LOTS OF QUESTIONS AND A FEW ANSWERS

Linda took Clark's hand and he led them out the front door into the morning sun. He paused just outside the door, turned toward the east and took in a deep breath. As Linda watched him, she remembered something about that Superman's powers and strength came from the sun. Observing him now basking in its rays, she could believe that. She thought she could actually see him soaking up and filling up with the energy. The sun felt good to her too. She always felt better in the sunlight. But mostly it just made her feel hot, not strong.

"If I'm from Krypton, how come I'm not strong, like you? Is it cause I'm a girl?"

They started walking away from the house and toward the barn.

"No. There's something inside of you… chemicals inside of you… that are transforming your body, your cells, your chemistry into … more like an Earthling than a Kryptonian."

"Vulnerablide."

"What?" Clark looked at her quizzically.

"The stuff that makes me vulnerable. Mr. Luthor told me about it."

Clark made that face again. He scrunched up his nose.

"He told me to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"About the vulnerablide. He said I should tell you. He wanted you to know."

"So that's what he's calling it, huh? Yeh, well, you don't really need to tell me about it. Those bombs literally smacked me in the face with it, so I'm already pretty well acquainted with it."

"The bombs? At school?"

"Uh huh. Vulnerablide… a catchy name," Superman said sardonically. "What is he planning to do, mass produce it and sell it at 'Criminals R Us?"

Linda furrowed her brow and tried to remember what Luthor had said about the vulnerablide. While she was thinking, a goat walked up to them.

"That's a goat," Linda stated matter-of-factly, pointing to the animal with her free hand.

Clark patted the goat on the head and then started stroking its back. "This is Vincent… Vincent van Goat." Clark gave a little chuckle. "Would you like to pet him?"

Linda hesitated, not because she was scared, but because she wasn't sure what the point was in petting a goat. But she nodded her head anyway and started stroking Vincent's back like Clark was doing. Clark was relieved Linda wasn't scared of the billy goat. He wondered if he could let his dog, Shelby, out of the barn where Matha had left her last night. Linda continued stroking Vincent while she looked up and around her and took notice of her surroundings for the first time. She saw the barn and some animals, and the orchard just beyond the barn. She turned around toward the house and saw the cornfields a little ways off in the distance.

"This is a farm," Linda stated, again matter-of-factly.

"It's my home. I grew up here. The space ship that brought me to Earth landed in that corn field over there." He gestured past the house. "Or as Ma likes to say, 'it crashed.' Ma and Pa went to investigate and they found me. They brought me home and adopted me and raised me as their own son."

"Pa?"

Clark detected a tinge of fear in her voice. He briefly fantasized about strangling Luthor. "He passed away many years ago."

Linda relaxed again and fell silent and contemplative. She turned her attention back to Vincent and moved her hand slowly up and down the full length of his back a few times. Then she looked up and around and took it all in some more. "It's really nice here and Ma… Aunt Martha… seems really nice. You're really lucky they found you."

That completely undid Clark. Gravity got the better of him, and his knees buckled and ended up landing on the ground with a thump. He was still holding her hand. He buried his face in his other hand.

Linda tried to take a step back, perplexed by his behavior, but he held her hand tightly.

"I'm so sorry, Linda," he sobbed. "I should have been the one to find you. Not Luthor. Not anyone. I didn't know you were coming. But I shouldn't have been off on some fool's errand half a universe away. I was supposed to be here. I was supposed to protect you. I should have been here to protect you."

Clark brought her hand to his face and pressed it against his cheek. "Please forgive me."

Linda felt very awkward and didn't know what to say or how to react. She didn't even understand what Clark was talking about. After a few moments, she became aware of a miserable sort of achiness creeping through her body and soul. It made her feel nauseous and unable to think or feel anything else. She stopped stroking Vincent and rested her hand on Clark's shoulder. She slowly knelt down and snuggled closer to him. Clark let go of her hand and put his arms around her. She put her arms around him and they hugged each other.

They hugged each other in silence for a few minutes. The nausea subsided, and Linda pulled away, but only enough to sit down on the ground next to Clark, still snuggling against him. He also sat down, wrapping his arms around her protectively.

"Can you tell me more… about me?"

"Your name is 'Kara.'"

"Kara?"

"Uh huh. It's a very special name in our family. The first girl that was born into the House of El, that's our family, in every generation was always named 'Kara.' And that comb you have is called 'Kara's comb.' It was handed down from one Kara to the next for over a thousand generations. That's how I recognized you from the photo Ms Lane took of you. I'm surprised Luthor let you keep it. Can I see it?"

"He tried to take it away from me. I wouldn't let him." Linda plucked the comb from her hair and handed it to Clark.

"What do you mean you wouldn't let him? How did you stop him?"

Linda shrugged. "Mr. Luthor used to sometimes call me 'Kara' when he was talking with Dr. Elbe. He always called me 'Linda,' though. He said that was his sister's name, and I reminded him of his sister."

Clark made that face again, although Linda couldn't see it as she was turned in the other direction. "Who's Dr. Elbe?"

"Mr. Luthor's friend. I lived with him before they sent me to the school."

Again... that face. "Could you do me just a little favor? Stop calling him…. Mr. Luthor."

"Why? What should I call him?"

"I don't know… just Luthor, I guess. He's not dignified enough to be called 'mister.' That's interesting though, that they knew your name. Who's Dr. Elbe besides being Luthor's friend?" He turned the comb over and over in his hands, wondering if it had any significance other than being a family heirloom.

"I lived with him before they sent me to the school," she repeated. "He's the first thing I remember."

That piqued Clark's interest. "Really? What's the first thing you remember?"

"Pain." Linda touched her left collarbone. "It was sort of here, but… it was everywhere, not just all over my body, but… all over the room. I can't describe it. It was like I could feel pain in the walls and in the furniture, and even in him. Does that make sense? It doesn't really, does it? He was leaning over me…" Linda's voice became shaky. "…with a… knife. He had a knife in one hand and he had some crystals in his other hand and some kind of tool, like a… " Linda opened and closed her hand. She didn't know what pliers were. "He was moving backwards … as if he had just been pushed like…" Linda threw up her hands and jerked backwards into Clark's chest. "Like that. I was trying get away from the pain, but I was tied down to the table. I don't remember being tied down, and I don't remember him cutting me. But there was blood on the knife and all over me. It was like suddenly waking up in the middle of something… like starting a video in the middle. He was moving backwards, and he yelled 'What was that!' I remember that's what he said but I didn't understand it at the time, and… I didn't even wonder what it meant. I didn't…. I couldn't… think… at all because I didn't have any words… to think. It was just all images and sounds, and… the pain. That's the first thing I remember. Dr. Luthor, can I call him Dr. Luthor…. told Mr. Danvers when I started school that I had … retro..grade and sem..antic amnesia. A bunch of different therapists came to the school to help me learn to talk better and other stuff. They told me I'm so awkward and I cry all the time because I'm kind of like a two year old, but I'm in an 11 year-old body."

Clark let Linda ramble on uninterrupted because he didn't trust himself to speak. He cut her! What the fuck!

Linda finally stopped talking and waited for Clark to say something. He was being so quiet. "Why can't I remember anything?"

"My father told me you once ended up someplace you weren't supposed to be, and you saw something you weren't supposed to see. It was something very top secret. Krpytonian memory is not like Earthling memory. It's more …. organized …. I guess that's the best way to describe it. It's pretty easy to take memories and just… play them out….kind of like playing a video on a screen. They were worried the information from that memory would fall into the wrong hands." Clark touched her collarbone. "So they implanted this crystal here. It's called a mermex crytal. It can lock up memories so no one can access them, not you or anyone else. Dr Elbe must've accidently triggered it to block your entire memory, instead of just the one."

"I think he was trying to remove it. Would I get my memory back if…"

"No." Clark wondered how much of the gory details he should share with her. She was only eleven… or really somewhere between two and eleven. "Removing it would kill you."

Linda bit her lip. "So I'll never remember anything?"

"We'll make new memories."

"What if I lose those too?"

"You won't. The mermex is already full."

"Tell me about my parents."

"Your father's name was Zor-el. He was a scientist and according to my father he was a quite a character. My father was older and his hair was already white. But I remember your father's bright red hair." He thought about his crystals lost on New Krpyton. "I wish I could show you some images. Maybe…" He suddenly thought about his spaceship. There might be some tools in there he could repurpose. "I might be able to."

"Really!" Linda's turned to look at him, her face lighting up and breaking out in a big smile, something Clark hadn't seen in a very, very long time.

"It's good to see you smile." Clark's voice turned mischievous. "I haven't seen you smile like that since I was a baby." He searched Linda's face, waiting for her to catch on to the incongruity.

It took her just a couple of seconds. She scrunched up her nose and giggled. "I wasn't even born when you were a baby."

"Yes you were. You were already a little girl. You even came to visit me when I was born and you held me on your lap."

Linda giggled again, wondering why Clark was saying such ridiculous things.

"I'm being serious. You really did. I've aged more than you since then. There could be a lot of reasons for that. Weird things can happen with time when you travel really fast like you have to between stars and galaxies. Or it could have been something else. There are lots of reasons someone might age at a different rate, or not at all."

Vincent, who had been quietly standing next to them chewing his cud, nuzzled Linda's neck and she giggled. Then he started chewing on her shirt and she let out a little exclamation.

"Stop that Vin." Clark shooed him away.

"Where is Krypton?"

Clark handed the comb back to Linda. Then he pointed downward and tapped the ground with his finger. "Krypton was that way. I can show you better at nighttime."

Instead of putting it in her hair, Linda held the comb in one hand and traced it's lines and curves with the fingers of her other hand. "Kara's comb," she said thoughtfully. "If 'Kara' is such a special name, maybe I should use it?'"

"If you want. It's up to you. I guess you're not really fond of 'Linda' anyway."

"Not really."

"And what about 'Lee.' Where'd that come from?"

"Dunno. Lee….sburg maybe? That's were Dr. Elbe lives."

"Leesburg? Florida, Virginia, Ohio…?"

"Florida."

"Superman will have to go pay Dr. Elbe a visit and ask him some questions. Maybe you told him some things before he messed up your memory. Hopefully I can get him to talk…. unless I strangle him to death first."

Linda turned to look at him again, eyes wide. Maybe Clark shouldn't have said that.

"Nah," Clark said darkly, unable to help himself. "Questions first, strangle second." He paused. "Questions first, answers second, strangle third."

Linda stared at him. "You're going to kill him?"

"No, Linda, I'm just fantasizing."

"I think I want to be called 'Kara,' Kara mused. "I don't really want anything to remember Dr. Elbe by."

"Fine…. Kara. We have to make a new identity for you anyway. Everyone knows about Linda Lee." Clark looked at her critically. "Some kind of disguise wouldn't be such a bad idea either, just to be on the safe side."

"Disguise?"

"To make it harder for people to make any connection between Linda Lee and Kara… Kent? Maybe glasses?" Clark considered her bright eye-catching shiny curls. "Maybe we should dye your hair or something. Or a wig, maybe? Your hair is very… identifying."

Kara's brows shot up and she smiled. "I don't need a wig." She scooched a little aways from Clark and turned toward him so he could see. She lifted her comb up to the top of her head, inserted it into her curls, and pulled it downward just halfway the length of her hair. Clark watched in amazement as the molecular structure of the bright blonde curls changed right before his eyes into straight, soft brown strands. Kara continued combing her hair till it was all brown. She smiled at the dumbstruck Clark. Her brows and eyelashes also darkened at the touch of the comb. Kara paused to look down her shoulders to admire her handiwork, and decided the stick-straight style wasn't to her liking. She ran the comb quickly through the ends of her hair to give the bottom of her new "do" a little bounce.

"How'd you do that?" Clark reached toward the comb.

Kara shrugged and handed the comb to him. "I don't know. I just…do…"

Clark examined the comb with renewed interest. It was more than just a family heirloom. "Well I'll be… It's coated with opalquine. It's the same stuff making those chemicals, the vulnerablide, in your body." Clark was sure no one ever knew about this. The Kryptonian council would never have let little girls or anyone else walk around with something like this. Opalquine was the most valuable substance in the known universe. Wars were fought over it. It was a good thing Earth was off the rest of the universe's radar, or they'd be in for more than a few unpleasant visitors trying to get their hands on the comb… and the opalquine inside of Kara. Clark supposed there was no harm in returning the comb to her, since she herself was full of the substance anyway. He gave it back to her.

"That must have been one of the secrets passed to you with the comb," Clark mused.

"Huh?"

"How to use the opalquine. There aren't that many that know how. Apparently you're one of those few, and you don't even have any clue how you do it?"

Kara shrugged and put the comb back in her hair.

"Maybe you even did this to yourself," Clark gestured in her general direction. "The opalquine inside of you, I mean. Maybe you put it there. Maybe you turned yourself into an Earthling. Maybe you can … access it somehow?"

Kara sat there quietly for a few moments thinking about it. She shook her head and shrugged. "I don't even know…. uh … I don't even know it's there. I don't feel anything. The comb, I can hold it in my hand but if it's inside of me … I don't know… how….." Kara gave an exasperated sigh. "But Dr. Elbe got some of it out of me."

"You mean he cut it out of you?" Clark said through gritted teeth.

"Uh huh. He gave it to Mr. Lu… I mean, Luthor. That's where he gets his vulnerablide from." Kara's thoughts again turned back to Mr. Luthor and what he had told her about his plans. "I don't think he wants to sell vulnerablide. He said…he wants to create chemicals that do the reverse."

"Huh?"

"Vulnerablide turns Kryptonians into Earthlings. He's gonna turn Earthlings into Kryptonians."

After hearing that, and about what Dr. Elbe had done to Kara, Clark wasn't sure how much more he could take in one day. Anyway, he had a meeting at the Planet in a few minutes.

"Why would he want to do that?" Kara asked innocently.

"Dunno, but I really should be getting back to Metropolis. Will you be OK with Aunt Martha?"

Kara smiled and nodded.

Clark stood up and Kara followed suit. They walked together in silence back into the house.