Usually Superman felt a pleasant wind-chill when he flew, but now he felt sweaty, overheated, like he was a powerless youth, Kansas summer, parked car with no AC… he'd lost his train of thought. He never lost his train of…

Superman reeled drunkenly to one side. There was definitely something wrong, some pressure or vacuum in his gut steering him wrong. The Kryptonite. He'd been exposed too long, it had irradiated him, his uniform. He had to get up out of Earth's shadow and into the sunlight that would melt the ice numbing his veins.

But when he tried, he paid for it. Nausea overwhelmed him and Superman went into a brief tailspin before righting himself. He was slowing down too, that was why his wind-chill wasn't cooling him.

Wearily, Superman divined North from the lay of the land and slogged through the air toward the Fortress. He doused himself with the rainwater in thick dark clouds, trying to stay awake. He had to keep going. He had to keep doing.

Clark knew he was going to fall. His mind kept wandering to people he'd known, knew, and every time he returned he found that he had dipped a little, like the ground was jumping closer. Snatching at him. A new memory grabbed him, his last night with Lois, and in an instant he was trying to explain, all over again, how they could never be together, but there were no words in English or Kryptonese and it was so much easier to just taste the wine and her lips and let the waiting stars burn above them for another night he brushed the snowy tops of an Arctic forest, leaving clumps of snow on his hair and face.

The chill was fleeting; his speed stripped the moisture away. There was no way he could make it, not when he was only now reaching the checkerboard of ice and brackish-green water. He called upon his indomitable will once more, ignoring the fantasy his muddled brain spun up for breakfast on the Kent farm, eggs and bacon, hash browns and hotcakes, his father reading the morning paper and Chloe riding up on her tassel-handled bike to tell him to "Pull it together, Clark. Superman. Kal-El." He ran out of names for himself before he reached husband.

He ignored the vertigo, ignored the flashbacks, ignored even the burning blood seeping from his reopened wounds. The stark blue of the sky turned dark once he was past the clouds, and his nausea overwhelmed him. He vomited until it felt like his entire body was leaving through his mouth, then he kept going up. The false black gave way to light, the colorful swirls of distant nebulas, the slow-motion avalanche of asteroid fields – his perspective was skewed, bringing the entire solar system into too-bright focus – and the stars. They didn't sparkle, not without their atmospheric veil, and thy weren't all white. They were blue, green, yellow… red.

Summoning up his last reserves, Superman gave himself one last pathetic nudge and then began to fall. And roast. The heat of his re-entry ate at his costume, scorched his skin. The pain was hellish, and when he finally blacked out, it came as a relief.

Kara was thinking up ways to tell Kal that she had learned to levitate when she heard the explosion. Perhaps she would call him in to retrieve something from a high shelf, then fly up to get it herself. Then Kal would embrace her and tell her he was proud of her and make her his partner and it would be oh, so good.

Then the Fortress shook so hard that the crystals clinked together and icy stalactites clattered down from the ceiling. It was so loud that it reminded her of Krypton's destruction, the first inexplicable cracking that had split Argo City in two. Although levitation was still strenuous, she had become an old hand at superspeed. A half-second brought her to a vantage point atop one of the Fortress's crystal spires.

From her skyscraper perch, she could see a plume of ice and snow several miles away, punching upward like one of the sapphire geysers of the southern continent. If there still were a southern continent. If there still was a Krypton.

She shook her head decisively. What would Kal say about her sulkiness? Someone needed help!

She sped off and hit a slight… speed-bump. Not literally, of course, it was just that she had yet to master the delicate art of applying precise amounts of superspeed, super-strength, and hovering to run over the icefields, which was so finicky that anyone with a choice would choose to fly. Kara ended up flopping down on her belly and traveling the last half-mile like a bobsledder, laughing at her own clumsiness until she came to the smoldering crater and saw the blood smeared down the sides.

"Kal?" She poked her head over the side. "Cousin Kal?"

Superman laid there in an almost comically abstract pose. He was half-in, half-out of the melted pool of ice; his body was already lightly frosted with snow, and the limbs were weirdly folded about himself like a pretzel that'd been half-unraveled. The sheer inorganic artlessness of his lying struck her as frightening, and when she saw his toes poking through a hole in his boot Kara giggled hysterically. At least he was still alive; he turned his head slightly toward the sound of her.

Think. Think. He's not moving. Need to get help. Wait… I am the help! Okay, okay, think harder. He might have a spinal injury, so I can't… no, yellow sunlight lets you regenerate. Right? There's light here, why isn't he—needs more of it. A lot more. The sun room, that's what it's there for!

The sun room, as Clark had shown her, was for those occasions when a Kryptonian's power was completely depleted. It worked on the opposite principle as the depowering bombardment of red-sun radiation, saturating the body with sunlight so intense that it would burn your average human to a crisp. And it looked to be just the thing for Clark.

She leapt down, picked Kal up… felt the horrible slipperiness of his blood against her body… and pulled him toward the Fortress. It was slow-going until she figured out that she could use the ice field to just slid him alongside her.

Inside, through the hallways and through the open space of the core and then… damnit, which door was it? And, surprisingly, the answer leapt to her mind like a data file requested by a computer. Kal had told her which door it was, days ago, and she remembered effortlessly. She dragged him down it, thankful that she couldn't hear bones breaking but horrified at the weird sloshing she heard when she stretched her sense of hearing out… was that normal? The blood in his veins, digestive fluid, some other bile… what was it?

Finally she saw it, a circle of megalithic crystals cloistered off from the walls in defiance of the usual liveliness of the Fortress. The standing stones were bright yellow and humming with the power stored in them from the oculus. Even now a waterfall of light was shooting down from the skylight, slashing through the dim space. Kara pulled Kal into the enclosure and was shocked at the discomfort of the intense light.

It was heavy enough to make her skin hurt, an entirely new sensation for a girl who had lived all of her eighteen years beneath the careful filtration of Krypton's atmosphere. She wanted to stop, take stock of it, figure out a response, most of all get clear, but she was single-minded enough to disregard that. Kal's head was flopping around weirdly, like he was trying to lift his head while motion jerked him around, and trying to say something.

She couldn't understand it, a garbled mix of Kryptonese and English and vomitous noises, so she smiled and made a motherly cooing noise as she tore off what was left of his clothing. Kara didn't linger long over his body; not even the shadow of his crotch held enough prurient interest to overcome her revulsion at the bruises that haunted his body. Kara backed off, leaving him lying in a spreading layer of his blood, and ordered the circle to close into a dome. As light was unleashed inside like a galaxy being born, wiping out even his silhouette from the glassy walls, Kara realized she was holding onto his shredded clothes like they were a security blanket.

The realization didn't make her let them go.

"Don't worry, cousin Kal," she said with a hand against the warm glass. "I'll handle this."

Bruce sat in his throne. It was a cast-iron monstrosity that had been decorating one of the upstairs bedrooms until he had brought it down to the cave. It added to the ambience, made him feel like the Bat even now when he sat in it wearing a dark wool suit.

Two pictures swam above him. One was an old news photograph announcing the wedding of Jack Kinison to Grace Lovitz. The groom's smile was small and reedy. The other was a mugshot of Jack Napier. His features were set in a stone-cold scowl. Their faces, grayscale, were staring down at Bruce like twin moons when Alfred brought him dinner.

"Later, Alfred."

"You said that forty-five minutes ago. Am I to assume that since the criminal underworld has proven insufficient to your self-destruction, you'll be giving starvation a crack at you?"

"I can't be distracted right now."

"Of course, sir." Alfred dropped the tray roughly on a table. "Shall I start a saline drip? Perhaps a catheter?"

Bruce gestured impatiently to the screen. "Look! One of those two men is the Joker!"

"You look! This is a rare steak, as per your request, and I spent all day cooking it to perfection. What difference does it make who your clown was, anyway? I doubt he's stealing all that money to spruce up the old homestead."

"No, but it's important for me to know. Talk him down." Bruce rubbed his jaw. "Bring him back to a normal life."

"I think it's a bit too late for that." Alfred moved a plate onto Bruce's lap. "Bon appetit."

Bruce cut and ate a small bite, then ran a rectangular magnifying glass over photocopies of the two Jacks and a picture of the Joker.

"Maybe there's just a little bit of hope left in Gotham."

Alfred knuckled the Joker's glossy. "Not for the likes of him… hang about!" He pulled a pen from his coat pocket and drew on Kinison's picture, overriding his tentative grin with a big, beaming smile. "Oh my word. It's him! Jack Kinison is the Joker!"

Bruce snatched the photo up. "That's impossible. Napier is the Joker. He was already a criminal genius, his accident just gave him a license to indulge…"

"They don't look alike. And it says here that Napier left Gotham…"

"He came back!" Bruce said, standing abruptly. "The chemicals deformed him. That's why he looks different. He's not a tragic victim of circumstance, he's a killer. Born and bred."

"That simple, is it?" Alfred jibed bitterly.

"Simpler. I catch him, I bury him, and we never see him again." Bruce started for the costume vault. "And I'm doing it right now."

"What happened to hope?" Alfred shouted after him. As Bruce angrily tugged on the costume, Alfred stayed with him. "How many times over the years have you assured me, sworn to me, that this was about Gotham, not about your personal problems?"

"I know it won't bring my parents back, we've been over that…"

"I'm not talking about that, Bruce!"

Bruce stopped short at the use of his first name. He was in his armor up to his neck, cape draped over his arm, one eye blacked out with greasepaint.

Alfred kneaded his hands together. "Sometimes people are the way they are because of what the world makes of them."

"Not him."

"I'm asking about you."

Bruce rubbed at his other eye. It was just to smear make-up on it.

"I'm not supposed to be happy, Alfred. You should probably just accept it."

As if he had accepted it, though Bruce knew he hadn't, Alfred left. Batman looked between the two Jacks. One of them had the makings of a monster in him. Was it a good man, a family man, twisted by circumstance into something evil? Or had it just been Jack Napier, all along, using his deformity to take his war against society to the next level?

He felt a primal connection to the man one of them had become. As he'd been reborn by conquering the fear toxin, Joker had been created by succumbing to the chemicals that defaced him.

The Joker was Jack Napier, evil, not insane, knowing the difference between right and wrong but not caring.

And his parents' deaths hadn't been meaningless. They were events of fate, giving him the necessary understanding to save Gotham. Anything else just wouldn't make sense.

Even when the line was encrypted, Bruce waited for the hitch in the other man's breathing as realization came (the caller ID would say he was a cleaning company), waited for the terse "Bruce" that was not the question of Kent but the statement of Superman.

"You're not sounding so super." Bruce smiled at his own little joke. "Everything alright?"

"Just fine. I needed some rest and relaxation, that's all. What's up?"

"Kal," he said, "do you ever think about Krypton?"

The reply was as serious-minded as the question. Bruce pictured how Clark must look, jaw tightened, probably taking his glasses off to rub at his eyes or pinch the bridge of his nose. "You know I do."

"Do you ever think of how many people you've saved on Earth compared to how many died back home?"

"What are you talking about?"

Bruce sighed, then wheezed like he wanted to chuckle. "You shouldn't listen to me. I'm in the process of immunizing myself to a toxin and it's making me a bit… funny. But have you ever thought that hundreds of millions of people died to bring you to Earth, Clark? How many people will you have to save to make it all worthwhile?"

There was a long pause as Clark's throat constricted. "I don't think about that. It's in the past and you can't change the past."

Bruce persisted. "You would if you could though, right? That's why you went back to Krypton, right?" he spat bitterly. "Because you hate it here so much?"

"I don't--"

"That's alright, Kal. I hate it too… If you could meet the person you would've been, what do you think they would be like? Like, if you were just a run-of-the-mill Kryptonian scientist, do ya think you'd have time for a wife? Kids?"

"I'm just doing the best I can with the cards I was dealt." Clark's voice made it clear he was tired of this discussion.

But Bruce pressed on, an avalanche growing ever-larger as it descended. "I've thought about who I would've been… a better person than I am. There are things I've done… do… did that they wouldn't approve of. But things that need to be done. I can't… hit on what's more terrifying: If their deaths were for the greater good… a goddamn beneficial act for the world, Kal… or what if it really was pointless? What then?"

"Do you want me to come over?"

"Why? So you can leave again?" His father had had good taste in brandy. It burned just right when Bruce drank it. "Lois is just one woman. Stop trying to relive the past. Move on!"

"I'm trying. God knows it's not easy. But I am trying, Bruce."

"Tell me something. If you could do it all over again, would you stay with Lois?"

"…I'd tell her the truth. I'd tell her how I felt and… and who I am."

"You'd tell her you were Superman?"

"I'd tell her I was Clark Kent."

"But you're not. You're something else. Clark Kent is your indictment of your… responsibility, those people whose need took you from your father's side."

"You're wrong about me."

"I'm never wrong."

"Why'd you call, Bruce?" Clark's voice was rattled enough that even Bruce sensed it, in that undernourished part of his brain he devoted to sociality.

"I want to know if I ever had a chance, a choice." He'd confused the words. "And I did a preliminary analysis of your crime scene." It was so much easier to talk about that. He heard Clark audibly exhale. Bruce knew the feeling. "It's all about as you'd expect. Half burglary, half excavation… they probably camped here for months, although a precise timeline is hard to ascertain without better equipments."

The thought of Luthor desecrating 'Krypton's tomb' was enough to make Clark's breath rush angrily.

"But what surprised me is that despite making no secret of what they took in most cases – the crystals, some of the tech – they did create a fake piece of equipment to replace something they stole. Probably in the hopes that you wouldn't notice."

Clark's phone beeped. He checked it, seeing that Bruce had uploaded a picture of the phantom zone projector. Something that looked a lot like it, at least.

"Tell me, what does this do?"

Lex Luthor hung up his phone and though his smile might charitably be described as that of a mortician who loved his work, his preening had a touch more self-satisfaction to it. "Divers are combing the river now. We'll have the Kryptonite by morning. Corben won't be eating steak anytime soon, but he was always a write-off. Now, are you ready to come through with your end of the bargain?"

Zod stroked his goatee. "As soon as the son of Jor-El kneels."