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Sol.
Kal flew to that green field early in the morning. He caught the sunrise once in the air, and again when his toes finally found their way between blades of grass. It looked like candy, the color of it. The feel of it was similar, but when he opened his eyes, it was just that same, bright green.
Kal stood barefoot, letting little ants pass over his feet, letting a butterfly land on his nose, until the sun peaked above him. He stared right at it, challenging its beaming smile. How dare it smile at him who suffered more than anyone deserved to. Did he deserve it? He sure thought so.
You told me once that we were stuck here.
When his feet left the ground again, a blur of red and blue shot into the sky. The world dropped out from below him, he was weightless. And yet, he didn’t feel free. Gravity still had a hold on him, even though he was pushing in the opposite direction.
If I jump high enough, do you think…
Oh, it was so cold. He wanted to turn back to that field of green. Green. Brainiac. Where he could close his eyes and the green would bleed into red and he’d be home again. And he’d throw down his homework and run through the fields with Krypto until he couldn’t. Which wouldn’t take long, he was still the weakest boy in the Redlands. It wasn’t like that here. Oh, here, on this planet that demanded so much of him, yet never appreciated his sacrifices. This planet that grabbed him and wrung him like a sopping wet rag.
I could fly us into that big, yellow sun?
If- when he reached the sun, it’d be warm, he liked to imagine. He liked to imagine a lot. It’d get warmer, and warmer, until everything else burned away. The residual marks left on his skin. Brainiac’s clammy fingers. The echoes of all who had wronged him until only he remained. And then, pure, he’d burn too. But it wouldn’t hurt. It’d just be warm, warmth all over. And then… and then he’d be shaken awake by his mom, he had fallen asleep in class again. He’d be young again, young and untouched by the evils of the world. He’d still hurt, when he’d be penalized for defying the Science League, but he longed for that hurt, the kind that, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t matter. Because he’d be nothing, and he was content with being nothing.
Kal could feel salt on his lips. The air was crisp up here, like an antarctic morning. His fingers tingled, and he squeezed them, released them, a couple of times to bring a little feeling back. He hadn’t been cold in a while, properly cold, such a sensation brought him both solace and dread. Even Brainiac’s lab was hot when the Kryptonite bore down on him. Those two weeks, he was sitting in front of a bonfire, half burning, half freezing. No, he hadn’t felt this since… Rao, since the trip to Earth, this terrible, beautiful place where he was marooned.
The world was still. For a moment, the wind vanished. His toes danced on an invisible floor, or maybe it was stairs. He looked up to the sun. The sun, ever so out of reach. Kal extended his arms out as far as he could anyway. No, he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t find his breath. He could hear a dog barking, Krypto, in the distance. Welcoming him home. He pushed forward through the grass, thicker than he remembered. Stiffer, stronger than he remembered, holding him back like a barbed wire fence.
There were weights on his legs. Weights on his back, on his neck, weights of lead, dragging him back towards the Earth. He tried to fight them, he was so close, he just needed to free himself from the confines of the planet’s gravity, those claws that had their bone-deep grip on him still. If only his cape wasn’t so heavy. If only he weren’t so heavy. He prayed for a second wind as he fought to pull from his body energy he didn’t have.
The invisible floor, or maybe it was stairs, gave out.
He closed his eyes, his head falling away from the sun.
He surrendered to the weights.
It felt good, the floating sensation in his stomach. Like when his father tossed him in the air, spun him around as a child. He knew he’d catch him. He longed to return to a time where he could trust, without it resulting in pain. Because here, he couldn’t give, feel, anything without being punished for it. It wouldn’t hurt, when he hit the ground. He wouldn’t feel the impact at all. He’d be falling, falling, and he’d land in his parents’ arms. They’d hug him and rock him and tell him that dinner is ready, and they’d bring him back inside his home.
The wind turned his hair into tiny whips, lashing at his cheeks. How grand he must look, his cape trailing behind him like a tattered flag. He wanted to explode right there, in a brilliant fireball that’d shatter windows miles away, let someone know how he felt about the life he was given. Kryptonite guilt tore at his heart as he pictured Sol, what he’d say about his whole plan, which sounded more stupid the more he thought about it.
Kal-El, you know as well as I that you won’t make it out there.
Shut up, Sol.
Kal-El, I’ve carried you nine million light-years. My systems are too weak to support this voyage.
If Sol were here, Kal wouldn’t be in this position. Sol would have stopped him. And he still did, sometimes, when he scratched at himself, the cape would reach out with dusty tendrils and hold him back. Kal didn’t know whether it was muscle memory or some program that hadn’t been erased. Kal didn’t want to admit to himself that he didn’t want an answer. He liked to think Sol was still around, buried deep in code in a place he hadn’t thought of looking yet. Oh, how he longed to listen to that little part of him that still believed that Sol wasn’t really gone.
They’d spend the day sitting in the field, distracting him from doing something he’d regret. Sol would tell him stories about Earth and he’d lie there, still, in the grass. Not on Krypton, but the planet he could finally call his home. At least, a part of him could. The rest still longed for the Redlands, the place he returned when he slept, when he wasn’t being pursued by whoever wanted to use him next. If only he could take one last breath of that air. He caught traces of it during his travels, it made him stop and inhale until his nose stung. Was it the landscape he craved, or what he associated with it? Things were simpler then. He was aware, but not like now. He was loved for who he was. Not that fickle mask of his, the “S” on his chest that he flashed like gun, the god that people saw before the rest of him.
He wanted to stay in that image forever. He knew he couldn’t, that he was being unreasonable, that he still had work to do. When the wind would eventually quiet, when he eventually stops falling, the sounds of Earth will return, and he’d have to rush back into the fray. Always more work to do. Rao, how he wanted it all to end. His mind crawled back to the vision of him, one more time, his parents, Krypto, the Redlands all around. It would wait for him. Until he was ready, truly ready, to join them.
Not yet.
His eyes shot open, his body stopping in its tracks. Reaching below him, it didn’t take long for the blades of grass to itch his hands. He was only inches from the ground. Kal slowly lowered his back to the ground, shivering from the anticipation. He could have died. Rao, he couldn’t die, he couldn’t!
“I’m still stuck here!” His voice, a mix of triumph and rage boomed out across the field. “Why can’t you just let me go?” Kal reached up to yank at his hair, but a thin tendril of dust snaked up his arm and wrapped itself around his index finger. “You’re not even alive. Why are you stopping me?” He couldn’t bring his hand down just yet, so he settled for running his fingers through his hair. When Sol- when his cape decided he wasn’t a threat to himself, it released him. Good old cape. Good old Sol, doing what he did best. In some messed up way, it was like he was never gone.
But he was. He was, that’s what prompted this mess in the first place. Sol was gone and Kal had to pick up the pieces all by himself and he was so scared and so alone and
Kal took a deep breath and lowered his hand. He sighed. Took another breath and his body unraveled on the exhale. Strange sounds were jerked from his throat, something deep in his heart making his body spasm and curl up like a dying bug. “Oh, Rao,” Kal moaned. “Rao, Sol, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He yelled into the sky in Kryptonese or English or just sounds, howling his frustration at whatever, whoever was listening. He was sorry for trying to escape, for even thinking that he needed an escape. Krypton was… terrible. He didn’t want to return to a place like that, Earth was on its way to becoming that. At least here, he actually had agency.
Earth was his second chance, his chance to make things right before this world descended down the same path as his home planet. Krypton, Sol, would have died for nothing if he… No, he wasn’t even going to think it. It was a horrible thing that he’d rather purge from his mind than have to wallow on for another second. How could he? How dare he?
Kal opened his ears and the world became more than him and the grass tickling him through his suit. He could hear the family of rabbits bounding across the other side of the field, unaware of his presence. The bees all around him, searching for nectar. The fish in a nearby river, the bubbling of that river, the grains of sand on the shore, shaken free by the water passing by. And further, miles away, a boy running barefoot through grass. Kal took another deep breath. His lungs jerked and his heart fluttered but the smell of wet dirt filled his nose, and that dulled those sensations just a little. That made him feel a little bit better.
“Calvin!” Someone, mother, called. “Caaal-vin! Dinner!” He ran his fingers through the soft carpet, focusing in on the mother’s exasperated nose whistles. Calvin’s huffs and puffs as he leaped into the air, pushing off the soaked ground and splashing down in a fit of laughter.
And a smaller, lighter voice called back. “Oh-kay!”