under a yellow sun - clark kent
request reader who acts as a healer for the team, and their ability on paper [and seemingly in practice] is just that they can heal anybody, no matter the damage or cause, except their power actually works by stealing the wound and inflicting it upon themselves. they can take any pain, mental, chronic, sometimes even emotional depending on circumstances and the degree of it. no one knows until they take on something far too bad: losing a limb, breaking their spine, guts spilling out, etc.
content gn! reader x clark kent, healer! reader, reader gets hurt, severe kryptonite/magical injury, radiation poisoning symptoms, blood, pain transfer, self-sacrificial healing, medical trauma, near-death experience, panic, guilt, references to clark’s survivor guilt/kypton, emotional distress, angst with hurt/comfort
masterlist
word count | 12.2k
Clark Kent knew what it meant to be breakable. People forgot that. They saw the cape first. The shield. The impossible body cutting across the sky faster than sound. Bullets flattened against his chest. Fire bloomed harmlessly over his shoulders. Buildings groaned, planes fell, oceans rose, and still Superman arrived with steady hands and a voice that made people believe the world had not ended yet.
He understood why people forgot. Most days, it was easier if they did. Easier if the child trapped under rubble saw the red cape and thought, safe. Easier if the terrified man on the bridge looked up and believed someone unbreakable had come to catch him. Easier if the League could turn toward him when the blow was too heavy for anyone else and know he would stand between it and them.
Clark did not resent that. He chose it. Every day. He chose to be the thing between danger and everyone else. He chose to hold up the falling roof. He chose to take the hit. He chose to smile afterwards and say, “I’m alright,” because most of the time he was.
Most of the time, the bullets did not hurt. Most of the time, the fire was only warm. Most of the time, being Superman meant absorbing the world’s terror and giving hope back.
But there were exceptions. Kryptonite. Magic. Red sun radiation. Grief.
You, somehow, were all four.
Not because you hurt him. Because you could. Not with a blade. Not with green stone. Not with a spell carved from old gods. You hurt him by standing too close to his pain and refusing to look away.
The first time Clark met you, he was bleeding green. That was not a metaphor. It had been a League mission in Coast City. Some weapons dealer with more money than wisdom had bought a shard of kryptonite, ground it into powder, and loaded it into bullets.
Hal had called it “deeply tacky.” Bruce had called it “predictable.” Clark had called it nothing, mostly because one of the bullets had lodged between his ribs and breathing had become an extremely complicated group project.
The Watchtower medbay had been bright and cold around him. Diana stood at his left, one hand on his shoulder. Bruce was at the monitors, jaw locked, pretending his worry was data analysis. J’onn lingered near the doorway, his expression quiet and grave. Clark lay on the exam table and tried not to tremble. He failed. Green veins crawled under his skin from the wound, branching outward like poisoned lightning. Every breath dragged fire through his lungs. Sweat gathered at his temples. His hearing flickered in and out, catching fragments.
“Shard is embedded.” “Radiation levels rising.” “Can’t cut without exposing him to more.” “Lead-lined tools?” “Not enough.”
Clark closed his eyes. The room tilted. He heard Bruce say your name. Then he heard your footsteps.
Not fast. Not frantic. Steady. That was the first thing he noticed about you. Not your face, not your voice, not the warmth of your hands. Your steadiness. You came into a room where Superman was dying by inches, and you did not panic.
Clark opened his eyes. You stood beside the table, looking down at him with an expression that was gentle but not afraid. That surprised him. People were afraid when he was hurt. Not only for him. Of him. Of what it meant. If Superman could bleed, then maybe the sky was not as safe as everyone thought. You only looked at Clark.
“Hi,” you said softly.
He tried to smile. It probably looked awful. “Hi.”
Bruce moved closer. “He was shot with a kryptonite round. Fragment remains lodged between the seventh and eighth ribs. Radiation is spreading through his bloodstream.”
“Rude place to put it,” you said. Clark huffed a laugh. It hurt. You looked at him. “Sorry. Bad time?”
“No,” Clark managed. “Good distraction.”
“Great. I have many terrible jokes.”
Bruce’s stare could have frozen lava. You ignored him entirely. Clark liked you immediately. Which, in hindsight, was the first warning sign.
You held your hands near the wound but did not touch.
“Clark,” you said, “I can help. I need to touch the wound. Is that okay?”
He blinked. People did not always ask him that. Not because they meant harm. Usually, because he was Superman, and Superman’s body was treated like a tool in emergencies. Armour. Shield. Rescue equipment. Something useful and indestructible until suddenly it wasn’t. But you asked. Like his pain was his. Like his body belonged to him even when it was failing.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Your hands settled over the wound. The pain changed. At first, it sharpened. Clark gasped, back arching off the table. Diana’s hand tightened on his shoulder. Bruce snapped your name like a warning. You did not move.
“Clark,” you said, voice steady. “Look at me.”
He did. Your eyes held his. Warm. Human. Determined.
“I’ve got you.”
Heat bloomed beneath your palms. Not solar heat. Not sunlight. Something else. Something soft and impossible.
The kryptonite burn receded. The green veins faded under his skin. The shard pushed itself out of his body into your waiting hand, slick with blood and glowing faintly. The wound closed. His lungs opened. The poison drained from his bloodstream so quickly that the relief was almost painful.
Clark inhaled. Fully. He heard everything again. The hum of the Watchtower. Bruce’s heartbeat. Diana’s breath. Your pulse.
Too fast. Your pulse was too fast. You stepped back, dropping the kryptonite shard into a lead-lined tray Bruce thrust toward you. Your hand shook. Then you folded it behind your back and smiled.
“There,” you said. “Better?”
Clark stared at you. He could still feel your hands on his ribs.
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” You turned to Bruce. “He’ll need rest.”
Bruce looked deeply offended by the concept of someone else issuing medical orders in his medbay. Clark nearly smiled. Then he heard it. A tiny shift in your breathing. Controlled. Suppressed. Pain. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You’re hurt,” he said.
Your gaze flicked back to him. For half a second, your expression went blank. Then the smile returned. “Just tired.”
Lie. Clark heard it. Not in your heartbeat. Not exactly. It was not always that simple. Heartbeats changed for many reasons. Fear. Pain. Embarrassment. Relief. But your voice had gone too careful. Like you had wrapped the lie in gauze before handing it over.
Bruce noticed too. Clark saw the way his eyes sharpened. But you stepped back from the table, already looking toward the next injured hero, and the moment passed.
Clark let it. He had just nearly died. You had just saved him. He was tired.
That was what he told himself. Later, he would hate that.
You became part of the League’s rhythm after that. Not officially at first. You were called in for emergencies. Then difficult cases. Then anything involving injuries too strange for standard medicine. Magic burns. Alien venom. Psychic backlash. Curses. Broken bones from battles fought in gravity fields human bodies were not meant to endure.
Eventually, people stopped saying, “Should we call them?” They just called.
Clark saw you often. In medbays. On battlefields. At disaster sites. In the quiet hallways after missions, when everyone had stopped bleeding and started pretending they were fine. You were good at seeing through fine. Mostly because you said it so poorly yourself.
He noticed that too. Clark noticed many things. People assumed his powers made him observant, and they helped, of course. Hearing through walls, seeing microscopic cracks, smelling ozone before lightning struck — useful, all of it. But journalism had trained something different in him. Attention. The patient kind. The human kind. The kind that looked at a person and asked, What are you not saying?
You were not saying a lot. After healing Barry’s fractured femur, you leaned on the medbay counter for exactly twelve seconds when you thought no one was looking. After healing Diana’s sword wound, you walked with a stiffness in your side that lasted the rest of the day. After healing Hal’s concussion, you wore sunglasses in three different Watchtower corridors despite the fact that the lighting had not changed. After healing Bruce from a magical burn that had eaten through three layers of armour, you vanished for six hours.
Clark found you in the observation deck afterwards. Not because he was spying. Mostly. You stood with one hand pressed against the glass, looking down at Earth. The planet turned beneath the Watchtower in impossible blue silence, cloud systems curling over oceans like brushstrokes. Your shoulders were tense.
Clark stopped at the entrance. “Can I come in?”
You turned. Surprise crossed your face first. Then something softer. “Of course.”
He entered slowly, giving you space. He had learned that about you. You gave everyone space and did not seem to know what to do when it was offered back.
“You disappeared,” Clark said.
You smiled faintly. “That sounds dramatic.”
“You vanished from Batman’s medical follow-up schedule.”
“Ah. So I committed a felony.”
“At least three, I think.”
Your smile widened. Clark felt absurdly proud of that. He came to stand beside you, not too close. Earth glowed beneath both of you.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Tired.”
“Only tired?”
You looked at him. There was no accusation in his voice. That seemed to make the question harder for you.
Your gaze moved back to Earth. “Mostly tired.”
Clark nodded. He did not push. You seemed to relax by a fraction.
“I know you can hear when people lie,” you said after a moment.
“Not always.” Your eyes flicked toward him. He smiled slightly. “It’s not magic. Heartbeats are complicated. People can lie calmly. People can tell the truth while terrified. Sometimes I hear that someone is upset, but not why.”
“Huh.”
“Disappointed?”
“No. Relieved.”
Clark looked at you. That was honest. It hurt more than the lie would have. He rested his hands lightly on the railing. “I try not to listen unless I need to.”
“That must be hard.”
“It is.”
“Especially in rooms full of injured people.”
“Yes.”
You were quiet for a while. Then, softly, “Does it hurt? Hearing that much pain?”
Clark breathed in. The question was not one many people asked. He looked down at the Earth.
“Yes,” he said.
Your expression changed. “What do you do with it?” you asked.
Clark huffed a quiet laugh. “Some days? Fly faster.”
“And other days?”
“Go home. Call Ma. Make soup. Write something no one will publish because it’s too honest.”
You smiled. “Reporter problems?”
“Reporter problems.”
“I’d read it.” Clark looked at you. You looked back. The quiet between you changed shape. Then you glanced away, clearing your throat. “For the record, Bruce’s burn was worse than he admitted.”
“He’s bad at hiding pain.”
“He’s excellent at hiding pain.”
Clark’s mouth curved. “He’s bad at hiding from me.”
You laughed softly. It warmed the room more than the Earth’s reflected sun.
After that, Clark started finding reasons to talk to you outside of emergencies. Sometimes it was coffee. You liked yours with too much sweetness, which delighted him. He brought it once after a mission and tried to pretend it was incidental.
You took the cup, read the label, and looked at him with raised brows. “Clark Kent, did you memorise my coffee order?”
“No.”
“You are lying very badly for a journalist.”
“It was a lucky guess.”
“My name is written on the cup.”
He glanced down. It was. In bold marker. With a tiny heart next to it because the barista at the Watchtower café had apparently chosen violence. Clark adjusted his glasses, which he was wearing despite being in uniform because he had come from the Daily Planet and forgotten to take them off.
You smiled into the lid. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Later, he found tea waiting for him outside the debrief room. Chamomile. Honey. A sticky note attached to the cup. For when the world is loud.
Clark kept the note. Not in a sentimental way. Obviously. Just folded neatly in his wallet behind his press badge.
Normal behaviour. Entirely normal.
Diana noticed.
“They are kind,” Diana said one afternoon, watching you from across the training room as you argued with Guy Gardner about whether “walking it off” counted as a medical plan.
Clark looked up too quickly. “Who?”
Diana’s smile was terrible. “Subtlety does not suit you, Kal.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do.”
Across the room, you poked Guy in the chest and pointed sternly toward the medbay. Guy, astonishingly, went. Clark smiled before he could stop himself.
Diana’s expression softened. “You are fond of them.”
Clark looked down at his hands. Fond was a small word. Safe. Manageable. It did not cover the way his attention found you in every room. The way your tired smile stayed with him long after missions ended. The way his chest tightened whenever you swayed after healing someone. The way he wanted to know what made you laugh outside emergency lighting.
“I am,” he said.
Diana did not tease. That was how he knew she understood it was serious. “Be careful,” she said.
Clark’s smile faded. “With them?”
“With yourself.” He looked at her. Diana’s gaze was gentle and ancient. “You have spent your life being the shield,” she said. “It is difficult, sometimes, to let another stand before you.”
Clark looked back toward you. You were laughing now, head tipped slightly back, light catching on your face. His heart ached.
“I know,” he said.
Diana touched his shoulder. “I suspect they know too.”
The first kiss happened in Smallville. Clark had not planned it.
He had planned many things that day, actually. He planned to introduce you to his mother because Martha Kent had asked about “that healer you keep smiling about” enough times that avoidance had become impossible. He planned to show you the farm. He planned to not look too pleased when you immediately fell in love with the barn cats. He planned to make dinner with his mother and not use heat vision for shortcuts because she always noticed and called it cheating. He planned to fly you back to Metropolis before midnight.
He did not plan to kiss you in the cornfield at sunset. That part just happened.
“You grew up here?” you asked, standing between the rows as evening light turned everything gold.
Clark walked beside you, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. “I did.”
“It’s beautiful.”
He looked at the fields. The farmhouse. The horizon. You.
“Yes,” he said.
You glanced at him. He looked away too late.
Your smile softened. “You’re different here.”
Clark laughed quietly. “Different bad?”
“No. Different like…” You searched for the word. “Quieter.”
He considered that. “I learned how to hear the world here,” he said. You slowed. Clark stopped with you. “When I was young, everything was too loud,” he continued. “Heartbeats. Insects under the soil. Planes miles overhead. People talking in town. My own blood moving. I didn’t know how to separate anything.”
You listened with your whole body. That was something you did. Made attention feel like a place to rest.
“Ma would bring me out here,” he said. “She’d tell me to find one sound at a time. Wind through corn. Tractor engine. Her heartbeat. My Pa’s boots on the porch.”
Your eyes shone.
Clark smiled faintly. “It helped.”
“I’m glad.”
The words were simple. They landed deep.
You reached out, fingers brushing the sleeve of his jacket.
“Can I?” you asked. His breath caught. It was only his arm. He could lift planes. He could hold collapsing bridges. He had survived bullets, bombs, alien invasions. But your hand hovered near his sleeve, asking permission, and Clark felt undone by it.
“Yes,” he said.
You touched him. Lightly. Your fingers rested over his forearm, warm through the fabric. “You’re always so careful with everyone,” you said.
Clark looked at you. “So are you.”
Your smile faded a little. “Occupational hazard.”
“Is that all it is?”
The question came out softer than he intended. You looked toward the horizon. Gold light gathered along your profile.
“No,” you said.
His heart changed rhythm. Truth. Not the whole truth. But truth.
Clark stepped closer. You did not move away.
“Sometimes,” you said, “if I’m not careful, I think I’ll disappear into what people need from me.”
Clark knew that feeling. God, he knew it.
“The healing?” he asked.
You looked back at him. “Everything.”
The word held a door inside it. Clark wanted to open it. Instead, he said, “You don’t disappear when I look at you.”
Your breath caught. Clark’s face warmed. That had sounded smoother in his head. Possibly because in his head, he was less farm-boy-in-love and more responsible adult man with emotional coordination.
You stared at him. “What?”
“I mean,” he said, then stopped. Nope. No recovering. The cornfield was silent except for crickets, wind, and his mother’s heartbeat from the porch, where she was absolutely pretending not to watch.
Clark cleared his throat. “I mean I see you.”
Your face changed. The way it had on the observation deck. Like the words hurt because they mattered. “Clark.”
He loved the way you said his name. Not Superman. Not Kal-El. Clark. The name his mother called from the kitchen. The name written on bylines. The name that belonged to flannel shirts, broken tractors, coffee-stained notebooks, and a boy who once hid in cornfields because the whole world was too loud.
“I see you too,” you whispered.
Then you kissed him. Or maybe he kissed you. It became difficult to assign responsibility afterwards. Your hand slid up his arm. His palm found your waist. He bent carefully, always carefully, even though you tugged him closer like you were not afraid of his strength at all. The kiss was soft. Then not. Then soft again, because Clark smiled into it and you laughed against his mouth.
When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.
“Was that okay?” he asked.
Your eyes opened. Your smile was devastating. “Clark, you floated.”
He looked down. His boots were four inches above the dirt. “Oh.”
You laughed.
From the porch, Martha Kent called, “Dinner’s getting cold!”
Clark dropped to the ground so fast you laughed harder. His ears burned.
“Your mom saw.”
“Ma sees everything.”
“She’s smiling.”
Clark glanced toward the house. His mother waved with the supreme confidence of a woman who had raised Superman and feared nothing.
You waved back. Clark covered his face.
You kissed his cheek. He decided embarrassment was worth it.
Loving Clark was not difficult. At least, you made it look easy. That frightened him sometimes. Not because he thought you were careless with love. Because you were careful with it. You learned the difference between Clark and Superman without ever making him feel split in two. You did not treat his softness like a secret identity or his strength like a performance. You understood that both were real.
You sat beside him while he wrote articles at two in the morning, your legs tucked under you on his couch, editing his sentences with ruthless affection.
“Too noble,” you said, pointing at a paragraph.
Clark blinked. “It’s about city council corruption.”
“You still made it sound like a moral epic.”
“It kind of is.”
“It’s zoning laws.”
“Zoning laws matter.”
“Clark.”
He leaned over your shoulder. “What would you write?”
You thought for a moment, then rewrote the sentence in the margin. It was better.
He sighed. You smiled. “Don’t pout. It’s unbecoming for a Pulitzer winner.”
“I am not pouting.”
“You are farm-boy brooding.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.”
You were also the first person outside his family to learn how he listened when the world became too much. Sometimes he would go quiet mid-conversation, head tilting slightly. You would pause. “Emergency?” He would listen. Sometimes yes. Then he would kiss your forehead and leave in a blur of red and blue. Sometimes no. A siren already handled. A baby crying but safe. A car backfiring. A fight resolving without violence. On those nights, you would touch his hand and say, “Come back.”
Not from danger. From listening. From spreading himself across every cry in the city until Clark Kent became only a receiving station for pain. He always came back. For you, he came back. But he still worried. Because he noticed you, too. Your disappearances after major healings. The way your smile sometimes arrived half a beat late. The way you treated your own pain like an administrative inconvenience. He asked. You answered. Sometimes.
“Does it hurt you?” he asked one night on his balcony after you healed a burn across J’onn’s shoulder.
The city hummed below. You leaned against the railing, wrapped in one of Clark’s sweaters. It was too big on you. He had opinions about that. Several. None appropriate for the serious mood. “My power?”
“Yes.”
You looked down at your hands. “Sometimes.”
His heart tightened. “How much?”
“Clark.”
“I’m not trying to interrogate you.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me.”
You looked up. The city lights reflected in your eyes. “If I tell you it hurts, you’ll stop asking for help.”
“I don’t ask for myself often.”
“That’s not better.”
He sighed quietly. You touched his hand.
“There are costs,” you said. “But there are costs to doing nothing, too.”
“What costs?”
You smiled sadly. “You know those.”
Clark did. That was the problem. You were both too good at making sacrifices sound reasonable. He turned his hand and laced his fingers through yours.
“One day,” he said softly, “you’re going to have to trust me with the whole truth.”
Your fingers tightened. “One day,” you echoed.
Lie? No. Not exactly. Hope disguised as a delay. Clark let it rest.
He would regret that later. He would regret many things later.
The mission began with Lex Luthor. Technically, Clark could not prove that at first. Batman frowned upon “I know it was Lex because it has his emotionally constipated billionaire stink all over it” as evidence.
Still. Clark knew. The first sign was a tremor in the Arctic. The second was a burst of red solar radiation detected by the Fortress of Solitude. The third was the emergence of a black-market satellite network using stolen Kryptonian coding from one of Brainiac’s old probes.
By the time the League traced the signal to an abandoned observatory in northern Canada, Clark’s stomach had already tightened into a knot. Kryptonian technology. Red sun radiation. Unknown magical overlay. That last part had Zatanna concerned, which made everyone else deeply concerned because when Zatanna looked at a spell and said, “That’s rude,” things were usually about to get apocalyptic.
You came to the briefing. Clark did not want you there. He also knew better than to say that in front of everyone unless he wanted Diana to give him the disappointed-warrior-princess look and Bruce to silently agree while pretending not to. So he waited until after. You were packing a medical kit when he approached.
“No,” you said before he spoke.
Clark stopped. You did not look up. “I haven’t said anything.”
“You have a face.”
“I always have a face.”
“Currently it’s the ‘please stay somewhere safe because I love you and I’m terrified’ face.” His mouth closed. You glanced up. Your expression softened. “I’m going, Clark.”
“It’s Kryptonian tech. And red sun radiation. And magic.”
“I know.”
“That combination could affect your power unpredictably.”
“That combination could kill you.” He had no answer. You zipped the kit shut. “I’m not going because I think you’re weak,” you said.
“I know.”
“I’m going because if something hurts you, I want to be there.”
Clark looked down at your hands. Hands that had healed him before. Hands that shook afterwards. Hands he had kissed in his kitchen, in his apartment, in the cornfield where he first floated because you touched him like he was only a man and still somehow enough.
“I don’t want you hurt because of me,” he said.
Your face gentled. “That’s not a choice you get to make for me.”
He looked at you. The sentence would come back later. A knife thrown forward in time.
He almost argued. Instead, he stepped closer. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
You smiled faintly. “I will be as careful as hero work allows.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
He leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours. For a second, the Watchtower faded. Only you remained. Your heartbeat. His. The fragile, ordinary rhythm of two people who loved each other in a world addicted to ending.
“I love you,” Clark said softly.
Your hand touched his cheek. “I love you too.”
He kissed you.
Bruce walked in seven seconds later. “Are you done?”
Clark pulled back, ears burning. You smiled against his mouth. “Hi, Bruce.”
Bruce looked unimpressed. Or as unimpressed as a man could look while clearly relieved Clark had someone to kiss before dangerous missions.
“We leave in five,” he said. Then he left.
You laughed. Clark tried to smile. It did not quite land. You noticed. You squeezed his hand.
“Come back to me,” you said.
His chest tightened. “Always.”
Another promise that would soon become complicated.
The observatory stood beneath a dead sky. No stars. That was the first wrong thing. Clouds smothered the moon, but even beyond them, Clark could feel an absence above the facility. The air tasted metallic. Sound behaved strangely, swallowed at the edges by a field of red solar interference that made his skin prickle. The League approached in formation. Batman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Superman. And you, near the rear, protected but present, carrying a medkit and an expression that told Clark you knew exactly how often he glanced back.
“Stop checking on me,” you said over comms.
Hal snorted. “Trouble in paradise?”
Bruce said, “Focus.”
Barry whispered, “That means yes.”
Diana sounded amused. “Indeed.”
Clark closed his eyes for half a second.
You laughed softly into comms. The sound steadied him.
Then the observatory opened.
Not the doors. The building itself. Metal panels unfolded like petals, revealing a core of alien machinery beneath old stone. Kryptonian script crawled across black pylons, wrong and corrupted. Red light pulsed from the central tower, spilling over the snow in long, bloody shadows.
Zatanna inhaled sharply. “That is not just technologu.”
Batman’s voice was grim. “Magic?”
“Necromantic structure. Solar inversion. Something is using death as a battery.”
Clark’s blood went cold.
Then the first beam fired. Red sunlight lanced across the snow.
Clark dodged, barely. The beam struck a ridge behind him and vaporised stone.
“Scatter!” Bruce snapped.
The battle became chaos. Diana flew toward the central tower, shield raised. Hal constructed a barrier around the medical evacuation point. Barry blurred between pylons, planting disruptors. J’onn reached out telepathically and recoiled with a hiss of pain. Clark flew high, scanning for the source.
He found it beneath the observatory. A chamber carved into the mountain. At its centre stood a Kryptonian crystal engine wrapped in chains of spellwork and threaded through with kryptonite.
Green veins. Red sun core. Black magic.
Clark’s stomach dropped.
A voice came through the tower speakers.
Lex’s voice filtered through something else. “Hello, Superman.”
Clark hovered midair. Batman cursed softly.
“Luthor,” Clark said.
“Predictable, I know. I’d apologise, but neither of us would believe me.”
The red solar field intensified. Clark’s flight faltered. He dropped ten feet before catching himself.
You said his name over comms. He heard the fear.
He looked toward you. You stood near the rear line beside Zatanna, eyes fixed on him.
“I’m okay,” he said.
Lie. You knew.
“Kal,” Diana warned.
The mountain shook. From beneath the observatory emerged something shaped like a man but built from wrongness: armor plated in lead-black metal, veins glowing kryptonite green beneath transparent sections, a core pulsing red in the chest.
Metallo technology. Kryptonian engine. Magic binding. A weapon designed by someone who knew exactly how to hurt Superman and had decided that was not enough.
The thing looked at Clark.
Its chest opened. Kryptonite light flooded the snow.
Clark fell. Not far. Diana caught him midair, but the radiation burned through him even at a distance. His muscles seized. His vision tunneled green. The red solar field stripped strength from his cells while kryptonite poisoned what remained.
He hit the ground on one knee.
The weapon advanced. Diana slammed into it with a force that cracked the mountain beneath them. It staggered, then drove a kryptonite blade into her shoulder.
She cried out.
Clark moved. He did not think. He never did when someone he loved was hurt.
He launched himself forward through the red field, through the kryptonite radiation, through every alarm his body screamed. He struck the weapon hard enough to send both of them through the observatory wall and into the chamber below.
The world went green and red.
They crashed beside the crystal engine.
Clark tried to rise. His arms shook.
The weapon stood over him.
“Subject responsive,” Luthor’s voice said. “Escalating.”
The engine activated. Kryptonite spikes rose from the floor.
Clark rolled away from the first. The second punched through his side.
The pain was absolute.
He screamed. Far away, someone screamed his name.
You.
No. He tried to push himself off the spike.
Another red solar pulse hit him. His strength vanished. The weapon seized him by the throat and lifted him against the engine core. Kryptonite radiation poured directly into his bloodstream. Magic hooked into the wound, preventing his cells from closing around the damage.
He could hear his heart. Too slow.
He could hear the League fighting above. Too far.
He could hear you running. Too close.
No.
No, no, no.
“Stay back,” he tried to say over comms. It came out as a wet gasp.
The chamber doors blew open. Batman entered first, cape torn, armour smoking. Diana followed, bleeding gold-red from the shoulder. Hal’s constructs slammed into the weapon, driving it back. Barry blurred to Clark’s side and stopped with horror across his face.
“Clark.”
“Don’t touch the spike,” Batman snapped. “It’s saturated.”
Clark could barely focus.
Then you were there. You slid to your knees beside him, ignoring Bruce’s sharp command to stay back.
Your hands hovered over the wound. Your face was pale. Clark had never seen you look afraid like that.
Not for yourself. For him.
“Hey,” you whispered.
He wanted to smile. Couldn’t.
“Hi,” he breathed.
Your mouth trembled.
Bad. Bad if you could not hide it.
“Don’t,” he said.
You shook your head. “Clark—”
“Don’t.”
The kryptonite spike pulsed. Pain tore through him. His body arched, but the spike held him pinned.
You reached for him. Clark caught your wrist. Barely.
His grip had no strength. He hated that.
“You can’t take this,” he said.
Your eyes filled.
He knew. Enough from your disappearances. Your tremors. The lies. The way pain followed your miracles like a shadow with teeth.
“You don’t know that,” you whispered.
“It’s kryptonite.”
“I know.”
“And magic.”
“I know.”
“And red sun radiation.”
“I know.”
“You’re human.”
Your face broke. “No,” you said softly. “I’m yours.”
Clark’s heart stuttered. Not from kryptonite.
From terror. From love. From the terrible understanding of what you had already decided.
“Please,” he whispered.
Your hand touched his cheek. “I can’t watch you die.”
“You ask me to come back to you,” he said, voice barely there. “Don’t leave me instead.”
The tears spilled over. For one second, he thought maybe it was enough. Maybe you would stop.
Then the weapon surged back to its feet behind you.
Diana shouted. Batman threw a batarang that shattered one of the pylons.
The engine pulsed. Clark’s vision went almost black.
His heart stumbled. You felt it. Your face changed.
Not fear now. Decision.
“I love you,” you said.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
Your hands closed around the wound. And you breathed in.
Clark’s world became sunlight.
Not yellow. Not warm.
White. Blinding. The kryptonite spike slid out of his body as if expelled by force. The wound closed. Magic snapped. Red solar weakness evaporated. His cells drank in the faint solar energy stored deep inside him and reignited.
Strength flooded back. Breath. Heartbeat. Heat vision flickering behind his eyes. He gasped and fell forward onto his hands. Whole. Alive.
Then you screamed.
Clark turned.
The sound ended the world.
You collapsed where he had been, one hand clamped to your side as green-black veins spread under your skin. Blood soaked through your suit. A wound opened beneath your ribs, not identical to his but close enough, deep and glowing faintly with corrupted light. Your body convulsed once as red solar radiation and kryptonite poisoning tried to translate themselves into human biology.
You were not Kryptonian. You had no cells waiting for yellow sun. No alien physiology built to process the poison. No invulnerability to slow the damage.
Clark caught you before your head struck the floor. “No,” he said.
It was not a word. It was a denial of reality.
Your eyes rolled, unfocused with pain. He cradled you against his chest, one hand over the wound, and felt blood slide between his fingers.
His blood. No. Yours. Because of him.
“No, no, no.”
Batman was beside him instantly. “Kal.”
Clark heard him. Barely. Diana and Hal fought the weapon behind them. Zatanna’s voice echoed through the chamber, spells unraveling the engine. Barry was moving so fast the air shook.
But Clark could only hear you. Your heart. Too fast. Too weak. Wrong.
“Can you hear me?” Clark asked, voice cracking. “Please. Please, sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Your eyelids fluttered. You looked at him.
Relief.
Clark nearly broke in half.
“You’re okay,” you whispered.
“No.” His hand pressed harder over the wound. “No, don’t do that. Don’t look at me like that.”
Your mouth trembled. “Knew… it’d work.”
“You didn’t know you’d survive.” Your eyes drifted. He shook his head. “Stay with me,” he begged. “Stay. Come back to me.”
The words were yours. They hurt coming from his mouth.
Your fingers twitched weakly against the front of his suit. Trying to hold on. He covered your hand with his.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
You had said that to him once. In the medbay. With green poison in his veins. He had believed you. Now he understood the cost of that comfort.
Your breathing hitched.
Batman’s voice cut through his panic. “The wound is radiological and magical. Watchtower medbay won’t be enough.”
Clark looked up. Bruce’s eyes were grim.
“Fortress,” Bruce said.
Clark did not wait. He gathered you in his arms and launched upward through the shattered observatory roof. Snow exploded around him. The sky opened.
He flew.
Clark had flown fast before. Faster than sound. Faster than bullets. Faster than disaster when he had no other choice.
He had never flown like this. The world became a blur of white and black beneath him. Cold air tore past his face. He shielded you with his body, one hand pressed to your wound, the other cradling your head against his chest.
“Stay,” he said again and again.
He did not know if you heard.
Your heart answered. Weakly.
Still there. Still there. Still there.
The Fortress rose from the Arctic ice like a memory of a world Clark had never truly known. Crystal towers caught the dim light and fractured it into pale, cold brilliance.
The doors opened before he landed. The Fortress recognised his distress. Or perhaps it recognised yours. Either way, Clark carried you inside.
“Kelor,” he called, voice breaking.
The Fortress AI responded immediately, calm and melodic. “Kal-El. Medical emergency detected. Patient is human. Severe radiation poisoning. Unknown magical contamination. Kryptonian cellular trauma signatures present.”
Clark stumbled. Kryptonian trauma. In your human body. Because you had taken it from him.
“Can you treat them?” he asked.
“Partial treatment possible. Human biology is incompatible with several injury markers. Recommend solar isolation chamber, magical contamination quarantine, and immediate stabilisation.”
“Do it.”
Crystal panels unfolded from the floor. A medical platform rose beneath golden lamps designed to simulate yellow sunlight for Kryptonian recovery. Clark placed you down as gently as he could.
Too gently. Not gently enough.
You whimpered. Clark flinched.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Mechanical arms moved around you, scanning, cleaning, sealing. A golden field lowered over your body. The wound in your side pulsed green-black. Clark stood beside the platform, hands stained with blood. Your blood.
“Radiation type resembles kryptonite but is altered by transfer through metahuman ability. Damage is less severe than original Kryptonian injury but remains critical.”
Less severe. Clark almost laughed. The sound would have been horrible.
Less severe did not mean survivable. Less severe did not mean fair. Less severe did not mean you had not taken a death sentence into your own body because you could not bear his.
His knees weakened. He gripped the edge of the platform. The metal dented beneath his fingers.
“Clark,” you rasped.
His head snapped up. Your eyes were half-open. Pain-glazed. Still searching for him.
He moved into your line of sight. “I’m here.”
You tried to smile. It failed. “Fortress?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty.”
A broken laugh caught in his throat. “Yeah. Pretty.”
Your gaze moved over his face. “You’re healed?”
Clark closed his eyes. Tears slipped free before he could stop them. When he opened them, you were watching him with aching tenderness.
“I’m healed,” he said.
“Good.”
“No.”
Your brow furrowed faintly. He leaned over you, careful not to interfere with the scanners.
“No,” he said again, voice shaking. “It isn’t good. Not like this.”
Your face shifted. Understanding. Guilt. Pain.
“I couldn’t let you die,” you whispered.
“And you thought I could let you?”
Your eyes filled. The golden lamps reflected in your tears.
Clark’s hands hovered uselessly. He wanted to touch you. He was afraid to. Afraid that even his gentleness would be too much for your damaged body. You noticed.
“Hand,” you whispered.
He stared. You moved your fingers weakly.
Clark broke. He took your hand with both of his, holding it as if it were made of breath. Your fingers were cold. They should not have been cold under artificial sunlight.
“Kelor,” Clark said, voice tight. “Why are they cold?”
“Circulatory instability. Treatment ongoing.”
“Fix it.”
“Treatment ongoing,” the android repeated.
Clark hated machines. Not always. Right now.
You squeezed his hand weakly.
“Bossy,” you whispered.
He laughed once through tears. “You’re one to talk.”
Your mouth twitched. Then pain seized you. Your back arched. The monitors shrilled. Green light flared beneath your skin, veins bright and horrible along your throat.
Clark froze.
Kelor’s voice cut through the alarms. “Magical contamination spike. Administering counter-frequency.”
The golden field brightened. You screamed. Clark almost shattered the platform.
Batman’s voice came through comms. “Clark. Status.”
Clark had forgotten the comm was still active. He could hear the League on the other end. Bruce, Diana, maybe everyone. The battle had ended. The weapon destroyed. The observatory collapsing into snow. He could not care.
“They’re in pain,” Clark said.
His voice did not sound like his own.
Bruce was quiet for half a second. Then, softer, “Are they stable?”
Clark looked at the monitors. He could read Kryptonian medical notation well enough. He wished he couldn’t. “No.”
You gasped as the spike passed. Clark bent over your hand, pressing his mouth to your knuckles.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Your eyes fluttered. “Don’t… be mad.”
He went still. Then lifted his head. “What?”
Your lips barely moved. “Please.”
Clark stared at you. Something inside him, already cracked, gave way.
“You almost died,” he said. You blinked slowly. “I almost watched you die in my place.”
Your eyes shone.
“I’m angry,” he whispered, like confession. Like sin. “I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with it.”
Your breath hitched.
Clark shook his head quickly, tears falling now. “Not because you saved me. I’m grateful. God, I’m grateful. I’m alive because of you.” His voice broke. “But I’m standing here whole while you’re poisoned with something meant for me.”
Your fingers twitched in his. “I chose it,” you whispered.
“I know.”
That was the problem. That was the wound beneath the wound. You had chosen. Not accidentally. Not under ignorance. Not because you failed to understand danger. You had looked at him dying and decided your suffering was acceptable if it meant his stopped.
Clark loved you for it. He hated it. He hated that his body was grateful. He hated that his lungs opened easily while yours struggled. He hated that some shameful, relieved part of him had felt the first breath after healing and thought, I get to live. He hated that your pain was the reason.
“You should have asked me,” he said.
Your face crumpled. “If I had asked…”
“I would have said no.”
“Yes,” you whispered.
Clark closed his eyes.
The truth. The soft, terrible theft inside the miracle.
When he opened his eyes, you were crying silently.
“I’m sorry,” you said.
He leaned down and pressed his forehead carefully to yours. The golden field hummed between you like warm static.
“I love you,” he whispered. “And I am furious with you. I don’t know how to be both.”
“You’re doing it.”
A laugh broke out of him, wet and wounded. Even now. Even now, you gave him that. You gave him a way through.
Clark kissed your forehead.
“I love you,” he said again.
Your eyes closed. “I love you too.”
Then you lost consciousness.
Clark did not let go of your hand.
Time moved strangely in the Fortress. Maybe because there were no windows that showed normal weather, no clocks that ticked in human increments, no city noise pressing in from all directions. Only ice. Crystal. Machines. Artificial sunlight.
Your heart.
Clark counted that instead.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
He sat beside you while Kelor filtered the contaminated radiation from your bloodstream. He sat while the wound in your side stopped glowing. He sat while magical residue burned away in tiny painful increments that made your body twitch even in sleep.
The League came after six hours.
Bruce arrived first. He stepped into the medical chamber wearing a thermal suit beneath his cape, cowl down, expression carved into something too controlled to be calm. Diana came behind him. Then J’onn. Then, after a moment, Lois.
Clark looked up when he heard her heartbeat. He had not realised Bruce called her.
Lois took one look at him and crossed the room.
No hesitation. No fear of alien machinery or Arctic cold or Superman with blood on his hands.
She wrapped her arms around him. Clark nearly fell apart. He held her carefully, because he always held carefully, and buried his face briefly against her shoulder.
“They’re alive,” Lois said into his ear.
“For now.”
“For now is where we start.”
He let out a broken breath. When she pulled back, her eyes were red. She looked at you on the platform.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered.
Lois loved you. She had from the first dinner, when you corrected Clark’s overdramatic article draft, and Lois declared you “the only person in this room with taste.”
Clark had been offended. Mildly. For show. Mostly, he had been happy.
Now Lois stood beside your bed, one hand hovering near yours. She glanced at Clark for permission.
He almost laughed at the ache of it. Permission. Everyone was learning too late.
He nodded. Lois touched your hand gently.
Bruce stood on Clark’s other side. For a long while, he said nothing. Then, quietly, “I should have known.”
Clark closed his eyes. “No.”
“Yes.”
Clark turned to him. Bruce’s face was grim. Of course he was already assembling blame. Of course he had found some way to make your secret his failure. Batman could turn sunrise into a contingency if given enough time.
“No,” Clark said again. “Not right now.” Bruce looked at him. Clark’s voice roughened. “I don’t have room to help you blame yourself. I’m using all of it.”
Bruce went silent. Diana stepped closer, her gaze full of sorrow.
“They have saved many of us,” she said.
“Yes.”
“At cost.”
Clark looked at you. “Yes.”
J’onn’s voice entered gently. “They carried pain in silence because they believed silence was kindness.”
Lois’s hand tightened over yours. Clark swallowed.
“It wasn’t,” he said.
“No,” J’onn agreed. “But it was love.”
Clark looked at him sharply. J’onn did not flinch.
“Love can be misguided,” he said. “Even harmful. It does not become hatred because it wounds.”
Clark looked down. His hands were still stained faintly red despite washing them.
“I don’t know how to forgive them for saving me,” he said.
The words entered the room and opened something.
Lois looked at him. Bruce looked away. Diana’s eyes softened.
Clark laughed once, broken. “That sounds awful.”
“It sounds honest,” Lois said.
He shook his head. “I’m alive because of them. And I’m angry.”
“Yes.”
“They almost died.”
“Yes.”
“I should be grateful.”
“You are,” Lois said. “You’re also scared out of your mind.”
Clark’s throat tightened.
Lois touched his arm. “Smallville, listen to me. You don’t have to make your feelings neat before they’re real.”
He looked at her.
She smiled sadly. “You love them. You’re angry. You’re grateful. You’re hurt. All of that can sit at the same table.”
Clark exhaled slowly. The Fortress hummed around them. Artificial sunlight poured over your still body. All of it at the same table.
Messy. Human. Hard.
He could do human. He had been raised human.
He nodded. Only once.
But it helped.
You woke on the second day.
Clark was the only one there when it happened. Lois had gone to sleep in one of the guest chambers after threatening Clark with bodily harm if he did not “at least close his eyes for ten minutes.” Bruce had returned to Gotham to investigate the remnants of the weapon. Diana and J’onn were coordinating with the League.
Clark sat beside you, reading aloud from a book of poems his mother had sent years ago. He did not know if you could hear him. He read anyway.
His voice stopped when your heartbeat changed. Your fingers twitched.
Clark set the book down immediately. “Sweetheart?”
Your eyelids fluttered. Opened. Your gaze wandered across the crystal ceiling, unfocused, before finding him.
Clark forgot how to breathe.
“Hi,” he whispered.
Your mouth moved. No sound came out.
He reached for the water. Helped you sip. You winced. He felt it like a blow.
“Easy,” he murmured.
Your eyes stayed on him.
“Sun,” you rasped.
Clark blinked. “What?”
“Feels… like sun.”
He looked up at the golden lamps. “They’re solar emitters.”
“Nice.”
A laugh escaped him. Small. Shaky. “Only you would review alien medical equipment.”
Your lips curved faintly. Then your eyes moved over his face.
Checking. Always checking.
“Are you hurt?”
Clark closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, you were watching him with worry.
Not relief this time. Worry. Progress, maybe.
“No,” he said. “I’m not hurt.”
Your face softened. He held up a hand before you could speak.
“But you are.”
Your eyes lowered.
The room went still. Kelor’s machines hummed quietly.
Clark leaned forward. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
You swallowed. “Yes.”
He nodded. His chest felt too small. “I need to ask you something.”
Your gaze lifted. Fear moved through it.
He hated that. He hated more that he had to continue. “How long has your healing worked that way?”
You closed your eyes. Clark already knew. That did not make it hurt less.
“Always,” you whispered.
He bowed his head. The word landed with all the weight of every miracle he had accepted.
Always.
The kryptonite bullet in Coast City. Bruce’s magical burns. Diana’s sword wound. Barry’s shattered bones. J’onn’s psychic backlash. His own injuries, again and again.
Always.
“All of it?” he asked.
Your eyes opened, wet. “Most of it.”
Clark’s laugh was barely a sound. “Most of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
He stood. Not because he wanted distance. Because staying still had become impossible.
You flinched. He stopped immediately. The reaction cut through him.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.
“I know.”
But your heartbeat had jumped.
Clark sat back down. Slowly. Carefully. He folded his hands together so he would not reach for you too quickly.
“You were afraid I’d stop you,” he said.
You looked at the ceiling. “Yes.”
“You were right.”
Your mouth trembled. “I know.”
“You lied to me. You let me believe healing me didn’t hurt you.”
Your eyes squeezed shut. “Yes.”
Clark inhaled. The air in the Fortress was crisp, sterile, cold beneath the artificial warmth. He could hear ice shifting miles away. He focused on that for one second. Then returned to you.
“Do you know what kryptonite feels like?”
You opened your eyes. Confusion flickered. Then understanding.
Clark’s voice stayed quiet. “I don’t mean now. I don’t mean after the transfer. I mean before. Do you know what it feels like for me?”
You shook your head slightly.
“It feels like every cell in my body forgetting the sun,” he said. Your face went still. “It feels like something inside me is being unmade. Not burned. Not cut. Unmade.” Tears slipped down your temples. “And you took that into your body without knowing if human biology could survive the translation.”
Your mouth parted.
No defense came. No soft lie. Only tears.
“I knew the transfer would change it,” you whispered.
“You hoped.”
You flinched.
Clark leaned forward, voice shaking now. “You hoped it would change enough.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I need you to say it.”
Your face crumpled. “Because I love you.”
The words hurt. They should not have hurt. Clark had heard them from you a hundred times by now. In his kitchen. Over sleepy phone calls. Pressed into his shoulder after long missions. Laughed into his mouth in the farmhouse kitchen when his mother pretended not to smile. Here, under artificial sun, with green poison still fading from your veins, they hurt.
“Love isn’t supposed to make you my shield,” he said.
Your breath broke. “You’re always everyone else’s,” you whispered. Clark froze. There it was. Your truth, sharp and shining beneath the wound. “You stand in front of everything,” you said, voice thin with exhaustion. “Bullets. Buildings. Monsters. Gods. Grief. You hear everyone, Clark. All the time. And you go. You always go.”
He looked down.
“I couldn’t stand there and watch the world finally be too heavy for you.”
His eyes burned. “I’m not the world.”
“You are to me.”
Clark’s breath left him.
You looked almost startled by your own honesty. Then you kept going, because apparently, pain had burned away whatever caution remained. “You’re Clark. You’re coffee rings on article drafts and half-burned pancakes because you use heat vision when you’re distracted. Your phone calls to your mom during storms. You’re pretending not to cry at dog adoption stories. You’re the way you say thank you to vending machines.”
“I do not—”
“You do.”
He closed his mouth.
“You’re not just Superman to me,” you whispered. “And I couldn’t watch you die like everyone had the right to ask it from you.”
Clark looked at you. The anger did not vanish. But love rose through it, terrible and bright.
“You think I could watch that from you?” he asked.
Your eyes filled again. “No.”
“But you chose it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought my life mattered more?”
“No,” you said immediately.
Clark waited.
You swallowed. “Because in that moment, I thought I could survive it better than you could.”
He stared.
You continued, voice shaking. “And maybe that’s arrogant. Maybe it’s awful. Maybe it’s unfair. But I saw that thing killing you, and I knew my body might twist it into something less. Not harmless. Never harmless. But less.” Your uninjured hand curled weakly in the blanket. “I thought I could take enough of it to keep you here.”
Clark understood then.
Not forgiveness. Understanding. You had not thought yourself worthless. That might have been easier to argue against.
No. You had calculated pain like weather. You had seen a storm built to kill him and believed your body could break the wind. You had been right.
That was worse.
Because he was alive. And you were not dead. And some part of him, some grateful, horrified part, knew the math had worked.
He hated the math.
He reached for your hand. Paused. “May I?”
Your face crumpled. “Yes.”
He took it gently. Your fingers curled around his with weak desperation.
“I love you,” he said. You closed your eyes. “I love you so much that I don’t know where to put the anger.” Your hand tightened. “I’m grateful.”
“I know.”
“I hate that I’m grateful.”
A tear slid down your cheek. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’ll keep saying it.”
“I know.”
He lifted your hand and pressed it to his mouth. Artificial sunlight warmed both of you.
“You saved me,” he whispered against your skin. You breathed shakily. “And you hurt me.”
Clark looked at you. Both truths sat there. Neither erased the other.
“I know,” you said.
“I don’t forgive you yet.”
Your face twisted.
He leaned closer. “But I’m here.”
A sob caught in your throat.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m angry, and I’m here. I’m scared, and I’m here. I love you, and I’m here.”
You cried then. Clark stood and bent over you, careful of every wire, every bandage, every bruise he could see and every one he could not.
He kissed your forehead. You clung weakly to his hand.
“I’m here,” he repeated.
Like a promise. Like a prayer. Like the first thing he could give you that did not require either of you to bleed.
Recovery happened under yellow sun.
Not the real one at first. Kelor insisted you remain in the Fortress until your bloodstream showed no trace of transferred kryptonite radiation. Clark translated the medical explanations into human terms, then Lois translated them again into “normal person English” because Clark, despite his best efforts, had started saying things like “cellular resonance contamination.”
You laughed so hard you winced.
Lois pointed at Clark. “See? You’re hurting the patient with nerd behaviour.”
Clark pushed his glasses up. “I’m not wearing glasses.”
“Spiritually, you are.”
You smiled from the medical platform, pale but alive.
Clark would take the teasing. He would take anything if it meant you kept smiling.
The wound in your side healed slowly. Not like a normal human wound, according to Kelor. Not like Clark’s either. Something in your power had absorbed, translated, and muted the injury, turning a fatal Kryptonian trauma into a survivable human catastrophe. A phrase Lois hated.
“A survivable catastrophe is still a catastrophe,” she said.
You nodded meekly. Clark raised an eyebrow.
You pointed at Lois. “I’m scared of her.”
“Correct,” Lois said.
Martha came on the third day. Clark met her at the Fortress entrance and immediately folded into her arms like he was ten years old again.
She held him without comment. That was his mother’s gift. She knew when words helped and when they only made the wound echo.
After a while, she patted his back. “Take me to them.”
You cried when you saw her.
“I’m sorry,” you said immediately.
Martha Kent looked at you in that way she had. Soft as pie crust, strong as a tornado shelter.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, sitting beside you. “I know.”
“I hurt him.”
“Yes.”
You flinched.
Martha took your hand. “And you saved him.”
Your eyes filled.
“And now,” Martha continued, “you’re going to have to do the harder thing and let him be hurt without trying to fix it.”
Clark stood near the doorway, throat tight.
You looked at him. Then back at Martha. “I don’t know how.”
Martha smiled sadly. “Most of us don’t, at first.”
She stayed the whole day. She brought soup, because apparently even alien fortresses benefited from soup. She made Clark eat. She made you drink tea. She charmed Kelor into raising the ambient temperature by two degrees.
“You negotiated with Kryptonian AI,” Clark said.
Martha shrugged. “I raised you. I’m used to stubborn alien things.”
You laughed. Clark loved both of you so much he had to look away.
That evening, after Martha and Lois had gone to sleep in the guest quarters, Clark sat beside you under the solar lamps.
You were more awake now. Still weak. But present.
Your fingers traced the edge of the blanket.
“Do you hear it?” you asked.
Clark looked up from the book he was pretending to read. “Hear what?”
“The world.”
He listened. The Fortress dampened most external sound by default, but not for him. Not fully. He heard ice shifting. Wind. Distant ocean. Farther, if he reached, the blur of civilization. Satellites. Planes. Faint cries and laughter and music scattered across the curvature of Earth.
“Yes.”
“Is it hard not to go?”
He closed the book. “Sometimes.”
“You’ve stayed here for days.”
“Yes.”
“Because of me.”
Clark looked at you.
“With you,” he corrected.
Your eyes softened. “That sounds nicer.”
“It’s also truer.”
You were quiet for a moment. Then, “Are you angry right now?”
Clark appreciated the question. He hated the answer.
“Yes.”
You nodded. Your fingers tightened in the blanket. “Thank you for telling me.”
He set the book aside and leaned forward. “I’m less angry than yesterday.”
“That’s something.”
“It is.”
“Still not forgiving me?”
“No.”
Your smile was sad. “That’s fair.”
“I’m working on it.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to punish you with it.”
Your eyes lifted to his.
Clark’s hands curled together. “I need you to know that. I’m not withholding forgiveness to hurt you. I just…” He exhaled. “I still see you on the floor when I close my eyes.”
Your face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I still see you pinned to that machine,” you whispered.
Clark went still.
Your voice trembled. “I see the spike. The green in your veins. Your face when you realised I was going to do it.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I know I keep saying that.”
He opened his eyes. You looked broken open by it.
“I don’t want you to stop,” he said softly. Your brow furrowed. “Not because I want you to suffer. Because I need to know you understand.”
Your gaze dropped. “I do.”
“I know.” He reached for your hand. “And I need to keep hearing it for a while.”
You nodded. “Okay.”
Clark lifted your hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”
You looked at him with a tiny, wounded smile. “For apologising?”
“For staying honest when it hurts.”
Your eyes shone. “You make that sound beautiful.”
“It is.”
“It sucks.”
“That too.”
A laugh escaped you.
Clark smiled. Small. Real.
Your breath caught.
“What?”
“You smiled.”
His smile faded into something softer. “I do that.”
“You haven’t much.”
“No.”
You looked at your joined hands. “I missed it.”
Clark leaned closer. “I missed you.”
“I’m right here.”
“I know.” His thumb brushed your knuckles. “I missed you while you were here.”
That made you cry.
He kissed your forehead and stayed close while you did.
No healing. No taking. No miracle. Just tears beneath artificial sunlight, and Clark learning that sometimes the brave thing was not stopping pain but remaining beside it.
The first time you tried to stand, Clark hovered. Literally.
You opened one eye from the medical platform. “Clark.”
His boots dropped silently to the floor.
Lois, sitting nearby with a tablet, smirked. “Busted.”
“I wasn’t hovering.”
“You were six inches off the ground.”
“That’s not hovering. That’s…” He searched for a word. You raised an eyebrow. “Vertical concern,” he finished.
Lois snorted. You laughed, then pressed a hand carefully to your side.
Clark moved forward. Then stopped.
You saw the effort. Your expression softened. “I’m okay.” He gave you a look. You sighed. “I am sore. Dizzy. Slightly nauseous. My side feels like it lost an argument with radioactive evil. But I am medically cleared to attempt standing.”
Kelor’s voice chimed, “With assistance.”
You pointed upward. “See? The house agrees.”
Clark did not like thinking of the Fortress as a house. Except maybe, with you in it, it had become one.
He came to your side. “May I help?”
Your face softened again. “Yes.”
He placed one hand at your back and offered the other for you to hold. You leaned on him heavily as you swung your legs over the edge.
Clark kept his strength carefully checked. Enough support. Never force.
You stood. For three seconds. Then your knees buckled.
Clark caught you instantly. You gasped, half from pain, half from frustration.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
You went very still in his arms.
He realised too late.
Those words. Yours. His. The wound between you.
He started to let go.
Your hand grabbed his shirt.
“No,” you whispered.
He froze.
You looked up at him, eyes wet. “Say it again.”
Clark’s throat tightened. He held you carefully. “I’ve got you.”
Your face folded. This time, the words did not mean you had to bleed. They meant someone else could hold the weight.
You buried your face against his chest. Clark wrapped both arms around you, gentle as sunlight.
“I’ve got you,” he said again.
Your shoulders shook.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered into his suit.
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
You huffed a weak laugh against him. “Say that again too.”
His eyes warmed. “I love you.” Your hand tightened in his shirt. “I love you,” he said, softer. “I love you. I love you.”
Outside the crystal walls, Arctic wind screamed across the ice. Inside, beneath yellow lamps, Clark held you upright. You trembled. He stayed steady.
That was something he could do. Not as Superman.
As Clark.
The League meeting happened one week after the mission.
You hated it. Clark also hated it.
Bruce insisted. Lois agreed. Martha said, “Secrets don’t heal just because you tuck them under the bed,” which ended the debate more effectively than Batman ever could.
So you sat in the Watchtower conference room wrapped in a soft sweater, one hand pressed protectively near your still-healing side. Clark sat beside you. Diana sat across from you, gaze kind but serious. Bruce stood behind his chair because apparently sitting remained a moral defeat. Barry fidgeted with a pen. Hal looked unusually subdued. J’onn’s expression was gentle. Zatanna watched you with the careful sadness of someone who understood magical costs too well.
You explained. All of it. The transfers. The pain. The way injuries changed inside you. The way some wounds softened and others didn’t. The way emotional and psychic pain could sometimes be taken, but unpredictably and dangerously. The way you had hidden symptoms because you believed everyone would refuse if they knew.
No one interrupted. That made it harder.
Clark could hear everyone’s heartbeat. The grief in the room had a rhythm.
When you finished, silence sat heavily over the table.
Then Barry said, very quietly, “My leg.” You looked at him. His voice shook. “After Gorilla City. You healed my leg.”
Your eyes filled. “Yes.”
Barry looked down. “I thanked you and ran six laps around the medbay.”
“You were relieved.”
“You were limping later.”
You said nothing. Barry closed his eyes. Hal leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face.
“I made jokes,” he said.
“You always make jokes,” you whispered.
“Yeah, well, now I feel like an ass.”
Diana reached across the table and placed her hand over yours. You looked at her.
“You should have told us,” she said.
“I know.”
“Your choice to bear pain does not erase our right to understand it.”
Your face crumpled. “I know.”
Diana squeezed your hand. “And still, I am grateful to be alive because of you.”
You sobbed once. Clark’s hand tightened under the table.
Bruce spoke next. “We need consent protocols.”
You let out a watery laugh. “Of course you already have a folder.”
Bruce’s eyebrow lifted. “Three.”
Hal muttered, “That tracks.” Clark almost smiled.
Bruce continued, “No healing without informed consent except in pre-authorised emergency conditions. Everyone will establish directives. Injuries must be disclosed afterward. No solo high-risk transfers. Mandatory monitoring.”
You looked exhausted just hearing it.
Clark leaned closer. “You don’t have to solve all of it today.”
Bruce paused. Then nodded. “Not today.”
That was Bruce being gentle. You seemed to understand, because your expression softened.
“Okay,” you said.
J’onn looked at you. “There is one more thing.”
You tensed. Clark did too.
J’onn’s voice remained calm. “You are more than the pain you can carry.”
The room went quiet. You looked away.
Clark wanted to wrap himself around you.
He did not. Not here. Not unless you asked.
J’onn continued, “Many of us have relied on your gift. We must now learn to rely also on your personhood.”
Your eyes closed.
That one landed. Clark knew because it landed in him too.
Your personhood.
Not power. Not function. Not miracle.
You.
The meeting ended slowly. Not cleanly. There were tears. Apologies. Awkward hugs. Hal made one terrible joke and looked relieved when you laughed. Barry cried openly and then apologised for crying, which made you cry, which made him cry harder.
Bruce handed you a tablet with the draft protocols. You stared at it. Then at him.
“Three folders?” you asked.
“Four now.”
You smiled faintly. “You’re a menace.”
“So I’m told.”
Clark waited until the room emptied. Then he turned to you. “How do you feel?”
You leaned your head against his shoulder. “Tired.”
“Only tired?”
He felt your smile against him. “No.”
Progress.
“I feel scared,” you said. “And guilty. And relieved. And like everyone is going to look at me differently now.”
Clark rested his cheek against your hair. “I do.”
You went still.
He lifted his head and looked at you.
“I look at you differently because I know you better.”
Your eyes searched his. “Not because you love me less?”
“No.” His voice softened. “Never that.”
You nodded. A tear slipped down your cheek. Clark wiped it away.
“May I take you home?” he asked.
“Fortress or apartment?”
“Smallville.”
Your face changed. “Really?”
“Ma has been texting me soup emojis for two hours.”
You laughed. Clark smiled. There it was. A small patch of sunlight through the ache.
“Smallville sounds good,” you said.
Smallville healed differently than the Fortress.
The Fortress had alien medicine, yellow lamps, crystal diagnostics, and an AI that could identify seventeen forms of radiation poisoning in six seconds. Smallville had Martha Kent. Which was better, in several ways.
You stayed in Clark’s childhood room because Martha insisted, and because Clark turned very red when you pointed out the little wooden airplane still sitting on the shelf.
“It’s cute,” you said from under three quilts.
“It’s old.”
“It’s cute.”
“It was a gift from my dad.”
Your teasing softened.
Clark picked it up carefully. His father had carved it by hand. The edges were worn now from years of a little boy’s fingers tracing the wings.
You watched him.
“He loved you a lot,” you said.
Clark smiled, sad and warm. “Yeah. He did.”
You patted the bed beside you. Clark sat. The bed creaked. Your eyes brightened with amusement.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought it.”
“I thought you are very big for this bed.”
He laughed. You smiled, triumphant.
That night, Clark slept in the chair beside you and woke to find Martha draping a blanket over him with the long-suffering tenderness of a mother who had absolutely expected this.
“Clark Joseph Kent,” she whispered. He opened one eye. “You are not guarding the national treasury.”
He blinked sleepily. “No. Something more important.”
Martha’s expression softened despite herself. Then she smacked his shoulder lightly with the folded edge of the blanket.
“Bed. Guest room. Now.”
“I’m fine here.”
“You are six-foot-whatever and folded like laundry. Move.”
You stirred, eyes half-open.
“Listen to your mom,” you mumbled.
Clark looked betrayed.
Martha smiled. “I like them.”
“I’m injured,” you added. “You have to listen to me too.”
“That feels manipulative.”
“It is,” you whispered.
Martha laughed quietly.
Clark went to the guest room. Mostly because both of you were terrifying.
The days that followed were slow. You walked through the kitchen with one hand on the counter while Clark hovered within acceptable ground-level parameters. You sat on the porch in the morning sun, eyes closed, letting real yellow warmth touch your face. You helped Martha shell peas one-handed and complained that Clark kept trying to do everything for you.
“He gets that from me,” Martha said.
Clark looked up from the sink. “I’m right here.”
“I know, honey.”
You grinned.
He loved seeing you at the farm. Loved it so much it scared him. You looked softer there, wrapped in one of his flannels, sunlight on your knees, bandage hidden beneath fabric. Not healed. Not untouched.
But safe. Or as close as the world allowed.
One afternoon, he found you standing in the cornfield. The same place you had first kissed him. You wore his jacket over your shoulders and held one hand lightly against your side.
Clark approached slowly. “You okay?”
You looked over. “I think so.”
He stopped beside you. The corn rustled around you both. For once, the world was not screaming. Clark could hear cows in the distance. A truck on the road. His mother humming in the kitchen. Your heartbeat, stronger now.
You turned toward him. “I need to tell you something.”
He nodded.
You took a breath. “I don’t regret saving you.”
Clark’s chest tightened.
You continued quickly, “But I regret how. I regret not telling you the truth before. I regret taking your choice. I regret making you wake up to my pain.”
His throat worked.
“I don’t regret you being alive,” you said. “I don’t think I ever could.”
Clark looked down. The corn moved in long, golden waves.
“I don’t regret being alive,” he said. Your eyes filled. “But I regret what it cost you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely okay with it.”
“I know.”
“And if it happened again…”
You went very still.
Clark looked at you. “I don’t know what I’d choose either.”
That startled you. He gave a sad smile.
“I want to say I would respect your no. I want to say I’d let you make the choice and accept it. But if you were dying in front of me and I could stop it?” His voice lowered. “I don’t know…I think,” Clark said slowly, “that’s why I’m so angry.”
You whispered, “Because you understand.”
“Yes.”
He hated admitting it. Needed to.
You stepped closer. “Where does that leave us?”
Clark reached for your hand. You gave it to him.
“In progress,” he said.
A faint smile touched your mouth. “That’s very journalist of you.”
“It’s also true.”
“Do we make rules?”
“Yes.”
“Protocols?”
“Yes.”
“Bruce is rubbing off on you.”
“Unfortunately.”
You laughed softly. Clark lifted your hand to his mouth and kissed your knuckles.
“But more than rules,” he said. “We keep telling the truth. Even when it’s ugly. Even when it doesn’t make either of us look noble.”
“I can try.”
“So can I.”
You looked at him. “I’m scared you’ll always see me on the floor.”
Clark’s hand tightened around yours.
“I will,” he said.
Your face fell. He touched your cheek.
“But I’ll also see you here.” Your eyes lifted. “In my mom’s kitchen. On the porch. In the cornfield. Rolling your eyes at my drafts. Laughing at Lois. Falling asleep with three quilts because you say the farm gets colder than the Arctic, which is objectively false.”
“It does emotionally.”
He smiled.
“There,” he said. “That too.”
A tear slipped down your cheek.
“I don’t want the worst thing to be the only thing,” he said.
You leaned into his palm. “Me neither.”
Clark bent and kissed you. Gently at first. Then with all the careful longing of the days he had spent afraid to touch you too much.
You kissed him back with your uninjured hand curled in his shirt.
He did not float this time. Progress.
Then your mouth curved against his. “You’re trying very hard not to float.”
Clark’s ears warmed. “I am grounded by discipline.”
“You are grounded by trauma and corn.”
He laughed, startled and helpless. You smiled. The sound moved through the field, small and human and alive.
Clark kissed you again. This time, his feet left the ground by maybe an inch. You noticed. You did not mention it.
Kindness. Mercy. Love.
All things with fine print, maybe. All things worth reading anyway.
