Boy With No Name

Futurefic AU, angst
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

If my blood can save lives, maybe I should come forward... - Clark Kent, "Resurrection"

I don't have a name.

I live in a little white box. I've always lived in it, as long as I can remember. It's exactly long enough for my cot, and wide enough that I can take ten steps from my cot to the wall. There is a toilet, a shower, and a sink across from the cot, and in the perfect whiteness of the door there's a slot where a tray of food appears three times a day. There's a mirror over the sink, and one bright light overhead. It's very, very clean and smells of disinfectant, and I never leave it.

When I look in my mirror, I see a boy with dark, wavy hair and green eyes looking back at me. That's all there is to see, really. The wall is white. The sheets on the cot are white. Even my clothes are white.

For a long time, I wondered if everyone in the world lived in a little white box. The doctors and teachers that I saw every day, did they live in the same sort of room? Obviously if they did, they got to leave their rooms sometimes, because they came into my room.

I didn't like it much when they came in, but I figured it was better than being alone all the time. Being alone was boring. When they came in, they spoke curtly to me, and then they took blood out of my arm. They still do, every single day. There's a little badge on the front of their white coats that says LexCorp: Making the World Better Through Medical Technology, with their name on a tag beneath it. When I was younger, I couldn't sound out the names, but now I can read them all.

The teacher helped me learn to read. She started with books that had sentences like the cat ate the rat, but those were easy. Before long she had me reading other stories, stories with much bigger words.

"Subject displays the typical rapid learning ability and excellent memory," she'd scrawl in her notes. (It took a little while, but I learned to read upside down pretty quickly, too.) At first I wondered what that meant. Typical for what? Was I just like everyone else? But if I was, then my memory wouldn't be excellent... it'd be ordinary. Average. At least that was what I figured.

Anyway, before long I was reading big books with no pictures. And as I read them, I began to realize not everyone lived in a little white box. In fact, it seemed that no one did. People lived in houses, and had parents, and families-- all words that I didn't quite understand.

"It's fiction," she said shortly, when I asked about it. "Fiction means it's all imaginary."

"So in real life, everyone lives in a box?"

"Of course," she answered, and scribbled some more notes. By now she'd realized I could read her writing upside down, and took care to tilt her clipboard so I couldn't read it at all.

I didn't quite believe her, but I had no actual proof other people didn't live in boxes. And really, why would I live in a box, and everyone else live in houses? Why would everyone else be able to travel around on bicycles, or in cars, and go to places like malls and stores, when I couldn't ever leave this box?

By now, I knew it wasn't a box, not exactly. The right word for the place I lived was cell. I lived in a cell. I'd read about cells in stories. When people did something wrong and went to jail, they lived in a cell.

I began to worry that I'd done something wrong. Maybe I was in jail. Maybe I'd done something illegal when I was younger, and that was why I was here. The idea tormented me. It scared me. Maybe I was a terrible person who'd done terrible things, and just didn't know it.

Every day, they drew blood from my arm. The doctors always touched me with a certain caution, as if physical contact with me was mildly disgusting, and they never smiled at me, or even looked me in the eyes. The syringe they used had a glowing green jewel on it, and it made me feel icky. They told me more than once that having blood drawn made everyone feel bad. I didn't like it, because it felt like my skin was crawling and my stomach was tying itself up in knots. But it was just part of my life, something that happened every single day, and I guess I'd gotten pretty used to it.

The doctors talked among themselves sometimes, with no concern for the fact that I was in the room.

"You'll note that the blood continues to retain its healing factors," one said once, holding up a vial filled with my blood, "no matter how many duplicates of the original genetic material are made. Cancer, heart disease, mental disorders... all are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, thanks to the almost miraculous qualities of this substance."

The assistant, who seemed more tentative, spoke hesitantly.

"But if the subjects were ever allowed rights, then all the progress we've made..."

"Rights!" The first doctor laughed coldly. "There can be no human rights for something that is not human."

"But the editorials in the Daily Planet... the rallies... the senators who support the cause..."

"There is no cause," the first doctor snapped impatiently. "There are only a few overly emotional fools who would pull us back into the Dark Ages, when people died of so many maladies that are almost entirely gone now. Do you really suppose the public would tolerate returning to the days of death and suffering? Do you really suppose the public cares about rights?"

The assistant looked embarrassed. "I suppose not..."

The first doctor sighed. "At any rate," he said, a little more gently, "the subjects are terminated before the onset of adolescence, in order to avoid the development of the secondary abilities that were displayed by the original subject. The public would never tolerate the manifestation of such abilities, and we both know it."

"I suppose you're right," the assistant admitted. "I simply worry..."

The conversation faded as they left my cell, but I heard others like it, over and over again. They tended to speak as if I wasn't there at all. But no matter how much I listened, I couldn't quite understand it.

It seemed as if my blood was valuable somehow. As if by giving it every day, I accomplished something worthwhile. Somehow, I dimly understood, my blood had to do with the words they all had stitched onto their white coats: Making the World Better Through Medical Technology.

But what, I couldn't guess.

The days slid by, one like another, dull and tedious and endless. The monotony was broken only by the hour or two when my teacher visited the cell, and the doctors came in to draw blood and make their notes. I had little to think about, and slowly, I started to wonder what was outside my cell.

Not about what the greater world was like. True, I liked to lie on my cot and dream about movies and bowling alleys and farms, to try to picture them in my head. But a more immediate question nagged at me-- what exactly was right outside my cell door?

The walls were soundproof. I couldn't hear anything, not even footsteps approaching. I never knew anyone was coming until the door opened. And when the door opened, and I snuck a peek outside, all I could see was more whiteness. A white corridor, I guess, just as glaringly bright as my cell.

I asked, but no one would answer me. And so, more and more, I began to wonder what was down the corridor.

I tried more than once to open the door, but it wouldn't open. Nothing I could do would force the handle to turn. There was no way of escaping my box.

My prison.

Slowly, I came to realize that was what it was. No matter how much they told me everyone lived this way... I just couldn't believe it. It didn't make sense. Everyone couldn't possibly live in a small cell, having blood drawn every day. There had to be more to most people's existence.

There should be more to my existence.

Oppressed by the relentless drone of monotony, I began to dream of escape. And slowly, my dreams turned to plans. Simple plans, of course, because I was still very young. But over the course of the months, my quiet acquiescence to fate slowly shifted into a grim determination to escape.

And today, when the door opened... I ran.

I brushed past a white-coated doctor. She gave a little squeal of panic, as if touching me had frightened her somehow. As if it had repulsed her. But maybe she was only startled. She grabbed for me, but I dodged to the side, avoiding her grasp, and ran down the corridor as fast as I could.

And then my mouth fell open.

The walls were stark white, and they rose high on either side of a wide central courtyard, which was surrounded by a clear plastic railing. As I raced down the corridor, I saw that on this level, there was a cell every twenty feet or so. From outside, the walls of the cells appeared to be transparent. You could see in, as if the wall were made of glass, but I guessed the occupants of the cells couldn't see out, any more than I'd been able to.

And every cell had an occupant.

Me.

Stunned, I ran on, looking into each cell. Every cell-- every last cell-- held a dark-haired little boy with green eyes, a little boy who wore the exact same face I saw in the mirror every day. A little boy who probably had blood drawn from his arm every day, exactly as I did.

There were at least fifty cells on this level, and as I ran, I looked up and down, seeing that this wasn't the only level of cells. There were levels above and below, and everywhere I looked, I saw myself, over and over and over again.

There were dozens of me.

No... hundreds.

Hundreds upon hundreds of dark-haired, green-eyed boys with no name.

-The End-

Funeral For a Friend

Perry futurefic
PG (character death warning)
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

Clark Kent: I just can't help thinking that... Whitney's skin wasn't bulletproof. His bones weren't unbreakable, but he still put himself in harm's way so the world could be safer. I wonder if I didn't have my abilities if I'd have that same kind of courage.

Jonathan Kent: Son, there is no doubt in our minds that you would.

"We are here today to remember a great American hero."

The casket sat at the front of the cathedral, draped in an American flag and surrounded by red, white and blue flowers. The vast building was packed to overflowing with mourners, and outside thousands more thronged the street, waiting to pay their last respects. Cameras set up in the church broadcast the event to millions or even billions more.

"Superman was not born on this planet." Perry White spoke in clear, measured tones, somehow managing to keep his voice steady. God knew it wasn't easy. "But he committed himself, body and soul, to keeping us safe. Not just America, but the whole world. He defended us for fifteen years. And in the end, he willingly sacrificed himself to save us all."

He looked over the crowd, seeing masked, caped superheroes scattered throughout. It looked like every superhero in the world was here. Superman had been the leader of the Justice League, and he imagined the superhero community must be in something of an uproar right now, though he had no way of knowing for sure. He wondered how they felt, if they grieved the way the general populace did. Judging from the way their heads were bent, he thought they must be grieving almost as much as he himself was.

"Superman was invulnerable, in most circumstances," Perry went on. "But he knew perfectly well he could be injured, or even killed, by the technology of the aliens who attacked us last week. And yet... and yet he faced them anyway. To protect us, to save us, he faced them without hesitation."

As he spoke, he remembered a seventeen-year-old boy, struggling to save him. Somehow the boy had lost his amazing abilities and become as fragile as any human, and yet he'd risked his life to save Perry's unworthy neck. The boy could have easily been killed that day, all due to Perry's stupidity.

But he hadn't died. Thank God for that. They'd both survived, and the boy had gone on to be the world's greatest superhero.

Perry had known, the minute he laid eyes on Superman, that he was Clark Kent. Of course he'd known. He wasn't stupid, and the minute Superman came to town, he'd figured it out. The fact that Clark wore dark-rimmed glasses, alternated a wide, goofy grin with foot-shuffling shyness, and generally acted like a clueless, bumbling idiot hadn't fooled him for a microsecond.

And yet after some thought, he'd decided to keep Clark's secret, because he could easily understand why superheroes needed to conceal their identity in order to protect their families. He'd been torn nearly in two by the issue, had considered it from all sides for weeks. His job as editor in chief of the Daily Planet was to bring the truth to the public, and the truth was that Superman was Clark Kent. And on a more practical level, exposing Superman's secret identity would have sold a lot of papers, no doubt about it.

But it also might very well have caused Superman to stop working as a hero, which could have killed a lot of people in the long run.

Perry had never regretted that decision, and last week's events had made him more certain than ever that it had indeed been the correct decision. Because if Superman hadn't been around, Earth would be a smoking ball of charcoal right now.

He paused for a moment, blinking back tears. Not only had Earth lost a great hero, but he'd lost a colleague and close friend. There were so many more things he wanted to say. He wanted to talk about Clark Kent, journalist, loving husband, devoted son, and a damn good friend.

But no one was here to remember Clark Kent. No one except him, and a handful of others-- his widow, who was seated in the press section and trying valiantly to conceal her tears; Jimmy Olsen, who'd known and protected Clark's secret for years; Martha Kent, who was seated near the front, struggling to look dignified and calm, as if a stranger, rather than her only son, lay in the coffin.

Very few people in the crowd even knew the name Clark Kent.

But everyone on the planet knew the name of Superman.

Perry pushed aside his memories of the dark-rimmed glasses and Clark's wide, goofy grin, and focused on the memory of a heroic figure patrolling Metropolis' skies, his crimson cape ripping behind him.

"And so," he said, "we gather together on this Veterans Day to remember all the veterans who have fought and died to protect our country, as well as those still among us. But most of all, we remember Superman, who gave his life to protect us all. Not just the United States of America... but every person on Earth."

He heard his voice cracking again, and paused, steadying himself, then forced out the last words of his speech in a ragged whisper.

"May we never forget him."

-The End-

The Breath of Dawn

Clark (offscreen Chlark) futurefic
Rating: PG-13 (character death)
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Inspired by "Upon This Dull Earth," by Philip K. Dick

For to his angels he’s given a command
To guard you in all of your ways
Upon their hands they will bear you up
Lest you dash your foot against a stone
And he will raise you up on angels wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of his hand.
-"On Angels' Wings"

They were out there.

Clark had always been able to sense them, though he wasn't quite sure how. It wasn't his superhearing or his special vision or his ability to go into superspeed that allowed him to know they were there.

He could just... feel them.

Curiosity impelled him to learn more. Around his fifteenth birthday, he began going into the local church graveyard in the deepest dark of night, just so he could feel more of them flitting past him. They felt like the merest brush of a feather against his skin, a soft summer breeze. Utterly insubstantial, and yet undeniably there.

And when they became aware that he could sense them, that he knew they were there, they began flocking to him. He could sit in the graveyard at night and feel them pressing in on him, a vast throng. They were still insubstantial, yet they pushed against him so tightly that he felt suffocated.

For the first time, he began to feel afraid of them. They weren't physical, in any sense that he understood, and he couldn't imagine how they could hurt him. And yet he had the terrifying sensation of thousands of hands, clutching at him, trying to draw him away from the shadowed dark earth, and into a realm of brilliant light.

If he strained with every aspect of his abilities, he could almost see the world they wanted to pull him into. It was just beyond his ability to comprehend, but he could see enough to know that it was beautiful beyond anything he'd ever known, so brilliant that the Earth looked drab and lifeless by comparison.

Somewhere deep inside, he wanted to go into the light.

But he couldn't. He had a life here, upon this dull earth. He had friends and family and duties here.

He stood up and fled from the clutching invisible hands.

But the next night, drawn by a need he couldn't explain, he was back. And the next, and the next. And each night, the hands grew more and more insistent. Thousands upon thousands of them thronged around him, so thickly he could almost see them, and he began to have the feeling that they were feeding on him somehow.

He wasn't sure if they were drawn to him because he was an alien, and thus different from anything they knew, or because he was aware of them. Or possibly they weren't drawn to him at all. For all he knew, any human who spent much time in a graveyard would be surrounded by an enormous cloud of them. The difference was that he was aware of it, whereas a human wouldn't be.

But maybe on some level humans were aware of them. That might, he thought, account for the stories of ghosts and angels and demons that humans had told over the years. It might even account for the ancestral human fear of graveyards.

For whatever reason, each night there were more of them, feeding hungrily on him. By the third night, there were so many they seemed to fill the air around him. There were a legion of them, and they bore him to the earth, irresistible and silent and terrible. He lay sprawled beneath them, helpless, screaming as their unseen hands dug deep, clutching greedily at his soul.

"No," he cried, trying to beat them off-- but without success, because they weren't corporeal. "No! No!"

They didn't listen. He had a feeling they couldn't listen, that they were being irresistibly drawn to something deep inside him, like birds drawn instinctively toward the south, unable to resist the call of migration. He could feel that there was no malice in them. They weren't consciously trying to hurt him.

They just... wanted him.

He sobbed frantically, genuinely terrified now. He'd been drawn to them out of curiosity, but what had started out as an interesting experiment had somehow turned deadly. He could feel his soul being drawn forcibly out of his body, and he screamed with agony and fear-- and with a strange, unearthly rapture.

On some level, he wanted this, wanted it more than anything. But for the most part, he was terribly afraid. His heart clenched in his chest, and fear clotted the blood in his veins and seared his nerves.

Driven by a wild panic, he managed to surge to his feet despite the impossible weight of them, despite the frantically clinging hands. He burst into superspeed and fled from the graveyard, leaving them behind.

He'd learned his lesson.

He'd never dare enter a graveyard in the darkness again.

*****

He'd avoided graveyards at midnight for fifty years now. But this night, he walked slowly into the same graveyard where he'd spent hours as a teenager. He could see the dark shapes of trees silhouetted overhead, inky shadows against a bright backdrop of stars. The thickly leafed branches rustled in the light summer breeze, and a full moon hung low in the sky, barely visible above the treetops. The headstones were silvered by moonlight, but the earth over the graves looked dull and dark.

There was peace here.

He walked further into the graveyard, looking for her grave. She had been buried here this morning, and he'd stood above her coffin, listening to the pastor talk about the afterlife, and then dropped a handful of earth on her grave, while tears ran down his face.

The tears were gone now, replaced with a grim sense of purpose. He walked slowly through the maze of granite stones, not bothering with superspeed.

He was in no hurry. He wanted them to sense him.

He wondered if they'd remember him. He wondered if they would still want him with such hunger and desperation. He wondered if he'd have to visit, night after night, before they were numerous enough to surround him and bear him to the earth, or if one night would be enough.

A few moments later, he found her grave, and sat on the freshly turned earth, right in front of her headstone. And he waited.

The moon slowly rose higher in the sky. He waited with inhuman patience, while long hours crept by.

At last, he felt something brush over his skin, very lightly.

He closed his eyes.

"Chloe?" he whispered.

There was no answer. He hadn't expected one. In all the time he'd hung around graveyards, he'd never heard a sound. But a moment later, something else brushed over his skin.

They were coming. At last, they were coming.

He sat there, waiting for them, holding very still, as if movement might frighten them away. Before long there were dozens of them, and then hundreds, and he could feel them brushing against him like butterfly wings, insubstantial and yet incredibly numerous. They surrounded him until he could barely draw a breath.

"Chloe." His voice was a whisper in the night. He had no idea if she was there, in all that throng, but he hoped she was. God, he hoped. "Chlo... take me with you."

They hovered around him for long moments more, and he felt more and more of them gathering. And then they were pressing against him, hungry and eager, like sharks drawn by the scent of blood.

He shivered at the image, because although he had always felt intuitively that they were good, he had no way of being certain of their intentions. Were they demons, or angels? Were they denizens of Heaven or Hell? Were they simply the souls of the dead, neither bad nor good, but like the rest of humanity, somewhere in between?

He had no way of knowing for sure. But he did know they wanted him, very badly. Not his body, but his essence. Everything that made him Clark Kent, deep down. They wanted to free his soul from his body. They yearned for his essence.

And his essence yearned toward them, too. It always had. Perhaps it was just the natural pull of a soul toward whatever awaited it after death. Perhaps it was those glimpses he'd caught of a brighter, more beautiful world. Or perhaps it was just ordinary curiosity.

Regardless of the reason, now that she was gone, he had no reason to stay upon this dull earth any longer.

They surrounded him, jostling and crowding. He let them push him down onto the ground, allowed them to feed on him, let them rip into him. The soft brush of feathers gave way to the agonizing sensation of talons tearing into him, piercing their way into the depths of him, yanking his soul from his body in sharp, excruciating tugs.

It was agony, and at the same time it was rapture. He sobbed with pain and pleasure, but made no move to fight them.

There were too many of them. He couldn't draw a breath. He was smothering, suffocating under their weight. Panic rose in his chest, but he pushed it back.

It's the only way, he reminded himself. The only way to get back to her.

His eyes opened, and he stared into the sky, seeing a faint golden glow in the east. Dawn was breaking, and soon they'd fade away.

He wondered if they'd take him with them.

They seemed determined not to leave him behind. Their efforts grew stronger and more frantic. At last there was a terrible ripping sensation, a shattering burst of agony like nothing he'd ever known before. A final wail of pain rose from his throat, wavering in the still night for a long moment.

And then they were bearing him up, soaring upward with him, and the light shone ahead of him, diamond-brilliant and gloriously beautiful. Not the light of dawn, but the unearthly, lovely light he'd sensed long years ago, and longed for.

The pain was gone, and all he felt was a profound happiness. He knew he'd left his body behind on the cold earth, an empty, useless husk that he no longer needed. The breath of dawn would blow over his vacant body, sprawled on top of her grave.

He rose upward, surrounded by a cloud of dazzling white entities. He could see them now, could see their glory and their beauty and their inhuman purity. They were like nothing he'd ever seen before, and he knew of no words that could describe them. And still he had no idea what they were.

But whatever they were, he was one of them now.

On first glance, they were all exactly alike... and yet, he realized, they weren't. Flying beside him was one he recognized.

Glowing and opalescent, it bore no resemblance to the Chloe he'd known on Earth, and yet he knew without question that it was her. It wasn't the way she looked. It was the way she felt. Her essence was undeniably Chloe.

At the knowledge that he'd found his way back to her, an all-consuming peace filled him. He had no idea where he was going, or what they were, but the questions no longer concerned him.

Whether they were angels, demons, or spirits didn't matter... because she was one of them.

He rose with the cloud of beings, and let them carry him into the light of a new world.

-The End-

Rule Them With Strength

Clark angst, futurefic
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

"Make the world a safer place, Clark."

Those were the last words she ever uttered. She'd been shot by a mugger, desperate to get a few dollars to fuel his drug habit, and I hadn't been able to get there in time to stop the bullet. I flew her to the hospital, but by the time we arrived, she was dead.

When they told me she was gone, everything inside me shattered into shards of ice. Numb, still covered in her blood, I went outside and flew in random circles for a while. Eventually I landed on top of the Daily Planet building and looked over the city I loved.

I'd been the protector of Metropolis for ten years, but what I was doing wasn't working. Sure, crime rates had lowered. But what did that matter, when people couldn't even venture out onto the street without getting shot?

I looked down at my blood-stained hands, and remembered her last words: Make the world a safer place.

And I knew I had to do more.

*****

It slowly became obvious to me that relying on the court system to deal with criminals wasn't working. Too many times, I caught people in the act of some heinous crime, and yet their cases were thrown out on minor technicalities. Even when they were convicted, all too often they were released after just a few years, going right back to a life of crime.

If I was going to ever make the world safe, I realized, I couldn't rely on the courts to help me.

I began placing every dangerous criminal I caught into the Phantom Zone. Murderers, rapists, drug dealers, abusers-- every last one of them went into the Zone. It had been my father's method of dealing with criminals, and if it was good enough for my father, I thought, it was good enough for me. I could no longer bear to take the chance that a murderer might be set loose on a technicality, or released once he'd served a few years.

I had to act, or more innocent lives would be lost.

Due process, I began to understand, was a meaningless concept, an archaic notion that only benefitted criminals. For that mater, the entire slow, meandering, hopelessly muddled American court system was meaningless. I saw far more than humans did, understood more, and therefore I could ethically act as judge and jury.

In fact, I recognized, it was actually unethical of me to stand aside and let them suffer, when I could fix so many of their problems single-handedly.

People weren't happy about my new crime-fighting program. There were a lot of angry editorials in the Daily Planet about due process and the rule of law, editorials deriding Superman as a dangerous vigilante. When I, in my Clark Kent persona, tried to sway public opinion by writing articles defending Superman's new methods, I ran afoul of my editor and was fired.

I didn't really care all that much. I'd been struggling against the truth of who I was for a long time. I'd been raised by humans, and as an adult, I'd wanted nothing more than to live among humans as one of them. But I no longer had an anchor to the human race, and it began to dawn on me that there was no real point in living among them.

No matter how much I pretended, I wasn't one of them, and never could be.

A voice from the distant past began to echo in my head: On this third planet from this star Sol, you will be a god among men. They are a flawed race. Rule them with strength, my son. That is where your greatness lies.

I'd fought against those words a long, long time, but I slowly began to realize my father had been right. They were a flawed race, and I was their only hope.

I remembered my other father's words, too. Clark Kent, you're here to be a force for good, not a force of evil.

Everything I was doing, I thought, was for the good of the planet. Humans might not fully understand that, but I was convinced of it. And I had a perspective on the world that no human could. No matter how they fought against me, I knew that what I was doing wasn't evil.

I was a force for good, just as Jonathan Kent had told me, long, long ago.

Make the world a safer place, Clark. She'd asked me to do that, but I'd been trapped in archaic, human ways of thinking, and I hadn't yet accomplished it. Innocent people were still dying.

I realized more drastic measures were necessary.

*****

It took a few years for me to realize that it made no sense to put criminals into the Phantom Zone, where they could possibly escape. The death penalty was a far more sensible solution, because it took the criminals off the streets forever. It was efficient, practical, and sensible. And the death penalty had long been a recognized part of most human justice systems, so it wasn't as if humans should be opposed to it.

Somewhere deep down, I had the niggling concern that she wouldn't have approved of the death penalty being administered without trials and judges and juries and all those human notions of justice. But I pushed that concern aside. Because as much as I'd loved her, she'd only been a human, and she'd seen the world in the human way.

I saw the world so much more clearly than any human ever could, and at last, I saw plainly what must be done. And steeling myself, I did it.

Over the course of a day, I went through the world's prisons and exterminated every convicted violent criminal on the planet.

The public outcry when I had started putting criminals into the Phantom Zone was nothing as to the outcry that arose now. People were angry and afraid. Afraid of me. Which was ridiculous, since I was only trying to protect them. It wasn't as if the ordinary citizen had anything to fear from me.

Americans in particular were outraged. They admitted their criminal justice system was flawed, yet they clung to it, useless though it was. Even Metropolis turned on me, its people booing and hissing when they caught a glimpse of me flying overhead.

Their rejection hurt a little. But I couldn't let them continue to muddle on without help, so I continued on.

I executed all the criminals I'd placed into the Phantom Zone, to ensure that none of them could ever escape and hurt anyone. And then I continued to patrol the streets relentlessly, executing anyone I caught in the midst of a violent crime. Not just murder, but rape and assault as well.

Despite the angry editorials in the papers, the worldwide murder rate fell to zero within a year.

I'd done what she wanted me to do. I'd made the world a safer place.

*****

The violent crime epidemic taken care of, I finally had time to turn my attention to other matters. She'd been killed by an addict, so the drug trade was of major concern to me. Many of the drug dealers had been executed in what the newspapers had referred to as "the Purge," but I took care of those that hadn't, and executed the hopeless addicts as well. I used my heat vision to destroy all drug crops worldwide, and destroyed every facility that created drugs.

That problem solved, I began to realize how many people were starving, due to the cruelty of others, and the callousness of governments. I started toppling the worst regimes, and replacing them with men and women who would listen to my advice. I removed American politicians I disagreed with as well, and when the people tried to elect politicians with the very same erroneous viewpoints, I saw to it that the elections simply didn't happen.

Anyone I removed from office was given the death penalty, of course. But there was no outcry in the papers this time, because I'd made it clear to the media that they were no longer to propagate the outdated, foolish ideas of justice and due process that had once held sway in the Western world. Headlines in the Daily Planet and the New York Times praised me and my actions, calling me a savior.

Sometimes I worried that in influencing political matters, I'd gone too far, but my father's words echoed in my head, reassuring me. You will be a god among men. They are a flawed race. Rule them with strength, my son.

And I remembered my other father's voice, reassuring me: Clark Kent, you're here to be a force for good, not a force of evil.

They'd both been right. I was all that was standing between the world and chaos. It wasn't evil for me to protect humans, or to serve them.

In fact, it was my duty. It was up to me to save humanity.

My next job was to remove all weapons of destruction from the planet. I removed nuclear missiles, biological weapons, and conventional weapons, destroying them or taking them far into space, where they could never hurt anyone again. Then I dismantled every branch of every armed force in the world. The men and women who stood against me were summarily executed.

Before long, Earth was a planet of peace. I floated far up in the sky and looked over what I'd wrought with satisfaction, and something close to joy.

I'd finally accomplished what she wanted. The innocent were safe at last.

*****

Years slid by, and to my sorrow, I began to recognize that no one on the planet was innocent. There were far fewer people on the planet now, yet no matter how much I tried to keep them out of disputes, they quarreled and fought and battled. No matter how evenly I tried to distribute the resources, they hoarded and stole and cheated one another.

I began to realize the world wouldn't be safe until I'd managed to purify the human heart.

I had no choice but to police them closely. Anger, pettiness, jealousy-- every negative, destructive action was met with the ultimate punishment.

And yet the more of them I executed, the more the rest fought, both against me and among themselves.

The human heart, I realized sadly, could never be purified. No matter how much I tried to make the world safe, it could never be safe as long as humans lived on it.

There was only one possible solution.

*****

The world is a beautiful place now. Quiet, free of strife and discord and hunger. I fly over it, marveling at the peace and tranquility and beauty of it. It's like Eden, sparkling and lovely and new. I feel like God, staring down from heaven at the work of his hands, and pronouncing it good.

After all these years, I've finally accomplished what she wanted. After all these years, I've achieved what I was destined to do, what I was sent to this planet to accomplish. At long last, I've made the world a safer place.

It's really too bad I'm the only person left to appreciate it.

-The End-

At Last

Clark futurefic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Screencap from KEakaCK.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kent. But you're dying."

The doctor looked at the man in front of him with compassion and admiration. Clark Kent, he knew, was Superman. He'd once hidden his identity from the world, but the truth had come out two hundred years ago. Now everyone in the solar system knew that Clark Kent was an alien who'd spent half a millennium working to protect humanity.

The doctor also knew that Kent had outlived a long succession of wives, and that he'd never had children. Right now, he recalled, Kent was widowed again, with no one to help support him through the grimmest moment of his long, long life. He was entirely alone as he truly faced his own mortality for the first time.

Kent frowned, his dark brows drawing down. He still looked as young and vital as ever, but the doctor knew he wouldn't continue to look that way much longer. "Are you sure, Doctor?"

The doctor sighed, looking over the test results one more time, even though he'd looked at them so many times he had all but memorized them. "Yes," he said sorrowfully. He couldn't imagine how shocked Kent must be, after all these years of thinking he was immortal. "I'm sure."

He grieved for Kent, but he grieved for the rest of the world as well. They'd all grown to think Kent was eternal. They'd grown to think of him as something permanent, like the mountains and the oceans. The doctor somehow couldn't quite imagine a world without Superman.

But he, and everyone else, would see such a world, very soon.

Kent looked at him for a long moment through solemn green eyes, looking every bit as serious as any man who had just been told he had a month to live.

And then, to the doctor's immense surprise, Kent smiled a wide, brilliant smile, his eyes shining with joy.

"At last," he said. "Thank God."

-The End-

Cat's in the Cradle

Clark/Chloe/child futurefic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
The music is "Cat's in the Cradle," by Harry Chapin.
Screencap by SVfan.

My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way

"Shhhh. Mommy needs some sleep."

Clark paced around the kitchen of the old farmhouse, holding his so-called bundle of joy in one arm and holding a bottle of milk in his other hand. The alleged bundle of joy looked at him, turning red and opening his mouth in what Clark recognized as preparation for howling. God knew he'd seen enough howling over the past few days to recognize the expression.

In hopes of preempting the terrible noises that the kid was capable of producing, he stuck the bottle's nipple into the open mouth. The baby looked briefly puzzled, then closed his tiny mouth around the nipple and began sucking.

The look of red-faced rage faded, and an expression of bliss took its place as the baby's eyelids slowly drifted shut, concealing his brilliant eyes.

Those eyes, Clark thought. The baby's eyes had caused something of a minor sensation at the hospital. Caucasian babies apparently were usually born with slate-blue eyes, no matter what color their eyes would turn later. But Clark and Chloe's baby had been born with bright green eyes.

Which wasn't truly surprising, since Gabriel Kent was only half human. Still, it would have made things simpler if the baby hadn't come into the world announcing, Look at me! I'm different!

Then again, Clark realized things were never going to be simple, not really. His baby was half Kryptonian, and his genetic differences were bound to manifest itself somehow. But Clark was going to do his best to make sure those differences never caused his son problems.

"I'll take care of you," he promised softly. "No matter what, I'll take care of you."

The baby's eyelids flickered open, and he looked back at Clark through brilliant green eyes, his gaze strangely trusting.

Then he slowly drifted off into a contented sleep, cradled in his father's arm.

*****

But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away

Working two jobs sucked, especially when you were a father.

Clark Kent strained fiercely, every muscle in his body taut. A huge passenger jet had suddenly developed massive engine problems over Metropolis, and plunged toward the city. Clark was doing his best to catch the plane, to prevent it from causing a horrific disaster.

But damn, the thing was big.

He thought of his son and Chloe, somewhere far below, and the thought spurred him to try even harder. He managed to dig his fingers into the metal and get a grip on the plane's nose, and slowly, very slowly, he began to stop the plane's out-of-control descent.

Once he had the airplane under control, he towed it to Metropolis International Airport and set it down gently, then flew toward home, his bright red cape flowing behind him. It was Saturday, and over the course of the last five days he'd put in fifty hours at his job with the Daily Planet, not to mention a whole lot of extra time as a superhero.

He'd planned to take today off, just to hang out with his wife and baby. But he'd heard the radio chatter about the jet, heard the panicked screams of the passengers. What could he do but try to avert a disaster?

Now that the crisis was past, though, all he wanted was to spend time with his family. It sometimes seemed like he never got to see his own child. Gabriel was eleven months old now, and Clark could hardly remember the last time he'd seen the boy awake. Most of the time he just tiptoed into the nursery at the very end of the day and stood there for a long time, watching his son sleep peacefully in his crib. And that wasn't fair to either Gabriel or Chloe.

Somehow, he had to do better.

He pulled a small, five-sided crystal out of a hidden pocket in his costume. Kara had given it to Chloe right after Gabriel was born, and Chloe had pressed it into Clark's hand , insisting he keep it with him. To remind you of what you love most, she'd said. It was essentially a digital camera frame, albeit a very high-tech, alien one, and it activated at his touch, flashing images of his son, and of Chloe.

He looked at the pictures for a moment, smiling, then put it back in his pocket and arrowed home.

"Oh, hi," Chloe said, looking up with a bright smile as he walked through the front door of their apartment, wearing jeans, a Daily Planet t-shirt, and dark-framed glasses perched on his nose. "Look at this!"

Clark looked, and saw his son tottering unsteadily toward Chloe's outstretched hands, his two teeth showing in a broad smile that reflected Chloe's.

Clark smiled too, but his smile wasn't nearly as happy. Because his son had taken his first step.

And he hadn't been there to see it.

*****

And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it
And as he grew
He'd say "I'm gonna be like you, Dad
You know I'm gonna be like you."

"Look what I can do, Daddy! Look at me!"

"Uh-huh," Clark answered absently, typing frantically. He'd been late on way too many deadlines this week, and Perry was riding his ass hard. He really needed to get this article handed in, before he got fired.

He couldn't afford to get fired, damn it. They needed his job to make ends meet. Raising a kid wasn't cheap, and neither was their new house in Metropolis.

Unfortunately, Chloe was on assignment out of town, and their usual babysitter had a cold and couldn't make it. And that meant he was working from home, trying to write while keeping an eye on the animated tornado that was his son.

"Lookie, Daddy! Look!"

"Very impressive," Clark muttered, typing faster.

"I'm just like you, Daddy!"

That sentence got Clark's attention. Curious, he turned his head to the side, then yelped in shock and leapt to his feet.

Gabriel was floating in the air, close to the ceiling.

Clark's first instinct was to yell angrily, but he choked it back. His son was just doing what came naturally, after all. "Hey," he said instead, very gently. "You shouldn't be doing that, Gabe."

Gabriel beamed down at him. "You do it, Daddy."

The fact that Gabriel, at seven, had already spotted him floating, didn't make Clark happy. He bit his lip, then answered honestly.

"Yeah, I do. But most people can't. So it's not something we can do where people will see us, okay, buddy?"

"I'm not doin' it where people can see me," Gabe answered. "Just you."

"Okay, Gabe. That's great. Can you come down now?"

Clark waited beneath, in case Gabriel fell. But Gabriel drifted down and stood smiling, with an aren't-you-proud-of-me expression on his face. Clark hesitated, then reached out and lifted the boy into his arms.

"You really are something," he said, smiling at his son. "You know that?"

"I've been doing it for a week now." Gabriel grinned back at him. "I'm just like you, Daddy."

Clark wasn't sure he wanted Gabe to be just like him. He looked at his desk, at his half-completed work, and thought of the fact that he'd been too busy lately to notice Gabe practicing floating. He should have noticed, but he hadn't. He'd just been too wrapped up in work-- both saving-the-world work, and the more mundane variety-- to pay attention.

Somehow, he needed to do better.

*****

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home, Dad? I don't know when
But we'll get together then, son
You know we'll have a good time then.

"I'll be home for dinner as soon as I can."

Clark spoke into a cell phone. He didn't need it to hear Chloe's responses, but she couldn't hear him without it, since she didn't have superhearing.

"It's already past eight," she answered, sounding chipper enough. She was used to him not showing up for dinner by now, and she understood his need to help people, in a way few other women could have. "I'm going to be putting Gabriel down for bed soon."

"I'm sorry." Clark uttered a sigh, so deep it caused the American flag on top of the LexCorp building to ripple wildly. "I really wanted to be there for dinner, but this big crowd down on the street looks like it's going to riot any minute..."

"Yeah, I get it. I do look at CNN, you know. Don't worry about it. What you do is important, Clark. Gabriel and I understand."

He knew Chloe understood, but he wasn't so sure about Gabe. The kid was only eight, after all, and having Superman for a dad couldn't be easy. He worried constantly that Gabriel would grow up to resent his all-too-frequent absences.

"Let me talk to him," he said.

A moment later, the cheerful voice of his son spoke in his ear. Gabe had inherited Chloe's happy disposition, thank God, rather than Clark's tendency to mope.

"Hey, Dad. When are you coming home?"

"Soon, kiddo. Soon. But maybe not before bedtime. Listen, if I don't see you before bed... I love you."

"Yeah," Gabe answered. "Me too."

The crowd below began to surge, and the American flag rippled again as Clark sighed. "I have to go now, Gabe."

"See you tomorrow, Dad."

I hope so, Clark thought. Aloud, he said, "Yeah, buddy. I'll see you tomorrow."

He shut the phone and dove for the crowd, intent on saving lives. But part of him was thinking about his son, too. He really wished he'd been there to tuck Gabriel in tonight. Gabriel deserved his attention. Gabriel didn't deserve to be an afterthought.

Somehow, he needed to do better.

*****

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw?", I said "Not today,
I got a lot to do," He said, "That's okay,"
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him."
"This football belonged to your grandfather."

"Wow." Gabe regarded the football with as much awe as if it were a holy relic. "He was the one that won the state championship two years in a row, right?"

"That's right." Clark grinned at his son, strangely touched by the sight of his son holding a ball that had once belonged to Jonathan Kent. "Take good care of it."

"I will," Gabe promised earnestly. He looked up at Clark. "Will you show me how to throw it, Dad?"

Clark hesitated. "I'd like to," he said at last, "but I kind of have to go out..."

"And fly patrol. Right. I know."

Clark sighed. He wasn't thrilled that a ten-year-old knew so much about who he was and what he did, but once Gabe had developed superhearing-- a whole hell of a lot earlier than Clark had-- keeping secrets from him had become impossible.

On the up side, Gabe seemed able to keep the family secrets to himself. Like his dad before him, the kid was the Fort Knox of secrets.

"I'm sorry," he said, reaching out and rumpling his son's hair. "Honest, I am. But I've been writing like a crazy man all week, and I haven't had much of a chance to keep an eye on things..."

"It's okay, Dad. Don't worry about it."

Clark wrapped his arms around his son. Gabe hugged him back briefly, then pulled away with a real-men-don't-hug expression, and grinned at him.

"See you later, Dad."

Clark watched his son walk off, tossing the football and whistling, and he sighed.

Later, he told himself. No matter what emergencies arose, he'd make sure he got home in time to toss the ball with his son this afternoon.

*****

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home, Dad? I don't know when,
But we'll get together then, son
You know we'll have a good time then.
Clark crept into his son's room late that evening. He could hear the soft, buzzing sound of Gabe snoring. He made his way across the room, avoiding the toys scattered like boobytraps on the floor, and stood staring down at his son.

"I'm sorry," he said, very softly. "I tried to get home earlier. I really did. But there were just too many emergencies for me to deal with."

Gabe didn't stir. He only snored, and his face looked peaceful and happy.

Clark bent over to kiss his forehead, and as he did, he noticed the boy was holding the football he'd given him earlier in the afternoon, clutching it to his chest the way he'd clutched a stuffed bear when he was younger.

His eyes stung with tears, and he kissed his son.

"I'll do better," he promised softly. "Somehow, I'll do better."

****

Well, he came home from college just the other day
So much like a man I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head and said with a smile
"What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys
See you later, can I have them please?"

"Gabriel!"

Clark thew his arms around his son. The kid was taller than he was now, a fact that shocked Clark every time he noticed it. His son had been taller than he was since his fourteenth birthday, and yet Clark still couldn't get used to the idea that the child that he'd once been able to hold cradled in his arm was now bigger and heavier than he was.

"Dad," Gabe said, hugging him back. "Where's Mom?"

"Working. But she'll be home soon. We weren't expecting you quite this soon."

"Yeah. I decided to run from the airport."

"Gabe."

"Oh, come on, Dad. You do it all the time. You always have. It's stupid to call a taxi, or to have you guys pick me up, when I can get here in like two seconds. Cars are a stupid waste of my time. For that matter, it's stupid for me to waste money on an airplane ticket when I can just fly home."

"Protective coloration," Clark said. "Fawcett City's a hell of a long way from here, Gabe. If you just appear in Metropolis without ever buying plane tickets, people are going to notice, sooner or later."

"Yeah, I guess. Still, it's stupid."

Clark nodded. It wasn't easy being an alien, and he understood that as well as anyone. But he also understood the need for flying under the radar, both literally and figuratively.

"Come on," he said. "Grab something out of the fridge and have a seat. Your mom will be home soon. Let's talk."

"Actually..." His son looked embarrassed. "I was kind of hoping I could borrow the car keys."

Clark quirked an eyebrow. "Weren't you just saying that cars were useless, and a waste of your time?"

"Well, for me, yeah. But there's this girl..."

Clark felt his eyebrows draw down. "You just got home. Just now. Are you telling me you want to go out on a date?"

"Well..." His son looked at the floor and shuffled his feet, in a way that reminded Clark strongly of himself when he was younger. "I haven't seen her in a couple of months, Dad. She doesn't know about... well, she doesn't know, so I can't just show up all the time. She'll suspect if I do, and I'm not quite ready for her to know. But I really missed her."

Clark blew out his breath in a sigh. He understood, more than he wanted to. He'd been a teenager once, too.

"Okay," he said, tossing Gabe his keys. The kid caught them deftly, grinning. "Have fun. But get your ass back over here before dinner, or your mom will have your head on a platter."

"I will," Gabe promised.

He turned around and whooshed out of sight. Clark watched his son disappear, and sighed. He'd really hoped to have a few moments alone with his only child, to catch up.

Maybe later, he thought hopefully.

*****

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home, son? I don't know when,
But we'll get together then, Dad
You know we'll have a good time then

Late that night, Clark crept into Gabe's room, just like he used to when his son was little. Gabriel was sprawled out on the bed, looking much too big for it, his arms and legs spread out in all directions. But his face looked peaceful and happy, as if he were happy to be home.

Clark wondered if he was dreaming about his girlfriend. Gabe had been invited for dinner at the young lady's house, and when he'd called apologetically, Clark and Chloe had both told him to stay. He hadn't come back into the house until after Clark and Chloe had gone to bed.

Gabe was a big boy now, so Clark tried not to worry about what his son might have been doing all evening. He'd almost rather it was misbehavior with a girl than Gabe sneaking out into the city to help people, or use his powers somehow. But he was concerned that it might be exactly that.

Fawcett City had always been under the protection of Captain Marvel, but about the same time Gabriel had started going to the university there, a new hero had showed up. The media called him Silver Angel, and when Clark read the reports, he couldn't help noticing that the Silver Angel seemed to have a lot of powers in common with Gabriel Kent.

Clark wasn't sure if he should be worried, or proud. Maybe, he thought, it was okay to feel a little of both.

He looked down on his son's sleeping form, and his heart melted, exactly the way it had when he'd looked at Gabe as an infant. He loved this kid, a hell of a lot. He only wished they were able to spend more time together.

Tomorrow, he told himself. He'll be home tomorrow, and the next day, too. We'll do better. Somehow, we'll do better.

He bent and kissed his son on the forehead, then quietly tiptoed from the dark room.

*****

I've long since retired, my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind,"
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad
It's been sure nice talking to you."
"I've been seeing you in the paper, Gabe."

On the other end of the line, Gabriel sounded out of breath. "Yeah, I've been busy," he agreed. "The insurance job keeps me busy enough, and when you add in the whole Silver Angel thing, well... I hardly get a chance to sleep nowadays."

"You have to sleep, son." Clark spoke gently. "You have to make time for yourself, and your family."

"Don't worry about it, Dad. Maddie understands."

"Yeah, Maddie understands. Of course she does, or you wouldn't have married her. But what about your kids?"

"They may not understand yet, Dad. But they will. I did, after all."

"I guess you did, kind of." Clark closed his eyes and sighed, blowing papers around the living room. "Still, it's awful hard for kids to grow up without their dad around, Gabe."

"Yeah. I know that, trust me. But other people need me, Dad. I can't just ignore them."

"I understand that," Clark answered with another sigh. He opened his eyes and looked at his empty house. Chloe was out working on a story-- because she didn't understand the meaning of the word "retirement," and insisted on turning in an article on a freelance basis at least once a week. But he could relate to that, because he was a workaholic too, and although he was "retired" from the Daily Planet, he hadn't retired as Superman. He probably never would.

But he wasn't working today, and the house was quiet. Too quiet. Suddenly he missed Gabe so much it hurt.

"Hey," he said. "Want to get together for lunch?"

It seemed like an easy enough thing to accomplish. He was still quite capable of superspeed, even though he'd lost a tick or two over the years. And Gabe was almost as fast as he'd been in his youth. Even though Gabe lived in Fawcett City, there was no reason they couldn't get together more frequently than they did.

"I wish I could," Gabe said with a sigh. "But the kids have a touch of the flu, and I have some policies to review, and then I really need to go out and fly patrol this afternoon..."

"Maybe later this week, then. You could come to Metropolis, and we could do lunch, maybe hang out a little..."

"Maybe. I'll see if I can find the time. Don't worry, Dad. We'll get together soon."

Clark sighed. He couldn't think of the last time he and Gabe had really sat down and talked. Quick phone calls and reading about his son's exploits in the paper weren't adequate substitutes for really sitting down and having a conversation.

"Yeah," he echoed. "Soon."

"Yeah, Dad. Soon. Because you're right. We need to do better. Somehow, we need to do better."

The familiar phrase coming out of his son's mouth made Clark's eyes sting. He blinked hard, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

"I love you, Gabriel."

"Yeah, Dad. I love you too."

*****

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me

Clark sighed as he closed the phone. He sat there for a few moments, in his too-quiet house, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out the little crystal.

It had an apparently unlimited memory, and he'd loaded it with thousands of pictures of his family over the years. He glanced through them now, seeing Gabe as a chubby baby, Gabe as a gangling, awkward teenager, Gabe beaming with pride when he graduated college.

He began looking through more recent photos, pictures he'd downloaded from the internet of Gabriel in his Silver Angel costume. Pictures of Gabe saving people. Pictures of Gabriel saving the world.

But far too few pictures of Gabe with his own kids. And damn few pictures of himself and Gabe together.

He paused on a picture of Gabe in his Silver Angel costume, a photo that showed the Silver Angel catching a truck in midair, saving a crowd of frightened people who would otherwise have been killed. Pride and sorrow tangled together inside his chest.

Gabriel, he thought slowly, had grown up just like him.

And for the life of him, he couldn't figure out if that was a bad thing, or a good thing.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home, son? I don't know when,
But we'll get together then, Dad
You know we'll have a good time then.

-The End-

Waiting

Shelby, Clark, Chloe
Futurefic angst
Rating: PG
Warning: Major character death
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

"Doggy!"

It was relentless. It was unstoppable. It was a lot like The Girl when she'd had too much caffeine, perky and cheerful and never turning aside for anything.

It flung itself onto my back, grabbed my ears, and yanked hard.

"Doggy!"

I thumped my tail, managing to wince only a very little bit. I was an old dog, but I'd gotten what I'd most wanted-- a human puppy to play with. And I was happy about it. Really.

I just wished it wasn't so determined to rip my ears off.

The Girl swooped down and grabbed Pup before it managed to pry off more than two handfuls of fur. "Hey," she said, giving me a sympathetic pat in passing. "Take it easy, okay? Be gentle with Shelby. Gentle."

Pup squealed happily, and I didn't need a translator to tell me what it was saying: Gentle? Never heard of that concept, Mom, sorry.

I heaved a deep sigh. I'd been playing with Pup all morning, and I was tired, very tired. The smart thing to do would be to get up and head for the porch, where Pup wasn't allowed to follow. But I was getting old, and I needed a nap, and I was just too exhausted even to get up and clatter my way across the kitchen.

The Girl put Pup down, and it toddled right back toward me, a small but destructive force on a mission. It wanted my ears, and it wasn't going to give up till it got them.

I decided it was time to pull out the big guns. I lifted my head and gazed at The Girl with big, sad, imploring eyes.

Save me. Please.

She took the hint. "Come on," she said, swooping up Pup again, so that it squealed and giggled. "Let's let Shelby get some rest."

A few moments later I heard her switch the picture box on, and the musical opening to a show Pup adored began to play. I dropped my head back on the floor, secure in the knowledge that I would be allowed to rest for a while.

All I wanted to do right now was to sleep. There had been a time when I could play all day, when I could run after balls flung by The Boy and never want to quit, but that time was far in the past. I just didn't have the energy I'd once possessed.

Exhausted from my morning of playing with Pup, I closed my eyes and fell into a restless sleep.

I understood dimly that I was a very old dog. I spent as much time playing with Pup as I could, but the truth was that the time I was able to spend romping with Pup grew shorter and shorter every day. And as happy as I was with The Boy, The Girl, and Pup, I found myself dreaming more and more often about people I hadn't seen in a long time.

In particular, I often found myself dreaming about The Man.

I'd always liked The Man a lot, and had never been quite certain what happened to him. He'd been there one day, and then the next day he simply... wasn't. But I was starting to think that perhaps, like me, time had just run out on him.

And then... what had happened to him, exactly?

I had absolutely no idea. I had no way of guessing what happened to people when they went away, or to dogs, for that matter. All I knew was that The Man was gone. Not just gone like The Woman, who sometimes returned for visits, but gone, unable to ever come back.

And somehow I knew that one day, quite soon, I'd be gone too.

I sighed and muttered in my sleep, thinking worriedly about Pup. Who would protect Pup when I wasn't there any longer? Who would protect The Home? How could The Girl and The Boy manage without me?

These were questions I couldn't answer, and they weighed heavily on me. Every day they grew heavier and heavier, pressing down on my old body until I felt like I was being crushed under their weight...

I woke up with a whimper. The Boy was patting my head, looking down at me with worried eyes. The Boy was still my favorite human in the world, the human I loved even more than Pup, and I was grateful to see him. He wasn't usually around the house this time of day, and I wondered if he'd come home early, or if he'd heard me whimpering from a distance, and come from wherever he was to see me.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that The Boy was patting my head and talking to me, just as he always did. The strange pain that had awakened me didn't ebb, but I found myself able to bear it, because The Boy was there.

"What's wrong, boy?" he said gently.

I tried to lift my head, and couldn't. Some strange force was crushing my chest, holding me to the ground. It felt like the time I'd been caught and pinned under a falling tree branch. It hurt.

"Good dog," he said, sounding oddly choked. His hand rubbed my ears. "Good dog, Shelby."

I struggled as hard as I could, and finally managed to turn my head. I licked his hand.

And then I closed my eyes, and darkness rolled over me.

A moment later, the pain and the pressure went away, as well as the gentle, reassuring sound of his voice. It all faded away, and there was nothing but a quiet, peaceful dark.

I rested.

It felt good to rest. I don't know how long I lay there, motionless and peaceful. But at last I opened my eyes, and found myself in a bright place.

It wasn't The Home. It looked like The Home, but it wasn't. It didn't smell right. My nose didn't recognize the place at all. Warily, I got to my feet and stood sniffing the air. There was a sweetness to the air, like a spring breeze, but the scent was somehow more vivid and brilliant than anything I'd ever smelled before.

Slowly it dawned on me that my pain was gone. My weariness was gone. In fact, I felt... young. The stiffness in my joints had disappeared, and I felt exuberant youth rushing through me.

I stood there sniffing, searching for a hint of The Boy, The Girl, or Pup, but they were gone.

I was alone in this place.

At least I thought I was alone. But then the light grew brighter, and someone walked toward me. The light became so bright I couldn't look at it. But I sniffed the air, and knew at once who it was.

It was The Man.

Delighted, I bounded forward, jumped up, and put my front paws on his chest, just as I used to do. He rumpled my ears affectionately.

"Hey there, Shelby," he said, in the drawling voice I'd missed so much. My tail lashed of its own accord as he spoke. "How have you been, old boy?"

Where have you been all this time? I've missed you. I wagged my tail harder, trying to tell him everything. I still live in The Home, with The Boy and The Girl and their pup. I take care of them all. You'd be proud of me.

"You're a good dog," he said, patting my head. "You've always been a good dog, Shelby. You belong here."

I didn't want to be here. I wanted to go home. I dropped to all fours and stood watching him hopefully, waiting for him to tell me how to get back to The Home, and my people. But he only smiled, a little sadly.

"You can't go back, you know."

I stood staring up at him, and my tail began to droop. Whatever I'd expected him to say, that wasn't it. I had to go back. I had to. My people needed me.

But he snapped his fingers and whistled to me, just as he used to do. "Come on, old boy," he said. "Come with me."

I knew The Man wouldn't encourage me to go with him if there was any chance of getting back to my family. Slowly it dawned on me that whatever had happened to me, wherever I was... The Boy and his family couldn't follow.

"Come on," he said softly, and turned, walking toward the light.

I lowered my head in sorrow, and followed, my tail low and still.

"It's all right," he said, his voice gentle and understanding. "You'll see them again, trust me."

But they need me.

"Don't worry," he said, glancing back over his shoulder at the darkness. "They'll be here someday."

Are you sure?

He looked down at me and smiled, then dropped his hand onto my head.

"They'll come, I promise," he told me, solemnly but with great assurance. "Because eventually, everyone comes this way."

At his reassuring words, my tail waved, and I trailed after him with more confidence. I still wished I could be there to protect my family, but clearly that wasn't an option. And I wasn't so worried any more. I was with The Man again, and I couldn't help but be pleased to see him.

And sooner or later, if The Man was right, I'd see The Boy and my family again. That was enough for me. It would have to be enough.

I followed The Man into the light, my tail wagging expectantly.

When The Boy and The Girl and Pup came... I'd be waiting for them.

-The End-