As always, thanks to Alisha, Beth and Nancy.
Last time:
Lois
I nodded. "Daddy," I said abruptly.
Dad looked at me expectantly.
I took a deep breath. "There's something we need to tell you, something I hope you'll understand and not be mad that Clark and I didn't tell you a long time ago."
He looked puzzled. "What's that, Princess?"
"It's about Clark and Bernie and the fact that they're related and where they come from and how they know that and it affects all of us and Christopher and Nate and..." I made myself stop and take a deep breath. "Daddy, Clark and Bernie... They're brothers, we told you that already, but what we didn't tell you is where they were born."
Dad looked from one to the other. "Where were they born?"
I looked at Bernie who nodded and Clark squeezed my shoulder lightly. "They were born on Krypton. Bernie is Van-El, the new superhero and this weekend Martha made Clark a superhero costume of his own."
Dad's jaw dropped and we all waited with bated breath to see his reaction.
*~*8*~*
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
We carried the boys upstairs, through the unlocked door and into their room.
"This is a nice house," Bernie said.
"Lois' dad has money. Lots of it. When he found out about the threat from Navance, he secured this wing and we moved in here. Now that the threat's over, he wants us to stay anyway," I told him.
"That's very nice of him," Bernie replied, taking it all in.
He seemed a bit uneasy as I gave Christopher a quick bath – using the shower head to rinse him off rather than an actual *bath*. Christopher hated that – he'd rather play with his boats. When I got back to the bedroom, Bernie was in the glider with Nate staring out the window when I came back in with Christopher in his pajamas.
"Okay, little man, it's bedtime," I said, doing my best to be stern. "Leave your brother alone." I gave him my best stern Dad look. The one my mom and Lois had perfected. Well, stern parent look. Dad had it perfected, too, for that matter.
He nodded as he yawned. "Wuv you, Daddy," he said giving me a big hug and resting his head on my shoulder for a long minute.
"Love you, too," I told him, giving him a big hug back. I set him down in his toddler bed. "Sleep in your bed tonight, okay?"
He nodded and picked up his bag of animals off the floor, setting it next to him.
"Not on the floor," I warned. "You've got your big boy pants on so you have to sleep on your bed."
He gave an exasperated sigh. "I *know*, Dad." He lay down on the bed and put his head on the pillow. "Co'er me up?"
"Of course." I pulled his sheet and blanket up over him before kissing his forehead. "Love you, little man."
"Wuv you, Daddy."
I turned to Bernie who was watching us with a mixture of jealousy and something else on his face. I motioned with my head for him to follow me and we all headed into our room.
I had a clean onesie flung over my shoulder and a size one diaper in one hand. I reached for Nate and he came willingly. "Come here, big guy."
He babbled incessantly as I bounced him up and down on our bed.
"Have a seat," I told Bernie, motioning to the living area.
He chose instead to sit in the chair on Lois' side of the bed near the door to the boys' room.
I kept Nate from crawling too far away as I managed to undo the snaps on the outfit he had on. "Hey, stay here."
He blew a raspberry my direction and grabbed his pacifier holder, sticking the wrong end of it in his mouth as I worked the one piece outfit over his tiny body. I changed his diaper and slipped the new outfit on him. I grabbed him again as he tried to scramble off towards the edge of the bed. I flopped him back right in the middle of our super king size bed and zipped to the mini-fridge in our closet, getting back with his bottle of milk before he had a chance to get back to the edge. Not that I was too worried with Van – Bernie – right there.
I picked Nate up and sat in the chair on the other side of the room, with my feet propped up in mid-air as Nate grabbed hold of the bottle. I held it away from him, heating it with my eyes.
"There you go," I said, letting him have it. He'd nursed almost as soon as we'd gotten back from the cabin and again since then, but he usually had a bottle right before bed.
He settled into the crook of my arm, eagerly drinking from the bottle.
"I think this is my favorite time of day," I told Van. "Christopher is down and quiet and I get to spend some time with just Nate. He's not nursing as much anymore so Lois isn't the only one who feeds him."
"Ashley was glad to hear that you have biological children," he said quietly. "Our father thought it would be possible for us to have children with human women, but he wasn’t certain. She wants to be a mom not long after we get married."
I wanted to ask him more about courtship and... mating or whatever on Krypton but I wasn't sure how to.
"You and Lois... the... physical relationship between you two..." He blushed furiously. "Not here," he added quickly, waving a hand towards the bed. "In public, or at least in front of your families, you're very openly affectionate."
I nodded slowly. "Yes, we are. We always have been, but until recently, it was because if Navance found out that we were only staying married to keep him away from Lois and Christopher, he had a claim to our son under Latislani law so we tried to be openly affectionate or whatever so no one would think we were faking it. The last few days though..." I shrugged. "It's just natural. It feels natural to be close to her, to want her close to me. Is that not... normal on Krypton?"
Bernie sighed. "Perhaps in private, somewhat. Our parents were more affectionate at home than anyone else I ever saw, even when I had a friend over or our grandparents were there, but not much. And in public, there was no contact at all – not even hand holding or things like that – except on special occasions where there was a formal escort or something."
"Lois noticed that with you and Ashley," I told him. "That you held hands but that was about it."
He stared at the ground. "I'll admit to you that I fly slower than I really need to when I fly with Ashley."
"Why is that?"
"Because she's in my arms," he admitted. "I..." He sighed. "This is a conversation for another day," he said, nodding at my now sleeping son. "About Lois' father..."
"Yeah?" I asked, lifting Nate to my shoulder and patting his back until he burped.
"Ashley and I talked about it earlier and agreed that she'd send me a signal if she was comfortable with it and she did when we came inside. That means it's up to me and I think, especially given your son's medical needs, telling him would be a good idea. If he's willing, he could act as physician for all of us, as needed. It would be good to keep that in the family, I think. I'm a doctor, but not a medical doctor like he is."
I nodded. "I think that's a good idea and I'm glad you agree. Let me put this guy down, and we'll head back downstairs."
A few minutes later, I was sitting next to Lois as she told her dad that Van and I were from Krypton.
His jaw – literally – dropped.
"Could you repeat that?" he finally said.
"We're from Krypton," I told him quietly. "I crashed landed in Kansas when I was a few months old. I was found by Martha Clark and Chris Davis. They got married that night and adopted me. The night they found me, he was killed in a fire, rescuing a baby who would be one of my best friends growing up – you've met him; Josh Irig, he married my cousin, Kara, right around the time of Nate's surgery. A ceiling collapsed on Chris. Five years later, Mom married Jonathan Kent who adopted me."
"So not too different from the story you've told us," Sam said slowly. "Just the whole crash landed thing?"
I nodded.
He turned to my brother. "And you're the new superhero that's been flying around?"
Van – Bernie – nodded.
He turned back to me. "And you can do all of the same things he can?"
"Yeah."
"Daddy, that's why we've been so reluctant to seek medical help for Nate. The thought of him having surgery scared us half to death and not just because they wanted to open up our three-month-old. We were so afraid that they'd see something that would tell them that he's not quite normal," Lois told him.
Sam nodded slowly as it began to sink in. "I can understand that."
"That's one of the reasons we wanted to tell you, Sam, but we also wanted Bernie and Ashley to be comfortable with it because we knew you'd figure out that we were related pretty quickly. And, especially if we're going to keep living here, then you'll soon notice that I'm gone at odd hours sometimes. Mom made me a superhero costume of my own yesterday."
"Because you just... flew out to see her?" Sam asked.
I nodded. "Van – Bernie – and Ashley met us out there and helped us decide on the colors and stuff."
"We're hoping that you can help us with the medical stuff for all of us, Daddy," Lois told him.
He nodded slowly. "I don't see why not. But Clark and Bernie won't need medical care, will they?" I could see the light bulb go off in his head as he turned back to me. "What happened at the cabin then, Clark?"
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
Tears sprang to my eyes.
"That was not a good night," I told them all, my voice barely a whisper. "We didn't know then, but we do now. There's this green rock. We think it came from Krypton, but it glows and it was in Bremerton. He passed out, and it causes intense pain and a loss of all of his powers."
Bernie looked shocked. "What?" he asked, astounded.
Clark nodded. "I didn't like it at all."
"We almost died that night," I told Bernie quietly. "The really big snowstorm the first weekend of November a few years ago. We got stuck about half or three-quarters of a mile from the cabin and barely made it. There was no power and Clark was passed out." A tear streaked down my face as I remembered the desperation of the night. "I got a fire started and got our wet clothes off of us and got us under the blankets and Daddy found us there the next day."
"It was scary," Dad admitted. "Sitting here with the roads closed and no one able to go look for them. The phone line had gone down after Lois called me." He sighed. "I'd like to try to learn more about this green rock at some point, but at least one good thing came out of that night – Christopher."
Clark and I glanced at each other.
Daddy caught the look. "What?"
I sighed. "We're not sure," I finally whispered. "We think so, but we're not sure."
"What?!" he asked.
Bernie and Ashley looked at each other uncomfortably.
"On Halloween, we went to a frat party with Lana and Joe," I told him. "We lost them and each other and later, Clark found me upstairs behind a couch, with my shorts and underwear off. We don't – and didn't - *think* anything happened, that Clark got there in time, but we're not sure."
"So when you got married, when you told Navance you were pregnant with Clark's baby, you weren't sure?" I could see him trying to wrap his head around all the new information.
I shook my head. "No. When Clark told Navance he was the father of my baby, he had no idea that there was even a chance that he really was. We didn't really remember what happened that night until much later – we both thought we'd dreamed it, and Clark actually thought he'd dreamed about Lana for a long time."
Daddy sat back in his seat. "When you guys spring stuff on a guy, you really do it right." He looked at Clark. "I won't say I'm sorry for the result, but I'm sorry for the pressure I put on you on the plane on the way back here. You did a very brave and noble thing to protect Lois and the baby you didn't know was yours – that you didn't think *could* be yours."
"I couldn't let him get to them. He was evil. Literally," Clark said.
"He was," I said, resting my head against Clark. "And Clark's never told me the worst of it. He said I didn't see the worst and if that's true, I can't even imagine what he would be like."
"Why didn't you just..." Daddy made a flying motion at Clark.
Clark sighed. "I didn't want to risk it. I would have if it came right down to it. I would have grabbed her and we would have disappeared, but she didn't seem to be in physical danger and I've spent my whole life hiding who I am and what I can do. I thought I'd wait and see what happened. I never would have guessed that he would have come after us like that."
"We talked about it a long time ago, Daddy. He wouldn't have thought that long-term danger would be an issue," I told him.
"When did he tell you?" Bernie asked.
"When my mom made me," Clark told them, appropriately chagrined.
"What?" Ashley asked.
"They thought I was pregnant with a half-Kryptonian baby. I was, but we didn't know it. It was still our freshman year in college and Martha told him if he didn't tell me, they'd stop sending the spending money they had been."
"And that she'd tan my hide," Clark said, wincing. "I may be invulnerable but there's two things besides that green rock – Lois named it Kryptonite, by the way – that scare me... Mom and Lois." He rubbed his ear. "As recently as my senior year in high school, she grabbed my ear when I got in trouble and... I mean, it was probably psychosomatic, but it hurt!"
I rolled my eyes. "Poor baby."
Clark sighed and pulled me closer to him. "I didn't have the guts to just tell her so I gave her a copy of this paper I wrote – about being a foundling and being adopted and how my parents met and got together and how both Chris and my dad didn't have to take on the responsibility of being a dad. The paper I turned in told the official story, but I'd written the real one, too, and showed it to my parents and it hit me it was a way to start the conversation with Lois. So she read it and I told her what all I could do and..." He shrugged.
"I didn't care about the whole 'I'm an alien' thing. What made me mad was that he already knew when the divorce was going to happen," I said quietly. At the startled looks, I continued. "When we got back to the States, we found out Navance had changed the law and the husband was only the legal father if the marriage lasted five years after the birth of the baby. We'd said we'd file for divorce the day after Christopher's birthday if nothing changed before that. It made me mad that he wanted to be the kind of dad Chris would have been and Jonathan still was, but he knew what day we'd file for divorce."
"She let me have it for that one," Clark said.
"Good," Dad said.
"I deserved it," Clark told him with a shrug. "I'm just glad I came to my senses and was able to convince her to keep me around," he said softly, kissing the side of my head. "I don't know what I'd do without her. I don't know what I'd do without my boys, but without Lois..." He pulled me closer to him still. "I'd be completely lost. I thank God he didn't answer my prayers for an eventual reconciliation with Lana. And that you saved her the other day, Bernie. I don't know what I would have done if she'd been hurt or worse on that transport."
"Then I am extra glad I was able to be of service," he said.
"Thank you," Daddy said suddenly. "For saving my little girl." He sighed. "Okay, we're going to have to figure out what to do about this little guy."
"And then you're going to have to move all my stuff back into our room," I told Clark.
His fingers played with the hair at my temple. "You moved it out, you can move it back?"
I turned enough to glare at him. "Now that Daddy knows, you can have it done in about three seconds. If I had to..."
He was gone.
Less than a minute later, he was back. "All done," he announced, sitting next to me, feet propped up in mid-air.
Daddy's jaw dropped again. "Wow."
*****
TBC
