go by ch18

*

His visits began six weeks ago.

A walk at midnight and through the morning hours. Clark once patrolled these streets, but he wasn't looking for crime anymore. He was looking for a woman. Cutting across the rail road tracks, down by the bay and to where the bus system no longer operated, he walked to a dusty movie house built in a time when the latest picture starred Cary Grant. Its marquee had burned out decades before the ticket booth was emptied out. A large cob web spanned corner to corner as if trapping whatever spirits that lingered behind. There were no film advertisements, no sign of life.  There was only a business card stuck on glass door that read,


Zatanna Zatara
Mistress of Magic


It was the same card that was passed to him in a midtown bar one night. Since becoming human,  Clark enjoyed the taste of alcohol and its newly acquired effects. A frequent night owl, he roamed the streets and alleyways  for something other than pale moonlight. He couldn't sleep. Or wouldn't, he wasn't sure. There was a lingering hope that he would find what he was looking for, a magical answer to the problems that kept him in the dark. And he found her, or she had found him. Zatanna lured him to this place, his head heavy with amber fog  of Metropolis' night life. . She was dark haired, a dark beauty. So different from all he was familiar to. Her seductive voice tempted Clark's desperation,the lift of her syllables picking up his spirit and hope. He remembered how she persuaded him with mystics towards his misery. He remembered because she offered it so casually, as if she would have offered it to anyone  who paid a her price.

He did not care. He had paid her anything.

Clark pushed open the glass door and walked down a dark hallway towards the auditorium. The trail of incense was enough to know that she was there. Zatanna sat very still in the center of the abandoned theater,   its acoustics covered by candle light. She smiled at him much like a cat did a canary, "Back so soon?"

Clark, sleep deprived and ill humored, sat down across from her on a oriental carpet. The floor was stripped of its seats and fixtures, their ghostly indentures the only remainder of their memory now. They reminded Clark of an absent audience, of the people who were once present in his life,and then gone.

A streamer of incense flowed between them. The wick burned slowly.

He began removing his boots and socks and crossed his legs. Zatanna stopped him, removing one of the candles in her path, "Clark, this makes twice in one week. I do enjoy the business but I need to remind you that I cannot promise you what you are seeking."

"It worked the first time." Clark responded, almost angrily.

"Magic," Zatanna said evenly, "works in mysterious ways."

Clark shut his eyes. It was the last theory he had held onto, clung to. Zatanna's hypnotic spells sending his conscious to a different place, plane, existence. "It felt real, the first time."

"Of course," she said, gently touching his temples with her fingers, "It is real, in that, everything you see is an illusion."

Clark opened his eyes. "That makes no sense."

"As I said the first night," Her lips descended towards his, and spoke very softly, "Illusion is the  deception in  your perception. To open your mind, your eyes, seeing all that  other eyes see,  is true reality."

Clark closed his eyes again, and drifted off to her chants. They were strange words, unrecognizable and certainly not Kryptonian. But they had a power over him, a way to pull him into calm. It was almost like drifting asleep, a beginning to a dream.


The last wave across shore
and  sound of it retreating back.


Clark awoke to snow.

He only knew by the touch of cold flakes against his skin. He would not open his eyes, prolonging his wish to hear her voice before he opened them to see her face. But like all the other failed attempts, he heard nothing except his own breath. He opened his eyes once he was certain that this too, was not the same place.

He found himself sprawled on top a blanket of snow. It was night, and somewhere outside his own house. He recognized the smell of the farm, even in the cold. It had been a long time since it had smelled that way, Like most dreams, he could not pinpoint the exact time he was in. There was a fog to his mind, as if his experience within Zatanna's spell had him as intoxicated as the night they met.

"Son."

Clark looked over him, finding his world upside down. "Dad?"

Jonathan Kent smiled in his crooked way, "It's rude to keep company waiting."

Clark up righted himself and looked his father up and down. Of all the scenarios, he had never expected this one to come true. Clark embraced his father  long enough for a fine dust of white coated his dark hair.

"What's wrong, Son?" Jonathan's voice muffled against Clark's shoulder.

The smile that crested felt more like a terrible cry. "Nothing. I've just missed you."

Jonathan patted his son's back with firm assertion, "I haven't gone anywhere. What's the matter, what's happened?"

Clark shook his head, and buried his tears, "I'm just glad you're home."

They stood in the middle of the black of night, Kansas snow quilting the ground. Fine flurries hinted to an existence above them, but Clark could not tell where the sky ended and heaven began. Instead of stars, there was the gradual fall of white , so soft and gentle as it trickled down. And the longer he looked, the more white seemed to fall.

It was all simple, and clear, and real.

"Clark," his father drawled, "let's go inside."  Over Jonathan's shoulder appeared the farm house. Clark happily agreed, and began their walk to it.

The walk was simple and quiet, just like the snow. Clark looked over to his father several times and then to the unfamiliar cars parked next to their trucks. "We have company?"

"Yes," Jonathan smiled, "We have you been?" He rubbed the top of Clark's hair, laughing as he did,  "It's like you're somewhere else today. First with strange behavior and now you forgetting your old man's birthday..."

Clark stopped, "You're birthday?" he frowned, remembering how his father had died the day before they had ever held the party.... Wherever he was, this was not the same place.

All the places Zatanna had sent him, they had been from the past, but this... this was a different past.

His world turned over again. "Dad, this isn't real."

Jonathan recognized the fear that shook Clark's voice, but it was clear to him that he did not understand it.

Clark backed away from him, the snow slowly coming to rest. "This isn't real."

"Clark," Jonathan frowned, "everyone is waiting for us. Where are you going?"

He fell backwards, reassuming his first position when he had awoken.

He awoke, again.

The smell of incense burning out any trace of his dream.

Zatanna across from him, studying him. "Did you see what you wished?"

Clark opened his eyes and stared across. "I saw my father."

*

On the walk home, Clark's mind was elsewhere, his body on autopilot along a path of its well practiced memory. Without his father's truck, the walk from Metropolis to Smallville lasted a better part of a day. He started in the  early morning after his departure from the rail road tracks that led to the back parts of the country road which led to the farm.

 He was mid way through his journey, the sun hitting his back. It was around four in the afternoon, Clark not stopping for a single break.  He didn't stop to think about one, or rather, couldn't stop thinking. His mind was elsewhere, distances away. Times, and years in the past and teetering on the possibility of the future. Calculating the possibilities, along with the doubtful impossibilities.

In his mind, he was with his father, in that place. He was with his best friend Pete Ross, out shooting hoops after school. He was with his mentor Virgil Swann, and then with a long forgotten friend, Lex Luthor.  He found Jonn Jonz in the Phantom Zone, reliving the last words transpiring between them and the forewarning they had meant.  And like a continuous circle, all of these places in his life looped around like a mirror ball. The cascading glints of light showering a group of young faces. He saw Chloe's.

The dull ache in his chest bloomed into a dark red blotch against his shirt.

A sleek colored SUV pulled next to him and slowed, a window rolling down to reveal an attractive woman behind dark glasses. "Clark Kent?"

He looked to the side, but kept walking. He didn't know who she was, or didn't care. He had thinking to do, his spirit enlivened  for once.

"Clark, it is you, isn't it?"

He looked down at himself, and then stopped. By the time he had noticed, she had already stopped the car and hopped out in front of him. She removed her glasses. "Lana?"

"Clark." She took his shoulder and then his hand, "Are you alright, what happened to you?"

He closed his eyes, and then reopened them when he deduced that he was indeed, awake. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's nothing."

"You're bleeding." Lana clarified, "Let me drive you to a doctor."

Clark refused to move, "I'm fine. It's... nothing."

Her eyes locked up like they always had after Clark covered a  secret, usual peppy expression souring  the moment after.


After much persistence, he finally agreed to her driving him home. In the car, she asked periphery, perfunctory questions, always with the open ended note of amiable conversation. Clark  seemed to enjoy her company too, although,  he could tell why he wasn't too surprised to see her. Like the looping path he'd been on  for months, seeing Lana Lang here of all times fit like a cog in a wheel.
Clark turned to her, "So, what brings you back home? My mom told me you had moved to Star City."

"My parents," Lana smiled politely, "They're still in here. I visit them every year. Whitney too. "

Clark nodded and then felt ashamed that he had forgotten long enough to even make the mistake to ask. Lana's parent's were killed in the first meteor shower; something that Clark couldn't reverse, nor fix. After all that had occurred, even erasing the effects of the meteor infected wouldn't fix this. He could never bring Lana's parents back. His cheeks became inflamed. He was uncomfortable sitting in the same car. He looked at himself in her side mirror, as his unshaven chin and soiled shirt. He looked, homeless.

 Clark turned to her, remembering how he used to be fond for her. But she was so far away now, had been for sometime. Both in thought, and in nature. Seeing her now, grown up and independent from everything he knew of her brought a since of gladness and sadness to his life. "Lana, I'm sorry."

"For?"

"You're parents."

Again with the polite smile, Lana shrugged and congenially said, "We've both lost someone we loved, Clark. You know as well as I do, it's hard to cope with losing someone so close. But, you become stronger once you learn to be brave."

*

On the Kent's driveway, Martha greeted the arrival of her son and the woman who had brought him home. Clark continued inside the house and changed shirts, washed his face and opened the drawer where his father kept his old pair of clippers.

While Martha served Lana coffee in the kitchen, Clark stood in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror  began wiping the wounds on his chest with a towel. They weeped like a fresh scab, and never healed beyond the first stages of scabbing. These were the souvenirs of the Phantom Zone, a part of him scarred forever. In a way, Clark hoped they would never heal. It was the only part of him that remained Kryptonian.

Picking a fresh shirt, Clark joined the women downstairs   for coffee and conversation before it was time for Lana to leave.

It was near dark, when Clark turned to his mother and kissed his mother on the cheek.

"What was that for?" Martha asked, humbled and happy.

Clark held onto her firmly, "I love you."

Martha's eyes moistened as they both turned to go inside, "You know, I wanted to ask you before, but with Lana here I didn't feel comfortable."

Clark knew she was referring to and grumbled. He had told her how he had gotten the wounds, but she always worried.

 Martha reaimed her question, "There was something else. Something strange. You'd think I'm silly when I say it, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Especially with an old acquaintance like Lana Lang showing up all these years."

Clark held open the screen door for his mother as she climbed the porch stairs. "What is it?"

She took up the coffee mugs left on the kitchen bar and placed them in the sink, "Well, when you walked in, I could have sworn I smelled your father's cologne on you."

Clark had been in the living room sitting on the couch, but with the odd statement made, he leaned forward and turned towards the kitchen, "Dad didn't wear cologne."

"No," Martha nodded sadly, creating sudds on a dish sponge, "he didn't. I had bought him a bottle for his birthday that last  year.. . I never gave it to him."

Clark stood very slowly.

"See?" Martha turned around, dish gloves on her hands, "Silly, isn't it? I just thought it was strange. I remembered being in the store with him one day and he picked it out. Said it was the kind his own father used to wear. I went out the very next day and bought it. The very last bottle. They discontinued it since..."

Martha watched as Clark raced upstairs and then returned, but with a shirt in his hands. It was bloody and stained, but Clark held it up to her like a precious object. She didn't have to touch it to know. She could smell the fragrance of her husband, and the cold, fateful day in January.