"What on Earth am I going to do, Bruce?" It was a sincere question, posed out of a genuine desire to understand his situation. Maybe he wasn't asking the person most likely to know the answer, but he was asking one man he trusted to help him understand the situation.

The first response Bruce gave was not equally sincere. It wasn't directly sincere at all. "About what Clark? Famine? Disease? Nuclear proliferation? The world changed while you were gone."

"I thought with the Berlin Wall down and General Zod vanquished…"

"No, Clark," Bruce turned back to face him. "You didn't think. You couldn't think. You just left. And some of us had a damned hard time filling your boots."

They were quite for a time, their eyes focused inward.

"Where did you go, man?" Bruce looked over at Clark, his face sober, his eyes expressing concern.

"Didn't you read Lois's column?" Clark queried, adjusting his glasses, slightly defensive.

"I did. You went to Krypton. You found the ghost of a world. But I don't think you gave her the whole story."

"Why not?"

"Because you couldn't give it to her. There'd be no way for her to understand, no way for her to put it into context, no context for her to put it into.

"What makes you say that, Bruce?"

"You couldn't tell her for the same reason you can't tell me. And for that matter neither of us can give you absolution and plead your case to the world." Bruce abruptly changed the subject, "I did some research on her fiancé, Richard White."

"Oh?"

"He wasn't always a newspaperman. He served in the armed forces. One of his patrols was lost. I think you can tell him. I think he will understand that part of you."

"How did you figure it out? I never told you what I was asking about."

"I'm the World's Greatest Detective, remember?"

"Thanks, Bruce. I'll need you to return one of the samples."

Clark turned back, and Bruce was gone. He usually only did that in uniform. A small led box sat where moments before, Bruce had stood.

Tuesdays had become Richard White's day to open Daily Planet. His uncle Perry came in early on Monday and got the team fired up. But he let Richard get things going on Tuesdays. The news was like cooking soup. On Monday, all the ingredients went into the pot. On Tuesdays, it would simmer on Tuesday and most of it would be done by Wednesday and Thursday. The man who could run the Daily Planet on Tuesdays: let the news simmer, season it, stir it, keep it from boiling over before it was done, that man could run the whole show. It had taken Richard a while to learn that. When he did, he began to relish it. Some days he would come in half an hour early and listen to the silent presses, look at the empty loading docks, enjoy the stillness before the next day's news cycle began. At those times the whole world seemed to hold its breath.

Richard heard a rap on his door. Looking up, he saw Clark there, and motioned for him to come in. "You're in early, Kent."

Clark slid the door open and stepped in lithely, like a panther on the hunt. Richard thought this was somehow out of character. Clark was usually tripping over himself. And he nearly always wore a three piece suit and a fedora hat. What was he saying, "…Oh, you know all those years of doing chores growing up on the farm, milking cows, feeding chickens…"

Clark was moving like an athlete and wearing a blazer over an open necked shirt. That wasn't like him all. Richard responded, "That isn't what you came here to talk about. Is it?"

"Well, jeepers, Mr. White - -" Clark stammered, pushing his glasses up on his face.

Richard held up his hands gently but firmly and tipped his slightly, "Mr. White is my uncle. Most people call my dad Agent White, though those who've known him the longest call him Colonel. No, Clark, please call me Richard."

"Alright then, Richard, did you notice the box on your desk?"

"The one sitting under my Hank Aaron autographed baseball? How could I miss it?"

"I've got another baseball, right here." Clark pulled it out of his pocket. "Bring the box up to the roof later after you get the paper up and running. Bring a lump of coal from the furnace down in the cellar, too. We'll throw the baseball and talk for a bit, man to man."

"Man to man, Clark?"

Clark let the remark pass, and asked directly, frankly, "When you were in the Service, Richard, did you ever kill anyone?"

"Well, I dropped bombs, delivered precision guided munitions, and ran my share of Close Air Support missions."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I'll meet you on the roof later." Richard stepped out and shut the door, leaving Clark alone in the office.

Clark opened the door, walked back to his desk and sat down. He pulled out his note pad and flipped thru it. Bruce had prompted some great story ideas. Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, Syria… Clark was sure Bruce had some stories to tell about the Middle East. Wayne Industries wasn't just technologies, chemicals and dishwashers anymore. Clark might go after some of those stories one day. But for today, he had finish up the piece on the power outage. The piece that had been forgotten the afternoon when Lois and Jason went missing, when an earthquake hit Metropolis, when he found out he was a father and his whole world tilted on its axis.

Clark opened up his laptop computer, spread out his notes and Lois's and dove into the story head long. Every electrical device on the East Coast goes dark…ConEd says that the outage had started at the VanDerhoval Estate…Lex Luthor had…" Clark barely came up for air when heard Lois say, "Hi, Clark, want some coffee?"

He turned to look and she actually had three cups. Clark heard footsteps as Richard came up and kissed his fiancée on the cheek. Richard removed one of the cups from the holder and set it on Lois's desk. He picked up the holder in one hand and offered it to Clark, "Thank you honey, but Clark and I are going to talk." In other hand Richard held the small grey metal box.

Lois looked at them both quizzically… "Talk?"

"Yeah, male bonding," Clark chimed in. "We'll talk about beating drums in the woods, Lois, things you wouldn't understand."

"Oh, I'd understand alright." She stood back up. Richard gestured for her to stay behind. "It's okay, honey. The paper is up and running. Uncle Perry is here to take the con for a while. We'll be back."