Special off-schedule update cuz it's mah birthday y'all and imma do something nice.
Gonna go see the Phantom of the Opera this weekend!
Chapter Fifteen: The Butterfly's Wings
Though sprung from his jail cell on bail over forty minutes ago and released into the custody of his superior, Agent Trask stewed like over-cooked beef in an alarmingly tidy office.
He had been so close this time! Closer than he had ever imagined himself getting! After seven years of running in circles, chasing down every lead and every dead end, he had finally laid eyes on Prometheus again! He'd had the bastard dead to rights and then there had been all sorts of interference.
It was bad enough with that delusional bint calling herself a cop, but the pushy reporter? Her and all of her little co-conspirators, rallying around the Prometheus with the idea that they were protecting him.
They have no idea what they were standing beside. If they had known... If they had known, they wouldn't have been so eager to defend it. Trask thought, a quiet rage making his hands curl into fists.
Just like last time, no one believed me. It's like he influenced them, controlled them! That must be it! He must have some mental powers over the weak-minded! Something that makes them blind and dumb to his true nature. That means I'm the only one who sees him for what he is.
For now.
I'll have to make them see. I'll make them all see!
Were Trask anywhere else and speaking out loud, he probably would have dissolved into maniacal laughter worthy of any world-conquering villain. But even as it crossed his mind to give just a token sinister chuckle to properly set the tone, the office door opened and he twitched at the sound of the deadbolt clicking.
In marched the most precise-looking man Trask had ever seen in the last fourteen years. He was older, into his fifties, and that age showed on his face. His light brown hair was streaked gray and he had more lines in his face than a Scrabble board. His dark blue uniform was decorated with his service banners and down the straps of each shoulder were four gold stars. His shoes were shiny and polished, his trouser legs precisely creased, and his collar was so starched it could have stood at attention with the best of them. This was Trask's military contact and the off-the-record director of Bureau 39. The agent got to his feet and stood respectfully in something that could have passed for an attentive parade rest.
The general didn't pay him any attention at first. He marched past Trask like the agent was a potted plant and set down several official-looking folders on his desk. One of them was already open and the general was frowning at its contents like he had been personally offended. Trask had the feeling that the folder contained Einspahr's report about the clusterfuck at the Daily Planet. It had been a few hours since then; that was enough time to cough up an outline of the events.
Several moments stretched into a full minute before General Sam Lane turned around. "Trask, what the hell were you doing out there today?!" he demanded.
"Making progress." Trask replied.
"You stormed the Daily Planet with assault rifles and no arrest warrant and in all likelihood, further damaged the legitimacy of this organization. That, Agent Trask, is the opposite of making progress." General Lane corrected.
"But he was there! The Prometheus was there!" Trask pointed out hotly. "Seven years I've been waiting to find him again and I have! We just don't know where he is, we can actually bring him in! There's no way he can escape--"
"Silence!" General Lane shouted and Trask subsided. "You're not grasping the full scale of your actions, agent. You stormed into a building full of the most goddamned go-get-'em press reporters in the entire city. A building that, on a daily basis, happens to contain my daughter who has no issue whatsoever with calling for accountability from the government. She's made a living out of it! We can't smother this; Lois won't let it happen. I would bet ten dollars that there will be a story on this in the evening edition with her name in the byline if I didn't already know it would happen."
"General Lane, with all due respect, I highly doubt your daughter would actually be capable of getting the public to listen to her." Trask said assuredly. "She's a rookie reporter as it is. She'd have it hard enough to get people to take her seriously due to her inexperience and that's if she was a man. But she's just a girl."
And anyone with enough sense didn't listen to a woman. Especially if they were the ones who thought they could break society's strictures and become something they couldn't ever become.
"Trask, you need to break the habit of underestimating and under-valuing women. It's going to get you killed before it puts you in jail. I've had to wipe a lot from your record just to keep you in the field, but I can just as easily put it back in and then make it public." General Lane growled. Lois was a fine young woman even for all her faults, and Lucy was shaping up to match her sister with equal fervor; Ella had done well by them. "Remember, I have a daughter who'd no doubt love to get her hands on you now that she's seen your face. Her pen's poison. Given the chance, she'll rip you apart."
He could see at a glance, however, that Trask had no intention of attempting to break his ill-advised habit. A woman just wasn't a threat in his mind. He barely saw them as functional human beings, much less as people who were smarter and more clever and capable of out-witting him. It was probably poor form to wish the wrath of Lois Lane upon him, but General Lane felt that it might teach the agent a valuable lesson.
"What you did this morning was stupid and hasty and poorly conceived. I thought you knew better than to go charging in like a mad bull. Your zealousness to capture the Prometheus is making you sloppy and that's unacceptable." the general went on, scowling. "That stunt could have set us back, undone more than a decade of careful work, and ruined our credibility. Presidential campaigning starts in earnest next year and to get our man in the Oval Office, it has to look like he's backing something legit. Do you understand that? If there's any significant fall-out from your little escapade that injures our chances in the election, I'm blaming you."
He jabbed a finger at Trask's sternum to make sure he got the point.
"Sir, I want the Prometheus. That's all I want." the agent said. "I've been waiting too long. Frankly, I've about had it with your schedules and politicking--"
"And all the little fiddly things like rules and regulation and standard procedure?" General Lane interrupted, an eyebrow canted. "Agent Trask, you're a member of the United States government. Whether you like it or not, you are beholden to the constraints of the law. You will operate within legal parameters. You will do this properly, even if we have to fabricate a crime to pin on Mr. Kent first."
It was Trask's turn to cant an eyebrow questioningly, because he was ninety percent sure he hadn't heard correctly. General Lane was one of the most rule-abiding, organized people that he knew; the man pratically shat regulation. He was a straight-laced, by the book, yessir, no sir, tighter than a drum military officer because he didn't know how to be anything else. So there was no way he could have said...
"Pin a crime?..." the agent repeated uncertainly.
"That's correct." General Lane nodded. "I looked into it while you were enjoying the view from the Saint Dorfman facility. Whoever 'Clark Kent' is underneath it all, he's considered a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. No record of his birth, naturally, but the adoption was fully legal. He has no priors and certainly no criminal record to speak of. No one will believe that he's guilty of anything until he's guilty of something."
Trask whistled lowly. "That's a tall order, General Lane, framing someone. Gonna be hard to make it stick." he commented. "How are we supposed to go about making the Prometheus a threat to national security?"
"We? Don't be stupid, Trask. We can never afford to get our hands dirty." the general said, shaking his head. He tucked a folder under his arm. "No, this is a job for someone else. Come along."
He led the agent out of the office and down the white-washed, spic-and-span clean corridor. Fort Jurgens was the only military installation within the vicinity of Metropolis and it was a small one; more to house the local branch of the Air and Army National Guard than a properly outfitted base for the United States Army. Roughly pentagonal in shape, it was hemmed in by three layers of chain-link fence topped in barbed wire with guard towers located at the five corners. There was a large vehicle garage for the armored humvees and troop transport trucks and at least half a dozen Stryker Infantry Assault vehicles. There were also several aircraft hangars housing the small squadron of A-10 Thunderbolts and Pave Hawk helicopters.
It was the latter that General Lane led Trask to. There were no grunts to guard the door, which immediately struck Trask as odd, because weren't there usually grunts to guard the door? Sure Fort Jurgens was not a high-profile installation (many people seemed unaware that it existed), but weren't there always those young pimply recruits who had to do the undesirable things like stand guard beside a door for eight hours?
He found out why once he got inside. Perched in a folding chair under the nose of a Thunderbolt was the goliath-like form of Sofia Gigante. She had crossed her legs, her elbow propped on her knee with her chin on her curled fingers. Her heavy brow hooded her eyes and her smile was sharp and wicked as Trask came into sight, as if she were the hyper-intelligent raptor that had just laid eyes on some particularly dumb prey.
Behind her was a tall black man with shoulders wider than Trask's torso was long, the outline of everything from his pecs down to his abs visible through the thin fabric of his shirt. His yellow eyes followed Trask with the same sort of predatory raptor-like calculation.
Sofia had no other enforcers around her.
"Trask, I believe you are already familiar with Sofia Gigante." General Lane said, gesturing to the large-framed woman. "She controls the Metropolis branch of the Gigante crime family."
"We've met. She broke my hand." Trask said, glaring at her.
"If only that taught you to respect a woman's boundaries." Sofia said. Her smirk widened, if anything. "You should feel fortunate. I could have crippled your arm up to the shoulder."
Trask colored red in the cheeks at the reminder and inhaled to start a dick-measuring contest.
"I'm glad you two are acquainted. That makes this a bit easier." General Lane said dryly, cutting that one off before it could start. "Trask, behave yourself. Mrs. Gigante is a worthy asset. Through her, we have very useful connections to Gotham."
"You're welcome." Sofia said throatily. She straightened up in the chair, as if to show off the broadness of her own shoulders.
"She broke my hand! Why do you keep her around?" Trask demanded.
"I'm sure she broke a lot more than your hand at the time." General Lane commented. "Didn't you hear me, agent, or are you deliberately being deaf? Mrs. Gigante is a well-placed individual. She is what you might call a necessary evil."
"All due respect, sir, what is that supposed to mean?" Trask asked.
General Lane made a face like he was talking to a singularly dumb person and from his perspective, he was. Trask's mind was about as complex as a five-note xylophone laboriously churning out the alphabet song and not half as melodious. He was a dumb solider, conditioned to take orders and not expend much brain power on thinking for himself. In comparison, General Lane's mind was a two-hundred piece orchestra performing Flight of the Bumblebee at full tempo.
"A kingdom can fall, for want of a nail. Do you know what that means, Agent Trask? No, of course you don't." General Lane said dismissively. "How about the Butterfly Effect? I imagine you're much more familiar with that. A butterfly may flap its wing in Brazil and set off a tornado in Texas. Or create typhoons in Taiwan. The tiniest change in the beginning could have a catastrophic effect on the outcome. An outcome we don't want to see. And that is where enterprising folks like Sofia Gigante come into the picture."
Trask sneered. "I thought the government and the military didn't associate themselves with criminals."
"We associate ourselves with you." General Lane sneered back. "For the past decade, Metropolis's criminal underworld has operated without a definitive leader. The police have come closer and closer to shutting it down entirely."
"Well, isn't that a good thing?" Trask inquired. It was what people always talked about; making crime obsolete.
"It depends on your perspective." General Lane said. "The truth is, crime can never truly be eradicated because it is a vital component to society as a whole. However, you cannot allow crime and lawlessness to overrun a city, otherwise you end up with Gotham. You need someone to direct it. Control it. Prune out undesirable elements on either side of the law. Just like the light side of the law must be disciplined and ordered, so must too be the dark side. My daughter Lois is well-intentioned, but even with her record, she is still shockingly naive. She doesn't understand that good must be balanced with evil. That balance is in constant sway and it is women like Mrs. Gigante who will keep it from tipping too far to either side."
Trask busted out laughing, an ugly sort of crow-like laugh. "Gigante? She's a dime-store thug! And a girl! No one sends a girl to do a man's job!" he said disparagingly.
Hands larger than his head closed around his neck and chin with the same abruptness of a striking snake. Trask's laughter gulped to a halt and his knees went wobbly when he realized the hands were well-positioned to snap his neck. Sofia moved around in front of him, still grinning that predatory raptor grin. The fingers flexing ever so slightly against his neck, Trask knew it was in his best interest not to struggle.
"He was about your size." Sofia said.
"Who was?" the agent asked.
"The first man I killed." Sofia answered. "I was sixteen when I snapped his neck. My father saw the first kill as something of a test. If we could end a man's life, we were ready to take our place in the family business. If not, we would be allowed to pursue our own goals and desires. My goal and desire was to pursue the family business. I say he was about your size, but I was a foot shorter than I am now. Nonethless, his body presumably still rests on the bottom of the Monchant River."
She took a step forward so she was up inside the agent's personal space, bent over slightly to be at his eye-level.
"Do you really want to test me, little man? Do you want to test your soft fleshy underbelly against the armor I've quenched and hardened on the bloodied streets of Gotham? You don't even know who I am. I am Sofia Falcone Gigante. My father is Carmine Falcone, the head of Gotham's Roman Empire. He is the necessary evil that contains the tide of horrors that is the Crime Capital of America.
"Do you know why you've never hunted in Gotham? Because it is the Roman who keeps your metas in line. He offers them a place in the world they would not have otherwise. He offers them a purpose, security. There are metas out there, shunned by the strictures of society, who would sign away a kidney for the basic necessities. My father supplies living quarters and financial security to them. He had won their respect and he respects their power in turn. You only fear them, because you know in your heart that they are stronger than you. In your fear, you rampantly destroy what has the potential to be so beautiful. The power of a meta should be channeled into the greater good, not indiscriminately snuffed out."
Her eyes flicked up to look over Trask's shoulder.
"I want you to think about the man holding your neck and the strength in his fingers. Twelve hundred and fifty pounds per foot of torque to break a man's neck. Twelve hundred and fifty pounds to this man is a pebble. A pebble!" Sofia held up two fingers barely millimeters apart. "That's all you are to him. And when all the metas you have hunted come rising up against you, with their strength and their speed and their flight and their telekinetics, do you really think you stand a chance?"
"Now-- Now listen you grotesquely-sized bitch--" Trask started, but Sofia reached forward and pinched his lips shut.
"Mr. Trask, you have not grasped the fact that you are a chattering little means to an end and one I will take great pleasure in crushing when I no longer have use of you. You need me far more than I need you. Remember that before you decide to mouth off a second time."
She released his lips and her enforcer released his neck. Trask stumbled away from the pair of them, trying not to let on that Gigante's little speech had rattled him down to the bones. Then he promptly denied that he was even afraid of her. He shouldn't be scared of a girl, he told himself. Underneath it all, Sofia Gigante was still just a vagina and a pair of breasts.
General Lane cleared his throat and stepped into their midst once again. "Agent Trask, I don't believe you're previously acquainted with Dr. Essex." He gestured to the large black man looming menacingly at Sofia's right side. "As of today, he will be joining Bureau 39 as a temporary agent."
Trask blinked. "What."
"If you didn't infer as much from Mrs. Gigante's speech, Dr. Essex is a meta. He has super-strength and you're going to need that in order to bring down your Prometheus." the general said, his glare just this side of piercing. "The times are changing, agent. At least put forth a token effort to keep up."
"Is he stronger than the Prometheus? I saw that asshole lift a bus once. A school bus. Clear off the ground." Trask said. That was in no way a small feat. School buses could weigh as much as ten thousand pounds and that was when they were empty. The agent scowled. "I don't want him. Get me the old guard."
"STORM? No, STORM's disbanded." General Lane said.
"That's not what I hear." Trask said.
"I'm afraid that's the official stance. There's nothing I can do to change it."
"Then I want Ignis and Fatuus. They were the only useful members."
"Where have you been in the past six years, agent? Ignis and Fatuus are dead." General Lane replied. "Ignis from a heart attack, Fatuus from liver failure, two years apart. They were both heavy drinkers in the last decade of their lives. In any case, they were too aggressive to continue active duty. They were dismissed following the collapse of the Agency." he explained. "STORM is dead. You get Dr. Essex or no one at all."
"Fine."
"Thank you for your understanding." General Lane said. "You'll find your men in the barracks. I want you and Agent Einspahr in the conference room at three-thirty sharp for full debriefing and we will discuss your inability to wrap up loose ends. Dismissed, Agent Trask."
"I'm not your soldier!"
"I said, dismissed, Agent Trask."
The Bureau 39 agent made a face, sticking out his tongue, and saluted with one finger. His bit of insubordination finished, he turned and stomped out of the hangar like a child throwing a temper tantrum. He even slammed the door behind him.
"If you weren't paying me with a helicopter, I would wring his neck." Sofia announced, crossing her arms.
"He's unpleasant, but useful." General Lane said, taking the folder out from under his arm and opening it. "To an extent." he added, admitting to himself at least that Trask was going to outlive his usefulness sooner than originally predicted. He nodded to the woman. "The Huey in the back corner. It's been retired into a warbird, meaning it's been stripped of all its weaponry. You'll have to re-install it on your own."
"We'll manage." Sofia said, and then went to inspect the helicopter. When she left, Dr. Essex stepped closer.
"No." he said simply.
General Lane raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not working with that-- that maggot." Dr. Essex spat. "That repulsive little waste of poorly conceived cells has a better chance of bursting into flame before I work with him."
"I'm not giving you another avenue. You're too much of a loose cannon to run around unsupervised." the general stated. "And please don't assist Trask with bursting into flames, Nam-Ek."
Dr. Essex growled, for his name really was Nam-Ek, of the noble Kryptonian House of Ek whose history had crossed science and war and genetic modification and other realms of science the Kryptonian High Council would have considered 'shady'. He hadn't gone by that name in quite a while, but he hadn't stopped thinking of himself by it.
"If you want the Prometheus, you'll have to wait until we're through with him. Then you can have whatever pieces are left over."
"That's not acceptable!" Nam-Ek growled. "Your Prometheus is one of mine. He's the last son of the House of El, and an abomination at that. He must be destroyed and I will be the one to do it. It's my duty. I'm the only one left to execute it." He stepped closer, using his height to an advantage. "These politics are over your head, General Lane. Do not interfere."
For his part, General Lane wasn't cowed. He had helped raised two singularly headstrong girls and the eldest had slammed into independent adulthood like a bomb and had been causing trouble ever since. It was no longer possible for him to be intimidated in the slightest.
"But you're on Planet Earth now, son. You play by our rules." he said. "The only reason I don't have you strapped to an operating table with your brain in a jar is because of our agreement. An agreement I have continued to honor despite you failing to hold up your end of the bargain and staying at S.T.A.R. Labs."
"No, the only reason my brain is not in a jar is because you can't find a blade that pierces my skin." Nam-Ek corrected smugly. "Nothing on this planet can harm me."
"Permanently." General Lane added. "Electricity appears to have some effect."
Nam-Ek snorted. "Temporary."
"Ah, but if we applied enough ampage? Held you under it for prolonged periods? Would your heart stop forever?" General Lane wondered. He smiled slowly. "You're still mine, boy. Obey your leash."
He slapped the folder into the Kryptonian's chest and walked away to check on Sofia. Nam-Ek grabbed the folder reflexively and opened it up. There were photos inside and every single one of them was of the same thing: the quartz-like shuttle with the gyroscope gimbals. A shuttle that was clearly of Kryptonian manufacture with a particular flair to it that suggested the House of El. Small enough to transport a very young child.
But it wasn't the ship as a whole that grabbed Nam-Ek's attention. It was the unusual growth of crystals between the rear bulkhead and the engine casing; something that wouldn't have normally been there. The photographer had been diligent and had taken several close-up shots. Encased inside the crystal growth was a perfectly round sphere not more than seven inches in diameter. It glowed a dark blue, the glow waxing and waning from picture to picture. Criss-crossing diagonally it were two metallic bands that would float off the sphere when it was activated, to open the doorway.
Nam-Ek inhaled suddenly. A Phantom Zone projector! Jor-El you stupid fool! Why in Rao's name would you--
The thought broke off and he remembered why a fool like Jor-El would risk the dangers of sending a Phantom Zone projector out into deep space, alongside a very experimental Phantom Drive which operated on similar principles as the projector. But the drive and the projector would have repelled each other had they been exposed. One wrong hit to that protective casing and the little shuttle would have been dust. Jor-El and his wife had been taking a mighty risk with sending their son away from a doomed planet with this in tow.
But they were sentimental fools. They wouldn't forsake one child to save the other.
"I should have known." Nam-Ek whispered, chuckling. He glanced across the hangar to where General Lane was conversing with Sofia and smiled. "I'm not going to be yours for much longer, General. It will be a great pleasure to see you kneel before my general."
Clark didn't consider himself a naturally violent person. He didn't know his birth parents, but he was obviously not predisposed to losing his shit even in situations where his shit oughta have been long gone. Frankly, he didn't have the luxury of allowing his temper to run away with him, not with his strength and the other inhuman attributes that had cropped up since puberty. If he lost his cool at someone just for one second, then he would consider it lucky if that person lived. Controlling his powers likewise meant controlling his temper and deliberately injuring someone was not cool.
But right now, he had never wanted to laser-eye someone more in his life.
And it wasn't like anything really bad had happened either.
Currently, Clark was in the plushly appointed living room of none other than Dr. Sullivan who now sat on the opposite couch with a sheepish, if slightly terrified expression. There was a coffee table and Krypto between them, the latter eyeballing each of them warily as if calculating when to get out of the way.
"What the hell?" Clark finally managed to ask.
"I'm sorry." Dr. Sullivan said.
"I was literally on my way to see you!"
"I panicked!"
"You-- practically tried to kidnap me!" Clark sputtered. "I'm on edge enough as it is with what's happened today and then you come in out of nowhere and try and fly off with me and it didn't occur to you that if you'd just asked me politely, I would have gone with you?"
"You were already a little panicked when I saw you back at S.T.A.R. Labs. I had no idea how you were going to react to meeting me a second time, so I wanted to make sure I had your undivided attention." Dr. Sullivan corrected, as if that made it better. "Second of all, I panicked! I don't-- I don't this very often! Actually, I've never had to do this, so I panicked. I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to do it."
Do not laser-eye him. Clark told himself, covering his face with his hands to better ensure that he didn't. He had been half-expecting to fight off the likes of Dr. Essex. Instead, he had gotten the other S.T.A.R. Labs scientist who had suffered a momentary bout of social ineptness, and watched him like he expected to get punched in the neck for this.
The better option, truly, but it was still the principle of the matter.
"I really am sorry." Dr. Sullivan added. "I guess I can't keep saying I panicked, but I did. Is there any chance we could just let this one slide?"
Clark sighed. "I wasn't raised to hold grudges." he admitted. He didn't like it either. You had to expend a lot of mental energy into a grudge and it was exhausting. "But the next time you want to talk to me, please just call me at the Daily Planet."
Dr. Sullivan nodded. "Would you like some coffee?" he offered belatedly. "I have an expresso machine."
"Yes, thank you."
The engineer practically fled to the kitchen and Clark just slumped into the couch. Krypto hopped onto the couch and dropped into his lap with a heavy thump. The dog looked up at him with big blue eyes, ears pricked forward attentively. After a second, Krypto tilted his head questioningly.
"You've been following me to work." Clark accused. The barking dog must have been Krypto. It would explain how he had gotten there in a heartbeat.
The big dog shrugged, as if he wasn't going to commit to an answer.
Dr. Sullivan lived in the northern borough of Lafayette, which was quite solidly middle-class and featured street after street of bungalow-style housing. His was a small house barely nine hundred square feet with a full bath and an empty basement. It was furnished like the engineer had gone straight to an interior decorator for some tips but had never actually bought furniture before, meaning everything was mostly color-coordinated but there was a tacky bit of something like a bowling pin lamp jarring out of what should have been seamless to the eye.
There was nothing about the house that suggested its inhabitant came from another planet.
Except that it was heavily sound-proofed.
Clark knew that there were very small children in the neighboring backyard; he had seen them out the window, messing about in the fresh snowfall. The supervising parent was nattering away on a smartphone. Clark should have been able to hear that conversation as easily as if they were standing right next to him. But for a change, he was almost completely deaf to any sound outside the house. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all lined with lead, which had something of a muffling effect on his abilities.
Dr. Sullivan came back with two cups of expresso and set them on the coffee table before he sat back down. He slid one of the cups over to Clark and waited for him to take it before he said anything.
"I really am sorry for the way I went about this. My parents would be ashamed of my manners. Your parents would be ashamed of my manners." he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"I..." Clark started impulsively, though the words just weren't there. And it was strange, because he wasn't always choked for a lack of things to say. Lois could say things that left him grappling for a response, but she was in a class of her own.
This wasn't how he had envisioned it. It was precisely the opposite. He had pictured himself arriving unannounced at the lab with a Lois-like entrance, barging in and taking command of the room like a bad-ass.
It was like a balloon deflated. He thought he had gone over the scenario enough times in his head, but now in practice, Clark was at a loss where to start. He was on the verge of learning something straight-up monumental and the knowledge would probably change his life, but now that he was here, all of the questions he had been holding for the past eight years had dissolved into a useless morass and he couldn't find a single word to say.
"What do mean my parents?" Clark finally asked, bewildered because which set of parents?
"Lara used to accuse me of being impulsive. By our standards, I suppose I was." Dr. Sullivan went on. He smiled at Clark over the rim of the coffee cup. "That's her name, you know. My daughter, your mother, Lara Lor-Van."
Clark a double-take. "What? What did you just--" He couldn't finish.
"Mr. Kent-- May I call you 'Clark'? Given what I'm about to confirm for you, it may be more appropriate." Dr. Sullivan said. Then he took a deep breath, appeared to steady himself, and said: "Clark, I am your maternal grandfather."
Clark stared blankly for a few seconds before he felt an internal scream coming on.
He really didn't know his grandparents. Hiram and Jessica Kent had died of old age a year before he'd been adopted. Johnathan still spoke fondly of his parents when he did. On the other side of the family, Mary Clark had been a victim of a five-car pile-up and her husband William had never really approved of Martha's marriage and her dropping out of law school to become a farmer's wife.
William Clark had come by the farm just once, as perfunctory and forced as though it was a scheduled check-up. He'd still disapproved all over Martha's twenty-plus year decision and then, as if to demonstrate just how out of the loop he was, he'd spotted Clark and asked his son-in-law if the farm was doing well enough to hire a teenager to assist.
If Martha had face-palmed, if Johnathan had told his father-in-law to fuck off into the sunset, and if Clark had crushed the shovel under his hands, then no one had called the other out on it.
William had nearly been chased off the property without learning he had a grandson and they hadn't exactly communicated since. It wasn't really a loss, since Clark didn't have to watch his mother make constipated expressions and get stressed out over dealing with her father.
Needless to say, Clark didn't have much of an opinion on grandparents and he had never thought there had been a void that needed filling. He had been an only child, sure, but he'd had Pete and Lana and he had been welcomed into their extended families as easily as if he had been born there.
So if there was a void, it had probably been filled regardless.
He blinked and said: "What?"
It was less a response and more a reaction that really didn't provide an opening for further explanation. Dr. Sullivan fidgeted on the couch cushion.
"I can do a DNA test, if you'd like." he offered. "It'll have to be with a cheek swab, though. I bent every hypodermic needle I tried to put through my skin and I suspect you're the same way."
"No-- No, I mean..." Clark waved a hand. "How?"
"My daughter conceived a child with her husband and then gave birth to you?"
"Stop being literal. I thought--" Clark broke off and decided "ugh" was the only acceptable thing to utter. He rubbed his forehead with both hands and tried to gather his thoughts. He had tried to write out a script in his head for this discussion, but Dr. Sullivan had cheerily dropped it into a fire with that little bombshell.
And he must have been dying to tell Clark that very thing when they'd met two weeks ago.
"If you're my grandfather, then where have you been for the last twenty-two years?" Clark demanded.
Dr. Sullivan held up a hand to forestall the answer. "Clark... How much do you know? Did you find the Idatha Xhamsahti?" he asked. "If you did, that's going to save me some time having to explain."
Clark shook his head. "I don't even what you just said."
The engineer's face fell half in despair. "You don't know anything? Nothing about Krypton?"
Krypton? The familiarity made Clark jolt a little and he immediately looked down at Krypto (who licked his chin in return). Just one letter short. The name had sprung into his mind the moment he'd laid eyes on the then-six month old puppy. Maybe the name had always been in his head. He had been just a year old himself the day he'd arrived on Earth, but maybe there was something that he'd remembered all along.
"Is that the planet?" he asked, just to be sure.
Dr. Sullivan tilted his head with a growing expression of relief. "Oh good... I don't have to try and convince you that you're not human."
"The people who raised me weren't dumb enough to try and keep that from me." Clark said, a touch defensively. "All things considered, it was a little hard to convince myself I was entirely human. Not when I could lift a one-ton truck above my head."
The engineer shrugged. "A fair point." he conceded. Though he couldn't explain the car-lifting business. Earth had a much lighter gravity than Krypton, but lifting tractor trailers with ease should not have happened.
"Is your name actually Anthony Sullivan?" Clark wondered.
Dr. Sullivan shook his head. "No. It's 'Thee'ton Sul-Van'. I don't think I have to tell you how I got 'Anthony Sullivan' out of that." he said, looking a bit amused at his twenty-year old cleverness. "I've lived here on Earth for about as long as you've been alive."
"But... Where have you been?" Clark asked again, his tone tinged with anger.
This man was claiming to be his grandfather, but god only knew how he had gotten to Earth in the first place. And there was the implication that he had been on this planet since before Clark's arrival.
Martha and Johnathan had been the best parents he could have hoped for, but they'd never had the answers. It would have been better to have someone there who would have been able to answer his questions. His parents could have sent him to talk to Grandpa. He could have gotten his answers so much sooner, instead of waiting over eight years for them and then scarcely believing them despite evidence to the contrary.
Dr. Sullivan looked a little frustrated, as though this wasn't going nearly as smoothly as he had originally imagined. "The basic story is that we had to evacuate. At your father's request, I set out to find a suitable planet to evacuate to. Jor-El--"
"I've heard that name." Clark interrupted.
"Yes, he's your father." Dr. Sullivan blinked, and then waved it off. "Let me finish. Jor-El was hoping to save his family, at least, since no one else was listening to him. I found Earth. I sent coordinates back. And no one ever came. At the time, I had every reason to believe that Lara and Jor-El never escaped Krypton and that you had died with them. I had gotten no reply. There was nothing to assure me that my daughter and son-in-law had made it here safely, much less at all. If I couldn't be sure you were even alive, where was I supposed to start looking?"
Then he put his head in his hands.
Some of the anger that had been stewing in Clark's chest for the past few minutes fizzled away and he felt sympathy instead. Though he didn't know how truly desperate the situation had been, Dr. Sullivan's tone conveyed enough of that to him. He had spent the last twenty years on Earth, hoping against chance that he hadn't lost the only family he had left.
Not to mention where he might have touched down. Just because Clark had landed in Smallville Kansas, it didn't mean that was where Dr. Sullivan had set up shop. He could have been here around Metropolis or further north in Canada. The tornado in Kansas had only been part of a six-state outbreak, with rotating super-cells lingering for over a week afterwards. If Dr. Sullivan had known what to look for, then he would have been looking literally from Nevada down to Texas and out into Missouri.
And Smallville... Well, it was three miles from the highway, neck-deep in cornfields, and absolutely nothing special.
"Sorry." Clark said softly, running his fingers through Krypto's fur.
Dr. Sullivan scrubbed his hands down his face as he looked up. "No, I'm sorry I don't have more proof for you." he said.
"Hang one, you said I should have found the--" Clark tried to remember what the engineer had even said, but he knew he wouldn't be able to reproduce the sounds. "The something?"
"The-- well, the flash drives. I don't think there's a direct translation, but they're flash drives or external hard-drives. Lara and Jor-El were planning to save Krypton's history and culture as best they could. You really didn't find them?"
"You think I would have known how to work them if I did?"
Whatever they looked like, Clark sincerely doubted that these "external hard-drives" were compatible with human technology. They were discussing being part of an alien race technologically advanced enough for interstellar travel.
"Yeah, Earth's technology is not..." Dr. Sullivan trailed off and cleared his throat loudly. "It's got several hundred decades before it catches up to our stone age." he finished diplomatically. "Is there any particular questions you have? I can answer quite a lot, I think, but my specialty has always been engineering."
Clark opened his mouth to ask something-- anything, but there was nothing. And there would probably continue to be nothing until his brain had fully processed what the hell had just happened to him.
For god's sake, he was sitting in front of his grandfather.
It wasn't that he didn't have questions, it was that he barely knew which question to start with.
"Can you... Can you just tell me about my parents?" he wondered.
Dr. Sullivan grinned. "I'll start with how they met." he said, and then moved to stand up. "And I can do you one better. I have pictures."
-0-