Chapter Text
“Hold him,” Bruce commands, and in the same moment he produces a batarang, feels it whisper against his palm when he takes a step forward and sends it spinning through the air.
A glowing green edge glints in the light from the overhead crane, and the kryptonite-tipped batarang embeds itself in the neck of the mirror creature that Clark has pinned in place, just above the blue neckline of the suit, slicing into him like a knife into warm butter.
Eyes narrowing in irritation, the mirror creature stares at Bruce, its skin tinged green at the neck where the kryptonite lights it up. There’s a moment where the world seems to go still, and as the colour drains from Clark’s face, the creature wrenches itself out of Clark’s grip and straightens up to its full height.
With a sigh that sounds downright disappointed, the creature wraps its fingers around the batarang and tugs it free, but no rush of blood follows; Bruce can see almost directly into the wound, a dark hole that glitters in the moonlight like the inside of a geode.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” the thing that isn’t Clark says. The kryptonite makes its fingers glow a sickly green, but it doesn’t drop the batarang. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t do that. You’re going to pretend that—”
Whatever it was going to say is lost as Clark slams into the creature from behind. The batarang clatters from the ground as Clark and the creature both disappear into the depths of the construction project. Bruce can’t see where they’ve gone, but he can hear wooden boards snapping and steel beams groaning.
Perhaps more alarmingly, he can hear the wail of sirens beginning to approach the park.
Suddenly, one of the Clarks shoots out of the construction and into the air, with the second already hot on his heels. The uppermost Clark turns in midair and lets loose a blast of heat vision that rips into the ground and through the construction site, but the Clark below is just as quick to dodge and respond with a blast of his own, rending the sky with twin beams of fire before the first Clark hits him head-on and begins to grapple with him high above the city.
It’s nearly impossible to tell from this distance which is Clark and which is the mirror image. They fly the same, fight the same, appear to share the same strength and powers—even the dark slit that Bruce had opened in the mirror’s chest seems to have disappeared, effectively removing all certainty as to which may be the true Clark. They’re titans dancing in the sky, wrestling and slamming into one another with concussive forces that ring out like thunderclaps across the park, and all Bruce can do is stand on the ground and watch, like—
like the Black Zero event. Like Doomsday. This is the reason they formed the League. Powerful beings, threats to the world, they can’t be allowed to go unchecked, and sometimes it takes more than one person to finish the job. Bruce can’t handle this on his own, and it looks like Clark’s powers are too evenly-matched for him to gain any ground.
But together?
Scooping up the discarded batarang, Bruce grapples quickly up to the crane he’d been standing on before the Clarks had slammed into the ground. The Kryptonians have contained their fight to the air over the park, luckily, but the park is close to residential neighbourhoods and the city is filled with sleeping people. Helpless people. The thought reminds him of the first time he saw Kryptonian heat vision melting through skyscrapers, and he has to fight to suppress a shudder.
“Clark, you need to get it out of here. Take it upstairs.”
Bruce doesn’t raise his voice above a whisper. It’s low enough that the modulator barely picks it up, and hopefully low enough that the mirror creature doesn’t hear it, either. He knows Clark does; he knows because Clark always hears him, and he knows because Clark raises a hand in his direction, suddenly stops in mid-air, and rockets upward into the stratosphere.
It would be more helpful if Clark had a way to respond to him. Bruce is still working on creating long-range communication devices that don’t short-circuit the moment Clark starts to use his heat vision, and if they make it through this, he’s going to have to double down on it.
He’s also going to have to apologize for the stunt with the kryptonite, but he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
“Keep going up,” he murmurs. Twin sonic booms echo far above the city as Clark follows his guidance with the mirror creature chasing behind. He watches until Clark is barely visible, until there’s no guarantee that Clark can even hear him at this distance, then says, “Take it as far out as you can. There are no nukes coming this time. You’ll need to find another way.”
Within seconds Clark and the creature are no longer visible in the night sky, but Bruce can still see the lines of light from their heat vision as they continue to trade blasts in a clash of red. During the showdown with Doomsday, Clark and the monster had created an inferno between them, illuminating the burning landscape with a brilliant light. There’s no such destruction here, luckily, and the lights are already beginning to move down on the horizon, growing fainter and fainter until they’re out of sight completely.
Christ, he hopes Clark knows what he’s doing.
*
The most jarring thing about being in space is the silence.
Clark is used to tuning out the sound of wind rushing over his ears. Sonic booms in succession are hardly noticeable, and even the aerodynamic sounds of nearby airplanes are white noise. In space, there’s none of that; no wind whistling by, no thunder to herald his arrival, no airplanes rattling his chest with their vibrations.
No sound at all.
Even the familiar whine of his heat vision is silenced in the vacuum of space, and Clark doesn’t notice that the mirror-Clark is using it until he feels the blunt force of it hit him square in the back. It sends him reeling off balance, but he’s quick to regain his footing and continues his trajectory high above the planet. At this point, he and the mirror are far enough away and moving so quickly that the earth almost seems to be standing still.
Even Doomsday hadn’t been able to follow him out this far. Quite frankly, it’s alarming that the mirror’s newfound abilities are nearly as powerful as his own, but Clark is still going to hold his breath (he’s literally holding his breath, still holding onto the deep inhale of ozone he’d managed to get before leaving earth’s atmosphere) and hope that his plan is going to work.
The mirror had sounded so factual, so like him that it had been chilling to listen to. Not that it isn’t chilling to look at something wearing your face, or listen to something that speaks with your voice, but his dislike for this creature goes beyond its attempt to appeal to Bruce, the one person who could kill him if given the chance. No, it’s the familiarity of this situation that Clark hates. He’d taken Zod into space twice. He’d knelt with his arm around Zod’s throat, knowing that if he let go, he would doom the planet.
He hates this creature for wearing his face, but he hates this creature more for what it hasn’t yet done—and so he hurtles toward the sun with the mirror blasting him with heat, determined to put an end to the threat of yet another Kryptonian.
If it looks like a mirror, it should break like one, the mirror said to Bruce.
Clark typically tries not to rely on last-ditch efforts anymore, but this time he’s banking on that being true.
The sun is a gargantuan wall of light and plasma and blistering heat, but neither Clark nor the mirror slow as they approach it. In fact, Clark does quite the opposite: he breaks the speed of light and barrels headlong into a lick of flame that he vaguely thinks might be a solar flare, but he doesn’t stop to worry about the specifics.
Then he stops.
The mirror slams into him with enough force to send him spinning what feels like several miles closer to the sun, nearly knocking his breath out in the process. At this distance, it probably doesn’t matter how close to the sun he is; the heat is so intense that even Clark feels uncomfortable, his skin prickling in a way and his stomach roiling with an unease that he hasn’t felt since the night he was introduced to kryptonite.
He’s pretty sure it’s fear. Bruce might be able to rely on the kryptonite to kill a Kryptonian creature, but Clark isn’t so sure that this mirror image is Kryptonian at all. He doesn’t know how it would react to a high dose of kryptonite radiation, but that information is irrelevant to him.
All that matters is that he knows it’s made out of crystal.
In the immense heat of the solar flare, Clark whirls around, grabs the mirror by the head, and leans in until their faces are nearly touching. The mirror grins at him, face contorting into a sinister expression that Clark has never before seen on himself. It’s hideous, now that he sees it for what it really is, no more a mirror than a cheap imitation.
You’re not fooling anyone, Clark thinks, then forcefully expels the lungful of air that he’s been holding in his chest since their departure.
It’s a complete shot in the dark. As far as Clark knows, nobody has ever attempted to create a small blizzard in the outskirts of the sun, and he’s not even entirely sure that it’s going to work; but while the sun’s proximity mutes his frigid breath, he can still feel the slightest temperature change in the plasma-filled space between them.
The mirror’s smile falters as Clark, now with both hands around its head, begins to squeeze.
—
Nearly twenty minutes after Clark’s disappearance, Bruce finds himself perched atop a nearby skyscraper, using the cover of night to shield himself from the swarms of helicopters and emergency response teams.
People in Metropolis don’t take anything lightly these days, and the sizeable hole in Heroes Park is as good a sign as any that something is—or was—happening in the city. There’s no evacuation order being given, but there’s a SWAT team on location and Bruce is fairly sure that someone in the White House is already frantically running around trying to decide what to do about the scene. But with Clark’s location unknown, there’s little that anyone can do to properly assess the threat, so Bruce simply watches the police rope off the crater and shine their lights around, waiting impatiently for something to happen.
Which, of course, it does.
The sky over Metropolis begins to hum. Quiet at first, the hum grows into a rumble, and when the policemen on the ground begin to scatter, running back to their cars in a panic, Bruce looks up and sees the fireball.
Though it manages to avoid hitting any of the news helicopters, the fireball crashes into the centre of Heroes Park with a sound like a cannon, illuminating the surrounding buildings with a brilliant light before the cloud of debris that it raises blots it out. The impact shakes the building that Bruce is standing on and makes the ground below shudder, setting off car alarms and causing the lights surrounding the park to flicker and dim.
The smoking crater is illuminated by several nearby police and news helicopters, but when the dust finally clears he can see, standing in the centre of the pit, a humanoid figure in a cape, one arm raised against the floodlights trained on it.
“Clark,” Bruce whispers, too cautious yet to be hopeful.
The figure in the crater turns its head and looks at him, raises a hand briefly in greeting, then rises out of the crater to address what looks like the entirety of the Metropolis PD gathered around the park.
Bruce lowers himself into a crouch once more and waits.
It takes an hour for the park to settle down. The sky’s beginning to lighten on the horizon, and yet when Clark finally breaks away and flies up to meet him atop the building, Bruce is still wide awake.
Clark touches down on the roof silently, glances around at the silent air, and heaves a sigh of relief.
“Talk about a warm welcome. The headlines are gonna be brutal,” he says, a grim expression on his face. Bruce watches him run his fingers through his hair, shaking free loose bits of debris and dirt. “Thanks for waiting.”
“Did you get it?” Bruce asks.
Clark glances up at him. “The mirror? Yeah, I think so.”
“What did it look like? When it broke?”
This time Clark holds his gaze, eyes narrowed as if to accuse Bruce of not believing him, but the accusation never leaves his mouth. Clark just sort of smiles at him, shaking his head as he steps closer to Bruce.
“You know… I’m not really sure.”
Bruce considers that for a moment, then tilts his head forward and rests his forehead against Clark’s. He lets his eyes slide shut and inhales.
Clark smells faintly of ozone, but of something more familiar, like hot metal, or charred meat.
“Do you want to know how I knew it was you?” Bruce asks without opening his eyes.
Clark hums quietly and rests a hand on Bruce’s arm. “Does it matter?”
“It would if I made the wrong choice.”
Clark is quiet for a moment, but he doesn’t break away. When Bruce blinks his eyes open, he finds that Clark is gazing at him, searching his face for some answer that Bruce must not be telling him.
“You have the kryptonite,” Clark says quietly. His mouth nearly brushes Bruce’s. “You can be sure.”
It would be a simple test to drag the batarang’s edge of Clark’s palm, to draw blood or black and know whether Clark is lying. But he knows also that only one Clark returned from the sky, and he fully believes that Clark has told him the truth about the culmination of their battle. He believes that the Clark in his arms is the only one left, and that what happened to the other Clark, real or mirror, is now a secret contained among the stars.
And if Bruce is to be honest with himself, he would rather accept this Clark than lose both.
“I’m sure enough,” he tells Clark, and kisses him just as the sun inches up on the horizon, illuminating them both in the first golden rays of morning.
End