CHAPTER 14
The fox had just lay there, dead on the ground, still where his father had shot it.
Clark had looked up at his father, Jonathan Kent, this sweet, kind, funny man. A man who now had a smoking gun in his hand. A man who now looked like something else entirely…
It was then Clark became aware of the many, many different sides men and women carry around.
It was then Clark realized that everyone had a secret identity.
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The monster was broken.
It seemed to grow weaker by the moment. Like its spirit, if it ever had one, was gone.
Nothing left but a whimpering pile of bone and muscle.
And still, Clark Kent rained blows down upon the helpless beast.
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But why, he had asked his father, as he walked slowly towards the lifeless body.
The sound. That was the worst part. The sound of nothing where there had once been life. Lungs filling, blood pumping, cells dividing.
Now there was nothing.
Why did the fox have to die?
Jonathan Kent took a long time in answering.
"Because, son," he said eventually, "because it was a wild animal. I couldn't argue with it. I couldn't have convinced it to say away. Even if I had chased it off, it would have just come back.
"Sometimes, you have to make awful decisions…"
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Heat vision and freeze breath at the same time. That seemed to work.
Hitting the weakened Doomsday with both subzero and solar-flare level temperatures at the same time seemed to wreak havoc with its body. The skeletal frame that protected it like armor was cracking to splinters all around it.
Like a thing possessed, Clark refused to let up. Using the primal fear of his ancestors as fuel, he was prepared to grind the creature into dust if need be. His mad frenzy shattering the landscape all around them. The empty, evacuated buildings screaming out in an agony of twisted metal and fraying cable.
Years upon years of pent up anger, grief and guilt flowed out in a white hot torrent of power.
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... the day he realized he was all alone in the universe…
… not being there to save Pa…
… the first time he realized he could never be with Lois…
… cradling Kara's dead body, while an army of gods stood by, helpless…
… cradling Lois's dying body hours ago…
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So much death. So many people he loved gone.
And yet this creature. This empty, useless thing survived. Had survived, for centuries!
So much power, and yet all it had done was destroy lives and inspire fear.
This disgusting, monstrous, wrong thing.
It wasn't right! It wasn't fair!
Well, enough was enough. He would set things right. He could cure all the evils of the world, and he would start right here, right now. He would end this monster, and the world would be a better place for it.
This creature had come to Metropolis, thinking itself Death incarnate. But it had learned, he smiled, who was truly the Master of Life and Death!
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But I don't understand, Clark cried.
He was on his knees now, cradling the dead body of the fox, soaking its fur with his tears.
I don't understand. Why did it have to die! There had to be a better way! Why did you have to kill it! I don't understand!
Pa Kent smiled a weak and sad smile.
"I know you don't understand, son. And I pray to God you never do."
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"What am I doing!"
Clark stopped.
He looked down at his hands. They were bruised and covered in blood. Much of it his own. Small slivers of bone sticking out, having broken off the creature and sunk deep into his own skin.
But he could be forgiven if, looking down at the bloody claws that were once his hands, he thought, just for an instant, he had somehow transformed into Doomsday.
"What have I become?"
He was shaking. Where had all that come from? Was that really inside him, all this time? Just waiting for a chance to explode?
He remembered being a boy, looking at his father stand in a field with a gun in his hand, wondering what had happened to the man he knew and loved just a short while ago. The ability to kill, it was in Pa. And nothing would ever be the same after that.
The ability to kill. It was in him as well. And he knew, nothing would ever be the same again.
"SHRRULLLK!"
The sickening sound of bone tearing through flesh startled him. It was almost a full second before he realized the flesh was his own.
He looked down, at the creature's one good, grey arm as it sunk deep into his gut, the surprise attack breaking through all his defenses. His red life's blood flowing out of him and down Doomsday's arm.
Fine, he thought, we'll go together. This was the only way it could have ended.
Summoning up what strength was left him, Clark raised both arms high over his head, as Doomsday remained crouched before him. Linking his fingers together, turning his hands into a sledgehammer, he brought it down with all his might, right on top of Doomsday's skull.
The ground heaved, seeming to rise and fall like a ship on the ocean as Doomsday's head, caught between Superman's fist and the whole of planet Earth, between an unstoppable force and an immovable object, collapsed in on itself, and was no more.
"I'm so sorry," he said. Perhaps to his father, perhaps to the beast he had just slain. Perhaps to himself, for what he'd allowed himself to become.
"There should have been a better way."
As he fell to the ground, he realized he could hear the sounds of his body dying.
The blood pumping. The lungs filling. The cells dividing. It all stopped, one by one.
Soon there was nothing.
He had saved the world, one last time.
And it had cost him everything.