After that night in Paris, I felt it would have been too much to hope that I would get to spend any more time alone with Diana for quite awhile. One evening that same month though, I had had to slip out of work near the end of the day to handle a crisis in the midtown area, an unextraordinary turn of events involving an out-of-control automated crane and a few poorly-placed buildings and bystanders. Though no one was hurt and I resolved the situation quickly, I didn't feel like heading back to the office right away, so I took instead to the sky, planning to fly around for just a little while. The sun was just starting to sink, the sky fading to the faint gold that signaled the beginning of the transition from day to night. I was a few miles into the sky and watching the slow stretch of the skyscrapers' shadows when I heard her voice.
"You don't seem to need any help with your own city- I guess it's a small wonder you added responsibility for the entire planet on top of your usual responsibilities."
I turned in the air and there she was, hovering over the nearest cloud like it was her pedestal. It may as well have been. I smiled immediately, startled by how effective her mere presence was- I already felt lighter just seeing her.
"What are you doing here?" I asked in surprise as I took a few steps through the sky towards her, reminding myself that to assume she was there to see me would have been little less than conceited.
She only shrugged with a small smile as she moved too to meet me in the middle. We were close enough to touch if we had wanted, and a part of me itched to reach for her and embrace her in greeting, but I head myself still when she only folded her arms over her chest, smiled across the sky at me, and finally replied.
"Just curiosity, I suppose. You tracked me down in my natural habitat; I figured I should return the favor. Watching you has been very…enlightening."
Though I raised my eyebrows in a suggestion for her to elaborate, she only gave me that sly smile in response. The sparkle in her eyes was somewhere between knowing and mischievous, and I wondered if she was aware of more about me than she was suggesting, the first of many times I would wonder that. But then she went on, looking around us at the myriad of colors beginning to dance in the sky.
"I've never been to Metropolis. Can you recommend a good spot to watch the sunset? Anyway, after how much I talked in Paris, I think Superman owes me an interview now."
Whatever she knew or thought she knew, it didn't seem to matter to her. Therefore I decided it wouldn't matter to me.
That night was the beginning what we would publicly call a friendship. From then on, we would visit each other in our respective cities almost weekly, stopping by each others' apartments, accompanying each other on patrols, or just taking each other on tours around the country…but through it all, spending nearly every moment talking and sharing our lives with each other.
With little prompting on her part, I told her throughout those visits about the formation of the Justice League, about my life here in Metropolis, and eventually I told her about my past in Kansas and Krypton. I told her Clark's story and Superman's, and finally I explained to her the past of Jor-El and Lara and their son Kal-El. She listened attentively to every word, the same sincerity that defined her every action full in her eyes as I found myself describing the three different identities I carried at all times. Her forehead creased pensively as she listened until she finally asked the question that would change everything.
"Which do you think you are at your core?" she asked me at one point. "If all of your external circumstances faded away for a moment, which of those identities would you take no matter what you are dressed as?" That night we were sitting on the globe atop the Daily Planet building, the sleepy city quiet far below our dangling feet. I had never entertained that question before, and it took me a long while to form my answer.
"It's hard to say," I responded slowly, considering everything as I sat there in the sky with her, the world around us flickering lights above and beneath. "I mean, as we sit here, I'm obviously Superman because I'm wearing this suit that tells everyone how I'm going to act. And in some ways, Superman is exactly who I am. Superman can do the big things that Clark Kent could never do-show his powers openly, protect people without concealing his actions-"
"Why couldn't Clark Kent do those things?" she interrupted for perhaps the first time since we had become friends. Her face was an expression of genuine puzzlement. "It's not as though your powers only work when you wear a red and blue suit. So why couldn't Clark be the hero without changing himself into Superman?"
That answer at least was easy. "Because Clark Kent wasn't supposed to have powers. He was supposed to be a farmer's son from Smallville, Kansas, not a super-powered alien refugee from a dead planet. When they found me and adopted me, my parents' primary concern was always to protect me from being found by the wrong people. If I had started doing these big things openly as Clark rather than Superman, it would have undone all their efforts. And even though I know now who my biological parents are, Clark will always be Jonathan and Martha Kent's son, and I want them to be proud of what I do with the name they gave me."
"But Clark was always Kal-El, he just didn't know it yet," Diana attempted again.
"Yes, you're right," I granted, "And I suppose underneath the hero persona, Superman will always in truth just be Kal-El of Krypton, displaced alien and sole survivor of his race. When I put a shirt and glasses back on, people will call me Clark and expect different things of me, but inside I'll still know that Clark is not all that I really am. Beneath this earthly identity, I'm still Kal-El."
"But never all three men at once," she said slowly, a hint of a question in her tone.
"It's a strange thing Diana," I said, turning and meeting her eyes, "but sitting here with you may be the closest I've ever felt to being all three people at once. The closest I've ever felt to being whole."
The confession was out of my mouth before I had even decided to say it, but once I heard the words in my own ears I knew they were true. Somehow, in a matter of weeks, she had managed to learn more about me than any single person on the planet. And somehow, she had taken in everything collectively, the whole tremendous mess all at once, and had understood in a way that no one ever had before.
Her lips turned in a small smile at my words, and for a long moment she just held my gaze captive, the silence like a shield around her. Her mesmeric eyes were so entrancing with the city lights glimmering in them that I didn't even notice that she had moved her hand from her knee until I felt her fingers gently brush mine. The back of her hand trailed lightly over the back of mine, a gentle but intentional caress, and before I could even react she turned her hand and settled it next to mine on the rail, allowing our fingers to overlap but making it quietly clear as she looked out over the city again that this was all she intended to do. The two of us sat together in silence, above the city but beneath the stars, a part of neither place yet connected and content somewhere in the between.
It was such a small touch lasting only a brief moment before she curled her fingers almost imperceptibly around mine and then drew her hand back, but that moment was a thunderclap of clarity that showed me two things.
The first was that she was no more made of stone than I was made of steel- for all her poise and contrasting power, her hand against mine was soft and warm. It was a long-awaited confirmation that she was in fact real and not an impossible construction of my mind.
Perhaps more importantly though, that small gesture showed that she wasn't afraid-that she trusted me enough to not take advantage of that moment. She had taken a small step towards me, had erased the line between us and redrawn it closer to herself. And if all I had earned so far was all she was willing to give, I knew I could be content with that.
However small that night would seem compared to all the other nights we would eventually share and memories we would make, I would forever see that moment as a turning point between us. Not just because she had reached out to me with a first, barrier-breaking touch that would come to define our relationship, but also because of the other change that set her apart from anyone else in my life.
After that night, she only called me Kal.