TO WAKE FROM DREAMS
PART 5
“Clark, come home, please,” Martha said, holding the phone tightly. “You’ve been all around the world this week, not resting for a second. You’ve been everywhere except two places. Smallville and Metropolis!”
“I know, Mom,” Clark said, standing in a phone booth in Phuket, Thailand. “I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m trying to get used to this. You know… my new life.”
“Clark, you never even tried to find a way out of this mess so you could salvage your old one.”
“Mom, I thought of everything! You think I want this? I’ve hurt everyone I love the most. You and dad,” he started.
“Honey, no – “
“You aren’t admitting it, but you are both beside yourselves with the realization that your son is gone, and that the only part of him that still exists, you can’t, logically, know. You can’t talk to me openly ever again. I can’t go to those games with Dad. I know he’s upset about that. I briefly saw Perry and Jimmy at the police station when I caught Al Capone and company. The looks in their eyes…”
Martha looked at the ceiling. She could hear the pain in his voice, but she couldn’t get him to come back. She couldn’t get him to believe that together they might be able to figure something out. It was as if all his hope had been shot out of him when those bullets hit.
“And Lois,” he started.
Martha could hear something change in his voice, talking about Lois.
“I’ve never seen her that way. I… I can’t ever see her that way again. It’s better if I start my new life as just Superman so she can start to move on.”
“Don’t you want to go to Metropolis and see how she’s doing at least?”
“Of course I want to see her, Mom. But I can’t. The last time I saw her, she was at the Planet. Perry was watching over her and I’m sure he and Lois and Jimmy are taking care of each other. I don’t want to see what my… *lie*… is doing to her! To all of them!”
“Then Clark, please. Just… come home. Your father and I really want to see you.”
“I’m not moving back, Mom. You have to understand. I can’t move back. Not like this. Not when so much has changed and I can’t even be me anymore. I promise I’ll check in with you just as soon as…”
Martha waited. “As what, Clark?” she finally begged.
“…as soon as I’ve got my new life worked out.”
“What does that mean, Clark?”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” he said sadly. “I have no idea.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Clark hung up the phone and stepped out of the phone booth. He looked around the strange land he was in for the moment. He’d been there before on Superman duty. He remembered thinking it was lovely and unique. Standing on that city street just then, though, with foreign customs going on busily around him, he hated it and wished he was anywhere else. He’d never felt more wretched and alone.
He sat down on the curb and stared at his hands.
He missed his old life so much.
He missed waking up, knowing he was going to the Daily Planet, where he would see Perry and Jimmy and Lois and do the one thing he loved to do – report the news. With Lois.
He missed her the most.
She haunted him every second of every day. He could hear her laugh and see her soft, sultry brown eyes. He could see that wonderful expression she would wear when he would tease her. The expression that always made him smile even bigger. He could feel her lips on his from the times they’d kissed. He’d always hoped that someday he would be able to kiss her all the time, not because of a story, but because they were together. That she was as in love with him as he was with her. He’d hoped all the time.
Thoughts of Lois always ended the same awful way, though. With her calling out his name, sounding scared and alone and lost. Her eyes that night when they had looked into his, begging him to do something. Everything she had said that night and the way her sobs had wracked her body.
Lois.
He hadn’t slept all week. He just kept thinking about everything. How Clark Kent was gone and what it meant for him. He just kept thinking about the hopes and dreams – those professional and those romantic and personal – that had been dashed when those three bullets had hit him.
He missed everything so much! His apartment –
He missed his apartment. It was his. His place in Metropolis. It was the only place he ever had that was *his*. Not a room in the house he grew up in, not a motel room… but his own apartment. A place where *he* belonged. Where people visited him. Where he relaxed after a long day.
As feelings of loneliness and longing began to really swell within him on that foreign street in Thailand, he realized what he needed right now. What he really needed was to be at home.
He wasn’t ready to go to Smallville and face his parents yet.
But there was another home waiting for him where he didn’t have to face anything but the past he’d lost.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It smelled like Chicken Soup.
Clark took his coat off and looked around the apartment suspiciously, wondering why it would smell like anything when he hadn’t been in it in a week. He shook his head, thinking he must just be crazy. Or overtired.
In fact, his eyes stung with exhaustion. He realized why it was catching up with him now. Whenever he’d had a long day before, he would never realize it until he’d walked through his front door. Being home, being near his own bed, his body would finally realize how tired it was.
He’d been running around… running away, really… all week, barely sleeping a wink. And once again, walking into his apartment – flying onto the balcony actually – brought his pent up exhaustion to the surface.
“It probably smells like Chicken Soup because when you think of home, you think of Chicken Soup. And I am finally home,” he rationalized to himself, while yawning a big yawn. Tiredness was washing over him in waves now.
He had only wanted to stay for a moment.
But he found himself heading for the bedroom on automatic pilot.
The room was dark and quiet. So quiet, with a beautiful rhythm lulling him, that he wouldn’t dare turn on a light and break the silent rhythm.
He changed quietly at super speed into boxers and climbed into bed, falling fast asleep to the beautiful, vaguely familiar, soft rhythm.
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