(THE “S” STANDS FOR HOPE) CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN: CLARK

Clark had heard a lot of opinions about Superman.

They came from everywhere; news anchors who spoke with careful neutrality while picking apart his actions like they were policy decisions; commentators arguing over him like he was an idea instead of a person; and people on the street who stopped and looked up when he passed overhead, their expressions filled with something that ranged from awe to expectation to quiet, unspoken dependence.

Superman was supposed to be perfect.

No one always said it directly, but it was there in everything else, in the way people talked about him, and the way they expected him to act. He was supposed to know exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and he was supposed to do it without hesitation, without doubt, and without anger.

Especially without anger.

Clark understood why.

Anger, in someone like him, wasn’t just another feeling. It was a potential catastrophe waiting to happen. People didn’t fear his strength when he smiled. They feared what it might look like if he ever stopped.

So Superman didn’t get to be angry. He didn’t get to be uncertain, or frustrated, or tired in the way other people were allowed to be. Those things existed, of course. He felt all of them. He would always feel them. But they had to be contained, kept far enough back that they couldn’t affect the world around him.

Because the world could not afford for him to slip.

Clark had known that for a long time.

Still, there were moments where the understanding sat uncomfortably in his chest, like something that didn’t quite fit no matter how many times he tried to settle it into place.

Moments like this one.

Max Anders stood across from him on that stage, speaking with easy confidence, like a man who believed he understood exactly what he was dealing with.

Clark listened.

He always did.

It was part of the job, and part of the choice he had made. You listened, even when someone was twisting things, even when their intentions were wrong, and even when every instinct told him that stopping them quickly would be easier.

Especially then.

Because power without restraint was not something he could ever allow himself to become.

That line had been drawn for him long before he ever put on the suit.

He could still remember the conviction in his pa’s voice, the calm way he had spoken about responsibility, about choice, and about what it meant to have the ability to change the world and deciding, every single day, to do so carefully.

It wasn't because he had to, but because it was right.

Clark had held onto that, and had built himself around it. But listening to Max, listening to the way he framed things, the way he twisted Clark’s presence into something invasive, something domineering, something that stole agency rather than protected it… It stirred something that Clark usually kept buried.

Never doubt—he knew who he was—but frustration. A persistent kind that pressed against the edges of his control. Because there was a part of him that understood, in a distant and uncomfortable way, how someone could see him like that.

From a certain perspective, Max wasn’t entirely wrong.

Clark could go anywhere. He could do almost anything. He operated outside the systems that governed everyone else, aware that they simply did not apply to him in the same way. And no matter how careful he was, no matter how much he tried to step lightly, his presence changed things.

It always would.

That was what it meant to be Superman.

It wasn't being the strongest, or the fastest, or even the smartest. It was the influence. The way the world changed in response to him, sometimes without him even realizing it.

Max saw that and called it control.

Clark saw it and called it responsibility.

The difference between those two perspectives felt smaller in that moment than it usually did.

And that… that was where the anger came from. A slow, steady pressure that built beneath the surface, born from the knowledge that no matter what he did, no matter how carefully he acted, there would always be people who saw him as something he was not.

Something he refused to be.

Clark breathed in slowly before letting it out just as slowly.

The city rushed back into focus around him: the city, alive with movement and noise; the distant sirens; the electricity running through the buildings; and the countless heartbeats, each one small and fragile and equally as important.

He held onto that.

The people.

Because at the end of it all, that was why he was here. Winning debates and proving points to men like Max Anders didn’t matter.

Helping people did.

But that didn’t mean he could ignore what Max was doing, or what he stood for. It didn’t mean walking away and hoping things sorted themselves out.

There were lines.

Clark believed in giving people the chance to choose better, but he also believed in stepping in when those choices began to hurt others. The hard part was knowing exactly where that line was. And whether crossing it, even for the right reasons, brought him any closer to what Max was accusing him of being.

He looked at Max again, at the confidence, at the carefully constructed image of control, and underneath it… something else.

Clark couldn’t have explained it if asked. It wasn’t something he heard or saw in any obvious way. It was just a feeling, a subtle undercurrent in the man’s words and bearing, that something didn’t quite align with the image he was presenting.

He had seen it before, in different forms. People who built themselves into something stronger because they had to. People who needed to be seen a certain way. People trying to prove something, even if they couldn’t quite name what.

Clark understood that more than he liked to admit.

The difference was in what they chose to do with it.

what you did with it.

He closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, the frustration was still there. The anger too. But it was contained.

Because it had to be. Because that was the choice he made, over and over again.

Even now.

The decision came quickly after that.

This wasn’t the place for this conversation. Too many variables to keep in mind. Too many eyes. Too many ways for things to go wrong.

If Max wanted to see what was behind the image, then Clark would let him.

Just not here.

The world blurred around them as Clark moved.

The stage, the city, and even the entire continent fell away in less than a second, replaced by distance and silence and open space where the only thing that remained was the two of them and the implications of just what had been done.

Clark set him down carefully, stepped back, and for a moment, he simply stood there, the wind moving slightly around him, the vastness of the horizon stretching out uninterrupted in every direction.

Superman was supposed to be perfect.

Clark knew better.

He was just someone who chose, every day, to try.

“There,” he said quietly.

And then he waited.