*4*
He can hear her crying. It is loud and unfamiliar next to the other sounds this apartment (this building, this city, this coast; this new life of his) makes. It is strange (unwelcome, because he did not know her long, but he never knew her to cry, never knew her to let loose hold of her walls to allow more than a few stray tears here and there to trickle through) and different, and it catches his attention so that he cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot move.
He’s been listening for her, of course. Has been caught up, ever since James told him that Lois Lane wished to see him, in a maelstrom of emotions so strong, so powerful, they threaten to carry him away and so he holds himself still and motionless in the center of them. Not quite numb, not quite overwhelmed; just...caught. Trapped. Arrested in a moment, in between the divergent reactions he wants to make (or thinks he should want to make but no longer knows how to allow himself to make).
But even though he’s been listening for her, even though he’s followed her progress to Sullivan Drive through the winding route all visitors have to take (if there were any besides her), even though he has his eyes squeezed tightly shut to make sure he doesn’t look toward her room (look, in the way only he can, where walls don’t matter while barriers ever so much more abstract and intrinsic set him further apart than mere walls could ever accomplish), still the sound of her crying startles him.
He doesn’t know what he should do.
He thinks he should go to her.
The sound of her lungs filling with air and then compressing is strained, a slight whistle to it betraying the effort it takes her simply to breathe, which means she must be hunched in on herself. Must be curled up and wrapped around herself, and he thinks, from the way the slight breeze of the air conditioning moves past her form, sliding across fabric and flesh and diverting around her, that she is not in the bed, but is on the floor, nearer the center of the room.
The image of her in his mind, crumpled to the ground like a tissue squeezed in a careless hand and then dropped aside, makes his every muscle tense in a violent convulsion.
Except…except that movement only reminds him. Reminds him of everything he tries so hard to forget (and cannot, because his memory is truer and more consistent than any nation’s approbation). Reminds him of why he sits alone in his own room, huddled up on the floor, straining toward the sky through glass walls.
Reminds him that he is not well.
Letting out his own quiet breath, he shifts slightly, bites back a grimace when he remembers why he does not like to move after a long day of pacing the confines of his cage, and quickly relaxes his muscles, breathes again in relief. It’s been weeks since Nightfall (all black, sucking space, the absence of everything and all around him to such an all-encompassing extent that Earth itself seemed only a dreamlike memory, and cold so intense he thought it would have stolen any breath he might have been able to snatch, and stars that tried to suck him away from Earth’s orbit into strange and foreign galaxies that would welcome him and praise him and then cast him aside in their turn, and a rushing mountain so large he felt tiny, dwarfed and insignificant and so very helpless), but still he is not fully back to himself yet.
His whole body hurts. Aches and twinges and stiffens in odd ways (his dad smiles at him and says that now Clark knows what he felt like all those years during harvest, trying to keep up with him, and his mom fusses over him and takes his temperature and pretends not to be worried at all when the thermometer explodes on her). Bruises that do not fade as quickly as the ones Trask gave him (but he does not think of that, hides it away behind the walls he’s learned to build), and maybe he should not have slammed himself quite so hard against the asteroid save that he does not know how else he could have stopped it.
There is a ringing in his ears, even now (with her sobs crashing through him like unending, unstoppable tidal waves), and though it has faded to almost nothing compared to what it was after spiraling in dazed, senseless circles amid the debris of Nightfall, it still frightens him a little, to have a constant noise that has no origin, no basis for being (points to no person to save, no crisis to avert, no way to bring it to a stop).
And worst of all, his hands tremble. Ceaselessly. Minutely. Frighteningly.
Clark (not Clark, not really, because Clark has been subsumed entirely beneath Superman; and yet, Clark always, because he does not know how to be anything, anyone else) wraps his arms around himself and flattens his hands against his own ribcage (more durable than anything made under the glare of the yellow sun). His heartbeat thumps against his right hand, steady and much slower than a human’s, implacable and unharmed (as if it’s still in one piece, unbruised and unbroken and unmoved). His lungs fill with air and then empty, a broader, wider echo of the stuttering, soprano breathing catching the whole of his attention.
The windows are cool, thanks to the apartment building’s more than adequate air conditioning, and Clark leans his body more heavily against the glass, careless of his bruises. His east bedroom wall is made completely of glass (tinted so that no one from the outside can easily see in), and Clark likes to stand in front of this wall every morning and watch the sun rise, likes to feel the sun creep its teasing, luxurious hands along his form, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. He likes the brightness of those sunbeams, here in California, likes the richness of them, the tangible quality to them. He likes that he can retreat to his room after days full of nothing but rescue after rescue (after rescue after rescue after rescue after rescue, ad infinitum) and soak in the proof that there’s still light and goodness and beauty in the world (likes to pretend it is still there for him to reach out and take part in).
Of course, it’s night now. Night, with cloaking shadows and falling stars and reminders of what happened almost three weeks ago. (Night with its screams and its pleas and its shattering glass and its speeding bullets.)
Slowly (knowing what he will see, but hoping anyway because if there’s one thing he can’t afford to lose, it’s hope), Clark sets his shoulder fixedly against the cool glass and unwraps himself long enough to look down at his own hands.
Trembling. Still. Continuously. Inescapably.
(Always, he begins to fear.)
Quickly, he hides them again, tucking them under his shoulders, stowed away, kept sequestered from anything they might harm.
“Reaction to the stress,” his mom decided after days of worry and debate about whether to seek a doctor. “What you faced was certainly traumatic, Clark, and super or not, your body’s going to need a bit of time to adjust to it.”
“It’ll go away,” his dad reassured him. “Just give it a bit of time.”
“But,” James had cautioned, always the pragmatic one, “until then, Superman might need to take a break.”
Clark had argued (vehemently, because he has lost so much already, and he cannot lose anymore). He needs to stay busy, needs to help people, needs to avert what catastrophes he can (needs to do something, to be something, and if he cannot be Clark, then he certainly cannot stop being Superman). But James was adamant.
“Look, CK,” he’d finally said, regretfully. “You know better than me--what would happen if you had one of these spasms while you were helping someone?” When Clark had stared at him, stunned by the implications, he quickly added, “I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone, CK. I know that. But you’d be afraid that you would--you know you would--and you’d blame yourself for anything and everything that happened, no matter what really caused it.”
So Superman disappeared, as easily, as seamlessly, as mutely as Clark Kent had.
The tremor of his breath hitting the glass and being redirected back into his room rushes through Clark’s hearing like a comforting rhythm of give and take. The sound of the city beyond the window, the people who live on other floors of his building (patterns and rhythms he has come to know, to recognize as familiar), the ocean murmuring its constant complaints against the shoreline (and he is glad for that ocean; he was raised in Kansas, but he quickly learned in Metropolis that having the hum of waves to overpower other, more monotonous noises is a blessing), the sound of clouds moving in from the west--all of it tickles at the edge of his hearing, begging for attention. The carpet beneath him is plush but stark, not quite abrasive, not quite soft, evident even through his sweat pants. The glass is cool, but the slight, invisible-to-the-average-eye imperfections are extremely evident to him against his brow and the bruises along his arm and shoulder. The scent of his room, his things, of James and his parents and the food they ate for dinner (and her, filling up the suite more and more with each passing moment), wafts through the air, adding something else to the mix, giving dimension and depth and color to the world, making it real.
And still his hands tremble.
He could have hurt someone, he thinks yet again. Superman has become so much a part of his life, so all-encompassing (so greedy, sucking everything else away), that he had not even stopped to consider the trembling. But James is right. The tremors are constant, but every once in a while, there is a slight, uncontrollable spasm.
Slight, yes. Small. All but undetectable.
Except that nothing is undetectable for him, is it? A sneeze and cars crash into one another. A wrong blink of his eyes and forests are ignited into a raging inferno. A flick of his wrist and whole buildings are demolished.
Now, every time he closes his eyes and feels his hands shaking, he sees disaster. Sees death and destruction. A wall Superman holds up suddenly lurching under a jerky, stuttering spasm and falling into rubble on top of fleeing children. A woman cradled in his arms on the way to the hospital arriving with a crushed ribcage and pierced lungs and mangled skin from the split thousandth of a second when Superman’s strength surged in an uncontrollable twitch. A crisis arrived at too late because he couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears, that high-pitched whine that threatens to send him crazy.
Superman, he thinks. He is Superman (now and always and forever) and he cannot be afforded any leeway. He cannot tremble, and he cannot shake, and he cannot be unwell. He must be perfect. Untouchable. Must be completely in control. Completely competent.
And right now…right now, he is not.
So he sits here. Useless. Helpless. Recovering, as James calls it. Day after day, pacing and worrying and listening. Night after night, sitting and worrying and listening.
It’s the right thing to do. Of course it is. He tells himself that over and over again, a mantra recited non-stop in his head to the accompaniment of that incessant whine. Ordinary men can go into shock and react to stresses. Ordinary men can have hands that shake and still go about their lives. But he is not ordinary (maybe never was; maybe only fooled himself into ever thinking an alien could live among a people not his own and fit in), and so he is left here, half a man (except not even that, because he’s already only half a man, so maybe he is only a quarter of a man; or maybe he is not a man at all, just displaced and disconnected).
But it’s safer this way. It’s safer for all the people he could harm, and it is only temporary, and so he waits.
But if it’s the right thing to do, he thinks for the thousandth time, then why does he feel like a failure? Every day he sits here, and he listens. Watches. Feels. And every day, every night, he is given a front-row seat to all the things he cannot stop. The people he cannot save. The places he cannot be. The dangers he cannot avert.
They are worried about him (about Superman, the hero, the savior, the shadow over their heads). He hears it on hundreds of news stations, in dozens of languages. They worry and ponder and theorize and begin to plan for how they will handle life without him should he stay missing this time.
They’re moving on.
It pleases him, in some basic way. To know that they don’t need him like they think they do. To realize that they can imagine life without their powerful protector. It makes him think that maybe, one day, he won’t have to be Superman anymore.
But that is a long time away (years and decades and centuries from now, when he is all alone and the world has moved on and forgotten the alien in red and blue and yellow), and for now, Clark is intimately aware of all the people who have needed him and who he has not been there for.
Like the woman in the next room over.
Lois.
The name slips through his mental defenses like a breath of stolen air, like exotic spices flavoring forbidden fruit. He tries so hard not to think of her, not to wonder about her, not to look her up at all. (Not to let his heart free to consider what he’d once thought she might be to him.)
But she is here (so very, insanely close, so that he wonders if the ringing in his ears isn’t actually from her proximity), and he knows that things will never ever be the same, as they once were (knows that dreams he once dreamed all fell to ruins and have decayed into ancient relics buried beneath dirt and sand and time and mistakes that can never be taken back) and that she is only here to get closure (“She wants to make some peace with what happened,” James said, reluctance written in every line of his body).
But.
But she is here, he thinks to himself (desperately, disbelievingly, wonderingly). She came after him and she has been looking for him and James said she was worried when Superman disappeared, and she is here--and she is crying.
And he should go to her.
It has been so long since he was Clark to her (to the world, to anyone but the three most loyal to him; the three who love Clark instead of Superman), but he knows their brief weeks of partnership by heart (Lane and Kent; Kent and Lane; partners, two against the world). Memorized that brief, enchanted period, etched it into his heart, inscribed it along his soul, and now he takes it out some days (when the pain is not too bad; when he feels strong enough to face the hurt) and relives it, replays it in his mind--each second of being at her side, watching her, listening to her, being a person to her, a man, a partner.
He knows (her, them, Lane and Kent, partners and maybe-friends), and so he knows that he should not be sitting here while she is crying. No, Clark-from-before would go to her (would have come up with some flimsy excuse to rationalize showing up at her door this late at night, but would not have to give it because she wouldn’t ask, or if she did, wouldn’t stop talking long enough to listen to his reply), and he would ask her if she is okay.
Clark feels the ghost of a smile settle across his lips, and he makes himself more comfortable against the window, closes his eyes so he can envision the scene in every detail, every nuance, every scent and sound and flutter of his heart.
She would brush off his concern (she never admits to not being okay), but then she would start babbling to hide the truth (hide how not-okay she was) and eventually the truth would slip out anyway. And if she was still crying, if she was lonely enough or scared enough, she would give Clark-from-before this…this look. So vulnerable and pleading and brave anyway, and Clark-from-before (Clark-from-any-time, really, even Clark-who-is-Superman) would not be able to stop himself. He would say her name (in that way he tried not to because he knew she didn’t want him to care about her like that; didn’t want him to love her), and he would reach out and tug at her arms.
And she would step forward and fall into his embrace, and he would hold her and will his strength into her own more fragile, more special body. Will his strength and his hope and his power (and his love, but it’s too painful and hopeless and useless to think of that anymore, so that, too, is set behind thick, impenetrable walls) into her, wishing he could heal her soul and mend all the hurts ever done to her and make her realize just how valuable and precious and wonderful she is.
The moment (the memory; the fantasy) is shattered when her breath hitches in her throat as she catches her composure. Not because she’s in his arms. Not because he’s holding her. But because she is exhausted and her heart is tired of struggling along at this frantic rate and her muscles are probably complaining about their cramped position.
Clark holds his breath and listens even more intently. Listens as she stands, as she heads into the bathroom and brushes her teeth. Then he turns his head away (he’s turned it toward her at some point, even though his eyes are still shut as tightly as possible, to avoid any further temptation) and focuses on the city outside his glass walls while she changes into pajamas (because some sounds, some mental images, shouldn’t be bandied about as if they’re cheap and tawdry; as if they’re within the realm of possibility).
When he tunes back into her, he hears her sliding into bed. Her breaths catch in her throat, her heart rate slows a bit at a time, her lungs shudder and shake from exertion, her limbs quiver ever so slightly, and then, a bit at a time, he hears her succumb to exhaustion.
She’s asleep.
Clark wraps his arms more tightly around himself and finally lets himself open his eyes to look out on the city. Not his city (like he’d thought Metropolis once was); just a city. His apartment is here, but Superman can’t be. Superman belongs to the world, not to any one city or any one person. Far to the east and just a bit south, he can see Mount Pacific straining toward the sky. North and a bit west, he can hear the cacophony of sounds marking out Coast City. But here, in this room, in this apartment, in this moment, all he can focus on is the sound of Lois breathing.
Asleep, but still that small, infinitesimal hitch to every third breath. Tiny, unacknowledged sobs.
He wonders if she would be breathing easier if he’d gone to her. Wonders if she would have stopped crying. (Wonders if he would have cried.)
Wonders what he will do when he finally does see her. Wonders what he will say (or if she wants him to talk at all).
But most of all, he wonders when he will finally be fully recovered.
For an instant, he reaches out a hand to place it against the window before he remembers and catches himself, places it back against his own invulnerable side.
And as if to remind him of just how dangerous touching anything is right now, one of his spasms hits him.
His hands quiver. His arms jerk. A millimeter. A microscopic amount of space, really, in the grand scheme of things. But motivated by power enough to take out Mt. Pacific with scarcely an effort. The glass window would have shattered, if he’d been touching it. The floor beneath him would have been turned to splinters and mangled remnants of carpet, if he’d let his hand rest on it.
Lois’s bones would have been pulverized, if he’d been touching her. Holding her. Embracing her. Quieting her tears and pretending that being Clark Kent is still possible.
But he did not go to her. He is still sitting in his own room, in the dark, and his hands are only touching his own flesh, and so no damage was done.
She is safe.
Calmly (there’s no use in being anything else; he’s learned that, after all this time, learned to take things slowly and methodically), Clark hunches in deeper around himself and focuses once more on healing. Recovering. Becoming safe again for the world (for his parents; for James; for her).
Lois sleeps. His parents sleep. James sleeps. Outside his window, the world moves on, revolving in an endless rotation that Clark fancies he can sometimes feel. The sun pulls them along in its inexorable orbit.
And Clark listens. Sits on his perch in the dark and watches life pass him by.
Observes the world outside and counts the cost of his enforced hiatus.
Hears their screams. Listens to their pleas. Notices the moment some heartbeats blink out of existence. Tries not to think about how many he could have saved if he weren’t so weak, so scared of that black nightfall. If he could only, simply stop trembling.
And behind him, taking the place of that ringing (so that he doesn’t even notice when the high-pitched whine finally vanishes), Lois breathes in and out, and Clark’s heart begins to beat in tandem. A lullaby that eventually soothes him so that, almost without even realizing, his head slumps gently against the glass as his eyes flutter closed and sleep claims him for the first time in nearly a week.
*
