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It had been almost three months since the Beatles had arrived on Earth, and the sun has finally, after more than twenty years, returned to full luminosity. It’s been more than two decades since the yellow sun of Earth started dying, since Clark had lost his powers, slowly but surely, as the sun got dimmer and the world got colder. He spent those years feeling small and helpless and powerless to help people who needed that help more than ever. He’d tried, to the best of his ability, to continue whatever good works he could manage; he tried to be a good reporter, a good person. Clark had worked with the Justice League as the world threatened to descend into chaos, even if he didn’t have much in the way of physical assistance to offer. He’d done his best- he could at least say that.
Guilt had been a near-constant companion, over those twenty years. Now, with his powers restored and the Earth slowly but surely regaining whatever version of normal could exist this soon after a narrowly-averted apocalypse, he felt more guilty than ever. Batman had told him, with a kind of hushed respect in his voice that Clark hadn’t heard from him before, that the data received from the Beatles suggested that only one member of the Hail Mary crew had survived the voyage to Tau Ceti. Dr Ryland Grace, astrobiologist and middle school teacher, had completed the mission alone. He’d saved the world, and he’d saved Clark. Saved Superman. That wasn’t a debt he could ever have hoped to repay, even if Dr Grace wasn’t dead on a spaceship twelve lightyears from Earth.
When he couldn’t stand the guilt anymore, couldn’t take the image of Dr Grace’s corpse on a dark ship flashing behind his eyelids every time he tried to sleep, he made the decision. He’d never be able to thank Ryland Grace, for giving everything he lost back to him. Earth would never be able to express their gratitude for him giving his life to save them all. But maybe he could honour him, give his soul, his spirit, whatever you want to believe is left behind after someone is gone, some peace. Clark could, at the very least, bring his body, the bodies of the crew who went on a mission with no expectation of return, home.
He tells Batman, expecting him to tell him he’s being ridiculous, but Bruce surprises him. He smiles, something like relief behind his eyes, and Clark wonders if he’s been dwelling on Ryland Grace too. Bruce isn’t usually the type to be sentimental, but there’s something about the Hail Mary crew that seems to soften his edges; Clark thinks maybe, despite everything, Bruce can’t help but root for the underdog.
He claps Clark on the shoulder, and Clark can’t help but relish the fact that for the first time in years, he doesn’t budge an inch at the force of it.
“Will you take anyone with you?” Bruce asks.
Clark shakes his head. “I’d ask Kara, but she hasn’t been on planet for years, since the sun started dying for real, and I haven’t talked to her in months. It’ll be quicker if I go alone.”
Bruce nods, mouth quirking up again in the closest thing to a smile Batman ever gets. “Bring them home,” he says, words heavy with solemnity.
So that’s how Clark ends up, a couple of weeks later, in the Tau Ceti system. He’d found the bodies of Yao and Ilyukhina first, floating out in space; Dr Grace must have had to leave them behind, Clark thinks, heart twinging with sympathy. The idea of the man waking up, alone, with the bodies of his dead comrades next to him, makes Clark want to cry; he can’t blame the man for not wanting to keep their corpses in the ship with him. He makes a mental note of their location; once he’s found the Hail Mary and Dr Grace’s body, he’ll come back for them.
After a while though, it becomes clear there’s a problem. He gets to the approximate place the Mary would have ran out of fuel, expecting to find the ship sooner rather than later. When he realises it’s nowhere to be seen, he initially thinks Dr Grace must have gotten closer to one of the planets; the Tauomeba that had killed their Petrova line had come from one of them, he reasoned. Maybe Grace, for some unknown reason, had decided to move the ship, before he died?
He checks everywhere. He leaves no corner of the system unexplored, he looks everywhere he can think of. He wonders if his eyes are failing him, but no; thanks to Dr Grace, he has superhuman vision again. It’s not his eyes. It’s not an oversight.
Clark looks around himself, at the star system that should have been the final resting place of three astronauts, and only two of them are accounted for. The Hail Mary, and Dr Ryland Grace with it, are completely absent.
Clark floats for a moment, looking around himself in honest, total bafflement, as if Ryland Grace is going to appear from thin air if he wills it hard enough. He furrows his brow.
“Huh.”
He thinks maybe he’s going to need some help after all.
**
Bruce had been characteristically irate when Clark had come back with the bodies of two dead astronauts, and explained that he was missing the third.
“What do you mean,” he grit out, one hand rubbing at his temple as if trying to stave off a tension headache, “he’s not there?”
Clark is at a loss for how else he’s meant to explain it. “He’s gone,” he insisted. “I checked everywhere, okay, the whole ship is missing. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“The ship is dead, Clark. It has no fuel. It can’t be anywhere else.”
Clark threw up his hands. “Well, maybe you should go and check then,” he tells Bruce, as cross and snappish as he ever gets. “If you think I’ve just missed him, like he’s a TV remote and I’ve lost him in one of the couch cushions, then by all means, go and check yourself-”
“Alright,” Bruce says, sighing in a marginally less insulting way. “Alright, fine. He’s not there. So where has he gone?” Clark didn’t think Bruce was actually asking him, which was good, since he had no clue where the heck Ryland Grace could have possibly gone. “We need more data.”
“Data?” Clark doesn’t know what kind of data is going to change the fact that the body of the man who saved the planet isn’t in the only place it could possibly be.
“Data,” Bruce confirms. “Come with me- we’re going to see Eva Stratt.”
**
Clark gets the impression that Eva Stratt isn’t someone who experiences shock or surprise very often. From what he knows of her, he imagines there’s very little that’s capable of catching her off guard.
That said, when they, Batman and Superman, walk into her office and tell her that the Hail Mary, and the body of Ryland Grace with it, was completely absent from the Tau Ceti system, she’d looked at them in abject disbelief.
“What?” she asked, almost like it had been ripped from her. “What do you mean, he’s not there?”
Clark shrugs, a little annoyed he’s having to explain this again. What else could “he’s not there” mean other than exactly what it sounds like? What other meaning could the words “hey, you know that astronaut who saved all our lives and died alone in space? He’s disappeared into the ether, and we’ve got no idea why” possibly have?
“I looked all over,” he tells her, “And he’s gone.”
“Is he,” she struggles, “is he alive?”
Hm. That’s interesting. The investigative reporter that lives inside Clark’s brain latches on to that sentence, the way she said it, immediately. They’d been friends, Stratt and Dr Grace; at least, that was the general consensus. Or, more accurately, Grace had been as close to a friend as a world dictator could possibly have. Even if he hadn’t been, Ryland Grace was a hero; he had done his job, he’d saved their lives.
So why, Clark wondered, eyes narrowing as he looked at Eva Stratt’s pale, set, purposefully blank face, did she sound more nervous than relieved at the idea he might not be dead?
“Probably not,” Batman said, and Clark side-eyed him, because that’s not the working theory he’d had when they were on the way over here. Then he sees the expression on his face, still, waiting, and realises he’s fishing, looking for a reaction.
He gets one. Eva Stratt relaxes, almost imperceptibly, but she’s not in front of people lacking in perception. She’s in front of rabid investigative journalist Clark Kent, and Bruce Wayne, a man so committed to being a detective he dresses up as a bat nightly about it. This isn’t the group of people she should be acting in front of.
“We want to understand what happened,” Bruce continues, like he hadn’t noticed that this woman was waving a metaphorical flag with “LIAR” written on it in big red letters. “Did Dr Grace send anything back with the data and the Tauomeba? Anything that could give us an idea of his last location?”
Stratt frowns, the tension from whatever secret she’s keeping falling away for a moment. She taps away at her laptop, thinking. “Nothing abnormal,” she mutters, eyes scanning the screen. Then, she goes still. “Hm.”
“Hm?” Clark asks, heart rate picking up.
“It’s strange,” she murmurs. “The origin point of the Beatles. He’s… he wasn’t at Tau Ceti when he sent them. He was moving away.”
“Moving away from what?” Batman asks, eyes boring into her, but Clark can see the screen, and he already knows. Something clicks.
“Not away,” he tells Bruce, who’s eyes snap up. “To. He wasn’t getting further away from Tau Ceti, he was getting closer to Earth.” He looks at Eva Stratt, who is deathly pale. “He was coming home.”
**
Oddly enough, knowing that Dr Grace had been making his way back to Earth had raised more questions than it answered. Had he found more astrophage to use as fuel? Why had he sent the Beatles, if he was planning on coming home anyway? And, crucially, if he’d been coming back to Earth, why wasn’t he here?
Clark, after several hours of arguing, had finally convinced Bruce it was time to loop in some of the others. Mentioning Hal Jordan had an interesting effect on Bruce at the best of times, but given that most of his arguments had been to the tune of “but I don’t like him,” Clark had mostly ignored him. Eventually, Bruce had been forced to admit, however grudgingly, that Hal would probably be helpful in this situation, what with his extensive experience with deep space travel.
They’d explained the problem to him, and once Hal had stopped being smug over the fact that Batman was asking him for help, he’d been confused too.
“I don’t even think he could have gotten as far as he did on the Astrophage reserves he had left,” he says eventually. “So, he had to have gotten it from somewhere.”
“Then why isn’t he back?” Clark asks, frustrated. “If he had enough Astrophage to make it out of Tau Ceti, he should have been here by now.”
Hal shrugs. “I’ve got no idea. Could you have missed him, on the way back?”
Clark decides he’s not going to take offence; the almost tangible rage that consumes Bruce whenever he’s in Hal’s presence means he’s the mediator by default. If he says anything even slightly argumentative to Hal, Bruce is going to take that as permission to put him through a wall, and they don’t have time for that. Clark is looking for the maybe-not-dead scientist who’s wellbeing he’s become deeply emotionally invested in; Bruce will have to wait for another opportunity to act on his deep-seated, entirely irrational hatred of their teammate.
“I don’t think so,” he says, in lieu of telling Hal to go fuck himself. “I took the same route the Hail Mary did on the way to Tau Ceti; if he was coming back, wouldn’t he go the same way he got there?”
Hal hums, contemplative. “We should go and check it out,” he says decisively.
Bruce tenses; Clark sighs. In space with two people who antagonise each other for funsies; that didn’t sound like a disaster waiting to happen or anything.
**
Things didn’t make much more sense once they got to Tau Ceti. It hadn’t taken them long; their ship was certainly more equipped for long haul intergalactic travel than the Hail Mary had been. That had been one of the things Clark had felt guilty about; by the time the Justice League had access to this kind of technology, Dr Grace and the rest of the crew had been long dead. At least, that had been the assumption. Obviously, they were discovering fairly decisively that hadn’t been the case.
Hal, like Clark, had looked around like Ryland Grace was going to appear out of thin air, and, Bruce, not to be outdone by a Green Lantern, had done the same with his usually effective and likely eye-wateringly expensive scanning equipment. They both came up with absolutely nothing.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Hal said once he got back in the ship, flopping into one of the chairs at the control centre.
Bruce looked like he didn’t want to agree with Hal on the colour of the sky, let alone anything else, but he didn’t have much of a choice. “He’s definitely not here. We need to think about this from another angle.” He looks at Clark. “Are there any life-sustaining planets near this system?”
That hit Clark like a punch to the gut. “You think someone took him?”
Bruce considers that. “Not necessarily. Maybe ours wasn’t the only star dying. Maybe Dr Grace made a friend.”
The idea that Dr Grace had gone on a suicide mission and somehow encountered an intelligent alien species they had no idea existed, and liked them so much he went back with them to whatever planet they were from made Clark a little uneasy (and also, kind of unreasonably jealous, in a weird parasocial way, considering he’s never even met Dr Grace. He’s an alien, but he’s not Grace’s friend; it feels a little unfair. He’ll need to unpack this much, much later). He’d go as far as to say it’s kind of far-fetched, except Batman doesn’t do far-fetched.
Hal isn’t disagreeing with Bruce either, which is either a sign of another impending apocalypse, or it means he’s right. Either way, they don’t have any other ideas; so, they start searching, for any indication that Ryland Grace wasn’t alone at Tau Ceti.
It takes them a while. But eventually, after hours of moving, stopping, scanning, rinse and repeat, Bruce’s machine chirps something that sounds more positive than the sad little beeps it’s been making since they started. Clark suspects the bird-like noises the scanner is emitting right now are Robin’s doing; the little, barely there smile on Bruce’s face confirms it.
They all look at the screen. Blip-A, it flashes at them.
“What the hell is a Blip-A?” Hal asks dubiously.
**
Once they get closer, it transpires that Blip-A is the most batshit insane spaceship Clark has ever seen, and he’s an actual, honest-to-god extraterrestrial. It’s clearly empty, floating dark and quiet in space. It’s also huge, and made out of a metal he’s never seen before. Bruce practically shoves him out the airlock, ordering to get him a sample of the hull, presumably to add it to his internal database of every piece of information he’s ever been able to get his hands on. Clark dutifully cuts off a piece of the hull and brings it back to Bruce. The sample doesn’t clear anything up.
“Xenon?” Hal asks incredulously. “Xenon’s a gas.”
Bruce says nothing, but the look of derision he shoots Hal says enough, honestly. He’s examining the sample carefully, like he doesn’t know what to make of it himself. Clark knows the feeling. He watches Bruce toggle with his scanner for a moment, fixing it on the ship itself. After a moment, Bruce frowns.
“The engines are full of dead Astrophage,” he tells Clark, still ignoring Hal to the best of his ability.
“Dead Astrophage?” Clark feels like he’s in some kind of weird sci-fi Cluedo game. “What killed it?”
“The Tauomeba,” Hal says suddenly. “The astrophage-killer Dr Grace sent back; his friend must have had some too. Maybe it escaped, somehow, killed all the astrophage Blip-A was using as fuel.”
Bruce looks considering, which, when it comes to his usual dealings with Hal, is practically a love confession. Hal looks elated.
“So,” Bruce starts slowly, his Batmantm voice in full effect, “Dr Grace and whoever that ship belongs to were at Tau Ceti at the same time. They find out Tauomeba kills Astrophage, then at some point they split up to go back to their respective planets.”
“Then, for some reason, Dr Grace stops, and goes back for his friend. Why? How did he know the Tauomeba had killed his friend’s fuel?” Clark finally feels like they’re getting somewhere.
“It must have killed Dr Grace’s fuel too- or at least started to. That’s why he went back; to save his friend!” Hal says excitedly, delighted to be part of solving the mystery. They both look at Bruce, eager for him to confirm, but he just looks grim and grave.
“You think we’re wrong?” Clark asks, heart sinking. But Bruce shakes his head.
“I think you’re right. Both of you,” he adds, and Hal looks taken aback at the blatant inclusion in Batman’s version of positive feedback. “But… I think we might have to revise our conclusion that Dr Grace is still alive.”
Clark feels himself go cold. “What? Why?”
Bruce rubs the bridge of his nose. “When I scanned the ship… the atmospheric pressure was more than a normal man could withstand, and the atmosphere itself was mostly ammonia. What little organic matter I could detect had incredible amounts of heavy metals in it.”
“So?” Hal asks, although Clark can see they’re both coming to the same heartbreaking conclusion.
“So,” Bruce sighs, heavy and sad, “Dr Grace may have had enough food to get him back to his friend’s planet. But a planet with that atmosphere, with that level of heavy metals… It’s incredibly unlikely he would be able to survive there.”
He looks at them, and Clark sees his own misery reflected back at him in Bruce’s eyes. Bruce sighs again, runs a hand through his hair.
“Dr Grace might have saved his friend’s life,” he tells them, “but he probably starved to death not long after.”
Clark feels like he’s been sucker punched. It looks like they’ve been looking for a body after all.
**
They continue the search anyway. It would have felt callous, abandoning Dr Grace now, after everything; an ignoble end for the man who had sacrificed his life twice over, once for his own planet, and once for an alien he met far away from home. If they can find him, his body, maybe they can at least do right by him; honour those sacrifices.
Bruce manages to pick up a trail; trace remnants of Astrophage, scattered through space. They follow it, and follow it, and follow it, until finally, they find what they’ve been looking for. 40 Eridani, not a system Clark had every been to before, nor one he’d ever heard had life within it; for them, Dr Grace must have been their first contact. He wondered, on their approach, what they must have thought; that this alien being, so far from home, had saved their entire planet at the cost of his own life. He stops wondering quickly; thinking about Dr Grace’s end is only going to make him weepy, and for now, he has a job to do.
As they approach one of the planets ordering 40 Eridani, their comms array starts beeping, and they all look at each other. It looks like they’re within radio range. Bruce reaches over, flicks the comm on.
“This is Citrine, member of science Eridian cluster. From Earth, question?”
Clark furrows his brow. “What are the chances that an intelligent race on another planet just so happens to speak English?” He asks, confused.
“Low,” Bruce tells him. “Dr Grace must have taught them; or his friend from Tau Ceti must have. Maybe they thought someone would come for his body, eventually.”
He reaches over, and speaks into the comm. “This is Batman, of Earth; we came looking for Dr Ryland Grace. Permission to land?”
The response is immediate, and excited. The Eridians are clearly ecstatic to have more alien visitors, and all but roll out the red carpet for them. Hal is predictably thrilled at the concept of a space elevator, and he’s still raving about it the whole way down to the planet, with the fervour only a pilot would have. Bruce is visibly restraining himself from throttling him the whole time.
The welcome wagon is waiting for them at the bottom, and it becomes immediately apparent that the Eridians were not “speaking” English at all. Their native language is made up of musical notes that sound incomprehensible to Clark’s ear, but that evidently wasn’t for Ryland Grace. They’re using some kind of translation software on a heavily modified Earth laptop, with a computerised voice talking for them; Dr Grace seemed to have spent the trip back to 40 Eridani making an English to Eridian dictionary.
Clark lets Bruce handle the political intricacies of the situation; he’s too busy despairing over the concept of Ryland Grace, slaving over a translator for the whole purpose of communicating with the people whose planet he was going to die saving. He doesn’t think he could open his mouth without bursting in to tears, which he thinks would maybe be a little confusing for their hosts.
Speaking of confused, Bruce and Hal are looking more baffled by the minute. All three of them are ushered in to some kind of dome-like structure, that reveals itself to be a transfer vehicle when it starts jolting forward, nearly sending Hal to the ground. Bruce, who Clark would usually expect to be gloating quietly over the fact he hadn’t moved an inch, doesn’t even chuckle. He’s looking around, at the near pitch-black landscape they’re moving through, with tense stillness that’s setting Clark’s teeth on edge.
“Something’s off,” Bruce says quietly. “We’re missing something.”
Clark goes still. “You think they’re hostile?”
“No, it’s not that,” Bruce waves him off. “I think they’re genuinely happy we’re here. It’s something else. Something’s strange about the whole thing.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Bruce looks frustrated. “It’s almost like-”
“What the fuck is that?” Hal says, pointing.
Clark and Bruce follow his finger, and both of them stare in naked shock. In front of them is a dome, far bigger than the one they’re inside of, like a giant terrarium. Clark can see a beach on one side, waves crashing against the shore, as they’re wheeled into some kind of oversized airlock. As it opens on the other side, one of the Eridians, in some kind of close-fitting mech suit, tells them with a cheerful computerised voice that they can exit safely.
“Atmosphere in biodome safe for humans,” they’re told happily, and exit the way they came in, leaving Clark with a growing, euphoric feeling he knows exactly what they’ve missed.
He’s right. He can see a rough-strewn path, laid in to the rocky landscape, leading up to a house nestled right up against the cliff face. As he’s watching, the door opens, and a near-frantic, distinctly human voice floats out, saying “what do you mean there’s other humans here? Are you kidding me? Is it April fools?”
“Erid not have April. Grace stupid again,” says another voice, this one less human, computerised like the others.
A man comes out of the house, followed closely by an Eridian wearing one of the mech suits they’d seen earlier. The man is blonde, wearing a slightly bizarre mix of Earth clothing and alien fabric, and he’s stumbling down the path towards them, squinting despite the fact that he has glasses dangling from his chin, like it hadn’t even occurred to him to use them. Clark can’t quite believe what he’s seeing, and he can feel Bruce and Hal tensed up behind him, like they’re in just as much disbelief as he is. But they all know exactly who this man is.
He comes to an abrupt stop in front of them, panting from exertion.
“Holy macaroni,” Ryland Grace says, eyes wide in his shocked, healthy, alive face. “Superman?”
**
“Gosh darn it, sorry about the mess,” Dr Grace says ruefully, trying to kick a shirt under the bed in a subtle way as he leads them into the house. Given that he was in front of Batman, who had never not noticed something ever in his entire life, and also that it was clear to everyone in the room that Ryland Grace was the least subtle person to ever exist, this didn’t work out the way he hoped. They all tactfully ignored his flailing, even Hal; they were too curious about him, and how in the hell he ended up here, to risk alienating Dr Grace by embarrassing him.
“So, is that like, just the way you talk?” Hal asked, because he might be being tactful about the mess, but the no-cursing thing was clearly a step too far.
There was a low rumble from the other reason they were all being very polite about everything. Rocky certainly wasn’t as happy as Grace was that they were there. Clark would go as far as to call him combative, honestly; he wasn’t sure why, exactly, Rocky was being so protective over Grace, but he was acting like he was one wrong word away from kicking them all bodily out the door. He looked sideways at Bruce, for confirmation this was weird, but Bruce is just looking speculatively between Grace and Rocky with his World’s-Greatest-Detective look, like he’s already figured out what the problem is. He doesn’t look happy about his conclusions; that’s just great, Clark thinks huffily, another thing to worry about.
“Rocky,” Dr Grace scolds, and Rocky pays him absolutely no mind, still glowering at them in a shockingly effective way, considering he doesn’t have a face. “Sorry about that. He’s not usually like this.”
Clark tries to be the peacemaker. “We’re not here to impose,” he tells Rocky, voice as conciliatory as he can make it; Rocky stays stony as ever, no pun intended.
“He’s not angry that we’re here,” Bruce says, so flat Clark whips his head around to stare at him. That’s his angry voice. That’s his someone hurt Robin voice. Bruce turns to Grace. “He’s angry we’re here for you. Why is that?”
There is a long, loaded moment of silence. Grace looks a little shellshocked, in the way most people do when their deepest, darkest secrets have been plucked out from the annals of their head by Batman without their knowledge or permission. Because that’s what’s happened, Clark is realising slowly. Something about this situation has tipped Bruce off, has sent the last piece of the puzzle toppling into place, and Bruce knows something he doesn’t. And whatever Bruce knows, he’s furious about it.
It soon becomes horrifyingly apparent why Bruce looks like he’s seriously considering breaking his no-murder-ever rule. Because Ryland Grace, who suddenly can’t look at any of them, is apparently the unluckiest, most cosmically doomed-by-the-narrative man in the history of the universe. And keep in mind, Clark is friends with Bruce Wayne.
Clark listens, in growing horror, as he starts haltingly telling them his story. Being tapped for the Petrova task force by Eva Stratt, which Clark already knew; then, the multiple kidnappings at the hands of the same woman, which he didn’t know, and wishes he was still blissfully unaware of. Being given three hours to decide if he’s going to die in space; then, finding out the decision has already been made by someone who isn’t him, and that he’s going to be sent to space regardless. Oh, and let’s not leave out the amnesia. Clark is struggling to wrap his head around the concept of giving an actual person in real life amnesia, and then expecting the guy who doesn’t have any memories anymore to wake up in space and save the world. Like, what part of that plan isn’t insane?
Bafflingly, Grace seems more embarrassed, maybe ashamed, than angry or indignant at being turned into a walking Dateline episode. The word “coward” is being thrown around a little too liberally for Clark’s liking, enough that he’s getting a pretty good idea of the contents of the conversation Stratt had with Grace that he’s glossing over. Every time he uses the word, Rocky gets visibly agitated; Clark’s right there with him. No wonder he’d been acting like a German Shepard since they got there, if this story is his impression of humans so far. With hindsight, he’s been remarkably restrained.
He actually thinks Bruce is going to crack a tooth with how hard he clenches his jaw when Dr Grace starts defending Eva Stratt. Objectively, Clark understands the position she was in. The sun was dying, the world was ending, and she had tough choices to make, even if sending a school teacher to space seemed like an odd decision, if you asked him. So yeah, objectively, he can see why Dr Grace is telling them that she made the right choice. Unfortunately, Clark isn’t feeling real objective right now, and Bruce, contrary to popular belief, has never been objective about anything in his entire life. Men who are objective don’t build their entire ethical and moral foundations around their parents being brutally murdered, and they don’t decide the correct course of action in that situation is to dress as a bat and fight crime, okay?
Bruce also, because of this, has a hell of a complex about anything and everything related to murder, and Clark is guessing, from the look in his eye, that what Eva Stratt did is close enough to qualify. He suspects that when they get back to Earth, life is going to get very, very difficult for her. Luckily for her, because of the aforementioned murder-complex and Batman’s subsequent rules about not taking lives, Bruce won’t be ending hers. Unluckily for Stratt, Hal has no such rules.
“Oh, I’m going to fucking kill her,” Hal says darkly, and Rocky perks up, suddenly looking a hell of a lot happier with the situation.
“Rocky kill!” He chirps cheerfully at Hal, who startles at being addressed directly. “Rocky have first dibs, been planning long time. Ring man help.”
Hal looks like he’s considering being offended at the new nickname, before deciding to take it as the peace offering it clearly is. “Sure thing, buddy, happy to help.”
Rocky extends his arm. “Fist my bump,” he says, like that’s at all a normal thing to say.
“Cheese and crackers,” Dr Grace mumbles, before clarifying, “it’s fist bump, Rocky, fist bump, we’ve been over this. And no one’s killing anyone, we’ve been over that too.”
Hal carefully fist bumps Rocky, looking thrilled, while Bruce looks at Dr Grace approvingly. Jesus Christ, Clark can practically see him filling out adoption papers in his head, never mind that Grace is probably older than him, at least chronologically. Smart, a firm anti-murder stance, chronic abandonment issues; Dr Grace will be lucky if he makes it out of this interaction without being Bruce Wayne’s shiny new ward. He makes a mental note to send a message to Robin before they get back to let him know he has a new brother.
“Listen, it’s fine,” Dr Grace continues, still using a tone of voice Clark associated with his elementary school librarian. “It all worked out, we saved the sun, I didn’t die. I’m not, like, thrilled about the execution of the thing, and the memory loss is annoying, but I’m really, honestly at peace with it. If she hadn’t sent me to space, I wouldn’t have met Rocky. So, it was worth it, for that.” Dr Grace smiles at them, a little embarrassed, as if he’s not breaking all their hearts. Hal looks like he’s considering that murder anyway, and Bruce looks like he’s considering not stopping him. “Really, I’m good here. I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
Nothing, he says, like finding the missing and presumed, dead, alive, then dead again second-in-command of the Petrova Task Force, perfectly fine and having a blast on an alien planet is nothing. Like the sight of him, smiling at his extraterrestrial bestie who has built him a house and a home and a life far away from the planet he was sent to die for isn’t settling the guilt in Clark’s chest for the first time in years.
“So,” Clark clarifies, just in case, because the number of misunderstandings on this trip have been astronomical, “you’re happy here. Safe? You don’t want to come back to Earth?”
Rocky whips his body around in Clark’s direction, making it perfectly clear what he thinks of that plan. The situation doesn’t devolve into violence only because Grace blurts out “God no,” without even thinking about it, and Rocky sags in relief. Hal starts laughing first, and the rest of them follow, even Bruce, who is looking a little bereft that he isn’t going to be bringing home a new waif to adopt and teach to fight crime.
“Is there anything you need here?” Bruce asked, ever practical. “Anything from home? Food, personal items; now we know you’re here, we’d be happy to help.”
“That would be amazing,” Grace tells them, smiling. “Someone else was here, and she said she’d stop by after her next trip to Earth, but we haven’t heard from her in a while. I think I’ve still got a list I was going to give her.” He goes to rummage in a drawer at his desk, oblivious to the stunned silence in response to his revelation.
Clark feels like he’s been hit over the head. “Someone else was here?” He asks, baffled. “From Earth?”
“No, not from Earth; she spoke English, and she said she had family on Earth, but she was from another planet.”
Clark is suddenly very aware that this person sounds a hell of a lot like someone he knows. Something like outrage is growing inside him, and he can see Bruce pressing his lips together like he’s trying not to laugh.
“What planet was she from?” Clark asks, faux-casual in a way that clearly isn’t particularly believable, if the slight alarm on Grace’s face is any indication.
“Um. She said she was from Krypton? Her name was Kara,” Grace looks at him with wide eyes when Clark visibly twitches from sheer supressed rage. “Do you, like, know her or something?”
He reaches over to his desk, takes down a picture pinned to the wall. Grace hands it tentatively to Clark, who looks at it while a volcanic ocean of fury rages in his chest. Because there, captured in a Polaroid picture clearly taken on the camera Clark himself bought her three Christmases ago, is his cousin Kara, laughing without a care in the world as she holds up two fingers to make bunny ears over Grace’s head.
Clark takes a deep breath. He cannot believe this. He’s been agonising over the fate of Ryland Grace for years, and his cousin, his own blood, has been taking photographs with him like it’s nothing. Grace and Rocky look confused at the sheer, disbelieving, incandescent rage on Clark’s face, as Bruce Wayne finally loses the battle with himself, and laughs openly at Superman.
Grace just looks lost. “Was it something I said?”
**
A hundred light years away
Kara startles awake. She could have sworn she heard something; someone yelling at her, maybe? She had kind of a weird feeling; like a kind of smug satisfaction, but she didn’t know why? Maybe she’d been dreaming- she didn’t know what dream would have made her feel triumphant like this though, like she’d won an argument she didn’t know she was having.
It felt a little like the feeling she got whenever she pissed Clark off, actually. She hadn’t had many opportunities to rile him up recently, she reflected. Maybe it was time to change that; it wasn’t easy to annoy him long distance, and it was much more satisfying when she was there to see his face.
She settled back down to sleep, Krypto snoring in her ear, as the feeling fades away. Kara smiled; she’d set course for Earth in the morning. Annoying Clark was a great reason to go home. And while she was there, she could pick up some things for that guy she found on the planet in 40 Eridani; Ryan something. Clark would probably get a kick out of meeting him, she thinks blearily as she drifts off to sleep; maybe she should ask him to come with.