Far Away (Superman Returns) - Complete
Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:06 pm
Title: Far Away, 1/1
Author: bistyboo1974
Word Count: 3,182
Disclaimer: I like to pass my time playing in an imaginary world that was cooked up by other creative people. It’s all theirs, and none of it mine. *sighs* This is depressing, no? So, needless to say, I reap no sort of financial benefit from writing fan fiction. Therefore…Don’t. Sue. Me.
Summary: Before he leaves in search of what may or may not be left of his home planet, Krypton, Clark must come to terms with bidding the women in his life farewell. He is successful in one attempt, but not so much in the other.
Spoilers: Although the events in this ficlet take place before SR, it still contains spoilers for that movie. You have been warned!
*****
The first glimmer of sunlight peeked over the horizon, painting the rural landscape with rich, golden strokes. The sky grew brighter with each passing moment, and Clark Kent took in the grand Kansas sunrise with a heavy sigh. The dashes of crimson mixed in with the golden hues of the morning told him that it would probably rain sometime later that day, and not a moment too soon, as the farmers in the area would be inclined to say. The farmlands of the region were arid at the moment; the usually rich soil was now scorched from enduring day after day without water, thirsting more and more as time passed by for a good rainstorm to satisfy its need.
Clark looked across the field of corn and up at the brightening sky, hoping the system moving in later in the day would bring nothing more than a rainstorm. He worried about his mother, alone on the Kent farm since he left her as a teenager, following the death of his father. Sure, old Ben Hubbard was around to look in on Martha Kent from time to time, assisting her with farm maintenance and such, but still Clark worried. He thought he should wait around – until that evening, perhaps – just to see if the storm was going to be a bad one or not. But, no. He couldn’t. There would be many more storms that’d be coming through Smallville after he went away…if he stayed around ‘til tonight, what might come up next that would keep him from going? No. He had to do this. He had to go inside now, into the old farmhouse where he’d spent the days of his youth. He had to go see his mother for what might very well be the last time. He had to tell her goodbye.
Clark took a step towards the porch, and heard his own voice saying the sentiment in his head…
Goodbye.
So simple, that parting remark. Babies learn it early on, waving eagerly while bidding everyone from their parents to the clerks in grocery stores heartfelt ‘bye-‘byes, complete with slobbery blown kisses and toothless grins. Yet Clark felt it the toughest thing he’d ever had to do. Tougher than any of the tremendous feats he’d undertaken, and he’d managed quite a few of those over the years. After all, strength and speed and all of that came easily to him. As easy as breathing to most people. But leaving behind the people he loved and cared for? That was taking endless amounts of courage, and a type of strength he couldn’t muster as easily as raising ten tons of aircraft above his head with a single hand…
Clark drew in a quick breath as that thought brought her to mind.
Lois.
Brash, bold, brilliant.
Lois Lane.
He’d left Metropolis without as much as a word to her. She all but ignored him at the Planet the day before, hot on the heels of a breaking news story, giving him a curt, “Move it or lose it, Kent!” as she jogged past him towards the elevators. He considered going after her right then and there, but what was he supposed to say to her, as Clark Kent? He considered going to her now, as his alter ego, but he immediately reconsidered. His nerve almost never failed him, but in this task? He wasn’t so sure. His physical strength was superior. He had the might of a god, many would say…but he felt as weak as the next man in her presence. He wouldn’t be able to do it, if he went to tell her goodbye. He’d stumble over the words, crumble there at her feet. Even now the thought of doing so was agony, as he stood in the midst of this picturesque countryside, so many miles apart from her. Already so far away.
Clark continued walking, taking slow, measured paces towards the porch. He glanced and caught sight of the old swing there, and he remembered sitting outside many evenings as a boy, looking out into the vast night sky, his keen eyes focused on the star-littered sky above. Always so fascinated by the enormity of the universe, his thoughts would stray and he’d wonder about the other solar systems he gazed upon, and about the far-away planets orbiting those distant suns. He remembered suddenly, as he took his last strides towards the rickety porch steps, the makeshift universe he had created on the ceiling of his bedroom when he was in elementary school. The thought of it brought a warm rush of memories back to him. He hated leaving. He looked over his shoulder at the dazzling morning sky, yellow streaks of sunlight streaming over the cornfields. He hated leaving Earth, this adopted home world of his.
He listened for signs of his mother stirring inside the house. He was sure he’d hear her bustling in the kitchen. Dumping coffee grounds into a filter, whisking eggs around in a metal dish, splashing her hands beneath the water trickling from the faucet. But the kitchen was silent except for the occasional sleeping grunts of the old Lab resting under the kitchen table and the clanking of the ice maker in the ‘fridge. Clark focused his hearing deeper into the house and finally made out the light breathing of his mother, still fast asleep. He was a little surprised she wasn’t up with the roosters, as in the days of old. Back in those days, Clark remembered more than once being on the receiving end of a scolding for sleeping in when there were chores to be done. There were moments when he missed those times so much. They were uncomplicated, for the most part. He recalled sunny afternoons relaxing under the branches of the old oak tree beside the house, with his homework sprawled out across the grass, happy to do his assignments in the fresh air and with the rays of sunlight gently nourishing his Kryptonian physiology. His mother would bring out a pitcher of lemonade and ask him about his day at school. He’d tell her, then sip the tangy-sweet beverage as he listened to her spin tales of when she was his age. Sometimes she’d ask if there was anything coming up at school she should know about…PTA meetings or field trips, or maybe a dance. Clark would flush at the mere mention of the word ‘dance,’ the idea of discussing a topic that involved girls and dating with his mother a positively horrifying one…
But this morning – his last morning on Earth for quite sometime, if not possibly the last – he planned to broach a subject he avoided most eagerly as a teenager. He was no longer a boy, and what he was going to speak to his mother about was not as trivial as a homecoming dance. He sat down on the swing and took in the pleasant fragrance of the gardenias blooming in the flowerbed beside the porch. Whenever he spoke of his work colleague to Martha Kent before, he never admitted outright the deep feelings he had for her, but at the same time it was difficult to keep his emotions in check when discussing Lois Lane.
“You fancy her, don’t you, Clark?” his mother once asked him.
He’d timidly responded, “A little…maybe,” when the more accurate answer would have been, “A lot…most definitely.”
But as simple as life in Smallville could be, his situation with Lois Lane was just as complicated.
He closed his eyes and pictured Lois in his mind, just as plainly as if she were standing a few feet away from him. He envisioned her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her hazel eyes staring carefully back at him, her fingers playing with a string of milky pearls that encircled her throat. He felt an ache in his chest as he held the image, an echo of this woman he held so dear. The woman he loved. The woman he planned on leaving without even a, “So long, it was nice knowing you.”
Suddenly, the image of Lois dropped the beads and crossed her arms. She arched an eyebrow and scowled at him. “What’s so difficult, buster? It’s plain and simple. Good! Bye!” She shook her head in disgust, causing her dark hair to dance furiously.
Clark sighed and opened his eyes, the image evaporating as he did so.
He needed his mother to know. How he felt about Lois, and how Lois felt about him, and why it could never be. That Lois would never remember, thanks to him, but that he would always remember. Of course, he wouldn’t go into details – this was his mother, after all – but he needed someone on Earth to know how he felt. To know that, if things were different, if he was different…
But there was the trouble. That was the problem.
He was different.
And that was why he felt compelled to leave. He both blessed and cursed the satellite data received that informed scientists of the possibility that Krypton still existed. It was a lure that was too great to resist...but, then again, so was Lois.
A gentle wind made the chimes hanging above Clark’s head awaken; their song lilting happily away on the breeze, oblivious to the conflicted emotions of their sole listener. Unwittingly, he tightened his grip on the arms of the porch swing until he heard a small cracking noise, then glanced down to observe the fractures in the wood slats that his hands had just caused. Frustrated, he got up and began to pace a bit before stopping at the top of the steps. He stared straight ahead, but didn’t see the dusty field of crops before him in the distance. No, his guilt-riddled mind was playing tricks on him, because there she was. Like a mirage in the desert, there was Lois...where wobbly pieces of farm equipment and clucking chickens should have been, he imagined her. She was only an illusion, but Clark clung desperately to that illusion for respite.
“I can’t,” he spluttered. “I can’t go to you. It would…” He paused and stared at her for a quiet moment, praying she wouldn’t dissolve before he could explain. “It would hurt too much.”
He heard her voice echo against the song of the wind chimes. “Who would it hurt? Me? You?”
“Both of us,” he replied.
“So what? We don’t know we’re alive without feeling something…even the hurt.”
“I…Lois…”
But her image finally melted away, lost amid the rays of sunlight streaming towards the farmhouse. The screen door slammed behind him, startling him. He spun around as his mother called out to him with a stunned expression plastered on her face.
“Oh, Clark! I thought I heard a voice out here!” Her frail arms were wrapped around him tightly in an instant, squeezing him into a warm embrace. “I didn’t expect you…is everything all right?” She pulled back from him and studied his face for a moment. “Everything’s not all right…I can tell.”
They went inside the house, to the quaint parlor to sit, and Clark spoke. Deep creases gathered on Martha Kent’s forehead as she listened to her son explain why he’d come to her that morning, out of the blue. Tears pooled in her eyes when he told her he had to go – had to leave Earth – and he had come to tell her goodbye. She held him in her arms again, and it was a long time before she let go.
“Is it selfish of me to want you to stay?” asked Martha, her voice weak.
“Mom,” said Clark, touching her face gently with his hand. “I have to…I have to see. If there’s even a remote possibility, I’ve got to…it’s my…”
“Home?” said Martha. She sniffled and looked at the row of photos atop the piano by the wall. Clark looked, too. It was a gallery of family photos: Jonathan, Martha, Clark.
A family.
The Kents.
His family.
Clark looked around the room at the old-fashioned paper decorating the walls and the well-worn rugs lining the wooden floors; at the comfortable chair where Jonathan used to sit and read each night, and the sofa beside it, where Martha would work on her needlepoint. This place had been his home.
And Krypton? A birthplace, certainly. But, a home?
Clark sighed and held his mother’s small and delicate hands in his large, strong ones. “The planet might still be there. And the people…they might be there, too.”
Martha nodded. “I know you’ve got to do this, Clark. I want you to stay, but I won’t try to stop you doing this.”
She asked him how long he’d be gone. She asked him if it was dangerous.
He didn’t know how long. He thought it’d be quite dangerous, but to tell her that…
But the look on her face told him she already knew.
“Mom,” Clark said finally. “Before I go, there’s something I need you to know, in case…”
In case I don’t ever come back.
“What is it?”
“It’s Lois.”
Martha’s expression softened.
“I love her, Mom.”
“Oh, Clark,” Martha said. She wore a smile that was filled with more sorrow than happiness. “Did you tell her this?”
Clark nodded.
“Does she feel the same way about you, Clark?”
“About me? About Clark?” he asked. “She did once. Before…”
“Before?” Martha looked perplexed. “Before what, son?”
Clark explained.
“My goodness,” was all Martha could say. She wrung her hands fretfully, and Clark had a difficult time wondering whether or not she was contemplating heading into the kitchen to fetch a rolling pin to wallop him with. He hoped that the importance of his visit that day outweighed her urge to give him a severe scolding.
“I needed for someone to know,” Clark said finally, when it was clear Martha was suppressing all urges to admonish him. “Mom, if things had been different…Lois and I…maybe we could have been happy together…”
Clark felt the ache in his chest return. They could have been so happy together. How many times had he fantasized about the ‘what might have beens,’ like marriage and family? But Clark knew those were just dreams. A wife and children? Those were things normal people had.
Normal people did not plan interstellar journeys in search of their home worlds.
“I’ll be thinking of you every minute of every day until you come back, Clark,” Martha told him, hugging him tightly yet again, seemingly unable to release him this time of her own accord. Clark gently parted with her and placed a kiss on her forehead.
“I love you, Mom,” he said as he stepped onto the front porch. He kissed her forehead again and whispered, “Goodbye.”
He didn’t look back as he descended the stairs, then crossed the yard, though he could plainly hear his mother’s quiet sobs. When he reached the edge of the field, he paused only for a moment before shedding the layers of clothing hiding his suit…the layers that gave him the appearance of a normal man. But appearances, as they say, can be deceiving. In an instant, he was gone. But it was a long time before the sounds of his mother’s grief left him.
***
As he flew northward, he thought more and more of Lois.
It’s not too late, he thought, even as he came upon the huge spires of crystal jutting skyward from the frigid Arctic landscape.
Inside the Fortress, he stood before the vessel that would take him far away from everything he’d ever known and held dear. Far away from everything, but especially from Lois.
He clutched a clear crystal in his hand, preparing to insert it into the ship…preparing himself to leave. The ship hummed as the glistening mineral hovered so near. Clark didn’t want to hesitate. He wanted to use the crystal to ignite the Kryptonian vessel, and to begin his journey without feeling anymore anguish, anymore pain. The humming grew louder, as did the voice echoing inside his head. His own voice.
It’s not too late.
Drop the crystal and go to her.
We don’t know we’re alive without feeling something…even the hurt.
Go to her and tell her…
If the throbbing ache in his chest were an indicator, he was feeling very much alive at the moment. He was gripping the crystal so tightly, it should’ve crumbled into a million microscopic pieces. Had it been a common, Earth-formed crystal, it would have.
If I go to her, I’ll never be able to do this…I won’t be able to look at her and say goodbye…she’ll look at me with her eyes full of anguish, and I’ll never want to leave her…but I have to…I have to see for myself, if what those scientists said is true...I have to…
The loud humming of the ship was drowning out his thoughts, as if it were trying to convince him they were right, that they were justified, that he truly had to leave – but it could do nothing to abate the ache he felt.
Soon, the crystal would have no more of his indecision. Like a magnet being drawn to a slab of iron, the crystal pulled itself free from Clark’s hand, then drove itself into the crevice it had been hovering above.
There would be no more debate. The crystal had made the choice for him. There was no turning back now, as the ship roared to life.
I’ll see her again one day, and I will explain.
He stepped inside the strange vessel, and tried to make himself believe this was true, that there would come a day when he’d see her face again.
She’ll understand why I had to do this.
He closed his eyes as the ship began to ascend. He was pretty certain she might understand why he had to leave; he wasn’t so sure she’d be accepting of why he left without saying goodbye.
He was enclosed in the ship now, encapsulated by a dazzling crystalline canopy that would shelter him on his long voyage. As the crystals surrounded him, so did his pain. He embraced it now, though. Perhaps a normal man – unlike himself – would feel pain of a different sort throughout his life; the sorts of common aches that come from normal human exertion that he was immune to. But he was not – and never had been – immune to another sort of pain. He felt emotional pains deeply, and right now – as the ship rocketed towards the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere – his heart was practically bleeding from them.
He was leaving the only home he’d ever known.
He was leaving the only family he had left there.
He was leaving the only woman he would ever love.
As the ship carried him farther and farther away, he kept his eyes shut tightly, aching desperately as he pictured her – his bright, beautiful and brave Lois Lane.
And he prayed that, one day, she might understand why it had been too hard for him to say goodbye.
THE END
Author: bistyboo1974
Word Count: 3,182
Disclaimer: I like to pass my time playing in an imaginary world that was cooked up by other creative people. It’s all theirs, and none of it mine. *sighs* This is depressing, no? So, needless to say, I reap no sort of financial benefit from writing fan fiction. Therefore…Don’t. Sue. Me.
Summary: Before he leaves in search of what may or may not be left of his home planet, Krypton, Clark must come to terms with bidding the women in his life farewell. He is successful in one attempt, but not so much in the other.
Spoilers: Although the events in this ficlet take place before SR, it still contains spoilers for that movie. You have been warned!
*****
The first glimmer of sunlight peeked over the horizon, painting the rural landscape with rich, golden strokes. The sky grew brighter with each passing moment, and Clark Kent took in the grand Kansas sunrise with a heavy sigh. The dashes of crimson mixed in with the golden hues of the morning told him that it would probably rain sometime later that day, and not a moment too soon, as the farmers in the area would be inclined to say. The farmlands of the region were arid at the moment; the usually rich soil was now scorched from enduring day after day without water, thirsting more and more as time passed by for a good rainstorm to satisfy its need.
Clark looked across the field of corn and up at the brightening sky, hoping the system moving in later in the day would bring nothing more than a rainstorm. He worried about his mother, alone on the Kent farm since he left her as a teenager, following the death of his father. Sure, old Ben Hubbard was around to look in on Martha Kent from time to time, assisting her with farm maintenance and such, but still Clark worried. He thought he should wait around – until that evening, perhaps – just to see if the storm was going to be a bad one or not. But, no. He couldn’t. There would be many more storms that’d be coming through Smallville after he went away…if he stayed around ‘til tonight, what might come up next that would keep him from going? No. He had to do this. He had to go inside now, into the old farmhouse where he’d spent the days of his youth. He had to go see his mother for what might very well be the last time. He had to tell her goodbye.
Clark took a step towards the porch, and heard his own voice saying the sentiment in his head…
Goodbye.
So simple, that parting remark. Babies learn it early on, waving eagerly while bidding everyone from their parents to the clerks in grocery stores heartfelt ‘bye-‘byes, complete with slobbery blown kisses and toothless grins. Yet Clark felt it the toughest thing he’d ever had to do. Tougher than any of the tremendous feats he’d undertaken, and he’d managed quite a few of those over the years. After all, strength and speed and all of that came easily to him. As easy as breathing to most people. But leaving behind the people he loved and cared for? That was taking endless amounts of courage, and a type of strength he couldn’t muster as easily as raising ten tons of aircraft above his head with a single hand…
Clark drew in a quick breath as that thought brought her to mind.
Lois.
Brash, bold, brilliant.
Lois Lane.
He’d left Metropolis without as much as a word to her. She all but ignored him at the Planet the day before, hot on the heels of a breaking news story, giving him a curt, “Move it or lose it, Kent!” as she jogged past him towards the elevators. He considered going after her right then and there, but what was he supposed to say to her, as Clark Kent? He considered going to her now, as his alter ego, but he immediately reconsidered. His nerve almost never failed him, but in this task? He wasn’t so sure. His physical strength was superior. He had the might of a god, many would say…but he felt as weak as the next man in her presence. He wouldn’t be able to do it, if he went to tell her goodbye. He’d stumble over the words, crumble there at her feet. Even now the thought of doing so was agony, as he stood in the midst of this picturesque countryside, so many miles apart from her. Already so far away.
Clark continued walking, taking slow, measured paces towards the porch. He glanced and caught sight of the old swing there, and he remembered sitting outside many evenings as a boy, looking out into the vast night sky, his keen eyes focused on the star-littered sky above. Always so fascinated by the enormity of the universe, his thoughts would stray and he’d wonder about the other solar systems he gazed upon, and about the far-away planets orbiting those distant suns. He remembered suddenly, as he took his last strides towards the rickety porch steps, the makeshift universe he had created on the ceiling of his bedroom when he was in elementary school. The thought of it brought a warm rush of memories back to him. He hated leaving. He looked over his shoulder at the dazzling morning sky, yellow streaks of sunlight streaming over the cornfields. He hated leaving Earth, this adopted home world of his.
He listened for signs of his mother stirring inside the house. He was sure he’d hear her bustling in the kitchen. Dumping coffee grounds into a filter, whisking eggs around in a metal dish, splashing her hands beneath the water trickling from the faucet. But the kitchen was silent except for the occasional sleeping grunts of the old Lab resting under the kitchen table and the clanking of the ice maker in the ‘fridge. Clark focused his hearing deeper into the house and finally made out the light breathing of his mother, still fast asleep. He was a little surprised she wasn’t up with the roosters, as in the days of old. Back in those days, Clark remembered more than once being on the receiving end of a scolding for sleeping in when there were chores to be done. There were moments when he missed those times so much. They were uncomplicated, for the most part. He recalled sunny afternoons relaxing under the branches of the old oak tree beside the house, with his homework sprawled out across the grass, happy to do his assignments in the fresh air and with the rays of sunlight gently nourishing his Kryptonian physiology. His mother would bring out a pitcher of lemonade and ask him about his day at school. He’d tell her, then sip the tangy-sweet beverage as he listened to her spin tales of when she was his age. Sometimes she’d ask if there was anything coming up at school she should know about…PTA meetings or field trips, or maybe a dance. Clark would flush at the mere mention of the word ‘dance,’ the idea of discussing a topic that involved girls and dating with his mother a positively horrifying one…
But this morning – his last morning on Earth for quite sometime, if not possibly the last – he planned to broach a subject he avoided most eagerly as a teenager. He was no longer a boy, and what he was going to speak to his mother about was not as trivial as a homecoming dance. He sat down on the swing and took in the pleasant fragrance of the gardenias blooming in the flowerbed beside the porch. Whenever he spoke of his work colleague to Martha Kent before, he never admitted outright the deep feelings he had for her, but at the same time it was difficult to keep his emotions in check when discussing Lois Lane.
“You fancy her, don’t you, Clark?” his mother once asked him.
He’d timidly responded, “A little…maybe,” when the more accurate answer would have been, “A lot…most definitely.”
But as simple as life in Smallville could be, his situation with Lois Lane was just as complicated.
He closed his eyes and pictured Lois in his mind, just as plainly as if she were standing a few feet away from him. He envisioned her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her hazel eyes staring carefully back at him, her fingers playing with a string of milky pearls that encircled her throat. He felt an ache in his chest as he held the image, an echo of this woman he held so dear. The woman he loved. The woman he planned on leaving without even a, “So long, it was nice knowing you.”
Suddenly, the image of Lois dropped the beads and crossed her arms. She arched an eyebrow and scowled at him. “What’s so difficult, buster? It’s plain and simple. Good! Bye!” She shook her head in disgust, causing her dark hair to dance furiously.
Clark sighed and opened his eyes, the image evaporating as he did so.
He needed his mother to know. How he felt about Lois, and how Lois felt about him, and why it could never be. That Lois would never remember, thanks to him, but that he would always remember. Of course, he wouldn’t go into details – this was his mother, after all – but he needed someone on Earth to know how he felt. To know that, if things were different, if he was different…
But there was the trouble. That was the problem.
He was different.
And that was why he felt compelled to leave. He both blessed and cursed the satellite data received that informed scientists of the possibility that Krypton still existed. It was a lure that was too great to resist...but, then again, so was Lois.
A gentle wind made the chimes hanging above Clark’s head awaken; their song lilting happily away on the breeze, oblivious to the conflicted emotions of their sole listener. Unwittingly, he tightened his grip on the arms of the porch swing until he heard a small cracking noise, then glanced down to observe the fractures in the wood slats that his hands had just caused. Frustrated, he got up and began to pace a bit before stopping at the top of the steps. He stared straight ahead, but didn’t see the dusty field of crops before him in the distance. No, his guilt-riddled mind was playing tricks on him, because there she was. Like a mirage in the desert, there was Lois...where wobbly pieces of farm equipment and clucking chickens should have been, he imagined her. She was only an illusion, but Clark clung desperately to that illusion for respite.
“I can’t,” he spluttered. “I can’t go to you. It would…” He paused and stared at her for a quiet moment, praying she wouldn’t dissolve before he could explain. “It would hurt too much.”
He heard her voice echo against the song of the wind chimes. “Who would it hurt? Me? You?”
“Both of us,” he replied.
“So what? We don’t know we’re alive without feeling something…even the hurt.”
“I…Lois…”
But her image finally melted away, lost amid the rays of sunlight streaming towards the farmhouse. The screen door slammed behind him, startling him. He spun around as his mother called out to him with a stunned expression plastered on her face.
“Oh, Clark! I thought I heard a voice out here!” Her frail arms were wrapped around him tightly in an instant, squeezing him into a warm embrace. “I didn’t expect you…is everything all right?” She pulled back from him and studied his face for a moment. “Everything’s not all right…I can tell.”
They went inside the house, to the quaint parlor to sit, and Clark spoke. Deep creases gathered on Martha Kent’s forehead as she listened to her son explain why he’d come to her that morning, out of the blue. Tears pooled in her eyes when he told her he had to go – had to leave Earth – and he had come to tell her goodbye. She held him in her arms again, and it was a long time before she let go.
“Is it selfish of me to want you to stay?” asked Martha, her voice weak.
“Mom,” said Clark, touching her face gently with his hand. “I have to…I have to see. If there’s even a remote possibility, I’ve got to…it’s my…”
“Home?” said Martha. She sniffled and looked at the row of photos atop the piano by the wall. Clark looked, too. It was a gallery of family photos: Jonathan, Martha, Clark.
A family.
The Kents.
His family.
Clark looked around the room at the old-fashioned paper decorating the walls and the well-worn rugs lining the wooden floors; at the comfortable chair where Jonathan used to sit and read each night, and the sofa beside it, where Martha would work on her needlepoint. This place had been his home.
And Krypton? A birthplace, certainly. But, a home?
Clark sighed and held his mother’s small and delicate hands in his large, strong ones. “The planet might still be there. And the people…they might be there, too.”
Martha nodded. “I know you’ve got to do this, Clark. I want you to stay, but I won’t try to stop you doing this.”
She asked him how long he’d be gone. She asked him if it was dangerous.
He didn’t know how long. He thought it’d be quite dangerous, but to tell her that…
But the look on her face told him she already knew.
“Mom,” Clark said finally. “Before I go, there’s something I need you to know, in case…”
In case I don’t ever come back.
“What is it?”
“It’s Lois.”
Martha’s expression softened.
“I love her, Mom.”
“Oh, Clark,” Martha said. She wore a smile that was filled with more sorrow than happiness. “Did you tell her this?”
Clark nodded.
“Does she feel the same way about you, Clark?”
“About me? About Clark?” he asked. “She did once. Before…”
“Before?” Martha looked perplexed. “Before what, son?”
Clark explained.
“My goodness,” was all Martha could say. She wrung her hands fretfully, and Clark had a difficult time wondering whether or not she was contemplating heading into the kitchen to fetch a rolling pin to wallop him with. He hoped that the importance of his visit that day outweighed her urge to give him a severe scolding.
“I needed for someone to know,” Clark said finally, when it was clear Martha was suppressing all urges to admonish him. “Mom, if things had been different…Lois and I…maybe we could have been happy together…”
Clark felt the ache in his chest return. They could have been so happy together. How many times had he fantasized about the ‘what might have beens,’ like marriage and family? But Clark knew those were just dreams. A wife and children? Those were things normal people had.
Normal people did not plan interstellar journeys in search of their home worlds.
“I’ll be thinking of you every minute of every day until you come back, Clark,” Martha told him, hugging him tightly yet again, seemingly unable to release him this time of her own accord. Clark gently parted with her and placed a kiss on her forehead.
“I love you, Mom,” he said as he stepped onto the front porch. He kissed her forehead again and whispered, “Goodbye.”
He didn’t look back as he descended the stairs, then crossed the yard, though he could plainly hear his mother’s quiet sobs. When he reached the edge of the field, he paused only for a moment before shedding the layers of clothing hiding his suit…the layers that gave him the appearance of a normal man. But appearances, as they say, can be deceiving. In an instant, he was gone. But it was a long time before the sounds of his mother’s grief left him.
***
As he flew northward, he thought more and more of Lois.
It’s not too late, he thought, even as he came upon the huge spires of crystal jutting skyward from the frigid Arctic landscape.
Inside the Fortress, he stood before the vessel that would take him far away from everything he’d ever known and held dear. Far away from everything, but especially from Lois.
He clutched a clear crystal in his hand, preparing to insert it into the ship…preparing himself to leave. The ship hummed as the glistening mineral hovered so near. Clark didn’t want to hesitate. He wanted to use the crystal to ignite the Kryptonian vessel, and to begin his journey without feeling anymore anguish, anymore pain. The humming grew louder, as did the voice echoing inside his head. His own voice.
It’s not too late.
Drop the crystal and go to her.
We don’t know we’re alive without feeling something…even the hurt.
Go to her and tell her…
If the throbbing ache in his chest were an indicator, he was feeling very much alive at the moment. He was gripping the crystal so tightly, it should’ve crumbled into a million microscopic pieces. Had it been a common, Earth-formed crystal, it would have.
If I go to her, I’ll never be able to do this…I won’t be able to look at her and say goodbye…she’ll look at me with her eyes full of anguish, and I’ll never want to leave her…but I have to…I have to see for myself, if what those scientists said is true...I have to…
The loud humming of the ship was drowning out his thoughts, as if it were trying to convince him they were right, that they were justified, that he truly had to leave – but it could do nothing to abate the ache he felt.
Soon, the crystal would have no more of his indecision. Like a magnet being drawn to a slab of iron, the crystal pulled itself free from Clark’s hand, then drove itself into the crevice it had been hovering above.
There would be no more debate. The crystal had made the choice for him. There was no turning back now, as the ship roared to life.
I’ll see her again one day, and I will explain.
He stepped inside the strange vessel, and tried to make himself believe this was true, that there would come a day when he’d see her face again.
She’ll understand why I had to do this.
He closed his eyes as the ship began to ascend. He was pretty certain she might understand why he had to leave; he wasn’t so sure she’d be accepting of why he left without saying goodbye.
He was enclosed in the ship now, encapsulated by a dazzling crystalline canopy that would shelter him on his long voyage. As the crystals surrounded him, so did his pain. He embraced it now, though. Perhaps a normal man – unlike himself – would feel pain of a different sort throughout his life; the sorts of common aches that come from normal human exertion that he was immune to. But he was not – and never had been – immune to another sort of pain. He felt emotional pains deeply, and right now – as the ship rocketed towards the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere – his heart was practically bleeding from them.
He was leaving the only home he’d ever known.
He was leaving the only family he had left there.
He was leaving the only woman he would ever love.
As the ship carried him farther and farther away, he kept his eyes shut tightly, aching desperately as he pictured her – his bright, beautiful and brave Lois Lane.
And he prayed that, one day, she might understand why it had been too hard for him to say goodbye.
THE END
: So sad! And poignant! Great work! 
