risk words, Clark gathered himself to leap at Crane, who stepped back and raised two aerosol canisters.
The vapor in the air between them misted Clark's skin; he passed through the twin clouds of toxin and tackled Crane with a solid thump. Flipping Crane onto his stomach, he grabbed the restraints from Batman's belt and hogtied Crane. "No!" Crane's voice was shrill and shocked. "I know these formulas are right, I know it! You should be on your knees!" Clark ignored him, briefly thanking Rao that it seemed Kryptonian physiology was immune to Crane's toxins after all.
Crane was still choking on his outrage as Clark finished tying him and backed away, hoping Bruce could hear that Crane was captured. Now to get to the police station, alert them to Crane's whereabouts.
He was two alleys over when he started to hear it. His running footsteps slowed, then stopped, trying to pinpoint the source of the pulsing, fluttering rhythm.
Rats.
It was the heartbeats of all the rats in the city, perfectly synchronized.
As if that were the final piece, the foundation that had been missing, the music of the city picked up to match it, a slowly building cadence of malice.
As he stood, confused, the shadows in the alley seemed to darken, rustling, hinting at unspeakable things within them, and he could feel the music shifting to a triumphant dirge.
Something was coming.
Something vast.
Something that could crush him without even trying, without even noticing.
But it noticed him now.
"No," he whispered. "Stay away."
It heard him and laughed, a laugh that made the shadows twine into something solid, a net of dark music to trap him and hold him until he was found and--
Promises and risks forgotten, he launched himself into the sky.
: : :
Pamela Isley smiled down at Jonathan Crane lying trussed on the ground and pulled out a wicked little pruning knife. Enjoying the slight flinch in Crane's eyes, she began sawing through his bonds. "Now you owe me even more, Crane," she said as they came clear.
Crane unfolded his spindly arms and legs, rubbing at them. "Let's get out of here before the police come." His voice was querulous.
"The big bad Bat wasn't afraid of you?" Isley tried not to sound too smug, but the gleam in those icy eyes indicated she hadn't succeeded.
"I don't understand it," he muttered as they slipped back to the safety of the lab. "They were two of the safest phobias I had. Nyctophobia and acrophobia, two of the most basic fears!" The peevishness had been replaced by wondering disbelief. "Darkness and heights...how could I have failed again?"
"Well, back to the drawing board," Isley said cheerfully. "And prioritize that dendrophobia, would you, dear?"
"Certainly, Dr. Isley," he mumbled, slouching back toward his notes.
: : :
Bruce was making small talk with one of Sunninger's doctors, trying to find out how Mike Sugiyama's recovery was going without appearing to understand much of the medical terms, when he heard Crane's voice sputtering in his ear, cursing the ineffectiveness of his toxins. He felt a blaze of triumph and had to bite down on a whoop of congratulations for his Kal. He beamed a smile full of relief at Leslie Thompkins, who smiled back, clearly puzzled at his sudden ebullience. He heard Clark's booted feet heavy on the street and imagined his lover all bound and buckled in black leather, looked forward to getting him out of it later...
"No," said Kal's voice in his ear, a bare whisper. "Stay away."
Bruce felt his smile go stiff for a moment before he could make it natural again. Then there was a sudden terrible crash, the sound of something colliding with dumpsters and trash cans. The sound of Kal falling from the sky. The metallic echoes faded through his head and he tried to nod as if he cared about the prattle around him. Then he heard a new sound, a low rattling burr. It took him a moment to place the sound.
It was Kal's teeth chattering uncontrollably.
Now seriously alarmed, he lifted his glass to take a long sip of wine. "Kal. Fly away," he muttered under cover of the drink.
Kal moaned. "Can't. I can't fly. I'll fall. I'll fall into the stars, forever and ever. I can't." There was a scraping sound of leather on concrete, as if Kal were crawling. "It's coming for me, Bruce."
Bruce struggled to disentangle himself from the conversation around him; Leslie looked concerned, but all he could focus on was the ratcheting rasp of Kal's breathing. "Bruce," his lover whispered, "She's coming for me. She wants me--to break me, eat my heart, she's--I can't--" Kal's voice broke into sobbing gasps and Bruce gave up all pretense and bolted for the door, not hearing the dropped glass shattering on the floor, not seeing the curious eyes making way before him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Kal cried, no longer addressing Bruce but whatever nightmare vision loomed in front of him, "Please don't--I swear I never--Please!"
Bruce slammed the car into gear, tires shrieking as if in pain, and Kal's voice echoed the sound. "Kal!" he yelled over the sound of the engine, the speedometer needle inching toward 100 as he raced back toward Gotham. "It's the toxin, Kal, nothing's really there. Nothing!"
A horrible keening, hardly human, was his only answer. It lifted and fell endlessly, with no pause for breath, as the car inched unbearably slowly toward Gotham at a hundred and ten miles an hour. "I'm coming, Kal," Bruce said after negotiating a few hairpin turns. "I'm on my way back. I'll be there soon. Is it Isley you're seeing? Or Ursa? They're not real, Kal. Whatever you're seeing, she's not real. I'm almost there."
The keening stuttered and broke. "Bruce? You can't--you can't keep her away, she'll find me, she sings--I can hear her singing and laughing, and her lips are bloody and beautiful, you can't stop her." Kal's voice was bleak. "You won't stop her."
Bruce struggled to sound reasonable and break through the delirium. "I'll be there soon," he said, a stop sign blurring by him in a streak of red. "When I'm there, she'll stop. Do you hear me, Kal? She'll go away. I won't let her hurt you."
Gotham's skyscrapers loomed around him now as he made his way to where Isley's lab was. Kal had to be near there. "Tell me where you are, Kal."
Silence. He couldn't even hear Kal breathing, he realized suddenly. "Kal!" The car screeched a stop and he leapt out of it before it was done moving, running, staring down alleys.
Silence in his ears. Nothing but silence. "No, no, no, damn it, no!" Rats scuttled away from him as he searched each alley. "Stay away from Kal, he's mine, you can't hurt him, I'll never forgive you if you hurt him, do you hear me?" He had no idea what vision Kal was seeing, but he had nothing left now but to embrace it. "Get away from him, get away from him, I won't let you touch him!"
A cobblestone turned under his foot and he staggered to his knees. As he stood, he finally saw the huddled shape of Kal in the batsuit, lying in a shadow. "God--please--" He rolled Kal over onto his back, touching the cool white skin. "Kal!"
The beautiful mouth opened and Kal drew in breath with a soft gasp. "Bruce?" A glint of turquoise eyes within the cowl. "Stay away...it's too..." Black-clad hands raised to cover his ears, twisting in Bruce's grasp. "It won't go away, her song, everyone bleeding toward death with every beat..."
"It's not real," Bruce said, feeling Kal trembling against him as he helped him rise. "It's the fear toxin, Kal. It's not real."
"It's too real for you to hear," Kal said like a wind over stone, empty.
He didn't say anything else as Bruce drove them home. He was silent as Bruce and Alfred got him out of the suit, trembling, his eyes far away. He curled against Bruce in bed, letting Bruce hold him, wordless.
Bruce woke up the next morning with the bed empty. "Clark?" he asked the empty air, panic in his voice.
"Good morning." The warm voice in his ear had a smile in it. "I'm back in Metropolis. Have to get to work soon."
Bruce shook his head as if that would help clear it. "Are you..."
"I'm fine now. The toxin wore off in the night." A pause; Bruce could hear coffee pouring into a mug. "I'm sorry about that, about freaking out like that, letting Crane get away. Seems fear toxin works on Kryptonians with just a slight delay." There was rueful amusement in Clark's voice. "And...thank you. For coming to save me."
Bruce tried to match Clark's casual tone. "We take turns, right?"
"You overcame it on your own," Clark said slowly. "I...couldn't."
"I'd been exposed to something like it before," Bruce responded. "You didn't know it would affect you, so you weren't prepared."
"Maybe," said Clark. "That could be it."
Bruce wanted to ask what Kal had seen in his delirium the night before, but something about Clark's tone seemed to close off the possibility. "So...you'll be up for dinner tonight? Alfred's making pot pie."
The hesitation on the other end was so small it could have been missed entirely. "Gosh, there's going to be a lot of work at the Planet today, I think. And I should put in a full patrol tonight after missing last night."
"Well then, maybe tomorrow."
"Maybe tomorrow, yes," Clark agreed.
But he didn't come to Gotham the next day.
Or the day after that.
He talked to Bruce on the headset, chatted with him on the computer, even invited Bruce to Metropolis for dinner. Nothing in his way of talking to Bruce seemed changed at all; he joked and flirted and complained about work the same as always.
But he still didn't come to Gotham.
Pairing: Clark/Bruce, Pamela Isley, Jonathan Crane
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: Gotham Nocturne is part of The Music of the Spheres, a combined Superman Returns/Batman Begins series. The whole series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: Bruce is needed at a charity event, so Clark has to keep a lookout for the Scarecrow.
Word Count: 3400
"There." Bruce pointed at the computer screen which currently had six different windows running footage from security cameras. He froze the image: a young woman with striking red hair in an emerald-green sheath dress slipping a glass of champagne. The keyboard rattled and the personnel records from Stagg Industries appeared: the same woman with her hair pulled back severely, her mouth set in a rather prim line. "Pamela Isley. She wasn't on the guest list."
"Perhaps she was someone else's guest, sir?" Alfred looked over Bruce's shoulder and raised his eyebrows. "I imagine she would have no difficulties finding a man willing to escort her."
"It might just be an interesting coincidence. Isley might simply be a biochemist with a rich boyfriend and a love of Art Deco hotels." His eyes narrowed. "But someone had to get that toxin into the hotel, and as far as I can tell Crane came nowhere near it." He glared at the images on the screen. "She'll require some close watching from now on. And if she wasn't someone's guest, how'd she get past the guards?"
: : :
"I want that dendrophobia formula, Crane!" Isley heard the shrill note in her voice and cursed herself as Crane merely smiled tolerantly. Call it women's intuition, but she could feel Fate preparing to close around them both like a Venus Flytrap. "I delivered the toxin like you wanted, now give me the one I need!" If she just had that formula, the world would change. The forests would remain untouched forever; people would regain the righteous fear of the great woods they once had. She would save them all, the redwoods, the rainforests--every day that passed another two hundred thousand acres of rainforest died! Couldn't Crane see that their time was running out?
Crane's calm was maddening. "I have some promising leads, Pamela, but it's just not perfect yet." He flashed a few spreadsheets and formula on the computer screen. "See, here? The neurochemical fluxes in the rat brains are still too unstable. It'll promote a flash of panic, maybe...but not the lasting terror you need." For a moment, he looked almost wistful. "None of this is what I'm after anyway."
Isley noted the dreamy quality of his eerie eyes. The inhibition-lowering enzyme in the air seemed to be doing the trick, just as it had against the guards at the hotel. "What exactly is it you're after, Dr. Crane?" She gritted her teeth over giving him the title, but she knew you had to give mammals and their status games their due.
"The Philospher's Stone," Crane said with a rapt smile. "The tabula rasa...the formula that can be transmuted into any fear at all with a bit of suggestion." His eyes glittered, not mammalian at all but reptilian for a moment. "Think of it. To be able to expose someone to it and then tell them what they're afraid of, and have them bend to your will irresistibly. It could become anything one needed. The seed of all fear." He sighed forlornly. "But I'd need more funds than I have...a better lab than this place, much better...and more time. Then they'll all bow before the Lord of Fear."
Isley almost sneered out loud. Such intelligence, such a mighty mind...and he wasted it with his petty dreams of controlling others, of putting himself on top of the pathetic pyramid of primate society. She knew she wasn't as theoretically brilliant as Crane, but she wasn't concerned with monkey games. The purity of her goal was more important than abstract knowledge. She would be the forest fire that razes in order to create new growth. She just needed a little more time...and that damn toxin.
Crane was still staring into space. An almost giddy smile grew on his face. "I think I'll be going out tonight," he said softly, reaching into a drawer and pulling out his ragged burlap mask. He pulled it on, picking up a couple of spray cans and fastening them to his belt. "I feel like hunting."
It was the enzyme, Isley knew, filling his head with vainglorious ideas and visions. "Crane, what are you doing? You'll ruin it all--"
Scarecrow turned to face her with a snakelike motion, and Pamela Isley's mouth went dry at the sight of the featureless mask, staring and silent. There was nothing under it but Crane's face, she reminded herself. There was no nightmare beneath that stained rough cloth. Fear was an animal's response to a threat, and she was no mere animal.
So there was no excuse for the way her knees trembled at the blank stare, the way she was unable to speak until the door closed behind Scarecrow with a soft click. No excuse at all.
: : :
"Are you sure you don't mind, Clark?"
Buckles, heavy and solid, tightening over his skin. Leather and kevlar encasing his neck. Clark pulled on the black gauntlets. "I can handle it, Bruce."
Bruce looked uncertain. "I've been on stakeout of Isley's lab for the last four days. It's my responsibility, not yours."
More buckles and straps making their way down the inside of his thighs. "Your father attended this fundraiser for the Sunninger Institute every year until his death. He was one of its founders and major contributors. When you're in Gotham, you don't miss it." He slipped one of the heavy black boots on, then the other. "Besides, you want to check on Dr. Sugiyama and the security there." The black cape slid around his shoulders with a sinuous rustle. "This way we can cover Gotham without Superman making a second appearance in a week."
Bruce's grin was wan. "We still need to stage a big confrontation to make up for you being here without my 'permission' last week." The smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "You've never done this before--played Batman. You've said it wouldn't feel right."
Clark smiled sunnily, well aware that the combination of his smile above the grim black suit would probably cause enough mental whiplash to keep Bruce from noticing how uneasy he really was. "I suppose it's time for me to face my fears and prove I can do this." He gestured at the still-lowered cowl. "Want to do the final honors?"
Bruce stepped close and tugged the cowl up over Clark's head, tucking the stray curl under it tenderly. His hands drifted over the armored shoulders, gathering two handfuls of black cloth and knotting in it. "You can do the voice?"
Clark pitched his voice as low as he could, feeling it rasp in his throat. He'd practiced this until the Fortress sensors could hardly measure the difference between his voice and Batman's. "I can do anything you need, Mr. Wayne," he grated.
Bruce's eyes widened for a moment before he got his face back under control. "Uh...okay, you can do the voice."
Clark let his smile become a bit smug and kept his voice low. "I believe I can perform...satisfactorily." Then he swept the cape around them both and kissed Bruce, lifting them both off the floor of the cave until they were hovering in the middle of the cavern. The bats, annoyed at the intrusion, swirled around them in a dark cloud, but Bruce ignored them and leaned into Clark's kiss as if embracing Batman while flying in the Batcave was perfectly natural for him.
He finally broke away, panting a bit. "No flying while on patrol," he noted as they glided gently back down to the floor.
"Don't worry," Clark said in his own voice. "I'm just going to keep an eye on Isley's lab, I'll try not to risk anything else." He shifted awkwardly. "This suit is uncomfortably tight under...certain circumstances."
Bruce kissed him again, lightly. "Now you understand why I usually don't keep the line open while I'm on patrol. Too risky."
Clark got into the Tumbler, starting its engine with a roar. "You do understand this is all just an excuse for me to drive your car."
The door swung closed on his grin and he revved the car out of the cave.
"Drive safely," Bruce said after him, knowing he could catch it with both his hearing and his transmitter.
: : :
"Nothing so far," Clark said softly for Bruce's benefit. He had the sound turned down but could still faintly hear the clink of china and chatter of people. "I stopped one mugging--I know I said I wouldn't risk anything else, but I wasn't just going to let someone get mugged." The look of stark fear on the mugger's face when Batman had leapt to the ground in front of him (being careful to land with an appropriately weighty thump instead of floating) had been both shocking and somewhat gratifying.
Bruce's voice went on talking about the benefits of Italian versus French shoes with someone, but an undercurrent of laughter ran under his voice for a moment.
Clark was crouched on a fire escape above an alley, keeping an eye on Pamela Isley's greenhouse. The greenhouse truncated to become the windowless room in back that was her laboratory. Was it possible that Crane was in there with her? He started to focus his eyes to check--then stopped. The idea of using superpowers while dressed as Batman, in Gotham, was...unnerving, somehow. Pretending to be Batman seemed to be straining some unspoken truce; using powers would violate it entirely.
He frowned at himself. This irrational personification of Gotham was keeping him from doing his job. Truces, promises, the crawling feeling of being watched--all phantasms If Crane was in that lab, he had to know.
Clark focused and looked through the walls of the lab. Inside he could see Isley talking to someone. His heart leapt until he realized she was just talking to a potted orchid on her desk, stroking its colored petals. She frowned and started putting on her coat. There were notes scattered about the room; he narrowed his eyes to get a better look at them--
"Well, well. What have we here?"
Clark whirled to see the Scarecrow standing on the ground below him, gazing up, his cloth-covered face unreadable. Deciding not to risk words, Clark gathered himself to leap at Crane, who stepped back and raised two aerosol canisters.
The vapor in the air between them misted Clark's skin; he passed through the twin clouds of toxin and tackled Crane with a solid thump. Flipping Crane onto his stomach, he grabbed the restraints from Batman's belt and hogtied Crane. "No!" Crane's voice was shrill and shocked. "I know these formulas are right, I know it! You should be on your knees!" Clark ignored him, briefly thanking Rao that it seemed Kryptonian physiology was immune to Crane's toxins after all.
Crane was still choking on his outrage as Clark finished tying him and backed away, hoping Bruce could hear that Crane was captured. Now to get to the police station, alert them to Crane's whereabouts.
He was two alleys over when he started to hear it. His running footsteps slowed, then stopped, trying to pinpoint the source of the pulsing, fluttering rhythm.
Rats.
It was the heartbeats of all the rats in the city, perfectly synchronized.
As if that were the final piece, the foundation that had been missing, the music of the city picked up to match it, a slowly building cadence of malice.
As he stood, confused, the shadows in the alley seemed to darken, rustling, hinting at unspeakable things within them, and he could feel the music shifting to a triumphant dirge.
Something was coming.
Something vast.
Something that could crush him without even trying, without even noticing.
But it noticed him now.
"No," he whispered. "Stay away."
It heard him and laughed, a laugh that made the shadows twine into something solid, a net of dark music to trap him and hold him until he was found and--
Promises and risks forgotten, he launched himself into the sky.
: : :
Pamela Isley smiled down at Jonathan Crane lying trussed on the ground and pulled out a wicked little pruning knife. Enjoying the slight flinch in Crane's eyes, she began sawing through his bonds. "Now you owe me even more, Crane," she said as they came clear.
Crane unfolded his spindly arms and legs, rubbing at them. "Let's get out of here before the police come." His voice was querulous.
"The big bad Bat wasn't afraid of you?" Isley tried not to sound too smug, but the gleam in those icy eyes indicated she hadn't succeeded.
"I don't understand it," he muttered as they slipped back to the safety of the lab. "They were two of the safest phobias I had. Nyctophobia and acrophobia, two of the most basic fears!" The peevishness had been replaced by wondering disbelief. "Darkness and heights...how could I have failed again?"
"Well, back to the drawing board," Isley said cheerfully. "And prioritize that dendrophobia, would you, dear?"
"Certainly, Dr. Isley," he mumbled, slouching back toward his notes.
: : :
Bruce was making small talk with one of Sunninger's doctors, trying to find out how Mike Sugiyama's recovery was going without appearing to understand much of the medical terms, when he heard Crane's voice sputtering in his ear, cursing the ineffectiveness of his toxins. He felt a blaze of triumph and had to bite down on a whoop of congratulations for his Kal. He beamed a smile full of relief at Leslie Thompkins, who smiled back, clearly puzzled at his sudden ebullience. He heard Clark's booted feet heavy on the street and imagined his lover all bound and buckled in black leather, looked forward to getting him out of it later...
"No," said Kal's voice in his ear, a bare whisper. "Stay away."
Bruce felt his smile go stiff for a moment before he could make it natural again. Then there was a sudden terrible crash, the sound of something colliding with dumpsters and trash cans. The sound of Kal falling from the sky. The metallic echoes faded through his head and he tried to nod as if he cared about the prattle around him. Then he heard a new sound, a low rattling burr. It took him a moment to place the sound.
It was Kal's teeth chattering uncontrollably.
Now seriously alarmed, he lifted his glass to take a long sip of wine. "Kal. Fly away," he muttered under cover of the drink.
Kal moaned. "Can't. I can't fly. I'll fall. I'll fall into the stars, forever and ever. I can't." There was a scraping sound of leather on concrete, as if Kal were crawling. "It's coming for me, Bruce."
Bruce struggled to disentangle himself from the conversation around him; Leslie looked concerned, but all he could focus on was the ratcheting rasp of Kal's breathing. "Bruce," his lover whispered, "She's coming for me. She wants me--to break me, eat my heart, she's--I can't--" Kal's voice broke into sobbing gasps and Bruce gave up all pretense and bolted for the door, not hearing the dropped glass shattering on the floor, not seeing the curious eyes making way before him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Kal cried, no longer addressing Bruce but whatever nightmare vision loomed in front of him, "Please don't--I swear I never--Please!"
Bruce slammed the car into gear, tires shrieking as if in pain, and Kal's voice echoed the sound. "Kal!" he yelled over the sound of the engine, the speedometer needle inching toward 100 as he raced back toward Gotham. "It's the toxin, Kal, nothing's really there. Nothing!"
A horrible keening, hardly human, was his only answer. It lifted and fell endlessly, with no pause for breath, as the car inched unbearably slowly toward Gotham at a hundred and ten miles an hour. "I'm coming, Kal," Bruce said after negotiating a few hairpin turns. "I'm on my way back. I'll be there soon. Is it Isley you're seeing? Or Ursa? They're not real, Kal. Whatever you're seeing, she's not real. I'm almost there."
The keening stuttered and broke. "Bruce? You can't--you can't keep her away, she'll find me, she sings--I can hear her singing and laughing, and her lips are bloody and beautiful, you can't stop her." Kal's voice was bleak. "You won't stop her."
Bruce struggled to sound reasonable and break through the delirium. "I'll be there soon," he said, a stop sign blurring by him in a streak of red. "When I'm there, she'll stop. Do you hear me, Kal? She'll go away. I won't let her hurt you."
Gotham's skyscrapers loomed around him now as he made his way to where Isley's lab was. Kal had to be near there. "Tell me where you are, Kal."
Silence. He couldn't even hear Kal breathing, he realized suddenly. "Kal!" The car screeched a stop and he leapt out of it before it was done moving, running, staring down alleys.
Silence in his ears. Nothing but silence. "No, no, no, damn it, no!" Rats scuttled away from him as he searched each alley. "Stay away from Kal, he's mine, you can't hurt him, I'll never forgive you if you hurt him, do you hear me?" He had no idea what vision Kal was seeing, but he had nothing left now but to embrace it. "Get away from him, get away from him, I won't let you touch him!"
A cobblestone turned under his foot and he staggered to his knees. As he stood, he finally saw the huddled shape of Kal in the batsuit, lying in a shadow. "God--please--" He rolled Kal over onto his back, touching the cool white skin. "Kal!"
The beautiful mouth opened and Kal drew in breath with a soft gasp. "Bruce?" A glint of turquoise eyes within the cowl. "Stay away...it's too..." Black-clad hands raised to cover his ears, twisting in Bruce's grasp. "It won't go away, her song, everyone bleeding toward death with every beat..."
"It's not real," Bruce said, feeling Kal trembling against him as he helped him rise. "It's the fear toxin, Kal. It's not real."
"It's too real for you to hear," Kal said like a wind over stone, empty.
He didn't say anything else as Bruce drove them home. He was silent as Bruce and Alfred got him out of the suit, trembling, his eyes far away. He curled against Bruce in bed, letting Bruce hold him, wordless.
Bruce woke up the next morning with the bed empty. "Clark?" he asked the empty air, panic in his voice.
"Good morning." The warm voice in his ear had a smile in it. "I'm back in Metropolis. Have to get to work soon."
Bruce shook his head as if that would help clear it. "Are you..."
"I'm fine now. The toxin wore off in the night." A pause; Bruce could hear coffee pouring into a mug. "I'm sorry about that, about freaking out like that, letting Crane get away. Seems fear toxin works on Kryptonians with just a slight delay." There was rueful amusement in Clark's voice. "And...thank you. For coming to save me."
Bruce tried to match Clark's casual tone. "We take turns, right?"
"You overcame it on your own," Clark said slowly. "I...couldn't."
"I'd been exposed to something like it before," Bruce responded. "You didn't know it would affect you, so you weren't prepared."
"Maybe," said Clark. "That could be it."
Bruce wanted to ask what Kal had seen in his delirium the night before, but something about Clark's tone seemed to close off the possibility. "So...you'll be up for dinner tonight? Alfred's making pot pie."
The hesitation on the other end was so small it could have been missed entirely. "Gosh, there's going to be a lot of work at the Planet today, I think. And I should put in a full patrol tonight after missing last night."
"Well then, maybe tomorrow."
"Maybe tomorrow, yes," Clark agreed.
But he didn't come to Gotham the next day.
Or the day after that.
He talked to Bruce on the headset, chatted with him on the computer, even invited Bruce to Metropolis for dinner. Nothing in his way of talking to Bruce seemed changed at all; he joked and flirted and complained about work the same as always.
But he still didn't come to Gotham.