Chapter Text
It’s Lex who finds the pod, watches it crash to Earth and tear apart the marmalade sky. He’s already a little lost by then, conspiracy theories twisting around his bones like vines as he stumbles in the dark, fumbling down the path of their father a little more each day. He is sure they are not alone in the universe, and even more sure that it will be him who protects them from the strangeness out there. Even more sure that the name Lex Luthor will echo for generations. And Lena – Lena still loves too much and looks too little, content to cling to the rose-tinted image of her brother as she first remembers him; gangly and kind and so ready to let her be a part of his life. She spends most of her time buried away in her apartment, working on her thesis, surfacing to visit Lex whenever inspiration wanes. He’s a little different every time, but she doesn’t notice.
The baby changes everything. The baby they find and bring home who they know isn’t just a baby, even though Lena tries very hard not to know, not to think about what all this might mean. The first few days are ones she will always keep shiny, iridescent memories of – just her and Lex and an infant, all out of their depth but happy all the same. Lena can almost convince herself that he never crashed to Earth at all, no matter what the pod Lex dragged from the field and into his lab suggests. Lex’s eyes are a little too wide and a little too curious, but it’s all okay until the baby grips Lex’s thumb so hard it nearly breaks, and instead of screaming, her brother lights up, chanting, I knew it, I knew it, he’s one of them. Every rumour Lex has ever swum in like silk suddenly flash freezes around him, hard and real at once, and it’s only a breath before he’s leaping off to grab his devices and instruments, intent on knowing everything, just like always. No matter the cost.
Lena begs him not to touch the child, and almost believes he won’t, but there’s a twist to his expression, and for the first time, she doesn’t quite trust him. She makes every excuse not to leave him alone with the baby, until she manages to remind herself that Lex is her brother, and he’d never do anything to hurt someone. She leaves the mansion and heads into the town, in search of the items google recommends for the care of an infant, which is something her PhD never prepared her for. She returns to the sound of the earth rolling its shoulders, an explosion rattling up through the dirt from the basement of their house. Lena runs, forgets to breathe and runs, down the stairs, to the lab that is in ruins. Equipment is strewn everywhere, metal shards stabbing through the walls. Some machines she recognises, some she doesn’t. The moment she finds her brother’s body is an earthquake all over again; the world shifting even as he lies still, eyes blank like deep water, the kind that rests at the bottom of a lake for millennia. And then she finds the baby, body trapped in a contraption of Lex’s design but safe and alive, untouched by the blast that killed everything and destroyed everything non-living as well.
Lena gives herself a moment in the rubble, between the boy and the body, to let her tears wreck her. And then she goes over to the cage and unlocks the door and presses the crying baby to her chest, trying to convince herself to inhale, exhale. What is she supposed to do now? Lena doesn’t have a plan, not really. She’s always been an accessory, a part of other people’s lives; she doesn’t really have her own. If their positions were switched, Lex would call Lillian. But – Lena may not have seen her mother in nearly a year, but she still knows her, the fundamentals of her. She cannot tell Lillian the truth about the baby. If the tug of the unknown had beckoned even Lex to attempt to experiment on a child, it would surely drive Lillian to madness.
She’s frozen for a moment longer, long enough for the baby to stop crying. For him to curl into her, fingers looping delicately around the edge of her sweater. And then she thinks about how easy it would be, with her tech skills, with how she’s stayed out of the public eye since starting her thesis, out of every eye, really. He certainly looks enough like hers to raise no questions; they have the same dark hair and pale skin, and, well – maybe she had a one-night stand with startlingly blue eyes, right?
It only takes an hour, and then the baby is Clark Luthor, and Clark Luthor is hers.
He can’t understand her yet, but Lena promises him she will keep him safe, this boy who fell from the sky, from the planet he’s fallen onto, and all the people in it.
The headlines are Luthor-Corp Heir Dead, and Luthor Baby Scandal. Lena doesn’t mind. Better a scandal than the truth.
She isn’t sure she’s done the right thing. Maybe it was the most-right thing possible at the time. But then Clark smiles his innocent smile at her, the one that makes him glow, all young and cheerful, and she doesn’t care anymore.
/ / /
Clark is the cutest baby in the universe, and Lillian quickly gives up berating Lena for “smearing the family name” and starts planning photo opportunities, wondering how much good will an adorable infant will get their company, and what a new boy heir will do for their stock values.
Lena has always bent to Lillian before, unwilling to lose the last twinge of maybe-love between them, but on this, she doesn’t budge. Aside from the fact she’d rather die than let Clark have a childhood like she did, there’s always the worry that the further he is into the spotlight, the more likely someone is to notice that he isn’t quite normal. Someone like Lex.
/ / /
Lena’s only experience with reciprocated love was Lex, but she thinks Clark likes her well enough. She isn’t sure quite how babies decide things like that, even though she’s read about a hundred textbooks on infancy and childhood since he was dropped into her lap by the stars. He coos when she holds him and pats her cheeks when he can get his wildly waving arms under control. He quiets when she holds him close and cries if she leaves his sight, even for a few moments. All and all, she thinks they’re okay. A tiny little family; someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and someone who doesn’t mind.
She misses Lex like someone took all the bones from her body, left her with nothing to hold her up, left her heavy and drooping. But when she’s with Clark it’s the happiest she’s ever been.
Maybe all those years in the orphanage when she’d dreamed of having a family that really loved her, that was perfect, and she didn’t get one – well, maybe the universe was just saving up, so that when she was twenty-one, it could get her the best, most precious one.
/ / /
If it’s hard to get people to take you seriously when you’re a woman in business, it’s even harder when you’re a single mother.
Lena doesn’t mind. She never wanted to be a company figurehead, anyway.
She has her own private lab at Luthor Corp, testing theories and developing new products. Science and innovation. What she’s good at. The only thing.
She’s too afraid to leave Clark at a day-care – what if someone figures out the truth? So she brings him to work with her most days, lets him nap and play and babble to himself while she works. If that explosion proved anything, it’s that he’s far safer than she is from lab accidents, but she can’t take the risk, sticking mostly to hypotheticals these days, and leaving the practical tests to other teams throughout the company. She’s never been a big one for baby talk, and instead chatters to him sometimes about what she’s doing, ten dollar biochemistry words and all. He nods along to the candace of her voice, but sometimes it makes her laugh, him frowning in concentration, as if he can understand at all.
/ / /
“Umumum,” Clark chants to himself, taking a brief break from chewing on his own foot. Lena had worried the first time he did that, but apparently it’s a normal thing, just babies investigating where their bodies end. He’s in her lap, and they’re watching the Discovery Channel, because it’s probably not too early to get Clark into science, right?
“Mumum,” he repeats, louder, clearly trying to get her attention. “Mumum.”
“Oh,” she says, letting the syllables line up in her head. “Yes. Mom. That’s me.”
It’s not the first time she’s called herself Clark’s mother, but it seems somehow strange to say it to him, permanent. Like this means she really gets to keep him.
She grins, stupid and so wide her cheeks probably split. “Mom. Ha.”
He’s only making sounds, she knows. But it doesn’t feel that way.
/ / /
Clark learning to walk claims many casualties, but Lena’s never cared much for expensive furniture anyway. It’s probably a side effect of spending the first few years of her life with hardly any possessions, just a thin mattress and a broken doll, because money has always made her slightly uncomfortable. Like the things she owns stick to her skin, tug at her muscles.
Clark grabs chairs to pull himself up, and the wood groans and splits, and she buys harder chairs. A particularly grumpy stomp shatters a nearby glass coffee table and rattles Lena’s teeth in her head. She brings home a steel one and baby-proofs the corners even though she knows he can’t hurt himself on them. He tears the couch throw rug when trying to stop a fall, and it sheers nearly in half. She thanks him for making it so they have one blanket each, and he grins proudly at her.
/ / /
She looks into the meteor shower that brought Clark to Earth. There was a similar one nearly a decade previous, but no mentions of anyone being found.
“I think it’s just you, buddy,” she mumbles to him one night, when he’s asleep on her stomach.
He sighs in his sleep, and snuggles in closer, like he’s trying to get inside her chest.
/ / /
He’s a peaceful baby; hardly ever cries. She fears that the lack of tears mean something’s wrong, but he’s just a happy kid. Big, blue eyes taking in the whole world as if he knows it isn’t his, hands grasping at every object within reach, and staggering gracelessly to those out of reach as well. He loves people, loves to hug them and burrow into them and drape himself over their laps and shoulders.
/ / /
She wonders if all children are as curious as Clark. He’s never seen a thing he doesn’t want to hold, trace with his fingers, and more often than not, put in his pocket.
He cries when twigs snap in his grip, and they talk about being gentle.
The first time he accidentally hurts her, he wails for hours, hiding under a cushion that is in fact far too small to hide under, even though she tells him it’s okay a thousand times. She wraps her hand and eventually coaxes him out with the promise of chocolate and cartoons, and does her best not to wince when he grabs her fingers at a particularly exciting part of the episode.
/ / /
His first word is “Look.”
“Look-look, Mommy,” he hollers, desperate to share every facet of this new and exciting world with her, as if it’s fresh for her, too. She acts like it is, urges him on, lets him try to drown himself in colours and places and smiles, living brightly and wildly in every direction.
“Look-look!” A tree.
“Look-look!” A cat. A cute one.
“Look-look!” A rock. That one goes in his pocket. Hopefully she’ll remember to take it out before she chucks his outfit in the washing machine.
His love of everything is infectious, and Lena doesn’t think the world seemed this beautiful and technicolour, not even when she was a kid herself, not even when Lex was alive.
You’d think the supposedly terrible twos would be worse with a superpowered baby, but Lena thinks there is nothing terrible at all about any of the days they live in.
/ / /
When Clark is nearly three, Supergirl cleaves her way through the skies, rescuing a plane.
Lena isn’t sure if there’s even a chance she and Clark are the same – he can’t fly, or at least, he never has. But the way she lifted that plane… well, there’s a possibility. And Lena can’t let it pass by, not when Clark claps excitedly every time the superhero is on-screen.
So Lena begs her father to let her head up the new branch opening in National City, and heads off to start a new life, just her and Clark and the ember of an idea that he isn’t the only one of his kind.
Lena has no idea how to go about finding Supergirl, but hopefully, she’ll find them.
It occurs to her that this alien girl might try to take Clark from her, take him to their home planet, wherever that is, and the thought is like turning inside out. But – but she can’t deny Clark this. Not when she loves him so completely.
/ / /
The anniversary of Lex’s death passes, and it hurts a little less. It still aches, wide and deep and ragged, but she is okay. She has Clark and she is okay.
/ / /
Clark is mostly very good at being gentle, these days, understands how much strength to use to accomplish what he wants. And they have rules, rules like, even if you want to lift that puppy up, you can’t, only pet him, that he’s good at following.
Lena risks sending him to a kindergarten. It’s private, with only five or so students in a class, and every staff member is up to their ears in NDA agreements. She can only hope that if Clark slips up, denial will convince the supervisors that they didn’t see whatever they think they saw. And, well – she and Clark can always move, disappear, if they need to. She can’t deny him a shot at a normal life just because she’s afraid.
He loves it there, thrilled to be around other children, and she’s glad. Glad, too, that when a stomach bug goes around the kindergarten, he’s fine. She still worries about him, constantly, but unlike every other parent, has the benefit of knowing it’s just paranoia – Clark’s far healthier and safer than she is.
/ / /
She meets Kara when she comes in with James Olsen, the photographer, to talk about the opening of the National City branch of Luthor Corp.
Kara is cute and funny and Lena can’t help but be a little transfixed at the awkward way she pushes her glasses up her nose when she’s nervous. She looks like someone wrapped sunshine in a pastel sweater, and Lena is blown away by it.
/ / /
Supergirl is National City’s eternal darling, and it’s a rare day that there isn’t at least a puff piece about her running in some magazine, if she’s not already the news headline of the day for some new heroic stunt.
Lena studies a still of her, a photo credited to James Olsen, and thinks that her eyes look kind of like Clark’s.
/ / /
They find a stray kitten in the grocery store parking lot. Clark’s never thrown a proper tantrum in his whole life, but he slams himself into the gutter, and refuses to leave unless they take the cat with them.
Lena’s read lots of books about psychology and toddlers and how you definitely should not give into their every whim and demand. And Lena’s pretty good about insisting on greens and no more cartoons and putting toys back when you’re done playing, but to be honest, she doesn’t want to leave the poor little kitten in the dark and the cold either.
“Okay,” she relents. “But not because you staged a sit-in. Because I like cats.”
He grins at her so brightly that she knows it wouldn’t matter what she’s just said; he’s too excited about the cat to care.
“Call him Supergirl,” Clark giggles. “Super Duper!”
She has no intention of letting him call their new stray kitten Super Duper, but somehow it sticks, even if it is totally ridiculous.
/ / /
Sure, Lena runs into Kara more often than is technically just “fate”. Sue her. It’s not like she’s going to take it any further; Clark is her number one priority, and she can’t risk him getting attached to someone who’ll only walk out and hurt him in the end. He won’t ever suffer for her mistakes.
But… it is nice to have a friend who understands her even when she talks science, who’s patient, who isn’t secretly looking for a way to get rich off her family name.
/ / /
“Mom work day! Mom work day!” Clark is happily untying the laces she just did up for him, wriggling with excitement over the possibility of going into Luthor Corp with her. She wonders if he has any memory of all the days they spent in the lab together when he was a baby.
He’ll probably be a lot less cheerful after an hour, when he realises most of what she does is paperwork, answering phone calls, and talking to boring people in suits.
“I love ants at day care!” he tells her as they walk towards the elevator, walking slowly so his tiny strides can easily keep up with her longer ones.
It takes her a moment, but she works out he’s happy that the building his class is in is being fumigated. “It’s not ants, Clark,” she says, and goes on to explain, and to his credit, it’s nearly a minute before he tires of the idea, and starts trying to press every button on the elevator wall.
He spends the morning with Jess while she’s in meetings, and then comes in to sit with her while she whiles away the afternoon with a novel-sized stack of paperwork.
“Nyoom, nyoom,” he mutters to himself as he runs his toy fire trucks up and down the sides of her desk. She runs her hand through the soft black tufts of his hair absently, and he leans up into her touch, humming in a satisfied way that she thinks he picked up from their cat.
She’s in the zone of checking boxes and signing on dotted lines when the door bursts open, sunshine whirling in.
“Hey, Lena, Jess said you had a minute and to just come on through -” Kara rambles, coming to a halt in the middle of the room when she catches sight of Clark, who is watching her, half-curious, half-apprehensive.
Lena stands and picks him up, resting him on her hip, the plastic truck still in his hands. He buries his face in Lena’s neck, suddenly shy.
“Kara, this is Clark,” she offers, and pokes him gently to coax him into looking up. “Clark, this is Kara. She comes here for work sometimes.”
“Work-work,” he echoes, staring down at the toy he’s clutching.
Kara knows about Clark – everyone does. She’s listened to Lena’s stories about him (all carefully edited to remove even the slightest suggestion of the extra-terrestrial), grinning and laughing and awww-ing at all the right moments. But they’ve never met.
And now Kara is watching him curiously, with something almost like dulled recognition in her eyes. The way you might look at someone at a high school reunion, whose face you know but can’t quite place.