The Cages In Our Minds, part 1
by KungFuNurse

Disclaimers: They belong to DC.  But really, I treat them better.  Also a big thanks to ‘rith for inspiring me with the Clark/Kal dynamic.  If you haven’t read ‘rith’s fic, I highly recommend tracking down all of it you can find.
Spoilers: Minor for GL #180.  Set in the comic-verse.
Warnings: Some gore and angst.  No sex yet.
Pairings: Eventually Bruce, Clark, and Kyle.

This is my second fanfic ever.  I was also woefully without a beta reader.  Please give me feedback!  I want to get better!
kungfunurse@visi.com  

*_*_*_*_*_*_

In a distant, shadowy place, there was a death.  A change.  It was…unexpected.  Things of this nature happened rarely.  Mouth things gaped and sound/fear dribbled like sand between toes.  Real things covered their eyes and made little spaces in the air for hiding.  Not-real things shivered and cracked in purpleing juices, sending ripples into the further rings of knowing.

On Earth, quite some distance away, sleeping forms stirred restlessly…and dreamed.

*_*_*_*_*_*_**_

Batman:

The dream started as it always did.  He was eight.  Young enough that he still tried to swing on his parent’s arms as he walked between them.  The movie was fun.  Bruce had been especially impressed by the cape.  He informed his father that he’d be needing one.  A cape, that was.  

“Oh really?”  His father had laughed.  Laughed and ruffled his hair.

Zorro needed a cape, of course.  And he was going to be Zorro.

“Well of course you are,” his beautiful mother had cooed.  And she smiled her bright smile when his tall, handsome father leaned over Bruce and kissed her.

The next part was always the worst.  Bruce would start remembering now.  Remembering to look in the shadows just there.  Remembering the nasty smile, the bang that was coming.  It was the worst because he never remembered in time.  

He opened his mouth and bright shiny pennies fell out.  

“Bruce, you shouldn’t waste money like that,” his father chided as they tinkled merrily on the ground.  “There are starving children, you know.”

No!  He tried to scream.  There’s a man!  And a Gun!  Run, we have to run!!!!

He succeeded in vomiting more pennies.

His mother bent over to pick them up and her face was grey and bloody.  One eye was red from the hemorrhaging in her brain.  Her hair fell out in whisps on the concrete.

She handed one to Bruce.  “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck!”  she chirped.

Bruce recoiled from her rotting fingers and turned to press his face into his father’s stomach.  Warm, safe…wet.  Screaming he pulled back, his face smeared with his father’s death as his parents collapsed around him.  A bang echoed, a snickering grin fading into the dark.  He was alone.

But not alone.

Tonight the dream was different.  They were coming for him.  Sometimes they came in ones and twos.  Often while he was awake.  But never all at once.  Never like this.  

Bruce whipped his head around, breathing too fast.  All the dead things that Batman couldn’t save were coming.  Coming for him.  He bit his lip and moaned, scrunching up his face in the way his mother always told him only spoiled little boys did.  But he couldn’t help it.  He was afraid.  And they were coming.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Green Lantern:

Kyle reached for the barbeque sauce and slathered a nice, thick helping on his supper.  It was odd.  He didn’t even like the stuff, but it just went so well with this meat.  He speared a piece with his fork and sucked a little sauce off of the finger joint.  He turned his head and spit out the wedding band that came off in his mouth.   Mmn.  Needed more time in the oven.

He ambled into the kitchen, plate in hand, and stopped in horror.  His mother’s head was staring at him through the oven window.  His hands started shaking and the plate crashed on the floor.  Barbeque coated fingers smeared the white tile and skittered under the fridge.

“No!!”  He screamed.  “Mom!! Mooooommmmm!!!!”  

He jerked the oven door open and gasped in shock at the freezing chill.  Blistering cold despair chilled his fingers and made his hands crack and bleed as he tried to grasp his mother’s severed head with numb fingers.  

Warm.  Need to warm her up.  Need to warm…Mom, Mom don’t be dead…need to get warm…

He finally fumbled her head into a loose football hold, cradling her between his arm and chest.  Sobbing now, the tears freezing to his skin, Kyle stumbled to his feet and tore the fridge door open.

Donna was twisted and grotesquely broken.  Arms had been snapped and hips dislocated to make shoving her full, luscious body into the closed fridge possible.

“Hey, sexy,” she lisped.  Her face was iced over and her tongue was blue and black when she licked her lips.  “I’ve got something hot and spicy here for you!”

No.  Not again.  

“Nononononononononooooooooo!!!!!!”

Screaming he threw his mother’s head at the frozen Donna and raced out of the kitchen, through the door, and spilled out onto the street.  He collapsed in front of his brownstone, choking and sobbing, cradling his frozen and blistered hands to his front.

He needed…he needed to do something.  But what?  How could he make this better?  He’d just thrown his mother’s head at his ex-girlfriend.  Both of them were going to be so pissed when he came back.  They’d probably try to stuff him in the toaster or something.  Women were like that.  They teamed up on you when all you were trying to do was have a meal and watch the game.  

Kyle didn’t want to die.  He didn’t want to live hacked up in pieces and stuffed into an appliance either.

Batman would know what to do.  Batman always knew.  He was scary and cold and a friggin' genius.  And he always had a new insult for Kyle.  Every time he saw the man.  Maybe he sat up nights thinking of new ways to make Kyle feel inadequate.  It was a special kind of love, Kyle was sure.

He even knew how to find Batman.  He just looked up in the sky and saw all the nastiest, scariest, most horrifying shadows ever drawn all swirling and converging around a central point.  A vortex of horror.  Bats would be right at the center.  

He started walking.  The shadows smeared like India ink across the skyline.  Kinda pretty, in a horrifically spooky sort of way.  And oddly, the further from his home he walked, the more his horror receeded.  It seemed to fade to shades of waterstained ink, whisping away like a bad dream.

Across the street John, Guy, Alan, and Hal were shooting hoops.  They had their green shirts on with their lantern insignias blazing out the fronts, lighting up the court.  

“Hey guys, got room for an extra?”  he called out.

“You’re not even a Lantern,” Hal sneered.  “Rookie.  I was Lantern for 40 years real time!  You barely made ten!”

“Besides,” John added reasonably, “you don’t have your ring.  You threw it away again.”

“But I got it back!”  Kyle protested.  “Major Force tried to trick me but now I’ll never give it up…”

“Then where is it?”  Guy demanded.  “Come on, guys.  Stop holding up the game for this nobody.”

Kyle held up his blistered, bleeding hands and saw that John was right.  The ring wasn’t there.

Shrugging, he turned to go when he heard a pounding sound against one of the brick walls surrounding the court.  He put his ear up against it and heard the pounding again.  

Someone was knocking.

The other guys started to laugh at Kyle, but he decided to ignore them.  They may be great heroes and all, but they didn’t know a damn thing about forgetting your keys.

Stiffly, Kyle reached to his back pockets and pulled out a handful of his favorite brushes.  The smallest one was barely three hairs wide.  Perfect for detail work.  It was his favorite.  He tucked it behind his ear.  Save the fine work for later.

Pulling out his fan brush, Kyle set to work smearing gold excitement and brown curiosity on the brick canvas.  The paints started to mix and run over his fingers, warming them and seeping into the blackened cracks.  The more the colors soaked into his skin, the warmer he felt.  His hands loosened up and his fingers felt more nimble.  

The pounding was louder.  More insistent.  

“I’m coming!”  He hollered at the wall.  Canvas.  Whatever.  You couldn’t rush a good door.  He was really working up a sweat now.  Paint smeared over one eyebrow as he pushed his hair from his eyes.  Those were some good hinges.  Now for a knob.  Nice, but not too fancy.  Not in this neighborhood.  Probably just get stolen.

Finally the door was finished.  He could tell because it was limned with the green glow that all his constructs had.  He opened the door and let the brilliantly shining man in.

"You’re looking for Batman too, huh?"

*_*_*_*_*_*_*


Batman:

Bruce screamed for help.  “Batman!!  Batman!!”

The darkness skritched and twitched around him.  He knew why the shadows were laughing at him.  Batman never came for him.  Batman didn’t like Bruce.  He was always yelling at him to stop being a sissy.  

The growling, dragging, dead things were coming closer.  No good waiting for Batman.  He would kill Bruce to save a stranger on the street, or a killer with a gun.  But he’d never come and play with Bruce.  Batman was mean.

Whimpering in terror, Bruce turned to run and tripped over his father’s legs.  He tried to cut off the little shriek as he went down.  Don’t make noise.  They’ll just find you faster.

But it was already too late.  All the victims, all the failures, all the deaths that Batman was too slow or too human to prevent were crawling into the street.  He was surrounded.  Leading the pack was Jason Todd, of course.  They all really liked him.  Batman had liked him, too.

Bruce thought Jason was a snot nosed bully.

“Come out come out wherever you are…” laughed Jason.  David Cain chuckled behind him and patted the boy on the back.  The two of them got along just fine.  

“You know where I am.”  Bruce said, trying not to let his voice squeak like a five year old.  He was eight, after all.

“You’re just trying to scare me!”

He stared defiantly out at Batman’s nightmares.  He would survive.  This wasn’t the first time they had come for him.

Racing forward now, he darted to his mother and snatched the pearls off of her neck.  They fell with hollow clattering sounds on the sidewalk, but he managed to save most of them.

Darting back to the theater wall, he smeared his hand across his face, wiping his father’s blood off and rolling the white pearls in the red sticky ick.

Then he threw one.  Darkness and shadows engulfed a pregnant little girl with stick thin arms.  She screamed once before the void took her.

“Nice,” sneered Jason.  “But do you have enough for all of us?”  

Bruce bit his lip and stared with piercing, uncompromising blue eyes into the creeping-dead throng.  Jeez, Batman was such a butt head.  He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk like that, but it was true!  Look at all these dead people!  Batman had promised that there wouldn’t be any more!  That’s why Bruce had agreed to share!  And look at all of them!  

Stupid Batman.

He threw another pearl, this one straight at Jason.  Jason ducked and some old guy with a wine bottle got unmade instead.  Bruce glared, but he wasn’t surprised.  Batman had shown Jason lots of tricks.  Bruce wished he would have bothered spending some time with him.  

But no.  

He didn’t have enough pearls for all of them.  They were getting closer.  The wall was huge and solid and Bruce was trapped.  His father’s blood was seeping in a pool closer and closer to his feet and Bruce knew that when the blood touched him he would start screaming and never stop.  

His hands were shaking so hard that he missed on his next throw.  A pearl went clattering off into the darkness.  The nightmares laughed.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

Superman:

Clark straitened his light blue suit and knocked on Perry’s door.  

“Get in here Clark!”  the Chief bellowed.

Clark grinned.  Perry always bellowed.  Any day the editor in chief of the Planet wasn’t yelling was a day the entire building walked on tiptoes.  Quiet was worse.  Much worse.

“What’s up Perry?”  Clark asked, lounging easily in one of the chairs.  Perry glared at him from across the desk.  After a pause he grunted.  

“Shut the door, son.”

Clark’s eyebrows went up.  Perry didn’t care who heard him yell.  And he never called you son unless there was something…

Clark rose slowly, closed the door, and leaned against the wall.

“Sit.”  Perry gestured.

A tight cramping ache twisted in Clark’s gut.  He knew what was coming.

“I prefer to stand, sir.”

“Suit yourself.”  Perry sighed and rubbed his eyes.  He was looking older, Clark thought.  The gray hair was thinning now, and there were more wrinkles, more weariness in the eyes.  Clark regretted that he was adding to that.

“You, well, you’re a damn fine reporter.  The best, actually.”

“I think that honor goes to my wife…”

“Shut it, Clark!”  Perry growled.  “I mean it.  If you weren’t so damn busy doing everything else with your day…”  

Clark’s eyebrows just couldn’t get any higher.  Were they going to…talk about it?  

“Hell Clark.  I, I have to let you go.”

“What?!”  This was not what he’d been expecting.

“But Perry, I haven’t missed a deadline in months!”

“It’s not that.”  Perry actually seemed to sag into his chair.  “It’s, well…” he mumbled.  Then he straightened and looked Clark in the eyes.  

“Clark, you’re an alien.  I know it.  You know it.  And we have a strict humans only policy here at the Planet.  Otherwise we’d have to call it the Galaxy or something hokey like that.  

“But…but…”

Clark was stunned.  

“I thought you wouldn’t mind that I was Superman!”

“Superman isn’t the issue boy!”  bellowed the Chief.  “Superman is fine!  Dandy!  It’s that you’re not HUMAN!  Now if you were a human who could fly and shoot lasers from your eyes, well now that would be something.  As it is, I want your desk cleaned out by lunch.”

Clark straitened and turned, pausing at the door.

“Go, just…just go.”  Perry whispered.

Clark left the building carrying a small brown box with his personal items.  How could this have happened?  How had Perry found out?  What would he ever tell Lois?

He walked through the jelly streets and past the screaming shop windows.  A hot-dog vendor was jumping up and down in rage across the way.  Apparently his hot-dogs were demanding better dental coverage or they would threaten a work-stoppage.  Whatever.  Clark knew better than to get involved in food fights.  Besides, he had other worries.

He had to admit that Perry might have a point.  He had always wondered if he really…understood humans.  And if he didn’t understand them, how could he report on them?

“I mean,” he muttered, “I was raised by Ma and Pa to be a good farm boy, and a good man.  I’ve spent my whole life watching them.  The humans.”
 
But try as he could, some things just didn’t seem to make sense to Clark.  He had assumed, growing up, that these things were confusing for everyone.  

Now he was an adult, though, and they still didn’t make sense.  At least, Clark thought he was an adult.  He wasn’t getting taller anymore.  He liked sex.  A lot, actually.  Wasn’t that being an adult?

Oh, he knew the difference between maturity and adulthood.  He wasn’t worried that he was some sort of perpetual child.  But lately certain things had started to…wake up…inside of him.  

Dawn had always been a special time for him.  Lately, though, it was becoming an obsession.  The heat, the need.  And Lois…just didn’t seem to understand.  She didn’t want to be woken up at O’dark-hundred in the morning, thank you very much.  And could Clark please turn a lamp on when he’s reading in the living room?  Normal people used lamps.  Besides, he knows how it freaks her out when his eyes reflect the light like that.  And when had Clark started pacing restlessly like a caged animal when he’d been on the ground for too long?

Those things weren’t the problem today, though.  Not right this second.  There were other things Clark didn’t understand.  

He’d never really gotten the whole marriage deal.  He knew it made Lois happy, and he understood that humans who intended to live together for the rest of their lives…well, they got married.  

But why?  Why did they need a piece of paper to make them life-mates?  Didn’t they just know?  Didn’t everyone just know?  In their blood and the way they couldn’t go more than a week or so without touching before they started to feel sick?  What was the big mystery?

Except, he’d found out, that humans don’t seem to get sick like that.  Or maybe not in the same way.  They talked about missing each other, and Clark decided a while back that he’d got that one figured.  Friends were something like being in a House.  He was the head of the House of El.  Therefore Lois, Perry, Bruce, Diana, Kyle, oh just everybody he loved, they were all in the house of El too.  That meant you loved them and depended on them to be honorable to the House.  

And he’d always thought that they got that.  Ma and Pa had surely understood.  Take for instance, the time Pa had first asked Clark to slaughter a chicken and Clark had been physically unable to do that.  Els didn’t slaughter animals.  They didn’t kill.  That was for other Houses.  The Lar’s for example, made excellent soldiers.  But the Els were scientists, and Ma and Pa had sold all the chickens after that and Clark didn’t even know at the time how to tell them about Houses and family lines.  They had just known, somehow, what he needed.

It was like the language thing.  Kryptonian was such a complex language, having developed over an enormous span of time, that you could be well into your late adulthood before you might master it.  

So his people had genetically encrypted the language into every pure-blooded Kryptonian’s genes.  That and a few other things.

As a child, of course, he had no way of knowing why he could speak Kryptonian as easily as he could breath.  His parents just thought he was babbling like all children.  Clark had just assumed everyone was born with languages in their blood.

Clark’s thoughts were interrupted.  He was home.  He flew up the side of the building, climbed in through the patio window, and put down his box.  

“Lois!  Hon?”  He loosened his tie and shrugged off his suit jacket, leaving just the shirt and slacks.  

Lois was…naked.  At the table.  With a man.  A naked man.

With a groan, Clark staggered and clutched at his chest.  What was going on?  Why did he feel so…weak?

Lois was showing the naked man something on the table.  It was big and glistening red and it jiggled when she prodded it with her pen.  

“Look, he gave it to me.”  She said, ignoring Clark.  She poked it again and Clark choked and fell to his knees.  Hard.

“You, you told Perry that I was an alien?”  He gasped and looked down.  

The gaping wound under his hand was staining his white shirt red.  As he watched, the red spread further until his whole front was bright red and the blood was dribbling down his dark blue tights and onto his cape.  

Cape?  When had he…?

“Well, it was actually an accident,”  Lois replied quickly.  “But see, I needed him to sign off on my next big story,” Lois said, finally turning to him.  “I’m going to call it ‘The alien heart, and how it differs from the human.’  See?”

She poked Clark’s heart again he groaned.  

“Please don’t do that.  It’s special…a gift I gave you…”

“It’s a Pulitzer in the making, that’s what!”  She crowed triumphantly.  The naked man smiled and nuzzled her neck.  

Clark staggered to his feet and limped past them, to the stairs.  The basement was down that way.  And Bruce.  He’d know what to do.

Clark didn’t actually find it odd that Batman lived in his basement.  Batman, Bruce, was the only human Clark actually understood.  Bruce only thought he was a Wayne.  He was actually an El.  Clark knew.  Everyone else he’d had to stretch the meaning to make it fit.  But not Bruce.  They were…connected, Bruce and Clark.  And maybe Kyle.  Whenever the rest of humanity was too confusing, and Bruce was too…Bruce, then Clark went to Kyle.  Kyle who could cheer him up with a smile and a good movie.  Kyle was light to Bruce’s dark…Kyle and Bruce were…

Clark limped into the cave and found Batman facing the huge computer at the far end.

“She, she broke my heart,” he gasped.  “What do I do?”

Bruce just snorted.  He didn’t bother to turn.  

“Bruce?”

“He’s not here.”  A flat growl.

Clark looked closer.  No, he was right.  Bruce wasn’t here.  

“Batman, where’s Bruce?”

Batman turned finally, the hollow space in his own chest cold and endlessly empty.  

“He went out playing, oh, years ago.  Go find him if you want the brat,”  snapped the Dark Knight.

“There’s…something I need first.”  Clark gasped.  He limped over to a cabinet and opened it.  Inside was a heavy, gray rock.  “You don’t mind if I borrow this, do you?”

“No.  Take it.  One less thing for Alfred to dust.”

Clark held the Batman’s heart gently in his hands.

“So, about Lois.  What do I do?”

Batman just looked at him like he was a really really stupid insect under a heat lamp.  Then the man moved across the floor and scooped up some of Clark’s blood.  

“Now this is interesting.  You, you’re just pathetic.”  Batman took a sample of the blood and stored it in the mini-freezer next to the work bench.  

“But, what…?”

“You can’t be human you stupid dunce!!  You idiot!  You sold her on the human, on Clark Kent and he’s a LIE!!”

“But, but I am Clark.”

“No.  You’re Kal-El.  Be fucking Kal-El you spineless bastard.  Now get out.  I don’t need any more of your blood on my floor.”

Clark cradled Batman’s heart.  

“I’ll take good care of this for you.”

Batman, already turned away, didn’t respond.

Clark flew out of the cave and straight up.  Up, up, further past the fear and the humans and their confusing needs and their refusal to understand his own.  He pierced the stratosphere and exploded into motion, throwing himself into the sun.  

Batman’s heart glowed like a jewel from inside it’s prison.  The heat of the sun caused stoney tears to drip down Clark’s hands and finally the grey rock shattered, leaving the firey amber sun of Bruce’s love flaring in front of him.  

Quietly, reverentially, Kal-El placed Bruce/Batman’s heart in his chest and watched himself become whole.

He was…himself.  Flaring brightly with an intense white light that scorched his clothes and left him naked and alien, he returned to Earth to find his new partners.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Green Lantern and Superman:

He was…beautiful.  Kyle gazed with an artist’s longing at the long, perfectly muscled legs and the exquisite lines of face and chest.  

And, he had to admit, Clark was hung like a bear.  Go Supes.  

Kyle chuckled and stuck his brushes back in his pocket.  The other GL’s weren’t laughing anymore.  They were staring.

Superman seemed so perfect, so remote.  But Kyle knew the guy.  He’d fought next to him and laughed with him and watched him burn marshmallows with his heat vision.  So he waited for it.
And Clark looked down at him and grinned.  

“Yup,” he said in a faint Kansas drawl that always made Kyle want to laugh.  Clark always had that drawl when he was relaxed.  Other times, when the big guy was stressed, he’d sound…odd.  A strange alien inflection informing each word.  But not now.  Clark was happy.  That made Kyle happy.  It was all so simple.

“We’re headed that way?”  Clark asked.

Kyle nodded happily and set out again.  Clark was always fun to hang with.  Besides, things seemed to make so much more sense with Clark around.  All the strange surreal things seemed to recede when he was with you.  
Odd that a huge, glowing naked man floating serenely next to you could make things seem less surreal.  But there it was.

“We’re dreaming, aren’t we?”

“Looks that way,” Clark replied.  He reached up and ran his hand through his blue/black curls.  Clark always played with his hair when he was thinking.  Kyle thought it was really adorable.  

“So, The Key?  Destiny?  The Ego?”

“Hm?”

“Who’s the supervillian?  Who’re we going to beat up this time?”

“Hmm.  Not entirely sure,” Clark mused.  “It’s…one of the reasons I’m looking for Bruce.”

“You mean Batman.”

“No.  I just left Batman.  He’s useless without Bruce.”  Clark shot a surprised look at Kyle.  “I thought you knew that.”

“Oh, well…no, actually.  I don’t really know him all that well.  I mean, he’s always, well, insulting me…”

Clark actually snorted.  It was impressive to see a glowing god-like being snort, Kyle thought.  Pretty cool.

“That’s just because he likes you.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”  Kyle grinned again.  The vortex was just ahead of them, and the only light in the world anymore was coming from Clark’s skin and Kyle’s ring.  The ring on his healed right hand, right where it belonged.  He and Clark were going to find Bruce and then everything would be right where it belonged.  

He saw the first row of creeping dead things and prepared for battle.  


Cages in Our Mind Part 2

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