Martha patted his back, and Clark reluctantly let her go. Martha quickly ran over to help Bruce up. Bruce touched his bruised mouth corner, then turned to Clark and said, "Looks like you're pretty hurt, otherwise, I'd be in the Kuiper Belt now..."
"You damned bastard!" Clark gritted his teeth and glared at him, "You played me!"
"Oh my! Clark! Don't talk to him like that!" Martha quickly intervened between them and then said to Clark, "Your friend saved me. I was almost kidnapped by those bad guys."
Clark widened his eyes and looked at Bruce. Bruce wiped his mouth corner and sat back at the dining table. Clark had no choice but to follow his lead and came to sit down opposite him at the table.
"When I arrived at Kent's Farm, those people had already broken in. They tied up your mom and were about to load her into a car. I knocked them all down."
Only then did Clark feel a wave of lingering fear. So Lex Luther really did it, but Batman got there first and saved his mother.
But why...
"Oh, dear, you might not know." Martha also brought him a bowl of oatmeal and then said, "I have an accidental injury insurance policy, which was insured when Kent's Farm was still doing well; the coverage is quite high."
"The past few years haven't been great, especially this fall. The wheat we grew was classified as animal feed due to failing data standards. We lost a lot of money. As it stands, we won't have money to buy seeds for spring."
"Kent's Farm is too old; the house needs repairs, and the farming equipment needs replacing. We simply don't have enough money. I've been robbing Peter to pay Paul, but soon I won't be able to sustain it. We need that insurance payout."
"Trust me, this isn't insurance fraud. Those kidnappers were about to ignite. Without your friend's timely arrival, the whole farm house would have burned down. So I thought, why not make some noise, pretend I was really kidnapped. At least this way, we could get some insurance money and keep the farm going."
Clark's face showed a painful expression. He had always known about Kent's Farm's financial struggles but had no solution to the issue from the beginning to the end.
He could help with the farming, but he couldn't understand how the wheat data was evaluated; he could work tirelessly, but the fixed costs of the farm were still too high. He couldn't just rob money, could he?
So he went to the big city for work, almost all the money he earned went home. But even then, it wasn't enough. Even though he didn't go to college, the jobs he found paid fairly well, but still couldn't support the farm.
Furthermore, being exposed in front of Batman made Clark feel inexplicably embarrassed. Because he was already so powerful and believed he was doing his best, but was still this poor. This made what he said before like "having the ability to be responsible for everyone" sound so ridiculous.
"Don't worry, ma'am." Bruce spoke up, "I know very well how those insurance investigators assess the level of disaster. The damage I've done to your house is enough for you to get a full payout. If not, I can also provide you with legal assistance. After all, it was indeed my car crash that collapsed the house; besides helping you, I also have my own purposes, naturally I must bear a part of the responsibility."
"Thank you so much." Martha held Bruce's hand and said, "I'll go get you another bowl of oatmeal, Clark, do you want some?"
"I..." Clark originally wanted to say he didn't want any, but when he turned his head, he exposed the bandage on his neck. Martha let out a sharp scream again.
Finished, Clark thought, how would he explain his injury to Martha?
But unexpectedly, what he awaited wasn't questioning. Martha just stared blankly at him for a while, then leaned on the table and turned to head to the kitchen. Soon, she brought back a steaming bowl of oatmeal.
"Eat a little, dear. It'll be better soon."
Clark picked up the spoon and fed the oatmeal into his mouth. For some reason, the once fragrant and sweet oatmeal now tasted like wax. A certain sour emotion surged up from his chest, rushing first to his eyes, then all the way down to his throat and chin; both places were sour and swollen, so painful that it made it difficult for him to swallow.
Clark couldn't believe he cried in front of Batman. And what he couldn't believe even more was that Batman didn't look at him, finished the food on his plate, and went upstairs.
Martha walked over and hugged him, wiping away the tears from his face, then said, "Go and sleep, rest well."
Clark didn't even know how he went upstairs, nor how he fell asleep. But he dreamt an extremely clear dream. In the dream, he recalled the latter part of the story.
One morning, he was awoken again by the familiar sound of a tractor. As he walked down the stairs, he smelled the familiar fragrance of oatmeal. He had just reached downstairs when his father, Jonathan, dashed in excitedly.
"Come quickly, Clark! Come over!"
Clark ran towards his father. They arrived outside together, Jonathan lifted him up, and then he saw in the trailer pulled by the tractor, a new lamb.
It was a white lamb, newly born, its curly fleece under the morning sunlight soft like the clouds on the horizon.
He looked at his father with surprise, and this middle-aged man with sunburnt face smiled even happier than him.
This time, Clark finally wasn't alarmed awake. He repeated a sweet dream many times, then slowly awoke, but still somewhat restlessly turned to the side. Wayne Manor's bed was a bit too soft; if his own bed were like this, then during the winter he wouldn't be able to wake up a single day for work.
After lingering in bed for a while, Clark still sat up. Because he slept too soundly, he felt a bit dizzy. He lifted his shirt and checked his chest; the external wounds were mostly healed, but the sense of weakness still lingered. That green crystal had mixed into his blood, and perhaps it would take a long time to metabolize it completely.
After standing up, Clark straightened his clothes and pushed open the door, but the entire manor was very quiet, with no sound at all. Standing by the balcony on the second floor, Clark felt a strange emotion, as if this place was a gigantic tomb.
Before Clark's eyes appeared again the tombstone engraved with the name "Damian Wayne." He sighed and walked down the stairs.
Batman was not downstairs; it was unclear where he had gone. Clark didn't know what to do either; he wanted to wait for Batman to come back and then talk to him. But during this time, he couldn't just do nothing, so he roamed around the manor.
Soon, he found a battlesuit in a display cabinet behind the living room. It was obviously tailored for a child, with small pant legs and sleeves. Clark instinctively reached out and touched the glass of the cabinet, feeling a bit suffocated.
"What are you doing?" A deep voice came from the other end.
Clark turned his head and saw Bruce standing at the end of the hallway. Clark quickly withdrew his hand and said, "Sorry, I shouldn't be touching it."
Bruce turned and walked back, with Clark following behind him. Clark heard him say, "Your mother went home this morning. I installed cameras nearby to ensure she doesn't encounter any more danger. What do you plan to do next?"
"I…" Clark actually had a gut full of plans, but when facing Batman, he couldn't articulate them.
They sat by the fireplace again. The warm flames gave Clark some strength, and he said, "Before that, I have some questions I want to ask you."
"What questions?"
Clark had many questions he wanted to ask, such as who that Black officer really was, or what exactly was the green crystal that made him weak. However, he first asked what he considered the most important question.
"Why am I always so angry?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know."
"Then you should think carefully; when have you felt angry?"
Clark carefully recalled, more thoroughly than ever before. Of course, he couldn't start recalling from the day he was born, so he selected some recent clips, especially those involving Batman.
Then he realized that the first time he felt angry, and that kind of uncontrollable rage, was actually when Batman died in his arms during the mission.
At that time, their relationship wasn't smooth, merely ordinary teammates. So this anger didn't seem to stem from a close person being hurt; he was simply very angry.
Next time was a bit better than that; when he was being chased and attacked by that evil spirit, he was also very angry, even ignoring the physical pain.
Then, at the end of the mission, the villain was punished, but he was still very angry. This anger had always been accumulating in his chest until the night the alien spaceship appeared.
But even after blowing up the alien spaceship, this anger wasn't vented out; it was still vague and elusive.
In other words, he had always been angry, unable to find a scenario where he wasn't.
But Clark was unwilling to accept this; he didn't think of himself as such an irritable person. So he began to recall earlier, from his childhood, trying to pick out moments when he wasn't angry.
He remembered that when he was a child, a classmate mocked him on the school bus. By rights, he should have been angry, but he wasn't; then the bus crashed into the river, and despite such misfortune, he still wasn't angry. Not only that, he even disregarded past grievances and saved that classmate who mocked him.
When he just left the town, he changed several jobs and was excluded by colleagues. Not only was he not angry, but he would also rescue them when they were in danger.
There was another time when he encountered something that made him angry, but he was just angry for a moment, and after impaling the opponent's car on a tree, he instantly calmed down, even feeling a bit guilty and regretful afterward.
So, what's the cause of this groundless anger all this time?
Clark narrated all his experiences intermittently and then looked at Bruce. Bruce showed an "as expected" expression but also began to daze off, as if recalling something.
A cold rainy night, a solitary high-rise, small silhouettes falling like raindrops...
"Helplessness brings anger. And anger… will destroy everything."