Thanks once again to Nancy and Carol. You guys are the best! And a reminder to everyone about flashbacks.
PART SEVEN
*~Ellie~*
***
Dad and I had flown out to a deserted area for this training session. Well, technically Dad had flown, and I had been a passenger. I still couldn’t fly yet, but Dad told me that I just had to be patient. I would be able to fly soon. But I still thought that it was unfair that Jon, who didn’t even want to fly anyway, could already do it while I couldn’t even float yet.
I wasn’t sure exactly where we were, but it looked pretty deserted. There were only a few scraggly trees poking through the earth, but the ground was covered with rocks of all different sizes. Dad changed out of his Superman suit, but I hardly reacted to that anymore. I was starting to get used to the idea.
“Lot of rocks,” I remarked as I bent down to pick one up. I chucked it as far as I could, and smiled as I saw it go sailing through the air, finally landing much further than it would’ve a few weeks ago.
“I figure we might need a large supply,” Dad said. He threw a rock of his own, and we both watched it disappear over the horizon. Show off.
“Isn’t that kinda dangerous?” I asked suddenly. “How do you know it won’t hit someone?”
“I’m still watching it,” Dad explained. His eyes were still glued to the horizon, but he took time to give me a small wink. “But it’s good that you thought of that,” he said. “You’re getting some pretty powerful abilities and although you might soon be completely invulnerable, other people aren’t. You have to be careful with how you use your powers.”
I nodded dutifully. Dad said something like that to me nearly every day now. Although it was getting a little old, I did realize that it was important. Getting all these new powers was really cool, but sometimes it was scary to think about how they could go wrong.
Like today, for instance. I had been trying to unlock the front door, and something wasn’t working right. At first, I thought I was using the wrong key or something, but then I saw the finger impressions on the door knob and I realized that I had accidentally squished it. That’s why Dad flew me out here when he got home and found out what happened. Although I was worried about what I had done, he made me feel better about it and assured me that he would help me get my grip under control.
I guess Dad’s rock finally landed because he stopped staring off into the distance and bent down to pick up a new rock, about the size of a cantaloupe.
“Let’s see if we can get this under control,” he told me as he handed me the rock.
The rock seemed a lot bigger in my hands than in his, but it wasn’t as heavy as I expected it to be. Probably because I was getting stronger. Dad’s hands settled over mine, and I instantly felt safer. It was like I was a little kid again, and Dad was teaching me to hold a baseball bat. I listened carefully as his voice gently instructed me, showing me the way to make sense of my new reality.
***
* * *
The university had been trying to years to get Dad to take a post there, but it wasn’t until Jon was comfortable being Supernova that he finally did it. Jon agreed to look after all calls for help in the city while Dad had to teach a class, which made it a lot easier for Dad to juggle. That arrangement expanded when I became Nebula. We all took turns covering for each other so we were able to keep important plans without having to worry about people needing help. And although Dad still ran out a few times while he was working on the school paper, he didn’t have to worry about anything while he was supposed to be lecturing.
When Dad first came to the UMet he shared an office with another professor, and I’m sure she thought that he had some kind of chronic bladder condition or something with all the times Dad inexplicably left the office. But Dad worked really hard to get the campus paper up to a credible standard, and the increased popularity meant that he needed his own space, so the university grudgingly provided him one. I was rarely on campus anymore, with most of my work being carried out at STAR Labs, but every time I was there, I usually stopped by for a visit, with coffee and donuts. Dad said it reminded him of the newsroom.
“Come on in, Ellie,” he told me as I came up to his office door. Another perk about having his own space was that Dad could now talk to his daughter through a door and no one would witness it.
“Got time for coffee?” I asked him once I entered.
“Of course I do.” He accepted a cup from me and took a donut as well. “So I was just thinking about something. What do you think about the paper running a Science feature every month or so? It could be really interesting. We could have interviews and news on important breakthroughs in research and-”
“I’m not writing it, Dad,” I told him, rolling my eyes. He had been trying to get me on board the paper ever since he came here.
“I thought it might be worth a try,” he shrugged sheepishly.
“Dad, you’ve seen my writing. I think we both know that the school paper would be better off without it.”
“I think you could be a great writer, Ellie.”
“You also once told me that I would make a great singer. Granted, I was six at the time, but you have to admit that even that showed serious delusions.”
“I still think you were a fantastic Hilary Duff. The other girls in the talent show had nothing on you.”
I sipped my coffee, smiling at the memory. Sure, Dad still teased me about joining the paper, but it was hardly a serious offer nowadays. He realized that I had my own dreams to chase, and he was always supportive of them.
“So how’s Jay doing?” Dad asked.
“Good, I think. I… uh, haven’t seen him much in the last few days.” I had talked to him on the phone a couple times, but I hadn’t really seen him in person since our last big conversation.
Dad nodded neutrally.
“Dad… Do you not like Jay or something?”
“Huh? No, of course not.” Dad shook his head emphatically. “I mean, he’s obviously in a difficult place right now, and it’s hard for that not to have an effect. The fact that he doesn’t have a job-”
“How is that a problem?” I found that I had become unconsciously defensive. “It’s not like he’s a slacker or anything. He’s just waiting for the right opportunity.”
“I didn’t say he was a slacker, Ellie,” Dad explained patiently. “But I imagine that Jay is the type of person who needs to be doing something constructive. And not having a job could be very difficult for him.”
“Oh.” Jay hadn’t really shared anything like that with me, but what Dad said made a lot of sense. It seemed that Dad understood a lot about Jay that I didn’t get. “You know, Jay thinks you hate him,” I told Dad.
“Really?” Dad asked in surprise. “Have I done anything to make it seem that way?”
I shrugged. “I told him that he’s probably overreacting, but it’s like he’s already decided that you can’t possibly like him. I honestly don’t understand it,” I said in irritation. I hadn’t planned on venting my frustration, but now I couldn’t stop myself. “No offense, Dad, but you’re not exactly an intimidating guy.”
“Maybe not Clark Kent,” Dad suggested, “but I imagine meeting Superman is pretty intimidating. And you have to remember that Jay knew I was Superman when he first met me.”
“Yeah, but that was over two months ago,” I pointed out, still not convinced. “By now he’s had a chance to realize that you’re not really like the Superman that’s portrayed in the media.”
Dad shrugged. “I don’t know, sweetie. But I promise I’ll lay off the protective Dad role a bit, okay?”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Jay’s one of my favorite of your boyfriends, so I don’t really want to see him go anywhere yet,” Dad teased. “I like him a lot better than that Arthur kid you dated a while back.”
“I don’t understand what you guys had against him,” I bristled at the long suffered jab. “Arty was really nice.”
“I remember how upset you were when he got you a set of test tubes for Valentines Day,” Dad chuckled.
“It wasn’t the fact that he gave me test tubes,” I grumbled. “It’s that he gave me the wrong ones. And then he ditched our plans that night because he learned he could fit in some extra lab time with Dr. Everett.”
“Well, I don’t think Jay is likely to do either of those things.”
“He better not.”
“Ellie, Jay’s a good guy,” Dad told me sincerely. “Of course, I’d like to get to know him a little better, especially considering what he knows, but you two seem to get along fine, and that’s what really matters.”
We talked for a while after that before I left, but that one phrase stuck in my head.
Yeah, sure, we were getting along just fine. Not a problem in sight.
If only Dad knew what was really going on between us. What would he say if he knew what was happening? I remembered Dr. Klein talking about when Dad’s powers had gone haywire as a result of red Kryptonite. Did he end up accidentally hurting Mom? I remembered Dad had told me a little of the story, but he hadn’t really gone into a lot of the specifics. I imagined if he did end up hurting Mom, he would’ve felt awful. Maybe about as awful as I felt when it happened to Jay.
When Mom and Dad were together, it seemed like they were always touching. Usually it was as simple as a hand here or an arm there. Jay and I didn’t do that as much, mostly because I didn’t want to take any chances that a simple touch would move into something deeper. If I didn’t have to worry about hurting him, would we touch more? Did Jay touch more with his previous girlfriends? Did he regret not being able to do that with me? Those were questions I frequently asked myself, but recently they had taken on a whole new urgency.
I wasn’t jealous of his previous relationships. I believed Jay when he said that I was more important to him right now. But there was still the fact that I couldn’t possibly give him the kind of relationship he had with previous girlfriends. How much did that interfere with us becoming closer? And did Jay ever wish that things were different so that we didn’t have the problem?
I did, sometimes.
And I didn’t even know what we were missing out on. It would be different for Jay, who knew exactly what we could be doing, if only it wasn’t for me.
In the past, I had often asked Dad for advice with boyfriends. He was always good at putting things in perspective for me. But for some reason, I hadn’t been able to talk to him about this. Sure, I wanted to know what Jay was thinking, but somehow I couldn’t screw up the courage to broach the subject with Dad. Maybe it was because that although Dad was always supportive of me dating a good guy, deep down, he was still a stereotypical overprotective father. And having a conversation about my boyfriend’s sexual history just seemed to be too uncomfortable.
Sure, he had told me about the choices he made when he sat me down for his whole chastity talk shortly after I learned that he was Superman. But knowing that he had saved himself for marriage didn’t exactly make that conversation any easier for me to discuss with him. Although Dad said he liked Jay, I wasn’t sure if knowing Jay’s past experience would help their relationship.
So where did that leave me? On my own, I guess. And more determined than ever to find a solution.
* * *
*~Jay~*
It was beyond bizarre to open my door and see Ellie standing there. She *never* knocked politely on my door, waiting for me to come answer it. But her patience didn’t last much beyond that. She had barely enough time for a brief “hi” before attacking me with a downpour of kisses that started on my face but soon migrated south.
“What are you doing?” I asked, cursing myself at the same time. Why was I protesting this?
“Testing something,” she murmured into my ear. So this was all some type of lab experiment? I found that I didn’t really care. She could even make a science experiment sound sexy. However, she couldn’t entirely quench my curiosity with a few kisses.
“So you found out the problem then? What was it?”
“Haven’t found the problem yet,” she replied, slamming the door behind her. “I just decided to treat the symptom and worry about the cause later. Now let’s see if this will really work.” She pulled us down onto my sofa.
I wanted to give her new idea a test drive, I really did. But something about the way she was acting seemed a little off. And she seemed unnaturally pale. Reluctantly, I pulled her off me.
“Ellie, why are you doing this?”
“Why am I kissing you? Jay, I don’t know where you’ve been in the last two months, but-”
“You know that’s not what I meant. I meant taking shortcuts. I may not be much of a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the way to go about getting the right solution.”
“I thought you would want to try this,” she spoke quietly, her eyes downcast.
I was baffled. Although Ellie wasn’t really a stickler for rules, she had always shown incredible dedication to meticulously researching and double checking facts as she conducted her research projects. Yet here she was throwing everything out the window for the sake of a make-out session. The only guess I had was that it had something to do with our recent talk, and the way she had clammed up near the end.
“Ellie, would you just quit being coy and tell me what’s bothering you?” I asked her in irritation. Possibly not the best Sensitive Boyfriend move ever, but I had been worrying about the problem for a few days now, and plus the way the chain of her necklace disappeared into the V of her sweater was distracting me. I winced a little at my tone, so I added a gentle “Please?” to the end.
Ellie shifted in her seat, until she was sitting upright, leaning against the arm of the sofa. She twisted her fingers together. “I don’t really know how to phrase this…” She spoke in a low, hesitant tone.
“Just tell me,” I encouraged. “You know me, I can handle blunt.”
“Okay. Um…” She squeezed her hands together, stopping their fluttery movement, and she finally raised her head to look me in the eye. “How much do you resent me for being unable to offer you a physical relationship?”
“What?!” I had imagined a lot of things, but this wasn’t one of them.
“Look, you told me that you’ve already hit a home run on more than one occasion, and even if you have dated other people and it hasn’t progressed to that stage, at least the opportunity was there. But with me, it’s like you’re just standing on home plate striking out.” She spat out the last part bitterly, and swiped under her eyes with her sleeve. She was crying. Crap.
I watched her helplessly. What on earth was I supposed to do? I scooched closer to her on the sofa, and, after a moment’s hesitation, placed an arm around her, pulling her into an awkward, one-armed hug. She rested her head on my shoulder.
“I don’t resent you in the slightest, Ellie,” I finally managed to speak. “I love every second we spend together, no matter what it is we’re doing.”
“Me too,” she told me, her voice muffled by my shirt.
“Ellie, what have I done to give you the idea that I wasn’t happy?”
She shrugged. “I know what dating means, Jay. And I know what it’s supposed to include.”
“Okay, stop right there,” I told her. “Since when do you follow whatever everyone else says you should do? You’re a mature, confident, bright woman. You shouldn’t give a crap about any of that stuff. And you’re certainly not supposed to jump through hoops in order to cater to my supposed physical needs. I’m not asking you to do that, and I certainly hope you’d give me a good slap across the face if I ever did.”
She laughed softly, and moved closer to me. “I know that. Intellectually, anyway. I guess it’s just because…” She took a steadying breath. “This means a lot to me, Jay. And… I just don’t want to see it slip through my fingers.”
“It means a lot to me, too,” I replied. “But you have to understand that I don’t want you doing something rash for my sake that you’ll come to regret. That’s not going to do us any good in the long run.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“And I realize that asking you not to do something rash is probably a pointless request,” I continued. “But at least put in a solid effort for me, okay?”
“I can be cautious,” she grumbled.
I merely laughed, and squeezed her tighter into my one-armed hug.
“I’m still waiting to see the day. And about the whole intimacy thing,” I continued before she could get in a comeback. “You realize that even if we didn’t run into any problems, it’s completely possible that we wouldn’t have gotten to that stage yet. And that’s perfectly okay. I want to do this right with you, Ellie. I don’t want to take any shortcuts here. To beat your little baseball metaphor to death, I don’t care if I miss every pitch at this point. I’m just glad to be up to bat.”
“That’s sweet, Jay,” she drawled drowsily.
“I know. I’m pretty good at this stuff, if you haven’t noticed.”
“And that just knocked a few points off your score.” She smacked me playfully, but gave a small grunt as her hand hit my chest.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. It was only then that I remembered her telling me that she had tried something to fix her control issues. What exactly was it that she had done?
“Nothing,” she replied slowly. “I think I just need some water.” She stood up, but then reached out to me for support.
“Ellie, are you okay?” I hadn’t noticed before how sickly she looked. She swayed slightly on her feet, and the pale skin I noticed before had transitioned into gray.
“I’ll be fine,” she mumbled. “It’s just a… little blip or something. I just need to get through this and I’ll feel better in a bit.”
I thought back to the glossed over explanation she had given me earlier. Treating the symptom, she had said.
There was only one thing she could’ve done.
I ran through what little I knew about the deadly mineral she must have used. If she had exposed herself in the lab, there was little I could do for her. A combination of sunlight and personal energy reserves would heal her.
But she wasn’t getting better. It seemed she had gotten worse since she came here.
“Ellie, what did you do?” I demanded.
Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to keep them open.
“Jay?”
Great, now she was disoriented.
Fighting the escalating panic I was feeling, I stood up and grabbed her arms to give her the support she needed to stay upright. “C’mon, Ellie, you’ve got to answer me. Just tell me what you did. Otherwise I don’t know how to help you!”
“I… used…” She pinched her forehead in concentration. “Jay… You’re gonna have to catch m…” She fainted. I managed to catch her and lower her to the sofa.
I struggled to focus. I had to figure out what was wrong with her fast. Although she hadn’t looked well when she first came over here, she was still fine, and walking under her own power.
But then she had gotten worse. Some kind of injection? God, I hoped not. I wasn’t sure if there was anything for anyone to do if it was that.
But Ellie had obviously done this in a hurry, so it was most likely simpler than that. I dumped her purse out, and sifted through the contents hurriedly. Nothing. Although her tight jeans didn’t provide an ideal hiding place, I checked the pockets anyway, trying to do so as chastely as possible.
Where else to look? Where else did girls hide things? I could think of a few possibilities, but I wasn’t about to look in any of them unless I absolutely had to.
I was about to call and wait for reinforcements when I had one last idea. Ellie hardly ever wore jewelry, and that chain she had on seemed chunkier than her usual taste. I pulled it out from its place tucked inside her sweater. At the end of the chain, there was a rectangular pendant, similar in shape to a military dog tag. Embedded within the metal, winking evilly out at me, was a tiny chip of glowing green.
