The cameras were already waiting when Clark stepped to the podium.
Their red recording lights stared back at him from every angle, unblinking and sterile, reflected in the polished black of the room and the gleam of the Justice Lords crest mounted behind him. The set had been chosen, as these things always were, for its message: order, authority, inevitability. Every line was clean. Every light deliberate. Every microphone positioned to carry his voice without distortion to every home, every schoolroom, every office and surveillance monitor across the country. He stood before it all in full uniform, shoulders squared, cape falling in a heavy line behind him, one hand resting lightly at either side of the podium.
He looked composed. Entirely himself. There was no outward sign of strain, no visible clue that this was anything but another formal address. If anything, that made the moment stranger. Clark looked exactly as he always did when delivering policy to the public: composed, grave, immaculately self-possessed. But when he lifted his gaze to the camera, there was a gravity in him that sat a fraction deeper than usual, something quieter than tension and heavier than anger. He did not look like a man learning these truths for the first time. He looked like a man who had already known them, long enough for them to settle somewhere far below the surface, and was now being made to speak them without disguise.
“There will be no misunderstanding me." His voice was even, measured, carrying cleanly through the microphones.
“For the past two years, Lois Lane, my wife, was held under house arrest by my order." There was the slightest pause before my wife. Not enough to read as hesitation. Only enough to suggest the words had weight. "Though it was framed as temporary, that confinement continued far beyond any honest use of the word. She was not permitted to leave the premises, receive unauthorized visitors, or make phone calls. The liberties afforded to her were narrow, selective, and granted at my discretion rather than recognized as rights. I allowed certain banned books to remain in her possession, not as an act of justice, but as a concession meant to make captivity more tolerable.” His mouth set a touch harder then, though the cadence of his speech never broke. “That is the truth of it. I deprived her of her freedom and called it necessity.”
He did not look away. The words left him with the same grave clarity he might have used to announce a new law or the end of a war.
“I also betrayed my marriage during that time." The words were no louder than the ones before, and yet they seemed to settle more heavily in the room.
“While Lois remained confined under my authority, I chose to pursue an intimate relationship with ... Lord Batman... a married man. A man who was meant to stand beside me among the Justice Lords in the governance of this world. Whatever explanations I might once have given for that choice, whether distance, conflict, estrangement, or rationalization, none alter what it was. It was infidelity. It was a violation of the vows I had made, carried out while my wife remained under restrictions I imposed and enforced. This period ended two months ago, having lasted for a year and a half.” His fingers tightened, just once, against the podium’s edge before easing again. “There is no language precise enough to make that hypocrisy into anything smaller than it is.”
Still he stood as though carved there, broad hands quiet against the podium’s edges, expression controlled down to the last detail. Somewhere behind the cameras, technicians and officials kept their silence. No one interrupted. No one could.
“As for my son, the world deserves plain speech there as well." This time the pause came before my son, nearly imperceptible, but there.
“Jon was subjected to training under my authority that placed upon him burdens no child should have been made to bear. I told myself it was preparation. I told myself it was duty, inheritance, necessity- the making of a successor capable of preserving order after me. But there were times that training crossed into cruelty. Times it became less about guidance and more about pressure, fear, and the shaping of a child through force rather than care. A father should not make his son into a weapon and call it love. An authority figure should not endanger a child and call it part of their legacy. What was done in the name of preparing him to take my place came too close to abuse to be dressed up by any more convenient word.”
The room remained deathly still. Clark’s voice did not rise, yet each sentence seemed to land heavier than the one before it, stripped of any comfort of euphemism. No one behind the cameras moved. Even the room seemed to know better than to interrupt.
“Effective immediately, reading, writing, and critical thinking will be fully restored to the school curriculum.
“Effective immediately, freedom of the press and investigative journalism will also be reinstated. No reporter, editor, writer, or citizen journalist is to be threatened with death, mutilation, disappearance, lobotomy, or any other form of state violence for pursuing the truth, publishing the truth, or questioning those in power. Journalism is not treason because it is inconvenient. Inquiry is not rebellion because it is unwelcome. A society that fears scrutiny so deeply it maims those who provide it does not deserve to call itself orderly.”
Only then did he pause. Just enough for the silence to settle around the statement like dust after a collapse. And for the first time, the weight of that plainness seemed to rest visibly on him. Not as shame put on display, but as the solemn acknowledgment of a man who could no longer shelter himself inside his own language.
When he spoke again, the cadence remained measured, but something quieter sat beneath it now. No softness, not quite remorse, but the bare acknowledgment of a truth too large to sidestep.
“These statements are not rumor, distortion, or rebel propaganda. They are facts. I did these things. I authorized them. I justified them.”
His eyes stayed fixed on the camera.
“And now they have been said plainly.”
The broadcast did not end immediately. For one lingering beat, Clark remained there under the lights, every inch still the image of authority, even with the confession hanging in the air between him and the world. Then the feed cut.
