The Deep took a breath and finally got it out. "I know you're a good person. Can you help me?"
There's something almost comical about hearing that particular sentence from him, Clark thought.
He had villains and criminals ask him for help before. It was usually desperate people who ran out of better options, not real threats. Actual villains didn't come to Superman looking for favors, mostly because whatever they wanted done, he was never going to be the one to do it.
The Deep didn't fit either mold. If anything, the word that came to mind was predator.
"You need my help?" Clark said. "Forgive me for being blunt, but a few days ago you were threatening Starlight and trying to corner her at work. Now you're here telling me you want to do something meaningful?"
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." The Deep's voice softened, almost pleading. "It won't happen again."
Clark shook his head slowly. He didn't buy the contrition for a second. What he was looking at wasn't remorse; it was fear. If The Deep actually felt bad about any of it, he would have apologized to the others too, the ones who couldn't push back the way Starlight had. He hadn't.
Some people just didn't have a spine or a compass of their own. They bent whichever way the wind was blowing that week.
Vought's heroes weren't known for their morals to begin with, and The Deep, who had spent his whole career at the bottom of the Seven's pecking order, had never had much backbone to lose in the first place. What was actually sad about him was that he didn't even have any fire left, any real anger, anything to plant his feet on. There wasn't much of a self in there to defend.
You couldn't call a man like that good or evil. A little pressure, and he would abandon whatever line he had drawn for himself. More pressure, and the principles went too. Maybe there was something decent underneath somewhere, it just never translated into anything he actually did. Whatever direction the outside world was pushing that day, that was the direction he moved.
But Clark was a decent guy. So he decided to listen.
"Interesting. Why come to me instead of Homelander or Madelyn?"
"They won't help. To them, nothing matters unless it does something for Vought, or for themselves."
"So what do you actually want to do?"
"I want to save some dolphins."
Clark raised an eyebrow. He didn't need X-ray vision or a super-brain to connect those dots. The Deep had always been able to talk to sea life, loved doing it, and it clearly made him more protective of it than most people ever got the chance to be.
"Illegal hunting? Illegal fishing?" Clark asked. "Smuggling endangered species?"
"No, nothing like that. At least, Vought never put anything like that on my task list. Mine's all publicity stunts." The Deep hesitated. "It's Oceania. The dolphins there, they're starving, they're being mistreated, and it's making them miserable. I want people to actually see it."
"So it's an animal welfare thing." Clark nodded slowly. "Didn't you have promo deals with Oceania? The fall event, the amusement park tie-in?"
"I did. That's exactly why, when I brought it to Madelyn, she shut it down."
The Deep pressed on, more urgent now. "In that so-called marine paradise, those dolphins are just toys for tourists. They can't get out, they don't get fed enough, and they're crammed into tanks way too small for them."
"So you've come to me."
"You're the only one who can help me. Please, Clark."
"Am I really the only one who can?"
The Deep started to answer and stopped cold. The rest of the sentence died in his throat.
Clark looked at him. His blue eyes were steady, unreadable, deep enough that The Deep couldn't find the bottom of them.
"Is it really the only one who can help you?" Clark asked again.
The Deep's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"You've built a habit out of needing someone else to lean on. Haven't you?" Clark's voice stayed level. "Why is that? If this actually matters to you, why not just do it yourself?"
"Is it your spot in the Eight you're scared of losing? Or is it something simpler? You just don't believe you're good enough to matter on your own?"
"If a seat at that table means that much to you, you might as well let the whole idea go now. As long as you're at Vought, you're going to keep running into this exact same choice, over and over."
"Vought sees you as a product to sell," Clark said, quiet and even. "You want to be something else. I don't think you get to be both. Not forever, anyway. Eventually you have to pick one."
Nobody had ever said that to The Deep so plainly before. Just two days earlier, he had told his private therapist he suspected the only reason he made the Eight at all was to check a diversity box. That he was, honestly, the weakest one on the team.
The therapist told him he was a member of the Eight. A hero. Nothing to feel small about.
Clark handed him the truth without the padding: he wasn't a hero. He was a face Vought picked to round out the roster, dressed up and sold as one.
And underneath all of that was the actual choice. The spotlight, the money, the cars, the mansion, against whatever it would cost him to actually do this. Standing there, he caught himself running the math. The annual paycheck, the fans who worshipped him under the lights. He hesitated.
If it costs me all of that, maybe I don't actually care about a few dolphins as much as I thought I did.
The thought made him sick with himself. He turned and walked away without another word, caught somewhere between shame and relief.
Clark slipped his phone back into his pocket and listened.
Jude's voice drifted over from the direction of his apartment, pitched low enough that only Clark's hearing could have caught it at all. "Never had much patience for the extreme end of animal-rights people. The ones who rank a dog's life over a person's. But starving dolphins in a tank for the tourist crowd? Yeah. That's just cruelty with a gift shop attached."
"Shame there's no Daily Planet in this world. A real reporter runs that story, Oceania's got a PR nightmare on their hands inside a week."
Clark smiled, a little tired around the edges. He had been in New York long enough to know better. Any reporter who actually ran with that story would get buried fast. Whoever was bankrolling Oceania had the kind of money that made problems like that disappear before they printed.
"Don't sweat it either way," Jude said. "It's the internet age. Nothing stays buried forever. Forget the fish guy, I'll get the dolphins out myself."
"Sometimes you've just got to fight fire with fire."
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