Last time:
Young Clark
Daddy and Mama danced then asked if I'd like to dance with them. I said I would but I didn't think I wanted to dance with any other little girls. I'd tried dancing with Lana while they were dancing by themselves, but she pushed me down again. Daddy laughed and said that someday I would. I told him he was wrong.
He picked me up in one arm and wrapped the other around Mama. The three of us just kind rocked a bit, but I guess that was dancing.
There with Mama and Daddy, we'd gone from something's missing to a family.
Looking back, all I can say about all the things he did for me...
I can only hope that I'm at least half the dad that he didn't have to be.
<There was something I couldn't quite put my finger on that was bothering me, but I couldn't quite place it so instead I closed the folder and spoke to Clark.>
*~*51*~*
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
I wasn't quite sure what to make of what I'd just read.
But first I had to get one question out of the way. "Um, you do know this isn't a fiction assignment, right?"
"Yeah," he said quietly. "But even so, the version I turn in will be partly fiction."
"Why is that?" I asked, still trying to process twenty-five pages of Clark's origins.
"Because if I turn in a paper that says I was found in a space ship, then Dr. Pearson will think it really is fiction and it's not. And possibly turn me over to government agencies or something if he did manage to believe it."
So that meant that he *had* been found in a spaceship.
I was glad I was already sitting down.
"What does all that mean?" I finally asked.
He sighed and sat back down – he'd started pacing as soon as I read the title off the front page. "It means that in 1985, my mom and Chris – her first husband – found a baby in a space ship. They got married that night and took me home. He died saving Josh from a fire early the next morning. It was a little over five years later that Mom and Dad got married."
"I get that," I told him. "It's the whole spaceship thing..."
"Pretty hard to swallow, huh?"
I nodded.
"You should have seen me the first time Dad tried to explain it to me."
"How old were you?" I asked quietly.
"Six. The day after my birthday." He picked a blade of grass and started shredding it. "I was fast and strong – well, enough that I wasn't quite on the same level as other kids my age. Mom and Dad took me to see the high school production of Peter Pan and I decided that I wanted to fly. I put on a green shirt and my best pair of blue jeans because I didn't have any green pants. I climbed up the ladder into the hayloft and went over to the door and jumped." He shook his head at the memory. "I landed on a pile of old parts for the tractor that Mom was going to use for some piece of artwork or other. Dad had seen me and came running. I probably should have been hurt a lot worse than I was, but my shirt was torn and I had a ragged scratch down the center of my torso. It didn't bleed too badly, but they were afraid it might get infected. Mom treated it at home and kept an eye on it. Three days later, it was a scar."
I gaped at him. "Three days? When I was seven, I was outside the cabin one night when I wasn't supposed to be. I wanted to... do something to the squirrel that kept getting into the birdfeeder – throw a rock at him or something. I wasn't planning on telling my parents I'd been out there, but I fell and scraped my shoulder near my collar bone. It took two weeks before I could move my arm right and another two before it wasn't red anymore. I was grounded for a week and couldn’t swim at Lucy's pool party for her birthday."
He sighed. "It's part of being me. I'm..." He paused, like he was having problems saying it out loud. "...an alien."
"What is part of being you?"
"I don't get hurt. Well, not since I was about fourteen. I haven't gotten hurt at all since then. Before that, I healed quickly and never got hurt as badly as I should have."
Something dawned on me. "So you made me carry you through the snow for nothing?!"
He shook his head. "No. I don't know what happened. The last time I felt sick was when I was five and on my parents' first date. Then in Bremerton. I have no idea what it was that made me sick."
I didn't say anything for a long time.
"So...?" he asked.
"So..." I replied. "I don't know what to say, what to ask. I know I want to be a journalist someday, but I'm caught off guard and this is so outside the realm of anything I could even begin to imagine. So just tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"Whatever you want. Whatever you think I need to know. You can honestly tell your parents that you told me the truth, but I can't imagine that your mom won't want to talk at least some specifics with me about whatever else it is that makes you... you."
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
Where to start?
I sighed. "Okay. Well, I'm invulnerable to everything I've found since I was fourteen or so."
"You said that."
"Yeah. I don't know where else to start. I've never told anyone about all this. Mom and Dad went through it with me. Chris only knew they found me in a spaceship."
"Start at the beginning?"
I picked another blade of grass and fiddled with it. "I'll tell you what I can do, how's that?"
She shrugged.
"Okay, invulnerable we've covered." I took a deep breath. "I can start fires with my eyes."
"That's what you meant!" she said as though a light bulb had gone off in her head.
"What?"
"On the way to the cabin. I said something about how you were going to have to make the fire and you said you couldn't start fires with your eyes at the moment. I just thought you were delirious."
"I was or I never would have said it. I'm way too careful about saying or doing things that I shouldn't when other people are around."
"Ah. So, that's how I've lived with you for like nine months and never noticed anything." He nodded. "Sorry for the interruption. Go on."
"Invulnerable. Start fires with my eyes."
Lois sneezed.
"Are you cold?" I asked her.
She shook her head then sneezed again.
I hesitated then asked, "Do you trust me?"
She shrugged. "I guess."
I winced. I wasn't sure why she didn't trust me. Because I was an alien or because I'd been a louse lately. I stood up and moved behind her. "Hold still."
I carefully dried her hair and ran a diffused beam of heat vision over her back.
"What was that?" she whispered.
"A very light version of the heat stuff."
She touched her hair. "It's dry." Her voice was full of awe or something.
I sat back down. "Yeah. I can concentrate it or diffuse it and turn the power up and down – for lack of better terms, I guess."
"What else?"
I hesitated. What else could I do? "I can see things far away or things that are really small – like using a telescope or a microscope. I can see through things."
"Like what?"
"Just about anything." What example could I give her? "When we first met, I looked out of the bathroom to make sure there was no one in the common area and when there wasn't I looked in our room to see if my roommate was there yet. When both were clear, I went to my room to get dressed then you showed up. Or like at the cabin. The second time the power was out. I could hear you moving around downstairs so I looked through the walls and floor or whatever and saw you with a flashlight. "
"But you couldn't find your shirt?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I didn't look very hard and it didn't seem all that important. And I can hear really well."
"How well?"
"I can hear stuff from a long ways away." I paused. "Dad's snoring up a storm tonight and Granny's watching Letterman."
"Wow."
"I can hear the baby's heartbeat," I whispered.
"What?" she whispered back.
"I can hear the baby's heartbeat when I want to. I have to turn it off and on, but I can. I listen to it sometimes at night when I go to sleep. It reminds me of why we're doing this. To protect you and the baby." I paused in case she wanted to say something. When she didn't I went on. "I can breathe in toxic fumes if I need to. Mom started a fire one time and there was fire extinguisher smoke everywhere. I inhaled it and was fine. I can also freeze things with my breath or exhale with like hurricane force winds or something like that." I hesitated again. "And I can fly."
"What?!" she exclaimed.
"I can fly. I can float and fly."
"You can fly?" She looked at me skeptically.
I levitated a few feet off the ground.
"Wow." It was little more than an exhale. She stared straight ahead for a long time, but I'd told her everything and didn't know what else to say. "Could you have flown us out of Latislan?"
After a minute, I nodded.
"Why didn't you?" There was no accusation in her voice and that made me breathe a sigh of relief.
"I would have. If there was no other way, I would have. I wouldn't have let him hurt you at the airport, for instance. But I've always looked for another way out and by the time I realized the long-term danger, flying you out wouldn't have mattered. Navance would have come after you anyway."
She nodded. "Probably." She yawned.
"Are you ready to go back?" I asked her.
"I think so." She stood up and stretched her back.
"Bothering you again?"
"Still," she admitted.
"Do you trust me?" I asked her again.
She bit her lip and then nodded.
I trained my eyes on her lower back and heated it gently. "Better?"
She stretched a bit more then nodded. "Thanks."
I folded the blanket and tucked the folder inside it. "Do you want to walk?" I asked her before I could talk myself out of it.
"How else would we get back?"
"I could fly us." She didn't say anything. "I mean, if you want me to."
She shrugged. "It'll be faster?"
"A lot."
"Then okay. I'm pretty tired again all of the sudden." She didn't really look at me. "How do we do this?"
"Well, I've only ever flown my folks. Them I usually just wrap an arm around their waists and go, but with the baby and all, I think I should probably hold you a little closer. I can sort of extend my invulnerability if I want to and the closer you are, the easier it is."
She bit her bottom lip before nodding. "Whatever you think is best."
I wasn't sure what I thought was best as I handed her the blanket to hold. I could carry her in my arms or have her stand right in front of me and hold her that way. That was probably best. I moved behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. "Ready?"
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
Was I ready for this?
For finding out Clark could *fly*?
To go *flying* with him?
"Sure," I managed to squeak.
He held me a little tighter and we slowly lifted into the air. I held my breath until he whispered in my ear, "Don't forget to breathe." I let the breath out. "We're not going far or fast or high."
The moon was bright enough that I could see the ground moving quickly below us. I wasn't sure how long it hadn't taken us to walk where we did, but we were standing on the porch in front of the farmhouse in just a couple of minutes.
"Wow," I whispered.
"It is pretty cool," he agreed. "It's the thing I love the most, being able to fly."
"I can imagine." I couldn't, not really, but it did seem pretty cool.
"Sometime, after the baby's born, I'll take you on a real flight."
I nodded and opened the door to the farmhouse.
"Take my bed again, if you want," he said quietly. "It's probably better for you than the air mattress."
"The air mattress can't be all that comfortable," I said to him. "You take your bed."
He shrugged. "I'll be fine. I don't really notice that stuff too much – it's not like I get a stiff back or anything. If it gets really bad, I can sleep on the couch or something. Or if I get too uncomfortable in the middle of the night, sometimes I wake up floating."
"Oh." That was a lot to take in. "Do you float at home?"
He shrugged. "I've never caught myself. And you've never caught me. I can't sleep and float at the same time on purpose. When I sleep float, it's completely involuntary."
By then I was up the stairs and walking into Clark's room.
"Seriously," he said. "Take the bed. If my parents say anything, we'll tell them the air mattress wasn't working for you." He hesitated. "Why'd you sleep on the floor last night?"
I shrugged as he shut the door behind us. "I guess I thought that would be better than your parents realizing we hadn't slept together and I thought we'd both welcome the opportunity to not have to share a bed and I didn't think it was right to kick you off the air mattress or your bed or whatever. It *is* your house after all."
"Well, you have a legitimate reason for sleeping on my bed instead of the air mattress with your back bothering you and all," Clark told me.
"I guess." With that I kicked my shoes off and crawled under the covers of his bed.
I wanted to stay awake, at least for a while, absorbing what he'd told me, trying to figure it all out, but I couldn't. The minute my head hit the pillow, I was sound asleep.
The sound of the truck starting the next morning woke me. I padded into the bathroom and, after I finished in there, dressed in my favorite Daily Planet sweatshirt – grateful that it was big enough that I could still wear it – and another pair of Clark's sweat pants. I had to roll them at the ankles, but they were comfortable enough to make that worthwhile.
I wondered who was in the kitchen when I heard noises as I walked down the stairs.
"Good morning." I heard Martha as I wandered into the kitchen.
"Good morning," I said as I poured myself a cup of coffee. I took a long sip. "I'm not a very good conversationalist until I've had some coffee."
She laughed. "I can relate."
"At least now I know why Clark doesn't need coffee to be annoyingly chipper in the morning."
"You talked last night?" she asked sitting at the table.
I sat across from her. "We went for a walk and he told me."
"What did he tell you exactly?"
"That you and Chris found him in a spaceship and what happened that night and how you met Jonathan. All the things he can do." I blushed a bit though for the life of me I wasn't sure why. "He flew us back here."
"That's pretty cool, isn't it?" she asked with a conspiratorial grin.
I nodded. "It only took a couple minutes, but yeah."
She reached out and grasped my hand lightly. "It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"
I nodded again.
"He's been scared to tell you, but it's something you needed to know. It's possible that it could affect the baby or you."
"I don't think it has," I told her. "Everything seems normal. My OB says that the baby's a few days farther along than average, but that it's not very unusual for a few days' variation."
Martha sipped on her coffee thoughtfully. "I wonder if that's why you didn't get sick until later. That it's a Kryptonian thing."
"A what?" I asked, puzzled.
"A Kryptonian thing." Her brow furrowed. "He didn't tell you about Krypton?"
I shook my head. "No. What's Krypton?"
"That's the planet he's from. There was a message with his ship that he was able to activate when he got older. It said that the planet was dying and that his parents had tried desperately to make a ship big enough for him to get off of the planet in and if he got the message then they must have succeeded."
"Ah. He said he was... an alien, but that was about it."
"He doesn't much seem like one, does he?"
"No. He seems pretty normal. I mean, he is a normal guy as far as I've ever seen."
"Telling Jonathan about him was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life, even harder than losing Chris," she told me. "When I lost Chris, I knew there was a good reason for it. He'd saved Josh's life. And I had Clark to take care of. He was probably two and a half months old when we found him, so I picked February 28 for his birthday. He still needed so much time and attention that I didn't have much time to miss Chris."
She paused before going on. "I dated a few times over the next several years, but nothing serious. I rarely went out with a man more than once because I knew that whoever I went out with, whoever I dated seriously would have to like Clark and Clark would have to like him. He even volunteered to move away once so that I wouldn't have to worry about finding a man who would want to be a dad to him – I could just find someone without having to worry about him.
"The first time I went out with Jonathan, he asked Clark to go with us. I cried when he did. I knew that I'd found someone who was willing to be a father to another man's child. It wasn't long before he asked me to marry him. Chris had been my best friend since we were old enough to remember. We'd dated in high school. I moved off to college and instead of getting married as soon as I finished, we waited." She brushed a tear off her cheek. "I don't regret that he died saving Josh, but I do wish that we'd had six months together first instead of only a few hours. After I accepted Jonathan's proposal, I had to tell him about Clark. He knew that Clark was adopted, but I couldn't let him think that raising Clark would be just like raising any other child. I was so afraid that he'd decide he couldn’t do it. That it would be too much."
"Clark was worried about that, too," I said quietly. "More about telling Lana than me, I think. Not that he doesn't care what I think or whatever, but from everything the two of them ever said, it was more like you and Chris – inseparable since childhood. He cares about me and what I think and all that, but he doesn't care about me the same way he did Lana." I had taken my hand back and both were wrapped around my coffee mug.
"That can't be easy for you."
I shrugged. "I knew when we got married that he was only doing it out of a sense of obligation to me and the baby. And I know there are worse reasons to get married than a baby and we're friends. That's better than enemies, I guess. And I think we both hope that things are different someday." *That* was the understatement of the year. The decade. The millennium. But not for the reasons Martha would think. "But for right now..." I sighed. "We both love the baby and that's enough for the moment."
*****
TBC
