Clark II
Clark was not proud of losing his temper. As Superman he couldn’t afford to ever lose control that way. And it simply wasn’t Clark Kent’s way. Doctor Friskin was going to have a field day at their next session. But Kal-El had been so blasted obtuse. In fact, of all the varied versions of Clark Kent he’d met from various alternate time-lines, this one had to be one of the densest. Erasing someone’s memories? Give me a break.
He checked his watch. Half an hour till every one showed up. It was going to be a long night.
“Why don’t you go talk to her now?” Clark suggested. Kal-El’s expression was bleak, defeated. He sighed as he stood and headed up the stairs to the main floor.
After a few moments, Clark followed him up the stairs.
Clark went up to the master bedroom and changed out of his suit into black trousers and a black turtleneck shirt. He refused to wear the black Kryptonian body suit that still hung in the back of the hidden closet with his other ‘suits’. His one concession tonight to signify his Kryptonian obligations was a blue enameled pendant with the sigil of the House of El.
Coming back downstairs, he noticed Kal-El and his Lois had gone out to the back deck to talk.
“How did it go?” he asked his wife.
“Was I that galactically dense?” she wondered aloud.
“No,” he replied, busying himself with setting out snacks on the dining room table for their soon-to-be-arriving guests. “Wasn’t it Herb who said you were simply blinded by love?”
“He only said that to make me feel better about it taking so long to figure you out,” Lois said with a grin. “I mean, who’d a thunk it? The Man of Steel was just a disguise for the hack from Nowheresville Perry was trying to set me up with?” She came over to the table. “No chocolate?”
“You know Lara and Jordan are allergic and you can’t have any until the baby’s weaned. Sleep good, baby wired on chocolate bad, remember? Have some carob kisses instead.” He popped one in to her mouth.
“It’s just not the same,” she complained.
There was the sound of a car driving up and stopping in the driveway. A moment later, the doorbell rang.
“I got it,” CJ yelled, running to the door and opening it. Standing on the front porch were Richard and Penny and just behind them was the Kent family lawyer, Constance Hunter.
“Come on in,” Clark said, waving them into the house. “Zara and Ching aren’t here yet, but should be any time now. Oh, Constance, this is Penny and Richard White.”
The attorney gave the couple a nod in greeting. “Constance will be the one handling the necessary paperwork, assuming everything comes together,” Clark added as explanation.
Richard gave Penny a hug. Clark knew they had high hopes for tonight’s meeting. Like he and Lois before them, they’d been turned down by adoption agency social workers. Even the foster care system thought the risk of placing a child with a pair of Daily Planet investigative reporters was too great.
“I assume the natural parents are aware of the documentation they need to have?” Constance asked.
“The message was passed to them, so I assume they’ll have proper documents with them,” Clark said. “We may have to translate them, however.”
Constance nodded.
Clark had told her early on it was to be a privately arranged fostering involving foreign nationals. He hadn’t added any details aside from the fact that fostering was a normal part of the culture among the high ranking families of that nation. He assumed Constance had done her homework and realized that no current Earth culture was doing that sort of thing these days.
Clark glanced out the French doors to the back deck. Kal-El and Wanda were still talking. Then, he leaned over and kissed her, a long tender kiss. He pulled away and Clark saw Wanda’s eyes widen. Then she slapped Kal-El. Hard.
“That had to have hurt,” Richard commented.
“They have some serious issues to work out,” Lois said.
Lois I
Wanda had never seen Kal-El looking so glum as when he came into the living room where she and Lois were sitting. Or maybe she had and just couldn’t remember.
“We have to talk,” he said, head bowed, hands in his pants pockets. His posture was so familiar, so Clark-like. She almost had it . . . and it was gone again.
Lois gave Wanda a little nod. Wanda stood up and followed Kal-El out to the back deck.
It was about an hour before sunset and the western sky was beginning to glow pink and red.
“They’re happy,” Wanda said, looking at the clouds. “Married ten years, four kids, two cars, a mortgage. They’re in love and they’re happy.” She glanced at Kal-El. His head was still down, looking at his feet, not at her.
“She was trying to convince me that Superman was nothing more than a character, a job. Somehow I can’t quite get my head around that either.”
“I think Mister Kent was channeling my father,” Kal-El said. “I know my dad would have been terribly disappointed in me for what I did to you. And he asked me some questions I’m not sure I have good answers for.”
“And what were the questions?”
“Just one really. Who am I, really? And I don’t have an answer. I’ve spent seventeen years trying to be the person my birth father’s AI thought I should be. And in that time, the person I ought to be, the person I’ve been all my life, has turned into someone I don’t even like. He’s a clumsy, cowardly fool and I’m not even sure how it happened.”
“Do you always refer to yourself in the third person?”
That brought a touch of a smile. “It helps me keep track. I don’t really have disassociated personality syndrome. It just looks like that sometimes.”
There was a long silence as she tried to put more pieces together. “I know, intellectually, that you’re also Clark. But I still can’t quite believe it.”
“He told me that Kryptonians are telepathic. He suspects I may have used that talent on you without intending to.”
“Can you undo it?”
To answer, he stepped closer, tipped her head up with his hand and kissed her. She remembered the sweetness of his mouth, the soft lips, the fervent promise of more.
He pulled back and the memories of that night, the night Jason was conceived, the night in the Fortress of Solitude came flooding back, overwhelming her senses. There was more than just that night – all the things she hadn’t put together afterwards, all the sly comments at work when it was discovered she was pregnant and Clark Kent, her partner, had disappeared to parts unknown, the understanding looks from Perry, the orders from Perry to go with Clark to do a story at Niagara Falls. Clark’s unconvincing arguments against it. It all came into focus and she was furious.
She slapped him as hard as she could.
He took a step back and she could see the confused pain in his impossibly blue eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Was it your idea to do that story at Niagara?” she demanded.
“Is that what you remember?” he asked, confusion obvious in his voice.
“Was it?”
“Hardly. It was an idiotic fluff piece and you know it. Jimmie could have written it,” he answered. “Perry went and gave the story I was working on to Mike. You have no idea how furious I was.” He paused, watching her warily.
That was something. The Man of Steel was afraid of her. She felt the beginnings of a hysterical laugh and ruthlessly quashed it.
“What else do you remember?” he asked.
“I remember Niagara Falls. And things I didn’t put together then, that didn’t make sense at the time,” she said. “We were set up. Somebody had a great laugh sending Mad Dog off on a honeymoon with her dweeby partner. Even if nothing had happened, they would have said it had. Only something did happen, and then you took off and they blamed me for it. Oh, nobody actually said it, and Perry was so understanding, and you hadn’t placed any blame on anybody for you needing to leave. And then when Jason was born and he looked just like you, only you didn’t come back . . .”
“Lois,” he said quietly. “You’re babbling.”
She stopped. To her horror, she was crying. She stepped toward him, recognizing through her tears that oh-so-familiar deer-in-the-headlights, ready to bolt look. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It just came at me too fast.” He seemed to relax just a bit, enough for her to put her arms around him. “I missed you. I missed my friend.”
“I missed you, too. I should never have left,” he said, resting his cheek on the top of her head.
“If I had stopped you, you would have ended up resenting it, resenting me,” she said. “We both know that.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “But it’s a moot point if we can’t get back home.”
Last edited by Dandello; 10/19/19 08:03 AM.
