Clark's first waking thoughts are hues. Images spinning brightly against his eyes. Things he has no names for yet. Red-orange streaks across a strange blue sky. Brown dirt and green grass under his feet and pulled between his fingers. A white flower. A man holds him, his hair the same shade as the crackly leaves around the corn. A woman sings lullabies, her hair like the sun, but soft.

Clark speaks in colors, more than words. No one but Martha understands, but she always knows what he means. His small fingers dipped in tempera paint - the little plastic brushes splinter in his hands -- he strokes the pigments on paper, cloth, and walls when she's too slow to stop him. It's a wonder that she ever can stop him, but he wants to do the right thing. He just doesn't always know how, or how to tell the difference.

He recognizes patterns by color more than function. Places his toy fire truck next to her "Red Hot Red" lipstick (a color she got in the gift bag at Fordman's one Christmas, and really only wears when Jonathan is feeling playful). His yellow big wheel goes next to from Daddy's tractor, which makes sense until he puts the bananas from the grocery store, and the post-it notes there as well.

When Clark makes his brown pile, with the fudge brownies Martha had been cooling on the counter for dessert, the uprooted tree from the back of the house, and the Polaroid of his new friend Pete, he drags it all into the house. Martha starts to use the chainsaw to cut the branches down into firewood, but Clark tears the rest into chunks by hand.

"Well, I guess he saved me a night of chopping," Jonathan says, walking in and eyeing the growing pile of tinder. It's easier to laugh together about their curious new son, than it would be to go mad.

"Don't bring anything bigger than you are into the house, son," he tells the little boy.

Clark nods, but it's anyone's guess if he really understands. Nothing in the Parenting section of the Smallville library covers stuff like this.

A few months, and several episodes of Sesame Street later, and Clark's English is perfect, his table manners as good as any other four year old, and the images of the life he had before Smallville faded into dreams. It's almost a pity. Now that he could describe what life was like sailing to Earth on his little ship, he no longer has the memories.

He passes for 'normal' most of the time, which makes Martha secretly nostalgic for her little alien baby. Now he can put his toys away neatly, doesn't carry trees or farm machinery into the house, and only snatches brownies when he just can't resist them. Jonathan's been known to do the same, so Martha knows it's a trait Clark might not outgrow. She pretends that this upsets her, but always bakes more than they need.

Lex's first memories are of textures, or at least they're the first good memories that come to mind after Belle Reve. His father's scratchy new beard as Lionel kisses after coming home from work. The damp, wrinkled hand of his nanny, pulling him along to the park. Soft, yet gritty sand under his fingers at the playground. All rare occasions. "Luthor boys don't play with those kind of children," his father had said. They'd built a sand pit for him, with imported black sand, but it wasn't the same.

Despite the education that means Lex recognizes great works of art when he sees them, can pick a single flute from a symphony of sound, and knows the top note from the bottom of a thousand perfumes, for him, it's touch that says it all.

His mother's hair falling over him as she kissed his forehead, cool and soft as gossamer towards the end. Julian's wrinkly baby knees, and face wet with tears. His father's fingers gripping him tightly, more pain than protection. A boy's hand brushing his cheek; more imagined than remembered.

He can't kiss his mother anymore, except through granite and marble, and time. Julian's cries will never be answered, and his father's claws are too sharp to hold. But the boy is different. The boy is more than a memory of touch, he is Lex's future.

Right now, Lex's future is snoring softly at his side, exhausted from a long day's work. Patrolling the city in cape and tights, and working on one's first Sunday magazine cover story can take a lot out of a guy, especially if it's followed by a night of getting reacquainted with your naked lover's skin.

Clark would break through marble and granite to save a mother's life. He can hear the cry of the weakest infant, and save it from any horror. Lex knows Clark redeemed him from Lionel's iron grasp. And just the feel of that satin soft, yet steel strength wrapped around him is the truest kind of rescue..

Today, while Clark was gone, Lex visited his mother, the closest thing he's got to a mother of his own. He needed the break from his stressful working life. Helping her stir brownie batter, holding the wool for Jonathan's Christmas sweater while she winds it, standing on a ladder to paint a chipped spot near the ceiling so she won't have to... all of it feels like home to him. It's true, she could wait for Clark, who would finish the necessary tasks in mere moments. But Lex is honored she asks him, instead. It makes him feel like family, and that's the most touching thing of all.

The world gets Superman, protector in the cape and tights. Lois gets the reporter in ill fitting suits, and useless glasses. Jonathan and Martha get Clark, the devoted son in flannel and cotton. What Lex gets is a combination of it all, something beyond the senses. He can only call it love.