Chapter Text
There was a coppery taste of blood in Batman's mouth.
He was typing on the Watchtower computer, entering data. Analyzing wave frequencies.
He had been doing this for some time now. A long time.
Warm hands on his shoulders. Diana. She was saying something about a funeral. He ignored her. She should know by now that Batman didn't do funerals. Not the last one. Not this one.
The taste of blood in his mouth.
New Year's Eve. Times Square, New York City. Thousands of celebrants. The JLA gets the message that something's happening there, some energy reading that's never been seen before.
They teleport into chaos--smoke, explosions, a silvery metallic figure that darts about at inhuman speed, caroming off buildings with impossible grace. Beams of light from its arms cut buildings in two. The moving mirrored ball is sliced in half, never to reach the bottom of its descent, stopped. Eruptions of glass everywhere. Superman shields the crowd from the flying debris. Wonder Woman hooks the figure's foot with her lasso, only to be flung through another building.
Red Tornado flies up to Batman. "It's a construct--some kind of robot! I've never seen anything like it before!" The robot is trading energy bolts with Black Lightning and Green Lantern now. The bolts sizzle by them as they send green and yellow crackling back at it. It seems to be holding its own.
Batman speaks into his communicator. "Arsenal. EMP arrow."
"On it, Bats." The arrow arcs over the screaming crowd, which Superman is still struggling to protect. It hits the robot with a sharp searing noise, and the robot goes limp, falling to the ground with a thump in front of the Man of Steel.
An angry, snarling voice from behind him. Vixen. "I know you never got along with Superman, but how dare you not go to his funeral? You owe him that much respect, Dark Knight." Underneath the fury in her voice Batman could hear tears. He ignored her, continued working on the computer. A choking growl, and Vixen continued. "Are you laughing under that damned cowl? Have you finally gotten what you always wanted--to be the only world's finest at last?"
"Go away." There was some reason he should be angry at her, but he couldn't remember exactly why. He could taste blood in his mouth.
"Did you make his last moments easier, Batman? Did you comfort him at all, or did you gloat as he died?"
"Go away." There was a hiss of pure rage beyond his shoulder, but someone caught her arm, led her away. Batman caught a glimpse of green. Probably Hal Jordan.
Thank you, Hal.
As Arsenal lets out a whoop of victory, Superman warns the crowd away from the fallen foe. "Everyone, stand back, it might not be--"
The robot jerks upward, puts its hand on Superman's chest. A bolt of silver energy at point-blank range.
Kal-El is cut almost in half.
Diana again. She put a sandwich next to his console. "Bruce. We're going to the funeral now. Please...try to eat something." Batman wondered how long it had been since he had eaten. Longer than it had been since had slept. A long time. He took a bite of sandwich, staring at the monitor.
The coppery tang of blood in his mouth.
A horrible, stunned heartbeat. Time seems to stand still. Batman seems to be the only person moving, swinging off the roof, down, down to Kal's side. The robot leaps to its feet and flees, the rest of the JLA in hot pursuit. Batman hears a voice yelling something. "No, no, no, no." It seems to be his own voice.
A horrible, wrenching dislocation. The world swims around Batman as he kneels next to Superman. The man who had often been close to an enemy, sometimes been nearly a friend, is lying in a pool of blood, his eyes lucid.
There is no saving him.
Someone had turned on a television behind him to show the funeral. He heard J'onn J'onzz's low, clear voice, solemn and sad, and felt a sudden, almost nauseating stab of deja vu. "Superman. Kal-El. The Man of Steel. The Last Son of Krypton."
Clark...
J'onn voice continued half-heeded behind him, talking about Superman's bravery, his humility, his grace and passion. His kindness. His aloneness. J'onn's voice broke. "All beings are...alone together. Kal-El's aloneness ran deep and true. Yet somehow, when I was near him, I was...never as alone."
Other voices. They buzzed on about heroism, about power, devoid of meaning.
Blood in his mouth.
As Batman bends over him, Kal's eyes focus on him. There's no pain in them, just shock, surprise, and a deep...it looks almost like disappointment. He struggles to say something. "G--" He chokes, gasps, and tries again. "Gl--" The effort causes blood to well up in his mouth, trickle down one pale cheek.
"Don't. Don't. Please." Batman uses the edge of his cape to wipe away the stream of blood. Useless. Useless.
The look in Superman's eyes becomes one of desperation and something else, something that Batman can't quite bear either to look at or to look away from. He reaches up and pulls Batman to him with a bloody hand.
Pulls his mouth down into a kiss. Tender. Yearning. A kiss.
Clark dies in the middle of the kiss. People who say the dead look like they're sleeping have never seen dead people. Superman doesn't look like he's sleeping at all. He looks dead.
The rest of the JLA find Batman still kneeling by the body when they come back.
A woman took the podium, her eyes red with weeping. The reporter, Lois Lane, the one who had written so many stories about Superman. They had been good friends. Batman wondered briefly why Clark had never dated her. He felt dizzy, a wave of exhaustion and vertigo washing over him. But didn't--hadn't Lois and Clark...?
He shook his head vigorously. That was ridiculous. He knew the marital status of his teammates, and Clark had never been married. Never even really dated anyone.
The reporter was speaking, her voice hoarse but clear. She talked about Kal-El's life, his career and his friends. She told some stories about him, even managed to make the audience laugh a little at one of them, something about his damn dog. She paused, gathering her thoughts. "As an investigative reporter, I always found Superman's life something of a mystery. In a world so often dark and cold, why was he so good? And...why so lonely? Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, 'there is a solitude in every person more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea--the solitude of self.' Kal-El, to me, personified that essential solitude, that aloneness that cuts to the core of one's being. Why such a good...such a kind...such a giving man should have been so deeply alone will always be...a great mystery to me."
She bowed her head, tears spilling over at last. "Peace be with you, Kal-El."
Batman continued to scan the monitor as the crowd began to sing a hymn.
The feel of Clark's mouth, warm and gentle.
The taste of Clark's blood on his lips.
Why the hell would Kal-El use his final moments to kiss him?
An energy reading on the screen. It matched the one spotted at Times Square five days ago. Smallville. The ruins of Lex Luthor's old house there.
Batman focused in on it. The FBI were already there, setting up a perimeter. Damn it. He'd have to go in disguise if he wanted full access.
In his quarters, he pulled on a black suit. Glimpsing himself in the mirror, he stopped cold in shock. At least three days of stubble on a face almost too haggard to recognize; he'd never pass for FBI like that. He went into the bathroom, lathered his face, pulled a razor across it. His hands were shaking. The razor caught on a scab on his jawline, pulling it open again. He didn't remember getting that cut, it must have been during the fight on New Year's Eve. Blood dripped into the sink and he cursed quietly to himself. What was wrong with him?
As his last preparation, he holstered a weapon that looked like a close-range taser. It was actually a modified EMP emitter that might prove able to take the assassin down.
Clark's lips on his. The taste of blood.
They'd be coming back from the funeral soon, but he didn't need backup on this one.
Batman didn't do funerals.
Batman did vengeance.
* * * * *
The burnt-out ruins of Lex Luthor's old home sat on a bluff, brooding over Smallville. In the distance you could just barely see the Kent farm. Considering what he knew of Luthor, Batman had no doubt that as a young man he had spent much time watching that farmhouse, a smudge on the horizon.
"Glenn O'Neill"'s credentials as an FBI agent were impeccable, of course, and he slipped into the building as the sun started to set. The estate was sprawling and maze-like, and Bruce soon found himself alone and vaguely disoriented. The remains of a large stone fireplace jutted up from the ground.
A faint skittering noise was all the warning he had before the assassin robot was on him.
He dodged, his relexes dulled by weariness, and found himself tumbling through the air, ricocheting off the fireplace and back at the robot in a white, unthinking fury, his modified taser in his hand. There was a hissing, crackling noise as they staggered back a few steps together, and Bruce felt a faint shock like electricity run through him. The robot cocked its head at the whining weapon Bruce held, and then it turned and fled.
Bruce followed it, bursting out of the ruins, yelling for backup from the FBI agents. There was only one person there, a dim figure in the gathering gloom. The robot flashed by him, Bruce right after it. "Stop him, for God's sake!" he barked at the remaining agent. The other man started in surprise, then bolted after the assassin. The robot turned and grabbed the agent, threw him backward into Bruce. The two of them went down in a heap on the ground and the silver figure disappeared in a blur of speed.
Gasping from the impact, Bruce glared up at the man who had landed on top of him. Azure eyes stared back at him, bewildered.
It was Clark.
It was Clark.
Alive.
Only decades of deep-trained reticence kept Bruce from yelling Clark's name, from throwing his arms around the other man, from...doing something very stupid indeed. Because as the first shock wore off, he realized abruptly that this person could be no more than twenty years old. Practically a boy, really, a very confused boy who scrambled off him and offered a hand to help him up. Bruce grabbed the hand and was hoisted easily to his feet. Once there, the world around him suddenly started spinning, circling out of control. Shock, exhaustion, the effects of whatever the hell had just happened. Clark's voice--too young, too young, but still Clark's voice--echoed oddly around him in looping deja vu. "Are you okay, mister? Mister?"
Merciful blackness.
* * * * *
Clark Kent caught the other man as he fell, lifted him effortlessly. The stranger's face was pale and drawn with exhaustion and something else that Clark couldn't name. He studied it for a while, cautiously.
It seemed like a good face.