Breakfast was awkward to say the least. None of us had been able to go back to sleep. I felt tired but I was too wound up with fury to care. Martha was the only one who even tried to eat. Clark and I both played with our food but didn't even consider taking a bite of it.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Martha asked Clark.

I glanced up from the soggy remains of what was once cereal. He glanced from her to me and back again, then glanced down. Clark shook his head. "Maybe later," he said.

"We're here for you, son, whenever you want to talk," I assured him. If only I could do more than that. One thought of that energy rope that Jor-El had wrapped around my neck last spring reminded me that I couldn't.

Clark stood. "I should get to school," he said. He super-sped out the door. I watched the door swing closed behind him and sighed, frustrated that this was even happening.

Martha and I worked in silence for most of the day, both lost in our thoughts of what we were supposed to do.

I did everything I could around the farm to take my mind off of Jor-El to no avail. If anything, my anger got worse as I thought about it more and more. I wished I knew what to do. The options I had weren't the best ones. I could go back to the caves and risk being killed before I could do anything. Jor-El wouldn't even think twice about it before he crushed my windpipe. I could ignore Jor-El until he decided to make his presence known again. That, of course, wasn't an option. I could take Martha and Clark as far away from Smallville as I could, but that wasn't really an option, either. I'd always told Clark that running wouldn't solve anything, and it wouldn't help us in this case, either, because I had a feeling that no matter where we went, Jor-El would find us.

When Clark walked in the kitchen at lunchtime, we knew something was wrong even if the panicked look on our son's face didn't clue us in. Clark never came home halfway through the school day unless something bad had happened.

"I spoke in Kryptonian at school," he told us.

"Clark, what?" I asked.

He repeated what he'd just said, but it was still unintelligible. I realized he was speaking in Kryptonian. It was the first time I'd heard him speak it when he was completely conscious. Martha and I exchanged a worried glance.

"We can't understand you," Martha told him. "You're not speaking in English."

The panic in his eyes worsened. Clark closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I spoke in Kryptonian at school," he said. He opened his eyes and looked at us hopefully.

I understood that loud and clear. "Okay, you're making sense now. When did you speak in Kryptonian?"

He let out a sigh of relief and sank into a chair. "I was in the cafeteria talking to Chloe. I didn't even realize I wasn't speaking English until Chloe looked at me weird."

"And you spoke in Kryptonian again just now," Martha summarized. "You didn't realize you were speaking it either time?"

Clark just shook his head. "If I concentrate, I speak in English. But the thing is, I can't tell what language I'm speaking in. Reactions from you guys are my only clues."

Martha and I exchanged a look. We were doing that a lot lately. "I think it would be best if you stayed home for the rest of the day, son," I said. "You can help us in the garden."

Clark only nodded, not trusting himself to speak in the right language.

"We'll get through this, Clark," I told him with assuredness. We'd gotten through too much already to just let something like this stop us.

We spent the rest of the day between picking fruit and vegetables and pretty much re-teaching Clark how to speak in English. I could see his frustration grow every time he spoke too quickly only for his words to come out in the wrong language, but bit by bit, we got him to relax and just concentrate a little more on what he was saying than normal. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself. Clark had as much patience as I did. He was used to being able to do anything quickly: he could move quickly and he could think quickly. It had to be frustrating not to be able to speak what was on his mind at the speed he was used to.

It was a long day, and we all went to bed feeling a little discouraged. Clark was still speaking in Kryptonian without even realizing it. Despite this, I suggested that Clark should go to school the next day. I wouldn't let my fear that someone would hear him speak in that alien language and make the wrong connections overwhelm me. We would get a handle on this. We had to.

Martha and I held each other tightly that night. "Is it really wise for Clark to go back to school tomorrow?" Martha asked, voicing my fears. "What if someone realizes what he's speaking is the same language on the cave walls, or-"

I sighed. "We just have to hope that doesn't happen. If it does, we'll deal with it."

It was the same thing we told each other each time a new problem arose: we'd deal with it. We'd find a way to make it better. Usually, we did find a way to deal with it, but it wasn't always for the better.

Martha drifted off to sleep hours before I did. For a long time, I held her, staring at her face. She was still as beautiful as I remembered, but I was shocked to find how old she'd become as well. White strands streaked through her auburn hair; there were too few of them to see unless you looked really closely. Wrinkles marked the skin around her eyes. Creases from too many frowns permanently marred her cheeks. I clutched her tighter to me. I'd caused her so much heartache that summer with all the time she must have spent at my hospital bedside waiting for me to wake up. It was all my fault, too. I made a deal with Jor-El and then ignored that deal when it no longer benefited me. I should never have made that deal. Because of me, Jor-El came back with a vengeance, almost killing me to get Clark to cooperate. Clark was sucked into that wall and turned into God-knows-what, and it was all my fault. What was happening now with Clark's nightmares and speech indepiment was probably my fault, too.

Damn him. Damn Jor-El for doing this to us. It may have been stupid to make that deal with him, but it was because of Jor-El's mind games that this whole mess began. Manipulative, insensitive bastard. What kind of society, alien or not, could ever produce a man like Jor-El? Clark was capable of feeling compassion; why wasn't his biological father as capable?

I didn't remember when I drifted off to sleep, but the next thing I knew, both Martha and I were sitting up in bed, startled awake by a loud crash coming from Clark's room.

We rushed into his room again. I turned the light on just as before. Clark lay in a heap on the ground; the crash we had heard was his own body hitting the carpet. He was shivering and was curled up in a ball. He was also muttering in the inhuman language of his birth.

" Mother!" Clark cried. " No I will not yield!"

I shook his shoulder. "Clark, wake up. It's just a dream."

With a cry of rage, Clark's hand curled into a fist. I watched as his knuckles approached my face too fast for me to move out of the way.

I thought for sure that I was going to have a heart attack right there. If my heart wouldn't do the honors of putting me in the hospital, I was certain Clark's fist would. Neither happened.

Martha gasped. Clark's fist stopped millimeters from my nose.

I glanced over the tips of his knuckles and into Clark's eyes. He stared back at me, wide-eyed.

"Dad?" he asked.

I nodded. "It's me, son."

His hand fell and I breathed a sigh of relief. Clark continued to stare at me, but now guilt had replaced his shock.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

I smiled. "It's alright, son. It's alright."

Fifteen minutes later, we were seated around the table clutching cups of hot chocolate. "What did you see in your dreams, son?" I asked him. I knew I wouldn't like his answer, but I had to ask. I had a feeling that his nightmares were the reason why he was having trouble talking, and the sooner we knew that for sure, the sooner we could find a way to fix it.

Clark took a deep, shuddering breath. " I think I'm having-"

"Slower, Clark," Martha said, placing a hand on his.

Clark, realizing he had been speaking in Kryptonian again, bit his lip and started over, this time speaking as clearly and carefully as possible. "I think I'm having nightmares of what happened to me this summer."

I nodded. I'd suspected as much.

"It's dark. I'm trapped in something - I can't move. I can hear Jor-El's voice - he's teaching me about Kryptonian customs. I try to resist him at first, but it becomes harder every day until one day I can't fight him."

Clark continued. The more I heard, the more horrified and furious I became. If there was any proof that Jor-El wasn't human, this was it.

Clark had spent three months in what sounded like the adult version of a womb. Jor-El spent those three months manipulating my son's mind and body into the perfect heir. When he'd finished, what would have been recognized as Clark Kent had been buried so deep that Clark compared it to drowning. Meanwhile, the alien entity that Jor-El had implanted in Clark's body, Kal-El, came more and more to the fore.

As selfish as it may sound, I was glad I hadn't seen Kal-El. Martha had enough nightmares of her encounters with Kal-El for the both of us, but what she endured was so little compared to what Clark had to go through.

I clutched my mug so hard I was surprised that it didn't break. When Clark finished his story, I stood up. I was shaking with anger. I was going to teach that asshole a lesson, once and for all. I wondered why I hadn't done it sooner.

"Jonathan?" Martha asked.

"That asshole has done enough interfering in this family. He's manipulated us, and we've just let him do it!"

Martha jumped up from her chair with so much force that the chair fell on its side. An absolute fury that mirrored my own radiated from her eyes.

My jaw dropped. I'd never seen Martha as furious as she was in that moment. If Martha had been gifted with heat vision, she would have reduced me to fine dust particles. There wouldn't even be anything left of Jor-El after one gaze from her.

"Sit your ass down, Jonathan Kent," she said.

Normally, I would have done exactly as she ordered. I would have been so shocked by the look on Martha's face, let alone the fact that she'd cursed, that I would have sat down on the floor and still be too dumbfounded not to realize I wasn't sitting in a chair. Not that day. I was too furious to do what was good for me. I'd built my anger up over the course of the last few weeks, and I wasn't about to back down now.

"Martha, if you think I am just going to sit back and wait for Jor-El to strike next then you are sorely mistaken!"

"JONATHAN KENT, IF YOU THINK I AM GOING TO LET YOU WALK OUT OF THIS HOUSE, THEN YOU ARE SORELY MISTAKEN! I SAT AT YOUR BEDSIDE FOR THREE MONTHS WAITING FOR YOU TO WAKE UP, AND I AM NOT GOING TO SEND YOU BACK INTO A COMA NOW!"

" STOP IT!" Clark exclaimed, jumping to his feet and slamming a fist down on the table. The tabletop splintered and broke. It fell in pieces to the floor.

Somehow, this worked. Martha and I were both shocked speechless. I tried to remember the last time Clark had broken a piece of furniture in a fit of temper but my mind refused to help me out; I found it difficult to think. The only difference now was that Clark wasn't angry. Now, he looked like an emotional, worn-out wreck.

I looked back at Martha. She looked at me. The hatred towards Jor-El was still there, but my rage had left me; so had hers, by the looks of it.

"I am so sorry, Jonathan, Clark," Martha said, begging us to forgive her with her eyes.

"No, it's my fault. I'm sorry," I said. I was such an idiot. Martha was right. I couldn't just go up against Jor-El without even a cock-and-bull plan, and I couldn't do it alone. How could I even think that I would stand a chance against Jor-El by myself? We needed to stick together, but if anything, this whole mess was forcing us further apart. Well, now that I realized that, I wasn't going to keep letting it.

I grabbed both of Clark's shoulders, forcing him to face me. "I'm sorry, son. I shouldn't have acted like that. I promise you we'll find a way to stop all of this, but we'll do it together. Alright?"

Clark nodded. He pulled me into a hug. I leaned into it and pulled Martha in towards us. I wanted them both close to me.

The group hug idea would have worked, but we forgot one vital thing: the broken table. Martha hadn't expected me to grab her arm. She took a step forward, only to trip over one of the broken table legs. With a startled yelp, she started to fall forward. She knocked Clark and I down with her. With our own startled cries, we all landed in a pile of tangled limbs on the floor.

For a minute, I just stared at the floor feeling dazed. Clark's knee was embedded in my stomach and Martha's elbow was digging into my leg. I wasn't sure what my squished left hand was caught between and wasn't sure I wanted to know. My other arm lay trapped beneath the weight of my own chest.

"Mom? Dad? Are you okay?" Clark asked from somewhere to my left.

"I'm fine, although I would much appreciate it if I could get up," Martha said somewhere behind me. I was having a little trouble breathing - Clark's knee was helping with that - or I would have concurred.

Ten minutes must have passed before we were able to completely extricate ourselves. I crawled away to a safe place in the living room, then turned around and glanced back at Martha and Clark. Both of them looked about as dazed and worn-out as I did. Martha was panting like me while Clark looked like he was slightly out of breath.

I wondered what this would look like if someone were to walk in on us now. The images that came to mind caused me to snicker. The snickers soon turned to outright guffaws.

Now they were both looking at me like I'd just grown a second head - granted it could happen in Smallville, but not this time. "Look at us," I said simply. My stomach hurt as I tried to breath and laugh at the same time. I couldn't seem to stop.

Martha and Clark looked at each other. Martha's lips twitched. Clark started to grin. I silently timed them as I waited for them to start laughing.

Martha lasted for two seconds. Clark lasted for three before he, too, gave in and started laughing almost hysterically.

It felt really good to laugh. I tried to remember the last time we had really laughed at anything. My memory wasn't as inaccessible as it had been the last time I'd tried to do this, so I could remember quite a few things clearly. I was dismayed that I couldn't recall a single moment in the recent past when any of us had been happy. It figures that a confrontation would be what we needed to break down like this.

Sooner rather than later, the laughter finally died down, leaving us feeling rather content. We sobered as we remembered what had led to this. I got to my feet slowly, then offered a hand up to Martha and then Clark. "We'll worry about what we'll do about Jor-El tomorrow," I said. "In the meantime, I think we all need some rest. We should be able to think better with clearer minds."

Martha and I headed for the stairs. Clark hesitated. "Um, Dad, Mom, I'm going to stay up for awhile, maybe watch some TV, if that's alright."

"Sure, Clark. Anything you want," Martha replied, worried. I squeezed her hand and led her up the stairs. I had a feeling Clark wanted to be alone, and I was certain that he would be all right without us.

Martha and I entered our bedroom and plopped down into bed. I held Martha close to me, too tired to do anything else, and waited for sleep to come. I found myself thinking back to a day a few weeks ago when Clark and I had a heart-to-heart about Kal-El and how he felt about it. Despite the fact that I had to do them often, I was never good at talking about anything that didn't have to do with farming. Still, with Clark, it was often necessary, and that had been one of those times.

He cut me off. "Dad, I don't want to be what Kal-El was. He was so cold. From what I remember and what Mom told me, I know he was everything I'm not. All he could focus on was his destiny, but he didn't even want it. He was so focused on obtaining it that he didn't even think about reflecting on his feelings for it. He was completely unconcerned about anything, but he was so certain of himself, too. There was nothing he hesitated to do." He waved his arms in frustration. "I'm nothing like that, Dad. Sometimes I wish I could be so confident in myself that I won't be clouded by doubts every time I have to make a decision, but I don't want to be so completely out-of-touch with everything that my own mother can't recognize me. But, what if I'm supposed to be that way? What if I'm a freak for being so...human?"

That was enough. I took him firmly by the shoulders. "You are not a freak," I told him, staring into his eyes and emphasizing every word. I was surprised to find that I was shaking with barely contained fury. "I don't know what Krypton was like, Clark, but I do know that. Your humanity isn't a weakness, son, no matter what Jor-El or Kal-El believed. And I don't care if in Kryptonian society fathers have the right to manipulate their children, I still know they're wrong. No parent has a right to do what Jor-El did to you, Clark, no matter what the society dictates is right or wrong. I'm grateful that you weren't raised by that son of a bitch. Luckily for both of us, you weren't."

Martha shifted beside me, stirring me from my thoughts. "Jonathan, what are we going to do?" she asked me.

"Whatever we have to, Martha. Together," I said. I kissed her on the forehead and shushed her when she began to ask another question. "Rest now, love."

Unable to argue, she snuggled up even closer to me. We drifted off to sleep.

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