Chapter Text
“I’ve found that most people will tell you the truth if you ask the wrong question long enough.”
- Clark Kent, “Interview Technique and Other Lies - An open letter to the journalism students of America, 2019”
you’ve been staring at the blinking cursor for eight minutes and thirty-four seconds, which wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t on an empty google doc titled “digital loneliness in a post-pandemic cityscape.” you’re supposed to write a 1,200-word lifestyle feature. so far, you’ve written: “loneliness is…”
and then you stopped, because honestly? you’re not sure you know anymore. or worse, you know too well.
you tap your keyboard like that’ll fix something inside you.
“tell me you’re writing and not just admiring your font choice,” dani says, suddenly appearing beside you with a cup of something suspiciously green in one hand and a raised eyebrow in the other. dani, your editor, champion, tormentor, and unofficial life coach, who once edited an entire piece of yours using only fleabag quotes as comments after you got her wine drunk and forced her to watch it.
“don't make me an optimist. you'll ruin my life.” she’d scribbled in the margins.
dani is… dani. she always walks like she’s being timed. there’s something olympian about her gait: deliberate, kinetic, a little terrifying. in heels, she’s a weapon; in flats, a myth. at 6’1, she doesn’t really tower as much as she commands the air around her, as if ceilings move to accommodate her. when she laughs, rare, short bursts, like a balloon being let go too soon, it feels like applause you didn’t know you’d earned.
she’s the only person who ever made you want to work weekends. not out of fear (though that’s there, too), but because her approval is the kind of thing that makes you believe you're not completely wasting your twenties. she’ll knock three paragraphs out of your lede with a single, “too slow,” and then send you a picture of her lunch ten minutes later with the caption “nommy nommies.”
you don’t know everything about her - she’s private in a scandinavian way, minimal and pristine - but you know she used to figure skate competitively and once told you, over cocktails at a christmas party, that the trick to good reporting is “keeping your skates sharp and your soft parts softer.” you still don’t quite know what that means, but you’ve quoted it in two different extended family events and once on a bumble date, and all times gotten an impressed nod in return. it still makes you giggle.
she took you in when you barely knew what an em dash was and made you believe you were going to be someone. not someone important, necessarily. but someone who could write something that mattered. lol.
you straighten up. smile. you are the cheerful one™ after all. the girl who brings in muffins on mondays. the girl who says “no worries at all!” and actually means it.
“of course i’m writing,” you say, clicking randomly just to make the screen do something. “i’m deep in the magic. elbow-deep in isolation statistics and accidentally poetic reddit posts.”
dani gives you a look. the kind that says don’t test me, sunshine, but with love. mostly.
“cool,” she says. “just checking. deadline’s in six hours, and i need to pretend like we’re still a paper of record and not just a content farm for sad single millennials and the occasional corruption scandal.”
you nod, looking at the clock that tells you it’s lunch time. “six hours is a lifetime. i could fall in love and get married in that time.”
dani smirks. “not with your track record.”
ouch. but fair. but when she notices that you aren’t smiling back this time, she sighs and shakes her head.
“take a walk,” she says. “go outside, read a trashy novel, eavesdrop on some teens having an existential crisis on a park bench. find your story. and when you come back, maybe take a look at this.”
she hands you a thick manila folder.
you flip it open. it’s a profile piece request; freelance, technically. high-risk, high-reward. the subject: clark kent.
you freeze. you’ve read everything he’s ever written. his luthor laboratories exposé. the pulitzer pieces. the live leak...
your stomach twists. you remember the last byline, the last photo. then the silence. the speculation. and now–
“you want me to write about clark kent?” you repeat, and it sounds a little stupid in your own mouth, like when people say “i love you” too quickly in movies and everyone watching knows they don’t mean it.
dani nods, as if you’ve just correctly named the capital of uruguay. “yes.”
you blink. “you mean that clark kent? pulitzer-and-pulitzer clark kent?”
she grins like a lioness watching her cub take down a gazelle. “the very same.”
the room seems to tilt slightly. you’ve written front-page stories. you’ve exposed a congressman. but this feels… biblical. clark kent hasn't spoken to anyone in five years. he hasn't been seen in nearly three. the last time his name trended, it was alongside the words reckless, traitor, and murderer.
“i don’t think he talks to anyone,” you manage.
dani shrugs. “then make him.”
you let out a small, nervous laugh. “dani. come on.”
“this is big, kid,” she says, leaning forward on her elbows. “i’m not giving this to someone else. and i’m not asking if you want it. i know you do.”
she’s right. of course she’s right. this is the kind of thing careers are built on. hell, rebuilt on. this is the story that could carry your name into newsrooms you haven’t even dared to imagine yourself in. and clark kent? he’s the reason you got into this line of work in the first place. not just because of his prose, which is legendary, but because, back before everything went to hell, he wrote like people mattered.
“and hey,” her voice cuts through your thoughs. “deadline for your lifestyle feature is still 7pm.”
you want to glare at her because you have never once missed a deadline but you’re still dazed. your heart is racing now, and your palms feel clammy. if you do this right - really right - you’ll never have to pitch another goddamn story again.
clark kent. jesus christ.
you get home, flick on the light, and immediately step over yesterday’s laundry. it’s a one-bedroom with a closet-sized kitchen, an overworked radiator, and a view of the bodega’s neon sign across the street. but it’s yours and meera’s.
you toss your bag on the couch, hang your keys on the little ceramic cat meera bought you from the hospital gift shop - “because even doctors deserve cute things” - kick off your shoes, and collapse in front of your laptop like a woman on a mission.
the adrenaline’s still buzzing. somewhere between the last espresso and dani’s parting “don’t screw this up,” your brain has sprinted ten paces ahead.
you force yourself to start with the basics: a reread of clark kent’s greatest hits - or at least the ones you’ve dog-eared emotionally. the arms of the city. blood in the rubble. and, of course, the broken bell. his first pulitzer. the piece that made you want to be a journalist.
but not in the all the president’s men, trench-coats-and-righteous-indignation kind of way. clark’s writing didn’t make you want to chase truth, it made you want to hold it still, long enough for someone to feel it.
the broken bell covered the gotham sanitation strikes, but it cracked open the entire city. clark embedded himself with the people slipping through the cracks: nurses skipping meals to buy their kids textbooks, subway workers sleeping in break rooms, janitors who hadn’t been paid in six weeks...
he reported on the dysfunction and dismantled the entire machine, piece by corrupted piece. budget cuts, hush money trails, a mayor who campaigned on empathy and governed like a banker with a vendetta. and then clark walked into a press conference, pressed record, and didn’t flinch once.
you remember your favorite line. you’d screenshotted it in college, back when meera still called you “baby amanpour” in your family group chat:
“they say gotham’s built on bedrock, but they don’t talk about the hands that laid it. the calluses, the backs broken under steel and snow. maybe they think we’ll forget. maybe they’re counting on it.”
it wasn’t just journalism. it was a punch in the throat.
and then he vanished. no bylines in five years. no panels, no podcasts, no alumni reunions. just... gone. the last thing he wrote was that article.
you dig into the obvious leads first: public databases, old newswires, even his ancient byline email. dead ends. his last known address is now owned by a hedge fund analyst and a french bulldog named miso. reddit threads spiral into fan conspiracies. a tumblr tagged #journalismdaddy went dark in 2019. his linkedin is a ghost town.
it’s not just that he disappeared. it’s that he disappeared clean. no trail. no statement. no explanation. the industry moved on. but you didn’t. couldn’t. not when he was the reason you’re here in the first place.
eventually, you open that article.
the luthor laboratories exposé is still online but barely. comments disabled. metadata stripped. halfway through, you feel the chill in your spine, a tone you’d missed before. the cadence is uneven. the voice, tight. something broke in him writing this. he was afraid. and he was right to be. two women died after that piece...
...clark kent had told the truth, and paid for it.
you lean back in your chair, throat dry.
the world decided he was done. but you? you don’t know how to quit stories like this. he’s your white whale. your myth. your maybe.
you open a new tab. search: “underground press clubs.” “dead journalist forums.” “where did clark kent go?” you know it’s a long shot, but something in your chest refuses to let go.
and then, of all places, an old fucking 4chan thread, half-buried in conspiracy rambling:
my source says he went back to smallville after everything. never heard of it? yeah, no one has.
smallville.
you blink. you honestly haven’t.
you grab your phone. call meera.
she picks up after one ring, a heart monitor beeping in the background. “about time, fucking weirdo.”
“hi. sorry. but i have a question.”
“no. you have the voice. the idea voice. i can hear it.”
“have you ever heard of a town called smallville?”
she pauses. “like… kansas?”
“…how’d you know?”
“remember that journalist guy you used to be obsessed with? cute, tall, serious? did all the late-night stuff after his nobel prize?”
“clark kent? pulitzer, not nobel, you dunce.”
“yeah, fucking whatever. tonya in med school had an actual shrine. she used to watch the daily show clips of him like they were marvel trailers. anyway, she once said he was from some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town in kansas. pretty sure it was called smallville.”
you actually bounce in place. sometimes you could kiss meera’s elephant memory.
this might actually be something if two different people can confirm it.
“hello?” she says, annoyed now. “did you die?”
“still alive! sorry. i literally called you about clark kent.”
“wait. seriously? why?”
you fidget with your notepad, flipping to a blank page. “i might be writing about him.”
there’s silence on her end. then, quieter: “be careful, sissy.”
you hang up and stare at your screen, her words echoing louder than you want them to. she’s never so quiet and that means her words hit harder.
between dani’s deadlines and meera’s late-night pep talks, you’ve somehow survived three years in this city. three years at the paper, and the last time one of your pieces trended, it was because a tiktok astrologer said your headline gave her a panic attack.
you’re good at what you do. you are. but you’re not where you thought you’d be. not yet. and looks like the key is clark fucking kent. the man who told the truth and then disappeared off the face of the earth.
you open the long-abandoned document titled: “new article/book - big serious project???”
and for the first time in months, you actually feel the electricity in your fingers as you type.
title: off the face of the earth