Chapter Text
“They’re tracking us!”
The butt of a rifle impacted between Clark’s shoulder blades, knocking the breath out of his lungs and sending a jolt of pain down his spine. He hit the ground on one knee and nearly used his hands to keep from faceplanting, but the guns pointed at his and Lois’ heads kept them high up, palms open. Rough hands patted him down, pulled at his jacket pockets, ripping out wallet, papers, phone, and a half-finished pack of cough drops.
“Clark, what’s going on?” Lois whispered urgently beside him.
I don’t know, he mouthed back.
“He’s military!” the scowling second-in-command reported, pointing the muzzle of his AK uncomfortably close to Clark’s nose. He waved a fistful of ID cards in the air. The words Kent, VA, and glimpses of glasses and a slight overbite flashed in glossy plastic under the sweltering Nairomi sun.
“I’m just a civilian now!” he cried out in English, then in Swahili. “I’m a reporter!”
He gestured helplessly at the remains of his camera strewn across the ground and the still-blinking tracker amidst the wreckage. “I had no idea… We had nothing to do with this.” If the gun inched any closer, it’d be up his nostril soon.
He glanced at Lois, who was kneeling beside him, white-faced. Someone had snapped the lanyard around her neck and ripped the scarf from her head, her hair tumbling down her shoulders in a scandalous cascade. She flinched when a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. The Warlord. The smug, maybe terrorist, Mr. I-have-nothing-but-love-for-my-people. She shrugged his hand off with a glare.
“Ignorance,” said the most powerful man in Nairomi, as he sauntered between the two Americans, “is not the same as innocence. Is it, Ms. Lane?” He touched a lock of her hair, vicious and playful at the same time.
He had a pistol in his hand, one that Clark noted vaguely that he couldn’t immediately ID. And Clark had an eye for firearms.
“Someone must’ve bugged us without us knowing,” said Clark, talking loud and fast so that he drew the warlord’s attention away from Lois. “The CIA, maybe. They used the Daily Planet, they used us to get to you. I swear to you, we didn’t know, we didn't know.”
The warlord’s expression was dangerous as he squatted down to look Clark in eye. “I don’t care what you didn't know. And what you do know, I will extract from you.”
Clark looked sideways at his partner. She was to his left, about 10 feet away from a good solid pile of crates, about 8 feet high. Three strides. Temporary cover. From there, a straight dash to the open gates of the compound. She could make it if she was fast, and if he distracted them. He exhaled slowly, then gave her a tiny nod. She blinked back at him, eyes widening in comprehension. No, she mouthed.
“Now here’s what’s going to happen to you and your lady reporter-”
Clark launched off his knee and cut him off midsentence with a body slam. “Run, Lo!”
A shot discharged near his ear. He slammed the heels of his palms into the guy’s wrist in a twisting motion, snapping the pistol out of his hand and probably the trigger finger too. Lois was a blur in his periphery, running as bullets pinged off the ground around them, as he grappled with the soldier for the gun.
He fancied he almost had the upper hand until someone from behind landed a kidney punch (unsporting, really), flooring him. A bag slammed over his head, blotting out a sea of furious faces. The world turned into a flurry of boot heels, rifle butts, and curses as he was dragged backwards, far away from the only exit. After a particularly vicious blow to the solar plexus that left him doubled over and struggling not to vomit into a burlap sack that already smelled like vomit, the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked and the feel of cold metal on his forehead made him freeze.
So that was it. Well, at least he’d go down fighting with toenails intact, not screaming for mercy as they pulled them from his feet. Not crying in the dark… never again…
They forced him on his knees. He closed his eyes, only hoping that Lois had made it. And, of course, regretting that he never got to say goodbye to…
The shot never came. Instead, the sky split open with a roar like thunder. Expect, he knew it wasn’t thunder, but a 12-cylinder turbocharged jet engine.
He found himself shoved unceremoniously to the ground as the gunfire now concentrated upwards, and the shouts around him grew less angry and more panicked.
There was a series of metallic thumps, the sound of magnetic discs thrown from a height and attaching to the barrels of guns. Then, a string of muffled explosions. The crack of a single precision rifle, the clank and snap of a grapple hitting the eaves of a roof, the twang of steel cable. There was no more gunfire after that, just the sound of wind rushing against great, black wings. A creature of the night, landing in the desert sun.
Silence. Through cracked lips and a sack that smelled like blood and vomit, he smiled. A second later, all he could hear were blows and screams of pain.
By the time Clark had managed to pull the bag off his head and heave himself into a sitting position, he was already the last one standing.
The world was blurry. He’d lost his glasses somewhere. His head swam when he tried to stand, but he didn't get the chance to fall on his rear before gauntleted arms were around him.
“Are you hurt?” came the deep growl that haunted the nightmares of Gotham criminals, but all Clark heard was the heartbreaking concern of the man beneath.
“I’m fine,” he wheezed. “Lois… get Lois.”
He was set gently down, then Batman was gone with a swish of cape. A distant murmur came from somewhere beyond the walls of the compound, then the whirr and twang of the bat grapple as Lois was pulled to safety.
Mr. One-question-begs-another was groaning somewhere to his right. Alive, but defeated. Clark considered punching him in the head, but Mom taught him better than to punch a man’s head when he’s down (or at all, if possible). He settled for an intense, near-sighted scowl instead.
He’d found his glasses by the time Batman came back for him. Cracked again. It was a prismatic figure that tenderly took his face, turning it this way and that to check for head trauma, carding a gloved hand through his hair, then holding him, pressing him against an armored torso. Was it Bruce trembling, or himself?
“I’m fine,” said Clark. “I’m fine now. You’ve got me.”
“I’ve got you.” He held Clark closer, tightly and yet so gently that not a single bruise was pressed, not a single injury aggravated. “Never again,” Bruce whispered into his hair.
Careful fingers plucked the broken glasses from Clark’s face, tucked them into a pouch on Batman’s utility belt for safekeeping.
Clark felt something being clipped to his belt, something cinched around his waist.
“Ready?”
Clark buried his face in Bruce’s shoulder, gripping powerful biceps, and let himself tremble for a moment. Later, there’d be work to do. There’d be evidence to gather, bullets lifted off the ground with tweezers, a tracking device to pick apart and trace, investigations made, conspiracies unraveled, possibly heads broken, then angry words yelled across the coffee table about recklessness and stubborn Smallville stupidity, and on top of everything else, a pair of glasses to fix. But for now, he was safe. He lifted his head, smiling. “Yeah.”
And then they were flying.