DCU: Untitled Identity Porn
3. The Plan
Two days of searching — of digging up every little piece he could find — and the only evidence he had to show for it was decidedly circumstantial. There was a lot of it, certainly, but that didn’t change the fact that it was still all speculation rather than proof. Still, the time had hardly been wasted.
Clark Kent, adoptive son of an otherwise childless pair of farmers from Smallville, Kansas. Official records indicated the couple had found their future son abandoned by the side of the road; age unknown, estimated at around two years. The next dozen or so years unsurprisingly turned up next to nothing; official enrolments in the local elementary and then high school, a solid but uninspiring academic record. Little involvement in extra-curricular activities bar the school paper, and Kent had made the logical step from journalism as a hobby to a professional after college, landing a junior position at the Planet. Which was all well and good, of course, but told Bruce very little other than the bland life story of a bookish, awkward kid turning into a bookish, awkward adult.
For such a dead-end uninspiring town, Smallville sure as hell seemed to be awfully full of UFO sightings.
And then there was Kent’s high school yearbook photo. The one he wasn’t wearing glasses in. And there was something about that photo, Bruce thought, though he couldn’t quite place it. A gut feeling that there was something about the smooth, fine-featured face that peered out from under shaggy black curls. Something… more.
Kent’s age certainly coincided; the first reported appearances of the figure that would later be known as Superman lined up quite nicely with his own progression into adulthood. A few months of that and then — all of a sudden — Kent dropped off the
(planet)
radar. For five years. And it wasn’t anything other than circumstantial, though neither were the photos. Public photographs of the adult Clark Kent were almost impossible to track down, but Bruce had eventually managed to pull one out of his employee records at the Planet. Photographs of Superman, on the other hand, were a dime a dozen and it was strange, because even blown up to two feet tall and displayed side-by-side on the monitors in the cave, they didn’t look like the same man. He’d sat there, staring blankly, for almost twenty minutes before finally giving in, opening a suitable photo of Superman in a graphics application, and drawing on a pair of glasses in thick, shaky black lines.
It was still maddeningly inconclusive.
There was only one solution, really, though it had taken him nearly a day to decide on it. Because it was… dangerous, no matter how it panned out, and Bruce had been loath to attempt it unless he had been absolutely sure it would produce results. But the evidence was as circumstantial as it was prolific, and Bruce just had to know. And as far as he could tell, there was only one way left to find out for sure.
Bruce Wayne was going to have to befriend Clark Kent.
There would be a point, Bruce knew — from hard experience — where, if Kent truly was Superman, it would be impossible to hide from anyone suitably suspicious or determined. An ill-cut, out-of-fashion suit was only good as a disguise so long as no-one bothered to look at what was underneath it, though Bruce was still a little hazy on how he was going to achieve such a thing. A little flirting would not be out of the question — was the sort of scandalous thing bored billionaire playboys did — but Bruce did not hold any particularly high hopes that Kent would be receptive to it. Still, it was a good cover in order to get some tactile exposure. And, in the remote possibility that Kent was receptive to such advances…
If it turned out Bruce’s suspicions were correct then the man would be an invaluable ally; he’d deliberately distanced himself from Superman in the past but if the alien hero really was a mawkish reporter from Kansas then perhaps he’d reconsider his stance. And if Kent wasn’t… well, quite frankly from what Bruce had uncovered the man was an excellent investigative journalist and that alone made him useful. That was Bruce’s in, he knew; the way to ingratiate himself into Kent’s life. Because Kent quite obviously did not trust Lex Luthor — whatever his reasons — and that made everything almost too easy. Luthor was slippery but Bruce had almost unparalleled inside access to the man’s current scheme; the more vapid nodding and “Gosh, Mr. Luthor”s thrown into the mix the better. There was no way Kent was going to knock back that kind of information, assuming Bruce could convince the man he was trustworthy, even if only in an “enemy of my enemy” sort of way.
Bruce had plans for that, too.
The first step was getting Kent alone somewhere — more specifically, away from Luthor — and the Foundation ball was an almost coincidentally perfect opportunity. A few words dropped in a few ears and he could make certain Kent was there, even though such events were hardly the man’s stock-in-trade. Bruce suspected Kent would forgive him the fluff piece in exchange for the possibility of an ally against Luthor, and after that it was simply a question of continually feeding Kent the sort of information he wanted — of continually finding excuses to meet up with the man, to get into his life, his trust…
It almost sounded too easy.
There was another issue to consider, of course, and that was Superman himself. The one time they had met, Batman had made it clear the alien was not welcome in Gotham and — to his surprise — Superman hadn’t appeared since. But even at the time Bruce had not failed to see the crushed disappointment in the other man’s eyes, though he’d refused to acknowledge it for a long time. Because, when it came right down to it, they were the only people who did what they did, and Superman’s point was still true enough; it made less sense for them not to be allies of at least some sort. But for Bruce it had all been about trust, or rather lack of it, and how that coloured his opinion of the other would-be hero. He was fairly certain Superman’s heart was in the right place now — that he truly did simply want to do good because he could… and that was the whole problem, really. Because Superman could do just about anything and there was next to nothing anyone else could do to stop it. And it was galling but Luthor was right, and the line between ‘guiding’ and ‘enforcing’ was very thin indeed.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
And Bruce thought about Kent and his nervous slouch and his silly glasses and about the young Clark’s brilliant yearning and the all-too-human look of loneliness in Superman’s eyes and a little voice in the back of his voice said;
Maybe… maybe we watch each other.