His eyes snapped open, sunlight stabbing across his face. Panic hit first. He shoved himself upright, heart hammering. His hands flew to his chest, his arms, his legs—checking for cuts, bruises, anything that screamed pain. Nothing just smooth skin and no broken bones or scars. His chest rose and fell differently.
He scrambled to his feet, unsteady, breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts. Every muscle tensed, searching, expecting pain, expecting the shock from the subway, from Ryan. His body should have been mangled. It should have hurt or at least shown signs of it.
Something was wrong.
His eyes flitted over his arms, his torso, his legs. He recognized how his hands looked, the lines on his palms, the shape of his fingers but they were off, they were shorter than he remembered. He swallowed hard as he tried to come up with a reasonable explanation.
And then a memory hit him like a train.
A subway platform. The cold taste of panic. Ryan's face grinning with something dark behind his eyes. The shove. The screeching metal. Light and noise and pain all at once. And then—nothing.
Wyatt exhaled sharply, a laugh caught in his throat—but it wasn't his laugh. It was too high‑pitched, too unfamiliar, not the voice he'd known all his life. He froze in place, his heart threatening to break through his chest, staring at the ceiling until the sunlight seemed to settle around him like warm dust.
Maybe it was a dream.
Maybe it was just a dream.
Except the voice—the unfamiliar timbre of it—told him otherwise.
He forced himself upright, swaying slightly. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and planted his feet on the floor—but the motion didn't match the mental map he had of his body. His brain calculated the distance from bed to floor the way it had always known it, the way it had practiced a thousand times, but his legs—shorter, lighter—disagreed. He tried adjusting his stance, and abruptly his ankle slipped. He tumbled forward with a dull thump, hands splaying on the hardwood.
"Sleepyhead," a familiar voice called from somewhere down the hall, flat and teasing, not the faint echo of an alarm clock but the real‑world sound of someone who had likely said that to him many times before.
Wyatt froze, nearly forgetting how to breathe. The voice was both foreign and intimately familiar, like a memory he should have been able to place. He stood up unsteadily, finding his balance and getting used to his centre of gravity while his mind raced.
A few seconds passed.
The same voice called out again, closer this time, footsteps brushing the floor behind it. "Hey, get moving, Sleepyhead. You're not gonna get to school lying there all day."
And there he was, Whitney Fordman stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with one shoulder, arms folded casually. His grin was easy, the kind of half‑mocking, half‑genuine expression that belonged to someone comfortable in their own skin. He looked like someone who could charm everyone he came across. He carried himself with a confidence that people tended to like him without even noticing.
And Wyatt knew that face.
From a show he'd watched years ago during long nights at his dad's apartment. A story about a small town boy with a bleeding heart from a different planet who later became the man of steel, and a life nothing like anything Wyatt had ever lived—until now.
Whitney looked down at him and shook his head with that signature smirk. "You okay, or do I need to carry you all the way to school?"
Wyatt forced a nod, the wordless gesture coming out unnervingly slow.
Whitney chuckled. "Good. I'm driving. School doesn't wait."
School.
The word hit Wyatt like a second wave.
For a moment simply stood there, breathing, trying to make sense of what was happening. The room was quiet except for a soft breeze drifting in through a window, clean air, not the stale, exhaust‑thick atmosphere of Manhattan, It felt different here, softer. There was an earthy smell beneath it, like open fields and hay and maybe something sweet and alive. No honking taxis. No sirens. No subway rumble vibrating through steel and concrete.
Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe.
His hand went to his wallet on the side table by his bed, an almost‑instinctive motion, years of habit from his life in New York. When he opened it, he nearly dropped it again.
Smallville High School, 2002Wyatt Fordman: Age 15
ID-PHOTO: a smiling boy with short, light-brown hair. His green‑hazel eyes are familiar, his face younger but unmistakably him. The half‑smile looks like a memory of himself, a version he never expected to see.
He stared at the card as if it might dissolve into dust. He remembered teeth‑chattering cold in a subway station. He remembered the glare of headlights. He remembered Ryan's grin like a blade.
And now he held a school ID from a place he'd never visited in his life—or so he thought.
Wyatt exhaled slowly and let his gaze linger on the ID. Manhattan had been his life before—bills, rent, the constant roar of ambition chasing him down every street. He'd built a career from nothing, fought tooth and nail for every opportunity, and it had all been taken from him in an instant. His thoughts darkened for a moment, landing on the one person he had trusted most Ryan, the friend who had betrayed and murdered him. But he shook it off. He had always clawed his way forward and despised revisiting the past, and that wouldn't change now.
The bright side? He was here, alive, in the early 2000s, with the world ahead of him. More than that, he had a second chance—a chance to live differently, to seize what Manhattan life had once offered, and perhaps more.
And somehow, unbelievably, he was in Smallville, if his guess was right and there was a Clark Kent in his school, he was in the DC universe.
"You okay in there?" Whitney called from the doorway again, softer this time.
Wyatt opened his eyes and nodded—though he wasn't sure he meant it.
"Yeah," he said, voice cracking slightly. "Just give me a sec."
Whitney strode in, leaning over the foot of Wyatt's bed. Even though he was taller, he reached down and ruffled Wyatt's hair with a quick tug. "Come on, sleepyhead," he said, voice sharp with urgency. "Shower. Grab some clothes. We're running late, and I'm not waiting for you."
Wyatt scrambled upright, still shaky in the unfamiliar body. Whitney didn't wait for him to protest, already heading toward the bathroom to grab his own things. "Move it," he called over his shoulder. "I'll meet you in the truck in five."
Wyatt managed a faint, nervous smile.
"Bed slipped," he mumbled.
Whitney's grin widened. "You do that a lot. Don't think I've ever seen you land so elegantly."
Wyatt didn't laugh. Not really. Not this time.
His mind kept circling back to one thing: Ryan.
He would never forget that grin. Not in a thousand lifetimes.
He shook his head, trying to push it aside. It didn't fit here. Not in Smallville. Not in this body. Not with Whitney in the next room being annoyingly upbeat about school.
"Right," Whitney said prodding gently. "School. I already told Dad you'd be late if you stayed in bed another minute."
"Huh?" Wyatt blinked. "Dad?"
"Yeah," Whitney said, tossing him a pair of jeans and a T‑shirt. "You haven't grabbed clothes yet? Jesus. Breakfast's on the counter and he's muttering about missing his coffee again."
Wyatt took the clothes, feeling the fabric between his fingers—another layer of reality that tempered the surrealness of it all. He began getting dressed slowly, staring at his reflection in a small mirror across the room. His face was youthful but familiar. His hair slightly longer than he remembered. His eyes still the same color just... different.
Once he was dressed, he followed the smell of toast and coffee down the hall and into the kitchen.
His father sat at the table, thin and pale‑haired, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose as he read from the local newspaper. The man looked older than Wyatt remembered from his television memories—a quiet presence, unassuming, but with eyes that still carried warmth.
"Morning, son," he said without looking up, voice calm. "Coffee's on the counter if you want it before school."
Wyatt nodded quietly.
"Toast?" his father offered.
"Yeah… toast sounds good," Wyatt said, voice still settling into this unfamiliar body.
His father smiled slightly, his calm presence eased the tight knot tension in Wyatt chest.
He sat, took a bite of toast, and let the quiet of the farm sink in around him. No blaring horns. No rushing crowds. Just the distant sound of livestock, the soft rhythm of farm machinery at ease, and the occasional call of birds in the yard.
It all felt foreign to him but he would be lying if he said he didn't find it calming.
After breakfast, Whitney grabbed keys from a bowl by the door. Wyatt slipped his feet into sneakers that fit oddly but well, then followed his brother outside.
The air was crisp, coated with the earthy scent of early morning—fresh grass, damp soil, distant hay. He had never smelled anything quite like it before. It felt alive.
They walked to a red pickup parked by the driveway, its paint a little faded but still gleaming in the sunlight.
"You ready?" Whitney asked, grinning broadly.
Wyatt took a slow breath of that clear, open air.
"Yeah," he said—quieter this time, more measured. "I think so."
They climbed into the truck, Whitney behind the wheel. The engine rumbled to life, and they drove off.
As they turned onto the road toward Smallville High, a strange calm began to settle over Wyatt, deeper than anything he'd felt that morning. The memory of Ryan—and the sharp sting of betrayal—was still there, but it felt distant now, like a shadow at the edge of his mind replaced by the gentle rhythm of rural life—one sunrise, one breath, one moment at a time.
He didn't know how or why he was here.
But he knew he was alive.
And somewhere down that tree‑lined road, a new beginning waited.