Worlds Within

Bruce/Clark, pre-slash
unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine.
For Pax who never gives up on me, even when long expanses of silence stretch between my posts.  Thanks for inspiring me with this one.

kungfunurse@visi.com

***

I can't do it anymore.

People think it's all about the "big picture".  World defying threats and huge masses cheering from below as I soar above them.  What I have found is that every pattern, every ripple, every tendency in nature repeats itself at both the microscopic and the macrocosmic levels.  An atom shares the same basic energy signature as a solar system.  An organ contains in itself everything that a galaxy holds.  A planet looks a great deal like a cell, when viewed from above.

That's how I like to think of myself.  Just a little protein modifier on a cell.  Nothing really unique or unusual about me, just a clump of DNA doing what I was made to do.

And that's how I like to view the world, at the smaller levels rather than the large.  I see the whole world reflected back at me in the eyes of a five year old, and I know by his laughter or tears how well I'm doing my job.

Today, the whole world saw me.  Saw Kal-El, rather.

I...I got mad.  There were children threatened by yet another mindless force of destruction, a ravenous cancer eating indiscriminately.

Usually I hold back, but today I let the mask slip.  Superman, the friendly, approachable superhero, everybody's buddy, went away.  Instead Kal-El shattered the enemy with fire and rage, poured sun-borne radiation into the invader and cleansed the world of it.

Oh, I didn't kill.  I wanted to, though, and what I did was enough.  I sought to teach that mindless cancer to fear me.  To fear what I could do if it crossed me again.

And Rao, great Rao I succeeded too well.  The whole world looked at me with fear and terror as it huddled in it's mother's arms, and I was forced to run from the truth I saw there.

Which is how I ended up here, in the Antarctic wastes where my destroyed Fortress once lived.  I am a monster, unsightly and unclean.  The fear, the trauma I caused that little boy can never be undone.  The growth rings I've disturbed in his little mind-tree will forever bear testimony to my loss of control.

"I can't be what they want me to be.  I can't do it anymore!  I can't be HIM!!"

"If you're speaking of Alex Voss, aka the CryptKeeper, then that's likely for the best."

Bruce's dry words surround me and attempt to give me shape.  Who am I to him?  Clark, the bumbling farmer's son?  Superman, the alien do-gooder?  I can feel my mind flexing and bending under his regard, and I'm tired, too tired to fight back.

"I suppose it's useless asking you how you got here."

"Yes."

One word.  Not enough.  I'm going to need more to go on, here.  Clark would push for words...he's a journalist after all.  Superman....well I don't give a good damn what he'd do.  I've never been any good at being him, anyway.

But no more words come.  Instead Bruce turns and sits beside me in the cold desolation.  That's fine.  I can wait.

An hour passes in wind and whiteness, and then two.  Bruce's body gives off beautiful silvery heat strands into the pale air, despite the protection from his suit.

Finally he begins to shiver and I can wait no longer.

"What!  What do you want from me?  Who do you need me to be!"

He turns stiffly in his chill, black armor and regards me curiously.

"Clark," he says quietly, "how many times have you sat with me in cold and darkness, watiting for me to find my way out?"

This, this I don't understand.  No one would believe that Superman would ever need...so it never happens.  And Clark disappears so easily that even his ex sometimes forgot-

I shake my head in confusion.  But he just keeps sitting there, and slowly it dawns on me that he's not here to send me back to the fray and he's not here to plead for my humanity.

He's just here for me.

And in his eyes I see a world where darkness surrounds and softens the harsh, brittle edges of light, and where the shadows he lives in are born of that same glowing source.  A world where we each have our purpose, equal and necessary.

Now this, I think to myself, this is a world I can live in.

This I can do.

fin

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