FIC: "Reunion" (Smallville), part 08 of ???
At 2,308 words, this is clearly the longest installment to date. Enjoy!
Previous Parts:
Prologue/Part One/Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Martha Clark Kent had lived with the fact that her son was not really hers for years. They had considered adoption for some time before Clark came into their lives, they had done their research, and she knew all the problems and questions that would lurk in the background if they did adopt. An adopted child might get curious about his or her birth parents, especially their birth mother, and want to seek them out. Records might be sealed, or an attempt at making contact might be rebuffed. The adoptive parents would have to deal with the additional strain, stress, moodiness that the situation would bring. She and Jonathan had put off applying to become adoptive or foster parents again and again, and she was not too proud to admit that these issues were part of the reason they did - though outwardly, there were always excuses. We’ve been so busy. The farm, you know. We’re still trying for a child of our own. The OB recommended a new medication. Some of this was the truth. Every month, she cried when it was again made clear that she wasn’t pregnant.
Nonetheless, the day of the meteor shower was one of the happiest in her life. It was only later, long after Lionel Luthor came through with the fake paperwork, and Clark had finally started to speak English, that the maternal adrenaline rush subsided and she began to worry. Where were his birth parents? Where were they from, exactly? Why did they send him away? What if someone found out? But luck was with them: questions were few and answers easily faked. Clark himself, otherwise inquisitive by nature, rarely asked questions and - until the incident with Lex Luthor - never expressed much interest in his birth parents or his life before the “adoption”. After that, with new powers popping up every few months, it was a completely different story. With the demands that the voice calling itself Jor-El had been making, the angst only got worse.
And Martha began to worry again. She hated the fact that they didn’t know the whole story - what had happened to Krypton, to Jor-El and Lara, or what more surprises were lurking in the Kawatche caves. At times she hated everything about them.
But now - seeing Lara, feeling the warmth of her body in their embrace, hearing her voice, knowing in her very soul that this was the woman who had given birth to her son - Martha could not hate her.
The whistle of the tea kettle ended the moment, but even that piercing sound and Lois’s quick, soft “Oh, dammit,” as she leapt to the task could not break the instantaneous connection Martha felt. Still, there was awkwardness: Martha disengaged herself from the hug and stepped back towards Jonathan. They stood there, silent; she could practically feel Jonathan scowling - he would not handle this well, she knew. And Lara and the man on the other side of the room (Is this the infamous Jor-El?) also stood silently. What do you say to your son’s alien parents?
A groan - male, loud, deep, in the general vicinity of the couch - broke the silence. It occurred suddenly to Martha that something was missing in this little scene - namely, Clark himself. What is going on here? Was that Clark? Did they do something to him?
At the sound of the groan, Lara and the man (Jor-El?) were at the couch. Martha followed them quickly, ignoring Lois’s muffled cursing in the kitchen. Despite the strong resemblance to her son, she knew with a mother’s intuition that this man on the couch was not Clark: no, this must be his father. This must be Jor-El. She reached out and touched Lara’s hand, gently. The alien woman turned and looked at her, apprehension and grief on her face. “What happened?” Martha asked - and then added: “Where’s Clark?”
Lara pressed her lips together, as if in pain. Softly, she said, “No words. You speak Lo-ees,” and gestured towards the kitchen.
The first man knelt beside the man on the couch, speaking softly in a language Martha realized she had heard before. The meter, the cadence, the lilt of it resembled some of the brief, rare moments of babbling Clark had done in those early months before, out of the blue, he’d begun stringing together entire sentences in English. That babbling, it seemed, had not been random at all: he had been speaking his native language.
Martha turned to call to Lois, but the girl was already coming, a tea tray in her hands, with Jonathan fast on her heels. “Give me just a sec, Mrs. K, and I’ll explain, all right?” she said, carefully navigating her way to the coffee table.
“Lois,” said Martha, trying to keep the worry out of her voice, “where’s Clark?”
Lois grimaced. “I’ll get to that, okay?” She began pouring the tea into cups and Martha suddenly realized that this was the special holiday service, the silver tea pot and the hand-painted china that had been in Jonathan’s mother’s family for three generations - “Lois, carefully…”
“Mrs. Kent, it’s all right. Just…just sit down, please. You, too, Mr. Kent. Just…just please sit down.” She turned to Lara. “Lara,” she said, pantomiming what she wanted her to do, “sit down? Drink some tea?” She poured a little bit into one of the cups and gave it to her. “Tea?”
Martha watched as Lara took the teacup and hesitantly lifted it to her face, first sniffing it and then tasting it. With a nod, she told Lois, “Good. We drink.”
A tiny, provincial part of herself whispered in the back of her mind: This amazingly advanced civilization, sending their child however far across the universe, visiting Earth decades ago, and they haven’t learned English to talk to us, they don’t have a translating machine or something like on Star Trek? They come all this way and they can’t talk to us properly?
Realizing how poorly those thoughts reflected on her, and with the brief thought of surprise at how easily Lois seemed to be taking the situation, Martha sat down, pulling Jonathan - so strangely silent, given the circumstance - with her onto the loveseat. She watched Lois finish pouring the tea and took her own cup. Then Lois sat in the remaining seat and took a deep breath. “Okay, first things first. Introductions. I mean, you already know each other or something, but not all the way, or…anyway…” She pointed at Lara. “This is Lara. She’s Clark’s mom. The guy there on the couch is Jor-El, Clark’s dad.”
“Why does he look like he went two rounds with the Metropolis Sharks?” Jonathan asked.
Lois frowned. “Um, can we get to that in a minute? It’s…it’s not exactly a happy story.”
Martha suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. “Just tell us in your own time, Lois.”
“Thanks. Anyway, the other guy,” she said, pointing to the remaining alien, “is Zor-El, who is Jor-El’s brother. Everyone clear so far?”
Martha nodded, but when she looked at Jonathan, she was glad he did not have Clark’s heat vision. Jor-El would have been barbequed by the anger present in her husband’s eyes. “Jonathan,” she said softly.
“Martha, that man has been nothing but trouble for this family since the moment we learned his name. What right do they have, just showing up here after what? Fourteen years of thinking they were dead and Clark was ours, our son?” He started to stand. “What, it was all a joke, their planet’s just fine, and it’s time to take him back home with them? All these…these tests are over now, congratulations?”
“Jonathan-”
“Kal-El!”
The sudden shout drew all their attention as Jor-El tried to sit up. For the first time, Martha saw his eyes - the same changeable blue-green that Clark had, an unearthly beautiful color. And like with Clark, all his emotions seemed to live there:
This was not a duplicitous man.
“Ne, ne, Jor, isht,” said Lara, helping Jor-El sit upright. “Pa ishtil, yikka ka fanyu-Kent ka Kal-El.”
“Kent?” said Jor-El. Martha guessed his tone to be one of surprise, and that same reaction was in his eyes as he surveyed the room. His gaze finally fell on Jonathan and he squinted at him. “Jeen-Kent ka Hyram-Kent?”
“Ne,” said Zor-El, finally speaking. “Jannadon-Kent.”
(“Clark was right,” Martha whispered to Jonathan. “He really was here in 1961.”
“Martha -”
“How else would he know your father’s name?”
Jonathan huffed and sat back down.)
The two fathers of Martha’s son stared at each other.
It was Lois who finally broke the silence. “Okay, moving on, since there’s a story here that’s probably weirder than anything to date in Smallville,” she said. “Um, Lara, Jor-El, Zor-El, this is Martha Kent, Kal-El’s mother.” She pointed at Martha for a moment and then moved to Jonathan. “And this is Jonathan Kent, Kal-El’s father.”
The House of El and the House of Kent stared at each other.
Jor-El made the first move, to Martha’s surprise. He tried to stand and finally succeeded, despite what seemed to be very strenuous protests by Lara and Zor-El. Then, slowly, he extended his arm to Jonathan. “Much pleased to meet you,” he said.
Jonathan stared at him.
Martha nudged him with her shoulder. “Shake the man’s hand, Jonathan!”
Jonathan stood. He swallowed and rubbed his hands nervously on his jeans. Finally, he took Jor-El’s hand and said, “Likewise.” Martha nudged him again. Come on, Jonathan Kent. I know you can do better than that. “Um, welcome to Earth.”
Martha rolled her eyes and exchanged a glance with Lois that caught Lara’s attention. The embarrassed look on Lara’s face probably matched her own.
Jor-El nodded at Jonathan’s salutation and sat down again, clearly strained but smiling: he saw the handshake as a success, Martha decided. Lara gave him his tea and he drank it with a relieved expression on his face.
From his sitting position, Martha could finally see the horrid bruise on Jor-El’s jaw. It was brightly colored - yellow, green, deep purple at the center. “Lois,” she said softly, “there’s some ice in the freezer. Why don’t you go get some in a dish towel for Jor-El’s jaw -”
“No.” The word came the man himself. “No need.” He looked up and his eyes met hers. “It heals. I remember this, from before. I am fine.”
“You speak English,” Martha said in surprise. Maybe we won’t suffer this communication problem forever…
He grimaced. “A little. It is many years ago, I was here. It is difficult, to remember words. I am not a man of words - Lara, she is good with words, but she does not know Earth. I hear you speak, Lois speak, Jonnadon-Kent speak, I start to remember words.”
“Jor.” This was Lara, pulling Jor-el’s head towards her with one hand. “Ne kelish. Maleen.”
“Ne, nali kelish.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead and Martha smiled to see the same sort of affection shared between the two that she and Jonathan knew. Maybe they’re not that different from us after all.
“Jor-El,” Martha ventured, “who hurt you?”
Jor-El grimaced again and quickly Lois butted in. “Mrs. Kent -”
“Ne, Lo-ees,” said Jor-El. “No. I will speak.” He turned back towards Martha and Jonathan. “Our son did this,” he said, raising a hand to his bruise.
Our son. The phrase drew shivers across her spine. Our son: he had been looking directly at Martha when he said it. At first, she did not register the fact that he was saying Clark had injured him; all she heard was acknowledgement from Jor-El that she and Jonathan were also his parents.
And then it hit her: Clark hurt Jor-El.
She didn’t have to ask why: the look on her face apparently moved Jor-El to speak again. “He was…angry. I do not know why. He spoke to me, very angry. He did not speak to Lara, he did not speak to Zor-El. Lois spoke to Kal-El -” He paused. “Please, what is his name here?”
“Clark,” Martha offered. “His name is Clark.”
“Ka-”
“Ne,” said Lara. “Cla-ark.”
“Eh. Clark.” He looked at Martha. “It is a strange name, for us. We will have trouble to say it.” He took another deep breath. “I do not know why he is angry. I did not understand all the words.” He glanced over at Lois.
Martha followed his gaze. “Lois?” she asked. “Do you know what Clark said?”
Lois shrugged. “I heard every word, but I can’t tell you why he said what he said. There was profanity involved, which I know isn’t exactly his usual thing. Basically, he wanted them to go back where they came from and to leave him alone. I’ve never seen him so upset.” She paused. “Does this have anything to do with how I met him, back in September? When he was kinda…out of it, you know?”
Martha opened her mouth to reply, but before the air could even leave her lungs, she stopped: suddenly, Jor-El raised his hands to his ears, grimacing in an all-too familiar way. She looked to the others and Lara and Zor-El were doing the same.
“Um, what’s going on?” asked Lois.
As quickly as it had started, it was over: the three aliens collapsed back in their seats, looking exhausted. Lara began crying and Jor-El drew her into his side, embracing her as he exchanged a wary look with Zor-El. “What did you hear?” Jonathan asked hesitantly; Martha was proud of his initiative.
Jor-El’s eyes turned steely, his chin set. He held Lara with her hair against his cheek, looking at Jonathan out of the top of his sight. When he finally spoke, it was a single word: a word Martha had never heard before, but clearly meant something to Jor-El. Something horrific.
“Zod.”
TBC
Previous Parts:
Prologue/Part One/Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Martha Clark Kent had lived with the fact that her son was not really hers for years. They had considered adoption for some time before Clark came into their lives, they had done their research, and she knew all the problems and questions that would lurk in the background if they did adopt. An adopted child might get curious about his or her birth parents, especially their birth mother, and want to seek them out. Records might be sealed, or an attempt at making contact might be rebuffed. The adoptive parents would have to deal with the additional strain, stress, moodiness that the situation would bring. She and Jonathan had put off applying to become adoptive or foster parents again and again, and she was not too proud to admit that these issues were part of the reason they did - though outwardly, there were always excuses. We’ve been so busy. The farm, you know. We’re still trying for a child of our own. The OB recommended a new medication. Some of this was the truth. Every month, she cried when it was again made clear that she wasn’t pregnant.
Nonetheless, the day of the meteor shower was one of the happiest in her life. It was only later, long after Lionel Luthor came through with the fake paperwork, and Clark had finally started to speak English, that the maternal adrenaline rush subsided and she began to worry. Where were his birth parents? Where were they from, exactly? Why did they send him away? What if someone found out? But luck was with them: questions were few and answers easily faked. Clark himself, otherwise inquisitive by nature, rarely asked questions and - until the incident with Lex Luthor - never expressed much interest in his birth parents or his life before the “adoption”. After that, with new powers popping up every few months, it was a completely different story. With the demands that the voice calling itself Jor-El had been making, the angst only got worse.
And Martha began to worry again. She hated the fact that they didn’t know the whole story - what had happened to Krypton, to Jor-El and Lara, or what more surprises were lurking in the Kawatche caves. At times she hated everything about them.
But now - seeing Lara, feeling the warmth of her body in their embrace, hearing her voice, knowing in her very soul that this was the woman who had given birth to her son - Martha could not hate her.
The whistle of the tea kettle ended the moment, but even that piercing sound and Lois’s quick, soft “Oh, dammit,” as she leapt to the task could not break the instantaneous connection Martha felt. Still, there was awkwardness: Martha disengaged herself from the hug and stepped back towards Jonathan. They stood there, silent; she could practically feel Jonathan scowling - he would not handle this well, she knew. And Lara and the man on the other side of the room (Is this the infamous Jor-El?) also stood silently. What do you say to your son’s alien parents?
A groan - male, loud, deep, in the general vicinity of the couch - broke the silence. It occurred suddenly to Martha that something was missing in this little scene - namely, Clark himself. What is going on here? Was that Clark? Did they do something to him?
At the sound of the groan, Lara and the man (Jor-El?) were at the couch. Martha followed them quickly, ignoring Lois’s muffled cursing in the kitchen. Despite the strong resemblance to her son, she knew with a mother’s intuition that this man on the couch was not Clark: no, this must be his father. This must be Jor-El. She reached out and touched Lara’s hand, gently. The alien woman turned and looked at her, apprehension and grief on her face. “What happened?” Martha asked - and then added: “Where’s Clark?”
Lara pressed her lips together, as if in pain. Softly, she said, “No words. You speak Lo-ees,” and gestured towards the kitchen.
The first man knelt beside the man on the couch, speaking softly in a language Martha realized she had heard before. The meter, the cadence, the lilt of it resembled some of the brief, rare moments of babbling Clark had done in those early months before, out of the blue, he’d begun stringing together entire sentences in English. That babbling, it seemed, had not been random at all: he had been speaking his native language.
Martha turned to call to Lois, but the girl was already coming, a tea tray in her hands, with Jonathan fast on her heels. “Give me just a sec, Mrs. K, and I’ll explain, all right?” she said, carefully navigating her way to the coffee table.
“Lois,” said Martha, trying to keep the worry out of her voice, “where’s Clark?”
Lois grimaced. “I’ll get to that, okay?” She began pouring the tea into cups and Martha suddenly realized that this was the special holiday service, the silver tea pot and the hand-painted china that had been in Jonathan’s mother’s family for three generations - “Lois, carefully…”
“Mrs. Kent, it’s all right. Just…just sit down, please. You, too, Mr. Kent. Just…just please sit down.” She turned to Lara. “Lara,” she said, pantomiming what she wanted her to do, “sit down? Drink some tea?” She poured a little bit into one of the cups and gave it to her. “Tea?”
Martha watched as Lara took the teacup and hesitantly lifted it to her face, first sniffing it and then tasting it. With a nod, she told Lois, “Good. We drink.”
A tiny, provincial part of herself whispered in the back of her mind: This amazingly advanced civilization, sending their child however far across the universe, visiting Earth decades ago, and they haven’t learned English to talk to us, they don’t have a translating machine or something like on Star Trek? They come all this way and they can’t talk to us properly?
Realizing how poorly those thoughts reflected on her, and with the brief thought of surprise at how easily Lois seemed to be taking the situation, Martha sat down, pulling Jonathan - so strangely silent, given the circumstance - with her onto the loveseat. She watched Lois finish pouring the tea and took her own cup. Then Lois sat in the remaining seat and took a deep breath. “Okay, first things first. Introductions. I mean, you already know each other or something, but not all the way, or…anyway…” She pointed at Lara. “This is Lara. She’s Clark’s mom. The guy there on the couch is Jor-El, Clark’s dad.”
“Why does he look like he went two rounds with the Metropolis Sharks?” Jonathan asked.
Lois frowned. “Um, can we get to that in a minute? It’s…it’s not exactly a happy story.”
Martha suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. “Just tell us in your own time, Lois.”
“Thanks. Anyway, the other guy,” she said, pointing to the remaining alien, “is Zor-El, who is Jor-El’s brother. Everyone clear so far?”
Martha nodded, but when she looked at Jonathan, she was glad he did not have Clark’s heat vision. Jor-El would have been barbequed by the anger present in her husband’s eyes. “Jonathan,” she said softly.
“Martha, that man has been nothing but trouble for this family since the moment we learned his name. What right do they have, just showing up here after what? Fourteen years of thinking they were dead and Clark was ours, our son?” He started to stand. “What, it was all a joke, their planet’s just fine, and it’s time to take him back home with them? All these…these tests are over now, congratulations?”
“Jonathan-”
“Kal-El!”
The sudden shout drew all their attention as Jor-El tried to sit up. For the first time, Martha saw his eyes - the same changeable blue-green that Clark had, an unearthly beautiful color. And like with Clark, all his emotions seemed to live there:
This was not a duplicitous man.
“Ne, ne, Jor, isht,” said Lara, helping Jor-El sit upright. “Pa ishtil, yikka ka fanyu-Kent ka Kal-El.”
“Kent?” said Jor-El. Martha guessed his tone to be one of surprise, and that same reaction was in his eyes as he surveyed the room. His gaze finally fell on Jonathan and he squinted at him. “Jeen-Kent ka Hyram-Kent?”
“Ne,” said Zor-El, finally speaking. “Jannadon-Kent.”
(“Clark was right,” Martha whispered to Jonathan. “He really was here in 1961.”
“Martha -”
“How else would he know your father’s name?”
Jonathan huffed and sat back down.)
The two fathers of Martha’s son stared at each other.
It was Lois who finally broke the silence. “Okay, moving on, since there’s a story here that’s probably weirder than anything to date in Smallville,” she said. “Um, Lara, Jor-El, Zor-El, this is Martha Kent, Kal-El’s mother.” She pointed at Martha for a moment and then moved to Jonathan. “And this is Jonathan Kent, Kal-El’s father.”
The House of El and the House of Kent stared at each other.
Jor-El made the first move, to Martha’s surprise. He tried to stand and finally succeeded, despite what seemed to be very strenuous protests by Lara and Zor-El. Then, slowly, he extended his arm to Jonathan. “Much pleased to meet you,” he said.
Jonathan stared at him.
Martha nudged him with her shoulder. “Shake the man’s hand, Jonathan!”
Jonathan stood. He swallowed and rubbed his hands nervously on his jeans. Finally, he took Jor-El’s hand and said, “Likewise.” Martha nudged him again. Come on, Jonathan Kent. I know you can do better than that. “Um, welcome to Earth.”
Martha rolled her eyes and exchanged a glance with Lois that caught Lara’s attention. The embarrassed look on Lara’s face probably matched her own.
Jor-El nodded at Jonathan’s salutation and sat down again, clearly strained but smiling: he saw the handshake as a success, Martha decided. Lara gave him his tea and he drank it with a relieved expression on his face.
From his sitting position, Martha could finally see the horrid bruise on Jor-El’s jaw. It was brightly colored - yellow, green, deep purple at the center. “Lois,” she said softly, “there’s some ice in the freezer. Why don’t you go get some in a dish towel for Jor-El’s jaw -”
“No.” The word came the man himself. “No need.” He looked up and his eyes met hers. “It heals. I remember this, from before. I am fine.”
“You speak English,” Martha said in surprise. Maybe we won’t suffer this communication problem forever…
He grimaced. “A little. It is many years ago, I was here. It is difficult, to remember words. I am not a man of words - Lara, she is good with words, but she does not know Earth. I hear you speak, Lois speak, Jonnadon-Kent speak, I start to remember words.”
“Jor.” This was Lara, pulling Jor-el’s head towards her with one hand. “Ne kelish. Maleen.”
“Ne, nali kelish.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead and Martha smiled to see the same sort of affection shared between the two that she and Jonathan knew. Maybe they’re not that different from us after all.
“Jor-El,” Martha ventured, “who hurt you?”
Jor-El grimaced again and quickly Lois butted in. “Mrs. Kent -”
“Ne, Lo-ees,” said Jor-El. “No. I will speak.” He turned back towards Martha and Jonathan. “Our son did this,” he said, raising a hand to his bruise.
Our son. The phrase drew shivers across her spine. Our son: he had been looking directly at Martha when he said it. At first, she did not register the fact that he was saying Clark had injured him; all she heard was acknowledgement from Jor-El that she and Jonathan were also his parents.
And then it hit her: Clark hurt Jor-El.
She didn’t have to ask why: the look on her face apparently moved Jor-El to speak again. “He was…angry. I do not know why. He spoke to me, very angry. He did not speak to Lara, he did not speak to Zor-El. Lois spoke to Kal-El -” He paused. “Please, what is his name here?”
“Clark,” Martha offered. “His name is Clark.”
“Ka-”
“Ne,” said Lara. “Cla-ark.”
“Eh. Clark.” He looked at Martha. “It is a strange name, for us. We will have trouble to say it.” He took another deep breath. “I do not know why he is angry. I did not understand all the words.” He glanced over at Lois.
Martha followed his gaze. “Lois?” she asked. “Do you know what Clark said?”
Lois shrugged. “I heard every word, but I can’t tell you why he said what he said. There was profanity involved, which I know isn’t exactly his usual thing. Basically, he wanted them to go back where they came from and to leave him alone. I’ve never seen him so upset.” She paused. “Does this have anything to do with how I met him, back in September? When he was kinda…out of it, you know?”
Martha opened her mouth to reply, but before the air could even leave her lungs, she stopped: suddenly, Jor-El raised his hands to his ears, grimacing in an all-too familiar way. She looked to the others and Lara and Zor-El were doing the same.
“Um, what’s going on?” asked Lois.
As quickly as it had started, it was over: the three aliens collapsed back in their seats, looking exhausted. Lara began crying and Jor-El drew her into his side, embracing her as he exchanged a wary look with Zor-El. “What did you hear?” Jonathan asked hesitantly; Martha was proud of his initiative.
Jor-El’s eyes turned steely, his chin set. He held Lara with her hair against his cheek, looking at Jonathan out of the top of his sight. When he finally spoke, it was a single word: a word Martha had never heard before, but clearly meant something to Jor-El. Something horrific.
“Zod.”
TBC