Clara Kent Superwoman

Chapter 7: Who Should I Be

Clara lay in bed that night mulling over all The Martian Man Hunter had told her. Kala-El, last daughter of Krypton. Jor-El, father, Lara-El, mother. The names were foreign on her tongue. She couldn't seem to properly associate these words with herself or actual people. It was like a fairytale, or a comic book, someone else's story.

She was Clara Jessica Kent, daughter of Jonathan and Martha. Farm girl and High School senior.

Kala-El had been a stranger's daughter. But her birth parents had loved her enough to sacrifice their own lives to save hers. The precious time left on their planet could have been used to save them, to find a way to leave. Instead, they had made plans for her, made sure she would be safe...chosen her new parents...

That in particular must have been devastating, knowing you would never see your child grow up, but choosing the people who would.

Clara and Kala, two different people, yet the same:

Clara Kent, who wanted to finish High-School.

Kala-El, whose father had a plan for her.

Clara Kent, who drank milk out of the carton.

Kala-El, powered by the yellow sun.

Clara Kent, corn fed country girl.

Kala-El, baby in a space ship.

If it weren't for that ship in the storm cellar and her various oddities there would be nothing to connect her to these faceless names.

But it was there, and she could run faster than a speeding bullet, lift a tractor without breaking a sweat, hear a car coming from miles away, float over her bed when dreaming.

Save a drowned man from a wrecked car.

All of this felt really rushed, there was so much information in one place.

Still so many unanswered questions.

Kala-El, Jor-El, Lara-El. The destruction of her planet hadn't just killed a people, it had separated a family. Would Jor and Lara have raised her so differently from Jonathan and Martha? Could she even shorten the names like that? Zor-El, the traitorous uncle, had she had cousins? If they had all lived would there have been siblings, grandparents, friends?

Kala-El was the last of a dead civilisation, lost to the legends of space.

But her parents had wanted her to survive, so Clara would remember her.

Clara Kent, baby in a space ship.

Maybe she should write all this down. Then she could just hand it to Chloe. It'd save time.

She'd get her head around it...In around 5 years.

...

In the end, Clara did write it down. It probably wasn't the safest thing to do, but then again, she could always say she was writing amateur fiction. Her mother had given her a journal the day she found out she was an alien. She'd written down her feelings and then buried it in her trunk in the barn, her "fortress of solitude". When she'd looked at the writing of her 15-year-old self she was compelled to answer the questions she had posed. Her name was Kala-El...