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Title: Choices and Chances
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Bruce/J'onn, Alfred. Cameos by Kal, Diana and Kyle.
Summary: Okay, not really Bruce/J'onn. More like timetravelling!J'onn meets 10-year-old Bruce, and figures out he loves the boy's older counterpart.
Wordcount: 5523
Warnings: see above
Choices and Chances
"Something's wrong."
Bruce's voice sounded quietly in his mind, with that particular Bat-tone that meant he was understating the fact. If Batman said there was trouble in that tone, you got out. Fast. J'onn was wheeling away even as he thought it, dimly aware that both Kal and Diana were following him. Kyle was slower to turn, but he cottoned on fast enough. You generally did, after spending any amount of time working with the Bat.
Where? he sent back, silently, giving it an interrogative cast. He could feel Bruce's attention turning towards him briefly, a flash of impatience and censure. It was serious.
"Everywhere," came the terse response. "I'm reading a massive energy build-up over the entire zone. Looks magical from here, but that's inconclusive. Get out." A sharp snap of command, cold, but J'onn could feel the lacing of concern behind it. And as he felt the surge of something behind him, the crackling buzz of sensation against his mind, J'onn suddenly understood why.
The Bat was as professional as ever, merely reporting what he saw, but behind him Bruce had sensed something more. The instinct behind the logic, the intuition that was more a part of Batman than he liked to admit. Bruce sensed there was something more to the energy, sensed what J'onn was sensing even now, racing towards him, the sensation of it building inexorably against his back no matter how fast he fled from it. The malevolence. The cruel intent. J'onn could feel the awareness in the force that came for them, and almost screamed as it turned, suddenly. To look at him.
It was vast, this thing, and young. Cruel and strangely stupid, a mindless malevolence, a wicked child. It turned arrogant, hateful awareness on him, stripped through his defenses with a power that terrified in its immediacy, its sheer size. The entity stripped him bare in a matter of seconds, angry that he should look at it, angry that he should presume to judge its magnificence. It bit poisoned teeth into his psyche, and ripped out what pleased it.
What pleased it was loneliness. Fear. Suspicion and distrust. And though J'onn strove to fight it, to drive down the memories it pulled from him with playful ease, he couldn't stop it finding those things inside him. The old, vast reserves, from an earlier, harder time. A time of fear, and the freshness of a loneliness so strong it had nearly killed him. The thing reached into him, pulled free the memories of his earliest days on Earth, and found them infinitely amusing. Pleasing.
Fun.
J'onn sensed what it meant to do. He could feel the intent, knew the thing was letting him, wanted to show him what was going to happen. He knew it, and was terrified.
The rush of power caught him up, bypassing his comrades, tossing them casually from its path. J'onn felt their distant dismay as they realised he was the target, felt them try to come around, try to help him. And beyond them, another spirit, reaching out to him. Bruce. Bruce was reaching out towards J'onn, the instinctive outstretched hand to bring him home, as if the will of the Bat could defy the strength of this thing. And despite knowing it couldn't, despite knowing that nothing any of them could do could stop this, J'onn found himself reaching out for it, straining his consciousness towards that of his friend, even as the wave hit.
He felt it pass over him. Through him. A dizzying roar of sound and colour, a sensation raw and screaming. A familiar dissociation, a stretching of his being, the twisting of his essence as it was sent where it had never been meant to go. He remembered this feeling, remembered the first time. Dimly, because then he had been too hurt to care. But now ...
He could feel them fading, swept away by the wave, lost to another time. Even another planet, as far as he knew. The last of them, Kyle, through the ring, will shaped with desperation, and then, before he lost them altogether, before he was thrown again beyond everything he had know, one last familiar presence. A beacon, blazing with desperation, will forged from loss, arrowing down through his link to them. Bruce. Trying, so hard. Fighting to reach him. Uselessly.
And equally uselessly, he found himself trying to reach back.
Bruce.
He felt himself arrive, felt the jarring return of reality, the pain as his essence was wrenched into alignment with this new time, this new world. He didn't move. Couldn't, really. Not yet. But he simply didn't want to. He didn't want to face it. Didn't want to begin the process of feeling his way through this new place, to face the suspicion and fear of a new world. Not again. The loss swept through him, a shuddering well of pain, not quite grief. Not yet. That would come, he knew. He remembered. Just pain for now, raw and almost numbing, nearly a relief. The grief would only come when he had stopped surviving long enough to remember what he had lost.
He lay where he had fallen, shaking silently. Not like the first time. Not the cold floor of an impromptu lab. Grass, it felt like, the tough, fragile blades pushing up against his raw form, every atom of him open and sensitive, stripped bare by the transit. He shuddered against it, against the chill of damp he could feel misting the air, the touch of sunlight. He didn't know what sun. The thought nearly shattered him.
But there was no time for that. No time, when a presence appeared somewhere beyond him, a meandering thing, not focused on him. They hadn't seen him yet, or sensed him, though they were wary. Instinctive, he thought. This person was always wary, always watching. Despite himself, despite the crushing weight of the situation, he wondered why.
He opened his eyes, then. Opened them to a world that was strangely familiar. A world ... very much like Earth, he thought, as he pulled himself to his feet. He paused in the rush of survival instinct, the habits of long years coming readily back to him, as if they had always expected to be needed again. He hadn't realised how deeply he had been touched by that first loss, how ready he seemingly was to lose again. But the sight of this almost-familiar place stopped the thought.
It was familiar. Not just the familiar of a planet-type, that came whenever the League ended up on an Earthlike planet. He'd had that many times. This was a personal familiarity, a sense that he knew this place, this exact place. From somewhere. Somewhen, maybe. Hope resurrected itself at the thought, desperate and persistent, everpresent no matter what he endured. As familiar as the pain, and a far more welcome friend.
And then the presence he had sensed came up behind him, pausing in shock and instant fear as it saw him. He stilled deliberately. He didn't want to cause another death, not again. He didn't want to repeat what he had done that first time, all unknowing. This time he knew. This time, it was his duty to prevent it.
But the fear in the being at his back did not overwhelm it, didn't send it spiraling towards terminal shock. Instead, when he didn't move, it morphed itself, became a kind of wary, intense curiosity, a fearful focus. And J'onn all but gasped. He knew that feeling. He turned. He didn't want to, wanted to more than anything, was terrified to. But he had to. Had to see, knowing what was going to be looking back at him. Knowing what that last desperate reaching had wrought.
He turned, slowly, and stared into the wide blue eyes of a ten year old Bruce Wayne.
The boy faced him, met his gaze squarely. Of course he did. Bruce would, no matter what. And this boy ... J'onn knew this boy was already on his way to becoming the man J'onn had known as a friend. Fear squalled through the child, terror of this monster, this obviously alien thing. But Bruce did not back down.
"I will not harm you," J'onn said, gently. He repressed the urge to raise his hands in a peacemaking gesture. This child, of all children, would not react well to sudden moves. Not that he reacted exactly well to the words, either, but at least he didn't bolt. Or try to attack. But Bruce knew how fragile he was. He always had.
"Why not?" the boy asked, with brutal directness. J'onn almost flinched, torn between laughter and pain. So familiar, this testing.
"Because I do not want to," he answered, equal blunt. He could see the child considering this, could see it weighed with a clear but still youthful intelligence, and smiled slightly when he nodded. Bruce didn't trust, but he knew enough to take what assurances seemed reasonable to advance the situation. So clinical, despite the fear, even now. But the mask was not quite there, yet, the emotions too fierce and fresh.
J'onn knew what that felt like.
"May I approach you?" he asked, hesitant. This child was not quite the man he knew, wasn't quite the dependable spirit he had come to trust. He couldn't be sure what this Bruce would do, and he knew all to well that the child was far more likely to be hurt by a mistake than he was. It was distressing to realise that the boy knew it too. Not for the first time, he wished he could have prevented the pain he had always felt, deep inside his friend, the anger and fear and unwilling, elemental hope. And seeing it here, so new and raw, the angry jags of emotion unshielded and skimming so close to the surface ... he ached for the child.
"Can I stop you?" Bruce shot back, a rapid assault, attacking what frightened him before it had the chance to attack him.
"Only say so," J'onn assured, wanting badly to reach out, restraining himself. Not now. He couldn't simply reach out because he yearned for the familiar, yearned to help his friend. This boy was not his friend. Not yet. Not for many years.
Not ever, if he hurt him now.
J'onn flinched from a sudden sense of vertigo, the future suddenly slippery and distant, a theft nearly more grievous than if he had been robbed of this world altogether. Any damage was suddenly his fault, and his alone. Everything he had held dear on this Earth was spinning on a needle, waiting for his slightest mistake to upset it, and a child with Bruce's eyes watched it spin.
And then, as J'onn stood frozen, dislocation sickness rushing up through him to meet the grief and nascent guilt, that child stepped forward, towards him. Just a few steps, just enough to put him nearly in J'onn's reach had J'onn been pure human, not touching, ready to dart back. But Bruce came towards him, his young mind shining with curiosity and a kind of fearful trust, wary, ready to be hurt, but needing to know anyway. Bruce was always so careless with his own safety, so ready to let himself be hurt if it got him what he needed. Knowledge. The safety of a friend. So familiar, this boy, so much the beginnings of everything J'onn had come to cherish in his future self.
Bruce, he whispered unconsciously, sending without thought, a greeting as casual and instinctive as any he had ever uttered. He was too raw himself, too shattered by the touch of that entity, that black creature. But that didn't excuse it, when the child flinched back in shock, his mind reacting with the instant rejection of the foreign touch that J'onn remembered from their first meetings, raw and unsophisticated now. But effective, oh yes. J'onn flinched back from that stab of fear and anger as surely as Bruce had retreated from him, the attack striking through to the sickness inside him and bringing him to his knees.
He lost a minute or two. Maybe more. He couldn't be sure, couldn't be sure of anything beyond the dull swirl of reaction, that sharp flower of sickness blooming inside him. The world disappeared, lost all definition, a dizzying whirlwind of distant sensations, and the fear rose through him at the echo of the translocation, panic clawing upwards. He arched away from it, form shifting as he reached desperately out for any anchor he could find, anything to hold onto, anything ...
"Stop! Stop! Let me go!"
A child's voice, shrill with fear, sharp with instinctive command. A bright flare of spirit beneath his touch, a soul arching with desperate intensity as his mind and form wrapped around it, fighting him, terrified of him.
Terrified of him.
He let Bruce go, recoiling from the child as if the touch burned. He fell back, rolled away. Somewhere. He didn't know where. There was water, in the fall. He felt himself slide through it, the splash surrounding him, chill slicing through to his core. The grass reached out to grab him again, little blades like the knife-edge of hurt, and the voice, above him, calling in fear ...
He stopped. Altogether.
He was slow in waking, the second time. The sickness had fallen back, his body and mind acclimatised to the world, his spirit recovering from the touch of the alien entity. But he didn't move, didn't do anything save lie still and wait. This waking would be the bad one, said the voice of experience. The one where he paid the price of what he'd done the last time.
Where he paid for hurting Bruce. And suddenly, as he felt the world settle around him, irretrievably ruined, he found he didn't particularly care what they did. It was nothing to the pain of what he'd lost.
But no-one did anything. There was someone near, he could feel them. Familiar again. Not Bruce, though that was hardly surprising. Alfred, he thought. Younger again than what he had known as a Leaguer. Sharper-edged. But it felt like the man he had met, back in the future.
It also felt angry, and hurt. And an angry Alfred ... that was a frightening thing.
"You are awake?" the man asked, quietly. Perceptive. Everyone in this family ... but it wasn't even a family, yet. Or only the beginnings of one.
He opened his eyes, pulled his form back into something that would have been recognisable to his friends. Not to Alfred, not now, but it was less intimidating, anyway. He opened his eyes and looked around gingerly.
The mansion. Almost certainly. He was resting on a sofa, the room bright and open around him, sunlight streaming in from the huge bay windows at the far side of the room. They looked out over the grounds, damp and ripe with fresh rain. That explained the water, anyway. Puddles, it must have been. Why Bruce had been out ... Though it hardly mattered. He turned his head, to look at his questioner.
Alfred sat on the edge of the small table beside him, watching him with wary, curious eyes. He had fewer wrinkles than the man J'onn remembered, closer to another man, in Kiev ... how long ago would that be, in this time? The eyes were similar, too. Sharp and ready, with an edge of ruthlessness. Alfred was all that now stood between the wounded Bruce and the world, and it was quite obviously a duty he took very, very seriously.
Now there was a thought to make you nervous, he thought wryly. But it was deserved, after all.
"I am," he confirmed, somewhat redundantly, but it was the courtesy of the thing. Alfred nodded at him.
"What are you?" Direct and to the point. So that was where Bruce got it. J'onn shook his head a little, pulling himself up onto his elbows to better face the man, and ignoring it when Alfred stiffened in readiness beside him.
"I am from Mars," he answered, quietly. "What you would call an alien." Alfred nodded briskly, and J'onn braced himself for the next question. What was he doing here. Had he come to harm them. To be fair, this man had better reason to ask it than most of the people who had questioned him over the years. He had an injured boy somewhere in the house, one J'onn had hurt, instead of simply an inherent sense of paranoia.
Not that Alfred didn't have a healthy dose of that, too. But these were just those kind of times. J'onn remembered them well, and not exactly fondly.
But Alfred surprised him. As the Bats constantly seemed to. "You're injured," he observed, quietly. "Or ill. I can't tell which." J'onn nodded, stunned, and Alfred shook his head with a deep frown. "I don't know how to help you. I've never seen anything like you. I wouldn't know where to start."
J'onn blinked at him. "Why ... would you want to?" he asked, slowly, and Alfred shot him a suddenly very Batlike glare. J'onn blinked at the stunningly familiar expression, the ache rising within him before he could stop it.
"Do I seem barbaric to you?" Alfred demanded, frostily, and J'onn could have laughed at the clear offense in the tone, had he not been so confused. Barbaric was the last thing anyone could accuse this man of being. "You are in our home, clearly injured. It would not be civilised to leave you that way."
"I meant no offense," J'onn assured him gently, and dipped his head. "But I have not been ... I have not treated you in a civilised fashion, either. I would not consider it barbarous to take ... precautions."
Alfred watched him in silence for a minute, his gaze so quietly weighing and incisive that had J'onn not known better, he might honestly have credited the man with the telepathy rumour granted him. But he knew it wasn't, that it was simply the intelligent perception that seemed inherent to the people of this family. Faced with it, he wondered, not for the first time, if this was what people felt when they talked to him.
"Bruce has nightmares, you know," Alfred broke through his thoughts, entirely unexpected. J'onn frowned at the non sequitur, watching as the older man let his eyes fall to rest distantly on his own knees. "You needn't know why, although if what he told me of your speaking inside his mind is true ... perhaps you already do." That sharp stare came up again to drill into J'onn, and he looked away, the knowledge clear in his face. Alfred sighed softly. "He knows what it's like to wake up in fear, to be hurt and sick, to lash out or reach out blindly. He knew it, the minute you fell. He understood why you hurt him. He does not blame you for it."
He does not blame you.
J'onn sank back down, closing his eyes. Pain lanced through him, loss and grief and understanding and love. Of course Bruce didn't. Of course he knew. That boy ... the man ... his friend. Not lost. Unable to be lost, forging a path despite it all. J'onn cried silently, inside himself. All he had made for himself ... not yet lost. Not yet fallen, still spinning, supported by the instinctive understanding of a wounded child. The relief and empathy undid him.
He sensed Alfred stand up beside him, sensed the man silently make his way out, compassionate discretion a bone-deep instinct for him. Giving him space to gather himself, the privacy to weep without the weight of a stranger's regard. Gratitude sang through the roiling emotions inside him, clear for an instant, then gone again as he surrendered to the tumult.
Curling into himself, losing physical coherency as he shrank to the smallest, simplest shape he knew, J'onn wept.
He felt the child enter, hours later. Through the haze of exhaustion, the drifting fog of spent emotion, he sensed the bright flare of that presence, recognised it instantly.
Bruce padded softly over to the sofa, wary blue eyes fixed on the hovering sphere that was J'onn. A quiver of curious delight flickered through his young mind, and J'onn laughed a little, inside himself. So curious, this Bruce. Young still, despite it all. He reached out with his mind, a gentle touch, no more than a warning that he was awake, that he knew Bruce was there. The child recoiled instinctively, memory and inherent caution prompting the retreat, but the gentleness was enough. He stood still, didn't lash out. J'onn let himself swirl gently, a flash of warm colour, to show his gratitude, and was rewarded with a soft sound of appreciation from the boy.
He held himself still, a sphere of warm life, colours eddying through him, and let his heart sing silently as Bruce came cautiously closer, to stand beside the sofa. He didn't move as the boy held out a hand slowly, gingerly, and paused with his fingertip an inch from J'onn.
Hello? the child sent, uncertainly, his thought loud and unpolished, wholly unlike the toned thoughts his older self sent. J'onn smiled, and unfurled a little, letting a wisp of himself brush gently over Bruce's fingertip.
Hello, he answered, gently. Bruce.
I don't know your name, the boy sent back, repressing his instinctive flinch, nerves trembling as he kept his hand outstretched to J'onn's touch. So fearful, so brave. J'onn ached to hug him.
J'onn, he whispered, gently. You call me J'onn.
Bruce tilted his head to one side, his eyes sharpening, his mind flaring with bright intelligence. You know me! he exclaimed. I thought ... felt ... but how? You know me, and I think I would have felt it if you'd taken it ...
Probably, J'onn agreed, wincing. You are sensitive, that way. You watch yourself.
I have to! Defensively said, outrage and old pain blossoming. The wounds were too raw for this Bruce, the path too freshly chosen. He hadn't yet learned the calm his older self would wield almost as a weapon. And you didn't answer my question. J'onn chuckled, despite himself. So sullen ...
I'm sorry, he sent back, a little sadly. I don't know that I can. They are not my secrets.
What secrets? the boy asked, angrily, then paused, his agile mind catching up, filling in the gaps. J'onn watched as flashes of old, half-remembered stories flickered through his mind, HG Wells, all the old books a young boy had once devoured avidly for the adventures alone, now scavenged for the concepts they had held. There was something quite ... tragic, about that. You're ... not just from another planet, are you?
No, he confirmed softly. I'm not.
Bruce nodded slowly, his mind leaping to the correct conclusion, and then, achingly, to a hope he knew was wrong, even as he felt it. But to know the future, to know beforehand if his choices would prove the correct ones ... what intelligent being wouldn't hope for that, if only for a moment? J'onn sighed, saddened, and braced himself to refuse, to disappoint. But Bruce knew. Without him saying it. The boy had learned long since that nothing was ever that easy.
I'm sorry, Bruce said suddenly, pulling his mind onto a different track with an almost physical wrench. J'onn blinked at him, a flash of surprised colour in the form he wore, and he unfolded himself out into the shape he had worn for Alfred so he could translate it better for the child. Bruce flinched back at the shift, his young eyes going wide as he watched, and J'onn winced at the memory that floated to the surface of his mind, of earlier, of his writhing form, reaching out blindly ... He had hurt Bruce, and the thought shamed him.
"Why?" he asked, out loud. The boy deserved the comfort of the familiar, at least. But Bruce wilted a little, a faint sense of loss curling up through him, and J'onn realised that this Bruce wasn't quite like his older self. This young, this alone, the boy liked the closeness of telepathy, liked the sensation of togetherness it brought.
Or maybe not so different. Did the older Bruce ..? He was so good at denying himself what he wanted, after all ...
"I ... hurt you," the boy said, quietly, dipping his head in shame. J'onn stared at him in raw shock. Bruce thought he had hurt J'onn?
"You what?" he asked, softly, disbelieving, and winced as Bruce found censure in the words, his shoulders taut with shame. Shame he, of all people, had no reason to feel.
"I didn't know you were sick," the boy muttered. "I thought you were ... I was scared!" So defiant, so ashamed. "I thought you were attacking me, and I lashed out. I didn't mean for it to hurt you!" He stopped, drew breath, his small chest vibrant with passion. "I'm sorry," he said again, more quietly. "That's all I meant."
J'onn shook his head, helpless caring filling him. He moved, pulling himself stiffly from the sofa to kneel gently in front of the boy. Bruce looked up at him warily, braced for ... something. Him to repay the hurt Bruce thought he'd caused him, maybe. J'onn smiled gently, no thought further from his mind, and reached out to let his hand hover lightly just above the boy's shoulder, asking silent permission. Still wary, still almost afraid, Bruce nodded, and J'onn finally let himself go, gave himself permission.
Silent, shaking with almost-loss and compassion, he pulled the small figure into the gentlest hug he knew how to give.
I never meant to hurt you either, he whispered, the regret rich in the touch of his mind. Bruce shuddered a little, though not in fear or disgust. Simply in reaction, in the shock of the unasked-for embrace, in the unwilling comfort he took from it. So proud, this little boy. Ready to be wounded, stunned by kindness. It was so obvious now, how much of these things his older self still felt, how much the Bruce J'onn had known had feared the closeness of others. How much, maybe, he had wanted what this child wanted.
The simple touch of a friend.
He hugged the small form close, mourning the friend he had failed without ever realising it, and ignored the tiny sound Bruce made, the little whimper, quickly stifled. The boy curled into him, into the warmth of his arms, and tried so hard to pretend he wasn't crying. J'onn let him, struggling himself. He'd never known. He'd never felt this unshielded longing, never been allowed to understand the full extent of Bruce's loneliness. And now he did, because the child his friend had been had not the strength in him to lie to spare another. Not yet.
He felt a presence behind him, Alfred's silent regard, the protectiveness, the sadness the older man carried inside his breast. He watched them, ready to move in an instant if J'onn seemed to threaten his charge, ready to stand back and allow his child to be comforted by a stranger if it would help. Distant and everpresent. As loving as anyone J'onn had ever met, and as weary. Alfred sensed the future in J'onn as surely as Bruce did, sensed the shape of it, a prescient wisdom that feared so much for the trials he knew his charge would have to face. And J'onn didn't know how to reassure him, how to comfort him.
Because he knew the hardships this child would have to go through. He knew the struggles, the pain his friend had fought his way through to stand beside them. He knew the strength he'd had to find, the strength he gave instinctively to protect those he cared for. The strength that hid this shaking loneliness.
I'm sorry, he whispered, to Bruce, to Alfred, to the future that looked sadly back at him, the chance to help that he had lost. I'm so sorry.
And they forgave him.
He felt it coming. Again. It could not be mistaken. The sun dimmed outside the windows, his spirit quailing from the sense of it. The childish malice, the disappointment, fed up with this game that had been spoiled. He hadn't done what it wanted. He hadn't obeyed, hadn't consented to be tossed alone and helpless into despair. He had clung defiantly to the strength of a friend, had found him again despite everything, had learned from the game that was meant only to destroy. The entity was not happy.
J'onn stood up, facing the windows as it came. He felt more than saw Alfred come to stand beside him, the old instincts of the man warning of danger, the protective spirit inside him leaping to defend his child. J'onn smiled grimly, cradling Bruce for an instant longer. The child looked up, awareness flooding his eyes, conscious of threat, and struggled a little in J'onn's arms, trying to turn, to face it. To protect them, who should be protecting him. J'onn shook his head wryly.
No, Bruce, he said, firmly. This one is not for you to fight. He felt their sharp, weighing attention scythe towards him. He knew the enemy. He had brought it to them.
What is it? Bruce demanded, clear and terrified, defiantly protective.
Not for you, J'onn repeated, glancing sideways at Alfred. The older man frowned at him, understanding instantly, and liking it not at all. But he held out his arms anyway, and accepted the weight of the child.
"You'd best be sure, Master Martian," he said, quietly, and J'onn laughed.
"Never more so," he answered. "I must go home, after all." That changed them. Bruce looked up at him sharply, struggling rapidly to slide out of Alfred's arms and stand beside him, his hand wrapped in the older man's. Alfred let him go, content to hold tightly to that small lifeline, content to let his boy stand on his own feet to face the threat, but not alone. Never alone. J'onn smiled at them, absurdly grateful for all they'd shown him, for the gift they'd unknowingly given him.
His future waited on the far side of this creature's will, a friend he had learned to see anew, a heart he yearned to be able to reach. A heart he meant to reach, the anger of this entity aside.
He felt the lightest of touches on his arm, and looked down. Bright blue eyes looked back, their owner standing proudly, trying very obviously to hide the pain he felt at losing, so quickly, his new friend. He had so few, this child. Goodbye, Bruce said, quietly. And ... thank you? Thank you.
J'onn reached out, to touch his face gently, to smile at the warmth of that spirit. Thank you, he whispered back.
Then, nodding to Alfred, a silent question to look after him, a promise for the future, he left, flying out to greet his enemy, to wrest his future and all that he cared for back from its grasp.
He was no Green Lantern. Not even Bruce, to shape reality to his will. But he was no longer afraid, no longer lost in despair, and he had been a father, long ago. He knew how to deal with a willful child. It was something you could forget, no matter how many years separated you from it. He could deal with this thing, and he had so many reasons to want to, to try.
Like the loneliness hidden behind learned calm, and the yearning for closeness disguised by friendship, and the unwillingness to let joy in hidden behind blue and weary eyes.
He opened his mind to the creature, opened the strength of his spirit to the field, and reached beyond, to a hand outstretched in desperation, to a mind that reached down through time to call him home. Bruce, he thought, the name filling him, the feeling of most familiar and cherished of spirits. Not the child, but the man. Not the past, but the future. Not memory, but hope, for everything to come.
Bruce.
The world parted around him, dislocation, the sullen acquiescence of a chastised child. The world whirled, and a voice came through the waltz, the most welcome sound he'd ever heard.
...onn...nn...J'onn! J'ONN! J'onn, answer me! Come in. J'onn!
Bruce.
J'onn? J'onn, you're inside the energy field! Are you alright? The calm, dropping back, professional and cool, disguising the panicked loss of that voice. J'onn smiled gently, shaking his head as the creature slipped away. Ah, Bruce.
I'm fine, Bruce. Everyone. It is leaving.
It? The sharpness of the Bat. What's 'it', J'onn? What had you?
A child, he answered, softly. Just a child, who didn't understand. It's alright. He's gone, now. And he wasn't sure, but he thought Bruce knew that it wasn't just the entity he was talking about. But then, they'd always been perceptive, that family. They'd always seen deeper than they let on, always understood more about those around them than they understood of themselves.
Debriefing in an hour, was all the Batman said in response, quiet and brusque. But J'onn didn't mind.
He knew he would have many more chances to talk to Bruce. To reach out to the child within the man. And more, to the man inside the child. The heart yearned in silence, but some people could learn how to listen. J'onn had. And now, he meant to teach that silent heart to speak.
Bruce deserved it.
