Fic: Sing
TITLE: Sing
PAIRING: hints of Clark/Bruce
AUTHOR: Misakikaito
RATING: G
WORDCOUNT:670-ish
DISCLAIMER: I wish I owned them.
SUMMARY: Gotham and her Dark Knight.
Gotham was filled with a dark sort of beauty, a beauty that pains and awes those who watched her, who protected her.
Who called her home.
Every night, she greets her Dark Night, her physician of the night, her healer of her wounds, singing through the wind, touching him with her shadows.
He stopped the pain where he could, fighting the evil when it emerged from the gutters and the asylum. At night, he wears a cowl and cape, both as dark as the shadows she uses to hide him from sight. Let it never be said that Gotham is ungrateful. She is a harsh mistress, but she is not cruel.
She knows the man whose parents' blood stained her streets, and she knew him well. She ensnared him with the delicate light of hope she cradled within her, surrounded by the sharp edges of agony and grief and insanity.
He acts the buffoon when the Sun desperately tries to shed its light upon her. To protect himself, he masks his true intellect and physical prowess, to shield his company and his heritage as the last scion of the Wayne House. He indirectly protects her by pretending to be that which he is not.
She knows the pitter-patter of every man woman and child who belongs to her- she knows their happiness and grief and rage, and they are a part of her, just as she is a part of them, as long as they may live.
But she also knows when someone intrudes upon her. She feels the foreign power of a different planet, a planet that tasted of knowledge and crystal and death. The man who intrudes upon Gotham, and upon her Dark Knight, is too bright for her. He does not belong in her shadows, and the shadows is the only thing she can offer this man made of light that out shines the hope she cradles within her breast. Her Knight confronts him, and the foreign Man of Light and Steel leaves. But he returns.
He protects her sunny, sunny sister, Metropolis. The fickle, fickle city calls herself the City of Tomorrow, and she races ahead of Gotham, leaving Gotham in the shadows of the past. But Gotham knows that her sister is not without darkness, although Metropolis is bathed in light- and Gotham wonders whether the Man of Light -Superman- had shadows as well.
When he comes again to her streets, she looks into the souls of both her Knight and her sisters’. The Man of Light’s soul is tainted by the darkness of rage, sorrow, loneliness and of a betrayal that cut deeply into his heart. His soul is mostly of the same light of Metropolis, but because shadows do lace his soul, he can see the darkness of greed that lies in her bright sister.
She also finds love. Her Batman and her sister’s Superman were two pieces of a puzzle that clicked when they met. They completed each other in ways that Gotham could only marvel at, and over years of a partnership that would never end, the seeds of an eternal love grew and flourished.
Gotham sings now, not just through wind and shadow now- she sings through the love she feels emanating from her Knight, and accepts the Light One into her fold. She opens the wedge that closed her Knight’s heart a little more, and his connections grow, and he brings to her only the best and brightest she knows she has. He trains them, and she sings to them of the deeds that they will do, because they carry pieces of the light she has, and the sharp edges of insanity and desperation soften, allowing her light to grow and envelope them.
Her Dark Knight is the brightest soul of her defenders, the leader of the pack so to speak, though he cloaks himself with shadows of his past to strengthen his resolve to protect the future. As he hunts the evil still lying in the dark, she sings to the stars and moon of his deeds and justice, and rings a clarion call across the world that sounds of light and justice and determination, strengthening the weak and bolstering the strong.
Gotham sings her love and light to her Dark Knight, her only prince, and she sings triumphant songs of victory for all the world to hear.