*16*
His dad’s skin is papery thin, worn down to its most basic form, but Clark takes inordinate strength from the way the fingers cling to his and the feel of the calluses still evident on the palm. He cradles the hand gently, carefully, so sure not to harm this slender, frail (but important) link to the man who took him in and loves him and worked with him for days and weeks and months to make sure he could hold even hands this fragile without hurting them. Jonathan’s eyes are closed against the dimmed lights, his strength not quite enough to force words past the tubes running along his face, into his mouth and nostrils, snaking along arms and legs.
But his hand…that holds on, curves around Clark’s so that Clark can know what he would see in faded, sparkling blue eyes (love and compassion and concern); what his dad would say if he only could (love and compassion and concern, because his dad is nothing if not steady and constant and predictable in the same way as earth and hope and green, growing things).
So Clark holds his dad’s hand, and he refuses to feel despair at the overbearing sound of machines helping his dad continue to live, the glass windows letting a constant parade of medical personnel keep Jonathan Kent under constant observation, the casts around his leg and wrist, the bandages on too-white skin. It would be easy to feel his fledgling hope trickle away, but Clark refuses. Because maybe they are in the middle of a hospital under heavy guard, but his dad’s hand is wrapped around his (his heart still beats, in a better, more joyful tempo), and so Clark can do nothing but feel relieved and grateful.
“I’m going to go see Mom now,” he whispers (words just for his dad, not for the curious, watching staff around them). “But I’ll come back and see you tomorrow.”
His dad squeezes his hand, an almost negligible pressure that sparks the birth of a wide smile on Clark’s face.
“I love you, Dad,” he says, and without a flicker of self-consciousness (determinedly, heedless of the stares), he stoops and kisses his dad’s brow. A point of contact, a flash of heat, a burst of love, to keep his dad here and bring him back to life and wellness and health.
Another tiny, appreciated squeeze before Clark regretfully sets the hand down in safety on the thin coverlet. And then he’s backing away and heading to another floor to see his mom.
She hates being on a different floor than Jonathan, hates not being able to get out of bed and take care of her husband and son and James. But she is still weak, still wobbly on her bruised legs, still tender around her midsection where her ribs are wrapped and stitches march beneath bandages, still not quite able to take breaths that aren’t shallow and quick. She still sleeps eight hours out of ten, and she is not so well that Clark doesn’t feel a flutter of fear every time he goes to see her.
“Clark,” she says as soon as he knocks on the door of her private room and pokes his head in (after giving a grateful, acknowledging nod to the police officers stationed outside). Her smile is not as wide as usual due to the stitched gash along her left cheekbone, but it is still warm and accepting and immeasurably beautiful.
“Mom,” he says (a sigh of relief), and he lets her opened arms command him forward to nestle her (so gently) in his embrace. Her heart beats out a steady, invigorating tune next to his, old and worn and slower than before, but so necessary to his continued wellbeing. “I missed you.”
“Oh, Clark.” She laughs breathlessly (he tenses at the wince of pain she tries to hide from him) and pulls back to examine him closely, as if he will have wasted away without her food to keep him going (without her constant affection, her changing but enduring love, like seasons that cycle and grow and move and revitalize, to give him a reason to live and love and hope). “How are you doing?”
His chuckle is quiet, but real, and that means everything to him, to her (to the world, if they want Superman to keep existing in any form or fashion). “I’m fine, Mom. How are you?”
She shrugs that aside, picking distastefully at her hospital gown. “Won’t lie, son--I’ve been better.” Then she laughs, banishing any bitterness. “But they said I can finally visit your father tomorrow. You know he’ll do better seeing me and knowing I’m all right. Also, I think I’ve managed to finally corrupt the night nurse well enough to sneak me in some paper and pencils. I haven’t had a sketching class yet, but I’ll surely be able to get something down. I’ll experiment anyway.”
“Painting, sculpting, metal-working, and now sketching?” Clark winks at her, grabbing hold of her hand and clinging, but softly, subtly, not wanting her to know how much he needs this tangible reminder of her life. “I’m starting to think you’re something of an overachiever, Mom.”
“Oh, hush,” she replies, but her eyes are twinkling. As he smiles and looks down at her hand (thin, frail, capable of so much life and creativity and miracles), he feels his steady cheerfulness waver, just a bit (his own want sneaking through to reveal itself to his mom, who doesn’t need someone else to worry about). “Clark,” she says, and when he looks up, he knows she’s seen it (she knows him too well, and he has never been able to fool her). The twinkle is gone, replaced by somber concern. “How long can we stay here? How long can you keep coming?”
He looks away.
It’s been hard, finding ways to come into the hospital without making it any more of a target than it already is. James told him not to make habits, to change up the methods of arrival, the timing of his visits; the hospital has been gracious enough (or intimidated enough) to let him visit even during the night, enter through any door he likes. James has protected their home, but…but Clark knows (as well as his mom does, apparently) that despite all these precautions, this can’t last. The police can’t keep guarding the hospital all the way through his parents’ long recovery. The National Guard should be out there helping rebuild, not keeping back the media and curious tourists and any criminals with a longstanding grudge.
This can’t last. Not forever. Not for long. Not long enough.
But he has only just gotten his parents back (gotten his hope and strength back), so recently that he doesn’t want to think about a dangerous move and the inevitable trust he will have to show to some hospital somewhere and the complications this might cause to an already precarious situation.
He doesn’t want to think of it, and if there is one thing Clark is good at doing, it is avoiding unpleasant truths.
So he doesn’t let any of his inward worry show on his face when he looks back to Martha. He makes sure he looks confident, relaxed, reassuring (as she has done so often for him). “I’ll keep coming as long as you’re here,” he promises her.
She brings over her other hand to cradle both of his, hers small and fragile but strong enough to contain and strengthen his. “I know you will, honey.” She catches his eye with steely resolve. “But your dad and I don’t want to be responsible for anything bad happening to you--or to any of the other innocent people in this hospital.”
Clark sighs (wishing she were not so good at cutting through all his defenses) and bends nearer to her. “I know, Mom. But Dad can’t be moved yet. When he can, then…then we’ll move.”
“You’ll have to get James looking for an alternative hospital--assuming he hasn’t started already.”
“I will. He’s getting back this afternoon.”
Martha pats his hand. “Make sure he’s eating enough. You know with all the time-zones he crosses, he forgets when meal times are and just skips them.”
“I will,” he promises with a chuckle. “You just make sure you’re resting in between sketching your masterpieces.”
“Depends on how fast I pick it up,” she teases him. She’s tired already, though; Clark can see her eyes drooping, feel her hands sagging around his.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and bends to kiss her too (but this time maybe he’s looking for a reminder for himself rather than giving one). “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, honey. Tell James we love him too and miss seeing him.”
“Tell Dad not to worry,” Clark returns, and then he has to tear himself away, walk through the heavy door, past the layers of security, to a window he found in an upper floor waiting area. He leaves too quickly for more than a blur of color to show, but he’s assuming it will be caught by cameras anyway (can hear them clicking and humming and grinding for a solid block in every direction). He has grown used to feeling always watched by now.
Morning sunlight pours down on him, the kind of nutrients his body needs more than food or water, but somehow not nearly as rejuvenating as the two sets of hands that curved around his mere moments ago. He feels tired, weighted down by worry he’s afraid to acknowledge lest it fully conquer him. He feels like a solid night of sleep, a warm breakfast, and a hot cup of coffee would be almost as welcoming at this point as his old life back (or maybe they’re one and the same, Clark Kent bestowing on him the small comforts that Superman cannot). He feels like going back home, pretending he has a reason for not being Superman, swooping into the suite and going out of his room to the living area. Staying there, listening to a heartbeat, a pattern of breathing, whatever words (astonishing, enlivening, unpredictable, always somehow just what he needs) Lois might give him. Looking at her, drinking in the sight of her, the smell, the presence of her until he forgets about Superman entirely and remembers only Clark (dreams only Clark-dreams, impossible for him now but once so seemingly achievable). Talking to her, maybe finding another excuse to take her into his arms, let her hug him until he feels real and whole and right in his own skin again.
He feels like casting off Superman and stepping into Clark Kent.
He feels like being selfish.
And that is dangerous, so very completely dangerous and all the more because of how achingly tempting it is. He cannot be selfish. He has no excuses anymore, no alter ego to hide behind, no white lies to give as explanation for why he did not save others beloved to people out there (maybe to the police officers guarding his family or members of the National Guard protecting that hospital helping his parents or the doctors healing the people he loves best of all). He has no reason to get rid of Superman, not when Superman is the one who is needed and Clark is only the one who delivered Superman to the needy, desperate, dying world.
Lois Lane. He let her come because he wanted to see her again. Because he missed her. Because he thought closure would be good for them both (would make him stop dreaming dreams that just make him want and make disappointment sharper when he wakes). And, if he is truly honest with himself, because he was so hurt, so wounded beyond what he thought could be healed, so tired that Nightfall seemed only the last in a long line of hurts, that he didn’t have the strength to turn aside this last hope offered him by a reluctant James just when he least expected it.
He let her come because he wanted to say goodbye to that time of his life. To shut the door on it and realize, for once and for all, just how irrevocably changed everything was, and thus, resign himself fully to the life now before him.
But she is Lois Lane, and so he is not resigned or content anymore. No, now hope seethes inside him like a storm, like a hurricane of dreams and memories all meshed together (her kneeling in the garden, her arms around him in the hospital, her eyes heavy on him in the darkness of her room, her tripping heart when he kissed her cheek, her tone of voice when she says his name). Hope and temptation and impossibility and a siren luring him on to things that can never be his (and he will not survive being dashed against the sharp rocks, not again, not when he is still so scarred and trembling from the last time).
Lois Lane. She is trouble, and he should have known that (he did, just not in this way, not in a way that would offer him such jagged hope, not when he never expected her to look at him as if she wanted him to kiss her cheek), but he is not prepared for it anyway.
He is Superman now. Clark is only for his parents and James, a secret he keeps because he cannot help it (because he will die without it, has already felt the growing loss, before Lois came, when he was fading away, a wraith with shaking hands), because Clark refuses to die. But the world needs Superman, and the world has accepted him and let him live here when it could have rejected him, and he owes them all for that. The world needs Superman, and Superman has a reason for being here, a reason for continuing, and Clark does not (Clark has no reason at all for thinking himself more important than the people out there screaming for a savior to keep their hearts beating and their own hopes alive).
So he cannot give into temptation. He cannot do anything more than attune his hearing long enough to realize Lois is in his father’s garden again, humming softly to herself as she pulls up weeds in a stubbornly endearing way (muttered imprecations breaking up the sweet sound of her alto voice). Even that is unwise since it makes the wanting, the longing, the desire to be more than a superhero, rise up in him.
But there are other noises besides her humming, other voices that are louder and more imperative. Other sounds that remind him of the necessity of his continued service.
So he is Superman (always and forever with no end in sight because it is too hard to see an end only to have it disappear over and over again). He soars through the skies and swoops down to save and rescue and help, and he keeps his lips clamped over all the words he wants to give the scared people before him (because if he speaks once, then he will have to speak forever, will have to answer any question or accusation they put before him, and that is more than even Superman can endure). He roams without direction or purpose, tethered only by the long, looping cord of his name (the name the world knows, needs, accepts), going where he is called, acting as quickly as he can, not lingering anywhere, and still, always, there are more people calling, crying, asking, demanding, needing (and he wishes, just once, there would be people wanting him instead of needing him), and there will never, ever be enough of him to answer every cry or help everyone who needs it (always, always, he will be found wanting).
Eventually, when it is dark and his Clark memories tell him he should be eating dinner, he lets himself turn back toward home. James will be back, and he needs to hear about the meeting with their lawyers, needs to know when to meet with Henderson again and how much more they need before a court date can be set and Luthor can be put away for good. He needs to go back home, and it has nothing to do with his wanting to see Lois again, even if just for a moment.
(He wishes he were not so good at lying to himself; it only makes the temptation harder to deny.)
Almost, at the realization of the true reason he has turned away, he makes himself turn away, follow the lodestone of his name being called in fear and hope. But even as he wavers, hovering unsteadily in the air while wind whips and tears at him, he hears a familiar voice (as if he knew Clark’s dilemma; as if he would follow him anywhere, as he did before, to save him and bring some measure of home back to him) that makes up his mind for him.
“Come home, CK,” James whispers, in a faraway suite, sitting at a counter used as a table, food laid out before him, his arm cradled in a cast because Superman wasn’t there quickly enough for him. “Come home.”
And so Clark does, because as hard as it is to turn away from cries for Superman, it is impossible to ignore this solitary cry for Clark Kent.
When he emerges from his room, James and Lois both look up from the pan of soup and the empty, waiting bowls (three of them) placed before them. They both smile to see him. They both say his name (Clark and CK, echoes of a newsroom he never wanted to leave). They both welcome him, and for a wonder, even with his parents sleeping so far away, he feels like he has come home.
“James made the soup,” Lois says quickly, as Clark comes forward and takes the seat left for him. “It should be safe.”
“Very safe,” James agrees, “since it came out of a can. We were hungry and decided speed was better than quality--otherwise we would have made you make dinner, CK.”
Clark laughs to hide how startled he is by the reminder that he does know how to do something so ordinary. Something so normal, so benign, so mundane that it requires no superpowers at all. “Soup smells good,” is all he says, and he isn’t lying. It’s hot and fragrant and fills up the suite so that it feels lived in, and that is enough to make him eat it even if it were burned and salty and out of date.
Conversation swirls around him as he savors the sips of soup, the chunks of potato and ham, the salt and the feel of the napkin. James and Lois both seem to sense that he cannot talk now (that he cannot stop enjoying this slice of normal, beautiful life long enough to conjure up any conversational skills), and so they banter back and forth. And when the soup is gone, Clark is still silent, watching them with enchanted eyes, the scene before him dissolving in and out with memories of that newsroom, of an impetuous reporter and an indefatigable copyboy. It’s been a long time since he’s felt so much like Clark, and yet…and yet, at the same time, it’s been a long time since he’s allowed himself to feel himself so removed from that Clark, from that life, from that world as alien to him now as Krypton.
The sense of removal, of isolation, is only heightened when he realizes that dinner is over and James has already told him that he doesn’t have to see Henderson for another week and he has no more excuses for sitting here in jeans and a t-shirt and glasses that veil the world in a more idealized sheen. Reluctantly, not wanting to interrupt Lois and James, he stands and takes care of the dishes before they can realize he’s moved, and then he clears his throat.
They both fall silent, instantly, and look at him. Lois blinks when she notices the empty table between them. “Wow,” she says. “That’s handy.” Then, so quickly it takes Clark aback, she grins at him. “Very handy. Now that we have a clean table, we can play some poker. You in, James?”
“Oh, definitely.” James moves as if to rub his hands together in glee before remembering his cast. His expression falls into a studiously mournful mask. “And since I’m playing at something of a handicap, you’ll have to go easy on me. Right, CK?”
“You will play, Clark,” Lois says in a suddenly soft, inviting voice. “Won’t you?”
And they both look up at him. Waiting. Hoping.
It is too much for him. He’s already tempted, already torn between his longing to stay and his responsibility to go. Their combined plea crumples the last of his resistance.
“I will,” he says (decisively, to hide the guilt). “I might even give a better showing at this poker game since Perry isn’t around to cheat.”
He regrets the words (the reminder of their missing friend) when both Lois and James wince at the name, but he cannot stop himself from smiling anyway. Not when he gets to sit down again, directly across from Lois and her shining eyes, her shimmering hair, her beguiling presence. Not when this is what he’s wanted for so very long. (Not when he wants the reminders and memories of a man who took a chance on him and gave him opportunities no one else had.)
But he should have known it was too good to be true.
James hasn’t even emerged from his room with the cards and chips when Clark hears the clamor of hundreds of voices crying for him all at once. The update of a tidal wave in the South Pacific on televisions from the floors beneath them. The news bulletins on radios of passing cars. He wants to be selfish, but it would be more than selfishness to ignore this; it would be a crime.
He thinks Lois already knows what he’s going to say when he opens his mouth. The sparkle is leaving her eyes and her mouth is tightening around whatever words she wants to spill. But she only watches him as he stands and says, “I have to go.”
He almost wants her to protest (almost thinks that if she asked him to stay, he would--more proof that she is trouble he cannot afford). But she only gives him a half-nod, so he ignores the pang of regret and longing surging inside him, and he turns to leave.
Her hand on his sleeve stops him.
“I’m not going to stop you from going,” she says, intently. Fiercely. “Or tell you that you shouldn’t. But I do want you to know that you don’t have to answer every cry for help. You don’t have to be on call 24/7. You’re still a person, Clark, and you deserve to have a life too.” Then, as if by magic (she was always so quick, in that time of before, so sure, so abrupt that she left Clark feeling slow and mesmerized), she drops her hand and intensity and gives him a sad smile. “Now go. The game will still be here when you get back.”
Clark makes it to the door of his room before he can hold back no longer. He turns to look at her (facing away from him, arms wrapped around her middle, hair concealing her face), and feels unsure. Lost. Confused. “Lois?”
“Yeah?” She turns back to him, her face composed when her hair falls away.
The question sits on his tongue, ready to be asked. Impatient to be out in the open. But he cannot speak, not for a long moment. The words (the plea behind it, the weariness and hurt and guilt) only bring back unwelcome memories, dark and battered flashes of endless days and nights before and after Nightfall, when he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t live past the weight and pressure clogging him up on every side.
But she watches him so patiently, and he has always been able to say and confess things to her that he cannot to anyone else. So the question slips from him before he can stop it or think better of it.
“If I’m not saving people all the time…if I take time off…how do I justify that? What do I tell them when they ask me why I wasn’t there?”
Lois’s gaze turns to steel faster than even he can move (or maybe it’s always steel, always hard and confident and unbreakable, and she only hides it behind a mask as thick as his). “You tell them that you are a gift to this world and that whatever you can do is more than enough. You tell them you help us because you believe there’s a hero in each of us and we can all do the same. You tell them that you are inspired by them and that if you are not there, then you trust everyone else to help out. You tell them that maybe they made you into a symbol, but you’re a person too. You tell them that it’s not only regular people who need saved and even heroes need time to themselves to remember why they’re doing what they do.”
Lois Lane, he thinks wonderingly (feeling as dazed as if standing beside Kryptonite and sucker-punched). He knew she was trouble, but this…this is more than trouble. This is desire and hope and impossibility and miracles all rolled up into one, and none of those things are for him anymore. This is strength and confidence and help and support and vindication on a level he cannot comprehend because those exist only for Superman (and only to a certain degree), not for Clark.
This is beauty. This is love. This is…is more than he can comprehend. More than he can understand. More than he can internalize.
But he wishes he could.
“Lois,” he says, but closes his mouth over the rest before it can escape (before he can vocalize what he wants more than anything else and see her blink and swallow before either turning away or agreeing only because she thinks it is what he wants and she feels like she needs to atone for what she did). So he gives her a smile instead and says (because he cannot quite turn away from everything she offers), “I’ll be back soon.”
He lets the world freeze into near motionlessness, lets everything fall away until he is all that is alive and moving, but even there, in this realm that is his and his alone, her words still ring in his ears (promise and temptation and taunt). Because he cannot bear to go out alone into the night after that bubble of normality and family, he takes her heartbeat with him, listens to the tune and tempo, the rhythm and range. Listens to it and examines it and tries to discern what about it makes Lois Lane so much more than anyone else he’s ever met.
It’s not his intention to eavesdrop, as he flies toward the distant sounds of pain and terror, but he’s so intent on the heartbeat, he almost doesn’t even realize he’s hearing Lois and James’s voices too.
“That was quite a speech,” James says as he comes back into the room.
“It’s true,” Lois says, almost defiantly. “Even if I didn’t phrase it as condemningly as I wanted to.”
“Probably best.” Clark can hear the grin in James’s voice. “He’ll listen to it better this way.”
He thinks Lois smiles back, can hear it in the rounded shape of her words. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
There’s silence unbroken by anything but their two heartbeats (and a world of motion and life and despair, but Clark is used to all that and does not focus on it lest it destroy him; lets only their heartbeats keep him afloat and above the clamor of the world) for a long moment before James finally speaks again. “I’m glad you came to me,” he says. “It is just what we need.”
Lois makes no reply. Clark cannot figure out what James means. James, apparently, does not seem to realize the effect of his own words and only drops something on the table with a clatter. “Shall we have a practice go of it before CK gets back?”
At that, Clark realizes what he is doing (taking the privacy away from the very people who are all that is left of his own privacy) and he lets his hearing slip away (reluctantly, grudgingly) from Lois’s heartbeat to turn instead to the emergency before him. But even when he is surrounded by foaming, raging water, even when people beg him for help and thank him for saving them and call out after him, he cannot escape the words (the path of escape) Lois offered him.
To be Clark Kent. To not be Superman all the time. To draw a line and not feel guilty about it. He does not think he can do that without falling once more beneath the weight of guilt and pressure and responsibility. But the idea that he can, the very possibility…it’s powerful enough to knock the breath out of him. Powerful enough to make the force of the surging ocean seem tame in comparison. Powerful enough to make him leave before the cleanup is all done, and head back to the suite of rooms. Back to home.
When he swoops in through his window, steps out of his closet in clothes much more comfortable (and comforting) than the Suit, and emerges from his room, he finds Lois and James laughing over what looks to be silly and even made up words on a Scrabble board, their heads tilted toward each other, a pack of cookies and a bottle of soda sitting, half demolished, at their elbows. Clark’s step checks upon sight of them, so happy and relaxed and normal (so easy and comfortable and right together), that he almost turns around. Almost flees back into the Suit and the skies and the strife that only Superman can alleviate. Almost leaves them to their fun and their ease (unwilling to bring the abstract stench of suffering and distress in amid their cozy atmosphere).
But Lois turns (as if she can sense him there, just outside their aura of light) and invites him over without hesitation (with a wide, bright smile), and James nudges a chair back for him and hands him a stack of cookies saved back for him, and unbelievably, ineffably, he is able to slip right into their private group, able to join the laughter without bringing it to a screeching, silent halt.
It seems as impossible as the words, the gift, Lois gave him, and yet it happens. He never thought he could feel so truly like Clark Kent again, never thought he wouldn’t be able to hear the cries of his new name long enough to find a spark of happiness amid his determined contentment. And yet it happens.
And if something this impossible can become possible, then maybe…maybe the rest of what Lois said can happen too. Maybe there is more hope than he’s ever allowed himself to realize before. Maybe he really can live again.
*
