Allana had been sitting on the edge of Kon’s bed, legs crossed under her, and watching her boyfriend pace the length of the apartment. For the earlier part of the day she’d traversed Lawrence with him, following him in and out of a series of what seemed like increasingly random locations. She’d done all of it quietly, for her anyway, and the running stream of quips and jokes had less edge than usual as she tried to buffer her boyfriend without making it too obvious.
She’d been certain that Clark was gone from the beginning. While she may have had her differences over the utility and fashionableness of capes with the older Kryptonian, she’d never thought of him as the kind of person who would disappear without warning, or let people worry when there was a way he could avoid it. He’d ducked out on everyone recently, when Darcy had gone home, but he’d still been available, had still made sure his friends and family knew he was okay. The fact that he hadn’t made the same effort this time, and that a search of the city had turned up nothing, sealed the deal for her. You didn’t drag off or injure someone like Clark without creating quite the scene, or without his super-powered and attentive-to-trouble clone hearing it. The seal was the only option.
Not that knowing makes it any easier, she thought, remembering Jennifer, Cade, and her grandfather. She couldn’t say she knew what Kon would go through, losing the only family he had, but she did know how it could feel to really hate the arbitrary apocalypse-driven force that pulled them here and there like leaves blowing in the wind.
She’d been letting her Kon ramble without interruption (most people would say she owed him on that front), but as he wound down, admitting that he couldn’t look in Clark’s room and regretting the past, she pushed up off the bed and crossed to where he was crouched next to Krypto. She reached down and laid a hand on his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze.
“You don’t have to,” she said, “not until you’re ready. It’s not like whatever’s there is going anywhere, you know? And,” she added, “don’t beat yourself up over getting mad at him. Families have fights. It didn’t mean anything, he knew that.”
She lowered herself to the floor next to him, side by side so that their shoulders were touching slightly, and reached her hand out to scratch under Krypto’s chin. It would have been easy, would have felt natural and honest, for her to open her mouth and keep talking, to say, “You still have me, you’ll always have me” but it wouldn’t have been true. She knew that one of them could disappear back through the seal at any moment, without warning, without a chance to say goodbye, and that they might not even remember each other when it happened. She’d spent the past few days missing her grandfather and nervously scanning the Force every so often to make sure everyone was accounted for. Sometimes it seems like we just can’t catch a break