Disclaimer: It all belongs to Smallville. I occasionally take their characters out, get them drunk and have my way with them. Oh, Liz is mine.
Feedback: Please R&R. If you like it, I will continue the story.
Rating: R. Let that be a warning to you kiddies. No trespassing.
Summary: What can happen in time and space when the conditions are right? Lex is about to find out.
A/N: This takes place after season 1. This graveyard actually exists. It is located in the deep woods of the North Georgia Mountains. It was discovered by a hunter will he was out scouting for deer. All of the inscriptions place the time of it in the 1800's. Most are the graves of children.
Remnants of Time
Chapter 1
The brilliant Kansas spring day was beginning to cool. Darkness was rolling in from the Northwest. Beauty could turn vicious with a flick of her wrist in this part of the country.
As he walked deeper into the woods, the shadowed path and soft breeze felt refreshing to Lex's heated skin. The run he had taken earlier left beaded sweat all over his body, and he had a fleeting thought that the sunscreen he had applied might be useless by now. He had to be very careful with his head when outdoors. Being bald, he had learned at an early age to always apply sunscreen whenever he went outside. He wasn't worrying about what the sun was doing to his head at the moment.
He was concerned about the gun that was pointed at it.
The woman walking behind him holding the gun wore a sleek, dark catsuit and walked as graceful and silent for the animal in which it was named. Mrs. Emma Peel, from the old British television show in the 60's, The Avengers, could not have pull off the look as well. Dark auburn hair curled slightly down the midway of her back. He could practically feel her hazel green eyes boring a hated path into him where she planned on having a bullet follow.
And she did mean to put a bullet in him. He didn't question that at all. German, French, Italian, languages came easily to him. And women's body language was a subject he enjoyed studying. This particular woman was someone he had studied for a few years on and off. A twist of her head, a raised eyebrow, a sly look to the side, he could tell her mood, what she was plotting, and whether or not she was lying.
She wasn't lying. She was going to kill him.
She had come back into his life recently with the intent of betraying him and stealing LuthorCorp to impress her father. Instead, Lex had planted bogus reports for her to 'find' on his computer, which she then used that resulted in the ruin of her and her fathers company.
"You took it all, Lex. My company, my father...my life." Victoria said, with a vengeful Scottish burr. The gun shook slightly as they walked deeper into the woods. The path that they were on was overgrown and difficult to follow. Years had probably gone by since anyone had traveled it. Dense underbrush had time to grow in even darkened areas rarely touched by sunlight.
She watched his back as they continued their press deeper into the unused acreage of the Luthor estate. He was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and pants with Nike running shoes. At her insistence he walked about three feet in front of her. Well aware that Lex was a black belt in several forms of martial arts, she had no intentions of having him whip around on her and gain the upper hand.
He walked with a wary grace ahead of her. He hadn't realized at first that she was there to kill him. He most likely thought that she was there to offer her body again in some new scheme to regain her company, but it was too late for that. The way he was looking at her, he might have even pretended to consider it to take her back to bed. For a moment, she remembered how good he was. He could be gentle, though his eyes never softened. At times, he would stroke her body lightly, all over, caressing her breasts, tasting, sucking her nipples, grazing his fingers down her abdomen and stroking between her legs. He would hold her arms down over her head when she tried to struggle to get more, to pull him to her. He would wait until she was shaking and crying out for him. He would insert his fingers into her, test her, until he was satisfied with how wet she was. Then he would take her hard, hold her tight while she bucked against him and he thrust inside her until she couldn't hold on any longer and she exploded in a scream.
As many lovers as she had had, no one was as good. She was going to miss that.
She had to give him credit, even when she pulled the gun on him while he was out jogging he never panicked. She knew he was looking for a way to escape. He was still infuriating cool and in control. She wanted to pull the trigger while he was out on his jogging trail, but she stayed patient. The longer it took for someone to find his body, the harder it would be to try and solve the crime. And she planned on it never being solved.
He was elegant even in sweat clothes. He walked with focused purpose, even towards his own death. There was a power to this man. He was dangerous. Others she could manipulate through seduction, but not him. And she hated him for it. God! If only he hadn't figured out what she was doing! She would have had the respect from her father that she craved. She would have shown that she was worthy of being 'Handed the Torch'. Money, Prestige, Power, she deserved to have it all!
But he took that all away when he planted those false reports on his computer. He had played her, not the other way around; and just like that, not only did her dreams vanish, but also everything else that had been hers up to that point. Lex may have thought he had won, but he was now about to find out the price of that game.
The tight set of the trees and underbrush unexpectedly opened up. Tangled vines grew and overlapped one another in a vegetative physiology of arteries and veins throughout an overgrown graveyard. All of the headstones were beaten and weatherworn. Many were cracked or broken, Most would need restoration to be able to read their inscription. There were enough that could be read, however, to be able to determine the generation of this particular abandoned place of rest. It was over one hundred years old. The inhabitants here had all been born and died in the 1800's.
"Well Lex," Victoria laughed, "I think we have just found your final resting spot." She read the inscription of the headstone that was directly in front of her. "Elizabeth Louve. Born 1865-Died 1883. Eighteen years old." Victoria gloated to Lex, "Think of it this way, at least you got to live longer than this poor loser." Dark clouds began to roll in earnest. Winds picked up and howled at the two figures trespassing in a place best left forgotten to the living. Victoria moved closer to a torturous tree that hung heavy over the young girl's grave.
Lex turned to her. For the first time since their journey began, he addressed her. "I think we both know who the poor loser is here Victoria." Not the best comment under the circumstances. But time had run out. In the last two hours it had taken to get here, not one feasible opportunity had presented itself.
"If you shoot me, you'll always have to worry about being found out." Lex related, as if he were explaining a financial report to a business colleague, "People will come looking for me. They may follow our tracks and find me right away. Even if they don't- and lets assume you don't overlook some tiny detail that will lead the police straight to you- my father will put vast resources into finding my killer."
"Why, because he loves you so much?" she sneered
"No, because he won't know why I was killed and he will wonder if he is next on the list."
Blackened clouds unfurled and blanketed the sky. The wind created miniature tornados of dead leaves at their feet and areas of the graveyard. Light kisses of rain began to touch their bodies.
"Perhaps," The gun, which had dipped down for just a second, rose back up, gripped in a firm, manicured hand. "But I'm willing to take the chance if it means I get to kill you."
"You hate me that much?"
"Oh yes." Her eyes narrowed. A snarl expose sharp white teeth. Momentarily, they reminded Lex of a small vicious animal. She cocked her head as if contemplating a question that she already knew the answer to. "Do you remember what you said to me after you ruined my father's company?"
Lex wisely kept his mouth shut. Drops of rain went from kisses to stings. The winds bore down on them.
Boughs of the tree next to Victoria groaned in protest. Bugs had crept inside over the years and eaten away at its insides. Disease and rot decorated its form. Ominous sounds gave warning as the old oak was bullied from the wind's force.
"You called me a whore. You destroyed me, then you called me a whore."
What he had actually said was, "You slept with me and called it business. What does that make you." However, it was close enough to not bother quibbling over. He did honestly regret the remark. He had won the game. There had been no need to add the verbal slap.
"I'm sorry Victoria. It wasn't true."
"Oh, but it was true." The winds whipped up her hair. Her body aligned itself with the gun as her arm straightened. Her voice rose up to override the madness of the storm. Lightning struck in the background. For a moment, she took on the appearance of a demon goddess releasing her wrath. "I whored myself for you- and you let me- then you used me to ruin my father's company." She smiled at him. The evil in it sent a thrill of fear down his spine. "That's why I'm going to kill you now."
As the trigger was being pulled, the tree carried out it's own threat by releasing the heavy limb that hung above her head. Lex heard the bullet's sharp sound as it zipped harmlessly by him.
The breath whooshed out of her. The heavy branch had her pinned. She covered the young girl's grave whose inscription she had read to Lex. A fairly large lump in the grave pushed against Victoria's stomach where she was lying face down. If she had been curious enough to ask about it, and if the residences of the burial grounds could talk, she might have been told that the lump was the cause of a meter shower that had happened around 15 years earlier. Time and weather conditions had buried the green stones deeper into the ground, closer to the still, quiet inhabitants of the graves.
Go for the gun or run? Lex only had time for the thought to run through his head. The next minute, it no longer mattered. Lightning struck the headstone of the grave that Victoria was lying on and ripped through her body.
She had to try again. "I dinit kill him!" The lisp was worse when she didn't focus on what she was trying to say. Fear made her frantic. "It waint me. Pless belieffme."
The chill in the air was nothing compared to the coldness in the gazes that stared at her. She knew what they were seeing when they looked at her. Ugliness. She was pale, quiet and nondescript. There was nothing remarkable about her. Nothing except for the reason she was being hung. The reason that she had been looked upon with suspicion and disgust all of her life. It was amazing that a simple thing such as being born with a separation of her top lip that extended a short way into her mouth was enough to make her a source of loathing.
Tom Neely's (who had formed this posse) entire left arm was gone. Nobody treated him badly. Maybe it was because he was born with an arm, but lost it a couple of months ago when he had gotten himself shot up when he was caught cheating at a poker game. His arm got infected and gangrenes set in. He had blamed her for its loss.
She tried to help him. She had gathered the proper herbs and walked five miles to his cabin every day to change his dressing and treat the wound. But he would get drunk most days, walk down to the creek with delusions of fishing, and, most times, fall in.
When she would explain again that he needed to keep the dressing clean and dry, he would cuff her upside the head with a curse and informed her that he was a MAN and she didn't tell him what he could and couldn't do. She should be grateful that an ugly little witch girl like her was allowed to come treat the wound to earn her some extra pennies since her momma had died.
When the arm finally had to be removed, (which was done by the local blacksmith, he removed teeth and limbs on the side to supplement his practice) He told people that she tried to kill him because he accused her of being a witch. Not just that she looked like one, but must be an Honest- To-God one. She rotten his arm off.
That was enough by itself to have many of the town's residence ready to run her body up a tree. Some of the more superstitious ones of the lot said that the reason her lip looked the way it did was because she was kissed by the devil. Most of them believed that there had to be some evil in her and God's way of showing them that was to put a sign on her body. Yes, Cain's children would be known by a mark.
Just as that incidence was beginning to die down, she discovered the body.
There was a red stain in his white shirt that surrounded a black hole in his chest. He was dead when she found him. She hadn't even had a chance to say good-bye.
She had heard of people having a 'Broken Heart'. She didn't know that your heart could literally feel like it was torn apart. She pushed the heel of her hand against her breasts to keep her it contained. If she pushed hard enough, maybe she could force the edges of it to stay together. He never knew she loved him.
His name was Louis. He liked to hear her thoughts on different issues of the day and didn't seem to mind if she had problems with pronunciations of certain words. He was interested in everything: politics, science, music and philosophy. Sometimes he laughed at what she had to say, but it was a nice laugh. It was a laugh that said, 'That was good'. He said he liked to talk to her. He said she was bright and intelligent. He said she had a quick mind and grasped difficult concepts easily.
Now he was dead.
She found him in his kitchen when she had come around to bring him one of the extra fresh apple pies that she had baked that day. Manly it had just been an excuse to come see him.
His body was under the table. The pie tumbled from her hands and clattered upside down a few feet from his head. She was able to take a few steps into the room before her knees buckled. She crawled the last few feet to him. Even before she saw the gunshot wound, she knew he was gone. There was a final stillness to him that couldn't be mistaken for anything else.
She pulled his head on her lap and stroked his red hair. Tears fell from her eyes and dropped onto his, then ran down his cheeks. It strangely appeared as if he were crying. Crying for her.
A noise she couldn't identify made her glance around. Over to the right side of his body, underneath the cupboard, was a gun. It was placed precisely in such a way where a person would have to be down beside the body to see it.
She reached her hand over and pulled it out. With her left arm wrapped around Louis's body and her right arm holding the gun, Tom Neely walked in. He smiled big at her. A smile with teeth.
Dread reached up and entwined its fingers with the pain.
And now she was sitting astride a horse with a rope tied around her neck. Her protest of her innocents fell on deaf ears and she could see her death in their eyes. Some of the mob actually thought that she was the cause of the storm that was quickly rising up. It was further proof that the devil was trying to free her.
Lightning flashed insane faces up at her and thunder crashed through Tom's rant regarding her sins of witchcraft. In the end, he gave up reciting the litany of her supposed crimes and hit the horse's rump while pulling on the reins.
Her neck jerked. The rope's deadly support dangled her body almost three feet off the ground. She hadn't been killed instantly. No, this was worse. She would slowly strangle to death.
That was her last thought before lightning struck the old oak tree that she was hanging from.
When she became aware of her surroundings again, she was lying in the mud. The branch she had been hung from was pinning her down. She imagined that it must have broken from the tree and she had been knocked out by the fall. They would hang her again unless she could find a way to get away.
As soon as she could get up, she was going to fight. She didn't want to die and it wasn't fair. She didn't do anything wrong. Once she was out from under the branch, She would fight, and then she would run. They might shoot at her, but at least this way she would have a chance, and if they shot her, hopefully it would be over quick.
The branch was pulled away from her. She started to put her plan in action, but found that not only could she not jump up, fight, and run away- she couldn't even sit up. However, she wasn't currently surrounded by townspeople with insane flashing faces. There was only one person. And, he seemed to be helping her.
It took her a few minutes to adjust her eyes. She then looked at the man who was holding her.
Sweet Jesus, was this real?
"You're alive! Wait,...are you alive? Maybe I'm dead."
"I can assure you, you are very much alive. And, so am I." His voice was clipped, hard. As soon as she could sit by herself, he removed his hands from her.
She was too happy to see him to let his reaction bother her.
"You're alive, you're alive!" Joy rushed through her and she flung her arms around his neck with a giddy embrace. "I thought you were dead." She rocked their bodies for a moment while she held him. She then leaned back to take another look at him.
"What happened to your hair?"