The fortress was never truly silent. It hummed, a low, crystalline thrum that vibrated in Clark’s molars, the sound of ancient Kryptonian technology breathing in the perpetual Arctic cold. But tonight, the silence between him and you was a different thing entirely. It was heavy, fraught with a shared, impossible hope.

Before them, encased in a containment field that glimmered like a soap bubble, lay Ultraman.

He was curled on the floor of the energy cell, a mirror image of Clark’s own physique twisted into a posture of defensive agony. His suit, a brutalist, charcoal-gray version of the El family crest, was scarred and smeared with otherworldly grime. In the pale, shifting light of the fortress, he looked less like a tyrant from a broken Earth and more like a lost boy, shivering on a bed of alien stone.

“He’s just a kid, Clark,” you whispered, your voice barely disturbing the air. Your hand was warm in his, a grounding point of human certainty. You weren’t looking at the monster the world feared; you were looking at the hollows under his eyes, the way his fingers twitched in a phantom grip for a weapon that wasn’t there.

Clark squeezed your hand, his thumb tracing the familiar ridge of your knuckles. He could hear the other’s heartbeat—a frantic, irregular staccato, so different from the steady, solar-powered rhythm in his own chest. It was the heart of a cornered animal, all fight and flight with no room for rest.

“They called him a god on his world,” Clark murmured, his voice tight. “A god of cruelty. But listen to that. He sounds… scared.”

“Everyone’s scared of something,” you said, your tone pragmatic, yet soft. It was the same voice you used to talk down terrified civilians. “Even gods from bad neighborhoods.”

The decision had been made days ago, in the quiet of their Metropolis apartment, surrounded by the mundane evidence of their life together—a half-read book on the arm of the couch, your favorite mug in the sink, the smell of last night’s pasta sauce still clinging to the air. They couldn’t send him to a S.T.A.R. Labs blacksite. They couldn’t kill him. Seeing him now, broken and captive, the last of Clark’s resolve hardened into something else, something that felt dangerously like paternal instinct.

You were the one who moved first, pulling your hand from his. “Okay, farm boy. Let’s go be somebody’s weird, cosmic foster parents.”

You deactivated the containment field with a series of swift, sure touches to the console. The shimmering bubble vanished with a soft pfft, and the raw, Arctic air rushed into the space, stirring the dark hair on Ultraman’s forehead.

His eyes snapped open. They weren't the warm blue of Clark’s, but a hard, metallic gray, like shrapnel. He scrambled back, a low, guttural snarl ripping from his throat. “Stay back! I will eviscerate you! I will shatter your bones to dust!”

Clark didn’t move. He just stood there, hands open at his sides, the way his Pa had taught him to approach a spooked horse. “No one’s shattering anything today,” he said, his voice calm, a gentle counterpoint to the other’s razor-edged fury. “You’re safe here.”

“Safe?” Ultraman spat the word like a curse. “This cage reeks of yellow sun. It burns.”