Recall
Rating: PG/K+
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Drama/Angst
Summary: For the hc_bingo challenge, prompt "Nightmares". Conner did remember a little bit.
Author's Note: Strangely enough, this prompt gave me some trouble as well. It sounds easy enough, but I had trouble pinning down the right scenario.
Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville. It belongs to Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and the CW.
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In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't too bad.
Conner told Tess and Clark most everything: How school was going, who he was friends with, extracurricular activities, developments with his powers, just about everything. Was it really so bad that he only kept them in the dark about one thing?
He hadn't been one-hundred and ten percent honest about the memories. Yes, for the most part he couldn't remember his time before getting his powers. Tess told him that he was a little more 'Lex' than 'Clark', and Conner had opted not to hear any more after that. He didn't want to know what he'd done as Lex- he was Conner now, and that was all that mattered. He was not Lex.
But some nights, he remembered flashes.
They came in his dreams. He felt the dim remnants of rage, and didn't know why he had it. He saw fire and felt satisfaction as it burned. He saw Clark, a lot of Clark, and the Blur's symbol in red and yellow. He felt the insatiable curiosity that drove him to ends he could not understand. He saw Lionel and Martha on the floor in a large room, looking at him in fear. Saw Tess and Clark in almost the same position.
That was when he usually woke up, gasping and shaking.
Clark was his mentor, his 'brother'. He understood what it meant to be different, what it meant to have to treat the world like it was made of paper. He understood what it meant to miss out on things because they were too dangerous for him to participate in, and being labeled as an outsider as a result. Clark understood him.
And Tess was his sister. Maybe he couldn't remember when he was little- even though, apparently, it hadn't been too long ago- but he knew one thing for certain: She had always loved him. Tess was always there for him when he needed her. Tess knew him in ways that Clark didn't. And while she didn't have any superpowers, he knew she would kill for him if she felt she had to. In some ways, she was as much a mother to him as a sister.
The idea that he had ever been consumed in enough darkness to want to hurt either of them made his stomach churn and his head hurt. Conner could not imagine what life would be like without them, his family, the people who knew what he was and what he was capable of and loved him anyway. The nightmares reminded him, just enough, of what he used to be and what he could become.
Conner didn't want to tell them about the dreams, because he didn't want them to worry about him becoming Lex again. He would never be Lex. He would never allow himself to be so swallowed by darkness and obsession again. Not if he had anything to sat about it.
But it still unsettled him.
He was in Tess's apartment this particular night when he awoke, around midnight, to a starry sky outside of his bedroom window and a plane cruising along in the distance. Conner had awoken to a particularly disturbing image of Tess being pressed against something by a twisted ghoul that looked disturbingly like Lex.
For a moment, he just sat up in bed, arms wrapped around his legs, and tried to calm down. With his sharp hearing, the sound of Tess tapping away at the keys on her laptop were clearly audible. Without really thinking, Conner threw off the covers and left his room, resisting the urge to race down the hall at super-speed and throw himself onto her lap like a kid.
Tess was on the couch, scowling at something on the computer screen until she noticed his presence. "Conner? You all right?" Conner nodded, wide-eyed and hopefully convincing.
"Yeah, fine. I just can't sleep." Tess obligingly pushed a pillow aside. He sat down next to her, letting his head fall onto her shoulder and blowing a strand of her hair away from his face. Whatever she was looking at on the computer screen had a lot of numbers and science jargon, and he was too tired to try and figure out what it was.
Tess curled an arm around him, though her eyes stayed on the computer. She didn't ask any questions, didn't probe him like the psychologists used to when trying to determine what frame of mind he was in. She just accepted his lie- and as perceptive as she was, there was a solid chance that she knew it was a lie- and went about her business, though not really ignoring him.
Conner relaxed and, eventually, her heartbeat and the keystrokes lulled him to sleep.
In his dreams, he saw the same scene with Clark and Tess, but one thing was different:
"You had something Lex never had, and that's Tess. She loved you."
"I still do."
He slept through the rest of the night.
-End