~Chapter Twelve~
The next morning, after a night of fitful sleep for all of them, they reconvened in the Wayne Manor kitchen. Bruce dug around in the freezer and found an unopened package of storebrand waffles under all the ice.
"Do you think we should go check on him?" Diana asked, looking up towards where the master bedroom was.
"It was just a concussion." Bruce shoved the waffles into the toaster.
"Your definition of 'just' and mine are completely different." Diana rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up. She didn't know how many objective days they'd gone without sleep but it was three at least.
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs. They all paused, Bruce included.
The other Bruce walked into the kitchen, gave them a look like you're still here? and rummaged around in the cabinet until he found a bottle of whiskey.
Clark glanced at the clock. "Little early, don't you think."
"My head hurts." Bruce slopped the drink into a glass. "I need whiskey. You going to stop me?"
Clark looked over to their Bruce, still fiddling with the toaster, for support. He got nothing. The other Bruce tipped the glass back and drank half of it.
"Aren't you going to back me up here?" Clark whispered.
"No." Bruce managed to jam two waffles into each toast slot. "He can do what he wants."
"Surely you have to find this disturbing."
"Of course. But—" Bruce stopped.
"But what?" Clark looked at him and suddenly realization dawned. "You understand it, don't you? You think this is what you would do?"
"No. No, I-" Bruce sighed. "Everyone here is dead, Clark., and there's not even a reason to keep being Batman. I may not like it but…I see how things could have led to this."
Clark grabbed his shoulder so Bruce had to drop the waffles and look at him. "I don't care if I do die, Bruce, if you go down this road I swear I'll make sure and come back just to smack you upside the head."
Bruce smiled slightly and handed him two hot waffles.
The other Bruce walked past and plucked one from his hands, then went and sat down at the table as far from Diana was possible. She looked almost a little hurt.
Bruce tried to ignore the fact that she seemed to appreciate every version of Batman but him.
"So we're back where we started," Clark said, and tried not to regret having to go into the Gotham City sewers for nothing.
"Well don't look to me to help you." The other Bruce ripped the waffle into strips and dripped it into his whiskey. Clark wondered if at this point he was just doing it to get a rise out of him. "Last time I tried that, I got knocked out in a jewelry store."
Something beeped. Both Bruces jumped. Theirs ran to the grandfather clock and bounded down the stairs. Clark and Diana looked at each other and followed. Bruce was already at the computer, staring at the globe projected in the screen. There was a strobing read beacon over the middle of Iowa. Bruce pointed. "That's where the crystal is."
They printed off the coordinates. The other Bruce was still sitting at the table when they came back up.
"We need to borrow the plane," Clark told him.
Bruce barely even shrugged. "Where are you going?"
Diana read off the coordinates. Bruce tried to hide his reaction, but Clark heard his pulse rate jump and saw the way his hands went utterly still. "You're not going to be able to get in there. It's—"
His eyes dropped to the table. "It's the site where the first bomb dropped. Now it's a memorial. Those coordinates you've got is the center, where…some of the bodies are. You can't get in there."
"But you can, right?" Clark asked.
Bruce crossed his arms and still didn't meet their eyes. "I don't want to go there."
"We need your help," Diana said, but he gave her such a hard, angry look that she stopped short.
"I did help you," he snapped, his voice rising. "I did. I did what you wanted me to. I'm not going there."
"Are you really going to be a coward?" Clark asked, before their Bruce could stop him. "Take the easy way out and let us fail?"
"A coward?" The other Bruce was shouting. "I don't want to see your dead bodies! How's that for a reason? If I'd wanted an easy way out I would have put a gun to my head as soon as I knew the war was done for good. But I stayed around, just in case something ever happened, in case—"
"In case we came back?" Diana asked.
Bruce stopped, and looked at her, like he was daring her to take it back. She didn't. After nearly a full minute he turned for the door. "Fine. I'll take you. But after this—you're gone."
He stalked off to the Batcave's teleporter and punched in the coordinates, barely waiting for them to follow.
The memorial was white and tall, marble, with pillars like an old chapel, with no apparent entrance. It sat in the center of a grassy Iowan field that was dotted with hundreds upon hundreds of gravestones of the same shining white rock. Clark stared up at it and couldn't decide how he felt about the statues of the six of them (everyone but Batman) that stood majestic on the curved roof.
"Gaudy, isn't it?" Bruce asked, without a trace of bitterness.
Their Bruce hung back, like he was the one who should be apprehensive here.
The other one stepped up to the wall and slipped his hand into a thin crack where two of the marble slabs met. Something beeped so quietly that even Clark just barely caught it. A tiny glass plate popped out from the wall, and Bruce typed something into the translucent surface.
One of the pathway stones clicked and slid back, revealing a stairway down into the dank ground. Bruce took the steps two at a time and led them into the crypt.
The shrine above must have been hollow, just a diversion and a spectacle, because this was where the bodies were. Six white coffins, with their emblems engraved in the lids and glass-fronted shadow boxes with their costumes folded carefully inside.
Diana's tiara and bracelets were missing, given back to the island, Clark assumed. His cape was gone, too.
"Lois took your cape," Bruce said, like he was a telepath now, too. "It was pretty easy actually, to keep your identities hidden. Not to hard to slip in a few extra bodies. And in times like these, no one really feels like questioning their symbols."
"Oh," Clark replied, because what the hell was a reasonable response to anything that this Bruce said?
Diana slipped the device Metron had given her from her pocket and held it up. It chimed softly, stronger when she turned left, and finally whined like a teakettle when held over the coffin with Clark's emblem on it.
"Go ahead," Bruce said, with a near-sigh of relief. "It's empty. The government just weighted it down for the parade and the funeral."
Clark reached out for the lid and lifted it. He was hit with a wave of something like déjà vu's opposite and sinister twin. But there wasn't anything in the coffin, and least not anything to spark spontaneous dread, just two bags of what looked like gravel and the crystal nestled in between them.
Their Bruce reached in and took it. The other crystal was already in his hand, like all he wanted was to be out of here, and he smacked them together with a small ferocity that startled Clark.
The vortex opened. The other Bruce barely flinched.
Metron must have momentarily gained the upper hand, because the swirling light bloomed in front of them instead of snatching them away. Bruce jumped in and Diana followed. Clark turned and waved goodbye, because it seemed appropriate, before starting after them.
Bruce grabbed his wrist. "Wait."
Clark looked at him, wondering.
"I—" Bruce began and faltered. "Don't let him push her away, okay? He listens to you more than you think."
Clark was too taken aback, just for a second, to respond. When he found his voice he said, "I promise."
Bruce nodded and let him go.
The last glimpse Clark caught of this universe was darkness falling on his own tomb.