Chapter Text
This day is not turning out how Clark expected it to. In his eyes, it had started off pretty well. This morning, he had woken up to a bright, sunny day on the Kent Farm. He had been staying there for the past weekend to help his ma with repairs to the barn. This year’s winter had been unkind to Smallville and had hit his childhood home especially hard. His ma told him she could handle everything herself, but there was no way he was going to let her do it alone. It also gave him a good excuse to have a few days off from work. While Perry was hesitant at first, he begrudgingly gave in after Clark promised to bring him one of his ma’s pies.
After a few hours of working on the barn, his ma had decided they should take a break and have breakfast. She had made him his favorite: 18 farm fresh eggs, sunny side up, fried in butter, a half-gallon of orange juice, whole-wheat bread still warm from the oven, and six grapefruit, sliced like orange slices. It took a little while for her to finishing cooking everything; electricity on the farm had been spotty ever since all the snow finished melting; it was one of the reasons he chose to come home. If he couldn’t talk to his ma on the phone, then he would just talk to her in person.
“I could have helped, you know,” Clark said as his ma had placed all the food on the breakfast table.
“You could have helped, yes; did I want it, no. I haven’t seen you in so long, let me reminisce a little,” she said playful while lightly hitting the back of a wandering hand with her wooden spoon. “You’ve grown so much since the last time I saw you.”
“I’m sorry Ma. I just have been so busy at the Daily Planet; Perry has been hounding us the last few days for a new front page that will bring in more readers. And Superman was needed for too many league missions.”
“Oh, quit your rambling son. You’re acting like I caught your hand in the cookie jar. I’m just teasing you. Now eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
As he happily went to devour his homecooked meal, his ma made her way to the living room to turn on the tv. The tv had taken a few seconds before it finally turned on. However, all that was displayed on the tv was static. His ma started flipping through the channeling trying to see if any of them were working. After a minute into her endeavor, she finally gave up and turned off the tv.
“Still having trouble with the tv, Ma?”
“Oh, for crying out loud! I haven’t been able to watch a single show since yesterday morning and even that was mostly static,” She said throwing the tv remote at the couch. She must have thrown it a bit too hard because it immediately bounced off the cushion and landed on the floor. Before she could lean down and pick it up, Clark was already there with the remote in his hand.
“Woah there Ma, gotta mind your strength! Are you sure you’re not a Kryptonian too?” he stated placing a hand on his chest in mock shock. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“If I had Kryptonian strength, I wouldn’t need to tell Mr. Stevenson to move his damn truck from blocking part of the road to town every other week,” She bantered back as she reached for the remote in his hand or tried to. Every time she went to grab it, Clark moved just out of reach until he was floating above her. “Clark Joseph Kent, you better give me that remote or else you’re going to wish Mr. White didn’t give you the weekend off,” She threatened, though the edge on the threat was lost as she couldn’t keep the playful grin off her face.
He floated to the ground with a grin of his own and handed over the remote. She lightly swatted him on the arm which quickly turned into a hug.
“Love you, Ma.”
“Love you too, sweetie. Now let’s go clean up the kitchen so we c-,” she started to say only to be interrupted by the sound of his league communicator going off. He quickly detached himself from her and used his super-speed to pick up the com. Clark and his ma had shared a look before he picked up the device and answered the com.
“Superman here.”
“Superman, you are need at the watchtower,” Diana’s voice flooded out of the speaker, “Emergency Founder’s meeting.” The communication immediately ended afterwards.
He and his mama shared another look. He could see in her eyes that she was concerned. He walked over to her and took her hands into his. “I’m sorry I have to cut my visit short,” he said full of remorse.
“Don’t be sweetie. Even though you are Superman, you can’t plan for everything”. She raised herself onto the tips of her toes and pressed a kissed to his forehead. “Go on then, I will see you later.” She said pushing him towards the door. He had given her one last hug before he flew out the door towards the watchtower.
As he flew towards the watchtower, he let himself think about how Diana sounded during her call. Although the message was brief, he could hear the nervousness in her voice. She had tried to keep her voice as monotone as possible, but there was no fooling Clark. He had known her for too long for her to be able to hide it. Diana is the princess of the amazons and their greatest warrior. She had very little to fear. So, whatever had the ability to make Wonder Woman nervous was a cause for extreme concern. He felt himself fly faster at the thought.
As he broke through Earth’s Atmosphere, his clothes burned away to reveal his superman costume underneath. He had made it a habit to wear his suit underneath his clothes. Even though it was a hassle to tuck the cape away and he had to wear two layers of clothing on top of it, it made it easy to quickly change into his alter ego when the time came.
The watchtower soon came into view next to the moon. There seemed to very few ships leaving and entering the watchtower’s hanger which was a good sign. The league, in partnership with STAR LABS, have been working on installing teleportation tubes called Zeta tubes for faster transportation to the tower. Because the project had just recently been started, the league was focusing on building tubes in the cities of heroes that couldn’t fly through space first; Meaning Metropolis was last on the long list of cites. If there was now less ships than there were last month, construction was going well.
He quickly made his way to and through the airlock towards the meeting room, passing by other heroes. Since the league’s formation by the original eight, they had been working to expand the group to include more heroes. In the few years the league has been active, they had quadrupled their size.
Even though his speed rivals Barry’s, he was the last one to arrive. The rest of founding members were already seated. The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter on the left side of the table while Aquaman and Hawkgirl sat on the right. Wonder Woman and himself sat at the head of the table. Even though the heroes present were all equals, him and Diana were elected the leaders of the league. Many of the other heroes had taken to calling them the Trinity… well, duo now. Green Arrow and Black Canary were also present. The two heroes were not founding members, but they have been a part of the league almost as long as the rest of the founders. They were founders in all but name. In addition, Oliver Queen was one of the league’s hidden sponsors and donated the most money, second only to Bruce Wayne, CEO of Wayne Enterprises and Gotham’s Prince.
The second Clark stepped into the room he could feel the tension thick in the air. All of the members were tense, as if bracing for an attack. Clark took a brief moment to look around the room. His eyes landed on Barry first. Barry was nervously thumping his left leg while resting his head on top of his clasped hands. With the hood of his costume down, Clark could see that his eyes seeing through the table in front of him. Next to him, Hal appeared to be in a state of disarray too. His mask was also off, displaying uncertainty and, was that… concern, in usually confident eyes. His lips were pressed into a thin line. At the front of the room, Diana was pacing a hole into the floor. Her face scrunched up in concentration with one of her hands under her chin. The rest of the heroes were in a similar state.
“Diana, what’s going on?” The other heroes traded sorrowful looks with one another before turning each of their gazes on Clark.
“I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news,” Diana whispered. Though she spoke only in a whisper, her words seem to rattle in Clark’s ears. She turned towards the Wayne tech monitor on the wall at the front of the room. She slowly picked up the remote and turned the monitor on to a Central City News station.
“- far 36 people have been confirmed dead following the collapse of the stadium field. A man calling himself Bane has taken responsibility for the attack and has taken Gotham City hostage. A few minutes ago, we had gotten confirmation from the White House that Gotham City will be under lockdown until further notice. We will update you all on the latest information as the situation develops. In-” Diana muted the tv and turned her gaze back to Clark. The room fell into a tense silence for too long before Clark finally broke the silence.
“We have to help them,” Clark stated with conviction.
“I know Clark. I want to help as well but we CAN’T. No-,” Diana said.
“Diana, we can’t just sit back when- “
“NO CLARK!” she shouted back at him louder. He took a step back to look at her and saw just how much this was hurting her too.
“But… Clark...,”Diana started, “No one goes in, no one comes out; that includes us. Any attempts to leave or enter the city will result in the detonation of a bomb powerful enough to wipe out the entire city. They’re already planning on blowing up all the bridges connecting Gotham to the outside world. The government doesn’t want Gotham’s problem spilling out.
“Plus, Clark,” Barry interrupted timidly, “Batman said Metas aren’t allowed in Gotham.” The room fell back into silence at the mention of Gotham’s Dark Knight.
Batman.
A name of that never seemed to truly leave Clark’s mind for long, and he knew the others faced the same problem. It had been 5 months since Batman resigned from the Justice League, yet the memory is still fresh in his mind.
Vandal Savage had gotten a hold of plans that could systematically take down every league member, and he had nearly succeeded. Luckily, Batman had been able to help each of the members escape from their death traps and together, they defeated Savage’s Legion of Doom. In the aftermath, they learned the plans had been created by Batman himself. This had sparked outrage in every member that was justified. The man knew every single one of their identities, yet they barely knew anything about him. They knew he didn’t trust them, but for him to have created secret plans to take down each of them, it had hurt too much. After he had time to think about Batman’s reasoning, Clark understood why he did it. Sometimes power can corrupt people, and each of them wielded a power beyond human capabilities. In addition, they were only meant to neutralize, not kill. That still didn’t lessen the pain. They had all revealed their identities to each other after a particular hard mission… well, everyone except for Batman. Though it hurt that he refused that day, they were all still hoping that he would eventually trust them and reveal his identity to them. That day never came. Batman had resigned from the league that day, and that was the last Clark has seen him.
So many unanswered questions: Why didn’t you trust us? Did we really mean that little to you? Did all those times we spent together not prove to you that we were genuine. ...... Do you hate us? But this was not the time to think about what ifs and broken friendships, he should really focus on the problem at hand. At least he was going to, if he didn't hear the telltale sound of a zeta tube going off. Now this wouldn’t usually catch his attention but after someone is teleported by the tube, their code name and league designation code are read allowed by the computer. There was no announcement following this activation.
“Clark, is something wrong?” Shayera questioned. At her question, the room’s attention was back on him. She must have seen him staring at the wall.
“The zeta tube just went off, “He started.
“Yeah, those usually do that Supes,” Hal interrupted.
“There was no code name and designation read out.”
At his statement, the rest of heroes jumped to attention and started to swiftly make their way to the teleportation dock.
“Computer, standby to initiate watchtower lockdown level theta,” Diana called out.”
Using their super-speed, Clark, Diana, and Barry reached their destination first with J’onn only being a few seconds behind by phasing through the walls. When they reached the dock, there was no one in sighting. Clark activated his x-ray vision to see if said person was hiding behind a wall while listening closely with his super hearing. While he couldn’t see anything, he could make out the faintest hint of a heartbeat; it wasn’t loud enough for him to track it.
“Clark?” Diana inquired.
“There is someone here, but I can’t track them.”
“J’onn, can you try pinpointing the presence?”
Clark watched as J’onn closed his eyes and used his power. After a minute, he reopened his eyes and turned towards the other heroes. By now, the rest of members present for the meeting had arrived.
“There is a person standing right there,” He stated while turning to point to a dark corner of the teleportation dock.
This day is not turning out how Clark expected it to. In his eyes, it had started off pretty great. This morning, he had woken up to a bright, sunny day on the Kent Farm. He had his favorite breakfast prepared by his dear, old ma. Getting some sort of call to the watchtower was an unwelcome intrusion, but not unexpected. Learning all of Gotham has been taken hostage by a masked man named Bane was a step up but not by much. But this was… not something Clark ever though he would encounter. But before he could speak, Barry beat him to the punch and spoke the seething question that was on everyone’s mind.
“Why is there a child on the Watchtower?!”