'And he never told her.' He said; his voice low and dangerous. 'He saw her every day at work, you'd think that if he really knew how much she loved him, that he could take five seconds out of his busy schedule to take off his glasses and tell her who he was.'

'When did you find out?' Sasha asked.

'A grand total of three minutes after meeting Clark Kent.' Jason said. 'I was five, I just saw the eyes and the chin and I figured it out. He told me to keep it a secret, I couldn't even tell mom.'


Jason rolled over in bed and cracked an eye open, looking over his room curiously. He knew Superman had been in his room before, and he might just be there now.

He was right; Superman was standing by the window, still as a statue. He didn't look majestic like he usually did. He looked huge in the dim light, but still different.

'I'm sorry for waking you.' He said, his voice not as deep as he was on the television, but not as high as he was when he was Clark Kent.

''s alright.' Jason mumbled, moving a hand to get the hair out of his eyes.

Superman cocked his head to the side, eyes narrowed as he listened to something far away. 'I have to go.' He said, turning towards the window.

'Wait!' Jason said, arms outstretched to try to get him to stay. 'I made you something.'

Superman turned and waited as Jason leaned over and pulled something out of his bedside table. He held it out to Superman.

'What is it?' Superman asked, taking it off him.

'It's glasses.' Jason said as Superman unfolding the paper glasses. 'So you can see when you're flying and don't run into things.

Superman faltered. 'What makes you think I'd run into things?'

'Because you always do. You fall over and trip and knock things over.' Jason said, almost bouncing on his bed.

'When?'

'When you're at ThePlanet.' Jason said slowly; as if he was explaining something obvious.

'When was I at The Planet?' Superman asked.

Jason groaned. 'You're always at The Planet; you work there when you're pretending to be Mister Clark.'

Superman's eyes widened.

'What?' Jason asked.

'How…' Superman swallowed and tried again. 'How did you know?'

Confusion flicked across Jason's face. 'You look the same.'

Superman took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of Jason's bed. 'You can't tell anyone that I'm Clark, okay?'

'Why not?'

'I don't want bad people to know.' Superman said.

'I won't tell the bad people. They scare me.' Jason looked away; he didn't like Superman thinking he was scared.

'Me too.' Superman said sadly. 'But I can't risk anyone hurting my family.'

'Your family?' Jason asked, intrigued.

Superman froze for an instant before nodding slowly. 'I have a mom and I don't want anyone to hurt her.'

'I don't want anyone to hurt my mom either.' Jason said softly.

Superman swallowed. 'Also, as Clark Kent, I can watch over your mom and make sure she doesn't get into any trouble.'

This puzzled Jason, couldn't he do the same thing as Superman?

'I have to go.' Superman said again, standing up.

'Okay.' Jason said, snuggling into his bed.

'Go to sleep.' Superman said softly before floating out the window, still clutching a pair of paper glasses.


'Mom knew who I was by then, but she never knew who Superman was. My dad, Richard, that is, he found out one Easter Sunday when I was six. I just knew there was an egg under the lounge, so I picked it up, one-handed, easy as anything. The shouting match between Mom and Dad went for ages; I even had to spend the night at Great-Uncle Perry's once. But Richard still loved me, hell, he still loved mom after all that anyway. He's more like my father than that alien freak ever was.'

'What about your powers?' Sasha asked. 'Surely, when they started to develop, he had to come into your life more.'

Jason chuckled. 'I'm different to my father, when he discovered his powers, they were always an accident, falling through the barn roof and never hitting the ground. My powers were never a problem when they emerged. I'd be trying to find something in a messy room and could suddenly see through the floor into the living room where it was sitting on the table. I'd be trying to reach something and the easiest way to get it was to hover, that sort of thing.' He shrugged casually. 'I don't know, blame it on the little bit of human, or maybe it was because I knew what was coming.

'He did give me a Suit though. Not all primary colours like his, thankfully, just plain gray with the "S" on the chest. It was pretty handy, I hate to say. You won't believe how much wind resistance you get off jeans and a jacket.'

'How old were you?' Sasha asked. 'I mean, when you found out he was your father.'

Jason rubbed his forehead. 'I don't really know… ten? Eleven max. It's kind of complicated.' He forced a bitter laugh. 'And I was just a kid, you know? Like every kid, hell, every person in Metropolis, I was captivated by him. Of course, when I found out exactly why he'd spent those secretive night meetings with me, it didn't make me proud that Superman visited me, but depressed that my "real" father didn't.' Jason pushed his chair backwards and kicked his feet up on the table.

'Mom and Richard never really split up. It took a few years before she gave back his engagement ring, but they lived in the same house, before…' he swallowed hard and scratched the back of his head. 'When I turned seventeen, I was already harbouring some deep resentment for him, and he turned up one day and told us that seventeen was the coming-of-age on Krypton and he wanted to write me into the Kryptonian family tree records.'

'But Krypton was destroyed.' Sasha said.

'Yeah, but he managed to grow his own little holiday home in the Arctic Circle out of a crystal that was sent with him.' He balled his hands into fists as he talked. 'He called it the Fortress of Solitude. Can you get more pretentious?'


'I thought you said the Fortress didn't have any programs.' Jason crossed his arms, standing on the lawn of the house in Metropolis. 'Not since Lex stole the control crystals.'

'It does.' Superman corrected. 'Just very, very basic ones. Family lines were very important on Krypton, that's why the family tree survived.'

Jason shrugged in response. 'Alright, let's go.' He said, moving to take off.

'Wait!' Lois called. 'I'm coming with you!'

'Mom, you don't want to come, it'll be boring.' Jason protested.

'Nonsense.' Lois replied. 'This is a right of passage and I want to be there for my boy.'

Jason snorted at her sentimentality.

Superman held out a hand to her and she moved towards him. Their fingers brushed tenderly and Jason almost gagged.

Lois stepped closer to him, resting the balls of her feet on his boots.

'Hold on.' Superman whispered.

Disgusted, Jason immediately took off.

Far below him, Jason could hear his mother sigh.

'He's not too happy about this, is he?'

'Genius, mom.' Jason fumed. 'Absolutely frigging genius.'

'No.' Superman replied. 'But he just needs time to adjust.'

'"Time to adjust"' Jason mocked. 'That's rich.'

Jason sped up, the wind whistling in his ears, but it did little to mask the voices of his parents.

'Is this, normal for him?' Superman forced out.

'Normal as in teenage hormone mood swings?' Lois asked. 'Kind of, yeah. But I've never seen him this anxious before.'

'He doesn't like me.' Superman said.

'No crap, Sherlock.' Jason muttered.

'That's nonsense. He loves you.' Lois replied. 'He's just having trouble at the moment. He's been a little stressed out.'

'I don't think he likes the idea of…' Jason could just picture Superman's face as he struggled to find the right words. 'Of us, together.'

Lois sighed. 'Maybe he'll have to get used to it. But he's just a boy, and the idea probably makes him a little uncomfortable.'

Jason couldn't help it. He turned around in mid-air.

'I can hear you!' he bellowed, the strength of his voice carrying so far that even Lois could hear.

Jason shuddered and flew off, heading directly for the Fortress, despite his desperate need to escape, to be anywhere but where they were.


'Superman had been making adjustments to the Fortress.' Jason continued. 'He didn't have any of the control crystals, but he could control parts of the system, particularly the environment. He set the temperature as suitable for humans, which I didn't need, but mom did, apparently. He activated the medical sensors, to monitor her when he couldn't. That's when it all started.' His voice was becoming hushed until it was barely above a whisper.

'Mom didn't know it, but she had a lung cancer.' The words spilled out like the floodgates had opened. 'It was serious.' He choked on something that could have been a laugh or a sob. 'In all the time he was with her, Superman never noticed. His Fortress did though. It found the cancer, determined she had a medical illness and… took the proper precautions.'

Jason crossed his arms across his chest as he watched Superman speaking to the machine. The Artificial Intelligence of the hologram was the first thing to go, so it took a long time for it to find the right system. Lois watched from behind, a soft smile on her lips.

A chamber slid open beside her, almost hidden behind the crystals. Lois frowned, about to question Superman when he gave a shout of success, having got successfully into the Fortress' systems.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she moved closer to it, fingers dancing over the clear crystal. Déjà vu washed over her, and she felt the urge to stand inside and close her eyes, anything to get an eighteen year old buried memory closer to the surface.

She stepped forward, into the half circle of crystal and turned around slowly.

The instant she was inside, the gap closed up without a sound, crystals growing in around her.

'What in the world?' Lois asked, fingers stretching over the clear crystal.

Outside, both men turned at the sound of her voice.

Their reactions were instantaneous. Superman leapt towards her, fear frozen on his face. Jason was right beside him, confused, but no less worried.

The chamber began to hum, light building up in the very crystals themselves.

'Stay relaxed, Lois, I'm going to get you out.' Superman promised her. She nodded mutely.

He rammed a shoulder into the crystal, and Lois covered her eyes, expecting them to shatter all around her.

They didn't.

He rammed again, harder this time.

'Let me try.' Jason said, desperately, pushing his father out of the way and punched the crystals. Again, nothing happened.

'They're from Krypton.' Superman said. 'They are no less indestructible than you or I.'

'Then do something.' Jason roared.

Superman leapt towards the main consol where a slowly spinning hologram of the house of El was displayed.

'Father!' he announced, and the family tree was replaced by the face of his father. 'What are you doing?'

'This is standard protocol, Kal-El,' the voice boomed, 'a medical situation has been detected and the Fortress is unable to cure it.'

Jason rammed his shoulder against the crystals again, unwilling to listen. Superman joined him, beams of heat shooting from his eyes and focusing on the base.

The recorded message of the long dead Kryptonian scientist continued to play.

'The appropriate course of action has been initiated. The subject is being placed in stasis until a cure is developed and they can be saved.'

Superman stopped, the reality beginning to dawn on him.

'What are you doing?' Jason raged, never stopping trying to break open the crystals and free Lois.

'There's nothing I can do.' Superman whispered.

The humming was deafening now, and the light was intense.

'No.' Lois breathed. She pressed her hand flat against the crystals and a tear slipped from her eyes.

The humming stopped and the light cut off abruptly, and Lois was frozen.

Jason shuddered, his shoulder quaking in sobs that wouldn't come. Slowly, he stepped towards her. Her hand was frozen, raised in a macabre farewell.

Jason slid his hand along the smooth crystal, pressing it against hers. His eyes were brimming with tears of shock and he forced himself to look at hers.

Her eyes were fixed over his shoulder.

Fixed on Superman.

Jason spun to his father, who was shocked into silence.

Rage boiling up inside him, Jason shoved Superman out of the way.

'You should have done something.' He spat.


'And so I ran. I ran so hard and fast.' Jason's eyes were staring fixed on the floor at the memory. 'I don't even know if I flew or if I just never broke the surface of the water. I remember hitching a lift on a 747 and leaving finger dents in the wings.'


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