Loving the Man of Steel | Clark Kent

Chapter 8- The Reality

Rose-

I didn't sleep well that night, tossing and turning for hours in the bed. After numerous messages and missed calls from Clark, I eventually powered down my phone, but as morning neared, I was beginning to feel guilty. I knew Clark really hadn't done anything wrong, but he ran out on my birthday-- my birthday! And if he was willing to skip out on that, what else would he be willing to ditch? Christmas morning? Our children's school recitals? The scenarios that played out in my head seemed endless and at the moment I was too overwhelmed with pain and hormones to be reasoned with.

Suddenly I was struck with a bout of nausea, and like most mornings, I soon found myself bent over the toilet. I laid back down for another hour afterwards but when I couldn't fall back asleep, I wandered out into the living room of Bruce's lake house. I made myself a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, sat down on the couch and flipped on the television. It didn't take me long to figure out they were talking about Clark.

"Maybe he's not some sort of devil or Jesus character. Maybe he's just a guy trying to do the right thing."

"We're talking about a being whose very existence challenges our own sense of priority in the universe. If you go back to Darwin and evolution, you find out we're not special on this Earth. And now we've just learned, that we're not even special in the entire universe because there is Superman. There he is, an alien among us. We're not alone. "

"So what are we talking about then? Are you, as a United State Senator, personally comfortable saying to a grieving parent, 'Superman could've saved your child, but on principle we didn't want him to act'."

"I'm not saying he shouldn't act. I'm saying he shouldn't act unilaterally. Must there be a Superman?"

"Ungrateful bitch," I muttered at the TV as I shut it down.

I might not of been happy with Clark at the moment, but that didn't mean I was stupid enough to ignore all the good Superman had done in the world.

I got up from my seat, placed my cereal bowl in the sink and went on a search to find Bruce. I checked his room and found that his bed had been made, but his car was still out front so that could only leave one place. As I walked back into the living room, I headed over to the bookcase and pulled the secret lever hidden behind a hollow book on the shelf. A few gears could be heard cranking and suddenly the fireplace to my right pulled back and an elevator pushed forward in it's place.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" Bruce called as I stepped off the elevator.

"Aren't you supposed to be out looking for bad guys and sucking the fun out of everything?"

Bruce spun around in his chair- shooting me a dirty look. "I do not suck the fun out of everything," he said.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," I chuckled.

As I traipsed past him and glanced up at the cave's main frame, I picked up some papers Bruce had laying around.

"What are you doing?" Bruce asked as he pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"Just looking," I replied sweetly. I knew it really drove him nuts when I touched his 'things'.

"Don't you have something better to do?" he questioned. "Like eat away the pain of your broken heart? There's some Ben and Jerry's in the freezer upstairs," he informed me.

"Oh my god, Bruce. You're such a dill hole," I glared at him. "Besides, I left him. He should be the one drowning his sorrows in a carton of ice cream, not me."