ToC----------
Even though the conversation with his parents had been deeply disappointing, the next few days that followed had been pretty good to Michel. He couldn't stop a grin from overtaking his face as he knocked on Susanne's door.
"Come in, my cabbage," she called.
He let himself into her apartment and scanned the elegant livingroom, not seeing any sign of her. "Susanne?"
"Right here." She emerged from her room, looking absolutely stunning in a little black dress. "This zipper is giving me trouble," she explained. "Do you think you could...?"
"Eh? Oh, of course," he replied.
She turned around, holding up a fistful of her fiery hair so as to expose her back to his gaze. He took hold of the delicate little zipper, his fingers brushing against her skin...
"The zipper goes *up*, Michel; up."
"Are you sure?" he teased.
She turned to glare at him, but the sparkle in her eyes and the tiny smile quirking her lips ruined the effect. "Michel!" she scolded.
He made a show of innocently looking away...and his eyes fell on something oddly incongruous. "Is that a crystal radio?" he asked, nodding towards the curio case on the other side of the room. Its shelves were all adorned with lovingly arranged mineral samples, but pride of place was given to an odd little contraption with headphones.
"Indeed it is," she told him. She crossed to it and gently ran a hand over the device's crude, wood-plank base. "This is the one that started my insanity."
"Oh?"
She smiled at him. "My step-father used to be a missionary before the accident, so we would travel a lot. On one of his trips to Peru, I went exploring and found a glittering nugget of what I thought was gold."
"Fool's gold," Michel inferred.
Her soft chuckle told him he'd guessed correctly. "I ran to my parents, thinking we were going to be rich! One of the villagers told me the truth." She shook her head. "I was so disappointed, until Papa explained all the wonderful things my pyrite could do that mere gold could not. He showed me how to make a Cat's Whisker, and we built this little radio together using my treasure for the detector. That's when I became obsessed with mineralogy."
They shared a smile, and then she tilted her head at him in curiosity. "What about you?"
"Me?" At her nod, Michel thrust his hands into his pockets. "Eh, nothing quite so adorable. I had always been interested in science..." And now, thanks to the globe, he had a clue as to why. "I think, for a while, I was even starting to lean towards biology. Then, one day, I went to the museum and saw a rock containing three different fossils." He met her eyes. "It was revelatory: three wildly different creatures with presumably nothing in common, and yet they had all come from the same Earth and were now preserved together in the same stone. It made me wonder if maybe—" He broke off before he could spill too much about that part of his adolescence.
"If maybe what?" she pressed, drawing closer to him.
"Ah, well, teenagers often feel different from their peers," he stammered out with a nervous chuckle. "I suppose I just wanted to...er... " His face felt warm. "I had just found out I was adopted, you see, and..." ...And if he couldn't belong to the human race, then at least he could still belong to the Earth, or so he'd thought. But even though he'd found his passion, that sense of belonging had eluded him no matter how deep he dug. "I suppose it doesn't matter."
Her hands slipped under the lapels of his jacket, and he became acutely aware that the zipper of her dress was still undone. "Do you want to skip the movie, tonight?" She murmured against his lips.
The resounding "Yes" was still deep in his throat when he felt something stir in the back of his mind, and Clark's voice whispered through his head. "Michel! The globe is awake again!"
"Why now?!" he lamented, then saw the confusion on Susanne's face and realized he'd spoken aloud. "Er..."
"Just realized you...need to be somewhere?" she guessed, looking disappointed.
He floundered. "I..."
She pressed a finger against his lips. "Just go," she whispered. "It's alright; we'll pick this up again another time."
"I'll make it up to you," he promised, and hurried out the door before she could think to ask any questions about where he was going.
He made a quick stop in the arctic ocean before continuing on to Metropolis.
**********
Clark stood in front of the bookcase, hands clenching and unclenching as he struggled to resist the urge to touch the glowing orb. There was no way to know how long it had already been awake by the time he came back from that fire in Guam; would it shut down again if he waited too long? His fingers twitched again.
Finally, a sonic boom shook the apartment, and Michel stepped through the archway to his room.
Clark let out a breath in relief. "You made it!" He grinned at his brother, then double-taked. "Why are you sopping wet?"
"Nevermind," Michel grumbled, squelching further into the room. "Is it ready?"
Clark nodded and let his fingers reach for the globe. It rose to meet him part-way. As soon as the smooth material made contact with his skin, the bedroom disappeared, and he saw their parents' laboratory on Krypton once more.
"Unmanned Kryptonian probes have explored every corner of the known galaxy and beyond," Jor-El narrated, as the images of him and Lara worked furiously. "For thousands of centuries, we received data back from those probes. I have every confidence that given enough time, we can achieve the conversion to a manned vessel. But will we have the time?"
The room shook violently, and the two scientists clung to each other while most of their equipment toppled to the ground. From somewhere nearby, two unseen infants began to wail. "There is an ancient Kryptonian saying," Jor-El's voice continued. "On a long road, take small steps. Precision and care are the watchwords. Yet, we still have far to go."
The vision faded, and Clark stared down at the dormant globe in awe.
Michel's voice broke into his thoughts. "That's it?"
Clark turned to stare at him. "What do you mean, 'That's it'?" he asked, incredulous.
"Well, it was awfully short," his twin pointed out.
Clark shrugged, closing the box. "So was the last one."
"Yes, but we learned so much more during the last one!" Michel complained. "Besides, is it truly fair to make us wait so long for such small portions?"
"I'm sure there's a reason for it," Clark defended, ambling over to sit on the bed. Granted, he too would have liked more. But, after so many years of not even knowing why he was different from other people, getting to even see a picture of his birth-parents was a gift he treasured too much to criticize.
Michel started towards him, but halted abruptly with a frown. "A moment, please." He disappeared into the bathroom, then stepped out of it seconds later, now bone dry.
"You're getting good at that," Clark noted with approval.
Michel flushed, a twinge of bashful pride pulsing through the back of Clark's head. "Thank you," he mumbled, finally dropping to sit beside him.
"Anyway, we did learn something," Clark pointed out. "If they've been sending probes into space for thousands of years, their technology must be pretty advanced."
Michel craned forward to look pointedly at the box in which the globe now rested, then turned back to Clark. The raised eyebrow practically filled Clark's mind.
"I mean *really* advanced," Clark explained, "not just a couple steps ahead of us. Figure, we only started launching things into space this century!"
Michel nodded thoughtfully. "True," he conceded. "And also, we learned that their planet is unstable."
Clark blinked. "We...what?!"
"Well, you saw the quake, no?" Michel said with a shrug.
"Earthquakes happen on this planet all the time," Clark pointed out. "You of all people would know that. Maybe their lab is just on a fault line."
Michel shifted on the bed to face him more fully. "Perhaps, although this would make Krypton the second planet in the universe known to have plate tectonics as well as the second to have life. I would also expect their laboratory to have been built of lighter materials if possible, since flexibility is better than brute strength when contending with such geologic forces. You surely saw how thick those pieces of debris were: foolish for a fault line!" He shrugged. "But moreso, I was thinking of the Kryptonite sample."
"What about it?" Clark asked.
"Do you recall I said that its formation would have required extreme mass?"
Clark nodded, remembering the conversation about Krypton that had led to him showing Michel his globe in the first place.
Michel pointed towards the box on Clark's bookcase. "If the planet has enough mass to produce a mineral like Kryptonite, then the forces required to even cause a quake like we saw would be tremendous. The question of what is causing those forces is, itself, worrisome, but that quake alone would potentially have had enough energy to create a nuclear reaction."
"A...nuclear reaction?" Clark echoed, a chill beginning to trail down his spine. "As in...massive explosion, followed by radioactive fallout?" Michel's nod barely registered as the horrifying implications sank in. "That might be why they were so desperate to create those ships!"
"Perhaps," Michel murmured. Suddenly, he sat up straight. "Do you suppose...?"
He trailed off, and Clark followed his gaze back to the box. Maybe it was the telepathy or maybe not, but Clark was sure he knew what his brother had begun wondering. "They sent us here in two separate ships," he said aloud. "Could they have—"
"—followed us in another?"
Their eyes locked.
"They never contacted us," Clark pointed out.
"We didn't know about each other for nearly thirty years," Michel protested. "Yet, here you are!"
"That's just it," Clark explained. "We didn't know. They would have. You tracked me down as soon as you found out about Superman, remember? They would have done the same!"
"Well, perhaps there is a reason," Michel insisted, his breath becoming harsher and his heart beating just a little too fast. "Perhaps they are afraid, or—or they could have amnesia, as we did after colliding with the Nightfall, or—or perhaps—"
Clark put a steadying hand on his brother's shoulder. "Michel," he said softly.
He hung his head with a soft choke. "I only... It is difficult, do you know? My parents love me, but they insist on my pretending to be ordinary. I cannot ask them for help with developing my powers, as you can with yours. I cannot discuss with them the fascinating details of our birth-world. I do not even say how it feels to be a Kryptonian living on Earth, because what if they are alarmed, or disappointed, or insulted that their love is not enough? I have you, and I am so grateful, but—" His head dropped into his hands, muffling a sob. "Oh, Clark! I want my mother!"
TBC...
