aftermath

fifteen

XV. love in its purest form

"Let him go," Superman roars, and he explodes into the air, tearing his eyes away from his best friend, cowering from him. Fury threatens to claw any self-control left in him, out. "Lex! What the hell are you doing? Unleashing a demon onto Earth? It'll eat you up, right after it rips apart Metropolis."

A heavy thud on the road. Two golden mechanical feet, leading up to the structured suit encasing the billionaire's bald head. "Actually, you have it wrong this time, Superman. I hired my friend here, you see."

"Get out of my head," Bruce screams, and stumbles back.

The smoke churns and ripples, eating up the pretty blue of the sky. Just ashes and gray downfall. A swirling storm of clouds and dark things in the air.

Kent surges forward. "Hired it? Did you get the new paint job from it, too?"

"Oh, I was just feeling a change," Luthor sneers.

Everything fades into black. But then the nothingness comes back, and it's just white for miles. In front of him, a figure materializes. It's, of course, no one other than Superman.

This time, Clark doesn't dissolve, or grow into a grotesque image of bone and blood. He's just Superman. He smiles, and says something, and Bruce can't make out the words because it feels like they're talking underwater. Everything is slow and blurry. The image of him is unrefined, not sharp at the edges.

Then he comes forward and touches him, and Bruce is falling. He falls and falls and falls, but all the while he is being undressed, restrained, and picked apart in that same white space.

He feels cold hands running up his thighs, his chest, the length of his legs. "No," he says, over and over, but it won't stop. He looks down, and there are fresh bruises lining the inside of his thighs. Bruce looks up and sees the face he has seen for years, and can't connect the wounds to the face.

"My Superman would never do this," he whispers in a small voice, and the Man of Steel seems to grow in size, overwhelm him, overtake him.

"I am Superman," it says simply, as if that cancels out everything.

"You're not," Batman musters all of his strength and pushes the other man away, flying through the wall behind him with a ripple, "the Superman Iknow."

Relief courses through his veins at the prospect of escape, but black tendrils of doubt reach for him from the air. He can't fight it for long, and then it catches him again, and the same scene appears.

"Your body is mine to use," Clark sneers.

Bruce opens his eyes, even through the blur, and his vision sharpens. The words sound so much clearer.

He looks at the menacing smirk, the cold blue eyes, and he closes his own. In his mind comes a faint picture of his Clark.

Conflicting in the beginning. They had fought, countless times, over the course of the League and battle strategies and clues and mysteries and powers. Said untrue things. Lashed out. Bruce remembers shouting, you would be nothing if not for your powers.

It's not true. It was never true. He remembers fighting then, side by side and then back to back, a shared grin here, a punch on the shoulder there- and the familiar, comforting feeling of Clark's arms catching him in the sky.

Superman always had his back.

They bonded then, became two parts of a whole. A strange duo of bright, flashing red and blue alongside the inky black. Long, snapping capes. Bruce remembers defending Superman to the League. Grateful words. Shared smiles. The cold, satisfactory feeling of defeating a villain, and then that feeling being amplified as he looks at Clark.

The relief, the colossal, great relief, of saving the Earth. A few times. Always a buzzing happiness he could just relax into, with the steady presence of Kal-El at his shoulder. Being rescued. Rescuing the other.

Countless nights in the Cave, with welcome company. Although he'd never admit he liked Clark around- but he had a feeling Clark knew anyway. The respect in his eyes at League meetings. Concern when he took a hit. Anger when he put himself in danger for the others.

There was everyone else: strong, determined, brave, eyes shining with the intellect and beautiful courage that made them members of the Justice League. But always, with a halo around him, standing at the front, there was Superman.

And then the feelings. There were so many heart aching, puzzling, stupid feelings. The azure of Clark's eyes, and the impeccable curls of his hair. The structured face of a Greek god, all chiseled lines and deep eyes. The muscular reach of his torso, corded legs, rigid body. It made Bruce's mouth go dry.

His body pressed against him, hugged tightly around him, when he fell from the sky. His back, as they fought three hundred-sixty.

The warm compassion in his face, the open honesty, the love.

And finally, Kal-El's steady heartbeat.

Bruce opens his eyes. Time has frozen, but the once frightening figure of fake-Superman in front of him seems as fragile and delicate as thin glass.

"You're not him," he says loudly. "You're not my Kal-El."

Nothing moves. Color fades away.

"I know Kal-El," Bruce says, "And I love him."

He breathes, then, slowly and carefully, and the imposter crumbles away like a sandcastle drowned by an ocean wave, until nothing at all remains.