SquidgeWorld Archive

A ten-year old boy was lying on the floor, putting the last touches on a model airplane. A curl of glossy black hair fell into his bright blue eyes, and the tip of his tongue stuck out a bit as he concentrated on getting the propeller just right. Now and then his eyes strayed to the door. Today was the day, his parents had told him. Today was the day they were finally going to bring Clark's brother home.

He had finished the model to his liking and was lying on his back, absent-mindedly swooping it about, when the door opened and he scrambled to his feet. His father, Cosmic King, came into the room behind a boy about Clark's age. The boy's face was very pale underneath dark, sleek hair. Clark grinned at him. The boy didn't respond.

Clark's father knelt down to look the other boy in the eye. "Bruce, this is your brother, Clark. You two have a great destiny together; together you will create a world with no war and no injustice, a world where evil is punished and the good do not suffer. I know that's a lot to ask you to accept right now, but please trust me." The other boyâ€"Bruceâ€"nodded, but didn't say anything. After a moment, Cosmic King stood back up. He looked slightly uncomfortable. Why would such a grand, powerful person as his father be uncomfortable around two little boys? Clark wondered. It must be some grown-up thing.

After Cosmic King left the room, Bruce walked stiffly to the bunk bed on the other sideâ€"Clark had always had a bunk bed, with the top empty, waiting for his brother--and sat down on the bottom and looked at Clark, but his gray-blue eyes seemed to look right through him. Clark shuffled his feet awkwardly in the carpet. "Um, would you like to look at some comic books together? I've got the latest Gray Ghost...Gray Ghost versus the Moon Men, it looks really cool." The other boy blinked at him owlishly and said nothing. Clark felt himself blushing. He probably looked like a dummy. "Or, or, I just finished this plane today, it took me all week." He grabbed his new model off the floor and held it out to the boy. "It's a Vought F4U Corsair, it was built with the wings bent at an angle like this, isn't it a beaut--" At this, Bruce grabbed the plane and smashed it against the wall, then began stomping it into fragments. "Hey! Hey! That's my plane! Don't do that!" Bruce whirled on him and grabbed him by the collar; the two boys went down in a heap, Clark fending off a flurry of blows. A fist connected with his nose and Clark yelped in pain, tears springing to his eyes. Shocked at the injustice of it all, he swung out and felt his blow land as well; Bruce gasped as if coming up from underwater and started to yell.

"My parents are dead! They're dead! They died right in front of me, they got shot right in front of me and you want to give me a stupid, stupid toy?" Bruce's face was contorted with rage and pain and he was making harsh sobbing noises, but his eyes remained dry. Clark went limp and stared at him.

"They didn't tell me."

"What?"

"They didn't tell me. That your parents died today. I'm sorry."

Bruce blinked at him and some of the fury went out of his eyes, to be replaced by something Clark found harder to look at. His lip was cut; Clark pulled a slightly dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to him. They sat next to each other on the bunk bed in silence for a moment.

"What did they tell you, then?"

Clark closed his eyes and tilted his head back, reciting like a catechism. "I'm going to grow up to be strong and powerful and be able to fly and have superpowers, and you and me are going to make the world a good safe place."

"Superpowers? Like Cosmic King's?" Bruce was actively interested now. "What powers will I have?"

Clark looked uncomfortable. "Actually, um, you won't have any superpowers. I get them because I was born on a planet with a different sun, and once I get enough sunlight I'll start to have powers."

"You're an alien? A really truly alien from another world? You don't look it." Bruce leaned forward, fascinated, to examine Clark more closely, then drew back, his brows furrowing and the spark of anger coming back into his eyes. "So wait, if I have no powers, why am I here, anyway? Am I supposed to be your servant or something?"

"No! No!" Clark was legitimately horrified at the thought. "You're my brother, our parents say we have to do it together, we can't make the world perfect without each other."

"Why's that?"

"They say I have the power but you have the will, and together we have the will to power."

Bruce frowned. "I'm not sure I understand that."

Clark thought of how he felt when he had looked into Bruce's eyes earlier. "I think I'm starting to understand. I think we have to be together because you remind me how awful it is when people you care about suffer, so I'll always want to stop it. Without you maybe I won't remember how important that is. You give me the reason to fight. So really you're more important than I am."

Bruce still seemed unconvinced. "If I'm going to help you without superpowers, I'm going to have to get really good at everything." The thought seemed to cheer him up somehow. He pondered the implications of this for some time. Then he shook himself all over like a puppy and turned to Clark, his face moderately close to an actual young boy's face.

"Did you say you had some Gray Ghost comics? He's my favorite."

Late that night, Clark was awoken by the sound of sobbing from the bunk above him. For a while he lay there, irresolute, then swung himself up to the top bunk. He rather expected to be rebuffed and felt a pang of apprehension when Bruce grabbed him by the collar of his plaid flannel pajamas, but the other boy buried his face in Clark's shoulder, choking sobs wracking his body. Clark wrapped his arms around Bruce and held him until the weeping evened out into deep breaths of exhausted sleep. He almost imagined he could hear Bruce's heartbeat, different from everyone else's heartbeat in the world. He fell asleep trying to memorize it.

A few days later, Clark entered the room to find his model airplane sitting on his desk. It had been carefully salvaged from the trash and painstakingly pieced back together, every fragment glued back perfectly. You could hardly tell it had been broken. Clark moved it through the air, admiring it.

They were going to make a great team.