Tired. Never really stop being tired, anymore. I don't remember when I decided to start drinking. It's not like the stuff works like it should. Just a burning taste that lasts long enough for me to forget what I was thinking between long, slow sips. The bar is crowded with familiar strangers. Their names change but they all stay the same. So-and-so hates his job, wishing his boss would recognize him for all his hard work. A beautiful woman who forgot years ago, looking for validation in the shallow smiles of hyenas dressed as men. Someone across the room starts a race to the end of his bottle with a friend, and before long they are trying to prove who has the loudest voice. The bartender wordlessly summons the bouncer, and they are ejected in time for their replacements to come through the door. Nothing changes. Nothing important, anyway.
I tap the synth-wood of the table, trying to remember the last time I saw a tree as my glass is filled with whatever I started drinking three hours ago. It smells like what she used to clean the floors of our apartment, and it tastes almost as bitter as the memory. Why are the things we take for granted so hard to see in the moment, but impossible to forget once they've gone? How many good years have I poured into this city only to watch them bitterly swallowed? I can't bear to look at my reflection in the mirror, anymore. Though you wouldn't guess an age by face, years have robbed my temples of any lingering black, leaving only gray. The deep canals running from the corners of my eyes would be full if there were any water left to feed them.
From a few blocks away, I hear someone cry for help. I absently rub my aching knee and wish for some of my own. I take another pointless draw off my glass, and curse the moment everything ceased to matter. It was like any other day in that the sky was not on fire. No extra-dimensional villains were stomping cars flat or tossing loved ones off of skyscrapers. No. Just breakfast, like a million other breakfasts. Lois was pouring my orange juice as she always had. Her right hand gently tipping the carton over my glass while her left held the infinite black of her hair behind an ear. I could see her dimple as she smiled for nothing in particular, and all I could think was how millions of hours spent in the empty void of space would never find a more beautiful black than that hair. Like the black behind your eyelids when you fall asleep next to the person you love. Behind her smile, behind that infinite dark hair my fingers swam through a thousand times, I saw something horrible.
I take another deep swig from my glass, letting the acrid burn sit behind my teeth. I try and let the taste derail my train of thought, but it's too late. I see the cascade of her hair, and behind it, the tumor that would take her from me. Years of catching her at the last minute, or flying through villains to feel her safe in my arms were meaningless in the face of this. My first mistake was not telling her, but the worse mistake was pretending like nothing was wrong. I couldn't save her, but how could I condemn her to the truth? Even now, a century after breakfast and love and her hair like ebony infinity...I curse myself for not being strong enough to say anything. I can lift and throw a building, but I couldn't give the woman I loved news she was going to die sooner than either of us had prepared for.
The empty glass now resting against my lower lip sat long enough for my shiny metal bartender to return to his ready position in front of me. Rather than lower my glass, I glower at him, letting the old redness of anger flicker behind my eyes. "As if you'll raise a hand," I think softly to myself "You stopped pretending you we're bullet proof the day you put roses on her grave." Nothing about this new world is something I feel obliged to save. Lois would curse up and down to hear me like this. Maybe, in some pitiful way, I was acting this way in the hope it would happen. The doors to the bar would be thrown open and my hero would loudly shout "Smallville!" grab me by the ear and lead me out. She'd shower me with expletives at first, then kisses after. I'd shave in the morning and pull the cape out of storage, but fantasies are for people who believe in superheroes. A screeching sound breaks me out of my reverie.
An auto-taxi had tripped its mag lane and careened into the bar, rudely interrupting my sulking. As the poly-steel body folds around my hunched back, I sit motionless. Glass floats around my head like deadly snowflakes as the once semi-quiet bar erupts in a blend of screeches and screams. I can't even manage a mild excitement. The disappointment of my favorite local dive being forcibly remodeled and my bartender being pinned to the wall is about as close to alarmed I can manage. I stand, unfolding myself from the wreckage.
Behind the bar, I find a bottle of whatever I'd been drinking. No one is left to charge me, so I take it out into the buzzing night sky, pausing to open the door of the now totaled vehicle and let the clearly deceased passenger roll out onto the floor. I drink once for him, once for me, and twice for Lois. Metropolis isn't anything like I remember, but then again, that was no product of years. It changed the day she left, and this Man of Steel all but rusted through