Hey, all. Thanks for all the reviews from last chapter, and sorry this chapter has taken a little longer to be posted. You know how Christmas time can get. I barely had time to drop this post before running off again...
So, yeah. Another warning. Despite the fact that I have no school to worry about right now, general craziness of Christmas and the season may slow down posting...as you have noticed already.
There we are, then. I hope you all enjoy this chapter. Here you go,
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Chapter 23: Mild-Mannered Reporter
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Martha refused to let Clark run off to see his father at once. After their tears dried up she sat him down at the table, fussing over him and demanding every detail so that she could make sure he was okay. It was shocking and horrific, and Martha felt like breaking into tears more than once, even though she was sure it was a very watered-down version, knowing her Clark.
He went and showered as she moved about the kitchen to fix a small lunch, glad for the millionth time this last week that Clark kept his kitchen well stocked despite the fact that he needn’t eat…that he got his energy from the sun. Martha wasn’t sure what to think of that, but she decided she really didn’t care. He was her son, and nothing else mattered, whether he ate frogs or soaked up sunlight like a tree.
She smiled slightly. There had been a time when he really had shot up like a tree. For a few months there she and Jonathan had worried that he might grow so tall so as to stand out as abnormal. Luckily, his growth spurt stopped, but still leaving him considerably taller than his schoolmates and sometimes downright clumsy about his new view of the world. A typical, awkward teenager—that had been her Clark.
Her smile faded as she listened to the shower going, and she stared at the wall for a long moment, seeing his face in her mind. He looked so tired, so…world-weary. Heaven help him recover from this, because she didn’t know what to do.
Clark stepped out of the shower, his aches and pains soothed from the gentle thrum of the hot water and the steaming air in the bathroom around him. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, noting that they were considerably looser than the ones Lois had bought him, and not only because of the fact that Lois’s size choice had been a little too small. No. He had lost weight.
He wiped the condensation from the mirror and froze in the act, staring at the dark-haired, pale creature that stared back at him with eyes that still seemed too big—too dark—for his weary face.
He pulled out a comb, watching the movements of the man in the glass carefully as the image raised its own comb in sync to comb out his hair. He combed it in his usual style—slightly back from his eyes, but more fluffed than Superman’s. He pulled his glasses out and put them on, adjusting them slightly. They felt slightly uncomfortable after a whole week without them, but they were necessary. He looked back at the mirror, with its haunted staring eyes looking back at him, and stopped.
He started to shake.
Lois.
She knew that he was back, now, and knowing her, she would be all fire and ice to storm over here and demand his part of the story. She would be here—probably soon, now that Perry knew that he was there. That kind of news just didn’t stay secret, especially at the Daily Planet.
And he couldn’t see how in the world a little pair of glasses could hide from her the man that she’d spent the last week of her life with, saving his life a thousand times over.
Clark’s breathing quickened. He could tell her. He had wanted to, in the white room, and only the safety of his parents had stopped him.
Now there was no reason not for her to find out. He knew that no matter what, she wouldn’t sell him out. She’d proved that already.
But…Lois. Oh, Lois. Lois, Lois, Lois.
He was shaking so badly that he had to grab onto the counter to stabilize himself. The walls of his bathroom were white—too white. And for right now, there was nothing but hot, stuffy air and the sound of his lonely breath around him.
Lois!
He couldn’t. She had done so much for him already. That was why he had left her in the first place. It wasn’t safe. The last week had proved that more than ever. He couldn’t risk getting close to anyone—especially her—because if something happened to her because of him, he knew it would kill him.
Besides, he was an alien.
He shook himself, but it felt more like an increased shiver next to his quivering. It didn’t do much good.
He knew Lois. She’d throw everything to the wind, forgetting herself in a frenzy. Who knows—she might never recover, be able to live a normal life, if she realized her coworker was none other than Superman. He would have to move on, never see her again…
Better Lois’s coworker, maybe even something approaching a friend, than never see her again.
The second option made his blood run cold. What if—oh, what if…
What if she turned him away?
Part of himself laughed at the thought. This was Lois. She had stuck through with him through this darkest part of his life. She had saved him, in more ways than one.
But if she rejected him now…he couldn’t bear it. The very thought made his knees weak, and he leaned over the basin as if he were going to be ill.
No. He couldn’t risk it. Not now. Not when he was so close to breaking already.
Later, he told himself in a last attempt to save his breakfast from the toilet bowl. Later he would think about this. Later he would decide, but right now the very thought of telling her sent up a wave of panic that froze him stone-still. So, along with everything these last weeks, he pushed it back and away, lurking just beyond his thoughts. Slowly his shaking calmed and he stood straight, looking back at the ghostly man in the mirror before him.
It was no good. Logram had seen him, the guards had seen him. They had seen too much of him, and too much of Clark had been there in that white room with Lois and Superman. He needed to do something. Something more.
He took off his glasses, sticking them back on the shelf carefully, then reached farther back. He lifted some other frames—his old, thicker glasses. The ones with the heavy frames that had dominated his face since the beginning of high school, and were only replaced after graduation. The ones that had made him the geek of the school, the outcast of the “in” crowd. The ones that had made him normal.
He ran his fingers around the frames, then sat them on the cupboard. He reached up, pulling his hair down from its usual style, letting it hang more fully around his face, covering his brow. Then, carefully, he lifted his old glasses to his face and placed them on his nose.
Dark, haunted eyes vanished behind a thick pane of glass.
His window. His window to the outside, where he could hide and see them, but no one could see him.
He straightened, staring at the awkward looking man in the mirror before him. The frames weren’t so monstrous as they had been in his younger days, but they were still quite large, hiding his features a hundred times better than his other glasses. Hiding, most of all, his eyes.
He frowned slightly at the mirror. No good. He lifted his eyebrows, then furrowed them, testing out the look. Finally he forced out a small smile.
No—too forced. In fact, it looked so ridiculous that a real smile began to grow out of it—the first real one in days. It started at the left corner of his mouth and twitched its way across. This only seemed to increase the phenomenon, and suddenly an awkward grin broke out on his face, though he didn’t feel it inside.
He finished it up by lifting his hand and giving an awkward-looking wave to his reflection.
“C-Clark Kent,” he said, testing it out, lifting his eyebrows. He projected his voice slightly higher, even than his usual Clark voice. “Hi.”
He looked just like a nerd. A complete, utter, hopeless small-town boy. A hick from Smallville, just like Lois had said. The kind of guy you asked for ten bucks on the street because you know they’ll give it to you with the slightest pity story, whether it was true or not. A pushover.
It was perfect.
He turned to the door and opened it, but caught his toe on the edge of the carpet and almost fell. It was an odd feeling—both the pain from the action and the fact that he had tripped at all. Usually he was careful enough to never even have to worry about tripping (not that a little piece of carpet was usually enough to get in his way without getting completely ripped apart anyway), but with his new look it felt…natural.
“Clark? Honey, you okay? You were in there a long time,” his mom called, coming around the corner to look at him. She stopped, blinking at him. “Clark?”
“Y-yeah, Mom?” Yes, nervousness was good. Superman didn’t get nervous. Lois might recognize a fearful stutter, but not nervousness.
Martha stared at her son. “Where are your glasses? And wha—why are you wearing your hair like that?”
“Is it that obvious?” Clark asked, reaching up to push his glasses farther up on his nose. He didn’t want to make it blatantly clear that he was changing—to his mom, perhaps, but not to others. Especially not Lois. Sure, they might see the differences, but if it was too much they might get suspicious. And a suspicious Lois was the last thing he wanted.
“It’s just…a step back, I think,” Martha said. “Did you break your other glasses?”
Clark shook his head. “It…no. Just…a change.” His mother waited. “To…to hide. Lois—you know, she saw…she saw more of me. I—I can’t let her know.”
“Why not?” Martha asked, putting her hands on her hips and looking at him in consternation. “I may not know the woman very well, but I liked what I saw of her, and seeing as she chose to stay with you, I think I like her even more.” Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “What did she do?”
“N-nothing,” Clark said, not meeting her eyes. “I…I just…don’t want her to know. N-not yet.”
Clark’s mother looked at him sadly. “That’s your choice, Clark.” She wanted to pressure him, but he was clearly not in a state to be pressured—about anything.
They sat down and ate, keeping quiet for the most part, just grateful to be coming together in a shadowing world. Clark was helping his mother with dinner dishes (at his own insistence that he was well enough to do so), when there was a knock on the door.
Clark jumped, almost dropping the plate he had been drying. He had been enjoying the thoughtless normalcy of such a task, and the sound had startled him.
“S-sorry,” he muttered, pushing his glasses up nervously as he carefully set the plate down and looked at the door apprehensively. He took a long breath, not letting him think that they might be beyond that door…
Martha saw his still look and touched his arm gently. “Are you going to get that, Clark?”
Clark wanted to say a most firm, ‘no.’ He could think of few people that knew where he lived, or even bothered to know where he lived now. But he just adjusted the glasses and moved over slowly, climbing up the stairs. He hesitated, then reached forward to open the door.
Jimmy stood there, holding a sunken cake and looking at him out of bright eyes despite the dark circles under them from the stress of the last few days. The young man blinked at the sight of Clark, but nevertheless managed to give off a huge grin.
“Hey, CK! I brought you a little something I cooked up. You know, to say ‘welcome back,’ and all. The chief said you weren’t coming in, but even though you’ve only been at the Planet a few months…you’re already family, you know?”
Clark blinked at the sudden rush of nervous words. He adjusted his glasses again, then slowly reached out to take the offering from the young man, who was near bouncing with suppressed energy. The cake was still warm—almost hot, as if it were fresh out of the oven and perhaps pulled out a little too soon. Written in sloppy, melting frosting were the bold words: ‘GLAD YOU’RE OKAY, CK.” Clark wondered if the terrible rhyming job was intentional.
“T-thanks, Jimmy,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. Jimmy looked at him a bit sideways, and Clark gave him a forced smile. “I…I really appreciate it.”
“You look awful, CK. Lois doesn’t even look as bad as you, and she looks like a hurricane on a bad hair day. Don’t tell her I said that, though. And probably don’t mention to her or Perry I stopped by, either. The Chief sent me home to get some sleep, but since you’re back and all, I just thought to say…well…I’m glad you’re all right, and all.” He trailed off awkwardly, fidgeting. “Yeah, well, I hope your dad is doing better…”
Martha stepped to the door, then reached forward and gave the young man a big hug. He had helped them out a lot the past few days, and she had taken the young man under her wing as best she could in the chaos of the happenings. Jimmy cut off, blushing as Martha stepped back.
“He’s doing about the same, Jimmy.”
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, strangely somber for his character. “It must be rough, to have to come back to something like that.”
Clark struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. “Rough” was an understatement. He hadn’t even seen his father, yet, but everyone spoke as if he were already on his death bed.
“We…we were just going to go see him,” Clark said, his voice a bit rough.
“Oh. Sorry. I should have figured...I guess I was lucky to catch you here at all,” the copyboy stuttered. “I’ll just be going then. See you later, CK. Ma Kent.”
With another hug from Martha, causing him to turn bright red again, he stepped out. Clark was left blinking in the silence after the babble of words.
He looked down at the sloppy cake he held. “GLAD YOU’RE OKAY, CK.” But was he okay? He didn’t know.
“What a sweet boy,” Martha said, following his suddenly somber gaze to the cake.
“Yeah,” Clark replied absently. He looked up at her. “Can we go see Dad, now?”
TBC...
