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Lois watched as the girl stepped out of the ship. If she hadn’t recognized her immediately from the van’s home movies, she still would have known who she was by John’s reaction alone. He ran to her, picked her up and squeezed just as tightly as she’d hugged her own boys not that long ago.
This was Natalie. In another universe, this was her daughter. Not Natalie Kent. That little girl had existed even less than hers here on this Earth. No, this was Natalie Lane Irons.
A part of Lois knew she should be happy — for John, at least, finally reunited with the daughter he thought he’d lost — but mostly she felt afraid. One pinky wrapped around Clark’s, and her body shifted, almost on autopilot, as she moved ever so slightly to stand behind him.
It wasn’t enough.
Natalie saw her. Her jaw dropped and a shaky “Mom?” fell from her lips. She’d taken a few steps, her disbelief giving way to a smile, until she saw Clark and stopped in her tracks.
“You.” Her voice was hard. Her eyes were harder and filled with fury as she strode toward them. A flick of her wrist brought a small metal stick down from her sleeve and another made it shimmer and grow into an axe.
“Whoa, now,” Lois said. “Wait a minute-”
“Nat-”
“DID YOU THINK I WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE YOU?!” Natalie’s steps turned to a run as she swung her axe, and Clark gave Lois a shove away from him, raising his arm to block the blow. She swung again “YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE BEHIND A PAIR OF GLASSES?!!”
The boys ran to Lois. She could feel Jordan tense, like he was about to go after Natalie, but Lois grabbed his wrist, keeping both of them with her. Two ramped up teenagers was the last thing anyone needed. Clark let Natalie whale on him, stepping a little farther away from his family with each blow. It was only when Natalie shifted her grip and twisted the handle, making the axe head shimmer with a green glow that Lois began to worry. Natalie butted Clark in the chest with the head of the axe. Lois swore she could hear him gasp for breath as the blow knocked him slightly off balance.
“Clark!”
Natalie raised the axe again, and had just begun her final swing when John intercepted, grabbing its handle, ripping it from her hands and flinging it as far away as he could.
“Nat, it’s okay,” he said as he pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay.”
“Daddy, that’s Kal El! He killed Mom!”
“Not here,” John said. “Not him!”
Natalie pushed herself away from her father, her expression sliding from determination to betrayal.
“Are you…with him?” she asked softly. She shook her head, and for a moment she looked like she’d be sick, right there in the grass. She didn’t need him to speak to know the truth. “Why? WHY ARE YOU WITH HIM?!” Natalie shoved her father away, only to step toward him again and beat on his chest, not with the trained rage of a girl with the gumption to take on a superman, but with the devastated hurt of a little girl destroyed. “HE KILLED MAMA!”
John just stood there while she slammed her fists into him, maybe because he thought she needed it. Maybe because he thought he deserved it. Lois wasn’t sure. But as the scene unfolded before her, a memory she hadn’t thought about in decades bubbled to the surface. She was 7, about to be 8. Her father knelt on the ground in front of her. All he wanted was a goodbye hug before being deployed, but all she could do was slap at the rough fabric of his BDUs, screaming and crying about the birthday party he’d promised to be at. It was the last promise he ever made to her, and when he returned nearly a year later, their relationship was never quite the same.
Lois squeezed Jonathan’s hand, kissed Jordan’s temple and stepped toward Natalie and John. She shook her head at Clark when he looked about ready to intervene, and when she reached John and Natalie, she laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Natalie.”
Natalie whirled around, and if Lois had Clark’s or Jordan’s hearing, she was certain she would have heard Natalie’s heart skip a beat. But she didn’t need anything extra to see the joy and the heartbreak and the sorrow that worked its way across Natalie’s face.
“Mom,” she squeaked while shaking her head, because she knew, deep down —no matter how similar things looked — that nothing was the same on this world.
“Come here,” Lois said as she pulled Natalie into a hug. The girl collapsed into her embrace, spilling hot tears onto her shirt, and in that moment, Lois knew, too, that nothing would ever be the same for any of them.
“I know you’re not my mom,” Natalie said. “Not really.” Lois nodded as she set a mug in front of Natalie, kept one for herself and sat down while they waited for the kettle to boil. “I mean, how could you be? Married to that thing.”
Lois let that comment slide. “It’s true,” she said. “I’m not your mom. But I don’t think we were all that different.”
“How would-”
“I saw your dad’s recordings. Home movies of the three of you. News reports of…” Lois trailed off. “Do you know where I was, yesterday?” Natalie shook her head. “I was on a rooftop in Metropolis, reporting on an attack from Kryptonians.”
“Why?!” Natalie’s eyes went wide. “Why, if you saw…if you knew how my…”
“Because we’re not so different,” Lois said. The tea kettle whistled, and she rose, bringing it back and filling their mugs, the aroma of chamomile wafting upward. “I was there because I needed to be. Because nobody else was, and people needed to know what was happening and how to try to stay safe. I was there because I love my children, and I wanted them to see what strength in the face of fear looked like. To know that we don’t have to be super to be strong.”
Natalie nodded, and dunked her tea bag a few times, watching dark streaks fill her mug.
“When I was 7, we were at the park. I giant rattlesnake came slithering out of a bush, headed right for us — after, Mama said she thought it must have hitched a ride coiled up in some farmer’s truck.”
Lois shuddered. Of all the normal things she hated, snakes were near the top of the list. “What happened?”
“She pulled a gun out of her purse and shot its head off. But I could tell she was scared. Of the snake. Of using her gun for the first time outside of the range. But she did it.”
“She sounds very brave.”
“Yeah, she was. And I guess you made it off that rooftop okay.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“What?”
“Your dad saved me while my husband fought his own people — his own blood -- to save the rest of us.”
Natalie swallowed and wrapped her hands around the mug. That didn’t sound anything like the Kal El she knew.
“I’m not your mom,” Lois continued. “Not really. But from what I’ve seen, we share a lot of the same goals and ideals and love, even if our families don’t look the same. And I hope that if you trusted her judgment, maybe some day you can trust mine.”
Natalie brought her mug to her lips. “Well, my mom did love her chamomile.” She took a sip and winced. “But she always used-”
“Honey?” Lois reached into the cabinet and produced a small plastic bear filled with golden liquid. In her universe, the bottle was shaped like a bee. A whole hive if it was the economy size. But this bottle had the same squeeze. The honey flowed at the same rate and stirred in just as easily.
And it tasted just as sweet.
Jonathan pulled clothes from his dresser and closet and shoved them into a laundry bag. He left a few T-shirts, shorts and sweatpants — things Natalie could wear in a pinch — and turned to his brother.
“How’s it going?”
Jordan turned his head so his ear faced the door.
“I think Mom’s making tea.”
“Oh, yeah, because that’ll fix everything.”
“Dad’s with Mr. Irons. They’re-” Jordan stopped midsentence, and Jon could see the tips of his ears flush pink. “Sorry,” he said before shaking his head and turning back to Jon. “Dad says if he can’t spy, we can’t spy.”
“Well how did he know- you know what, never mind,” Jonathan said as he gestured to a bookcase. “Grab that trophy, too.”
Jordan set a photograph from their first birthday into a box and grabbed the Pee-Wee Football championship prize from the shelf.
“You know you’re not actually moving into my room forever, right? Why do you need this?”
“Because I’m awesome,” Jon said, “and I don’t want her to get the wrong idea, think I’m like you, and then all of a sudden I’m the one dodging Kryptonite axes in my sleep.”
“You don’t think she would, do you?”
“I don’t know. But she hates Dad, so the less to remind her of him the better.”
“That’s messed up,” Jordan said as he grabbed another family photo — this one from Worlds of Fun when they were 9 — and added it to the box.
“Can you blame her?” Jon said. “I mean, what we almost saw, with Mom and that Kryptolady? She *actually* saw. I’m surprised Dad is just staying in the murder van and not a hotel halfway around the world.”
“Huh,” Jordan said as he hefted the box off the bed and gave one last look around the room. “Where would that be?”
“What?”
“The other side of the world?”
“Do I look like a geography nerd; how I would know?” Jon swatted his brother with a final pair of of socks before dropping them into his bag.
“Middle of the ocean,” a voice said from the doorway. “Pretty much right between Africa and Australia.” Both boys turned to see Natalie standing in the doorway, leaning on its frame and holding a blue mug that clashed with her red hair. “I am a geography nerd,” she said before taking a sip of her drink.
“I, uh, I didn’t mean nerd in a bad way,” Jonathan stuttered as he offered a slight smile.
Natalie snorted and entered the room with a shake of her head. She went straight to the window and gazed out into the yard.
“So this is Smallville,” she said. “Bunch of farms and a downtown that’s the basically the whole town.”
“You’ve never been? On your world, I mean?” Jordan asked.
“Why would I come here?”
“You know, I said the same thing,” Jonathan said.
“Ugh, we get it,” Jordan said as he picked the box up again. “Smallville bad; Metropolis good.”
“Hey, Metropolis is awesome,” “Metro’s great,” Jon and Natalie said in near unison before looking at each other with grins.
“You’re…Jonathan, right?”
“Jon, yeah. Only my parents and grandpa really call me Jonathan.” Jon nodded in Jordan’s direction. “That’s my brother Jordan. I guess…technically…” he trailed off, suddenly painfully aware of how close he was skirting the “My dad is Superman and married to your dead mom’s doppelganger” line. Sometimes he missed the days when his only problem was geometry and if the cafeteria was out of chocolate milk.
“It’s okay,” Natalie said. “I mean, it’s NOT okay, but I get it. Technically, in a weird way, we’re kind of family. And I guess that’s cool. I never had brothers before.”
“We never had a sister, either,” Jordan said as he headed for the door. Jon looked down at his laundry for a moment, biting his tongue as his mother’s secret threatened to spill out. “It’s getting late though, so I guess…see you tomorrow?” Jordan said, and then he was gone.
For a moment, Jon and Natalie stood in silence.
“So…” Jon said, trailing off when he realized he didn’t know what to follow it up with.
“So.”
“How’d you get here?” Jonathan finally asked.
“It’s a long story,” Natalie said, and something in her face lit up like she couldn’t wait to tell it. “Flash tech, mostly.”
“You know The Flash?!” Jon dropped his laundry bag and took a seat at the edge of the bed. “There’s Flash tech?”
“Yeah! Well, I knew A Flash-”
A light knock on the door frame interrupted them.
“Jonathan,” Lois said. “Time for bed. You still have school tomorrow.”
“Aw, come on, Mom. After everything that’s-”
Lois arched her brow and dipped her chin every so slightly.
“Uh-oh, I know that look,” Natalie said with just a touch of humor as she looked pointedly away.
“Yeah. Yeah, me too,” Jon said, rising and his grabbing his laundry in one motion. “G’night, Nat. Mom.”
Jon hurried to Jordan’s room and hoped sleep came quick. After all the nightmares the last few weeks had been — hell, the last semester, really -- for the first time in a long time, he couldn’t wait for tomorrow.
Natalie breathed deeply. Her breath was minty from borrowed toothpaste and a spare brush, fresh from the package, but it was the clothes that stuck with her. They were Jon’s and nothing special — just a pair of sweat pants with the cuffs bunched around her ankles and a faded Metropolis Sharks T-shirt — but they were so soft and the smell of soap and dryer sheets lingered, sending her mind soaring back to her childhood. Honey was one thing, but this? All she needed was a warm fluffy towel to really feel at home.
She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she felt this way. She’d been with a resistance cell ever since the attack. Ever since her dad disappeared. And even though she was walking with true heroes, they were still limited to cots in underground bunkers. Laundry detergent, when they had it, left their clothes stiff and scratchy.
A bed. Fresh clothes. Her dad downstairs on the couch and some version of her mother a few doors down. This was better.
Except Kal El was less than 100 yards away, sleeping in a barn like the animal he was. She wanted to believe that Lois and her dad were right. That he wasn’t like that here. This was Clark, who was a family man and global hero. Maybe even the original superhero, who just happened to be near unkillable and shoot laser beams from his eyeballs.
She wanted to believe them. But her universe’s Kal El had been good once, too.
Natalie piled all Jon’s pillows at the foot of the bed and propped herself up. With her stick leaning against the leg of the bed and the moonlight in her face, she could always keep one eye on the sky.
Just in case.