Garden

He doesn't ask anybody for permission. He could, of course; however rarely the former inhabitants saw each other, they still had each other's contact information. In the space of a few hours, Vandal and Shade and Eel and Slade could be there for a conference. He's not particularly fond of them, but he knows it would be the right thing to do to ask their opinions. Earth isn't his alone, after all. Technically. He doesn't bother, though. Earth is his in all the ways that matter, and he knows the others will just pass his rudeness off as just Bruce being Bruce (it was ridiculous to maintain a secret identity when it was only them, when he doesn't have anything to protect even from those he'd once called his enemies). On the empty plain where once a great city had stood, he sets to work.

It's delicate work at first; on most worlds, life had evolved slowly and naturally and had built the atmosphere as time passed, changing the world and being changed by it. It would be difficult for his plants to throw off the balance of gases in the air; after all, it's such a large planet and his garden is so small. But he's thorough; he plans to at least visit for the rest of his life, however long that might be. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, he's going to invest his attention, his diligence, in that ounce of prevention.

He creates a perfectly balanced ecosystem, hand-selecting everything down to the microbes, and tends it by hand until it's stable and robust and alive without need of his help. Nothing in his garden would be familiar to somebody acquainted with only what had been Earth biology, but there's nobody by that description any more. And much as he would love to see roses again, it's a relief just to see something alive on this planet again. Over a few short years, the former location of Gotham City becomes a wilderness even Isely would have been happy with, although the trees will take longer to really be trees. It's all right, though. He can wait.

***

The next reunion goes smoother than he'd expected. He had, after all, started in Gotham. For all that Gotham doesn't exist any more, still nobody dares try to tell him what he can and can't do in it. Gotham is his in a way nothing else has ever been, in a way that defies not only what's normal, but possibly also what's possible. The others have all moved on with their lives, with the exception of these occasional remembrances. He's the only one who stays.

Shade gives him clippings from his own garden, and he knows he has implicit permission (not that he needs it, but it's the thought that matters). His garden spreads through careful cultivation and species selection to encompass the world.

Memoriam

He flies in and lands on the empty plain. There's nothing but this wasteland as far as the eye can see. The only difference seeing it from space had made was that there's water in other places. Even the Event hadn't gotten rid of those, even though it had wiped out all life on the planet, except for a few of the more robust microbes and a small percentage of the metas and aliens who had called Earth home. None of them had even tried to pick up the pieces and rebuild civilization on this planet, even those who were most attached to it. There was too much pain and too little life here to even think of trying.

His boots crunch on the gravel. They're the same boots, or at least the same design (if it had been the same exact costume it would have long since crumbled into dust), he's worn for a long time. The whole costume is the same; he can't be bothered to keep up with the rapid change of fashions anymore, not when the years, the decades, blur together like the days had used to when he was younger. The centuries haven't yet lost their slowness in his perception, but he can tell it's only a matter of time. He fears he's lost touch with humanity (or whatever, since there aren't any humans any more unless you count a few immortals; other languages have words which are more encompassing, but he still thinks in English, even after all this time since he last heard it spoken even by himself); their lives seem so ephemeral to him now that he doesn't even try to connect any more. Not that it matters; he doesn't do the heroing thing any more, hasn't since the Event no matter how often he'd been asked. It just didn't seem right to try to save somebody else's world when he'd failed so miserably at saving his. And it had been his (perhaps it still is), no matter how little he'd fit in while it had still been alive.

There had once been a city here, but it's impossible to tell from just looking at it. Enough time has passed that even the buildings have been eroded to rubble. The Event had been so thorough that it had taken a long time; there had been no plants to cover the walls and tear them down, no animals to break the windows. For years after the Event the city had been a still life. Cold corpses had laid where they'd fallen in a grotesque parody of life, children playing, mothers in the process of preparing dinner, crime stopped in its tracks. With few bacteria left to decay the corpses, he'd had ample time to see everything before it had faded with what had seemed cruel slowness: every person he should have been able to save. His friends. His loved ones. People he'd known only vaguely. People he'd never met and never would meet. But eventually they were unrecognizable even to him. And then they were gone, and he almost wished they weren't because even seeing their bodies everywhere was better than seeing the city so empty, so devoid of anything that even resembled life out of the corner of the eye. He'd left Earth then, and only returned at intervals to remember, as one of the few who could, one of the few who still can.

The spot isn't marked. It never had been, but for anyone but him it would have been easier to find with the aid of streets and of buildings to use as landmarks. He's made the journey so many times that he never has even a moment of doubt about the location. He doesn't even step over the invisible lines delineating where the sidewalk ends and the buildings begin. He reaches his destination and closes his eyes at the rush of memory of years past, of the distant past, of those who'd died.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice harsh from only rare use. It sounds overly loud to his ears, even over the strong wind which had always been blocked by the buildings before they'd been eroded to rubble so that it could only be felt on the rooftops. He feels tears stinging his eyes, as he does when he comes here every year. "I'm sorry."

He pulls two flowers from where he'd secured them under his belt. They aren't roses; all the roses were destroyed at the same time everything else that mattered to him was destroyed. But they're the closest he can get. Gently he places them on the ground and walks back to the sleek black ship.