The smoke rose above the ruins of the former great city, the wails of sirens eerily absent. The only life he could see was the flames rising from the craters and shattered buildings tottering on their twisted frames. The grey eyes behind the mask could not hide the sorrow, the viscous flow of regret rising from deep within the shadows. He had always been the shadows, but now he was their prey.
The fight had started over something which was nothing. Bruce shook his head in wonder, in depressing regret, at his own ego. Clark had accused him of being a traitor to their kind, to their people. Bruce had never felt he had a people, not since the night in a dark alley where he watched everything change, everything play out. Where he watched his father’s choices come back and reap their vicious revenge.
By the time the Bruce and Clark had reached New York, so many others like them, heroes supposedly, had joined sides. They had chosen without truly knowing; caught up in the emotion of the moment and the excitement of being on the right side of history. The military had tried to stop them. They had downed everything sent against them. Bruce had crossed the line he had promised himself he never would. Clark had crossed that same line. In less than a second, a community’s faith in them had been thrown the dogs of their own natures and egos.
Fists had flown. Bodies had been thrown. They had each been thrown by the other. The city, the innocent, and the not-so-innocent bore the brunt of Bruce and Clark’s hubris. City blocks were reduced to rubble, and more were turned into grotesque statues, an artistic monument to the uselessness of trusting in such as they. Bruce recalled the moment it hit him. Those two words, straight from the mouth of an Agent in The Matrix.
“Only human.”
Bruce reacted. He exploded. Angrier because he knew Clark was holding back. He knew Clark, like an avatar of Zeus, was treating him, clobbering him, like he was no more than a petulant child who was not getting his way. Bruce’s rage coalesced with the memories, the hurt, the betrayals, a vortex which had burst from his soul like a tornado of fury. And New York paid the blood price. The floodgates opened wider, a dam venting backed-up waters after an eternal storm.
They landed in Central Park, gouging a scar through the gardens once sculpted and gorgeous, once the rendezvous for lovers and misfits. A single blast of energy from Clark cut the art museum in two, rubble and dust falling into the gaping wound. Heat rays down, then up again for a sweep back at Bruce. Turtle Pond instantly turned to steam, shrouding Belvedere Castle as it was cut like a hot knife through the base of a cake at the height of the rocks by the pond outside its stone walls. As they thrust, blasted, and pounded each other, Bruce and Clark edged through and laid waste to the Great Lawn and its softball fields. Trees were left smouldering fingers raised in protest.
The police station, long abandoned from the first signs of trouble, went up in similar displays of Bruce’s and Clark’s powers. And then the worst. The reservoir, after repeated pass after pass of Clark’s heat ray, cast a stinking cloud over the park as the breeze, fuelled by the flames, wafted it through the city streets nearby. Once luxurious and exclusive apartments and homes, the dreams of many, were now deserted, the residents fleeing to safer places. Bruce ducked behind a mound as another red blast of energy passed overhead and boiled some of the last water of the reservoir into gas.
Bruce crouched and ran at the alien human, slamming into him with the bludgeoning force of a jackhammer. He lifted Clark up off the ground, just enough to slam him back into the twisted steel of a fence. Clark twisted, but Bruce’s arms did not break their hold. Bruce slammed his head into Clark’s face, the customary grind of cartilage not following the brutal impact. Clark grinned, rage and anger lurking behind his perfect teeth, as he slammed his forearms down onto Bruce’s shoulders. The suit took most of the impact, but the grunts from Bruce told Clark all he needed to hear.
Bruce staggered back, sucking in oxygen. Clark came on again, flying right into his opponent’s body. Clark grabbed an arm and was dragging Bruce along the ground. Rocks, stumps of burning trees, concrete. They were all a battering ram against Bruce’s body and suit. Every hit hurt more than the last. Bruce started to feel the mind bend as the signals from every nerve in his body overwhelmed his brain. Every bounce was a collision with a sledgehammer and then a truck.
Suddenly, Bruce was on the ground. He was not moving. Bruce was just Bruce; alone in the smouldering remains of a park. He could hear the flickering crackles of flames as they worked through the trees and the buildings around him. Occasionally, the booming of falling rock and concrete echoed across the park. A building collapsing under its own weight.
Bruce lay there for a long time. His body was used to being smashed about, but this was something new. A new depth of not only pain, but his realisation he had truly become something less than his ideal. He had become the monster he had spent so long fighting. Clark had joined him in his descent. Bruce rose from the ground, no one around to watch. No one to witness the invisible transformation within, marked only by the battered and torn remains of his suit and cape.
Bruce walked from the park and wandered through the streets, aimless and purposeless. His thoughts, his own internal conversation, were silenced in the gravity of what he had become, or what he had always been. Vaguely heading south, Bruce followed his heart to the heights, succumbing to the need for clarity he could only get from altitude. He climbed the stairwell of a shattered building to its shattered roof. In the distance, the ex-hero could see the Empire State, wisps of smoke rising from its Art Deco lines. Bruce shook his head, and his shoulders slumped down.
“Only human,” he repeated.
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