serendipity. [superbat]

intro: experiment.

a/n: just a thought i had.
w: mpreg, not following canon play-by-play cause I don't want to, slow burn.

Bruce spends a lot of his time thinking in "What ifs". It's what's kept him alive in the business he's chosen with the questionable company he finds himself keeping. What if the laughing gas the Joker fancies so much could be used to wipe out the entirety of Gotham? He'd need to know that. He'd need to put every factor into an algorithm. He'd need to run every experiment he could to make sure he got the answer to that problem before it became an actual problem. It was morbid curiosity that tended to pay off. 

He spent the time that he wasn't chasing the monsters on the streets of Gotham trying to figure out what their next move would be. A lot of the time, that meant thinking as unhinged as they did. It meant brainstorming the most harebrained scheme and testing them before they found their way into the lives of the city's residents. If a hunch led him to a random toxin that was being stored by Scarecrow's henchmen, he needed to know what damage it could potentially cause. If he was thrown some puzzle by the Riddler, he'd need to know how much time he'd need to solve it and how that amount of time would affect the people he intended to save. He needed to know what he was up against. 

That's how he'd found himself in this particular predicament. He'd had an interaction that had made him suspicious, maybe even a little wary. Metropolis' finest had landed in the heart of Gotham without so much as a warning. The caped crusader's sudden touchdown caught Bruce's attention immediately, pinging up on the computer's monitor as soon as chatter began to bubble up. 

Even with Superman's attempts to be discreet with his bulky clothing, tussled hair, glasses and briefcase, he still was Clark Kent. Clark Kent, who was still a well-known reporter in his own right, would definitely be noticed by those in the journalism circuit. They'd want to know why he was on their turf. According to the chatter, a reporter from the Daily Planet had suddenly found himself chasing a story. 

Bruce can't say he isn't curious. 

He'd had different plans for the night. Ones that involved Batman some shady storage containers, but instead he found himself dressed in a suit that was too expensive for the amount of time he planned to stay in it. His equally expensive, sleek shoes find themselves standing in front of Gotham's Museum of Art and he has to grit his teeth and remind himself why he's here in the first place.

"Mr. Wayne!"

It's a hard sell as a woman draped in something that probably costs more than any of them would be donating tonight, slinks up to him and begins speaking on something he has absolutely no interest in. It doesn't stop her though as she slips an arm around his and guides him up the stairs and into the main entrance. 

Bruce's eyes scan the room out of sheer habit and it's not long before he finds Kent loitering over in a corner, eyes watching the crowd intently. He doesn't go straight over, mind snapping back into the moment and reminding him that there are appearances to keep up. He slips out of the woman's grasp with some mumbled apology and grabs the first drink he sees off of the nearest tray that passes him. 

As much as he doesn't like socializing, he's spent a lot of his life having to suck it up in order to get to where he was trying to go. So, he knows all of the tricks to make it less painful. He finds a group that's already discussing something he doesn't particularly care about and finds a woman that doesn't seem as though it's going to take a lot to get her to hang off of his arm. He manages to find someone who's intrigued enough in his appearance that she won't think too much about the fact that he's not even remotely interested in her. He talks in vague sentences and laughs when everyone else laughs. 

It's easier said than done though as he squeezes and shimmies through around over two hundred people, with more than a few stopping him to talk about how he could fund whatever they were trying to sell.

When he's not pretending to listen, he's pretending to be interested in the rest of the room in order to catch quick glances of Clark. He hasn't moved from his previous spot but someone, another reporter Bruce would guess from the tacky formal wear and notepad in her hand, has joined him. She's chatting him up and he's entertaining her.

Curious.

"He's here for the Daily Planet." Bruce hears somewhere within the group he's supposed to be participating in.

"Hm?" He asks, glancing back at the woman on his arm to see her eyes going from where Clark was standing in the corner over to lock eyes with Bruce. 

"Yeah, he came to my job and wrote an article on..." Then, Bruce is back to zoning out as he once again grabs for another drink off of the nearest tray being touted by a waiter, "He's really sweet."

He's too sober, he realizes, to entertain even simple banter. He steps away from the woman, heading for the balcony. He just needed a temporary escape before heading back inside. He lets out a sigh, eyes cast up to the night sky and it takes him way longer than he would like to admit to register the fact that someone is standing behind him. 

"Bruce Wayne?" Kent questions as if he's surprised to see the man, at one of the biggest fundraising events held in the heart of the city he resides in. 

Kent glides over and immediately starts chatting as if they're old friends. 

"So, how've you been holding up?"

In that moment, Bruce knows he should abort the plan and maybe try going about this some other way. The warmth of the man's voice, the way he smiles as if he's just happy to be in Bruce's presence, throws him for a loop. It shouldn't, because they've been doing this thing that they should've squashed months ago. A thing that felt a lot like friendship. Those types of relationships tended to cloud judgment. He didn't need them. Yet, he finds himself reveling in that smile as it's aimed at him. He finds himself cracking jokes and stepping forward to fix the man's way-too-garish tie, before he suddenly remembers why he's here. 

Taking a sample inconspicuously should be difficult, but Clark's standing so close to him and touching him. He places a hand on his shoulder, gives it a light squeeze before taking yet another step into Bruce's space. 

Getting a couple of skin cells is a breeze. The hardest part is tearing himself away from Clark once the job is done. 

He spends a couple of days analyzing the sample, noting his findings as he goes. He's observing the skin cells under a microscope when he first notices it. At first, he just assumes that it's a lack of sleep that has him seeing things. He watches as the cells attempt to regenerate and heal like a reptile that's lost a limb. 

The cells seem to multiply without the body, Clark's body, present as if they have a mind of their own. He places a couple of the cells on the heart of a rat that had passed in a previous experiment and watches as the cells slowly begin to assimilate, becoming similar to the cells that the organ was made of in order to attempt to heal. The way they behave raises the question of whether they could be used to create new organs. 

It should've been a question for later.

Bruce is exhausted. He'd spent a staggering amount of time cooped up in the cave, staring at the damned cells while depriving himself until he got some answers. He could feel Alfred practically breathing down his neck as he looked on with disapproval. He was so exhausted that the only thing keeping one foot placing itself in front of the other was sheer adrenaline. After a particularly harrowing fight with the Penguin, the lack of food, water, and sleep were actually beginning to take effect. It would be better to do more tests later. 

However, that doesn't stop him from yanking off his suit and settling himself at his desk as he continues to scribble down questions. So, it's no wonder that his deft fingers drop the needle that he'd intended to use on a rabbit lung. The needle falls into his lap and he can feel the prick before he sees the pinprick of blood appear on his skin. 

He doesn't have a protocol for this. 

Deadly diseases, sure. Deadly toxins, absolutely. He has a protocol for the black plague, but he just finds himself sitting there, sleep-addled mind trying to figure out his next move. 

"Fuck."