Clark
remembers running into his mother's arms once when he was very small, warm and
laughing, fresh from a summer's day spent outdoors.
She held him at arm's length, remarking on how dirty he was, then
kissed his nose and called him 'sun-drunk'.
For Clark, who had at that time only the most tenuous grasp of the
English language, these words evoked the image of himself downing a glass of
liquid light. The idea stayed with him, as did the sensation -- whether
imagined or real, he could never say -- of luminescence rolling down his
throat, filling him from within, making his skin seem to him like the barest
wisp of a border between his inner fire and the outside world of sunlight.
The
memory has never quite faded from Clark's mental landscape, surviving even the
ravages of early adolescence, when Clark so carefully erased all hints of
childhood from his bedroom and his mind.
His mother's phrase pops into his head at the oddest moments
-- watching the sunset in the loft with Lana, or working on the tractor
with his dad, or running for the school bus -- bringing with it that infantile
fantasy of imbibed light, the warmth in his belly .
Most
often, he remembers when he's at Lex's mansion.
The stained glass has a way of tranfiguring light, that contributes to
Clark's usual sense of disorientation in Lex's presence.
Splashes of red and purple punctuate the stretch of space between Clark
and Lex, turning ordinary objects into relics of another place, another world. A pen glows crimson and becomes a sliver of bloodstone.
An empurpled cell phone is about to erupt in a clatter of wings and fly
away like an exotic beetle. Lex's
curved and irridescent hand rests on a computer keyboard in mystic
benediction, slender fingers like young shoots of grass.
These
bizarre imaginings will flit through Clark's thoughts and he'll hear his
mother's voice, saying, 'sun-drunk', and he'll force himself to meet Lex's
gaze, to reclaim sobriety in those intensely blue eyes.
It's
a shocking un-surprise, the day he realizes that his powers are linked to the
sun. Every part of Clark's rational humanized mind is stunned by
the revelation, but the small bit of him that remembers drinking light is
completely nonplussed. With
increasing frustration, Clark struggles to regress into that small alien body,
believing secretly that so doing would enable him to once again feel the sun
as a tangible thing. If only he
could physically recall that feeling of radiant inebriation, he would be able
to know when the sun has slammed into him with a wave of excess energy, he
would be able to harness his errant abilities.
But the sensation is elusive -- though it has always come upon him at
random, often unwelcome times, now, when he tries to summon it, Clark can't
seem to connect with the memory.
"What
does it feel like when you drink?" Clark asks Pete on their way out to
the camping site. "I mean,
in your mouth, how does it feel?"
Pete's
grip on the steering wheel tightens incrementally.
He doesn't like it when Clark asks these questions.
He was positively belligerent when Clark asked how he knew that they
both saw the colour green the same way -- that Clark's green didn't actually
look like Pete's purple. Still,
Pete seems to find some patience for his beseiged alien friend, forming a
reply. "It kind of burns on
your tongue, you know?"
"It
hurts?" Clark asks. He knows
pain -- some kinds more intimately than others -- and he can't imagine anyone
willingly putting a burning thing in his mouth.
Even though his skin has already healed, he vividly remembers the burn
that he gave himself while extinguishing the fire at home.
Pete
shakes his head impatiently. "No,
not ... just like a sudden sting on your tongue, and in your throat.
It fades right away."
Like
the time Clark put his hand too close to the circular saw in the barn, when he
was seven, and his mother had slapped him out of angry relief when her voice
stopped his motion just in time. That
slap, the only time he was struck as a child, remains in his body memory --
the sharp click of impact, followed by a slow furious glowering of blood under
the skin. Clark imagines it on his mouth, in his pharynx, and nods
slowly. "And when you
swallow, does it burn in your stomach, too?"
Pete
shrugs, wanting to change the subject. "Depends
on what you're drinking. Wine
goes down smooth, other stuff is rougher."
"Something
that's really strong," Clark suggests, squinting at the sun through the
window. "Scotch."
"Yeah,
that burns. But not in a hurt
way. More in a ... kind of like
there's something hot inside your stomach, just hot enough to make you feel
..."
"Feel
what?" Clark prompts when Pete shows no sign of continuing.
Pete
shrugs. "I dunno, man. I
don't know how to describe it."
Clark
recognizes this tone of exasperation from their discussion on the colour
green, and sits back in the seat with a sigh, closing his eyes against the low
autumn sun in the hopes of blocking it and its unpredictable nature.
***
In
the months that follow, Clark sees the waning days of descending winter as
carrying an especial torment. Darkness
descends and the earth chills. Now
it isn't the kiss of the sun and its attendant gift of energy that Clark feels
-- it's the absence of the same.
It
seems to Clark that every time he manages to get out into the daylight,
something or someone comes along and pushes him back into night.
Lana is getting as good at lying as he is, telling him pretty stories
about her feelings for him. Pete
seems to view Clark as his personal property.
Chloe ... Chloe isn't a trustworthy commodity anymore, and though Clark
understands her betrayal, it's wrenching to know that they will never again
enjoy the giddy friendship that began three years ago.
And
Lex ... and Lex. Clark can hardly
bear the sight of him, so much so that he avoids the mansion.
He's glad to be literally blind to Lex's presence on the occasion of
Lex's visit to his loft. There's
something eerily offset about Lex since his return from Belle Reve -- he
sounds all the right notes and makes all the right gestures -- but he's not
Lex. He's Lionel's stand-in for
the Lex that Clark was just getting to know, the Lex that Clark almost managed
to save. He's a still frame from
the blurringly fast reel of Lex's being.
Though
it's February, and the sun's returning, Clark finds himself thinking wistfully
of those moments of intoxication. He's
beginning to understand that such sweet oblivion is more and more dearly
bought as time passes. The weak
sunlight of late winter has no capacity to fire his inner self, just as this
new, weaker echo of Lex has no capacity to make Clark seek asylum in his
friend's eyes.
He
sees Lex in the Talon one dismal rainy afternoon, watches dispassionately as
Lex orders a double tall latte and smiles with diluted benevolence at Lana.
Lex pauses to speak to Clark on his way out of the Talon. Clark smiles widely and opens his mouth to inquire after
Lex's well-being. The words get
jammed somewhere en route to his lips.
Lex's
tepid smile falters and fades. "Clark?"
Clark
swallows, tries again. "What
do you think it would be like, to drink sunlight?" he asks abruptly.
A
wash of colour rises in Lex's visage, lighting up his eyes along the way.
As though unaware of his motion, Lex sinks into the seat across from
Clark, setting his drink down on the table between them. The steam rising from the opening in the cup's lid adds to
the illusion of a mist clearing away, the true Lex burning through the
firmament with sudden and painful brilliance.
The shock of the sight sends fire along the paths of Clark's veins,
singing in his ears with bright-toned fervour.
"Don't
be silly, Clark," Lex says at last, the slightest of smirks gracing his
lips. "People can't drink sunlight."
There is no solid ground in Lex's eyes now, no sober reality or dash of
cold water. There are only
unraveling reams of light and possibility.
Clark
finds himself leaning across the table, trying to get closer to this source of
his power. "I did," he
asserts softly, locking Lex in place with a single look.
He's five years old again, turning his face full into the sky, and he
can taste the sparkle of light trickling down his throat.
Clark is sun-drunk to the core on the greyest day of the year.
--The
End--