From last time:
He watched as his wife closed the bedroom door and turned back to face him, smiling slightly as she shook her head. “I have no idea how you and Martha pulled that off,” she said.
“We made Superman do all the hard work,” he said as he pulled her into his arms.
“Poor guy, he never seems to get a day off,” she replied.
“He doesn’t mind,” Clark said. “I hear he goes home every night to this brilliant, amazingly hot wife that he’s crazy in love with.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he breathed as he lowered his head to cover her lips with his own. She sighed as the kiss ended.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For reminding me of all the things I have to be thankful for. Our family. Our friends. You. I don’t know how it is that you manage to be strong enough for both of us, every single day.”
“We take care of each other; that’s what ‘for better or worse’ is all about,” he said softly. The truth was, the last month had been brutally hard on him as well. He knew he was probably only keeping everything together because he had to. Lois needed him; nothing else mattered. Clark threaded his fingers through her hair as he held her close. He closed his eyes and focused on the sound of the baby’s heartbeat. Over the last week and a half it had grown clearer and more distinct—easier to pick out over the din of everyday sounds. Everything was going to be okay, he told himself. He knew it was going to be okay because it had to be. Because he couldn’t imagine how much it would devastate Lois if things weren’t all right. Because he didn’t want to think about how it would hollow him out, too. Clark pressed his lips against Lois’s temple, silently praying to the fates or deities that might hold some sway over how their lives turned out.
“I love you,” she whispered quietly as she began to slowly undo the buttons of his shirt. Her hands felt warm against his roughly scarred skin. But it was like she didn’t even notice the strange and ugly marks that marred his body. There was no way for him to deny what her touch so clearly conveyed—she loved him. All of him. Even the parts of himself he thought unlovable.
And he loved her just as deeply. Just as completely. “I love you, too,” he replied. The words were inadequate; they could never fully embody the magnitude of his feelings. Which meant he was just going to have to show her how much he loved her, he thought as he framed her face between his hands and kissed her thoroughly.
********
New stuff:
He shivered, trying to remember the last time he’d felt so cold. His whole body was frozen, as though the chill had leeched straight into his bones, taking root there and branching out into every cell and fiber of his body. The air on New Krypton had been this cold. No longer impervious, he’d felt its awful sting so many times. In Nor’s dungeon, on the campaign to liberate Terian, in the charred remnants of Silban.
Suddenly, he was standing amidst the wreckage of that leveled city, breathing in the smoke and soot and ash. To his astonishment, Nor appeared through the curtain of smoke and started swaggering toward him, every bit the bloated, jaundiced corpse he’d been when Clark had seen him last in the morgue, his gut torn wide open by the wound Clark had inflicted at point blank range. “You couldn’t protect these people,” Nor gloated. “What makes you think you can protect them?” Nor looked past him and Clark spun quickly to see Lois standing in front of Jon, trying to shield their young son despite the fact that she was somehow now extremely pregnant, her abdomen large and full with the life her body was creating. The fear in her eyes was unmistakable.
“Lois!” he shouted her name, but as he tried to run toward her, he was pulled back by the shackles that now bound his arms and legs to the ground. Nor stepped around him easily as he bore down on Clark’s family.
“No!” he yelled, struggling against the chains that bound him. He suddenly found himself bolt upright in bed, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Clark? Honey?” He felt Lois place her hand on his shoulder. He exhaled shakily. “Are you okay?”
“It was just a dream,” he murmured.
“Everything’s all right,” she said as she sat up to wrap her arms around him. He allowed her to pull him into her embrace. The sound of her heartbeat and the baby’s soothed him. They lay back down, still wrapped in one another’s arms.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you, too,” she said. “We’re okay. You know that. All of us, Jon, the baby, your parents, you, me. We’re all okay.”
“I know,” he said softly. Clark placed his hand against her abdomen, which still showed no signs of her pregnancy. He wanted some assurance that he would be able to keep his child safe, but he knew there was no such thing. For all his abilities, he couldn’t guarantee the future would be bright and shiny and perfect. But he could do everything in his not inconsiderable power to protect the people he loved. And yet, he wondered if the dream was a portent of more troubled nights to come. Over the last few months, the nightmares had grown less frequent, though truth be told, he was never really free of them.
“I know you’ve done all of the emotional heavy lifting in this relationship for a long time now,” she began. “But I am still here for you. It’s like you said, we have to take care of each other.”
“We do,” he agreed in a quiet whisper. He didn’t expect to get much sleep for the remainder of the night, but at least he could hold his wife, and marvel at the little life they’d created, that was growing every day in her body. As he had on so many other nights over the last few weeks, he prayed that their child would be strong. Strong enough to deal with such a rocky start in life. Strong enough to endure the seemingly endless series of trials and tribulations that seemed to follow their family.
********
He jogged down the stairs from the library, where he’d supposedly been holed up working on some big layout disaster at the Planet. Lois’s cover for him had been brilliant, as always. No one wanted to hear about the difficulties in physically putting together a newspaper or why it was going to take several hours, which gave him all the time he needed to deal with the enormous pile up on the interstate in Nebraska. A blizzard had made the roads practically impassable. The forty car pileup that resulted finished that job. Rescue crews were themselves hamstrung by the weather, which meant more work for him.
Now that he was home again, the house seemed much quieter than it should have. He found his wife in the living room, a mug of tea held between her hands. “How’d it go?” she asked.
He shrugged. “No fatalities, thankfully. It was a pretty big mess, though. Where is everyone?”
She leaned forward to put her mug on the coffee table. “Lucy and Jimmy took Jon to see the Nutcracker. My mother decided to brave the crowds and go shopping, and your mother—because she’s a saint—agreed to go with her. I think your dad is in the apartment downstairs, taking a nap.”
Clark smiled as he sat down next to his wife and pulled her into his arms. “So we have the whole place to ourselves, then, huh?” he asked as he pressed his lips against the soft skin of her neck, just below her ear. He felt her shiver as a low moan escaped her lips.
“Are you still going to be attracted to me when I’m as big as a house?” she asked softly.
“You’d better believe it,” he whispered against her skin. “And I can’t wait to fly all over the planet to get you Chinese food in the middle of the night, or samosas from India, or Belgian chocolate.” He pulled the soft lobe of her ear into his mouth and sucked gently on it.
“Oh yeah?” she said breathlessly.
“And I want to paint the nursery with bunnies or teddy bears or ducklings or whatever cute baby animals you want and spend the entirety of our rather substantial salaries on all that ridiculous baby stuff everyone claims you need. And read every parenting book ever written.” He caressed her cheek and turned her face gently so he could kiss her. He felt her smile against his lips.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he replied, realizing this was the first time they’d talked about the baby without the specter of their fears haunting the conversation. For a moment, they were simply two people in love, joyfully expecting a new baby. This everyday happiness was, for them, hard fought and even harder won. And despite the contentment he felt now, he knew how quickly things could change—not the way he felt about his wife, or the way she felt about him. Those things were enduring, even if everything else around them seemed to shift as though it were on a foundation of sand. Months ago, that knowledge would have only made him bitter. But he was trying to grab hold of every good moment in life, unwilling to let them slip by him, only to be lost. They needed all of those good moments as they struggled to get through the bad ones. He looked up and quickly scanned the house and the street outside, all the while tuning in his superhearing. She placed her hand on his.
“What is it?” she asked, frowning.
He smiled. “I just wanted to make sure no one was going to see me do this,” he said as he swept her into his arms and flew her upstairs to their bedroom.
********
For the second night in a row, he woke with a terrible start, wondering how the hell Nor had managed to worm his way back into his subconscious. The space next to him in bed this time was empty, though. The bathroom light was on. He fell back against the pillows and listened to the innocuous sounds of the faucet running, the light switch being flicked off, and the bathroom door opening again.
“Sorry for waking you,” Lois whispered as she lay down in bed next to him.
He drew her into his arms. “Don’t worry about it. You okay?”
She sighed. “Three forty a.m. is technically morning, so the morning sickness is at least more accurate today.”
Clark pressed his lips to the crown of her hair and remained quiet for a long moment. “I think I need to talk to Dr. Friskin,” he said at last.
“Did you have another nightmare?” his wife asked.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Same as last night. It’s kind of unnerving.”
“I’ll bet,” she agreed as she placed her head on his shoulder. “Is it anything you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a mental shrug, still staring up at the ceiling, letting the pleasant feeling of his wife’s body curled up next to his fill him with a sense of peace. “I don’t know why they’re starting again now, or what they mean. Except that…you know…we’re both afraid for the baby, and I guess I’ve just started associating pretty much everything I’m afraid of with Nor.”
“I wish I knew how to help,” she whispered wistfully.
He hugged her just a little tighter. “You already have,” he said. “Lois, you’re the only reason I still function in the world. And if it weren’t for you, I never would have gotten the nerve to talk to Dr. Friskin in the first place. This is just one more thing to work through,” he said, not sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.
********
“So of course the minute we start feeling better about the baby, when we start thinking everything might be okay, I start having these nightmares again…” he paced the length of his therapist’s office and turned on his heel to do it again.
“And why do you think that is?” Dr. Friskin asked, still calmly sitting in her chair, a stark counterpoint to his frenetic pacing.
Clark dragged his hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, exasperated. “Maybe it’s because I’m not facing the things I should be dealing with…”
“Such as?”
“The bomber…the one who almost killed Lois and me and nearly blew up the Planet. He’s dead, but I haven’t done anything to figure out how to stop the people who sent him. He had to have been connected to the Triads. But I just told myself that I have my family to worry about. And when the cops said the trail was cold, I figured the masterminds were outside our jurisdiction. There was nothing we could do.”
“And so now you’re worried that they’ll harm others in the future if you don’t stop them. You’re worried they’ll manage to do the same thing Nor did.”
“I am,” he admitted, the realization dawning on him. “There’s something else, too…the cop that shot the bomber…yeah, I thanked him for saving our lives, but I haven’t done anything else. I haven’t checked to make sure he’s okay.”
“And you feel responsible; not only because he killed someone to save your life, but because you understand what he’s probably going through.”
Clark stopped pacing and turned to face his therapist, burying his hands in his pockets as he did so. “Yeah,” he agreed.
“So what do you want to do?”
“I’m going to start by going and talking to that cop. Then, if the Metropolis PD can’t help me with the Triads, I’m going to go straight to the Chinese government.”
********
He pulled open the glass door to the diner, anticipating the jingle of the bell hooked onto the top of the doorframe. The few souls inside all looked up as he entered and expressions of shock registered on all faces except one—the man who’d kept his head down, ignoring the newcomer. The scene could have been lifted straight from the old Edward Hopper painting, but instead of a gray flannel suit, the man in the corner as far away from the other patrons as possible, wearing a look of quiet desperation, was dressed in the familiar blue uniform of Metropolis’s Finest.
The young officer finally looked up as Superman moved to take the stool next to him. “The watch commander at the two-two told me I could find you here. How have you been?” Clark asked simply.
“Okay, I guess,” the other man said with a shrug.
The middle aged waitress wandered over and silently refilled the officer’s coffee cup. “What can I get you, honey?” she asked nonchalantly. He could tell she called all of her customers—from the old World War II veterans who wore their pins and medals with pride, to the little boys with skinned knees who probably chased their sisters through the diner—by some term of endearment or other. He wondered if she was even really paying attention to who he was.
“Coffee, sugar and cream,” he said. “Thanks…Judy,” he said as he read the plastic nametag on her pale pink uniform. She smiled at him before turning and walking off to get his coffee. Being treated like an ordinary person while in uniform was kind of refreshing, he realized. Overhead, an old fluorescent light tube buzzed as its light faded, clearly fighting its impending demise. From the kitchen, the lingering scents of grilled cheese sandwiches and fries wafted into the eating area, the greasy comfort food that like a siren’s song drew people here. Some were lonely, some were bored, some were insomniacs, some drove taxis or walked the beat in the middle of the night. Others were just hungry at two in the morning on a Tuesday night. If only Superman could manage to have a favorite coffee shop. Of course, the moment people realized he came here, it would turn into a circus.
“So what brings you here…besides the coffee?” Officer Dawson asked. He finally looked at Clark as he spoke. He had a look of weariness on his face that no man that young should ever have worn. The ghost of the thousand yard stare shaded his expression. Kyle Dawson could still function in the world. He still put on his uniform every day and went to work, but Clark knew the young man was haunted. And he cursed himself for not stepping up and doing anything about it any earlier.
“I wanted to see how you’re doing. I’m not sure I really thanked you enough for what you did. You saved my life and Ultrawoman’s. And probably the lives of a lot of other people.” He took a sip of his coffee, still piping hot and probably sweeter than most people could stand.
“Yeah, but I still feel pretty crappy about it. I spent four years in the Marines. Singing cadences every day about how many people we were going to kill and how blood makes the grass grow. You never really buy into any of that stuff. I never fired my weapon except on the range to qualify. Three months on the beat, and I’ve already killed someone. You know they’ve got me riding a desk now.” He drained the coffee cup and put it back down on the counter.
“It can take a while to come to grips with something like this,” Clark replied earnestly. “Believe me, I know,” he added in a soft tone.
The young man looked at him, puzzled. He opened his mouth as though to speak but said nothing. Clark knew he was wondering whether the Man of Steel was admitting to turning into a vigilante.
“I led a people at war for years,” he clarified. You see things and do things…you make choices between bad and worse, just like you had to.”
“Does it ever get any easier?” Officer Dawson asked quietly.
“Making those kinds of decisions? Not really,” Clark replied, knowing he was disappointing the younger man. “But you can find a way to live with them.”
The younger man fixed him with a penetrating stare, his eyes boring into Clark. “How?” He could hear the desperation in the young cop’s voice.
“You learn to get perspective. The man you shot had just tried to murder a building full of children. He was going to kill Ultrawoman. And he was going to kill me. Every life she and I save, from now until the end of our time here, will be because of you. That’s the part you have to remember.”
The young police officer nodded, his mouth slightly agape, as though he couldn’t really process what Superman was saying. “Let me tell you one more thing,” Clark began. “I’m not you, and I don’t know what it’s been like for you, but the only way I ever came to terms with the things that were bothering me, was to talk to someone.”
“You mean like a shrink,” Officer Dawson asked derisively.
“Yeah, I mean a trained professional,” Clark corrected. “Someone who could help me make sense of what happened, help me see what I did and what I had to do from a more objective viewpoint.” He finished his cup of coffee and stood up. “If you want to talk to me, just contact Lois Lane or Clark Kent at the Daily Planet, they’ll know how to get a hold of me.” He reached under his cape to pull out a few bills to pay for the coffee.
“It’s on the house, Superman,” Judy said. “I insist.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d recognized me,” he deadpanned. The waitress merely grinned and shook her head. With another jingle, the door opened again and the caped hero walked out.
********
“The dead gunman was identified as Hsiao Chen, a Chinese national and resident of Macau,” Superman explained patiently to the Special Administrative Region’s Chief of Police, Wan Xiang.
“Superman, we appreciate your concern in this matter, but you fail to realize just how delicate the relationship between Beijing and our police department is,” the middle-aged officer responded testily from behind his large desk. He wore a hand-tailored wool suit instead of the typical polyester police uniform.
“Sir, I don’t think you do understand my concern,” Clark replied in clipped Cantonese as he folded his arms across his chests. “When an assassin tries to blow up a building full of children, I take it personally. When he tries to murder my friends, I take it personally. And when he does it all in an attempt to kill me, I take it personally.”
Wan stood up slowly. “And what exactly do you want us to do? You have provided us with no evidence to tie this man to any other parties under my jurisdiction or otherwise.”
“That’s because the American authorities and I aren’t authorized to investigate here and your own police don’t seem terribly interested in taking on the case.”
“So you expect me to just let you trample on our jurisdiction and sovereignty and do whatever you want here?” Chief Wan waved his arms dramatically to punctuate his statement.
“No sir, what I want is to have cooperation in the investigation and prosecution between the authorities in Macau and Metropolis, with no one’s sovereignty or dignity getting trampled in the process.”
“We’re not dealing with ordinary street criminals here,” the police chief replied haughtily.
Clark’s eyes narrowed. “I’m well aware of that,” he said. “But I also know that Macau has been trying to shed its reputation as a haven for organized crime. I’ve seen enough of how the Triads operated in Metropolis to help bring down the organization here, as well.”
Wan shook his head. “Do you really think you can go from city to city, shutting down every organized crime syndicate you come across?”
“No,” Superman admitted. “But I do believe that I can make people realize that obtaining Kryptonite and using innocent children as bait to try to kill me will end very badly for them.” The cold edge to his voice left no doubt about his position on the subject. “If you change your position, you know how to contact me.” With that, Superman strode out of the room.
