CLARK KENT

At this time of the year, the sky above Kent Farm gains a lighter tone at about six in the morning. I like to be here, on the roof of the house, when that happens. I like to see the sun rise. I like to see its warm colours turn the sky into a soft dance between red, orange and yellow. I like to close my eyes and listen to this side of the world wake up.

Everything is so calm. No one's talking, no animals running around, the wind blows a calm breeze and drags some dirt and grass in it. I almost forgot how this feels, to hear everything. I spend so much time holding back...I wonder how far away I can go?

I hear Bobby, Mr and Mrs Kane's dog, waking up, no wonder getting ready to jump on his owners' bed so they can take him for a walk. I focus on listening further. I start to hear cars, buses. Must be Smallville. Some coffee shops have people inside them already, sipping on their hot drinks, getting ready for a new day.

"Clark?"

I can listen to people drinking coffee miles away, and yet, Pa is still able to get up and exit the house without me noticing. The irony just makes me smile. I open my eyes and walk to the edge of the roof. Looking down, I see he is wearing his red checked shirt and denim overalls.

"Morning Pa."

"Morning son. You alright?" He asks, smirking. "I'm sure I could move your bed up there, if you wanted. Could always do with a spare bedroom."

"Why would you want a spare bedroom?" I ask, getting in on the joke.

"To play squash. You know I need to practice." He says, rotating his shoulders backwards as some sort of warm-up.

"Yeah, your swing is not what it used to be." I reply.

"You come talk to me when you reach my age, young man." He points at me smiling. We both laugh for a moment. It's good to have him around. Pa has always been, well, Pa. He's everything I hope I turn into, one day. Wise, funny, loving, and, most of all, righteous. Not a day goes by when I don't think it wasn't a coincidence me crashing on Kent Farm. I seriously doubt that any other family would've raised me the way Ma and Pa did.

Ever since I started showing abilities beyond those of a regular human, Jonathan and Martha have always been supportive and clear with me. They never hid my true identity from me and they never pretended to be my biological parents. As my powers developed, they helped me control them. As I grew up, they educated me. They never ask me to call them mom and dad, but they certainly earned it anyway.

I jump down the roof, focusing on trying to control the landing. I am able to hover for half a second just above the floor, I feel free, almost weightless. I still land pretty hard, but it's definitely an improvement from that one time I left a seven foot wide hole on the back of the farm.

"You're getting better." says Pa.

"I suppose. It's just hard to control those last moments before landing, but can't complain with the progress." I respond. Of all the powers I've developed, my leaping ability is, by far, the biggest wild card. Sure, I'm jumping further and further away, going higher and higher each time, but I lose focus too quickly. I get nervous about crash landing.

"You'll get there one day. Just got to put your mind and heart to it." Dad rolled up his sleeves and picked up a rope and a long stick. "I'm going to go and make the horses run for a bit."

"Do you want any help?"

"I think I'll be fine. Your mom might want some help, though. She's picking apples for the pie later. She also said she wanted to talk to you."

Even though I am eighteen years old, even though I know I haven't done anything wrong, the words "Ma wants to talk to you" make me feel like a scared kid again.

"What about?" I'm trying to sound like I'm not scared.

"What do you think?" Dad turns around and walks towards the stables. "She wants you to save the world."

Ah...this again.

For the last couple of months, Ma and Pa have been keen on the idea that, after graduation, I should move out, go to a big city and use my abilities to help people. I've said that I'd prefer to stay on the farm, helping them. Pa says he believes that is the wrong thing to do but, ultimately, it's my choice. Ma has been more quiet on this. Until now, it seems.

She's on the other side of the farm, wearing almost the same clothes as dad with the exception of the blue coloured shirt. She's on top of the ladder, catching the apples on the higher branches and dropping them into a basket on the floor. I walk towards her, thinking of a million arguments to convince her to drop the case of me moving somewhere else.

"Good morning, Ma."

"Good morning, honey." She says with her sweet voice. "How are you? Did you sleep okay?"

Eighteen years and she still asks me if I've slept okay like I am eight years old. Maybe the fact that the first time I had a nightmare when I was younger, I ended up tearing a piece of the wall out. I remember it made me feel terrible. Seeing mom and dad almost scared out of their lives, seeing them struggling with the idea that, one day, I could take the whole house down...it made me horrified of my powers. It was a turning point. I knew, there and then, that I had to learn how to control my strength and everything else I can do.

"If I had a bad dream, you would know." I reply, slightly ashamed of that memory.

"Of course I would, you would tell me." She replied with a smile that always make me feel at home. Makes me feel human, normal.

A slightly awkward silence falls between us. I don't want to start this conversation again, but it's better to just get it over with.

"Pa said you wanted to talk to me?" She turns to me and nods. "Okay, but let me just say something. What you want me to do, use my powers to help others, I know it's the right thing to do. I know that should be reason enough for me to go out there and start, I don't know, put out fires or something. I know that. But what if I don't want to? What if I'm not meant to do that? You've always taught me that the world has rules and that those rules shouldn't be broken."

She has such a different way of looking at me than Pa has. Everytime I said something like that to Pa, he would look sad, almost disappointed. Ma, however, has a smile on her face. She looks like she's about to tell me I'm being naive or silly.

"Clark. We are not saying you should break any rules. We are not saying that you should do something you don't want to. We want you to be happy. We want you to do something that makes you feel complete. Whether that means you'll be working on the farm or writing for journal, it doesn't matter to us. We are going to support you no matter what." She places a hand on my cheek. "You are our baby boy. You are our world. We will be with you, whatever you do. But we need you to ask yourself something."

With chills down my spine I ask "What?"

"You've spent the last couple of years asking yourself why you were sent here. Now ask yourself why would you stay here, on Earth. You might have been sent here for a reason. But doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you find your own purpose. Maybe you can put these things you can do, these powers, to good use. You are clever, strong, you can melt steel with your eyes and freeze fire with your breath. Maybe, one day, this will all come in handy. Or maybe not. One day you might face a situation where your powers might help someone. On that day, whatever you do, Clark, whatever action you take, you'll live with it forever. I just want you to think about it, to prepare yourself for the world out there."

When my parents started to talk to me about the importance of the things I can do, of who I am, when they started talking about serious stuff with me, I always tended to start getting tears in my eyes. The fact that I could do anything and still have them by my side, no matter what, always felt overwhelming. This time, however, Ma has put things down as they are.

It's my responsibility. Whatever I do, whatever I don't do, it's on me.

"Wow, Ma. That was...I'll think about it." Those are the only words I can mutter, looking down to my feet. Ma, however, picks my chin up.

"Don't be afraid. You don't owe us anything." She then kisses me on the forehead and smiles.

I hear something, it's close, but not too close so that mom can hear it.

It's the horses.

"Mom, hold my arm. Something's wrong." She does it and I run to the stables. I get there in less that two seconds. My mother almost gets sick, I don't know if it is from the high speed run or from the scenario in front of us.

Lying on the ground, with pieces of shattered wood around him, is Bill, one of the horses. He is moving, trying to get himself back up but two of his legs are broken. What is most concerning, though, is the blood coming from underneath him. Dark red, almost the colour of wine, it's spreading rapidly and, the more it does, the less Bill is moving and struggling. Dad is just beside him, trying to calm him down.

"What happened?" Mom asked. She is horrified, I hear her heart pounding in her chest.

"Bill was running and suddenly missed a jump, ended up collapsing against the barrier and broke his legs." Dad is also terrified. He's trying to hold himself together. "The blood, I...I...I don't know where it's coming from."

I look at Bill, still struggling, but less now, almost as if he realised what will happen. I look at its majestic black body, I hear his heart fighting to get the blood running in his body without realising that every pump made to keep Bill alive is actually killing him.

"He's suffering so much." I say, looking at mom and dad. "There must be a solution, something we can do."

"There isn't, Clark. We either wait for him to die...or we put him down." Dad struggled to get that last bit out. It's a horrible idea, to kill a living thing. But as I look at Bill he looks back at me, its big black eyes meeting my blue ones. I can swear he knows what we are talking about. That is a begging look. A look of someone who has suffered enough.

I approach Bill and drop to my knees. I run my hand through his body, trying to calm him down, lying, saying that everything is going to be okay. After one last look, Bill places his head on the floor.

For mom, dad and Bill. What I did must have been an instant, a blink of an eye. To me, it took minutes. Applying pressure over the heart, I felt Bill's ribs crack one at the time, I felt his heart struggling to pump with the added pressure and, finally giving up. Even now, as I take my hand off, I can still feel it beating, living.

I'm brought back by two different hands being placed on my shoulders.

"Clark?" Says my mom on my left.

"Son?" Says my dad on my right.

"I'm sorry." I say. "I didn't want him to suffer."

I am crying. I'm crying like a baby. Crying like I cried when I landed on Earth. Crying like the ten year old who disappointed his dad. I'm crying because I've just killed. I broke something that can't be fixed. Mom and dad fall on their knees and embrace me, hold me like they did eighteen years ago. Hold me like their son.

"You did the right thing." Dad is, as always, trying to calm me down and cheer me up. This time, it isn't working.

"There was no hope for Bill." Mom grounds me and says it like it is. Hope. There wasn't any hope, she's right. Bill was going to die anyway. But there would've been hope if I had gone with dad. I could've stopped it.

I could've been hope.