The windows needed replacing. They were old windows, shabby teal paint flaking off into little piles of dust on the floor. The shutters hung crookedly with disuse or rather over use and then disuse. In all the windows would be the first thing to go. Of course, Superman wasn't sure any of the houses could be kept. It'd been years since he's been here. The ways of the world, time lines, and catastrophes, have kept him wide ranging and far from home. After the death of his adopted parents he'd seen no reason to keep in touch with his home town, it might be his incubator but it wasn't his roots. Five years ago he'd left in search of those origins, traveling out beyond the stars to see the remnants of his birthright for himself. And now he returned to a run down yellow house whose shutters didn't shut and whose door was broken in. Superman would never have expected Smallville to be swallowed by suburbia much less turned to a slum but Metropolis had grown and grown, chewing up land and spitting out garbage dumps, and ghettos in its wake. As suburbia sprawled farther, neglected places were relegated to those on the hard side of the law. Superman would know something about that. He wondered at how fast things had changed, had it only been 5 years he was gone there and back? The state of the house made him question his immediate desire to come here first. Traveling that fast over space, time was a strange thing between the worlds, how long had it been?
Superman pushed the door open gently, ignoring the broken lock and listening intently. His super hearing told him where the mouse was in the kitchen and the structural instability of years of disuse. He did a brief scan of the building as he entered, almost surprised to find it vacant. This one house, and its surrounding land, was part of the only unused space left in the Smallville slum. The well tended fields of his father's day were long gone replaced with refuse and muddy furrows. Clark sighed wiping his fingers through the thick layer of dust that lay like a blanket over the counter tops. The furniture was gone but for a hall way table tilting precariously, debauched with a broken leg.
The kitchen was covered in the same dust and the cupboards hung open or closed, clearly there was nothing left. The house had been scoured for useful items more than once. Superman was glad he'd thought to move all his possessions of any importance to the fortress before his sojourn. Standing in the kitchen and surveying the decay that had been his childhood home Superman noticed a peculiar lack of dust in a swath over some of the floor, it looked as if someone in a long coat had moved through the room. He followed the path of exposed wood to where it reached the stairs. He shoved off the counter, peering up through the gloom the rooms over head were devoid of people, he shuddered to think about how the house stood with that much termite damage, possibly carpenter ant tunnels in there as well.
The railing to the stairs, of course, was broken off, but Superman didn't need a railing. The upper rooms were less disturbed, though He was certain he'd find nothing the way he left it. The trail of less dusty floor continued its sweep across the floor ending at Clark's door which was surprisingly closed. He pushed it open gently; it scuffed on the floor catching on wood chips from the ceiling. The ceiling itself was more bowl shaped than flat, like someone had lain in the attic and it was made of soft clay and not wood. Clark's bed sat as it had for so many years, bolted to the floor, the mattress was still there as well, but no blankets or pillows and the mattress seemed to be the home to a thriving family of mice. Superman scanned the rest of the room but again saw nothing more than the average animal life. There was however one chest of drawers left and that was where the path on the floor stopped. Superman crossed the room and slowly slid open the drawers. It gave a thoughtful squeak. Inside there were no more clothes, there was however a scrap of paper. Superman stared it, how odd it was something so ordinary and yet so out of place. Superman pulls it out. It's a picture, an old one. Clark recognizes himself, younger barely a teenager, gathered with his friends. Chloe and Pete stand to his left, Chloe leaning against him, a friendly elbow digging in his side laughing at him. Pete is amused beside them both. Lana stands immediately to his right, just barely not touching. The photograph captures the awkward tentative stages of their early relationship. The barely there, yet constant, hum of tension between them in the set of her shoulders and his right hand hovering uncertainly above her waist, caught in the indecision of preparing a pose. This is an unintentional photograph. Pete's not looking at the camera, Clark's embarrassed, Lana's uncertain and Chloe is dying with laughter at all of them. Lex is there too, making the photo even harder to place in time. He stands off to the right, within the frame but apart from the group. Like so much of what was, he appears collected and separate, the only one truly looking at the camera. His face is a mask, smiling stiltedly, but his eyes are lonely. Clark wonders how he missed such things, and when the photo was taken.
He has thought so little in so long. The picture brings memories flooding back, Chloe winner her first Pulitzer, sparkling in a dress with a high front and scandalously low back, familiar elbow at his ribs, teasing about his lack of career. Pete in Hollywood when Clark came to visit, at home among starlets and glitter, making a name for himself and working parties in a way only Pete could. Lana in her wedding dress, the pang he felt then a returning distant ache. Meeting her first child, its little fists waving, her happy face and apron with its childish print reminding him she was happy and he never could have given her this. Only Lex defies an epilogue in Clark's mental photo album, just a handful of polariods and publicity spin doctors, only his eyes in those moments telling the unchanged truth and growing deeper by the year. Lex was the one Clark never spoke to again. Lex was Superman's business.
Clark stands in his old home in the wake of ages long gone by. He knows Lana's children will be grown. He knows Pete will be famous and infamous and finally settled down with the credit his legacy deserves. Clark knows Lex is out there somewhere, maybe even president but his eyes will be just as hollow, a whole country unable to satisfy that hunger after so many years of neglect. Clark is satisfied that he himself has changed. He knows his own story just as he knows that of his friends even if he cannot place to story behind the moment of the photo. Clark will sell the house, this last piece of binding thread. He is neither Clark Kent nor Superman. Kal-El comes with too much baggage, but the name will suffice. Kal-El has many pasts, and a long life ahead. Someday these connections will seal themselves into a whole, but for now he will burn a few bridges. Kal lets the photo go and it spins to the floor. The spindly writing on it's underside unfamiliar over the age, faded pencil of a date and time long forgotten and not to be remembered for many years to come. Clark leaves as he came. Superman flies away. Kal waits for the feeling of loss to release his chest before catching the L-train into the heart of the city that is his home.