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.
A/N: Oh! I forgot about good old until one Passionate-Sweetharte added this story to her/his (probably her) favourite list, and I got an email about it.
So, yeah, I kept writing, even though I wasn't posting. There's lots more, actually! If there's still anyone giving this work in progress a quick read in their spare time, I'd be happy to post the rest of it. 'Til then, here's the beginning of part two. (There are a total of three parts.)
Enjoy!
Part Two: The Consequences
Chapter Seven
Part TWO: the consequences
Q7
Everything was so white and tremendously bright that he let his eyes fall shut again for a moment. When he did, he felt the ground around him tilting, and the world spun around him. This was the worst Kryptonite hangover he'd ever experienced. He could feel his body trembling. Cold, metal restraints held his wrists and ankles to some sort of cushion-less table or perhaps to the floor.
He opened his eyes again.
The dizziness overcame him, and he leaned over to the side, wondering if he was going to vomit. He'd never so much as had heartburn before, and the notion was rather frightening. His body convulsed, and, without realizing it, he tore his restraints.
Suddenly voices came from everywhere.
"Those were solid titanium," someone said. Clark jerked his head towards the noise; the room rotated sporadically around him, leaving him helpless to determine where it had come from.
"Looks like Luthor's hunch about the strength was dead on," a different voice said. Clark sat back upright and drew his knees up to his chest, knowing that he must have torn the metal at his ankles as well. He couldn't care right now, though. His return to consciousness had been abrupt and so painful. It felt like he'd been kept in touch with the Kryptonite for hours.
His healing powers were kicking in, though, and he let his legs lower, coming to a rest on either side of some sort of table. Straddling the table as he was, he was able to gain some sense of stability, and he opened his eyes once more, forcing himself to visually absorb his surroundings.
The room he was in was painted a solid white colour—it was so completely homogeneous that he couldn't tell where the floors ended and the walls started. There was a door, however, hovering just out of reach. Pushing up on his unsteady legs, Clark remembered how the sunlight felt on his face. The thought seemed to imbue him with psychological strength and he pressed forward.
The nausea had nearly disappeared and the room stabilized; where before it had toppled like a sock in a washing machine, suddenly the tumble cycle was over.
Without thinking, he wrapped his fingers deep into the sides of the door and pulled it loose. He stumbled slightly as he tossed it aside; as he righted himself, he heard a voice again.
It was merely a gasp—but it was a gasp that had come from nowhere; a gasp that had materialized like a ghost, and revealed everything.
He was being watched.
Squinting at the wall, he saw through it, through the foot of solid concrete that surrounded it, and into another room. It was as white as the one he was in, but it housed two people: scientists, tightly gripping clipboards in their white-knuckled hands.
His hands shook in anger. He wanted to hurt these people that had captured him. He wanted to see his own fear in the eyes of the people who had captured him. He was not a rodent, to be experimented on for the good of humanity. He wanted to show them that he was more human than they—kidnapping torturers that they were—could ever be.
But more than anything, he wanted to go home.
So he ran.
Before either of the scientists could even blink, he was out of the lab and running through corn fields. He reached out and could hear his mother's voice.
A moment later, he collapsed, shivering and curled into the most protective position he knew, in the middle of Kansas, and knowing that there was only one place he wished he could be: at his mother's side.
He felt this horrid lurching feeling in his stomach when and lay there, choking, until he passed out.
Q
When he woke up again, he felt frustration bubble in his throat. He was back in that room—or a room, at least, white and inhuman as the other. He remembered running through cornfields, feeling his strength growing as the sun beamed down on him; knowing that soon he'd be home and he could take his mother somewhere far away, where they would both be safe.
And then pain had shot through him, as though there was Kryptonite everywhere, and he'd fallen, convulsing like a sheet in the wind, until vomit had risen in his throat and he'd been left with darkness again.
That darkness contrasted boldly with the white of the room he was in, and, more and more, he realized that he'd have preferred being unconscious to being back in this room.
This room represented everything he'd been afraid of the last time he'd been in a lab. It was cold and impersonal; it reeked of that cold and impersonal art called science. He was bound, like some sort of animal ready for autopsy, to the same stiff reclined chair.
He had no idea how he'd gotten back here or why had he collapsed while running, free of Kryptonite and in full view of the sun.
A door opened from behind him. He waited uncomfortably, and tugged at his retrains. To his surprise, they held. He strained to look at them, and found that they were glowing a faded green, and leaving red rub marks on his wrists.
The man that came into view was not Dr. Williams. He was a younger guy, with white-blonde hair and sharp angles in his face. His wide blue eyes looked cruel and cold. Clark craned his neck as he came closer, pulling against the Krypto- cuffs, trying to get a better look at him.
"My name is Sean," the stranger said. He smiled a wide smile at Clark, and Clark couldn't help but think that it looked rather taunting. He realized, as he settled himself back onto the cold table that there seemed to be something protruding from the table. A moment later though, he couldn't feel it anymore and he turned his head slightly to look at the man.
"Why am I being held here?" Clark asked tersely, fully expecting not to get an answer.
"You're an amazing research opportunity," Sean replied, looking at the clipboard he held. "Unlike any human that has ever existed in recorded history."
Clark didn't reply. These people did not know that he was not even technically human, and he was not planning on letting them find out.
"We've seen people affected by the meteor rocks," Sean continued. "We've studied them many times. However, none of them are quite as… unique as you. None of them can move as fast, or have anything even approaching your sensory capabilities. As well," he paused, and pulled a small box from his jacket pocket. "None of them react the same way to the meteor rocks." He opened the box then, revealing a pea-sized piece of Kryptonite.
Clark cringed away from it.
"How did you get me back here?" Clark asked.
Sean smiled that condescending smile.
"Okay, princess," he said softly, a hint of a lisp creeping into his voice, "I'll make you a little deal. I'll talk now… if you promise to talk later."
Clark said nothing.
Sean took his silence for assent.
"Does your back hurt, a bit?" he asked. "Your healing capabilities are amazing, so I imagine it doesn't at all."
"What are you talking about?" Clark growled, just barely stopping himself from pulling at the restraints and throwing himself at the doctor. He felt like an animal, strapped to a table and ready for autopsy, and didn't want any of these men to forget that he was—before he was a lab rat or a specimen—a person.
"The first few scalpels we used just broke," Sean continued. "Even with you passed out and clearly weakened by the meteor, the scalpels and needles would shatter before piercing your skin. We ended up melting down some of the rocks and making shiny green knives to cut you open with."
Clark's stomach twisted in horror. His ears rang as the image of green knives flashing over his vulnerable body crashed into his mind.
The question that he wanted to ask burned in his mouth—what have you done to me?
"The contraption that we put into you is quite simple really," he continued. "It is a lead box with a sliding door placed inside another box, and situated in your back, just below your spine, between you kidneys. There are two threads—only about two molecules thick—of the melted meteor rock holding the box in place by linking under your ribs." His smile turned almost kindly when he saw the look of terror on Clark's face.
He held up a small remote. It had only two buttons and a dial on it. "If a situation were to arise that you need to be pacified," he said, "such as with the incident earlier today, I simply press the button." Clark flinched, expecting him to press the button as he said the words, but nothing happened.
"It's okay," Sean said. "I think that we can get along. It's your turn now, though."
Clark looked at him expectantly, not sure of what he was supposed to say.
"Tell me everything you know about yourself."
Q
Lana rolled over in her bed, wrapping her arms tighter around herself, and rubbing her hands up and down her arms. She had enough blankets piled on top of her that she could barely breathe, but she still felt so cold.
She closed her eyes and thought of the last time she'd seen him. It had been the day of the trial and she'd sat, clutching Chloe's hand, and watching him. Even if she couldn't be close to him, even if she couldn't tell him how grateful she was that he was risking everything to protect her, she could still watch his lips move as he spoke.
The actual words that he said—that they were as painful as losing the baby was her first hint that she had a problem.
Clark didn't love her. She'd resigned herself to his fact long ago, when he'd broken up with her, and then slowly, while telling herself she loved Lex, she'd let herself love Clark again. She had let herself believe that Clark still loved her.
She sat up in her bed and looked around the apartment. She'd rented the small bachelor apartment in Metropolis soon after the trial had ended and she'd realized that she'd far overstayed her welcome in the room over the Talon. The apartment didn't have a bathtub, so when she needed a good soak she would throw a plastic place mat over the drain and let the hot water fill the few inches that the porcelain surrounding the drain would allow. She would curl up, then, letting the shower run until it was scalding, and then let it continue to fall down, burning her skin, while the water in the bottom slowly drained.
Often, her olive skin would be a deep shade of red before she could convince herself to move again. It seemed to be the only way she could stay warm—the only way she could wash away the feeling of Lex's hands on her hips.
Tonight, though, she didn't head for the shower. She was barely affording rent as it was, and an extra large hydro bill wasn't going to help matters. What she had, though, was an alternative. It had the added advantage of numbing all higher order brain function and leaving her with a pleasant haze of unknowingness.
She poured herself a shot of vodka.
Lois had brought her out drinking the day after the trial. That night, Lois had demonstrated her tank-like ability to hold her alcohol, and Lana had displayed to the noisy party, her inexperience. She had ended up throwing up all over the home-owner's leather couches and into the knocked over bowl of the sub-woofer in their ten thousand dollar sound system.
But the hour or so before that… she had felt wonderful.
She took a second shot—downing it without changing her stoic expression. After her third shot she felt the warm feeling settle in her stomach and put the lid back on the vodka bottle and slid it into the freezer.
Ten minutes later, she was asleep beneath her mountain of blankets, curled into a tight ball, with her hands placed protectively between her thighs.
