A little late. Or: "I didn't realize it was Friday until it was almost Saturday". It's been a weird week.
Dat Supergirl season 2 anyone? Some strong-af Clois there.
Chapter Thirty:
It snowed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Such a meteorological event hardly unusual for the latitude, but it did play havoc with the travel plans. Trains were behind, flights were delayed, and by mid-morning, over a dozen skid-offs had been reported on the M-26 out of Metropolis.
All delays aside, the Kents were predicted to arrive at a little past noon and the narrowing proximity to the target time was starting to make Lois nervous.
It was ridiculous that she was nervous about it in the slightest. Meeting new people never gave her even so much as an uncertain wobble. It was part of what she did! Going around kicking in doors and getting into stranger's faces to extract a story. She had no time to get shy or nervous about meeting new people, not when there was a story to be had!
But there she was sitting in the train terminal's waiting area with her stomach making anxious gurgling noises.
Oh for god's sake, Lane! It's just a pair of yokels from Smallville. Nice little country mice who probably still say 'aw shucks' and 'golly gee'. Lois told herself, mentally clamping down on her nerves. Admittedly, nice little country mice who brought up this heaping helping of grass-fed free-range American beef.
Her gaze slid discreetly sideways to Clark, thumbing through his phone as he read the weather updates. He was dressed the most casual she had ever seen him - she had caught him in his pajamas, of course, but that somehow wasn't nearly as titillating as the sight of his damn fine ass in a pair of blue jeans. And the flannel overshirt... Lois had never figured herself for being even distantly attracted to men in flannel, but Clark pulled it off like a rough and rugged logger mountain man who smelled like a Yankee Candle. He just needed a bit of a scruff around his chin and her aesthetic would be complete.
The first problem with Clark was obvious: It was that underneath his wonky farm boy veneer, he was attractive. Like, stupid attractive. Like, bang him into the wall attractive. But he tried to hide all of it under too-large shirts and bad ties, nerd glasses and a hairstyle that had gone out of fashion in the nineties. "Tried" being the operative word. When you were standing far enough away from him, the loser pizza-faced nerd impression was the first one you got. It was like camouflage, spotting someone who was only just this side of socially acceptable, but deciding not to risk it.
Get close enough, however, and it was like a magic eye puzzle coming together. Too close and no amount of gosh-diddly-darn apple pie farm boy would hide how seriously stupid-attractive he was.
Lois would be lying through her teeth if she tried to claim that she didn't feel at least a little tingle for the likes of Clark Kent.
Oh dear god, I'm like seventy-nine percent certain I'm sexually attracted to this farm boy. Enough that it's embarrassing and slightly shameful.
And I'm less than twenty minutes away from meeting his parents.
It's gonna be like 'Hi! I'm young, hot, single, and I sort of want to bang your son! How was your trip?'
"Well, it looks like the train will be on time." Clark commented, looking up from his phone at last. He glanced over Lois's pink face and noticed the way her eyes seemed riveted on his shoulder. "Are you all right, Ms. Lane?"
Lois snapped out of it. "We gotta lay down some ground rules!" she almost shouted.
"Ground rules?" Clark repeated. Where had that come from?
"Yes!" She shifted in the chair to face him better. "If you haven't been paying attention, we are now in week seven. If you paid any attention to the gossip, you know that people don't last two days around me. But it's week seven and for some reason, you're still here."
"We are work-partners." Clark reminded her.
"And I've never had a work-partner stick around for three days in a row, mostly because they question my sanity." Lois pointed out. "But you're still here and with the shit we've been through together, I think you have earned the right to use my first name on a casual basis."
"So... It's now a ground rule that I call you by your first name?" Clark asked, just to make sure he was clear on that.
"Yes. Is that a problem for you?"
"No, no, of course not."
If Clark had been any less of a gentleman than what he had been raised, he might have brought up Lois's near complete lack of using his own first name, the fact she had slapped a nickname on him in the first five seconds, and called him 'farm boy' almost as much as she called him 'Smallville'.
But he was a gentleman and he was perceptive enough to recognize that this was how Lois kept an emotional distance from the people around her. Using nicknames made it seem, in her mind, that she wasn't getting attached to them so that when they went away, it wouldn't be so difficult to let them go. She had only used his first name a handful of times; when he was in trouble or if she wanted to get his undivided attention. He could hardly infringe on her comfort zone.
"Is there anything else?" he asked.
Lois took a deep breath like she did have a lot to say, but it fizzled out. "No, I think that's that it." she admitted. She was pretty sure they had ironed out the ground rules weeks ago, just not in such precise terms. Clark was certainly not a man prone to treading over boundaries.
Or make sexist comments.
Or leer at her chest.
Or go full Lombarde when he was talking to her.
Basically, a guy like Clark Kent wasn't a guy Lois had previously thought existed.
Men with basic human decency were a vanishing category.
I can't believe this man is a real person. Lois thought, eyeballing Clark up thoughtfully. He's a nice guy. Like an actual nice guy with manners and propriety and modesty and a healthy sense of platonic intimacy. I mean, this is what you should think when you hear about those fedora-tipping m'lady Sir Knight gentlemen who defend women from other men because that's called being a decent human being. Instead you get those neckbeard yay-hoos soaked in Axe body spray and a toxic patriarchy thinking that if they just stick up for this one woman, they'll take the dude to the back room and get their freaky on.
And then Clark's just all 'Oh golly whiz Miss Lane don't mind me it was no trouble at all I thought you might like to finish them off may I hold your purse while you destroy them'. Or something like that.
Seriously, there needs to be a few more Clark Kents in the world.
Also, we ladies need to take back the fedora from those neckbeard ass-hats and make it awesome again.
Maybe I'll buy a fedora. I could totally rock a fedora.
For a moment, Lois entertained the intensely satisfying mental image of herself trashing the patriarchy while Clark stood by with her coat and her purse and a proud little smile on his stupid farm boy face and she about had to slap herself to get rid of it because Clark was looking at her with concern.
"Something wrong, Smallville?" Lois asked sharply.
"You just seem a bit distracted today. It's not really like you." Clark said. She was normally as focused as a laser-guided scalpel and if her mind did wander, it was usually succeeded by a Eureka! moment.
"It's the holidays. I'm allowed to let my mind wander off sometimes." Lois said, a touch defensively. She elbowed his ribs. "Why, what's on your mind? C'mon, I'm not the only one looking pensive, farm boy."
It was true. In between checking the weather updates and the fluctuating train schedule, Clark had been staring into the middle distance looking worried and thoughtful like he was trying to convince himself to be optimistic about something he had no precedent for.
"The test results came back positive." he said.
Lois frowned. "What test results?"
"The one Dr. Sullivan wanted done." Clark elaborated. "He got a colleague at S.T.A.R. Labs to do them so we didn't have to wait until January to get the results back and they are positive."
Lois sat up. "What, like a genetic test?"
"For determining parentage." Clark nodded. No such test had happened, in actuality, but there was only so much Lois needed to know.
"It came back positive? The guy's actually your grandfather?" Lois asked expectantly, excitedly.
Clark just smiled. He had known for a little while now and it still gave him a warm tingle of happiness. Because after eight years of wondering and waiting and questioning, he finally had a link to a people and a culture that he was supposed to have been born in to. He had someone who could tell him all about his birth-parents and his family. Yes, there was not a whole Dr. Sullivan could tell him about the culture because he was over twenty years removed and when you're trying to save either a planet or yourself, there were things you stopped paying attention to, but Clark had four hundred years worth of Kryptonian history ready and waiting for him to explore at his leisure.
It was something to smile over indeed.
"There ya go, Smallville!" Lois thumped his shoulder, looking proud like she had personally accomplished something. "And your birth-parents?
"Definitively deceased. We were -- traveling up from Oklahoma through west Kansas when those storms hit." Clark fabricated. The official story, if Lois probed deeper, was that they'd been heading up to Metropolis -- where Dr. Sullivan had indeed set up shop for a few years before moving to D.C -- for a family vacation with Granddad. "Sounds like I'm originally from Lawton, Oklahoma."
"Pfft, figures. Tornado Alley from the beginning." Lois nodded, settling back into her plastic seat and started to fiddle with her phone. She looked satisfied with what little information he had imparted.
Clark went to ask something, the words about to leap off the tip of his tongue before he reigned them in, wondering briefly if it was a good idea to say them at all. But after another second, he went for it. He would worry about the consequences later.
"I'm surprised you didn't have prior holiday plans." he said.
Lois glanced up from her phone. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well," Clark straightened his glasses absently. "I thought you might have wanted to spend Thanksgiving with your dad and your sister."
She had initially given him the impression that there was no family in Metropolis to spend the holiday with, until she had texted him back asking if she could bring her sister to the Kents' Thanksgiving.
"I honestly didn't know you had a sister."
"If you haven't noticed, Smallville, I don't talk about my family." Lois reminded him. "There really isn't anything to talk about. There was a while there where Lucy and I weren't really getting along, but we're better about it now. We just..." She shrugged. "My dad's a terrible parent."
"Terrible?" Clark repeated uncertainly, for there were so many different connotations.
"No, no, it's not like he's abusive or anything like that!" Lois corrected hastily. "But he's one of those people who shouldn't be having kids because he has absolutely no idea how to parent like a parent. He parents like the military general he is and that's not really conducive to raising children. Mom balanced him out, but..."
"But she passed away." Clark realized. The rare moments where Lois had brought up her mother, it was always in past tense. "What happened? I-If you don't mind answering."
For a moment, Lois made a face like she had just looked down memory lane and reminded herself why she didn't do that too often.
"When I was fourteen, Mom came down with a pretty bad chest cold. She had asthma, so whenever she came down with any chest colds, she had to break out of the hospital-grade nebulizer. That same year, our bald overlord opened some waste processing plant using some of his new executive power, so I guess the added pollution in the air didn't help. The chest cold turned into bronchitis and then she got pneumonia in one lung right after the other. We had Thanksgiving in the hospital that Thursday and then Black Friday and..."
She trailed off, but it really wasn't necessary to finish. Black Friday was the day that Ella Lane had left this world behind. Lois's perception of the holidays had doubtlessly been soured ever since.
"I'm sorry." Clark said.
Lois shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, well... Can't say Thanksgiving has been a thing for my family since then." she muttered, staring at the floor. "But Lucy should get a few good Thanksgivings and if you're offering..."
Clark smiled brightly. It was delightful watching every assumption people made about Lois Lane blow up. They liked to argue that she was heartless and stone-cold, but Clark had met a few people like that in his time. They were like that by nature, whereas Lois was like that by circumstance. She had had too many people attack her verbally, so she had put up the wall and only let a few people through.
People called her callous and a bitch because she wasn't open and warm and receiving to everyone like they thought a woman should be.
But there were people Lois cared about dearly and her sister was one of them.
"I can't believe you invited Colletta too." Lois grumbled, half in after-thought.
"She said that she didn't have any plans for Thanksgiving outside of the policeman's potluck. And my parents aren't picky, so I thought..." Clark trailed off, shrugging. The more the merrier and of course they would want to see that he was making friends in Metropolis.
He had indeed gotten Colletta's number off of Lois's phone and texted her once just to say hello. Colletta was one of those naturally sociable people who really only needed two seconds to warm up to a person if they were obviously the good sort, so just Clark saying hello was like opening a floodgate that had ended with her asking about his holiday plans.
Clark still wasn't sure if he had actually invited her, or if Colletta had invited herself and he'd just agreed to it.
"I don't know how she got clearance to bring Sergeant Trevor, though."
"Yeah, me neither."
Somehow or another, Colletta had obtained permission to get Steve out of the hole Met P.D. had stuck him in so he could have a proper Thanksgiving. Whether someone up high had owed her a favor or Lieutenant Sawyer had tugged a string or two (or the possibility that she didn't have permission at all), the officer wouldn't say. Either way, Steve was expected to be at the dinner tomorrow.
The station intercom dinged and everyone in the waiting area looked up expectantly.
"The eight-forty train from Central City is now arriving at platform three. Repeat: the eight-forty train from Central City is now arriving at platform three. Thank you for your patience."
Clark heaved himself out of the plastic chair. "My parents should be on that one."
"You should text them to make sure." Lois suggested, getting up to follow him.
"Can't. They don't have cell phones."
"Am I allowed to make a face and complain that they need to get with the twenty-first century?"
"It wouldn't be anything I haven't already complained about. They just don't think they need cell phones because the landline still works and they've got video-chat on the laptop." He smiled a little strained. "I love my parents, but they like to be stuck in their ways. I think it amuses them."
"Out there in farm country, you gotta take what you can get." Lois muttered, half in agreement. Her dad wasn't so much as stuck in his ways as he was stuck in a rut. Despite when calling, texting, or emailing would have been much faster and more efficient, he turned up at the door instead to say his piece because he believed the face-to-face approach got the best response. Sometimes Lois suspected that he was doing it on purpose to inconvenience her, but too often General Lane acted like the very concept of a mobile phone was wholly offensive.
The station itself wasn't jam-packed with people waiting for their friends and family or waiting to leave; not at the very moment, at least. With weather delays across the board, the human traffic rose and fell according to the staggering arrivals and departures. At the moment, the proverbial tide was low so they easily made their way up to platform three where the train was pulling in, its brakes wheezing softly.
With Lois standing behind him, Clark nudged down his glasses and scanned the length of the train. He had been practicing. His X-ray vision was getting much more precise in that he was starting to see only as much as he wanted to see, so it wasn't a total struggle to find his parents halfway down the third car sitting with-
He grinned widely. They didn't tell me they were bringing Pete!
Good ol' Pete Ross, his very best friend since before actual memory, and his parents had likely intended to surprise him. Clark hadn't seen Pete in well over three years, not since he had moved to Edge City to sit on the county council. Whenever they had gotten the opportunity to speak, it sounded like Pete was beholden to a very busy schedule that kept him occupied from breakfast 'til bedtime.
But I've got him until at least Friday. Yes! He pushed his glasses back into place. Nothing like catching up with an old friend.
The travelers started piling off the train in droves, hauling their luggage with them. Lois spotted the elder Kents before Clark had the opportunity to point them out. She didn't know what they looked like and Clark had never described them physically, but he wouldn't have needed to. She wasn't quite sure what made them so noticeable to her, but they just looked like the kind of parents who raised a son like Clark.
They both must have been in their late forties or very early fifties. Johnathan Kent had a good-natured and weathered face that showed years of outdoor living, his brown hair beginning to give over to gray. Martha Kent had reddish auburn hair that was also starting to show some gray threads and a smile that was actually quite a bit like Clark's. But while Clark's smile made Lois feel weak at the knees and warm in the cheeks, this one made her feel like she had to apologize profusely for something she had done fifteen years earlier, like confess all your sins and you will be absolved.
It was, without the shadow of a doubt, a mother's smile.
Clark seemed to buoy up off the floor in response to it (if Lois had looked down, she would have seen that he was indeed standing a little too lightly on his toes) and walked forward with big almost-running strides. He hadn't visited his parents since first moving into his apartment, which had been something like five or six weeks ago now, and that was long enough.
And Pete-- Well, goddamn, he just hadn't seen Pete face-to-face in three years.
He gave his parents a smile and bypassed them in favor of his best friend.
"Pete!"
"Clark!"
They shouted at each other almost simultaneously and collided for a great big crushing bear hug and Clark had to be careful not to squish the smaller man. Growing up, they had been neck and neck for height, until Clark had practically woken up one morning late in sophomore year and found that he appeared to have grown five inches overnight. Pete hadn't reached his final growth spurt until midway through eleventh grade, but even those three inches hadn't caught him up to Clark's then five-foot-eleven. Now all of five-foot-nine, Pete had also never caught up to Clark in terms of sheer bulk.
"Surprised to see me?" he asked, grinning and thumping the much broader man on the back with a closed fist.
"Surprised in the sense that no one told me you were coming." Clark said, pulling back from the manly hug to give his parents a mock-angry glare. "But not actually surprised to see you."
"Ah, we tried." Johnathan shrugged, shaking his head while Martha giggled. Surprising Clark was very hard, when he could hear someone breathing from forty feet away.
"Alright, my turn. I haven't seen my baby boy in a while." Martha said, nudging Pete aside so she could embrace her son.
"It's only been a couple of weeks." Clark commented. His mother was only about as tall as Pete, so he had to bend down a little to properly hug her back.
Lois cleared her throat so they didn't not realize she was still standing there, feeling quite a lot like an outsider trying to attend someone's birthday party through a closed window.
She almost regretted it immediately afterwards, because all of a sudden, both Mr. and Mrs. Kent and whoever this Pete-guy was were all staring at her with a little too much curiosity.
Clark flinched a little. The moment hadn't gone on long enough for him to get caught up in it, but another thirty seconds and he probably would have forgotten she was standing there waiting to be introduced.
"Right," Clark stepped back over to her side. "Everyone, this is Lois Lane, my partner at the Daily Planet. Lois, my parents Johnathan and Martha. And my friend Pete; I told you about him."
"Hello Lois, it's so nice to meet you." Martha said, coming forward with an outstretched hand and a warm smile. "Clark has told Johnathan and I so much about you."
"Conversely, he has told me very little about you." Lois informed them. She tried to keep her tone light and joking, but it came out a bit tart all the same.
"Well, sometimes he can get stuck for words when he's around lovely young ladies." Johnathan said, grinning when his son let out a small sputter of protest, because no it was still not like that and it was probably never going to be like that.
If there was a possibility that it could become a possibility, then it was located at the furthest point away from Earth.
Lois turned vaguely pink around the cheeks at what she hoped was a sincere compliment. What the fuck has he been telling them about me? But not about to be put off by it, she turned to Johnathan for the customary handshake.
"Well, when Clark here does talk about his parents, he's super complimentary." she said. She felt like she was lying a bit; Clark really hadn't said anything beyond assuring her that he loved his parents and they were his parents regardless of where he had originally come from. That sentiment did say a lot, however.
"What has he told you about me?" Pete asked, coming forward to do his introduction properly. He was Asian-looking with dark skin like one of his parents was black and he was looking at her with a kind of flirty approval. Like he either wanted to flirt with her and was too aware of the polite company he was in, or that he absolutely one hundred percent approved of her being the one to date Clark.
"Pete Ross the aspiring politician?" Lois asked.
"Lowell County council today, Kansas state senator tomorrow." Pete grinned, showing movie-white teeth and executing a perfect politician handshake. "I'm currently the representative of District Four, speaking for the concerns of a postage stamp and a bent paperclip."
"Which one's Smallville?"
"The postage stamp. Midvale's even smaller and half as useless."
"Pete!" Martha elbowed him, her tone admonishing but her expression playful. "Midvale's not that useless; it has the granary."
"Delightful, sounds like a perfect place to spend a weekend." Lois commented dryly, a hand diving impulsively for her cell phone like she had felt it buzzing against her leg. It wasn't, but she grabbed it anyways and held it up like she had gotten a text. Because that feeling was knocking against her ribs. This overwhelming itchy sensation of anxiety that urged her to escape from this situation.
And she already had a convenient out.
"I don't mean to cut this short, but I told my sister I'd pick her up from school and she's out in fifteen minutes." she said. Lucy's school was having a half-day and Lois had indeed promised to pick her up for the holiday weekend. "If the weather hadn't caused any delays, I would stick around for lunch..."
"Of course, we understand." Martha said graciously. "We'll see you tomorrow. It was good to meet you." she said again.
Lois muttered something that sounded distantly like an agreement and all but fled the platform.
"She seems..." Pete searched around for a charitable description, watching the reporter's retreating back.
"Nervous." Clark filled in. "I could hear her stomach churning all the way down the platform. She's normally more-- chill, than that."
Johnathan shrugged. "I would imagine she's not used to meeting people outside of a professional capacity." he reasoned. He clapped a hand on Clark's shoulder. "She does seem fairly nice."
"I thought there would be more snark. I was looking forward to the snark." Martha admitted.
"Ah, I suppose you'll have to wait until she warms up to you a bit." Clark figured. Or deal with her in a professional capacity. Then the no-nonsense attitude and minute amounts of snark would come out, instead of that nervous oddly stuck for words version that had just departed.
It was really odd and off-putting to see Lois nervous.
They gathered their luggage as it came out of the compartments and then set off up the platform towards the terminal for the local trains. They would have to take the D-line back to where it junctioned with the B, C, and J lines, and from there, it was a straight shot home.
"So what I really wanna know about is this biological grandfather you suddenly have that I had to hear about from your parents first." Pete said, reaching up to throw an arm around Clark's shoulders. It was an awkward reach, so he only did it for a second.
"Your mother and I would like a little more information on that too." Johnathan said. "You were stingy with the details, son."
"Well..." Clark shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. "I guess I was still trying to sort it all out."
He had told his parents about Dr. Sullivan almost as soon he was sure of the relation, but he had been quite bare with the actual details since that had happened before he'd gotten the full story from the Fortress A.I.s.
"Is he really from the same place?" Pete asked. "I mean, is he really your grandfather? Can he like-- y'know, fly?"
"Flight, speed, strength, both kinds of vision and infrared which I don't really have, just as indestructible." Clark assured him, grinning at the sheer novelty of at last having a shared experience with someone. "I just take more after my biological father instead of my biological mother, so the resemblance really isn't obvious."
"How did he find you?" Martha wondered
On one level, it was obvious how it could have happened as Clark would have a tendency to stand out no matter how hard he worked to hide what he could do. But at the same time, Clark had buckled down on keeping himself looking normal as his powers had grown in intensity.
"We found him, actually. Lois and I. We were researching a story and his name came up. He approached me later. When I say that I look like my biological father, what I mean is I could be his twin. Hang on..."
Clark felt around in his trouser pocket for the slick, not-quite-Polaroid photo that Dr. Sullivan had given him. It was originally a 3-D image that had lost some of its luster during the conversion to 2-D, but it conveyed all the necessary details and he presented it to his adopted parents. Jor-El and Lara stared almost cautiously out from the photograph, giving half-smiles like they weren't entirely sure if they wanted to smile fully.
"Wow, you could be!" Martha exclaimed while her husband let out a wowed whistle. "Goodness, did they just clone you from a strand of his hair?"
"Ooh, is that who I think it is?" Pete asked, reaching over Martha's elbow to point at the tiny infant in Lara's arms, piercing but otherwise bleary blue eyes looking sleepily at the camera.
"Oh, we have a baby picture now!" Martha squealed excitedly, shaking her husband's arm. "Johnathan, look! He's so tiny!"
"Look at that, he just fits in the crook of her arm. You would never know he was going to grow up to six-foot-three just looking at this." Johnathan said, awed. "Do you know how old you were in this, Clark?"
"I think Dr. Sullivan took it just before he left the planet, so I don't think I was more than two months old." the twenty-three year old replied. "And I don't think Lara carried the pregnancy to full term either."
No Kryptonian woman had carried a pregnancy to term in something like two thousand years, mind, so Dr. Sullivan didn't actually know how long the gestation period was supposed to be for their people. Once the math had been worked out, it had been determined that Lara had carried the pregnancy for about eight months, Earth-time. Other pictures suggested that Clark had indeed been born a little premature.
Martha and Johnathan continued to coo embarrassingly over the photo as Clark led them to the turnstiles while Pete gave him looks that were halfway between sympathetic and Sweet revenge!. Judge Ross was a doting mother and a kind woman off the bench, but she liked to sit her children down when she pulled out the baby albums so she could recount the exact circumstances under which each photo had been taken and also repeat those stories to visitors. Since there were no baby pictures of Clark prior to his first birthday, he had been somewhat exempt from the embarrassing parent ritual.
Until now.
Sort of; there was no way they could show that picture to anyone without being asked if Clark's birth-parents had been members of a cult. The robe-like dress alone would have been met with raised eyebrows, never mind the ornate head-dresses.
But whatever, he could let his parents have this moment.
Pete was seething with more questions than Johnathan and Martha and he would have peppered Clark with them if they hadn't boarded the commuter train. Out of everyone who knew the truth, he had taken the most active interest in Clark's extraterrestrial-ness, even before they'd found out that he wasn't a meta like they had initially suspected. He had been such an avid star-gazer in their younger years that if a year on the student council hadn't given him a taste for public service, he might have gone to college with the intent of working for NASA and reaching Mars.
He was burning with questions now, Clark could tell. He wanted to know everything about Dr. Sullivan and why he was on Earth and what had happened to Krypton and he wanted the answer to every question he'd had for the last eight years that there were now answers to.
But they were on a public train and he couldn't so blatantly ask any of them.
Instead, he commented sourly on the state of the West River (the train depot was located north of the city across the Siegel River) and wondered who had let it get this bad in the first place. His sense of civic duty was appalled.
"It's always been like that, Pete." Martha informed him, much to his civic outrage.
"Actually, they're going to try and fix it now." Clark said, watching the crumbled buildings pass by. "There are plans in place and Mayor Kovac sounds like she's pretty dead-set on getting the demolition started by next spring."
"They'd have to take down the old buildings first." Johnathan commented, his eyebrows popping up when an entire window shutter unhinged itself from a building and fell as the train rumbled past it.
"Are they planning to shiny up the Slums too?" Martha wondered.
"There's a ten-year plan to clean up the Slums, West River, and Metrodale." Clark said. "They've already gotten started on West River. There was an initial push to restore the area a few years ago, but I don't know what stopped it."
"Politics." Pete said dryly. "Sometimes I hear the Edge City officials pissing about why they can't just spread grass seed over that ugly empty lot in the middle of the city. Like, how hard is it really to buy a sack of grass seed and distribute it across the lot? No, turns out that that empty lot is like a card in a poker hand. They won't put it into play until the most absolute crucial moment no matter how much of an eyesore it is. They hold it like an incentive or a threat. I still can't believe how much politics is about one-upping the other guy."
"I'll be sure to chronicle your career as you move up to president of the United States." Clark said.
"Alright, no business talk over the holidays." Martha instructed. "Now I grew up in The Old City. Is the clock tower still there? I used to climb it before they closed it to the public. It had such a nice view of New Troy."
"I think so. I hear bells sometimes that aren't church bells."
The train carried them past the site of S.T.A.R. Labs and across the Vernon Bridge. The tracks passed over St. Martin's Island while Martha pointed nostalgically towards the things she remembered as a girl and the things she hadn't seen before. She hadn't been back to Metropolis since graduating high school and that had been in the early seventies. She was a little alarmed at how far the Slums had tipped since her day; she could still remember when the copper mine had been open and functioning, and the mass economic panic that had ensued when it had closed, and when the Slums itself used to be called Copper Hill. She was even more alarmed at the state of Metrodale, for it hadn't hit its ghetto red light degradation until the early eighties.
At the Centennial Park station, they made the transfer to the J-train and set off south to Little Bohemia. The plan was to deposit their luggage at Clark's apartment and then eat lunch before hitting the grocery store to get the rest of what they needed for the Thanksgiving feast. Clark had already bought the turkey and the essentials for a few side-dishes, but for the large amount of baking that Martha would be engaging in for the rest of the night, she liked to use the freshest possible ingredients.
At the station in Little Bohemia, Krypto was waiting.
"There you are, you furry little bastard!" Pete cried happily as soon as he laid eyes on the big white dog, throwing his arms wide. "My favorite furry bastard!"
Obligingly, the wolf-like dog took him down in a slobbery pounce and crawled over him. Krypto's tongue ran over every corner of Pete's face, his tail whipping back and forth in excitement. Krypto hadn't seen Pete in three years either.
"Theirs is a special bond." Clark commented, watching the reunion.
It was a bit of an unusual bond, since Krypto wasn't like other dogs. He was smart enough that Pete didn't feel at all comfortable with treating the dog like he would another pet. Instead, Pete's big brother instincts had kicked in (he was the second of five children) and what had developed since was something Clark would liken to a sibling relationship.
"Is it me or did Krypto get bigger in the last month?" Johnathan wondered. It might have just been his imagination, but Krypto was quite a lot of dog and it was too easy to imagine that he was somehow getting larger.
"Oh, he's still a puppy, believe or not." came Dr. Sullivan's voice, the man himself striding towards them with a welcoming expression. "He's a veze layo'sa. Fully domesticated, sixty year life-span, but we never bred the size out of them. He should be forty-two inches at the shoulder when he's done growing, but that won't be for another five to eight years." He smiled even wider than before. "Krypton's atmosphere was a little more oxygen rich than Earth's. We grew 'em large there."
Clark knew what was going through his parents' heads while they stared, though he didn't think they were seeing quite what he had seen.
What the Kents saw was a glimpse of a life they might not have lived, but at the same, they also saw a link to the life Clark might have led if things had been just a little different out there in the night sky.
They saw a connection to something they weren't quite sure of, not sure if they really wanted to hear the maybes and the could-have-beens and maybe a bit of protective jealousy because Clark was their baby boy and it didn't seem like Dr. Sullivan should be over there poking his way into their family dynamic, but that was a foolish thought. This man was Clark's family and that made him their family too.
Martha blinked, her mouth opening in a few false starts before she said: "You look just like your daughter."
Johnathan nodded. "She's right, you look nothing like Clark."
Dr. Sullivan let out a booming laugh and came forward to clasp their hands in greeting. "Clark spoke extremely highly of both of you and I don't think that was just filial love talking." the engineer said. "You're good people, both of you."
"Well, he's a good kid." Johnathan said.
"No, I mean that." Dr. Sullivan said insistently. "You took in a child knowing full well that he was not of Planet Earth and raised him with all the love you would have given your own. I don't know many other races or species that would have done something like that."
"He was just a baby." Martha said, looking a bit flustered at the praise.
"I still mean it." Dr. Sullivan stated. "Johnathan and Martha Kent, on the behalf of both the House of Lor-Van and the House of El, I'd like to extend my deepest, deepest gratitude and esteem for your boundless kindness and absolutely upstanding creditability. I would be foolish to judge the human race based on the pair of you, but I can't help but feel like we made the best possible choice, regardless of the hand that chance had in it. As patriarch and steward of the aforementioned Houses, I would award you Krypton's highest honor if we still had those to give out. You'll have to accept my fathomless gratitude instead."
"We'd take nothing more than that." Johnathan said, his cheeks hurting from the smile. Though he was the kind of man who tried to live a humble life, it was very relieving and very pride-inducing and very satisfying to know that their kindness was recognized and their parenting skills were exemplary enough that all the long-lost grandfather could do was gush praise.
In a way, they had saved Dr. Sullivan's only grandson and Johnathan would eat a bale of hay before he met a parent or grandparent who wouldn't be grateful for that.
Dr. Sullivan opened his mouth to add something, but his eyes found Pete right then standing at Clark's side with a humungous grin and an expectant glimmer in his eyes. His fervor for the stars had never truly vanished and oh, there would be questions a-plenty.
"Hi." Pete waved a hand. "I'm Pete."
"He's my best friend. He knows." Clark elaborated. "He was there when I accidentally lifted the back end of the car above my head."
"And I've been there ever since." Pete stated with such authority that it left no doubt whatsoever. "I have many, many questions. And it would make me a very happy man if you answered them."
Dr. Sullivan chuckled, looking quite amused and pleased and maybe a bit eager. "My specialty is engineering, so I won't know the answers to everything." he said. "But I should know enough to sate your curiosity."
He clapped his hands briskly and looked at the Kents. "So, I heard something about lunch. May I join you?"
Martha held an inviting hand out towards him. "We'd love to have you."
-0-
shameless self-promotion: read my star wars fanfic. all OCs but it need some love too