Chapter Forty-Two: The Only Place to Call Home

A high-pressure system moved in over the course of Tuesday, chasing away the clouds and the snow. Wednesday was sunny again, but it was still very much winter around these parts and the temperatures plummeted at night in the absence of the insulating layer of cloud cover. The windchill brought the thermometer down even further until it was in the single digits. It was no night to be out on the town and everyone knew it. Those who could turned up the heat and cuddled with significant others. Some didn't have a choice because of their jobs or circumstances.

And others were Lois Lane.

She really should have been at home in her pajamas, chasing down internet rumors of Superman's survival; it looked like there was something -- meteors over the south Atlantic. Instead, she was bundled up her winter coat and her thickest socks and braving the bitter night air. Chemical heat packs tucked into strategic locations under her coat kept her outsides warm while a thermos of coffee did the same for her insides.

Lois was huddled on a bench in the mis-named Oceanside Park. Mis-named as St. Martin's Island sat squarely in the junction of the Carter and Siegel Rivers and Metropolis was about a thousand-plus miles from the Atlantic, but someone must have liked the sound of it. She had tucked herself in the shadow of the massive ferris wheel that dominated the waterfront. It was the most distinctive structure on St. Martin's Island. It was so towering that she could see it from her Pelham apartment.

There was a reason she was hanging out in the closed-for-the-season park after dark on one of the coldest nights of the year and it had everything to do with the curious note she had found on her desk just before she had signed off this afternoon.

'Oceanside Park, ten o'clock tonight. If you want first scoop.' the note had read in beautiful calligraphic handwriting. The kind of handwriting that might have earned a place in a museum; it was that much of a work of art.

But it wasn't the handwriting that had caught her attention. It was the fact the note had been signed 'Superman'.

"I'd be dumb not to follow that lead down to its conclusion." Lois muttered, taking another sip of coffee.

Was he actually going to let her have first scoop?

Normally, Lois wouldn't have cared. Getting to the story first was what every reporter lived for and one couldn't have too many scruples about how they managed that. In the end, having a big fat story for tomorrow's paper usually took priority over whatever laws they might have trod on in the process.

The best reporters who sought first scoop spent a night in jail here and there. Lois herself was no stranger to the downtown lock-up.

Though she had been tasked with getting an interview with their elusive and mysterious savior of Metropolis, Superman, there were other reporters who didn't have her integrity and if given the opportunity, they would out-scoop her.

And Superman... Well, he was the hottest story of the year. And there wasn't much time left in the year to get that Big One. He could have approached any reporter with years more experience and enough integrity that they didn't walk all over Metropolis's somewhat loose trespassing laws. Any reporter in it for the thrill of the chase would have wet their panties for an opportunity like this one.

She almost wanted to wonder if the note had been placed on the wrong desk, because this was really too good to be true.

It gave her massive amounts of glee, however, to believe that he had written the note and that he would show up, alive and well.

"I hope this isn't a hoax." Lois muttered over the rim of the thermos. "That would be just thing. Lombarde or Osborne or Hunter make up a fake note and get me all the way out here to have a laugh at my expense."

"I certainly hope not." said a deep baritone voice that sent a shiver down Lois's spine. She raised her head slowly to the source of voice and sucked in a deep steadying breath.

Superman was descending out of the sky, just as Lois had imagined, like some majestic vision of body-building. He touched down and walked over. The crimson cape rippled out behind him and the lights gleamed off his black hair, highlighting the faintest of blue-ish tints.

It was occurred to Lois, distantly, that this was the first time she had seen Superman really put his feet on the ground and do something as simple as walk. Now granted, the other few times they had come face to face, he had been putting his feet on the ground, but only to stand.

But in this moment, he walked.

He walked lightly, as though his feet weren't quite touching the ground. There was a sense that gravity just couldn't hold him to the earth even when it wanted to. Nonetheless, it was a powerful stride that said this was a man who knew exactly where every inch of his body was. He knew every cord of muscle and he knew how to make every single one of them work in just the right way.

It's like everything he does is just glorious. Lois thought, her eyes dropping to the man's sleek, corded thighs. He's alive and I'm mooning over him and I don't think I care.

"I did write the note myself, so I'm certain this isn't a hoax." Superman added with a broad white smile that made her blood run a little quicker.

"You're alive!" Lois squawked, the words jumping out past her shock.

Superman nodded. "Yes."

"How...?" Lois wondered. She shuffled towards him a few steps and had to temper the desire to stroke his abs.

"Well, it was a bit touch and go for the first four hundred miles, but things cleared up once I got down out of the thermosphere." he said, shrugging. For a second, he looked impossibly familiar to Lois's eyes.

The familiarity was gone as quickly as it had come.

"That's impressive." she said vaguely. "Okay, then!" Lois dug the recorder out of her coat pocket (she had borrowed Clark's). "Did you actually come here because you wanted to give me first scoop or just to tell me that you were alive?"

"Both, honestly. You would have asked for the time, anyways. And you already have a reputation for being trustworthy, Miss Lane." Superman told her. "I needed to speak to someone who would give me a fair chance to tell my story and not warp the words. Your name came up."

"Right... That's flattering. Who's got that much faith in me? I've climbed security fences for the full story. Never mind." Lois waved a hand and clicked the recorder on. She checked the battery life to make sure there was plenty. She had placed fresh batteries in just a few hours ago, but sometimes the display went wonky. Clark had had this one for a while.

"That and I imagined you were worried about me." Superman added, looking contrite. "I'm sorry I didn't show up sooner, but after I hit the south Atlantic, I wasn't in much state to even fly on my own."

Lois felt her face color pink. She cleared her throat loudly.

"Alright, let's get this started. Now I might already know some of the answers, but humor me. So, where are you from?"

"Krypton."

"What, you're Greek?"

"No, Krypton was a planet twenty-seven light-years from Earth in the constellation Corvus. It orbited a red dwarf star alongside three other planets; two of them were gas giants."

Planet?...

If there was one thing Lois disliked about words, it was how easily they could be made to sound convincing. The right tone, the right expression, and any words could sound like the gospel truth.

Planet?

Lois wouldn't lie. She hadn't actually absorbed the idea that Superman was an alien, because it was just too insane to believe out of hand. Therefore, she had expected to hear some pedestrian-sounding small town name like Airville, Pennsylvania or the insulting type of who thought that would be a good name like Jackass Flats, Nevada.

Maybe Typo, Kentucky, or even Smallville, Kansas.

Planet?!

She might have killed to hear Smallville, Kansas instead.

"Kryp-- Krypton is a planet?..." she sputtered, disbelieving. "In outer space?"

"I don't think it would have fit anywhere else." Superman said without a trace of anything that might indicate he was having her on. In fact, he sounded so sincere that Lois's knee-jerk reaction was to believe him instead of questioning everything from his sanity to how real his muscles were.

She stayed silent for a very long moment, trying to digest the words. It was a landmark achievement to render her speechless for more than two seconds and it was something that no one yet at the Planet had accomplished (Clark Kent wasn't aware of this little competition and he wasn't the type to gloat anyways so the crown would go unclaimed for the foreseeable future).

"What you're saying-- What you're telling me-- is that you're-- you're not-- You're not human?" Lois asked, the words staggering out of her mouth in contrast to her usual snappy delivery.

Superman shrugged. "Not the last time I checked."

"You're an-- alien. An extra-terrestrial from-- up there?" She pointed straight up.

"More like over there." Superman corrected, pointing to the southern horizon.

"Don't be a smartass." Lois said, scowling. Ah, there was her sharp tongue. It had gotten lost for a moment. "But you're saying you're an alien."

"Yes, Miss Lane. I'm not from this planet. I'm an extraterrestrial being from a planet called Krypton." Superman assured her patiently. She would probably say it a few more times until it sunk in.

"You're an alien." Lois repeated.

He nodded.

"Your massive hunk of impressive muscles and majestic hair is a product of alien DNA?" Lois asked.

"Yes, it would seem that way." Superman said, trying not to chuckle. He thought: Impressive muscles and majestic hair? Is that what you think of me?

Lois reached out and poked him on the arm.

Superman couldn't tell if she was relieved or disappointed that he was actually very solid and for her part, Lois couldn't either.

"Well, I guess I have to accept the fact that you are standing here." she said. "But whether you're an alien or a not-so vanilla mortal is still up for debate. Not by me, but there are people who won't believe it. You look too human to be alien."

"You look too Kryptonian to be human." Superman countered.

Lois blinked. That was actually kind of a good point. Years of watching low-budget sci-fi shows where all the aliens were strangely human-like had made her rather opposed to the idea that a real alien would actually resemble a human. Considering that she had never met another alien, it had never bothered to occur to her that perhaps an alien species might also find the upright bipedal configuration to be an evolutionary advantage as well.

"It's just-- There's no proof. In all of recorded history on this entire planet, no one has reliably confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life. And you," She pointed at him again. "Here you are telling me that you're from a planet called... Krypton?"

"Yes." Superman nodded. "I know it sound like a lot to take in. But it's a big universe, Miss Lane. It's too arrogant to assume that humankind is the only life out there."

Lois laughed the sort of laugh people gave when they had no other way of reacting to anything. The sort of laugh that existed to fill what would otherwise be an awkward silence. The laugh that existed when there was no available counter-argument.

Because humankind was confined to this one planet that already seemed too small for the seven billion plus people living on it. They had barely explored the length and breadth of their own solar system. To quote a wise man: "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is." There was so much vastness out there and all of it was unexplored by their little fragile bipedal selves. It was arrogance to say that they were the only life in their circle of nine planets (Nine, thank you very much. Lois had to add, even to herself. Pluto is still a fucking planet).

Her laughter sobered up quickly as this train of thought went across her mind. Superman could be an alien. For real, a proper alien. There might be some science to prove it. If he was an alien...

Crap, I might owe Smallville another cookie.

"Okay, you're an alien. Wow." Lois was going to have to accept that as the truth because he wasn't telling her anything else. "Now... You've been referring to Krypton in the past tense. Actually, Dr. Essex was too."

"Krypton was destroyed over two decades ago. My people tried to solve an energy crisis by harvesting the core." Superman confirmed. "To the best of my knowledge, however, I am only one of three survivors to have made it to Earth."

"One of three?" Lois repeated.

"Dr. Essex, obviously. Nam-Ek. And--" Superman hesitated for a moment. "My grandfather. I'd appreciate it it you kept that one off the record, Miss Lane. I don't want people to know about him."

Lois nodded. "So what exactly happened to the planet? How did you three get to be the only sure survivors?"

"The governing body didn't believe that the planet was in danger and when they said so, everyone blindly believed them. My father figured it out first, but his findings were dismissed as fear-mongering." Superman explained. "Only a few people took his words to heart. I don't know who might have made it off the planet before it collapsed on itself or who wasn't even on the planet, so I can only confirm three survivors. And Dr. Essex isn't around anymore."

Lois whistled in fear and awe. "Wow, and I thought our government was full of idiots." she muttered. "So, no family? It's just you?"

"For now, it seems that way." Superman said.

"That's depressing. And you're here on Earth because it was the closest inhabitable planet with an atmosphere you could survive in." Lois surmised. "Is that what I should be getting out of this?"

"It's a basic summation of the facts." Superman said. I'm being a little vague here, aren't I...

"Good." Lois grinned, pleased that she was keeping up. "Alright, enough with the history. Let's talk about you. You're an alien. You're incredibly strong. You can fly. You're practically invincible. I mean, you're standing in front of me when the official statement is that you're dead and let's be honest, I can't wait to refute that. What else can you do?"

"I can emit concentrated beams of heat from my eyes." Superman said.

"Really? Prove it." Lois said dryly.

Pointing with one finger, he directed her gaze to a patch of snow just off to the left and narrowed his eyes at it. For a brief instant, nothing happened, but a glittering red color gathered in his sclera and the snow started to rapidly melt into a steaming puddle.

Lois nodded. "I didn't bring a camera. A camera would have been perfect. Why didn't I bring a camera?" she wondered. Next time, she would have a camera. She shook her head. "What else do you have in your bag of tricks?"

"Enhanced senses. I can hear your heart beating. There's an airplane stalling out on a runway at Metropolis International."

"That's eight miles from here." Lois informed him, like he didn't already know that. "How far away can you hear things?"

"It depends on the surrounding environment, but it seems to average about ten to fifteen miles and I have to be concentrating." Superman explained. When he wasn't concentrating, he could basically hear everything in an eighty-foot radius. "I also have super-speed."

"Faster than Zoom?"

"I've clocked myself at Mach Four, but I did break orbit with four hundred pounds in tow, so I know I'm a lot faster than just Mach Four. And I told you about the x-ray vision."

"Yeah, not actually believing that one."

"I do."

"Then what color's my underwear?"

"I don't know. I'm not looking."

"Oh, you're a gentleman too." Lois sniggered. "Humor me. What color's my underwear?"

She didn't expect to see him get flustered; he looked so noble and regal. It was a small display, nothing like Clark's bright pink, full-face blush and instant break-out of sweat. Superman shifted uneasily from foot to foot and gritted his teeth before he squinted cautiously in the vicinity of her right hip.

"Uh... Orange. Cotton, I think."

She was bundled up from head to toe in sensible winter clothes and her underwear was in no way visible from the outside. That one would have to be taken at face value.

"Well you are just little bundle of surprises." Lois commented, hoping she didn't sound too impressed. "So that invincibility of yours... You've shrugged off bullets at point-blank and it's pretty obvious that you survived direct contact with what I imagine was a fairly powerful explosion, not to mention no breathable atmosphere. Any comment on that?"

"To be honest, I don't know if I would have survived. I haven't exactly gotten around to testing my limits." Superman admitted. "I don't want to do something like dive into an active volcano only to find out that it's going to kill me."

"Fair point. So there's a lot you can do, but you still don't know what you can't do." Lois made a mental note to word that part of the interview in such a way that it didn't sound like an invitation. Her father's last two emails had given her the impression that General Eiling was ready to execute a tactical nuclear strike whether or not the need arose.

"So after twenty years, what brought you out of hiding now?"

"I'd just like to start helping people." Superman said. It was deliberately vague, but he didn't feel that he could say he had spent the last two decades growing up. He needed to keep his parents out of the line of fire too.

"Hmm, you mean like last night?" Lois inquired, receiving a nod as answer. "You know that you saved ten million people? Probably the entire world in the process? That the city's calling you a hero? I've heard people say that Mayor Kovac wants to publically thank you."

"I'm not doing this for any notoriety, Miss Lane. I just want to do what's right."

"The military wants to blast you out of the sky for existing."

"I'd prefer they didn't."

"Judging from what I know so far, they're welcome to try." Lois said dryly. "But you didn't exactly answer the question. After twenty years here on planet Earth, what finally brought you out of hiding and into the world at large? What made you want to start helping people, saving lives?"

"I didn't think I had to justify being a decent person." Superman admitted.

Lois canted an eyebrow. "So you're just here with the best of intentions? Nothing lured you out of hiding?"

Nothing except graduating college. Superman didn't say. "I told you, I'm not doing this for the notoriety. I don't want fame. I don't want glory. I don't even want to be called a hero. I don't expect people to. I just want to do my best to make the world a little better place for people to live in. Having super-strength and being able to fly is just superfluous. I would do the exact same thing even if I didn't have these powers. It's just that I have them, so I might as well put them to the best possible use. The government is welcome to tell me to cut it out, but if I can save ten million more lives before the United States Supreme Court issues me a cease-and-desist, then I'll have considered my time well-spent."

His voice oozed such levels of sincerity that Lois felt a lot of her doubt melt away. He had an earnest, honest expression that seemed so unreal, just looking at it. Lois couldn't remember the last time she had seen a display of open honesty like that and didn't regard it with suspicion. Superman the alien from the destroyed planet called Krypton really just here because he had good intentions and wanted to help. No desire for glory or fame and he might even be happier if the only thing he got was a thank-you every once in a while.

Yet, it was still impossible to believe, as much as she wanted to. She wanted to believe that someone would do good acts just for the sake of doing them. But how many people did she meet in a day who acted solely on their best interests and damn anyone who got in their way? Chivalry was basically dead; they didn't even hold memorial ceremonies for it anymore. Random acts of kindness were always met with great shock and some suspicion. Had humankind really just become so jaded that it was impossible to believe that someone would do something out of the pure goodness of their heart?

"Look, history is full of people who had good intentions but the road to hell is paved with them, as they say." Lois said. There were still a few chinks in this argument of his. "The Greatest Generation had the best intentions on ending the war, but they still bombed the everlasting fuck out of two Japanese cities and the consequences are still felt, even today. How can you reassure not just the people of the United States, but the people of the world, that you don't pose such a threat? That you wouldn't go to such extremes to reinforce your 'good intentions'?"

Superman pondered over that a moment. It was a very valid and very real fear that he was familiar with. The abuse of power by authority figures, essentially. The fear that a handful of individuals could take away every freedom and privilege away from the people.

Or just one man, with the power akin to a god, making the world quake in fear.

"Miss Lane, do you know what it's like to fly?" he asked.

"No."

"Would you like to find out?"

"Oh god yes."

It was a stupid question to ask. If Lois hadn't had her sights set on journalism, she might have re-traced her father's military steps and trained to become a pilot. And the offer itself suitably distracted her from the question Superman hadn't answered.

"It'll be cold up there." Superman warned her.

"I don't care. Take me, big boy, I'm yours." Lois couldn't do that sultry come-hither tone very well, but she tried.

He smiled, making her think of a warm, sunny day, and put an arm around her waist. It was just as firm and strong and reassuring as the last few times. Lois wound her arms around his chest, remembering, though vaguely, the last time his arms had been around her. The last time she had been held against his tree trunk-like chest. It was as solid and immovable as the ground under her feet -- which wasn't under her feet anymore, come to think of it.

Lois looked down and saw that they had already three or four feet off the ground.

"Oh!" She clutched at the man a little tighter.

"It's alright, you won't fall." Superman assured her. His voice vibrated around her ribs. "Would you like me to go higher?"

Lois nodded. "Yes. Yes, please."

He did, rising slowly in a steady circle as to give her time to adjust to the idea of being in the air. It grew increasingly colder the higher they went, but Superman's body radiated heat, so much that the tips of Lois's fingers started to warm up. His heart thumped under her right ear, a powerful beat like a drum. The suit felt strange against her cheek; certainly made of no earthly materials. The texture was like metal just as much as it was like fabric, maybe like Kevlar, but not even a quarter of the same thickness. And he smelled like generic soap and baby-powder deodorant.

Superman stopped his ascent just above the very top of the ferris wheel.

"Heheh, I can see my apartment from here." Lois giggled.

"Would you like to go higher?" Superman asked again. He didn't want to take her too high, in case she had a previously unknown case of acrophobia.

Lois frowned. "I'm not dignifying that with a response. I think it should be obvious."

"Hold tight, then." Superman advised.

This time, when he ascended, he put on the speed, clocking in at just over one hundred miles per hour. The city fell away at a dizzying pace and the stars were suddenly closer than Lois had ever seen them. The wind rushed through her hair, stung her eyes, but she was distantly aware that she was laughing in joy. Away from the earth, slipped from gravity's leash, rising higher and higher into the sky until Metropolis was a glowing spider-web under their feet.

Superman brought them to a spiraling stop and his cape fluttered out around them like settling sea-foam. Lois spun right out of his arms like a dancer, momentarily leaving the anchor that had otherwise kept her tethered, and she experienced a moment of wild, breathless freedom. She twirled once, twice through the air before his strong, sure hands clasped her own and her feet came down safely on the tops of his boots.

"Wow!" Lois gasped breathlessly.

"Careful, we're almost a mile up! You wouldn't want to fall." Superman said, but he was grinning. He would have caught her well before she'd slipped ten feet.

"Just a mile?"

"It's the highest I can take you without an oxygen tank."

"Can you go higher?" Lois wondered, glancing down and then up.

"Yes, I have a deeper lung capacity. I can go as high as fourteen miles, higher if I hold my breath. But I still need to breathe, so fourteen miles is about where I lose the oxygen." Superman said.

"Wow..." Lois said again. "Just-- wow... Everything, wow."

She looked down again. They were still above Metropolis, drifting gently on an air current. The city was sprawled out below, displaying the straight lines that it was known for. Long clean lines glowing with electricity, yellow and orange and occasionally blue. The LexCorp tower glowed white, the gold-colored globe of the Daily Planet building was brightly illuminated and the sterile-like floodlights from S.T.A.R. Labs just west of the city proper cast a strange pall into the air. Cars moved up and down the roads, looking no bigger than ants from this high up. She felt like she could reach out and pluck any of the buildings from their foundations. Puffs of smoke rose from the industrial stacks to the north and airplanes veered towards the runways, looking simultaneously cumbersome and graceful in the air.

Metropolis looked like a great heart on the peninsula, beating with the lifeblood of an entire nation.

Lois tore her eyes off the ground and back into the sky with the man who had brought her up here. And her breath caught. They were far away from the harsh city lights that warped impression. Up here, under the starlight, the lines of Superman's face thrown into soft relief, giving him both the face of an alien and a human, as though he couldn't decide which one he should be.

Then he tilted his head just a little and all philosophical musings flew right out of Lois's head.

Oh my god, he is the hottest thing since that knife that toasts your bread when you slice it. She thought.

"Something wrong?" Superman wondered, not entirely sure what to make of her flabbergasted expression.

"No, nothing's wrong." Lois assured him. "I'm just-- This is all new to me. Humans just don't fly like this. Is it like this for you all the time? Being up so high? Being able to see everything?"

"I like the view from ground level too." Superman assured her. "Being up so high where everything is so small isn't the right way to look at the world. No one should live at such a lofty height. It does things to a good man's head. And I don't mean just from the oxygen deprivation."

"Hah! That's true." Lois agreed, casting another look at the white-lit L-shaped tower of LexCorp. Now there was a man who wouldn't dare lower himself to walk among the wretched masses like a common person.

Maybe the oxygen deprivation was getting to Luthor.

"I'm wondering what the 'S' stands for." Lois said, nodding to it.

Superman looked down at the pentagonal shield.

"It's not an 'S.'"

"Here it's an 'S.'"

"It's not an 'S'." Superman repeated. "It's an old Kryptonian hieroglyph that means 'hope'. My ancestors adopted it as the house crest. You could argue that hope is what brought me here."

"How so?" Lois prompted.

Superman inhaled with an uncertain expression and breathed out in a fortifying kind of way. Lois recognized the sight of a man trying to gear himself up for a confession. Despite his supposed alien origins, he was still the most human man she'd ever met.

"Miss Lane, I've lived practically my entire life on Earth." Superman said. "The only Krypton I know is the one preserved in video and image files. I have no personal memories of the planet.

"I was just a baby when Krypton imploded. My grandfather went ahead of me, to try and find a place like Earth. My parents sent me here so that I would have a future. This planet is the only home I have. I wouldn't dare intentionally harm Earth and the people on it. The very idea makes me sick to my stomach. As such, I won't be anyone's nuclear deterrent."

The words were firm and resolute. Lois hoped she could convey that tone through the editorial. He was not going to be anyone's weapon of mass destruction. He wasn't going to fight wars and he wasn't going to take sides in politics.

She had to make sure that got across.

"Noted." she said. "By the way, your name, Kal-El. Does it mean anything? In your language, I mean."

"I honestly don't know." Superman admitted. It would be worth finding out, though. "I haven't started learning my people's language yet. I barely know anything about the history, come to think of it."

"You said you've lived on Earth all your life. Where did you grow up? Who did you grow up with, your grandfather?" Lois wondered.

"Now that is not a question I should answer." Superman asserted firmly. "I have a personal life, Miss Lane. I would like to keep it to myself."

"As long as you're not secretly a serial killer. Because if you are, I can't make any promises about not prying." Lois told him. "But I won't pry. You're entitled to privacy. Everyone is."

"Thank you, Miss Lane." Superman said, briefly closing his eyes in gratitude. But when he opened them again, they held just a glint of mischief. "Now then, I don't think I've properly taken you flying."

Did that mean swooping and diving and twirling like a roller coaster until she was halfway past nauseous? Spiraling between the buildings of Metropolis, skimming too low over the streets and having a lot of near-misses? Because that would be a fine way to spend the next half-hour, in Lois's opinion.

Her excited grin was answer enough.

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