Chapter Text
Metropolis was thick with the smell of burnt metal and bad decisions.
Trying to find stillness between the smoke, sirens, and screams was nearly impossible, yet I always seemed to manage. He always seemed to manage. Another lunch break was cut short by finding another high angle to capture whatever otherworldly thing had managed to find its way into the city centre.
I had been trying to get a still shot of him for months, but he was too quick, too unsteady—another explosion, another blur in the background, another ruined roll of film.
They call him hope. A symbol. A miracle in a cape. Perhaps that was the point. He wasn’t meant to be caught, just something for people to have that they can grasp with their own eyes. But to me, he’s a ghost. One that shows up just long enough to save the day and screw up my exposure settings
I hadn’t always chased him. I just happened to always catch the aftermath. The smoke, the rubble, the faces, people don’t look at long enough. But it’s hard to ignore him when he’s always one step ahead, leaving nothing behind but broken physics and light leaks in my negatives.
Today was no different, as debris rained from the rooftop of the LexCorp annex, the crowds scattering, phones raised. I had five seconds to frame the chaos.
And there he was—not in focus, of course, but there.
A streak of red. A glint of blue. A shadow that looked too much like a man, and not enough like anything else.
Superman.
✦
By the time I got back to the Planet, the sun had begun to set, yet the newsroom was already smelling like overbrewed coffee and printer toner. My boots left faint trails of concrete dust across the linoleum. No one noticed or cared. Perry was yelling about a deadline, Jimmy was swearing at the copier, and Lane was halfway through an argument with someone over speakerphone. Just another day in paradise.
The Daily Planet moved like a machine—one I was still figuring out how to slot myself into. Three months on staff, and I still felt like a replacement part waiting to oil the gears.
Back in Blüdhaven, much like the city itself, things in my life had been slower. Messier. I freelanced for a string of local rags and independent outlets—mostly crime scenes, environmental protests, the occasional rooftop interview with a masked vigilante who wouldn’t give me his real name. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was honest. And it taught me how to survive on instinct.
Metropolis wasn’t like that. It was shinier. Quieter on the surface. But underneath, it pulsed with something stranger, something bigger than anything I’d pointed a lens at before.
Clark Kent was the only one in the newsroom who never filled the silence, and somehow, that made him easier to talk to. He looked up as I approached my desk. He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there, paper cup in hand, eyes trailing the dust on the floor, then to my camera bag slung low on my shoulder, then back to me.
A faint crease tugged between his brows, which was not quite worry. Something gentler. I raised an eyebrow. He gave a slight nod. We’d done this before: the quiet check-ins, the nonverbal You good? Yeah, you? I wasn’t sure when we’d started doing that. I wasn’t shy, per se. I just never really had anything good to say. Maybe because he was one of the only people who didn’t talk over my silences.
Until he opened his mouth, “You okay?”
Clark Kent was leaning over the corner of my desk, holding a paper cup. The kind of coffee that should come with a warning label. He offered me the cup. “Thought you’d need this after walking all the way to Midtown to capture that fight”.
I smiled softly, dumping my equipment on my desk before taking the cup, mostly for the warmth. He didn’t flinch when my fingers brushed his.
“I didn’t pin you as the office barista.”
“Well,” he said, adjusting his glasses, “someone’s got to keep the new blood caffeinated. You looked like you were about to pass out on the subway floor this morning.” My head shoots up to meet his. “So you were watching me?”
He opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. “I happened to be on the same train.” Scoffing with a smile, I gave him a flat look. He smiled. “Very observant of me. Reporter instincts.”
“Mm-hmm.” I took a sip, grimacing. It was awfully sweet. “You trying to poison me?
“Only a little,” he said, deadpan. Then, quieter, “Seriously. You alright?”
I hesitated. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because the way he asked made me want to give him the real one. And I wasn’t in the habit of doing that.
“Y-yeah. I mean, besides my shoulder going dead walking back from the scene.” I say, rubbing my face in an attempt to wake myself up. I dropped into my chair, slinging the camera bag into my lap and fishing out the film rolls—four of them, all warm from the city heat and probably full of blurry stills.
“What’s the bet none of these will be publishable... again?” I say with a sigh.
Clark didn’t answer right away. Just watched me gather the canisters with a kind of gentle focus, like he was trying to read something between the frames.
“You always say that,” he said finally.
“And I’m usually right.”
“Still doesn’t stop you.”
I shrugged. “Hope’s a dangerous thing.”
He gave a small, strange smile. “Sometimes it’s the only thing.”
I ignore the warmth that spread across my cheeks when he said that, shaking my head with a laugh before I stood, slipping the canisters into my jacket pocket.
“Darkroom?” Clark asked.
I nodded. “Might as well ruin them properly.”
He gave a soft chuckle, stepping aside as I passed.
The Planet’s darkroom was tucked in the back, past archives and a printer that hadn’t worked since the last mayoral scandal. No one else really used it anymore, with the digital age and all that. But I liked the quiet. The smell of chemicals. The illusion that something might appear if I just waited long enough. I flicked on the safelight, locked the door behind me, and pulled the blinds. The room bled into red. Muscle memory took over. Gloves. Scissors. Developer. Fixer. I moved like I wasn’t tired, like the ache in my shoulders wasn’t setting in. Like I wasn’t already bracing for disappointment.
One by one, I clipped the negatives to the drying line.
At first, everything looked… normal. Smoke. Crowds. Blur. Those I could use.
But as the last roll came into focus, I froze.
A frame near the end was warped. Not ruined exactly—not a light leak or shutter shake. Just… off. Superman was there. Or something like him. A streak of red, a limb caught mid-motion. But in this one frame—there was no cape. No clear emblem. Just a shape.
Human. Almost.
The proportions were wrong. Not alien, just familiar in a way that made my skin prickle. I leaned closer, squinting at the silhouette. A hand. A shoulder. The edge of a collar. I’d seen that cut of fabric before. I saw it this morning . On Clark Kent. I leant impossibly closer, my breath fogging the glass of the nearby panel. The more I stared at the silhouette, the more it refused to resolve.
No. That wasn’t fair.
Clark was… Clark. Soft-voiced. Slouched posture. A man who apologised when you bumped into him . Not the kind of person who punched holes in the sky and disappeared into the clouds. But that part of me—the part I kept buried under logic and camera settings, it didn’t care. It looked at that silhouette like it had always known.
It couldn’t be.
I tried to think rationally. That checkered button-down shirt was so common, so nothing. It could’ve been anyone. But the thing in my chest—the part of me I usually ignore said otherwise.
Holy sh–
A loud knock on the door jolted me out of my thoughts and into an upright position. “You got anything usable yet?” Perry’s voice, sharp and impatient. “We need a main photo for the LexCorp piece in twenty!” I jolted back like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t. Which, technically, I hadn’t. Yet. “Almost done!” I called, hoping my voice didn’t carry the tremor sitting just beneath it. I unclipped the negative, that negative, and slipped it into a spare envelope, sealing it with a swipe of tape. The rest I left hanging.
Another knock followed. Softer. “Everything okay in there?” Clark. Of course.
My hand hovered over the doorknob, still warm from sealing the envelope. What was I even going to say? Hey Clark, sorry I’m jumpy, I might’ve accidentally photographed you flying through the sky. Right. Normal. Casual. I tucked the envelope into my back pocket and took a second, just one, to fix my face in the mirror above the sink. Blank. Bored. Normal. Then I opened the door.
“You always check on people in darkrooms?” I asked, stepping past him like I hadn’t just been dissecting the evidence of his double life. Or at least, I think his double life.
Clark smiled, soft and easy. “Only when they forget to blink for twenty minutes.” I gave a half-laugh that sounded more normal than it felt. “You timing me now?”
“I have my methods.” He smiled. Easy. Uncomplicated. And all I could think was: That’s the same smile he wore in the photo.
He didn’t press. He never did. But I could feel him watching me as we walked down the hall, like he was trying to read between my silences.
For the first time, I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to find there.
✦
It was almost 11:30pm by the time I got home. The streets were quieter than usual, that strange in-between hour where the city felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for the next thing to fall apart. I should’ve felt good. I’d gotten the photos in just under Perry’s deadline. He even managed a rare, gruff “Nice work” on my way out, which from Perry, was basically a standing ovation. But something still sat wrong. Not in the newsroom. Not in the work. In me .
I paused in front of my apartment door longer than I should’ve. Fished out my keys. Tried to remember if I’d locked the deadbolt this morning. I had, probably. Inside, everything was just as I’d left it. The faint smell of fixer and lavender. A pile of jackets on the back of the couch. Books stacked two deep on the floor beside the armchair. Home, more or less.
I toed off my boots and padded into the kitchen on autopilot. The kettle clicked when I flicked it on, echoing in the quiet like it didn’t belong.
I didn’t want tea. I just didn’t want silence. I dropped my bag and leaned back against the door as it clicked shut. Let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The envelope in my pocket felt heavier now, like it had gained weight on the walk home.
I didn’t take it out. Not yet.
It stayed right there against my hip like it was daring me. Maybe I’d dream about it tonight. Maybe I’d open it tomorrow and feel like an idiot. But deep down, below that static and doubt, below the newsroom noise, a question had planted itself within my very being. What if it’s really him?
I told myself I had to be wrong about this.
But some part of me—the part I don’t listen to, was already sure.