The desolate, bleak winter arrived as scheduled. The cemetery's gray brick walls had turned bluish-black from the melting snow seeping into them. Snow blanketed the layered Gothic eave ornaments, whiter than white. The dense branches of leafless trees spread a field of gray in the distance. The moon melted into the pallor, leaving only a faint outline.
A figure stood before a gravestone. He was tall and strong, yet amid the endless rows of tombstones, he seemed so small. Another person stood beside him, his profile hidden in the moonlight.
"You never told me about this." Clark Kent lowered his head, looking at the name on the grave, then at the man beside him. The other man was as stern as ever, but the grief Clark sensed from him was a hollow void, and it made him shudder.
Bruce Wayne, a man who now looked somewhat aged, bent down and brushed the snow from the gravestone. Then he said, "It wasn't your responsibility. You didn't need to know."
"I just..." Clark Kent's abrupt pause was like the powerless braking of a car after it had already struck something. He lowered his head, closed his eyes for a moment, and said, "The media never reported that you had a son. No one knew he was dead. If I'd known, I..."
"You would have been more polite to an old father who lost his son?"
Clark turned his head away and looked at the falling snow in the distance. For a moment, his mind drifted as he tried to recall whether, over all these years, he had ever heard a child's Calling for Help, or a father's grief-stricken sobs. But he truly could not remember, and so he had nothing to say.
"This is who you are, Clark Kent." Bruce Wayne rose