So it's sad news in Beth-land as I start a new semester, putting an end to my days of guilt-free writing. Luckily, I think I've built up enough of a buffer between the stuff I've already written and the stuff I am currently posted, so this shouldn't affect my weekly posts. Thanks Nancy for putting up with reading through this chapter over and over again. You're the best!
PART TWELVE
Seven thirty on the dot, he came. I sat on my sofa tightly gripping my hands together and trying to ignore the furious gnawing sensation in my stomach. There was none of the easy casualness between us like last night. Instead of greeting me warmly as before, he merely nodded at me curtly. He hadn’t changed out of his Supernova suit.
“I figure you might want to go somewhere where there’s no chance of our being overhead,” he said when he refused to take a seat.
I would’ve taken this suggestion as a good sign if it wasn’t for the look on his face. I wrapped my arms around his neck stiffly and we took off. The ride was bumpier than usual, but even though I gave a couple startled gasps at our sudden changes in altitude, he didn’t speak to me. I wondered if maybe he was taking some kind of grim pleasure in my discomfort.
The flight came to a sudden end, and I was deposited on the ground of the very same tropical beach that we had come to on our first date. The spot had always been special to me, and we had returned to it several times over the last few months. I remained sitting in the sand, and Jor looked at me expectantly.
“Okay,” I began shakily. “Last night must have been a huge shock for you. And I’m so sorry. I had never planned it to happen like that. I wanted to tell you everything before, but things… got crazy which is the way it normally goes so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.” I looked up to see Jor’s reaction, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead he was digging a trench in the sand. No matter. I still had to keep talking. “But I’m really glad you gave me this chance to explain myself to you. What I did last night was perfectly reasonable considering the circumstances so I’m just going to tell you everything now and hopefully we can… get back on track.” I took a deep breath. This was the moment. I would finally be able to tell him. “I work for-”
“-the NIA,” he finished for me.
“How did you know?” I gasped breathlessly. My head started swimming and my voice strangely echoed in my ears. Jor dug deeper in the ground and brought out a briefcase, which he opened and pulled a small stack of papers out of.
“Your name is Kaylie Watson,” he read aloud in a cold, ringing voice. “You’re agent number J-2493. You joined the ‘service’ when you were eighteen years old. Trying to impress your dad, were you? Who is also, by the way, an NIA agent. And so is your brother. Quite the family business you have going on there, isn’t it?” He jabbed sarcastically. Then he continued to skim through my file. “Registered aliases include Brenda Sykes, Molly Turner, and Kaylie Stewart.” Each word that tore out of his mouth felt like an icicle being stabbed into my heart. The last two contained an extra sting.
“Where did you get that?” I asked in a low voice, trying to keep the bile from rising up in my throat.
“Oh, I had a friend Google it for me,” he replied venomously cheerful. Again, he bent over that damned file in his hand. “Your specialties are in Ammunitions and Martial Arts. Imagine that! Right now your assignments include… ‘Target acquisition and removal’. So, what? You’re some kind of bounty hunter or something?” He finally looked me in the eye, but his gaze offered no comfort.
“That file,” I struggled to speak, “is falsified. Yes, I work for the NIA. But I’m not a… I don’t kill people just because they’ve broken the law. That’s not what I do.”
Jor scoffed rudely. “You expect me to just believe you? After what I saw last night?” Hot anger scorched through me.
“I expect you to trust me!” I told him heatedly.
“Frankly Miss *Watson*,” he snapped sarcastically, “I don’t see any reason why I should.”
“You don’t see any reason why I’m trustworthy? Are you kidding?” I leapt up off my feet. “Do have any idea how easy it would’ve been to find out who you are?! I know that you were born in Metropolis about twenty-six years ago. I know that you were named after your paternal grandfather. I know the general area of town that you work in. You’ve left countless fingerprints scattered about my apartment. I know what you look like, Jor! I work for the National Intelligence Agency! I could find someone from a wrinkled dollar bill, let alone the amount of stuff you gave me. But I didn’t! And now you’re saying that you can’t trust me?!”
“You lied to me, Kaylie!” he retorted. “You kept key information about yourself hidden from me for the whole time that we’ve known each other. How many times have we talked about secrets and you never even mentioned that you had one? You could’ve told me the same thing I told you that one night before we started dating, or at least have told me *something*. Instead you pretended that you were being totally open with me and then let me be completely blindsided last night!”
“I was going to tell you the truth,” I argued, horrified to feel tears pooling in my eyes. “I called you over to tell you everything. But then you flew away from me. Twice! And instead of letting me explain this for myself you went ahead and dug up a ton of government issued crap and started throwing it in my face.” Anger boiled up inside me. I couldn’t believe that he had just gone ahead and ripped my secret from me in such a violent manner. Didn’t he understand what he had done to me? “You violated me, Jor!” I accused.
“What are you talking about, Kaylie? I just found out that my girlfriend, who I thought loved me, has been leading a secret life. That you attack police officers and dress in provocative clothing in your spare time. You’re as familiar with a gun as CEO is with a Blackberry. How did you expect me to react to having that thrown in my face? Don’t you think I would be a little shocked and confused and wondering why you lied to me for so long?”
“You, of all people, should understand what it’s like for me.” I defended angrily. “I thought you would see that. Instead you went ahead and did exactly what I had promised never to do to you. How could you do that to me? Even though you can’t trust me now, I thought you did, before this all happened. And I thought maybe you’d be able to hold onto some of that trust. But who am I kidding?” I said with dawning realization. “You never did trust me in the slightest, did you?”
“Kaylie, that’s ridiculous. You told me yourself that I gave you more than enough information for you to find me. Obviously I trusted you wouldn’t look into it.”
“But you didn’t know I could find you with that information.” I pointed out. “For all you knew, I was just a simple schoolteacher with no connections whatsoever. I mean, really, what information did you actually give me?” I felt detached from the beach, from our argument. I went over the last few months of our relationship with new eyes. “You ran into me by accident that day on the street. If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have told me where you worked or what you look like. And even that one day you told me you had a secret… You would’ve left if I didn’t figure out that you had a secret identity. I was the one who uncovered everything about you. You only gave me information when you were backed into a corner with no way out.”
“That’s completely unfair. I took you to my apartment! I told you how old I am, where I was born, you know that my whole family still lives in Metropolis. I’ve given you a lot, and in return you lied to me!”
“Ellie told me her name within seconds of me meeting her!” I shot back. “Yeah, you took me to your apartment, but I had to wear a blindfold and you took down all the family pictures. You won’t tell me your birthday or even your pager number. You still slick your hair back like you’re Supernova even though I’ve seen how you normally wear it and I know you like the other style better.” All the little tricks we’d pulled, all the little games we’d played, swirled around in my mind. They had seemed loving and sweet at the time, but now they just made me sick. The moisture threatening me finally overflowed and spilled down my cheeks. “I did all those things for you willingly. Because I knew you weren’t ready. I knew you needed time. But then you just went and… and…” I gestured at the sheaf of papers clutched in his hand. My tears were choking me. I sniffed noisily and messily, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. I was a sniveling wreck, made an idiot in front of the one person who I never thought would do it. At that moment, I hated him more than anything for turning me into this. And I wanted to hurt him. “Were you ever going to tell me the truth?” I shouted at him spitefully. “Or were you just going to keep wallowing in the ruins of your last relationship?” I could see by his expression that that one had landed.
“My relationship with Amanda has nothing to do with the fact that you lied to me ever since we met!” he shouted.
“Don’t you dare pin this all on me, Jor.” I retaliated. “You gave me just as little as I gave you. But at least *I* was willing to wait for you to tell me the truth instead of taking it.”
“Well at least *I* was willing to be honest!”
“You really want to give me honesty, Jor? Then tell me: Who the hell are you?”
The silence roared in my ears. Jor froze, looking at me indecipherably, but then he suddenly rocketed into the sky. “That’s what I thought!” I screeched at the clouds. “You’re just going to run away! You’re too scared to get involved! Well, I don’t care. Leave!” I collapsed on the sand, as the flow of tears trickled to a stop. I gave one last small sniffle. “Dammit.”
* * *
What had he done? The question clattered about his brain as he hovered over the island where Kaylie still sat. After their accidental run-in at the club last night, Jon had been consumed in confused anger. Comparable to the day that he found out his parents had lied to him for fifteen years.
But it was more than just anger and confusion that he felt. It was humiliation too. She had tricked him into thinking she was just a nice, ordinary person doing ordinary things. He should’ve picked up on the clues. After all, they were really more alike than he had ever suspected. But he had had no idea the amount of stuff she kept hidden.
And he had gone and dug it up. He should’ve let her explain herself, she was right. But he had been in shock that night, hardly thinking clearly and he decided that he would find the answers himself since Kaylie was no longer to be trusted. He should’ve gone to her once he came across her file. Of course she wasn’t an assassin; he knew she wasn’t like that. Yet he had kept it to himself all night, while building up a boatload of resentment towards her.
She had stopped crying, which eased the pain and guilt he felt. But she was still sitting on the beach with unnerving stillness. He couldn’t work up the courage to go down to her. She said he didn’t trust her. Was that true? He felt he did. He was comfortable with her knowing what she did about him. He didn’t think for a second that she would abuse what she knew. Yet whenever he thought about taking the final step and actually telling her who he was, his gut clenched up and he mentally backed down. He wasn’t ready yet, he kept telling himself. But would he ever be?
If he was really honest with himself, he knew that the game was up when he bumped into her that day on the street. After she recognized him, it was pretty obvious that all the stuff they did together was little more than a charade. A game that she kept playing for his sake.
And he had taken all her understanding and consideration and patience and ground it up into a pulp and served it to her alongside a stolen NIA personnel file and a healthy serving of unfair accusations. Again, the question ripped through his thoughts as he soared away from the painful view of the island. What had he done?
* * *
I felt a cool breeze on the back of my neck that wasn’t from the ocean.
“I don’t want to talk to you right now, Jor. Go away.” I heard the small sound of a throat clearing and I whirled around to face… Not Jor. “Oh. It’s you,” I commented blankly. Okay, maybe not the best reception for the original Man of Steel, but I was still emotionally wrung out. Superman cleared his throat nervously again.
“You must be Miss Stewart,” he began awkwardly.
“Don’t… call me that,” I replied with irritation.
“I’m sorry…”
“If you were meeting your son’s… If you were meeting me for the first time in real life, you wouldn’t call me Miss Stewart. You’d call me Kaylie. Pretending it’s otherwise is just putting barriers in the way…” Despite my leftover moodiness, I didn’t have enough emotional energy to put up a good fight.
“You’re right,” he conceded. “I’m sorry. Kaylie.”
“It’s all because of that stupid suit. It makes you think that you have to remove yourself from the world.” I peered at him, petulantly scrutinizing him. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who you are, will you?” He shifted his feet uncomfortably.
“Kaylie, as much as I’m sure you’re very trustworthy I can’t go behind my son’s back and tell you things he isn’t ready to tell you.”
“Even if your son is being an idiotic jerk?” He flinched visibly at that comment, and I think that’s what snapped me out of my foul mood enough to realize that I was being incredibly hard on him. It wasn’t his fault that Jor was an idiotic jerk. “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m not making a very good first impression, am I?” He visibly relaxed, and joined me seated on the sand.
“Don’t worry. You’re not doing all that bad.” He gave me half a smile.
“Did Jor ask you to come here?” I questioned in a small voice.
“He told me you had a fight.”
“Now that’s an understatement.”
“He asked me to come pick you up and I agreed. I don’t think either of you could’ve handled the trip home right now.”
“Thank you,” I offered weakly. He sat patiently next to me on the beach, waiting until I was ready. His fingers tapped an easy rhythm in his knee. Despite the spandex suit, this man looked so… ordinary. Yet he had been through so much. Had so much experience… “Can I ask you a question?” I blurted out.
“Sure.”
“How did you tell your wife that you were Superman?” He was silent for a moment, thinking.
“I didn’t tell her. She figured it out.”
“Oh.”
“I had been trying to tell her, but then things kind of spiraled out of control for a bit and I didn’t get the chance. She ended up figuring it out herself and confronting me with the truth.”
“Was she mad?” Did she lash out in every way possible and try to make you feel small and shameful and pathetic?
“Yes, she was mad. A bit. But I think more confused than anything else. It took her a while to rediscover who I was without any secrets in the way.”
“She knew you for two years…” I remembered what Jor had told me earlier, “and all of a sudden you were different.” Jor had thought I was a teacher, plain and simple. But then he discovered this completely different life hidden behind the one he saw. It must’ve blown him completely out of the water. I also remembered what he had told me on this same beach on our very first date. “Jor was fifteen before you told him and Ellie.” He grimaced in response.
“We made a mistake in waiting that long to tell them. It becomes a habit to hide things from people. My wife and I had always planned on telling our kids the truth. But we figured we’d tell them when we first saw hints of them getting special abilities. When that didn’t happen as soon as we thought, we set a new deadline. And then another. And I guess soon we were looking back and realizing we should’ve told them a long time ago.” Once again, I could see myself in this story. When I first met Jor there was no reason for me to even consider telling him the truth. But gradually our relationship deepened and looking back I saw that I should’ve told him at least something before. Instead I just did exactly what his parents had done to him when he was fifteen. Except maybe I should’ve known better.
“Why did he forgive you?” I asked Superman. “You lied to him for fifteen years. He moved across the country to be away from you, but then he ended up forgiving you.”
“I guess he forgave us because he realized that even though we hurt him, we didn’t do it intentionally and we were truly sorry for what we did. We were also careful to learn from our mistakes.”
“That easy, huh?”
“Well, no. It’s never that easy in life. It takes time for someone to work past any kind of emotional wound. The trust that was lost needs to be rebuilt and reinforced. But the important thing is that the wounded person realizes that they care for that person more than they care for their grudge. Kaylie, I don’t know exactly what’s going on between you and my son-”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No. All he said was that you had a huge argument about something.” Well that was a point to Jor’s credit. Although he was upset with me for lying at least he didn’t tell anyone else. All he did was… At the thought of what he did to me, I felt the hurt and frustration heaving up inside me again.
“What would you do,” I asked Superman, “if the person you thought you trusted more than anyone else in the world betrayed that trust and invaded your privacy?”
“That,” he spoke carefully, “is for you to decide.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to make that decision yet.” I bit my lip in confusion. I could barely contain my anger over what he had done to me today, yet I didn’t think I was ready to cut the cord completely.
“One thing I can say, Kaylie, is that it seems that the person that you love the most is also the person who is able to hurt you the most. That’s what happens sometimes when you really give yourself to a person. But just because they hurt you doesn’t mean they don’t love you.” I thought over Superman’s words. Was there any way possible that Jor and I could work this out? Could I even consider forgiving him and rebuilding? And when, if ever, would he be willing to forgive me? It had taken him four years to forgive his parents. How long would it take this time? Finally, I found my voice.
“I think I’m ready to go back now.”
