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But the Stars are not gods, they say; they are just lost children, as we all are.
The Orphan’s Tales: In The Night Garden, Catherynne M. Valente
I. Once upon a time
She’s in love with a god.
It’s easy to forget it sometimes, with the sun streaming through the windows, hearing his soft sighs as he wakes up, his arm thrown over her side on the bed. He has soft eyes and a kind smile, he likes pepper on his omelets and milk on his coffee, and he calls his mother everyday, so ordinary, so marvelously human.
But then his eyes focus, and he hears things she can’t begin to guess, a cry from across the world, and he doesn’t hesitate, never, a bone-deep need to answer and help and save.
He flies and destroys, and there’s not a day she’s not in wonder with it, with the way he’s proof the universe it’s so much greater than they could’ve imagined.
(he cares, and that’s the most wonderful part of him, that he looks at this world, so full of pain and misery, this world that could bow to him so easily, and thinks only of making lives a little brighter, a little easier. He can’t save everyone but he’ll never stop trying)
(If God is all-powerful, he cannot be all good, Lex Luthor will say one day – but Lois knows he is more powerful that they can imagine and a better man that they deserve)
II. The good part
She’s never had anything like this. Lois is made of fights and confrontations, tense dinners and infrequent phone calls. Love, to her, has always been about a few moments that wouldn’t mean much to anybody else - her mother’s hand over hers, her father holding his tongue to not upset her, her sister calling on her birthday.
But Clark doesn’t know how to do just small moments – he loves with everything he is, at all times, even when he’s frustrated or angry. He never forgets her favorite food, buys her flowers because it makes her smile, makes her coffee in the morning, and kisses like she’s precious and perfect.
(she’s not, and, for the longest time she thought one day she would arrive home and he wouldn’t be there, finally realizing she wasn’t everything he thought she was)
And maybe because he loves so completely, so does she – and she’s never loved like this, with her soul and mind and heart, wanting to keep him with her always, letting him step into her world in a way nobody has ever done before. She lets him know her, and it’s a wonder far greater than the way he flies above the clouds.
(Lois Lane can love Superman and Clark Kent and nobody notices a thing, because nobody really knows anything about Lois, much less anything about the people who inhabit her world)
He touches her so softly, always, never leaving a bruise, though her sheets are destroyed and his hands leave imprints on the walls. She should fear him, she thinks sometimes, but he always gives himself so completely, so soft and warm in her hands, and she loves him, so much, wouldn’t know how not to love and accept him.
(this is a mistake, they’ll tell her, over and over again. There’s no shame in loving a god, not at all, but you shouldn’t forget to fear what he truly is, what he could do)
(he would never do that, she tells them, and still they answer, dark eyes and bleeding hands – but he could)
III. The bad part
They hold out his hands for him, praying, begging, and they don’t see him at all.
She mocked the glasses in the beginning, but they’re effective, because Clark smiles too much and laughs too loud, too human for anyone to associate with their god.
They look at him and see power and the sun and endless possibilities, and they turn to her, a million different questions that are all the same, how is he who is he tell us tell us tell us.
They don’t want the truth, she knows, they want a miracle and a messiah and a god – and he is all that, he is, but that’s not all he is -, so she can’t tell them he’s so warm, too stubborn for his own good, always speaks before thinking, watches football and jokes too much, sometimes.
So when Perry asks for an article about the death of a hero, she can’t give him one. She can’t write about Superman without writing about Clark, not when he’s no longer there to read it with her in the morning and laugh. Clark existed before Superman did, and this story has always been about a boy from Kansas, and she can’t pretend otherwise - not so soon after, maybe never again.
(Perry gives the article to someone else, once he hears about Clark – I understand, Lois, we all cared about Kent, he was a good man – but they do ask her to choose the words that will go on his memorial and she does only because she wouldn’t allow someone he didn’t know to do it)
(she didn’t expect it, couldn’t have guessed, how lonely it would be to love him)
IV. A fear
Lois worries, sometimes.
She knows it’s silly, that this world can’t hurt him, not really, that their weapons are useless, that nature doesn’t stand a chance. But his heart is so soft, and every time he can’t save someone, or they look at him with distrust and fear, she feels him break a little, wanting so badly to be part of this world because it was the only one he has left.
(later, when she sees him lying down, the green glow illuminating him, it’s his face, afraid and defeated, that really hurts her, and it’s all of her worst nightmares coming true, a world that finally discovered how to hurt him)
(even later, holding his body, kissing his face, she’ll hate them all, for making him believe Earth was worth more than his life)
V. A shared love
He’s a man who can fly across the world, touch the starts and stare into the sun, and he likes it when she tells him stories.
The subject never really mattered – it could be about her day, an old fairytale, even a book. He liked to lay his head on her lap, close his eyes and hear her speak, the words flowing naturally.
I like journalism because of that, he told her once, it’s making this world, simple and mundane, into extraordinary stories with just your words.
It never failed to amaze her, how much he loved the way the words came together so they could be passed on.
(she’s told a thousand stories in her life, but not one of them compare to the wonder of him)
(that first day she woke up and he wasn’t there, she went into his grave and told story after story after story, until it got dark and her voice grew hoarse and Martha had to come get her)
VI. A bleeding wound
After he-
After, she stays with Martha a lot, the only woman in the world who could begin to understand. They share stories and coffee, easy smiles, but it pains her, that the memory of him will die with them. Because the world remembers Superman, builds him memorials and statues, but they can’t know he never wanted that and she still hasn’t forgiven them for making him die thinking the world hated him.
(it’s so easy to love a dead messiah, who can’t be questioned or perform miracles, who is only a memory of kindness and a possibility that will never come true)
The first few weeks, she thinks a lot of writing his story, really, starting with a baby in Kansas, through a childhood of confusion until the moment he decided I will love this world even if it isn’t ready to love me.
(she would need more time before writing it. With his memory so fresh, she could have a thousand pages, and it would just be the same words, again and again, and it isn’t a very good story - he tried, he tried so hard and we didn’t deserve him so now he can’t ever try again)
VII. A possibility
Bruce visits her, sometimes. She’s not sure he feels guilty, or if he’s just lonelier than he likes to admit.
She likes to be kept updated on the search for metahumans so they usually talk about that, but one day, when they’re both drunk and tired, he tells her about his nightmare, of the world he saw for Clark.
She imagines the man he describes, made of steel and pain, that kills without a second thought and doesn’t forgive. He would never do that, she tells Bruce, and he nods, raises his glass, he was a good man.
(later, she’ll think of Clark after that incident on the desert, clinging to her like she was going to disappear, and of Clark smiling so softly, telling her you are my world)
(he wouldn’t do that, she thinks. But- he could)
an interlude: a question
(how do you say that to someone? Please love me a little less, I’m okay with needing you, but I think I would feel better if you didn’t need me so much)
(she was selfish. She had a lifetime of being too much for people to love, so she wanted him to look at her like he did, like she was the sun itself, like she was the goddess there. She loved him and she wanted to be loved back, though it scares her to think the world would have to pay for that)
VIII. A confession
She wears the ring everyday. Most people know better than to ask why, but Diana Prince is not most people.
She can’t really explain. She wanted to say yes, and if he had died after asking she would’ve continued wearing it, so it feels silly, to not wear it just because it hadn’t arrived soon enough.
(not so secretly, part of her still thinks he’s coming back. Martha too, though she only says it once, is it silly, Lois, to still think one day he’ll just-)
(he’s a miracle, and it’s hard to believe death can keep him for long - if he comes back, even if by then she’s too old and different for him to love, she wants him to know she loved him)
(but it feels wrong saying that to Diana, who has seen too many deaths and no resurrections)
I’ll never let him go, she says instead. Even if someone else came, even if I could love them- they would have to understand I can’t let him go.
Diana smiles at that, all sharp teeth and centuries of grief. Lois suspects that are a lot of things Diana refuses to let go.
The other woman takes Lois’ hand, her fingers pressing the ring a little, her eyes focusing on it like it’s something more than a simple rock from this word Diana is still learning to love.
You’re quite the human, Lois, she says, and it’s sounds like a question and a wonder.
(why would a god choose you?, it’s how some people would take of it, Lois thinks)
(who else could ever be enough for someone like you?, it’s what Diana truly means, and it makes Lois smile, her own sharp teeth and a grief that feels far older than it is)
a second interlude: a father’s prophecy
(Lois has a young spirit and an old soul, her father used to say – always looking for trouble, always knowing exactly how big of a mistake that is)
(of course she fell in love with him, even knowing her world was too small to keep him. Losing him was painful, but never a surprise)
IX. The terrifying part
The story she’ll one day have to write starts with something like this: one day she met a man who changed her life. And after monsters came from the sky, and took her to space, after she fell to Earth all over again and watched a city be destroyed, she realized a very troubling fact. She was in love with a god that could burn the world to the ground.
But – and this is the very important part, the one she’ll have to rewrite over and over again to make sure it’s right – that god fell to his knees in pain, his heart too fragile for the pain of taking someone’s life. That god, made of sunlight and stars, held her like she was the only thing keeping him in this world, like she alone could hold him upright.
He was the most human person she had ever met, and he loved her, so much, in a way she never thought she’d be loved. And because he was precious and kind and good, she took him into her home and her bed and her heart, and he was a fragile thing, made of steel but soft to the touch, and when she smiled, he lived, and when she cried, he broke himself in half until he managed to make her smile again.
He might never have forgiven the world if it had taken her from him, and that’s what they feared about him, the day the pain of the world would be too much to handle, the day the anger would surface from that gentle smile. So they took him from her, let him burn himself to save them and sighed in relief that death came before his anger did.
(this is the part she won’t write: they should’ve feared her. Because this god who was just a man loved her beyond reason, and Lois was only human, and far too often she considered taking his heart into her hand and telling him they do not deserve you – make them pay for daring to thinking they do)
(her god was too soft and too gentle and loved her too much, even if she’s just human, fragile and ordinary, unable to travel through the skies or touch the stars. And she could have broken him, without meaning too, far too easily, and he wouldn’t have thought to stop her)
(he told her you’re my world and went to save them all, and she lies awake at night, fearing that he’ll came back just to die for her all over again)
X. A conclusion
So she’s in love with a god who is actually no more than a man and he could burn the world to the ground. And this is still the single most terrifying part: he loves her too.