Chapter 8: Cultivation

So the entire world was to be rewritten for the sake of Clark Kent. Admittedly, a pretty shitty world at the moment, which could be said to be Clark's fault in more ways than one. Of course, if Lois went along with this, she would not so much view it as saving him as fixing his mess.

The others had their known places in this new – old – world, where their lives would intersect again. Clark Kent and his mother, Martha, and his friend, Lex Luthor. And Clark's little time machine.

For Lois, that world could only be known as a collection of events that, for good or ill, had never happened: She never worked for Lionel, and so never met Kal, at least not in precisely that way – in the lobby of LuthorCorp, Lionel's pointedly brief introduction with the slightest ironic pause before saying his ward's name. Lois had only understood that later: Kal had just begun insisting on the name given him by his biological parents, dropping the "El" back then in a concession to normalcy. Shortly thereafter, Kal had taken to haunting the floor of LuthorCorp where Lois had been given a corner desk in one of the less well-appointed offices. She had noticed him lingering, and eventually made him talk to her.

In the other world, that whole strange period of her life had never happened. There, she could not have met Lex the same way either, of course – brought together through the machinations of Chloe, conspiring with her cousin to get a face-to-face encounter with the suspected end of her investigation into Lillian's fate.

There, some years later, she had never fled from Metropolis, out of Kal-El's reach. And there, so many people would not have had to die.

That made it worth the effort to correct the course.

On the other hand, it struck her that if some things in her life remained unchanged, there was a reasonable chance she knew Clark Kent. Something she could almost consider a known factor: She knew the idiot who had caused all this. Remind me to smack him when I see him again, she told herself.

When she saw him again … when Lex figured out how to bring him back. Erase Kal and replace him with a stranger.

Lex had explained what he thought had to be done, and that Kal, who was waiting outside, had agreed to help.

"I just need to study this thing and see if Dolman really did devise a way to revert the timeline," Lex said. "Kal-El is going to show me as much as he's figured out. So we've got to take that ring away – I don't know, to the second floor, outside –"

"Hold it." Martha interrupted him. "Lex, you can't just walk in here and tell me that you want to completely alter our entire lives – this family – and not expect me to want a say in it."

Lex glanced at Lois, but she merely raised her eyebrows and said nothing. She had made her own decision already, but Martha had the right to object.

"What you're asking me to do is to give up my son, the son that I love, and take on the responsibility of raising a child who … all I know of him is that in the here and now, he grew up to be a monster."

"He won't with you and Dad as his parents."

"You can't know whether that's true. You have no evidence."

"I don't need any. I know you. Who else in this world would I trust with this, but you?"

With that, Martha seemed to relent, and stepped up to her son and embraced him, and then held his face in her hands as she asked, "What about you?"

"I'm …" he began, his voice slightly choked, as if trying to avert tears. "I'm going to lose a lot," he finally said. "But, Mom, you have no idea … on the outside, how hopeless it looks. That it's just a matter of time – we can't hold him back. One way or another, this ends today. But this is the right way to do it. The best way."

Lois felt uncomfortably aware now, even if the other two weren't, of her guess that Kal would be listening. For her part, Martha looked regretfully doubtful, and Lois wondered if she shared Lois's own misgivings, the suspicion that the "best way" was a pipe dream, and if the threat of Kal-El was to end today, it could only have happened when Lex had him by the throat earlier.

"And you really trust him to help you with this?" Martha asked.

"I have to. It's not possible without him."

Martha picked up the ring. "I'm going to put this in the front room and you can let him in. Make your plans, figure out what you need to do, but just … let me think about it before you go ahead with it, okay?"

Lex nodded, and Martha left the kitchen. He turned to Lois. "Do you want to object?"

"Lex, if I objected, you would have heard about it by now," she said. "I'll go get him."

She found Kal on the porch, and was startled to see, upon following his line of sight, some uniformed men carrying Dolman's body away, placing it in a newly arrived vehicle.

"What the hell …"

Kal shrugged. "I called to have them clear it off the farm." He waved dismissively toward the men, who rapidly entered the vehicle and drove off.

Lois turned to see Martha watching the scene from the screen door. "The ring is out of the kitchen," she said, and they followed her back inside.

Lex was already at work on the device. "Did you know there's another message on here?"

Kal blinked, surprised. "No," he said as he moved to stand behind Lex.

"It was created at 9:13 p.m. and was sent at 12:44 a.m. and returned undeliverable a few seconds later. Interesting. It must have been queued up behind Clark's message."

"Let's hear it then."

A few more taps on the keyboard, and Lex said, "There's nothing to hear. It's a text message, directed to a computer … damn. Dolman sent it to himself. It's just what he said his plan was: instructions on finding the alien boy in Smallville during the meteor shower. All kinds of details about your powers, weaknesses …"

"And he never received it?" Kal asked.

"No. Apparently Clark's message, since it was sent first, changed Dolman's life enough that the address was no longer valid."

"For what it's worth, Dolman worked for Lionel in the mid-eighties. And Lionel had the influence to help Dolman get places he may not have gotten otherwise."

"There's no hope in detangling that. Maybe with Lillian around, she influenced Lionel's interests in other directions," Lex said. "But one thing's becoming clear: It's not enough for us to stop Clark's message. This device has to be destroyed, because in that other world, presumably Dolman is not dead, and he could try to send his message again, giving us a whole new set of problems."

"You'd better get to work then," Martha said. "And so will I. I realize by this evening I may have a super-powered son running the farm, but for today, I have work to do."

"I'll help," Lois volunteered. "Never been good at computers." Lex gave a chuckle of agreement, and Lois playfully narrowed her eyes. "Say nothing, Smallville."

Then Kal found himself the object of expectant attention.

"I, uh …" It amused Lois a little to see that it seemed to be Martha who unsettled him, as if Kal thought he ought now to treat her as a mother, but had no idea how. "I'll see if he needs help," he said, motioning to Lex.

"Okay," Martha said. "I had an early lunch before Lex showed up, so if you want anything to eat, there's plenty to choose from in the fridge. Lois?"

"I'm good," she said, grabbing an apple from a bowl on the counter as she followed Martha outside.

They set to work tending the gardens, which Martha had maintained, still selling her organic produce on an individual basis. The Farmers' Market, where the Kents' stand had once been a staple, was now out of the question, she told her daughter-in-law, but she kept a number of loyal customers who made the trip out to the farm.

"So you've survived. We really had no way of knowing how you were doing," Lois said.

"I've survived. With a lot of help from other people. And not just from people I knew – sometimes out-of-towners, strangers, would come here to buy produce – I think they thought patronizing me was a form of resistance. You could tell by the way they kept nervously looking over their shoulders," she said with a laugh.

It felt good, healthy, to be on the ground, digging in the dirt, muddying the clothes Kal's lackey had given her. The overcast sky no longer seemed grim, but gentle, promising rain for the gardens. The vegetables of resistance, Lois thought, cheerily yanking up a weed.

She asked Martha, "Do you wish you had left when Lex asked you to?"

Martha paused in her work, leaning on her rake. "My reasons for staying may not have been good enough, if I had known how bad it would get here. I don't think Jonathan would have wanted me to live through this just to keep the farm. But now it's the people – the friends who have stood by me, made sure that I got by – it's hard to think of leaving them behind."

"Let's hope Lex's plan works then, because if it doesn't, I really don't think he's going to let you stay this time."

Martha just shook her head and resumed working.

"You don't think it's going to work, do you?"

"No, I don't. I'm willing to give my son the benefit of the doubt, but …" She attacked the ground a little too fiercely, then added, "I also don't know if I share his conviction that I could make this all better, that I could raise a child like that."

"Rest assured that you couldn't have done worse."

"Maybe. But how do you even … How do you discipline a boy who is stronger and faster than any human could be, including his parents?"

"Believe it or not, it's my impression that once upon a time he was a fairly mild-mannered child. When I met him, he was only then starting to rebel against Lionel."

Lois had encouraged Kal in that, there was no doubt – even pushed him. By the time Lionel had driven her away, the battle had been set to escalate.

She told Martha, "Although, by then, Lionel had discovered the means to control him."

"The Kryptonite?"

"Oh, it wasn't every day, or even every week but, yes."

"But that's torture to him!"

"Lethal, if you go too far."

Martha looked appalled, but Lois would not let herself feel that again – outrage on Kal's behalf. But still she said, "I tried to get him to just leave, back then. But Lionel's grip was far more than physical."

After a silence, Martha said, "You've said before … he killed Lionel?"

"I could never prove it, but I believe it."

"Even knowing there may have been some provocation, the idea that he killed his father is pretty disturbing when I'm being asked to become his parent."

"Lionel wasn't my father." Lois and Martha started, and turned to see Kal standing at the edge of the garden. "Lois will tell you, that was a fiction for the public. Even then," he added, "I can plead that I was under the influence when I did it."

"Under the influence?" Martha asked, but Kal's comment had answered a question Lois had long wondered.

"Red Kryptonite," she said. Kal affirmed it with a curt nod. "It had intoxicating effects," she explained to Martha, "removing inhibition, a lot of his regard for personal safety, any kind of moral restraints …"

Martha faced Kal. "Were you on it when you killed Dr. Dolman?"

"No, I haven't used it for years, because it …" He only then appeared to grasp her meaning. "No," he said abruptly. "That was me." Lois could have almost sworn he looked ashamed. He changed the subject: "Your son seems to have things in hand. There wasn't much I could do. So I came out to see if I could help."

Once again he seemed to have to force himself to meet Martha's steady gaze.

"All right," she said. "Let's see what we can find for you to do."