THE LAST DAUGHTER

Clark flew up. Straight up. Then still further up, until he was just on the outer edge of Earth's thermosphere. He suddenly stopped his upward momentum, and then turned around to look down on his adopted planet. This was his favorite 'perch." This is where he would go to think, to meditate, or to just be. Out of the corner of his eye, a sickening green mass caught his attention. He turned his head briefly to look at New Krypton, in high orbit above the Earth. Only a corner of the monstrous crystalmass was visible, rising just over the horizon, from Clark's vantage point. He wished for the millionth time he had been able to throw it further into space. It was a huge… scratch that…. ginormous grotesque reminder of the dreadful mistakes he had made and the terrible consequences of his foolish decisions.

Why had he returned to Krypton? Joe-el had warned him not to. He should have listened! Oh, why, why hadn't he listened!

If he had listened to Jor-el, Luthor would never have been able to create New Krypton, almost killing billions of Earthlings in the process. What if Clark had arrived back on Earth just a few days later than he had? He tried not to let his thoughts wander in that direction.

If he had listened to Jor-el, he could have been there for Lois during her pregnancy. He could have been there for his son's birth and first five years. Maybe he would be the one living with them now…

He was certain Kara must have arrived on Earth during his absence. He should have been here. He should have been the one to find her. Not Luthor!

Why hadn't he listened to Jor-el!

The voice of Jor-el echoed in his mind.

"The Last Son will return to Krypton and redeem it. The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son."

"That's it?" Kal-el had asked.

"That was the entire prophesy. But there was other, apocryphal… information. Most of it was secret and only known by the intergenerational society of the keepers of 'Kara's comb.' Your cousin, my brother's daughter, Kara Zor-el, was the last Kara to have the comb passed down to her, and I assume the information as well."

The AI programming brought up an image from Jor-el's memory for Kal-el to experience. The hologram showed a happy little girl, who looked to be the equivalent of about 7 Earth years old, with thick blond curls and eyelashes, a freckled nose, rosy cheeks and pouty lips. The little girl was bouncing up and down on a lounge, acting silly and giggling. She abruptly stopped her antics and reached out her arms. An image of Clark's birth mother, Lara, entered the hologram. She was holding a newborn baby.

Kal-el remembered.

Like most things on Krypton, Kryptonian memory was crystalline. Clear, precise, and non-degrading. On Krypton, memories from infancy would be cloudy only because it took a great deal of energy to access them, and get the relevant 'neurons' to crystalize to bring the impressions into focus. On Earth, Kal-el had all the energy and strength necessary to bring any memory into focus. Even so, memories from his infancy were confusing because as a baby, he hadn't understood much of what was going on. Someone across the room may have said something important, but as a baby he was focused on whatever was inches away from his face and within his reach.

Kal-el remembered that day, but watching it now from Jor-el's perspective, he was able to make sense of it.

Lara sat next to Kara on the couch and gently placed Kal-el in her lap. The little girl bent down and wrapped her arms around the delicate baby and looked at him quietly for a while. Abruptly, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to bring him closer.

"I can hold him," the little girl insisted as she gently tried to pull the baby away from Lara.

"I know you can," Lara chuckled, "but I'm just a little selfish, OK?"

"But I can't…"

"You can," Lara encouraged her. "I'm sure you can. Just give it a few more moments. Be still. Be quiet. Don't give up. Concentrate."

Kara's face scrunched up even more. Kal-el let out a little grunt as his tiny hand came to rest on her nose. Kara opened her eyes and giggled.

Everyone else in the room but Lara stood back and stayed silent so as not to let their own crystalprints intermingle with the baby's. He was so little that his signals were weak. It would be difficult for Kara, who was also little, to detect them. So Kara's father and mother and Uncle Jor-el stood back, hoping to clarify the space as much as possible around the little girl and her baby cousin.

Kal-el watched the image of himself and his mother and Kara from Jor-el's vantagepoint. In a similar way that a good movie director can set the mood of, the general hue, flow of the image and the qualities of the audio of the hologram informed Kal-el that Jor-el was enjoying himself in those moments, and that he felt great affection for and closeness with everyone in the room. Integrating this with his own memory he had of the gentle hummings and vibrations of the crystalprints that surrounded his younger self, gave him a sense of what family felt like on Krypton.

Kara squeezed her eyes shut again and took a deep breath and concentrated. After a few moments, a huge smile broke out on her face. She had pinpointed little Kal-el's crystalprint. She lifted him up a bit to bring his cheek up to her own. Her eyes were still closed, but they were now relaxed. The baby let out a quiet "coo" and then he, too, closed his eyes and was silent and still. They remained in that way, cheek to cheek, exploring each other's presence.

They both opened their eyes and gazed at each other, both still cognizant of the connection they had just made. "He knows me too." Kara whispered. Kal-el let out another "coo."

Kara reluctantly let Lara pull the baby back into her own arms. The little girl leaned over and placed a kiss on little Kal-el's head. "You're so cute. You're the cutest baby in the world. And your voice is so sweet. It's sweeter than the forest songs. Isn't it Daddy?" She looked up at her father for a moment and then back at the coo-ing baby. "When you come visit us Argo city, I'll take you to the Singing Forest so you'll see what I mean. It's too bad you don't have any here."

Jor-el's focus shifted to his brother, who was standing next to him. "Like father, like daughter."

This was the first and only time Jor-el ever mentioned Kara and this was the only image of her he ever showed him. But it had been enough to help him understand that memory from his infancy. It was enough to enable him to recognize Kara in the photos Lois had taken. And when he approached her in the playground of Midvale's Girls' School, even though her physiology was now more Earthling than Kryptonian, his super strong senses could still make out a somewhat fuzzy crystalprint, the same that had been imprinted in his memory when Kara held her cheek to his own.

How did she get here? How did she… exist… at all.

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Jor-el continued. "But all that died with her when she was obliterated."

"Obliterated?"

"Assassinated by obliteration. It was a terrible matter, made even more terrible by that I was unable to comfort my brother. I reached out to him, but received no response. We were not on speaking terms at the time."

After just witnessing such a beautiful serene family scene, Kal-el was all the more perplexed. "Why not? What happened?"

Jor-el returned to the subject of the First Father as if the AI programming had not heard the questions.

"There were a few other matters related to the prophesies that were not secret. But no one knows their origin and there is no way to ascertain their validity. Were these also from the First Father, or were they added later on by generations with overactive imaginations? One of these matters was that there would be not just a Last Son, but a Last Daughter as well. It was never made clear, but it was assumed that the Last Daughter was referring to a keeper of "Kara's comb."

"So Kara Zor-el was the Last Daughter, since she was the last to have the comb?"

"The matter continues that in order to redeem Krypton, the Last Son would be compelled to kill the Last Daughter. Kara Zor-el's assassin was not of the house of El at all, so he was certainly not the fabled Last Son. And furthermore, although her death was associated with events linked to Krpyton's demise, it had no noticeable impact on those events."

"So who else could it be?"

"Perhaps there is a Last Daughter, but it is not Kara Zor-el. Perhaps the traditions concerning the Last Daughter were not authentic. Maybe they are authentic, but the First Father was mistaken, or he had no ability to foretell the future at all. There are many possibilities. These prophesies are a part of our heritage, which is why I am telling you about them. I do not intend that you try to use them to inform you of the future. There can be no redemption for Krypton's destruction. Do not return there. Nothing will be left. It will be a graveyard."

"Who would assassinate a small child?"

"Palm-ek was former colleague and friend of mine…"

But Jor-el was wrong. Kara hadn't been assassinated.

She was alive, and she was here.