I'm not sure where this came from exactly. I guess I just thought that Friday's episode of Smallville was really, really good. Anyway, this is just Sacrifice from Faora's perspective, not really anything creative - just a narration. I was a little disappointed that this side of her was revealed so quickly and then taken away. I really would have liked to see what would have happened. Please, read and review!
Warning: some spoilers for Sacrifice. Don't read if you haven't seen it.
Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville.
Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
-Cormac McCarthy, The Road
This place gets under your skin. She couldn't put her finger on what it was, but she thought it might have been the tranquil calm of leaves rustling in the trees above her and the rippling waves lapping at the shore of a brook. There was a simplicity here, hidden beneath the dirt and grime of the alleys and the anger that marred human voices – but she could tell it was there. She could see it in the smiling faces of naïve women as they held their children's hands to cross the street; she tasted it, standing beside her sister, sipping a cappuccino from a paper cup. And every time she saw the symbol, burned into concrete over the relieved faces of the saved, she thought she might finally understand what it meant to be at peace.
In all her years on Kandor, she had never seen the world the world through civilian eyes. Her views were shrouded in cynicism, in month after month spent in trenches, feeling shrapnel against her skin. Her last memory of her home world was a war-ravaged skyline. Not like here. Here the cold rain bit at her skin and passing cars hit deep pools of standing water, drenching her as she hurried along the sidewalk.
The bell rang overhead as she ducked into the bookstore and she spied Vala behind the counter, accepting money from her human customer. It would be some time before her sister was finished with her work, so she resigned herself to patience and shrugged out of the damp jacket. Her fingers fluttered over the clinging white fabric of her shirt and she glanced up to see Vala watching her, as a stooping human woman scrawled out a check.
There were times when she'd considered telling him, times when the light flashed in Vala's eyes as she reminded her how many times he had saved her life. She remembered how her own voice had risen when she defended him to Kal-El. But the thought of having her promised powers had somehow lost the appeal they'd once held for her.
She knew, as they all did, how many people there were in this foreign world who wanted the Blur dead. Kal-El was a saint to the common human, faceless and revered, yet fragile in the way he held the trust of the people, as if one misplaced step could topple him from his pedestal. In those mornings, when she perused the front page of the Daily Planet, she thought it best that her child be shielded from such a life.
"The others are already here."
She turned, and replaced the maternity magazine where she'd found it on the shelf. "I'm not late, am I?"
"No, sister, of course not," Vala smiled. "Let me close up and we'll join them."
She nodded, the words a blur of sounds in her mind. Her eyes had fallen on the magazines next to the one she'd thumbed through, one of the less-validated publications on more outrageous topics. It was the straightforward title "Aliens Among Us" that had caught her trained eye, depicted as a rabid, feral creature preying upon the innocent in a dark alley. Once again, she found her left hand pressing against her abdomen.
"Faora?" Vala placed a hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright? You didn't hear a word I just said, did you?"
"I'm sorry, Vala," she whispered, "I've just been thinking, especially these last few days."
A knowing smile softened the lines of worry in her sister's face. "No more than the rest of us. But don't worry. Once we've reunited with Major Zod and the rest of our brothers and sisters, then we will finally be home once again."
Vala took her hand and led her to the back of the bookstore. There was a door in the workroom, which led down into a basement they'd been meeting in, on nights when Vala was alone in the shop.
"I know you are right," she whispered, knowing her sister wouldn't hear. Already, there was uncertainty coiling in her stomach. She saw that same uncertainty reflected in the planes of Kal-El's face when the shadows parted to grant him entry, and he spoke to her in a voice that was low and rushed. It was that same uncertainty that fueled her hesitation at denying his words against the major. He's had powers for weeks.
She would never be able to pinpoint the exact moment when she folded away the life she'd lived on Krypton and buried it deep within her heart. Her life on Earth had begun before she'd acknowledged it, before she'd seen past the urgency of the solar towers and the frantic rush to find the book of Rao. It had begun long before any passion had arisen between soldiers far from home and somehow it had been founded in the coarse earth before she had ever imagined the faint quivering of life beneath her skin.
Yet it was Kal-El who dusted the denial from her eyes. Kal-El who stood there, with his Kryptonian shield against the backdrop of a human farm, and at once contradicted everything that she had ever known. He wanted so much to believe in people, but was far too distrustful to turn his back to anything. From him she saw the familiar symbols from a life lived so far away; she heard Jor-El's words speak up from the page, telling the fate of her doomed world.
Their savior, their leader, the father of her child. Was that when her human life began? Krypton lives on through you, Faora. This place gets under your skin. Like the sharp, biting metal of the Kandorian border, it took root. Like the windswept battlefield, she would fight for it, against tyranny and hate-filled eyes of humans. It would soak her blood.
In her mind's eye, she saw the small-framed child, the dark hair falling into his eyes. He was some fair and fragile thing, shrouded in whispering leaves and moons too full of white. In her vision, she saw a row of houses, the boy teetering on a rusting bicycle beneath the Sun's pale gaze. She wiped smudges of dirt from his cheekbone and pressed a kiss to his temple as she cocooned him in blankets, the faint constellations in the dim darkness above their shadowed forms. What would he have done with his little life, this son of Kandor? A doctor, perhaps? Walking the streets of the city, human and powerless, saving lives and stitching wounds with his strong hands and dimpled cheeks.
She could only recall with vague recollection the words he'd used. Mere moments after her blood had trickled from her arm, their city had whipped apart, ablaze beneath the unforgiving sky. Krypton had lost sons and daughters that day – and she couldn't even remember it. No one but him could see the empty horizon, the screams that had died on the lips of thousands before they'd known what had happened. And somewhere in the heart of the city, a mother and son whose husband and father stood by, watching as it all fell apart.
"I wish I had seen it," she admitted to him in the stillness. "Seen Kandor's last moments. If only so I could say goodbye to it."
"No," his voice was gruff. He looked up at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. "No, you don't wish that."
She was done being a soldier. She'd endured years of hardship and suffering, of shuddering trenches and yells in the night, and only now was she casting it aside. She stared into the woman's hard eyes, glinting like coals from the harsh expression on her face. She held her head high, spoke clear and strong.
"We only want peace."
She thought of Vala and seeing her sister lay weak and shivering on a bed, rescued by Kal-El, Zod, and the strong-willed human woman called Lois.
"We are way past peace."
The next moments passed in a blur. Shattered glass and screeching metal and his face so full of hatred and disgust. She couldn't help the falter in her step when he turned to her, the death of their world in his flashing eyes. I'm only betraying one.
He approached her, his posture calculating, eyes glistening, speaking of a different time. A time when she'd been different, when there was nowhere in the world she wouldn't follow him. But there was no hesitation in this moment, just the soldier in her hollow bones performing the last duty required in the flickering light. Her hand came up once more, pressing against the subtle roundness in her abdomen. Never, she hissed. It was the most selfish choice she had ever made.
She knew he would spare her if she told him, if she whispered her secret across the cold space between them, against the hard touch of his hand to her throat. He would stumble to his knees, his hands reaching out, needing to touch her, but uncertain. The features of his face would travel quickly from horrified to a kind of awed wonder and he would look up at her with tears glistening in eyes that had seen the world burn.
He would never again command her to kneel before him. She knew this.
And in the end she couldn't do it. I know more than you ever will. No son of hers would be his conqueror. She wouldn't allow it. His grip was unrelenting and she filled her lungs with one last small breath as her head grew light and her vision spotted black. She thought that it wasn't a son at all, but a daughter. Yes, a tiny little girl with bounding curls that caught the sunlight as she played beneath the treetops.
This turned out a lot differently than I had expected, but I hope you liked it. Did anyone catch my reference to Davis Bloome? That was an afterthought that I threw in there. Anyway, please, leave me a review, if you are so inclined.