Jason froze.
He carefully examined Clark's expression, but found no trace of a joke, nor any of the mockery and belittlement he had seen before disguised beneath a serious façade. This reporter named Clark Kent was serious.
"Why do you ask?" Jason asked, puzzled.
Clark lowered his head slightly and said, "Perhaps you know something about the news industry, but not enough. Within ten minutes of that photo spreading through the industry, we had pieced together the life stories of Jason Todd and Dick Grayson."
"To be honest, they weren't exactly smooth sailing, were they?" Clark was clearly choosing his words carefully. He was especially cautious in this regard, and he made Jason fully aware of that caution. Jason knew that was how reporters earned people's trust.
"You were both orphans. Forgive me for putting it so broadly. Though your circumstances were somewhat different, you were both adopted by Bruce Wayne after losing your parents."
"Up to that point, there was nothing to criticize him for..." Clark was obviously giving his own opinion, rather than that of his editor or colleagues.
Jason knew what their opinion would be. He considered himself impervious to blades and bullets, but the thought of the filthy words that might appear on the front pages of gossip rags—especially the long string of them after Bruce Wayne's name—still irritated him.
"No matter what, he took you in when you had no one else to rely on. He let you survive in this dangerous city. That was heroic, and I'm not here to condemn that."
"But your records show that both of you later disappeared from his side. Dick Grayson left first, and then you vanished as well, replaced by someone else."
"Children always leave home when they grow up." Clark's fingers kept rubbing against each other,