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My father quoted a lot of history and strategy at me, and I'd gotten into the habit of quoting it back at him, and at other people, too. Quoting poetry never would have been his choice, and sometimes in the moments between falling asleep and sleeping I let myself wonder whether I quoted poetry so seldom more because he never did, or more because my mother would have.
Philosophy, tactics, classics: hard lessons I cut my teeth on; these are the lexicon my father gave me to use. And I do. But there's plenty I've read, plenty I've absorbed into myself over the years, that rarely if ever shows on the surface, that's never glibly quoted as if it's a patented Luthorism rather than a dusty adage from the distant past. Theology, for example; I doubt anyone suspects I've read more than what's inevitably required in studying the history of western civilization, not least because I never quote from Clement or Maimonides or Chopra.
I doubt Clark ever read any of them, at least not before he went to Met U, whereas I could quote them from memory, if there were someone with whom I cared to talk about God or goodness or things eternal. Someone like Clark, maybe. But hell, Clark never got around to Whitman, never even finished To Kill a Mockingbird; the copy I'd lent to him when he was in high school came back marked in the middle, the latter pages stiffly new, untouched.
Untouched like Clark, and I wonder if I'll ever stop second-guessing that indecision, ever stop flagellating myself over it.
Sometimes we had entire conversations without either of us saying more than a handful of words, if that. Theology never came up, but I learned so much from those conversations we didn't quite have. Concepts that I could have elaborated on with hours of dry theosophical recitation, Clark lived, embodied, breathed life into. And that was true from the day we met until the day he disappeared.
~
I used to think of prudence in terms of not getting caught, thanks to lessons about underfed Spartan children, and about the excesses of Baroque royalty which — once they became widely-known — ended reigns via popular uprisings. Early on, watching Clark watching Lana and her quarterback, I saw reasons aside from long-range strategy to refrain from taking, or trying to take, something I wanted.
~
I relearned love by seeing it shine from his eyes, understood at last that it was never a mere trick of memory and grief that I'd thought I used to feel love in my mother's gaze. Even without much to compare it to, I recognized Clark's love by the way he cared when I opened up about myself — or maybe I opened up because I sensed that he cared.
~
Clark believed people were good at heart, as much as I once believed the opposite, though I couldn't say now which one of us was right. But he always gave second chances, no matter how many times had to be called the second. Anger might possess him, ruthlessness might tempt him, but in the end, Clark was always merciful.
There was no mercy for him at the end. I'm sure that's ironic, but irony isn't something it pleases me to contemplate anymore. My appreciation for irony died with Clark, and with my father, killed by the same alien radiation Lionel had used too much of in restraining Clark for whatever inane and insane experiment he'd had planned.
I used to take pleasure in catharsis. I used to need it. I've never watched any of the CCTV footage of their last moments a second time.
~
Mercy is something I was taught to abstain from, to avoid, to abhor as if it were a sign of weakness. But Clark taught me that mercy requires greater strength than my father could ever have imagined. I had to work my way up to it. Those secret lessons in theology came in handy; there's an actual guide for sinners like me, called The Corporal Works of Mercy.
Feed the Hungry, Give Drink to the Thirsty: the first two went together and were easy enough to do. Soup kitchens and food pantries are needed everywhere, and always short of funding — or they were before I turned my hand and freshly-enlarged fortune to charity. Smallville came first, of course, then Metropolis, and then... I made sure if anyone in Kansas went without, it was by choice. Next it was the Midwest, now the country, and I've already initiated campaigns on the international front. Extravagance is an old habit, though aiming it toward charity was a decided improvement. As well, while I could keep my attention focused on my first steps, the remainder of my moral journey could be postponed — something I found a relief at the time.
But a man as ambitious as I am could procrastinate just so long. Besides, if no one ever learns that I was the one endowing them? Well, the alternative would have been adverse publicity and speculation as to my motives that would only have impeded my pilgrim's progress, and the good that was being done. If I'm ever caught at it, I have ready Luthorisms about warm, well-fed workers being more productive.
I tell myself I'm not bitter; eventually I'll believe it, and someday it may even be true.
~
Clark never told me. I knew, of course, almost from the beginning, and I was so busy trying to get him to tell me what we both knew that it never occurred to me to tell him that I knew.
I never claimed there was only one mistake I flagellate myself over.
~
Now that the three-year media and legal frenzies over his disappearance — over both his personas' disappearances; the furor over the Daily Planet journalist's disappearance took nearly as long to subside as the costumed hero's — have died down, now, now I can finally bear to take my pale beauty, with his raven hair and his incongruously still-rosy cheeks, from the well-hidden glass casket in this ludicrous castle that I once so presciently called my mausoleum, and lay his incorruptible body to rest. I can't bring myself to kiss his red lips now, because what would I do if that were all it took for him to wake?
I had had fairy tales, of course, at least while my mother was alive.
I deck myself in white because I can't bear for anyone else to see that I am in mourning. The funeral is as private as possible, just me in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of Kansas field, having paid richly for the neatly-dug grave and obscenely for the diggers' silence. My clothes are stained with the rich earth well before, finished filling the grave, I fling the shovel aside and throw myself down on the mound that seems to separate us more finally than his death had.
After, my mirror reflects a man who has fed the hungry, quenched the thirsty, sheltered strangers, clothed the naked, visited the sick, ministered to prisoners, and, at last, buried the dead. As the silvered glass shatters around my fist, I reflect that this is anything but fair.