Chapter Text
As it turned out, Cal is not waiting for her.
She jolts awake to the shuddering entrance of her pod into earth's atmosphere.
In an instant she's frozen in time, and then alive again, careening towards a sea so different from her starry ocean.
The pod shook violently, for a moment, encapsulating her entirely in the white hot fires of reentry.
She is a world of flames, a girl of ice and fire.
She can smell the ash, the smoke, feel the choking heat crawling at her throat.
Kāra is dying .
Dead.
She is both destroyer and destroyed, and just for a second, she is back on Krypton, caught in the fires of its implosion.
The ship rocks and she blinks back into her pod - no longer covered in flames but still falling rapidly.
Up is down and down is up as the world shifts and shudders apart; ripped and and frayed at its edges by a sea of conflicting forces that toss her around mercilessly, like a small boat in a weathered storm.
She loosed a shattering scream as she lands with a thundering crash into the ground.
The impact reverberates through her violently, shaking her very bones in a mix of unadulterated terror and whiplash that sucks the air from her lungs.
The pod groans like a wounded animal, inching forward and half buried in sand before finally coming to a stumbling stop.
Like being trapped in a living beast, everything around her shifts and sighs as it settles and she presses her hands against the glass, first to brace herself, and then to eagerly stare at any visible land.
Though half buried and covered in earth - the tip of the pod banked up, away from the ground, and through it she could see…..…..blue?
It’s a vast blue, the colour of her fathers eyes, limitless and utterly breathtaking - but entirely odd.
Did she land upside down? Is she looking at an ocean? If so it’s very still.
Glancing at her pod she takes stock, she has her necklace, her chair, and not much else.
If she wants to get out she’s going to have to get creative….. Should she get out? If she’s over the ocean the fall would surely kill her.
Her dilemma is answered for her by a blur and a smash as something pulls the pod's hatch right off its hinges, and she screams because looming above her is……is her father?
" Daddy? "
"I - What? Sorry kid, I don't know what language you're speaking. Are you hurt? Do you need help? Ayuda?"
Her father spoke in a strange stilted stream of syllables that left her ears ringing - but it didn't matter because her father was here .
Leaping from her chair, she threw herself into his arms, grappling for purchase on the wrappings at his shoulders.
His hands secure themselves on her back and she presses her nose into the fabric of his dressings; not caring for the strange smell, the hot sun on her skin, or that peculiar upside down ocean because he was here, she had prayed for a miracle and Raō had answered her.
"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! You came for me!"
Her father halted in his mutterings, his hands freezing where they gripped her waist before grabbing her face in panic.
"Wait Kryptonian ? Your kryptonian ?”
And she nodded because yes. They had fled Krypton together, all they had to do was find mother and Cal-Eł and they would be whole once more.
But fathers face is white, and his hands are trembling where they frame her face. His eyebrows knitted together in grief and concentration.
" Daddy? "
“I'm uh….I’m not your dad kid, I’m sorry, I uhh……I … no … dad "
A stone sank in the pit of her stomach, and quite suddenly, the air became much too thin to breathe.
" No you're my Daddy! Mine ! You came for me! "
Because he had? Hadn’t he?
" I… ."
His face crumbled in a soul crushingly familiar way, and the ache in her heart grew as she noticed the subtle differences between the man in front of her - and the man that only lived in her memory.
His hair was lighter than father’s, and his skin had been tanned a soft gold by the Terrans yellow sun.
But most of all, the difference lay in his eyes, for there was a glint of hope in them she had not seen since she was a very young girl.
"Daddy?" She whispered for a final time.
And with a single word he broke her heart into pieces all over again
"No, I'm not your Daddy."
The scream that followed would haunt Clark for the rest of his life.
Clark was out of his depth, Clark so entirely out of his depth it was laughable .
Clark wasn’t laughing.
In the last ten minutes he had gone from finalising his research paper for Professor Doyle, to having a kryptonian child sitting on the pizza stained futon he found on a curb!
Which was…….it was…..
Clark had never understood the term “mixed bag” until he was flying above the Pacific - with a little girl in his arms.
Apparently she knew him - or at least knew of him - and that was more of a connection to the past he so longed to know then he had ever had before.
On the other hand….. an entire whole ass person was sitting in his crappy apartment, looking at him like he hung the moon and stars!
He cracked the bathroom door open checking she was still there before shutting it again like the cowardly coward he was.
And he was a coward, he was a coward because it was beginning to dawn on him this little kid (and he couldn’t stress that enough) was quite possibly his responsibility from here on out. If she was kryptonian, regardless of how she got here, there was no krypton to go back to.
She was stranded, just like he had been, except she wasn’t a baby; she was a fully functioning small person, capable of choosing who looked after her. (and if the way she gripped his hand had been anything to go by, she had chosen him).
Which was insane, that was an insane choice to make! He was only just an adult himself!
He ate ramen for breakfast! He crunched his college deadlines and did stupid things for money! Hell, he dressed up in a baby blanket and punched people! For free !
He was 23, only just finishing his degree, he wasn’t capable of raising a child!!
And that was the question wasn’t it?
Whoever this kid was, it was highly unlikely any of her family survived, hell it was a miracle they themselves were here. Whoever she ended up with was probably going to be keeping her. Permanently.
He just needed a place to drop her off, somewhere that would give her a normal life, we’re she could grow up to become a strong woman with human values. (and not have to be involved in the train wreck that was Clark’s college years.)
But who the hell was equipped to deal with a super-powered pre-teen?
His parents were too old, he wouldn’t put this on them, and he couldn’t exactly call cps! They would turn her over to scientists in a……..actually that could work.