The team behind stopping nightfall worked together on putting together a deep-space sensor array in the Mojave Desert. Lex with his newly established financial power had begun the project. The nickname Megalomaniac had been fondly given to the man, but he didn't truly behave that way. The bite his doppelgängers may have once had tempered by the invasion and turned into actually worthwhile human endeavor.
"You're scorching the motherboard, Kal."
Kal-El blinked, the microscopic beams of heat receding from his eyes. He leaned back from the massive, half-assembled satellite dish.
"My apologies, Bernie," Kal-El said smoothly, though a faint, self-deprecating smile touched the corners of his mouth. "The solder in this wire has a lower melting point than the schematics indicated. I am adjusting my output."
Bernie sighed, dragging a heavily calloused hand down his face. The older scientist was sweating through his khaki shirt, squinting through thick sunglasses at the Kryptonian who was currently per
"I think it's time for a break anyways," Bernie answered, rubbing tired eyes. He tossed a wrench onto the metal scaffolding. "Let's take a break. You might be a solar battery, but I need sustenance."
Kal-El nodded and floated down from the fifty-foot scaffolding, landing with barely a whisper of displaced sand. His body language was very far from his clone's. He tried to mimic the 2 doppelgängers from the alternate earths he'd met and was learning not to 'stand like a god' as Bernie and Lex had come to ironically phrase the description.
He wore 'human' clothing as well, absolutely nothing to remind people of his people.
As Bernie retreated to the air-conditioned trailer, Kal-El turned his face upward, closing his eyes to let the unfiltered radiation of the yellow sun wash over him. It was a stark contrast to the moon. Here, he felt tethered.
The sound of an approaching engine pulled him from his reverie. He didn't need to open his eyes or use his enhanced vision to know who it was. He recognized the heartbeat—a little faster than most, shaped by a vigilance that never truly slept.
Lois.
Kal-El deliberately stayed where he was, keeping his hands visible by his sides. He had learned over the last four months that sudden movements, even welcoming ones, could cause that steady heartbeat to spike into a frantic, panicked flutter. He waited until the door opened.
"I brought supplies," Lois called out. Her voice was strong, carrying easily over the desert wind.
Kal-El finally turned. She was standing by the open trunk of the SUV, hauling out a large insulated cooler. She wore combat boots, cargo pants, and a loose linen shirt, her hair tied back severely. She looked like a soldier on leave—always prepared, never entirely at rest.
"Bernie will be exceptionally grateful," Kal-El said, remaining near the base of the satellite dish. He kept a deliberate thirty feet of distance between them. "He was just lamenting his breakfast."
Lois dragged the cooler onto the sand, shutting the trunk. She looked at him, her dark eyes scanning his posture. The guarded intensity was still there, a physical barrier between them, but the sheer, blinding terror that used to accompany it had dulled into a manageable wariness.
"Lex sent actual food this times," Lois said, taking a few steps forward before stopping. She gestured to the massive array towering behind him. "Is the perimeter defense grid online?"
"It will be by nightfall," Kal-El answered. He saw her flinch slightly at the word, a reflex to the name of the asteroid they had destroyed. He immediately softened his tone. "By the evening. I am finishing the micro-welding on the receiver."
Lois nodded, her shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch and breath hitching at the reminder of what he could do. "Good. The zealot factions have been quiet, but Lex thinks they’re regrouping. They know you're still on Earth, and they don't like the idea of an alien building a watchtower."
"It is not a watchtower. It is an early warning system,"
"Try telling them that." Lois crossed her arms, a classic defensive posture, but she didn't step back. "How are you holding up out here? Lex said you haven't been back to the bunker in three weeks."
Kal-El looked out over the desert. "It is peaceful here. I do not have to worry about... startling anyone."
Lois’s jaw tightened. She knew what he meant. Even with the world hailing him as a savior, the sight of his face walking down a hallway in the bunker was enough to make survivors freeze in their tracks. He was mirror image of a cruel invader - bearing the same awful power, and he carried that burden with a quiet, devastating grace.
"You can't hide in the desert forever, Kal," Lois said quietly.
Kal-El looked back at her, surprised. It was the first time she had actively encouraged him to integrate. "I am not hiding. I am working."
"You're isolating," she countered, her journalistic instincts flaring to life, sharp and unyielding. "You're doing exactly what you did on New Krypton when you realized your people were broken. You're stepping back because you think your presence causes pain."
Kal-El stiffened. The observation struck entirely too close to the bone. "My presence *does* cause pain, Lois. I am a living reminder of a monster. I cannot fix that with a smile."
"No, you can't," Lois agreed bluntly, refusing to sugarcoat the reality of their trauma. "But you also can't fix it by hiding - in fact isolation is also alarming. Frankly it's not fair to you. You are isolated for years - in stasis."
Kal-El let out a slow breath, the tension leaving his frame. He looked at the woman standing twenty feet away. She was still broken, still healing, and yet she was standing here in the blistering heat, challenging a being who could level mountains, simply because she thought It the right thing.
"You are a very formidable woman, Lois," he said, the corner of his mouth ticking upward.
"Don't change the subject," she deflected, though the ghost of a smirk mirrored his own. She nodded toward the cooler. "Come help me carry this to Bernie's trailer. He'll pass out if he doesn't get a sandwich."
Kal-El didn't move immediately. "Are you sure?"
Lois looked at the space between them. It was a chasm of horrific memories, of another man's cruelty, of grief and survival. But the door, as she had told him months ago, was off its hinges.
She took a breath, anchoring herself in the present. In the yellow sun, in the desert dirt, in the man who had risked his life to stop Nightfall.
"I'm sure," she said. "Just... walk slow."
"Always," Kal-El promised.
He closed the distance at a distinctly human pace, stopping a respectful few feet away to lift the heavy cooler as if it weighed nothing at all. They walked toward the trailer together, the silence between them no longer heavy with fear, but fragile with the beginnings of trust.
