Author's Notes: Yes Doomsday was just that full of suck. And worse. I suspect I will write it more than once. Anyway, this may be a four part, angsty fic that will attempt to fix it. Also, that last part. remember the kiss scene in Beast okay? *is cryptic*
Rated for this chapter, and the last.
You can muddle love, transmute it, but you can never pull it out of you
~E.M. Forster, a Room with a View
He used to want to be gone, somewhere, under thousands of metric tons of rock where he couldn't hurt anyone anymore. It hadn't mattered how much he wanted her, needed her then, only what he was, only what he needed to stop. He couldn't live with it, but he couldn't die either.
She became the reason he needed to. It hadn't mattered then, if she loved him, only that he loved her and she was.
None of that had changed when he found the Kryptonite. Then, he had died the first time, come back and she'd become the one to save him.
We load up the car and never look back, she'd said.
Ten miles on the road had turned to fifty, fifty to a hundred and each one stretched the rope tying her to Smallville more. She looked back, couldn't help but look back and she wasn't happy.
The more clearly he saw it the more she persisted, pushed for them to go farther, and stayed close by his side.
He'd wanted to be hers, but not like this.
(And yet, they didn't have a choice.)
He tried to make it less painful for her. It got so she was the most comfortable when he was feigning sleep, so he did that; let her believe that he could. (That had stopped when he'd learned what he was.)
Still, he could hear her, every second of every moment, even with his eyes screwed shut and trying his damndest not to.
He didn't know how his hearing had become like this, the legacy of the monster inside him. Maybe it had been when he had heard her heartbeat racing in fear through the basement door or it had been the whisper of her step in the fortress, when he had believed, wanted to believe that she loved him.
No one ever trusted him without reason. It didn't happen on the dingy streets, in the beautiful polished city. No one ever looked at him like that before her, like he could be that hero when he'd been up against the ropes.
He thought he couldn't be a hero with the words Cornfield Killer and his face staring out at him like some alien's.
She'd been helping him and they would have found out. Her life would have been a living nightmare, and he wouldn't let it become that.
I would do anything for you, she'd said, and some part of him read into those words, whispered that she loved him, a little bit, even a little bit.
For the first time he hadn't wanted to die.
Davis heard the truth the first time in an unnamed gas station outside of Metropolis, her voice assuring Clark that she was doing it all for him. It had hurt then, like a knife sliding its way into his chest when he couldn't feel that any longer, but he'd gone out the door, pressed a silly valentine candy into her hand and she'd smiled like that wasn't all it was.
They trod the line that they had often enough before. Friends, wavering. That first night, she'd fallen asleep in the car before the first motel they reached, chocolate melting in her jacket pocket.
They'd run out of gas at one of those towns and he knew he had to get her inside, keep her safe. She was so tired she hadn't budged and he'd had to lift her out of the car. For once it felt like there wasn't a monster churning against his skin.
He'd gone for supplies even while she slept, because despite her firmness on the matter, It couldn't tear itself out with less than a hundred yards between them, yet. There wasn't much there-a couple of flimsy toothbrushes, the kind of beef jerky that looked as if it had been made a hundred years before.
This kind of life was what she was subjecting herself with him.
She'd let him in with her eyes half glued shut from sleep and a course imprint of her sleeve on her cheek. She locked the door on them both looking senselessly, inexplicably happy. She hadn't been happy before, and he felt something in him springing up in answer.
"They don't have T-shirts, do they?" They only had the clothes on their backs. He was going to be subjected to some serious shopping.
She'd sunk back down onto the dingy queen-sized bed like it was home, practically knocked him down beside her.
"We'll manage as long as you don't roll over in your sleep. I really don't want to end up a Chloe pancake."
She hadn't let it go of the hand that had given her the bag, drew a lopsided circle on his palm.
"We're all set." There was just the border to liberation, she told him, and they were really going to pull this off.
He was acutely aware then that was just them with the hotel room door closed and the lights down as if no one would ever know. No one else existed there, and maybe that's why she had the courage to clamber over to him, kiss him like she was afraid of getting burned, like she would burn him. He hadn't realized that he'd tugged her down to him until her arms collapsed over him.
The imprints of hundreds of faces seemed to vanish from behind his eyes, and it was easy, too easy to think that the needy sounds she made in her throat were just her. Like maybe hundreds of miles away, away from the life she was leaving behind, they could suddenly exist.
The two layers and a thick jacket weren't separation at all and he felt heat and warmth and a strange seizing up in his chest, the pulse at her throat fluttering like a caged bird.
He heard her voice, over and over, I can save you Clark, knowing he wouldn't let her do this. She'd touched his face when he'd frozen, smiled brightly, too hollowly like she was plunging the knife in again and again.
"I thought you wanted…"
She didn't have to say that, she knew. She'd always known. He felt himself stiffening at her touch, pushing himself up of the mattress, knowing she couldn't touch him again.
"You've always known that, but you never... Why you, why now? "
"If you have to ask me that, nothing I will say will ever convince you."
It was okay, he had told her, she didn't need to keep It happy too.
She'd slammed the thin motel door behind her and it hadn't happened again.
He'd told himself over and over, he would find a way to end it when this got to be too much for her. A part of him told him that that time was now when he heard the sound of her fingers on the keys, always calling Clark on the telephone, always hanging up.
This time she paused like she always did, pressing the buttons almost as if she didn't want the signal to go through. The phone had rung, had been picked up, and she finally managed to get two words out, "It's me."
"Thank God. Don't hang up." Clark had said, almost unsteady (he had seen her die) and for once the sound of his voice hadn't triggered that horrible burn in Davis, Its urge to destroy. Instead it was just the human side that hurt, hearing her voice, for once not sounding as if she'd wanted to run. That was what she wanted, not him, never him.
"How could you not know it wasn't me?" was all she said, her voice flat, like she wanted not to feel. "It was just another victim of Tess's play to make you into her hero. Next time don't believe I'm dead until I mail you the certificate."
"What was I supposed to believe? You didn't call me. You didn't say a word after that. I was worried sick."
"I didn't need to. I'm fine."
"Chloe, you can tell me you're safe but you're not. Someone is dead, Chloe. Davis killed Neutron. That at least was true wasn't it?"
"He couldn't stop it. He didn't hurt me. He got me out of the burning car alive." The transformation had torn the metal to scrap. Davis still heard her nightmares in the dark.
"He killed someone else." Clark repeated, slowly, as if talking to a child or someone with advanced Stockholm syndrome.
"---who might have killed me. It was just a bad situation."
"I can get you out; you've just got to let me know where you are."
"That's what she wants to happen, don't you see? If you look for me you'll be playing right into her hands. As long as I stay out of range nothing will happen."
"What hasn't happened?"
"I won't let it."
"What will you do Chloe? Shut him in the room with you 24/7; make sure he doesn't ever feel scared or angry or worried?"
"That's the plan."
"And what happens when it stops? What happens when you're not enough any more?"
"It won't. All the time he's been around me, he's been okay somehow. I can't program him, but what he feels won't just go away."
"You've got to come back." She'd stopped then, muffled the headset with her hand because the radio had come on a few rooms away, unfamiliar and Spanish. Every creak of the radiator felt like an unnecessary clue.
"You know I can't do that. There's only so far I can go on tempting that genetic coding."
"He's a time bomb, Chloe, and not the harmless kind. He's a danger anywhere. I won't let you do this for me."
"I won't risk either of you ripping yourselves and the world to pieces. I care too much."
"We wouldn't. I found a way for it all to be over and you didn't think so much about the world then, did you?"
"Eternal hell wasn't ever an answer. He doesn't deserve to die either."
"Just like Lex didn't deserve to die? You don't want to see him die..."
"He didn't choose this. He's not Lex."
"Dr. Hamilton said you were desperate to cure him before. The black Kryptonite could split the human and Kryptonian sides of Davis. "
"How do you know?"
He hadn't said anything there.
"You don't Clark, and as much as I'd like to believe that you've found me some kind of magic potion. Doomsday isn't his dark side, it's in his DNA. He could be a part of Doomsday, just a part and the split could kill him."
"You just won't take that risk."
"You'll have to admit that what I'm doing know is the only thing that works. He's not our guinea pig. He's as human as you are, and I won't just..."
"We can work together. We'll get Davis free. Come on, when have we not being able to fix a problem? You just have to tell me where to find you or just let me know you're alright."
"I just did."
"He's treating you alright? He isn't making you…"
"I have to go now."
"You don't. You're not alone okay? We can fix this. I'm getting closer to finding a way every minute. Come home."
Clark's voice sounded harder, assured, and heroic. He could have been halfway across the world in a second; it was pointless if she didn't let him find her.
He could hear the sound of plastic, the phone slipping out of her grasp onto the tiles, and for a moment a strange hitch to her breath.
Maybe he wasn't human, not a whole human, like she thought.
He barely felt cold or heat anymore, but he felt it when she slipped under the covers next to him. He had to restrain himself from reaching out, just anything to sooth her, to tell her that it really would be alright.
She wouldn't have to do this much longer.
Chloe used to think that it would be easy to leave, that once they made it out of Smallville, no one else would know to follow. If she was efficient and calm enough they'd be just fine.
But Tess Mercer had been desperate enough to put a tail on them. Someone else had died.
It had happened five miles on an empty road, with an easy listening country song barely making its way over the radio. She'd been about to sleep, thinking of how to explain it to him. He wanted something, she knew. Something more, something else.
She'd wanted, what had she wanted? To feel needed? To know he was whole? To make him happy like some sort of twisted martyr?
He'd always frightened her seeing through things, seeing through her. Maybe he was right. Maybe she didn't know what she felt. (Maybe she was waiting for that, an excuse to go back into her shell.)
She'd hurt him and she wasn't going to do a damn thing about it.
The comfortable pitch black behind her eyes had turned to blue as the electrical cage lit up around the car. It rocked to a stop and she understood the charge was keeping it in place.
It hadn't been a dream, another of her nightmares and there were four of them out there.
Two to four odds. Decent, but not when he was capable of tearing them all to shreds and himself in the process.
She'd been terrified of that as much as whoever was out there.
He'd sunk his head into the steering wheel so she wouldn't have to look but the deep red of his eyes struck her. He was already halfway there despite the fact that her hand was on him. "You've got to be calm, okay?"
She'd had her Glock awkwardly under the seat; the one legacy of her run in with Linda Lake's nail gun. If she reached for it she'd be shocked senseless and not any use at all. She had to keep It at bay, it didn't matter if they were captured, she couldn't let It kill again.
The police had been searching; perhaps these were just the extra-mutant bounty hunters. They'd be caught, locked up, but he could get them out. Couldn't he?
"We need to let them catch us. Just trust me on this."
I trust you, he'd said but he could have crushed the wheel in his bare hands. There was the tension of his skin, something pushing out. She'd murmured something unintelligible and hopefully soothing, dug her nails into his knee too hard.
"We're coming out, just let us get out. We'll surrender!" She knew that as soon as the lightning stopped she was going to press on the accelerator, peel on out of there.
They couldn't know, yet there was no reaction to the figurative white flag.
Then the fire had started and she'd forgotten about calm, slammed her hands on the windows and felt them singe her flesh.
Nothing could've stopped It then.
(She knew if she just kept herself out of danger it wouldn't happen again.)
This was the last time she'd call Clark, just to explain.
Maybe she was Florence Nightingale. Maybe she wanted to save them both and that would be their downfall.
But it was all she knew.
Davis was the Clark she could save; naivety and intensity and tragedy all rolled into one broken package. Davis was the man who, somehow, somehow seemed to see her as the world even though no one ever had before. Davis was the guy fighting when he couldn't win.
That would have been just her kind of story before, when she'd been optimistic, before Justin Gaines and Lex Luthor, when the words written on newspapers had been truth, when choices had been black and white (not kill a man and save the world).
Something was massively wrong.
She should have seen it from the start in the stiffening of Davis's spine, the way he crouched on the ground
"What is it?"
The covers slipped out behind her, and she left them, didn't bother to keep herself modest.
"I feel…He's close." He tried to say, but his throat moved as if he was about to choke on whatever was pushing itself out.
"That's impossible, he can't be here." But Davis would have no reason to lie.
She could see thicker ridges than his normal muscle on his back, moving under his skin so that they would rip right through.
Suddenly she understood it, the pacifications, the offers of help, the stalling. Clark had just wanted to find them, and this time maybe she wouldn't be enough. Clark had lied, Clark had…
She fell to her knees in front of him, noticing then, that Davis's eyes were dark red, as if the corneas had bled and even when she touched him it wouldn't let off. Maybe he was wrong, he was created for this, and he only had a mission, like a wolf out for blood. Maybe, it didn't matter what he felt. Maybe they were both village idiots
The fear was there, boiling in her gut and she restrained the urge to flinch back. With a disconnected thought she saw the ashy gray between his knuckles.
His hands had always been capable of dwarfing hers, warming her, but in the past weeks, in her mind's eye she had only seen them severing a vessel or aorta, tearing Clark apart.
She felt the roughness, like sandpaper pressing into her skin. She drew circles to calm him, like she always had before but now it wasn't human skin, snagging and tearing into her palm, hurting as she could see the spines starting to push through, turning his chiseled jaw dark and uneven.
"You're not working, Chloe. I thought...I can't…"
His eyes were squeezed tightly shut so she couldn't see the red in them any longer. She felt something akin to horrified paralysis as sharp points began digging through the plain white cotton of his shirt.
"Please leave. You've got to get away."
His hand? sunk into the AC, leaving only deadly looking shreds. The moment she was terrified; as terrified as she'd ever had been of dying.
"Get away! You have to. Please."
"I can't." she said. She couldn't live in a world where she failed, where he turned into a monster, where he killed Clark, where she let him be lost.
She couldn't give up on them both now. She wouldn't remember him like this.
It was simple; if nothing else she'd choose a place to fall.
He wouldn't be able to speak much longer.
"Davis, I trusted you. Why did you let me come with you if this would happen?"
"I thought…" what was left of his voice was almost animalistic, not human. On his face, further in, the gray was infringing on clean tan skin.
She had to stay calm, act like this would work. She'd been calm, almost calm when she'd touched him that first time in the alley, wanting to let him know he was safe. Maybe it wasn't about he felt at all.
Maybe it was about what she felt.
"Don't think."
She had to remind herself of what she felt, of something besides the panic.
It wasn't easy to compartmentalize, ignore the fact that his fist as she pulled it from the carpet was cutting into her hand, that she would probably have cuts everywhere later. She imagined the dream, his lips on hers in the darkness, feeling whole. It was almost easy.
Still, her mouth bumped into his too fast, too sudden that she could taste the blood on her lips, on his. They didn't have time; precious little of him was human now. She needed him to be human.
There was a second where she held still, felt no reaction at all. No matter what had happened, no matter how strained things had been, he couldn't have closed himself off so much. Maybe she was wrong and there wasn't enough Davis to hear.
He could have torn her to bits. (She could've run.)
Then there was reactive warmth, a movement like a swallow but his eyes were red, nearly uncomprehending. She didn't need to see this.
Then his arms were hard on her back, spikes tearing into her sensible pajama jacket. With her eyes closed his lips were soft. In the dream she had drawn her hands up and down his back, felt the tension, needed it. In reality her hands on his shoulder blades (no. scapula) stung as the skin nearly scraped off her palms but she couldn't stop.
They were too near the floor, so it was just a slight movement when he pushed her down, held her neck close enough that it wouldn't hit the ground, not a stranglehold, not quite but she could feel the force under it all, exactly what he was.
He was heavy when he kissed her again and she could feel almost skin through the tatters on his back, too warm. His eyes weren't brown again, not yet, but he would come back to himself.
She'd thought that this would be easy. At the touch it would melt away like so much camouflage and he would hold her, and then he would let her draw away if she got scared again.
He'd been like that these past weeks, always waiting for the slightest touch, the slightest word as if it would put him back together again, but never asking. He just needed to be close to her, and she was too full of mixed emotions, and guilt, and knowledge to even give that. (He'd always waited for her like something out of a fanciful romantic story. He'd been the Beast in the story, the knight on a white horse, the one who gave his heart first.)
This is not the way it was now, his hands hard on her hips moving her closer before she could think, do anything. This wasn't him, not really; the force pulling her in wasn't human, but she pretended it was, pretended it was him after a hard day. It was just his hands in her hair; It hadn't been about to tear out of him moments before.
His hair was soft, damp with sweat like it always was after It started to take control. She felt different, powerful, because no one had ever touched him like this, just after It. He'd been frightened, maybe more than she had.
Listen to me, she wanted to say, you won't hurt him, you won't hurt anyone. She doubted he'd even understand if she did so she just smoothed a hand behind his neck, over his forehead wiping away the sweat, like she was blind, noticing vaguely that his skin wasn't cutting her anymore.
He drew her closer, latched her onto her mouth like a child, and she could feel his breath faster. She was wired to what he felt like, knew this even as she felt his hands through the tearing cloth, too warm. There was no guilt, no fear; no thoughts that what she felt would end up killing her best friend.
(She'd taken him out of the fortress. She couldn't have imagined Clark trapping him in a prison, a hell where the human part of Davis disappeared forever. It defied everything that was right and true because he'd fought and that died to stay human and the one cure couldn't involve turning him to a monster forever. She couldn't let him go, not when he'd been human as he walked to her, fragile, not like some creature about to tear down the world.)
She was going to bring him back to himself, but wasn't this him, needing her, in that way that made no sense? She'd never had let herself give in then, but she felt a sudden weakness, now, knowing just how much she wanted to. This wasn't Davis, she had to remember that but there was no stopping the reaction.
This was her, too much tension building in the pit of her stomach, making her move when she should've been bolting.
Her knee hitting the side of his hip was the cue he needed before he moved into her completely ignoring the scraps of cloth between them. It was too fast and she felt herself bruising, raw. It had been a while.
He was not quite as careful as he would've been. She opened her mouth, waiting for a sound to come out. She was doing this. He was murmuring something, she didn't think it was coherent and maybe it was best that way.
It wasn't enough, and he pushed her farther, drawing her knees up, pushing so far that she couldn't breathe for the heat of it, his skin, hers. It felt like she was choking on air. Those were his hands stroking strongly at her sides, almost too heavy in a way that shouldn't have been soothing like this.
She was opening then, and it was easy. His eyes were brown on her face, she saw that, knew that it would have been safe to let go now. She couldn't, something was unfurling in her and it felt like her soul was leaving her.
She pressed her head down so it wouldn't buckle against the floor and let it go..
It wasn't easy, it was more tension again and she heard herself, clutching onto his neck like a tourniquet, knowing when this ended it would be gone.
It didn't end then, as she knew it wouldn't and he was still moving in jerkily, breath barely brushing against her neck as his mouth worked to say something, for the first time fully himself. He could have said anything, something about how she was beautiful, the only one or she was his always so she closed her eyes, knowing she couldn't hear it.
He said he was nothing without her like it was some sort of mantra and it hurt just as much.
He looked fragile again and it felt like she was breaking him, breaking herself, tightening her grip until she could feel it moving though them like it was going to crush them both. The rough carpet at her back was the only solid thing because he was shaking as if he'd fall apart. She couldn't see anything, couldn't hear a sound that he didn't make, didn't think of the time passing or if Clark really knew.
When he fell against her it almost hurt, pulled against her back. He wasn't a dead weight for long, but even as she loosened up he wouldn't let her go. She ached, somehow, strangely, wanting him back again.
The look in his eyes made her feel even more exposed even after what had just passed. She said nothing; saw the fear trickling into his eyes, not as bad, not as bad as It had been.
"I'm not hurt." She told him, closing her hands against his arm so he wouldn't see the palms flecked with blood. She smiled, she thought she did but it wasn't enough.
"I'm sorry." he said, and again, as if she hadn't been the one pulling him into, tugging until he broke.
"Don't be dramatic. I like saving the world. I care about you. This was…"
She struggled for a word that she could take back, but the realization was in his eyes and he was going to ask, going to push sometime, maybe not then, but he would. He always got things out into the open.
She couldn't move then, knew she would, knew she had to and maybe if she tore the bandage off quickly it wouldn't hurt so much. She felt him breathe, closed her eyes for a moment. Just a moment more.
"I love you." He said, like someone had just pushed the wind out of his lungs and she felt her throat closing up.
"I know. I know it every day. Just like I know you are something without me."
She couldn't be like Oliver, compartmentalize him into a small genetic component. She knew him, in a way that made her right or the most deluded person on the face of the planet. It was something she had to believe.
"You wanted to help people before you met me. You helped them. If I was gone tomorrow you would still want that."
"If you were gone there would be no me."
"I don't understand Oracle speak, Davis."
"The thing inside you told me I was a camouflage. I didn't have a choice in what I was and when I got back it was all worse, like there was no way to keep it out. My head, my thoughts, if they could be called that, weren't the same. With you I feel like… you see me and I can fight again. I can be that guy. You are me."
"What are you, Heathcliff?" She knew how that story ended, like some sort of ghastly fairytale. She couldn't be his world, not when she was human, not when she could die and It could be left to tear the world to bits.
"You are Davis, with or without me. So Braniac told you that. Braniac was a computer. He couldn't understand…"
"Being human?"
"Exactly. You know how I know that? When I can't tell the difference anymore."
"You don't think I can be just a part of it?"
"Of course not." She said drawing a hand across his neck, slipping on the sweat there. He couldn't think when she did that she knew. (She wondered if she was lying, afraid of something she did not know. )
A camouflage could not love, or believe it could love, could it? A camouflage crumbled away, and when push came to shove, It had crumbled, with her.
His mouth was against her hair again, breathing in, telling her again as if hearing that made it that much more urgent.
She told him she cared. It wasn't hard; it was all she could give.
She wanted to save him more than anything in the world and they'd do it. It would get better in time and maybe, they did have a future.
It wasn't enough.
"You don't understand. I love you. If I say it enough times maybe you'll hear me. I love you, I love you, I love you. You're the only one."
His face crumbled strangely in the light and she saw a strange manic intensity to his face, at once, not healthy. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she had jumped into this too fast.
"It wouldn't hurt so much if I thought it was just me. You can't say it. You feel something. You felt it with the smoke and dust and sirens. There was just us, Chloe. It's not going to change. You don't want it now, and I know why. Maybe you're right, but we can still, we can still…"
"We can what? We're running away from a group of people who want both of our heads on a platter, another that wants yours, and if I ever get scared they could all end up dead. There's no time to…"
"And if I was free would you love me? Could you if I wasn't this? If I was just a man you could have a life, you could be near your friends, you could be near Clark."
It wasn't meant to go like this. "I'm not exactly in the best state of mind for this you know. Just give it time."
Time wasn't what she needed. Resolution. Something she could keep, and she felt him slipping out of her grasp.
That wasn't enough to calm him anymore, and then he was gone, while she gathered the bits of torn cloth around her in some semblance of dress. He came back to her with a lead box shifting in his hand, nearly falling out of his shaky grip.
"I heard you talking with Clark. If you really think…"
He knelt on the dirty carpet, pulled the lid open and the telltale black stone shone roughly. She didn't think of how what he'd done to get it, but that he was crazy enough to actually do it. She wasn't all sure, no matter what she wanted him to believe. He shouldn't have believed her. "Stop it, Davis, don't open that box."
"Why?"
"You're scaring me." She placed her hand over it, pressed down on the lid.
"Why? You told me you didn't think I was just a part. You do, don't you? You don't think I'm really whole." He placed his hand over hers, slipped his other under it as if he had never seen it before. "Do you?" Her held them there smoothed his fingers over the palms, too warm, and she shivered.
"Of course not. "
"I'll be just like I was when you met me. I'll be what you need." He had her hands trapped, in front of her, away from the lid. He wasn't even trying but her fingers felt encased by iron.
"Right now, I need you to listen. We're not ready to do this. I'm frightened that if you…"
"You're always frightened of me. I don't want you to be frightened." He repeated, again, hand twitching curiously against hers.
"I don't need this. You don't have to…"
"I'll do this. I'll be enough I promise." He whispered, and he didn't let her stop him. Even as his hand touched the stone the blue light blinded her until all she could see was his face fracturing to bits of gray, It pushing its way out of him like some sort of ghost.
Then it was gone, everything was gone but him, falling against her, another shell shed by the monster.
He wasn't Davis, wasn't all, and that strange vacant look to his face was just like those on the dozen of accident victims he'd saved in his life, not yet dead, realizing. Maybe the monster was a part of him; maybe it was triggered for this in case of a separation. Either way, she'd lost.
His skin was cold and she told him that she wanted to save him. I believe you, he said, she hated that he always believed her.
What she hated most were that the last words he said, echoing over and over in her head were that he was sorry, that there was nothing left to save.
Endnotes: Spoilers, may seem tragic, but that's not in the tag. repeat after me. dr**m
Reviews are very nice. :D
