The Keeper of Krypton

By mat528 [marsha.twitty@yahoo.com]

Rated: PG

Submitted: July, 2010

Summary: Clark finds a new way to store his globe by involving an old friend.

A/N: Clark finds a new way to store his globe by involving an old friend. This is a crossover I thought of early this morning.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Lois and Clark, The New Adventures of Superman, or do I own any publically recognizable characters. They belong to their individual companies and subsidiaries.

This story takes place after the L & C episode “The Foundling.”

***

Clark Kent walked with his Earth parents, Martha and Jonathan, by the fence which housed their farm. In his hand was the globe and all of the secrets of Krypton that it contained.

“Clark,” Martha’s worried voice intruded, “are you absolutely sure about this? I mean, honey, you had it in the Fortress of Solitude tree house, where no one would find it.”

Clark protested as he looked at his mother, “Only because they didn’t look there. Suppose they’d found it, like the men Jack sold it to? Then they would not only use it to control me, but they might use you, as well. Lois is already starting to ask questions.”

Martha’s worry increased tenfold. “What kind of questions?” she asked.

Before Clark could respond, Jonathan inquired, “Are you sure you’ve thought this through, son?” He looked over his shoulder at the tree house again even as they got closer to the main house.

“Yes,” Clark said, his brown eyes following his father’s gaze.

When it looked as if Jonathan would disagree, the super powered man said, “There, it’s completely vulnerable. But the place I’ve chosen is more secure than any other on Earth, and my friend would never reveal the globe’s location to anyone.”

“Is it anybody we know?” Jonathan asked. The look on Martha’s face echoed the same question.

Clark shook his head, saying, “No, and much as it hurts, I’d like to keep it that way. They might come back, or those two men Jack sold it to might track it down.”

They all knew nothing about the two strangers who had possessed the globe for a short time, but all three knew about the first threat: Bureau 39. Bureau 39 was a secret department organized by a Federal Agent turned rogue, named Trask. Trask had been paranoid, using and exploiting the government’s resources against aliens real and imagined. He had gotten the ship Clark, aka Kal El, had been sent to Earth in as a tiny baby to escape extinction when his planet, Krypton, exploded.

The globe was genetically tuned to Kal El’s frequency, but it would also activate at certain times whenever another touched it. Clark had hidden it in the tree house he’d often used as a child when he wanted to escape all of the taunts and slurs thrown at him in school whenever someone saw him using one of his powers.

He’d called the house his “Fortress of Solitude,” where he could relax and look at his pet rock, which he’d named after his first crush, Lana Lang, or any of his other earthly treasures. He remembered when his powers had first shown up on his sixth birthday, and how, a mere three years later when heat vision had been added to his x ray vision and incredible strength, he’d wondered about his parents.

Martha and Jonathan had tried to fudge things as best as was humanly possible, but Clark had persevered. Finally, on his tenth birthday, they had told him the truth: he was adopted. When Clark had run away, he’d gone to the Fortress, refusing dinner that evening. Jonathan had told Martha to let him go, to give their son space to work things through. The usually headstrong wife agreed with her husband and remained silent.

The next morning, Clark had decided to find out everything he could about his real parents. He had hit rock after hard place several times over the years, until last year, when Trask’s warehouse had been discovered; until six months after, when Jonathan finally confessed to both Martha and Clark that he had hidden the ship that he couldn’t bring himself to destroy.

Jonathan had also told Clark that the reason he’d not revealed anything was to protect him and Martha from possible exposure by the government in the 1960’s when space exploration was just beginning to be thought possible in America, and when the existence of aliens was more than just little green men.

Trask had also, three decades later, seized on this possibility. But, to him, and to Clark and to Kal El’s friend, aliens were real. The government terrorist saw them as dangerous, beings who with the arrival of Superman would invade and conquer. He failed to see that not all aliens were like the ones that Clark had encountered on his trips abroad. Trask didn’t realize that the mild mannered Kryptonian wasn’t there to take control, but to give control back to Earth whenever beings from outer space threatened it.

And so was the being who agreed to keep the globe…until the time was right.

When Clark’s thoughts returned and they had all gone inside the house, Jonathan slammed the screen door and all three sat at the small, rickety wooden table in the dining area in the kitchen.

“I guess you’re right, Clark,” Jonathan said at last. “I’m only sorry it’s come to this.”

Clark put a reassuring hand on his father’s arm, then moved it to his mother’s.

“Don’t be,” he said, his voice comforting. “I’m not.”

***

Later that night, Superman flew into space above the Earth and waited. After about five minutes, a light winked amongst the stars, and a blue box with the words “Police Box, Public Call” appeared. The door on the box opened and a man with a rounded jaw, hair parted to one side, and a tweed jacket with a shirt over which a pink bow tie rested popped out.

“Hello, Kal El, or is it just ‘Kal’?” the man greeted.

“Hello, Doctor,” Superman said, his hearing of the Time Lord’s dual heartbeat confirming that this was his friend.

“We’re on schedule, I see,” the Doctor said, gesturing inside his ship. “Come inside.”

Superman flew in and landed in the vastly different, slightly orange hued console room.

“You’ve been redecorating,” the Man of Steel commented. He didn’t say anything about the wilder color scheme. His mind conjured up the last colors of the TARDIS, and of the Doctor, himself.

“And you’ve…changed,” Superman said haltingly. His nose and his ears had told him that this was the same man, but he was puzzled as to how the Doctor could alter his appearance.

“Regeneration,” the Time Lord said. “The last time we met, I had on slightly more leather, as I recall.”

“And bigger ears,” Superman put in. Just then, before the Doctor could comment, a young red headed woman with long hair came in, toweling her ears. Her mini skirt housed some long, shapely legs, and her hazel eyes were regarding the Time Lord with amazement in them.

“Doctor,” she said with a Scottish accent, the Man of Steel noted, “you never mentioned that you had a swimming pool!”

The Doctor put his hands on Amy’s shoulders, saying, “Yes, well, I never mention a great deal of things, Amy Pond.” He regarded Superman, who had been standing off to the side of the ship that Amy had not looked toward.

“We have a guest I’d like for you to meet,” the Time Lord said. When he removed his hands, Amy turned around, and then she gulped.

“S-Superman!” she said after a moment. She pointed at him and said, “That’s the Man of Steel!”

The Doctor’s lips twitched with amusement. “Yes, quite,” he said.

Superman crossed his arms and smiled. “You can come closer, Amy,” he told her. “I’ve been house trained, or, uh, TARDIS trained.”

Amy put a hand to her mouth, exclaiming, “Yeah, I know, but…you’re the Man of Steel!” She squealed again.

“I get that a lot,” Superman responded. Amy reached out and touched a blue clad arm. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a camera.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “The Doctor frowns on this sort of thing sometimes, but…”

Superman nodded his approval, inviting, “Please.”

Amy handed her digital camera to the Time Lord, who took their picture. Once that was done, she gave the thumbs up to the Doctor at the way the image came out. It showed her planting a saucy kiss on the Man of Steel’s cheek while he smiled.

“Amelia,” the Doctor instructed, “amuse yourself while we talk shop.”

“But Doctor…” Amy started protesting. The Time Lord gave her one look with his intense, deep blue eyes.

“Okaaayy…” she grumbled, walking out of the console room.

When both were alone, the Doctor told Superman, “Sorry about that.”

Superman thought, And does she sit and play dead on command for you? But he knew that it wouldn’t be right to say that to the Doctor, so he settled for, “Boy, you’ve got her well trained.”

“She’s known me for quite awhile,” the Doctor revealed. Both sets of eyes followed the path Amy had taken out of the console room. Jerking himself to regard the Man of Steel, the Doctor said, “Now! To your globe!”

Superman removed it from his cape, saying, “I’m glad I was able to use the communications band of the Wayne Tech computer to track you down.”

“Well, from one alien neighbour to another, I figured I owed you one,” the Doctor said, taking the globe from Superman.

“Come again?” the Man of Steel asked.

“Krypton was in the same galaxy as Gallifrey, my home planet,” he explained. “I visited your father on some occasions.”

“But you couldn’t save him,” Superman said, not without some bitterness.

“Can’t interfere in certain events which are fixed in time, like your planet’s destruction,” the Doctor responded, not without some sympathy which he rarely felt.

“But, look at it this way,” the Time Lord told Superman, “without your little journey to Earth, you would not have met the extraordinary individuals, good and bad, that you have.”

The Man of Steel thought about his Earth parents, Lana, Perry, Jimmy and Lois.

“By the way,” the Doctor said, “I understand your partner knows that you kept your own property? How did she, ah, respond to that out of curiosity?”

As they walked outside of the console room toward the Doctor’s library where he stored various knick knacks, the Time Lord placed Superman’s globe on a shelf and touched it. He grabbed the Kryptonian’s hand and a light shot out of the globe. An older, distinguished man with grey hair and a white robe with the “S” symbol Kal El wore on his blue suit appeared.

“The fifth transmission has ended, but so that you will know the glory of your home world, my only son, you need only ask what you will,” Jor El’s, his father’s, vision invited.

Superman looked at the Doctor, but the Time Lord remained silent. The Kryptonian stared at the image of Jor El again.

“Are you my father?” Superman asked.

“I am,” Jor El said.

“Why did you send me to Earth?” he wondered.

“To save you from Krypton’s destruction,” Jor El responded.

Superman had already guessed as much when he’d seen the older man’s earlier transmissions. Kal El’s jaw tensed as he asked another question.

“You obviously seem like a man of technology,” he said to Jor El. “Why didn’t you build a ship to save yourselves with me? Why couldn’t you save Krypton?”

Now it was Jor El’s turn to look tense. “I had miscalculated the time of Krypton’s destruction,” he said. “My initial conclusions had indicated that it would be destroyed in months, but as the earthquakes grew more frequent and the volcanic eruptions more prevalent, I did some more research and discovered quite to my horror that only hours before the end were upon us.”

Superman choked back a sob as his father continued. “There wasn’t enough time to save anyone, except for you, and possibly your mother,” he reported. “But Lara decided to face the end with me; she wisely concluded that the ship might not reach Earth with both of your combined weight slowing its descent. I agreed finally with her choice.”

“Why Earth?” Superman said. “I know that you said its values were like Krypton’s, but…you could have selected a more advanced world, couldn’t you?”

Jor El’s hologram said, “It was not the technological advancement that appealed to us. It was the spirit, the determination, and the ability not to be defeated even under the most oppressive circumstances which aided us in our choice. For those reasons, and the fact that those beings there need a champion to help guide their journey towards the light, I sent them you, Kal El, last son of Krypton.”

The Doctor removed his hand. Jor El’s image burned with its luminescence, but remained silent. Superman removed his hand, digesting all that Jor El had said.

“What did you do?” he asked the Doctor. “Jor El’s image once told me that he’d only be able to appear five times, and those times I saw him, he was never that personal with me.”

The Doctor drew himself up to explain. “Time Lords are a telepathic race,” he said. “We communicate with each other, and, when it’s warranted, arrange for other species to transmit to each other with a Time Lord as the bridge.” He regarded the globe, saying, “I’ve just arranged for the circuits within the hologram to be a sort of two-way transmitter. Whenever you ask a question, it will scan your mind, receive the signal, and transmit an answer from your father.”

When Superman looked dubious since he didn’t know if Jor El would have placed the words into the globe or whether the Doctor fabricated the words Jor El might say, the Time Lord told Superman, “Don’t worry! Your father really did load the globe with several hundred thousand thoughts and images, not only of your world, but other, fantastic things! I just arranged it so that you could discover them more easily.”

Superman looked grateful, but he asked a moment later, “But since you’re keeping the globe, how will I contact my father to ask him more questions if you’re not in the area?”

The Doctor tapped his head, saying, “I’ve thought of that, too. When you concentrate on your globe and your father, you will see his image. You must think hard; a mere stray thought in your mind will produce nothing, and then you’ll see his image until you transmit the thought command to stop.”

“But what about other people?” Kal El wanted to know. “They accessed the globe’s secrets before. They could find out more about…me.”

The Doctor shook his head, saying, “You just don’t get it. It’s now keyed in not only to your DNA, but to your mind! Unless both are utilized, the images will not be seen. Once they are transmitted, they can only be seen by you, no one else.”

Superman shook the Doctor’s hand just then, saying, “Thank you.”

The Doctor thought about his people, about his family and friends who had been destroyed just then. He wished that he could have brought them back somehow. Maybe, someday, they could return, but for here, for now, he was content to help a fellow alien, particularly this one.

Fishing in his tweed jacket pockets, the Doctor said, “Here.” He handed a silver key with circles and lines on the back of it to the Kryptonian.

“If I’m in the area and you want to see it, ring me up,” the Doctor invited, “and when my ship appears, you’ll be able to enter it and see your property.” He wrote his cell phone number down and handed it to Superman. The Man of Steel took both items and put them inside his cape.

“Thanks,” he said, flying outside into space once more. When the Doctor poked his head back out, Superman said, “Say good bye to Amy.”

The Time Lord waved his assent, then closed the door. The blue box disappeared with its familiar grinding noise. Superman flew back down to Earth and to the Daily Planet.

***

Later on that day, Clark was typing up the last of a story when Lois came over to his desk. “Okay, what’s up, Smallville?” she asked Clark. Clark looked up from his article.

“What do you mean, Lois?” he wondered.

“You’ve been smiling an idiotic grin all day long,” she said. “I wanna know what’s going on.”

“Well, I got a chance to meet an old friend,” Clark said smoothly. “He got me in touch with some folks who know my parents…my real parents,”

Lois slapped him gently on his arm, saying, “Good for you, rookie.” She gave him a serious look, telling him, “But don’t get your hopes up too high ‘cause it might not be the real thing.”

Clark finished typing, then leaned back in his chair, saying, “Oh, I think that this time, it’s real. The keeper of my parents’ information wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He ignored the confused look Lois gave him and took his article to Perry’s office.

THE END

Table of Contents

The Keeper of Krypton