serendipity. [superbat]

error ii.

Bruce isn't a dependent person. He couldn't afford to be with the way his life had started and the path he had subsequently taken after. He didn't need the touch and affection of others, didn't rely on it. He couldn't depend on someone staying around for more than a week at most. So, watching Clark scrabble to get dressed and stumble out of the ship, mumbling something about Martha, shouldn't hurt as much as it does. He shouldn't reach out for Clark the way he does, attempt to plead for him to come back, but Bruce doesn't seem to be able to detach himself currently. 

So, he protests until the door slams shut and once he's alone, he curls in on himself and tries to ignore the emotional pain in favor of finding a way to dim the physical pain. The ship, while he was sure it was nothing but a foreign machine, was nothing like any man-made device. He could feel it watching him. The way it reacted to his clear suffering felt less like a robot's reaction and more like a machine with the mind of a human placed inside of it. It was like Clark's ancestors had put their emotions inside of their technology. The ship was doing its best to accommodate, the tone of the voice speaking to him shifting from sterile and passive to empathetic and present. It was trying, with everything it'd collected from, Bruce assumes, previous instances of this happening, to find a way to soothe Bruce. 

A particularly unpleasant cramp hits him and he feels like he's going to vomit. He lurches forward on his hands and knees, fighting his hardest to stand so that he can get at least within the proximity of the bathroom, only to watch as a deeper bowl, almost like a sink, opens up at the edge of the pool in front of where he's propped up. He gags, feeling like his stomach is about to escape through his throat as tears prick at the corners of his eyes. 

That's when he hears it, a quiet soothing voice talking to him.

"Do you need me to contact Kal-El, Bruce?" The voice asks and, if he hadn't been absolutely exhausted, he would've set himself into a fighting stance.

Instead, he peers up to see the ship's screen with a face on it that looks eerily familiar. It's a woman who's watching with concern, mouth turned down into a frown, eyes fully of worry. She looks like she'd be stern, but kind, brunette hair pinned up in a bun, piercing blue eyes analyzing Bruce. 

"Who are you?" he huffs out, feeling as if this is it, he's finally lost his mind.

He watches as the woman on the screen smiles sweetly.

"I am Lara, Kal-El's mother."

It takes everything in Clark not to turn around, to pull Bruce over and do everything in his power to make sure the man's okay, but fear keeps him moving. 

Clark's felt it before, mostly when their backs are to one another in a fight or he watches as Bruce's body collides with some surface that he knows it couldn't handle. Though, that's a slightly different feeling. It wasn't him hurting Bruce. This feeling that looms over him, eats away at him, was his fear of being the one breaking those fragile bones. Bruce was resilient and strong in his own right. He'd shown himself to be when he'd killed Clark, but Bruce isn't Batman right now. He isn't being protected by some suit; he doesn't have the clearest mind. Hell, he's trusting Clark currently, which tells Clark all he needs to know. 

So, he keeps going until he lands on his mother's porch. She swings the door open, large smile on her face until she sees the expression on his. She tugs him inside and immediately rushes off to find him something to drink.

"Tell me what happened," she says, placing a snack down in front of him.

"I need to get back, I just -," he looks around the living room as if that held the answers to his problems, "Bruce is in pain and I can help, but he's completely out of it and I need his permission to do so."