Clark has something to say

Clark came to resent Bruce's rationality and calmness.

He thinks that he is one of the few people who know Batman best in this world, and he also thinks that he can tolerate all his faults-the essence of love is blindness and love for no reason.

There is no doubt that Bruce Wayne is a planet with a huge mass that is frightening, with a huge gravitational force that can firmly absorb everything around him.

Doesn't make sense at all, Clark thought.

Few people have the qualities to make people crazy, but Bruce does have this stuff, despite his self-destructive tendencies and low self-esteem, but just looking at the objective facts, you can know how many people are willing to pay for him. Life... even everything, whether it's a superhero or a supervillain, or...ordinary people.

Bruce doesn't even have to make a long speech, he just sends the invitation and leaves, and after a short or long time, they struggle to be attracted to him again.

They all know that contacting Batman is an uncontrollable process, the soul will be grabbed, the reason will be deprived, from a person with independent will to become an extension of his will, his tool, no matter how much this sounds to ordinary people unreasonable--

But Bruce Wayne is gravity itself.

Clark himself had gone through this process, and Jason had defined it in a rather subtle and somewhat cynical way.

domesticated.

For many people, being able to be included in the place circled by Batman is a kind of unbearable spiritual pleasure/sensation, which has nothing to do with benefits, just getting this ticket is enough longing.

To be such a special person of such a person has the temptation to shake the soul.

In the eyes of the outside world, the Dark Knight is looking after and ruling his Gotham alone, and some new members of the alliance have basically had this idea.

Soon, they will find that once there is trouble beyond Batman's control, many people they have heard of before or for the first time will come out and basically give Batman unconditional help.

It's all for this reason.

But as time goes by, these people will gradually become unwilling to admit what they knew from the beginning... For example, Bruce Wayne is made of absolute rationality.

No matter how much softness he reveals, or how much he cares—when the symbolic Batman reveals his extremely hidden, private side to someone, once he is treated like this, Will naturally want more.

Sadly, they can never get more.

Because he can always abandon these connections and simply look for the optimal solution from an objective and rational perspective, and in order to achieve the goal he wants to achieve, all his things can become the necessary price.

His property, his energy, his health, his spirit, his life... His relationship with other people is only one of them.

And those who get special treatment cannot accept that their previous relationship can be classified as one of the prices that can be exchanged.

In the final analysis, Bruce's interpersonal problems are largely caused by the guy who has been domesticated enough to be willing to put his teeth away and is suddenly kicked out of the safe zone.

Add in the fact that Batman is a hopeless control freak, and things only get worse.

Clark decided to let their conversation continue, for no other reason, because only if the conversation continued could he know the specific content of that memory, and Bruce's damn theory-they had to understand each other better.

What's more, Batman is willing to take the initiative to analyze himself to him, and he would choose to refuse if he is crazy.

The corner of the future revealed by Bruce is enough for Clark to peek into the despair of another timeline, but as far as the future self hurts Bruce very badly...he didn't feel or know the severe pain of Dick's death because of himself.

On the contrary, there is a feeling of "it is so", as if the stone that has been hanging in the air has fallen down.

He attained a kind of peace that accompanies intense labor pains.

"I want to know everything," Clark said. "If I ask one thing at a time, there's always something I'm missing."

After finishing speaking, he was worried that he would be rejected, and added: "You just promised."

Bruce nodded calmly.

"From the very beginning." He narrated in a calm and impersonal voice: "The clown planted a nuclear bomb in Metropolis, he was affected by the fear gas, Martha..."

Unlike Tim, who at one point was almost at a loss for words, Bruce didn't even get stuck, and he was the perfect narrator.

His sentences do not contain any redundant elements, nor do they contain any subjective judgments. Talking about that memory is like telling someone else's story.

Clark notes that in this narrative, the future Superman is consistently referred to by Bruce as "he."

But he kept using the person "I" to refer to the Batman in that memory.

This was an unbelievably long one-sided explanation. In the middle, Clark wanted to interrupt Bruce countless times so that he could ask for clarification, but he still tried his best to control himself and wait for the other party to finish.

"...In the end, he was imprisoned by me in Red Sun Prison."

Bruce's voice stopped.

The god of the world stood before him, making himself a lifeless statue.

Bruce glanced at him, and thoughtfully gave Clark time to collapse his world view. He stood up from the chair, walked to the table, and unsealed the half-drunk wine bottle.

He took out a glass from the cabinet, unhurriedly, went to the freezer to get a round ice, and finally poured the amber wine into it.

When he returned with his wine glass, he found that Clark had occupied the chair he was sitting on before.

Bruce swung the wine glass, took a sip, moistened his hoarse throat due to talking too much, and didn't find a place to rest himself, so he stood in front of Clark.

Clark's eyes gradually moved to Bruce's face.

"I……"

Bruce handed over the wine glass in his hand, and said almost empathetically, "I think you need it."

Clark took it, but he couldn't control the strength of his fingers. In his overly agitated mood, the poor glass was directly crushed into pieces.

He lowered his head to pick up the shards, only to pinch the larger piece of glass in two.

"I'll do it." Bruce stopped him from continuing to harm the carpet: "Do you have anything to say?"

"... Alcohol doesn't work for me." After a long time, he squeezed out such a sentence.

Bruce smiled.

It's hard for Clark to put into words what he's feeling now, but the fear does overwhelm the pain for a time—will he be like this in the future?

Dick had told him earlier that none of this had happened, you had nothing to do with him.

He was wrong.

No one knows who he is better than himself, and Clark has a clear understanding of himself, so he followed Bruce's narration and deduced at the same time, and then he discovered a frightening fact——

Once again, he would still make such a choice.

Bruce plucked Clark's curly hair and wrapped it around his fingers twice.

"Now let's talk about the Ship of Theseus."

Clark whispered, "...wait a minute."

His tone seemed to be pleading.

What had been supporting him as Superman, working for justice and Utopia, came crashing down.

Clark was not Superman from birth, on the contrary, the identity of Superman is based on Clark.

So Superman is never above all beings.

He just wants to do something nice.

There are too many people suffering in this world, and tragedies happen every moment. He has the ability to help them, so he chooses to become a superman.

And when his path deviated and his heart began to waver—it turned out to be such a complete disaster!

He destroyed everything with his own hands.

If the symbol on Superman's chest is no longer a symbol of hope, but a byword for terror and repression, why should he still believe that being Superman has any meaning?

Clark lowered his eyes, and the bright red cloak behind him hung down and piled up at his feet. The red color was like a knife drawn out of its sheath, piercing straight into his pupils and tearing him apart.

He closed his eyes, raised his head again, and set his eyes on Bruce.

Bruce will be exposed by him, and everything will be taken away by him - fighting him with flesh and blood?

From Bruce's perspective, Clark's eye rims were unnaturally red, and his pupils were out of focus, making those pure and bright blue eyes slightly red.

He realized that Clark was terrified.

Not only was he afraid of the possibility of the future, but he also began to fear the existence of Superman. If the rustic young man in Kansas stayed in the small town honestly all his life, he never made any extraordinary choices.

This kind of future will be strangled in the cradle directly.

Bruce understands this all too well.

He has thought about the meaning of Batman's existence many times. Does Batman curb crime or give birth to crime?

The clown and even a series of Gotham villains are often not for their own evil intentions. Their purpose is to defeat Batman so that they can enjoy a drama about the fall of the knight.

In the process, many innocent lives were used as chips in the game and were involved in the disaster for no reason.

Bruce was a firm believer in Batman's raison d'être at first.

Gotham is indeed getting better, the crime rate is falling, and ordinary people in this city have a chance to breathe.

But it's much easier to destroy than rebuild.

There are countless ways for those vicious thugs to ruin all his efforts. The meaning of Batman is meaningless before the shocking casualties.

Could this have been avoided without Batman in the first place?

If bad things happen, is he the one who caused these tragedies?

No one can tell him.

Life can never be paid as a price, and the lesser of two evils is a joke in the face of fresh human lives.

But if he doesn't continue to be Batman, then Gotham will return to a worse situation than before. The evil he has been suppressing will surge up, and the weak will have no room to survive. At the same time, the hope he is trying to plant in Gotham It will also wither completely.

He must go on.

He can only do his best to ensure that he will not make mistakes and prevent all accidents. Bruce Wayne will be dedicated to Gotham as a victim of Batman.

He is willing.

But now Clark is also facing the same problem, and he can really convey these pale experiences——

Let Superman wear shackles that will never come off?