Previous Fic in Series: Recycling
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Ten Minutes Ago-Clark shut off the television. The memorial service for Superman was only an hour in, and his curiosity was long-since overridden by frustration. Despite his wife’s now half-abandoned efforts at rousing his memory, both Superman and Clark Kent remained strangers to him. He leaned back on the sofa and rubbed his forehead, the lightheadedness of the past few mornings returning again.
The sound of Lois’s key in the lock interrupted his thoughts. With a smile, he rose to help her as she struggled with the bags of groceries…
…and the room disappeared.
Clark blinked. He was floating, adrift in the endless vacuum of space. Eternity stretched above him, below him, and on all sides. The hose of his air supply floated up into his field of vision, taunting him. His lungs ached.
“I’m sorry, Lois.” His lips formed the words soundlessly. The stars around him dimmed.
“Lois Lane, Clark Kent.” The voice of the man interviewing him was gruff, with a southern twang. They were in an office, and nobody wanted to read about geckos. His wife had just flung open the door and steamrolled in, pitching to their boss about a crazy scientist who might not be so crazy.
Clark rose from his seat, awestruck.
Lois’s nod was dismissive of the bespectacled nobody. “Nice to meet you.” She turned her attention back to Mr. White. There was a theater being razed. Despite her warnings, Clark would fall for her.
His heart was pounding, desperately trying to get oxygen to his brain. It was futile. The tips of his fingers were as blue as his suit. Moving them was difficult.
“That’s not dancing,” he had told her. She fit perfectly in his arms, as though she belonged there. Nigerian princesses did not impress her, but helpful spacemen did; her faint gasp as they left the floor was sweeter than the music. His cape swirled around them as they slowly drifted. “Not part of the Earth, not part of the stars,” he told her as they broke cloud-cover. He was both, and he needed her to see both: the ordinary farmboy who could lift space stations, and the alien who watched football and wrote about geckos.
The stars had disappeared for a moment. Earth was a tiny, blue speck in the distance. The pain had finally stopped, and he felt nothing. He couldn’t move his arms.
He held an angel. Lois smiled back at him, tightening her arms around his neck as mountains and fields rolled beneath them. His cape and her veil whipped in the wind. They were flying to heaven! Wait, that couldn’t be right; they must be going someplace else. But they were getting married, and that was miraculous enough. At long last, they were beyond the reach of scheming billionaires, New Kryptonian politics, and their own insecurities. It was incredible, really, just how much they’d needed to overcome to get to this point. The minister’s face was vague and blurry. The words “Don’t give up" drifted through his mind as the side of his head struck something hard.
-Present-The living room slowly faded into view amidst a flurry of spots. He was lying on his side, legs bent, his left cheek resting on the back of one hand on the floor. The mangled remains of what seemed to be a spoon sat a few inches away from his nose.
“…think he’s coming around…” said a voice.
Clark sucked in a breath. The air rushed into him without resistance, but he still pulled at it greedily, trying to dispel the memory of empty lungs.
“Clark!” There were footsteps, and feet, and now his head was being lifted onto Lois’s lap. She brushed the hair back from his forehead as he desperately gasped. “Honey, can you hear me?”
He could hear her, but couldn’t answer. He shifted so that he could look into her eyes, silently trying to reassure her. He wanted to tell her that he would be fine; and for some reason, he desperately wanted her to know that a good horse was like a member of the family.
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