Spending My Summer Vacation at School

He woke slowly, which was unusual for him, and spent long minutes contemplating the ceiling. His hand rubbed absently at the scar tissue on his chest, already fading. Whatever programming had been left in the ship wasn't going to control him that way any longer, at least. But did the lack of coercion change anything? He could still hear the echoes of the alien (father's) voice in his mind. He was still Kal-El, with the weight of that command that possibly had been built into his genes. Could he be Kal-El, and still be Clark too?

He didn't know. He was still scared. Of himself, of the ship, of destiny. Everything.

He sighed and rolled over. He knew one thing, he wasn't scared of the stack of peanut butter sandwiches he could smell, or the bottles of juice and soy milk (SOY MILK! -- he could just hear Jonathan Kent's outraged voice holler) he found in the refrigerator. He grinned through the peanut butter stuck to his lips. It didn't taste like milk, but it was pretty good, and there was no one here to lecture him about drinking straight from the bottle.

His smile faded at the short note beside the plate of sandwiches. Yes, Nicole had cautioned him that she had to leave. Yes, she promised to be back when she could. Yes, he had promised to believe that he wasn't being abandoned.

But her absence still hurt. There was no one else who knew what it was like, to have to be so careful of the so-easily-breakable people around him all the time.

The doubt and guilt and hurt settled in its accustomed place behind his eyes. He sighed and took a shower and picked a t-shirt at random and went exploring on his own.

He went straight to Level 3 (there is no level three, snickered an old memory) just to prove he could, and was promptly terrified by a shout behind him. "Clark! Kal-El!" Clark turned just as an undersized teenager hurtled into him, practically jumping up and grabbing him and spinning around and dancing with him at the same time. "You came! You came! Oh, boy! Have you gotten settled in yet? Met everybody? Ready to get started on the tests? C'mon, I'll show you what you'll need to set up...."

Clark's bemusement at the younger boy's hyperactivity slid suddenly to an all too familiar cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had recognized the kid immediately, just from Lake's and Nicole's off-hand references: Wynter did indeed look like a mutant, his slightly bulging head accentuated by unkempt hair that would have been in hopeless knots if it weren't as fine and straight as a cat's; sock-footed (two different colors, both with holes), his shirt in a condition that Jonathan Kent wouldn't have used for a tool rag. The super-brained boy had pronounced "Kal-El" with a Kryptonian accent so unnervingly perfect that it echoed in Clark's mind -- Wynter probably spoke Clark's native tongue (Kal-El, Kal-El) better than Clark did himself. His eyes glittered with enthusiasm and terrifying intelligence.

Clark met those eyes, and all his life-long reflexive paranoia came back. "Tests...?"

"Math and physics through five dimensions at least, biology and chemistry with interrelated applications, history and philosophy from both Asian and European viewpoints, communications and game theory, languages.... We need to know your true comprehension levels, so we can design you a program for your self-study that doesn't either leave out something unexpectedly crucial or bore you to tears. How you managed to keep from going insane from ennui in regular school, I'll never know. You must have self-control to rival John's." Wynter gave him an odd look. "You don't look happy about it. Am I moving too fast? Sorry, sometimes I forget that other people need a break from school."

Now Clark was embarrassed. "No, that's not it. I'm really looking forward to seeing how far I can go. I just .. I mean, my parents -- the Kents -- were always warning me...."

Wynter managed to look sympathetic and disgusted at the same time. "You've been watching too much bad sci-fi, and I do mean sci fi, as opposed to science fiction. We'll start by putting Asimov on your evening reading list; I want you through the first hundred of his books by the end of the week. Let the librarians know what your preference for order is, fiction or non or mixed, and they'll have them sorted."

Clark blinked. "The first HUNDRED? Wynter, even I'm not that fast."

"You will be. The analysis team can teach you speed reading and mnemonics, which you're going to need anyway. We have a lot to get through just to get you on course and up to where you ought to be, and not much time to do it in, no matter what decision you make about the rest of your life. Damn John's midwest team for not following through on that meteor fall, anyway. They should have found you and started you on special training a decade ago. Though to be fair, it wasn't their fault they were killed in that militia disaster."

The cold feeling was back. "You mean, made a project of me."

"Well, of course created a project for you! Stars and planets, John creates projects and special training for kids if they so much as survive a flood or win a science fair, though most of them don't pan out and never know they've been watched and gotten a boost. We -- John, that is -- found almost all the Specials that way, and about half the rest of the team. The other kids at least got some decent schooling out of it. The usual training and education available to the public these days is so bad that it's a wonder the whole damn technological infrastructure hasn't collapsed, much less that we're still managing anything in terms of research and development into anything new."

"...Oh." Clark reigned in his thoughts and firmly forced them on a different path from the one they usually automatically followed. "I'm sorry. I guess I misunderstood. I'm just use to thinking that, that I'm," he caught himself one second before using the word "freak," which would have been gauche, considering the company, and stumbled to, "that people would want to, like, exploit people who are, you know, different."

Wynter sighed and took out his pocket communicator. "Note to Kate: put all the books dealing with experimenting on aliens into the controlled-access section, and put a big sign on the door: Off Limits To Clark Kent And / Or Kal-El Until We Beat Some Sense Into Him And Some Of His Paranoia Out Of Him." He clicked the Star-Trek model phone shut. "Seriously, Clark, you can read that crap if you want to, but there's a few million other better things for you to read while you're here, so don't waste your time."

"And actually, the only place in the complex that is absolutely off-limits to you, under any and all circumstances, I don't care if there's a nuclear bomb going off, is Lab 8. The kryptonite room is under triple personnel-recognition lock while you're here, and the vaults are three centimeters of lead with steel casing, but there's always the chance of atomic particulate contamination. In fact, you're not even supposed to be in the Lab 6 through 10 wing at all without both a science partner and a guard escort strong and fast enough to get you out immediately if something goes wonky. Eight has its own sealed air supply, and our HVAC crew is very good, but there are such things as microcracks and Murphy's Laws. We would strongly prefer that you not go into the 6-through-10 wing at all if any Lab 8 experiments are underway. Not that we have any scheduled while you're here, but all the contingencies any of us could come up with in our worst nightmares have been planned for."

"As for exploiting?" Wynter grinned suddenly. "Is it 'exploiting' to want to help someone use all their talents, be the very best they can be? I'll grant you that some sports coaches and music masters push a little hard, but everyone needs a good kick in the pants to motivate themselves every now and then." He mimed kicking at Clark's rear end, and Clark dodged, laughing with the giddiness of sudden relief.

"Don't! You'll break your foot."

"Oh, well. Maybe just meeting John will serve the same purpose." Wynter seized his hand and dragged the unresisting and still chuckling Clark down a side hall and into a room lined with computer cubicles, half of which were occupied. "Math tests first, though. Push that button if you need help, like if it's too noisy or someone's bothering you. I gotta get back to work. See you probably around dinner time."

Clark grinned and watched his exit at x-ray, unashamed of using his talents in this particular environment. Wynter went down the hall and around the corner with the quickness of a typical hyperactive teenager, jogging a little, not as if he were running from or to anything, but as if he were indeed just busy and didn't care how it looked. Clark shook his head. Most of the other people in the room had glanced at him, smiled genially, and gone back to their own, presumably, lessons. He wondered how many of them were "freaks."

Just before Wynter turned the corner, though, just as Clark was about to turn his attention to the computer, Wynter looked back -- as if knowing that Clark was watching -- and hollered, "And if you misuse "like" or "you know" that way again, I'll tell Lake!"

The computer gave him a series of establishing questions and ID handshakes and guided him into the first of the math tests. He chuckled softly to himself. Geez, he was spending his summer vacation at school! Only this time he didn't have to hold back, in fact, he was being challenged. And the odds of someone bringing a meteorite to science class looked a little on the slim side. Clark grinned at the computer. The extra-hardened, high-speed keyboard wasn't just for him, it was standard equipment on all the machines in the room. Suddenly, all his differences in this world didn't seem to matter so much.

He made it through integral calculus one in two hours, and mentally gave himself a 95%, assuming there was always a brain fart somewhere. The computer wasn't telling. (He'd gone out of his way to beat the typing test and clocked out at 3000 words per minute. The computer had seemed grumpy ever since. He could hear someone on the other side of the wall, presumably on monitor duty, still chortling.) He took one look at the next set of questions and shied away. Time for a break. He wandered out, looking around.

"Clark?" The voice behind him was familiar. Clark turned and took in the sight of a boy his age, with long brown hair and bright penetrating eyes, also familiar. In the two seconds it took him to see through the changed countenance, the boy grinned and walked up to him. "Or are you going by Kal-El here? Good to see you again, man!"

"Cyrus?" It wasn't the long hair that had fooled him, it was the relaxed and happy expression.

"Cyrus, Bill, whatever." The boy he remembered as haunted and scared was gone. The self-confident, almost swaggering teen shrugged. "Headed for a snack? Me too. You better not be skipping out on Wynter's program, though. He'll tell Lake. And while nobody much cares about names around here, for god's sake don't call him Wynt the wart. Last time Nicole did that, he put a mechanical shark in her bunk. No telling what he'd come up with for you. Outside of Lab 8, of course. But don't even ask about the see-through shorts."

Clark immediately went through a dozen scenarios involving see-through shorts, and blanched, deciding not to even mention that topic again. "It's good to see you again too, Cyrus. Bill. I never got a chance to apologize for -- last time."

"You did what you had to do." Cyrus stopped and faced Clark, suddenly frighteningly serious. "If you hadn't done that, if I had been forced to live with that guilt for the rest of my life, I might not ever have been able to come back. It hurt, yes. At the time, it hurt like hell. Even Randal wasn't sure I would make it, and he's a more sensitive empath than I could ever have nightmares about being. But if you hadn't been who you are -- not what you are, but who you are -- and done what you did, then I would still be a vegetable in some clinic some place, eaten alive by failing myself. Or worse. Thank whatever gods John may still believe in that he got to me before Lionel's people did.

"You made me face the truth. You gave me a conscience to live up to. And that's the only reason I could get out of that hell hole in my own mind. I don't owe you my life. I owe you my sanity. I hope you never have to know what that means."

Clark swallowed, praying to whatever gods Kryptonians had believed in that his incipient tears didn't show. "I never meant to hurt you. I just knew I couldn't let you go on believing in a hope that wasn't going to ever come true."

Cyrus put a hand on Clark's shoulder, very deliberately, and smiled. "Watch this trick." He closed his eyes, and drew in a slow breath. "Stop it, Clark. You bear no blame. Kal-El is not responsible for all the problems in the universe. You do what you can. We all do whatever we can. That's the definition of a good person. And you have done well. You are not responsible for the things you cannot change, or be, or do."

Peace and acceptance and happiness flooded through Clark like moonlight, intangible, ethereal, unmistakable. Clark gasped. "Did you just -- how did you do that?"

Bill's eyes blinked open, full of mischief and pride. "I'm a healer, my friend. The best in the world, according to John. Ever read Elfquest? Shoot. Oh well, I'll have Wynter put it on your study list. I make Leetah look like a hobbit. Whoops, mixed genres there. And I'm only beginning to get a handle on just how far I can go with the reading part. Ran says I'm so slow at getting past the block because I'm afraid I'll end up like Gem on that old Star Trek show. Hah! It's all his fault, he's the one who made me watch it. That show is so old that Kirk had to be FORCED to kiss Uhura, like Nichelle Nichols isn't still one of the hottest babes -- uh, excuse me, women -- on this planet or off it.

"Never mind. The point is, I owe you a big one. You're ... you have this martyr complex, just because you think that you ought to be able to fix everything around you that goes bad. That isn't the way the world works, Clark. Kal-El. Bad things happen. To everyone. Some of it you can fix. Some of it you can work with. Some of it you can't. You're not the only one in the world when it comes to that, you know? At least you have that in common with practically everyone else in the known universe. So give yourself a break every once in awhile, okay? Or Wynter will give you more tests."

Clark laughed. "Thanks for the warning. The math is tough enough, I don't think I want to even see what the psychology section is like. Cyrus -- Bill -- thanks. You can't believe how great it is to see," he gestured generally, "Things working out."

Cyrus favored him with that uncomfortably intent stare again. ESP, Clark thought. No wonder Bill was always in a bad mood, being around people who were always giving him a hard time, even if only in their minds. It would be like when his supersensitive hearing and x-ray vision first kicked in, only all the time, and in thoughts instead of just sounds and sights.

"Yeah," Bill said softly. "For some of us, things are A-OK for a change." He seemed on the verge of saying more, then shook his head. "C'mon, let's go raid the junk food storage. I bet Wynter and Nicole didn't bother to tell you how to fake out the lock. Probably wanted to see if you'd rip the door off. And Kal-El -- " he hesitated, holding his hand out as if to touch Clark again, stopping just a few bare centimeters from his skin.

Clark experienced a moment of dizziness, gone so fast he wasn't sure if he'd imagined it, or was just tired, or needed a sugar fix. Or if something, someone, had flickered through his mind, a not-quite-expert scanning, a healing touch unhappily aborted. Possibilities danced on the edge of comprehension. Maybe Cyrus was uncomfortable touching him. Maybe he felt too much with his contact abilities. Maybe Clark scared him. All too often, Clark thought gloomily, he scared himself.

William Cyrus took a deep breath. He couldn't think of any way to disabuse Clark of his self-doubt without causing him even more turmoil. Maybe Randal or John could. Someone was going to have to. Clark was hurting. Bill could understand it, a little, having been a lone freak convinced of his own alien-ness for more than a decade, but Clark had to live with the reality of that every day. And to bear the weight of a heritage he didn't even want. And the survivor's guilt, and not being able to be damaged the way his fragile friends could be, and separation anxiety, and the vicious voice in his head, and being able to do what no one else in the world could, and now wondering if he'd be forced to do something that appalled him just because it would be so easy for him....

Cyrus made a snap decision and took both Clark's hands in his, just for a second, pouring a flash flood of all the healing power at his command into the alien teen. It was a gross violation of protocol and personal responsibility, but it was making him sick just to be around Kal-El and all his ragged and raw emotions. For one second, he did what he could do.

Then he let go and slapped Clark on the back. Emotional control was one of the reasons Randal had made him watch even the most awful of the Star Trek episodes in all its incarnations, and he was getting pretty good at it. "Just let me know," he said in almost-unfeigned joviality, "whenever you need a hand. Hey, here's the sandwich locker. Just don't use heat vision on the bread, you'll set off the fire alarms."

Clark stared at him in consternation, and wonder, and in a very alien emotion indeed: the idea that he hadn't actually hurt someone after all. Cyrus, for his part, vowed to himself to work harder at getting past the mental block that made him so afraid of sharing other people's pain, to do whatever he could do for the last son of Krypton, to whom he owed so much.

Cyrus showed Clark the cheat-bypass that Wynter had snuck on the food locker, and heaped Clark with piles of sandwich makings (vegetarian cheese? Clark wondered), giggling conspiratorily. "Go hide these in your room. By the time logistics finds out we've been here, you'll probably have eaten it all anyway. I know I did."

"Um, they'll know we've been here?" Clark looked around. "How, fingerprints?"

Bill snorted. "Fingerprints! John hasn't used fingerprints for ID since the moon landing, I bet. Sure they'll know, but they don't really care, no matter how much they gripe. It's not stealing, it's just getting an early start on tomorrow's lunch. We're actually saving them work. It's not like they're gonna tell Lake or anything."

Clark looked at him, and for a moment, so did Kal-El. Cyrus met the sudden alien presence behind the hazel-blue eyes, and shivered. "Why does everyone use that phrase?" said Kal-El's voice. "Is 'telling Lake' some particular protocol I should know about?"

Cyrus braced himself against the sudden coldness. "I thought you'd met her."

"Yes, she and Nicole were my" (Clark's, Clark's) "first contact with the Specials."

It was the Cyrus personality, not Bill's, who had first recognized Clark as an alien, and Cyrus was the only one who could speak to Kal-El now. "Lake Anderson is a cold-blooded killer," he said evenly. "She has killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, with her mind alone. With a thought. She is far less human than you. And far more dangerous."

Clark blanched and pulled away. Kal-El took that as a challenge. "Indeed?"

Bill looked back sharply at the boy who had first befriended him, who he now barely recognized through the other's terribly suppressed pain. "You have enough on your plate right now," he said softly. "You don't want to know about the world Lake lives in." He gestured to the pile of snack food. "Go hang out and look around for awhile. I have to get back to work."

Clark was left staring after him, hands full of food. Kal-El was left nowhere at all.