Chapter 6

A light rain had begun to fall from the heavens as the town clock chimed midnight, the loud claps of the bell echoing across the town despite the water in the air. The lights of Smallville shined in the night air, as a handful of people wandered the streets. Even in a small town, there are always some people who like to stay out late. Then again, being a night own is the least of differences people here tend to have. From his vantage point, Clark couldn't see the lights of town, but he could hear the bell, its sound resounding as if trying to reach all of Kansas. He could hear the rain splatter around him, each drop falling against the metal roof of his parents' barn with a metallic tink. And he could hear the sound of his parents' breathing, slow and steady in the night as they slept a hundred feet away in their room.

Clark gazed into their room, his eyes peeling back the wooden wall of his house so he could check in on them. Jonathan and Martha Kent were sleeping soundly next to each other, his father's arm thrown over his mother. Clark smiled even as he quietly thanked them for being asleep instead of feeling…amorous.

Even before I got my super-hearing, there were nights…those walls are really not very thick. His thoughts drifted back to the summer between freshman and sophomore years of school, on one warm night when all the pillows, clothes and sheets he could put over his ears weren't quite enough to keep out the sound of his parents' activities in the next room. Annoyed, Clark had finally just leapt out of bed and started running for the hills in just his underwear, the ground presenting no challenge to his bare feet. Clark smiled. The only thing I was concerned about was that I would run into a bunch of guys camping in the woods with me in my boxers. And the only thing I was really hoping for was that I would run into a bunch of girls camping in the woods with me in my boxers. He snorted. They probably just would have laughed at me, anyway.

The rain started to grow stronger now, pounding down with greater and greater force. It didn't really matter to Clark; he wouldn't catch a cold no matter how long he stood in the rain. But he really didn't feel like getting wet. So, like he had done so many times as a boy, he leapt off the back edge of the roof, grabbing the edge of the siding with one hand and swinging himself through the open door in the second story.

Bringing him right into the middle of his Fortress of Solitude.

He glanced around in the darkness before reaching for the lightswitch connected to his desk, which with a click lit the room on a bright yellow. More than a room really, Clark's personal hideaway stretched halfway across the barn, taking up nearly the entirety of the upper level. It had originally been reserved for hay bales, but Hiram Kent had decided in a moment of fatherly care to give it to his son as a refuge from the world at large when Jonathan was thirteen – and Jonathan had returned the favor to his son.

Ma's cleaned up here, Clark observed as his eyes swept the room, surveying the piles of books that had been organized and shelved since Clark's rapid departure from Smallville nearly a year prior. The desk was immaculate, the shelves dusted, and the floor swept. Clark looked over at the old couch along the side of the room; the blanket atop hit had been changed and folded neatly, and the pillows looked freshly poofed. Clark felt a pang of drowsiness hit him, and he yawned. It has been a long day. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to lie down for a minute. I just have to be gone before Mom and Dad wake up. He plopped himself down onto the couch and reclined against the pillows, sighing as he felt the comfort of familiarity after so long from home. The sound of the raindrops was almost hypnotic, and Clark very quickly found himself asleep.

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The sky over Smallville seemed to glow a robin's egg blue as Clark bolted out of bed, his mother calling his name. Quickly, he dressed and ran downstairs to breakfast, hugging the graying-haired woman he had called his mother since the day eighteen years before when a rocketship had fallen from the sky into the Kents' back field and their lives had changed forever. He didn't know where he came from; his father held some crackpot theory that he was from another planet, but Clark – despite a love for science fiction – and his mother always laughed it off. Still, it nagged at him sometimes; his parents had hid the fact that he was adopted for seventeen years, and though he had forgiven them many times over, he still wondered as to who his true parents were.

As the clock hit seven-thirty, Clark waved goodbye to his mother and ran out the door, taking the time to give his father a hug as he ran. His father always seemed to fit right against him in his arms, the man's balding head coming barely above the six-and-a-quarter foot Clark's chin. Clark leapt into his parents' aging Ford truck and took off for school. The truck rattled down the road as Clark drove, his eyes surveying the open plains all around him – barely a tree to be seen in any direction, just fields of wheat as far as the eye could see. The nearest house to his own was a mile away, and other than that nobody for five miles in either direction. Just the way he liked it.

He pulled into the parking lot of Smallville High a few minutes before eight, only to meet up with a blond-haired, freckled boy who he recognized as his friend Pete Ross. Giving a jovial wave to Pete, he climbed up the steps and entered the tiny school, turning left at the second door and entering a small classroom. As he plopped down in his usual desk, he heard a sweet voice behind him and turned to see his oldest friend, Lana Lang. Her strawberry-blond hair was held back in a ponytail, and her light blue sweater matched her faded jeans closely. Her lightly freckled cheeks crinkled as she smiled, her deep green eyes twinkling as she looked at him. Clark smiled back at her; she had been his next-door-neighbor and best friend since preschool, when both their parents introduced them to each other for the first time.

She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Do you think we can go flying tonight?" she asked softly, making sure that no one would hear. There was a glint of glee in her eyes. Clark nodded softly and smiled, and Lana beamed. As the teacher came in and called the class to order, Clark leaned back in his chair, as a feeling of contentedness spread across him. Everything was going to be fine, he said to himself. But a nagging doubt began to spread across the back of his mind.

Wait a minute. Ma doesn't have gray hair. And Pa's as tall as me.

The doubt began spreading faster, like a black cloud in the sky.

And they told me I was from Krypton when I was fourteen. I know I'm from Krypton!

The doubt exploded, shooting across every corner of his mind as he glanced around the classroom furiously. The teacher continued to speak monotonously in the background as Clark filled with panic.

And…and Pete is black! And he left for Wichita last year! And that's not Lana! He spun to look at the cute girl next to him. She looked familiar…but more like his mother than anyone else; a younger, prettier version of Martha Kent.

Lana doesn't have that color hair, and she never wears blue, and she doesn't look or sound or smell like that, and…I never told her I could fly!

Lana looked over at him now, perplexed at his expression. "Clark?" she asked in concern.

Wait a minute…I can't fly, can I? Yes, yes I can…but I couldn't…I couldn't…

"Clark? Clark, is that you?"

Oh my God. What is this?!?

With a scream, Clark bolted out of sleep, slamming his head against the side of the couch that broke with a bang. His eyes snapped open – to see his parents standing above him, looking down in concern. His heart thudded in his ears. Sunlight streamed in through the opening in the Fortress as Martha Kent reached down and grabbed her son's hand.

"It's okay, sweetheart," she said, a smile of relief falling over her lips.