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Jor was always listening, hoping, waiting at the core of the ship.
His son preferred teleportation to flying down through the opened doors. Which was fair, Jor hadn’t liked going into dark spaces either when he was alive until he started studying Krypton’s geology (and even then, he’d had enough close calls to always throw a light down first). So he tuned himself to the obelisks, he could sense Kal’s presence above.
Perhaps this time they could chat about cheerful things. Perhaps Jor could show him some of his favorite animals, or when Jor met Kal’s mother, or perhaps Kal would realize his father’s ghost was more sentient than he let on and tell him about the world above, because Jor was limited to what the ship could sense, and it could only sense what it was familiar with. Perhaps Kal could bring his friends, or his adoptive parents, or just talk. Maybe he’d met some nice people and had settled in with them, most Kryptonians held very strong communal bonds, after all, and it only took a strong friendship to become part of a House.
Jor smiled. He refused to be bitter now, after everything; his son had grown up well, safe and strong, the evidence of a kind family written across his movements. His son came to visit hm sometimes now too, even though he spent most of the time playing with the ship. Experimenting with it.
And it was exciting to think that after all these years, after being raised by others, his son may yet be a man of science.
Jor heard the teleporters activating.
He spun around and sent his body to the landing area, hoping that this time maybe, he be able to hug his son.
But instead, there was a large sack on the landing platform. He scanned it.
It was full of rocks.
Jor hadn’t told him he had been a geophysicist, perhaps his son was closer to him that Jor had thought, perhaps this was the beginning of his son’s interest, and maybe he had finally figured out that this stolen ship had some fascinating science equipment Jor would never get to use.
Jor El started to pull out the field samples in excitement. Some of the rocks were similar to Krypton’s, at least on the surface. He could recognize some even, strikes of familiarity, touchstones of the interconnected universe beyond the ship’s walls. He could not help his nearly manic grin when Kal came through.
Kal looked around, and deflated a little when he noticed the bag of rocks.
His son was doing science! It wasn’t going how he seemed to want it to. But such was the way of science.
His son vanished and another bag of rocks appeared, which Jor poured over cheerfully. One was even a fossil! He set that one aside to look at later and then give to Kal.
His son would like a fossil.
Everyone liked fossils.
Kal popped in and out, bags of rocks, a brick of dried grass, and even a small hissing beast with sharp teeth and claws (which Kal immediately grabbed and scolded gently as he flew it out of the ship) were passed through the teleporter.
Jor El poked at the grass brick curiously.
“It’s hay.” Kal said. “We feed it to animals when there’s no grass. I’ll need that back, though.”
Jor El offered his son the fossil.
“Do you like rocks?” Kal asked, he inspected it, as if unaware of it being anything more than an ordinary rock. And then he turned it over to where the echo of a fern had been embedded, “Oh hey, a fossil!”
Jor El nodded. “I used to be a geologist. I met your mother because she was archiving my papers and gave her fossils until she dropped a book on my head and asked me to dinner.”
He knew Kal didn’t understand, there was a sadness to his expression, that dimmed the light of his smile.
Kal tried to hand the rock back.
“It’s for you, my son.” Jor El pushed it back towards Kal.
And his son smiled.