-- Chapter 7 -- Comfort --
Reo-Ra leaned back in her chair and watched her new employer, the Eradicator, piloting her ship. She didn't look like a machine much less a weapon. Reo tried not be too envious of the perfect eternal body thing. She'd never been the pretty type and it hadn't bothered her in years. Shifting her attentions to the decor, Reo spun slowly in her seat. The ship was classy, clean lines and spacious too. It was far cry from the rat-holes her career had landed her in. Running a hand along her chubby stomach, Reo couldn't fight off a chill. At least her other jobs had been about her mind and skills, not the use of her body. Feigning indifference to her situation, Reo addressed her employer. "How much longer do we have to wander around like this? I thought we had a destination. When do I meet the sperm donor?"
"I have a couple of stops to make first. Some potential coworkers of yours in this system are in imminent danger. I had a proxy-bot watching them and according to his readings I've already lost one of the potentials and the other two are on the brink," the Eradicator said. One of the walls projected an image of a plain frozen blue world. "It's called Orcus, a mining world that didn't get it's shipment of air on schedule. Under a few tons of ice and death there's a bubble of air, and that's where we're heading."
"What are you going to offer them to get them onboard with your plan?" Reo asked.
"I'll offer them their lives and money and a future, much like I did for you," the Eradicator said. "Of course they are still pre-pubescent. It will be a few years before they're of breeding significance."
"They're children? I told you that I don't take care of children," Reo said. She stared at the frozen world like it held a plague. "Children make me nervous."
"Don't worry, Reo-Ra. I'll take care of them," the Eradicator said.
A little boy stood in the middle of polished and shining living quarters. His dull orange hair hung into his brown eyes and his bottom lip was protruding nearly to his nose. His sister was sitting cross-legged and ignoring him. She was counting their food again as if the food mattered when they could hardly even breathe. Luci was only two years older, and she didn't know everything. "The air tastes really bad, Luci, and I want go out. I bet the air's better outside in the hall. So open the door!"
Tucking her more brassy orange hair behind her ears, Luci continued counting without even looking at her brother. "We have to wait here for, Dad. He told us to wait and not to open that door for anyone. You understand?" Three dehydrated meals, one bag of ground carbohydrate...there just wasn't enough food or water. Their only drink was some fermented something her parents kept over their bed. After watching the people who killed her mom suffocating on their information screen, Luci hadn't been able to make herself move for a long time, and when she did, it was too late to fill anything with water. The water was gone, and the air was bad, and her brother was awake. Little Ford was scared and mad, but at least he didn't know. He hadn't seen. "Dad put me in charge so shut up about outside."
"I don't care what Dad said," Ford shouted. The air smelled so bad: burnt and rotten. How was he supposed to breathe? Ford stormed across their living room and started mashing the key-code to the door. "We have to get some air."
Luci came to her feet and jump-tackled her brother before he could let out what was left of their air. "You little idiot, don't you know it's worse out there. There isn't any air anywhere."
"If there isn't any air anywhere, what are Mom and Dad breathing? They're out there." Ford struggled loose from his sister enough to half sit up and glared at her. "I'm ten, not a baby. What happened?"
Her mother's execution flashed through Luci's mind, but she didn't try to tell Ford that. He didn't need to know everything. "They didn't bring the air like they were supposed to and we ran out. Everybody got really upset about it and had a big fight until all the air out there was gone. We have a little air here, and I'm sure there's more air in other places. Dad is probably stuck somewhere, and he'll get to us as soon as he can." The lie came easily, and Luci refused to feel bad about hiding the truth from her brother. He was just a kid and he didn't need to know that his mom and dad were dead, one executed and the other suffocated. I can protect him.
"Are you sure? Mom and Dad are coming for us?" Ford stopped struggling and let Luci hold him. "Are you lying to me? I'm not a baby."
"I know it. You aren't a baby," Luci whispered. "We're practically the same age."
Ford didn't push her to answer the question she'd stepped around. He didn't want her to be lying. Gulping down a lungful of the thick air, Ford didn't fight his tears. No one ever told this little boy that it was shameful to cry.
A tiny swelling of redness marred an otherwise perfectly smooth creamy jaw. Chloe stared at the offending pre-pimple in her mirror and tried to decide which magic cream would best fight the potential disaster. "I will not start sophomore year with an outbreak. I will destroy you with astringent and Neutrogena soap and sulfa cream." Chloe attacked her face, scrubbing it red three times. The swelling was still there, but hopefully it wouldn't make it through the night.
Making her way back downstairs, the doorbell rang over the clatter of her dad washing the dishes. He had insisted on taking them on by himself. It was her welcome home dinner, and the guest of honor was not washing dishes. "Could you get that, Chloe? It should be Max from the plant with some time sheets. Invite him in," Gabe called.
"Got it Dad. Want me to finish the dishes? If you need to work..." Chloe's polite smile turned into a shocked stare. That wasn't Max from the plant. It wasn't anyone from the plant. Clark Kent was on her doorstep. She'd forgotten this feeling, light headed and breathless. After the first shock passed, Chloe realized that the 180 pounds of farm-alien in her doorway didn't look exactly at ease. His clear blue eyes were shadowed, and his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. How could anyone that tall and heart-achingly-beautiful look so insecure and pitiful? "Dad, it isn't Max. I'm going for a drive, okay?"
Chloe pushed Clark out the door before her dad could ask who had dropped by after ten at night. "Sorry for rushing you out like that, but my dad can be a little over-protective when it comes to late-night-jaunts with boys. You know?"
"Sorry...welcome home," Clark said. Chloe hadn't changed at all, well except for her hair. Still choppy and very blond, the cut was more stylized, probably really fashionable. She smiled the same though. When she smiled, her entire heart glowed through the expression. Clark felt a blush rising on his faced, and he could feel a mirror of Chloe's smile tugging at his lips. "I needed that, a friendly face."
Craning her neck trying to spot the Kent truck, Chloe arched an eyebrow at Clark. "You came all the way out here on foot just to get a look at my face? What happened?"
It was tempting to dump everything on Chloe right there. She was his friend, his sympathetic ear, but he didn't want to talk about his parents or Pete or even Lola. In that moment Clark just wanted her to keep smiling at him like that. "You know. I don't even want to talk about it right now. It's your first day home. Let's talk about Metropolis or school or whatever."
Chloe's grin turned mischievous, and she pulled her set of car keys out of her pocket. I know what happened with Pete today, but you want to keep this light and fluffy? I can handle light and fluffy. "I think we covered Metropolis over e-mail, and school doesn't start until Monday. Let's just drive and talk about...aliens."
Two scared parents sat together across from a silent blue rock. It had been all Martha could manage to get Jonathan to give the conversation a chance. Now she just had to make this work, start a conversation and pull her family back together. "Lola, we'd like to talk with you, clear the air between us. Until today, we thought you were only able to communicate with Clark, or we'd have tried this sooner. Do you understand us?"
Lola would have sighed if she were a creature who respired. Why hadn't Clark put her away like she'd asked? It was one thing to encourage him to communicate with his parents and reaffirm his family ties. It was quite another thing to be pulled into the middle of things and forced to expend her energy in audible conversations. "I understand you," Lola vibrated. "Audible communication is a drain on my resources, and I avoid it whenever possible."
Jonathan bit down hard on his lip at the sound of Lola's tinkling crisp voice. It was almost like hearing a bell speak. Whatever Clark said about Lola trying to help them, Jonathan wasn't buying it. The rock was manipulating everyone, and Martha's attempt at communication was just playing into that manipulation. "What are you? What do you want from Clark? Why won't you let him remember?"
Martha kicked at Jonathan and shook her head. "This isn't a confrontation. It's a conversation."
With heavy resignation Lola answered Jonathan's heated accusations. "I'm a living being, your son's friend, and I've tried to help him to remember and heal. You get angry because you're afraid and you don't understand."
"Can you help us understand? What is the relationship between Clark and you? You call it friendship, but it's different," Martha said. "It's private and continuous. It isn't friendship the way we think of it. There's a degree of intimacy...I don't understand."
Do you really want to understand then? Lola had her doubts about Jonathan, but Martha seemed willing to listen. "It's simple really. The intimacy between us is a song. Clark can hear my true voice, and I can see his. If you were a painter, an artist, and the universe were filled with blind beings that could never see or understand your expression, would you be friends with the one being who could see? I spent years alone, singing into the void without anyone to listen. Clark can hear me, and he thinks my song is beautiful."
In the Torch's freshly-waxed pre-fall-semester-clean newsroom, Clark stood at the chalkboard drawing a diagram. Sitting back and enjoying the view, Chloe tried to wrap her mind around the reality of the alien in front of her. It was the story of a lifetime, a story she couldn't write, but at least she could know. A different Clark Kent might have been afraid to share his secrets and identity with an aspiring journalist like Chloe. A different Clark would have had years of training in the value of his secrets and the danger of knowledge. It was probably the meanest, most horrible sentiment she'd ever indulged in, but Chloe liked this Clark better. So many of the things he lost with his memory were the things that kept them apart.
"Okay." Clark stepped away from the board and pointed to the full length stick-man he'd created. To the diagram's right a list labeled indeterminate held two categories, speed and strength. The left side had a list labeled determinate with a wider more interesting variety of items: x-ray vision, heat vision, ice breath, flight. Clark smiled a little self-consciously and tried not to be too nervous, but Chloe was watching him with a rapt amused expression, and he couldn't help wanting to impress her. Over their months of correspondence, she'd shown an endless fascination with what he was as well as who he was, and sharing his secrets with her felt right. "Alien physiology 101. This is your friend the Kryptonian. Just like a human, he's an organic life-form. Unlike a human, he stores energy from the sun inside his cells' crystalline-battery-things. That energy fuels his strength and speed and certain abilities." Clark paused and waited to see how Chloe would reply to that.
Better than science fiction, Chloe stared at the lists and the real life alien they applied to with no small amount of awe. I'm friends with an alien, a real alien, an alien who trusts me. There was a heady exhilaration to being the confidant, the important friend. Rising with a smirk, Chloe joined Clark by his diagram. "A little vague there, but let's see what I learned from your e-mails. You've been fast and strong your whole life. You just keep getting stronger and faster as your batteries get more charged." When Clark nodded she kept going. "Our first order of business should be to quantify those a little. I mean are we talking, your average linebacker strong, Arnold Schwarzenegger strong or maybe King Kong strong? Fast could be anywhere from the minute-mile to warp-speed. Enlighten me."
"I never really tried to quantify any of it. I guess the biggest thing I remember picking up was the truck, long story-I'll tell you later. As for speed, I can get from my house to yours in less than thirty seconds." At first Chloe didn't say anything, and Clark knew a moment's fear. What if that was too much truth for her? What if he'd scared her? God, why did Lola abandon him when he needed her input?
"Wow, so that's closer to King Kong than linebacker and way closer to warp speed than minute-mile." Chloe couldn't tear her eyes off Clark, beautiful, sweet, fascinating, alien-and-all. I could kiss him. I could touch him and stop waiting. He doesn't even remember Lana. The old fears and insecurities were still there though. Part of her just knew that Clark was going to remember everything, and forget about her. It was better not to build too much on a relationship that wasn't ever really going to happen. "The most important question next, what about the x-ray vision thing? Can you see my underwear or my femur?"
The moment she asked, Clark couldn't help looking, and he could feel his cheeks turning the color of the underwear in question. "Sorry, I know that wasn't exactly an invitation. They're red, and I could check out your femur too if you want."
Without thinking about it, Chloe crossed her arms over her chest protectively. "Hey, that wasn't an invitation." A minor invasion of privacy couldn't keep her excitement in check though. "How cool is that? What about these other abilities? How do they work?"
"Actually, they don't work yet. I haven't stored enough energy to turn them on. My DNA is kind of hanging out and waiting, you know?"
"No not completely, but I'm beginning to..."
Jonathan could hear Martha clinking dishes in the kitchen, warming up a quick dinner. With a steady hand he lifted Lola and stared through her transparent blue facets. "I don't believe you, Lola. Maybe Martha does, but you're just manipulating her, and you're feeding on Clark. You're a parasite, and I know how to deal with you." While he was still alone, Jonathan dropped the blue rock into their lead box.
"Jonathan, dinner is ready," Martha called.
Snapping the lid securely shut, Jonathan headed for the door outside. "I'll be just a minute. There's something I have to take care of."
