GIRLS WITH OLD SCHOOL NAMES LIKE RUBY MAY

"I hate my name," she was kicking the chair petulantly, eyes on the floor. Clark could understand why. She was in a bad way.

Lois was injured after stubbornly reporting on an incident of gang violence that had taken the Suicide Slums by the storm. As punishment, she was put on the city beat, and banned from pursuing any of her personal projects until she was fully recovered. Clark one hundred percent approved, and even managed to snag the position as her partner.

"Please," Lois had said, "You're a glorified babysitter."

"Does that make you a baby, then?"

She'd pursed her lips in a way that meant "Shut up, Kent" without ever saying a word. He'd shut up.

Being the stubborn woman that she was, she'd still been determined to follow her story, even if she was only allowed to write fluffy human pieces.

Thus, Clark ended up in a quiet apartment with a ten-year-old eyewitness to the violence while Lois interviewed the woman. She'd been sullen the entire time, and Clark hadn't spoken a word to her until she interjected her complaints into the quiet.

"Why?" Clark asked. "What is it?"

She fidgeted, meeting his eyes for a split second before looking down at her glittery plastic sandals again. Her brown hair was twisted into two puffs on the side of her head, and she wore a headband to match her sandals. Her brown nose was crinkled up in distaste.

"It's Mildred," she spat it out as if it hurt her. "My sister's name is Ruby May. She tease me about it alot."

"Mildred's a beautiful name," he said.

"No it's not," she mumbled. "It's an old lady name. Ruby May said so. But everyone calls me Milly cause Mildred ain't a name for a little girl. Only Ruby May calls me Mildred."

"Would you like me to call you Milly then?"

She seemed to seriously think about it for a whole minute, before shaking her head vigorously. "No! Call me Mildred. I don't want to be Milly anymore."

Ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut, Clark persevered. "Okay then, Mildred. It's very nice to meet you." He held out his hand. "I'm Clark."

She grabbed it firmly with both hands and shook it energetically. "Hello, Mr. Clark, I'm Mildred." She dropped his hand and cradled her small chin in her small hands, bracing her elbow on her thigh.

"You know, she dead."

Clark was startled from his quiet observation, one ear on Lois' conversation with Mildred's mother in the other room. "What?"

"Ruby May is dead. They done killed her a week ago. She was taking out the garbage, and Ma say the police don't care and ain't going to do nothing, so that's why she's talking to the reporters. She was gonna put it on facebook, but she didn't know what to say so when she heard ya'll was over here she ran out to catch up with you."

Clark didn't know what to say to that, mostly because he knew it was true. The Metropolis Police Department were still trying to deal with the damages from Zod's attack. The riots in the Suicide Slums were hardly of any importance, not when people were still looting the metropolitan area of the city that had escaped much of the destruction. Superman had come and managed to greatly accelerate the speed of the repairs— eighteen months now, since the attack, and it was only in the ground zero area that anyone could even tell that tens of skyscrapers had been demolished.

But places like these were greatly overlooked.

Pulling out his phone to record and pen and notebook to take notes, he leaned forward and gently gave her a smile.

"Why don't you tell me about her?" he asked.

She blinked away a small sheen of tears. "Okay."

And Clark wrote down the story of Ruby May Blanche. It didn't go to the Daily Planet, being a child's testimony, but just speaking about her sister enlivened something in the young girl's face as she started off with a stark, almost clinical description of her death in the drive-by— she'd been watching from the window— to lighter softer anecdotes and funnier stories that lit her face up with joy through her tears.

Superman hadn't been able to save Ruby May Blanche, and he certainly could not help Mildred, but Clark Kent could listen, and the longer he heard her story, the more he realized this distraught, painfully lonely girl wanted— someone to listen.

"Ruby May never liked calling me Milly, cause she said we had to have old names together. So if I'm Mildred, she's Ruby May, and she'll still be here."

When they stepped out, Lois the workings of a piece on the injustice of a mother losing a child and her murder going uninvestigated (an event so unfortunately common the article would be dismissed by her hundreds of thousands of readers the moment they saw the Slums mentioned) Clark sedately followed behind. Sirens wailed in the background, but they weren't police cars or fire trucks, but fire alarms. The buildings down the road were on fire.

"You know Lois," he said suddenly, interrupting the steady cadence of their mismatched footsteps, "there's something about fluff pieces."

She looked up at him and smiled, and he knew she understood.

Thanks for reading! This was the second oneshot i wrote after sunset, can you believe it?

YellowWomanontheBrink

October 12, 2019

1:34 AM