From last time:
“This is complicated for everyone…” she began.
“How complicated is it? I’m not the first man to come home from war. I fought. I got wounded. It’s happened to plenty of people before me and they managed to go back to their lives just fine.”
“Those aren’t battle scars on your back,” she said as she turned back around to look at him. Lois had thrown down the gauntlet. It was a step she’d been avoiding since he’d returned home. She watched as his posture stiffened. He was preparing to shut her out. “Something happened to you out there, something you can’t forget no matter how hard you try. Something that keeps you from sleeping at night. That keeps you from talking to me. I’m not stupid, Clark. Whatever you think you’re protecting me from, it’s not working.”
He stood up, backing away from the table. “I was ambushed and shot,” he said, his voice betraying nothing. “I was taken prisoner by Nor. He held me for six weeks and four days. And he tortured me for every moment of it. He strung me up. He starved me. He beat me unconscious because it amused him. If Ching and a commander named Talan hadn’t found me, Nor would have killed me. There. Now you know.”
Each word cut her deeply. She said nothing, stunned not by the particulars, but by the fact that he’d told her anything at all. For so long, he’d kept her completely in the dark. It didn’t matter how much it hurt, how his torment was now something she could imagine. She would find a way to be strong for him, to shoulder whatever part of the burden he’d let her take up.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry for everything you went through. I’m sorry you went through it alone.”
“It’s over,” he said. “I try not to think about it.”
The sharp whistle of the tea kettle shattered the fragile silence that had settled between them. Without saying another word, he turned and walked out of the kitchen. Numbly, she watched him go, ignoring the shriek of steam rising up behind her. She wiped away a tear. And then another.
********
New Stuff:
“I told my wife,” he said flatly, staring straight up at the ceiling.
“What did you tell her?” his shrink asked.
“I told her about what Nor did to me,” Clark replied.
“How did she react?”
He grunted. “I didn’t wait around to find out.”
“What made you decide that now was the time to tell her?”
“I don’t know. I just…I couldn’t…” He fidgeted with his cape and tried to keep his hands from trembling. “I guess I realized that what I was doing wasn’t working anymore. I could keep hiding the truth from her, but it was exhausting. It was hard telling you, but I got through it. I figured it was time to at least try.”
“Was it difficult telling her?”
Clark laughed humorlessly. “Yeah,” he admitted. “She looked…hurt, when I told her. Ever since I got back, she’d been asking me to tell her what happened. And when I did…she didn’t want to know. She was better off not knowing.”
“Was that her judgment, or yours?”
He dropped his cape and dragged a hand through his hair, sighing. “I don’t know. Maybe it was mine. I’d hoped that I’d feel…relieved… unburdened…something. But I felt so numb.”
“I imagine you felt numb because you could tell her the facts, but you couldn’t allow yourself to re-experience the emotions that those events created. Does that sound right?”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Why isn’t this getting easier?”
“It takes time, Superman. I wish I had a better answer, but it takes time. You’ve taken an important step, but there’s still more to be done.”
********
He landed on the porch, changing back into his normal clothes. It was getting darker earlier now and the nights were getting crisper. He opened the door and walked into the farmhouse.
“Hi honey,” his mother said from the kitchen. She came out to meet him and kissed him on the cheek.
“Hi Mom,” he replied. “Lois home?”
“She’s on a patrol,” Martha said quietly. In the living room, Clark could hear his father and his son playing a game of Chutes and Ladders. He wondered if the twinge of disappointment he felt was the same feeling she’d had early in their relationship when he was constantly leaving her in the lurch. He was thankful that she was carrying the burden of his responsibilities, even though it pained him to feel so inadequate, so incapable of doing what had once come naturally to him.
“It’s almost Jon’s bedtime,” he said.
“Do you want to do the honors?” his mother asked. He silently prayed that this would go well. Some nights when Lois wasn’t home, Jon would go to bed without any problems. And sometimes the disruption to his nightly ritual turned into an ordeal.
Clark made his way to the living room. “Hey buddy,” he said.
“Hi Daddy!” Jon exclaimed. He stood up and ran to his father.
Clark scooped the little pajama clad boy up in his arms. Jon wrapped his arms around his father’s neck and Clark returned his son’s hug. “Ready for bed?” Clark asked as he kissed the crown of Jon’s hair.
“Okay,” Jon acquiesced. So far, so good, Clark thought with a quick thanks to whatever deities could claim a role in Jon’s good mood.
Father and son made their way upstairs and Clark helped Jon brush his teeth and prepare for bed. Jon picked out a book and hopped onto the bed, waiting for his father to tuck him in. “Where’s Mommy?” he asked innocently.
“Mommy’s working,” Clark replied.
“Do you work, Daddy?” Jon asked.
Clark could feel his expression settling into a wry grin. “I help Grandpa with the farm. But I used to be a writer, like Mommy.”
“Mommy’s books don’t have any pictures,” Jon said, his tone one of disappointment.
“No, they don’t,” Clark agreed. “How about tomorrow, you and I write a story? And we’ll even draw pictures.”
Jon’s face lit up in a smile. “Yeah,” he said excitedly.
“All right. Let’s read Curious George, now.” Jon let his father pull the covers up around him and settled in to listen to the story. The little boy yawned and could barely keep his eyes open for the whole story. Not long after Clark had finished reading to him about the adventures of the mischievous little monkey, Jon was fast asleep.
Clark stood up silently and whispered, “Goodnight, little guy. I love you.” He shut off the light and quietly pulled the door closed behind him. He made his way back downstairs to the den. His parents were enjoying a cup of tea and watching the evening news together. They both looked up and favored him with a smile as he entered the room. He wondered if he and Lois would ever get back to being as comfortable together as his parents were.
“Jon asleep?” his father asked.
“Yeah. Teeth brushed, tucked in, story read,” Clark replied.
His mother regarded him with a sympathetic expression. “Is everything all right, honey?”
“Yeah, Mom, everything’s fine,” he said, knowing he didn’t sound convincing. “I’m just going to go for a walk. Clear my head.” Clark turned and walked out of the room and out onto the porch. He looked up at the clear autumn night’s sky. Countless stars were scattered across the heavens, glittering brightly. He stared up at the dark swirls of constellations. Shooting stars streaked across the sky.
He walked lazily to the edge of his parents’ property, following the length of fence that demarcated the boundary of the farm. He tapped in a few loose nails holding up the wooden slats. The corn stalks were almost as tall as he was, the wheat was just about ready to be harvested, and pumpkins had grown fat on the vines. The crops would keep him and his father busy for the next few weeks. He hoped the work would help keep his mind occupied with something other than dark thoughts about New Krypton. Looking up, he saw the familiar sight of his wife descending from the heavens. She touched down softly in the path near the wheat fields.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“Hey,” he replied. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. “Metropolis was pretty quiet.”
Clark extended a hand toward his wife. She spun out of her suit and into old, worn out jeans and sweater. She took his outstretched hand. They walked silently along the edge of the farm. Even though she was just as impervious to the cold as he was, he pulled her closer at the first hint of a cool autumn breeze, draping his arm across her shoulders. “I love you,” he said quietly.
“I love you,” she whispered in response.
He stopped, reached out to caress her cheek, and kissed her. She let him pull her into his arms and tucked her head under his chin. Clark kissed the crown of her hair and closed his eyes. Listening to the sound of her heartbeat soothed him and calmed his troubled nerves. It shouldn’t have been like this. They should have had some time together as newlyweds, time to get used to being married, time to figure out what that meant for them, before having a world full of troubles dropped on them. But instead, he was trying to figure out how to be a husband and a father at the same time. He was trying to figure out his marriage at the same time that he was trying to figure out how to fit into a world that had changed over the last four years. He was trying to figure out his place in Lois’s life, given how much she’d changed. Why couldn’t they just slow the world to a stop, make it wait for them a little while, until they got things figured out?
********
Lois awoke suddenly, she tried to focus on the sound that roused her, the voice that she knew better than any other in the world. She strained to make out the words, but they were completely unintelligible. "Clark?" she whispered, uncertain whether he was awake. His back was to her, physically keeping her at bay. She touched his shoulder. He continued to murmur, repeating the same words in a mantra she couldn't understand. "Sweetheart?"
"Baroth et nias di …baroth et nias di…baroth…"
Lois wrapped her arm around him, pulling him closer to her. She realized that he was trembling, his voice high and agitated, almost shrill. "Baroth et nias di…nias…nias…nias…"
"Shhh, sweetheart, it's all right," she whispered. She felt him struggle, his arms thrashing, his body contorting as he tried to break free. Lois held him a little tighter, afraid that he still did not know his own strength and in this odd nightmare halfway between waking and sleeping, that he'd lash out. In these nightmares, in these horrible dreams, when he'd flail and fight, she would hold him. Physically invulnerable, he could do her no harm. Eventually, he'd give in, realizing that he was home and safe, and he'd fall asleep again.
"Clark…Clark, it's okay. Honey, it's okay…" Her voice grew slightly louder. He stilled in her embrace.
"Lois?" he breathed her name, a question that made her believe that he was afraid she wasn't really there. He placed his hand on top of hers, holding it against his bare chest.
"I'm here, honey, I'm here. You're okay." She stroked his hair. He fell silent and for a long moment neither said anything.
"What does it mean?" she asked at last.
"What?"
"What you were saying before. It was in Kryptonian, wasn't it? It was something like Bar oth…"
"Baroth et nias di," he replied flatly.
"That's it," she responded. "What does it mean?"
He paused. "I'll never tell you."
She felt the knife twist in her chest. Tears pricked at her eyes. She couldn't even begin to think about what he meant. She would have wondered what could have made him say that, what could have made him shut her out like that, but she was too stunned by the fact that all of the air had been drawn out of the room and she was unable to even take a simple breath. "Clark?" she managed at last, her voice breaking.
"No, that's what it means," he explained, his voice wavering. "It means 'I'll never tell you.'"
A shuddering breath escaped her. She hugged him more tightly, wishing he would turn around so she could look into his eyes. "Wh…why?" she asked. "Who were you talking to?"
She felt him sigh. "When Nor…held me prisoner, I'd sort of fade in and out of consciousness. I was delirious, I guess. I'd start speaking in English…he wanted to know what I was saying. He was just taunting me, I guess."
"Do you remember what you were saying? What it was you wouldn't tell him?"
"It was your name," he confessed. "I must have been saying it over and over again. He asked me what it meant, what it was I kept repeating. He'd say your name and it sounded…wrong. He had no right. He had no right to say it. I wouldn't tell him. I couldn't. I couldn't let him know about you."
She closed her eyes, feeling a tear slip down her cheek. She took a deep breath, hoping that she could hide the fact that she was crying. "He tried to make you tell him, didn't he?"
"Yeah," Clark admitted reluctantly. He continued to hold her hand against his chest, but he didn’t turn around. She felt him trace his thumb against the skin on the back of her hand. He wasn’t going to let her in, but he wasn’t going to let her go, either. He held onto her, like he held onto the thread of their relationship, desperately hoping it wouldn’t fray or break.
********
“I’m trying to figure out where I fit in in my own life,” he said quietly from his usual perch on the couch. “I’m not doing my job. Ultrawoman’s taking care of that. I’m trying to make things right with my wife, but I don’t really even know what that means…”
Dr. Friskin frowned, she couldn’t help him discover any particular insights in this area unless she knew more about his relationship than he’d cared to share until this point. There were certain things she’d surmised about him from what he’d told her—it was highly unlikely that his invincible wife was anyone but Ultrawoman, which explained why she had taken his departure so hard. But he was so reluctant to say any more than was absolutely necessary. “What was your marriage like before you left?”
She watched as he folded his hands over his stomach and sighed. “It was perfect. For one night, it was absolutely perfect. And perfectly awful.”
Dr. Friskin nodded to herself in silent understanding. “So your leaving sped up your plans to get married?”
“Not exactly,” he said with another sigh. “We’d been planning to get married for a while, but things kept getting in the way.”
Like a meddling sociopathic billionaire and his fiancée losing her memory. The parallel lines of two lives merged into one. “Superman…”
“Why don’t we cut the pretense?” he asked as he sat up.
“Clark…” she began again. He nodded in acknowledgment. “You’ve had a lot more to get used to than just having Lois take over your job, haven’t you?”
“I should have been here for her,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. “I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
“Your son was born nine months after you left. I take it you didn’t know…”
“I didn’t know,” he agreed.
“You didn’t have a routine in your marriage to return to, so being a husband and father are both new to you, right?”
“Yeah.”
She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose from where they’d slipped to as she leaned over her notepad. “So of course these roles are going to be difficult to adjust to. You’re jumping into family life midstream, so to speak, and all under the uncomfortable eye of the press and public. I want to talk more about your family as we go forward. If you’d be comfortable with it and if Lois agrees, I’d like to talk to both of you together, too. But I also want you to remember that you are making progress. You’ve started talking to your wife about your experiences. You’ve recognized the impact that your time on New Krypton has had on your family life. I want you to take a little time to pursue the things that interested you, that were an important part of your identity before you left.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Well, as you forge new identities as a husband and father, it will be easier to reintegrate yourself if you can assert identities that are familiar and comfortable for you.”
“I was a reporter before. I can’t do that now. I was Superman before. And we both know it’s better for everyone if I don’t try taking that up again for a while.”
Dr. Friskin pressed her lips together in a thin frown. It was truly unfortunate that so many aspects of his previous life had changed to the point of being unrecognizable. The roles he had been comfortable in before either didn’t exist or were no longer things he could adopt easily. “Well, even if you can’t be an investigative reporter right now, what about writing? You are a very talented writer, Clark.”
“Thanks,” he said absently. “I’m just not sure what to write about.”
“You can write for catharsis. Or write for escape. Or to refocus your energies on something that was always important to you. Or to discover a new passion. Whatever is most comfortable for you.”
He nodded silently and closed his eyes. “I’ll try,” he said earnestly. He stood up swiftly, his cape rustling behind him as he moved. “Thank you, Dr. Friskin.”
“Of course. And you know that everything you say here remains in the strictest confidence.”
A ghost of a smile—one that didn’t reach his eyes—briefly crossed his expression. “I know,” he responded. “I’ll see you in a few days?”
“Would you prefer to come as you’re currently dressed…” She glanced up and down at his colorful regalia. “Or...?”
“I’ll probably draw less attention to myself as Clark, although maybe not that much less,” he said, his tone so different from the one Superman adopted. It was remarkable, she thought idly. He really did use very different inflection and mannerisms in his two personas. He walked toward the window and gently lifted off the ground, floating with seemingly effortless grace out into the evening’s sky.
********
Her fingers flew over the keyboard, tapping out the letters, words, and sentences to form her next column. Seven hundred and fifty words. That was all she got to try to inform, to persuade, to start a conversation. Assuming she had something relevant to say. She was supposed to be pithy and erudite and insightful. Yet she couldn’t think of anything worth writing about. She looked down at what she’d typed out:
I have no idea what to write about and Perry’s going to kill me. She quickly deleted the text with a sigh. Lois stretched her legs out on the couch, her computer balanced on her lap. The whole house was quiet. Jonathan and Martha were asleep. So was her little boy. Clark hadn’t yet returned, but it wasn’t that uncommon for him to stay out after his appointments with Dr. Friskin. She knew he needed the time to clear his head. Lord knew she’d needed it too, when she was in his position.
The porch step squeaked, letting her know that he’d come home. She looked through the walls to see him entering the farmhouse. He walked in slowly, his shoulders slumping. Lois’s heart sank; she hoped he was just tired – reliving the worst experiences of your life had a way of exhausting you, even when you had superhuman endurance. He walked into the den.
“She knows,” he said flatly.
“You told Dr. Friskin?” she ventured, unsure how to read his lack of emotion.
“More or less,” he replied with a shrug. “I’m sorry; I should have talked to you about it first.”
Lois shook her head. “If it helps you work through things, I don’t mind at all.”
“She wants to talk to both of us…together…” he continued unenthusiastically.
“Are you okay with that?”
She watched him sigh and, out of the corner of her eye, saw his hand begin to tremble. “I’m holding what’s left of me together with a prayer and scotch tape,” he said, a waver in his voice. “There’s still stuff I can’t deal with yet because I’m afraid I’m going to fall apart.”
Closing her laptop and setting it aside, she stood up. “I know,” she whispered. “I mean…I don’t know exactly what you’re going through…but I know what it’s like to be so afraid of what you’re feeling that it’s easier to pretend you don’t feel anything.” Lois stepped around the couch and walked toward where he was standing, still hanging around the doorway to the room. “I love you. And I will be here, no matter what.”
Clark closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. Her eyes shut, she hugged him tightly. “I love you,” he whispered in response. “So much.”
********
“There’s something I want to show you,” he heard himself say. The thought had been rolling around in his head for hours. He’d been flying around, trying to figure out what to say to her. His outburst earlier that week hung around his neck like a millstone, but he wasn’t about to revisit that. He took her hand and led her up to their room.
Clark let her hand slip from his as he crossed the room to open the metal box sitting on the dresser. He picked up the first of the globes. He watched as she bit her lip slightly. “Is it another message from your birth parents?”
“Not exactly,” he replied. “More like a home movie.” Clark activated the globe and watched as the image of his parents appeared before him, larger than life.
“They look so young,” he heard her murmur, echoing his own thought. She exhaled sharply at the sight of his birth mother, lifting the tiny baby into her arms. “That isn’t you…”
“My sister, Keir El,” he confirmed. Off her questioning look, he shook his head sadly.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“She died a few years before I was born. Cancer.” He bit out the word harshly. “She was six.” Incongruously, the images of his impossibly happy parents continued to play in front of him.
<<Your mother loves you very much.>>
“What did she say?” Lois whispered almost reverently.
His birth mother had of course been speaking Kryptonian. He activated the globe’s translation program. “She said ‘Your mother loves you.’”
Jor El smiled at his tiny daughter. <<As does your father.>> This time, the image of his birth father spoke English, as he had on the globe that had accompanied his son to Earth. Lois quietly walked toward him and wrapped her arm around his waist, still watching the image of his parents. He draped his arm across her shoulders, holding her close. For a long while, they watched the captured moments of happiness silently.
“I met their closest friend. He was a physician who saved my life when I was a baby. Tao Scion loved my family and kept their memory alive. I learned so much about them from him. Most of the time, I hated everything about New Krypton, but learning about my parents and my sister…it helped.” He closed his eyes and swallowed roughly. “It helped make sense of why I was there, what I was trying to do. My parents gave their lives to save that world. My father was the one who realized Krypton was dying. He and my mother designed the technology that saved the millions of people who escaped to New Krypton. They sent me to Earth instead because their enemies had tried to kill me. They knew they couldn’t keep me safe, so they sent me here. And they gave up their own seats on the last shuttle to New Krypton so that others could take their place.”
Eventually, the image faded to black. By the end of that first globe, his older sister had started walking and talking. His birth parents couldn’t have seemed more pleased. “Thank you for showing me this,” Lois whispered.
“You know that if I’d had any way of knowing you were pregnant, I wouldn’t have left,” he explained.
“I know, sweetheart,” she replied, leaning closer to him.
“But knowing what I did then, I think I did the right thing. I think I owed it to my parents.”
“They would have been so proud of you,” his wife whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
He let it go, not sure how to respond.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” he replied. “More than you can imagine.” He kissed the crown of her hair, wondering what she would think about him if she knew the full story, if she knew what had happened on New Krypton. She’d sent off her idealistic husband, so naively certain he could do good. She was fully aware that it wasn’t the same man who’d returned to her so many years later. But could she imagine just how different he was? And if she could, could she accept that man?
