As they rose into the air, Lois couldn’t help but gasp. She’d never been particularly impressed with the experience of flying in an airplane; her limited experience had been to attend funerals as a teenager, and mostly she remembered feeling cramped in a smoky environment.
This was something entirely different. The world fell away below them, and Lois didn’t feel any sensation of acceleration. If it hadn’t been for the feeling of the wind against her face, she’d have wondered if they were moving at all.
From the air, the Kent estate was beautiful. It was almost as though it had been designed to be viewed this way, instead of from the more mundane view on the ground. The earth and the sky in Colorado were more breathtaking than Lois had remembered; she’d never been one to pay much attention to the scenery, but here there wasn’t much else she could do.
She should have been terrified that he was going to drop her, but instead she felt oddly safe and secure. This was a man who could lift space shuttles and move faster than supersonic jets. If he were to drop her, there was no doubt in her mind that he would be able to catch her before she fell.
She hadn’t remembered him as being this impressive before. She’d been more concerned with his role as Lisa’s father, but in the space of a moment it occurred to her. This really was a man from another world. He was proof that Earth really wasn’t alone in the larger scheme of things.
Finally tearing her eyes away from the world below her, Lois looked at the man who held her in his arms. He was a handsome man, the sort of man who would have turned the heads of her friends. He’d certainly turned her head the first time they’d met.
It was a shock to realize that she was still attracted to him now. This was the second time in a couple of weeks that she’d been attracted to a man, and Lois wondered if this was what it was going to be like from now on. She’d been a mother for a long time, and she’d shut that part of herself away. It had gotten easier to do that than to mourn for all the missed parties and boys and dates.
She’d done what she’d always done and focused herself on one thing to the exclusion of everything else.
Were other women this aware of every attractive man who crossed their path? Or was it just man who were super rich or powerful?
Lois hated to think that she was superficial enough to have her head turned by a mansion, or a fancy cape and tights.
Her lips pursed. She’d come here for a reason. No matter how amazing the experience of flight was, it didn’t change the fact that she was angry.
When he finally landed on a large ledge miles away from where they’d begun, Lois squinted. She could barely see the Kent estate from here.
“We had to come this far?” The thought of her daughter being able to hear things to this distance in a city the size of Metropolis was horrifying.
“If she hears as well as I did at her age, yes.” Kal El stepped back from her, and Lois was suddenly aware that the air was cold. She ignored it.
“You didn’t have any right taking her flying without my permission,” she said. “What if you’d dropped her?”
He didn’t bother to respond. Instead he crossed his arms and stared at her.
Lois flushed. “It’s not a ridiculous question.”
“I’m fast enough to catch her,” he said. He disappeared and it took Lois a moment to realize that he was behind her. “And at this point, I’m not sure a fall of that distance would hurt her.”
Lois blinked. “What do you mean?”
“My abilities developed gradually,” he said, “but the last time I felt pain was when I was six. How long has it been since she scraped her knee or hurt herself?”
Her thoughts racing, Lois tried to remember the last time she’d had to comfort her daughter from anything other than emotional pain.
“I can’t remember,” she said at last.
“When was she last sick?” he asked.
“She was sick as a baby,” Lois said. “Not often, and it never lasted very long. It hasn’t happened in years.”
“I was never sick,” he said. “Not even as a child. Being part human must make her a little more vulnerable.”
“Wouldn’t you have gotten sick on Krypton?” she asked.
“Krypton was an advanced planet,” he said. “They’d gotten rid of most illnesses.”
The way he said it rang false to Lois, the first false note in the conversation.
“So you don’t know if you’d have been sick or not,” she said. It irritated her that he knew these things about her daughter. She’d been living with Lisa all her life, and she didn’t know any of these things.
Of course, this was the reason they’d taken the monumental risk of driving cross country to find him. These were things no one else would be able to tell Lisa.
That didn’t make it any easier.
“I’m not going to do anything unsafe with her,” Kal El said. “Keeping her safe is important to me.”
“She’s all I have,” Lois said.
“You came here for a reason,” he said. “Growing up with that kind of power and not knowing what’s happening or why…it’s terrifying. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world to realize that you are the last…the only one like you.”
It didn’t sound like he’d grown up on Krypton. Lois nodded encouragingly.
“I don’t want her to go through what I…I don’t want her to go through something like that.”
“She’s going to have a lot of questions,” Lois said. “What all will she be able to do…what will she need to watch out for. Is there some way to control what she’s going through?”
“I’ll be there for her,” he said. The look in his eyes was convincing, filled with remembered pain.
“Just…don’t shut me out,” she said. “She’s my daughter, and I don’t want to feel like the third wheel. I want to be involved in any decisions.”
“So no taking her to Paris without you,” he said. At her expression, he grinned. “I can be anywhere in the world in under two minutes. It might take thirty minutes with passengers.”
She’d dreamed of traveling once, of going to Ireland and Tahiti and Italy.
“Um…just how long will it be before she can fly?”
His expression became carefully neutral. “The first time I flew was the night we met. I was seventeen.”
Lois felt heat rising to her face. He’d first flown on the night they’d been together. It wasn’t suggestive on the outside, but it felt that way, as though flying was a metaphor for something else.
“I’ll have to make sure she isn’t doing any unauthorized flying when she’s sixteen or seventeen.” Lois said dryly.
She took a deep breath. Girls tended to develop earlier than boys, and so there was no telling what the actual progression was going to be. However, this man knew things about what was going to be happening to Lisa, and furthermore, he was her only link to a world that was reportedly dead.
“Let’s work together on this.”
***************
Although Lisa could see them talking quite clearly on the mountaintop, she couldn’t hear a word they were saying. Her mother was faced away from her, and her father was turned at an angle, although he occasionally looked in her direction.
Lisa wasn’t sure how she was going to feel, having a parent who knew exactly what her limitations were. While she’d been wearing the red bracelet, it had occurred to her that her mother couldn’t actually force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Fear of losing her mother’s love had been the one thing keeping her in check.
Her father though…she had no doubt that he could do just about anything. He was stronger, faster, and he knew everything about how to use his abilities. He wasn’t a knight on a white stallion; Lisa didn’t know what he was yet. All she knew was that he was finally here, and a knot that had been inside her for her entire life was finally beginning to unwind.
The sound of wheels rolling against tile behind her startled her, and she turned.
A skeleton sitting in a wheelchair faced her.
Uncertainly, Lisa smiled. Back when she’d been afraid she was crazy, seeing people as skeletons had scared her. It had seemed like sure proof that she was one step away from being taken away from her mother and locked away in a terrifying place forever.
Now, she preferred it to seeing people naked. That had been the most horrifying day of school ever. The discovery that most people absolutely needed clothing had been a shock.
Seeing them as muscles moving without skin had been the worst. All in all, clean bones were preferable to seeing floating guts.
Now, Lisa mostly looked people in the face…or skull.
“Hello,” she said.
“You must be Lisa.” The skeleton had a pleasant voice, even if it did insist on grinning at her.
Nodding, Lisa said, “I’m supposed to be here.”
“My name is Joshua,” the skeleton said. “I’m a friend of your father’s.”
Lisa nodded. The Superman Foundation was based here, so surely some of these people must be his friends, even if the skeleton butler was rude.
“I have a present for you,” it said. “I made it myself.”
Dangling from its bony fingers was a familiar piece of jewelry. It was a bracelet, and it looked just like the one her mother had, the one which had been so fascinating.
The wheelchair clicked forward as the figure said, “Go ahead…take it.”
Lisa stared at the bracelet, and almost involuntarily she stepped forward.
She wanted the bracelet, but her mother would never let her keep it. Still…maybe her wouldn’t mind if she held it for a while.
What could it hurt?
