Summary: After the execution of Lois Lane-Kent for a crime she didn't commit, things spiral out of control for the Man of Steel.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I make nothing. All characters, plot points, and recognizable dialogue belong to DC Comics, Warner Bros., December 3rd Productions and anyone else with a stake in the Superman franchise. I don't own Bruce Wayne/Batman, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, John Stewart/Green Lantern, or any of the other members of the Justice League either. They all belong to DC Comics and whomever owns their respective franchises.
Special Thanks: Go to AntiKryptonite, for inspiring this idea with her feedback to one of my previous stories, "Guilty Until Proven Innocent." Thank you, my friend!
Extra Special Thanks: Go to my husband, Chris, who beta read this story for me. His comments made me laugh, but proved to be invaluable as I edited the story and prepared it for posting. Thank you, my love! You are my personal hero!
***
"Have you any last words?" The voice was cold, practiced, emotionless.
"I'm truly sorry that Sykes died, but I didn't do this," Lois said defiantly. "I don't know how, but someone else is responsible and framed me."
The warden didn't move, but Clark could see the subtle rolling of his eyes.
"Anything else?"
Lois looked through the glass separating herself from the handful of people who'd turned up to watch her die.
"I love you, Clark," she said.
Clark saw tears brimming in her eyes, then the glimmers as they fell onto her cheeks. His fist clenched as he heard her sobs and increased heart rate. He could all but smell her fear. He came to a sudden decision.
His secret be damned, he was going to break her out of that death chamber.
"Lois!" he called out, determination falling over him as he got up out of his chair - so quickly that it fell over - and stepped forward.
I'm coming, he swore to her in his mind.
He saw Lois' eyes widen in surprise. She knew what he was about to do.
"And don't count on your friend, Superman, coming to bust you out of here," the warden said, his back to Clark, unaware that he was about to eat his words.
Another guard moved to the warden's side, a small lead box in his hands. Clark saw it only too late. The warden nodded and flipped open the lid. Inside the observation room, a second guard opened an identical box. Clark crashed to the floor as the assault from the Kryptonite hit his body, while inside the death chamber, at a word from the warden, the lethal cocktail of drugs was injected into Lois' veins.
"Clark!" he heard her cry out.
A scream ripped from his throat.
It felt like his very soul had been torn away, leaving nothing but pain in his otherwise hollow shell of a body.
How long he lay there, the pain in his heart far greater than that caused by the deadly green stone, he didn't know. He wasn't aware of anything other than the knowledge that Lois had just been murdered. He never felt the gentle hands of his parents as they tried to help him. He never heard the wailing of the Lane family as their daughter and sister died. He couldn't hear it as Lois' pulse slowed, then fell heartbreakingly silent. He couldn't hear the last, shuddering breath that she exhaled. He never heard the warden confirm that Lois Lane, wife of Clark Kent, was well and truly dead.
Later, he stood by her lifeless body where it lay abandoned on a gurney, trying to will her back to life with the power of the love he had for her. But, of course, this was real life. In the end, it was Jonathan who finally had to pull Clark away from his vigil over the corpse.
The next few days were a blur for Clark. For the rest of his life, he could scarcely recall any of the details. A funeral was planned. Clark chose to have a two day wake to accommodate family, friends, colleagues, and anyone from the general public who might have wanted to say their final goodbyes to a woman who'd once been known as a pillar of truth and justice. The funeral mass was held in Lois' childhood church - he only hoped she would have approved of that decision. Lucy seemed to think that Lois would have, at any rate. At the cemetery, Clark secured a spot right at the top of a slight rise in the land, beneath the spreading branches of a massive maple tree. It was peaceful there. Secluded too, as it was in a far corner of the cemetery.
Only snippets of those bleak days remained in his flawless mind. Funny stories told about Lois, in an effort to make him laugh and smile, even if only for a heartbeat or two. Meeting new people from Lois' past. Seeing old faces he hadn't seen in years - friends of his, former Daily Planet staff members - and family members he'd only met at their wedding, only a couple of short months before. Noticing that far fewer people came to pay their last respects as he'd hoped or imagined, thanks to Lois' newly tarnished reputation. The halting, tear-filled eulogy he was barely able to deliver at the funeral mass. Watching as the pristine gray casket was lowered into the ground at the cemetery, wanting so much to jump down into that dark hole in the ground and die alongside her. The duel between his inner heartbreak and total numbness.
Mostly, he forever after carried guilt in his heart.
He'd failed Lois. He'd let her go to the meeting with Sykes alone. He'd failed to find the evidence he needed to clear her name and save her life. He hadn't been able to push past the Kryptonite poisoning to break down the walls separating him from Lois when she'd been strapped to that chair, with that accursed IV in her arm, ready to receive the chemicals that ended her life.
Guilt that he eventually did find the evidence that proved Lois' innocence. Evidence that plenty of people rejected as fabricated anyway.
Then there was the guilt over all the things he hadn't been able to do with Lois. The anniversaries they never got to celebrate. The children he'd never helped to give her. The life he hadn't been able to show her, despite the fact that she was the most deserving person on the planet. The happy home life he'd promised her, the one she'd never had as a child. The loving, secure family life her warring parents had robbed her of having.
He'd never grow old with her.
The day after the burial was the hardest part for Clark to deal with in the aftermath of Lois' death. Family and friends went back to their own lives, save for his parents, who stayed on for a couple of weeks in a show of support for him. Clark was left in his empty house - no longer his home - unsure of what to do. Loneliness descended on him. He felt...tired. Tired of hurting. Tired of living. Tired of fighting for justice when the justice system had so badly failed both Lois and himself. He felt lost too. What was he supposed to do now? Where was he to go? Metropolis, once the place he'd been searching his whole life for, was suddenly as unfriendly and uninviting as an alien planet. The Daily Planet felt like a prison.
But he had nowhere else to go. So he stayed in the house of broken dreams and continued working at a paper he no longer felt any passion for.
And Superman?
For the first time in Superman's few years of life, he ignored the calls for help, at least in those first difficult weeks.
In fact, for the first weeks after Lois' death, he did only three things - work to clear his wife's name, sit by her grave, and sleep only when he passed out from sheer exhaustion. He didn't eat. He barely spoke, unless it was absolutely necessary. Words took too much effort for his emotionally drained state for him to waste them on anything that wasn't part of his investigation or spoken quietly to Lois while he sat vigil at her final resting place.
Slowly, he felt his heart harden to the world. He all but stopped caring about anything. He withdrew from everyone and everything. And people respectfully gave him his space. Even Jimmy didn't press him, and he was like a brother to Clark. Everyone just assumed that, at some point, Clark would snap out of it and return to his old self, even if Clark himself knew that there would never be any going back to the man he'd once been.
Things only unraveled further from there. Overcome with shame over a testimony he couldn't even remember giving, Perry took his own life - a single bullet that tore through the roof of his mouth and into his brain - not even a month after Lois' death. Ellen Lane slipped back into old habits and eventually drank herself into liver failure and death, while Sam threw himself into his work, almost completely disappearing off the map. Lucy did disappear, running off with some guy she'd met over the internet. Clark had tried searching for her, but it soon became apparent that she didn't want to be found. Jonathan and Martha's home was hit by a tornado while Clark was abroad, dealing with a mudslide. Clark buried them in the Smallville cemetery in one plot, knowing they would never have wanted to be separated, even in death. Jimmy eventually quit the paper and went on to open his own photography studio, his passion for exposing the worst of society gone after losing his mentor and his two best friends - one to death and one to grief.
In less than a year, Clark had nothing left to live for. Nothing left to protect. Nothing left to fight for.
Oh, he still kept up the facade of Superman. There were people out there who still needed help. But he wasn't the same Superman the world had known before Lois' murder. He rarely spoke a word, unless it was to reassure someone he was saving, or to ask police or fire officials for a briefing before he walked into a situation. But that was it. The press didn't get a word out of him. Bystanders were ignored. Courts never saw him. His statements to the police were typed up and dropped off at super speed so that no one saw him, let alone tried to speak with him.
More and more, he felt his life slipping away. Superman slowly consumed him, while Clark Kent fell to the wayside and faded. Eventually, he gave up on trying to be Clark. He sold the house he and Lois had so eagerly bought together and, instead, built a humble lodging for himself out of ice and snow in the frozen nothingness of the Arctic. It wasn't home. Not by a long shot. Nothing had been home for him since his soul mate had died.
His zest for journalism burned out and died, leaving not even a single glowing ember or spark behind. So it was the easy and natural thing for him to do when he handed in his resignation to the Daily Planet. Perry's successor, a hard-bitten woman named Daniela Waters, had tried to convince him to stay, but Clark simply hadn't had the heart to. Each day he sat down at his workstation, looked over to what had been Lois' desk and relived all of the excruciating pain her absence caused. Still, he knew that seeing it empty would be far easier to bear than when someone else eventually occupied that space. He didn't want to see the day when some other woman or man took over the desk and erased the fact that it belonged to Lois Lane.
Finally, the day came when Clark Kent ceased to exist altogether.
No one noticed.
But the public had noticed the changes in Superman. And it demanded answers from the Man of Steel. Seeing nothing left to lose, Clark reluctantly called for a press conference. When the day came, he donned the costume of Superman and flew to the Daily Planet. It only felt right to keep that one piece of his past - Superman's link to the paper - intact.
"Good evening, everyone," Clark said as he touched down in the newsroom.
Pens flew into action as he spoke. A hundred cameras flashed. Video cameras whirred into life. Audio recorders made copies of every word he spoke.
"I know you all have questions about my recent...change in behavior," he said hesitantly, choosing his words carefully.
"More like an entire personality shift," someone mumbled. Scattered agreement followed.
"The thing is," Clark continued, ignoring the remark, "there's been a lot of changes going on for me lately."
"Yeah," someone else shouted out loud. "Your little girlfriend, Lois Lane, got what she deserved."
"Lois was innocent!" Clark couldn't help but shoot back, harsher than he'd intended. "She was innocent and they killed her anyway."
A snort of derision came from the same man. "Even if she was, so what? It doesn't explain your sudden bad attitude."
"They killed my wife!" he bellowed, so loudly it nearly shook the Planet's foundation. "What do you expect of me?"
Too late, he realized what he was saying. In a rare event, the entire newsroom went stock still and silent. Indeed, the very world seemed to be shocked into muteness. It lasted only a few precious heartbeats before the explosion of disbelief, anger, accusations, questions, and even sounds of approval began. Clark motioned for everyone present to settle down.
"Yes," Clark said, in a calmer, quieter voice. "Yes," he said again as the last grumbles died down. "That's right. I'm...I was...Clark Kent. I've lied to the world for long enough. But, now I have nothing left to lose. No loved ones to protect by keeping my true identity secret. No real life that I'm trying to preserve. But now? Now Clark Kent is dead. My wife's death..." he paused, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "I've no reason left to be the man I was. So this...this farce of a superhero is all that's left."
A rapt silence ruled as everyone awaited his next words.
"I'm sorry," he finally said after a moment. "I'm sorry I've lied to the word all this time. I'm sorry for the deceptions I've pulled, to maintain the lie that Clark and Superman were two different people. I'm sorry that I was selfish enough to have ever thought I could have a real life, outside of my powers. But the truth is...while I had a normal life and all the things that went into it - cooking, paying rent, doing the laundry, going to the movies, planning my wedding - I loved it. Being Superman...it was never the life I wanted. This...this cardboard cutout of a hero that I've become...it was born out of a desire to help. It was my way of reconciling the fact that I have these extraordinary powers. It sprung from a misguided belief in the justice system. Clark was always the real man behind the hero. I grew up as Clark. I lived as Clark. I always thought I would die as Clark."
He closed his eyes for a second as he sighed sadly. "But Clark died the moment Lois did, even if I playacted as Clark long enough to prove my wife's innocence. So now, here I stand, all that is left of me. I know I have no right to ask anything of anyone, but...I'd like to ask that my privacy be respected. No questions about Clark or the life I used to live. No questions about Lois. I won't answer them."
"What about Superman?" a young woman near the front asked. "Are you...still going to help?" Nervousness danced in her words, as though she feared that he might say no.
Clark almost mustered a saddened half-smile. Almost.
"Of course," he said. "For as long as I have strength in my body, I will do what I can to protect the innocent people of this planet."
"CK! CK!" called out a familiar voice.
Jimmy.
Of course his old friend would be there to see Superman speak. He'd been a true friend to both of Clark's personalities - the human and the alien hero.
"Jimmy," Clark said, this time the ghost of a smile gracing his lips.
"Will you ever...you know...be CK again? This Superman thing...it's not permanent, is it?" Sadness shot with fear suffused the younger man's words.
Pain lanced Clark's heart as he slowly shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Jimmy. But Clark has no more reasons to live." He glanced around the room at all of the reporters clamoring for his attention, so that they could ask their questions and get answers they could print in their articles. "No more questions," he said, knowing his tone was brusque.
Carefully, he lifted up off the ground and floated toward the open window of the Planet's bullpen. Not long before, he'd flown out that window to help his fellow Kryptonians avoid a civil war. Back then, Superman had flown away from his press conference, not knowing if he'd ever return to Earth and the people he loved, everything in the world pulling him back, compelling him to stay. Now, Superman was flying away, without a single reason to look back, no threads of life keeping him anchored to the world.
When he was high enough, he turned and sped through the window, fast enough to tear apart the sky about the building with a sonic boom. He knew, from experience, that people had come to associate the sonic boom with the fact that Superman would not be returning to that place. They would know that the press conference was now truly over.
With nowhere else to go, he headed back to the lair he'd created for himself in the frozen north. He sat down on a thick blanket as soon as he was inside, then picked up his favorite picture of Lois - a shot of her, alone, laughing on their wedding day as they celebrated at the small, intimate reception they'd thrown. She looked so incredibly happy and full of life in that photo. Looking at it, it was hard to believe that someone so young, so good, and so giving could have been so senselessly executed. Not only executed, but ruthlessly set up so another could benefit from her murder.
"Well, I've gone and done it now, Lois," Clark told the image of his wife. It made him feel better to speak aloud to her, as though she was sitting right next to him. "The world now knows who Superman used to be. I didn't mean for it to happen. It just...came out in the heat of the moment. I'm tired, Lois. Tired of lying. Tired of pretending. Tired of holding in my secret when there's no reason left to keep it a secret. I have nothing left to protect. Everyone I care about is gone. Well...there's Jimmy. But no one associates him with Superman. Not the way they did with Lois and Clark, at any rate."
He sighed noisily. "I don't know if what I did is right or wrong or if it will even make any kind of a difference whatsoever. But what's done is done. There's nothing I can do to change what happened today. And the weird thing? All my life, I've feared this moment - when my secret would get out and everyone would know about Clark Kent's extraterrestrial roots. But now that it is out there for everyone to know...I'm actually really okay with it. Like I told the world, Clark Kent is dead. The justice system killed him in the same instant that they executed you for a crime you never committed."
He paused for a moment, just gazing at that frozen moment in time that he held in his hand, taking in all the details of her laughing, smiling face. "Ever since I was a child, I was taught to believe in the justice system. Be good, do good, and god things will happen to you. Be bad, do bad, and bad things will happen. I was naive enough to believe those lies. Never again. Karma is an idiot's invented notion. The legal justice system is a joke at best. You were the best person I've ever known and..." He bit back a sob that was threatening to overtake him, but he couldn't stop the tears that leaked from his eyes and raced down his cheeks.
"I miss you, Lois," he said after a few minutes of struggling to master his emotions. "Every second of every day. You made me a better person. You gave me a million reasons to believe in the good in the world. All my life, I'd strived to be the best person I can be. Helping others both with and without my powers. Saving people. Fighting injustice. Preventing wars. Putting criminals behind bars to make the world a safer place. Destroying an asteroid the size of Metropolis so that it wouldn't turn this planet into comic dust. Forgive me, Lois, I know you'd hate hearing this but...I feel like...to what end have I done these things? The world's no safer than it was five years ago. Sure, maybe Nightfall didn't wipe out all life on Earth, but decent people still can't walk down the streets at night without the fear of being raped or mugged or killed. Countries still teeter on the edge of war. There is still theft, violence, people who go hungry or who shiver on the streets without anywhere to go."
He sighed again. "Superman can't even put a dent into it all. Every time I catch one criminal, more just pop up in their place. Even with the other 'supers' helping out...our efforts amount to pretty much nothing. Meanwhile, the people we care about get hurt." He paused for a moment, his heart breaking to think of his next words. "I failed you, Lois. In every single way, I failed you. As a friend, I lied to you about my powers, because I was afraid of losing you. I flaked out on you constantly, even though I knew that for you, trusting someone enough to allow them to befriend you - especially as a best friend - was a huge deal. As a boyfriend, I still hid my abilities. Instead of trusting you, I constantly ducked out on you, usually right in the middle of important discussions. I made you feel like I didn't care about you or that I was too afraid of commitment to give you the life you deserved. As a fiancé, I left you behind on Earth while I agreed to help an alien race who, as I later learned, are not my people. And as a husband, I let you go, alone, to meet with a source. I should have gone with you. Even if I didn't go as Clark, I should have hovered nearby as Superman, just in case. But I didn't. It's my fault that everything happened the way it did. I'm sorry, Lois."
He knew what she would say, if only she could.
It's not your fault, Clark. I'm the one who insisted that I go to the meeting alone. You can't blame yourself for something that was completely out of anyone's control. I was framed, plain and simple.
"If one of us had to die," he whispered morosely, "it should have been me."
It was truthfully the way he felt. He wished everyday that the Kryptonite the prison warden and the other officer had kept out as a precaution against Superman rescuing Lois Lane had managed to kill him. He loathed the fact that he was still allowed to live on while his soul mate lay decaying in a grave, unjustly killed by a greedy district attorney and a demented professor. Oh, the truth had come out as Clark had found the proof - too late! - to clear Lois' spotless name. But even then, D.A. Michael Clemmons had managed to get the lightest sentence possible. And while Clark wasn't a man who sided with death and violence, it seemed more than unfair that Clemmons got to live while Lois didn't.
"Don't worry, Lois," he said, once more looking at the photograph. "I'm not looking to end my life. As much as I want to be with you, I know there's still work for me to do before I cross over to the other side."
He brought the frame to his lips and reverently kissed the glass before returning the photograph to the rough shelf he'd created out of ice. Then he lay down on the blanket, but sleep was elusive. He wound up staring at the picture of his wife.
"I love you, Lois," he whispered to the empty, lonely space around him.
For a couple of hours, that's all he did. Just laid on the floor, staring numbly at the image of Lois. Eventually, he got up and forced himself to leave his little lair of isolation and fly around, listening for those in need. For hours, he tended to one emergency after another. He was about to head back to what now served as his home, to rest for a couple of hours when his sensitive hearing picked up something.
"Clark? Clark Kent!" came on jarring cry. "Clark Kent!"
"Jimmy?" Clark asked, screeching to a halt, up amongst the clouds.
"CK, I know you're out there somewhere!"
Jimmy's voice was clear and strong, with no hint of fear or pain in it. It made Clark curious. He decided to fly down and see what it was that he wanted.
"Jimmy?" he asked cautiously, as he came to a light touchdown on the roof of Jimmy's apartment building. "Are you okay?"
"CK," the younger man acknowledged, turning around to face Clark. Relief was evident in his features, as if he hadn't really believed that Clark would respond to his call. "You came. I wasn't sure. I've been trying to reach you since the end of the press conference."
"I'll always come if you call and it's possible for me to get here," Clark swore. "You're my friend, even if I've been a crummy one myself lately."
Jimmy shook his head. "I never faulted you for withdrawing from everyone. I can't swear that I would have handled things any differently, had it been the woman I loved."
"Thanks for understanding," Clark said with a slight bow of his head. "So...what can I do for you? What do you need?"
"Just...to talk," Jimmy responded hesitantly, as though afraid of scaring Clark off.
"Jimmy..."
"No, listen," Jimmy said, shaking his head again. He sighed. "So...it's true then."
"What's true?" Clark asked.
"You really are Superman," the photographer replied, awe in his voice.
Clark closed his eyes for a second before answering, "Yeah."
"Cool," he breathed, that same, child-like awe coating his words and gracing his features. "I mean...I think that's really great, CK."
"You aren't offended that I never told you?" Clark asked warily, remembering all too well how hurt Lois had been when she'd figured out his secret life.
"Not at all. I get why you did it, CK. Protecting those you loved. Giving yourself a chance of a normal life. Not allowing the man in blue to swallow up your identity. I get it, CK," he repeated, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.
"Jimmy...I'm not..." Clark had to turn away, his next words so hard to say to the brother of his heart. "I'm not CK anymore."
"That's where you're wrong, CK. Like it or not, Clark Kent is still alive, somewhere inside of you, even if you feel like he's gone forever."
"He is gone, Jimmy," Clark argued, placing his hands on the high brick wall that ran around the roof's edge. "He had no purpose in this world, no reason for existing. All that's left is this avatar of Kryptonian powers standing before you."
"No purpose? Have you forgotten how many criminals you caught when you were working for the paper? How many slumlords you took off the streets? How many corrupt politicians you exposed? How many friends' lives you enriched? How much you've meant to me as a friend?"
"Jimmy, you know I value your friendship. You've always been like a brother to me. But I can do more to help people as Superman than I ever could as Clark. Admit it. You know it's true."
"No," Jimmy said, very firmly. "I don't believe that."
"Well...I do," Clark replied regretfully and with finality.
"Even so," Jimmy said after a moment of silence. "Can I still call you CK? I just...there's no way I can call you Superman, knowing that you're my best friend."
Jimmy's words hit Clark right in his heart and sent shockwaves through his soul. As he'd flown around, even though the world now knew his secret, Superman was the only name that had been used to call for him. Only Jimmy insisted on using the name he'd grown up under, the only identity which used to matter to him.
"Okay," he agreed.
Jimmy's smile was one of relief. "Thanks," he said.
Clark nodded once, unsure of how to proceed from here.
"Look...CK..." Jimmy said after a minute. He sounded uncertain of himself. "I know you're a busy guy and all but...if you ever need a friendly face or a listening ear, I'll be here for you. I may not be able to fix all of the rotten things that have happened, but with me, you never have to be Superman. You can still be Clark. And even if you don't want to talk but just want to...I don't know, have a meal with a friend or play video games or whatever, well, I'm here for that too."
"Jimmy..."
"In fact," Jimmy continued, steamrolling right over Clark's protest, lost in his own thoughts. It reminded Clark all too clearly of how Lois used to become so absorbed in her thoughts that she ceased to acknowledge the world around her. "I'll keep every Thursday night open. No late photo shoots. No late meetings with perspective clients. No dates. Nothing. Just a standing invitation for you to come over, if you want. I'll be right here, with the apartment window open for you. No need to call, of course. Just drop on by. Of course, you can drop by whenever, but Thursdays I can guarantee that I'll be around."
"Jimmy, don't put your life on hold for me," Clark said, feeling guilty that Jimmy would set aside one day a week for him, and knowing that it would be a rare thing, if at all, that he would take Jimmy up on his offer.
Still, beneath that wall of guilt that was washing over him, there was a spark of gratitude and a feeling like some iota of humanity was restored to him, albeit briefly.
Jimmy shook his head. "I'm not. Look, CK, you've done more for me than I can ever repay you for. You helped me find my courage when I was Perry's gofer. You cleared my name when I was accused of murder. You even helped me repair some of the damage to the relationship between my dad and me. You saved my life when that youth-sucker machine turned me into an octogenarian. And I...well...I miss you, CK. I miss grabbing some pizza and seeing a movie with you. I miss playing basketball with you after work. I miss running research for you and..." He abruptly cut off his words.
"And Lois," Clark quietly finished for him.
Jimmy nodded. "Yeah," he said in a matching tone. "And Lois. I never understood it, before you came to the Planet, that Lois was always nice to me, even when she kind of frigid to the rest of the staff. But I always valued her friendship."
"She was a special woman," Clark agreed.
"Yeah, she was." Jimmy sighed and fell silent for a moment before speaking again. "I may be the only one who realizes it right now, but the world is a lot poorer for the loss of Clark Kent and the addition of a full time Superman. So...will you come over, at least once in a while?"
"I'll try," was the best Clark could offer him.
It was enough. Jimmy nodded. "That's all I ask. That and...be careful out there, okay, CK?"
Clark nodded. "Thank you, Jimmy. For everything. For not hating me for not telling you about who I am. For trying to save what's left of my soul. For being a true friend."
A neighbor's radio caught Clark's ear. He instantly turned in the direction of the source as he listened closely. Jimmy seemed to understand and fell respectfully silent. Clark grimaced. A nuclear reactor was leaking.
"I have to go," he said to Jimmy.
"Then go," Jimmy encouraged. "I just hope to see you soon."
Clark nodded once before taking off like a shot into the cold night air. As Jimmy and his apartment building fell away from him, so did any of his recaptured humanity. And as he went about his business of saving innocent lives and fixing the leak, he once more slipped completely into the alien that his DNA proclaimed him to be.
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