Chapter Text
Clark Kent gets a grave.
It’s simple enough. A mound of dirt and a gravestone engraved with a quote from one of his more popular pieces about the Justice League.
We will be the ones to save the world.
No one quite appreciates the irony.
A couple shows up a week after the funeral. Smallville notices the pretty people climb out of the fancy car and assumes they are friends from the city. They are not wrong.
The man places his hand on the stone. The woman crosses her arms. Neither of them cry.
“He can’t be gone.”
“Bruce,” she says, dropping her arms and stepping closer to him.
“I know he’s gone, but,” his breath shakes and he weaves his fingers, “the world needs him, Diana.”
“The world has us.”
“We’re not enough.” He stops. “He’s-- a beacon of hope. In a way we could never be. People look up to him. They rely on him. The world can’t survive without that.”
“They’ll have to.”
“Maybe.”
She tries not to think about the determination in his voice. She stares at the gravestone and he stares at the dirt as if they, too, could bore holes in them with a glance.
The body below them is fake.
***
Superman gets a crater.
It doesn't seem quite big enough. It’s too cold. Almost empty.
On the top of a mountain overlooking the crater’s edge stand two people who pretend that they are fine. She places one hand on her hip and one on her sword. He kneels and scans the crater through a pair of binoculars for something they both know is there but hope not to find.
Finally he lowers the binoculars, stands, and sighs.
“He hasn’t moved.”
“And he won't.” She turns to face the other. “We have to let him go.”
“You don’t-”
“I understand. But we will be fine without him.” She places a hand on his shoulder. “You will be fine without him. We will fill the hole he left behind.”
“Yes.” He shrugs out of her grasp. “I will.”
The body below them sits unmoving. Nothing about it has changed.
Neither considers that it might be strange.
***
They all watched him go down. Hit by a beam that would have destroyed any of them with mere proximity. They waited for him to climb out. He didn't. They watched Batman attempt to run into it and watched Wonder Woman pull him away from levels of radiation that could have killed the best of them. That had killed the best of them.
They sit in the Watchtower and pretend that everything is normal. Wonder Woman stands at the head of the table. Batman doesn't show. She doesn't wait for him.
“We've been at a crossroads,” she says, “since the passing of Superman.”
It's been a week. They've been mourning. No one mentions this.
“Two paths lie ahead of us. In one, we carry on as usual and wait for the public to ask questions. In the other, we announce to the world what has become of-- our friend.”
The world slows as they come to the same conclusion. Hawkgirl speaks first. “We can’t hide it forever.”
The Flash laughs, quick and forced and half-hearted. “We can try.”
***
“Hey, B?” Dick walks slowly through the door. He hears a crash and a string of curses from the other side of the Batcave. He walks toward it as Bruce rounds the corner, jumping and attempting to remove a sparking piece of metal from his foot. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” He grunts. Dick looks him over and determines that he is, at the very least, not bleeding profusely, but he does appear to be limping. Bruce brushes past him toward the metal table in the center of the cave.
“What have you been doing down here?”
“Did you need something?” Bruce snaps, wrestling the boot off of his foot.
“Alfred wanted to know if you’ll be up for dinner.”
Bruce throws the still-smoking metal across the room and moves onto the other foot. “He needed you to do that?”
“Said it’d be good if I came down here.”
“Just have him bring it to me. I'll be working.”
“Bruce.” Dick moves closer to the man and sits down. “This isn't about Clark, is it?” Bruce says nothing and continues to claw at pieces of the boot. “It wasn't your fault. There's nothing you could have done.”
“People keep telling me.”
“Whatever you’re doing-” Bruce finally removes the metal and throws it onto the floor with a loud clang. Dick sighs. “He wouldn’t want you tearing yourself apart.”
“If he wanted to voice his opinion, he shouldn’t have died.” Bruce snaps.
“B-”
“Leave.” Dick starts to protest, but Bruce cuts him off. “And tell Alfred not to bother sending anyone else down to rescue me.”
***
Vicki Vale is the first to question where Superman has run off to.
She jokes that he has finally taken a vacation and waits for the Justice League to respond.
***
“We can’t keep hiding it, Diana.” J’onn J’onzz says after the second meeting that week. Batman failed to show, again, but that is no longer a surprise.
“I know.” She responds curtly. Everything has been curt, recently. It is all she has the energy for.
J’onn is unfailingly kind. He gives her grace and does not push back on her. No one does. She wishes they would stop. “We should say something.”
“I know.”
J’onn senses her hesitation, as he always does. “But?”
Diana sucks in a breath and finally voices the debate she has been having for days. “But what if Batman is correct? What if we-- what if the world does not survive without him?”
“It survived before. It will do it again.”
“It’s gonna hurt, though.” Hal says smoothly, more control in his voice than any of them are used to.
“So it must.” Diana says, and that settles it.
***
Batman stops going on patrols. Dick and Stephanie tease him about finally giving in to his age. He smiles but he does not respond. At this point, anything is a victory. They take it as it is and leave.
Crime continues, as it always does, and there are still people left to fight it. Not only those in masks and capes, but everyone else as well. Even in Metropolis, where people had grown accustomed to seeing him every few days, life carries on.
Superman dies, and the world does not fall apart.
***
The Gotham Gazette anonymously receives a grainy photo of a man with a red cape flying. According to the Justice League, Superman is dead. More damning, perhaps, is the fact that he hasn’t been seen in weeks.
Front page news the next day is about a Wayne Foundation donation to a local hospital. Better to leave unfounded sensationalist gossip to the tabloids, after all.