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The alley is a labyrinth. Bruce doesn't want to go in there. He knows they mustn't go in, it's too dark and it makes his chest tighten, his heart in his throat almost suffocates him.
But instead of saying 'no', he says 'I want to go home', which is the wrong thing. The adult hands that grip his own tighten even more firmly around his fingers and drag him down the alley so black that he sees only two tall, square backs ahead of him.
The labyrinth seems to go on forever and Bruce struggles as he is dragged forward.
He runs away from the detours with a jolt every time they suddenly open up at their sides, he knows he mustn't enter them, he mustn't let himself get caught.
But every time he runs away, he finds himself alone in the street, deafened by the drops of dampness pattering on the pavement and by his own heavy breathing, and he can't leave his parents behind without him. They're going to enter the alley and Bruce can't let that happen.
He comes back to help them, each time, gasping and crying and avoiding falling down the side passages. When he finds their backs, darker shadows against the black walls of the alley, he runs to grab their hands and they resume dragging him forward. Bruce wriggles out and runs away, but then comes back to them, again and again, until everything starts to collapse.
How will they manage not to enter the alley now? Now that the walls close in, the bricks collapse, the dripping of the water increases and there are footsteps behind them, chasing them?
When the footsteps of the man with the gun have now reached them, there is a flash of clarity: his parents turn around and Bruce can finally see their faces, his mother's eyes surrounded by small lines, the crooked smile of his father.
But Bruce can see them because the gunshot lit up the alley.
Thunder follows light, twice.
His parents fall to the ground and darkness closes in on them.
Bruce awakes abruptly, takes a desperate gulp of air as he emerges from the nightmare. He sits up taking all the sheets with him. His heart pounds in his throat and temples. He swallows and gets to work to slow it down.
“Hey,” Clark calls softly, placing a hand on his back. "I didn't have time to wake you up. Everything ok?"
Bruce nods, a little stiff.
"Your parents?"
Bruce doesn't answer. He doesn't ask how Clark knows. Bruce doesn't call for them, even during the worst episodes, and that certainly wasn't. He is certain of this because during his adolescence he resigned himself to the terrifying ordeal of asking Alfred explicitly, and because he spent years training himself so that his subconscious would not betray his secrets while he slept.
But Clark… of course Clark knows.
He knows that Bruce suffers from nightmares more often than he cares to admit because he sleeps next to him more often than Bruce thought he would have been comfortable with, and he knows that he dreams of his parents' deaths because Bruce was so careless, the night that Batman almost killed Superman, to tell him that his folks were killed for no reason in an alley, that their deaths taught him that nothing made sense.
Bruce winces, remembering: handing a weakness like that to the enemy, even defeated... but at the time it didn't seem important, or maybe Bruce needed to tell someone who was soon to die that everything he did, everything he was, it was because of his parents: Superman had to know he was dying for them, for Jason, for the world.
And now that Clark isn't dead, sleeps regularly in his bed, and has proven time and time again that he has a good instinct to read Bruce's turmoil, damn him, Bruce can't help but acknowledge what an error of judgment it was to allow himself to speak of them on that occasion.
“It's just a nightmare,” he finally answers, pushing the sheets aside, putting his feet on the floor. “I didn't mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep." He’ll go down to the Cave to fill those empty hours before dawn.
But Clark grabs his shoulder. “No, Bruce, wait.”
His grip is light, but not enough that Bruce can simply slip away and pretend he didn’t even notice it, as he normally would.
“It always ends up like this,” Clark continues, without letting go. He slides closer to Bruce's back. “You disappear downstairs, alone, and I don't know what… I'm just sitting here helpless and it drives me crazy, you know?” He whispers the last words behind Bruce's ear. He releases his shoulder and wraps his arm around his chest. “Talking might help. You can tell me about it if you want. Or not. But don't be alone."
Bruce remains stiff one more minute. He could argue that he’s not a child, that he’s no longer afraid of the dark after a bad dream. Then he sighs softly, clasps his hands to Clark's arm and relaxes against him. He can barely make out the shape of his own knuckles, the slight contrast against the tanned skin of Clark's arm. Almost like in his nightmare.
He doesn't need to talk about it. It is not something that can be overcome by talking. Heaven knows Leslie and Alfred did try, when he was a child, to help him through his grief, through his trauma. They tried for years, until Bruce decided he wanted to stop the therapy. That night is something that’s inside him, it’s part of him. It’s his mission, even if he only understood it many years later.
And the nightmare... that's part of Bruce too. He can't overcome it, he can't suppress it. He doesn’t want to.
But Clark doesn't know all this.
“It's not that bad,” he murmurs.
Clark waits without saying anything.
“It always ends the same way. Two shots, them falling to the ground. My mother's torn necklace."
There weren't so many pearls scattered around the alley, they are tied individually. But sometimes in the dream Bruce tries to gather them with his clumsy child's fingers and there are too many, his pockets are full of holes and the pearls keep falling. Bruce runs after them, puts them in his mouth to keep them safe. His throat hurts when he wakes up.
Sometimes there is blood. Bruce tries to wipe it off from his parents faces, to no avail, and wakes up with his hands hot and sticky with sweat.
“But I can see them, just before,” he continues. “The Manor was full of their portraits, photographs…”
“Were they lost in the fire?” asks Clark as the pause gets longer.
“Not all of it. There are portraits of them in every Wayne building, anyway. But those are just pictures. Memories… fade.”
Focusing on their faces with the eye of memory is an impossible feat. When Bruce noticed that he was starting to forget, as a boy, he did everything possible to preserve what he still remembered, telling himself every anecdote, every moment that he could focus on, writing them down; making Alfred describe his parents, asking him endlessly to recall his father's tone, his mother's smile.
But in doing so, words supplanted memories. He doesn't remember his mother's face, but the expressions with which he would describe it.
Language has rewritten memories.
Except in the nightmare. There, he sees clearly: his subconscious brings to the surface forgotten details, his mother's eyes tired and sans make-up before bed, his father frowns while he was reading, so different from the austere expression of the portraits in the offices of Wayne Enterpraises.
“In the dream I remember them perfectly. Or at least, so my mind leads me to believe.” Bruce squeezes Clark's arm tighter, still silent in the dark. “Sometimes, it's not even scary. On the best nights it’s just melancholy."
In those nights it is almost a gift: elusive memories in exchange for a little sadness. Bruce would never be able to give it up.
Clark rests his cheek on his shoulder. He says nothing. He doesn't ask how often good nights happen. Maybe there hasn't been one yet, since Clark sleeps next to him.
Bruce still has nightmares of Clark being stabbed by Doomsday, where all attempts to revive him with the Mother Box fail.
Nightmares where Superman rips his heart out of his chest whispering 'My whole world,' and he’s not talking about Lois this time. Those remind Bruce how screwed up he is, as he wakes up burning with shame, guilt and yearning.
“I see Da, sometimes,” Clark says in a low voice.
Bruce focuses on him, moves away a little to face him. Bruce can talk in the dark, to the dark, but Clark isn't afraid to make eye contact with him. He gives a tiny smile before continuing.
“It happens when I'm upset. When I feel like I'm in the middle of a storm. Suddenly he's there, in front of me, doing some quiet work, or fishing, or I don't know…” Clark shakes his head. “He was a quiet man. It was impossible to provoke him, not like me."
Bruce breathes in and wants to ask for forgiveness, because it's Batman who most of all wanted to provoke Superman, but Clark gives him a squeeze and another small smile, and he stays silent.
“When you and I met, I needed guidance. And he was with me." His smile grows sadder. “It happened a few other times, always at bad times. I'm happy to see him, to feel him close." Look at Bruce, solemn. “But I don't know what I would give to share even happy moments with him.”
Bruce is twice blown away. At the idea of addressing one's parents, as he sometimes does, not with a test of sacrifice, but simply presenting one's happiness as a source of pride; and the idea of what Clark implies: that he's happy now, next to Bruce.
He has no idea if Jonathan Kent would actually be happy to know his son next to a man like Bruce. He still can't quite believe that Martha is. And in such a vocal and enthusiastic way.
But he can't reject Clark's words, those spoken and those implied. So he nods. Clark's eyes glow in the dark and Bruce returns to staring into the dim light.
“Do you think you can sleep? At least give it a try?” asks Clark, after a few minutes. “Or I can go down with you.”
Bruce knows from experience that he won’t be able to sleep again. He should at least make productive use of his insomnia. Instead he relaxes. Clark loosens his grip, but keeps his hand on his heart as Bruce lies back down.
Clark settles back, his lips brushing Bruce's temple as he begins to whisper, “There's this rocky mound out there in the Flint Hills. It takes more than three hours by car from the Farm. Da and I would wake up at four and — well, I didn't sleep from the excitement, usually — and..."
Bruce listens to him and, perhaps because Clark is a writer, manages to see him effortlessly with messy hair running towards the Kents' pick-up as if his hiking backpack weighed nothing, slamming the door too hard.
As Clark talks, Bruce adjusts his breathing and is happy in someone else's memories.