Fic: Holding up the world
I wrote this when I saw the preview clip for Lazarus and had a minor brain spasm at the imagery of Clark as Atlas where's he literally holding up the world. Yes, I know, Atlas held up the sky in ye olde myths and legends, but I like the idea of Clark being the person on whom the world will rely to save it from itself.
It was easy, lifting the giant globe of the Daily Planet out of the sky before it plummeted (yet again) to a shattering end a hundred and fifty stories below. Soaring upwards as crowds clapped and cheered below, Clark did a quick count of all the times he had done this before.
There was always someone trying to make a point by knocking the symbol of Metropolis off its perch. Clark was constantly surprised that the Planet insisted on putting it back up, despite knowing that it wouldn’t be long before it got blown off again.
But that was the way of the world in general, doing things that had been done before. Like the chores his dad had insisted he had to do on the farm, every day twice a day for as long as he could remember. Work kept a man honest, his dad said.
The world was slightly bigger than the farm, but he did the same things on a regular basis: earthquake, landslide, floods, robberies - the list went on. Not that he was complaining - far from it - but as he welded the giant iron planet back onto the roof with his heat vision, it got him thinking that it would be really easy to complain that no matter what he did, bad things didn’t stop happening and, which was worse, sometimes he couldn’t do anything about it. And that made his guilt swell and his life hard.
Atlas had never had this problem. All he had to do was hold up the damn planet, not try and figure out the solutions to all its problems too.
He couldn’t do it without Lois. He used his abilities for something much greater than to get to work on time or make toast without a toaster or find Lois’s car keys when she lost them (again), and he had made helping people his purpose in life; but it was hard, really hard, trying to fix the world and all the people in it when he was only one man in a sea of pain and desperation and helplessness. And after a long day wading in humanity’s lowest points, he would go home and walk through his front door and find her lying on the couch wearing his plaid shirt with her long legs dangling over the end of the couch, and then the world outside seemed to get very small.
There were days he felt defeated and lost because the task was bigger than he was: for all that he had done to help, it hadn’t been enough. Someone died or got hurt and he wasn’t quick enough to stop it. These were the days he went home and sat on the porch looking up at the stars wrestling with his conscience, demanding answers of himself as to why he failed when he could do so much. These were the days that he needed her the most.
Atlas’s job might have been easier, but he didn’t have the greatest secret weapon of all in his armoury: the love of Lois Lane. Clark knew that he could get up in the morning and face whatever the world threw at him because he had Lois in his corner, fighting for truth and justice and him. She was the one person he could count on to never turn on him, as so many had done before. She was honest in her advice to the point of being blunt, making him consider a problem from another angle. If he needed fixed, she would do it before he even realised he needed it. When he was sad she would sit beside and hold his hand without a word. His happiness found a reflection in the sparkle in her eyes. All his hopes and dreams could only be shared with her, because she was the one who made them come true.
She’d told him long ago that she felt lucky to have found him, the other half of herself, but really, he was the lucky one.
While he was holding up the world, she was holding up him.
It was easy, lifting the giant globe of the Daily Planet out of the sky before it plummeted (yet again) to a shattering end a hundred and fifty stories below. Soaring upwards as crowds clapped and cheered below, Clark did a quick count of all the times he had done this before.
There was always someone trying to make a point by knocking the symbol of Metropolis off its perch. Clark was constantly surprised that the Planet insisted on putting it back up, despite knowing that it wouldn’t be long before it got blown off again.
But that was the way of the world in general, doing things that had been done before. Like the chores his dad had insisted he had to do on the farm, every day twice a day for as long as he could remember. Work kept a man honest, his dad said.
The world was slightly bigger than the farm, but he did the same things on a regular basis: earthquake, landslide, floods, robberies - the list went on. Not that he was complaining - far from it - but as he welded the giant iron planet back onto the roof with his heat vision, it got him thinking that it would be really easy to complain that no matter what he did, bad things didn’t stop happening and, which was worse, sometimes he couldn’t do anything about it. And that made his guilt swell and his life hard.
Atlas had never had this problem. All he had to do was hold up the damn planet, not try and figure out the solutions to all its problems too.
He couldn’t do it without Lois. He used his abilities for something much greater than to get to work on time or make toast without a toaster or find Lois’s car keys when she lost them (again), and he had made helping people his purpose in life; but it was hard, really hard, trying to fix the world and all the people in it when he was only one man in a sea of pain and desperation and helplessness. And after a long day wading in humanity’s lowest points, he would go home and walk through his front door and find her lying on the couch wearing his plaid shirt with her long legs dangling over the end of the couch, and then the world outside seemed to get very small.
There were days he felt defeated and lost because the task was bigger than he was: for all that he had done to help, it hadn’t been enough. Someone died or got hurt and he wasn’t quick enough to stop it. These were the days he went home and sat on the porch looking up at the stars wrestling with his conscience, demanding answers of himself as to why he failed when he could do so much. These were the days that he needed her the most.
Atlas’s job might have been easier, but he didn’t have the greatest secret weapon of all in his armoury: the love of Lois Lane. Clark knew that he could get up in the morning and face whatever the world threw at him because he had Lois in his corner, fighting for truth and justice and him. She was the one person he could count on to never turn on him, as so many had done before. She was honest in her advice to the point of being blunt, making him consider a problem from another angle. If he needed fixed, she would do it before he even realised he needed it. When he was sad she would sit beside and hold his hand without a word. His happiness found a reflection in the sparkle in her eyes. All his hopes and dreams could only be shared with her, because she was the one who made them come true.
She’d told him long ago that she felt lucky to have found him, the other half of herself, but really, he was the lucky one.
While he was holding up the world, she was holding up him.