A/N
As usual, it has been a very long time since my last chapter -- but for you who are still reading, I hope this pleases:)
Disclaimer: Superman and his fellow characters are the property of Warner Bros. Studios and DC Comics, and created by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel.
25 Human
For the next week, Clark hides out at his mother's farm, leaving only to visit Lois and respond to dire emergencies. The serendipity of Perry divining his secret no longer a mystery, but a gift – allowing Kent, Star Reporter, a break without worry.
Martha, for the most part, is still herself, making three course meals and apple pies, but sometimes, she forgets about Jason, and at other times, mistakes him for Clark.
He doesn't know if he can get used to that, and he knows it is just the beginning.
He feels helpless, and all his otherworldly powers make his helplessness complete. His mother has been given the worst diagnosis imaginable – a diagnosis of life – a life without parole. Day by day, hour by hour, her life will slip away. Her experiences, her memory, will fall from her fingers like cake crumbs -- as she speaks, as she breathes. Her day will cease to exist, with only the moment remaining -- a moment without context, without meaning, without purpose or intent. The sole kindness being that she will not know the difference.
Her loved ones – Clark, Ben, and Jason - witness the progression, the slow descent, into the solitary living moment of existence. It will be as if she had always been this way. To her, one emotion will last forever – joy, sadness, depression, elation. Whatever her day gives her, moment-by-moment, she will live it forever in her mind. The depth will be endless, and the experience complete.
Clark works very hard to make most of her moments good – to keep her contented, to avoid the confusion that can send her on a spiral into black depression. For, even though her deep sadness lasts a mere ten minutes until itself lost with memory, for that span of time her mind is disarrayed and lost in bedlam.
"Here Mom… listen to your music," he says. He puts on her favourite – Vera Lynn – takes her hand, and, for the length of a song, she dances away from the torturing sadness – back to a time when Jonathan was there and life was as it should be.
Clark watches Ben suffer those happy moments, knowing he is nothing to her in them – even when she takes his hand, to dance to her music, he knows she feels Jonathans rough fingers, and sees her husbands face. He winces when she calls the wrong name while looking in his eyes. Ben and Clark bear the pain, knowing hers is worse, knowing hers is the confusion and loss – not of self, but of knowledge of self.
The warm evening breeze brings the crickets serenade past the faded floral curtains and into the room. Curtains Martha stitched together on her tiny portable Singer machine in the spare room, while Clark, bundled on the bed beside her, traced flowers with baby fingers and inspected pastel threads with tiny alien eyes.
Basking in the late summer's scents and mysteries, Clark sinks into his dad's favourite chair, his mother gone to bed -- baby monitor by her side. His extraordinary senses serve better than the 80 dollar Sears mail-order gadget, and the squawking baby blue blob of plastic with its cascade of red light offends his senses. Ben sleeps in the spare room, since the night she awakened scared and confused by the stranger in her bed. The look in Ben's eyes, when Clark grabs the monitor, stops him before he can disconnect the plug from the wall. The older man's love for Martha is in those eyes, softening, warming, transforming their colour -- even their texture. Clark assumes it is his natural ability to see auras and read emotions, and he doesn't have to ask Ben why he would rather the monitor stay right where it is, why its presence is a comfort to this man, why it keeps his love close to him in the long night.
These days, Clark spends mornings tending to chores and playing with his son. Jason stops asking about his mother, his childish wisdom trusting Dad to decide when Mommy will be ready to see him.
In the afternoon, Clark helps his own mother decipher her day. In the evenings, while Martha slumbers on the porch swing, he unwinds with Ben's amiable company. At night, he lays awake, staring at the stuck-on stars of his home galaxy, trying to put his earth life in perspective.
Human. I am… human.
On autopilot, Clark's daily trips to the hospital pass in a dreamlike state, to make up for the restless nights. Even with his super-metabolism, even with his need for less sleep than the average human -- two hours total per night -- he feels drained and lethargic each morning.
On this day, he walks through the hospital entrance and nods at the receptionist with a tired smile.
Her name is… Carol. I pulled her from a car crash… 3 years ago? No, further back -- one of my first rescues…
Carol returns Clark's smile, but fails to recognize her rescuer in the rumpled visitor in the scruffy suit.
After a dazed ride, in an elevator redolent of antiseptic, Clark enters Lois's room and is pleased to find her relaxing in a chair by the window. Wrapped in one of Martha's quilts, her hands rustle the newness out of this morning's copy of the Planet. She adjusts her reading glasses on her nose and grabs for the red pen shoved behind her ear.
Clark thinks he's never seen her more beautiful.
He makes a small throat sound to avoid startling her, but the look she throws him is expectant and sharp. One eyebrow raises, and she peruses him over the rim of her glasses.
Clark senses she is eyeing the fedora he found at the Smallville Salvation Army store. A hat seemed a good idea at the time, since he thought further disguise might be astute. After all, the horn-rims didn't fool Perry for long and, now, perhaps Jimmy has seen through the lenses to the truth.
He drags the battered fedora off his head, gripping the brim with both hands. "Lois, you're up. How are you feeling?"
Tilting her head, she pulls off the glasses and, with a little shake of her head, she squints at his hands.
"I'm okay – I think I'm remembering some… remembering -– at least, I'm starting to realize that I have things I should… remember."
She continues to watch Clark's hands as they knead the hat brim like bread dough. Realizing that he is about to manipulate his new costume piece into a misshapen mass, he clasps the brim between thumb and forefinger and balances it on her bed tray table, punctuating his movement with his answer. "Really. Well, that's wonderful. Um."
"So… what's with the hat?"
Resting beside the fedora, Lois's empty milk carton gives it a raspberry with its bendy straw tongue. Clark wonders why no one likes his hat.
"Oh, I uh, thought I could put my press pass… in… the… band -- No?"
"No. Lose it. You got that second-hand too, didn't you?"
"Guilty as charged."
"C'mere – you need your scalp examined."
"Don't you mean I need my head examined? Lois, I don't have your fashion sense, but…"
"Head, scalp whatever – dump that hat and get over here, Smallville. Do I have to get up?"
"No Ma'am."
Clark gives the decrepit felt hat a final fond look and drops it in the trashcan at the door. Unable to resist her plea to come closer, Clark shuffles toward the window and stops between the edge of the bed and Lois's knees. Knees wrapped in his mother's country quilt – the combination, with Lois's unassuming air, intoxicating to Clark's senses.
Lois grabs his arm, yanking him from his eiderdown duvet fantasy to a sitting position on the edge of the bed; she clutches his shoulders, drawing him to her.
Their faces mere inches apart, Clark soaks up her two-tone gaze like morning sunlight. I am so addicted to this woman. Forcing himself to think, Clark plays the shy reporter part and shifts his eyes, Lois's proximity bringing a blush, unbidden, to his cheeks.
"Look down, Clark."
"What?"
"Look at my lap."
"Your lap?" Clark squeaks.
"Do it."
His head dips down and Clark wonders what Lois's game is, until a childhood memory sneaks to the surface. The nurse at school -- the long pick and the fine-tooth comb -- under blinding lamplight.
"Lois – d…do you think I have LICE?"
As if I could – the little buggers couldn't pierce my skin…
"Clark, you bought a grungy hat from a thrift shop and plunked it on your head – stop squirming."
Clark relaxes under her ministrations, until Lois sits back and looks at him with a smile.
"Am I ok? No unwanted friends?"
"Clear of cooties, I'm happy to say."
"Can I have my hat back?
"NO. Clark, NO ONE wears hats -- except teenagers and people who are trying too hard. Your suits are enough of a strain on my eyes – give me a break, ok?"
Straightening up, Clark gets a faraway look
"Look, I… know about you, Clark."
"What? Oh," flushed with the anticipation of possibility, Clark's knees weaken, and he wills himself not to float toward her bed.
"Yes. Well, Jimmy filled me in, really. I had suspicions and…"
"Jimmy."
I wondered if Jimmy… Why did he not…? "Jimmy? So… what did our favourite photographer say? I can't imagine what he could say about me, Lois. I'm just a farm-boy from Kansas who became a journalist."
"A prize-winning journalist."
There's that damn blush again – why can't I have super blush-suppressing powers -- the whole super breath thing is embarrassing enough.
"Clark… or should I say…
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TBC
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