Fic: Vers: II: Memories
Parts: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII
- - -
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
- T. S. Eliot
- - -
II
Memories
I never scratched out a place in the dirt and made memories there.
That's why I came back to the Daily Planet and not my apartment.
I don't hold any false sentiment about this building: this is not my 'home'; this is not my desk. A hundred ghostly fingers danced over keyboards and scratched notes in its dirt before I came here. Like me they pressed their names like flowers between newspaper pages and hoped they would keep; like mine, the flowers of their names were crumpled up and thrown away.
They made love to their work on my desk, slow and laborious. In the night they would whisper their poetic aspirations and brush their ghostly fingers over their lover's skin; press the rosebud of their lips to their lover's eyelids and consider that the flowers of their mouths would wither and die in the earth of this desk. In the morning they were only reporters - no longer idealists; in the morning every one of them was Hunter S. Thompson.
Night after night I sit with Clark at that desk, listening to the police scanner like a married couple in the middle of the last century might have sat together and listened to the radio. "Why don't you go home?" he would say softly in the early hours of the morning - and what could I say? I am a wandering goddess; I am a vagrant spirit. But most of all, I have never had a 'home' in the way he understands it. I make homes in other people. I will stay.
"What are you doing here?" he says, stirring the air behind my neck.
He smells of apples, and ears of corn, and newspaper print. He works all day and sits up all night in the same clothes, but always he smells of apples and corn and newspaper print. I smell of cheap deodorant and sweat and travel. I taste of coffee.
I breath in, and turn to face him. He is, somehow, genuinely surprised to see me.
"I have insomnia." I say it like he should already have understood; with a shrug, like coming back first to your place of work in the middle of the night after your vacation is the most natural, most usual thing in the world - and he smiles.
"How's mom?"
What does he think I can tell him that he doesn't already know? "Still the coolest person I know. How was your trip anyway? -- Hot shot reporter, what was your first out-of-town assignment like?"
He breathes out slowly. "It was interesting. I can't say I'm not glad to be home, though."
Especially now that I'm here? No; I don't say that. But he smiles anyway, and I wonder if he read my mind.
So we sit down across from each other, because tonight is just like any other night. Just like any other night, the last thing I want is to go back to my apartment alone and lie alone in the dark, fingers twisted in the sheets, drifting in and out of sleep and watching a zoetrope of nightmares flickering before me.
I don't know why Clark stays, but I understand it is not to keep me company. Clark, like Clark does, has his own mysterious reasons for doing things - maybe it is worse to go home to an empty farm filled with memories you scratched out with father and mother, cousin and lover. Maybe Shelby howls all night.
- - -
"Here,"
There is a gentle hand on my shoulder, a steaming cup of coffee in front of me.
"Ugh," I blink my eyes open. "What time is it?"
"It's seven," he says, leaning against the edge of my desk. "I thought you'd like a couple of hours before the day starts to -" he falters for a moment, and I look at him.
"Go home and take a shower?"
He smiles. I sigh, and rub my temples, then reach for the coffee.
"Would you like me to drive you?" he offers, and I put up a hand. He raises his eyebrows and adds, "You've had like three hours sleep, Lois."
Usually the fact that I am tired would be ample grounds to argue with him, but I feel utterly drained of all my strength somehow. All my joints ache; I feel like my head will never sit straight on my neck again. And it's - sweet, the way he always does this: the way he looks after me in that tender, matter-of-fact way; the way he disarms it with excuses about how much sleep I've had, or whatever.
So I let him close the door behind me as I step into his car, let him glance pointedly at the seatbelt - as if Clark Kent, who drives like an eighty year old woman who has just passed her test, would ever be involved in some kind of traffic accident - and I let him be Clark to me. Because at times like this I let myself feel loved, even by Clark.
"Is - that my mother's necklace?"
I feel my breath hitch. "I - yeah."
His lips part in a smile, and I feel mine spread across my face too like ripples on a flat calm. But it's awkward, after that. There's something awkward, something unsaid about my wearing his mother's necklace, and about his smiling over it.
And I wonder why I never dream moments like this.
- - -
He hovers in the door to my apartment after I have walked in; and I think that if I stand like this, I can look at him using the corner of my eye and pretend it is just the coat stand there, the suitcase where I have left it by the door, which I have mistaken for Clark - Clark, hovering in the doorway as if he doesn't realise that he has a standing invitation to be where ever I am.
"Are you coming in?" I say, as if he is really there. "Or are you going to stand there all day?"
He closes the door behind him, and stands just inside the apartment - and I wonder what I think is happening here; wonder what he thinks is happening here. But nothing is happening here. I am making coffee.
"I missed you," he says, quietly, and suddenly, as if he is looking at me from the corner of his eye and pretending I am just a coat stand, a suitcase, a shadow against the wall. "I -" he breathes in slowly, "always miss you when you go away."
I wonder what Martha has told him about me: Martha who holds my entire vagrant, wandering being in her eyes. Did she call him last night while I was asleep and tell him that she is concerned about me? Did she call him and tell him that I feel alone? Somehow Clark is the first and the last person I want to know those things about me. Somehow he is the first and the last person I want to bury my memories inside.
"I -" I have forgotten all the words I ever knew.
He breathes in, and presses his lips together.
"I missed you as well," I say, my voice faltering in confession. I wouldn't be thinking like this if I had slept more last night, if the world felt tangible and full.
Then, stay, I want to say. We should fall asleep on top of one another; I should twist my fingers in the folds of your shirt and fill myself up with dreams of apples and corn and newspaper print. Your kite-flying hands should be in my hair; my eyelashes should flap like bats' wings against your neck. We wouldn't have to say it. It wouldn't matter.
But it does matter, so I don't say it. I don't say it, and it doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen, and Clark leaves for work, and I sleep alone.
- - -
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
- T. S. Eliot
- - -
II
Memories
I never scratched out a place in the dirt and made memories there.
That's why I came back to the Daily Planet and not my apartment.
I don't hold any false sentiment about this building: this is not my 'home'; this is not my desk. A hundred ghostly fingers danced over keyboards and scratched notes in its dirt before I came here. Like me they pressed their names like flowers between newspaper pages and hoped they would keep; like mine, the flowers of their names were crumpled up and thrown away.
They made love to their work on my desk, slow and laborious. In the night they would whisper their poetic aspirations and brush their ghostly fingers over their lover's skin; press the rosebud of their lips to their lover's eyelids and consider that the flowers of their mouths would wither and die in the earth of this desk. In the morning they were only reporters - no longer idealists; in the morning every one of them was Hunter S. Thompson.
Night after night I sit with Clark at that desk, listening to the police scanner like a married couple in the middle of the last century might have sat together and listened to the radio. "Why don't you go home?" he would say softly in the early hours of the morning - and what could I say? I am a wandering goddess; I am a vagrant spirit. But most of all, I have never had a 'home' in the way he understands it. I make homes in other people. I will stay.
"What are you doing here?" he says, stirring the air behind my neck.
He smells of apples, and ears of corn, and newspaper print. He works all day and sits up all night in the same clothes, but always he smells of apples and corn and newspaper print. I smell of cheap deodorant and sweat and travel. I taste of coffee.
I breath in, and turn to face him. He is, somehow, genuinely surprised to see me.
"I have insomnia." I say it like he should already have understood; with a shrug, like coming back first to your place of work in the middle of the night after your vacation is the most natural, most usual thing in the world - and he smiles.
"How's mom?"
What does he think I can tell him that he doesn't already know? "Still the coolest person I know. How was your trip anyway? -- Hot shot reporter, what was your first out-of-town assignment like?"
He breathes out slowly. "It was interesting. I can't say I'm not glad to be home, though."
Especially now that I'm here? No; I don't say that. But he smiles anyway, and I wonder if he read my mind.
So we sit down across from each other, because tonight is just like any other night. Just like any other night, the last thing I want is to go back to my apartment alone and lie alone in the dark, fingers twisted in the sheets, drifting in and out of sleep and watching a zoetrope of nightmares flickering before me.
I don't know why Clark stays, but I understand it is not to keep me company. Clark, like Clark does, has his own mysterious reasons for doing things - maybe it is worse to go home to an empty farm filled with memories you scratched out with father and mother, cousin and lover. Maybe Shelby howls all night.
- - -
"Here,"
There is a gentle hand on my shoulder, a steaming cup of coffee in front of me.
"Ugh," I blink my eyes open. "What time is it?"
"It's seven," he says, leaning against the edge of my desk. "I thought you'd like a couple of hours before the day starts to -" he falters for a moment, and I look at him.
"Go home and take a shower?"
He smiles. I sigh, and rub my temples, then reach for the coffee.
"Would you like me to drive you?" he offers, and I put up a hand. He raises his eyebrows and adds, "You've had like three hours sleep, Lois."
Usually the fact that I am tired would be ample grounds to argue with him, but I feel utterly drained of all my strength somehow. All my joints ache; I feel like my head will never sit straight on my neck again. And it's - sweet, the way he always does this: the way he looks after me in that tender, matter-of-fact way; the way he disarms it with excuses about how much sleep I've had, or whatever.
So I let him close the door behind me as I step into his car, let him glance pointedly at the seatbelt - as if Clark Kent, who drives like an eighty year old woman who has just passed her test, would ever be involved in some kind of traffic accident - and I let him be Clark to me. Because at times like this I let myself feel loved, even by Clark.
"Is - that my mother's necklace?"
I feel my breath hitch. "I - yeah."
His lips part in a smile, and I feel mine spread across my face too like ripples on a flat calm. But it's awkward, after that. There's something awkward, something unsaid about my wearing his mother's necklace, and about his smiling over it.
And I wonder why I never dream moments like this.
- - -
He hovers in the door to my apartment after I have walked in; and I think that if I stand like this, I can look at him using the corner of my eye and pretend it is just the coat stand there, the suitcase where I have left it by the door, which I have mistaken for Clark - Clark, hovering in the doorway as if he doesn't realise that he has a standing invitation to be where ever I am.
"Are you coming in?" I say, as if he is really there. "Or are you going to stand there all day?"
He closes the door behind him, and stands just inside the apartment - and I wonder what I think is happening here; wonder what he thinks is happening here. But nothing is happening here. I am making coffee.
"I missed you," he says, quietly, and suddenly, as if he is looking at me from the corner of his eye and pretending I am just a coat stand, a suitcase, a shadow against the wall. "I -" he breathes in slowly, "always miss you when you go away."
I wonder what Martha has told him about me: Martha who holds my entire vagrant, wandering being in her eyes. Did she call him last night while I was asleep and tell him that she is concerned about me? Did she call him and tell him that I feel alone? Somehow Clark is the first and the last person I want to know those things about me. Somehow he is the first and the last person I want to bury my memories inside.
"I -" I have forgotten all the words I ever knew.
He breathes in, and presses his lips together.
"I missed you as well," I say, my voice faltering in confession. I wouldn't be thinking like this if I had slept more last night, if the world felt tangible and full.
Then, stay, I want to say. We should fall asleep on top of one another; I should twist my fingers in the folds of your shirt and fill myself up with dreams of apples and corn and newspaper print. Your kite-flying hands should be in my hair; my eyelashes should flap like bats' wings against your neck. We wouldn't have to say it. It wouldn't matter.
But it does matter, so I don't say it. I don't say it, and it doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen, and Clark leaves for work, and I sleep alone.