It was supposed to have been a week. Three, tops. A summer vacation–sleepaway camp, but to space!–to get a better handle on that pesky little extraterrestrial legacy of his was.
Clark and Lois had raised him as human as they possibly could. There was the farm, a dog (who had his own set of powers, sure, but that was a separate problem), video games, Converse, thick-framed glasses just in case anyone looked at him a little too closely. They’d done their best, and they’d done a pretty good job of it, too, all things considered. He’d made it through middle school with all his limbs intact (yeah, he was indestructible, but it was still middle school). But he’d always been more than.
He’d look up at the stars speckling that open Kansas sky and wonder what it was like out there, what a world that no longer existed would think of him and his knobbly knees and his cowlick. He was too human to be alien and too alien to be human, and probably legally not allowed to take a 23andMe for risk of starting an international security crisis.
It was easier to ignore when he was little and didn’t know better, but as he got older, Jon started to understand what his dad being Superman meant. But he wouldn’t really understood it until he got out there, and when he did, he understood it better than he’d ever anticipated. So that was what it was to keep going because you knew it was the right thing to do, the good thing to do, even when everything in you was terrified. That was what it was to buckle up and fend for yourself before you were ready because you didn’t have another choice.
The difference was, though, when it all went sideways, Jon still had had a home and a family to come back to. There was no chance any of them would find him up there, so he’d had to find them, and he did. It just took a little longer than he’d expected. For him. The newspapers he’d found? Barely three weeks past the day he’d left.
He didn’t realize how tall he’d gotten until he landed on their balcony and found his head near-level with the doorframe. It had all seemed so much bigger before. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, tried in vain to flatten his hair, and, with a deep breath that was really more of a nervous gulp, Jon pushed open the door. “Mom? Dad?” he called. “I’m home.”
Clark thought it would be good for Jon: to see the World... Or maybe worlds, as he saw them. As what Krypton might’ve seen them all as. A learning experience, he rationalized as he sent his son into the deeper reaches of space. It was going to be worse when he sent him off to College, he nodded. He would be back faster than a speeding bullet, he believed.
But the boy before him... Wasn’t a boy.
Dressed nearly ready to conquer the day as Clark Kent, his coffee mug neatly shattered in his grip, blue eyes wide as saucers at the silhouette before him. All at once, he saw his boy’s life flash before him, all the events he was there for, that he made damn sure he was there for... And all the ones he couldn’t be, because as much as Clark and Superman were separate identities, they were never separate entities. The latest printing of the Planet crumpled in his other hand, the sound barely breaking him out of his trance, blinking as he took in the features. They were exactly the same, albeit a bit aged. He still took too much after his mother-
Blinking eyes brought the Man of Steel crashing back into consciousness, using the unread paper to wipe off his hand and try to stamp out what had splashed onto his pant leg. “Great Scott-” The exasperated expiative finally made it’s way out of his iron lungs, an almost sigh of relief if he wasn’t still so unsure what had happened. Tossing the paper onto the small table, the one he’d seen the same boy go from canned mush to solid foods, he slowly approached the new stranger in his home. “... Jonathan, is that... Is that really you?” Hesitant hands reached forward, hovering for a moment before they made contact with his arms, holding just tight enough to ensure that this wasn’t a dream... And Clark wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
