Lessons
Set at the end of the second season. (Believe it or not, I didn't know that myself until I got to the end, and had to go back and revise the beginning. Feel free to pick nits on what I missed.) Same characters from "Interview," plus some of their friends. Rating: no sex, no drugs, no violence (unless you count the green rocks), no nudity (darn wimps), lots of emotional abuse.
Disclaimer: for entertainment purposes only. Smallville and all associated characters belong to somebody else. The Special Operations folks are my own creations, and though you wouldn't want to meet any of them in a dark alley -- or bright daylight, either, for that matter, if one of them were on your bad side -- they're just around for the fun of it. And no, this is NOT any darn AU X-Men. I haven't picked up an X-Men (also copyright somebody else) since 1982, or seen the stupid movies either. Xavier doesn't read Lovecraft or Koontz. I do.
Lesson: don't try to put one over on people who have been there and done that. _ _ _ _ _
The wind whipped by him, far slower than he could run. The engine growled beneath him, a toy he could have picked up and crushed between finger and thumb. The countryside gave way to houses, to countryside again, to cities. He didn't see them. They were all the same to him. Unimportant. Ephemeral. Meaningless.
Not his. Not his home. Not his life. Not his world.
The redness burned in his veins. It hurt, some, like a high fever or the edge of an overdose of alcohol. It was, after all, more or less the same stuff as the green rocks, the only thing that could kill him, just aimed at his mind instead of his body. Poisonous, he knew. But it kept the other hurt, the worse hurt, the loss and grief and abandonment, subdued.
Nothing else on this planet -- not that the rocks were of this planet -- could so much as scratch his skin. Not bullets, not lasers, not even a nuclear bomb, probably. In the haze of redness, he was half tempted to go find out. Maybe they were testing a nuke somewhere.
Maybe he'd go set one off himself. So what? He'd already renounced or destroyed everything he cared about, everyone and everything that meant anything to him.
His parents were long dead. Hells, his whole species was long dead. His whole world was long dead. And his last and only link to that world, his only way of ever maybe finding out who and what he and his own people were, was dead now, too. At his own hands.
The people who had raised him hated him, and with good reason. His friends all knew him for a liar and a falsehood. They probably thought he was an alien invader too.
If they thought of him at all, any more.
("Have a nice life, Clark." And she'd stomped away. She was gone from his life.)
He hadn't been able to explain to her. He hadn't had time. The voice screaming in his head had made it impossible to hear his friend. Alien hell had been engulfing him, consuming him, threatening all that he held dear and all that he believed he was. And he'd had to destroy it all to be free of the terror of hurting those he most wanted to keep close.
His betrayal of all he'd loved and cared about stabbed him, hurt worse even than holding that terrible pure green octagon in his bare fingers had. Nearly dying had not felt as bad as the decision he'd finally made. To shut them all out, not even try to be part of their lives any more. Not to have friends. Never again.
Only the red burning held it at bay. For now.
Not his world. Not his world.
The engine began to sputter. Clark -- Kal-El, he reminded himself automatically, there was no Clark any more -- glanced at the gages. Out of gas. His lips curled in a sneer. Wouldn't you know it. Machines ran out of gas. He never did. Never could.
Rule them with strength, echoed in his mind. Shut up, he snarled. I can't even convince them to build a decent power source on this filthy reckless unthinking planet.
He abandoned the bike and went on walking. Why run? There was no place to run to. No place he wanted to go. Except away.
The countryside gave way to a town again. He didn't care. He ignored the people, their glances, friendly or suspicious. Not his. Not his town. Not his home. Not his world.
He may as well not even have been there. He wasn't part of this world. They could do nothing to him. He could do nothing but hurt them, or save them from something temporarily, and what difference did it make? They meant nothing to him. Never would. Never could. They were just ... animals. Nobodies. Nothing. He didn't care. Couldn't care.
To care, you had to belong. He didn't belong here. Never had. Never would. He was only walking because there was nothing else to do. Nothing mattered. Nobody cared if he lived or died. Would probably prefer that he died. So what. Made no difference to him.
So the sudden hard grip on his wrist from behind took him by complete surprise, and he reacted too slowly to resist the powerful fingers that ripped the ring from him. Literally, tore the metal, not wasting the time to try to slip it off. He spun just in time to see a big dark woman pop the whole thing in her mouth and swallow. "Bleagh!" she said, massaging her throat. "That stings almost as bad as the green stuff. And Wynter's gonna be truly ticked at me for destroying his sample. What in all the nine billion names of god has gotten into you, kid? You look one sandwich short of catatonic."
Clark (Kal-El, Kal-El, echoed in his mind) stared at the woman he knew, remembered, to be an artificial creature, as strong as he was and even more invulnerable, though not as fast or with a lot of his other so-called gifts. Someone who had offered him friendship, and a sense of belonging. Once upon a time.
Reflex closed out any thought of belonging or connection. Not his world. Not his world. No one like him. No one who could understand.
She had been made in a laboratory, he (Clark?) remembered. Not her world either, really. Maybe she could understand. Maybe....
The thread of even a possibility of acceptance again hurt even worse.
The dulling red haze faded. Her "stomach" was a nuclear furnace. There wouldn't be anything more than atoms of the ring left by now. The real pain, the pain that lived too deep inside him to ever exorcise, came roaring back over him. "Nicole," he said weakly. "Don't."
He fainted.
When the world came slowly back, he was lying on something comfortable, a cool wet cloth over his eyes, moving -- according to his gravitational senses -- faster than anything even Lex drove, and considerably farther away from the ground. A plane. His ears identified the steady subsonic droning. Okay, a jet. A jet with a couch? He sat up.
"Gotta go, Jack. The kid's awake, and there will be hell to pay if he puts us into the ground." Nicole flipped some switches, and left her cockpit seat to stand in front of Clark, arms folded. "Care to tell me what that was all about?"
Clark (Kal-El, get used to it) very nearly did. Then he averted his eyes. "No."
"Hm. We know about the explosion at your place. We have a crew of builders led by an ex-construction battalion looey, a Seabee, on their way right now, and they know what to look for. They think it's a treat, they don't get fresh corn off the stalk very often. We know about Lex's wedding to that arrogant fool pawn of Lionel's, of course. A couple of our people have joined his cleaning staff, and his collections and records are about to undergo some interesting alterations. We know your mom had a miscarriage, but at her age, and after all the toxins she and Jonathan have been exposed to -- and I'm talking DDT here, not meteorites -- she was pushing the odds anyway. Any of that sound familiar?"
Clark slumped. He didn't want to think about any of it, but reflex made him defend the people who had raised him. "My parents -- " Kal-El, Kal-El, not Clark, not Kent -- "The Kents use organic farming."
"Not twenty years ago, they didn't. Why do you think they were both sterile in the first place? Why do you think half the town was so susceptible to kryptonite mutation? There'll be pesticide teratogens in the soil there for another hundred years."
Kal-El gritted his teeth. Very unKryptonian. "I don't. Want. To talk about it."
"Suit yourself, kid." Nicole went back to the pilot's seat.
"Where are you taking me?" Not that it mattered. Not any more. Not his world.
Nicole tilted her head sideways in consideration. "To a top secret installation hidden in plain sight. A castle with an electronic and industrial moat. The center of civilization out in the middle of nowhere. To see John."
John, the Baron, the mysterious head of Special Operations, for whom both the dangerously powerful Nicole and her even more frightening partner, head field agent Lake Anderson, worked. Clark would have been thrilled, and more than a little scared. Kal-El didn't care one way or the other. Yeah, he could wreck the plane, but both he and Nicole would survive it, and what would be the point? What was the point of anything?
"Fine." He laid back down, and lulled by the engine drone, drifted off to sleep.
Set at the end of the second season. (Believe it or not, I didn't know that myself until I got to the end, and had to go back and revise the beginning. Feel free to pick nits on what I missed.) Same characters from "Interview," plus some of their friends. Rating: no sex, no drugs, no violence (unless you count the green rocks), no nudity (darn wimps), lots of emotional abuse.
Disclaimer: for entertainment purposes only. Smallville and all associated characters belong to somebody else. The Special Operations folks are my own creations, and though you wouldn't want to meet any of them in a dark alley -- or bright daylight, either, for that matter, if one of them were on your bad side -- they're just around for the fun of it. And no, this is NOT any darn AU X-Men. I haven't picked up an X-Men (also copyright somebody else) since 1982, or seen the stupid movies either. Xavier doesn't read Lovecraft or Koontz. I do.
Lesson: don't try to put one over on people who have been there and done that. _ _ _ _ _
The wind whipped by him, far slower than he could run. The engine growled beneath him, a toy he could have picked up and crushed between finger and thumb. The countryside gave way to houses, to countryside again, to cities. He didn't see them. They were all the same to him. Unimportant. Ephemeral. Meaningless.
Not his. Not his home. Not his life. Not his world.
The redness burned in his veins. It hurt, some, like a high fever or the edge of an overdose of alcohol. It was, after all, more or less the same stuff as the green rocks, the only thing that could kill him, just aimed at his mind instead of his body. Poisonous, he knew. But it kept the other hurt, the worse hurt, the loss and grief and abandonment, subdued.
Nothing else on this planet -- not that the rocks were of this planet -- could so much as scratch his skin. Not bullets, not lasers, not even a nuclear bomb, probably. In the haze of redness, he was half tempted to go find out. Maybe they were testing a nuke somewhere.
Maybe he'd go set one off himself. So what? He'd already renounced or destroyed everything he cared about, everyone and everything that meant anything to him.
His parents were long dead. Hells, his whole species was long dead. His whole world was long dead. And his last and only link to that world, his only way of ever maybe finding out who and what he and his own people were, was dead now, too. At his own hands.
The people who had raised him hated him, and with good reason. His friends all knew him for a liar and a falsehood. They probably thought he was an alien invader too.
If they thought of him at all, any more.
("Have a nice life, Clark." And she'd stomped away. She was gone from his life.)
He hadn't been able to explain to her. He hadn't had time. The voice screaming in his head had made it impossible to hear his friend. Alien hell had been engulfing him, consuming him, threatening all that he held dear and all that he believed he was. And he'd had to destroy it all to be free of the terror of hurting those he most wanted to keep close.
His betrayal of all he'd loved and cared about stabbed him, hurt worse even than holding that terrible pure green octagon in his bare fingers had. Nearly dying had not felt as bad as the decision he'd finally made. To shut them all out, not even try to be part of their lives any more. Not to have friends. Never again.
Only the red burning held it at bay. For now.
Not his world. Not his world.
The engine began to sputter. Clark -- Kal-El, he reminded himself automatically, there was no Clark any more -- glanced at the gages. Out of gas. His lips curled in a sneer. Wouldn't you know it. Machines ran out of gas. He never did. Never could.
Rule them with strength, echoed in his mind. Shut up, he snarled. I can't even convince them to build a decent power source on this filthy reckless unthinking planet.
He abandoned the bike and went on walking. Why run? There was no place to run to. No place he wanted to go. Except away.
The countryside gave way to a town again. He didn't care. He ignored the people, their glances, friendly or suspicious. Not his. Not his town. Not his home. Not his world.
He may as well not even have been there. He wasn't part of this world. They could do nothing to him. He could do nothing but hurt them, or save them from something temporarily, and what difference did it make? They meant nothing to him. Never would. Never could. They were just ... animals. Nobodies. Nothing. He didn't care. Couldn't care.
To care, you had to belong. He didn't belong here. Never had. Never would. He was only walking because there was nothing else to do. Nothing mattered. Nobody cared if he lived or died. Would probably prefer that he died. So what. Made no difference to him.
So the sudden hard grip on his wrist from behind took him by complete surprise, and he reacted too slowly to resist the powerful fingers that ripped the ring from him. Literally, tore the metal, not wasting the time to try to slip it off. He spun just in time to see a big dark woman pop the whole thing in her mouth and swallow. "Bleagh!" she said, massaging her throat. "That stings almost as bad as the green stuff. And Wynter's gonna be truly ticked at me for destroying his sample. What in all the nine billion names of god has gotten into you, kid? You look one sandwich short of catatonic."
Clark (Kal-El, Kal-El, echoed in his mind) stared at the woman he knew, remembered, to be an artificial creature, as strong as he was and even more invulnerable, though not as fast or with a lot of his other so-called gifts. Someone who had offered him friendship, and a sense of belonging. Once upon a time.
Reflex closed out any thought of belonging or connection. Not his world. Not his world. No one like him. No one who could understand.
She had been made in a laboratory, he (Clark?) remembered. Not her world either, really. Maybe she could understand. Maybe....
The thread of even a possibility of acceptance again hurt even worse.
The dulling red haze faded. Her "stomach" was a nuclear furnace. There wouldn't be anything more than atoms of the ring left by now. The real pain, the pain that lived too deep inside him to ever exorcise, came roaring back over him. "Nicole," he said weakly. "Don't."
He fainted.
When the world came slowly back, he was lying on something comfortable, a cool wet cloth over his eyes, moving -- according to his gravitational senses -- faster than anything even Lex drove, and considerably farther away from the ground. A plane. His ears identified the steady subsonic droning. Okay, a jet. A jet with a couch? He sat up.
"Gotta go, Jack. The kid's awake, and there will be hell to pay if he puts us into the ground." Nicole flipped some switches, and left her cockpit seat to stand in front of Clark, arms folded. "Care to tell me what that was all about?"
Clark (Kal-El, get used to it) very nearly did. Then he averted his eyes. "No."
"Hm. We know about the explosion at your place. We have a crew of builders led by an ex-construction battalion looey, a Seabee, on their way right now, and they know what to look for. They think it's a treat, they don't get fresh corn off the stalk very often. We know about Lex's wedding to that arrogant fool pawn of Lionel's, of course. A couple of our people have joined his cleaning staff, and his collections and records are about to undergo some interesting alterations. We know your mom had a miscarriage, but at her age, and after all the toxins she and Jonathan have been exposed to -- and I'm talking DDT here, not meteorites -- she was pushing the odds anyway. Any of that sound familiar?"
Clark slumped. He didn't want to think about any of it, but reflex made him defend the people who had raised him. "My parents -- " Kal-El, Kal-El, not Clark, not Kent -- "The Kents use organic farming."
"Not twenty years ago, they didn't. Why do you think they were both sterile in the first place? Why do you think half the town was so susceptible to kryptonite mutation? There'll be pesticide teratogens in the soil there for another hundred years."
Kal-El gritted his teeth. Very unKryptonian. "I don't. Want. To talk about it."
"Suit yourself, kid." Nicole went back to the pilot's seat.
"Where are you taking me?" Not that it mattered. Not any more. Not his world.
Nicole tilted her head sideways in consideration. "To a top secret installation hidden in plain sight. A castle with an electronic and industrial moat. The center of civilization out in the middle of nowhere. To see John."
John, the Baron, the mysterious head of Special Operations, for whom both the dangerously powerful Nicole and her even more frightening partner, head field agent Lake Anderson, worked. Clark would have been thrilled, and more than a little scared. Kal-El didn't care one way or the other. Yeah, he could wreck the plane, but both he and Nicole would survive it, and what would be the point? What was the point of anything?
"Fine." He laid back down, and lulled by the engine drone, drifted off to sleep.