Chapter Text
PROLOGUE.
It was twilight when Bruce flew into the sea.
Layers upon layers of gold, orange and purple rose above the horizon line and expanded in front of the Batplane. Behind him, Gotham grew smaller. Darkness fell over the old city and gained on him like an overly attached lover, begging him to come back to her, come back to Gotham, but he couldn’t. There was a nuclear bomb strapped under the plane. He was racing against time to take the bomb as far away from Gotham as possible.
Throughout his career, Batman had taken cover in the night like a child seeking the safety of his mother’s embrace. How fitting that he was only running away from it and toward the sun now when he had every intention to die. Bruce was suddenly struck by a feeling of loneliness.
Alfred must be so angry. Out of his own selfishness and for the old man's sake, the communicator had been cut off. Bruce banished the thought of his dear butler. He shouldn’t think about Alfred, who had gone beyond his obligation and duty and raised him like a son, whom he would never meet again.
The radar let off a series of urgent beeps that cut through the silence. A dot appeared on the monitor and rapidly approached the Batplane.
The canopy shattered. Salty wind rushed in, roaring in his ears, lashing his face and bringing forth fresh tears. Through watery eyes, Bruce saw a dark silhouette, a white cloak dyed pink by the dying light and a handsome face.
The stranger’s hair was framed by a halo of light, like a god.
***
I. GOD OF SORROW
Casualties comes with the lives they led. Heroes, lords, rebels… and Batman was human through and through, but Kal had thought he would never die. The man had come out of fights toeing between the line of life and death, giving loved ones heart attacks and uncountable what-ifs, but he had always pulled through. Bruce had seemed so invincible, had burned with the fervor of life. Kal-El realized too little too late that he hadn’t wanted to take that fire away.
Lord Batman was dead.
He had died quietly, breathed his last moment with neither cries of pain nor pleas for mercy. In his death, there was no movement from the rebels, no last-ditch effort blaze of glory, no riot to commemorate their late leader. They had scurried away, like small beasts seeking shelters to lick their wounds and bid their time. Kal-El knew it wouldn’t be the last of them, although he didn’t doubt that Bruce’s death had been a heavy blow to their forces.
Lord Batman was dead.
In the privacy of his own mind, Kal allowed himself to reflect. He had been doing so for the last couple of days, retracing his steps over pages upon pages of history, recounting where, when and what had gone wrong. If the other Justice League hadn’t intervened, if the other Batman - and he was sure it was the other Batman - hadn’t filled Bruce’s head with ideas, if Bruce hadn’t been so stubborn, he would still be by his side.
“Kal-El?” Diana asked.
He nodded once to signal that he was still listening.
“Our troop found this in Batman’s hideout.” She gestured at a golden orb on the table between them. Her lips quirked up when she noticed a flicker of surprise in Lord Superman’s expression. The Kryptonian clearly hadn’t been paying attention. Her eyes softened lovingly, unlike the frosty ice glaciers they had been when she had snapped Bruce’s neck. They made Kal’s skin crawl. “A relic of a forgotten civilization. We’ve gathered that much from Batman’s record."
Kal-El picked it up. The artifact was no bigger than an apple, marred by scratches and other marks of time passage but overall whole. Glyphs were carved into its metallic plates, although he couldn’t match it with any of the languages he knew.
“I didn’t know you still had time to collect this sort of things.” Kal mused. No matter how strong willed Batman was, managing a group of ragtag rebels was a full time job. For him to collect the relic and even research it, it must be important. “What were you planning, Bruce?”
The dead couldn’t answer him; and the living was full of unease in the face of such question.
“Does his record say anything about what this does?” He addressed Lady Wonderwoman.
“No. Either he didn’t know, or he kept his finding elsewhere.” She crossed her arms. Her smile had dropped. Her gaze was dull, lifeless, sad almost. “Kal, I… about-”
Batman. Their mutual sore spot, their ally, their friend, and their betrayer. There had always been a bat-shaped hole in their relationship. Diana had thought she could mend it - if not overlook it, but it kept growing. When realization finally struck her, it was a gaping abyss; and any of her attempts at communication got sucked into it before they could reach Kal.
She tried; and he shut her out. She pulled; and he pushed. It was tiring. Her goodwill was dwindling. As she waited for his answer, she knew this time wouldn’t be any different.
“Go back to Themyscira, Diana.” He said. “Take a break.”
“Kal…”
“The rebels wouldn’t be a problem for a while. When was the last time you saw your sisters and mother?”
Since Wally’s death, Diana didn’t have to say, they both knew. She had been with him every step of the way, waiting and hoping, dreaming a fool’s dream…
“Oh Diana, you’ve cut your hair.” Queen Hippolyta had lamented while running a hand through her daughter’s short cropped hair. Diana’s sisters had shared her sentiment, although they had kept it to themselves, overwhelmed and unsure about what to do with the new melancholy rolling off her in waves.
“Long hair is inconvenient, mother. I can’t fight with it.”
“You’ve never let it stop you before.”
To appease her mother, she had said: “Hair grows back.” It might take a few years to reach its old length, but what was a couple of years to a demigod?
What was a mortal’s life to a demigod? As ephemeral as a mayfly’s. So why had it hurt so much?
That was the last time she had been on Themyscira. Her hair should have grown down to the middle of her back since then, but she kept cutting it time and time again. At one point, cutting hair stopped being about practicality and started being about how she didn’t want to look into the mirror and be reminded of the good time.
“Alright.” Diana surrendered. “I can bring the artifact to my mo-…”
“No, I will look into it myself.” If his tone were a little possessive, if his hand gripped the relic a little harder, Diana didn’t mention it.
She held her head high when she turn around to leave, but her gait - too measured, too stiff, more like a soldier than a warrior - undermined her calm pretense. As her hand rested on the doorknob, she looked back at him.
It hurt inside when Kal couldn’t grace her with a glance. Diana had a premonition that she was going to lose him. To her dismay, she was okay with it. “Take care, Clark.”
The door closed with a click. Lord Superman heard a soldier on the other side greet her nervously, and Diana return with a stern “At ease!”
If he really wanted to, he could listen to her heavy heart all the way to Themyscira, making sure that her trip would be safe. However, Diana was a capable fighter, and the last person whose heart he monitored was…
Lord Batman was dead.
Lord Superman laughed breathlessly, gratingly. He didn’t need air, but he was suffocated. “Did your brilliant mind foresee this, Bruce? Why? Why did you fight me, why did you betray me?” He slammed a fist on the table, having barely enough self control to not break it in half.
Out of nowhere, there was Bruce’s gray cowl in front of him. Kal was shocked into falling out of his chair, except there wasn’t a chair under him anymore, only the Batcave’s cold floor. And Bruce was walking at him in all of his glory, like an apparition. The white lenses that covered his eyes glowed; the bats above them harmonized in an ominous song; and he walked right through Kal-El, over to the Batcomputer.
What’s the meaning of this? Hallucination? Magic? Lord Superman held up the artifact. Sure enough, it was still in his palm; yellow light glowed through the cracks between its plates and glyphs.
Bruce took off the cowl.
“I knew I would find you here.” Another Lord Superman said. “You didn’t show up, why?”
Instinctually, Kal backed up until he was by Bruce’s side, keeping his eyes on the intruder. It was ridiculous: that was himself, and he couldn’t interact with either of them anyway.
“You didn’t need me there to lobotomize a bunch of college students.” Bruce said.
“They were criminals.” Said Other Kal-El.
“They were KIDS!” Batman roared, then smaller, weaker: “They were just stupid kids, Kal. They didn’t know any better.”
Other Kal-El couldn’t see Bruce’s aghast face, but he could.
“They knew the consequences of opposing us.” Other Kal-El advanced. He put a hand on Bruce’s back. Lord Superman wanted to rip it off.
“There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t. You can’t make exception for everyone, Bruce. Eventually someone will abuse your compassion. What people need is absolution, total authority.”
“You… you are right.” Fight visibly left Bruce’s body. Steel blue eyes peeked at the other lord over his shoulder, dull, lifeless, sad almost.
No. Kal frowned. Don’t look at me like that… Like Diana… like…
you gave up on me.
“I’m glad that you see reasons.” Other Kal-El said smugly.
“NO!” He roared.
The Batcave faded away.
It was only him in the Justice Lords’ war room. A large crack split the roundtable in half. His chair was knocked over. The relic sat innocuously on the floor, when had he dropped it? Kal became aware of a lingering tiredness in his bones, like he had been exposed to Kryptonite. It went away quickly when he heard hesitant knocks on the door.
“S-Sire? Is everything alright?”
“Leave me.” He commanded.
***
One sleepless night later, Kal came to the conclusion that what the artifact had shown him was not a simple fabricated illusion but a memory. There had been a protest on Gotham University’s campus. When the polices arrived, a gun had gone off and escalated things. His super brain brought him the faces of every single protestor, some had been apprehensive, some had been angry, and some had been serene, accepting of their fates. It was the faces of the calm ones that disturbed him the most, because he could see traces of Bruce in them.
“Batman, as your old comrade, I give you one last chance. Disband the rebels and pledge your loyalty to the Justice Lords and Kal. Beg him for mercy, you just might receive it.”
But Bruce had remained willfully silent as Diana’s lasso biting into his neck until, until…
In hindsight, what a moron Kal-El had been, waiting for the Bat to yield, knowing that Bruce’s body would give out before his mind did.
The rebels kept radio silence. Lady Wonderwoman was gone; and without her, nobody - lords or otherwise - dared approach Kal-El with ‘trivial’ errands. She was the only bridge between him and the rest of their men. He missed her, although it had been his initiation to let her go.
He also couldn’t stand her.
With no one to discourage him, Lord Superman used the relic again.
“He’s gone mad.” A brave - or stupid - soldier said.
“Quiet!” Another hissed. “Do you want to get us all killed?”
Lord Superman locked himself in the war room, obsessing over streams of memories. It was him burning a hole in Luthor’s head after the Flash’s death; it was him giving a speech about the disbandment of the Justice League and the formation of the Justice Lords; it was him clearing a riot, the smell of burned flesh nauseatingly thick in his nostrils… In all of these memories, Bruce was there, but he was distant, always behind him like an obedient shadow, never beside him like a partner should. And the more recent the memories, the more their dynamic shifted from brothers-in-arms to superior and subordinate.
Why hadn’t he noticed the drift?
With each careless words and actions, Bruce had slipped away.
And then, on the day Bruce had betrayed the Lords, the fire in his eyes had been rekindled. Kal-El stood beside Bruce, looking at himself behind bars.
“Are you happy, Bruce? You ruined the utopia we’ve built.” The younger Lord Superman was spewing poison. “Mankind can’t be trusted on their own; they will destroy themselves with lies and greed. Do you think you did them a favor? The day will come when they curse you out, they will hate you.”
Bruce didn’t speak. He was crestfallen, but under his sadness, he was vibrant and full of purpose like the vigilante he used to be.
Were you happier when you were against me, Bruce?
If I had treated you like you deserved, as my partner, my brother, my friend, would you have stayed by me?
“No more.” Lord Superman said. “Show me something else.”
The artifact obeyed.
He didn’t immediately recognize his surrounding.
He was in the air, looking down at what had to be a city at some point, reduced to broken concretes and fire. He saw Bruce in a black uniform, tattered black cape spread out behind him like broken wings. He was missing an arm. The wound wasn’t bleeding as much as it should; the stump was cauterized, meaning that the perpetrator could only be another… Superman.
Kal almost didn’t see the red and blue Superman approach the fallen Bat. The uniform that used to bring hope was covered in blood and soot.
“And they said you would defeat me.” The other Superman mocked.
Batman was gripping something in his hand.
“What is it this time? A red sun grenade? Kryptonite smoke bomb? Go ahead.” Other Superman tilted his head. His curiosity was insidious in the way he resembled a child tearing off the wings of a butterfly to see how they worked. It was a cruelty born of ignorance, one that destroyed fragile beauty. Except, Other Superman wasn’t a child, and the world and Bruce weren’t insects. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong. That couldn’t be Kal-El.
Bruce choked back a sob. “I should have seen it from the beginning, Clark. I should have seen through the bright colors, those friendly eyes, and that Boy Scout grin. I should have known what you were doing to me… What you were doing to all of us.”
Bruce glared at the cruel god, defiant when even his feet wouldn’t support him. “You told us to love each other.” He spat out the word “love” like it pained him. “To tear down the walls that kept us from trusting each other. We wanted to believe you. We wanted to believe that the strongest man in the world was there to save us. That we could let go of our fears and hope again. But we were wrong.”
“I… I really loved you, Clark.”
Batman stabbed the syringe into his inner thigh.
In both Kryptons’ horrified eyes, Bruce doubled over and transformed. First his right arm regenerated; then his skin turned grey, stretching over misshapen muscles; large scales grew in patches all over his body, denser around the head, shoulder, forearms and knees.
“Doomsday.” Kal whispered. “Rao, Bruce, he…”
The changed Batman charged at Other Superman. Kal-El knew he was going to kill him.
“Stop! Bruce!” He dived from the sky. It was the first time he took the initiative to reach out to an illusion. He couldn’t explain what drove him. This wasn’t his world, this wasn’t his Bruce, this Superman had what was coming for him, and yet… Without thinking, he landed in front of the other Kal-El, raising a hand to catch Batman’s fist. His mind registered less than a second after that his action was in vain, they would phase through each other.
They collided.
“What?” It was the red and blue Superman who spoke.
Kal-El saw himself reflected in the Doomsday’s scarlet eyes.
In a blinding flash, the nightmarish scene disappeared.