Smallville fic: Apocalypse's End (2/8)

[seriousfic]

Title: Apocalypse's End
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,487
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis.
Author's notes: Takes place after season nine. Betaed by nonky
Previous: 1/8
Next: 3/8
Summary: It's 2011. The future ain't what it used to be.



Wake up. Keep your eyes shut. If you're in Hell, don't spoil the surprise just yet.

You hear Chloe's voice. Can't be Hell. "I can't deal with this right now. I really cannot deal with this." Open your eyes. See her face. Feel better.

You're in a room that looks like the background of a news cast, all computers and stacks of paper and wide-screen TVs. Chloe's usual anal-retentiveness must be shot to shit, because some of the monitors are on the fritz and there are papers scattered everywhere. You're on a hospital bed, below a monitor showing your vital statistics. Tucked away in the corner are thumbnails, a picture of you and a picture of something else.

You're in a side-chamber to the main room, some kind of infirmary. There are more beds with more people on them, resting comfortably. Someone with his leg in a sling is wearing a helmet shaped like a hawk. Normal is a bit further away than you thought.

Chloe is pacing. She has a mug of coffee in one hand and her other is hitched to a gun-belt – the accessory to a Kevlar-and-camouflage outfit that would be very flattering under different circumstances. Sit up. Hope she doesn’t shrink away.

She doesn't. "I don't know who you are or what you hope to accomplish, but I have enough problems at the moment, so if you like your head staying in touch with your neck, you'll stay right there until I'm ready for you."

Notice the collar around your neck. Hear it beeping.

"You make one wrong move… your eyes turn red… and I'll blow you back to hell. Ultimate Destroyer or not, you'll take your time getting over that."

Lie back down. Close your eyes. There are a lot of things you could say, but only one of them matters. "I missed you."

She sets her coffee down. "Don't make me think up a reply to that." And she's gone.

Get up. Turn to the screen. You've seen this stuff at the hospital. Experimental, supposed to take the place of patient sheets if they ever scrounge up the money. Tap the picture in the corner. See your biography come up. Read your history. Give yourself nightmares.

Wait. Be patient. You've had experience at being patient. A whole year's worth. In half an hour she comes back. Her hand's still on the gun.

"I've got a minute. Come with me, talk on the way."

You get up to follow her, but she doesn't let you out of her sight. You end up walking in front of her, listening to her tell you where to go. If it weren't so good to hear her voice again…

"Take a left. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Dying," you say. "What's the last thing you remember about me?"

She doesn't quite answer. "I know what you are. So when you say the last thing you remember is dying, be more specific."

"I was getting rid of a body," you admit. "A date rapist. He got out in three years because of overcrowding. A non-violent offender."

"Spare me the justification. I've heard it all before. What happened next?"

"I got into my car and… she killed me."

"This her?" Chloe asks, and you turn. She's holding a cell phone in her hand, and on the screen is a picture. You recognize the woman.

"Yeah. That's her. Who…?"

"You know how you're a monster? Well, you were born that way, but Tess Mercer is a self-made woman. Keep moving. Second door on your left."

You do. "There's something you're not telling me."

"You're really going to complain about dishonesty, Doomsday?"

You stop. "Don't call me that. My name is Davis Bloom."

"That is not your…" You hear her rein herself in. She used to do that when she talked about Jimmy. "I'm sorry. Go inside, please."

You open the door. The room is made of metal. Thick. Cold.

"I'm not going in there."

"You have to."

"You might as well kill me. I'm not going back into a cell."

"Fine, we'll do it out here," Chloe says. "Strip."

The hosings haven't left you with a lot of modesty. Take your clothes off, pile them against the wall. Feel Chloe's eyes on you. Feel her stop you when you reach the silk boxers that apparently Lex favors. Feel the pain as she touches the scar.

"I didn't know you could be scarred," she says.

"The wonders of modern science," you say.

Feel the tingle as the scanner passes over you. The light is purple.

"What happened?" You deserve to know.

"You didn't die," Chloe says, intent on your purpled skin. "Tess took you and told you the truth… you're a weapon built by an alien race to kill Clark. He's the Red-Blue Blur. Oh, and an alien. You figured out that meteor rocks would kill you and you got me to help…"

"I died," you say. "Again."

Chloe's still being flippant. As defense mechanisms go, it's got nothing on you. "Not yet. It didn't take. You woke up and went to me. I was the only thing that kept Doomsday from taking over. So for a few weeks, I hid you. Then, when that wasn't an option anymore, we went on the road."

"Did we… were we…"

"No. You meant nothing to me. It was all to protect Clark."

You nod. You suspected as much.

Chloe finds something on your shoulder blade. If you turn your head, you can just see it. A tattoo, visible only under that purple light. Bar code. "Eventually, we came up with a way to cure you. But afterward, when I went back to Jimmy, you snapped. Killed him. Tried to kill me."

"I would never—"

"I saw it happen!" she snaps. "Jimmy used his last breath to defend me. From you. And I haven't thought of you in months." She kicks your clothes at you. "Congratulations. You're a clone."

You get dressed.

***

After a few minutes, you follow her out. You've had enough of being alone. You find the control room empty except for Clark. He's in a wheelchair.

"She's crying," he tells you.

You sit down. Clark goes back to typing at his workstation. Pictures of superheroes flash across the screen, taking assignments, flying to the rescue.

"Chloe says I'm a clone," you tell him.

He doesn't say anything.

"That's impossible. I have memories, I have personality. A clone would be a blank slate."

"It's Kandorian technology. All it takes is a blood sample and an entire person can be reconstructed."

"Like magic."

"Any significantly advanced technology."

You can start to see what Chloe sees in him. It pisses you off.

"So what's with the chair? Slipped getting out of the tub?"

He stops typing. It's satisfying. "That Kandorian technology? It brought back Zod." The name registers with you, but that's not why cold goes down your spine. "To stop him, I had to use blue Kryptonite. It makes me normal. I beat him, but he shoved me off a skyscraper. My powers came back, but not in time. When I landed, it broke my back."

"You haven't healed?"

He laughs off-key, like it's a joke he'd heard too many times. "I'm not Wolverine. Just because it's hard to hurt me, doesn't mean I can heal any faster when I am hurt."

"I heal," you say.

He starts typing again.

***

Chloe comes back in. Her eyes are red, but dry. "The swarm is headed here. We have to go. Start the file transfer to Edge City. I'll set the self-destruct."

You make yourself comfortable. "I'll wait here." They look at you like they forgot you were there. You shrug. "They've killed millions. Maybe they'll have an idea about what to do with me."

Chloe picks up a satchel and throws it to you. "Be useful. Go to the kitchen, pack some snacks. You're too dangerous to let out of my sight."

When Chloe says you can be with her, you can't help yourself. You smile. After a second, you help yourself. "Sooner or later, whatever you do to me is going to stop working. Why prolong the inevitable? So I can watch last year's Oscar winners?"

Chloe's triggering deadbolts on the mainframes, blowing them one by one in neat little sparks and sound. "There's a cure. Once we rebuild the Fortress, black Kryptonite can separate you from Doomsday. Then we can boot him into the Phantom Zone."

You don't understand any of that, but if Chloe says it'll work, it'll work. Still… "Why bother?"

She picks up a monitor and throws it at your feet, sprinkling your legs with glass. "Because Jimmy wouldn't want me to hate you."

You go to make yourself useful. But yes. He would.

***

There's a helicopter on top of the Watchtower now. You help Chloe pull the tarp off, then she runs through the pre-flight checklist. You help Clark load his wheelchair onboard. On the horizon, there's a storm coming. Only stormclouds aren't that black.

You take off. From the air, Metropolis is clean and safe. You have to get closer to see that the cars filling the streets aren't rush hour, they're an exodus.

The sky is going dark. You look up to see things covering the sun like flies on a corpse. They look like armored gargoyles and they're swooping down like a swarm of angry bees. They dive past the helicopter and hit the clogged streets and you don't watch. "What are those things?"

"Parademons," Chloe says. She's a good enough pilot to keep out of their way. "They're very hard to kill."

You're over the suburbs now. Someone's started a fire and no one's stopping it from spreading. There's so much smoke you could think the ground was bleeding into the sky. Clark's palms are pressed to the armrest of his chair. There's nothing he can do. For the first time, you feel sorry for him.

Then something hits the chopper. You feel the thing inside you shift in its sleep. "It's on the tail!" Chloe says, loud.

Clark opens the side-door, letting in the apocalypse's soundtrack, and leans out. Heat surges from his eyes and incinerates the creature on the tail like it was a bundle of oily rags. Another Parademon hits the chopper and Clark pitches forward. You grab him by the waistband and lug him back inside. Chloe banks the chopper, but everything on the instrument board that can make a noise is making a noise and there isn't a light that isn’t red. The ground is coming for you.

You pull up, straighten out, and Chloe makes the laugh she used to do when you kissed the inside of her knee. Then the devil drops out of the sky and hits dead-on. The windshield hits you in a hundred pieces and the thing is reaching for Chloe, but before it can touch her you've gotten up next to it, grabbed it by its chrome armor, and jerked it upward. The rotors do the rest.

They also break apart.

The ground drops out from under you and everything after that is crashing.

You don't lose consciousness. You never lose consciousness. Not when they beat you, not when they shot you, not when they gassed you. There were just periods where your brain was set to Receive instead of Send, so for a few moments, you wait for your body to catch up to your mind. Then you get up.

Clark's sprawled out on the floor, no, it's the wall, trying to get a grip to pull himself up. Chloe's still in the pilot's seat, maybe awake, maybe not. But she's breathing. Above, the Parademons are flying in a circle, like vultures. They wait until there are an even dozen of them, then they land, surrounding you.

Chloe is unbuckling herself now. "We have to run, we have to run fast."

You put a hand on her arm. She doesn't shy away. She calms down, somehow. "Don't worry, I'll handle it."

"How?" She stops halfway through asking it. Stupid question.

"Stay in here. I can't do this if I know you'll see."

You step outside. "Is there a problem, officer?" You shed your shirt and pants, kick off your shoes. The things, the Parademons, watch you as you walk up to them in nothing but boxers. Maybe they're not used to people standing up to them, maybe they're wondering if you're one of them, a commander. "I know what you're thinking." You gesture back to the helicopter. "Spam in a can! Right? Come on, then. Chow down. I'm the other white meat."

Their train of thought is still boarding, so you slap one in the face, full on. "Come on! I'm delicious! Try me, you might like it!" You poke another in the eye. Knee another in the groin. It nets you a hollow sound. "Not wonder you're so angry." You're at a loss. Who knew that old saw about standing up to bullies was right? You do a little Three Stooges routine on the next in line. "You knucklehead." You are maybe not the picture of mental health. If Chloe's watching, and yeah, she would be, maybe you've made her laugh.

The thing that lives in your clenched fists still won't show its face.

Finally, one of them makes a move. Its hand moves and cuts three gashes across your chest. "Yes! Yeah! Work that shit!" Another hits you from behind, fangs sinking into your neck. You can't feel the pain. Doomsday can. "That's it! Choke on me, motherfuckers! Choke!"

For some people, it feels good to wallow in misery. Have a good cry. For you, it feels good to be mad. You haven't been angry in a year, not really. But now you can stop holding it in.

Get mad. Say no more to all the shit in your life. Let it all out. Open the door and let the other side of you in. Be destruction.

You're not awake for it, not really. It's like dreaming on a roller-coaster. Coming up for air. Like clinical depression, an orgasm, a branding iron on your chest. It's not that you fade out and Doomsday fades in. It's that this one feeling, this perfect rage, is so big that you can't feel anything else.

You stop. Like being woken from a dream, that roller-coaster coming to a stop. Chloe's in front of you. And you can feel yourself shrinking, feel the spikes pulling back into your body, feel the blood covering you. It's chilled compared to human blood. Reptilian.

She hands your clothes to you.

"They're all gone," she says.

You dress.

"You didn't hurt anyone else," she adds.

"How much did you see?"

She doesn't speak.

"Pretty freaky, huh?"

You pull on the sweater, but leave it unzipped. Why hide the blood coating your chest?

Comments

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

You're making me sad. But still cool.

[morwen_peredhil]

"Congratulations. You're a clone."

Why hello there, Daavis.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Also, Crashdown is a Cylon.

[morwen_peredhil]

I could have forgiven RDM for a lot of the late-BSG fuckery if he'd only given me that.

[lust-4sorrow.livejournal.com]

*reads with wide eyes*
Loooovvving this fic.

[devlinacardigan.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched Smallville in eons, I have no clue who Davis is and I hate second person but, somehow, you've side stepped all of that and have made something I'm really loving so far.

[eternal-moonie.livejournal.com]

this is great! Can't wait for more Apocalypse's End.