FIC: "Reunion", Part 24 of ?? (Smallville, PG-13)
Previous Parts
PART TWENTY-FOUR
Jonathan wasn’t the least bit surprised that Lois was muttering to herself, under her breath, in a heated manner, when she finally returned inside, Clark and Jor-El not far behind her. This was nothing new.
The look of understanding that Jor-El gave Clark as they came in, however, was.
Jonathan Kent wasn’t perfect. He knew from day one that he’d have trouble if Clark’s birth father ever showed up, long before he’d known anything about Jor-El, or the message in the ship, or the caves. He was human, and humans could be damn jealous, and petty, and selfish, and it took all his control not to jump up and separate his son from his birth father and shout at the man and reach for the shot gun.
The smile on Clark’s face - a small one, mind, but a smile nonetheless - made it particularly difficult not to follow through with his animal instincts. Is this what Martha was talking about? How she feels about Lara?
Martha.
He glanced over into the kitchen. She was getting a tray together for him - her insistence, not his, and he certainly wouldn’t have chosen what she was preparing for him. Vegetable sticks and whole-wheat crackers and water…
Ugh.
The knowledge that Martha wouldn’t be too happy with him if he tried to kick Jor-El’s ass reined him in. And since they’re going to turn super-powered any minute now, he forced himself to admit, I’d probably lose anyway. And the old ticker isn’t much up to it besides.
Clark’s sudden appearance beside him drew him back into the real world. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” Clark replied. He had an uncertain look on his face, a little fearful, and he looked away for a second, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “Are you okay? I mean, you’re going to be okay, right?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan told him, reaching up to pull a bit of hay out of Clark’s hair. “I’m going to be just fine. Just got to take it easy.”
“Yeah, that’s going to happen. Who has to sit on you this time, me or Mom?”
Jonathan laughed, glad to see the fearful look leave Clark’s face. “I’ll have you know I am perfectly capable of taking it easy. For five minutes.” Clark laughed at that and he reached up to brush more hay and dust out of his son’s hair. “What did you do this morning, roll around the barn floor?” If he had, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Of course, Clark had been six and imitating the barn cats the last time. Or protesting bath time. It depended on who was telling the story.
Clark bit his lip. “Uh, no,” he replied. “I, um, I was levitating and I fell.”
Jonathan was sure that if his eyebrows had gone up any further, they would have run into his hair. “You were floating? In the middle of the day? I thought you only did that when you were sleeping.”
“Yeah, when I’m me.” That was Clark-speak for ‘anytime I’m not high on red Kryptonite or brainwashed by the voice in the caves’ - surprisingly common occurrences. “But I flew that one time, you know? And sometimes, when I have to jump, I almost feel like I’m going to…” He shook his head. “So I should be able to do it, right?”
Jonathan nodded, not sure what to say. Years ago, the floating thing had been the scariest of Clark’s powers - somehow it had been stranger and more frightening than running fast or lifting up an end of a tractor with one hand - but after the development of his other powers, Jonathan wasn’t as concerned, really, so long as Clark wasn’t concerned. Frankly, heat vision was his least favorite of his son’s abilities, simply because of its destructive power.
“Was - was Jor-El helping you?” he finally asked, as softly as he could. Clark had said that “the drifter” had flown with Louise McCallum - he had to assume that Jor-El had known what he was doing back then, and still remembered it now.
“Yeah,” Clark admitted a little hesitantly. “It was, um, it was okay.”
Jonathan Hyram Kent swallowed his pride and told his son the only thing that was right to say, as much as he didn’t like it: “Good. I’m - I’m glad to hear he was helping you.”
A frown darkened Clark’s face, but - thank God! - Martha’s joining them stopped him from saying something. She set the tray on the coffee table and fussed with the pillows on the couch. “Martha-”
“Jonathan, don’t raise your voice. You are going to take it easy if I have to sit on you to make you do it. Here - take some carrot sticks,” she said, forcing a handful of them into his own hand. He took them only half-grudgingly; he liked carrots, when he wasn’t being force-fed them.
Martha sat down on the other side of Clark. “Good grief, did you roll across the barn floor again?” she asked, pulling her hand back from his hair.
“Mom, I was six. I thought the cat was trying to show me something,” Clark huffed. Despite the fact that his “little boy” was nearly eighteen and outweighed him by twenty pounds, the normal, teenaged, human behavior was adorable. “And no, I didn’t. Jeez. It’s just a little dirt. I already got most of it off my clothes.”
“Your clothes-” Martha said in surprise, looking at him as if for the first time. Jonathan could see where this was going before Martha did. “Go up and wash off that dirt, Clark,” she ordered. “And change your clothes. Sitting on the couch, covered in dust…”
It was a nice change, Jonathan decided, not to be the one Martha berated for getting dirt on the couch. There was something to be said for this ‘taking it easy’ business.
With an adolescent sigh, Clark did as ordered and was soon running up the stairs two at a time. But their solitude on the couch was short-lived: Jor-El soon sat down across from them. “You are well?” he asked politely.
“I’m all right,” Jonathan told him, and then added, burying some more of that pride, “Thank you. Your, uh, your brother saved my life.” At this rate, someone else is going to have a heart attack, he told himself. ‘Jonathan Kent swallows his pride: video at eleven!’
But Jor-El simply shook his head and reached across the coffee table to take one of Jonathan’s hands - not quite a handshake, but just a firm, friendly grip. “There is no thanks, Jonathan Kent. We owe you more than we can ever pay. The House of El is forever in the debt of the House of Kent.”
What do you say to something like that? Jonathan wondered. And he remembered what Martha had said in the car on the way home from the hospital, about how they, in a way, owed Jor-El and Lara so much as well, because their sacrifice had given them Clark, had given them the child they had so desperately wanted. And he swallowed another few pounds of pride and told Jor-El, choosing his words carefully, “Then we’re indebted to you, too, Jor-El. Because you…because you sent your son-” His voice wobbled a little on those two words. “-to Earth, we got to have a child. So, really, we owe you guys a heck of a lot ourselves.”
Ignoring the surprised look on both Jor-El and Martha’s faces, Jonathan leaned forward and grabbed the tray of vegetables and offered it to Jor-El. “Carrot stick?”
Ursa followed Dru-Zod into the chamber beyond the cave wall, her hands busy even as she walked, braiding her vessel’s long, dark hair. At least her hair is the same color as mine, she mused as she pulled the plaiting tight and secured it with an elasticized band she had found in a pocket. I shall be glad for a mirror.
She gave her head a little shake, a little angry at herself for wasting energy on such frivolous thoughts. Conquest before vanity, she resolved and met Dru-Zod at a stone pedestal, heavily inscribed with ancient Kryptonian signs. “I had not realized how old it was, husband,” she said, pulling one fingertip over a line of symbols. “I knew the history, of course, but to see it myself…”
Dru-Zod cocked a single eyebrow - an odd look on his vessel, with its bald head and almost ruddy eyebrows, but it was familiar at the same time. “Can you read it?” he asked.
“Of course,” she answered. “I may simply require a little time. These date to the age of the Great Awakening, beloved.”
His nostrils flared, as they always did when that part of Kryptonian history was mentioned. “Blasted House of El,” he muttered. “Meddlesome cowards.”
Ursa held her tongue; it was the same harangue as always and her energies were better served deciphering the old inscriptions. He should be glad they aren’t older than the Great Awakening, she thought to herself, lest she say it out loud and he hear it. At least there were records of that time surviving until our own. If this had been much older, it might have proven hopeless.
“What in Rao’s name…‘In the month of Nura-kan were we reconciled to our enemies,’” she read aloud, her finger following every curve and line of the old words. “‘The House of El stood at the temple gates and the eldest and the youngest practiced bri-kuram; even the ancestors of our enemies were remembered. At the point of Run-min until Razoyan we taught them peace and at Solam-kan we broke bread with those who had been our enemies.’”
“Yes, yes, a pile of Elist propaganda,” Dru-Zod said, stirring up the alien dust of the chamber’s floor at he returned to her side. “A few hundred generations hasn’t changed them a bit. Where does it talk about the crystals?”
She scanned the ancient text until she found the old word patana, pronounced paton in modern Kryptonian: “ ‘Patanam yeyi zhekatu,’” she recited, in her mind substituting the modern words - Patonem yi zhektu - and then translating them for her warrior-husband: “‘There are three crystals.’”
The muscles around his lips tightened into a snarl. “Three crystals,” he repeated. “Blast.” He ran a hand over his head, as if expecting hair to meet his fingers in the gesture. “But of course. We’re still ahead. Keep your wits about you, Dru-Zod,” he muttered. “The boy’s only placed one of the three on the pedestal. We’ll soon find the remaining two. Our vessels know something of them. We’ll find them soon enough.” Then, looking at her for the first time in several minutes, he demanded, “Continue.”
“‘There are three crystals,’” she repeated. “‘Should the children of Rao have need of it, prove yourselves and reunite the three until they form one. A remedy for great ills shall be revealed.’”
“Children of Rao, indeed,” Dru-Zod mocked. “The House of El has thought highly of themselves from the beginning of time, it seems.” He sighed. “Anything else of value?” he asked.
“A moment, husband,” Ursa said and quickly scanned the remaining symbols. “I don’t think so.”
“More propaganda from ancient times, hm?” Dru-Zod said, wrapping his arm - muscular, but a little spindly compared to the body she remembered him in - around her shoulders and hugging her to him. He dropped a kiss on her lips and then, as if there was to be no romance at all until all the crystals were found, he moved away and marched back into the main chamber of the cave.
Ursa sighed and resigned herself to the idea. She followed him into the main chamber. “More distractions for the House of El?” she asked, seeing him at the controls again.
“An adjustment, love,” he told her. “A time delay. It would do us no good to be seen before we wish to be, and give the game away.”
She remembered scanning her vessel’s memories earlier and did so again now in her boredom as Dru-Zod worked, reliving the argument this Lana creature had had with Kal-El. The taste of anger was still on her tongue - and something else. Coffee, the vessel’s vocabulary provided. Sugar. Milk. Chocolate.
“Something the matter, Ursa?” Dru-Zod asked, bringing her out of the almost-dreamlike world of the vessel’s memories.
“No, no,” she replied, smiling - only half to reassure him. “I believe I am beginning to succumb to hunger.”
He tapped something on the wall with a flourish and then was beside her in an instant. “Hm, you know,” he whispered into her ear, wrapping his arms around her, as though his earlier behavior was completely forgotten, “this Lex of Luthor is a powerful, rich man. We have nearly everything imaginable at our disposal, simply for my wearing his face. We will dine upon the best that this strange planet has to offer. And should the local delicacies not be to your liking, dear Ursa, then we shall traverse the more distant regions until we find something that pleases you.” He bit her earlobe, gently. “The records were clear. Not only are speed and strength at our disposal, among other abilities, wife, but before long we shall also fly.”
Ursa turned her head, meeting his unfamiliar blue eyes, and kissed him. The smile on his face now was worth the sullen behavior from earlier. He pulled himself away from her and jogged a few steps ahead. “Follow me, Ursa.”
And then he seemed to disappear.
Speed, then, she thought to herself. She pushed away her own memories and focused on what she had just seen - and ran to catch up.
Jor-El had thanked him politely and taken a handful of carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes. Lara had joined them as well and had taken to sliced cucumbers like they were candy.
Just like Clark, Jonathan told himself a little dejectedly. Every bit of evidence that Clark had been Jor-El and Lara’s first, by nature, stung a little - and Midwestern farmer machismo aside, his tolerance for pain was pretty low. He sighed and chewed his carrot stick.
“Time for a few of those questions, Jonathan?” Martha whispered, setting her glass of ice water on a coaster. It was as if she knew his own thoughts before he did - well, they were a little old for meteor mutants, but they had been in Smallville during the meteor shower-
Stop it, Jon. Martha’s no more a meteor mutant than Chloe is.
He sighed again. “I suppose,” he finally replied. “Especially since Clark’s not here at the moment.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it? Whatever the answers may be?” she pressed.
It was a legitimate question, especially considering what had happened the last time they’d asked Jor-El a major question - namely, his heart attack - but save for a little fatigue and his usual annoyance at Martha’s mothering him, he felt pretty damn good. Whatever Zor-El had given him had really done the trick. “Yeah,” he finally answered. He looked up and saw Jor-El watching him with a strange look of concern. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I’m sure.”
The girls were wandering into the room as Martha spoke: “Jor-El?” she said hesitantly. “We, ah, we have some questions for you and Lara, if you don’t mind.”
Jor-El tilted his head, glancing at Chloe and Lois as he replied. “We will answer all questions, Martha Kent, but I think it a conversation of parents, yes?”
Jonathan had known the look of ‘inventing a chore to get Clark out of the room’ on Martha’s face for many years, but this was the first time that either of the girls was substituted for their son. “Girls,” Martha finally said, “would you mind going up and putting fresh sheets on my bed?”
“Is this some sort of ploy to get us out of here, Mrs. Kent?” Lois immediately demanded. “Because we’re all adults here and you know we want to help -”
“What Lois means,” Chloe interrupted, and it was a sight to see: the short girl yanking her taller cousin out of the room. “Is that we’d be delighted to help in any way we can. Right, Lois?”
Lois narrowed her eyes but gave in. “Of course. One freshly-made bed, coming right up!”
Jonathan shook his head at the little spectacle. If we’d had more kids… But he quickly nipped that thought in the bud and returned his attention to Jor-El and Lara. Zor-El had followed the girls in and was soon nodding to whatever Jor-El was saying to him and slipped away outside.
And now it was just him, and Martha, and Clark’s birth parents.
“So…” he said, drawing it out in lieu of anything else he could say, unwilling to be the one to ask the awkward questions quite yet.
“Indeed…” Jor-El replied.
A shout from upstairs drew their attention before anyone could say anything else meaningless. It was obviously Clark, and a moment later the cause of his ire was obvious as well: “Lois, what the hell!”
“There is such a thing as a lock, you know! Oh, stop blushing, E.T. - it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before!”
“Um, Lois, just back away slowly and close the door. Clark, she’s really sorry. I swear, she didn’t realize you were in there, and it is the only bathroom…”
Trust Chloe to try to smooth the ruffled feathers.
Jor-El chuckled. “Eetee?” he asked. “I do not know that word.”
“Extraterrestrial,” Martha explained with a little smile. “Alien.” Then, when Jor-El frowned - he couldn’t blame the guy for puzzling over why Clark being called that wouldn’t be a cause for alarm - Jonathan surprised himself and said, “She means it in the sweetest way possible. Lois, she - she like to give people nicknames. It’s, ah, it’s from a movie.”
“Ah,” Jor-El said. He tilted his head towards his wife as Lara asked him something in a concerned tone of voice and soon enough he directed a question their way. “Lois,” he said slowly. “She and our son-” He made a sweeping gesture as he said ‘our’; he was including him and Martha as well. “-They are not…promised, are they?”
It took a moment for his use of the word ‘promised’ to sink in, but Jonathan could only blink mutely, his mouth opening and closing like one of those mudsuckers he used to catch in Lowell Creek. Beside him, Martha pitched forward with the force of her laughter and only then raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh, god, no,” she said.
Jor-El sighed - in relief, Jonathan supposed. “Good,” he said. “Good.”
Clark and Lois? Jonathan wondered to himself. Those two are like oil and water. She’s a fast-talking, worldly city girl, and he’s - well, he’s not quite the naïve farm boy she used to think he was - He glanced down at Martha’s hand, clasping his. A city girl and a farm boy.
Oh, crap. He’s doomed.
“Would there be something wrong if they were?” Martha finally asked, her laughter apparently defeated. “He wasn’t - you didn’t promise him to a Kryptonian girl at birth, did you?”
Jonathan straightened his back and frowned at that idea, but Jor-El’s reply quickly put him at ease. “Rao, ne!” he said in surprise. “No! No, that custom is gone many hundreds of generations. We promise for love,” he insisted, and squeezed Lara to him as if giving proof of his statement. She smiled, a little blankly, like she wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Jonathan didn’t blame her. “No,” Jor-El continued. “We only worried that he is too young - in our opinion. In our…culture.”
Now Jonathan did his own sigh of relief. “We think so, too. Absolutely.”
“Good,” Jor-El said. “When I was here before, though…many young people his age were already promised, already married. I don’t…I don’t know if it has changed… It worried Lara a little - I had not yet told her about this girl Lana who was here earlier, and her relationship with Kal-El. Lara worried, you see…”
“If you don’t mind our asking,” Martha said - he knew that curious tone of her voice - “how old would be old enough?”
Jonathan simply sat back with the surreal realization that they were discussing how old Clark should be before he got married. A moot point, given the unfortunate fact of Alicia’s presence in Clark’s life months ago, but…
Jor-El pressed his lips together, thinking. He looks a lot like Clark when he does that, Jonathan told himself. At this rate, everything about Clark would eventually find a reflection in Jor-El and Lara, until nothing human of his son remained. It was a disturbing thought, especially since Clark had spent most of his life on Earth. “As I said this morning,” Jor-El finally said, “we measure time a little different, so I will try to translate it. I believe we each had thirty Earth years when we married, Lara and I. We were…twenty or twenty-one when we met. This was when I left Earth; she was also on the ship that took me back to Krypton.”
If he was twenty when he left Earth, and Mom was still pregnant with me, then how old - “You’re sixty-four years old?” Jonathan said in surprise.
Jor-El had a blank look on his face for a moment, like he was trying to do the math himself, and then said, “Yes, I believe that is a good approximation.”
“But you only look as old as we do,” Martha protested. “If that. I mean, Clark’s never looked too young or too old for his age, really…”
“Ah,” Jor-El said, a sad look reaching his eyes. “We are Kryptonian, and you are human. We look very similar - we are very similar - but we are not the same. We are different - but I am not a doctor like my brother Zor-El. I cannot say all the differences. But we live more years, Martha Kent. The…middle of our lives is longer than humans. One hundred Earth years is not uncommon for us at all. I think it would take much to prevent Kal-El from living beyond one hundred and fifty.”
“Good God,” Jonathan whispered. Children were supposed to outlive their parents, but - “Good God,” he repeated.
“This difference,” Jor-El said softly. “It disturbs you.”
“Yes,” Jonathan found himself admitting. “It does.”
Jor-El looked thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. “When we decided Kal-El would come to Earth, I was sad because I knew that he would see many friends become old and die before he did. I had been to Earth; I knew a small something of human life. But Lara was wise and she said this to me: if he goes to Earth, he will live. If he stays on Krypton, he will die - because,” he added, gesturing to Lara, “we thought we will die. But on Earth, he will live, and he has a chance for happiness. He will have friendship, and he will have love, and maybe he will have joy. Maybe he lives too long, and all his people die - but he had people to miss. Life always has sadness, Lara said, but maybe he will be happy, too.”
Jonathan supposed that the extra twenty years, and the whole alien thing, gave the ‘House of El’ the right to sound ten times wiser than him. Beside him, Martha was nodding. “Tell Lara,” she said, and he had to look at her because her voice sounded so odd as she said it, “that she sounds like a good mother.”
Jonathan was missing something in what Martha was saying - but he tried to push that feeling away. He’d been gone overnight, after all; Martha had tried to catch him up to speed, but he supposed there were all sorts of little things that he had missed and would never really hear about. This was probably one of them - and the immense smile on Lara’s face when Jor-El finished his little Kryptonian speech confirmed it.
Well, Martha, whatever that was about, at least you made her happy.
[END PART 24]
PART TWENTY-FOUR
Jonathan wasn’t the least bit surprised that Lois was muttering to herself, under her breath, in a heated manner, when she finally returned inside, Clark and Jor-El not far behind her. This was nothing new.
The look of understanding that Jor-El gave Clark as they came in, however, was.
Jonathan Kent wasn’t perfect. He knew from day one that he’d have trouble if Clark’s birth father ever showed up, long before he’d known anything about Jor-El, or the message in the ship, or the caves. He was human, and humans could be damn jealous, and petty, and selfish, and it took all his control not to jump up and separate his son from his birth father and shout at the man and reach for the shot gun.
The smile on Clark’s face - a small one, mind, but a smile nonetheless - made it particularly difficult not to follow through with his animal instincts. Is this what Martha was talking about? How she feels about Lara?
Martha.
He glanced over into the kitchen. She was getting a tray together for him - her insistence, not his, and he certainly wouldn’t have chosen what she was preparing for him. Vegetable sticks and whole-wheat crackers and water…
Ugh.
The knowledge that Martha wouldn’t be too happy with him if he tried to kick Jor-El’s ass reined him in. And since they’re going to turn super-powered any minute now, he forced himself to admit, I’d probably lose anyway. And the old ticker isn’t much up to it besides.
Clark’s sudden appearance beside him drew him back into the real world. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” Clark replied. He had an uncertain look on his face, a little fearful, and he looked away for a second, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “Are you okay? I mean, you’re going to be okay, right?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan told him, reaching up to pull a bit of hay out of Clark’s hair. “I’m going to be just fine. Just got to take it easy.”
“Yeah, that’s going to happen. Who has to sit on you this time, me or Mom?”
Jonathan laughed, glad to see the fearful look leave Clark’s face. “I’ll have you know I am perfectly capable of taking it easy. For five minutes.” Clark laughed at that and he reached up to brush more hay and dust out of his son’s hair. “What did you do this morning, roll around the barn floor?” If he had, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Of course, Clark had been six and imitating the barn cats the last time. Or protesting bath time. It depended on who was telling the story.
Clark bit his lip. “Uh, no,” he replied. “I, um, I was levitating and I fell.”
Jonathan was sure that if his eyebrows had gone up any further, they would have run into his hair. “You were floating? In the middle of the day? I thought you only did that when you were sleeping.”
“Yeah, when I’m me.” That was Clark-speak for ‘anytime I’m not high on red Kryptonite or brainwashed by the voice in the caves’ - surprisingly common occurrences. “But I flew that one time, you know? And sometimes, when I have to jump, I almost feel like I’m going to…” He shook his head. “So I should be able to do it, right?”
Jonathan nodded, not sure what to say. Years ago, the floating thing had been the scariest of Clark’s powers - somehow it had been stranger and more frightening than running fast or lifting up an end of a tractor with one hand - but after the development of his other powers, Jonathan wasn’t as concerned, really, so long as Clark wasn’t concerned. Frankly, heat vision was his least favorite of his son’s abilities, simply because of its destructive power.
“Was - was Jor-El helping you?” he finally asked, as softly as he could. Clark had said that “the drifter” had flown with Louise McCallum - he had to assume that Jor-El had known what he was doing back then, and still remembered it now.
“Yeah,” Clark admitted a little hesitantly. “It was, um, it was okay.”
Jonathan Hyram Kent swallowed his pride and told his son the only thing that was right to say, as much as he didn’t like it: “Good. I’m - I’m glad to hear he was helping you.”
A frown darkened Clark’s face, but - thank God! - Martha’s joining them stopped him from saying something. She set the tray on the coffee table and fussed with the pillows on the couch. “Martha-”
“Jonathan, don’t raise your voice. You are going to take it easy if I have to sit on you to make you do it. Here - take some carrot sticks,” she said, forcing a handful of them into his own hand. He took them only half-grudgingly; he liked carrots, when he wasn’t being force-fed them.
Martha sat down on the other side of Clark. “Good grief, did you roll across the barn floor again?” she asked, pulling her hand back from his hair.
“Mom, I was six. I thought the cat was trying to show me something,” Clark huffed. Despite the fact that his “little boy” was nearly eighteen and outweighed him by twenty pounds, the normal, teenaged, human behavior was adorable. “And no, I didn’t. Jeez. It’s just a little dirt. I already got most of it off my clothes.”
“Your clothes-” Martha said in surprise, looking at him as if for the first time. Jonathan could see where this was going before Martha did. “Go up and wash off that dirt, Clark,” she ordered. “And change your clothes. Sitting on the couch, covered in dust…”
It was a nice change, Jonathan decided, not to be the one Martha berated for getting dirt on the couch. There was something to be said for this ‘taking it easy’ business.
With an adolescent sigh, Clark did as ordered and was soon running up the stairs two at a time. But their solitude on the couch was short-lived: Jor-El soon sat down across from them. “You are well?” he asked politely.
“I’m all right,” Jonathan told him, and then added, burying some more of that pride, “Thank you. Your, uh, your brother saved my life.” At this rate, someone else is going to have a heart attack, he told himself. ‘Jonathan Kent swallows his pride: video at eleven!’
But Jor-El simply shook his head and reached across the coffee table to take one of Jonathan’s hands - not quite a handshake, but just a firm, friendly grip. “There is no thanks, Jonathan Kent. We owe you more than we can ever pay. The House of El is forever in the debt of the House of Kent.”
What do you say to something like that? Jonathan wondered. And he remembered what Martha had said in the car on the way home from the hospital, about how they, in a way, owed Jor-El and Lara so much as well, because their sacrifice had given them Clark, had given them the child they had so desperately wanted. And he swallowed another few pounds of pride and told Jor-El, choosing his words carefully, “Then we’re indebted to you, too, Jor-El. Because you…because you sent your son-” His voice wobbled a little on those two words. “-to Earth, we got to have a child. So, really, we owe you guys a heck of a lot ourselves.”
Ignoring the surprised look on both Jor-El and Martha’s faces, Jonathan leaned forward and grabbed the tray of vegetables and offered it to Jor-El. “Carrot stick?”
Ursa followed Dru-Zod into the chamber beyond the cave wall, her hands busy even as she walked, braiding her vessel’s long, dark hair. At least her hair is the same color as mine, she mused as she pulled the plaiting tight and secured it with an elasticized band she had found in a pocket. I shall be glad for a mirror.
She gave her head a little shake, a little angry at herself for wasting energy on such frivolous thoughts. Conquest before vanity, she resolved and met Dru-Zod at a stone pedestal, heavily inscribed with ancient Kryptonian signs. “I had not realized how old it was, husband,” she said, pulling one fingertip over a line of symbols. “I knew the history, of course, but to see it myself…”
Dru-Zod cocked a single eyebrow - an odd look on his vessel, with its bald head and almost ruddy eyebrows, but it was familiar at the same time. “Can you read it?” he asked.
“Of course,” she answered. “I may simply require a little time. These date to the age of the Great Awakening, beloved.”
His nostrils flared, as they always did when that part of Kryptonian history was mentioned. “Blasted House of El,” he muttered. “Meddlesome cowards.”
Ursa held her tongue; it was the same harangue as always and her energies were better served deciphering the old inscriptions. He should be glad they aren’t older than the Great Awakening, she thought to herself, lest she say it out loud and he hear it. At least there were records of that time surviving until our own. If this had been much older, it might have proven hopeless.
“What in Rao’s name…‘In the month of Nura-kan were we reconciled to our enemies,’” she read aloud, her finger following every curve and line of the old words. “‘The House of El stood at the temple gates and the eldest and the youngest practiced bri-kuram; even the ancestors of our enemies were remembered. At the point of Run-min until Razoyan we taught them peace and at Solam-kan we broke bread with those who had been our enemies.’”
“Yes, yes, a pile of Elist propaganda,” Dru-Zod said, stirring up the alien dust of the chamber’s floor at he returned to her side. “A few hundred generations hasn’t changed them a bit. Where does it talk about the crystals?”
She scanned the ancient text until she found the old word patana, pronounced paton in modern Kryptonian: “ ‘Patanam yeyi zhekatu,’” she recited, in her mind substituting the modern words - Patonem yi zhektu - and then translating them for her warrior-husband: “‘There are three crystals.’”
The muscles around his lips tightened into a snarl. “Three crystals,” he repeated. “Blast.” He ran a hand over his head, as if expecting hair to meet his fingers in the gesture. “But of course. We’re still ahead. Keep your wits about you, Dru-Zod,” he muttered. “The boy’s only placed one of the three on the pedestal. We’ll soon find the remaining two. Our vessels know something of them. We’ll find them soon enough.” Then, looking at her for the first time in several minutes, he demanded, “Continue.”
“‘There are three crystals,’” she repeated. “‘Should the children of Rao have need of it, prove yourselves and reunite the three until they form one. A remedy for great ills shall be revealed.’”
“Children of Rao, indeed,” Dru-Zod mocked. “The House of El has thought highly of themselves from the beginning of time, it seems.” He sighed. “Anything else of value?” he asked.
“A moment, husband,” Ursa said and quickly scanned the remaining symbols. “I don’t think so.”
“More propaganda from ancient times, hm?” Dru-Zod said, wrapping his arm - muscular, but a little spindly compared to the body she remembered him in - around her shoulders and hugging her to him. He dropped a kiss on her lips and then, as if there was to be no romance at all until all the crystals were found, he moved away and marched back into the main chamber of the cave.
Ursa sighed and resigned herself to the idea. She followed him into the main chamber. “More distractions for the House of El?” she asked, seeing him at the controls again.
“An adjustment, love,” he told her. “A time delay. It would do us no good to be seen before we wish to be, and give the game away.”
She remembered scanning her vessel’s memories earlier and did so again now in her boredom as Dru-Zod worked, reliving the argument this Lana creature had had with Kal-El. The taste of anger was still on her tongue - and something else. Coffee, the vessel’s vocabulary provided. Sugar. Milk. Chocolate.
“Something the matter, Ursa?” Dru-Zod asked, bringing her out of the almost-dreamlike world of the vessel’s memories.
“No, no,” she replied, smiling - only half to reassure him. “I believe I am beginning to succumb to hunger.”
He tapped something on the wall with a flourish and then was beside her in an instant. “Hm, you know,” he whispered into her ear, wrapping his arms around her, as though his earlier behavior was completely forgotten, “this Lex of Luthor is a powerful, rich man. We have nearly everything imaginable at our disposal, simply for my wearing his face. We will dine upon the best that this strange planet has to offer. And should the local delicacies not be to your liking, dear Ursa, then we shall traverse the more distant regions until we find something that pleases you.” He bit her earlobe, gently. “The records were clear. Not only are speed and strength at our disposal, among other abilities, wife, but before long we shall also fly.”
Ursa turned her head, meeting his unfamiliar blue eyes, and kissed him. The smile on his face now was worth the sullen behavior from earlier. He pulled himself away from her and jogged a few steps ahead. “Follow me, Ursa.”
And then he seemed to disappear.
Speed, then, she thought to herself. She pushed away her own memories and focused on what she had just seen - and ran to catch up.
Jor-El had thanked him politely and taken a handful of carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes. Lara had joined them as well and had taken to sliced cucumbers like they were candy.
Just like Clark, Jonathan told himself a little dejectedly. Every bit of evidence that Clark had been Jor-El and Lara’s first, by nature, stung a little - and Midwestern farmer machismo aside, his tolerance for pain was pretty low. He sighed and chewed his carrot stick.
“Time for a few of those questions, Jonathan?” Martha whispered, setting her glass of ice water on a coaster. It was as if she knew his own thoughts before he did - well, they were a little old for meteor mutants, but they had been in Smallville during the meteor shower-
Stop it, Jon. Martha’s no more a meteor mutant than Chloe is.
He sighed again. “I suppose,” he finally replied. “Especially since Clark’s not here at the moment.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it? Whatever the answers may be?” she pressed.
It was a legitimate question, especially considering what had happened the last time they’d asked Jor-El a major question - namely, his heart attack - but save for a little fatigue and his usual annoyance at Martha’s mothering him, he felt pretty damn good. Whatever Zor-El had given him had really done the trick. “Yeah,” he finally answered. He looked up and saw Jor-El watching him with a strange look of concern. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I’m sure.”
The girls were wandering into the room as Martha spoke: “Jor-El?” she said hesitantly. “We, ah, we have some questions for you and Lara, if you don’t mind.”
Jor-El tilted his head, glancing at Chloe and Lois as he replied. “We will answer all questions, Martha Kent, but I think it a conversation of parents, yes?”
Jonathan had known the look of ‘inventing a chore to get Clark out of the room’ on Martha’s face for many years, but this was the first time that either of the girls was substituted for their son. “Girls,” Martha finally said, “would you mind going up and putting fresh sheets on my bed?”
“Is this some sort of ploy to get us out of here, Mrs. Kent?” Lois immediately demanded. “Because we’re all adults here and you know we want to help -”
“What Lois means,” Chloe interrupted, and it was a sight to see: the short girl yanking her taller cousin out of the room. “Is that we’d be delighted to help in any way we can. Right, Lois?”
Lois narrowed her eyes but gave in. “Of course. One freshly-made bed, coming right up!”
Jonathan shook his head at the little spectacle. If we’d had more kids… But he quickly nipped that thought in the bud and returned his attention to Jor-El and Lara. Zor-El had followed the girls in and was soon nodding to whatever Jor-El was saying to him and slipped away outside.
And now it was just him, and Martha, and Clark’s birth parents.
“So…” he said, drawing it out in lieu of anything else he could say, unwilling to be the one to ask the awkward questions quite yet.
“Indeed…” Jor-El replied.
A shout from upstairs drew their attention before anyone could say anything else meaningless. It was obviously Clark, and a moment later the cause of his ire was obvious as well: “Lois, what the hell!”
“There is such a thing as a lock, you know! Oh, stop blushing, E.T. - it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before!”
“Um, Lois, just back away slowly and close the door. Clark, she’s really sorry. I swear, she didn’t realize you were in there, and it is the only bathroom…”
Trust Chloe to try to smooth the ruffled feathers.
Jor-El chuckled. “Eetee?” he asked. “I do not know that word.”
“Extraterrestrial,” Martha explained with a little smile. “Alien.” Then, when Jor-El frowned - he couldn’t blame the guy for puzzling over why Clark being called that wouldn’t be a cause for alarm - Jonathan surprised himself and said, “She means it in the sweetest way possible. Lois, she - she like to give people nicknames. It’s, ah, it’s from a movie.”
“Ah,” Jor-El said. He tilted his head towards his wife as Lara asked him something in a concerned tone of voice and soon enough he directed a question their way. “Lois,” he said slowly. “She and our son-” He made a sweeping gesture as he said ‘our’; he was including him and Martha as well. “-They are not…promised, are they?”
It took a moment for his use of the word ‘promised’ to sink in, but Jonathan could only blink mutely, his mouth opening and closing like one of those mudsuckers he used to catch in Lowell Creek. Beside him, Martha pitched forward with the force of her laughter and only then raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh, god, no,” she said.
Jor-El sighed - in relief, Jonathan supposed. “Good,” he said. “Good.”
Clark and Lois? Jonathan wondered to himself. Those two are like oil and water. She’s a fast-talking, worldly city girl, and he’s - well, he’s not quite the naïve farm boy she used to think he was - He glanced down at Martha’s hand, clasping his. A city girl and a farm boy.
Oh, crap. He’s doomed.
“Would there be something wrong if they were?” Martha finally asked, her laughter apparently defeated. “He wasn’t - you didn’t promise him to a Kryptonian girl at birth, did you?”
Jonathan straightened his back and frowned at that idea, but Jor-El’s reply quickly put him at ease. “Rao, ne!” he said in surprise. “No! No, that custom is gone many hundreds of generations. We promise for love,” he insisted, and squeezed Lara to him as if giving proof of his statement. She smiled, a little blankly, like she wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Jonathan didn’t blame her. “No,” Jor-El continued. “We only worried that he is too young - in our opinion. In our…culture.”
Now Jonathan did his own sigh of relief. “We think so, too. Absolutely.”
“Good,” Jor-El said. “When I was here before, though…many young people his age were already promised, already married. I don’t…I don’t know if it has changed… It worried Lara a little - I had not yet told her about this girl Lana who was here earlier, and her relationship with Kal-El. Lara worried, you see…”
“If you don’t mind our asking,” Martha said - he knew that curious tone of her voice - “how old would be old enough?”
Jonathan simply sat back with the surreal realization that they were discussing how old Clark should be before he got married. A moot point, given the unfortunate fact of Alicia’s presence in Clark’s life months ago, but…
Jor-El pressed his lips together, thinking. He looks a lot like Clark when he does that, Jonathan told himself. At this rate, everything about Clark would eventually find a reflection in Jor-El and Lara, until nothing human of his son remained. It was a disturbing thought, especially since Clark had spent most of his life on Earth. “As I said this morning,” Jor-El finally said, “we measure time a little different, so I will try to translate it. I believe we each had thirty Earth years when we married, Lara and I. We were…twenty or twenty-one when we met. This was when I left Earth; she was also on the ship that took me back to Krypton.”
If he was twenty when he left Earth, and Mom was still pregnant with me, then how old - “You’re sixty-four years old?” Jonathan said in surprise.
Jor-El had a blank look on his face for a moment, like he was trying to do the math himself, and then said, “Yes, I believe that is a good approximation.”
“But you only look as old as we do,” Martha protested. “If that. I mean, Clark’s never looked too young or too old for his age, really…”
“Ah,” Jor-El said, a sad look reaching his eyes. “We are Kryptonian, and you are human. We look very similar - we are very similar - but we are not the same. We are different - but I am not a doctor like my brother Zor-El. I cannot say all the differences. But we live more years, Martha Kent. The…middle of our lives is longer than humans. One hundred Earth years is not uncommon for us at all. I think it would take much to prevent Kal-El from living beyond one hundred and fifty.”
“Good God,” Jonathan whispered. Children were supposed to outlive their parents, but - “Good God,” he repeated.
“This difference,” Jor-El said softly. “It disturbs you.”
“Yes,” Jonathan found himself admitting. “It does.”
Jor-El looked thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. “When we decided Kal-El would come to Earth, I was sad because I knew that he would see many friends become old and die before he did. I had been to Earth; I knew a small something of human life. But Lara was wise and she said this to me: if he goes to Earth, he will live. If he stays on Krypton, he will die - because,” he added, gesturing to Lara, “we thought we will die. But on Earth, he will live, and he has a chance for happiness. He will have friendship, and he will have love, and maybe he will have joy. Maybe he lives too long, and all his people die - but he had people to miss. Life always has sadness, Lara said, but maybe he will be happy, too.”
Jonathan supposed that the extra twenty years, and the whole alien thing, gave the ‘House of El’ the right to sound ten times wiser than him. Beside him, Martha was nodding. “Tell Lara,” she said, and he had to look at her because her voice sounded so odd as she said it, “that she sounds like a good mother.”
Jonathan was missing something in what Martha was saying - but he tried to push that feeling away. He’d been gone overnight, after all; Martha had tried to catch him up to speed, but he supposed there were all sorts of little things that he had missed and would never really hear about. This was probably one of them - and the immense smile on Lara’s face when Jor-El finished his little Kryptonian speech confirmed it.
Well, Martha, whatever that was about, at least you made her happy.
[END PART 24]