WHO: Clark Kent WHEN: Now WHERE: The upside down SUMMARY:A hopeless existence WARNINGS: Hopelessness, thoughts of death and the end.
This was exactly how Clark's nightmares used to be, when he was still figuring out who he was - Kal-el, Clark Kent, Superman, all three together. This was the end of humanity doomsday scenario that he saw played on the inside of his eyelids over and over again. Except this time, right now, he was certain he wasn't dreaming. He also wasn't certain this wasn't his new reality - alive, alone, trudging along an Earth where everyone else had given up on hope and died. Everyone and everything had left him behind.
He was alone.
Just as he always knew he would be one day. He didn't expect it today. Out of nowhere.
His mind was dark as he made his way through this shadow of the house he'd grown up in, where echoes of his parents barely existed. He kept thinking he saw something out of the corner of his eye but when he'd turn, nothing was there. He sat heavily on the steps of the front porch for a long moment, his face in his hands. Far in the future, he always knew there would be a moment when he would outlive everyone else in his life. But he always hoped it wouldn't mean the end of humanity at the same time.
It was hard for him to think of this as some kind of scenario that these scientists were putting him through. Hard because this was a very real fear that he had always had. The numbness was real. The inability to connect with these echoes of his own past. The deserted world that had fallen into such nihilism that all that was left were the remnants of vice and sin.
He didn't know how long he sat there, shoulders slumped, fingers pressed into his eyes so he didn't have to see the stark landscape laid out before him. An hour, a day, a week, a year? Did it matter?
Finally, Clark stood up and began walking. Away from the farmhouse, with its flickering lights and useless memories. Away from the ground that should have held growth and sustenance. Away from the abandoned buildings that Clark wouldn't have set foot in during his present and certainly didn't want to now. How could humanity have come so far only to regress into this? Why did the best of humanity defile themselves and destroy their world? When they could have anything they put their mind to, all they wanted was this?
He couldn't save everyone. He had learned that time and again. Even as he realized that while he couldn't save everyone, he could still save someone. Here though, there was no one left to save. He didn't think he could even save himself from whatever hellscape he was trapped in. One that he knew he wouldn't wake up from like he had before.
But there must, he thought, must be some way to get back to where he'd been. Back to Lois and Diana and Bruce and the others. If they were still alive. If they hadn't been removed or killed or -
Clark stopped at a crossroads, the farmhouse at his back, disparate, dilapidated buildings to his left and right, an endless nothingness in front of him. His feet wouldn't leave the ground. He couldn't see farther than an above average human. He didn't feel his own strength coursing through his muscles. The absence of his powers wasn't something Clark would ever get used to, nor would he understand it either. Had he come all this way, lived this long, so long that he had finally become human, something he had wanted for so desperately and yet found consistently out of reach.
Now it had come for him, and everything around him was dead.
What kept him going was thoughts of his mother. Even if she wasn't in this experiment with him (and thank god for that), she had always been part of the best of him. She had taught him more about what was good in humanity than anything he could have ever done. And Lois, who allowed him to be himself without putting on any kind of show, without judging him, without looking at him as though he were an alien (which he was). These two women, along with Diana (and yes, even Bruce, in his own way), were the best of humanity. They were who Clark still needed to save, even if they were gone, too.
Clark chose to turn left, not for any reason other than it gave him a 50-50 chance of - of what? - of making his way back to them.