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if the world was ending (you'd come over, right?)

summary: at the end of the world, you and clark come back together.

word count: 10k

author's note: this is my 300th fic and i really wanted it to be something cool. but i've also never written action or anything this long so. i'm pretty nervous. exes to lovers, world ending stakes, light angst, happy ending. i hope you enjoy it <3

Clark wakes before his alarm.

No crash. No scream. No call for help.

Just a shift–subtle, low in his chest.

Like everything had tilted an inch to the left.

He sits up in bed, his heart beginning to gallop under his skin, lets the quiet settle around him. The Metropolis skyline outside his apartment window is hazy with early morning light, but the air…

It isn’t right.

He steps barefoot onto the balcony, still in his too soft, old pajama pants. He closes his eyes.

A shiver runs through him, goosebumps pricking his flesh.

The air tastes different. On the wind, there’s a scorched taste–metallic, sharp, like the edge of a scream never let out.

The last time he felt something like this, he was thirteen, waking from a nightmare about a planet he didn’t know he came from yet.

Under the pulse of the city, the ground hums. To anyone else, imperceptible. To him–impossible to ignore.

Something is changing.

And not in a way the planet can afford.

x

By the time he’s showered, he’s sure–something is coming. He can feel it in his gut. He gets dressed, pulls on a faded flannel, and starts the coffee maker.

The mug he grabs is chipped–blue ceramic, gifted to him by someone who once laughed at him when he burned his tongue. He doesn’t throw it away. He never has.

He runs a hand through his curls, nervous. He paces a bit, listens to the machine gurgle as it starts to make his coffee.

He's too nervous, energy buzzing through him like a live wire.

He can’t stand still.

Clark pauses, lingers in front of his refrigerator. Still, despite everything, there’s a picture of the two of you stuck to it with a little heart magnet. He had taken down the rest of them–though he hadn’t wanted to. But, he couldn’t hide them all.

You were gone, sure, but, Clark still needed you around. Somehow. He shook off the feeling–the ghost.

By the time his coffee had spilled from the machine into his cup, the message came through. A coded ping in his phone, short and sharp.

“UN emergency advisory. Science and defense brief. Summit at 1100. Attendance required.”

He exhales through his nose.

It was the kind of meeting that didn’t happen unless someone was scared.

Deep down, somewhere between his ribs, he thinks they have a reason to be.

He pours his coffee from the mug into a thermos, hardly tastes it, now. Already, his mind is cycling through possibilities: tectonic stress, magnetic fluctuations, solar interference.

But, he didn’t need to guess.

Whatever it was–he’d know soon enough.

By the time he lands in Geneva, the sky is pale and glassy, clouds like puffs of cotton candy. The air still holds that charge.

Like the whole planet is holding its breath.

Clark does it too, like he can’t help it.

x

The conference center is quiet in that purposeful way–like the walls have seen too many hurried meetings, chaotic discussions–and had stopped trying to pretend to be something it wasn’t. The room is too cold, air conditioner on full blast. The air is sterile, clean.

Empty.

Security is tight. Guards mill about like ants, trying to be useful in a situation where they couldn’t possibly. They check people’s identification, try to keep things in order, Clark can tell.

Not that it really mattered. Clark without his glasses reads Superman, no matter how unequipped he feels for whatever is beginning.

His suit opened doors–whether he wanted it to or not.

He nods at guards, gives tight smiles.

In the center of the room, a general is speaking low to a group of advisors. Scientists hover over screens, murmur about seismic grids and temperature spikes in the Pacific Rim.

And then there’s you.

Impossible, gorgeous, love of his life, you.

Standing near the center table, half-turned toward a holographic display of the Earth’s crust. Your voice–soft, certain–cuts through the air.

“It’s not geological. The patterns aren’t random, and they’re not native. These readings look Kryptonian.”

Clark stops walking.

Everything in him freezes, muscles begging to turn, run away. But, he keeps walking anyway.

Doesn’t have a choice, really.

You don’t look at him as he finds a spot across the table. But you’re not surprised. He sees it in your shoulders–the way you don’t flinch.

You must’ve known he’d be here–had to have at least guessed.

Of course you did.

He wishes he’d had the same chance.

He makes his way toward the display, towards you, hands loose at his sides, fingers flexing over and over around nothing.

You still haven’t looked at him. Not really.

Voice low, he murmurs, “No one told me you were consulting on this.”

You glance at him, finally. Cool. Focused. Detached in a way that stings him, even now.

“Maybe they thought you wouldn’t come if they had.”

It lands harder than he would have expected. He blinks.

“You know that’s not true.”

You shrug. “I don’t know anything.”

You turn back to the display, nodding toward a cluster of glowing glyphs at the Earth’s core on the projection.

“The relic started waking up six months ago,” you start. “But, it wasn’t until last week that it began building. It’s tapping geothermal pressure. Drawing energy. Fast.” A beat. “There’s writing buried in the signal.”

Clark frowns. “Kryptonian?”

You nod. “Some form of it. The dialect…I’ve never seen it before. But the syntax is close enough. The structure–”

You stop. Tilt your head slightly–the way you always had when you had a new train of thought.

“You should see this.”

You pull up a layered schematic. One symbol clearly circled several times, blinking faintly.

“It’s repeated everywhere,” you say, softly. “Always alone. Like a title. Or a name. Zora.”

The glyph flickers, a sharp curl intersected by three vertical lines–like a crown tipped sideways, or a warning etched in fire. Clark doesn’t recognize it. But the sight of it makes his stomach twist like he should.

You look at him again, but it’s different this time. Quieter. Softer.

“Does it mean anything to you?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

But something about it curls behind his ribs. Like déjà vu. Like something he’d almost remembered.

He looks at the glyph again, lets his eyes unfocus just slightly, and…

There’s snow. Not real, not now–but the memory of it, hard-packed and dry under his boots, wind biting at his cheeks. He’s standing somewhere near the edge of the Fortress, watching static bleed across a half-functional console while Jor-El’s projection glitches in and out like a broken film reel. He’d spent days trying to decode symbols not meant for human minds, sifting through echoes of a world lost before he was born.

And, somewhere in that blur of data, in some forgotten strand of corrupted archives, he had seen that shape before.

He thinks.

Maybe not.

His hand twitches at his side, nerves aching to reach out to you.

He presses his palm flat to the edge of the table instead.

Next to him, you’re frowning–not at him, but at the projection, fingers hovering near the console like you’re resisting the urge to touch it. To work faster.

Clark knows that look.

He knows what it means when you press your lips together like that, when you go quiet and still and sharp behind your eyes.

You’re scared.

He’s seen you afraid before. The day Metropolis nearly fell into the sea, when alien spores cracked through the bedrock like roots made of glass. You’d been bleeding then–bottom lip split, ribs cracked, but, still, you had been trying to usher pedestrians towards ambulances, offer help where you could. But even then, you weren’t like this.

That’s what chills him.

That, and the fact that you still haven’t said his name.

It’s been eight months.

He hadn’t counted. Not on purpose. But his body had. In little ways. The twitch in his fingers whenever he walked past that bakery you used to love, the dull ache in his chest whenever he flew past the library’s rooftop where you’d once fallen asleep against him, arms curled around a folder of half-finished research.

His body had kept the calendar–marked the days in the places it hurt.

And now you were here, across from him, the same and not. No ring. No gentle touches to his arm while you talked. No small soft smile that used to curl up uninvited when you caught him looking at you.

Just cold professionalism.

Just Zora, blinking on the screen, burning a hole in the silence between you.

His hand finds the thermos on his belt. It’s still warm. He unscrews the lid, even though he doesn’t want the coffee. He drinks it anyway.

The taste brings him back to that morning, a heartbeat ago. The chipped mug. The picture on the fridge. He thinks, absurdly, of the magnet–a little plastic heart, cracked at the top. You’d found it at a street fair, once. Said it “just needed love” and insisted on using it for the most important photo: the one where you were both soaked from rain, smiling like idiots, your hands looped around his neck.

He almost threw it out, when everything fell apart. His fingers had run over the little crack, considering, then he had stuck it back to the refrigerator.

He hadn’t thrown away anything that reminded him of you. Not the things that really counted.

He wonders if you’ve kept anything.

Wonders if, buried somewhere in your overstuffed laptop case or tucked into the back of a drawer, there’s still some leftover fragment of him.

Stupidly, he wonders if you still have your ring. If you ever put it on, walk around your home, and wish he was around.

Like he does, sometimes. With his wedding band.

He wonders if you miss him.

Not Superman. Not the cape. Just…Clark.

“Does it ever say anything?” he asks, voice a little rougher than he means it to be. He nods at the glyph. “The relic. The signal. Is it speaking?”

You hesitate, and that hesitation lands harder than any answer.

“Not yet,” you say. “But it’s trying.”

He shifts closer, automatically–not enough to be inappropriate, not in this room, not now. Just enough to make it easier to read the screen, easier to see the small strain behind your eyes. The kind of closeness that once meant nothing between you.

Now, it feels like trespassing–like he doesn’t belong in your space anymore.

You don’t move away. But you don’t move toward him either.

You speak again, quieter this time. “If it’s a failsafe…if it’s something Krypton left behind…we don’t know what kind of activation protocol we’re looking at. Or what it’s waiting for.”

His mouth goes dry.

It’s not a leap, not really. There were rumors buried in the Fortress code. Defensive measures, contingency plans. Autonomous vaults. Living weapon caches.

Earth had always been a second choice. Krypton’s afterthought.

What if this relic didn’t see it that way?

What if it was waking up now because it had finally recognized something it was built to obey?

Or worse–something it was built to destroy?

He leans in a fraction more, barely audible. “Why are you really here?”

You look at him then, sharply. Not angry. Not unkind.

Just honest.

“I asked to be.” A beat. “When I saw the language, I knew I had to be.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Clark murmurs.

Your lips press together. The silence stretches. Clark watches the gears twist in your mind, watches you settle on honesty.

Then, softer, “Because if this is Kryptonian…if this is part of your legacy…I didn’t want anyone else translating it. I didn’t trust anyone else to.”

He exhales through his nose. The answer shouldn’t feel like comfort.

But it does.

It makes him feel safer. Even now.

Even after everything.

Before he can reply, the general clears his throat. The murmuring room stills. Orders begin to cascade outward in clipped tones. Delegates start moving.

You step back from the console.

So does he.

But not before one more glance between you. Not before your fingers twitch, just slightly, like maybe–for half a second–you’d almost reached for him too.

Almost.

And then you’re gone again, pulled into the tide of personnel and protocol.

Clark lingers a moment longer. Just long enough to let his fingertips brush the edge of the table where your hand had been.

Just long enough to remember what it used to feel like–before the world started cracking open beneath your feet.

Before you fell apart.

Before Zora.

Before this.

Whatever this is.

Whatever comes next.

The world keeps turning. For now. But, Clark stays in front of the screen, watching the glyph pulse.

Whatever it means–whatever is waking beneath the Earth’s crust–he knows two things for sure:

It is Kryptonian.

And it isn't going to stop.

x

The plane ride is quiet, charged with the sort of frantic energy Clark doesn’t want to touch.

You sit across from him.

The cabin is dim, overhead lights casting the only glow. It makes him feel like a kid again–a teenager, coming home late on the band bus after reporting on the football game for the school paper.

There’s something about that hazy sort of glow. It makes him feel unguarded again. Like he always was when he was with you.

He wants to reach out, touch you–maybe curl his fingers around your own. Small. Grounding.

He doesn’t.

The engines hum around him, a steady, rhythmic sound that could lull him to sleep in a different situation.

Clark steals glances at you, when he can.

When he isn’t going to get caught.

You’re the same, mostly, in all the ways that make his stomach twist, nervous butterflies come to life.

He thinks of the day you got married–how he’d known you for half a lifetime, but had still gotten nervous when he’d seen you in white.

He shakes it off. The seat belt strap digs into his neck. He looks out the window, clouds like pulled cotton. Snow comes down in spits. As they near the site, it falls thicker and thicker.

The plane lands with a start, jolts all of you forward in your seats.

The silence doesn’t break so much as shift, like something exhaling beneath the floor.

A moment later, the back hatch opens with a hiss of pressure. Cold air rolls in–sharp and metallic, edged with snow.

It's the kind that doesn’t stick, isn’t pretty. It just sweeps sideways in the dark and stings your skin like pricks of glass.

Clark stands and follows you down the ramp.

The tarmac below is glazed in a thin sheen of ice, cracked faintly where boot prints haven’t melted. Overhead, floodlights cast long shadows in pale blue. Beyond them: the vague outline of a facility tucked into a low ridge, mostly buried in snow.

Clark shivers.

He steps beside you, close enough that your coat brushes against his. Just for a second.

You don’t lean in, but you don’t move away either.

Clark doesn’t look at you. But he feels it, that hum in his nerves whenever you’re close.

The wind kicks harder across the open field. Beneath it, deeper, quieter–he feels the buzz again.

That impossible hum.

Clark can feel it in his teeth. It rattles him, shakes his insides.

He clenches his jaw.

Beside him, you seem to notice. “You okay?”

He nods, clipped, tight. “M’fine.”

He follows you across the snow-packed field, the wind biting into his cheeks. It’s colder than it should be for this time of year, even at elevation. The kind of cold that seeps under his skin and coils in his chest.

The crunch of his boots against the ice echoes too loud in the stillness. Everything feels too quiet–no birds, no engine hum behind them, just the wind and the faint crackle of something distant and wrong.

They’re high in the mountains, but the earth looks like it’s been split open and left to scar over. Wide fractures snake across the snow covered ground, some shallow, others like deep wounds in the ice. The terrain feels unhealed.

As if it remembers being torn.

Clark slows when he sees the first glyph.

Etched deep into a flat stone, half-buried under a drift, it pulses with a faint bluish light. Not bright, just enough to catch the edge of his attention. His eyes scan further, and then–he sees another. And another.

They’re everywhere.

Carved into rock faces, etched along the edges of ice sheets. Some are random, but others repeat–again and again. That same curling symbol intersected by three vertical lines. It stirs something in his memory. Something old. Forgotten.

“Do you see that?” he murmurs.

You glance over, eyes tracking the glyphs, but your brow creases. You nod. “Zora. Again.”

He stares at you, distracted. “Can you…can you hear that?”

You shake your head, a little cautious now. “Hear what?”

He doesn’t answer. The hum’s stronger now–under his feet, in his chest. Not loud, but present. A vibration that settles in his molars, tightens his jaw, sends a curl of nausea through his gut.

Whatever’s under them–it’s awake. Or waking up.

He pulls his jacket tighter around his body, protection against more than the cold.

The air has changed. It’s not just wind anymore. It feels like standing too close to a thunderstorm just before the strike.

He looks down at the repeated glyph, the curling one with the lines.

It’s not just decoration.

It’s a message. A message he has to understand.

And, quickly.

x

They’re given rooms inside the outer station–old mining housing long since converted into a scientific outpost. The sort of place designed for experiments or learning.

Not this.

The place smells like dust and heating coils and something faintly metallic. The walls hum like the relic does. Less alive, but not quite dead.

Clark drops his bag in his room but doesn’t bother unpacking. He’s back out in the corridor a minute later, drawn by the faint sound of your voice.

Just like he always was.

He finds you in one of the common rooms. The light is low, only a few lamps turned on, and the rest swallowed in shadow. Books are everywhere–half open, stacked, spilling across the table in a way that makes it clear you got frustrated trying to stay neat and gave up halfway through.

He sees your handwriting in the margins of one of the printed reports, looping and careful, a habit from before you typed faster than you wrote. He feels a strange ache in his ribs at the sight.

You don’t look up right away. You're cross-referencing something in two of the books at once, lips pressed together in that way you do when you're thinking too fast for your hands to keep up. He leans against the doorframe.

“You’ve made a mess.”

You glance over, tired, not annoyed. “It was already a mess.”

Clark steps in, picking up one of the tomes. He flips a few pages, though the text isn’t English.

He can read it anyway.

“Zora again,” he murmurs.

You nod, tapping a spot in the open journal in front of you. “It wasn’t designed to be destructive,” you say slowly. “But…its purpose–it’s warped with time. Forgotten. Abandoned. Maybe unfinished. Now…” You glance up at him. “It’s expanding.”

Clark watches you. The light catches on your skin, highlighting the redness of your eyes, the tiredness. He wonders how much sleep you’ve lost lately.

How much of that was because of this, and how much of it was because of him.

You gesture to another passage, and he sits beside you, leaning in. Your elbows brush. Neither of you pulls away.

The conversation fades, but the work continues. Books shift between hands. Notes are added, rechecked, argued. His presence beside you starts to feel familiar again–comforting, like some old rhythm he used to know by heart. He can almost forget what they’re here for, what’s growing beneath them. Almost.

When the hour turns late and the heat kicks on again with a thump, you both pull back. You rub your eyes. Clark stretches and stands.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” you say.

There’s a pause–too long, just long enough.

Loaded. With what, Clark couldn’t say.

He nods, awkward. “Yeah. Night.”

You hesitate like you might add something.

But you don’t.

You only slip out of the room.

x

He wakes to your voice at his side.

Just a whisper, “Clark.”

He jolts upright before he’s even conscious, still tangled in the blanket. For a moment, it doesn’t feel real–just a dream bleeding out of sleep. The sound of you, the urgency in it.

Like another morning, in another life.

Maybe you want breakfast.

He rubs his eyes. “What do you want, baby?” he mumbles, not meaning to say it aloud. “Waffles?”

Then he blinks. The dim shape at his side is you.

You stare at him, wide eyed. Not angry. Just surprised. A little stunned.

“Sorry,” he says, sitting up fast. “I–sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say softly.

He runs a hand through his hair. “Did you…did you need something?”

That’s when your expression sharpens. “You should see this.”

x

Outside, inky black tendrils cut through the snowy landscape. Bioluminescence glows purple on some of them. Some of them are simply plain.

“What…”

You nod. “I know.”

“What’s happening?”

You cross your arms over your chest. “I think it’s…I think it’s using the Earth. It’s draining energy from the core. Getting stronger.”

You turn towards him, body angling just so that it makes your skin touch his.

It makes him feel a bit like a time bomb–worse than the threat outside could ever do.

“And the planet–the sink holes, the glyphs on rocks…it’s like Earth is rebelling. Resisting.”

Clark doesn’t answer right away.

He watches the tendrils writhe in the distance–slow and deliberate, like they’re tasting the air. Some of them pulse with that unnatural purple glow, while others move with quiet purpose, curling around the bases of trees or sinking into the cracks in the ice.

The wind stirs, but It doesn’t carry snow this time. Just cold. Clean. Empty.

Your shoulder brushes his again. He doesn’t move away.

If he leans a little closer, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

He swallows hard, throat tight. “How long do you think it has?”

You don’t speak for a while. Then, “It’s already started.”

The words settle in his chest like weight, like frost. He thinks of Metropolis. Of Smallville. Of his Ma and Pa. Of everyone going about their lives, unaware. Of everything he’s supposed to protect–everything he might already be too late to save.

And still, what rattles him most is how calm your voice is.

Not cold. Not detached. Just…resigned. A little scared. Like you’ve been holding this truth alone for longer than you should have.

You look up at him, and your expression softens.

“I don’t think it means to hurt anyone,” you say. “But it will. If it keeps going.”

He nods, slow. It’s all he can do.

You shift beside him. Your arm still pressed lightly against his, your eyes searching his face like you’re trying to find the boy you used to trust. The man who could stop anything.

And Clark–he isn’t sure what you see.

But, he hopes you still believe in him.

Even when he doesn’t.

x

The ground pulses faintly beneath his feet.

It’s subtle–just a shimmer beneath the frost-laced stone, almost too gentle to notice. But it’s moving, alive in its own slow rhythm. Every time he tries to focus on it, the light dulls slightly, as if aware of being watched. He keeps walking anyway.

Tendrils seem to curl out of their way, make the path more plain.

The path leads them to a half exposed rise in the landscape, where the snow has melted back just enough to reveal smooth stone, carved deep with symbols. He slows as he approaches, gaze sweeping across the surface.

ZORA.

It’s carved into nearly every panel–delicate, curved strokes, some nearly worn away, others glowing faintly through thin layers of ice. It shows up in the interfaces too–hovering symbols and glyphs, flickering displays buried in cracks and walls, pulsing with dim energy.

Clark crouches, one hand hovering over one of the lit panels.

The air around it feels…hesitant. Waiting.

He presses his palm to the surface.

The light responds, but only briefly. It flashes once–sharp and cold–and then goes dim again, folding in on itself like a door closing. Not hostile, exactly. Just unreadable. Like it doesn’t know what to make of him.

He pulls back, thoughtful, watching as the glow recedes. Then he looks up.

You step forward without hesitation. Place your hand on the same spot.

The change is immediate.

The glyphs flare softly beneath your touch, spreading outward in circular ripples. The interface comes to life, casting patterns into the air–maps, perhaps. Coordinates. Threads of alien text bloom across the display, and you study them in silence, eyes narrowing.

Clark watches you quietly, not with envy, but with something closer to awe.

This place responds to you like you’ve been here before.

He half expects the door to open, invite you in, but he doesn’t interrupt.

He just stands beside you, listening to the quiet hum of the air around you and the faint, pulsing warmth that seems to radiate from the relic only when you’re near.

Whatever this is–whatever Zora means–it’s chosen you to hear it first.

And Clark, for now, is content to stand in the stillness and learn what he can.

x

The room glows low with the light of scattered lamps. It’s late. Quiet, but not still. Wind taps softly at the windows. Pages rustle. Books are stacked three and four deep across the long table. Ancient Kryptonian, early phonetic translations, renderings frozen mid-loop. It’s all there. A mess only the two of you could navigate.

Fitting, in a strange way.

You sit across from him. Elbows on the table, sleeves pushed up as you trace a repeating sequence in one of the scanned pages. Zora.

The word appears everywhere. Carved into stone, embedded in interfaces, inked in the margins of older, less stable texts. It’s starting to feel like a pattern–not a name, but a thread. A concept.

“A place?” you murmur. “Or a person. Or maybe…” You pause, frown slightly. “A return. Like a…cycle. Something coming back.”

Clark doesn’t answer right away. He’s looking at you again.

Not in the obvious way. Just quiet, steady, remembering. The slope of your shoulders in the lamplight. The way you rest your chin in your hand while you think. It’s nothing new. He’s seen it a hundred times before–late nights, early mornings, on the couch you’d picked together.

The one you’d left behind.

Zora. He mouths the word, barely audible. Tasting it.

You glance up.

He looks down.

There’s a notebook in front of him. It’s mostly empty. He hasn’t taken as many notes as you have. He hasn’t had to. He keeps rereading the same phrase anyway, turning it over in his head.

It feels like something buried in his chest. Just out of reach.

You reach for one of the books between you at the same time he does. Your fingers touch–just the barest brush–but neither of you pulls back right away.

He wonders if you can hear his heartbeat.

Your eyes meet. There’s something unspoken in the look–something worn and quiet and complicated. Not just memory. Not just distance. Not just the ache of what broke.

A rhythm. One that's still there, beneath the weight of everything else.

You turn back to the page eventually, hand retreating with a quiet sort of care. Clark shifts back in his seat and exhales through his nose, like it might settle something in his ribs.

The word shines again on the screen: Zora.

He doesn’t know what it means yet. Not really.

But in the soft space between you, he starts to wonder if it has less to do with a weapon or a warning–and more to do with something gentler.

A place.

A promise.

x

It starts like a heartbeat.

Clark’s in the secondary wing of the outpost, hunched over a console that hasn’t responded to anything in hours. The interface flickers under his hands, fussy and half broken. Static curls at the corners of the display.

Then the tremor rolls beneath his boots.

Subtle at first–like a shift in pressure. A change in the air. But then it hits again, stronger, enough to rattle the table. Enough to make him stand.

He listens.

No alarms. No warning. Just silence–and underneath it, that rising hum. Low, electric, almost imperceptible, except in the way it winds through his molars and settles in his skull like a threat he can’t name.

He glances toward the hallway.

You’re not here.

He doesn’t hesitate. He just moves.

Clark runs fast through the narrow corridors, the overhead lights flickering once–twice–as he passes under them. Somewhere deep in the structure, metal groans. A monitor screen fuzzes to static and dies. The hum is growing louder.

When he reaches the main chamber, he sees you.

You’re standing at the far end of the room, near the table you’d both claimed for your research. Papers are scattered, the datapad in your hand vibrating faintly, reacting to something neither of you triggered.

He slows only slightly as he crosses the space between you.

“You felt that?” he asks, voice low but urgent. Like he has to be sure he’s not crazy.

You nod. “It’s not seismic.”

The floor beneath you shudders again–sharp, a fault line fracture–felt more than seen.

And then it happens.

From the far wall, just beyond the sealed partition, something stirs–dark and jagged, snaking through the cracks in the metal like veins. Tendrils. Biomechanical, moving with purpose. They press against the wall like they’re listening. Or learning.

Clark steps in front of you before he can think.

Then–without warning–the hum breaks like a wave.

And a voice, not heard but delivered, fills his head.

“You are not the end we were promised, Kal-El.”

It’s not angry. It’s not kind. It just is–cold and knowing and impossibly old.

The tendrils freeze.

The hum fades–slow, reluctant, like it’s only retreating for now.

Clark doesn’t move.

You’re breathing hard behind him. The datapad screen is white with static, pulsing once every few seconds.

The quiet stretches.

Then, gently, you speak. “Clark?”

He turns, and in the glow of failing lights and paper-thin fear, all he can think is:

Please still believe in me.

Because I don’t.

Then, your voice, quiet, but sure, “I think we’re out of time.”

You look at him, and for a moment, neither of you moves. The tension is brittle–like glass pulled too thin. His eyes are sharp but unsettled, jaw tight in that way it always gets when he’s scared but trying not to be.

Then–a sound.

Low. Distant.

A grinding crunch that vibrates through the floor. Like stone shearing against metal. Or something larger than it should be shifting far too close.

You both freeze.

Then another sound, closer this time. A deep, warbling groan, like the earth trying to speak through fractured lungs.

Clark turns sharply toward the door.

“Come on.”

You run.

The hallway lights flicker as you sprint through them, datapad still clutched in your hand. The hum is rising again–not in his ears this time, but in the air itself. Everything tastes metallic. The cold bites deeper.

The moment you step outside the outpost, the sky seems to bend.

It’s not night, but the clouds have thinned into strange, high streaks. The air feels charged–like it does before a thunderstorm.

Then he sees it.

Out in the snow covered field beyond the ridge–where the initial seismic reading had first pinged on the scans–the ground is breaking open. A deep, jagged split has formed, and from it, light spills out. Not warm. Not welcoming.

Cold, blue-white, searing and rhythmic.

And the relic–if that’s what it is–is rising. Or assembling. It pulses with energy in waves, tendrils unfurling like limbs, wrapping into place with mechanical precision. Not like something waking up. Like something returning.

Clark moves beside you, breath caught tight in his throat.

From somewhere beneath it all, from no mouth and no speaker, a voice echoes again. This time, not into Clark’s mind–into the world:

Zora.

The name–half warning, half promise–reverberates through the ice.

The wind kicks up hard. The snow lifts in sheets. The ground vibrates so sharply his teeth rattle.

Clark grabs your hand.

Not because you can’t run.

Because it’s starting. And, something deep in his chest has to touch you.

Because this is the moment neither of you can turn back.

Your eyes meet for just one second.

And then the world begins to change.

x

“Clark,” you say, voice thick with desperation. “Come on. You can’t just go off half-cocked and alone.”

“I’m the only one who can.”

He weaves through the hallways, heading for the exit with missile like focus. You follow behind him, hoping to make him change his mind, he’s sure.

You catch up to him, fingers wrapping around his arm. The contact sends a jolt through him–familiar and grounding in a way he almost can’t handle, not now.

He knows what you’re doing.

You’re trying to pull him back. Make him see reason. But he can’t let himself pause for long. Not when the relic is pulsing louder by the minute–reshaping the land, shaking the earth, pulling energy from deep underground like it’s breathing for the first time.

A nearby officer steps forward, tense and weary. “Sir,” he says, voice rough, “this is…it’s a suicide run. The insertion point’s too narrow. It’s collapsing. Once you go in, that’s it.”

Clark stops and faces him. “I’m the only one who can survive the initial push. The relic…it responds to me.”

“It’s been responding to me more than you,” you snap, breath uneven. “You know it has.”

He meets your eyes–knows you’re right. He’s felt it too. The way the relic seems to pull toward you, the warmth it gives off when you’re near. It should be you going in. But if something goes wrong–if the path closes behind you–he won’t risk it.

He can’t.

Not you.

“This has to be done,” he says, quieter now. “Before it’s too late.”

The officer doesn’t argue. Just gives a short nod. “We’ll provide cover from here. But make it fast.”

Clark turns toward the exit, ready to go. The air feels thin in his lungs. His pulse is steady–but beneath that, there’s something trembling. Not fear. Not quite.

You step closer, blocking his path. Your jaw tight, your eyes still storming. “Can I speak to you alone?”

He exhales slowly, nods once.

Because even now–even when the world feels like it’s tipping toward the edge–he’d still stop for you.

Always.

Even at the end of the world.

x

He follows you out of the operations hallway, past the low hum of panicked voices and flickering monitors, until the sounds fade into a hush.

You lead him to a quiet overlook above the field, the snow reflecting a sickly light from below–where the relic pulses like a second heartbeat beneath the ice.

The cold bites at his skin. He barely notices.

You stop a few feet from the ledge. He keeps his distance at first, then closes it–just enough that your breath could reach him if you turned.

“Say what you need to say,” he murmurs.

You glance down at the shifting glow. “You’re going to go in there. Alone.”

He nods once. “I have to.”

“You always think you have to,” you say, quietly, but it cuts all the same. “Like no one else ever could.”

He swallows. “That’s not fair.”

You turn then, sharp. “Isn’t it?”

He exhales through his nose, tries to keep his voice steady. “If something goes wrong in there–if the space collapses or the relic lashes out…you don’t come back. I can’t let that happen. Not to you.”

There’s a flicker in your expression–anger, maybe, or something softer, buried deep. “That’s not your choice.”

“It is,” he says, and this time his voice breaks a little. “It always is. That’s the problem.”

He runs a hand through his hair, turns away from the relic’s glow. “You think I want this? I don’t. I never did. I didn’t ask to be Kryptonian. I didn’t ask to be some...last-hope emblem for a planet that’s already dead.”

You don’t speak. You let him go on.

“I couldn’t save Krypton. I couldn’t stop Earth from falling into this…” He trails off, chuckles bitterly. “Whatever that thing is. And I couldn’t stop you from leaving.”

The silence after that is brutal.

He looks at you again, eyes tired. “I keep thinking...if I do this right–if I fix this relic, save the world, hold the planet together with my bare hands–maybe something will feel different. Maybe it’ll feel like I’ve done enough.”

You stare at him for a moment. When you finally speak, your voice is calm. Too calm.

“You don’t owe Krypton anything.”

He flinches, barely. You step closer.

“You’re not their weapon.”

The words land like a strike. He drops his gaze.

“You’re not Krypton’s redemption, Clark.”

The air between you pulses. Not with energy, not with relic-born static–but something older. Something broken.

He’s quiet for a long time. Then, softly, “Then what am I?”

You reach out. You don’t touch him, not yet, but your hand hovers near his. Close enough he could take it if he wanted.

And, he does. Desperately.

“You’re a good man,” you say. “You’re the man who brought me tea when I was sick. Who left notes in my coat pockets in winter for me to find later. Who said I do with stars in his eyes.”

He swallows hard. You’re not done.

“You’re a survivor. You’re someone who gets up even when the world tells you not to. Who keeps trying, even when you’re tired. Especially then. And you’re the man I–” You stop yourself. Rewind. “You’re the man I believed in. Who I still believe in.”

He lets out a shaky breath, like the weight of the past months–years–finally breaks something open in his chest. His eyes are damp.

“This thing down there,” you continue, nodding toward the relic, “it’s trying to twist you into something else. Into the last son of Krypton. Into a legacy. But that’s not who you are.”

He looks at you then, eyes searching, hollowed by exhaustion and grief and guilt he’s never known how to set down.

“That’s not who I loved,” you say, quietly.

There it is.

He presses his hand over his mouth, breath catching. Not to hold back tears–he’s past that–but like he’s holding in the answer to a question you didn’t ask.

He finally speaks, voice raw. “If I don’t make it back…”

“Don’t,” you cut in, firm. “Don’t say it.”

You step in, just enough that your shoulder brushes his. The contact startles him, soft and immediate and grounding.

He leans into it.

You let him.

“I’m coming back,” he says, half to convince you, half to convince himself.

“You better, Kent.”

You glance at him, your expression still tight, still unreadable.

“I’m coming back,” he says, half to convince you, half to convince himself.

“You better, Kent.”

You glance at him, your expression still tight, still unreadable.

And for a second, he thinks that’s it. That this is where you leave him–again. That you’ll walk away and he’ll go down into the unknown with your silence hanging in the air like a verdict.

But then you move.

No warning.

No lead-in.

You grab his collar and pull him in.

The kiss lands like a punch. Desperate. Ungraceful. Your lips crash into his like you’re trying to bruise something loose in both of you. There’s nothing delicate in it. No perfect angles, no soft violin swell. It’s breathless and raw, clumsy with emotion and the taste of everything you never got to say.

He doesn’t hesitate.

He kisses you back like he’s drowning. Like you’re the only thing tethering him to the surface.

Maybe you are.

His hands come up instinctively–one curling into the back of your coat, the other splayed wide across your back. Holding you like he’ll lose you if he lets go for even a second.

Maybe he already has. Maybe this is just a dream dressed as a memory.

But it’s real enough that his knees feel unsteady.

You make a sound in the back of your throat–somewhere between a sigh and a sob–and pull back first.

He chases after the space you leave, forehead finding yours before he can stop himself.

You’re both breathless. Unspoken words coil in the cold air between you, heavy and close.

He can’t say it.

He wants to.

He wants to tell you he still loves you, always did, never stopped–not for a second. But the words lodge in his throat, strangled by the weight of what comes next.

So instead, he just stays there. Breathing against your skin. Eyes closed. Letting the moment last one second longer than it should.

When you finally pull away, you just look at him for a long moment, and in that look is everything you couldn’t fit into the kiss.

“Something to come home to,” you murmur, almost a promise. Then, “I’ll be in your ear.”

There’s no room for debate. You turn on your heel, walk away.

Somehow, though, knowing you’ll be at his back, comforts him.

He watches you go. Not because he wants to.

But because he has to.

This–you–have always been the part of him that made the fight worth it.

And now, he realizes, maybe this whole time…he wasn’t trying to save the world.

Maybe he was just trying to get back to you.

x

The wind howls high above the outpost, but down here, everything is still. Still and waiting.

Clark hovers just above the snowy ground, his cape caught in a slow, unnatural current that doesn’t match the wind. Before him, the mouth of the relic yawns open–a hole in the earth itself, rimmed with black, biomechanical tendrils that pulse with dim light.

It opens like something alive. Like something hungry.

“You seeing this?” he asks, quietly.

Your voice crackles in his ear, calm and clear. “We’ve got eyes. Confirming pattern shift on the outer walls.”

It shouldn’t calm him. But it does. The line between you two, this tenuous stretch of signal and trust, is the only steady thing he has left.

He clings to it like you’re really here.

He exhales, then drops.

The descent is fast–and then suddenly not. Gravity bends. Light swirls. The walls around him shift and roll like oil on water, their surfaces laced with threads of bright veins, pulsing, flickering. For a second, they close in too fast–hostile, violent–and he braces, arms up.

Then they recede.

Not welcoming. Not even neutral.

But…watching. Noticing.

Recalibrating.

He lands on a platform that wasn’t there a second ago. Behind him, the entrance seals with a bone-deep thunk. His comms flicker. Static. Then:

“Clark?” Your voice again, settling over him like a warm blanket in a cold room.

He breathes. “I’m here.”

The HUD in his visor distorts. Readouts bend sideways. Symbols flicker across the glass–some in Kryptonian, some in something older. He squints, trying to focus.

You guide him, your voice steady. “Left corridor. Follow the glyph pattern that looks like a curl intersected by three vertical lines. It’s repeating.”

Zora. It’s there again. Subtle, then sharper. Flashes on a panel beside him. Pauses. Waits.

He presses a hand to it. It warms slightly–then dims. Non-hostile, but not for him.

For you. For the you in his ear and his heart.

The air inside the relic is thick, syrupy. It buzzes in his bones. The silence is complete–so total it becomes a sound of its own. And deeper in, something shifts.

He turns a corner and stares.

A memory waits in the space ahead–shaped in light and movement and impossible physics. A room that no longer exists. Krypton. He knows it instinctively. It thrums in his marrow.

And in the center of the projection: his mother.

She turns. Her expression is wrong. Nothing like the video. Frozen in pain. Then she dissolves.

The floor pulses red.

Clark sways.

“I’m seeing–” he tries to speak, but the words don’t come out right. “Something…”

The comms cut again. Your voice vanishes, and with it the last thread of his bravery.

And all he has left is the echo of you, somewhere in his chest.

He’s deeper now. The maze tightens around him.

His powers stutter. He tries to fly and instead falls–slows, floats, glides to a hard landing. The air bites at him. Not with cold, but something…wrong. Something that doesn’t belong to Earth. Or Krypton. Or anywhere he understands.

His hands tremble. He doesn’t know if it’s weakness or fear.

He thinks of you.

Of your voice in his ear. The only thing that’s felt solid in days. Weeks. Maybe years.

He remembers the night you left.

He remembers how you kissed him that last time–not angry, not cruel. Just…tired. Defeated. Like you couldn’t wait for him to come home anymore.

He touches the side of his head, trying to will your voice back.

He misses you.

Instead: static. And beneath it, the low thunder of something waking.

He stumbles forward. Walls bend. His vision splits.

Then a voice–not yours–speaks:

“You are not the end we were promised, Kal-El.”

The sound fills the space, not with volume but with weight. Like judgment. Like history pressing down all at once.

Clark drops to one knee. Tries to breathe.

The light around him dims.

And he realizes, with a sudden, cutting clarity–

He’s not going to make it out.

x

Suddenly, the wall splits open behind him.

He doesn’t see it at first. He hears it–the sound of tearing metal and rushing breath.

You step through with the light of the outside world haloing your silhouette. Your chest rises fast. Your eyes lock on him–wide, stunned, desperate.

Then suddenly, you’re there, kneeling at his side, throwing his arm around your shoulder.

He blinks. “You…?”

You hold him, bracing more of his weight than you ever should. His legs don’t want to work right, but you don’t hesitate.

Right now you feel like the only solid thing in the entire world.

“The hell are you doing here,” he mumbles.

“Is that not obvious?” Your voice drips with sass.

But it shakes.

He leans into you. Lets you take some of the weight.

The relic feels it–your presence. The space calms. Glyphs flicker. The walls soften, almost imperceptibly.

What he doesn’t know–what he’ll never see–is the fear in your eyes when he went dark. How your hands had trembled over the comms console. The way you’d run from the room, ignoring generals, techs, all their well-meaning shouted warnings.

“He’s gone,” they had said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“Well,” you started, voice thick with unshed tears. “Then, I’m not gonna let him die alone.”

You’d flown with fire in your veins and love in your heart–not because you were sure you could save him, but because you’d promised you wouldn’t let him go through this alone. And you don’t break promises.

Not when he had never let you down. Not really.

Now, here you are.

And Clark can’t even breathe.

He looks at you like he’s still trying to believe you’re real. That you’re not some vision his mind conjured up from the better part of his life.

You look at him.

“I told you I’d be with you.”

Like it’s simple. Just a fact.

He shakes his head, dazed. “You didn’t have to.”

You look away. “I couldn’t let you die alone.”

He swallows hard.

There’s so much he wants to say. None of it fits in his mouth.

So instead, he just stands there with you in the impossible quiet, letting you hold him up.

Letting himself hope–for the first time in a long time–that maybe this isn’t the end.

Of the two of you, or the world.

x

You move through the shifting biomechanical corridors of the relic beside Clark, your minds syncing in a delicate dance between desperation and hope. The walls pulse faintly, casting ghostly shadows as you scan the glyphs etched across surfaces–fragments of Kryptonian language tangled with something foreign, survival code woven into an ancient digital heart.

Clark guards you fiercely, though his side aches, his head throbs all the way to his brain.

He uses his body as a shield against the hostile architecture that bends and warps unpredictably with his presence.

You feed him steady translations as you go, your voice the tether keeping him grounded. His HUD flickers and stutters, but you push through, fingers flying over your datapad as you unlock command sequences and decipher the labyrinthine script.

Every so often, the relic lashes out–walls folding aggressively, disorienting the space around you both.

Clark is beginning to think that grief is why the relic responds to you. The grief you feel for him, for the life you shared.

He feels it too.

Then, together, you spot it again: the glyph for Zora. It pulses softly, a beacon in the chaos, familiar and heavy with meaning neither of you fully understands yet. The relic’s terraforming sequence accelerates–a countdown clock to catastrophe clicks away in Clark’s mind, an unstoppable force fueled by ancient will.

You seem to realize there’s no brute force solution at the same time he does. This is not a machine to be fought, but a spirit to be reasoned with. The answer lies in speaking its language, on its own terms.

A flash memory flickers unbidden–a quiet night on the couch, Clark sharing a whispered bedtime story from long ago, something from Krypton no normal child would have remembered, a child’s word hanging in the air: Zora.

The promise of return. The hope of home.

The one who brings you back.

“It’s home,” Clark croaks, voice scratchy. “Zora. It means home. Coming home.”

The relic’s energy surges around you, the air thick with tension as systems overload and the structure trembles on the brink. Lights dim to twilight, and the once menacing hum softens to a breath.

“That’s it,” you murmur, something clicking into place that Clark can’t see.

You squeeze his hand tightly. His eyes meet yours, the unspoken weight of the moment settling between you like a fragile thread.

With calm certainty, you step forward, voice steady in the electric silence.

“Zora.”

Time fractures–everything freezes.

The glyphs still. The walls ripple softly, like a flower closing at dusk. Tendrils of energy retract, the rising hum cutting off suddenly, as if the world itself exhales.

The relic folds inward, a dying star collapsing gracefully into peace. The AI fades, no longer a force of destruction, but a memory gently laid to rest.

Zora. Return. Completion. The end of the cycle.

You glance around as the walls close in. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

Clark nods, quick. “I could try flying.”

He’s not sure he can, not sure it will work.

“Okay,” you murmur. “Make it quick, Kent.”

Like you still believe in him.

With his last burst of energy, he wraps an arm around your waist, surges towards the sky.

x

The air outside tastes real–uncorrupted by the alien machine’s pulse. The humming is gone.

“It’s over,” Clark says, voice full of disbelief.

“It never needed to conquer,” you murmur, shrugging lightly. “It needed to let go.”

Clark lands with a soft thud, groans at the impact. Instantly, you reach for him, throw his arm over your shoulder again.

“Come on, farm boy.” You tease. “You need a medic tent.”

He shakes his head, matches your pace. “M’fine.”

You glance at him. “Did it sound like I was asking?”

He looks at you with a new kind of understanding–something like longing mixed with a deep knowing.

“No.” He chuckles. “I guess it didn’t.”

x

People crowd around Clark the minute the pair of you come into view, but you don’t let him go.

It makes his stomach flips. Your quiet determination.

He’s half-carried into the medical tent, his suit cracked and scorched, cuts staining the fabric beneath. He’s stiff, but clenching his jaw to mask the pain.

You stay at his side, brushing off medics who reach for you instead.

“I’m fine,” you say firmly. “Help him.”

One medic insists you sit, but you shake your head, eyes locked on Clark.

He tries to joke through the pain, voice rough but teasing, “You’re really not gonna let me look cool, huh?”

The laugh is brittle, and it cuts through you sharper than any wound. You reach out instinctively and take his hand–he doesn’t pull away.

His breath is shallow, uneven, but his eyes stay fixed on you, as if you’re the only real thing left in the chaos.

You whisper, “I couldn’t let you die alone.”

Anybody else wouldn’t have heard you. But, Clark–even without enhanced hearing–had always heard you.

He heard you in his heart.

His eyes close briefly. When they open again, the faintest hint of a smile ghosts across his face. “You didn’t. You brought me back.”

The camp is quiet now, the fire low and sputtering. Clark rests on a cot near the flames, patched up but pale, eyelids heavy.

You sit close, unwilling to leave his side, hands wrapped around your knees, thoughts tangled.

His voice breaks the silence, barely audible, “Zora…”

You lean in, curious. “What did that mean to you, back then? When you were a kid? I remember the story, but…”

He blinks slowly, a faint smile playing on his lips. “Bedtime stories. A place…a person…a promise. The one who brings you home.”

You nod, understanding more deeply than ever before.

“That’s what you were in there,” he murmurs, eyes searching yours.

“You were my Zora.”

You look at him for a long time. “Well,” you start, “you were always mine.”

Clark’s throat gets tight, thick with emotion. He can only nod. Then, he takes a breath.

“And, it can mean come back...but only if you really mean it.”

He looks at you, hope in his eyes.

The silence stretches between you, thick with everything unsaid. Finally, he breathes out, barely a question, “Would you let me?”

You blink. “What?”

“Come back.”

The words linger, a promise and a plea.

“Maybe,” you murmur. “If you meant it.”

He turns his head toward you, eyes clearer now but still heavy with uncertainty. His voice is low, almost unsure, but he can’t not ask you. Not after everything.

“If I asked again–would you say yes?”

You don’t answer right away. Instead, you study him–beyond the bruises and cracks, to the man still standing beneath it all.

Then, you settle on honesty.

“I never stopped wanting you to.”

He reaches out, unable to resist. His hand finds yours–slow, steady, grounding.

You say nothing more. You don’t need to.

The pair of you have already said everything.

x

For hours, you’ve sat at his side. You had finally relented, let a medic check you out, but as soon as you were cleared, you were back.

Now, the moon hanging high in the sky, Clark scoots over on his medical cot.

“Come up here,” he murmurs.

You glance up. “What?”

“You can’t sleep on the floor.”

“Of course I can.”

He looks at you, painfully fond. “Well, I don’t want you to.”

“Fine,” you murmur. “Fine. We wouldn’t want to upset Superman.”

Clark laughs, bright and wonderful. “No, you wouldn’t.”

You settle beside him in the way you’ve done a million times before. Still, it’s something new, now. Something he’s missed, desperately.

It sets sparks along his skin.

You both look up, the stars above you glisten and glow. Clark just enjoys it. He feels the quiet certainty of your hand in his, steady and warm.

You whisper–no longer a plea, but a promise, “Come back, hm?”

A thought settles quietly in his chest:

He was Krypton’s last son, and maybe that meant something, to some people.

But, to him, you’re his return.

His home.

He never wants to leave it again.

x

He’s been standing outside your apartment for a few minutes, heart pounding more and more with every passing second. One hand holds a flower–wild, picked outside his apartment from a beautiful community garden–the other conceals a small box tucked in his coat pocket.

His mind replays the moment from the medical tent–the way you held his hand, laid beside him, the way you never said no.

“If I asked again,” he had said, “would you say yes?”

The question echoes inside him.

He told himself to wait longer. Give you space. Let you come to him.

But a week was too long. He couldn’t stay away. Not any longer. Not with the memory of your fierce protectiveness, your gentle cuddles, resting in his heart.

He raises his hand and knocks.

The worst thing you could say is no.

And, really, the worst thing would be never asking again at all. Never knowing. Never having.

You’re barefoot, holding a mug, caught somewhere between surprise and something softer–acceptance, maybe.

Clark’s heart stutters. You’re real. Alive. Here.

He offers the flower like a peace offering. You take it without hesitation.

He watches your eyes–the place where love used to live.

Looking at you now, he thinks it still does.

He doesn’t kneel. Doesn’t make a speech.

He simply pulls the small velvet box from his pocket and holds it out–closed.

“It’s not the same one,” he says softly. “I didn’t want this to be about what we lost–the past. I want it to be about what we still could choose.”

He takes a breath, but he doesn’t ask yet. He lets the gesture hang between you, open-ended and full of possibility.

You ask quietly, “Why now?”

He answers honestly, eyes steady.

“Because I meant it. When I asked before.” He holds your gaze. “I want to come back–come home. To you. Because, no matter what, I’ve never stopped loving you.”

There’s no rush. Just the truth–the kind you only say when you’ve been broken apart and still want to try again.

He smiles, soft and steady.

You step back–just enough. Not an invitation, but permission.

He walks in. The door closes behind him with a gentle finality.

The sound feels like a beginning.

He sets the ring box down on the kitchen table–beside the keys you still hang on the same hook.

You sit. He sits. He doesn’t touch you–not yet. He waits.

Then, you lean over, press the softest kiss to his lips.

“I never stopped loving you, either, farm boy,” you murmur.

Clark grins.

And, for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s running out of time.