From Part 6:“Truth and justice,” she told him simply. “I think those are the things your girlfriend would want from you – would expect from you – whether it’s the Superman you or the other you I don’t know.”
“And if she leaves me… if I lose her, what do I do then?”
“You grovel,” she told him, her mouth quirking in a smile. “Do they teach men to grovel on Krypton?”
He smiled in spite of himself. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I’m from Kansas.”
“You’ll do fine, then. You must have picked it up along the way.”
“I thought you hated it when I was pathetic.”
“I hated it because I can’t resist it. I have a feeling your girlfriend might be even more susceptible.”
Privately, Clark doubted it. Aloud he said, “I’ll think about it. Everything you’ve said… I’ll think about it.”
She nodded. “Thanks for the bagel.”
“You’re welcome.” He stood up and cleared his trash off her desk. “I’ll see you at 9:00 tomorrow?”
She nodded. “At the fountain. I’ll be there.”
“Thanks.” He reached for the bag with Lois's bagel and left his attorney's office, feeling more confused than ever.
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Part 7:Clark dragged his feet a little as he walked back into the newsroom with the rumpled bag from the bakery clutched in his hand. Normally, he loved the newsroom. If Metropolis was his adopted hometown, the people of the
Daily Planet were his adopted family, and he looked forward every day to walking and working in their midst. He was an insider there – a feeling he hadn’t had in very many places – and even though there were good days and bad, it was one place he almost always felt comfortable.
Today, though, he wanted to be practically anywhere else – wanted to escape to the sky and hide amongst the clouds, to lose himself in the middle of a thick, dark forest, or to float on his back in the middle of a salty sea. He needed to be alone, needed time to unravel the Gordian knot his thoughts had become over the past few days. He had been so certain only a day before, so confident, but now the certainty was gone, and all that was left was confusion. And in the busy newsroom, there would be no chance to sort it all out.
You’re making a mistake, Constance had told him, and Clark was beginning to concede that she might be right. But if exiling Superman was the wrong thing to do, what was the right thing? Every other scenario he considered ended in his losing Lois, and when he reached that point in his imagination, he found he couldn’t think any further. If he lost her, he would go on living, of course, but he couldn’t quite conceive of what that life would be like. He only knew that it would be nothing like the life he wanted, nothing like the life he had dreamed of for so long.
And the irony was that it was such a simple dream, really. He didn’t want money or power. He just wanted a wife, a home… maybe a child someday. And he was willing to work for it; he wasn’t expecting anything to be handed to him. But all the hard work in the world wouldn’t make a normal life possible for him.
You live above us, Lois had said to Superman, but it wasn’t true. It would be easier if he
did live above it all – above all the worries and cares and desires of ordinary men. But he didn’t, and that meant that, for him, simple dreams would never be simple at all. He had spent his life learning to adjust, playing the hand he’d been dealt, and being grateful for his many blessings, but it was hard to feel gratitude now. Looking at Lois from across the divide his powers had created, he had a sudden urge to shake his fist at the universe. For a moment, the rage and grief were like a physical place; they were like a room in his heart he thought he’d locked up tight, only to suddenly find himself trapped inside.
“Hi, Clark.” The cheerful voice – one of the women from advertising – startled him, making him blink in surprise. “You all right?” She peered at him curiously.
“Uh, yeah. I’m good. How about you?”
“Fine, thanks. Gotta run, though.” She patted his arm and moved past him. The brief exchange was enough to get Clark moving again, and he crossed the newsroom, feeling the noise and activity scrape against his nerves as he got closer to Lois.
She was sitting at her desk, and she looked up as he approached. He could still see the marks of sadness on her face, but they were less obvious now, and she was more controlled. That should have made it easier to talk to her, but it didn’t. The passion and energy he associated with Lois seemed to have been tamped down, leaving a disturbingly calm simulacrum behind. He tried to remember her as she’d been the night before, soft and warm and responsive in his arms, but already that memory had faded like an old photograph.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
“I, uh, was craving a bagel. I brought you one. Chocolate chip.”
“Thanks.” She took the bag he held out to her and set it to one side on her desk.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?”
“Maybe later. What about you? Where’s yours?”
“Ate it on the way back.”
Her mouth curved in a half smile. “Must’ve been some craving.”
“Yeah.” He forced a chuckle.
“I arranged Superman’s press conference.” Her voice gave no hint as to her feelings. He searched her eyes, and saw nothing there, either – no hint of the pain she’d been in only an hour before. Just calm, cool, collected Lois, giving her partner an update.
But the words struck him like a fresh blow. He could picture it – the entire Metropolis press corps gathered to hear what Superman had to say, and Superman standing mute and doubtful before them, the words he’d prepared stuck in his throat.
I’m yours now... you live above us... all we’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy... making a big mistake... had to make a choice... she should be able to handle this... not sure that’s possible, son... I have to do better... we women can forgive a lot... stand up in front of the whole world and lie... making a big mistake... never run away from you again... when do you stop lying to her...? you’re different tonight... making a big mistake...He felt his chest tighten and for a moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, as the voices seemed to chase one another around in his head.
“Clark?” Lois’s brow creased in confusion, and he knew he’d been silent too long. There was no telling what his face had given away, and he felt all the danger of that. This was not the time for him to be losing his grip on his bland Clark Kent persona. Not today, of all days.
“Uh, good,” he said belatedly, mentally backtracking to confirm that his response was the right one.
“It’s tomorrow at nine o’clock. At the fountain in Centennial Park. Why don’t I pick you up tomorrow morning, and we’ll go together?”
And there it was again: the panic blossoming in his gut, the feeling of being cornered, of being forced to tell another lie. “Oh... um, I figured I’d just come in here... hold down the fort.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d be there with me,” she said in a low voice. Not pleading but insistent. “For moral support, I guess.”
“Then I will. But... let me meet you there. My place is out of your way.”
For a second, he was afraid she would argue, but then she just nodded. “Thanks.”
Clark Kent would arrive late, he thought with despair. She would need him, and once again he wouldn’t be there. And there was no help for it. Not this time. But he promised himself that, one way or another, it would never happen again.
“What do we have on for today?” he asked, desperately needing a change of subject.
“Fire last night at Johnson Middle School. Perry wants us to look into it.”
“Was there something suspicious?”
“The place went up like a tinderbox, Perry says. There’s some talk that it wasn’t up to code – wasn’t safe for kids.”
“Want me to call the fire marshal?”
She nodded. “Actually, I was hoping you could run with this one on your own. I’m going to take some personal time today.”
“You....” Lois never took personal time. Not if she could help it. “Lois, is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head. “I just need some time to myself.”
“Can I see you tonight?” he asked, but even as he said it, he hoped she’d turn him down. He still needed time to think, and if this was to be his last day as Superman, he felt he owed it to Metropolis to be on duty one last night. He was both relieved and, perversely, a little hurt when she shook her head.
“Maybe tomorrow night, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll try to plan something special.”
“That’ll be nice.” The corners of her mouth turned up in an almost-smile. “Thanks for the bagel.” She touched the bag she’d put to one side, and he knew he was being dismissed.
“Lois.” He waited until she looked up, and then he cupped her cheek in his hand, needing to prove to himself that he could still touch her – that it was possible to bridge the distance he felt forming between them. He stroked his thumb across the pale softness of her skin, and she drew a shuddering breath, her eyes drifting shut as she relaxed briefly into his caress. Her hand came up as if to cover his, but he felt only the briefest touch of her fingertips dancing across his knuckles, and then she was drawing her hand away and pulling back, away from his touch.
“I’m sorry.” He invested the words with more feeling than the moment deserved.
“No. It’s just... we can’t do this here.”
“I understand.” But that was a lie. He didn’t understand anything anymore. All the rules seemed to have changed between them overnight, and he didn’t understand them at all. It was as if they were getting farther and farther apart, but he couldn’t seem to tell which one of them was moving. Was she drifting away from him because of her grief over Superman? A grief she couldn’t share with him? Or was he moving away from her because of all she didn’t know, all he hadn’t told her?
A riot of emotions swelled in his chest, buried under a loud tie, a crisp shirt, and a red and gold shield. He wondered what emotions she was hiding and wished he could see beneath her calm exterior to know what was going on in her head and heart, but in this, his x-ray vision was useless.
“I’ll let you finish up.” He retreated then to his own desk, not wanting to feel the sting of a second dismissal. But when she let him go without comment, without trying to keep him there, it still hurt.
He called the fire marshal, and while he was still on the telephone, asking questions and jotting down the answers by rote, he saw her shut down her computer and gather her purse and briefcase. She raised her hand in a brief gesture of farewell as she walked away from him, and when she stepped into the elevator and the doors slid shut between them, he felt a surge of panic. He told himself he was being ridiculous. She was just going home; she wasn’t going to the moon. But it was like the feeling he’d had when she was standing at the fax machine – the feeling that he needed to stop her, needed to
hurry and do something before it was all too late. Even with the fire marshal talking in one ear, Clark could hear the groan of the old elevator descending. He could beat her to the lobby, he thought, could catch her before she left the building....
But something kept him in his seat, his right hand dutifully scratching out notes while his left curved into an impotent fist.
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Clark turned in his story at five o’clock, feeling as though he’d spent the entire day in Purgatory. He and Jimmy had gone to Johnson Middle School, and as Jimmy had rushed around taking pictures, Clark had moved more slowly, taking in details he’d missed the night before when he’d stood there so uselessly as Superman.
And now, with his story turned in and the newsroom growing quieter, as more people left for the day, Clark sat at his desk, flipping through the pictures Jimmy had taken. The beautiful, historic gymnasium was gone now but for a stand of charred bleachers that peeked up from the ruins. Never again would that place be filled with young voices and the squeak of shoes against the polished wooden floor, but that hadn’t bothered Clark nearly so much as the thought that the fire could have taken place when the gym was filled with children. He imagined the cheers turning to panic, and the stampede as alarms sounded and smoke filled the room. Where would Clark Kent be while that was happening? Would he be standing on the sidelines with a notebook in his hand? Or would he be sneaking in to help as a plain-clothes superhero, jeopardizing everything he held dear? He knew from experience that he could only work a certain number of ‘miracles’ before people started asking questions he couldn’t answer. How long could he realistically survive in Metropolis without Superman?
Unconsciously, he slid his hand across his chest, beneath his tie, and into the placket of his shirt. He fingered the stiff shield with its bold, confident S, and he remembered his conversation with Constance that morning. “You’re not two men,” she’d said, but at that moment he wished that he could be – wished he could carve himself in two and give one half to his adopted planet and the other half to Lois. Wished he really could be in two places at once, rather than just creating that illusion. Wished that he didn’t have to make a choice between duty and desire.
And he wished, most of all, that he knew what he was going to say at his press conference the following morning. He thought of the speech he had prepared and wondered if he could actually say those words out loud, could go through with exiling half of himself.
He suddenly realized that he was sitting in the middle of the newsroom with his hand stuffed inside his shirt like Napoleon, and he pulled it out quickly, smoothing his tie and glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. No one seemed to be paying any attention, fortunately, and he quickly closed the folder on the pictures Jimmy had taken and shut down his workstation. When he left the
Daily Planet, it was from the roof rather than from the front door.
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He’d interrupted a drug deal – the second that night – an activity that always made him feel like he was aboard a sinking ship and bailing water with a thimble. He’d sent the men involved off to jail, but he knew their stay would be brief, and in the meantime, Metropolis was full of others like them, creeping out of cracks and crevices under cover of darkness to peddle their poisonous wares. As he stood in a filthy back alley, alone now, he thought of Constance Hunter – of her unwavering ideals and her weariness with the realities of the justice system. Those were the things that had drawn him to her and made him sense in her a kindred spirit. He had the same ideals, but he also had many of the same frustrations.
Lois shared those ideals, too, but he couldn’t share his frustrations with her because of all she didn’t know. She had no idea that he spent every night out in Metropolis fighting crimes large and small – no idea the toll that could take on his spirit on nights like this, when it seemed that nothing he did made a difference. Yet Constance knew. On the strength of a few days’ acquaintance, he had confided to his attorney what he couldn’t confide to the woman he loved. He would have sworn that he would never consider cheating on Lois, but he had been doing just that, he realized. He had left her standing heartbroken at the fax machine that morning while he sought the comfort and counsel of another woman. It wasn’t a betrayal of the flesh, but a betrayal of the soul.
He sank to the ground, heedless of the damp and filth, and took a shuddering breath as he realized what he’d done – how very far he was from where he wanted to be. Lois’s apartment was just a few miles away, and he ached for her presence – for the encouragement that only she seemed able to give him. But he couldn’t go there. Not now, with so much standing between them.
He had no idea how long he sat huddled there in that dank alley beneath a smudge of starless sky. The city hummed around him, and if he’d tried – if he’d cared – he could have picked out individual sounds. Cars going by, televisions and radios playing, phones ringing, people talking, planes taking off and landing, elevators dinging... he could have heard it all, but he let it all fade into a blur of white noise, almost like music.
There were thousands of sounds. Millions, even. And later, he couldn’t have said what it was about that one small sound that made his head come up – made him leave off his worrying and his self-recriminations and really listen. But something made him tune out the din of the city and his own troubled thoughts and search for the one sound that had been... not right.
That’s all it was. A vague feeling of wrongness. Of something there that shouldn’t be. It was a sound that raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and he had no idea why.
He held his breath and listened,
really listened, and he heard it again – a thin, raspy cry, like a toy doll with dying batteries. But it wasn’t a doll, it couldn’t be, because when he listened for it, he could also hear the flutter of a tiny heart.
“Oh, God!” The words felt like they’d been ripped right out of his chest as he took off toward the sound. It was coming from the end of the alley, from a collection of battered metal garbage cans. Even as he approached, he was scanning them with his x-ray vision, searching desperately for signs of what he’d heard and hoping just as desperately that he was wrong.
It’s a cat, he thought frantically, as he fixed his gaze on the garbage cans.
Surely it was just a cat... He followed the sound of the muffled heartbeat, quickly ripping the lid off of a battered can and letting it crash to the ground. The sweet-sharp smell of rotting food rose up around him, gagging him.
“Oh, God,” he said again, but softly this time. Because he’d found it, wrapped in a back issue of the
Daily Planet, like something at the fish market. He lifted it out carefully, and for a dizzying moment, he felt transported back in time; spots seemed to dance before his eyes, and he saw not his hands but his mother’s hands, lifting another baby and clasping him to her heart.
He caught sight of his own byline as he peeled the newspaper away, the name ‘Clark Kent’ jumping out at him amid the jumble of words on the page. It felt like a sign of some sort, though at that moment he couldn’t have said what it meant. And then the moment was forgotten as the baby gave another weak cry when it felt the rush of cold air against its skin, its body giving a jerky spasm at the same time.
The paper was stuck to the baby’s skin in places, and for a second, Clark was reminded, horrifyingly, of one of his mother’s
papier mache projects. But with the paper peeled away, more or less, he registered the male genitals and felt, irrationally, that some sort of progress had been made – that a puzzle piece had been slipped into place – as if knowing that the child he’d fished out of the garbage was a boy made some sort of difference. It didn’t, of course. Far more important were the blue-tinged lips and the chill of the skin that was still streaked with blood and vernix and bits of
Daily Planet. Clark swept the baby with his heat vision, warming him gently as he used his hearing to monitor the beating of the child’s heart and the whisper of each breath.
The baby felt almost weightless, as if Superman’s large hands were the only thing keeping him from floating away into that dark, starless sky. But as he found his fist and began to gnaw on it hungrily, Clark knew that this child would not drift away without a fight. At that moment, Superman held
life in his hands – life with all its infinite possibilities and potential – and his own words from the courtroom came back to him:
...in the moment that I save a life, I know two things most people never figure out: why I’m here, and how I can make a difference.His mother’s hands had lifted him from a spaceship, and together, she and his father had crafted a man named Clark Kent... and Superman. They had formed him for this crazy, complicated dual existence so that on this night he could be in this place, holding a miracle in his hands. And maybe there
were things he would never have – maybe a life without Lois stretched out in front of him like an endless desert highway – but he knew that even for her, he could not turn his back on half of himself.
With the baby cradled carefully in one arm, he ripped the cape from his shoulders with the other. He swaddled the infant as best he could, to protect him during the flight, and he thought again of his parents, of what they had done, and all his old dreams surfaced; he wondered if he were to take this baby home instead of to the hospital... if he and Lois could....
But, no. He knew that keeping this little foundling was as much a pipe dream as his fantasies of a life without Superman. He’d spent the last two days chasing a mirage, and it was time for him to deal in realities, however difficult they might be. This baby had been wrapped in his newspaper, and now in his cape, but that did not make him Clark Kent’s.
He pulled the baby close and shielded his face carefully with one hand before lifting off, out of the alley and toward the hospital.
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Clark had known the baby would be taken from him immediately, but his arms felt empty as the baby was whisked away from him and into the care of others. He had done his part, and now it was time for the hospital staff to do theirs – to feed him and clean him and warm him and eventually to surrender him to the proper authorities, who would find him a home. But even though Clark served no purpose there, he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Usually, when he brought accident victims to the hospital, he stayed just long enough to give the medical personnel whatever information he could, and then he took off again, disappearing into the sky over Metropolis. The sight of Superman pacing the ER waiting room was an unusual one and drew the stares of staff and patients alike, but Clark ignored them all. Eventually, he settled near a window, staring out at the parking lot, where tall lights illuminated a few ragged pansies struggling in their beds here and there amongst the cars.
“Superman?” A nurse approached him and touched him gently on the arm. “I thought you might want this.”
She held his cape, neatly folded now but dirty from when he’d been sitting in the alley and torn across the top, where he’d ripped it from his own shoulders. “Thank you,” he said, accepting the length of fabric. “Is the baby...?”
“He’s going to be fine,” she promised him. “We gave him some sugar water and are warming him up.”
“He was in a garbage can,” Clark said, still trying to wrap his mind around that fact. “I heard a sound, and at first, I wasn’t sure what it was... it wasn’t even really a cry. I thought he might be a cat at first.”
“The fact that he was in the garbage can might have saved his life,” the nurse said, sounding matter-of-fact. “It kept him warm – warmer, anyway, than he would have been out on the street.”
“And you’re sure he’ll be all right?”
“He hasn’t been examined by a pediatrician yet, but all indications are that he’ll be fine,” the nurse said. “It’s a good thing you were in that alley tonight, though. You know, several states are considering passing safe haven legislation that would allow mothers to abandon their newborns in a safe place – like a hospital or a police station – without fear of prosecution. I hope New Troy will consider a law like that.”
“I hope they will, too,” he said. And in that moment, he realized that while he’d done all he could for the little boy as Superman, perhaps there was more that Clark Kent could do. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be at the
Planet, writing up the story of what had happened that night.
The nurse must have sensed his sudden restlessness, because she said, “Oh, Superman...one more thing: The nurses like to give these babies a name – something we can call them while they’re here with us. Since you found this one, would you like to name him?”
The yearning he’d felt in the alley returned full force. He knew that, for so many reasons, this might be the only chance he ever had to name a baby, and for a moment he wished desperately that this could really be his child, his son. The name “Kent” was on the tip of his tongue, but that was too close for comfort, so instead he said, “Jonathan. I’d like to call him Jonathan.”
“Baby Jonathan,” the nurse repeated with a smile. “It’s a fine name and will give him a good start in life. Thank you, Superman.”
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In the darkened newsroom of the
Daily Planet, Clark Kent did two things: First, he wrote up the story of Superman’s rescue of Baby Jonathan, interviewing himself as he went along, just as he had so many times before. He sent the story to Perry and then pulled up his press release, quickly deleting most of it, leaving only the announcement of the formation of the Superman Foundation.
It was a flimsy excuse for a press conference, but it was all he had. Superman was not going anywhere – he knew that now – and the press had already been called. He would have to say something to them, so he would read his statement, and then he would call Constance up to answer any specific questions they might have about the Foundation.
After that, he – Clark – would take Lois somewhere private and tell her everything. He refused to allow himself to hope that conversation would end well, but at least it would be the truth. Truth and justice, Constance had said. That was what he owed Lois. But ever since she’d thrown herself into his arms two days before, he’d been neither honest nor fair. He’d spent every minute building castles in the air, pretending he could arrange the world as he thought it should be, and he’d been too afraid to ask her if the life he was imagining for them was even the life she wanted.
He was still afraid. Terrified, in fact, of what her response would be. But in a day that had been filled with confusion, two things finally stood before him in sharp relief: He had to be Superman, and he had to tell Lois the truth.
Finally, all that would be between them would be the truth.
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As usual, thanks to my friend Sara for her awesome encouragement and advice! Additional thanks to Nancy/Classicalla for doing medical beta on this part and patiently answering all my questions, despite being very busy with real life these days. Thank you so much, Nancy! And thanks, as always, to those of you who have commented and let me know you're reading. 
I think I should be able to wrap this up in one more part, but real life has kind of caught up with me, so it may be a couple of weeks before it's posted. It's coming, though, I promise!
