Christopher sighed as he trailed after the man he'd called father. The man who raised him looked just as lost as he did when he'd "died" nearly forty-six years before. Part of him wanted to be angry at the man, to curse him out for abandoning him and Margaret. But, every time he took in that lost half shut-down look, he found himself unable to be angry. He was sad, disappointed despite the fact that he honestly hadn't known what he'd been expecting would happen when he'd showed up unannounced, and he didn't even know what. A small thread of the old burned-out anger he'd carried throughout his youth was present, but it was overshadowed by this massive, uncertain ball of everything else that seemed to have settled in his chest and done its damnedest to crush his heart and squeeze the air from his lungs.

There had been a period of time when he'd almost hated his father for adopting him in the first place and blamed him for every bad thing that had happened to him since the adoption. He had felt justified in his burning corrosive anger, citing the fact that just about every last one of the problems he'd had growing up had stemmed from the fact that he'd obviously been adopted, and had been the only Asian kid in the neighborhood. Part of the reason he'd joined the military in '69 had been because it was something Clark Kent wouldn't have done, and sure as hell wouldn't have approved of.

He'd signed up because of that, and because, aside from rescuing civilians from battlezones, Superman had stopped interfering in wars since Korea, tending to let the humans fight it out until they grew sick of fighting, which meant that Superman would be staying out of his life so long as he was in uniform. The last thing he'd needed back then after his father had died and left for good was for the man's alter-ego to start interfering in his life, especially since he hadn't yet seen what had happened to his father as a death, and instead had still seen it as an abandonment.

After enlisting, he'd been sent to Vietnam where he'd been completely ignored by his father who had passed through to scoop up random villagers and put out fires. While he'd been on leave in Japan during his tour of duty, he'd started learning Japanese in order to have a connection with what the angry young man he'd been back then had considered his "real people". If he hadn't been a G.I., and hadn't known that if the M.P.s didn't hunt him down and drag him back, he'd be a wanted man for life if he deserted, he likely would have let his anger at the people who had raised him and the society to which they belonged lead him into denying that he'd ever been an American during that leave, wife and child waiting for him at home be damned.

Truth be told, he'd been bitter, angry and almost completely aimless throughout almost the entirety of the Sixties, even before his mom died and left him with the absent being who only went through the motions, occasionally drifting in and out of the house to make sure he and Margaret hadn't died or burnt the house down while he was away, to pin his anger on. That anger had continued into the Seventies before it had finally burned itself out because there was almost nothing left of him to fuel the flames with.

By the time his anger had burnt itself out, he had almost completely and irreparably ruined his life. Angry and wandering through life with no particular direction in mind was a bad thing to be. Especially when one has a young family that's starting to disintegrate, much like society had seemed to have been doing during the Sixties and Seventies. When he'd come home to find his wife gone, his son gone, and divorce papers waiting for him, it had not been his father's fault and he knew it. He'd been the one who'd made the choice to leave his family in order to go off and fight in a war he hadn't needed to fight all on his own. He had been the one who'd left his family behind this time and, rather than waiting for him to come back, they had left him in return.

Coming home to find his family gone because he'd left them had brought him up short and forced him to examine himself in depth. He had found that he hadn't liked who he was, and what he had become while he had let his anger burn unchecked an nearly utterly consume him. He did his best to change after that day, and did his best to make things up to his wife and child whom he hadn't really appreciated until the day he'd come home to find them gone and that he had nothing left but an empty home.

Even though his wife had returned for a time, his marriage had never recovered from his angry period which could've continued for the rest of his life if he'd allowed it to. But, he had done his best to visit his son as often as he could, even after the woman he'd promised Forever to had remarried. Eventually, he too had remarried and the son he made sure to never be more than a phonecall away from was joined with half-siblings from his side of the family as well as his mother's.

Part of what had allowed him to move on and start a new family had been acknowledging the fact that while the body was still there flying around the planet rescuing people, the man who had raised him as his own, the man who'd taken him to baseball games and helped him with his homework even when he looked about dead on his feet had curled up and died at some point soon after the woman he called mother had passed. It had been nearly four decades since he'd accepted his father's death, and started moving on from it as anyone would move on from the death of a loved one.

Now though, here his father was, back from the dead, and part of him dearly wanted to punch him for a variety of reasons while another part of him which saw that his father was just as lost as he had been five decades ago wanted to reach out to the man. He could now see why it might not be such a good thing to have a loved one return from the dead. The little mental pedestal you put your deceased loved one on as your mind starts erasing their faults abruptly gets knocked over the second you see them again, and the relationship returns right back to where it had been when they had passed on. If your relationship was as strained as his and his father's had been...Well, things could potentially end up being a veritable living hell.

From the moment he'd followed his father out of the building that housed the Gotham Ledger, his father's face had worn that utterly lost and vaguely panicked expression that it had when the man had wandered through the Woolworth's lingerie department with an absolutely mortified Margaret trailing behind him over fifty years ago. Just about every second his face didn't have that expression, which his father didn't seem to be fully aware of, it would slip back to that emotionless Superman mask which seemed to be his current default expression. The flat and empty expression looked as utterly wrong on the man with the glasses and the differently combed hair which identified him as Clark Kent as the lost and vaguely panicked one did.

Searching for something to say, since talking to his father caused the lost expression on his face to vanish for a moment as he concentrated on him, he fished around his mind for a topic on which they could converse. A topic that hopefully wouldn't end in an argument which would more than likely cause his father to shut down and retreat the way just about every other argument he'd had with his father since his mother's death had done.

"Nice weather we're having." he finally said, having latched onto what was probably the most neutral subject in existence aside from "hello". He got a slightly incredulous look in return. Looking up at the sky for the first time since they'd set foot outside, he noticed that it was completely overcast. He winced internally. His father needed the sun and cloudy days tended to be his worst days, the days when he had the least amount of energy until he finally took as much of it as he could, flew off above the cloud cover, and started chasing the sun. Saying what he'd just said, it would've almost sounded like...

God, he may as well have said "Why don't you just curl up and die?".

Before he could apologize, he noticed that his father had gone and retreated again. That blank look had returned and, for a second, it had looked as if his father was about to fly off and leave him standing there unable to follow. Instead of flying off however, his father seemingly came to a decision of some sort and picked a direction. Sighing since he knew there was no use talking to his father when he was like this, he followed. Eventually, the both of them reached the destination his father had picked.

"The train station?" he asked, a sinking feeling in his gut telling him they hadn't come here to watch trains.

"I'm sorry Christopher." his father said, the look he had when he was in full retreat and about to run off rather than finish the argument in his eyes. "I can't...I just can't."

Even though he knew better than to expect much, especially in the beginning, disappointment settled in his stomach like a lead weight pushing aside all of the other emotions that had been roiling since he'd found himself looking at his father, his father and not Superman, for the first time in decades. He didn't know what the right thing to do was at the moment. Should he continue trying to talk to him despite the fact that he was in full retreat and would only run off? Or, should he let his father have his space and try again later?

Seeing the Superman mask drop over his father's features and realizing that while the man was wearing Clark Kent's clothes, it was Superman he was looking at, he decided to do the latter, praying that he wasn't making a big mistake. Though part of him said not to, he would let his father have his space. For now.

He heard a bit of a whoosh behind him as he turned towards the ticket counter. He didn't need to turn around to know that his father, that Superman was gone.

Sighing, he made his way to the counter and purchased a ticket back home. Once the purchase was made, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.

"How did it go?" Margaret asked when she answered.

"Horribly." he replied.

She sighed. While she'd told him all along it would go horribly, he had heard the hope in her voice as she'd warned him. Part of her had wanted their father back, even if it was only to see him once more in the end, as well.

"I'm not giving up this time though." he said.

He meant it too. He wasn't going to let his father slip away again now that he was back from the dead, or at the very least, partially back from the dead.


Gabrielle frowned as she watched Superman make his way to his desk, having returned from wherever he'd taken his rather mysterious "guest" who had come looking for him under his Clark Kent alias. There was a rumor going round that the alien who hadn't been seen cracking an actual smile in decades had shown actual emotion rather than faking it when he'd been with the stranger that he'd left with but hadn't returned with. Looking at him now, she could see that there was something slightly off about his movements. They were still as almost mechanically precise as usual, but there was something different about him now which she couldn't quite put her finger on.

Considering how much power he had and how much destruction he could cause if he snapped, different could be a bad sign. A very bad sign. An "Everybody Run! It's the Apocalypse!" sort of bad sign.

Wondering if Alfred Wayne had just put her and everyone else in danger for the sake of his own amusement, he called Eric into her office. After saving his work, the man had promptly left his desk and answered her summons.

"You wanted to see me Gabrielle?" Eric said when he arrived.

"Look, I haven't seen anything to give me grounds to ask Kent to leave, and it's possible that I'm worrying over nothing" she started, wondering if she would come to regret saying anything, especially considering HIS hearing. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound and all that. "But, if he starts showing any...anomalous behavior, I want you to report it to me" she continued, knowing full well that HE had likely heard her despite the fact that it didn't look like HE was paying her any attention whatsoever.

Eric gave her a long look before nodding and saying "Understood".

"Thank you." she said, dismissing him so he could get back to work.

As he left, she heard him grumble something that sounded suspiciously like "Shoulda been a lighthouse keeper".

Deciding that she probably didn't want to know, she did her best to get back to her own work despite the potential danger looming over everybody's unsuspecting heads. Keeping everything nice, quiet, normal, and on an even keel was probably the safest route at the moment. HE could just as easily kill everyone while they're running around and panicking as HE could while they were sitting unsuspecting at their desks should he snap and go on a killing spree, and a death you go to unaware is more merciful than one you know about in advance.

Edited 9-3-16.