Smallville and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
ONE
(Just after Freak, but before Promise)
That he was sitting here, on this plane, next to Lana, was incredulous. He could tell that she barely believed it either; she looked slightly shocked, a little bit disgusted.
"The stock market," Lana said, suddenly. "It crashed; I told you that, right?"
Clark nodded. "Yea, Lex, uh, mentioned. A disaster, he said."
There was another long silence. "Where are we headed?" Clark asked.
"Hawaii," Lana replied, shortly.
"Wouldn't you rather it be a surprise?" Clark asked. "Isn't that the point of a honeymoon? Everything is supposed to be special, new?"
"I've grown to hate mysteries."
Clark looked down at his lap. He still didn't understand why she would have chosen him to go along with her, of all people. It was only weeks before that he had kidnapped her, and then thrown her fiancé against the barn wall and tried to kill him. There had been that moment, after she had spoken to Tobias, when he had sensed that maybe she was starting to forgive him, but now, sitting awkwardly with her in this private jet, Clark was starting to doubt even that.
"Why did you ask me along?" he said. "Why did Lex come to me?"
She looked up at him and tried to catch his eye, but he was staring, still, at his lap as though it had some answers.
He was actually staring through his lap; it was a game that he'd recently started playing. He could sometimes stare at the ground, and see how far he could get. Sometimes he'd stare through a line of buildings, counting how many roads he could see across until everything faded.
"When Lex was out of town and I was being stalked," she said, "I went to your house for solace. Despite everything we've been through, I still feel safe with you."
He grinned, sadly, and looked up at her, letting his normal vision take over. "You've been watching me," he said. "You came to my house for reasons other than safety, we both know that."
Her face hardened at the accusation.
"Did you find anything interesting?" he asked. He didn't sound confrontational, she thought, just curious, and maybe a little bit scared.
"I did," she said. "My necklace."
"Your necklace," he repeated, raising his eyebrows. He remembered, of course, and it was her necklace inside the cigar box in his room, but he had no feasible explanation for how its green colour had been sucked dry.
"It wasn't the same, though," she continued, sounding triumphant, as if she'd finally pinned him on something. "It was clear."
Clark smiled. "You used to wear that necklace all the time," he mused. "I always thought it was pointless to dwell on the past like you do, but you wanted to keep a reminder of your parents close to your heart, and I understood that."
He leaned forward now, and Lana could see a familiar glint in his eye, as if for a moment everything that had happened to them was suddenly mist over a river, and they were in the water again, just a happy, new couple. "The meteors were what killed them, Lana. I didn't want you to remember them for their death any longer—I wanted you to think of them as they were when they were alive, whatever little you can remember."
The corners of Lana's mouth pulled downward as she was reminded of the reason she had been so in love with Clark to begin with. He had a source of empathy in a way deeper than she had ever seen in a person before.
"I had the necklace set with a clear crystal. I asked the jeweler to shape it the same as the meteor rock had been," the lie resounded nicely in Clark's mouth, and he was glad that he'd finally discovered that being prepared made lying a lot easier. He watched Lana's hand move to her mouth; she looked so tragic in that moment.
As if, finally, she'd finally begun to properly mourn what they'd lost.
"The crystal is pure, untainted; like the future, Lana," he said softly, "so that you can finally stop looking at the past."
She dropped her gaze, and Clark knew what he said had touched her deeply. He was glad that one of his inexplicable occurrences could finally be explained in a way that showed him in a good light—because he was damn tired of his I wasn't myself excuse every time red Kryptonite came into play.
In the same second, though, he felt sick. He'd never liked lying to Lana, and this lie, as well thought out as it was, was no different.
For a long time, the cabin was silent. Clark could tell, by her shallow breathing, that Lana had fallen asleep, and he only felt slightly creepy watching her sleep for several hours—after all, he had been the guy with the telescope for more than three years.
Watching her sleep, her chest raising and falling, the slow beat of her heart, was hypnotic. He had almost fallen into his own stupor when he noticed that the sound of the air rushing over the wings of the plane had changed. That was all the warning he'd had—the slightly higher pitch of the whistling wind that indicated that the plane was speeding up—before he was thrown across the plane as it banked to the right.
Time slowed as he flew sideways, and he watched Lana's body, still limply unconscious, soaring toward the side of the plane. He twisted, midair, trying to catch some sort of foothold, but there was nothing he could do but watch as she landed, rather awkwardly, on her front. She bounced off of the counter and landed against the window.
Clark landed at the same time and dashed toward her, wrapping his body around her; she chair she had been in had ripped from its base and bounced off of Clark mere moments after he had shielded Lana with his body.
Her eyes opened, slowly, and she looked up at Clark. Words started to form on her lips, but Clark wasn't looking at her. His gaze was fixed on the front cabin and his stomach clenched when he realized that there was no pilot in the driver's seat.
He looked further now, and could see that the plane was starting a steep descent, and they were thrown again, forward this time, as the plane began to spiral toward the ground.
With balance that shouldn't be possible in a crashing aircraft, Clark carried Lana toward the front of the plane. He held her against his chest with one hand and Lana found comfort, despite the direness of their situation, in the smell of his shirt. With his other hand, he tore open the locker that held the parachutes, and Lana gasped when she saw that it was empty.
He was squinting at the wall in a perturbing way, the same way he had stared at the cabin earlier. "Where are the pilots?" she yelled, bringing her face close to his ear.
He didn't answer her, but continued to stare, now at the floor. He placed her down, and grabbed her shoulders, steadying her as they crashed back and forth in the hallway. "Lana," he said in her ear. "We're going to get through this."
With his arm tight around her, she felt warm, safe.
Clark held her against his chest, and he closed his eyes for a second before tapping her on the head, knocking her out cold. He wrapped her legs around his waist and put her head on his shoulder. He moved towards the door of the plane, but didn't move right away. He could see an island, out amidst the water, and he waited a full minute before he tore the door off of the plane.
The island was far away—barely visible from where he was now. He had never attempted a jump of this magnitude, and to complicate matters, he didn't even have a solid platform to push off of.
But he didn't have time for doubt, and in one bold movement, lasting less than a second; he bent his knees and jumped.
The plane spun off course, falling suddenly downward due to the extreme upward momentum of his trajectory.
His landing was anything but smooth. The island wasn't all that large, and his forward speed was much faster than he'd anticipated. He touched down with so much velocity that he skidded on the sand, crashing through vegetation, and stopping just short of a very tropical looking tree.
Lana was still curled up against him, and he placed her down on the sand. She was stirring, and Clark knew that she couldn't wake up next to the traction mark he had created. His shoes had burned right through from the friction of his landing, and he pulled them off his feet before picking her up again and moving them, with inhuman speed, to the other side of the island.
Fully expecting to find herself in a twisted and burning aircraft, Lana opened her eyes. Her body throbbed painfully, but she wasn't a mess of broken limbs and blood like she'd anticipated. Clark was standing, ankle deep in sand, about ten feet away from her, as if he was wary of approaching.
"I wasn't sure you'd wake up," he said.
"Where are we?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I don't know. I woke up here about ten minutes ago. It seems like we might have been thrown clear of the plane."
Lana's eyes widened further, and Clark couldn't help but think that she looked decidedly terrified. They were on solid ground, albeit solid island ground in the middle of the ocean, but they were no longer on a falling aircraft headed for the bottom of the ocean.
"Clark," she said, sounding stern. "How is this possible?" Before he could answer, she doubled over in pain. "God," she whispered. "Do you think my baby's okay?"
She watched him squint at her stomach, as if, somehow, he could see through her. His face crumpled and he placed a hand, softly, on the small lump that had only just begun to form.
"I'm sure she's fine," he whispered.
Lana couldn't quite place what was wrong with his reassuring statement; it could have been the tone with which he spoke—as if all hope was lost already.
The pain came back, shooting through her abdomen. She took Clark's hand and sat back down on the sand. Clark folded himself next to her. "We need to get you to a hospital," he said, slowly.
"Clark, we're on a desert island. I seriously doubt there as hospitals nearby," she said, laughing bitterly. "We have to wait; hope that someone rescues us."
She tilted her chin up, looking at his face; his eyebrows furrowed in worry, his lip curled under his upper teeth. "Clark…" she muttered.
Clark knew what was coming before she even began to speak. It was typical Lana, he mused, dredging up the last and hitting it with a sledgehammer until it made sense.
"Tell me you lied," she whispered. "Tell me you still love me."
He put his arm around her, holding her up as she winced in pain again. He had seen these symptoms before—when his mother had miscarried. The cramps had come first, and then she had gone into labour, giving birth to her dead child.
Lana shouldn't have to go through that on an island; the blood and tissue of her uterus mixing with the sand and her unborn child, barely larger than a fist, receiving an informal burial knee deep in the beach.
Her dark brown eyes were laced with pain. The familiar look though, the anger, her demand of the unconditional truth, scared him.
"We're going to die on this island," she said, yelling now. "If you don't still love me, then you should tell me the truth. You might as well tell me why you stopped loving me."
"I never stopped loving you, Lana," he said. The words felt right, his tongue wrapping around the words just like they used to; the clean feeling of the truth wiping away every lie… "My feelings for you have changed," he had said. "I don't love you."
"But we're not going to die," he said, firmly.
Lana tried to quiet her sharp intake of breath when he said those words, the ones that she'd wanted to hear him say so many times since they'd broken up. But it wasn't relief that she felt now, it was anger, hatred even.
He loved her and he'd let her go. What kind of cruel person rips happiness away from someone they loved like that?
She watched as his face hardened, and suddenly he was so far away from her that she knew her words wouldn't reach him. "Clark?" she whispered. He was moving now, mechanically, and he placed his other arm under her legs and picked her up. She had always reveled in how strong he was, and now he picked her up as if he hadn't just been thrown from a plane. Her entire body ached, and she couldn't imagine what kind of inner strength it took him to keep the pain off of his face.
That he was about to do this scared the crap out of him. He'd spent so long trying to hide who he was from her—he'd lied to her, broken up with her, and let this relationship with Lex continue, all to protect his secret. He knew that before he did this, he owed her some kind of explanation, but, as he stared into the horizon, looking for the closest landmass, he realized that there was no explanation he could give.
"Even if you had been meteor infected," she had said to him, "you'd still be the same Clark Kent."
"I'm sorry," he said, and looked down into her face; she looked confused and scared.
When he apologized to her, Lana could feel the blood rush into her face as she realized—this was it. Every secret that he'd kept, every lie that he'd told, it was coming undone in this moment.
His arms were strong around her, holding her close to him. She snuggled tight into his chest, wishing that she could wrap herself in his smell again and call it home.
She told herself that here, she was safe.
It was seconds before she let herself open her eyes again, and she looked up at Clark, who was staring determinedly upward, and then listened to the whistle of wind in her ears; the icy air tearing across her skin, and then she looked down.
They were flying.