Howdy ya'll, minor update here. I've been debating whether or not I should be publishing new chapters every month or every half-month, and since I'm fixing to do a lot more writing that may take me a bit, I'll probably go with every month. This means ya'll can expect another chapter introducing someone ya'll have been waiting for in the beginning of February!

Please let me know what you think in the reviews, I can't wait to hear from ya'll! See you in 15 days!

Additionally, please let me know in the reviews what special events you think occurred between Man of Steel (2013) and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) that contributed to the overall storyline of the latter. I look forward to reading them!

Chapter 22: Azure, Wool, and an Airplane

Growing up on a farm, Clark had always been an early riser, but once again Darcie was up before him despite it being half-past five in the morning. She wasn't there when he got up to shower and get dressed, but reappeared around six-thirty with some muffins, more coffee, and plane tickets.

She was perfectly quiet and polite all morning, only speaking when necessary during breakfast and check out with her hands tucked in her coat pockets. The tiny airport was a forty-minute walk away and after customs, it was another twenty-minute wait before they boarded.

There were only seven other passengers who either fell asleep or started reading as soon as they were airborne and Darcie followed suit, contentedly busying herself with a sudoku book she'd found in a seat pocket, only to glance up occasionally at the fellow passengers and surroundings. There had been enough room in the small plane for Clark to get his own seat across the aisle from her, allowing them each a little bit of space.

Not having an activity to entertain himself with, he looked out the window instead and sipped at his second coffee in as many hours, still a bit cold and tired after waking up in such an unfamiliar environment then what he was used to down south and he noted that his fellow traveler seemed to adapt well to the freezing temperatures. The scenery was interesting enough and his keen eyesight could spot the occasional deer hiding in the trees far below them, but the forest soon gave way to stony tundra covered by clouds. With nothing more to see, he leaned back and watched Darcie instead. By now they had been flying for a good forty-five minutes and she had already solved multiple puzzles, calculating the possibilities at an incredible pace and tapping her pencil against her leg as she thought when he noticed she wasn't wearing any gloves. It was understandable as the thin pencil could be hard to grip through a layer of wool, but what really bothered him were her bruised and bloodied knuckles. Darcie saw him looking and guiltily pulled the sleeves of her coat over the raw joints, trying to ignore his gaze as she continued the puzzle.

"You went out last night," he stated in a low voice and she nodded, biting her lip.

"I… I had earned my punishment."

He had nearly forgotten the incident the night before, but she obviously hadn't and had taken it upon herself to pay for her mistake. The bruised marks were still fresh from pounding rocks with her bare hands.

"Why?" he asked and she looked up at him with sorrowfully.

"I nearly hurt you, Clark. I do not want to hurt you."

The veiled compassion in her words touched him and he realized just how much he was afraid of hurting her as well. A flicker of emotion rose up in his chest, one he hadn't felt since he'd seen his mom, his only close relative, over a year ago and he thought it might have been affection.

Getting up out of his seat, he crossed the aisle to sit down beside her and silently watched her work. She tensed, unused to being so close to a man, and having her main escape route blocked off worried her even more, but Darcie silently tolerated the disturbance.

"My name is Clark Joseph Kent." he murmured, keeping his voice low enough so only she could hear him, "I was found a few miles from Smallville, Kansas on the night of June 18th, 1980 by Martha and Jonathan Kent. I started discovering my… "powers" I guess, very slowly and with quite a few accidents. When I was thirteen my dad showed me the ship I had been found in, told me what little he knew about it, and gave me my spike-thing. I've been trying to find where I came from ever since."

There it was. His life in short laid bare to a near stranger who somehow was one of the closest friends he had.

"Thank you," she whispered, looking up at him with newfound respect. Despite their differences in height, her face seemed so close to his and it wasn't hard to lean in with a soft peck on her lips. Darcie sat stunned for a moment, her cheeks taking on a rosy tint and she glanced back up at him skeptically. "That was a kiss, right?"

He chuckled, not minding the odd look he earned from a nearby passenger as he playfully nuzzled her dark hair. "I don't know, do you want another one?"

She smiled, a good, warm smile, and shook her head.

"I think I found a word to describe you," she said thoughtfully as she removed his wool hat to hesitantly tousle his hair, possibly the most affectionate thing she had ever done.

"What is it?" he asked and she smiled again. "It's actually two words. 'Boy Scout, noun. An honest, friendly, and typically naive man'. Quoted from the New Oxford American Dictionary. And I am referring to naive as innocent, not as in having poor judgment."

Clark nodded, not exactly listening as he stared intently at the back of her head before lifted one of her dark locks to compare it to his hair, examining her black strands excruciatingly.

"We have the exact same hair color," he said after a moment and Darcie dismissed it, already aware of the fact. "Yeah, eye color too."

That caught him by surprise and he gently turned her head to face him, looking intensely into her eyes. She blinked, revealing the deep blue of a stormy sea flecked with gold, intelligent looking, and more attractive than he wanted to admit. Months of studying his own eyes in an attempt to discover what made him able to see so for had helped him memorize his iris' pattern and Clark could confirm that their eyes really were the same brilliant hue of azure, though his was maybe a shade or two brighter.

"Do you think we might be related somehow?" he asked, letting her go. She shrugged and subconsciously suppressed a wince at the movement, still sore from the night before. "It is possible, though highly unlikely. There are a lot of people out there with black hair and blue eyes."

"But not a lot who also happen to be aliens," he whispered and she shrugged again, concentrating on the nearly-finished sudoku. It wasn't long before she finished it and sighed in disappointment. "I am sorry."

"What for?"

"I was too slow. I can usually finish one in less than a minute, but this…" she trailed off, looking out the window at the cold grey sky that enshrouded the small plane, completely alone in the white. Without noticing it she settled back against his side, still watching the frosty window with a distant look, failing to acknowledge when he put his arm around her shoulders.

"Tired?" he asked softly and she hesitated for a moment before nodding. Clark smiled to himself, humming what he hoped was a soothing tune as she began to drift off. It wasn't long before her breathing slowed down to a sleepy rate, her breaths long and even, only broken by the occasional twitch or gasp caused by a fleeting nightmare which he would quiet with a gentle kiss on her hair. It was definitely affection.