The first sense to return to Kal-El was smell. A sweet, spicy scent, alien and yet so deeply familiar, tickled his nostrils. The air was warm, laden with the fragrance of red pollen and clean ozone. He opened his eyes.
The light flooding the room wasn't the yellow, gentle light of Earth's sun. It was a harsher, whiter glow, filtered through a complex double-crystal structure. He was lying on a soft bed, covered with a blanket of metallic fibers that shimmered.
He rose and walked to the window. His breath caught.
Stretching as far as he could see were fields of geth-rad, the scarlet wheat of Krypton, their stalks swaying under a violet sky where two moons, one silver, one copper, were still visible. In the distance, the crystalline spires of the city of Kandor pierced the horizon, intact. The planet hummed with a peaceful, powerful life.
"Kal! Wake up, sleepyhead!"
The voice was like music. He turned. A beautiful woman, with flaming red hair braided with copper threads and eyes full of wisdom and love, smiled at him. Lara Lor-Van.
"Your mother is right, my son," said a man's voice, warm and firm. Jor-El stood in the doorway, dressed in the simple robes of the Scientist Guild. His face, which Clark had only ever seen in shattered holograms, was alive, serene. "Today is not a day like any other."
A boy of about ten, with black curls and sparkling blue eyes – his own eyes – slipped between them and grabbed his hand.
"Hurry up, bro! They brought the jor-ell!"
Bro. The word resonated in his heart like a bell. He had a brother.
He let himself be led. The house was full of laughter, of relatives in elegant robes, of cousins he had never known. Everyone looked at him with affection, with pride. It was his birthday. Not the birthday of Clark Kent, the human. That of Kal-El, son of Krypton.
Everything was perfect. Too perfect. Every detail was a missing piece of his soul, filled with heartbreaking precision. He felt the comforting warmth of the planet's core beneath his feet. He heard the singing of the crystals that structured their home. He hugged his mother and felt the real warmth of her body.
It was paradise. The paradise that had been stolen from him.
Deep within, a small voice, a distant echo from another world, tried to make itself heard. A voice that spoke of Smallville, of journalism, of Lois... But these memories seemed pale, unreal, compared to the tangible, magnificent reality surrounding him.
He blew out the blue flames of the candles on a cake with silver reflections, surrounded by the beaming faces of his family. His father placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You are home, Kal-El. Forever."
And for a moment, an eternity, Kal-El wanted to believe it. He wanted to forget Earth, forget Superman. He wanted this perfect nightmare to never end.
Because it was a nightmare. The cruelest of all: to be given everything he had ever desired, while knowing, in the deepest part of his being, that it was all an illusion.