Randal and Andy and Cyrus and Wynter and....
It was a distinct battle for Clark to decide whether to eat dinner in the commons or grab something and hide out in his room. In the end, he chose the commons. Being alone would tempt him with too many morbid thoughts. But he chose a table by himself.
"Care for some company?" Clark was about to make a snap answer when the four presences registered. Randal. Andy. Cyrus. And Wynter. Oh god. Give me Lab 8 any day.
"Did I ever tell you I hate broccoli?" Andy asked Randal, seating himself.
"Many thousands of times. But all children hate broccoli."
"I don't," Wynter put in. "It's one of the first genetic hybrids, you know."
Andy rolled his eyes. "Like you're a good example of children. I'm never going to actually be normal, Wart, so don't start on what's changed. But I've decided I like broccoli."
"You're allowed to get away with calling me Wart exactly once. Ask your dad about the see-through shorts. And broccoli is a very interesting plant. Take cauliflower...."
"Please!" said Randal and Bill and Andy and Clark in unison. They looked at each other and laughed. "Clark has a trace of empathic talent after all," Randal said.
"Really?" Wynter put down his fork and his eyes glittered with the prospect of experiments. "How would we go about testing that? It's difficult to get an EEG on him."
Clark felt himself go cold at the word "testing," and Bill and Andy both paled noticeably in response. Clark cursed at himself. Bad enough that he could kill with a finger or a glance, but with an involuntary thought? Must be what Lake felt like sometimes.
"That was just an observation, Wart," Randal said deliberately, far more controlled. "Any empath can tell when someone else is in tune. You don't have to wire him to anything."
"You are definitely asking for some invisible clothing. And what's the problem? You volunteer for EEGs all the time. Even with Dylana in the loop, which, for Kal's edification, is my definition of Lab-8 level masochism."
"Ever heard of the word 'phobia,' bright boy?"
"Really?" Wynter peered at Clark. "Sorry, I didn't realize. Have you been reading the sci-fi crap about testing on aliens again?"
"I'm not even through Diana Wynne Jones yet, much less Silverberg."
"You're not allowed into Silverberg until you turn 18. Or even John D. MacDonald, for that matter, though he doesn't do aliens. Smut, you know."
The empaths threw back their heads and laughed. "Oh, like you're so sexually experienced!" Randal shouted loud enough for the whole room to hear.
"I am going to put aphrodisiacs in your water and sell tickets. Clark, I'm sorry, I didn't think a simple EEG would bother you. I do it as an excuse to have someone cut my hair. Just, it would be really interesting to have a couple of comparative records on you. It would take special equipment because of your invulnerability aura, yes, but it's not invasive, except of your brain waves. It's not as if we're going to shave your head or cut you open."
Shave his head? Clark thought about that, with vaguely distracted interest. The Lex look? Maybe he could go with a mohawk.
The thought of Lex was a downer. Yes, Lex was okay now, but he would never see his friend again. Not his friend, Kal-El reminded him. Not his species. Not his world.
He saw his own depression reflected on the empaths' faces and reigned in his emotions, tiredly. What did it matter, really? If they had been going to lock him up in Lab 8, they could have done that already. This was just another test, just another experiment. Just another baseline for another freak. Easier to let them do as they wanted, and feel nothing.
"Okay, whatever. I probably ought to go along with SOMEthing to pay the rent."
Cyrus and Andy looked at each other, and Bill stood up. "You know, we didn't get a chance to look at Meria's parrot yesterday, and she'd kill me if she lost Samson. He's only twenty. Wanna help?" To Clark, offhand: "Samson's an African Gray. They're really smart, and they can live fifty years or so, but they get sick easy. If you'll excuse us?"
Well, that sucked, Clark thought, sinking lower. He'd just chased off two people who had tried to be friends with him, and probably hurt them, to boot. Story of his life.
Randal cocked his head at Clark, but spoke very obviously to Wynter. "You might actually have to use kryptonite to get through that thick skull of his. On the contacts, maybe. At least a few green-coated electrodes" -- Randal tapped his fingertips against the sides of his head in demonstration -- "Would give him something to think about that we could analyze."
Wynter bounced out of his chair in instant fury. "Have you lost your -- ! Oh. Yeah, I see what you mean. Hitting him over the head with bricks hasn't gotten his attention so far."
Clark's first reflexive sick helpless terror at the suggestion gave way to true and pure hysteria. Clark stared from Randal to Wynter and began to giggle. The giggles built until they were choking him, until he couldn't sit upright, until he was folded over on the floor. Until they turned to sobs, and Carlston came in and discreetly helped him to his feet.
Carlston raised an eyebrow at the two Specials, and Randal nodded. "My room."
Wynter wiped his forehead. "Thanks, guys. I'll be in comm control."
Clark was never quite sure if he had passed out. There was a confused period of mixed-up memories, and then he was lying back on an unfamiliar bed with a cool wet cloth over his eyes and a warm hand stroking his head. A slow soft voice was speaking nonsense words. English, Latin, Kryptonian, he didn't care. It was just a voice. A comforting presence. Someone to watch over him. Someone trying to save him from himself.
He lifted a hand that should have weighed tons, but actually weighed nothing at all. Really, nothing weighed much to him any more. No solid walls could stop him, and none could shield him. The weight of guilt and sadness drowned out any other weight that could be put on him. Tiredly, he took off the cloth that was about as effective as the spider-silk blindfold Nicole had first put on him. Nothing, not even lead, could keep the hurting away.
"Back with me?" Randal said gently. "Bill wanted to try to help, but he still isn't quite good enough at blocking. He was afraid he might lose control."
"HE was afraid?" Clark laughed harshly, and cut himself off before he degenerated into hysterics again. "Well, of course he was afraid of me. Who wouldn't be?"
"Kal. El." Randal's voice was stern as steel. "He was afraid of what he might do TO you. A healer's powers are not to be trifled with. You think your first arousal-driven heat vision was dangerous? Imagine what something very similarly out of control could do at a cellular level."
That got Clark's attention. And even, though he was reluctant to admit it, interest. "I don't understand. Are you saying that Bill's -- and Andy's -- healer talent can, well, cause harm, too?"
"Have you read Greg Bear's Blood Music?"
"Um, that's on the proscribed list." Clark discovered that he could recover almost as fast as he lost it, whether green rocks were involved or not. He sat up, letting the biology lessons of the past few days roam free in his mind. Healing, when disease was involved, meant more than just making you feel better. It would require the ability to manipulate and restructure -- oh geez, cells, genes, viruses, molecules. Clark's eyes widened. Oh yes. A healer could take you apart at the molecular level. If the empathic healers hadn't been forced to feel what they were doing, they would be almost as dangerous as Lake. "Oh."
"Oh," Randal echoed, mocking. "At least Wynter's lessons are starting to sink into that thick head of yours. Maybe we won't have to use the kryptonite headset after all. Sorry," he added hastily, when Clark's stomach tightened on a reflexive gag at the thought. "I know better. I was with you through the whole Lab 8 self-flagellation, I know it's not a joke."
The empath sighed and sat back. "It's a wonder you've survived this long, as much damage as you've taken without even trying. But you go out of your way to hurt yourself. Why, Clark? I've been with you, emotionally anyway, for almost two years, and I still can't understand why you torture yourself. About everything. And I've been through the girlfriend thing myself, I wanted to call you up and laugh both of us silly when you were mooning over Lana and being afraid of trying to keep up with Chloe. I once asked Dylana for a date."
Clark sat bolt upright, forgetting kryptonite altogether. "You ARE crazy!"
"No kidding. And she accepted. Someday I'll tell you about it. But we're off topic. I know why you're ambivalent with girls, and with guys too, for that matter." At Clark's wide-eyed attempt to protest, Randal cut him off with a snort. "Most powerful empath on the planet, remember? And spent a night with Dylana? Try lying to me, and I'll tell Lake.
"You were right about trusting Pete. And you're right about not completely trusting Lex, I'm sorry to have to say. You do have a trace of empathic talent, though it's nothing worth training. The problem is that you block at random, not knowing how to stop the bad stuff, not being able to pick up the good, because you have this stupid, alien, idea that you don't deserve anything good." Randal stared at him, narrow-eyed. "Why, Clark?"
Clark dropped back onto the pillows, rubbing his head. Not being able to lie to someone was something he had wished for his whole life, and it was turning out to be a real pain in reality. "I dunno," he muttered. This was something he had always wished he could tell his parents and friends. About how weird it was, just being there, just being from another planet, just being -- the only one. Never mind all the things he could do, all the so-called gifts that he had to be so careful of, and with. It would have been easier to be weak, he thought sometimes.
Then he remembered what it was like for people who were actually unable to climb stairs, or read, or hear, much less unable to kick over buildings or see through walls or hear through concrete floors, and he wanted to go stick his head in a vault in Lab 8 in shame.
Randal's hand gripped his, surprisingly forcefully. Hah. Maybe Randal had more talents than just being a horrifyingly sensitive esper, too. "Why, Clark?" he repeated again. Randal leaned in towards him, intimately close, eyes blazing. Clark shuddered, and retreated.
He wished he could put into words how they could never understand. Except that Randal could, in a sort of second-hand way. Except that Randal didn't have so much to blame himself for. No one else could know what it was to be responsible for all the bad things that kept happening, and to have given anything to fix it. And never be able to. Because everything that had gone so wrong was because of who he was. What he was.
Randal leaned back, and released him. "Do you want me to torment you some more?" he said coolly. "Do you want me to tell you that you did Andy no favor by giving him just enough language to realize that he was retarded? Do you want me to explain what you did when you violated his mind? That the relationship I had worked so hard for over the years with my son is gone now, and I have to start all over to rebuild something different?"
No. Randal couldn't have ripped that wound open any wider if he'd tried, not with anything, green or otherwise. Clark shut his eyes on a sob and wondered if he could kill himself. Even with all the safeguards, there probably wasn't anyone, even if Nicole were here, who could stop him from breaking into Lab 8. He turned over and curled up, willing Randal to leave. He thought of leaving a note. Why bother? Who to? What could he say, besides that he was sorry?
And suddenly Randal hauled him upright, blazing eyes less than an arm's length away. "Don't. You. Dare," he hissed. And slapped him.
Clark suddenly wondered what it was like to have a heart attack. Because he was pretty sure his heart had just stopped. His hand lifted to his stinging cheek in disbelief.
"How dare you?" Randal demanded, shoving him back onto the bed in fury. "How DARE you? How could you possibly be so blindly self-centered as to believe that everything is because of you? My child was born mentally disabled because of MY mutation. Because of the uncontrolled sensitivity that nearly killed me as a child. Do you think I haven't felt guilt about that every day of my life? I knew I was running the risk of putting him through the same kind of suffering that I nearly didn't survive. I didn't even consider that there might be worse things. How DARE you try to believe that you are the only one who carries burdens?"
Put that way, Clark could only wonder distantly where all the oxygen in the room had gone. Randal -- an empath, an enormously powerful sharer of emotions and pain -- was furious with him. An empath was furious with HIM. Not for NOT taking responsibility, but for trying to take responsibility for something he wasn't responsible for.... Clark gave up on trying to understand words and fought for just a handhold on reality.
"I am NOT going to tell you a lie like that just because you want to hear it," Randal said, dangerously low. "Do you know what you gave Andy? You gave him the ability to talk to me, and to all the people around him, and me to talk to him, as something other than a little child all the rest of his life. You didn't invade his mind -- if anything, he invaded yours. You didn't do anything except open wonderful, incredible new opportunities for him. You gave him a gift beyond price. How DARE you feel anything except happiness and pride for him, and for yourself? How could you possibly be anything except grateful for who you are, and what you can do? Why are you feeling sorry for yourself for being able to give miracles?"
Reality was proving a slippery thing. "But -- you said -- "
Randal threw up his hands in exasperation. "Where did you get such a talent for self-pitying rationalization? There isn't even a concept for such a thing in Kryptonian, and the Kents don't strike me as the type to go around feeling sorry for themselves. Maybe you ought to become a lawyer. The first thing lawyers learn is to tell people not to say 'it was my fault.'"
"But it was my fault," he said miserably, forgetting the empath's sensitivity.
"Maybe picking up that damn refined kryptonite in your bare hand, putting on that poisonous red ring, and opening the vault door in Lab 8 were your fault, though the jury is still out debating the plea of temporary insanity. I've always thought that it was stupid to have suicide on the books as a crime anyway. Probably the insurance lobby's doing. But you are not responsible for anything you did not consciously choose to do! Everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING else, was somebody else's doing and somebody else's mistake."
"The ship...."
"Yeah, did it ever occur to you that maybe Jor-El was a lousy computer programmer? That maybe he's the one who bears the responsibility for invading YOUR mind? That it could have been either badly-worded advice or stupid nonsense orders based on knowing nothing more about Earth than what he got from watching old television? If my only source of news was the corporate-owned media right now, I'd tell Lake to blow up the damn planet myself."
"My parents...."
My parents, the empath noted with satisfaction. Clark, not Kal-El. "Oh, is your dad so well known around town for his sainthood and self-control and good driving record?"
"They're good people," Clark muttered resentfully.
"No doubt. Salt of the Earth and all that. But a bit on the selfish side, too. Not to mention paranoid. Maybe they had good intentions in making you hide so much of yourself. Maybe they understood that socializing with other children your age was necessary to proper emotional development. Home schooled kids turn out sociopathic more often than not. But I bet that's not the calm, logical reason they gave you for having to be such a sneak, was it?"
Sneak. Yeah, that was the word. "They were afraid someone would take me away. They said the government would want to lock me up and study me. Experiment on me."
"Considering some of the wigged-out bigots and McCarthyites in congress, maybe, but so what? Minus the meteorites, what could they possibly do to you? You could have gotten up and left whenever you got tired of the games, just like you can here." Randal waved a hand around them. "In case it's escaped your attention, while no one came to take you away, you did a pretty good job of that yourself. And we're all being studied here. Part of the job."
"But if they had known about the meteorites...."
"Would you finish a sentence for once? Was Jonathan planning on telling 'them'?"
"No!" Clark remembered that terrible look on Jonathan's face while he was trying to comfort Martha, and suddenly wasn't so sure. Maybe.... No. Not even when Clark had gone so crazy with the red ring the first time. Dad and Pete had risked their own lives to get close to him -- they knew full well he could have snapped both their necks before Pete could get the lead box open -- rather than let anyone else know how to stop him. How to hurt him.
"Not much of a sentence, but it's a start. For that matter, if you had been taken out of the area, probably no one would have known that the meteorites had any effect on you at all. Someone would have noticed an increased incidence in odd cancers, the rocks would have been examined more closely and hauled off to a toxic waste dump site somewhere, end of problem." Randal frowned. "It would have been less of a problem than having the Luthors know that there's something unusual about you, and about your weakness, anyway."
Clark felt as if his blood had turned to ice. "They ... know ...?"
"Is that a sentence? Of course they know, they didn't corral billions of dollars by being unobservant. The first thing they look for is signs of weakness. They probably have pictures of you nekkid, they certainly wouldn't miss your aversion to an all-too-common green stone. You became a target the day you pulled Lex out of the river. You think Luthors do anything out of gratitude? That truck was an attempt to buy you off. A lot cheaper and less publicly messy than a lawsuit. The fact that you didn't try to get money out of them for injuries or something was what tipped them off that you had something to hide. If Martha's father had known, he would have warned you about the way lawyers and rich people think."
Clark shook his head, a defeated motion. "That was my fault too. Dad didn't want grand-dad around because he was afraid that he might find out about me. Because I was kind of careless when I was a kid."
"Dammit!" Randal roared, surging to his feet. "I suppose it was your fault that Jonathan and old man Clark fought like rabid bulldogs from the day they met? You weren't even born when they both went to jail for being a public nuisance!" Randal calmed himself down with the practiced control of long experience, and sat back. "You need at least a year's worth of psychology reading. I'll ask Wynter to put that ahead of the legal studies, anyway."
Clark groaned. Maybe it was time to get out of here after all.
"You're going to need both, if you hope to play on anything like a level field with the Luthors some day. Corporate espionage is their middle name. They have spies in your high school, spies in the town, spies in Metropolis, spies in Washington. But we're better at it than they are, and we're having some, hm, Lake would call it fun, with them."
Clark was pretty sure he didn't want to know what Lake's idea of fun was. Then he remembered what Lake's usual assignments were. "Why are you going to all this trouble?"
Randal raised an eyebrow. "Because we can?"
Clark scowled at him. "Randal, please, don't. I'm confused enough already. Playing twenty questions isn't helping me think, no matter what Socrates said."
"Mm, Socrates. You have to remember that men who were considered brilliant and insightful for their time would be laughed out of junior high school today. The defining characteristic of a culture and its most brilliant members is the weight of experience that it has -- or chooses to accept."
Clark fell back on the pillow with a moan. "Enough with the lessons already. Just, please, tell me why is a world-wide bunch of really scary agents so interested in just me?"
Just you, Kal-El? The man across from him only wished there were words to tell him. "Because we don't believe in letting potential go to waste."
"What potential?" Clark said tiredly. "To cause everyone more problems?"
"STOP that. How about, the potential to do even more good things? Even greater things than the miracles you've already performed? You're still a child, and you've imposed so many limits on yourself. Imagine how much you could do if you set yourself free."
"Imagine how dangerous." Clark flopped over on his stomach, the words muffled.
Randal chuckled, low. "As opposed to Lake and Nicole? And a date with Dylana? Or Wynter with his highly illegal hack into every computer in the world? Or the number of nutcases loose in the world with the ability to set off an atomic bomb? Or the dictator-wanna-bes who control mobs through money and planted operatives? Trust me, I can imagine 'dangerous' better than you'll be able to for quite some time. But that's the point. The difference between what you CAN do, and what you WILL do, is a matter of individual choice. You have never, ever, chosen to deliberately hurt someone."
"It happens anyway." Words still muffled. "I can't help it."
"So? You think you can affect random chance the way Jacques does? Speaking of dangerous talents, our card sharp is also quite capable of turning any element past about neon into a nuclear bomb with a thought, just by changing the probabilities of neutron decay. But he doesn't go around doing it, and more than you go around setting fires and smashing walls. Tell me again how dangerous you are."
"I hurt everyone who gets close to me." Muffled voice suspiciously broken.
"You've saved the lives of everyone close to you, over and over. Try again."
"They wouldn't have been in danger in the first place except for me!"
"Oh, please. Would you like a look at Lex's arrest record? Lionel spent nearly as much covering up for him as the CIA did cleaning up after George Bush. You weren't even in school yet when he was first busted for cocaine and grand theft auto. Yep, that was your fault all right. Did you ever think that if he'd hit anyone but you on that bridge, it would have killed that person? Not that he would have cared about the manslaughter charge, because he'd be dead too. Right, the rich boy wouldn't be in danger except for you. Try again."
"The meteorite mutants...."
"Still having trouble finishing sentences, I see. Look at me." The voice was suddenly, unaccountably commanding. Clark found himself rolling over before he knew what he was doing, meeting Randal's sun-flecked eyes. "Did you deliberately bring those meteorites along with you? Would you have chosen to if you could have?"
Clark shuddered. "No. No."
"Two sentences. Very good. If you had known that they would cause mutations, would you personally have gone and cleaned them all up?"
It was a dare. Clark sighed. "You know the answer to that."
"Yes, I do. The question is, do you? How would you not do it alone? Would you have organized a trash bash, and just casually mentioned that the rocks were radioactive? Would you have contacted a university or government lab, and asked them to come investigate? Would you just get your parents to go collect them all and bury them?"
Clark frowned. "I -- I suppose I should have. I didn't think of that."
"And what do you suppose the response would have been when you were, what? Four or five? And why didn't your parents think of that themselves?"
"They -- they didn't want to draw suspicions."
"Draw suspicions to a meteor strike? Names of all the stars. That's dumber than the old 'secret' military space shuttle launches. As if you could hide a space shuttle launch by throwing a tarp over it and telling everyone the noise was an exploding Pinto. Rather like the way they tried to hide your spaceship, in fact. Even the Luthors only hired crackpots to collect meteorites, when NASA should have been all over them if they had any competent managers instead of a bunch of bean counters. I suppose government stupidity and inter-agency backbiting and theft is all your fault too. So tell me what else you're responsible for."
"The baby," Clark whispered. "My parents lost their baby because of me."
"I am getting tired enough of this to slap you again, and it hurts me a lot more than it does you. Yes, the Kents are one of those all-too-common obsessive-compulsive couples with the eighteenth-century idea that you're supposed to pop out babies to prove yourself. If you knew how many people pop out babies and then abandon them.... Or the kids who are born and then starve to death, or killed by nature's disasters, or shot in neighborhood crimes, or die of childhood cancers, or are hit by cars, or beaten to death by their parents...."
Maybe if he moved fast enough, he could rip open all twenty vaults in Lab 8. "Stop," was all Clark could manage.
"And then there's the people who know better than to try to have children," Randal went on brutally. "The people with better sense than me, for example, who know their genetics are screwed up. Or the people who have sense enough to understand that they'd be lousy parents, so they live their lives out alone and their family name and line dies with them. Maybe they take in foster kids, or have nieces or nephews, to balance against that instinctive evolutionary command to reproduce. Or once they get older and more mature, they decide to adopt." Randal's voice went nearly into the subsonic range. "Or maybe, once in a hundred million times, sheer blind luck drops the answer to their wishes and dreams right in front of them. Washed up on a beach or falling out of the sky or rescued from any of a million other things that can go wrong, sometimes one child becomes part of a family to make up for all the ones who were lost."
Clark stared at him, heedless of his tear-blurred vision. "I'm not ... I'm not...."
"Your parents HAVE the son they always wanted." Randal poked him in the chest. "Sure, they were a little shell-shocked. So were you. That doesn't excuse the way they treated you." His voice softened, became the comfortable warmth of a cat's purr. "You just ran, son. You were under a hell of a lot of stress, and you fought with people you thought you should have been able to trust, and you didn't know what else to do. That's such a common reaction that I'm half tempted to enroll you in a local runaways group with a hundred others just like you. Except that you'd probably try to teach them to curse in mathematics."
"There aren't any others like me." Clark would have had to have more voice for his words to be called a whisper.
"There aren't any other teenagers from Krypton who blew up their own spaceship to keep from having its computer yell at them in their head, no. That I know of, anyway. But there are a couple of hundred million teenagers who are going through a really shitty time on any given day. Teenagers pregnant who don't want to be. Teenagers losing their lives who don't want to die. Teenagers whose parents scream at them and throw them out of the house. Teenagers addicted to drugs, and teenagers losing their minds through no fault of their own. Do you really want to go down to, say, the barrios, and see how much sympathy you get?"
Clark had only heard of the barrios as an offhand reference in sanitized news stories. And that kind of poverty was allowed to exist in the richest country in the world. He hadn't....
Clark straightened. He hadn't even thought about the way too many places on this planet where teenagers blew up not just their homes, but themselves, and each other, on a daily basis. Even after what Mustafa had told him. Teenagers who didn't expect to live. Who didn't have any reason to live.
He groaned. He'd seen some of the information input that John's news team watched every minute of every hour. Most of it was, by definition, unpleasant. How did they pick and choose what to involve themselves in? There was so much, so incomprehensibly much going wrong in the world. So much suffering. How did they keep their sanity, watching it all?
"What happened to you was terrible, Kal-El. No one is going to make light of it. But I believe -- " Randal touched Clark's forehead, an unbelievably intimate gesture for an empath -- "that you are strong enough, and sane enough, whole enough, that it will not break you."
"There's so much." Clark's voice was still too quiet to be said to have sound.
"Yes, there is. And there always will be. So much for you personally, and so much for the world." Randal sat back. "You have to learn that there are some things you simply cannot do, and a great many things that happen despite your best intentions, and an awful lot of things that are simply beyond anybody's ability to change or help. Including yours."
Clark's breath hitched. "How do you ... live with it?"
"Honestly?" Randal's lips twitched on a smile. Clark marveled that the empath could even stand to be in the same room with him, much less manage to keep a sense of humor. "By taking the long view of things. The really, really, really long view. One day at a time."
Clark managed a tiny quirk in response. "Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"
"You haven't met John yet. Contradiction is his middle name." Randal tipped his head. "Which reminds me, John wants to see you tonight, if you feel up to it."
"John ... wants ... to...?"
"After supper, if you feel like it." Randal made a shrug gesture with one hand. "Take your time to get yourself together. If you don't want to, then you can say so at any time."
Clark gulped. "Sounds like an offer I'm not supposed to refuse."
Randal snorted. "This is not the real world, Kal. This is the Baron's domain, and what he says goes. And one of the things he says is that no one coerces anybody, not even him. Though you probably don't want to know about some of his and Lake's discussions."
Not the real world. Well, that said it all, didn't it? "What if I just, you know, don't?"
"If you decide to leave?" Randal stared him in the eyes. Clark had never seen eyes so unreadable. "Well, that's your decision too. I'll tell you right here and now that it would be a mistake, but since when have you ever listened to advice? We'd miss you. And you'd be throwing away a lot of opportunities. And you'd always be welcome back, whenever you chose. No one would try to stop you. Though the next time Nikki sees you, she'll probably punch you until she gets tired of hitting you. But why do you want to run, Kal? Clark?"
Clark looked away. "Maybe I just need some time to digest it all." And maybe I want to be part of the real world instead of John's.... I don't know.
"That, I can well believe. Is there any reason you can't do that here for awhile?" Randal stood up. "In the meantime, do you know what the definition of a hero is, kid?"
Somebody he didn't want to be. "Somebody who saves people."
"Not even close. A hero is someone who risks something of themselves, for the good of others, without thought of gain for themselves. Look it up before Wynter puts it on your assignment list. Your friend Whitney is a hero. The volunteers who deliver meals to shut-ins in dangerous neighborhoods are heroes. And I hate to break it to you, but so are you."
"No." Clark just didn't want to go there. Rule them with strength. Go away.
Randal squatted in front of him, bouncing a little. "You put others before yourself," he said gently. "You gave up a lot to try to make it better for others. You left everything you had rather than risk hurting your family and friends. You only made one mistake, hero. You tried to do it alone. Ask Whitney someday. A team is greater than the sum of its parts."
Startlement jolted Clark out of his confusion and denial. "Whitney's dead."
Randal stood again and gave him a sideways smile than only a very powerful psi could pull off. "Don't be so sure. There are such things as misidentified records." He started for the door, then hesitated and looked back. "You're welcome to stay here, of course, if you don't feel like going back to your own room. Either way, take your time to think everything through." Randal tapped his head. "Call for something to eat if you want, or wander around. But mostly, we'd really appreciate it if you didn't run off until you've talked to John."
Clark swallowed his misgivings and did his best to replace them with mild curiosity and belief, the way he had done for Nicole. He nodded halfheartedly. "I promise."
Randal's smile was sad, but believing. Well, of course. Randal had probably known every thought that went through his head. How he'd survived it was another question entirely.
"Randal...?" Clark decided to dare himself the question, however tentatively.
Randal cocked his head. Clark took a careful breath. "How do you do it? Keep from, well, going crazy, with all the suffering and crap you share with the rest of us?"
Randal actually gave a low chuckle. "Emotions are what bind us all together, my young friend. The happy pleasure of a dog at play, or a cat being petted, is more powerful than all the angst of uncertainty, and more lasting than any despair of loss. You learn from it, and you build from it, because the weight of experience only makes you stronger."
"That which does not kill me," Clark quoted ironically.
"Don't go comparing time and change to Lab 8." Randal cuffed him lightly. "Even Lake can tell you that there's some things that you don't grow calluses over. Radiation poisoning being one of them. And I would really appreciate it if you didn't do that again. Being with Dylana when she tried to empty the sky of lightning was far preferable."
Which was killing her, but also exalting her. Clark nodded slowly. "I don't really plan to."
"Glad to hear it. And the rest of it?" The empath's eyes were penetrating.
Clark let out a slow breath. "Go on. I promise to wait and talk to John."
Randal stared at him a moment longer, then nodded and left. Clark lay back on the bed and wondered if Kal-El was capable of such emotions, or if he wanted him to be.
John's quarters were shielded with everything any of them could think of, but there were always faster rats. The Martian Manhunter, wearing Randal's simulacrum, entered the outer door and shut it -- an unusual occurrence -- before allowing his appearance to shift.
Randal was already waiting for him. "Brutal, huh?" the actual Randal said softly.
"Very." J'onn wiped his green forehead. "I apologize for the violation of your identity. The use of your memories was instrumental in gaining Kal-El's acceptance."
"You're welcome, and it's I who owes you thanks." Randal shook his head. "I couldn't have handled that one on one. The hysterics were about my limit. God he's strong."
"And the damage runs deep," J'onn agreed. "That alien strength may be the only thing holding him together."
"You ETs always give yourself all the credit." Randal's smile was feeble.
"Randal has a point, J'onn." The Baron came out from his back room, rubbing an ear where the communicator had irritated it. "The alien physical resilience is what's working against him. The human emotional strength he's been raised with is what we're counting on to keep him from actual schizophrenia. How far did you manage to get into his mind?"
No one except John could have asked that question without earning the Manhunter's severe disapproval at the invasion of privacy. "Far enough to counter some of his complexes, I think, though he'll have to work through them one by one to believe it himself. His instinct to help and protect others comes honestly from both his families, though Jor-El was rather unique among Kryptonians that way. He will always be afraid of himself. It might be just as well to allow him to keep that. There is very little else to keep him from losing control."
John regarded him. "Are you ever afraid of yourself, Martian?"
J'onn smiled, and shifted his appearance to mimic John's again. "Always, Baron. Even after a century of training as a lawgiver. Are you never afraid of yourself?"
"Of myself? Not for a long time." John's eyes unfocused, but the empath and telepath had no trouble reading the weight that brooded there. "Of mistakes? Forevermore."
It was a distinct battle for Clark to decide whether to eat dinner in the commons or grab something and hide out in his room. In the end, he chose the commons. Being alone would tempt him with too many morbid thoughts. But he chose a table by himself.
"Care for some company?" Clark was about to make a snap answer when the four presences registered. Randal. Andy. Cyrus. And Wynter. Oh god. Give me Lab 8 any day.
"Did I ever tell you I hate broccoli?" Andy asked Randal, seating himself.
"Many thousands of times. But all children hate broccoli."
"I don't," Wynter put in. "It's one of the first genetic hybrids, you know."
Andy rolled his eyes. "Like you're a good example of children. I'm never going to actually be normal, Wart, so don't start on what's changed. But I've decided I like broccoli."
"You're allowed to get away with calling me Wart exactly once. Ask your dad about the see-through shorts. And broccoli is a very interesting plant. Take cauliflower...."
"Please!" said Randal and Bill and Andy and Clark in unison. They looked at each other and laughed. "Clark has a trace of empathic talent after all," Randal said.
"Really?" Wynter put down his fork and his eyes glittered with the prospect of experiments. "How would we go about testing that? It's difficult to get an EEG on him."
Clark felt himself go cold at the word "testing," and Bill and Andy both paled noticeably in response. Clark cursed at himself. Bad enough that he could kill with a finger or a glance, but with an involuntary thought? Must be what Lake felt like sometimes.
"That was just an observation, Wart," Randal said deliberately, far more controlled. "Any empath can tell when someone else is in tune. You don't have to wire him to anything."
"You are definitely asking for some invisible clothing. And what's the problem? You volunteer for EEGs all the time. Even with Dylana in the loop, which, for Kal's edification, is my definition of Lab-8 level masochism."
"Ever heard of the word 'phobia,' bright boy?"
"Really?" Wynter peered at Clark. "Sorry, I didn't realize. Have you been reading the sci-fi crap about testing on aliens again?"
"I'm not even through Diana Wynne Jones yet, much less Silverberg."
"You're not allowed into Silverberg until you turn 18. Or even John D. MacDonald, for that matter, though he doesn't do aliens. Smut, you know."
The empaths threw back their heads and laughed. "Oh, like you're so sexually experienced!" Randal shouted loud enough for the whole room to hear.
"I am going to put aphrodisiacs in your water and sell tickets. Clark, I'm sorry, I didn't think a simple EEG would bother you. I do it as an excuse to have someone cut my hair. Just, it would be really interesting to have a couple of comparative records on you. It would take special equipment because of your invulnerability aura, yes, but it's not invasive, except of your brain waves. It's not as if we're going to shave your head or cut you open."
Shave his head? Clark thought about that, with vaguely distracted interest. The Lex look? Maybe he could go with a mohawk.
The thought of Lex was a downer. Yes, Lex was okay now, but he would never see his friend again. Not his friend, Kal-El reminded him. Not his species. Not his world.
He saw his own depression reflected on the empaths' faces and reigned in his emotions, tiredly. What did it matter, really? If they had been going to lock him up in Lab 8, they could have done that already. This was just another test, just another experiment. Just another baseline for another freak. Easier to let them do as they wanted, and feel nothing.
"Okay, whatever. I probably ought to go along with SOMEthing to pay the rent."
Cyrus and Andy looked at each other, and Bill stood up. "You know, we didn't get a chance to look at Meria's parrot yesterday, and she'd kill me if she lost Samson. He's only twenty. Wanna help?" To Clark, offhand: "Samson's an African Gray. They're really smart, and they can live fifty years or so, but they get sick easy. If you'll excuse us?"
Well, that sucked, Clark thought, sinking lower. He'd just chased off two people who had tried to be friends with him, and probably hurt them, to boot. Story of his life.
Randal cocked his head at Clark, but spoke very obviously to Wynter. "You might actually have to use kryptonite to get through that thick skull of his. On the contacts, maybe. At least a few green-coated electrodes" -- Randal tapped his fingertips against the sides of his head in demonstration -- "Would give him something to think about that we could analyze."
Wynter bounced out of his chair in instant fury. "Have you lost your -- ! Oh. Yeah, I see what you mean. Hitting him over the head with bricks hasn't gotten his attention so far."
Clark's first reflexive sick helpless terror at the suggestion gave way to true and pure hysteria. Clark stared from Randal to Wynter and began to giggle. The giggles built until they were choking him, until he couldn't sit upright, until he was folded over on the floor. Until they turned to sobs, and Carlston came in and discreetly helped him to his feet.
Carlston raised an eyebrow at the two Specials, and Randal nodded. "My room."
Wynter wiped his forehead. "Thanks, guys. I'll be in comm control."
Clark was never quite sure if he had passed out. There was a confused period of mixed-up memories, and then he was lying back on an unfamiliar bed with a cool wet cloth over his eyes and a warm hand stroking his head. A slow soft voice was speaking nonsense words. English, Latin, Kryptonian, he didn't care. It was just a voice. A comforting presence. Someone to watch over him. Someone trying to save him from himself.
He lifted a hand that should have weighed tons, but actually weighed nothing at all. Really, nothing weighed much to him any more. No solid walls could stop him, and none could shield him. The weight of guilt and sadness drowned out any other weight that could be put on him. Tiredly, he took off the cloth that was about as effective as the spider-silk blindfold Nicole had first put on him. Nothing, not even lead, could keep the hurting away.
"Back with me?" Randal said gently. "Bill wanted to try to help, but he still isn't quite good enough at blocking. He was afraid he might lose control."
"HE was afraid?" Clark laughed harshly, and cut himself off before he degenerated into hysterics again. "Well, of course he was afraid of me. Who wouldn't be?"
"Kal. El." Randal's voice was stern as steel. "He was afraid of what he might do TO you. A healer's powers are not to be trifled with. You think your first arousal-driven heat vision was dangerous? Imagine what something very similarly out of control could do at a cellular level."
That got Clark's attention. And even, though he was reluctant to admit it, interest. "I don't understand. Are you saying that Bill's -- and Andy's -- healer talent can, well, cause harm, too?"
"Have you read Greg Bear's Blood Music?"
"Um, that's on the proscribed list." Clark discovered that he could recover almost as fast as he lost it, whether green rocks were involved or not. He sat up, letting the biology lessons of the past few days roam free in his mind. Healing, when disease was involved, meant more than just making you feel better. It would require the ability to manipulate and restructure -- oh geez, cells, genes, viruses, molecules. Clark's eyes widened. Oh yes. A healer could take you apart at the molecular level. If the empathic healers hadn't been forced to feel what they were doing, they would be almost as dangerous as Lake. "Oh."
"Oh," Randal echoed, mocking. "At least Wynter's lessons are starting to sink into that thick head of yours. Maybe we won't have to use the kryptonite headset after all. Sorry," he added hastily, when Clark's stomach tightened on a reflexive gag at the thought. "I know better. I was with you through the whole Lab 8 self-flagellation, I know it's not a joke."
The empath sighed and sat back. "It's a wonder you've survived this long, as much damage as you've taken without even trying. But you go out of your way to hurt yourself. Why, Clark? I've been with you, emotionally anyway, for almost two years, and I still can't understand why you torture yourself. About everything. And I've been through the girlfriend thing myself, I wanted to call you up and laugh both of us silly when you were mooning over Lana and being afraid of trying to keep up with Chloe. I once asked Dylana for a date."
Clark sat bolt upright, forgetting kryptonite altogether. "You ARE crazy!"
"No kidding. And she accepted. Someday I'll tell you about it. But we're off topic. I know why you're ambivalent with girls, and with guys too, for that matter." At Clark's wide-eyed attempt to protest, Randal cut him off with a snort. "Most powerful empath on the planet, remember? And spent a night with Dylana? Try lying to me, and I'll tell Lake.
"You were right about trusting Pete. And you're right about not completely trusting Lex, I'm sorry to have to say. You do have a trace of empathic talent, though it's nothing worth training. The problem is that you block at random, not knowing how to stop the bad stuff, not being able to pick up the good, because you have this stupid, alien, idea that you don't deserve anything good." Randal stared at him, narrow-eyed. "Why, Clark?"
Clark dropped back onto the pillows, rubbing his head. Not being able to lie to someone was something he had wished for his whole life, and it was turning out to be a real pain in reality. "I dunno," he muttered. This was something he had always wished he could tell his parents and friends. About how weird it was, just being there, just being from another planet, just being -- the only one. Never mind all the things he could do, all the so-called gifts that he had to be so careful of, and with. It would have been easier to be weak, he thought sometimes.
Then he remembered what it was like for people who were actually unable to climb stairs, or read, or hear, much less unable to kick over buildings or see through walls or hear through concrete floors, and he wanted to go stick his head in a vault in Lab 8 in shame.
Randal's hand gripped his, surprisingly forcefully. Hah. Maybe Randal had more talents than just being a horrifyingly sensitive esper, too. "Why, Clark?" he repeated again. Randal leaned in towards him, intimately close, eyes blazing. Clark shuddered, and retreated.
He wished he could put into words how they could never understand. Except that Randal could, in a sort of second-hand way. Except that Randal didn't have so much to blame himself for. No one else could know what it was to be responsible for all the bad things that kept happening, and to have given anything to fix it. And never be able to. Because everything that had gone so wrong was because of who he was. What he was.
Randal leaned back, and released him. "Do you want me to torment you some more?" he said coolly. "Do you want me to tell you that you did Andy no favor by giving him just enough language to realize that he was retarded? Do you want me to explain what you did when you violated his mind? That the relationship I had worked so hard for over the years with my son is gone now, and I have to start all over to rebuild something different?"
No. Randal couldn't have ripped that wound open any wider if he'd tried, not with anything, green or otherwise. Clark shut his eyes on a sob and wondered if he could kill himself. Even with all the safeguards, there probably wasn't anyone, even if Nicole were here, who could stop him from breaking into Lab 8. He turned over and curled up, willing Randal to leave. He thought of leaving a note. Why bother? Who to? What could he say, besides that he was sorry?
And suddenly Randal hauled him upright, blazing eyes less than an arm's length away. "Don't. You. Dare," he hissed. And slapped him.
Clark suddenly wondered what it was like to have a heart attack. Because he was pretty sure his heart had just stopped. His hand lifted to his stinging cheek in disbelief.
"How dare you?" Randal demanded, shoving him back onto the bed in fury. "How DARE you? How could you possibly be so blindly self-centered as to believe that everything is because of you? My child was born mentally disabled because of MY mutation. Because of the uncontrolled sensitivity that nearly killed me as a child. Do you think I haven't felt guilt about that every day of my life? I knew I was running the risk of putting him through the same kind of suffering that I nearly didn't survive. I didn't even consider that there might be worse things. How DARE you try to believe that you are the only one who carries burdens?"
Put that way, Clark could only wonder distantly where all the oxygen in the room had gone. Randal -- an empath, an enormously powerful sharer of emotions and pain -- was furious with him. An empath was furious with HIM. Not for NOT taking responsibility, but for trying to take responsibility for something he wasn't responsible for.... Clark gave up on trying to understand words and fought for just a handhold on reality.
"I am NOT going to tell you a lie like that just because you want to hear it," Randal said, dangerously low. "Do you know what you gave Andy? You gave him the ability to talk to me, and to all the people around him, and me to talk to him, as something other than a little child all the rest of his life. You didn't invade his mind -- if anything, he invaded yours. You didn't do anything except open wonderful, incredible new opportunities for him. You gave him a gift beyond price. How DARE you feel anything except happiness and pride for him, and for yourself? How could you possibly be anything except grateful for who you are, and what you can do? Why are you feeling sorry for yourself for being able to give miracles?"
Reality was proving a slippery thing. "But -- you said -- "
Randal threw up his hands in exasperation. "Where did you get such a talent for self-pitying rationalization? There isn't even a concept for such a thing in Kryptonian, and the Kents don't strike me as the type to go around feeling sorry for themselves. Maybe you ought to become a lawyer. The first thing lawyers learn is to tell people not to say 'it was my fault.'"
"But it was my fault," he said miserably, forgetting the empath's sensitivity.
"Maybe picking up that damn refined kryptonite in your bare hand, putting on that poisonous red ring, and opening the vault door in Lab 8 were your fault, though the jury is still out debating the plea of temporary insanity. I've always thought that it was stupid to have suicide on the books as a crime anyway. Probably the insurance lobby's doing. But you are not responsible for anything you did not consciously choose to do! Everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING else, was somebody else's doing and somebody else's mistake."
"The ship...."
"Yeah, did it ever occur to you that maybe Jor-El was a lousy computer programmer? That maybe he's the one who bears the responsibility for invading YOUR mind? That it could have been either badly-worded advice or stupid nonsense orders based on knowing nothing more about Earth than what he got from watching old television? If my only source of news was the corporate-owned media right now, I'd tell Lake to blow up the damn planet myself."
"My parents...."
My parents, the empath noted with satisfaction. Clark, not Kal-El. "Oh, is your dad so well known around town for his sainthood and self-control and good driving record?"
"They're good people," Clark muttered resentfully.
"No doubt. Salt of the Earth and all that. But a bit on the selfish side, too. Not to mention paranoid. Maybe they had good intentions in making you hide so much of yourself. Maybe they understood that socializing with other children your age was necessary to proper emotional development. Home schooled kids turn out sociopathic more often than not. But I bet that's not the calm, logical reason they gave you for having to be such a sneak, was it?"
Sneak. Yeah, that was the word. "They were afraid someone would take me away. They said the government would want to lock me up and study me. Experiment on me."
"Considering some of the wigged-out bigots and McCarthyites in congress, maybe, but so what? Minus the meteorites, what could they possibly do to you? You could have gotten up and left whenever you got tired of the games, just like you can here." Randal waved a hand around them. "In case it's escaped your attention, while no one came to take you away, you did a pretty good job of that yourself. And we're all being studied here. Part of the job."
"But if they had known about the meteorites...."
"Would you finish a sentence for once? Was Jonathan planning on telling 'them'?"
"No!" Clark remembered that terrible look on Jonathan's face while he was trying to comfort Martha, and suddenly wasn't so sure. Maybe.... No. Not even when Clark had gone so crazy with the red ring the first time. Dad and Pete had risked their own lives to get close to him -- they knew full well he could have snapped both their necks before Pete could get the lead box open -- rather than let anyone else know how to stop him. How to hurt him.
"Not much of a sentence, but it's a start. For that matter, if you had been taken out of the area, probably no one would have known that the meteorites had any effect on you at all. Someone would have noticed an increased incidence in odd cancers, the rocks would have been examined more closely and hauled off to a toxic waste dump site somewhere, end of problem." Randal frowned. "It would have been less of a problem than having the Luthors know that there's something unusual about you, and about your weakness, anyway."
Clark felt as if his blood had turned to ice. "They ... know ...?"
"Is that a sentence? Of course they know, they didn't corral billions of dollars by being unobservant. The first thing they look for is signs of weakness. They probably have pictures of you nekkid, they certainly wouldn't miss your aversion to an all-too-common green stone. You became a target the day you pulled Lex out of the river. You think Luthors do anything out of gratitude? That truck was an attempt to buy you off. A lot cheaper and less publicly messy than a lawsuit. The fact that you didn't try to get money out of them for injuries or something was what tipped them off that you had something to hide. If Martha's father had known, he would have warned you about the way lawyers and rich people think."
Clark shook his head, a defeated motion. "That was my fault too. Dad didn't want grand-dad around because he was afraid that he might find out about me. Because I was kind of careless when I was a kid."
"Dammit!" Randal roared, surging to his feet. "I suppose it was your fault that Jonathan and old man Clark fought like rabid bulldogs from the day they met? You weren't even born when they both went to jail for being a public nuisance!" Randal calmed himself down with the practiced control of long experience, and sat back. "You need at least a year's worth of psychology reading. I'll ask Wynter to put that ahead of the legal studies, anyway."
Clark groaned. Maybe it was time to get out of here after all.
"You're going to need both, if you hope to play on anything like a level field with the Luthors some day. Corporate espionage is their middle name. They have spies in your high school, spies in the town, spies in Metropolis, spies in Washington. But we're better at it than they are, and we're having some, hm, Lake would call it fun, with them."
Clark was pretty sure he didn't want to know what Lake's idea of fun was. Then he remembered what Lake's usual assignments were. "Why are you going to all this trouble?"
Randal raised an eyebrow. "Because we can?"
Clark scowled at him. "Randal, please, don't. I'm confused enough already. Playing twenty questions isn't helping me think, no matter what Socrates said."
"Mm, Socrates. You have to remember that men who were considered brilliant and insightful for their time would be laughed out of junior high school today. The defining characteristic of a culture and its most brilliant members is the weight of experience that it has -- or chooses to accept."
Clark fell back on the pillow with a moan. "Enough with the lessons already. Just, please, tell me why is a world-wide bunch of really scary agents so interested in just me?"
Just you, Kal-El? The man across from him only wished there were words to tell him. "Because we don't believe in letting potential go to waste."
"What potential?" Clark said tiredly. "To cause everyone more problems?"
"STOP that. How about, the potential to do even more good things? Even greater things than the miracles you've already performed? You're still a child, and you've imposed so many limits on yourself. Imagine how much you could do if you set yourself free."
"Imagine how dangerous." Clark flopped over on his stomach, the words muffled.
Randal chuckled, low. "As opposed to Lake and Nicole? And a date with Dylana? Or Wynter with his highly illegal hack into every computer in the world? Or the number of nutcases loose in the world with the ability to set off an atomic bomb? Or the dictator-wanna-bes who control mobs through money and planted operatives? Trust me, I can imagine 'dangerous' better than you'll be able to for quite some time. But that's the point. The difference between what you CAN do, and what you WILL do, is a matter of individual choice. You have never, ever, chosen to deliberately hurt someone."
"It happens anyway." Words still muffled. "I can't help it."
"So? You think you can affect random chance the way Jacques does? Speaking of dangerous talents, our card sharp is also quite capable of turning any element past about neon into a nuclear bomb with a thought, just by changing the probabilities of neutron decay. But he doesn't go around doing it, and more than you go around setting fires and smashing walls. Tell me again how dangerous you are."
"I hurt everyone who gets close to me." Muffled voice suspiciously broken.
"You've saved the lives of everyone close to you, over and over. Try again."
"They wouldn't have been in danger in the first place except for me!"
"Oh, please. Would you like a look at Lex's arrest record? Lionel spent nearly as much covering up for him as the CIA did cleaning up after George Bush. You weren't even in school yet when he was first busted for cocaine and grand theft auto. Yep, that was your fault all right. Did you ever think that if he'd hit anyone but you on that bridge, it would have killed that person? Not that he would have cared about the manslaughter charge, because he'd be dead too. Right, the rich boy wouldn't be in danger except for you. Try again."
"The meteorite mutants...."
"Still having trouble finishing sentences, I see. Look at me." The voice was suddenly, unaccountably commanding. Clark found himself rolling over before he knew what he was doing, meeting Randal's sun-flecked eyes. "Did you deliberately bring those meteorites along with you? Would you have chosen to if you could have?"
Clark shuddered. "No. No."
"Two sentences. Very good. If you had known that they would cause mutations, would you personally have gone and cleaned them all up?"
It was a dare. Clark sighed. "You know the answer to that."
"Yes, I do. The question is, do you? How would you not do it alone? Would you have organized a trash bash, and just casually mentioned that the rocks were radioactive? Would you have contacted a university or government lab, and asked them to come investigate? Would you just get your parents to go collect them all and bury them?"
Clark frowned. "I -- I suppose I should have. I didn't think of that."
"And what do you suppose the response would have been when you were, what? Four or five? And why didn't your parents think of that themselves?"
"They -- they didn't want to draw suspicions."
"Draw suspicions to a meteor strike? Names of all the stars. That's dumber than the old 'secret' military space shuttle launches. As if you could hide a space shuttle launch by throwing a tarp over it and telling everyone the noise was an exploding Pinto. Rather like the way they tried to hide your spaceship, in fact. Even the Luthors only hired crackpots to collect meteorites, when NASA should have been all over them if they had any competent managers instead of a bunch of bean counters. I suppose government stupidity and inter-agency backbiting and theft is all your fault too. So tell me what else you're responsible for."
"The baby," Clark whispered. "My parents lost their baby because of me."
"I am getting tired enough of this to slap you again, and it hurts me a lot more than it does you. Yes, the Kents are one of those all-too-common obsessive-compulsive couples with the eighteenth-century idea that you're supposed to pop out babies to prove yourself. If you knew how many people pop out babies and then abandon them.... Or the kids who are born and then starve to death, or killed by nature's disasters, or shot in neighborhood crimes, or die of childhood cancers, or are hit by cars, or beaten to death by their parents...."
Maybe if he moved fast enough, he could rip open all twenty vaults in Lab 8. "Stop," was all Clark could manage.
"And then there's the people who know better than to try to have children," Randal went on brutally. "The people with better sense than me, for example, who know their genetics are screwed up. Or the people who have sense enough to understand that they'd be lousy parents, so they live their lives out alone and their family name and line dies with them. Maybe they take in foster kids, or have nieces or nephews, to balance against that instinctive evolutionary command to reproduce. Or once they get older and more mature, they decide to adopt." Randal's voice went nearly into the subsonic range. "Or maybe, once in a hundred million times, sheer blind luck drops the answer to their wishes and dreams right in front of them. Washed up on a beach or falling out of the sky or rescued from any of a million other things that can go wrong, sometimes one child becomes part of a family to make up for all the ones who were lost."
Clark stared at him, heedless of his tear-blurred vision. "I'm not ... I'm not...."
"Your parents HAVE the son they always wanted." Randal poked him in the chest. "Sure, they were a little shell-shocked. So were you. That doesn't excuse the way they treated you." His voice softened, became the comfortable warmth of a cat's purr. "You just ran, son. You were under a hell of a lot of stress, and you fought with people you thought you should have been able to trust, and you didn't know what else to do. That's such a common reaction that I'm half tempted to enroll you in a local runaways group with a hundred others just like you. Except that you'd probably try to teach them to curse in mathematics."
"There aren't any others like me." Clark would have had to have more voice for his words to be called a whisper.
"There aren't any other teenagers from Krypton who blew up their own spaceship to keep from having its computer yell at them in their head, no. That I know of, anyway. But there are a couple of hundred million teenagers who are going through a really shitty time on any given day. Teenagers pregnant who don't want to be. Teenagers losing their lives who don't want to die. Teenagers whose parents scream at them and throw them out of the house. Teenagers addicted to drugs, and teenagers losing their minds through no fault of their own. Do you really want to go down to, say, the barrios, and see how much sympathy you get?"
Clark had only heard of the barrios as an offhand reference in sanitized news stories. And that kind of poverty was allowed to exist in the richest country in the world. He hadn't....
Clark straightened. He hadn't even thought about the way too many places on this planet where teenagers blew up not just their homes, but themselves, and each other, on a daily basis. Even after what Mustafa had told him. Teenagers who didn't expect to live. Who didn't have any reason to live.
He groaned. He'd seen some of the information input that John's news team watched every minute of every hour. Most of it was, by definition, unpleasant. How did they pick and choose what to involve themselves in? There was so much, so incomprehensibly much going wrong in the world. So much suffering. How did they keep their sanity, watching it all?
"What happened to you was terrible, Kal-El. No one is going to make light of it. But I believe -- " Randal touched Clark's forehead, an unbelievably intimate gesture for an empath -- "that you are strong enough, and sane enough, whole enough, that it will not break you."
"There's so much." Clark's voice was still too quiet to be said to have sound.
"Yes, there is. And there always will be. So much for you personally, and so much for the world." Randal sat back. "You have to learn that there are some things you simply cannot do, and a great many things that happen despite your best intentions, and an awful lot of things that are simply beyond anybody's ability to change or help. Including yours."
Clark's breath hitched. "How do you ... live with it?"
"Honestly?" Randal's lips twitched on a smile. Clark marveled that the empath could even stand to be in the same room with him, much less manage to keep a sense of humor. "By taking the long view of things. The really, really, really long view. One day at a time."
Clark managed a tiny quirk in response. "Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"
"You haven't met John yet. Contradiction is his middle name." Randal tipped his head. "Which reminds me, John wants to see you tonight, if you feel up to it."
"John ... wants ... to...?"
"After supper, if you feel like it." Randal made a shrug gesture with one hand. "Take your time to get yourself together. If you don't want to, then you can say so at any time."
Clark gulped. "Sounds like an offer I'm not supposed to refuse."
Randal snorted. "This is not the real world, Kal. This is the Baron's domain, and what he says goes. And one of the things he says is that no one coerces anybody, not even him. Though you probably don't want to know about some of his and Lake's discussions."
Not the real world. Well, that said it all, didn't it? "What if I just, you know, don't?"
"If you decide to leave?" Randal stared him in the eyes. Clark had never seen eyes so unreadable. "Well, that's your decision too. I'll tell you right here and now that it would be a mistake, but since when have you ever listened to advice? We'd miss you. And you'd be throwing away a lot of opportunities. And you'd always be welcome back, whenever you chose. No one would try to stop you. Though the next time Nikki sees you, she'll probably punch you until she gets tired of hitting you. But why do you want to run, Kal? Clark?"
Clark looked away. "Maybe I just need some time to digest it all." And maybe I want to be part of the real world instead of John's.... I don't know.
"That, I can well believe. Is there any reason you can't do that here for awhile?" Randal stood up. "In the meantime, do you know what the definition of a hero is, kid?"
Somebody he didn't want to be. "Somebody who saves people."
"Not even close. A hero is someone who risks something of themselves, for the good of others, without thought of gain for themselves. Look it up before Wynter puts it on your assignment list. Your friend Whitney is a hero. The volunteers who deliver meals to shut-ins in dangerous neighborhoods are heroes. And I hate to break it to you, but so are you."
"No." Clark just didn't want to go there. Rule them with strength. Go away.
Randal squatted in front of him, bouncing a little. "You put others before yourself," he said gently. "You gave up a lot to try to make it better for others. You left everything you had rather than risk hurting your family and friends. You only made one mistake, hero. You tried to do it alone. Ask Whitney someday. A team is greater than the sum of its parts."
Startlement jolted Clark out of his confusion and denial. "Whitney's dead."
Randal stood again and gave him a sideways smile than only a very powerful psi could pull off. "Don't be so sure. There are such things as misidentified records." He started for the door, then hesitated and looked back. "You're welcome to stay here, of course, if you don't feel like going back to your own room. Either way, take your time to think everything through." Randal tapped his head. "Call for something to eat if you want, or wander around. But mostly, we'd really appreciate it if you didn't run off until you've talked to John."
Clark swallowed his misgivings and did his best to replace them with mild curiosity and belief, the way he had done for Nicole. He nodded halfheartedly. "I promise."
Randal's smile was sad, but believing. Well, of course. Randal had probably known every thought that went through his head. How he'd survived it was another question entirely.
"Randal...?" Clark decided to dare himself the question, however tentatively.
Randal cocked his head. Clark took a careful breath. "How do you do it? Keep from, well, going crazy, with all the suffering and crap you share with the rest of us?"
Randal actually gave a low chuckle. "Emotions are what bind us all together, my young friend. The happy pleasure of a dog at play, or a cat being petted, is more powerful than all the angst of uncertainty, and more lasting than any despair of loss. You learn from it, and you build from it, because the weight of experience only makes you stronger."
"That which does not kill me," Clark quoted ironically.
"Don't go comparing time and change to Lab 8." Randal cuffed him lightly. "Even Lake can tell you that there's some things that you don't grow calluses over. Radiation poisoning being one of them. And I would really appreciate it if you didn't do that again. Being with Dylana when she tried to empty the sky of lightning was far preferable."
Which was killing her, but also exalting her. Clark nodded slowly. "I don't really plan to."
"Glad to hear it. And the rest of it?" The empath's eyes were penetrating.
Clark let out a slow breath. "Go on. I promise to wait and talk to John."
Randal stared at him a moment longer, then nodded and left. Clark lay back on the bed and wondered if Kal-El was capable of such emotions, or if he wanted him to be.
John's quarters were shielded with everything any of them could think of, but there were always faster rats. The Martian Manhunter, wearing Randal's simulacrum, entered the outer door and shut it -- an unusual occurrence -- before allowing his appearance to shift.
Randal was already waiting for him. "Brutal, huh?" the actual Randal said softly.
"Very." J'onn wiped his green forehead. "I apologize for the violation of your identity. The use of your memories was instrumental in gaining Kal-El's acceptance."
"You're welcome, and it's I who owes you thanks." Randal shook his head. "I couldn't have handled that one on one. The hysterics were about my limit. God he's strong."
"And the damage runs deep," J'onn agreed. "That alien strength may be the only thing holding him together."
"You ETs always give yourself all the credit." Randal's smile was feeble.
"Randal has a point, J'onn." The Baron came out from his back room, rubbing an ear where the communicator had irritated it. "The alien physical resilience is what's working against him. The human emotional strength he's been raised with is what we're counting on to keep him from actual schizophrenia. How far did you manage to get into his mind?"
No one except John could have asked that question without earning the Manhunter's severe disapproval at the invasion of privacy. "Far enough to counter some of his complexes, I think, though he'll have to work through them one by one to believe it himself. His instinct to help and protect others comes honestly from both his families, though Jor-El was rather unique among Kryptonians that way. He will always be afraid of himself. It might be just as well to allow him to keep that. There is very little else to keep him from losing control."
John regarded him. "Are you ever afraid of yourself, Martian?"
J'onn smiled, and shifted his appearance to mimic John's again. "Always, Baron. Even after a century of training as a lawgiver. Are you never afraid of yourself?"
"Of myself? Not for a long time." John's eyes unfocused, but the empath and telepath had no trouble reading the weight that brooded there. "Of mistakes? Forevermore."
