not to make this post traumatic or anything, but what i constantly think about when i see movies or media where the buildings just collapse because there’s been some devastating attack on the city, where our hero gets thrown through concrete and steel and rebar and glass and whole foundations are toppled while people flee or die in the destruction—the ones that survive; the ones you see running away and getting to safety, the ones that make it out of the billowing clouds of smoke, particulates, and debris swirling behind them—they’re dead.
like maybe they don’t die that day, or the next day, or the week or month after, but they breathed lifetimes worth of carcinogens into their bodies as they struggled to flee. their bodies are completely covered in building shit. it’s in their eyes, it’s in their mucous membranes, it’s poison.
our hero saved the day but the death toll will rise in the coming weeks, months, years. it comes in the form of first responders dropping like flies or wracking up hospital bills to keep themselves alive; it comes in the form of bystanders who opened doors for those fleeing the poisonous clouds of sediment, urging people to take shelter inside whilst shops and store fronts darkened to an apocalyptic yellow-grey of death; it comes in the form of hope as the fighting or the chaos dies down and survivors deemed it safe to leave where they’d hunkered down, using rags or their jackets to cover their mouths and noses as they make their way back into the darkened clouded streets to get to safety.
I think about it all the time, because in bvs you see bruce wayne running into the cloud while people try to outrun it, and I think about the fact that, sure, he survived, he goes on to form the justice league after his misunderstanding (and lex’s influence), after clark dies.
But imagine it’s a year or so later; clark comes back from the dead, and Bruce has a cough, one that developed during the time Clark’s been gone, but one that Bruce does his best to keep under wraps. No one really notices, after all, people cough all the time.
But Clark has the added benefit of supersenses, of being able to hear the wetness in Bruce’s chest when he breathes, smells the cancer growing throughout his body. It doesn’t make any sense to Clark how Bruce could be dying at all, the man keeps fit, eats healthy, doesn’t smoke. He wonders if there’s something in the cave that could cause it; makes cursory scans of the underground bunker, takes note of some chemicals that could, with prolonged exposure, cause cancer (or some other nefarious ailment), and one day he just approaches Bruce and tells him he’s concerned.
Bruce denies it, dismisses it, tries to assuage that he’s fine, it’s just a little thing he’s getting over. Clark gets close and tells him that he can taste the sickness just being inches away from Bruce’s face, but still, Bruce refuses.
He can’t tell Clark it’s because of That Day. He can’t tell Clark that he was there, on the ground, trying to get to his people. He can’t tell Clark that he’s just another casualty. People die all the time from various ailments, Bruce isn’t gonna be that different, he just doesn’t want Clark to blame himself.
But Clark is an investigator; he traces back timelines and events and talks with alfred and diana, and he starts to get an idea of why Bruce is cagey about his health.
It’s because Clark killed him.
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