Clark Kent spends sixteen years travelling the world after Jonathan Kent dies when he is 17. Then he saved an oil rig, and the rest, well, is ancient history.

This is an account of journeys in between.

Clark Kent is seventeen, almost eighteen, when he picks up a job as an accountant. It's a simple job, and most people don't pay much attention to him. They don't ask questions. He has a schedule, in and out, doing his job, nod, nod, okay, bye.

He buys a new suit and it's black and tailored and it has a red tie wrapped around his throat. He's there for two years, and that's enough that he thinks he should be happy, or settled, or find a purpose or something like that. And. Well. It's not that it's a bad job. It's not. It's just that there's- there's too many people. Too many. He 's scared. Really. It's not fun. Its. Awkward.

Uncomfortable.

Once, he nearly lit his office on fire. With his eyes. And he can see them, all of them, at times, flashes, and its weird and odd to say it out loud- I can see your skeleton- so he doesn't obviously, but- and there's too many people- He had a bad day once and nearly lasered a path right through his coworkers' heads.

He needs to leave.

Desk jobs just aren't worth it.

He's twenty when he starts to apply to NASA. it makes more sense. If he can't fit in, why not find out more about himself? He's an alien, right? Going to space seems like the logical choice.

Clark had a collection in his room when he was a kid. It wasn't anything major, a mishmash of various lego bricks and Star Wars movies and Star Trek posters and little figurines that he forgot where he got them and little cartoon stickers of stars and moons.

That's unimportant. He does his job- not really a job, technically. It's an internship. And it isn't actually all that helpful for him. He's not complaining, of course. He's helping. People. He accidentally flew, once, twice, and blew a hole through the building.

Powers. He really needs to control them. Something tells him this isn't what his father- both, either, none- wanted him to do.

Clark Kent doesn't talk to his mother for over a year. He spends the year up north. It's better. He takes time. Learn how to live on his own. Living on flannel and axes and pancakes and whatever else is stereotypically Canadian. First Christmas alone.

Toast?

Maine is cold and rainy and wild and the countryside is freezing and smells of pine and sap and air and there's rarely anyone around anyways. It's better than America, maybe.

He feels like he's an adult, almost, an adult with nothing to do but drag logs everywhere.

Clark tries to train his powers. He does. He thinks he's getting good. He doesn't accidentally blow holes through buildings, or break bones by accident, and he can control when he sees skeletons and blood veins and shoot red-hot lasers everywhere.

A few years more of self-imposed exile and maybe he can get back to human interaction?

Maybe.

The funny thing maybe, is that he doesn't plan on seeing Martha.

He doesn't really plan on anything, for a while, really. He goes to Oregon. He's pretty confident in his powers.

He uses a false name this time. Robert Kent. Starting mechanic. Kept the last name.

It's not fun, actually, even if he expected it. Not really. It's. Monotonous. Pointless. Not very heroic, or helpful, which is what he wants to do.

He just doesn't know how to do it.

It's not like he's getting anywhere near what Pa wanted for him, right? Dragging logs around and kicking down trees really isn't helping him. Or anyone else. Or, if he had a therapist, they'd probably tell him it wasn't doing anything good for his mental state either. Well.

He packs up his bags again. Again.

Back home.

He doesn't plan to stay, either.

He doesn't of course.

" You don't owe them anything, Clark."

He doesn't. He doesn't need to do anything. He misses home.

He doesn't plan on going back.

Those things aren't as contradictory as you might think.

The first time Clark saves-

Well.

No.

( The first time Clark saved anyone was when he was a kid back in school and his school bus fell into the water, and his Pa scolded him after and he found out about the spaceship and-

They'd yelled at him then, except he couldn't really remember what they said outside of talking with Ma and Pa about it in the house.

He remembered the swing though. Spent far too much time on it trying to ignore them to not observe everything about it. )

The first time Clark saves someone after he left Kansas, he's twenty four, six months until his next birthday, and he's back on water, again. Sailing, and he hasn't talked to anyone in a while.

They're off the coast of California. It's cloudy and wet and rainy, and he doesn't have much to do, outside of waiting for something to happen. The wind keeps blasting at him from through the wood, strong and hollow and he pulls the covers over his ears to try and block it.

It's louder, on the docks. But at least he can see things better from here. The seas are fiercer than normal, far more so, lapping at the sides and screaming at him. The raging black-green waters swirl far below his feet.

He's not worried. The ship's sturdy, large-

Was that-

Clark blinks against the fog. His eyes narrow, vision sharpening against fog. On the coast. Next to, the coast, he corrects. From here, the thin outline of another ship- smaller, far smaller, too small, oh, God-

He doesn't think. The sail is tiny and fading- sinking, he can see the water, like in the schoolbus, like- and if he strains he can hear the voices of two other people panicking on the board.

Clark doesn't stop. He doesn't think, at the moment, he can't think.

The only thing he can think to do is try and reach it.

He remembers surprisingly little. It fades together. Diving into the wiater, salt and freezing and screaming and machines and roaring, and his heart pounding and shivering inside him. He forced his eyes open against the water, and one moment he's in the water, and another he's speeding viciously across the tides, and another he's barely stopping himself from crashing against the ship.

It's already sinking. Down.

His vision fogs, and fades, and flickers.

Not dead. Still heat- trapped. Unconscious. And he knows he shouldn't think it, he knows, and he regrets it, but in that final moment before he realizes that they're knocked out and before he tears them out and onto the shore- He's relieved. They can't see him. They don't know him. Can't- well, it doesn't really matter does it? He quashes the feeling beneath him, lurching forwards so that he can drag them out of the wreckage.

The ship is beyond saving anyways.

Stephan Brindles resigned a few months later.

The next years pass in a blur. Frustration. He changes names. Changing jobs. Changes countries.

He saves lives. Sometimes on the job, sometimes by accident, and sometimes, he looks around for people when they're in trouble. It's the last part that guilts him the most.

He's certain that he's not supposed to do that. Looking for trouble. But it makes him. Happy, sort of, if that's the word. Proud? Adrenaline Rush?

He tries to appear normal when he reaches them, usually lost kids or sometimes criminals or collapsing buildings. It's nice. They're usually happy to see him.

Other times, they're not.

That's fine, too.

It doesn't feel like he's doing that large of a difference, honestly, which is just a horrible thing to think, Clark tells himself. He's saving lives. Every life is important.

Right. Right.

Maybe he's a bad person. He probably is. Good people don't feel hopeless when they try to inspire hope in others.

Is that what he's doing?

He hopes so.

Never took extensive medical care.

Probably should. He was lucky to never have to do an impromptu surgery yet.

" Do you trust me?" he asks. The sound outside swirls, hot and watery and screaming. The boy shivers. He doesn't move. He doesn't.

Maybe he knows he doesn't have a choice, really, in this.

" You aren't going to die." He promises.

Can't save everyone. He closes his eyes.

The landing is always worse than the fall.

" What are you?"

" Don't know either, kid."

Eventually, rumors start to spread. About a person with super strength and speed and laser eyes and could find you wherever you were.

Time to move.

Again.

Brazil is awfully nice this time of year. It's humid. Damp. He rents out an apartment near the coastline, just in case. It's older, gray and wet and smells of bricks and sun and leaves. He gets hired to a wildlife rehab center. It's different from saving humans. But. He's saving lives, too, so that has to count for something.

There's a lot of bats here.

It's a decade. Been a decade. Over, a decade. He doesn't know how to celebrate. If. He should celebrate. It doesn't feel like he's done any more progress than when he left. Nowhere near closer to finding himself.

" You don't have to continue." Ma says. " It's been too long, Clark."

" Pa wanted me to do this." he says.

" And I don't. Your father-" she stops, then. " Your father wasn't always correct, either. "

" Do what you want to do, Clark."

It's sound advice.

He doesn't know how.

He doesn't celebrate.

Clark Kent- or rather, Joseph Kimberly, spends his twenty-eighth birthday rotating between being a car mechanic and a park ranger. He probably needs to spend more time away from the ocean anyhow.

( " Stop that."

" Who's going to stop me? You?"

He could. Could laser him. Could break every bone in his body. Clark doesn't give any of those thoughts the benefit of even being considered. Tries not to. )

He's frustrated. He's nearly thirty. Clark is nearly thirty.

Flood.

It's always the water.

He's walking through it, this time. It's up to his knees and there's branches and wreckage and wood and stones all floating around him.

No one.

No one alive that is.

He didn't fail. He knows he didn't.

Shouldn't upset him this much.

He's sure that he's happy about what he's doing. He's sure of it. He's saving people. That has to count for something, right?

Maybe that's his purpose? Going around the world rescuing people when they need it?

It makes sense.

It doesn't feel right, though.

Still.

Better than nothing.

Clark Kent is thirty two and there's a bullet and he doesn't think and he runs and runs and runs and it hits him, then, there, and he winces and falls and waits-

And nothing. It doesn't go past his skin. Still, he can't stop. He rams into the guy, and there's an angry sort of panic and rage and well-

" What are you?"

And if three's a crowd, then what's five? What's ten? They're staring at him. The gun lies away from his hands.

He's not as fazed as he should be.

" What are you?" He demands in turn. " What are you doing?"

By the time he's thirty-three, Clark's spent near- over, maybe, half his life away from Kansas. He's gotten no closer. Still, he has to try, right?

One more year. Then, he'll stop.

Promise.

" Name?"

" Thomas Clark."

There's a hum.

" So what made you interested in this job?"

" I have experience with sailing. I heard you were hiring."

" You don't really talk much, do you."

" Working on it."

" Welcome to the Debbie Sue, Thomas."

That's not my name.

Except that it is.

" Yes, sir."

The Aurora collapses in his sight.

Like that ship.

But the Aurora is bigger, its an oil rig, and the metal chokes and stabs at his skin.

Save them. Echoes.

I'm trying, he thinks.

Trying.

( Clark knows how to tear apart a car.

Ludlow's is no different.

He sighs heavily.

Now, then.

To the arctic. )