Pulses

By Cascade

Rated G

Spoilers: Exodus, Exile, Phoenix

Disclaimers: I don't own them, I get no money for them, 'nuff said.

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Pulses
By Cascade

Quiet lay over the Kent home like a blanket, warm against the cool October night. In this time between the calling of the insects and the singing of the birds, the stillness seemed fragile, almost enchanted? and wrong.

Jonathan Kent turned his head and opened one eye, looking at the glowing blue numbers on his new digital alarm clock.

1:40 A.M.

He didn't know what had woken him, but he wished it hadn't. In the two weeks since Clark had come home, grounded and ashamed and fighting depression, Jonathan and Martha had gotten more rest than in the past three months, but these days nothing seemed to chase the tiredness from his bones. Trained from long habit to sleep hard and deep, he knew that nothing short of a twister should have roused him from a dead slumber. He glanced over and saw that Martha, his beautiful flame-haired angel, slept soundly, a faint smile playing on her lips. So it wasn't a noise; he realized belatedly that whatever had disturbed him was something deeper.

Jonathan eased himself to a sitting position, silently slipping his feet into his old sneakers, reaching for his robe to cover his cotton pants and white tank. He stood gingerly, picked up his flashlight and shotgun, blew a kiss at Martha, and started his old patrol. He hadn't surveyed the house at night like this since Clark had been eleven and they'd gotten word of a serial child killer on the loose in the area. It didn't matter to Jonathan that his son's developing strength and speed would probably have saved him from real harm; he could deal with the unique challenges of having a superkid, but his paternal instincts told him to protect his child as though the boy was normal. Those instincts were now telling him that something was out of place.

Jonathan watched the shadows on the walls for a few moments, nodding to himself when they didn't move. He moved down the hallway, past the small guest/sewing room, the head of the stairs, a linen closet, Clark's bathroom, and stopped at his son's bedroom door. Hand on the doorknob, Jon recalled how many times he'd been in this room in the two years since they'd moved Clark into it from the smaller room--he smiled slightly at the memory of the broken bed and Clark's sheepish expression; winced as he remembered lecturing the teenager about throwing parties and leaving the house; closed his eyes and sighed as he thought of how many times he'd entered the too-still sanctum over the summer, searching futilely for any little clue, hearing echoes of a just-changed and still deepening voice, finding one of his own shirts hanging in the closet, picking up the deep blue quilted jacket on the chair and holding it close to his face to breathe in the clean smell of his son.

Shaking his head and sighing again, Jonathan firmly reminded himself that Clark was home and safe and that they were never going to lose him like that again. Everything was fine; his son was in (or possibly above) his bed, fast asleep, just as he should be, and whatever had woken Jon was probably a sign that his instincts were getting soft. He chuckled as he realized that he'd spent so much time with his son in the last two weeks that he was starting to think like him--Jon thought, in Clarkese, that sometimes getting old really bit.

He was still smiling to himself as he quietly opened the door, letting light from his flashlight creep into the miniature disaster area, falling softly across the small piles of clothes, the backpack, the physics book on the nightstand, the empty bed, the chair covered with coats, the mud boots, the?

He jerked the beam back along its path, eyes widening in horror.

END