ask and ye shall receive!!! context + fic clipping below
context: both bruce and clark are AFAB in this au. bruce's deadname is antigone, clark's i haven't actually picked yet but whatever! antigone wayne isn't out publicly, clark kent is; batman is batman and kal jor-el is supergirl. woohoo!
(this isn't edited, sorry for grammar or weird plot stuff. i like to think that i write with good grammar, but idk. the stuff in bold is footnotes (yes i do footnotes. fight me) but tumblr doesn't support those. enjoy!! :) )
One miasma and crime-coated night, not to say that all days and nights in Gotham aren’t like that, the Bat sees a flying woman. She’s dressed in blue and red with a giant S on her chest, roaming around Gotham, looking for something. Presumably. Batman does a quick search online.
Supergirl, a superpowered alien native to Metropolis, became active around a year and a half ago. She fashions herself a hero, and Metropolis residents certainly aren’t complaining. The Daily Planet has several interviews with her on record, though in every single one the interviewer was Lois Lane. She has a multitude of powers, not limited to invincibility, superstrength, laser vision, and flight. He’s almost jealous.
Of course, he already knew all of that [He keeps tabs on everything that could threaten Gotham—the database already spans 12 terabytes—and a superpowered alien definitely applies. He already has four fully constructed contingency plans with phases, steps, and instructions prepared, but another four couldn’t hurt. [Yes, they could, but that’s to worry about later.]], but why she’s come to Gotham is still a mystery. The Bat plans to find out.
She lands a few roofs away from the Bat’s current stakeout spot, seemingly frustrated, but he knows better. She’s pointedly not looking towards where he’s watching, instead faux-searching the previous row of buildings that she’d already searched. She, quite literally, twiddles her thumbs.
He can’t get out of this, can he. He quickly adds super senses, x-ray vision? to the powers list before standing, silencing the click of his boots to try and stay hidden as long as he can, knowing that it’s a futile effort. To her credit, Supergirl does a good job of pretending to be fooled.
“What do you want,” he intones, standing with shadows draped over him like blankets. Right now, to a normal human, he’d be a pair of white slits where his eyes are. He has no idea what Supergirl sees.
She pretends to startle. “Dear—Rao, you scared me!” She rubs a hand on the back of her neck, smiling sheepishly, before flying over to stand in front of him.
Her eyes are inhumanly blue, with glowing white irises. They’re enchanting.
“Leave Gotham.” He narrows his eyes.
“Woah there!” she says, holding her hands up, palms out. Is she trying to look less intimidating? Does she think that he’ll think that she’s, what, cramping his I am a terrifying vigilante style? “I just want to talk to you! Can you spare five minutes?”
“One minute and you consider what I say?”
“Great!” Supergirl looks inordinately pleased with herself and her technicality. She takes a deep breath, one that seems to make a slight rattling purr. “So!”
One excruciating minute later, the Bat has a rudimentary understanding of the superhero club Supergirl’s trying to start and an unwelcome reminder of why he stopped watching most videos on 2x speed. He squints his eyes further.
Supergirl’s stopped floating, holding her hands behind her back and looking cheery. Even standing at his full height with his boots, she’s taller than him.
To be fair, it’s not a completely unsalvageable idea. Having an alliance already set up for world-ending threats with other superpowered people saves the ideological arguments for drawing the contracts up, not when something’s trying to absorb all oxygen from Earth or something similar. [Simply a hypothetical; Ivy doesn’t work at as large of a scale.] Supergirl already has a roster in mind, including him for some reason, but that’s about all that’s been prepared in advance.
There are several flaws with this plan: first, he doesn’t have superpowers. Supergirl had explicitly said “superhero team,” and he fits on none of the counts. Besides that oversight, the logistics weren’t thought out at all. Where would they be operating? What are they planning to do? Who’s taking responsibility for this? How are they going to settle the power structure? Conflicts of interest? The governmental alliances alone deserve an entirely separate discussion, and funding—dear God, funding.
All of it is incredibly idealistic. Did Supergirl come all the way to Gotham to propose a first draft to the Bat of Gotham? That’s an insult, even disregarding the fact that she’d interrupted him on patrol.
“Why now decide to make a team?” As good an opener as any. Supergirl seems to mistake his skepticism as curiosity, looking pleased.
“So, the United Nations contacted me—” she grimaces for a split-second— “and asked if I could be their interplanetary defense person. Basically. And I’m totally not against that!” She holds her hands palms-outward again, bashful. “But I don’t think it’s a job I can do totally on my own. And I felt like it was right to ask, since you’re kinda the first superhero, y’know?”
He did not know that. Some quick mental math reveals—yeah, he was the first. Supergirl made her debut a few months after he did, Wonder Woman revealed Themyscira shortly after, and now it’s a tossup of which superhuman will come out of the woodwork this month. Fuck, and he started it. Shit.
He grunts. She hesitates, before taking it in stride. “What do you think? Questions, comments?”
Plenty, but he doesn’t care to give her the entire roadmap. “Short-sighted. This ‘Justice Party’” —some vicious, clawed airquotes are employed— “will starve to death even with my involvement.” What did she think was going to happen? Her and her tea party sing kumbaya while he duct tapes the entire operation together?
Supergirl winces. “So that’s a no?” She sounds disgustingly hopeful.
He glares at 52% intensity. “No.”
As her face falls, the Bat fades into the darkness, jumping off the building almost faster than the human eye can see. He doesn't have any data on what Supergirl can and can't see.
As he makes his exit, he hears a faint, frustrated “Goddammit,” alongside a sniffle.
It’s good for her to be disappointed now, Bruce tells himself. The world is disappointing, cruel, and unkind, and it’s best for her to shape up before she actually puts it into motion.
He tells himself that, listening to Supergirl fly off crying.
( @securitycapecreature wanted to be tagged when the fic was posted; i think this counts at least a little)
