The Shield

Clark Kent, Superman

Lois pressed print and stood up from her desk. As she walked over to the printer, she stopped to watch as Clark sat in the "work" room (that is, the one room in the apartment without any windows) with a sewing kit. He was mending one of his Superman costumes, probably the one damaged in the fight with Faust last week. From the red thread she occasionally saw bob up and down, she assumed he was working on the "S" shield. It was the part that always took the longest.

The way people thought of that shield had always been a good indicator of how they thought of Superman. For some people, it was all but a symbol of divinity. The cult that Wonder Girl had fallen in with after Connor's death was the first example that came to her mind. There were, of course, others: try as he might, Clark had been unable to dissuade some people from thinking of him like a god. It was something that had always troubled him deeply.

Thankfully that view had, at least in the parts of the world where the flow of information wasn't limited to word of mouth, been at least partially sublimated by knowledge of Superman's extra-terrestrial origins. These days, when some enterprising young author does a book on Superman, they talk about how he's "The Last Son of Krypton." To them, the shield is a kryptonian symbol: something otherworldly. Or in the case of the more paranoid (Lois had once had the displeasure of meeting Amanda Waller), a symbol of an alien threat.

There were a few who even knew that the symbol (which translated, more or less, as hope) doubled as the symbol of the House of El. The majority of the superheroes (and villains) of note that Clark ran across seemed to get to this point eventually. These people tended, by and large, to know the name Kal, even if they didn't connect it to Clark.

But there were very few, even out of the people who called him Clark on occasion, that truly understood how Clark himself saw the Shield. Lois herself hadn't really noticed it till a few years back (though she did have a history of ... farsightedness with her husband's wardrobe habits).

Initially, Martha had always mended Clark's costumes on the rare occasion that one of them was damaged. Lois Lane doesn't sew, and Clark never could get his mother to teach him how (she had always simply insisted on doing it herself).

But about 5 years back, Clark had made a special point to head out to Gotham and have Alfred teach him how to sew. After that Clark had started to mend them himself with increasing regularity (though he tended to defer to Alfred on the occasion that he needed a new one made from scratch). Lois finally understood why 3 years ago when Martha was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Clark had probably noticed well before Johnathan had even started to push her to see a doctor about the pain. And of course, she would never admit it to Clark (children weren't supposed to have to worry about their parents), but the costumes must have been painful to make.

Of course, Martha did occasionally keep up with her son's goings on. Clark always made sure he had a (slightly) damaged uniform for her to mend if she noticed that one was ripped in a picture. He never had the heart to say "no" to her. And despite his insistence that she take her time, Martha would always have it good as new the day later.

If Superman had been sewing the uniform at super speed with super accuracy, it would have taken him seconds to finish the shield. Clark Kent was usually on that part for an hour or so. For him, this wasn't about Superman. It wasn't about Krypton or the House of El. It wasn't even about the people who saw the shield and felt a ray of hope.

It was about Martha Kent and her son Clark. Lois hoped that, if they ever had kids, she would do as good a job as Martha had.

Except for the sewing. Lois Lane doesn't sew. Even if it was Lane-Kent these days.