FIC: "Reunion", Part 17 of ?? (PG-13) (Smallville)
Part Seventeen
For the second time in a single day, Lois Lane found herself carting three aliens in her car.
Granted, Clark didn’t really count - he acted like a normal guy most of the time after all, even if that scale of normalcy was skewed towards ‘small-town farm boy’, which was an end of the spectrum that she’d never really encountered before coming to Smallville - but technically, he was really an alien.
It was kind of cool, actually.
“It’s only thirty here,” he said suddenly.
Cool until he opens his mouth.
“Chill, Smallville,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing.”
He actually turned and looked at her. “Then take a hint from someone who’d rather not get pulled over and have Sheriff Adams ask who the people in the back seat are, who’ve never been seen in town before, but surprisingly enough happen to look like me, but don’t speak much English and aren’t carrying any identification issued by any country on the planet Earth,” he said. “Please. Slow. Down.”
Apparently the squared-shoulders, almost-in-her-face, voice-of-authority thing was not a one-time deal. At least it wasn’t followed by the Evil Lip-Lock of Doom. She slowed down to the speed limit. Another speeding ticket would piss Dad off anyway, she told herself.
In the rearview mirror she could see Lara smirking as she gazed out the window. Knowing how little English the alien woman actually understood, she told herself that Lara recognized the tone of Clark’s words rather than the meaning. Stubborn Kryptonian men, indeed. Guess Smallville didn’t fall that fall from the tree after all.
They traveled in silence. A few times her hand itched to turn on the radio, but remembering which CD she had in the player stopped her each time. Not that Clark Kent would understand the significance of Whitesnake’s Greatest Hits.
They wouldn’t appreciate her singing along anyway. In the interest of intergalactic peace, the stereo remained off. It was the least she could do.
She turned onto the road into town. The roads had been surprisingly quiet: it might have been after ten on a Friday night in Nowheresville, Kansas, but their relative proximity to Metropolis gave the local high school crowd plenty of ideas. Especially as graduation approached. It’s just my imagination, she told herself, that I’m transporting three aliens back to a spaceship and that’s why the roads are clear. The General would have called if something was actually happening.
That would be just about the only reason he’d call.
She squared her own shoulders and kept driving.
“Here,” Jor-El suddenly said from the backseat. Lois almost didn’t recognize the place in the dark, even though the sun had been setting the last time she was there. She pulled off to the side of the road, retracing her earlier actions. The headlights showed that the spaceship was still there. One less thing to worry about.
She turned off the engine and the headlights along with it. It was a clear night, with a not-quite-full moon, and the spaceship - its half again as big as the Winnebago the General rented on that cross-country trip the year after Mom died. At the very least. And it’s not that far off the road. Of course, knowing Farm Boy, he’ll walk right into it.
Unless one of his secret alien powers is night vision to rival the undead.
She shook her head. I have got to get some better nicknames for him. ‘Farm Boy’ and ‘Smallville’ just don’t pack the same punch when you know he was born on another planet.
Wordlessly, she followed Jor-El and Lara as they walked towards the spaceship. She could feel the burrs of the cow weed sticking to her pants, she could hear the crunch of the vegetation under their feet as they moved forward, but something wasn’t right. She turned around and saw that Clark was still standing on the shoulder of the road, beside her car. “Clark!” she hissed. “Come on!”
There was an uncertain look on his face, but for once he followed her lead and slowly but surely walked in their direction, following their path. The moonlight illuminated his face, making him look older, even more like his bio-dad, but with that weird expression on his face. When he had caught up, she gathered all her empathy and asked, “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I think so.” The uncomfortable or uncertain look remained on his face, but if he wasn’t going to say anything, she wasn’t about to dig any deeper. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know what a weird couple of hours he’d just had - she knew that she still didn’t know everything, but she knew enough (in particular thanks to that lovely incident in his bedroom) that he had Major Issues about everything that was happening. So she simply said, “Okay,” and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, and then followed Jor-El and Lara’s path the rest of the way to the space ship. The sound of Clark’s footsteps behind her proved that she hadn’t lost him again.
The first time she hadn’t paid much attention to the ship itself, so much as she had freaked out over the fact that there was a space ship at all, and human-looking aliens climbing out of it. This time, she took a moment to really look at it. It stood tall, like the Winnebago she remembered, but even taller - there was a chance they’d have trouble getting it through the barn doors - and long enough to easily fit three adults for a week or two - or longer. Jor-El hadn’t said anything about how long they’d been traveling. Intergalactic RV, I guess, she thought to herself, allowing a little laugh to escape her lips. It was black, shiny, and more or less rectangular, but slightly rounded. She figured that had something to do with aerodynamics - but her dad was in the Army, not the Air Force. There was only one window, in what she supposed was the nose of the ship, and just the one door that she could make out - mostly because by this time Jor-El and Lara had already opened it up and light from inside the ship was making its way outside, showing clearly the rectangular shape of the hole. Steps led the way to the door.
Go on, Lois, she told herself. Climb those steps and take a look inside. Squaring her shoulders and reminding herself not to be surprised by anything she saw inside - they are aliens, after all - just because Clark is semi-normal doesn’t mean anything, ‘cause he grew up here - she did just that.
The doorway led into what she immediately termed the cockpit of the ship. There were two seats immediately in front of the window - pilot and copilot, I guess - and Lara was sitting in one of the seats, poking her finger at various buttons and controls. Opposite her, across from the door, there was a kind of couch along the wall. Everything was clean and a little shiny - new-ish, she supposed - and colored a little differently than she expected, but on the whole not too weird. If she didn’t know better, she’d guess it was the set of a modern science fiction movie.
Opposite the window was another door, which was open. She peeked through and saw that Jor-El rifling through a few containers. There were two things that she guessed were beds, and yet another thing that looked like a couch. Along the far wall there was another door and a series of what she guessed were cabinets and a kind of sink. She was about to turn back to the front of the ship when Jor-El spotted her, smiled, and said, “Lois, welcome in our ship.”
“Um, thanks,” she replied. “It’s, um, it’s very…nice.”
His smile spread to the rest of his face. “Good,” he said. “Lara is very…” He muttered under his breath a moment, apparently searching for the right English word, because then he finished: “Very proud.”
“Lara…?” Is Lara the pilot, then? That would be pretty cool. She glanced into the cockpit and discovered that the woman in question was watching them with some curiosity.
“Yes, Lara. Her work is to fly ships,” he explained and then said something in their language, directed at Lara, who nodded as if in agreement when it was done.
“Cool,” Lois said honestly.
Silence.
She realized that Clark hadn’t come inside yet - more issues-with-a-capital-I? she wondered - and so she went to the door and poked her head out. “Yo, Smallville!” she said, seeing him at the base of the steps. “Are you coming in or not?”
“Lois, I, um, well, I -”
She sighed. “Clark, just spit it out.”
She watched him, bathed in the light of the space ship rather than moonlight now. He reached his hand out and touched, ever so softly, the exterior of the ship -
And then jumped back as if bitten. Or sparked.
“Clark? What’s wrong?” she asked, with real concern. This wasn’t like him. Who knew how many more freak-outs he had in him before he finally dealt with whatever was bugging him, whatever these issues with his birth parents were?
“I, um,” he started, looking nervously between her and the spot he had touched. “I’m going to go now, I think.” He shivered a moment, but before she could say anything, he was gone.
There’s the super-speed again. God, I hope all he did was run back home to the Kents’.
“Lois?” Jor-El’s voice called from behind her. “What is wrong?”
She sighed and turned back towards him. “I don’t know, exactly,” she said slowly, hoping that he understood everything she was saying. “Clark ran away.”
“Ran away?” Jor-El repeated, as if the phrase was unfamiliar.
“He is gone, he went, he’s not here anymore,” she tried to explain.
The remnants of his smile disappeared, replaced by worry. “He is gone,” he repeated again, but more solemnly. These words, if she was guessing right, he understood. He seemed to think on it a moment, rubbing at the bruise on his chin. She was still trying to figure out why Clark had slugged him in the first place. “I think,” Jor-El finally said, “he is gone back to house of Kent. I think he is…tired…and he is…uncomfortable.” This last word he said slowly, like he was trying to make each syllable as clear as possible. “I think we also go back to house of Kent now, Lois.”
“Okay,” she said. To be honest, there was little else she could say. And the idea that he ran back to the Kents’ place was the only thing she could think of herself. “You can follow my car back to the Kent house?”
He hesitated a moment before replying, as if figuring out every individual word she had said. Maybe he’s getting tired of trying to speak English, she told herself. I can understand that. It’s not like it’s the most logical language on the planet. And when was it that he was on Earth - what was it that Mrs. Kent said - nineteen sixty-something? I’m surprised he remembers as much as he does anyway. Finally, Jor-El spoke. “Yes,” he said. “We follow you to house of Kent.”
“Good,” she replied. “Then, um, I’ll see you there.” And then she climbed out of the space ship.
She walked back to her car alone. Luck was still with them, it seemed: there was no evidence that anyone had driven past them, no patrol car sat on the shoulder, writing a ticket for whatever law it was she was technically breaking by parking there, no one poking around. Clark wasn’t there, either, which filled her with equal parts of relief and concern: relief that she wouldn’t have to drive back with the King of Angst and concern because as much as she sometimes pretended not to like him, she actually thought he was all right. He was a farm boy, and sometimes he was a little boring to the uninitiated, and he had this disturbing predilection for plaid and flannel, but underneath all of that he was a nice guy, and he more or less tolerated her (a mean feat unto itself), and while the whole alien thing was obviously a big issue, it was also pretty cool. Plus, she liked his parents. Both sets of them. So far, at least.
Out of habit, she reached for the volume dial after she started the engine, but pulled back before she actually turned it on. Whitesnake would be too distracting, she told herself. And I’d never hear the end of it if I missed the turn in the dark and ended up taking Jor-El and Lara to, say, the Luthor mansion instead.
She looked out the side window and saw that the door to the space ship had been closed. A moment later, the light inside the craft turned off - guess it would draw too much attention, she told herself, or maybe it’s just distracting, like a light inside a car when it’s dark out - and she watched as it slowly began to rise off the ground. After a few moments, it was high enough to clear the power lines and began moving in her direction. She took this to be her cue and put her car into drive, carefully turning it around and then starting off in the direction of the Kent farm.
Every now and again she got a glimpse of the spaceship in her rearview mirror and the only thing that would pop into her mind was this: That is so cool.
TBC
The way I have things outlined, there is one more part before Friday is over and we move on to Saturday. This probably feels like the longest handful of hours on a Friday evening in history.