Here we go
. This is also the beginning of what hasn't been seen by anyone so...
Last timeHe finished wrapping her ankle, letting her decide whether or not to put her boot back on. "All done."
She rolled it slightly, experimentally. "Not bad for a city boy." She worked her boot on and laced it up. "So, Superman. No holds barred interview. Not for publication. Anything I want to ask. You have to answer. You have to be honest and no, you can't say no."
"Do I have a choice?" he asked her resigned.
"No."
"Then shoot."
"Start at the beginning. Tell me everything from the time you got in that ship to the time you showed up in my house. *Something* in there is relevant to those military yahoos and we've got to figure out what it is."
*~*13*~*She watched him take a deep breath before he started to talk. "My parents found me twenty-six years ago. They were at my grandpa's cabin in upstate New Troy when they saw a streak of light and something land down the mountain. Mom, believe it or not, was the one who insisted they go look to see what it was. She's not the outdoorsy type at all, but she insisted. Dad tried to at least convince her to wait until morning but she refused. They walked through the woods, down a trail that's fairly steep in places, in tennis shoes with Maglites. They found my ship in a small clearing near a creek about half way down the mountain from the cabin."
He picked up a twig and played with it in his hand. "They took me and everything they could carry with them when they left. Me, my baby blanket, a couple other little things, but they couldn't carry the ship. They were going to come back the next day and get it but..." He shook his head. "Mom got a phone call from her college roommate in the middle of the night. Star's a sometimes psychic. She's often... wrong or at least off somehow – like if she'd said we'd sleep together last night but implying a lot more. Technically, she'd have been right but..." He sighed. "Anyway, she called Mom and told her that wherever she was, she had to leave because the baby was in danger. Star thought Mom had finally gotten pregnant and she was going to... fall down the stairs at the cabin or something or down the mountainside hiking with Dad, something like that. I guess Star didn't know..." He shook his head and didn’t finish the thought. "So Mom woke Dad up and they took off for Metropolis."
"Was Star right?" Lois asked quietly.
Clark nodded. "Everyone else who lived anywhere near there had Army men pounding on their doors in the next few days. My parents went back six months later and 'just happened' to hike down the mountain to where they'd found my ship but it was long gone by then. The military had been over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for part of a satellite – or that's what they'd told everyone. One of the things they were able to rescue from the ship was this... globe. It played a message for my parents and told them about me – pretty much what you've read in the papers, just about a baby not an adult. Planet exploding, last of my people, that kind of thing."
Lois wasn’t sure when she'd reached out to rest her hand on his arm, but she had. He seemed lost in his train of thought and she didn't want to interrupt him.
"Over the years, Dad's done research into UFO and shooting star sightings that night. There were a string of them, starting near San Diego and ending in upstate New Troy. Smallville wasn't one of them, but it's pretty close to the line connecting all of them. This area had the highest concentration of sightings of anywhere, I think, even more than near the cabin – but this area, believe it or not, is more densely populated so... As best we can tell, that was the path my ship took when it entered the atmosphere. My... guess is... whatever it is that guy Trask has, that Josh's dad found, was in the wake of my ship and landed somewhere along the path it took. It's possible there's more of whatever it is all along that line. It's possible that Trask already has a bunch and is just waiting for a chance to try it out. Dad said he looked around pretty good while Mom was cooing over me, to see if there was anything else that they should take back with them and he didn’t see anything. If whatever it is glows green like you said, I'd think he'd have noticed it."
Lois really wasn't sure when she'd rested her head on his shoulder, but she had. "Was it hard growing up?" she asked quietly.
He was quiet for a minute before answering. "It would have been harder if I hadn't known I think. That globe told me a lot about my heritage and what to expect living here. Krypton had a red sun while Earth's is yellow. Something about the difference is what gives me my abilities. I had to be careful, always, to hide what I can do, but if I hadn't known... If we'd thought I was a science experiment, genetically enhanced or some Soviet moon landing gone wrong, it would have been a lot harder. As much as I wish I had my ship, I'm really glad I have the globe."
"I'm glad," Lois said softly. "Will they come back? Your powers?"
She felt him shrug. "I don't know. I've never encountered this... whatever it is before." He was silent for a long moment, but she sensed he had something else to say. "They may not ever come back," he finished, his voice so low she could barely hear him.
They sat there for a long time before she finally decided to ask him something else – something to try to take his mind off of the loss of his powers. "So, any brothers or sisters?"
He shook his head. "No. My mom can't have kids. Neither can my dad, actually, but that's a medical thing. They... They had a lot of rough years together before I showed up. High school sweethearts. Married at eighteen, ready to take on the world. Put themselves through school because all of my grandparents had told them if they got married, no college money, but they were young and in love so..." He shrugged. "Mom became a nurse and helped put Dad through medical school. Found out he'd been cheating on her ever since she went to work full-time after graduation. She worked a lot of nights because it paid better and med school is expensive. One woman after another apparently. They split up, but didn't divorce. He got snipped because he didn't want unwanted kids to interfere with his playboy lifestyle."
He hesitated before going on. "They'd been separated about a year when Mom was in a car accident and they brought her into the ER where he was working at the time. He saw her and it scared him. Scared straight, I guess. When he realized that he could lose her, he knew he couldn't live with that. They started to rebuild their relationship. He didn't cheat anymore – he hasn't since the accident. She started talking about wanting to have kids and he finally came clean with her about the vasectomy. He'd already started looking in to having it reversed. But then..." He sighed. "Then... It was about six months after the accident, but she still wasn't completely recovered and ended up having a hysterectomy so he never bothered with the reversal. Dad had taken her to the cabin on the anniversary of the accident, of them starting to work their way back towards each other, and that was when they found me. And, as far as I know, I don't have any biological siblings either."
He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "I think that's enough of a no-holds-barred interview for today, Ms. Kent."
She nodded against his shoulder where her head still rested. He'd bared a lot of his soul to her – details she was sure very few people knew, even without the alien subtext to it. Why had he done that when they'd only known each other a couple of days?
"So what now?" he asked. "Just sit here for a few more hours."
"We could always make out."
*****
TBC
