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Bruce Wayne has built a life around pain. He understands pain like the emotion itself has materialized as a vestigial organ inside his tormented body. Completely invalidated through evolutionary development yet somehow unable to completely disappear.
Pain is what defines him, describes his very life.
The phantom pain of his murdered parents.
The stinging pain of his orphaned ward.
The fatigued pain of his infested city.
And all the millions of scrapes and stabbings and burns and broken bones and throbbing scars stretched over his pale body like a tapestry of the travesty his life has become.
Yet, nothing, no pain suffered still and ever present could ever compare to even a fraction of the utter agony that had griped him at the moment.
It was white hot, dazzling and numbed him down to his toes, where he stood, cowl off but the rest of his vulnerable frame encased in matte black and dark steel Kevlar.
He had seen it down to the exact second when realisation had dawned on the other man.
Had seen his beautiful oceanic eyes widen and something breaking irreversibly and immediately in those brilliantly glowing pupils. Had seen his mesmerizing tanned skin blanch a pasty ashen. Had seen the endearing flush on his sharp cheekbones bleeding out like blood draining off a slaughtered animal. Had seen his plush lower lip tremble for a slight second.
Had seen how effectively he had smashed the not so steely heart of the famously monikered Man of Steel to utter smithereens with just one revelation.
'This! This is what you wanted, right? Hit where it hurts? The weak, tender belly of the beast? The break in the scales? to exploit the lone vulnerability of the most invulnerable being to walk the earth?', Bruce's mind spat in sadistic glee.
The ever slumbering darkness in him delighting at the sheer torture of having to bear the sight in front.
"You.. you...", Clark whimpered, sounding oddly baffled even in his horrifyingly agonizing realisation, "...was a trick? Was all this just a trick?"
Superman rasped from a rapidly thickening throat.
'NO! No please.. please..', Bruce wanted to scream but his words had evaporated right from his lead laden tongue. He could barely hear his own thoughts from the incessant pounding of his own heart.
And Clark staggered, reeling at the heels of his red booted feet.
A God, a Titan, a creature of unfathomable power - whom not even a nuke can shift off course, stumbled back like a newly born colt. As if unable to bear the suffocating weight of the truth.
The slap of a vapid betrayal so deep that it had made both of them nauseous. The one who caused it just as much as the one suffering from it.
Bruce's hands shook beside his rigid frame as Clark breathed with his mouth open, as if on the edge of a rapid oxygen depletion. As if Superman who can run laps around the fastest creatures of the galaxy in complete vacuum at that, suddenly needed air to breathe like his plebian mortal teammate.
Bruce had only ever seen Clark struggling this much under the influence of Kryptonite. A sharp pain lanced through Bruce like an electric shock and he tried lifting his hand to reach towards his---
'Not yours, not anymore, never has been..', his mind supplies unhelpfully.
Yet inside his mind, he is still screaming.
'Clark! Clark please.. please... I love you. I love you. I am sorry. I am sorry. I love you. Please..'
"I.. you lied... you... I though you... you... I loved..", Clark's voice breaks off completely and the next moment his handsome face crumples like the ruined remains of a hastily used tissue paper.
'Used him. You used him and his big beautiful heart and his hilariously easily given trust and his unbearable kindness and his brilliant warmth and... used him. You used---'
Bruce sees the tears sparkling at the edge of those gorgeous eyes and a white hand clamped around his muscled chest like he has to scramble to hold back the pieces of his heart from falling out, bent at the waist like he has suffered a roundabout kick to his gut.
'He very well may have'
"Clark...", the name breaks out of his lips like a benediction. Finally. A plea for forgiveness but Superman is gone. Before Bruce could finally make his stupid body move, could utter even a single word more, could fall to his knees and beg and beg and grovel if required.
Superman is gone.
The remnants of the repulsive force of the sonic boom created by his sheer speed blows Bruce back a stumbling few steps.
The night sky is red lined and heavy. It seems to loom like a frighteningly burdensome and obsidian canopy ready to trap its unsuspecting prey underneath. The sun has long since set. The warmth has been replaced by the frigid and pungent night air of his beloved city.
Clark is gone.
Bruce feels a hitch in his breath and something like a wet slap of panic strikes him immediately after what seemed like hours of frozen suspension and his knees buckle like someone had taken them out from behind in one smooth move.
Gotham titillates in a whispery laugh, malice dripping from its venomous fangs with a vengeance and the Batman kneels on the ground, lonesome and gasping from the nauseating pain in his chest- the insides of his ribcage scraped raw and his heart having caved into itself like a collapsing blackhole.
'I love.. I love... I love....I lost.'