A/N: For Randi. Because I promised (
here ) that I did have darker stuff... I'm fairly certain I'll be breaking this up into three parts, but it may only be two. We shall see. Un-betaed.
*******Kill Your Heroes*******The air was dank and stale around them. The room smelled like a cross between spoiled milk and body odor, likely because both were present in the little space the two men were currently sharing. At least it was cold, so instead of being cramped into a tiny area and suffocating to death because of the smells and humidity, they were freezing their buns off and had to wear gloves even to type. They weren't allowed to mess with the thermostat-- for the computers, their boss told them-- but Pete knew it was mostly for economy reasons. Their budget had been cut, once again, due to lack of funding. Which was why there were currently only two men on duty and numerous computers needing to be monitored.
Did no one care about space anymore?
Pete cupped his hands and raised them to his face, breathing into them in order to provide a moment's warmth. Had there been a window in the room, all he'd have seen outside was frost. December, he'd decided several years ago, had to be the most miserable month to be in Metropolis for heat lovers. Well, just outside the main city of Metropolis was no better, apparently.
He exhaled heavily and watched his breath blow through the air. It was a job. A job in his field of interest. Sort of. When he'd signed up to be involved in a scientific team working on a project where they launched stuff into space to test their new satellite, Pete had kind of thought he'd be, you know, doing stuff with space. Not sitting here making ten-fifty an hour freezing to death in an icebox, only to be monitoring the skies above for movement and debris.
Well, at least he could do his job well. The same could not be said for his coworker, Gerry. The man could barely function-- he was asleep right now, Pete noted with an eye roll. And he never helped out by running any of the errands, he never paid for any of their lunches, and rarely responded to any of Pete's requests. Hell, he'd seen the man not answer calls or texts, cell phone inches away on the desk in front of him, simply because of laziness! Pete thought he'd bring that up the next time one of the head honchos came around. What if it were for something important.
Suddenly a light flashed on Pete's screen, a fast moving blip on the radar, and he sat upright in his chair. "Hey, Gerry. Look at this."
From behind him came a groan, and the older man murmured something incoherent as he shifted in his chair. Pete ignored him and, in a frenzy of movement, shuffled through his papers for the schedule for the day. He swiftly ran his finger down the page, looking for anything that might cross over this area at this time, and came up empty. He looked back at the monitor and saw that there was indeed something fast moving overhead. "Gerry, we've got a bogey heading our way, coming in fast. What are we supposed to do?"
Another groan, but this time, it came from closer. Gerry wheeled his chair over and squinted at the screen as he spoke. "How fast?"
Pete looked at the numbers tracking in at the corner of his monitor. "Pretty darn fast, I'd say."
"Then it's Superman. Relax kid. Nothing ever goes wrong on this job. You're too high-strung."
Pete's shoulders slumped slightly at the realization that the older man was, sadly, right. "Oh." Gerry rolled back. Pete watched in less earnest than before as the little blip on the monitor suddenly came to a halting stop, somewhere close to their location and way above them. That piqued his interest once again. "He's stopped."
"Mmhmm."
Pete frowned as the superhero's stillness disconcerted him. "What's he stopped out here for? There's nothing in the area but us."
"You know, I could do with a little less chatter from the peanut gallery."
Pete turned to shoot his colleague a glare before returning his gaze to the monitor. "What are you looking for, Supes?" he murmured under his breath, watching him just hover there. Suddenly, another blip came racing up towards the hero, at an even faster speed, heading straight on a collision course. Pete's eyes widened as he watched the blip get closer and closer to Superman.
Then, they collided.
Pete was out of his chair and on his feet like a shot, shouting an oath as he stared riveted to the action happening on the monitor.
Gerry scrambled to his feet at the commotion in shock. "What? What? What's going on?"
Pete just pointed to the screen, and Gerry followed his gaze to watch alongside him. The two dots were circling each other in the sky, with the second one coming in every few seconds and doing what they could only assume was attacking the hero. Superman was making no forward motion that would suggest he was fighting back, and seemed in fact to be losing ground-- or air, in this case-- to his mystery attacker. At first, Pete had thought perhaps that it was a missile, or some other kind of tracking device following the man of steel, but this... This was just... It was...
Human.
They stood frozen in place, unable to move even if they wanted to. The fight wore on for what seemed like eternity, but in reality was probably only a couple of minutes.
The first blip dropped.
Pete blinked. That couldn't be right. The first blip... that was Superman.
There was a slight shake as the dot connected with the ground and caused an almost seismic disturbance. Damn, they had come closer than he previously realized.
Then the second realization came. Superman had fallen to the Earth.
Pete uttered another curse and finally tore himself away from the computer screen to grab his cap and gloves and sprint out the door. Surprisingly, he heard Gerry following, not far behind him.
He tore into the direction in which the hero had fallen, hoping, praying that what he'd seen hadn't been what he thought it was. Perhaps they'd gotten it backwards, perhaps the first blip wasn't Superman and the second one was. Maybe his falling hadn't meant what Pete thought it did.
They came upon an area where a lot of snow had been displaced, piled high in a ring, and with a churning in his stomach, Pete knew this was it. He swallowed thickly and trudged his way up and through the small snowdrift to the place where he hoped Superman wasn't. Or at least, if he was, he hoped the hero would just be sitting there, dusting himself off, and give them a cheery wave as he flew off once again.
Pete closed his eyes on sight of the slightly askew red cape, unable and unwilling to look any further. He heard Gerry come up beside him and swear violently, and he knew without a doubt that his suspicions were true. Pete tried to keep from shaking, to little avail. How was he supposed to act? Superman, the man of steel, the man of tomorrow, was dead. Would live to see no more tomorrows. What was the protocol here?
Slowly, he brought himself to open his eyes once more. He knew he'd have to face it again at some point. It was now or later, when the cops came to investigate or to drag off the body. He shivered again at that thought, before finally dragging his gaze up from his feet buried in snow to the man he'd believed to be invincible.
His body was at a sickening angle, twisted out of shape unnaturally. His neck was definitely broken, Pete realized, and had to fight back the urge to gag as he also noticed his arm was bent backwards, and a piece of bone was showing through. His hair was all out of place, not slicked down as it always had been. Blood was spattered lightly over the iconic red, yellow and blue of his uniform, marring the 'S' symbol that, in the past thirty years, the world had come to associate with truth, and justice. His face was abnormally pale, with some bruises already forming under his near translucent skin. And softly covering him all across his body was a light dusting of snow; a stark contrast to his vibrant suit and dark locks.
Pete felt his stomach sink and clench painfully at the same time. Superman was dead. Superman was
dead. It was inconceivable. He couldn't die. Superman was always around-- he had been a staple to the world for Pete's entire life, in fact. He didn't exist in the times before Superman. It was as though his whole world was being stood on its end.
Somewhere in the distant part of his mind, he heard Gerry talking on his cell phone, trying to explain to an ignorant 911 operator what happened and that this was not a prank call. Pete couldn't tear his attention away from the body before him as he stepped closer and knelt besides his hero's lifeless form. "Who did this to you," Pete whispered to himself, his mind completely in shambles. As he looked closely at his face, he noticed a few differences in the Man of Steel that he hadn't picked up on before. There was some light grey spattering his thick, dark hair, and some slight wrinkles around his eyes. Smile lines, his mother had always reminded him. Though he never really thought of Superman doing much smiling, come to think of it. Here and there, of course, but usually he remained stoic.
A large raindrop fell and landed on Superman's crest, and Pete watched it disinterestedly as it sat there and the liquid started to freeze. Suddenly a frown crossed his features. Pete looked around him and took note of the light little snowflakes that were falling everywhere else, before looking back to the raindrop where it had come to rest on the body. His frown deepened. That couldn't be right. Curiously, he glanced up.
His eyes just barely alighted on a small, dark form, extremely high up in the sky. The moment it registered just what he was seeing, there was a loud sonic boom and the figure was gone.
Pete's eyes went wide and he turned back to face Gerry, who had a similar look of surprise on his face at hearing the sonic boom-- something else typically associated with Superman. Then he went back to yelling at whoever was on the other end of the line, demanding to speak to the lead detective.
Pete turned back haunted eyes to the hero that lay broken before him and came to grips with one crucial fact.
He had set eyes on Superman's killer.
