Chapter Text
[FORTRESS LINK: SYSTEM ALERT]
Foreign vessel detected approaching Earth’s orbit.
Current trajectory set to breach Earth’s atmosphere in T-01:47:32.
Predicted landing coordinates: 83°39′N, 30°37′W (30-mile radius).
As soon as the warning message buzzed onto his phone, Clark knew his Friday afternoon plans were done for. But at least the alien he was about to intercept chose to book their Earth vacation on a weekend. He wouldn't have to come up with an excuse for why he needed to dip early from work, and Lois and Jimmy wouldn’t need to cover for him.
Instead, he feigned a headache to get out of the after-work drinks invite and claimed he’d go straight home.
It wasn’t a total lie. The Fortress of Solitude was a kind of home. And it was exceptionally close to where the ‘foreign vessel’ was expected to land.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Four. What else can you tell me about our visitor? Are we even sure there’s life onboard?” Clark asked almost as soon as he laid eyes on the robot.
“Our readings indicate a high likelihood that the vessel is Kryptonian, sir,” Four replied. “Whether or not it carries life is unknown, but from what we could tell about the structure of the vessel, it is remarkably similar to the one Jor-El designed to send you here. The design was his own patent. We don’t know how it could have been replicated without access to the blueprints, which we assumed were destroyed with the demise of Krypton.”
The monotone delivery did nothing to lessen the impact of the robot’s words. The breath left Clark all at once.
Another survivor.
Someone like him. Someone who may have even known his father—how else could they have accessed his designs?
Maybe… maybe it was even his father. Clark knew it didn’t make any sense, and he knew it was wishful thinking. He was certain his biological parents were dead. Or else, why would they have taken this long to follow him?
The sleek, crystalline console of the Fortress suddenly felt like the only steady thing in the universe as he leaned heavily against it, his knuckles turning white.
“How… how long until they get here?”
“Estimated countdown to impact is one hour, twenty-five minutes, and nineteen seconds.”
With how anxious Clark was to meet this person, it might as well have been an eternity.
— — —
The vessel was similar to his, only bigger.
Clark couldn’t help but hope that meant it served a similar purpose to his own—that it was designed to preserve life. He couldn’t help but hope that it contained an adult Kryptonian. Someone who could finally answer all his questions about home.
And Kal-El, despite his best efforts and the underlying guilt he felt toward the Kents for wishing it, couldn’t help but hope the vessel carried one of his parents.
It cracked open like an egg. He carefully lifted the top section off, his eyes eagerly scanning the interior.
His breath hitched when he saw her.
The passenger was a girl.
She was unconscious, wearing a silver suit that covered her entire body so he could only see her youthful face and catch a glimpse of blonde hair carefully tucked into the head covering. She couldn’t have been much older than thirteen.
And she was hurt. There was blood seeping down the side of her head, coming from her temple.
A tiny whine brought his attention to the other lifeform the vessel carried. Of all things the vessel could have contained, a dog was not one of Clark’s guesses.
The dog shifted and climbed higher on top of the girl until it was practically sitting on her chest, its small face nuzzling her neck tentatively. It licked the side of her face not covered in blood, and that alone was enough to rouse her awake.
Clark didn’t have the time to mentally prepare for this moment. He didn’t even have the time to register that he probably shouldn't be towering right over her, or that it would do him good to take a step back.
As it was, they almost immediately locked eyes, and the first thing the girl did was scream.
“Sorry! I’m sorry! I mean you no harm, I swear,” Clark quickly said, backing away and raising both hands in the air, praying it was a universal sign for surrender and not just an Earth thing.
The girl snapped something back. The sounds were familiar enough from the audio archives he had of the Kryptonian language to know what it was, but he had no idea what she was actually saying.
“I-I don’t understand,” Clark said apologetically.
The girl said something else, gesturing with an open hand in a sharp up-and-down motion at his suit, then honing in on the crest on his chest. She said something that sounded distinctly accusatory.
He looked down at the crest, then back up at her. “This? This is my family’s crest. Do you recognize it? Did you know them?” He couldn’t help asking, the questions pouring out of him before he could stop them. But he knew she couldn’t answer him; she didn’t even know what he was saying.
“Wait. I have something for us.” Clark held up a finger, once more relying on basic gestures to cross the communication gap. Digging into his suit’s pocket, Clark pulled out two small earpieces.
Twelve had anticipated this exact hurdle and had immediately gotten to work on them—Kryptonian technology calibrated to translate between English and Kryptonian in real time.
He kept one held out and took the other, making a show of putting it in his own ear, hoping she got the message.
She regarded him warily for a couple more seconds before reaching out for the other piece, mirroring his actions. As soon as the earpiece clicked in, both of them immediately talked over each other. Neither caught a word.
“You go first,” Clark said after a beat of silence, able to tell that the girl’s patience was running thin.
“Where did you get this? Who are you?” The girl asked. He could still hear the raw Kryptonian vowels, but the English translation layered seamlessly on top of it.
“I made it. There were designs for it in my vessel. My name is Kal-El.”
The girl scoffed, looking at him like he was an idiot trying to get away with a laughable lie. “Kal-El is a baby.”
Clark blinked, completely thrown off. “I was a baby at one point, yes.”
The girl looked even more irked, clearly coming to the conclusion that she was dealing with a fool.
“I was maybe a year old when I crash-landed on Earth in a vessel almost identical to yours,” Clark explained gently. “It was designed by my father, Jor-El.”
Her breath hitched at the mention of his father’s name. Her eyes widened, and her arms, which had been tightly crossed over her chest, unwound to push against the floor of the vessel. She scrambled to her feet at a startling speed, but swayed immediately. Clark instinctively reached out to steady her.
She used his outstretched hand to pull him closer, and he held perfectly still as she studied his face. Up close, Clark caught his breath. Her eyes were the exact, impossible shade of blue as his own—a color so hyper-saturated it looked fake to human eyes, a trait he’d never seen on another living soul. It was like looking into a mirror that was maybe thirteen or fourteen years younger.
After a stretch of silence that felt eternal, Clark saw the exact moment the girl started to believe him.
The irritation melted right out of her, replaced by absolute horror. Shaking her head, she stepped back and kneeled down at the vessel's controls, frantically switching through the screens and scanning lines of data.
She was whispering something under her breath. His super-hearing picked it up, and the earpiece translated the single word repeated over and over again.
“No, no, no, no, no.”
Clark wasn’t sure what was happening, or what had her so upset, so he stayed quiet and waited. After a few agonizing seconds, she whipped around to face him.
“How many revolutions has it been?” she asked, the translation technology accurately replicating the sheer panic in her voice.
“How many what?” Clark asked, unable to follow.
“Since you’ve arrived on this planet! How many revolutions has it been?” she repeated, sounding so terrified that Clark felt a spike of panic in his own chest.
“Twenty-five years?” Clark answered. It was the only answer he had.
It must have been the wrong one. The next thing he knew, the girl pounded her fist against the vessel’s operating panel, exclaiming something with an unmistakable tone of fury.
The earpiece struggled for a microsecond before relaying in a flat, robotic voice: “Kryptonian curse word.”
Her fist landed once, then twice, then five times in quick succession. The alien screen remained unharmed, but the dog, watching in curiosity, started to bark in protest.
Clark was quick to intervene, reaching out and gently grabbing her forearm. “Hey, hey, stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
She jerked her arm out of his hold and turned on him fiercely. “No, you stop! You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything! This is all wrong!” She gestured wildly around them, tears finally spilling over.
But he was desperate to understand—desperate to fix it. She was clearly distressed, and those blue eyes were overflowing, making them look impossibly brighter.
He held his hands out in a placating gesture. “Okay. You’re right, I don’t understand. Help me then. Tell me what’s wrong, and maybe I can help figure out a way to fix it.”
Her lip quivered with the effort to hold back sobs as she looked at him with so much despair it made his heart squeeze. He could feel her pain almost as if it were his own.
“You can’t fix this,” she said. Her voice shook, but the statement was devastatingly matter-of-fact. She took a sharp, ragged breath. “They’re all dead. Everyone I’ve ever loved is gone. My home is destroyed. And the only reason I am not buried with them was so I could protect you. That was my one mission, and I failed before I even had the chance to try. I’ve lost them for nothing.”
Her voice cracked at the end, and she couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. Too proud to cry openly in front of a stranger, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed into them, her shoulders shaking violently.
Clark held his breath, his mind clouded with a grief that wasn't his own, yet hit him with the force of a train. His heart mourled for all the people this girl had lost—because they were his people, too.
“I-I’m so sorry,” Clark whispered, his hands hovering, wanting to comfort her but completely lost. But the questions were still burning in his mind. “I know this is hard, but could you help me understand? I don’t understand what your mission had to do with me. I thought Krypton was destroyed twenty-five years ago. How did you survive this long? And… I'm sorry, but who are you?”
The girl wiped at her face with her gloved hands, though it did little to stop the tears. She forced herself to calm down, straightening her posture and trying to appear bigger, even though the top of her head barely reached his chest.
“Of course you wouldn’t remember me,” she said cryptically, a painful longing bleeding into her tone. “You still fit in the crook of my arm the last time I saw you.”
She took a breath and steadied herself.
“My name is Kara Zor-El,” she continued. “Daughter of Zor-El and Alura In-Ze. I was sent after my baby cousin in the only two vessels to make it out of Krypton. My mission was to protect and raise him, make sure he grows up knowing our customs, and help him bring honor to the noble House of El.”
She looked away then, down at the flashing console that had told her the damnable truth. Her fists clenched and unclenched in barely controlled anger, her shoulders sagging under a weight too heavy for a child to bear.
“I failed my mission,” she repeated, turning to look back at him. Her expression was now eerily devoid of emotion, masking the devastation underneath. “I failed you, Kal-El. I am sorry. I am twenty-five revolutions too late.”