Work Text:
She lives with the Kents for a while. They’re kind, Kara will give them that, almost foolishly so. They treat her to apple custard and knitted sweaters and books, many books—first, from her cousin’s childhood stash, filed away in the attic, then from their own bookshelf, then from the public library down in Smallville.
Kal visits every other day. He asks her questions about Krypton.
“I remember eymor,” she says, on one such occasion.
“Eymor.” He lets the word sit on his tongue, like a melting lozenge.
“A game we used to have on Krypton. We’d play it during recess. Unlike other games, it wasn’t a contest of who would win, or who would last longer than the others. We passed a ball around and across a circle, never letting it hit the ground, never touching it with our hands either, only arms and elbows; and everyone had to touch the ball at least once, before someone was allowed to pass it a second time.”
He nods. He is old, older than her. He is four-and-twenty in Earth solar cycles: it is close enough in length to Krypton’s own solar cycles to call it the same age in both calendars. He has only recently graduated from Earth’s version of higher academies. College, she remembers it’s called. He looks like the Earth’s treerats—squirrels, she remembers they’re called, or was it chipmunks—when he smiles, all puffy-cheeked.
He’s found a job at a newspaper, down in Metropolis. The Daily Planet. He’s starting there in a month, as an assistant photographer.
“You’re picking up the language fast. It’s only been, what, a little over a year?”
She shrugs. “There’s not much else for me to do.”
“I think you must have been a really smart nut on Krypton, too. I never was one for languages, as you may have, uh, noticed from my distinct lack of Kryptonian.”
They’ve stopped in front of an enclosed pasture, filled with those Earth-zuurts. ’Cows’, Kal calls them, and they’re grazing on the grass. Kal stops to lean against the fence.
“On Earth, we have catch.”
“Catch.”
“Kent family tradition, weather permitting. It isn’t a competition, either. Although it is, uh, admittedly simpler than eymor. Just passing the ball, back and forth, over and over.” He pauses. “Do you want me to show you?”
She tells him yes.
He tells her to don a special glove. A big and bulky and unwieldy ornament. A baseball glove, Kal calls it, for the human game of baseball; for that matter, the smooth white ball he has in his hand is also called a baseball. “Very original, I’m aware,” Kal quips, shooting her an awkward smile.
“Now what?”
“Eyes on me.” He paces, back, back, until he is clear across the field. “Hold your hand out. Steady. Now go.”
He throws.
Later, Kara will come to remember the sports broadcasts that her father would put on the holo when he was younger and happy and could afford himself such small pleasures, races and tourneys; and she will think of those slowed down holos, in this moment, as she watches how fast and how slow the ball spins toward her. Too fast, far too fast, fast like a bullet. Too slow, like time has congealed and she is the one who has come unmoored, or is it that she is too fast; and she coils her legs, and she springs out.
“Nice catch, Kara!”
They settle, passing the ball. It is a hypnotic rhythm, repetitive, almost meditative. They talk. He talks. He talks about his life. He is not normal, and now she isn’t either.
He’s stronger, and faster, beyond what any normal mortal being should be capable of, and on top of that he can breathe out ice and glare in red-hot fire, and that’s meant to make him special. Not to mention his senses. The tingling in his ears of all the murmuring voices in the world, or all the hidden and unhidden things beneath his eyes, or the constant itch in his arms and his legs and his chest; or the dreams. It hurts to stare for too long. It hurts to listen, to smell, to taste, to feel: so he’s learned to never linger, stay on the move, here and there and away.
He says he’ll become a proper superhero within the next solar cycle. Superman, he’s decided for the moniker. She asks him why. Because he read a book from a human philosopher named Nietzsche, about the concept of eternal recurrence, about reliving one’s life endlessly and still finding satisfaction in one’s choices at every moment, and the name ‘Superman’ from that book stuck with him—
“No,” she cuts him off. “Why do you want to be a hero?”
He pauses at that.
You ever get that feeling like there's something missing in your life? he ends up asking back. You ever wonder if there's more to your life—not in the sentiment of delusional grandeur, because he couldn't care less about glory, about fame—but because something has felt off about you from the day you were born? Like you were a relic forged for a long-irrelevant use, left to rust in the shed, left to find some other purpose on your own.
This, he says: this is the purpose he’s chosen.
“And what about you, Kara?” He tosses the ball back at her. “What purpose will you choose?”