We were in a dark wood…or was it a labyrinth of halls like those I'd seen in government facilities worldwide….or was it a grey moonscape, cratered and empty of any sign of life, the horizon impossibly clear? Somehow it was all and none of these.

I looked over and saw Clark, looked down at myself. We appeared the same as we'd been in the Fortress. He wore the spandex Suit, and he'd put back on his farm boots. I wore my sandals, and hoped that we wouldn't have to go on any long walks. He glanced around nervously, just as I was doing.

I felt a compulsion to move. I knew, somehow, that if I went one way, I would come to…..myself; if I went the other way, I would come to Clark. Watching Clark, I saw he felt the same pull.

"Who first, you or me?" I honestly didn't know which I preferred.

"I don't know." Clark hesitated for a minute. "Flip a coin?"

"OK." I hadn't thought the spandex suit had pockets, but Clark pulled out a quarter from somewhere. "Just a minute. Let me see that."

He unhesitatingly passed it over, raising his brows. It was a perfectly normal twenty-five cent piece.

"Just checking."

Clark looked bemused. "What, you think I have a two-headed coin or something?" At my embarrassed glance away, he added, "Who do you think I am, Lex Luthor?"

I had to laugh. One of Lex's most inbred characteristics was stacking the odds in his favor. Clark met my eyes – he was laughing too. A moment of camaraderie passed between us before I remembered the situation and looked away awkwardly.

I passed it back. "You toss. I'll guess. Winner gets to pick."

"You don't want to toss?"

"Tell me if this is true. You can see the flips in midair and you'll know how it lands."

This time it was Clark's turn to look shifty. "OK. I toss. You guess. Ready?" He suited the action to the word and snapped the quarter in a beautiful display of coin flippery.

"Tails never fails," I said confidently. The quarter landed on the ground.

Heads.

"Darn it."

"I guess I get to pick, then," Clark said. He stood for a minute, looking off into the distance of the forest or labyrinth or whatever it was. "We'll go that way."

To my relief, he pointed to the area which was….him.

"I thought you'd take me….I mean that direction…first."

Clark gazed at me. "According to the philosophers, the unexamined life is not worth living." He said it sardonically.

There were so many things I could say in response. I settled for an inarticulate "Uh". And we walked off together, toward the tangled underbrush and dark forest of Clark's soul.

"How do you think we'll know Brainiac?" I asked neutrally.

Clark didn't look at me as we forged our way through what was becoming a tangled mat of undergrowth. "I don't know. Jor-El promised we would. I guess let's just keep our eyes open."

A metallic glint peeped through the thorns. "What's that?"

"Let's go find out." Clark pushed his way through, the thorns entangling in the spandex but not dissuading him. I muttered a quick thank-you that it was him breaking the trail and not me.

We came into an open clearing. In the center was a smooth ovoid with a flanged rim. It had that Kryptonian look to it – the lines just screamed alien.

"It's my ship." Clark stared at it, bemused.

"Your ship?"

"In my world, I was sent to Earth from Krypton as a baby. This is the ship I came in."

I leaned over to look at it. Clark pulled me back.

"What?"

Clark nodded at our surroundings. They had morphed from a forest clearing to what I recognized as the storm cellar on the Kent Farm. And, standing facing each other, the ship between them, were two figures. I recognized them as a younger Clark and, based on the features, one of the Ross boys. I'd stayed good friends with Abby Ross even after Jonathan and I had divorced, and I knew all her kids. But this one seemed unfamiliar.

"I think I know when we are," my Clark muttered. He didn't look happy.

At his mutter, the Ross boy began speaking. "So….you're saying you're some kind of alien? Not human?"

The younger Clark leaned forward. "Pete…." he said earnestly.

I realized two things. Number one, this was Pete Ross, who'd been nine years old when I moved out of Smallville and back to Metropolis. And two, something very strange was going on.

The two figures in Clark's memory continued to gesticulate at each other, and I felt it. To be more specific, I felt what the younger Clark felt. When Pete looked at him in suspicion, I felt his resolve to convince the shorter boy of his harmlessness. When young Clark moved toward Pete, and Pete automatically backed away, I experienced the younger Clark's confusion and then sickened realization. And when Pete stormed out of the cellar, I stood there in the place of the young Clark and felt the desolation and fear.

With a gasp, I stumbled, and I was myself again. Clark – the older one, the one wearing the Suit – caught me by the elbow.

"I'd tried to forget that part of it," he said dispassionately.

"What?" I was still dazed.

"The first time I told someone about myself. You know, the alien thing." Clark kept a stone face. "That didn't go all that well."

"Why'd you tell him anyway?" I asked, curious.

Clark sighed a bit. "I was young. He was my best friend. And I kind of had to, because he found my ship."

"He found your ship? Pete Ross?"

"Long story." Clark sighed again. The strange thing happened again. I met his eyes for just a moment, and I was whirled into a cloud of memory.

Going with Pete in the truck to the cornfield where the ship had crashed….picking it up, trying to convince Pete to take it to the Kent Farm, but Pete insisting he take it to his own shed….stealing the ship back in the dead of night….getting caught lying about it…..deciding to come clean….

The memories cut off and I stumbled again.

"What was that?" Clark asked. He looked just as flustered as me, the stone face broken.

"Clark…..did you pick up that ship in a cornfield?"

He nodded slowly.

"Did Pete help you?"

He nodded again, beginning to suspect. "Are you…."

"I think I'm getting your memories."

For a second, an undecipherable look of – was it horror? Fear? - crossed Clark's face. "Oh my God…." he whispered. His mouth worked but no sound came out. And, frightening me, I got an echo of what he felt. Apprehension. Anger. Embarassment. Fear. Then, after a minute, resignation and, growing stronger, a firm resolve – a sense of a dirty job that had to be done.

"Not really what I expected," he said dryly.

Or wanted, I filled in.

"Brainiac?" That was it, let's focus on the mission, we've got a lot to do here, let's not think about weird Kryptonian mind-melds. All that was in Clark's matter-of-fact tone.

I glanced frantically around the cellar. Anything to not have to meet Clark's eyes. The younger Clark had disappeared and the two of us were alone in the Kent Farm storm cellar. "Uh…."

A silvery sparkle caught my eye. I pushed back some jars on the dusty shelves. In the back was a pint Mason jar filled with liquid silver.

"That's it!" Clark reached for the jar. "That's Brainiac."

I said nothing but agreed. The silver was alien, out of place in this hole literally dug in our Earth.

The jar slipped away from Clark's grasp. He reached for it again and once again it avoided his fingers. He tried repeatedly.

"I can't catch it," he said, turning to me. "Can you?"

"I need a step stool," I said, scanning the cellar. The mote of Brainiac infection was (of course) on the top shelf, toward the back, out of my reach. We both looked around. Unfortunately, the cellar was devoid of any obvious candidates.

"I can lift you," Clark said hesitantly.

I paused for a minute. "OK." We needed to root out Brainiac. That was the job we had to do. The fact that, once again, I was scared to have Clark touch me, scared to be so completely within his power, made no difference to what I had to do. Well, it was only a virtual world. I felt a little happier when I remembered that.

He gently placed his hands at my hips. "Ready?"

"OK."

He lifted me with the ease he'd used every time before. I leaned forward and grabbed the jar with no problem. Clark set me down. His hand brushed my bare arm and I almost dropped the jar as, with the skin-to-skin contact, I got a more intense flash of his feelings.

Frustration at not being able to grab the jar…..annoyance and sadness at my being frightened of him again….a lingering embarrassment at having his private moment disclosed….underneath it all, that same strong resolve. The sheer intensity of the feelings left me when he stopped touching me.

God, this was way too intimate. I already knew more about Clark in some ways than I had known about Jonathan after ten years of marriage. I didn't want to know more. And I had a bad feeling that what I wanted didn't matter. And… was he getting my feelings in return?

My feet touched the floor and I handed the jar to Clark. Or rather, I tried. He was unable to grasp it, no matter what he did.

"I think I'm seeing a pattern here."

"Me too."

Clark paced. "I can't touch the Brainiac that's in me, in my memories. But you can."

"Can you destroy it? With your heat vision or something?"

"Set it there." I set the jar carefully on the earthen floor and stood off to the side. Clark squinted and I saw his eyes turn red. That was something that would give me the shivers no matter how often I saw it. Face it, heat vision was creepy.

I saw the red grow stronger. My skin grew uncomfortably hot, even though I stood next to Clark, far away from the jar. He must be dialing it up to blast furnace level, I thought. The air took on the hazy ripples of a hot summer day. The ground around the jar dried, baked, cracked into a hardpan of fused earth. My eyes watered.

The jar sat on the floor, untouched.

The red died from Clark's eyes. "I guess not." He looked hopeful. "Can you destroy it? You could touch it."

"I'll give it a try." I looked around the cellar. Clark handed me an iron – an actual pressing iron, back in the days before electric steaming irons, back when "ironing your clothes" meant heating metal irons on a hot stove. I took it by its handle and knelt by the jar. I brought the iron down on the jar with all my might.

It bounced off. This was no ordinary Mason jar.

"I don't think I can destroy it either." This wasn't good. How could we clear ourselves of Brainiac's infection? "Got any ideas?"

"Not really. Other than to go through, um, my memories and find all the Brainiac bits and pieces. Maybe by going through, or at the end, we'll figure out something." Clark shrugged. "You?"

"I don't have any better ideas, other than that we shouldn't leave this here."

"True." Clark looked troubled. "I think that means you have to carry it. I can't touch it."

We both looked around the cellar. The best option seemed to be an ancient picnic basket, surprisingly still sound. I put the jar into the basket. As I did, the lid moved, and I heard Brainiac's voice.

You're an alien….no one will ever accept you.

I shot a look back at Clark. He was quick to put his poker face back on, but I'd caught the echo of loss and hurt. We stared at each other.

"I spent a lot of time thinking that," Clark finally admitted. "I still think it at times."

"Oh."

Clark nodded to me, and followed me up the cellar stairs to the light.

We went back out into the flat light. Clark headed toward another area. The light shifted and suddenly we were elsewhen again.

There was a confusing potpourri of quick scenes. Clark saving someone from a meteor mutant. Clark selling Kent Farm Organic Vegetables at the farmer's market. Clark teasing Chloe at her newspaper office at Smallville High – a happy, innocent Chloe, not the battle-scarred, hardened warrior I knew. Clark chatting with Lex Luthor – Lex looked the same, lean and dangerous no matter what world he was in. Clark saving someone else from another meteor mutant. In all these moments, there was a constant knowledge of being alien, having a secret, having to hide.

What floored me was the scene of Clark having dinner with his parents. No big deal to him then – he could eat with them every night. I marveled at Jonathan, happily talking to his son, and at the other Martha, who gazed at the men in her life with happy possessiveness and pride. I ached inside. Why should they be so happy when I was so miserable?

I picked up more Brainiac-stuff at each scene. The silver stuff murmured Alien, Outcast, Hide in every scene. I thought of how Clark had come to our world and how he was unable to hide. Everyone knew he was alien. Everyone reviled him. And yet, hidden in his own world, or overt in ours, and despite the provocations we'd heaped on him, he acted the same – friendly and helpful.

"You saved a lot of people," I ventured.

"I never kept count." He chuckled mirthlessly. "Martha, I don't think you're going to like what I'm going to show you next."

That worried me. Clark had been quite the unsung hero before. In fact, he seemed too good to be true. Maybe it was my lawyer training, but if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. "Am I to understand that we're finally getting to the real dirt?"

"You might say that." He clasped my hand, and I felt reluctance and embarrassment and even some resentment, but also that firm resolve. He would lay himself open in front of me, no matter how much he hated it. I shuddered to think that I would have to do the same when my turn came. Show myself, all of myself, to the person I had wronged… I deliberately turned my mind away from that.

I saw Clark, a younger Clark, in Metropolis. He looked odd until I realized that he was dressed in black. The Clark I knew almost always dressed in blue and red. The younger Clark I saw looked different in another way. He looked dangerous.

He swaggered through the streets, entering a bar. Loud music almost deafened me. I seemed tied to his younger self's point of view. He strode past the writhing bodies and came up to the bar. He demanded a drink and gulped it down. I tasted the liquor, the heat in the back of my throat.

He stepped out into an alley. Thugs came to attack him. Rage rose within him, along with an unholy glee. He let them shoot him, the bullets bouncing off his torso. Then he advanced. I felt his pleasure as he tossed one attacker into a wall. The man collapsed in an unmoving heap. Clark snarled as he broke another man's arm, the sound of the snap pleasing him and horrifying me. I felt him savor his domination, felt him enjoy how effortlessly he disposed of his attackers.

He howled. He had the power, and he would rule. He viewed the bodies of his attackers, sprawled on the concrete of the alleyway, and savored his domination. He would rule. Humans would bow before him.

Someone touched my arm. It was the older Clark, the Clark I'd grown to know on this world. I stumbled. I'd been sucked into the memories of younger Clark. "I'd hoped you wouldn't see that." Through his touch, I felt his shame.

I couldn't speak. It was in him. Deep down, Clark was Kal-El, the conqueror. He had fed us a good line, but…

"Martha." Older Clark had his hands on my shoulders and turned me away from the scene of his past. "I'm not like that."

I breathed hard, shaking with fear. I said nothing, just pointed to his younger self standing over the fallen bodies of his adversaries. Zod had stood like that.

"I can't deny that it's in me…" Clark said hesitantly. "But, Martha, it's the red kryptonite."

"Red kryptonite?" I'd only ever seen green K.

"It's an isotope of the mineral… it's rare." Clark hadn't let go of me, and I felt both his urge to convince me, and his sincerity. "It removes my inhibitions."

"Oh." That was all I could say, as horrific scenarios tossed through my mind. I pulled back from him and he let me go.

"When I'm on it, I'll do what I want, say what I feel… I don't care. I'll hurt anybody."

I felt Clark's shame. There was nothing I could say. The scene shifted and his shame turned to anguish.

He moved closer to me and I fell into his memories again. Surprise held me frozen. His mother – my counterpart – pregnant? Jealousy raged through me. I had been barren. Then Clark's memories told me why. He had found the ship that had brought him from Krypton to Earth. A complicated backstory whirled its way through our minds. His mother was sick. The only way to heal her was to use Kryptonian technology. He found a way to make the ship emit a healing ray.

None of them had known that it would cure Martha Kent in all respects, that she could be fertile now. And so she conceived and carried a baby. She joyously awaited its birth.

I sifted through Clark's memories. He stood back and let me. I sensed, from his flinching, that these were memories he didn't want to re-live.

Younger Clark had made contact with the Artificial Intelligence on his Earth. Jor-El had told him that he should conquer the Earth, dominate the inhabitants. "Rule them with strength, my son," the AI had told Clark.

I felt Clark's refusal. Older Clark wasn't ashamed to show me that memory. The Clark in the memories was frantic – how could he escape his Kryptonian father's edict? Young Clark set up a plan to destroy the spaceship, the ship which seemed to be the host for the Artificial Intelligence.

And then, tragedy and disaster. Young Clark destroyed the spaceship. But his parents were nearby, and they were caught in the explosion. His mother miscarried. I felt older Clark's anguish, as fresh as it was on the day that it happened.

Young Clark's mother lay in a hospital bed. Clark stood out in the hallway, trying to meet Jonathan's eyes.

The younger Clark could hardly meet his father's eyes. "Dad… I didn't have a choice. I had to destroy the ship."

Jonathan said angrily, "And why didn't you tell us?"

Young Clark looked down. "I knew you wouldn't agree with what I did. Dad, I didn't want the ship to take me away from you."

Jonathan was hoarse with the effort of holding back his tears. "Your actions have consequences, Clark. Didn't your mother and I ever teach you that?"

"Yes, but…"

Jonathan turned his back on his son. "This time there's no excuses, Clark. It's too late." He choked back tears. "You didn't think this thing through, you had no idea of what was going to happen, and now…" He turned to meet Clark's eyes. "Now your mother is lying in a hospital bed."

A woman's voice cut off Clark's reply. "Mr. Kent?"

"Doctor, how is my wife?"

"She has a mild concussion, but she'll be fine," the doctor said reassuringly.

There was a long pause. Jonathan finally broke it.

"And how is the baby?"

The doctor's eyes were kind. "I'm sorry." Jonathan and Clark hardly noticed when she walked away.

"Dad…" Clark pleaded.

Jonathan turned his back on Clark. He walked into Martha's hospital room and closed the door behind him, leaving Clark alone in the hospital corridor. Clark looked through the window. His parents held each other in a tight embrace, sharing their sorrow.

"I'm here, sweetheart, I'm here," Jonathan whispered to his sobbing wife. Neither of them looked at Clark.

Young Clark, anguished, sped away. He ran to the high school, where he knew the class rings waited. The class rings with red kryptonite in them.

Deliberately he opened the drawer, pushing away Pete Ross's attempts to dissuade him. Deliberately he picked up a ring. And deliberately, he slipped the red kryptonite onto his finger.

His grief dropped away. The almost unbearable guilt diminished, until he was able to wad it up and hide it away. He gave himself over to hedonism. The red kryptonite kept him from feeling grief and guilt. He didn't want to have a conscience now. He spent three months in his drug-fueled haze.

I saw him gulp down alcohol, cursing the fact that it didn't affect him. I felt him stride into nightclubs, and feel pleasure at the way everyone cowered from him. The bartender was quick to serve him.

He ripped open ATM's and scooped up the cash. He bought a Lamborghini, drove it for an evening, and gave it away. He robbed a bank. The police shot him, and he shrugged off the bullets. Richocheting projectiles almost killed a policewoman, and he didn't care. He beat up men in dark alleys, breaking their bones, and he didn't care. The light glinted off the red stone in his ring.

I looked up at Older Clark in horror. He didn't look away. "It's in me, Martha." He sighed. "I've done things I'm not proud of."

Clark was on the sixtieth floor of the Luthorcorp building in Metropolis. He had been hired to steal something from Lionel Luthor. He crushed the lock and ripped the hinges off a safe door. Then he pulled the door out and threw it across the room. He took what he'd been hired to get – a metal box – and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He turned around and met his father's eyes.

"Hello, Clark."

"Jonathan Kent. Isn't it a little past your bedtime?" Young Clark had a supercilious smile. "How'd you find me?"

Jonathan had his own tiny smile. "Your biological father."

"You two are working together, huh? That's cute. But I didn't listen to him and I'm certainly not going to listen to you." The red K singing through his veins fueled his disdain.

Jonathan grabbed his arm. "Clark. You need to put all this behind you, son. Come on home to the people who love you."

Clark smiled, nodded, and patted his father's shoulder. Then he pushed lightly, and Jonathan went flying across the room. Jonathan hit a wall and slid down. Clark figured he'd dealt with that annoyance. He addressed Jonathan's unmoving form. "You should have stayed in Smallville."

Jonathan got up slowly, apparently unhurt. "Son, you're coming home with me. Now."

Clark stared back at Jonathan, unable to understand how his father would dare defy him.

Jonathan rushed at Clark. I started in surprise – was Jonathan using super-speed? Young Clark and Jonathan, entangled, went through the window and plummeted sixty stories down. They fell through a generator housing and ended up in a basement construction zone.

They fought, trading super-powered blows, moving in super-speed. Jonathan held his own against his super-powered son. I felt young Clark's unease. Clark stepped back, breathing heavily. "Looks like the old man has been working out."

Jonathan said, "Jor-El and I have an understanding." His tone was sheer Jonathan Kent stubbornness. "I'm taking you home."

"I don't care what he's done to you. You're not taking me anywhere."

"Clark! You don't realize how dangerous you are when you're wearing that ring."

I felt Young Clark's desolation even through the red kryptonite euphoria. "It's not the ring. I was born that way. You just can't accept it."

He rushed Jonathan. His father fought him off and threw him into a scaffold, which collapsed on him, covering him with wood and steel framing members and bags of cement.

Clark pushed himself out from under the debris. He threw a pipe at Jonathan, who ducked to avoid it. Then he sped to Jonathan and grabbed him by the throat. He had his father pinned to the wall, halfway choked. Jonathan tried feebly to push Clark away.

Clark cocked his arm, ready to deliver a blow that would end this fight once and for all. But he made the mistake of looking in his father's eyes. Jonathan looked back at him defiantly. "Go on! If I could raise a son that could kill, then kill!"

The words hammered through Clark, cutting through the red K haze. Suddenly he knew the red kryptonite was a cheat. He didn't want its false euphoria anymore. He wanted the sweat of an honest day's work in the fields instead of the alcohol-fueled nightclub life. He wanted real friends, not people who cowered away from him. He wanted his home and his family. He wanted real love.

With a loud scream, Clark drove his fist into the girder next to Jonathan. The red kryptonite shattered. Clark felt the intoxication leave him. He fell to the ground, gasping. He caught a glimpse of his father, doing the same thing.

He got up and ran over to Jonathan. "Dad? Dad?" What if he'd hurt his father? What if he'd killed him? Please, not now.

I felt Young Clark's concern, and then his relief when he realized his father was all right. I stumbled back and Older Clark reached out to steady me. When he touched me, I almost collapsed at the anguish I got from him.

"Why…" I asked. "You didn't hurt him. He was all right."

"That's what I thought, then." Clark was short. I turned my eyes back to the parade of his memories.

"Jonathan," I murmured. I knew he was a good man. I saw what he had meant to Clark.

The scene shifted forward. It was three years later. Now it was late night, near the barn. Jonathan came staggering out of the barn, and almost fell into Clark's arms. I – no, it was the other Martha, my counterpart – stood next to Clark. Jonathan looked at me with love, and then collapsed. The other me screamed. I knew it was too late. I'd seen that boneless collapse before. Jonathan Kent was dead.

"He died of a heart attack," older Clark told me. "Having the Kryptonian powers used up his life force. He burned years in seconds." Older Clark was crying, just like the younger Clark in the memories was doing. "He came to save me, and I killed him…"

I hugged him in sympathy and without restraint. He stiffened in surprise and then held me tightly, accepting my sympathy. Anguish and self-loathing coursed through him, and infinite sorrow. How could Clark forgive himself for this? He never could.

But every day, he went on.

We waited a long time. Finally, Clark managed to push his grief back into the box where he kept it, the box he opened up every day. I had nothing to say. Clark had had a typical moment of teenage rebellion. It had turned into something much more serious. I knew Jonathan. I knew he would have felt responsible for his son. He would have gone after Clark no matter what. Taking on the Kryptonian powers had just been necessary, so he could literally beat some sense into Clark.

Somehow I knew that Jonathan knew there had been a price, and he had willingly paid it. I put my hand on Clark's arm, trying to convey that to him through our wordless link.

He met my eyes. "Every day…" he swallowed. "Every day, I think about him. If I hadn't done what I did…" Clark's voice took on a greater resolve. "Every day, I think about that. And I tell myself that today, I'm going to be the man that my father could be proud of. Be the man that he knew I could be."

Our link told me how strongly he meant these words. It told me how much he respected Jonathan, and how grateful he had been for Jonathan's guidance. He couldn't lie in this setting. I felt every ounce of his sincerity.

"Let's move on." He said it in a cracked voice. I nodded, wiping the tears from my own eyes.

We were back in Metropolis – the damaged, burned, depopulated Metropolis of this world – with the swiftness of thought. Clark had just been dumped here from his world. He stared at the broken skyscrapers in dismay. He saw someone he knew.

"Lois!"

It wasn't his Lois. It was the Lois Lane I knew, the one with the scar on her face and the hate for Kryptonians. "Who the hell are you?"

"Lois, what the heck happened here?" Clark gestured around at the devastation. "Why don't you know me? Where is everybody?"

Lois looked at him suspiciously.

He moved a little closer to her. "Why are you wearing a parka in April…" Then he felt it. Kryptonite.

Lois pulled a green rock from her pocket. "This rock only glows for three people on this world." She moved closer to him, and he felt himself weaken and collapse. "You've one of them."

The last thing Clark saw as he slipped into unconsciousness was the triumph on her face.

"We can skip through the next parts," now-Clark told me impassively. "I found out what was going on, what Zod and Brainiac had done. You were there for most of that."

I had been, but at that time my view had been distorted. I hated Clark then. He frightened me beyond words. And yet, he was an opportunity…

The scene switched to him in his prison cell, handcuffed with the kryptonite handcuffs. I shuddered when I saw those. Past-Clark was pleading with his captors. "Let me help! I promise to fight with you to take down Zod! Please!"

This time, I heard the sincerity in his words. This time, I felt his determination. I let the scene play out, Clark fighting his way through the army of collaborators at the portal entrance, and then dueling Zod and Brainiac. I felt his absolute resolve. Humans would be free. Past-Clark was stabbed and lost consciousness. His memories faded to blackness.

Now-Clark turned to me. "That's how I feel, Martha." He said nothing more. Our link let me know he was telling the truth. I felt what he felt.

I took a deep breath. I dreaded what I – what we were going to have to do next. But at the same time I felt a strange confidence. Clark was at my side, and he'd proven to me that he wasn't cut from the same cloth as the other Kryptonians. He wanted to save and protect our world. Our world – the world that belonged to humans, and one Kryptonian that felt and thought like a human. One who didn't see Earth as a planet to be subjugated, to be molded into a faux-Krypton. One who wanted Earth to just be herself, the marvelous, life-teeming, green-jungle, blue-sea planet that she originally was, in all her glory.

He'd proven it to me in a most intimate fashion. I'd seen his thoughts, felt his feelings, lived his life. I'd felt his cringing embarrassment when he realized I was there too, and then his calm resignation that this was the way it had to be.

And now it was my turn. Could I bare myself? Here, in the gray forest of my life, I wondered. Then I shrugged my shoulders. Clark had gone first – could I let him be braver than me? There was something liberating about not having a choice. Or rather, having a choice, but the other option being totally unthinkable. The song lyrics murmured in my memory: "Freedom's just another word for having nothing left to lose." Well, the only thing I had left to lose was my pride. And, really, hadn't I lost that long ago?

I walked over to Clark, who had courteously gone off a few paces and turned his back to me – whether to give me a minute to work up my courage, or to compose himself after sharing his most intimate memories – and said quietly, "Are you ready?"

He turned and I saw he'd been clenching his fists. Tears ran down his face. He defiantly wiped them away with a spandex-clad sleeve. "Yeah," he said thickly. He took a couple of deep shuddering breaths. "Are you?" he asked, more controlled now.

"Yes," I answered softly. He stood, bent in on himself, his height crunched down, unhappy. Suddenly, surprisingly, I thought about hugging him again. Seeing the other me in his memories….what if the Clark of this world had landed, and had come to Jonathan and me? Well, I didn't have to wonder anymore. I'd seen it. It was terrifying and exhilarating and shivery and exciting and fearful and astounding and….there was love. So much love between the members of the Kent family that it spilled out to Smallville, to Kansas, to the rest of the world.

Our Earth had nothing to fear from Clark. Not when he could love like that.

I contented myself with touching his arm. "We're half done," I murmured. "And I know exactly where Brainiac is, in my half."

That caught his interest. "Oh?"

"Yes." I wanted to say something else, like, So straighten up and let's get moving, or, You'll back me up, right?, or Please don't tell anybody about this. But everything I thought was insulting, so I confined myself to a gesture and a significant look.

Clark straightened up – it seemed to come naturally to him. He offered his arm. This time I took it. Surprise drifted over his features. He stood a little taller, walked a little more bravely. We headed into the deep dark woods.

As I'd told Clark, I wouldn't have to look hard. I knew exactly where Brainac was hiding. I set a course for him, remembering now what I'd tried so hard – and failed – to forget. Those not-so-long-ago days when the aliens had really landed…