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He looked incredibly pale.
It started with coughing. Then a tremble of the arm. Then a stutter while he spoke.
Then too many other things, to count.
Yet, he continued to smile at them. Peacefully, even.
He asked for little. A game of chess, homemade videos of the time Clark first discovered his powers, storytimes with Wally; that always ended with the latter sobbing somewhere in a closet.
It's why she could not deny him this simple request.
The man opened the door slowly, shushing a kid who kept running around with crayons in his hand. Long black hair, it'd already begun, then.
From the look in the man's eyes, he had already realized the same.
The silence as she took him to the watchtower was unbearable; but she knew this was not about her, so, she kept the growing pit in her stomach strictly to herself.
Hera... The way Longshadow had smiled. "Pa?" he said
The man fell apart as if he'd been knocked over. Kneeling against the white sterile floors of the medical bay. He muttered an array of apologies in a language she couldn't discern. Desperation clear in every choked breath.
She walked out of the room. She was an anomaly there. An unnecessary entity.
Then, why did she feel like her heart was crumbling apart?
She wandered the halls listlessly, caught between wishing they would announce his death already and that they would somehow find a cure. She felt ill, unsteady.
She'd made it to the eating hall somehow, when she spotted her. Eyes heavy with bags, a vacant look as she fiddled with her food.
Diana remembered then, a time not long ago when Shayera had told John "They were real to me"
Shayera tensed as she approached, but she paid it no mind.
"May I sit here, just for a while?"
The other woman nodded imperceptibly.
Minutes, perhaps hours, passed in complete silence.
And then, an earth shattering cry.
"Diana."
She turned her head slowly. She was greeted with a knowing look
"Just let it out."
He had been real to her.
She made the whole galaxy know, as her cries joined that of his father. As Wally rushed to her side and held onto her. As Shayera placed an arm over hers.
He had been real.