My Brother's Keeper (a Superman story)

Chapter 6: Tender Feelings

Clark's POV

"Do you think I made a mistake in not telling him?" I asked my mom, Lois sitting next to me, holding my hand as I waited for my mom's response.

She stayed quiet as if thinking hard.

"I don't know. Maybe, because otherwise, it would not have been something so new to him that he was going to have a hard time grasping the idea of you being Superman.

"So I did make a mistake" I felt bad now.

"Mistake or not, you did what you felt was good for him and you can never go wrong with that" my mom smiled, assuring me but I felt the sting of my brother's fear.

I looked up, using my vision to look at him, and he was asleep in his room.

"Were you just looking at him?" asked Lois.

"Yes."

"What is he doing?" asked my mom.

"He's asleep, peacefully."

"Clark, son, Omar is a good kid. He may have strayed a bit because of everything that's happened. We went through a global pandemic, he missed out on a high school experience and he wasn't able to see his friends because of the coronavirus."

"And he also missed me, a lot. And I neglected him" I felt so bad now. "He hates me, and even more so because of my secret. Now I see I should have told him a long time ago."

"Don't beat yourself up, either" my mom said. "Omar is still a boy, though sometimes I get the impression he thinks he's a fully grown man..."

"And he's grown up to be a handsome young man" Lois smiled.

"That he is" Clark chuckled.

"My point is that you did what you felt was good for him and you didn't keep your secret from him out of malicious intent. You did it for noble reasons and there's never anything wrong with that. So I'm sure he'll come around when it becomes second nature to him."

She was right but I was desperate to have a relationship with him, again. He was my little brother and my whole world. I needed him as much as he needed me, even if he felt he didn't.

Lois and my mom stayed in the kitchen, chatting and really getting to know one another, laughing and having what appeared to be a great conversation. I decided to go get some air and went into the barn, our hiding spot where we often spent time together, growing up.

As I walked upstairs, I went into the play area where everything was still neat and in its place. He had maintained everything in good shape, on his own, and I sat down and began to get nostalgic for the old days when he was still practically a child.

He still was, a child but he was inching closer to adulthood and that oftentimes made me sad for two reasons. One, because he was becoming an adult, and two, because I had missed a lot of what had happened in his life during my absence. The latter was my fault but now that my brother knew my secret and was angry at me even before revealing anything to him, I began to hope that he could overlook everything and for us to be close once again.

He had big brown eyes, much like our father's, as well as strong and sharp Middle Eastern features. One of them being his big eyes, as well as the thick eyebrows and thick dark hair. But despite that, because our mom was Mexican and Spanish, he looked somewhere between Middle Eastern and European.

He was fair-skinned but olive toned at the same time. I tended to resemble my father more because we were from the same family line from Krypton but Omar came out looking like both my parents and had inherited features from both.