Chapter 4
Clark blinked at the dark wood of Lois Lane's door in confusion. He shouldn't feel so surprised. He didn't know how to go about this talk, but her reaction felt extreme still. He tried to tune out his hearing, but it did no good. He could still hear her muffled cries through the front door. A soft thud sounded as she slumped against it heavily and slid to the ground. His heart pulled at him uncomfortably.
She had to know the truth. She deserved the truth. They had a child together. And if he hadn't been so messed up and out of his head that night, he'd have told her then and there, before anything even happened.
They had a daughter.
His chest puffed with pride, and he wanted to smile. He didn't think he could stand how happy that little girl made him. Knowing she existed-- that he'd had a hand in creating something new, in creating a life when he hadn't been sure that was something he'd ever be capable of because his biology-- was too much to bear if he couldn't see her again. His eyes swam with tears. He clutched at his hair frustratedly, backed away from her door, only to return and touch it gently. "Lois," he whispered, voice harsh and ragged.
Nothing. Clark stepped back again, drawing up his composure, and he turned to walk down the hallway, beating a hasty retreat down the stairs and out across the Metropolis night sky.
He didn't have an exact destination in mind. He just flew until he couldn't feel the tears running down his face, till the sounds of her tears weren't echoing in his brain. He landed after a long winding path at the farmhouse, underneath the wide open space of the starry Kansas skies, and he took a deep breath.
The sky was so big. And he was such a small thing in comparison, a blip in the universe, a blight on this planet... how could he have messed things up so royally? He was just one person.
One alien.
He scanned the stars as he always did for sight of his first home. Sometimes, he imagined he could see it. A faint red star flickering in the distance, thousands of years back in time. He wondered what his ancestors would be doing a thousand years ago. Did they have these sort of problems? Did they just live normal, every day lives-- eat, drink, fall in love, make mistakes...
But there was nobody there. Because it wasn't a thousand years ago. Because Krypton and Rao and everything surrounding was gone. Obliterated. Much like his life.
His imagination wasn't so powerful that he could imagine a happier ending.
Clark turned to look at his childhood home, chagrinned as he always felt when he wondered about his other family. Not his true family-- he knew that he couldn't have asked for better parents. Things worked out the way they were supposed to, even if it took a lot of sacrifice for him to make it here.
A thought crossed his mind and struck him dumb. Because he'd accepted his parents that weren't biologically his own, but what if his biological parents had shown up years down the road? Would he even accept them?
Havana didn't have to accept him. She had her own support system in place. Her own family. And if his own daughter didn't have to accept him, then Lois definitely didn't have to.
Guilt gnawed a hole in his stomach, and he trudged into the house with slow, heavy steps. He shut the door quietly behind him, and took in the peaceful, familiar surroundings. He smiled sadly at the photos of their family lining the mantle-- something he'd never get to have with his own daughter. He ran his hand over the door jamb to the kitchen, where the marks of his height were notched in and told the story of his childhood in braille. He smiled softly at the kitchen.
Food would help.
He opened the fridge and inspected some of the ingredients, wrinkling his nose when he smelled that the milk was expired. Clark shoved the carton to the back of the fridge and held his breath a moment. His eyes alighted on a hunk of cheddar and some bread, and he snatched the supplies up in an instant, sealing the door on that acrid smell. He turned and got a pan out of the bottom cabinet and greased it with butter, letting the aroma soothe him as it melted into the hot pan.
"Don't move." Something prodded at his back menacingly.
Clark froze and raised his hands above his head. "Dad?"
The light flicked on and he blinked to adjust his eyes before turning around. "Clark?"
He smiled a little at the sight of his mother holding a laddle aloft and his father poking him with the skinny side of a baseball bat. Martha sighed and set down her weapon. "Clark, how many times do we have to have this conversation? You can't just go barging in here in the middle of the night and clamoring around! You might not need it so much, but some of us are trying to sleep!"
He grimaced. "Sorry, Mom."
His parents exhaled heavily and put down their guard, relaxing. Jonathan hefted the bat in his hands and grumbled about putting his bat away for next time, and Clark would have chuckled if he were in a better mood.
"What's wrong, honey?"
Clark looked at his mom to defend himself, and suddenly found himself trapped in her stare. He squirmed, thinking that he should have known better than to make eye contact, and she focused in her attention on him like a laser beam.
"What did you do, Clark?"
He felt like he was seven years old again, caught sweeping the remains of a broken lamp literally under the rug. "Why do you think anything's wrong?"
"Oh, please, honey. Why else would you come here in the middle of the night? What, Metropolis ran out of grilled cheese?"
He wanted to laugh, to scoff, to roll his eyes like a teenager and blow off her question with some lighthearted sarcasm. He wanted to pretend, just for a little while longer, that everything was okay.
But it wasn't.
He opened his mouth to reply and a croak came out. A furrow appeared between his mother's brows as her concern grew, and he couldn't take it anymore.
He broke.
Tears streamed down his face, and he sank to his knees on a sob. His mother was at his side in an instant. "Clark? Clark?!"
He dragged in a gasping breath, but the tears kept flowing. He'd thought that he'd cried all his tears already on the flight here. He'd wasted two whole hours wandering the skies until his tearducts felt dry.
"Jonathan! Get back in here!"
"What? What's going on?"
"Clark's-- Help me--"
He cradled his head in his hands.
"Son? Talk to us. What's wrong?"
"Clark, you're scaring me. Say something."
He sniffed loudly and wiped his sleeve over his face. "I... I screwed up, Mom."
He felt his mother's hand land on his forehead, pushing his hair back from his face. "Oh, honey." He looked over the rim of his foggy glasses at her and she gave him a comforting smile. "Come on. Let's get up. I'm not so young anymore, so can we please cry on the couch?"
He huffed, the closest thing to a laugh he'd felt since he'd tucked his daughter in for the first-- and most likely the last-- time. He nodded morosely and allowed his mother to drag him to his feet, his father at his back to steady him. His feet felt like lead, but guilt prompted him to shuffle away, so that they didn't have to physically drag him. He felt like enough of a burden as things were. He sank into the couch cushions before he even registered he was there.
"Now, talk. Whatever you say, you know we love you and it's probably not as bad as you think. Just start talking and you'll feel better."
He didn't think she was right about that. It was definitely worse than he thought it was. But talking might help, and right now, he needed all the help he could get. He just didn't know where to start.
He pursed his lips and looked into the loving, concerned faces of his parents. They seemed to be waiting him out. "You don't understand. It's been... it's been the worst day of my life."
"That's not true, son. Remember the Kryptonite?"
Clark shook his head. "Worse than that. I... I've never felt worse in my life. I don't know how to survive this."
"Stop it, Clark. Don't talk about my son like that. It surely couldn't be all bad. You can too get past this, whatever it is, and it'll just be a bump in the road."
His mother's words meant nothing right now, but she was right about one thing. He took his glasses off, cleaning the tears that had pooled in them with the hem of his shirt distractedly. "It's not all bad, in one way. Because as horrible as it was, I still can't say that. Because it's also kind of the best day of my life."
He waited for some sort of signal to continue, from either side of him, but a stark silence waited for him, both parents staring anxiously. Clark leaned forward to set his glasses on the coffee table, inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.
"I found out... I'm a father."
He waited again for a reaction, heard his parents take in a deep breath of their own. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, waiting for an explosion of some kind, waiting for the ball of anxiety in his chest to release.
"Clark?"
He turned towards his mother hesitantly, opening his eyes. He saw tears reflected in hers, and his heart thumped with hope in his chest.
"I'm a grandma?"
He swallowed and smiled weakly at her. "Yeah. I'm a father... oh, God, I'm a father--"
A laugh broke from his mother's throat, and she covered her face to hide her tears and her smile. His heart warmed inside him. This was a step in the right direction at least. She was happy, excited to be a grandmother. He hoped she'd get the chance to really be one.
A beat of silence passed before his father, ever the pragmatist, spoke up. "And you're certain that this child is yours?"
Anger spiked in his chest in defense of Lois, and his face reddened. "Dad!"
"I'm just saying, son, are you positive--"
"Of course I'm positive! You should have seen her! She... she looks just like me."
"She?"
Clark turned back to his mother with a hint of pride in his tone. "Yeah. She. My daughter. I... I have a daughter. And she's perfect. She's beautiful, and smart, and... and I barely know her, and I love her so much already. I don't know how it's possible to love something so hard that you didn't even know existed."
His mom's hand cradled his cheek gently, and he shot her a watery smile. "I do. That's how it was when we found you."
His stomach dropped at the reminder of everything else that came with this knowledge, and he could feel his smile slide into a frown. "I wish you never did find me. I don't deserve it."
A slap fell against his shoulder, and he looked glumly up at his mother. "How could you say that when you have a child of your own?"
"She's dying, Mom."
Terror made her face go white, and he worried for a moment maybe he'd scared her to death. "My grandbaby?" she whispered.
"No!" He shook his head. "No, Havana's perfect. Never been sick. Perfect." She let out a breath he hadn't realized she'd been holding, and his father at his back did the same. Jonathan hadn't been very vocal in all this, but Clark was happy to hear that he wasn't completely uninvested. "It's Lois-- her mother. She's dying. I think... I think I might have killed her."
A heavy, large hand landed on his shoulder, and Clark turned with tears burning in his eyes again to look his father in the eye. "Start from the beginning. Tell us everything, son."
And so he did. He reminded them of his time in Havana, expanded on what really happened, with minor edits. He told them about how she'd run, how his head had cleared the next morning. How he'd suspected it had been some form of Kryptonite that the would be assassin had. Reassured his mother that he was fine once again when she started crying about Kryptonite, firmly putting the rememberance of that time out of her head. Then he walked them through the events of the day, to the moment where she'd slammed the door in his face.
"You did what?!"
"She deserved to know the truth," he defended against his father. He really hadn't expected him to be the parent he had to fight against. He'd thought his dad would be the calm voice of reason, and his mom the irrational, reedy voice of punishment.
"Why? She didn't know before. What makes you think telling her now is gonna make any bit of difference?"
"I didn't know before!"
"So you told her your biggest secret-- the one thing I've told you your whole life to never tell another soul-- for what? To assuage your own guilt?"
"Jonathan!"
"No. The boy doesn't got any sense, Martha!"
"Jonathan," she snapped firmly this time, fixing him with a hard glare. "Why don't you go make us all some coffee?"
He grumbled and launched to his feet, a new sort of guilt filling Clark's soul as he watched him walk away. "He's right, Mom. I probably shouldn't have told her anything. She... she might not ever let me near them again, and she wouldn't be in the wrong. But I just... I should have told her the first time, when we met. Meeting her again, and consciously not telling her? When would ever be the right time?"
"Clark," she soothed, pulling him towards her in a one-sided hug. "You were trying to do the right thing, that's all. She's raising your child. She had to know sooner or later."
He licked his lips hesiantly. He'd never been dehydrated in his life, but he was parched right now. "What if I'm right, Mom? What if... what if she slept with me and that's some big affront to the universe, and she's dying because of it? What if I'm some sort of... poison to humans?"
"Oh, sweetheart," she cooed, brushing his hair back gently. "I can't believe that's the case. You survived all the way to this planet, made it safely into our arms-- it just wouldn't make sense if you couldn't be happy."
"I'm serious, Mom."
"I am too. Heck, I changed your diapers, and I'm perfectly fine. Besides, you think you'd have been able to create a child with her if you weren't meant to?"
Clark sighed and closed his eyes gently. "I don't know, Mom. That's the problem."
The coffeepot hissed in the distance, and Clark listened as his father poured a mug before the screen door in the back creaked open and slammed shut. He frowned. "Coffee's done."
Martha sighed and pat his thigh. "Why don't you go talk to your father, and I'll fix us a cup."
Clark got to his feet and trudged out the kitchen door. He saw his father staring up at the stars, his mug steaming in the cold air. He shuffled over to his side, arms crossed tight over his chest. "Dad? I'm really sorry."
Jonathan didn't move to acknowledge him. They stood together in silence for a few long moments before his father finally sighed and spoke. "You don't understand yet how hard it is to be a father. It'll come. Every decision you make can leave an impact; everything you do or even the things you don't do can leave you second guessing yourself."
"You've been a great father," Clark defended.
"I appreciate that, son, truly. But it doesn't take one ounce of that fear away."
He stayed silent in acquiescense, because he understood that now. He'd never been so scared in his life. He hadn't known the girl existed for even a day, and already his head was filled with terrifying questions that had no solutions. The only thing that he thought might make him feel better was if he could hold her in his arms for the rest of her life, where he knew she'd be safe.
"The guy-- the one you said was trying to assassinate the Cuban dictator-- you said he had Kryptonite?"
Clark nodded. "It had to have been. It wasn't green, like the stuff that almost killed me, but it made my head pulse and I just felt... different, in my head. It was red. I try to stay in such tight control, Dad, all the time. But that stuff... it made me feel like all that control just drifted away."
Jonathan pursed his lips and rocked on his feet. "And he was military. He had to have worked with the same people that came and dug up your ship in the first place."
"Maybe." Clark shrugged.
"And she told you she was there with them, on that same military convoy, and you still thought it was a good idea to tell her that you were an alien?"
He gaped at his father, because he hadn't even thought of that, but he knew in his gut it wasn't true. "Lois isn't like that, Dad. She left them. I mean, she's a well known reporter, for Pete's sakes. You'd think that you'd be a little less cynical of her."
"I don't know her, son. Heck, you don't know her either. You've spent all of two days with this woman and done nothing but defend her since."
"Dad--"
"I'm not trying to pick a fight," he held up a hand defensively, and took a moment to sip his coffee. Clark tried to keep his stomach from roiling. Because his dad wasn't wrong, not in the least. "I just want you to start thinking about your actions, son. Because you're a father now, and even if you're not around, every decision you make is gonna have an impact on that little girl."
Shame and fear made his face grow hot. "Yeah, I know."
"I love you, Clark. I don't want anything bad to ever happen to you."
"I know. I love you, too, Dad."
The screen door burst open. Clark snapped his gaze over to find his mother poking her head out with a mischevious glint in her eyes and a wry smile twisting her face, and he knew she was up to something. "Boys? I think I had an idea."
