trajectory PROLOGUE: TRAJECTORY ALTERED
Jonathan Kent silently observed his wife, Martha, as she leaned against the open window of the passenger-side door, gazing wistfully but blankly at the clouds and vast Kansas landscape as their truck rumbled along the open country road, carrying them home.
He knew that home was not complete for her.
I see a little face, she'd said. It's all I've ever wanted.
Martha's thumb idly traced the velvety red petal of one of the tulips they'd purchased from Nell Potter in town. A very... uncomplicated flower, Nell had labeled them - and by proxy the woman she saw as the undeserving Mrs. Kent - to which Martha gave nothing but a face-saving half smile and dropped her eyes instead to the fairy princess beside the counter. One of many little faces that served to remind her that she'd never have one. She, Martha Kent, was an uncomplicated flower - less than that, even. The tulip beside her was hearty, thick-stemmed and strong, sprung perennially from a bulb that had one purpose and fulfilled it. A simple, ugly little root could do year after year what she couldn't do even once. Uncomplicated, but complete was that bulb and its offspring, which she'd brought home to adorn her dinner table.
A table set for only two.
Martha gave her husband her gentle, introspective smile - the one he knew was her thin attempt to tell him that she was unaffected, but signaled that she'd appreciate his arm supporting her when they returned to trek up the front steps of their empty house. It pained her to know that she gave him cause to feel as if he'd left her dissatisfied. She never intended it, but Jonathan Kent had a long-standing ability - almost a need - to bear responsibilities that hadn't been demanded of him.
I know what you wished for.
Of course he knew.
The wish wasn't only hers.
"What's happening, Jonathan?" Martha had cried, her voice sounding disembodied and distant as she called out, the words not even registering clearly in Jonathan's mind until he opened his eyes to find the top of his skull pressed achingly against the upholstered ceiling of the truck. Smallville had seemed to suddenly incur the wrath of the cosmos, leaving the Kents dangling by their safety belts with the largely unafflicted tulips lying scattered around their heads.
Toes. Ankles. Was that really what he saw? Fleshy little legs carried on surprisingly steady feet amid the surrounding debris, stepping closer to his window.
"Martha?" Jonathan said searchingly, as much to assure himself that he was in fact conscious as to get his wife's attention. Surely the trauma had just inflicted him with a manifestation of their shared dreams. He couldn't be seeing a child - not here, now now. A perfect, unmarred child.
Then there it was. The little face. It came into view, and one look at Martha's eyes told Jonathan that it was as real as every tear they'd shed in wishing for that very sight.
The boy smiled.
He had found them.
The second pair of feet came with no warning, shod in muddy workboots with the legs above them clad in tattered denim. A third person followed, planting one foot almost inside the window of the truck as the child was suddenly ripped from their view.
There was no way that he could prove it, but Jonathan Kent innately knew that neither of those people had any claim to the boy.
His heart had claimed him already.
"No!" he cried out, struggling against the seatbelt, which held him fast. "Wait!" Martha repeated his plea and she tried to no avail to release herself as well.
"Damn it! They're conscious! Do you think they saw it?" a female voice said, thick with apprehension.
"Shut up! It doesn't matter, just go, we gotta hurry!" a man ordered with pressing authority.
"But what about that thing? What is it? We can't just leave it here!"
"No time, we gotta go - get the kid and start the car. Now!"
The last things Jonathan remembered before crawling out of his truck an hour later and finding himself and his wife looking down at a pod-like vessel, were a wicked sneer and a flash of something green before it struck him in the forehead.