Work Text:
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
--ee cummings
Someone close to you is going to die. That's what Cassandra had said, even though she'd shown him something different, something far worse. It was entirely possible she was simply kind and wanted to spare him.
But now he knew exactly what his vision of endless tombstones had meant.
He still grieved. For his parents, for Lana, Pete and Chloe. For Lois. All of them in the ground now, nothing but dust and bone shards. Sometimes he could still feel their gritty ash on his fingers from when he'd gone to see, to make sure there was nothing left.
It was, he supposed, the way it had to be. And, in his more philosophical moments, he understood this was the natural order of things. They'd had their time together, had loved him and been loved in return. He would be selfish and wrong to want more from them.
Still. It was hard to be alone.
There were other worlds, of course. Other places that needed help, that probably needed him.
Clark was tired of helping. Tired of being needed.
Once, he'd asked the image of Jor-El when it would be enough, how long before he would be done, be free to join those he loved. No answer or comfort there, just more admonitions about destiny, about fate.
His father had said they were free to make their own fate. At fifteen, Clark had believed it. Now, ages upon ages later, he wasn't so sure. But he tried.
The first one had come out wrong. He was still perfecting the process, but had been too eager to wait. It had hair, for one thing, and its brain never fully developed. That one had only lasted a few days before Clark decided it was a failure.
They improved as he went on. Eventually he worked out the required sequence to retard the follicles and to keep the skin from cracking open and peeling off once it was out of the tank.
When they came out physically perfect, however, there was still something lacking. Some spark of personality that made them nothing more than pretty dolls programmed to parrot back what he wanted to hear. Being with them was almost worse than being alone.
Almost.
Next came experiments in implanting the engrams he'd carefully saved along with the tissue. That was a little trickier. Too much and they came out wanting to kill him. Too little and they wept and wanted their mother. Some merely lapsed into catatonia and never came out when they saw what the world had become.
He lost count of the failures. But honestly, it didn't matter. He had nothing but time.
And fate owed him this one.