Chloe/Davis fic: Remembrance (2/3)
May. 20th, 2009 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Remembrance
Fandom: Smallville
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis, Clark, Jimmy, Lois
Rating: R
Author’s Note: AU for Bride. Davis doesn’t know he’s Doomsday, Chloe doesn’t remember Clark is Kryptonian, and Jimmy is engaged to marry her. Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vagrantdream.
Word Count: 2,996
Previous Part: Chapter 1
Next Part: Chapter 3
Summary: Chloe is willing to kill Doomsday to protect Clark. But what is she willing to do to protect Davis?
Chloe found him on the roof of the Metropolis General. Davis was sitting on the parapet, his back to her. “I’d jump if I thought it would do any good. You saw the people on the way up?”
Chloe had. The basketball court was nothing compared to it. She reached into her purse, felt cold steel.
“How’d you find me?” Davis asked, dully curious.
“You left your cell phone on. That’s all I need.” Chloe squeezed the gun until she thought it would crack. No such luck. “I came here to kill you.”
“Please…” He turned around. “Please do.”
Chloe let go of the gun, putting her hand to her mouth. His body was… opened. Long gashes tore across it, feeding rivers of blood. What little of his skin wasn’t covered in blood was deathly pale. And veins hung out of the ruptured skin, dripping blood, dangling with tendons and nerves.
He took a step toward her, reaching out with arms split from wrist to elbow. “I cut every artery I could find, from ulnar to carotid. There are five liters of blood in the human body and mine’s all over the roof. My tendons are cut, but I can still move. I can’t die. What kind of monster am I that even death won’t have me?”
Chloe forced her hands down, around her purse. “You didn’t know.”
“I suspected. I thought… I was being punished. I thought if I had faith—“ Blood bubbled out of his throat with each word, disjointing his sentences. “Can you kill me? Please, say you can.”
Blood spurted out of his wrist, then the arm closed up, the only evidence a scar of clean skin.
Chloe dropped her purse. “I can’t.”
“Find a way. You’re smart, can’t you—I’m begging.”
“No, I can’t. You’re the only thing that still makes sense. The only thing that’s mine.”
His other arm knitted itself together. “It was me!” he roared. “Me…” He wrapped into a fetal position. “I became a paramedic to save people. And now I find out the best way I could’ve done that was to put a bullet in my own goddamn head.” Fresh blood trickled out of his split carotid.
“Don’t say that.” Chloe pressed the heel of her hand against the gushing side of his neck until it closed up. “Look, I know what it’s like to—“
“I’m a killer. A freak. A rabid fucking dog. You have no idea what that’s like.”
Chloe grabbed the sides of his head and forced him to look up at her. “You want to know how I lost my memory? An AI took over my mind. It made me do things! I hurt my friends! I killed someone! So I know exactly what it’s like to feel like you’ve been twisted into something ugly, always wanting to know why you weren’t strong enough to stop it, wondering how much of it was you and how much was the monster, wondering if you’re the monster. Wondering if anything you can do will make up for who you were or if you should just end it. I’ve been there. But I’m still here.” She let go of him. He kept looking at her. “With you.”
“Get away from her, Davis.”
Chloe turned, a hot flush of guilt hitting her.
Clark’s face was a roadmap of the fight. Rimmed with small cuts and one eye charcoal-black, it seemed to Davis like an accusation that had followed him all the way up from the city streets.
“Chloe, it’s him!” Davis doubled over, a sudden shooting pain…
“No, it’s alright, it’s…” Chloe stepped between them. “Clark, he can’t control it.”
“Do you really think that matters anymore? All the more reason to—”
“To what? Kill him?”
“Your idea. You were right. You’re always right. Step away from him. Please.”
“He’s right, Chloe.” Davis shut his blazing red eyes. “You need to be running.”
“I’m not going anywhere!”
“It’s him, it’s him, Chloe.” Davis struggled to speak with the jagged teeth pushing their way into his mouth. “It’s Kal-El. I’m meant to kill him. I was born to kill him.”
“You’re not a monster! You’re more than that, you’re…”
Davis was beyond hearing her. The beast stepped over Chloe, locked onto Clark like a bloodhound with a scent. They met. Flew off the roof like a missile launched into the heart of Metropolis.
***
They hit the street, cracking pavement, and the fight began in earnest. Davis felt the beast’s instincts like a dream’s logic. Of course he should hit Clark. He should keep hitting Clark. He should hit Clark until there was nothing left to hit. And even though a part of him kept thinking this was wrong, he should stop, he couldn’t keep that train of thought going. He had to keep fighting. It was the only thing that made sense.
***
If anything, anyone got in the way, he simply knocked them aside, the scent of their spilled blood driving him onward. He flung cars at Clark, not caring where they landed. He cracked buildings with Clark. It seemed to distract him.
***
Everything was hate, everything was rage, everything was blood. Davis couldn’t understand how he had ever been anything but the beast. How could he, the other him, feel guilty about being who he was? He savaged the son of Jor-El, reopening old wounds and making new ones. This time, Kal-El would stay dead.
***
Then he heard a lone voice cry “Stop!”
Chloe Sullivan.
The beast turned away from the target of its hunt. It looked down at the tiny blonde figure standing between it and its prey. And somewhere deep inside its craggy hide, Davis Bloom stopped screaming.
“Davis, it’s okay. I know it’s you. It’s alright. I trust you.” She walked to meet it, her stride never breaking, her breath never quickening. “I know you’ll help me, no matter what, and I need your help right now. My life is a lie, and it has been for a long time. Because, I’ve been lying to myself. About who I am. About who I love. You’re the only thing that I know is real and I need you to help me find the truth. I want to stop being someone else’s idea of happy, living someone else’s dream. You cared about me when I was just me. You didn’t hide anything from me. We were just a boy and a girl who made each other happy, remember that? I want to start there. Come back to me. Run, walk, swim, or fly, but be with me.”
The beast picked her up in one monstrous hand. His bone spurs cut her, but she ignored them the way she’d ignore the thorns on a rose. He held her up to his face and she saw that his eyes hadn’t changed.
“Chloe…”
Sirens wailed and lights flashed as a new wave of police reinforcements approached. The beast whirled to meet them, hands turning into fists until one met the warm resistance of Chloe’s body. Then, something happened that had been a lifetime in the making. Davis Bloom’s lifetime.
A creature engineered solely for destruction made a choice. It chose not to kill.
Instead, it jumped, landing on the roof of a skyscraper with Chloe in its arms. Then it jumped to another building, and another, gathering speed until it jumped and left Clark, Jimmy, Metropolis far behind.
Chloe didn’t know where they stopped, but it had mountains. The beast blended into the rock, except for the splotches where dried blood painted it brown. As soon as they landed the beast turned from her, barking oddly, then laid into a boulder until it was so much shale.
Chloe looked at the bone spurs on its fists to find they had decayed, like rotten teeth. They broke off and the nubs retracted under the skin. The beast shrunk, its skin at first too big for it, then tightening into a tanned consistency.
Davis gasped, the last of the spurs still projecting from his skin like compound fractures. He sobbed as they were sucked back inside him, daggers sinking in past the hilt.
Chloe smoothed his wild, fresh-grown hair down. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
***
It took hours for Davis to catch his breath. Sometimes he wept, sometimes he whimpered, sometimes he screamed. The only constant was that Chloe didn’t let go of him. At first he shook so hard she wondered if it was a seizure, but with time it faded until it was just a tremor in his hand. She stopped that by taking his hand in hers. For the next few minutes he was still as stone, staring off into the distance. She wondered if he was looking at the setting sun or just pointed in that direction. She watched it anyway.
When it had set, Davis pulled her hand to his face and ran its back along his cheek. She was real. Davis kissed her wrist with parched lips. “You’re a piece of a good dream in the middle of this nightmare, you know? We have to go back, don’t we. I have to put a stop to this.”
“Clark can help. His heart’s in the right place. And he’s a part of all this craziness.”
“Alright. If there’s even a chance…” Davis struggled into her coat. “I love you. I’m sorry.”
Chloe licked her thumb and wiped away the flecks of blood dotting his face. “I don’t want to remember our first kiss as part of all this insanity. But never forget how I feel.” She pulled him into a fierce embrace, didn’t let go this time until he put his arms around her shoulders and hugged her back.
***
Two days of hitchhiking and bus rides later, they were back in Metropolis. The people were walking wounded; skittish, ashen-faced, jumping at shadows. Chloe squeezed Davis’s hands as they walked the traumatized streets. There were still windows cracked from the force of blows exchanged miles away. He gave her some privacy as she got in a phone booth, dialed Clark’s number.
“Clark, it’s Chloe.” She took a deep breath. “I remember everything.”
She heard the words collapse in his throat. “Chlo… we can talk about that later, where are you?”
“No, let’s talk about it now. You stole my memories!”
“They were putting you in danger. You could’ve been killed helping me!”
“That’s my choice! I helped people! My life had meaning!”
“It still does. Jimmy—“
“He doesn’t make me happy, Clark! Not like what I had with you.”
“Had?”
“Don’t act like you value our friendship. You have no idea how angry it makes me just to hear your voice. But I need your help.”
“Anything, Chloe.”
“It’s Davis. Clark, that monster he became, he can’t control it. We need your help for that.”
***
After the fight, Clark had stumbled to Ollie’s penthouse, where he’d been treated privately for his injuries. The media had never gotten a clear shot of the red-blue blur, but Clark nodded when he heard Chloe’s suggestion to retire his blue shirts and red jacket. And now they were back in Lionel’s vaults, poring over all the research Luthor had put together before his death.
“I’m sorry,” Davis said suddenly, making Clark look up from his Kryptese translation.
“What was that?”
“I said I’m sorry. For the fight, whatever part I had in it.”
Clark looked away from him. “An apology – I suppose it’s a start.”
“What, you want me to wash your feet?” Davis joked uneasily.
“Maybe send a flower to all the funerals, if you can afford it. God only knows what Chloe was thinking when she--”
Davis lunged for Clark just as Chloe threw herself between them.
“Hey! I don't need someone to fight my battles or protect my honor! I can take care of myself!”
“You tell him, Chlo.”
Chloe slapped Clark, then shook her hand. “Okay, that would've worked better if you weren't invincible.”
“Want me to try?” Davis asked, half-joke, half-threat.
“Could you just give us a minute?”
Giving Clark one last look, Davis left the room.
Chloe put her hands on her hips. “Alright, Clark, out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“We can’t solve this if you’re blaming Davis for making me ‘turn against you’ or some other macho—“
“It’s not like that!” Clark protested. “You’ve died, Chloe! I’ve had to pull you out of morgues because of our friendship!”
“So it was all to protect me?
“Yes!” Clark paced. “I thought now that you had Jimmy, he could take the place of… all this.”
“And I’d spend the rest of my life being Suzy Homemaker.” She sunk into a chair.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Clark said softly. He sat down across from her. “I know I had no right, but I thought it was either that or… or one day I’d lose you.”
Chloe wouldn’t look anywhere but the ground. “I loved you. I would’ve done anything for you.”
“Have I lost you, Chloe?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe looked at him, her eyes flat and level. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re the world’s savior or its most benevolent dictator.”
“So what should I do?” He smiled a bit ruefully. “I missed being able to ask you that.”
“Right now, save the day. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”
“Then I guess we really only have one option. We have to go to the Fortress. We have to see Jor-El.”
***
After Chloe stopped talking, Davis stared at her, the only sound the steady growl of the engine and the purchase of the tires on the road. “Wow.” Davis blinked. “That’s a lot to take in.”
He’d suspected a lot of it, and Chloe had hinted at the rest on the journey back to Metropolis, but he hadn’t been that curious and hadn’t pressured her for Clark’s secrets. But hearing the whole thing laid out… Veritas, Krypton, Brainiac… it made him wonder if his head was screwed on right.
“Want me to go over any of it again?” Chloe asked. She was sitting in the backseat with Davis, legs up and feet in his lap. He had a hand across her ankle, thumb absently rubbing the side of her heel.
“No. I trust you.” Davis shook his head in resigned belief. “I can’t imagine the pillow talk you make.”
Chloe blushed a little.
Davis bit his lip, surprised he’d said it.
Clark concentrated very hard on keeping his car on the road. “So Chloe, how’d you get your memory back, anyway?”
Chloe darkened, as if light was suddenly reluctant to touch her. “Once I… admitted the injury, I was able to heal myself.”
“Injury?”
Chloe leaned up to the front seat. Her voice was very flat. “You gave me fucking brain damage, Clark.”
The rest of the car ride was quiet.
***
“We’re here,” Clark said, parking.
Davis looked at a nearby sign. “The Kawatche caves? Did everyone know about this Krypton stuff but me?”
“We’re only here to use the teleporter,” Clark told him. “You don’t mind being broken down at a molecular level and reassembled in the Arctic Circle, do you?”
“Clark, be nice.” Chloe turned to Davis. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
”What’s the worse that could happen? I die?”
“Yes.” Chloe took his hand. “That’d be the worst thing.”
She rubbed her arms as they went underground. It’d been a while since she’d been here. Since she’d remembered it. Davis put his jacket over her and that made it a little better.
“Anyone remember the story of Persephone?”
“Kidnapped by Hades,” Davis said. “Forced to spend six months in the underworld.”
“Forced to spend six months separated from her husband because Demeter wanted to keep her safe,” Clark said, his voice echoing.
“Yeah,” Chloe said.
Clark pressed the octagon into its receptacle and the chamber opened up.
“It won’t hurt,” Clark assured Davis.
The light took them.
***
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” Crystal spikes shot out of the walls, narrowly missing Chloe as they impaled Davis. He didn’t cry out, just groaned a little. Chloe made more noise with her hands clapped over her mouth.
“Father, no!” Clark said. “He’s a… friend.”
“The entity is a class-omega threat. It must be destroyed.”
“Let him go, father. You have to trust me.”
The spikes retracted and Davis dropped into Chloe’s arms. She shielded him from Jor-El with her body while saying to Clark “You and daddy dearest seem chummy.”
“Without you, who else should I have relied on?”
Davis still said nothing, instead hugging himself as if ashamed of the way his wounds didn’t bleed.
A wall shot up between them, cutting Clark off from Chloe and Davis. “Chloe!” He pounded at the wall, jolting it, before realizing if he did bust through, Chloe would be hit by flying shards. “Father…”
“The Destroyer possesses an unstable genetic matrix. At any moment it could discard its camouflage and attack you—a battle I cannot guarantee you’ll survive.”
”Is there any way to… stabilize his matrix?” Clark’s brow furrowed. It’d been a long time since he’d argued with Jor-El. He didn’t like it. “It’s not camouflage. It’s a person.”
“Its programming extends to the genetic level. Removing these traits would trigger the transformation. The only solution is termination.”
Through the frosted glass of the wall, Clark could see Davis holding Chloe. “The day I make that choice is the day I go from savior to tyrant. There must be another way.”
“The safest option would be to eliminate the Destroyer.”
“Every day, Chloe risks her life for me. Are you saying I shouldn’t do the same?”
“You are the Traveler. Your life is worth more than hers.”
“As long as I think that, I’m not worth a tenth of her. Find another way.”
“There is one other way. But it will require… sacrifice.”
Fandom: Smallville
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis, Clark, Jimmy, Lois
Rating: R
Author’s Note: AU for Bride. Davis doesn’t know he’s Doomsday, Chloe doesn’t remember Clark is Kryptonian, and Jimmy is engaged to marry her. Betaed by
vagrantdream.Word Count: 2,996
Previous Part: Chapter 1
Next Part: Chapter 3
Summary: Chloe is willing to kill Doomsday to protect Clark. But what is she willing to do to protect Davis?
Chloe found him on the roof of the Metropolis General. Davis was sitting on the parapet, his back to her. “I’d jump if I thought it would do any good. You saw the people on the way up?”
Chloe had. The basketball court was nothing compared to it. She reached into her purse, felt cold steel.
“How’d you find me?” Davis asked, dully curious.
“You left your cell phone on. That’s all I need.” Chloe squeezed the gun until she thought it would crack. No such luck. “I came here to kill you.”
“Please…” He turned around. “Please do.”
Chloe let go of the gun, putting her hand to her mouth. His body was… opened. Long gashes tore across it, feeding rivers of blood. What little of his skin wasn’t covered in blood was deathly pale. And veins hung out of the ruptured skin, dripping blood, dangling with tendons and nerves.
He took a step toward her, reaching out with arms split from wrist to elbow. “I cut every artery I could find, from ulnar to carotid. There are five liters of blood in the human body and mine’s all over the roof. My tendons are cut, but I can still move. I can’t die. What kind of monster am I that even death won’t have me?”
Chloe forced her hands down, around her purse. “You didn’t know.”
“I suspected. I thought… I was being punished. I thought if I had faith—“ Blood bubbled out of his throat with each word, disjointing his sentences. “Can you kill me? Please, say you can.”
Blood spurted out of his wrist, then the arm closed up, the only evidence a scar of clean skin.
Chloe dropped her purse. “I can’t.”
“Find a way. You’re smart, can’t you—I’m begging.”
“No, I can’t. You’re the only thing that still makes sense. The only thing that’s mine.”
His other arm knitted itself together. “It was me!” he roared. “Me…” He wrapped into a fetal position. “I became a paramedic to save people. And now I find out the best way I could’ve done that was to put a bullet in my own goddamn head.” Fresh blood trickled out of his split carotid.
“Don’t say that.” Chloe pressed the heel of her hand against the gushing side of his neck until it closed up. “Look, I know what it’s like to—“
“I’m a killer. A freak. A rabid fucking dog. You have no idea what that’s like.”
Chloe grabbed the sides of his head and forced him to look up at her. “You want to know how I lost my memory? An AI took over my mind. It made me do things! I hurt my friends! I killed someone! So I know exactly what it’s like to feel like you’ve been twisted into something ugly, always wanting to know why you weren’t strong enough to stop it, wondering how much of it was you and how much was the monster, wondering if you’re the monster. Wondering if anything you can do will make up for who you were or if you should just end it. I’ve been there. But I’m still here.” She let go of him. He kept looking at her. “With you.”
“Get away from her, Davis.”
Chloe turned, a hot flush of guilt hitting her.
Clark’s face was a roadmap of the fight. Rimmed with small cuts and one eye charcoal-black, it seemed to Davis like an accusation that had followed him all the way up from the city streets.
“Chloe, it’s him!” Davis doubled over, a sudden shooting pain…
“No, it’s alright, it’s…” Chloe stepped between them. “Clark, he can’t control it.”
“Do you really think that matters anymore? All the more reason to—”
“To what? Kill him?”
“Your idea. You were right. You’re always right. Step away from him. Please.”
“He’s right, Chloe.” Davis shut his blazing red eyes. “You need to be running.”
“I’m not going anywhere!”
“It’s him, it’s him, Chloe.” Davis struggled to speak with the jagged teeth pushing their way into his mouth. “It’s Kal-El. I’m meant to kill him. I was born to kill him.”
“You’re not a monster! You’re more than that, you’re…”
Davis was beyond hearing her. The beast stepped over Chloe, locked onto Clark like a bloodhound with a scent. They met. Flew off the roof like a missile launched into the heart of Metropolis.
***
They hit the street, cracking pavement, and the fight began in earnest. Davis felt the beast’s instincts like a dream’s logic. Of course he should hit Clark. He should keep hitting Clark. He should hit Clark until there was nothing left to hit. And even though a part of him kept thinking this was wrong, he should stop, he couldn’t keep that train of thought going. He had to keep fighting. It was the only thing that made sense.
***
If anything, anyone got in the way, he simply knocked them aside, the scent of their spilled blood driving him onward. He flung cars at Clark, not caring where they landed. He cracked buildings with Clark. It seemed to distract him.
***
Everything was hate, everything was rage, everything was blood. Davis couldn’t understand how he had ever been anything but the beast. How could he, the other him, feel guilty about being who he was? He savaged the son of Jor-El, reopening old wounds and making new ones. This time, Kal-El would stay dead.
***
Then he heard a lone voice cry “Stop!”
Chloe Sullivan.
The beast turned away from the target of its hunt. It looked down at the tiny blonde figure standing between it and its prey. And somewhere deep inside its craggy hide, Davis Bloom stopped screaming.
“Davis, it’s okay. I know it’s you. It’s alright. I trust you.” She walked to meet it, her stride never breaking, her breath never quickening. “I know you’ll help me, no matter what, and I need your help right now. My life is a lie, and it has been for a long time. Because, I’ve been lying to myself. About who I am. About who I love. You’re the only thing that I know is real and I need you to help me find the truth. I want to stop being someone else’s idea of happy, living someone else’s dream. You cared about me when I was just me. You didn’t hide anything from me. We were just a boy and a girl who made each other happy, remember that? I want to start there. Come back to me. Run, walk, swim, or fly, but be with me.”
The beast picked her up in one monstrous hand. His bone spurs cut her, but she ignored them the way she’d ignore the thorns on a rose. He held her up to his face and she saw that his eyes hadn’t changed.
“Chloe…”
Sirens wailed and lights flashed as a new wave of police reinforcements approached. The beast whirled to meet them, hands turning into fists until one met the warm resistance of Chloe’s body. Then, something happened that had been a lifetime in the making. Davis Bloom’s lifetime.
A creature engineered solely for destruction made a choice. It chose not to kill.
Instead, it jumped, landing on the roof of a skyscraper with Chloe in its arms. Then it jumped to another building, and another, gathering speed until it jumped and left Clark, Jimmy, Metropolis far behind.
Chloe didn’t know where they stopped, but it had mountains. The beast blended into the rock, except for the splotches where dried blood painted it brown. As soon as they landed the beast turned from her, barking oddly, then laid into a boulder until it was so much shale.
Chloe looked at the bone spurs on its fists to find they had decayed, like rotten teeth. They broke off and the nubs retracted under the skin. The beast shrunk, its skin at first too big for it, then tightening into a tanned consistency.
Davis gasped, the last of the spurs still projecting from his skin like compound fractures. He sobbed as they were sucked back inside him, daggers sinking in past the hilt.
Chloe smoothed his wild, fresh-grown hair down. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
***
It took hours for Davis to catch his breath. Sometimes he wept, sometimes he whimpered, sometimes he screamed. The only constant was that Chloe didn’t let go of him. At first he shook so hard she wondered if it was a seizure, but with time it faded until it was just a tremor in his hand. She stopped that by taking his hand in hers. For the next few minutes he was still as stone, staring off into the distance. She wondered if he was looking at the setting sun or just pointed in that direction. She watched it anyway.
When it had set, Davis pulled her hand to his face and ran its back along his cheek. She was real. Davis kissed her wrist with parched lips. “You’re a piece of a good dream in the middle of this nightmare, you know? We have to go back, don’t we. I have to put a stop to this.”
“Clark can help. His heart’s in the right place. And he’s a part of all this craziness.”
“Alright. If there’s even a chance…” Davis struggled into her coat. “I love you. I’m sorry.”
Chloe licked her thumb and wiped away the flecks of blood dotting his face. “I don’t want to remember our first kiss as part of all this insanity. But never forget how I feel.” She pulled him into a fierce embrace, didn’t let go this time until he put his arms around her shoulders and hugged her back.
***
Two days of hitchhiking and bus rides later, they were back in Metropolis. The people were walking wounded; skittish, ashen-faced, jumping at shadows. Chloe squeezed Davis’s hands as they walked the traumatized streets. There were still windows cracked from the force of blows exchanged miles away. He gave her some privacy as she got in a phone booth, dialed Clark’s number.
“Clark, it’s Chloe.” She took a deep breath. “I remember everything.”
She heard the words collapse in his throat. “Chlo… we can talk about that later, where are you?”
“No, let’s talk about it now. You stole my memories!”
“They were putting you in danger. You could’ve been killed helping me!”
“That’s my choice! I helped people! My life had meaning!”
“It still does. Jimmy—“
“He doesn’t make me happy, Clark! Not like what I had with you.”
“Had?”
“Don’t act like you value our friendship. You have no idea how angry it makes me just to hear your voice. But I need your help.”
“Anything, Chloe.”
“It’s Davis. Clark, that monster he became, he can’t control it. We need your help for that.”
***
After the fight, Clark had stumbled to Ollie’s penthouse, where he’d been treated privately for his injuries. The media had never gotten a clear shot of the red-blue blur, but Clark nodded when he heard Chloe’s suggestion to retire his blue shirts and red jacket. And now they were back in Lionel’s vaults, poring over all the research Luthor had put together before his death.
“I’m sorry,” Davis said suddenly, making Clark look up from his Kryptese translation.
“What was that?”
“I said I’m sorry. For the fight, whatever part I had in it.”
Clark looked away from him. “An apology – I suppose it’s a start.”
“What, you want me to wash your feet?” Davis joked uneasily.
“Maybe send a flower to all the funerals, if you can afford it. God only knows what Chloe was thinking when she--”
Davis lunged for Clark just as Chloe threw herself between them.
“Hey! I don't need someone to fight my battles or protect my honor! I can take care of myself!”
“You tell him, Chlo.”
Chloe slapped Clark, then shook her hand. “Okay, that would've worked better if you weren't invincible.”
“Want me to try?” Davis asked, half-joke, half-threat.
“Could you just give us a minute?”
Giving Clark one last look, Davis left the room.
Chloe put her hands on her hips. “Alright, Clark, out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“We can’t solve this if you’re blaming Davis for making me ‘turn against you’ or some other macho—“
“It’s not like that!” Clark protested. “You’ve died, Chloe! I’ve had to pull you out of morgues because of our friendship!”
“So it was all to protect me?
“Yes!” Clark paced. “I thought now that you had Jimmy, he could take the place of… all this.”
“And I’d spend the rest of my life being Suzy Homemaker.” She sunk into a chair.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Clark said softly. He sat down across from her. “I know I had no right, but I thought it was either that or… or one day I’d lose you.”
Chloe wouldn’t look anywhere but the ground. “I loved you. I would’ve done anything for you.”
“Have I lost you, Chloe?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe looked at him, her eyes flat and level. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re the world’s savior or its most benevolent dictator.”
“So what should I do?” He smiled a bit ruefully. “I missed being able to ask you that.”
“Right now, save the day. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”
“Then I guess we really only have one option. We have to go to the Fortress. We have to see Jor-El.”
***
After Chloe stopped talking, Davis stared at her, the only sound the steady growl of the engine and the purchase of the tires on the road. “Wow.” Davis blinked. “That’s a lot to take in.”
He’d suspected a lot of it, and Chloe had hinted at the rest on the journey back to Metropolis, but he hadn’t been that curious and hadn’t pressured her for Clark’s secrets. But hearing the whole thing laid out… Veritas, Krypton, Brainiac… it made him wonder if his head was screwed on right.
“Want me to go over any of it again?” Chloe asked. She was sitting in the backseat with Davis, legs up and feet in his lap. He had a hand across her ankle, thumb absently rubbing the side of her heel.
“No. I trust you.” Davis shook his head in resigned belief. “I can’t imagine the pillow talk you make.”
Chloe blushed a little.
Davis bit his lip, surprised he’d said it.
Clark concentrated very hard on keeping his car on the road. “So Chloe, how’d you get your memory back, anyway?”
Chloe darkened, as if light was suddenly reluctant to touch her. “Once I… admitted the injury, I was able to heal myself.”
“Injury?”
Chloe leaned up to the front seat. Her voice was very flat. “You gave me fucking brain damage, Clark.”
The rest of the car ride was quiet.
***
“We’re here,” Clark said, parking.
Davis looked at a nearby sign. “The Kawatche caves? Did everyone know about this Krypton stuff but me?”
“We’re only here to use the teleporter,” Clark told him. “You don’t mind being broken down at a molecular level and reassembled in the Arctic Circle, do you?”
“Clark, be nice.” Chloe turned to Davis. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
”What’s the worse that could happen? I die?”
“Yes.” Chloe took his hand. “That’d be the worst thing.”
She rubbed her arms as they went underground. It’d been a while since she’d been here. Since she’d remembered it. Davis put his jacket over her and that made it a little better.
“Anyone remember the story of Persephone?”
“Kidnapped by Hades,” Davis said. “Forced to spend six months in the underworld.”
“Forced to spend six months separated from her husband because Demeter wanted to keep her safe,” Clark said, his voice echoing.
“Yeah,” Chloe said.
Clark pressed the octagon into its receptacle and the chamber opened up.
“It won’t hurt,” Clark assured Davis.
The light took them.
***
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” Crystal spikes shot out of the walls, narrowly missing Chloe as they impaled Davis. He didn’t cry out, just groaned a little. Chloe made more noise with her hands clapped over her mouth.
“Father, no!” Clark said. “He’s a… friend.”
“The entity is a class-omega threat. It must be destroyed.”
“Let him go, father. You have to trust me.”
The spikes retracted and Davis dropped into Chloe’s arms. She shielded him from Jor-El with her body while saying to Clark “You and daddy dearest seem chummy.”
“Without you, who else should I have relied on?”
Davis still said nothing, instead hugging himself as if ashamed of the way his wounds didn’t bleed.
A wall shot up between them, cutting Clark off from Chloe and Davis. “Chloe!” He pounded at the wall, jolting it, before realizing if he did bust through, Chloe would be hit by flying shards. “Father…”
“The Destroyer possesses an unstable genetic matrix. At any moment it could discard its camouflage and attack you—a battle I cannot guarantee you’ll survive.”
”Is there any way to… stabilize his matrix?” Clark’s brow furrowed. It’d been a long time since he’d argued with Jor-El. He didn’t like it. “It’s not camouflage. It’s a person.”
“Its programming extends to the genetic level. Removing these traits would trigger the transformation. The only solution is termination.”
Through the frosted glass of the wall, Clark could see Davis holding Chloe. “The day I make that choice is the day I go from savior to tyrant. There must be another way.”
“The safest option would be to eliminate the Destroyer.”
“Every day, Chloe risks her life for me. Are you saying I shouldn’t do the same?”
“You are the Traveler. Your life is worth more than hers.”
“As long as I think that, I’m not worth a tenth of her. Find another way.”
“There is one other way. But it will require… sacrifice.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 08:11 pm (UTC)“Want me to try?” Davis asked, half-joke, half-threat.
I may have literally emitted a squeak of glee when I got to this part. Clark so deserves it — and how nice that your version of Clark actually GETS IT.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 10:41 pm (UTC)If she wants to avoid those sorts of things happening, then she needs to choose not to help him. But she can't make herself choose not to do them if she remembers. So she'd actually be better off not remembering.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 11:22 pm (UTC)Obviously, the last part will get more into the nitty-gritty, but she does not accept Clark's justification and I think she shouldn't.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 12:17 am (UTC)Okay, bad example...
no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 04:40 pm (UTC)