2

Tom wasn't sure whether to run or not when he heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. He was close enough to being done that he could have just bolted, grabbed his bag and kicked off into the sky to find some new place to settle down with a new name, but to do so would mean that the animals would have been left uncared for – and one of the few things that he could never stand was being cruel to animals.

But when he stared past the wall and saw that it was Sally walking up the door, he figured that she deserved some answers. Maybe it was just his subconscious trying to make up for the mistakes of the past, but he wasn't going to walk out on her.

He got to the door before she did, opening it up for her. "C'mon in, Sally," he said, directing her towards a chair inside the old farmhouse. "Would you like something to drink?" he asked, making no move away from the door.

Sally sat down in the old easy chair, but shook her head. "No, I'm good. Thank you."

"How's Frank doing?"

"He's good," she said. "The doctors say he'll pull through. Gonna have a nasty scar, though."

"That's good, Sally."

An awkward silence hung in the air for a long moment. Tom searched his mind for something to say, some way to open the conversation, but he couldn't think of one. That was part of his problem – he'd never been able to think of one. Every time he'd had this conversation – which, upon further review, was surprisingly few, especially considering the simplicity of his disguise – it had always been the other person who'd been forward about it, who'd confronted him straight up about his secret. Which, in a way, made it easier. Despite all the battles he'd fought in his life, he'd never been one to engage someone else in something unpleasant unless he had to, be it a conversation or a glorified wrestling match. But Sally wasn't playing along with the formula; she just sat there, waiting for him to say something. Tom rubbed the back of his head, as if trying to force something to flow from it.

"I'm sorry, Sally." It was all he could think of.

Sally, to her credit, didn't seem angry at him for not telling him. If anything, she seemed pleased; he smiled, almost laughing at his remark. "Sorry? What are you sorry for?"

"For not telling you, I suppose."

"Well, does anybody else know?" she asked.

Tom sighed as he looked off into the distance, for a second staring into the past. "Nobody who's still…alive."

Sally glanced back down in her shoes, ashamed of bringing up such a topic. "I'm sorry," she said, not noticing the irony.

It was Tom's turn to smile. "Don't be – it's been a long time, I've made peace with it."

Sally looked back up at him as he sat down in the sofa next to her, the awkwardness broken. "So, how long is long, if you don't mind my asking?"

Tom exhaled, doing the math in his head. "Thirty-eight years. That was when Lois passed away, back in '68. Lung cancer. She hadn't smoked since we got married, but she'd been quite the smokestack back when she was younger – I suppose it just caught up with her."

Sally stared at him, deeply. "You were married?"

Tom nodded. "Twenty-two years. Why?"

She blushed. "Well, no offense, but…I never saw you with anyone out here. Never saw you react when any girl in town batted an eyelash at you. You've just been out here alone for so long…I guess I just figured you for a lifelong bachelor."

Tom smiled - not at her, but into space. "Well, she was one of a kind. She was the one for me – after that, who could ever compare?"

Sally smiled at him, warmly this time. "That's beautiful, Tom."

"True love is something you don't see enough of these days, in my opnion."

His words hung in the air for a long minute, until Sally's confused voice broke the quiet. "Hold on a second. You said your wife died thirty-eight years ago, and you were married for twenty-two years."

Tom sensed where this was going, but he bit his tongue. "Uh-huh."

"And how old were you when you got married?"

"I was twenty-eight. She was thirty. We married late."

Sally's mouth moved as she added up the figures in her head. "So that would make you…" Her eyes went wide. "No way."

Tom could only nod. "Eighty-eight years old. Eighty-nine, come October."

Sally's mouth hung open, a fact which made Tom smile. "But I don't look a day over sixty, do I?"

"I…I mean…no! I didn't even think you were that old!"

"Call it a benefit of good heritage."

Sally's composure seemed to be coming back strong. "And the bullets bouncing off you? That part of your 'heritage?' "

He nodded yet again, feeling like a bobblehead doll. "And the running fast, and the pickup-shredding, and the leaping into the air and not coming back down. Not to mention the hearing voices three miles away, or the reading a newspaper from orbit or staring through walls."

Sally's eyes widened as she began to realize just what he might mean. "You can't…you can't be…he's just make-believe…"

Tom slowly rose to his feet, his chest swelling with purpose. He seemed to tower above her. "My name isn't Tom Welling, Sally. I was born Kal-L. last son of the planet Krypton, but the name I always thought of myself was Clark Kent, adopted son of Jonathan and Martha Kent. But most folks…"

"…most folks know me as Superman."

Sally rose to her feet, the living embodiment of shock. "We read about you in history class, but the teacher said you were just made-up by the government…nobody ever got a picture of you…"

Clark smiled. "It's hard to snap a picture of something that moves faster than the shutter. But I can assure you, I may be many things, but make-believe is not one of them."

Slowly, gently, Sally reached out towards the man before her. He made no move to resist, even when her fingertips brushed his chest. She laid her hand against him, and for a microsecond, his mind flashed back seventy years to a summer day in Kansas when another young girl, her hair streaking strawberry-blond in the sun, laid her hands against him in a meadow so far from civilization that even he couldn't hear the sounds of humanity from there. It had been the happiest moment in his life by that point – it had been the day that he had learned true love, when he'd discovered what it meant to be loved in a way that no parents – adoptive or otherwise – loved you. He could still smell her skin, the scent of lavender and grass in the air.

But he pushed away those thoughts as fast as he could manage. After all, the girl in front of him was almost five times younger than him – and human or not, to take a girl so far removed from him was a thought that made him feel ashamed. So he gently removed her hand from his chest. She blushed as she pulled away.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable – it's just…I've never touched a real live hero before." Her voice quaked as she looked away.

Tom felt himself fall at her words. He turned away, staring out the window. "I'm not a hero, Sally. And if I ever was, I'm not anymore. I lost that right a long time ago."

"What do you mean?"

He sighed. "There was a man once who…well, people called us arch-nemeses. We hated each other. His name was Lex Luthor, and there was a pattern to what we did; he would try to blow up a city or something, I would catch him and put him in jail, and then he'd break out and try it again. Nobody ever really got hurt; after a while, I almost started to respect him, like it was a game or something.

"But one day, Lex decided that he'd had enough playing. He got serious. He set off a bomb downtown that killed two dozen people – just ordinary people. Back then, that was unheard of – you just didn't do something like that. While I was busy with that, he broke into the newspaper where I worked and…killed two of my friends. He kidnapped Lois. Then, he ran off to his secret hideaway; by the time I'd gotten back to the paper, he was gone. But he made sure I knew where to find him. He figured that I'd come back there, he'd catch me in this sort of suspension field he'd created, then make me watch as he ravaged the woman I loved. But Lex's biggest flaw was always his own arrogance; no matter how big his brain was, his ego was bigger. And he'd counted on his brain being stronger than my heart.

"I tore through that field like nothing, I was so angry. I'd never been so enraged in my life; I barely had control over my own strength, my abilities. I pulled him away from Lois before he could do anything, and…" Clark trailed off, his eyes closing in regret.

Sally understood exactly what he meant. "You got serious, too."

Clark couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze. "I can still hear the sound of my fist going right through his face. That's what I see when I close my eyes at night to go to sleep. His head exploded like a cannonball went through it. And in that moment…I didn't feel a thing. No regret. No sadness. Just…anger.

"That was the day that Superman died.

"To this day, I'm still amazed that Lois stuck by me after seeing that. But she did, for over twenty years. Day in and day out, even after I'd renounced the part of me who she'd fallen in love with in the first place. But we spent all those years together, happy. I even thought that maybe, maybe, that was just who I was supposed to be. Clark Kent: husband, reporter. Nice guy.

"But when she died…it was like I lost so much of what had made me human. The name of Clark Kent didn't mean anything anymore. Nothing meant anything. I spent years just wandering the globe, a man without a name, without a past – just a face in the crowd. A ghost. As time went on, I began to wonder if maybe I really was Superman inside after all, that maybe my place was really back here, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way – the things my parents always taught me to believe in. So one day, I came back to America after all those years – to find I didn't even recognize her anymore.

"So, I renounced everything that I had been. I stopped using my powers. I contended myself with settling down somewhere where I could start anew, with a new name. A new life, somewhere that reminded me of the home I used to know. Walker just happened to be the first place that fit."

Sally digested it for a while. Her next question, though, caught him off-guard. "So, why are you telling me?"

Clark blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You've gone all these years on your own. You clearly can take care of yourself, and if you didn't want anyone to know who you are, you would have been out of here faster than anything once you heard my car pull up. Nobody would have ever believed me, anyway, if I'd told them that somebody stopped a robbery by bouncing bullets off their chest. But you decided to stay. To tell me everything."

The girl would have made one helluva reporter, Clark thought. "Because I'm sick of running. Because I liked things the way they were here, and I figured somebody ought to understand. Most of all, maybe, because you remind me of someone who showed me a lot about myself and taught me to never be afraid of who I am. I haven't done much to make her proud, either."

"Lois?"

He shook his head. "No. Her name was Lana, and she was the first girl I ever loved. She grew up in the same town as me, and we were…everything to each other. Friends. Enemies. Pals. Saviors. Even lovers. My parents were the ones who always told me to use my gifts to do the right thing and fight for what's right…but she was the one who gave me a real reason to fight for it. I owe her a lot."

Sally just smiled. Beamed, actually "Wow."

Clark looked over at her. "What?"

She blushed. "Well…it's kind of cool for Superman to tell you that he reminds you of his first girlfriend, y'know?"

He laughed. Not just a chuckle, but a full-blown howl of joy. Before he realized it, he was breathless from it, falling backwards into his chair to keep from collapsing as all the stress and tension he'd kept bottled up for years flowed out. Sally started laughing, too; she couldn't help herself, his joy was just so…beautiful. It was like seeing a plant which hadn't blossomed in years suddenly open up to reveal the most amazing flower.

As they wound down, a thought hit Sally that cut her laughter short. When he walks out that door, she realized, I'll never see him again. That's the end.

"Clark?" It felt weird to call him that.

"Yeah, Sally?" He wiped a tear of joy from his eye with the back of his hand.

"What are you going to do now?"

The smile ran away from his face. "I don't know.

"I guess I'll just move on. There's got to be somewhere else I can set up some roots, live out the rest of my days. Another town where nobody knows me."

"Why?" Her question seemed so naïve, but somehow…there was a deepness to it that was hard to understand.

Clark, for one, didn't really have a good answer. So, as he'd always done, he told the truth as best as he was able. "'Cause there's nothing else to do."

"That's not true." The steel in Sally's voice surprised him. "We both know it. Just because you did something once that you're not proud of doesn't mean you have to exile yourself for the rest of your life for it. You said you never really knew who the real man was, Clark Kent or Superman – but right now, you're neither. You're just a passing traveler. And you're supposed to be so much more than that.

"If I could do what you can do, Clark…I don't know just what I'd do. But I know I wouldn't spend my life hiding in Nebraskan farmhouses. The world out there needs its heroes – it needs people to look up to. I need people to look up to. Am I supposed to look up to the politicians? The movie stars? The supermodels? The world needs people like you to inspire it. It needs its hope. And you…you can do more to bring hope than anybody else on this planet. There's no one like you out there. You've spent the last forty years running from who you are inside – don't you think it's time to stop running?"

Clark could only stare into her eyes, amazed at the depth that could come out of such a young soul. For a moment, he wondered if this was someone other than Sally talking to him; he'd never been a very religious man, but in that second, he could have sworn Lois might well have taken over the girl in front of him. But that wasn't likely. Sally was, upon second thought, just the latest strong woman to step into his life.

And, like his mother, Lana Lang, and Lois Lane, she was also spot on.

Slowly, carefully, he stood up and walked towards the door, motioning Sally to follow him. With her close behind, he walked across the driveway and over to the barn. The storm cellar doors opened with a creak as Clark swung them wide, turning on the dim light before descending with Sally close on his tail. He walked steadfastly, purposefully, across the cellar, stopping in the middle of the floor. Smoothly, easily, he punched through the wooden floorboards and tore them aside, reaching into the hole and pulling out an old steamer trunk. He flipped the catches, and opened it with a hiss of escaping air.

Inside, atop a pile of old clothing, sat a blue-and-red outfit that could only be described as a "costume."

Clark unfurled the upper half of it with a flourish, airing it out. Even in the darkness of the cellar, the crimson "S" on the suit's chest seemed to stand out. He held it up for Sally to see. "What do you think – too old-fashioned?"

Sally only smiled. "More like classic. I don't think anybody would want to see you in anything else."

Clark looked down at the costume in his hand. "You still think this is a good idea? I'm not nearly as young as I used to be."

"My dad has a saying: half of infinity is still infinity. You're still so much stronger than the rest of us – I don't think many of us will make a qualm about the size of the mountain you're lifting."

His eyes closed for a long moment as he took a deep breath in, then let it out. He opened them up again, and suddenly, Clark Kent disappeared in a blur of blue and red. The man standing before Sally now was so much more than any ordinary man. It seemed as though time had stopped as a gentle breeze came down the stairs and tickled the cape, making its tips rustle.

He smiled. "Think I look okay?"

Sally shook her head, amazed. "You don't have anything to worry about…Superman."

"Clark," he corrected her. "It was always Clark to my friends, Sally."

Together, they strode into the sunlight again, the yellow rays causing the costume to burst into living color. For a moment, the duo stared off at the horizon, where the sun was beginning to head towards its day's rest.

"You realize, I can't ever come back here." His voice was somehow stronger now. "So far as the world can know, Tom Welling is gone."

"I know," Sally said. "But it doesn't mean we can't still talk, does it? I mean, with computers and everything…"

He turned to her and smiled. "It's only a little more than a hundred miles from New York to Boston, too. If you need somebody to talk to, I'll be there."

"Faster than a speeding bullet?"

"Faster than a speeding bullet."

"Take care of the animals for me, okay? I'm sure your parents can make room on their farm. I can give 'em some money if they want, but I just don't want them to be left alone here." His voice returned to the softer, gentler quality it had before.

"I'm sure they won't mind," Sally said. "You've been a good enough neighbor, I can't imagine why they'd want anything in return."

"Well, in any case-" he reached behind his shoulders and pulled out a set of keys from where Sally could only guess –"give them my truck. It's old, but it still runs fine. Should be good for a few hundred dollars at the least."

"I can't take your truck," she protested.

He only grinned. "Why not? It's not like I'll be using it."

The sun faded a little further towards the western horizon. The wind kicked up again, sweeping into their faces and blowing the smell of spring into them. In the fading light, Sally glanced over at the man next to her, standing before the endless fields of wheat, his red cape flapping in the breeze and his eyes staring off into the distance. And for a moment, she knew what it was like to believe again. To believe in heroes; to believe in the truth, and justice, and all those old-fashioned things that people talked about but never seemed to do anything with anymore. She knew that he was doing the right thing; she only hoped he knew it, too.

In all honesty, Sally had expected him to leap off into the air right then and there, but what he did next surprised her; he reached back into the same pocket he had pulled his keys from and withdrew a faded photograph, folded into quarters. Lovingly, he opened it up and handed it off to her. In the image – black and white – a black-haired woman in a wedding dress stood on an altar next to a much younger version of the man standing next to her – only instead of a red-and-blue costume, he wore a black tuxedo and a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses. The two of them beamed into the camera as they wrapped their arms around each other.

"That's Lois," he said softly. "Our wedding day. Happiest day of my life. I haven't gone a day since she died without looking at that picture."

Sally handed it back to him. "She would be proud, Clark."

He stood tall into the wind as he smiled out of the corner of his mouth wistfully. "Yeah. I like to think so."

He turned to Sally and gently kissed her on the forehead before embracing her. "Goodbye, Sally. Thank you for everything."

"Don't mention it."

Without a word, he took a step back, crouched down, and leapt upwards into the sky. He threw Sally a wave; as she waved back, she realized that for some reason, she was crying.

Then he turned off into the sunset – and Superman was gone.