fiction for denni_m
for: denni_m
from: to be announced
type: fiction
request: happy ending, angst, classic Chlark, reporter Chloe.
title: follow me back into the sun
summary: the world didn’t end: what happens next. Life is measured in moments. One moment you feel that the world didn’t end. The next moment the world is saved. Moments are added together; the sum is life.
rating: pg
timeline: post-vessel
author’s note: much thanks to my beta for sorting through the prose and the commas.
(i)
By morning Chloe knows the answer to one of the questions lingering in her mind since the previous evening. The silence that emerges as the sky begins its morning ritual of lightening with the rising sun: these are the indicators of the answer she wanted. She had feared disappointment only hours before, during the darkest hours of night, huddled beneath her desk, trying to make head or tails of the bundle of loose-leaf papers.
She never found her way through the papers, the symbols beyond her reach, but at least her hope was rewarded. Hope, the only emotion left at times.
The world is still alive, continuing on its path. The path that no one knows, yet the same gravel-littered road that no one wants closed off prematurely. One question answered, the one of could Clark save the world?.
It was her first true experience of the world being directly in peril with her knowing the full score. A terrifying experience, one made all that more scary by the fact that her other question remains unanswered, the question left suspended in the air. The question of would Clark survive?
Now that she knows the answer to the first question, the more her worry about the second question can consume her. The world hasn’t ended, but there’s no Clark in sight, and no one is answering at the Kent house.
Wait and hope, Chloe tells herself. Commands easily issued, difficult to follow in practice.
(ii)
At five she emerges from the bowels of the Daily Planet into the open air of downtown Metropolis. There’s a lingering staleness in the air, the product of the riots when the sky was inky black, the stars blocked by the city lights. A scent of sulfur in the air, but the smell reminds Chloe that the city survived despite the craziness that gripped its people only hours before.
Under the cloak of night, people had stormed the street. Chloe can still remember the overwhelming number of bodies, the violence deep inside their souls suddenly unleashed. She shudders at the memory and wills it away, tilting her head towards the brightening sky. At the minute, this early in the morning, the sky is a pale gray, but the horizon holds the promise of a golden afternoon.
There’s a light breeze. It tousles her loose hair as she starts to walk towards the nearest coffee shop. Competing smells of morning dew and smoke fire are drawn in that wind, passing her by, reminders the both of them, indications of survival.
If only she knew if one particular person had survived. If only.
The front windows of the coffee shop are gone, but the café is open. The aroma of dark roast coffee and espresso escapes through the empty windowpanes, and draws her inside. Chloe would have gone in anyways: the hours awake and the worrying gathering in the pit of her stomach (although she’s denying this at the moment) have produced a jittery mass of nerves demanding a caffeine infusion. In her jumbled up thoughts coffee will at least alleviate some of her nerves, allowing her to work and pass the hours until Clark shows up.
She’s tired already, her body dragging. Her white blouse and blue coat are weighty against her tired shoulders.
The barista smiles when she enters, and offers a joke about surviving the end of the world. An older woman waiting for her coffee scoffs and says that the night before was nothing compared to some of the riots of the 1960s. Chloe offers what passes for a smile at the joke and the reference before placing her order in a voice that sounds a little too monotone to be her own voice. Yet it’s her mouth doing the talking so it must be, and she grips the extra-large paper cup of dark coffee with two shots when it’s handed to her.
When she exits the coffee shop, her hands are tightly wrapped around the paper cup. A cardboard sleeve protects her from the radiating heat of the coffee. She starts to walk down the street, the wind a touch stronger than it was five minutes ago. Of the sulfur smell only a trace is left.
“Hey, Chloe, wait up,” a male voice says from behind her.
Chloe turns around too fast even though the voice is all wrong, too high, too light. The coffee rising from beneath the plastic lid to splash through the small hole for drinking. The dark liquid dribbles down the sides of the cup, its path interrupted as it meets her skin. She inhales, sharp.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m just a little jumpy,” she says. She offers a smile similar to the one she gave in the coffee shop.
Jimmy nods. His smile is more genuine: it even reaches his eyes. Nothing much has changed about Jimmy since he was an eager teenager whose habits reminded Chloe of a 1950s teenager wearing bowties and suspenders. He’s not quite that geeky, but all the same the effect is there. She always thought he was simple in terms of understanding his character - never any mystery there.
“Long time no see,” Jimmy says.
“Yeah, long time.” They didn’t stay in touch after their summer at the Daily Planet during high school. No surprise there, Chloe thinks.
“It was a crazy night.” He grins, self-deprecating. “I hid under my bed.”
The laugh that escapes her throat, a pathetic sound really, makes her choke in the next second. Jimmy pats her awkwardly on the back.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I am. I just need some time I guess to wrap my mind around everything that has happened.” Chloe doesn’t mention her worry; her fear that her second question may be answered in the negative, that Clark didn’t survive. That life was cruel in that way: you could save the world but you couldn’t survive that saving.
“I get it.” Jimmy shifts his weight from one foot to another, the sound echoing. The street is beginning to fill up a bit more, people heading to work now that the world is still kicking. “What are your plans for today?”
“Work,” she says, then repeats it. “Work.”
“Me too. Just starting a new job actually.”
“Oh?” she asks. It’s a polite sound. Chloe takes a sip of her almost-forgotten cup of coffee, the cardboard providing the warmth that reminds her she’s holding it. The liquid is hot and she winces as it burns her tongue.
“I finally made it to the big time. The Daily Planet.”
“Congratulations.”
Their conversation is so normal, so mundane, that Chloe keeps losing her train of thought. She’s conscious of what Jimmy is saying, but just barely. She can respond in the normal, expected ways, precisely because there’s nothing unexpected in this conversation. That’s Jimmy for you, she thinks, rather unfairly. She remembers he didn’t call after they spent the night together; she remembers that she pictured him as someone else. It’s screwed up, of course.
She thinks of Clark, of how it’s never simple with them, never normal. There’s a subtext always that has to be paid attention to.
Jimmy smiles in a bashful way, like he was one of those seven dwarfs, the adorable one. He says, “Where do you work?”
“The Daily Planet.” The smile she offers is a pale imitation of his. “I guess we both made it to the big top.”
“I should have known.”
Gripping her cup of coffee, Chloe says, “I should get back.” She inclines her head in one direction of the building that stretches towards the sky, a golden spinning planet topping the building. “See you around?”
“Definitely,” Jimmy says, not understanding her words for what they truly are, the means to end a conversation.
She doesn’t want a normal, mundane conversation with Jimmy. She wants a somewhat tense, littered with meaning conversation with Clark. If she can’t have that, she wants silence, the lack of words allowing her to focus on what could happen, the consequences.
Chloe walks away. Her pace is measured, almost slow. Her mind is encumbered with her thoughts.
(iii)
In the basement this morning, she’s the first person at work. She has changed her clothing, substituting her dirty clothing for an outfit she left at work the previous week. Generally she has a spare outfit at work, just in case she spends the evening working and wants to pretend she didn’t the next morning. The outfit she left the week before included a pale colored sweater, and when Chloe puts it on she’s displeased, wishing she had something in black. The light color feels all wrong, the lightweight of the sweater heavier than it should be. Her bones are out-of-joint, poking into the sweater.
She shifts repeatedly in her seat, unable to get comfortable. For long minutes she’s able to work, Clark successfully set aside in her mind, but she can’t stay concentrated. Something happens: a ringing phone, a whoosh of air from the doors flinging open, and she glances up, wanting to know if it’s her phone, if it’s Clark striding through those doors. When it’s not, her fingers hover over the keyboard; she needs to write but it takes several minutes before she can.
The process repeats itself. A record player struck on repeat.
By late morning she’s finding it harder and harder to concentrate. The minutes she spends actually working decrease as her ability to be distracted increases. She’s waiting, and waiting, and waiting. The sun has risen, it’s high in the sky, and there’s golden light streaming into the basement bowels, the fulfillment of the promise she saw in the sky at five. But the beautiful sky means nothing because there’s no Clark to turn his head towards that shining sun, to receive strength from it, and to say, ‘It’s another day’, or maybe even say, ‘It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood today’, a reminder of childhood.
She goes to photocopy what little she’s done, a show of something at least, and almost breaks the machine. When Chloe heads back to her desk, she glances around, an automatic gesture, and she’s finally rewarded, her second question answered in the positive. The world didn’t end and Clark survived saving the world. The doors are still swaying from being pushed open, and there’s Clark, a shaft of light falling across his face, beckoning her to him.
Before she can comprehend all that is occurring, the seconds trickling together in a way impossible to separate, she’s rushing over to him, hugging him.
“Hey,” he says into her hair. His hands on her back, and her sweater no longer feels like lead weight. “Miss me?”
She pulls back just slightly, smiling all the same. “Jerk,” she says and slaps him lightly on his arm. His arm covered in a fresh blue jacket; he was wearing red the night before. He looks no worse for the wear, but then his scars are always beneath the skin, never clear unless you know where to look.
“Well, you know,” he says, his words hanging loosely in the air.
They’re in the basement of the Daily Planet, surrounded by other junior reporters all wanting to make their mark in a way that reporters could in previous decades. It’s the middle of the day after a long night where the world almost ended.
They’ve separated now, space between their bodies. Chloe watches the way the sun dances across Clark’s skin, sparkles of light.
Clark says, “So, last night, when…”
“When I kissed you?”
“That was the moment.”
Chloe thinks of the things she wanted to say to Clark, the words the filtered through her head when she was waiting, waiting and waiting. But now she can’t say those words; they’re trapped in her throat, too big to emerge. Too big and too needy and it’s the wrong moment to say anything big and meaningful. Clark is alive and the rest is a jumble of emotions, the hours of waiting, of not knowing. He’s here and it’s not like last night, when it was the end of the world; in the bright light of day they’re just Chloe and Clark. No more, no less.
“It was the end of the world,” Chloe says. The smile she gives is like the ones she’s given too many times today: pale and an imitation. She gives him an out, and says, “Don’t worry about it.”
Clark smiles, and she thinks it’s a doubtful smile. She feels uncertain and unable to press the issue, afraid of what could happen. Instead Chloe wants to focus on the fact that he’s alive, that he’s real and solid and with her right now.
And then Jimmy comes up to them, introduces himself, and gives them both a way out. She’s never been more grateful in her life.
(iv.)
The farm looks deserted when Chloe pulls in, putting her car into park. Martha’s car is gone but Clark’s truck is there. It sits in the dirt driveway, covered in dust, abandoned.
Clark has been quiet for the past couple of days, ever since the world didn’t end and he didn’t die. At first she was okay with the silence on his end, not wishing for a rehash of their awkward reunion conversation. The memory of the heart-stopping kiss lingers, its meaning dismissed for the moment but not really gone despite what she said. Easier to explain it away, blame it on an impending apocalypse, and avoid Clark. She’s become at expert at doublespeak, a doublespeak different than Orwell’s but a kind of doublespeak nevertheless. Say one thing and mean another.
But she got worried, the way she does when Clark is concerned.
His continued quiet has propelled her to make the long drive after work, leaving on time for once. She was out of the Daily Planet as soon as she could be, and now it’s an hour before sunset.
She heads to the barn, his usual location for contemplation. Her footsteps are almost inaudible on the dry dirt. She avoids the browning grass, the fragile looking grass. The sunlight is bold like it is close to sunset, enveloping the farm in its glow. The air is soft, a caress.
When she enters the barn she hears a familiar sound. It’s the sound of a rubber ball contacting with wood. A muffled thump. She climbs the barn stairs, her footsteps louder now.
“Hey,” Chloe says as she enters the loft. She’s reminded of a scene from the previous year. Today Clark is sitting in front of the faded couch, out of the path of the sunlight through the open loft window. Last year he was on the stairs when she found him. His expression tonight is the same as it was a year ago. If he could develop worry lines, his face would be littered.
“Hey,” he says back, his voice dull. He keeps tossing the ball.
She lowers herself to the ground when she gets to the couch. The couch is old flannel against her bare shoulders.
Chloe says, “You’ve been quiet lately. I realize you’re not the talker I am, but this sort of quiet is rather unusual.”
Clark sighs. She waits; she’s used to waiting now. And this sort of waiting doesn’t hurt like the waiting to know if he survived. A different sort of pain, more dull than sharp, not a metaphysical bullet.
“I’ve just been thinking.”
“That can be dangerous.”
He cracks a smile; it’s small. “Not this kind of thinking.”
Although she nods in reply, she doesn’t believe him, and the worry builds. Chloe finds herself leaning more into the couch, an instant reaction. She feels her body becoming looser, spineless. The worry crowds her brain like headlines on the front page of the newspaper.
“Thinking about what?” she asks, the words slowly erupting from her mouth. Although she has an idea: the situation alters but the guilt retains its familiar character, like the characters in A.A. Milne’s novels from the original to the sequel.
He looks at her, and his eyes are hooded, concealed. “I escaped the Phantom Zone. I saved myself but something doesn’t feel right. Like the air has been disturbed by what I did and when I breathe the air isn’t what it should be,” he says. He sighs again, and throws the ball. Repeats the action. Thump, thump, thump.
Oh Clark, she wants to say. She wants to reach out, brush back his hair from his forehead, and soothe him.
“I feel…”
He trails off, seemingly unable to finish the sentence. His shoulders are slumped and Chloe thinks that maybe he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. She wishes she could truly understand, but she’s never had superpowers, she’s never been an alien living on earth. His alien heritage is what almost destroyed the earth, but she can’t exactly tell him to forget about that. She could say that humans have done a very good job at killing themselves, could point to the countless wars over inconsequential things like territory and religion. It wouldn’t make a difference because Clark sees the world from another viewpoint, one she can’t comprehend being human. She can’t make him see the world the way a human sees it. She can’t take away the guilt he feels when anything alien-related occurs; he blames himself, being alien, being here on earth, sheltered by earth, saved by earth.
But she thinks she has a notion of what he feels. They experience the emotion in various ways, yet it remains the same emotion.
“You feel vulnerable.”
He glances at her, glances away. The ball is thrown. “I guess.”
She doesn’t say it’s a natural emotion. There is no point in saying that. Instead she reaches across his lap to grab the hand tossing the ball. His fingers are warm and slightly slippery feeling from holding the ball for so long. The ball comes back their way but Clark lets it lay abandoned on the wooden floor. He lets her hold his hand, doesn’t resist when their fingers lace. He leans into her, and her body no longer feels spineless; she feels strong again.
“It’ll be okay,” Chloe whispers, a promise of sorts. Not the kind they’ll ever mention again but there nevertheless. Her words fill the space around them, and they let them, sitting there with her words and the soft air.
(v.)
The sun starts to slip from the sky.
“Coffee? In the house?” Chloe suggests. The barn is the wrong place to be as the sun descends.
Clark nods and begins to rise. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Chloe follows him. He glances over his shoulder and smiles at her. It’s slight and doesn’t tug at the corners at his cheeks, but at least he looks like his usual self, the Clark that smiles and wears flannel and feeds his dog from the table. He leads and her footsteps echo his, and it’s the way things often are.
Dusk is approaching as the coffee brews, the rich smell filling the light-colored kitchen. They talk of meaningless things. Doublespeak in other words and they both know what’s out there, what lingers, but they leave it alone for now.
It’ll be okay, Chloe thinks, hopes, as they sit at the kitchen counter and drink coffee in oversized ceramic mugs.
They survived the end of the world after all.
End
second author’s note: My beta correctly pointed out I didn’t mention Chloe being concerned about Lois. And I didn’t and then I couldn’t find a way to shove it in while being graceful. I do apologize.
from: to be announced
type: fiction
request: happy ending, angst, classic Chlark, reporter Chloe.
title: follow me back into the sun
summary: the world didn’t end: what happens next. Life is measured in moments. One moment you feel that the world didn’t end. The next moment the world is saved. Moments are added together; the sum is life.
rating: pg
timeline: post-vessel
author’s note: much thanks to my beta for sorting through the prose and the commas.
(i)
By morning Chloe knows the answer to one of the questions lingering in her mind since the previous evening. The silence that emerges as the sky begins its morning ritual of lightening with the rising sun: these are the indicators of the answer she wanted. She had feared disappointment only hours before, during the darkest hours of night, huddled beneath her desk, trying to make head or tails of the bundle of loose-leaf papers.
She never found her way through the papers, the symbols beyond her reach, but at least her hope was rewarded. Hope, the only emotion left at times.
The world is still alive, continuing on its path. The path that no one knows, yet the same gravel-littered road that no one wants closed off prematurely. One question answered, the one of could Clark save the world?.
It was her first true experience of the world being directly in peril with her knowing the full score. A terrifying experience, one made all that more scary by the fact that her other question remains unanswered, the question left suspended in the air. The question of would Clark survive?
Now that she knows the answer to the first question, the more her worry about the second question can consume her. The world hasn’t ended, but there’s no Clark in sight, and no one is answering at the Kent house.
Wait and hope, Chloe tells herself. Commands easily issued, difficult to follow in practice.
(ii)
At five she emerges from the bowels of the Daily Planet into the open air of downtown Metropolis. There’s a lingering staleness in the air, the product of the riots when the sky was inky black, the stars blocked by the city lights. A scent of sulfur in the air, but the smell reminds Chloe that the city survived despite the craziness that gripped its people only hours before.
Under the cloak of night, people had stormed the street. Chloe can still remember the overwhelming number of bodies, the violence deep inside their souls suddenly unleashed. She shudders at the memory and wills it away, tilting her head towards the brightening sky. At the minute, this early in the morning, the sky is a pale gray, but the horizon holds the promise of a golden afternoon.
There’s a light breeze. It tousles her loose hair as she starts to walk towards the nearest coffee shop. Competing smells of morning dew and smoke fire are drawn in that wind, passing her by, reminders the both of them, indications of survival.
If only she knew if one particular person had survived. If only.
The front windows of the coffee shop are gone, but the café is open. The aroma of dark roast coffee and espresso escapes through the empty windowpanes, and draws her inside. Chloe would have gone in anyways: the hours awake and the worrying gathering in the pit of her stomach (although she’s denying this at the moment) have produced a jittery mass of nerves demanding a caffeine infusion. In her jumbled up thoughts coffee will at least alleviate some of her nerves, allowing her to work and pass the hours until Clark shows up.
She’s tired already, her body dragging. Her white blouse and blue coat are weighty against her tired shoulders.
The barista smiles when she enters, and offers a joke about surviving the end of the world. An older woman waiting for her coffee scoffs and says that the night before was nothing compared to some of the riots of the 1960s. Chloe offers what passes for a smile at the joke and the reference before placing her order in a voice that sounds a little too monotone to be her own voice. Yet it’s her mouth doing the talking so it must be, and she grips the extra-large paper cup of dark coffee with two shots when it’s handed to her.
When she exits the coffee shop, her hands are tightly wrapped around the paper cup. A cardboard sleeve protects her from the radiating heat of the coffee. She starts to walk down the street, the wind a touch stronger than it was five minutes ago. Of the sulfur smell only a trace is left.
“Hey, Chloe, wait up,” a male voice says from behind her.
Chloe turns around too fast even though the voice is all wrong, too high, too light. The coffee rising from beneath the plastic lid to splash through the small hole for drinking. The dark liquid dribbles down the sides of the cup, its path interrupted as it meets her skin. She inhales, sharp.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m just a little jumpy,” she says. She offers a smile similar to the one she gave in the coffee shop.
Jimmy nods. His smile is more genuine: it even reaches his eyes. Nothing much has changed about Jimmy since he was an eager teenager whose habits reminded Chloe of a 1950s teenager wearing bowties and suspenders. He’s not quite that geeky, but all the same the effect is there. She always thought he was simple in terms of understanding his character - never any mystery there.
“Long time no see,” Jimmy says.
“Yeah, long time.” They didn’t stay in touch after their summer at the Daily Planet during high school. No surprise there, Chloe thinks.
“It was a crazy night.” He grins, self-deprecating. “I hid under my bed.”
The laugh that escapes her throat, a pathetic sound really, makes her choke in the next second. Jimmy pats her awkwardly on the back.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I am. I just need some time I guess to wrap my mind around everything that has happened.” Chloe doesn’t mention her worry; her fear that her second question may be answered in the negative, that Clark didn’t survive. That life was cruel in that way: you could save the world but you couldn’t survive that saving.
“I get it.” Jimmy shifts his weight from one foot to another, the sound echoing. The street is beginning to fill up a bit more, people heading to work now that the world is still kicking. “What are your plans for today?”
“Work,” she says, then repeats it. “Work.”
“Me too. Just starting a new job actually.”
“Oh?” she asks. It’s a polite sound. Chloe takes a sip of her almost-forgotten cup of coffee, the cardboard providing the warmth that reminds her she’s holding it. The liquid is hot and she winces as it burns her tongue.
“I finally made it to the big time. The Daily Planet.”
“Congratulations.”
Their conversation is so normal, so mundane, that Chloe keeps losing her train of thought. She’s conscious of what Jimmy is saying, but just barely. She can respond in the normal, expected ways, precisely because there’s nothing unexpected in this conversation. That’s Jimmy for you, she thinks, rather unfairly. She remembers he didn’t call after they spent the night together; she remembers that she pictured him as someone else. It’s screwed up, of course.
She thinks of Clark, of how it’s never simple with them, never normal. There’s a subtext always that has to be paid attention to.
Jimmy smiles in a bashful way, like he was one of those seven dwarfs, the adorable one. He says, “Where do you work?”
“The Daily Planet.” The smile she offers is a pale imitation of his. “I guess we both made it to the big top.”
“I should have known.”
Gripping her cup of coffee, Chloe says, “I should get back.” She inclines her head in one direction of the building that stretches towards the sky, a golden spinning planet topping the building. “See you around?”
“Definitely,” Jimmy says, not understanding her words for what they truly are, the means to end a conversation.
She doesn’t want a normal, mundane conversation with Jimmy. She wants a somewhat tense, littered with meaning conversation with Clark. If she can’t have that, she wants silence, the lack of words allowing her to focus on what could happen, the consequences.
Chloe walks away. Her pace is measured, almost slow. Her mind is encumbered with her thoughts.
(iii)
In the basement this morning, she’s the first person at work. She has changed her clothing, substituting her dirty clothing for an outfit she left at work the previous week. Generally she has a spare outfit at work, just in case she spends the evening working and wants to pretend she didn’t the next morning. The outfit she left the week before included a pale colored sweater, and when Chloe puts it on she’s displeased, wishing she had something in black. The light color feels all wrong, the lightweight of the sweater heavier than it should be. Her bones are out-of-joint, poking into the sweater.
She shifts repeatedly in her seat, unable to get comfortable. For long minutes she’s able to work, Clark successfully set aside in her mind, but she can’t stay concentrated. Something happens: a ringing phone, a whoosh of air from the doors flinging open, and she glances up, wanting to know if it’s her phone, if it’s Clark striding through those doors. When it’s not, her fingers hover over the keyboard; she needs to write but it takes several minutes before she can.
The process repeats itself. A record player struck on repeat.
By late morning she’s finding it harder and harder to concentrate. The minutes she spends actually working decrease as her ability to be distracted increases. She’s waiting, and waiting, and waiting. The sun has risen, it’s high in the sky, and there’s golden light streaming into the basement bowels, the fulfillment of the promise she saw in the sky at five. But the beautiful sky means nothing because there’s no Clark to turn his head towards that shining sun, to receive strength from it, and to say, ‘It’s another day’, or maybe even say, ‘It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood today’, a reminder of childhood.
She goes to photocopy what little she’s done, a show of something at least, and almost breaks the machine. When Chloe heads back to her desk, she glances around, an automatic gesture, and she’s finally rewarded, her second question answered in the positive. The world didn’t end and Clark survived saving the world. The doors are still swaying from being pushed open, and there’s Clark, a shaft of light falling across his face, beckoning her to him.
Before she can comprehend all that is occurring, the seconds trickling together in a way impossible to separate, she’s rushing over to him, hugging him.
“Hey,” he says into her hair. His hands on her back, and her sweater no longer feels like lead weight. “Miss me?”
She pulls back just slightly, smiling all the same. “Jerk,” she says and slaps him lightly on his arm. His arm covered in a fresh blue jacket; he was wearing red the night before. He looks no worse for the wear, but then his scars are always beneath the skin, never clear unless you know where to look.
“Well, you know,” he says, his words hanging loosely in the air.
They’re in the basement of the Daily Planet, surrounded by other junior reporters all wanting to make their mark in a way that reporters could in previous decades. It’s the middle of the day after a long night where the world almost ended.
They’ve separated now, space between their bodies. Chloe watches the way the sun dances across Clark’s skin, sparkles of light.
Clark says, “So, last night, when…”
“When I kissed you?”
“That was the moment.”
Chloe thinks of the things she wanted to say to Clark, the words the filtered through her head when she was waiting, waiting and waiting. But now she can’t say those words; they’re trapped in her throat, too big to emerge. Too big and too needy and it’s the wrong moment to say anything big and meaningful. Clark is alive and the rest is a jumble of emotions, the hours of waiting, of not knowing. He’s here and it’s not like last night, when it was the end of the world; in the bright light of day they’re just Chloe and Clark. No more, no less.
“It was the end of the world,” Chloe says. The smile she gives is like the ones she’s given too many times today: pale and an imitation. She gives him an out, and says, “Don’t worry about it.”
Clark smiles, and she thinks it’s a doubtful smile. She feels uncertain and unable to press the issue, afraid of what could happen. Instead Chloe wants to focus on the fact that he’s alive, that he’s real and solid and with her right now.
And then Jimmy comes up to them, introduces himself, and gives them both a way out. She’s never been more grateful in her life.
(iv.)
The farm looks deserted when Chloe pulls in, putting her car into park. Martha’s car is gone but Clark’s truck is there. It sits in the dirt driveway, covered in dust, abandoned.
Clark has been quiet for the past couple of days, ever since the world didn’t end and he didn’t die. At first she was okay with the silence on his end, not wishing for a rehash of their awkward reunion conversation. The memory of the heart-stopping kiss lingers, its meaning dismissed for the moment but not really gone despite what she said. Easier to explain it away, blame it on an impending apocalypse, and avoid Clark. She’s become at expert at doublespeak, a doublespeak different than Orwell’s but a kind of doublespeak nevertheless. Say one thing and mean another.
But she got worried, the way she does when Clark is concerned.
His continued quiet has propelled her to make the long drive after work, leaving on time for once. She was out of the Daily Planet as soon as she could be, and now it’s an hour before sunset.
She heads to the barn, his usual location for contemplation. Her footsteps are almost inaudible on the dry dirt. She avoids the browning grass, the fragile looking grass. The sunlight is bold like it is close to sunset, enveloping the farm in its glow. The air is soft, a caress.
When she enters the barn she hears a familiar sound. It’s the sound of a rubber ball contacting with wood. A muffled thump. She climbs the barn stairs, her footsteps louder now.
“Hey,” Chloe says as she enters the loft. She’s reminded of a scene from the previous year. Today Clark is sitting in front of the faded couch, out of the path of the sunlight through the open loft window. Last year he was on the stairs when she found him. His expression tonight is the same as it was a year ago. If he could develop worry lines, his face would be littered.
“Hey,” he says back, his voice dull. He keeps tossing the ball.
She lowers herself to the ground when she gets to the couch. The couch is old flannel against her bare shoulders.
Chloe says, “You’ve been quiet lately. I realize you’re not the talker I am, but this sort of quiet is rather unusual.”
Clark sighs. She waits; she’s used to waiting now. And this sort of waiting doesn’t hurt like the waiting to know if he survived. A different sort of pain, more dull than sharp, not a metaphysical bullet.
“I’ve just been thinking.”
“That can be dangerous.”
He cracks a smile; it’s small. “Not this kind of thinking.”
Although she nods in reply, she doesn’t believe him, and the worry builds. Chloe finds herself leaning more into the couch, an instant reaction. She feels her body becoming looser, spineless. The worry crowds her brain like headlines on the front page of the newspaper.
“Thinking about what?” she asks, the words slowly erupting from her mouth. Although she has an idea: the situation alters but the guilt retains its familiar character, like the characters in A.A. Milne’s novels from the original to the sequel.
He looks at her, and his eyes are hooded, concealed. “I escaped the Phantom Zone. I saved myself but something doesn’t feel right. Like the air has been disturbed by what I did and when I breathe the air isn’t what it should be,” he says. He sighs again, and throws the ball. Repeats the action. Thump, thump, thump.
Oh Clark, she wants to say. She wants to reach out, brush back his hair from his forehead, and soothe him.
“I feel…”
He trails off, seemingly unable to finish the sentence. His shoulders are slumped and Chloe thinks that maybe he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. She wishes she could truly understand, but she’s never had superpowers, she’s never been an alien living on earth. His alien heritage is what almost destroyed the earth, but she can’t exactly tell him to forget about that. She could say that humans have done a very good job at killing themselves, could point to the countless wars over inconsequential things like territory and religion. It wouldn’t make a difference because Clark sees the world from another viewpoint, one she can’t comprehend being human. She can’t make him see the world the way a human sees it. She can’t take away the guilt he feels when anything alien-related occurs; he blames himself, being alien, being here on earth, sheltered by earth, saved by earth.
But she thinks she has a notion of what he feels. They experience the emotion in various ways, yet it remains the same emotion.
“You feel vulnerable.”
He glances at her, glances away. The ball is thrown. “I guess.”
She doesn’t say it’s a natural emotion. There is no point in saying that. Instead she reaches across his lap to grab the hand tossing the ball. His fingers are warm and slightly slippery feeling from holding the ball for so long. The ball comes back their way but Clark lets it lay abandoned on the wooden floor. He lets her hold his hand, doesn’t resist when their fingers lace. He leans into her, and her body no longer feels spineless; she feels strong again.
“It’ll be okay,” Chloe whispers, a promise of sorts. Not the kind they’ll ever mention again but there nevertheless. Her words fill the space around them, and they let them, sitting there with her words and the soft air.
(v.)
The sun starts to slip from the sky.
“Coffee? In the house?” Chloe suggests. The barn is the wrong place to be as the sun descends.
Clark nods and begins to rise. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Chloe follows him. He glances over his shoulder and smiles at her. It’s slight and doesn’t tug at the corners at his cheeks, but at least he looks like his usual self, the Clark that smiles and wears flannel and feeds his dog from the table. He leads and her footsteps echo his, and it’s the way things often are.
Dusk is approaching as the coffee brews, the rich smell filling the light-colored kitchen. They talk of meaningless things. Doublespeak in other words and they both know what’s out there, what lingers, but they leave it alone for now.
It’ll be okay, Chloe thinks, hopes, as they sit at the kitchen counter and drink coffee in oversized ceramic mugs.
They survived the end of the world after all.
End
second author’s note: My beta correctly pointed out I didn’t mention Chloe being concerned about Lois. And I didn’t and then I couldn’t find a way to shove it in while being graceful. I do apologize.