Dawn awoke me, although it lacked the birdsong I'd become accustomed to back before. The muted sun seemed a little brighter than usual this morning. I strapped on my parka and boots and crawled out of the tent. Clark was already up, figuratively and literally. I saw him hovering, vertical and first, then slowly tipping his body horizontally.

He saw me exiting the tent and waved at me. He touched down gracefully. "Good morning, Martha."

"Morning," I said sullenly. The thing I hated most about this new, post-alien-invasion world was that there was no coffee. Clark took the hint and wisely said nothing as I staggered to the outhouse. He did present me with the soap and another steaming bowl of water as I came back, then ostentatiously absented himself.

I cast caution to the winds, took the soap, water, and my clothes to the outhouse. There, out of the wind (and with very little stench, since everything was frozen), I had a thorough wash-up before I got dressed. Fortunately, I'd packed clean socks and underwear.

I sighed in relief as I walked back to the tent. Clark waited a decent amount of time, enough for me to get my tousled hair combed out, before he reappeared. I wondered if he'd been viewing me from afar – it was certainly within his power. But I didn't think so – he just didn't seem that type of guy. I shrugged my shoulders. If he was, I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

Clark greeted me, then blurred off. Before I could gasp, he presented me with a mug of hot tea, and asked me, "How are you feeling?"

The headache was almost all the way gone. "A lot better," I said honestly.

He got that squinty look again. I coughed significantly. Last night he'd said he'd never hurt me, and I'd said I wouldn't be afraid of the Kryptonian powers. But there was something demeaning about being looked at like an object, being X-rayed at will.

I meant to instill courtesy in Clark. His regular manners were fine. The using-the-powers-manners needed some work. Probably, because in his own world, he'd done everything surreptitiously – how could he ask people?

Clark blushed. "Excuse me. I was….I'm sorry. Martha, may I have your permission to scan you, um, check out your concussion, see how you're healing?"

I took a long sip of hot tea, and thought about saying no. It was kind of creepy, to be looked at that way. For the first time, I understood, in what seemed so odd to Americans, why some Muslim women actually wanted to wear the veil. To be protected against gazes…..

On the other hand, we were partners, and he had asked. "OK."

He squinted again and stared at me – not meeting my eyes – for what seemed like a long time.

"Well?" I demanded.

"I can still see the bruising," Clark reported, "and there's still a lot of swelling. It still hurts, right?"

"Right," I confirmed. "If I shake my head or move it too fast."

"Well, don't do that, then," he said absently, still staring. I cleared my throat again and he jumped a little bit. His squint relaxed and he met my eyes. "It is healing," Clark said. "I can tell that. But there's a long way to go." He looked worried. "I've really got to get you back to Metropolis base….you need real shelter…"

"That would be nice," I said, suddenly tired again. He offered his arm and I took it. The concussion talk had actually made me dizzy again. He helped me settle myself back into the reclining stump-chair he'd made for me yesterday.

Another blur, another whoosh, and he was offering me breakfast. I checked, and he pointed out his own portion. He'd given up trying to convince me that he didn't need to eat. We were going to share, darn it.

"How are you coming along?" I asked after we'd both wolfed our skimpy meals.

"Fine, I think," Clark said. "I'll try to get higher than ten feet off the ground today."

"OK." What else could I say? It wasn't as if I could give him flying advice. Legal advice, certainly - if the laws still applied and if we still had things like courtrooms and judges. But what flying advice could I give him? "Watch out for birds?" Yeah, that would be really helpful.

"I'll start practicing," Clark broke into my rapidly-spinning-towards-self-pity reverie. He'd done the dishes with another one of those speedy blurs, I belatedly noticed.

"OK."

I settled in for a long day, still tired, still with a headache. Clark practiced in the middle of the clearing, rising and falling, twisting, spinning, assuming all sorts of body positions while maintaining his float. I almost laughed as I realized how blasé I'd become about seeing a levitating man. Ho-hum.

I called to him a few times. He fell down the first time, his concentration broken. He said some sort of exasperated word that I didn't hear, and I waved at him blithely. "Just testing."

He stood up, then levitated a meter off the ground. "It still needs work." His wide smile took the sting out of his rueful words.

I circled around the clearing, wanting to get my blood moving and my legs working. The mild exercise helped clear away some of the lingering headache. I called again to Clark, and this time he responded without losing his levitation. My next prank was to make a snowball and lob it at him. I crowed proudly when it slammed right into the center of his back.

He dropped again, and turned to me in surprise. "Martha!"

"If you can't handle that, Clark, you still need work!" I retorted. "And no throwing back!"

I'd read him well; he was molding a snowball in his hands. He reluctantly dropped it. An idea came to me. I came over to him. "Here, give me that."

He passed over the snowball.

"Now fly."

Clark nodded, and obediently levitated.

"Don't just stand….float there! I want to see you moving all around!"

He shrugged and began slowly circling around the clearing. He stayed in a vertical position with respect to the ground. I wondered about wind resistance. Certainly that would be a factor if he flew faster. Shouldn't he fly horizontally? Didn't designers make airplanes with rounded-pointy noses for that reason? It just seemed like common sense.

I held up the snowball. "I know I won't catch you again. But I'm going to throw the snowball and I want you to melt it with the heat vision while it's in midair."

Clark raised his eyebrows. This obviously hadn't occurred to him. "OK."

"And you have to keep moving. No staying in one position."

"OK." Clark was getting into the spirit of it now.

"Ready? On three." I wound up, getting ready to throw. "One. Two. Three." I didn't throw.

"Martha?" Clark asked. "I thought you said – "

I threw the snowball, well away from me. Clark cut off his sentence and I saw the eyes grow red. The snowball plopped to the ground, undamaged until its final splat against a tree trunk. And Clark promptly fell down too, landing on his rear in a most undignified manner.

"I thought you said on three!" he protested.

"Clark," I said with an evil smile, "I lied. I'm a lawyer. Get used to it."

"Hey," he said in mock anger, not getting up from where he sat in the snow, "any more of that and I'll be forced to pull out my lawyer jokes."

"If that's your highest card, you're going to lose," I informed him. "I know more lawyer jokes than anyone. I've heard them all before."

"Yeah? Well, how many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?"

"Easy. Everyone knows it's four. One to hold the bulb, two to turn the ladder, and one to sue the electric company."

"Wow. You have heard them before."

"You're delaying," I pointed out sweetly.

"Yes." He got up slowly, and once again I was struck by how tall he was. "Martha?"

"Yes?"

"It's a good idea," Clark said, seriously now. "Would you mind throwing some more snowballs?"

"Sure." What else did I have to do? I bent down – the snow here in the middle of the clearing was scant, wind-blown to a thin layer. Clark had trampled much of it in his previous day's work on flying, which seemed to have involved a lot of falling, too. Not good snowball material. I headed for the edge of the clearing, where better snow still remained under the pine boughs.

Another blur and whoosh, and several piles of snowballs lay scattered around the clearing edges. "Figured I'd save you the tedious making-the-snowball part," Clark said.

I wondered if I should get offended at this use of powers. Nah. I knew what – who he was and what he could do, and he knew I knew. He was just trying to speed things up here.

"OK." I took the first snowball from the pile. "The plan is, you fly, I throw, you zap the snowball with the heat vision."

"Right," Clark said, smiling nervously.

"Just….just don't zap me, OK?" I couldn't help the tremble in my voice.

Surprise, then understanding, crossed Clark's face. "You don't have to worry, Martha," he said, in utter seriousness. "And you….please just throw me some easy ones till I get some more practice, OK?"

"OK." We had a bargain. I tossed the snowball into my other mitten. "I'll start with this pile, and throw them that way." I indicated the wide area to my right. "You have to get them from various angles and heights, OK?"

"OK. Go." He lifted off. I tossed the first snowball, gently, underhand. I wasn't looking at him this time, but I saw the ball explode into steam in midair.

"Can we try that again?" Clark asked.

"Sure." I tossed the second snowball, doing my best to replicate the angle and position of the first throw. This time the snowball melted.

"I dialed down the intensity a little bit," Clark confessed.

"Yeah, good, work on that too." I felt a little nervous. If that heat vision beam had hit me….humans were ninety-eight percent water. The snowball had turned to steam. I gulped and tossed another spheroid. It melted.

"Keep 'em coming," Clark called out. He sounded happy. I caught a glimpse, and indeed, he was smiling. What did it feel like, flying? I threw another snowball, a little harder.

"Horizontal position, Clark," I called. I wondered if, in the other world, I could have gone to Clark's Little League games. Did they let him play Little League? Would he have been hitting mile-long home runs at age eight? I tossed more snowballs, some irregularly shaped, as Clark floated around the clearing, looking as if he reclined on some invisible floating bed. I called out various instructions – "Arms above the head! On your back! Over your shoulder!" - as I threw what seemed an unending series of snowballs.

Clark missed many of the first pile that I threw. He missed them when he got into a different position. And he missed more when I demanded he do some contortion. And he missed even more when I asked him to dial up the heat, so that the snowballs turned to steam.

He especially missed more when I threw them not-very-far away from me. I hoped – and feared – that this meant that he was thinking before he zapped. On the one hand, I liked it, since I was the potential victim of any accident. On the other hand, what I was hoping to accomplish was that for Clark, using his heat vision while flying would be automatic, if the need arose.

I started asking him random questions as I threw. "What's the capital of South Dakota?"

"Pierre." A snowball turned to mush.

"I thought it was Bismarck." Another toss, this time disguised behind my back.

"That's North Dakota." He missed that snowball.

"Have you ever been to Pierre?" I made another throw, this one an easy lob in front of me. "And backwards horizontal position, please."

Clark contorted himself. I saw the eyes glow red. The snowball splattered to the ground, untouched. "No," Clark said, landing. "I've been to Metropolis, though." He strode over to me. "Are you OK, Martha?"

Why would he ask me if I was OK? Oh, yes, I'd had a concussion. But I was doing fine. Brisk air, mild exercise, verbal sparring – a fine day out.

"I'm fine," I assured him. "You, on the other hand, need a lot more work." I stared him down until he said, "OK," and backed off.

"This time you're not allowed to zap the snowball until you're in the air," I said. "And you can't lift off until after I throw."

"OK," he said, smiling.

"And no fair using speedy-speed," I added, a little irked.

"Speedy-speed?" Clark parroted, now smiling broadly at the expression.

"You know what I mean. You have to go the slowest you can and still make the play."

Now Clark was frowning. "You're really giving me a good workout here."

"That's the plan, Kent." I couldn't help returning his smile. Somehow it didn't hurt to call him Kent. Strange.

"Lay it on me."

"OK. Remember, you asked for it," I teased him, as I threw the snowball. I put some distance into this toss, wanting to give him extra time.

A whoosh filled the air and Clark snapped into existence across the clearing. He'd run into a small tree. With a cacophony of creaks, groans, and whishing boughs, the tree collapsed.

We both stared at it.

"I don't think that was on the program," I finally said.

Clark blushed. "Martha, um…..that's what I was talking about when I said the super speed was glitching."

"I thought you were trying to fly," I said inanely.

"Well, uh, yes. When you set up those conditions for the latest test, it got all mixed up, the running and the flying, I mean." He dug at the ground with a booted toe. "Er, I guess I need to practice a little on my own, yes?"

"I think that would be a good idea," I said weakly. He didn't have control, that was obvious. Suddenly it seemed a very dangerous idea to be in the same clearing with Clark Kent. "Um, we were down to our last snowball pile anyway…um…." I dithered as I scurried back to the tent. "Um, I'll just rest awhile in the tent…"

"Can I get you anything? Hot tea?" Clark asked solicitously.

"Ah, no, I'll be fine." I was speaking the truth when I added, "I am getting a little tired and I think I'll take a short nap." I gave a quick inhalation. "You'll work on that running – flying thing, right?" I was already easing myself into the tent. "I mean, you want to get right to work on that, don't you, Clark?"

Clark took the hint. Maybe having the tent flap zipped closed right in his face was a little too obvious. "Uh, yeah. Right to work." I heard him walk away, then come back. "Get some rest, Martha." He didn't sound annoyed. His voice was gentle – and concerned.

I eased off my boots, took off the parka, and squirmed into my sleeping bag. I hadn't lied to Clark – once the excitement of the snowball game had worn off (or, more accurately, been frightened away), I realized that I was tired. I'd overdone it on the activity and my head hurt again. I left my hat on for warmth and quickly slid into sleep. All through my restless nap I heard irregular whooshings. Clark was indeed practicing.

When I woke that afternoon, Clark came to me. He actually looked a little tired. The clearing was scuffed and several trees had evidence of damage. I looked at one of the piles of firewood and raised my eyebrows. He greeted me with a nod.

"How are you coming along with the running – flying thing?" I asked, trying to keep a neutral tone.

"I think I might have it," Clark said. He was tired – it was in his voice.

Good! Let's head out to Metropolis, then! That was what I wanted to say. What actually came out of my mouth was, "How are you feeling?"

A fleeting expression of surprise crossed Clark's face. I wondered why, and then it came to me. All our time together I hadn't asked how he was doing. Not once. He'd asked me, what seemed a hundred times. And I had assumed that since he was Kryptonian, there was no need to ask. No need, even in the face of torture and mutilation. I hadn't asked, even though Clark spent hours in mental and physical toil. Learning a new skill didn't come all that easy – I knew that. And to learn so much in only two days – that was hard work.

"Fine," Clark replied neutrally. At my sharp glance, he added, "OK. A little tired."

"What's the plan?" I asked. Again Clark was surprised, for me to be so blatantly offering the initiative to him. I'd made it clear at the beginning of our trip that I set the agenda, he followed it. He was to follow my orders. But the last three days had been an intense lesson in the art of survival. We both knew that we had to get back to Metropolis base, to report what had happened. And more importantly, we had to get back because we were running out of food. Maybe that didn't matter to Clark, but it did to me. The cold weather demanded frequent refueling.

But Clark was the one with the abilities. He was the one who knew how far he could go and what his limits were. I felt the usual underlying disquiet. That would probably never go away. By now I believed that Clark was telling the truth – that he was on our side, and that he would not harm us – but things could always change.

I deliberately steered my mind away from those channels and faced Clark.

"What's the plan?" I asked again.

He sighed. "I think I have most of the flying ability under control," he started. "I'd like to get a little practice at altitude, though, before I take you."

"Couldn't you just run me – run us back?"

Clark sighed again. "If we were on the roads, or in open country, sure. But in this mess?" He indicated the forest around us. "It doesn't hurt me when I run into a tree, but…."

The same can't be said for you. It was unspoken but obvious. I had to defer to his knowledge.

"Let's discuss this over dinner, then," I said firmly. I rummaged in the pack and pulled out a ration pack. "Last meal, Clark."

"That has an ominous sound to it," he said, amusement in his voice.

Oh. "I mean it's the last one we have."

"You should have it, Martha."

"No."

"No?" Amusement again in his tone.

"No. For one thing, I'm not all that hungry." A partial truth – the concussion had decreased my appetite. "And I've been sleeping most of the last two days. You've been working."

Clark seemed to waver.

"And besides, you're my ticket out of here. So it's in my best interest to feed you. I need to have you flying, not falling out of the sky."

Whoops. Suddenly I wished I hadn't brought that image to mind.

Clark had a sardonic smile. "Well, since you put it that way…" He gently took the ration pack from me and gathered up the cooking utensils. "If you will have a seat and allow me to do the cooking… We'll split it."

We sat quietly, finishing the meal. Clark sighed again. Really, he was very good at sighing. Actually, he sounded like he sighed all the time. Did the guy just mope a lot or what?

"I was thinking of going straight up and then trying out the speed. You know, with clear sailing." He gestured towards the trees at the edge of the clearing, my tent, our stump-chairs – obstructions which I'd made use of when I'd helped him test his flying ability.

"You might test how fast you can get to Metropolis base."

Clark gave a mirthless chuckle. "I will. But Martha," he leaned forward, speaking earnestly, "I don't really know. I don't know anything about this except what I've learned in the last two days. And it frightens me," he swallowed, "it just petrifies me, to think that I might be carrying you, and something might….go wrong." He motioned again to our surroundings. "We obviously have to get out of here, and soon." He pointed toward our empty dishes. "But I wish I'd had more time to practice."

I nodded.

"Martha, I don't want to hurt you. Anymore." He said it very quietly. Underneath I heard the guilt and the fear. He'd already given me a concussion, at least he felt responsible for it. I still blamed our attackers, but certainly Clark felt he had contributed. "So I have to do everything I can to make sure…"

"All right." How could I not respond that that naked plea? I would stop dropping pointed hints.

"If you're OK, I'll get going as soon as I do the dishes." Without giving me a chance to protest, he slipped into his speed and blurred around the camp. The dishes were clean before I'd finished drawing breath.

"OK, then." I stood up.

Clark stood in the center of the clearing. He took a deep breath. It was as if he was setting off on some journey of discovery.

"Fly well," I murmured.

He looked at me, startled, then nodded. Without a word, he lifted off, slowly at first, then increasing speed till he rocketed up above the cloud layer and out of my sight.

I stood, looking up for a moment. Despite the events of the last three years, despite knowing what Kryptonians could do, despite working with Clark for the past two days, it still astounded me to see a man fly.

I paced around the clearing nervously. Clark wasn't here anymore – the very fact of his presence had inhibited me. Now, alone, I could think. Thinking clearly might be too much to ask for, given my head injury and current surroundings. What were my feelings now? What did I want?

Well, certainly I wanted my old life back – Martha Clark, boardroom lawyer, who had lunch at sidewalk cafes in Metropolis on sunny days, who lived in a human world, where alien invasions were something that happened only in summer movies.

Unfortunately, as I knew all too well, that life wasn't coming back. I had to play the cards I was dealt. I'd sustained myself for years on anger, resentment, and plotting for revenge. I'd gotten my revenge by proxy, when Lex and Chloe and Lois and everyone else went to the Arctic Fortress and killed the Kryptonian invaders.

After that, I'd had resentment. Resentment that a Kryptonian had been allowed to live. Anger that others couldn't see the risk in letting him live, letting him roam around freely. Resentment that he'd lived when so many others had died. Resentment that he claimed a relationship with me - that, in another world, I was his mother. The nagging echo of what could have been.

And now, things were changing. Over the last few months I'd finally seen the devastation. I'd been in hiding, or confined to Metropolis base, for years. Now, since the overthrow of the Kryptonian invaders, I'd been out. I'd traveled all around. I'd seen what remained of our once-prosperous country. It hurt. And Clark was trying to restore things. At least that's what he said. More to the point, Lex had told me that too.

Clark himself, now that I'd been in his company even for just a few days, didn't act alien. He acted like a human. That's what threw me off, made me uncertain. He reacted to the devastation just as I had done, albeit with a little more intensity, and perhaps the occasional morbid humor. Why did he have to act so human? Why did he have to act like he cared? Why couldn't he have been arrogant, distant, just plain evil, like Zod? I sniffed angrily.

Why did he have to be so nice?

Why did he protect me, respond to my caustic comments with mild words, and cater to my every whim? How had he the courage to let himself face terrible pain to save me? How could he be like that?

And – I danced around it, I didn't want to think about it – what was I like in that other world, the world where I'd taken in a toddler from a spaceship, a world where Jonathan and myself had never had our bitter arguments, never divorced? Where we'd kept our marriage together, shared an adopted son, joined in keeping his secret? What was that world like, where Zod's invasion had been stopped before the world ever heard about it, where I was a U.S. Senator (I had to smile at that – I always knew I could do it), and where Clark Kent lived a quiet life on his farm, no one knowing that an alien lived among us?

A world where I didn't have to feel guilty about surviving when so many others had died?

I sat down on the tree stump and burst into tears. The sobs of three years broke out. Before today, I hadn't cried since that long-ago day when Brainiac had forced me to watch Zod and Aethyr at their genocidal amusements. I'd vowed myself to hardness, to unfeeling duty, to revenge. I'd gotten it, and where was I now? I cried for the rape of my planet. I cried for the loss of the blue sky, the lack of the sun. I cried for all those who had died, especially the friends and comrades in the fight against the invasion, those who'd been lost in our numerous unsuccessful attempts, and in the final successful one. I'd expected to die any day, and here I was three years later, still alive.

It was harder to live.

I cried myself out. I trailed off into tiny little sniffles, rubbing my eyes with the back of my gloves. Inside I felt only emptiness. My righteous anger had been swept away, leaving me with nothing.

What should I do now? Of course, I should work on the reconstruction, the rebuilding of whatever of human society could be saved. That was a process that would take years, decades. I mentally quailed. Better to think about Clark.

Clark. In the emptiness, I could think about him without the hate. In this strange silent moment, I understood how my hate of the Kryptonians had colored my view of him. If I'd met him on the street, or at a business meeting, I would have liked him immediately.

In the exhaustion after my crying jag I could see him in new eyes. He was a young man, uncertain of where he fit into the world. He thought like a human, but he wasn't human. A person obsessed with keeping his secret and successful at that for years. Until he was thrown into this world, where everyone knew what he was, and everyone feared and hated him for what others of his race had done.

A man who had incredible power but who seemed reluctant to use it, at least on behalf of himself. He'd used his Kryptonian abilities, probably more than I suspected, to keep me safe. And comfortable. I thought back to what Charlie Greene had told me at Metropolis base – "When you go camping with Clark you always have hot water." It was true. And I'd heard about the work he'd done elsewhere – helping to rebuild bridges, lifting heavy objects so that teams could repair or restore, or simply save time and lives.

I chuckled sadly. I had a classic case of Orwellian doublethink going on. I knew Kryptonians couldn't be trusted. They would abuse their power. And here I was, starting to trust Clark. Doublethink – don't trust them, but trust him. Kryptonians would use their power for ill. But I was already tempted to say, "But Clark wouldn't do that!"

I sat up suddenly. Would he do that? Would he hurt someone to save his life? He hadn't hurt Hank Hall or the other men, but maybe that was only because they'd gotten the drop on him first. What would he have done if they'd failed to incapacitate him? Zod would have had no mercy – I'd seen that.

Clark seemed nice, but he hadn't been tested, really. I sniffled again. It was easy to have high moral standards when you were invulnerable, when you could catch fired bullets in mid-air. Your ethics might be a little more flexible if you were facing harm yourself.

I ignored that niggling voice at the back of my head. What about self-defense? Every human is allowed that right! My law background – and my common sense – bubbled up. I couldn't stop that voice sometimes.

I didn't know. I didn't know what was wrong or right anymore. I sat, thinking for a long time.

In the end, it came down to this: He was still a Kryptonian, with Kryptonian powers. A being that we couldn't control, if he decided that he didn't want to go along with us. In that situation, he would have to be killed for our safety. Of course, in that event, the tough part would be catching him. Or fighting him off, if he decided to kill us first, like Zod had done.

I shuddered. I found myself devising scenarios, making plans, allowing for contingencies. Before, I'd embraced these moments. Now, I really didn't want to think about them.

Ah well, Clark was a smart guy. No doubt he'd thought this all through right away. Why else his employment and his current situation? He'd be good. It was in his best interests to do so.

As I stopped pacing, I wondered about the other world. No one knew about him there. Would he use his powers for good if circumstances weren't forcing him to?

I broke into a smile as I considered it. If I'd raised him – if my counterpart was like the Martha Clark I'd been – of course he would.