Chapter One: Bad News Comes to Kansas

Some Eight Years Later

"Hope? Can you come out here, please?" Diana calls her daughter, with Clark somewhere behind her, busying himself with something trivial. She understands that he doesn't want to show his weakness, and though he'd always tell their daughter (who, in keeping with everyone's expectations, was a bit of a hard-case) that it wasn't a bad thing to cry, he's unable to face his daughter with tears standing in his eyes. He is a strong person, and knows that if it were not his own daughter that comes to hear them now, that it would make things easier. Diana is not crying, not yet, but she knows that the tears will come. There is the sound of bare feet coming down hardwood stairs, and with the emotional overload of the moment, Diana almost wants to yell at her child for dawdling: for taking her time by walking instead of getting there quick, like they all knew she could.

"Yeah mom?" The girl (she is eight years old at this time) has blue eyes; this isn't much of a surprise, as both her mother and father do too—what is more surprising, is that the color and shape of them more closely match Bruce Wayne's than either of her parents. Maybe this is in mockery of the third's more spiritual than actual role in her conception, but it's probably just dumb luck.

The way that Diana can see her daughter, Hope, can see the child's intelligent (and severe) eyes quickly pass over both her mother's face and the way her father is half-turned away from her: that is not luck. This swift and efficient way of surveying a situation: that is not luck. The scowl that settles into her young brow, subconsciously: that is not luck. Again, with emotions running so high, Diana wants to reprimand her daughter, wants to scold her for being so pointed and so quick.

It is not luck, the way that Hope uses her Batman's eyes to do these things. Maybe, most probably, this is learned behavior: Diana—who was Wonder Woman but cannot be now, not today—consoles herself; she doubts that Bruce Wayne would teach her daughter these things, and not so young. Not after his long years with his own 'children'. And still, Diana feels a sullen rage rise in her, directed at Bruce Wayne.

Not because of how her daughter is more like him than either she or her husband will admit, and not because of all the detective kits he sends her, or the specialized computer games, or the money, or the toys, or the way that she loves his presents best because he never sends clothes.

Diana, who cannot, cannot, cannot be Wonder Woman (feels like she may never be able to call herself that again) is feeling a sinking and awful, hopeless frustration at Bruce Wayne, who was Batman.

She is utterly lost with and furious at Bruce Wayne, who will never be Batman again. Bruce Wayne is dying.

"What's wrong?" Hope asks her mother with the Batman's scowl; the scowl Diana doesn't know whether she simply picked it up after seeing it on her 'uncle's' face, or if maybe it's Hope's attempt to emulate the man. With those eyes, his eyes (Impossible, she tells herself, but also reminds herself that stranger things have happened) staring her down, she has to look away for a moment, to collect her thoughts. If Hope hadn't recognized something amiss before, this gesture is enough to send alarms ringing in her young mind. "Tell me, what's wrong? Dad?"

This is when she still calls him dad, and even then, it's rare. Neither her mother or her father understand why Hope is so distant with her father; in his worst suspicions Clark sometimes thinks that it may be Bruce's doing, trying to get at him in the worst way possible. A psychiatrist would have suggested that Bruce had something to do with it, but not so directly: probably that it was a case where Bruce was the father that Hope wished she had had, instead of Clark—but it could just as easily be said, that sometimes two people just don't bond: sometimes even parent and child. Hearing this term of endearment, knowing that he doesn't hear it often enough, Hope's father turns to her, and she knows for sure: Something is horribly, horribly wrong.

"It's Uncle Bruce, Hope." His voice wavers, and a tear slides over his cheek. As if trying to take it back or console her, he gives a weak smile. Hope feels a terrible knowing in her gut, pushes it aside; though she often takes the time to remind them both that she doesn't call him "Uncle Bruce" just "Bruce", she doesn't this time.

"What's wrong?"

"He's dying, Hope. Honey, he's dying," Diana tells her daughter, and hears (feels) Clark draw breath in sharply, as if he's been stung. When she says it, she thinks for one dreadful second that her daughter won't react: that those light blue eyes will turn glacial, that they'll close up and close everything else out. Instead, her young daughter jumps backwards, as if some strong electrical current had literally shocked her. Eight, Diana says to herself. Eight, that's how old Bruce was when…And though humans tended to see her and her friends as all powerful, Diana thinks about how so many things are connected, how so many things are out of her reach.

"What? What are you talking about?" Instead of her usual sharp watchfulness, Hope is now outright glaring, her eyes turning from her father to her mother, and back again—If looks could kill, her mother thinks. Hope is thinking about her friends, how some of them like to play jokes, but she knows that this isn't a joke. She knows, though maybe she can't yet describe it, that her 'uncle' (who she never ever calls her uncle, just Bruce, please-and-thank-you) isn't one for joking.

Hope decides that none of those kids, the daughters and sons of other heroes, are her friends anymore, and she also decides at the same moment that she hate jokes. In the logic of an eight-year-old, this makes perfect sense.

"Uncle Bruce is in the hospital, Hope. He has a bad heart—it's sudden for us," And instead of adding 'but we think he's known for a long time', Diana decides that that's too much for a little girl to try to understand, no matter how bright she is, no matter how quickly she blows through her detective kits, and no matter what death-glares she can give. "Honey, we're going to go to the hospital soon."

Hope's small fists clench, and she bares her teeth like a caged animal, taking a step back. Instead of crying, Clark watches her jaw clamp down, and he can hear her molars (some of which are still baby teeth) grind together; he hears her heart beat faster. He loves his daughter, would do anything for her, but he cannot understand her; it breaks his heart to know this. Again, he finds that he must look away.

"No!"

"Hope, it's hard for all of us-" Diana pushes herself away from the table she is sitting at, and takes a couple of steps toward her daughter. There is a shimmer in the air, and as she puts her hands out towards the little girl she quickly draws them back, lips pulled tight. No one seems to be able to pinpoint what exact powers the girl has, beyond superhuman senses, strength, and speed (and flight, but Hope flew so rarely that even that could be negligible): every once in a while, this happened. It seemed that the girl had some power over making force fields, energy shields—this one had given Diana a shock to touch. Though she knows that it is not the right thing to do, getting mad at her daughter for the hurt they all felt, she feels exasperated; she can only hope that Bruce will hang on long enough for them to get to the hospital, to see him a last time. "Hope, this isn't a game, now stop!"

There is a tingling sensation on Clark and Diana's skin, as the energy is depleted from the air. Diana moves towards Hope, and takes the girl in her arms.

"But you said! You said that I didn't have to worry about this!" Hope strikes out at her mother, but without any real enthusiasm. She thinks back to all the movies she has seen: Bruce would watch them with her, and they would eat popcorn and sit in front of his big television in a big room, with all the shades drawn closed if it was daytime, and the shades open if it was nighttime. Sometimes she fell asleep, and though he was old and she was getting heavier, he'd always carry her to one of the big beds in his house (just so that she could wake up in the middle of the night, and sneak out to his). A lot of the movies had people dying in them, though more of it was implied than graphic: Bruce said that she didn't need to see the other stuff, and that better movies had less gore anyway.

When Hope had asked Bruce about death, he had looked at her like she was growing up in a very backward country, as if she was asking him why 2 comes after 1; and he had told her that it was like being born (she knew what that was) but instead, you're being taken back. The way he had said it, it didn't sound like so bad of a thing. When she had asked her parents, all she had gotten was: 'You don't have to worry about that. Not for a long, long time.' And that had been the end of it; she found that Bruce always gave better answers than her dad, Clark—and almost always better than her mom's.

"I know sweetie, I know. But I was talking about- What I mean is, Uncle Bruce is human, Hope. He's not like we are." Diana doesn't like the way her daughter grows rigid in her arms.

"I don't care," Her daughter says, psychically digging in her with heels against the idea of losing Bruce Wayne. Though Bruce may have made death sound so completely natural, Hope knew that it meant she'd never see him again, and when people died in movies, everyone was always sad.

"Hope, he's in the hospital. We have to get ready to go see him, for the last time. We'll talk about it later, I promise, but you have to go get ready now." Though Diana knows Clark would find talking to their child like that cold, and though she can feel him staring at her from a few feet away, she also knows her daughter. Even at a younger age, Hope had always reacted better to logic than bribery or threats. The girl does not nod, does not speak, and most of all does not cry—but curtly turns on her heel, and runs up the stairs.

This time she is moving at more than human speed.