Omi

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Jon and Martha find the Kryptonian ship in their corn field, but when they open it the baby is not well. He’s traveled light years, and even at the fastest speeds, it was days or even weeks. What fluid was sustaining him has been gone for some time.

They work a farm. They know what a sick baby looks like.

They take the baby inside anyway. It’s far too late for anything to be open, so they break out the milk replacer for the livestock. The bottle they find has had a goat kid sucking on it, but they wash it good, because what other choice do they have?

The baby doesn’t take to the bottle well. He barely eats.

They both know a lack of appetite is a death knell.

“I can’t watch a baby die,” Martha says. She’s done it before. She and Jon struggled to have kids. The closest they got — well. It’s a hard memory for them both.

“I know, love.” Jon’s a good old country boy. He grew up being told it’s a man’s job to take the burden. He’ll take it now. “Go to bed. I’ll stay with him.”

Sure, they both know Martha won’t sleep, but at least she won’t have to see.

Jon takes the wee babe out onto the porch. He tries to poke more milk down him. Rubs his chest, bounces him, pushes the bottle past his lips, every damn thing he can do. The hours are long and hard, but he would never forgive himself if he didn’t try.

The baby continues to fade.

The eastern sky starts to lighten.

“I’m sorry, little fellow,” Jonathan whispers. It’s not long now. He can feel it in his bones. He’s held plenty of animals as they died. He’s waiting for that long last exhale. “Sorry you came all this way and this is your welcome. Can’t even enjoy the sunrise.”

He told himself he wouldn’t cry until the boy was gone. Wasn’t fair, that his last moments would be a man crying instead of comforting him, but Jon does his best to do both at the same time. He cradles the poor little thing even as his shoulders shake.

The sun breaks over the horizon, and light floods the porch. Jon closes his eyes against it and his tears.

It’s a hiccup that is the first sign something changed. Then the wiggling.

Jon nearly drops the baby in shock.

When he looks down, the little boy sure hasn’t died. He’s got this rosy little glow to his cheeks and his eyes are bright. He’s throwing those little hands around like he’s trying to figure out how they work, but he seems to be trying to reach for the sun.

Jon just stares at him until the baby gets frustrated enough with his clumsy limbs that he opens his mouth to tell the world about it.

The baby’s cry is so powerful Jon falls right out of his rocker. It’s a miracle he doesn’t launch the poor thing.

Only thing he can think to do with a screaming baby that’s about to take his eardrums out is shove that bottle right in that open mouth.

The little boy shuts right up and clings to the bottle for dear life as he drinks with a fury.

When Martha comes stumbling out wild-eyed in her jammies, Jon’s sitting on the porch with a grin as bright as the dawn despite the fact his ears are still ringing.

One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.

I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.

I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.

I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered.  When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.

She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.

I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ‘a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.

And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think… I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.