Later that evening, after the early sunset had painted the sky a brilliant shade of orange and full dark had settled over the eerily silent farmlands, the four refugees – as Clark had dubbed them in his mind – turned their attention to their growling stomachs. Alfred rose from his seat in the living room.
“Any particular requests for dinner?” he asked as he stood.
“Something simple and easy,” Bruce immediately responded. “It’s been a busy day for us all.”
“I could do a baked ziti,” the older man replied slowly as he thought. “I’ve even got a couple of loaves of fresh Italian bread.”
“Perfect,” Bruce said, standing up. “What can I do?”
“Nothing, sir. I’ll take care of it.”
“No way, Alfred. You did more running around today than I did. You just tell me what you need me to do,” Bruce protested, waving away the retort Alfred was clearly building.
“I’m not much of a cook,” Lois added, also standing. “Actually…I can burn water. But if you have some kind of non-cooking related task, I can handle that.”
“Well, if we’re playing Little House on the Prairie, count me in too,” Clark interjected. “What can I do?”
Alfred thought some more. “Miss Lane?”
“Lois,” she corrected.
“Miss Lane,” Alfred repeated, looking uncomfortable at the idea of using her first name. “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable setting the table than in the kitchen?”
Lois nodded, brightening in relief that she wouldn’t be required to cook. “Perfect.”
“Master Bruce? If you would be so kind as to dice the mozzarella into small cubes.”
“On it,” Bruce replied, already heading for the kitchen.
“I can cut the bread,” Clark offered helpfully. “Do we want it cold and in slices to be buttered by ourselves or hot and buttered in the oven?”
“Oven,” Lois immediately responded.
“I was leaning that way myself,” Clark said.
“Fine by me,” Bruce called from the other room.
Alfred shrugged. “I always did prefer hot bread.”
“Garlic?” Clark asked, striding toward the kitchen now.
There was a murmur of general consent.
“Uh, question?” Lois piped up. “I know I’m not exactly one to talk, but…have you ever actually…you know…cooked before?”
“Here and there. Nothing too fancy,” Clark admitted. “Lex had his hired chef, but, being stuck in Lex Tower all the time, I spent a fair amount of time watching television. Sometimes, I watched cooking programs and, every once in a while, I’d try my hand at replicating what I’d seen. My memory is pretty good, and it usually turned out alright.”
Lois peered at him in a way that suggested she was weighing how true or not that statement had been. Clark snapped his fingers.
“Tell you what. One of these nights, I’ll cook. Everything. Start to finish. I’ll prove to you that I can do it.”
“You’re on,” Lois said, sealing the deal. “But it has to be something more complicated than baked ziti.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” he replied with a wink. “I wasn’t planning on skimping out.”
“Good.”
With that, the matter was settled and Lois went to gather the plates and utensils. Clark turned his attention to the two loaves of Italian bread Alfred had bought. He grabbed a cutting board and serrated knife, then started to cut the bread lengthwise down the middle, to expose the soft inside. But he’d overestimated how much healing the sun had done that day. As he held the bread in his hand and chatted with Alfred, he cut too far. The jagged, unbelievably sharp blade slipped and sliced the palm of his hand. Clark yelped in surprise and pain, dropping the bread on the table. The knife hit the edge of the table and clattered off the side, to the floor, where it missed his slippered right foot by mere inches.
“Damn it!” he hissed as he inspected the bloody wound on his hand.
“What happened?” the three asked as one.
“The knife slipped,” he admitted. “I cut myself.”
Lois strode over, a look of concern on her face. “That looks bad. Let’s get it bandaged. Follow me.”
Clark did as he was told, cradling his injured left hand in his right. Lois took him straight to the upstairs hallway bathroom. He sat on the closed toilet seat as he waited to see what she would do. For her part, Lois spent a long minute rummaging through the medicine cabinet, then under the sink. She emerged with a triumphant look on her face.
“Lucky for us, Lucius seems to be pretty stocked up on first aid stuff,” she told him. “Come here, let’s wash that cut off.”
Clark stood and allowed Lois to take his hand and gently wash the blood away. He hissed in pain as the water hit the open wound, but it was a minor sting compared to the agony he’d experienced in the presence of Kryptonite. She helped him to dry the area, then applied a healthy layer of antibiotic ointment to the wound.
“This will keep it from getting infected,” she explained as she worked. “I’m guessing you don’t have much experience with this stuff.”
“Nope.” He sighed and raked his uninjured right hand through his hair. “I’m so embarrassed. I’ve never slipped with the knife before. And even if I’d done so, I would have been invulnerable. I guess I’d hoped I was getting closer to…being whole again.”
“I guess I can understand that,” she said softly as she plastered a gauze pad over the cut, then wound a longer strip around this palm, tacking it in place with some surgical tape. She kept her eyes on her work as she patched him up. “Sorry, I’m not too great at this. My parents were the gifted healers. Not me. Which is odd. I mean, for the amount of scrapes I’ve been in and injuries – usually minor, thankfully – I’ve suffered from…the burns I’ve gotten from trying to cook…I should be better at this.”
“You’re doing great. It already hurts less,” Clark encouraged her. He wasn’t lying either. The pressure from the bandage felt good and distracted him from the fact that he’d managed to slice open his own flesh.
She placed the last piece of tape, then stood back a step and admired her handiwork, her hands on her hips. “Well, it’s not pretty, but it should do the trick.”
“It’s perfect,” Clark assured her. “Thank you, Lois.”
With his good hand, he took one of her hands and brought it to his lips, placing a reverent kiss there. To his surprise, she didn’t immediately draw her hand back and away from him. He had to take that as a good sign, he told himself.
“You’re the best doctor I’ve ever had,” he told her, giving her a lopsided grin.
She laughed a little. “Well, you’re the best patient I’ve ever had.”
“Have you had many?” he teased gently.
Lois laughed too. “Just my sister. Growing up, our parents worked a lot. I mean, a lot. We understood, as much as it was possible for us to understand at that age, that it couldn’t be helped much. They were very in-demand, and they had a lot of high-profile patients. But still, a lot of times it was just Lucy and me. I practically raised her. Cooked for her – as much as you can call heating up TV dinners cooking. Bandaged her cuts and scrapes. Counseled her through drama with her friends and her first few breakups.”
“I…see,” Clark said awkwardly, once more trying to fight back the crushing knowledge that he’d taken all of that away from Lois.
She cleared her throat and inspected the bandage one last time. “Anyway, that should hold,” she declared a second time. “How long do you usually take to…recover your…abilities?”
“I…don’t know,” he stuttered. “I’ve never gone this long without…being able to recharge my powers. Hopefully they’ll come back within the next day or two. I…I hate this. Clearly,” he said, looking at his wounded hand.
“They’ll be back,” she said confidently, and he had to wonder why she felt so secure in that knowledge.
“I know. In the meantime, however…” He shrugged and let his voice trail off. “It…doesn’t matter,” he decided. “There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. I just have to let my body do its thing and keep my fingers crossed that all that Kryptonite exposure and lack of sunlight didn’t do any permanent damage.”
“You ready to go back downstairs?” Lois asked.
No, his mind screamed, his heart aching to be alone with her as much as possible.
“Sure,” he said coolly, not allowing his heart’s desire to show on his face.
Lois favored him with a bright smile. Then she held up a warning finger. “Just…no more knife work for you tonight. I’d hate to have to bandage up your other hand,” she ribbed him.
He chuckled. “That’s fine by me. With my luck, I’ll lose a finger next.”
***
Three days passed as Clark and the others settled into a new, far from comfortable, normal routine. Everyone pitched in with what little chores needed to be done around the farm. Mostly, it centered on cooking, cleaning up after cooking, the odd load of laundry, and generally just trying to stay out of each other’s way so as not to have tempers flare in the close quarters. That went double when it came to Bruce, as far as Clark was concerned. The billionaire still had a presidential campaign to spearhead, and, as much as Clark hated to admit it, he wanted to see the man win, simply because his win would prevent Lex from being on the ballot when it came time for the people to vote.
Instead, he spent as much time as he could outdoors, breathing in the clean, cold air, and luxuriating in the sun’s weak, but healing, light. It left him feeling refreshed and invigorated, but he wondered how much of that was a figment of his imagination, since none of his powers had returned and his wound still hadn’t healed. Regardless, he wasn’t about to spend any more time than was necessary indoors. He tried to get up with the sun and only retire to the house once the sky grew dark and the stars shyly peeked out to play. Lois joined him some of the time, and Clark was grateful for her company. And yet, the time he spent alone was precious to him in its own right. The solitude allowed him to reflect on his situation and his uncertain, but potential, future.
What’s next? he asked himself near sunset of the third day. Do I help them put Lex in jail for several consecutive lifetimes? Do I dare gamble my one chance at freedom? Bruce may be obscenely rich, but how can I trust him to get immunity for me if I take the stand? Do I even want to do that and have my face out there, for all the world to see? How can I possibly make a normal life for myself then? But…if I don’t help them…what will Lois think of me?
He sighed and kicked a clod of dirt as he walked through one of the fields, envisioning tall cornstalks that had possibly once grown there, towering up above his head.
Let’s pretend I could actually go on and make my own life. What then? Who would I be? What would I do? Could I bear to keep this moniker of Clark Kent? The name so thoughtlessly thrust upon me by Lex, thanks to a couple of advertisements that were in front of him at the moment he decided to rebrand me for his own purposes? Could I be a reporter, like Lois has suggested? Could I work for the same paper, see her every day, maybe even work on a story or two with her? Would she even want that? Does she really have any interest in me? Or is she using me, just as Lex did, to get what she wants? Why does that thought feel like that would hurt so much more than anything Lex ever did to me?
He sighed, squinting up into the western sky, watching as the bright orb of the sun dipped lower in the blindingly colorful red and orange, cloudless sky. He stopped walking for a moment as he looked up. He looked back over his shoulder, toward the east, where the sky was already growing darker.
Darkness and light, he thought to himself. Both existing together. Is it possible that I’m the same way?
The thought troubled him more than he wanted to admit. Not the fact that he could possibly change for the better. He wanted to be better, for Lois. He wanted, more than anything, to be worthy of her love someday. But the idea that there would always be some darkness within him scared him. He already knew he could easily kill Lex someday, if given the opportunity. He wanted his former jailor to die by his hand, not by some state-appointed executioner, his life snuffed out in a calm, controlled, supposedly pain-free manner as a chemical cocktail was injected into his system, spreading and shutting down his organs bit by bit until his lungs went still and his heart froze in mid-beat.
Shaking his head, but unable to clear his thoughts, he went back into the house and straight back up to the bedroom he’d been using the last few nights. It was a small room, but he didn’t need much. The best feature was that he could easily climb out the oversized window and walk right out onto the roof. He did so now, stopping only to respond to Bruce’s call for everyone to come get dinner. Clark wasn’t hungry, not now, not when he had so much weighing on his mind.
He climbed all the way to the highest point on the roof. For a moment, he crouched down, the movement coming with such fluid naturalness that he did it without even thinking. A dozen memories flashed through his mind of crouching in the night on other rooftops, waiting for the right moment to make his move and mindlessly, obediently take life. On those nights, he’d been poised, calm, collected. Now, the memories made him shudder and his hands tremble. He wished he could forget the details of those assignments. He wished he could forget the names, the faces, the way they’d looked as death had stolen them away from the world of life.
Feeling weak with his guilt, Clark sat on the rooftop and, for the first time in his life, he let his grief wash over him like a turbulent ocean. Wave after wave of emotion crashed over him, drowning him. His chest tightened. His heart pounded. His mind screamed in agony. Tears – once an almost foreign concept to him – pricked at his eyes before rolling down his cheeks, salty and hot and cleansing as he tried to purge his soul from all the feelings that were threatening to bury him alive right then and there.
For how long he wept, he wasn’t sure. When he next looked up, drying his eyes on his sleeve, no trace of the sunset was to be seen. The sky above was pure black velvet. There was no moon, only a scattering of trillions of stars, more than Clark had ever seen in his lifetime, and it left him feeling so tiny and insignificant in the infinite vastness of the universe. He wasn’t used to that feeling either. Sure, he’d known what it was like to be powerless and irrelevant, but this was on a whole different scale. He was used to feeling like a very big, very valuable part of his demented little microcosm back in Lex Tower. Granted, Lex had been at the center and held all the power, but Clark had always been accurately aware of how much of Lex’s success had hinged upon his successful assassinations. Lex had never openly acknowledged it, but Clark was now certain that the billionaire had to have at least been aware of it in the back of his mind.
Clark lay down on the roof, stretching out to his full length, and grateful for the fact that his missing powers hadn’t affected his inability to be bothered by the cold. He lay on his back, his hands folded beneath his head, staring up at the countless points of light above him – some faint and some so bright it was hard to imagine how many billions of miles away they were. He traced out familiar constellations in his mind, learned from the pages of books when he’d been much younger. As always, he picked out Orion, the hunter, first. Not only was it the easiest winter constellation to find, thanks to the distinctive three stars of his belt, but he’d always been Clark’s favorite. Orion had been a hunter, like Clark had once been. True, the man in the myth had hunted animals, as opposed to the human prey Clark had stalked and killed, but Clark had still come to find a certain kinship with the celestial hunter. Of course, the myth had gone on to say that Orion had died from the sting of a scorpion – the summer’s Scorpio constellation – because he’d been too arrogant to take note of the tiny arachnid. Clark smirked sardonically to himself. Had he been so different? Too self-assured to think that his prey would ever be capable of taking down such a mighty hunter of the night.
For the first time, seeing the familiar constellation brought no comfort to him. He felt only cold detachment from everything. A band of whitish light ran through the sky. Clark knew it as the Milky Way – or at least a small portion of the spiral that was visible from Earth. He’d seen it only a scant few times before. Less than a handful, if he remembered correctly. It never failed to humble him, just how minuscule the world was in the grand scheme of the endless universe.
“I mean less than nothing,” he whispered to himself, his breath a puff of white smoke that disappeared almost instantly. “If I were to die, right now, there’s not a single person on this planet who would mourn for me. Not that I need anyone to, but…it would be nice, to have even one person to remember me fondly.” He sighed but did not get up.
For a long while, he remained out on the roof, watching without really seeing as the stars moved across the sky and a few meteorites streaked by overhead. Most of them were so faint it would have been easy for the average skywatcher to miss them, but a couple of them blazed brilliantly by, so fast and bright that Clark half imagined he could hear them hurtling through the atmosphere.
Eventually, he got up and stretched. Just being outside, alone, had cleared his head a little. But his heart was still heavy and conflicted. Carefully, he let himself back in through his bedroom window, all the while very aware that a fall from this height, without his invulnerability, would definitely result in injury, if not kill him, if he landed the wrong way on his neck. Inside, the room was toasty warm, and although Clark hadn’t been cold outside, it still felt inviting and wonderful. He glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. Somehow, it had become eleven at night while he’d been staring up into the night sky. He decided on taking a shower and quickly gathered together a change of clothing before heading to the shared bathroom. No one was using it, so he swiftly showered, dried, and dressed.
He towel-dried his hair and then put his slippers and bathrobe on, wondering what to do next. He wasn’t tired just yet and knew sleep would not come for a while. But the question was soon put to rest by his growling stomach. He decided to slip downstairs and see if there were any leftovers he could heat up for his late dinner. He was midway down the stairs when he heard the soft, low sounds of the television. His curiosity piqued, he went to investigate. Maybe Lois was still awake.
He was met with no such luck. It was Bruce, sitting alone in the living room, idly watching a movie, though he appeared to be distracted and not all that absorbed in the images on the screen. The man must have heard Clark’s approach, despite the fact that Clark had tried to make no noise. He looked up as Clark reached the doorway.
“Where have you been?” Bruce asked, but the question lacked the accusation and suspicion it might have once had.
“Outside,” Clark replied.
Bruce studied him, seemingly weighing if Clark was being truthful. “You came in, but I never saw you go back out.”
“My window gives me access to the roof,” Clark explained hesitantly, leaning against the doorframe with his right shoulder.
“You were…on the roof?” Bruce asked, silently requiring Clark to explain himself.
Clark shrugged. “Why not? The view of the night sky is pretty amazing here. You know. A view I was denied for half the year being underground,” he added, unable to resist the barb.
But the statement hadn’t been made to make Bruce feel guilty, Clark realized. It just seemed to come naturally, despite how much he’d worked to restrain at least some of his cynicism and sarcasm around the group.
“And,” he continued after a few heartbeats, “truth be told, I rarely got to see views like this before you captured me. My missions almost always took me into heavily populated areas with a lot of light pollution. And when I was in Lex Tower, Lex didn’t like me being outside much, even if there was no way anyone not in a helicopter could have seen me if I’d been up on the roof.”
Clark shrugged, trying to shed some of the loathing he still felt toward his former life and failing to succeed. He didn’t think he’d ever heal from the mental scars Lex had caused him. He sighed and dragged his fingers through his hair.
His voice grew softer. “The only times I got to see night skies like this were the few times I got to go out in between Lex discovering that Kryptonite can hurt me and him clapping that accursed collar around my neck.”
“Hmm,” Bruce hummed in acknowledgment.
Another complaint from Clark’s stomach drew his attention back to why he’d come downstairs in the first place. “Any dinner left?” he inquired.
Bruce nodded just once. “Alfred set aside a bowl of stew for you. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“Thanks.”
Clark pushed himself away from the door, went into the kitchen, and carefully heated up the bowl of stew until it was steaming hot and delicious smells wafted up into his nostrils. He inhaled deeply, his mouth watering. He could scarcely wait to try it. He grabbed a can of soda while he was there, then, having had enough time by himself that night, he took everything to the living room and joined Bruce, though he chose the armchair to sit in rather than the couch where Bruce sat.
“So…what’re we watching?” Clark asked, since the movie had switched to a commercial break for Tide laundry detergent.
“Young Frankenstein,” the billionaire stoically replied, his eyes never leaving the screen, though Clark was convinced the man wasn’t really seeing it at all.
“Cool,” he replied, taking a bite of his dinner. The stew was good. Meaty and hearty and just hot enough not to burn the inside of his mouth. He savored the flavors of the beef, peas, carrots, and potatoes before swallowing and taking another bite. “I love Mel Brooks movies,” he added as he swallowed his second bite. Then, a few minutes later he looked up. “This is good. I’ll have to tell Alfred.”
“He’d appreciate that, yeah,” Bruce nodded. He pulled his eyes from the screen. “So…the roof.”
“I just needed some time alone,” Clark answered warily and a little defensively.
“Uh-huh,” Bruce said in mock agreement.
“Oh, come on, Bruce! Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t need some time alone every now and again! Just because we’re all camped out here in the middle of nowhere in this farmhouse like the damn Brady Bunch doesn’t mean we’re all going to get along like a nice, happy little family,” Clark pointed out harshly.
“Are you complaining? Because camping out here is keeping Lex Luthor from finding you.”
“No!” Clark cried in exasperation. “Look, I’m grateful to be off of Lex’s radar for the time being. But you’ve had me locked up for six months, Bruce. Six months where I didn’t see a shred of sunlight or a single star. Where every time I needed something, I had to rely on others to get it. Excuse me if I wanted some time alone, left to my own devices, left to ponder my own thoughts. Especially now that I might have a future to consider,” he spat acidly.
“So, you’re going to allow me to work on getting you immunity?” Bruce asked carefully.
Clark threw up his one free hand, holding his bowl with the other. “I don’t know, Bruce.”
“You can trust me, you know,” he said evenly.
“Yeah, and you have an ocean in Indiana to sell me,” Clark shot back.
Bruce was silent a moment. Then, “Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?” Clark asked, taking another bite.
“Automatically resort to sarcasm and insults.”
“It’s who I am, remember? The useless assassin who grew up under the tutelage of a psychopath,” he replied mockingly, though it was aimed more at himself than to Bruce.
“You know something?” Bruce asked, as a Papa John’s commercial began. “I don’t believe that.” He muted the television then steepled his fingers together as he turned to sit catty corner to better see Clark.
“You should,” Clark countered bitterly, eating another spoonful of stew.
“I don’t,” Bruce repeated. “No, this isn’t who you are. It has nothing to do with who raised you.” He shook his head firmly. “No. Under all that brashness and bravado and phony tough-guy exterior, you’re just really, really insecure, aren’t you?”
Clark went to protest but Bruce spoke right over him, killing his retort before it even had a chance to grow.
“Not that I blame you,” Bruce continued, “being raised in isolation, taught to fear being seen by anyone. But that’s not what ‘real men’ are supposed to be like, right? So you put on a tough act, pretend to be hardened to any emotion, put people at a distance by wounding them with your words so that they never want to get too close.”
“Now, wait just a minute,” Clark said crossly.
Bruce acted as though he hadn’t heard him. “You make sure they never see the man behind the curtain, just the jerk who calls himself Oz the Great and Powerful. It’s safer for you, so you think. Safer to allow yourself to automatically revert to being a jerk and a bully, than it is to let people know how uncomfortable you are in your own skin.”
Clark put the mostly empty bowl of stew aside. He gripped the arms of the chair with such force, that if his strength had returned, they would have been in splinters. “Oh ho ho! That’s rich!” he fairly roared. “You think you have me all figured out, don’t you? Oh, the evil assassin must be hiding some pain so he lashes out at others! No, it’s can’t possibly stem from living a life of isolation, being twisted into a killer, always having the threat of death hanging over his head, right? You know nothing!”
“I know a hell of a lot more than you think!” Bruce shot back, his anger flaring. “After my parents died, I did the same thing. Retreated into myself. Took to being short with everyone. Developed a dark sense of humor. Until Alfred called me out on it. He made me be honest with myself. So, I’m asking you now, to be honest with yourself. Are you really the person you present yourself to be? I don’t believe it. If you were, you never would have…had the conversation with me that you did on the plane.” His voice dropped in volume, as if trying to ensure that no one overheard him. It was an oddly respectful move that Clark found himself appreciating.
He took a deep, calming breath before answering. “I…don’t know. I’ve been this way my entire life.”
“Well, maybe next time you spend all night on the roof, you can reflect on it,” Bruce said, a hint to a hard edge to his words.
“You know what? Suddenly, I think I’m done with dinner,” Clark replied angrily, standing. “Enjoy the movie, Bruce.” The words were loaded with poison, but Bruce appeared unfazed.
Clark took his bowl into the kitchen and washed it out, then retreated back to his bedroom. There he paced for a while, muttering under his breath. “He’s wrong. He knows nothing about me. He’s wrong,” he kept repeating as he racked up the miles.
But, after a while, he felt his defensiveness wavering. An annoying little voice in the back of his mind started to wonder if Bruce wasn’t completely wrong. What if he actually had made himself this way? Not because of any personal insecurity, but as a matter of survival? Especially once he’d been collared like a dog, he’d been afraid of Lex. That had also marked the height of Clark’s cynicism and sarcasm. He hadn’t wanted Lex to know he was afraid, because Lex would have used that fear against him.
“Son of a…” he murmured, rolling his eyes.
***
The entire farmhouse was quiet. Clark cautiously crept down the stairs, only to find the living room dark and empty. He switched on one table lamp. The weak orange glow illuminated the room just enough for him to find what he was looking for. He grabbed two of the blank journals from a nearby bookshelf and sat down at the rolltop desk in the corner of the room. The first pen he tried didn’t work, but the second one did. For a moment, he just sat there, staring at the blank page before him, then, tentatively, he set the pen to the paper and began to write with bold, sure strokes.
He kept on writing for hours, only pausing here and there to collect his thoughts as he went along. Finally, half of the first journal was filled. He closed the book, clicked the pen shut, then slipped everything into one of the drawers, hiding it all under a yellow legal pad. He shut the rolltop on the desk, switched off the light, and headed back upstairs in the dark. At least his exceptional night vision had been left unaffected by the loss of his powers, he mused as he easily maneuvered in the dark. He stopped to use the bathroom, getting himself ready for bed, then headed to his bedroom. It was now almost four in the morning, he saw, reading the red numbers on the digital clock. He slipped beneath the warm, heavy blankets, and was almost instantly asleep, his mind calmed by the work he’d done.
To be Continued…
