Polished floor; pearls bouncing. No, it's a clattering of crystal. Shards refracting, spilling out like a dozen confused projectiles. A light from the window, sun shining through. When Bruce Wayne collapses, he thinks that it's wrong to see the doorway unobstructed.

His broken glass glitters on the ground. Sight more than sound, which travels. Bruce's mind travels past the cry of office temps.

Metropolis, Kal hears. Almost impossible to, or to not to. A faint female voice, so inaudible that Clark Kent fills in the words with his mind. An ambulance, needed, Wayne Tower, get--

Air. A hundred-thousand voices. Just as Perry starts asking about Clark's article, the Man of Steel can prove to himself that Bruce Wayne indeed needs help. It's not his imagination. There are a dozen school kids terrified in Baghdad, a shooting victim bleeding out and alone in Keystone, and a kid prepared to jump off of his apartment building in Toronto.

Five seconds later, and there's another hundred-thousand voices joining the fray. One of the security guards with Wayne knows first aid and starts applying it. The way his elderly voice sounds, Kal doesn't hear optimism.

Someone's parents are going to be mugged in Vegas.

Kal hasn't decided anything. He's already moving without thinking of choices. Bruce forgive him for this, since Kal is putting his own priorities first. Superman knows where he's needed, and he knows where he's not wanted.

He obstructs the doorway in a heartbeat, closing off the light to the frightened, desperate room. The tunnel of air follows him, pushing past Kal and billowing his hair, and his torn-forgotten reporter's shirt.

Remnants of Bruce's water-glass scrapes on the ground as people pull back, tinkling against other pieces of itself. The sound is acute, and something Kal will never shake loose from his memory. It's exactly the same for the thin, ragged and fragile murmur inside the fallen man's chest.

It's foolish, what Bruce would say. To come so recklessly, and barely costumed. To stop caring in this instant, after years of establishing a firm habit and identity. It's stupid, to pick favourites when one is the most powerful man alive.

Well, second powerful.

Kal could bear this foolishness, just for another chance to hear them admonished to him. He's obstructing natural death just to give the other more time to live in the darkness, though Kal's already filled in the door--blocked off the sun.

And maybe, maybe Bruce had hoped for that. Thought of it briefly, and instinctively. The only one to save him now...has to block off the sun before he can turn back into it.

Kal does, and he doesn't reenter alone.