A Matter of Time

By NostalgiaKick <feli290412@gmail.com>

Rated G

Submitted May 2015

Summary: Bureau 39’s discovery is a double-edged sword.

Story Size: 668 words (4Kb as text)

Disclaimer: All recognisable characters etc. are property of DC Comics, Warner Bro’s and December 3rd Productions. I own nothing.

Author’s note: This is set during “Strange Visitor”, and is a loose sequel to ‘At First Sight’, but you don’t have to have read that first. Thanks go to KenJ, for beta-reading, and to my good friend Trina, for convincing me to post this. Thanks also go to IolantheAlias, for getting it ready to be archived.

***

All my life I have wanted two things. To have a way I can use the powers I’ve been given to help people — and yet still live a normal life — and to find out more about my heritage.

I have the first. The second… The second was just within my grasp.

Now it’s been ripped away, and I feel… threatened.

***

Since becoming Superman — a slightly self-serving name bestowed on me by Lois Lane, the woman of my dreams — life has been wonderful. Hectic, but wonderful.

I — Clark Kent — am far from being the man of Lois’s dreams. Superman, however… I know I should take a step back there, but she is like an addiction. It’s a little disturbing to realise that at the age of twenty-seven I can still act like a lovesick teenager.

Lois is my writing partner at the Daily Planet. I’m not even convinced she likes me — Clark me, that is. But she at least talks to me, which is more than most of the staff can say. I’ve heard her referred to as Mad Dog Lane, and it would be easy to take her prickliness and abruptness at face value and dislike her. I, however, have seen one of the faces she hides from the world and I find myself falling a little more every day.

Life had been wonderful.

Until the raid on the Planet offices by Bureau 39.

The knowledge that a government department was interested in Superman made me feel slightly sick. The feeling was only intensified when we broke into the warehouse on Bessolo Boulevard.

Most of the contents of the warehouse were exactly what Lois dismissed them as — junk — but not all of them.

In the filing cabinet, there was a folder marked Smallville, 1966. And hidden under a dusty tarp was — my ship.

That, and the globe with it, were the first objects I’d ever seen that offered a clue to my heritage.

Holding the globe, watching it change from the familiar continents of Earth to the configuration of an alien planet, feeling the sure knowledge that *this* — Krypton — was where I came from, was the single most incredible moment of my life.

I came away from that warehouse feeling an extraordinary mix of emotions. Appalled that the government was so close to connecting the dots between Clark Kent and Superman. Apprehensive of what they intended to do if they made that connection. Fury at the means the Bureau used to try to get to Superman. Dismay that the government knew more about me than I did. Exhilaration that

I’d found part of my heritage. Desolation that I was not only not human, but apparently the last of my kind. Frustration that I’d had to leave my ship behind.

It was to get worse.

Returning to the warehouse to find it completely empty was like a physical blow.

Lois was upset at the loss of her story. I, however, had a personal stake in this. Earlier today I’d seen and touched the last remaining link I had to the planet that gave me life.

And now it was gone.

It felt as if part of me was missing.

At the same I was filled with a sense of foreboding. Wherever the Bureau had gone, I knew that they would resurface.

It was only a matter of time.

THE END

Table of Contents

A Matter of Time