Warnings: A little language, a little violence, one major character death, and the occasional apocalypse
Note: Each part corresponds to a prompt on the stargateland bingo card. Their respective ages vary from part to part. Beware of possible spoilers through "Enemy at the Gate" and The Dark Knight. My portrayal of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor is loosely based off of the early seasons of Smallville but does not attempt to stick to Smallville canon in any way.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate, Batman, Smallville, or "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)."
1. Question
They fly to Atlantis in a puddlejumper because that's how John says the city is meant to be seen. Bruce has to sign an extra form agreeing that the Air Force will not be held liable if anything should happen on the ten minute flight from Area 51 to San Francisco Bay. Specifically, he waives liability in the event that the puddlejumper should explode, crash, vent all oxygen, spontaneously transport itself to an alternate reality, or experience about three dozen other disasters, all carefully printed in four point font at the bottom of the form.
The city is invisible, of course. Otherwise it would be the world's most explosive news item of all time, and while the Stargate program will someday go public—Bruce's invitation to tour the city is a first, ever so tentative step in that direction—that day is not today. With the horizon stretching out in front of them it feels as if they're simply flying out to sea, no destination in sight.
Bruce has flown with John before, but not like this. Not in a ship the other man can control with his mind, a ship that literally acts as an extension of his body. John is at peace, here, in a way that he never is in Gotham.
Eventually they pass through the bubble of invisibility that surrounds Atlantis, and then Bruce finds his breath taken away. John has described Atlantis in the past—in detail, at length, and at every possible opportunity—but seeing it for himself is a whole different experience. The city is like nothing else on Earth, all clean lines and majestic piers. A beautiful behemoth that should not float and yet somehow does. Bruce is enthralled. He wants to wander her every hallway, to see John sit in her control chair—he himself lacks the ATA gene—to feel what it must be like to live in a city that is very nearly alive.
Then he looks at John and his own awe is shattered under a wave of despair. He knows the expression on John's face. That is the bright, blind gaze of a man in love.
"I've been trying to find the right way to tell you," John says, his eyes locked on Atlantis, drinking her in, as if to look at anything else would be a crime.
Bruce forces his voice steady. "Tell me what?"
"General O'Neill called two days ago. He finally won the President over. Atlantis is going back to Pegasus."
Bruce has known for almost a year that this was a possibility. He only met John in the first place because while Atlantis was grounded John had, among other tasks, been assigned to be the government's liaison with Wayne Enterprises, overseeing their production of certain devices whose designs are of extraterrestrial origin. Bruce has known from the first that there was a chance that the government would agree to allow Atlantis to return home—and that of course John would go with her.
For the past three weeks, Bruce has been carrying around a question. A question that might destroy everything between them, the repeal of DADT notwithstanding. A question that would open himself up to the possibility of hurt, the possibility of healing, for the first time since Rachel's death. A question that he has wanted, desperately, to ask, and yet has been afraid to voice.
But he knows the expression on John's face. Bruce, too, knows what it is to love a city more than one loves oneself. And so he quietly, and with much regret, tucks that question away in a dark recess of his mind.
"She's beautiful," he says.
John squeezes Bruce's knee—a casual, pleased touch. "Isn't she, though?"
If he could tear his eyes away from Atlantis he would see Bruce's flinch. But he can't.