Hi! I'm back!
Since I am always forgetting to add the definitions of my story titles, I figure I'd better start off with this, yes?
im·bro·glio /ɪmˈbroʊlyoʊ/
–noun, plural -glios.
1. a misunderstanding, disagreement, etc., of a complicated or bitter nature, as between persons or nations.
2. an intricate and perplexing state of affairs; a complicated or difficult situation.
3. a confused heap.
Okay, that being said. This originally started out because I wanted to torture poor Clark. At first, this was supposed to be a self-projection piece, but it went sort of beyond that...
Anyhoo, thanks to Cape Fetish (who also suggested the title) and LaraMoon for spurring me on and reading the tidbits I deviously sent iddy biddy bit at a time. And thanks to Psychofurball, who has promised to brainstorm. Muahahaha!
On a final note, before I get murderlized for this part, not everything is as it seems. Bum bum BUUUUUUUUM!!!
(Set after the series, but the last episode didn't happen. Because I said so. So neener.)
-
It was raining outside. Clark watched through the window as rivulets of rain trailed slippery paths down the pane of glass. This was perhaps the most exciting thing he had done all day.
For three months now, he had been out of work. For three months now, he could barely open a jar of peanut butter without the assistance of his mother.
He felt his stomach tighten with hunger. It had taken a while to recognize the hunger pains for what they were – before; he hadn’t really needed food on a daily basis. Slowly, wincing slightly as his hips cried out in protest, he rose from the chair that he had positioned before the window.
With a slight limp, Clark trekked down the kitchen of the farmhouse, careful to make his way silently past his parent’s room. He knew that they loved him, but even though they assured him that what had happened hadn’t been his fault; he could still hear the resentment in their voice, the disappointment with every word they spoke. He couldn’t say that he really blamed them. In all honestly, he had to wonder how they could even look at him at all, let alone speak to him.
Grabbing a piece of left over turkey from the fridge, he made a pathetic attempt at a jog back up to his room, as fast as he could. The effort made his lungs burn and his waist ache, but the overwhelming sense of relief to be back in the safety of his own room made the exertion worth the pain. Once the door was closed, he leaned heavily against the old oak as the dizziness overtook him, and he was forced to close his eyes and take several long deep breaths.
A soft cling of metal against wood caused his eyes to flash open. Bringing up his left hand, he sneered at the simple band of metal that seemed to be mocking him. Somehow, for some reason, he had slipped the ring back on during the course of the day. Clenching the turkey leg between his teeth, he yanked the offending piece of jewelry off with enough force to leave an ache in his finger before he hurled it across the room, where it landed with a clatter that seemed to reverberate down his spine.
The room began to swim around him as the air became to thin. Gasping for breath, he stumbled towards the small twin sized bed that he had slept in as a boy where he collapsed, the piece of meat falling from his mouth onto the worn quilt as he fought away the urge to empty the contents of his stomach onto the hard wood floor.
For three months now, he had been a widower. Of his own hand.
In the five and a half years that he had been Superman, he had not killed anyone. Not until that final day.
Officially, Superman quit because he was unable to save a woman that he had spent years protecting. The gossip mongers speculated that he had been in love with the reporter. Officially, Clark Kent quit the Daily Planet because he could not handle the grief of losing his wife. The gossip mongers speculated that he is currently searching for the wayward superhero to exact his revenge.
In a way, they were correct on both counts.
However, what no one knew, with the exception of his parents, was the truth that he tried to hide even from himself.
Little more than three months ago; thirteen weeks, three days, and seventeen hours, to be more precise, they had taken him by surprise. They captured his wife while he was dealing with the aftermath of an earthquake halfway around the world, and had kept her there for almost the entire fourteen hours that he had been gone. When he finally returned to his home, looking forward to nothing more than being able to forget the horrors in the arms of his wife, he found the brownstone vandalized beyond the point of repair, and found a note written in his wife’s own shaking handwriting.
It had been a trap. Of course, he knew this. Of course, he went in with engines roaring, too sure of his abilities to give caution a second thought.
Too late, he felt the blinding pain of green kryptonite. Too late, he felt the needle prick his arm as the injection of red kryptonite, melted down to a liquid state.
Always, the red rock had had unstable side effects, whether it was apathy, power transference, or unstable bouts of strength. Never before though had it seemed to put him in such a hallucinatory state of uncontrollable rage. He had the vaguest recollection of being tossed into a cell. He could not recall exactly what it was that he saw while in the red haze, but when he woke up, the body of his wife was crumpled at his feet, her blood on his hands.
Clark did not realize that he was shaking, or that he had been crying, until he felt the slightest pressure on his shoulder. For a brief moment, hope welled in his chest until he realized that it was not his wife who had come to offer comfort, but his mother.
“Clark, you have to come out of here soon,” she spoke softly, brushing a soothing hand over his shoulder.
“I don’t know how,” he answered as his heart fell, aching all over again. “I’ve forgotten.”
“Forgot what, sweety? How to go outside?”
He shook his head and buried his face into his pillow. “I’ve forgotten how to be without any of it.”
His mother had no words for him, just held him softly in her strong, infallible arms.
She squeezed him in the shelter of her embrace, ensuring that his attention was on her when she spoke next. “It wasn’t your fault, Clark,” she insisted adamantly. “Your control was stripped away from you. You couldn’t have done anything.”
“Couldn’t I?” He had wanted to scream that at her, to shout until his throat was raw, but it came out high pitched and weak instead. “I killed my wife, mom! With my own hands!”
And after he had done that, when the haze of unreality lifted away, he had murdered the people who had lured him there. To his horror, he felt very little guilt over their destruction.
He supposed that it was a sort of poetic justice that his powers had left soon after.
**
The building was old and worn, a warehouse that had once been used to store car parts. A tip to Detective Henderson from Bobby Bigmouth assured that it now housed something less machine and more human.
The SWAT team waited for the cue, and when it was given, they stormed the decrepit building.
The place was empty except for one room. Its sole occupant laid on her side, staring blankly at the wall, not even paying attention to the raw skin of her wrists, where the handcuffs had rubbed away too much skin.
Heart in his throat, Henderson knelt beside the prone woman. Her eyes flickered up to his before they returned to their vacant stare, giving no indication that she recognized him.
“Lois?”
-end part one
