seriousfic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seriousfic) wrote2010-09-30 11:53 am
seriousfic) wrote2010-09-30 11:53 am
Entry tags:
Smallville fic: Apocalypse's End (4/8)
Title: Apocalypse's End
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,588
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis.
Author's notes: Takes place after season nine. Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nonky
Previous: 3/8
Next: 5/8
Summary: Davis can never make up for what he's done. But maybe he can earn the fact that he's still alive.
When you wake up, the sun is high in the sky. You were more tired than you had thought. There's a room service cart in front of the door. In it are three changes of clothes. They're all your size. You wonder if Chloe learned your measurements when she and the other you were on the run. There's also breakfast. Donuts and milk. Maybe an apology.
You shower. The blood is dry, but it comes off if you scour hard enough. You put on the clothes and they fit almost perfectly. A little slack. You're not as thin as you were when you came out of hell, but it's not because you're eating better now. It's the beast. You can heal from anything.
You go to Chloe's room. Clark is there, and AV cables snake across the floor in furtive clumps. She's set up a PC on the desk and there are about three laptops and the TV has been rewired, but it's a big step down from Watchtower. You feel sorry for her in a way you didn't when you heard Jimmy had died.
"I don't trust him," Clark is saying.
"Good, you shouldn't," Chloe replies, almost immediately.
You stay outside.
"We should've left him in Metropolis. Just knocked him out and left."
"Since when do you give up on people?"
"Since when do you not? Especially Davis Bloom?" He spits your name like it's gone rotten in his mouth.
When Chloe speaks it's quietly, at a whole different level from Clark. "He's different. Not like I remember him."
Clark is quieter too. Like he doesn't want to embarrass her by saying this out loud. "Don't tell me you're letting some sob story make you forget everything he's done…"
"I haven't forgotten anything," Chloe says, sharp as you remember. "But I would really love it if you quit trying to run my life."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Figure it out, Blur."
You step inside so Chloe doesn't have to take anymore. She can't enjoy sniping with Clark. Not without feeling guilty about it.
"I've been thinking," you say, though you haven't, not really. There's just been one idea going through your head, like an echo that gets stronger and stronger instead of fading away. "What if we did it again? I could transform again. As long as there weren't any people nearby…"
"It wouldn't work," Chloe says flatly. There's something in her eyes she doesn't let spread to the rest of her face. "We've tried frontal assaults before. The mothership is hidden. While we look for it, we're sitting ducks. No matter how strong you… it… is, they have numbers enough to grind you down before you can get inside their ship."
You're more creative than that when it comes to killing things. Maybe Zod gave you some tactician DNA when he was cooking you up. "So I'll infiltrate the ship and change inside. A Trojan horse."
"And how do you plan on finding it, much less getting inside?" Clark asks, sounding offended that you're offering to be in the spotlight.
"Tell them I have a package they need to sign for?"
Chloe's lighting up, even smiling at your sarcasm. That could make a lot of things worth it. "Tess Mercer." A few keystrokes and her file takes over the TV. "She's collaborating with them. Same game she tried to pull with Major Zod. If you get in good with her…"
"It's a suicide mission," Clark protests. "If someone goes wrong, if he changes earlier then we expect… we can't just use him as some sort of guided missile!"
"For me, guided missile would be a step up."
***
You talk it over with her over breakfast. She forgot to eat and you're not hungry. You watch her eat, trying not to notice how the syrup on her pancakes caresses her lips. Clark's minding the shop.
It's about the most you've spoken to her since you came back. Easy trick. Just avoid all the blood and death and lust sprawled out between you. Finally, she cuts your arm open and slips the transponder inside, holds the wound shut while it heals over it. She's rattled by it. It makes her repeat things.
"Tess's systems are completely off the grid, but there's wi-fi in the transponder. Just get it close to a computer and activate it, I'll be able to hack her."
"And turn it on by squeezing my arm. Got it."
"Be careful."
You stand. She's not going to say anything else. Not that she loves you, not that she'll miss you. So you do it. "It was nice seeing you."
You leave.
***
There's something you didn't tell her. The beast isn't satisfied with those monsters. You felt good doing that, and it's a demon. It wants immorality. It wants murder. So you don't go to Tess, not yet. You walk the streets and wait for human nature to take its course.
It doesn't take long. A woman steps out of the shadows of an alley and points a shotgun at you. "Food! Now!"
You drop your bag to the ground. All that's in it is a change of clothes. After ruffling through it, she jabs you with the shotgun. It's as if she's in disbelief that her little descent into anarchy couldn't net her anything. "What else have you got?"
You smile with red eyes. Knock the shotgun away. Put your hand around her throat.
"Sis!" It's a child's voice.
You let her go. Leave her clinging to her baby sister as you walk away into their nightmares. And inside, the beast wonders why you still care.
***
There's a shipment of cars just waiting in the shipyards. Chloe guides you to it. A feature of the transponder. The wonders of technology. You fill a jerry-can from the closest pump and then force the lock. If you're human enough to spare someone's life because it'd make you feel bad to kill them, you're human enough to drive a cool car.
You find something with a nice color and leather seats, fill the tank, hotwire the engine. Chloe's voice in your ears tells you everything you need to know to get by without a key. You wonder what it would be like to be sprawled under a sink, going at the pipes with your toolbox while she calmly walked you through it. Your hands, her brains. Afterward, she'd lie down on top of you and in the cool, secret space of the cupboard, your lips would meet.
You don't have much else to think about, as you drive toward Tess Mercer.
She's in Boston. Her hometown. You'd never have guessed. She's managed to have it spared and now she rules like a feudal lord, although there's a state senator serving as figurehead. She sounds like the kind of person who likes power but not scrutiny.
You drive for hours to get there. You see abandoned cars, buses stuffed full, convoys that look like they came out of a gasoline-stained Wild West. And you see flaming wrecks, bodies picked clean by scavengers – animal and otherwise.
Chloe plays music for you. You remember sitting with her in her apartment as she stopped thinking of Jimmy, as she put on record after record, as you held her. You don't talk, but it's a kind of conversation anyway, when she puts on the Frames and you hum along, your fingers patting the wheel, your foot tapping the floor mat.
You would think it'd be nice to see a city that isn't in pieces. And Boston doesn't burn or have chunks missing from the skyline. But the bits of alien technology grafted to the high-rises are worse. They make it look like the city has cancer.
Things like toll booths block the road, with enough spikes on them to be a mirror to you. There are twenty cars in front of you, hungry for even the small safety of oppression, and a dozen Parademons roost in the trees. Some of them are picking at a carcass on the side of the road. It has shoes on.
Chloe stops the music playing. Katy Perry was a little inappropriate. "Looks like it's time to go dark."
"Looks like," you say.
She's so quiet you might think the transponder is already off. The line moves forward. "You already died once. Don't do that to me again."
You turn off the transponder. Feel more alone than the year you spent in Tess's low-income housing.
You reach the head of the line. There are people manning the toll booth. Maybe. A piece of curved metal covers their foreheads, screws clawing into their skulls like crowns of thorns. They run a scanner over you. It doesn't pick up the sleeping transponder. They give you some forms to fill out. You knock the stack out of his hands. They tell you to stay in the car. You get out of the car. "My name is Davis Bloom," you say. "I'm kinda a big deal."
They put a bag over your head and stuff you in the back of a truck. Boots thud, then the truck moves. You hear breathing, guns. You're not alone.
The truck stops. You're taken out and frog-marched inside, where air conditioning hums. Metal doors open and clang shut behind you. Finally, you're shoved down on your knees and something cold snaps around your neck. The bag is pulled off your head.
"An entire year of poking and prodding. Did you think we didn't figure anything out?" The woman who killed you once.
"Hi Tess. How are things at work?"
"There's been a hostile takeover." She looks amazing in a hateful way, like a corpse must look to a necrophiliac. For all the beauty products she still uses and the fashion she can afford to wear, her eyes are ball bearings in a whirring, clanking machine. "That little accessory does more than bring out the color of your eyes. It keeps your alter ego in check. That'll come in handy while I figure out what to do with you."
Your hands aren't bound. You're alone with her, but for all the glamour, she's wearing a shoulder holster over her little black dress. The office you're in is professionally appointed, but you can see signs of decay… books missing from the cherry wood shelves, empty whiskey tumblers on the desk and cabinets.
"You could let me join you," you say, cracking the kinks out of your neck. It's unhealthy, having your head kept down that long.
"Really?" She leans back against her desk, picking up a tumbler. When she sees it's empty, she fills it. "I didn’t peg you for the type. Of course, you are an alien killing machine, but you struck me as being in denial about it."
You rub your arm, feeling the slightest trace of the hardness under the skin. The transponder starts broadcasting. "My humanity has caused me nothing but pain. All I care about now is being on the winning side." She looks at you questioningly. You snort. "The woman I loved only ever… tolerated me. I'm a clone. And apparently, deep down, I'm really just a violent son of a bitch. It was never Doomsday. I was the monster. So I might as well get paid for it. And paid well."
"Really? Because I had the feeling you would be out for revenge. I never took much interest in your care, not after you got me Kandor, but I didn't hire guards for their gentleness."
You shrug. "They're dead now. And whatever you've done, I've done worse. It'd be hypocritical to pretend you've wronged me."
She drinks. "Alright. So, well-paid… what does that entail?"
"Chloe Sullivan. When you find her, she's brought to me. Unharmed."
"You're incorrigible, you know that?"
"The heart wants what it wants."
"The way I heard it, you already had her."
"The helicopter? After I killed your Parademons… sorry about that… I came to and found out she had ditched me. I never meant anything to her. She never cared about me, just Doomsday killing her friend."
"So why go after her? I could give you a very attractive title in the new order. You wouldn't want for companionship. In fact, if you're dead-set on a Sullivan, I'm sure I could dig Lane out of a prison camp. She has all her cousin's… spunk, while being far more manageable. I'm sure we could think up a fun way to punish Sullivan's wayward tendencies."
You falter a moment, wanting to rip her apart. "I had her. For a few days, I was something like her boyfriend. In a perfect world, it could've been more. It wasn't. But for a few days, I knew what happiness was." You watch her drink. "I'm still human enough to be nostalgic."
Her empty tumbler joins the others. "I'm touched. The guards will show you to your room while I confer with my partners. If they're interested, I'll relay your request to the Parademons immediately." She makes a little shooing gesture and you go outside. The hallway is immaculate except for the two chromeheads waiting for you. You go with them, into a guest room. You go into the bathroom, turn on the shower, sit on the toilet while you wait for it to warm.
"Is it safe to talk?" you mutter.
"No listening devices," Chloe replies.
"Did you get into the system?"
"I need more time."
You run a finger under the collar at your neck. No way you're getting it off. "I'll see what I can do. Going dark."
"Davis, wait."
You do.
"Is it true, what you said in there?"
"Don't be ridiculous. People like Tess, they can't conceive of anyone who isn't as corrupt as they are. I just told her what she expected to hear."
"What about being with me?"
You're glad she's not in the room with you. There's only so much a man can take. "Why do you think I'm doing this, Chlo?"
You go dark.
The water's hot, it's probably always been, but you don't get in. You listen to it striking the tiles and running down the drain. You're the clone of a murderer. Do you even have a soul? If you do, who's to say it's not black as pitch? Maybe you're still just a machine following programming, only now instead of Zod's orders, you're working off a year-old crush, a farce, a mockery. Maybe you should leave the transponder off and take the same deal Tess made. She's comfortable, at least, and who would say you don't deserve a little comfort now? Maybe this… power, luxury, and anyone who's attracted to either… maybe it's as close to heaven as you're ever going to get.
You can't do this for Chloe. She'll never look at you without seeing Jimmy's blood on your hands. But maybe you can do it for yourself. To prove to yourself you're not just an animal, that you're doing more than running a program. Maybe some day someone can look at you and see more than the monster that's shared your face.
That's as close to redemption as you're ever going to get.
There's a knock at the door. You answer it. It's one of the chromeheads, blood from the screws in his head daubing the shoulders of his butler's livery. "You're invited to dinner, sir," he says, with the cadence of a deaf person. He hands you a tuxedo and you take it. "One hour."
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,588
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis.
Author's notes: Takes place after season nine. Betaed by
nonkyPrevious: 3/8
Next: 5/8
Summary: Davis can never make up for what he's done. But maybe he can earn the fact that he's still alive.
When you wake up, the sun is high in the sky. You were more tired than you had thought. There's a room service cart in front of the door. In it are three changes of clothes. They're all your size. You wonder if Chloe learned your measurements when she and the other you were on the run. There's also breakfast. Donuts and milk. Maybe an apology.
You shower. The blood is dry, but it comes off if you scour hard enough. You put on the clothes and they fit almost perfectly. A little slack. You're not as thin as you were when you came out of hell, but it's not because you're eating better now. It's the beast. You can heal from anything.
You go to Chloe's room. Clark is there, and AV cables snake across the floor in furtive clumps. She's set up a PC on the desk and there are about three laptops and the TV has been rewired, but it's a big step down from Watchtower. You feel sorry for her in a way you didn't when you heard Jimmy had died.
"I don't trust him," Clark is saying.
"Good, you shouldn't," Chloe replies, almost immediately.
You stay outside.
"We should've left him in Metropolis. Just knocked him out and left."
"Since when do you give up on people?"
"Since when do you not? Especially Davis Bloom?" He spits your name like it's gone rotten in his mouth.
When Chloe speaks it's quietly, at a whole different level from Clark. "He's different. Not like I remember him."
Clark is quieter too. Like he doesn't want to embarrass her by saying this out loud. "Don't tell me you're letting some sob story make you forget everything he's done…"
"I haven't forgotten anything," Chloe says, sharp as you remember. "But I would really love it if you quit trying to run my life."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Figure it out, Blur."
You step inside so Chloe doesn't have to take anymore. She can't enjoy sniping with Clark. Not without feeling guilty about it.
"I've been thinking," you say, though you haven't, not really. There's just been one idea going through your head, like an echo that gets stronger and stronger instead of fading away. "What if we did it again? I could transform again. As long as there weren't any people nearby…"
"It wouldn't work," Chloe says flatly. There's something in her eyes she doesn't let spread to the rest of her face. "We've tried frontal assaults before. The mothership is hidden. While we look for it, we're sitting ducks. No matter how strong you… it… is, they have numbers enough to grind you down before you can get inside their ship."
You're more creative than that when it comes to killing things. Maybe Zod gave you some tactician DNA when he was cooking you up. "So I'll infiltrate the ship and change inside. A Trojan horse."
"And how do you plan on finding it, much less getting inside?" Clark asks, sounding offended that you're offering to be in the spotlight.
"Tell them I have a package they need to sign for?"
Chloe's lighting up, even smiling at your sarcasm. That could make a lot of things worth it. "Tess Mercer." A few keystrokes and her file takes over the TV. "She's collaborating with them. Same game she tried to pull with Major Zod. If you get in good with her…"
"It's a suicide mission," Clark protests. "If someone goes wrong, if he changes earlier then we expect… we can't just use him as some sort of guided missile!"
"For me, guided missile would be a step up."
***
You talk it over with her over breakfast. She forgot to eat and you're not hungry. You watch her eat, trying not to notice how the syrup on her pancakes caresses her lips. Clark's minding the shop.
It's about the most you've spoken to her since you came back. Easy trick. Just avoid all the blood and death and lust sprawled out between you. Finally, she cuts your arm open and slips the transponder inside, holds the wound shut while it heals over it. She's rattled by it. It makes her repeat things.
"Tess's systems are completely off the grid, but there's wi-fi in the transponder. Just get it close to a computer and activate it, I'll be able to hack her."
"And turn it on by squeezing my arm. Got it."
"Be careful."
You stand. She's not going to say anything else. Not that she loves you, not that she'll miss you. So you do it. "It was nice seeing you."
You leave.
***
There's something you didn't tell her. The beast isn't satisfied with those monsters. You felt good doing that, and it's a demon. It wants immorality. It wants murder. So you don't go to Tess, not yet. You walk the streets and wait for human nature to take its course.
It doesn't take long. A woman steps out of the shadows of an alley and points a shotgun at you. "Food! Now!"
You drop your bag to the ground. All that's in it is a change of clothes. After ruffling through it, she jabs you with the shotgun. It's as if she's in disbelief that her little descent into anarchy couldn't net her anything. "What else have you got?"
You smile with red eyes. Knock the shotgun away. Put your hand around her throat.
"Sis!" It's a child's voice.
You let her go. Leave her clinging to her baby sister as you walk away into their nightmares. And inside, the beast wonders why you still care.
***
There's a shipment of cars just waiting in the shipyards. Chloe guides you to it. A feature of the transponder. The wonders of technology. You fill a jerry-can from the closest pump and then force the lock. If you're human enough to spare someone's life because it'd make you feel bad to kill them, you're human enough to drive a cool car.
You find something with a nice color and leather seats, fill the tank, hotwire the engine. Chloe's voice in your ears tells you everything you need to know to get by without a key. You wonder what it would be like to be sprawled under a sink, going at the pipes with your toolbox while she calmly walked you through it. Your hands, her brains. Afterward, she'd lie down on top of you and in the cool, secret space of the cupboard, your lips would meet.
You don't have much else to think about, as you drive toward Tess Mercer.
She's in Boston. Her hometown. You'd never have guessed. She's managed to have it spared and now she rules like a feudal lord, although there's a state senator serving as figurehead. She sounds like the kind of person who likes power but not scrutiny.
You drive for hours to get there. You see abandoned cars, buses stuffed full, convoys that look like they came out of a gasoline-stained Wild West. And you see flaming wrecks, bodies picked clean by scavengers – animal and otherwise.
Chloe plays music for you. You remember sitting with her in her apartment as she stopped thinking of Jimmy, as she put on record after record, as you held her. You don't talk, but it's a kind of conversation anyway, when she puts on the Frames and you hum along, your fingers patting the wheel, your foot tapping the floor mat.
You would think it'd be nice to see a city that isn't in pieces. And Boston doesn't burn or have chunks missing from the skyline. But the bits of alien technology grafted to the high-rises are worse. They make it look like the city has cancer.
Things like toll booths block the road, with enough spikes on them to be a mirror to you. There are twenty cars in front of you, hungry for even the small safety of oppression, and a dozen Parademons roost in the trees. Some of them are picking at a carcass on the side of the road. It has shoes on.
Chloe stops the music playing. Katy Perry was a little inappropriate. "Looks like it's time to go dark."
"Looks like," you say.
She's so quiet you might think the transponder is already off. The line moves forward. "You already died once. Don't do that to me again."
You turn off the transponder. Feel more alone than the year you spent in Tess's low-income housing.
You reach the head of the line. There are people manning the toll booth. Maybe. A piece of curved metal covers their foreheads, screws clawing into their skulls like crowns of thorns. They run a scanner over you. It doesn't pick up the sleeping transponder. They give you some forms to fill out. You knock the stack out of his hands. They tell you to stay in the car. You get out of the car. "My name is Davis Bloom," you say. "I'm kinda a big deal."
They put a bag over your head and stuff you in the back of a truck. Boots thud, then the truck moves. You hear breathing, guns. You're not alone.
The truck stops. You're taken out and frog-marched inside, where air conditioning hums. Metal doors open and clang shut behind you. Finally, you're shoved down on your knees and something cold snaps around your neck. The bag is pulled off your head.
"An entire year of poking and prodding. Did you think we didn't figure anything out?" The woman who killed you once.
"Hi Tess. How are things at work?"
"There's been a hostile takeover." She looks amazing in a hateful way, like a corpse must look to a necrophiliac. For all the beauty products she still uses and the fashion she can afford to wear, her eyes are ball bearings in a whirring, clanking machine. "That little accessory does more than bring out the color of your eyes. It keeps your alter ego in check. That'll come in handy while I figure out what to do with you."
Your hands aren't bound. You're alone with her, but for all the glamour, she's wearing a shoulder holster over her little black dress. The office you're in is professionally appointed, but you can see signs of decay… books missing from the cherry wood shelves, empty whiskey tumblers on the desk and cabinets.
"You could let me join you," you say, cracking the kinks out of your neck. It's unhealthy, having your head kept down that long.
"Really?" She leans back against her desk, picking up a tumbler. When she sees it's empty, she fills it. "I didn’t peg you for the type. Of course, you are an alien killing machine, but you struck me as being in denial about it."
You rub your arm, feeling the slightest trace of the hardness under the skin. The transponder starts broadcasting. "My humanity has caused me nothing but pain. All I care about now is being on the winning side." She looks at you questioningly. You snort. "The woman I loved only ever… tolerated me. I'm a clone. And apparently, deep down, I'm really just a violent son of a bitch. It was never Doomsday. I was the monster. So I might as well get paid for it. And paid well."
"Really? Because I had the feeling you would be out for revenge. I never took much interest in your care, not after you got me Kandor, but I didn't hire guards for their gentleness."
You shrug. "They're dead now. And whatever you've done, I've done worse. It'd be hypocritical to pretend you've wronged me."
She drinks. "Alright. So, well-paid… what does that entail?"
"Chloe Sullivan. When you find her, she's brought to me. Unharmed."
"You're incorrigible, you know that?"
"The heart wants what it wants."
"The way I heard it, you already had her."
"The helicopter? After I killed your Parademons… sorry about that… I came to and found out she had ditched me. I never meant anything to her. She never cared about me, just Doomsday killing her friend."
"So why go after her? I could give you a very attractive title in the new order. You wouldn't want for companionship. In fact, if you're dead-set on a Sullivan, I'm sure I could dig Lane out of a prison camp. She has all her cousin's… spunk, while being far more manageable. I'm sure we could think up a fun way to punish Sullivan's wayward tendencies."
You falter a moment, wanting to rip her apart. "I had her. For a few days, I was something like her boyfriend. In a perfect world, it could've been more. It wasn't. But for a few days, I knew what happiness was." You watch her drink. "I'm still human enough to be nostalgic."
Her empty tumbler joins the others. "I'm touched. The guards will show you to your room while I confer with my partners. If they're interested, I'll relay your request to the Parademons immediately." She makes a little shooing gesture and you go outside. The hallway is immaculate except for the two chromeheads waiting for you. You go with them, into a guest room. You go into the bathroom, turn on the shower, sit on the toilet while you wait for it to warm.
"Is it safe to talk?" you mutter.
"No listening devices," Chloe replies.
"Did you get into the system?"
"I need more time."
You run a finger under the collar at your neck. No way you're getting it off. "I'll see what I can do. Going dark."
"Davis, wait."
You do.
"Is it true, what you said in there?"
"Don't be ridiculous. People like Tess, they can't conceive of anyone who isn't as corrupt as they are. I just told her what she expected to hear."
"What about being with me?"
You're glad she's not in the room with you. There's only so much a man can take. "Why do you think I'm doing this, Chlo?"
You go dark.
The water's hot, it's probably always been, but you don't get in. You listen to it striking the tiles and running down the drain. You're the clone of a murderer. Do you even have a soul? If you do, who's to say it's not black as pitch? Maybe you're still just a machine following programming, only now instead of Zod's orders, you're working off a year-old crush, a farce, a mockery. Maybe you should leave the transponder off and take the same deal Tess made. She's comfortable, at least, and who would say you don't deserve a little comfort now? Maybe this… power, luxury, and anyone who's attracted to either… maybe it's as close to heaven as you're ever going to get.
You can't do this for Chloe. She'll never look at you without seeing Jimmy's blood on your hands. But maybe you can do it for yourself. To prove to yourself you're not just an animal, that you're doing more than running a program. Maybe some day someone can look at you and see more than the monster that's shared your face.
That's as close to redemption as you're ever going to get.
There's a knock at the door. You answer it. It's one of the chromeheads, blood from the screws in his head daubing the shoulders of his butler's livery. "You're invited to dinner, sir," he says, with the cadence of a deaf person. He hands you a tuxedo and you take it. "One hour."