For Pete's Sake: Ch. 1
Category: Drama
Time: Pre-"Shattered"
Rating: PG-13 for mile language and adult themes
I wanted to write a story with Pete front and center (hence the title of
this little piece) but of course other Smallville characters appear, too.
More chapters will follow if there's enough interest. Feedback welcome and
appreciated. All Superman characters property of the WB/DC Comics. As I
always say, please don't sue the starving graduate student. (
The night had settled like a dark blanket over Smallville. In Metropolis, three hours to the east, the skyscrapers and neon signs kept the city bright even at midnight, but here in the country there was nothing but the moon and stars to light the autumn sky. And tonight there was no moon.
A car screeched to a halt on the Loeb Bridge, the tires leaving streaks of black rubber on the concrete. The driver's side door opened, and there were sounds of a scuffle as he or she reached back into the interior of the vehicle, emerging with a rolled-up coat. The driver strode to the edge of the bridge and chucked the bundle into the dark water below.
The waterproof jacket didn't sink. Instead it bobbed along in the darkness. With most of the spring and summer rain still dammed up behind Morley Reservoir the Small River was at the lowest it had been all year.
The coat floated downstream on the slow current. Wrapped tightly inside its unwitting occupant snuffled and blinked blurrily up at the sky as it was carried away from all it had ever know.
Clark rolled over and opened his eyes to an orange ceiling.
Orange?
He blinked a few times and then remembered: he was staring up at the ceiling of a tent. The Ross family's old tent to be exact-much loved and much used by the five Ross children.
He pulled himself out of his sleeping bag and shivered slightly. He had slept in his clothes. October in Kansas wasn't exactly Alaska, but the nights could still get pretty darn cold. To warm his blood Clark stood up and stuffed his stocking feet into his boots without bothering to lace them.
Across the tent Pete's sleeping bag was already neatly rolled back up and stowed away, just like their dads had taught them.
"Show-off," Clark grumbled to no one in particular as he bent his six- foot-plus frame down to squeeze through the tent flap.
Pete was feeding sticks to the fire they'd carefully banked the night before and looked up at him with a wide grin.
"Some farm boy you are," he laughed. "It's six a.m. already."
"Give me a break, Pete-I'm on vacation." Clark sniffed the air carefully. "You didn't try to make coffee, did you?"
Pete held up a thermos. "Nah. Lana hooked me up before we left. I just reheated it."
"Well, better reheated Talon coffee than no coffee at all." Clark fished two tin cups out of the camping supplies and held them out for Pete to fill.
This was real camping: he and Pete had packed in everything they needed, and they would pack everything out and try to leave the woods as they had found them. Of course, Clark could have carried in a lot more, but Pete had insisted this be a "powers-free" camping trip.
The boys drank their coffee and debated over what to make for breakfast.
"We could catch some more fish." Clark offered.
"For breakfast? Ugh. Let's make pancakes. All we have to do is add water to the mix."
Clark took another swig of coffee. "No syrup."
Pete rooted around in the backpack of food supplies and produced a plastic container.
"Jam."
When Clark still hesitated Pete waggled the container back and forth.
"It's you mom's. Strawberry."
Clark grinned. "You talked me into it."
They worked in companionable silence. Clark stirred up the pancake batter and set them to fry in an iron skillet while Pete started dismantling the tent.
Clark took a depth breath of the woodsy, moss-scented air and sighed. He wished they could stay out longer, but his folks needed him back on the farm. He knew his parents' didn't begrudge him this forty-eight hour reprieve from daily life-in fact they had insisted on it. But Clark would start feeling guilty if he didn't get home to help with the harvest.
And he already felt guilty enough. The camping trip had been an annual tradition for the Ross and Kent families as far back as Clark could remember. Usually they would go for a week, sometimes longer. The last two summers their folks had let them go on their own.
But this summer Clark hadn't been around to go camping. Instead he'd run off to Metropolis. Granted, he hadn't exactly been in his right mind at the time, but Pete had been the one person he hadn't even attempted to contact.
Pete hadn't said a word about it. He and Clark had picked up right where they'd left off-one of the benefits of being friends with someone for almost twelve years. But Clark still wondered if somewhere, deep down, Pete was angry with him. It was hard to tell with Pete: he always seemed so easy-going.
But had Clark decided not to push things. The boys ate their breakfast in companionable silence, listing to the wind in the trees. They settled the age-old question of who had to do the dishes in their usual way- rock, paper, scissors. And, as usual, Clark lost.
Pete smiled as he handed Clark his sticky plate and cup.
"I like my dishes extra sparkly."
"Shut up," Clark said good-naturedly. "That tent better be down and stowed by the time I'm done, or you're packing it back out of here."
"You just worry about dishpan hands, man, and leave the tent to me," Pete shot back.
Clark gathered up the cooking utensils and walked the dozen or so yards down to the river. It wasn't moving too fast today, but he still trod carefully along the edge where the sand was damp and squishy.
They had chosen to camp just above a bend in the river, and Clark moved a little downstream to find a dry patch of sand. He had just bent down to start scouring the skillet with sand like his father had taught him when he caught sight of something pink. Something was wedged in some brambles a few feet away, where the water was shallow.
He hated to admit it, but anything pink still reminded him of his girlfriend-or ex-girlfriend-or, heck, Clark wasn't exactly sure where the two of them stood now. And, like the situation with Pete, he had only himself to blame.
But he still stood up, brushed off his hands, and walked over to fish whatever it was out of the river. Only before he could reach it, it moved.
Clark jumped several feet back, half-expecting something horrible to come slithering out of the old coat it had obviously made its home. But nothing did.
Instead Clark approached more cautiously, scanning with his x-ray vision what he could now see was a girl's jacket.
"Pete!"
It wasn't an animal. It was human. He could even see what seemed like a ridiculously tiny heart beating quickly inside a tiny ribcage.
"Pete!" He hollered again. Above him several birds, started out of sleep, took flight.
Behind him he could hear Pete's sneakers crunching through the underbrush as he arrived, breathless from running. When he saw Clark standing there he made a face.
"Clark, man, don't yell like that! You gave me a serious 'Deliverance' flashback."
"Pete, there's something alive in there." Clark pointed at the bundle at his feet.
Pete scowled, his dark eyebrows lowering ominously. "Yeah? Like a dog or something? Man, people are such jerks! Old man Bates once tried to drown this whole litter of kittens but my dad caught him."
"No, Pete," Clark felt strangely numb. "It's not a dog, or a cat. I looked at it, and it looks, well.human."
"Human?" Pete stared at him blankly. "What do you mean, 'human'?"
"Human. Like.human."
"Oh, jeez." Pete looked ill. "Is it.alive?"
"Uh huh. I think so."
Pete looked at him like he was an idiot. "Why didn't you say so?" Pete sprang into motion, unhooking the jacket from where it had snagged on the fallen branches and lifting it carefully onto the sand.
"Pete, there's blood on the jacket."
"I see it, Clark." The arms of the jacket had been knotted around the body inside of it, and Pete wrested to untie the wet fabric. A moment later he pulled it loose, and took a cautious look inside. A second later he nodded at Clark.
"It's definitely human. And it looks ok."
Clark hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. "Are you sure?"
"I think so. It's looking back at me like it wants to know how the heck it got here."
Cautiously Clark glanced over his friend's shoulder. The lining of the jacket was silver, and lying against it was a very, very small baby.
It had the smallest arms and legs Clark had ever seen, and its head seemed out of proportion to the rest of its body. It moved its limbs jerkily, like it didn't have control over them yet, but Pete was right: it had fixed its rather unfocused gaze on the two boys.
"Clark, give me your jacket," Pete ordered.
The tone was so unlike his childhood friend that Clark complied without thinking. Pete carefully lifted up the infant and rolled it into Clark brown barn jacket. The baby's head flopped slightly to one side before Pete steadied it.
"This kid is really young, Clark," Pete said softly. "Like, weeks, maybe. It's lucky it didn't die of exposure out here all alone."
"Yeah, lucky," Clark echoed.
The two of them stared at the dark red smears on the outside of the pink jacket for a long moment before Clark spoke again.
"Pete. I don't think that baby got here by accident."
"No, I don't think so either."
"So what do we do?"
"We get the heck out of here before whoever dumped it comes back to finish the job."
"Hang in there, kiddo," Pete crooned softly to the unknown baby. "As soon as Clark gets back the three of us are out of here."
He knew there was no way the baby understood him, but he also had enough nieces and nephews to know that you had to stay calm and speak quietly around infants. Like dogs and bees, they could smell fear.
And if any kid had a reason to smell fear, it was this one.
Clark had insisted on tracking up and down the river a ways, worried that the parents might be around, might be injured, might be waiting for help to arrive.
Pete knew that was wishful thinking, but he let his friend look anyway. Clark could move fast enough that it wouldn't really make a difference, and he'd seemed so freaked out that Pete thought it was better if he was out of the way.
The baby snuffled again, the sound muffled against Pete's sweatshirt. He'd tucked it into his own coat and zipped it up so that only the top of the kid's head showed. All it had had on was a soggy diaper.
Was that why someone had wrapped it in that pink coat? Pete had insisted they leave the coat where they'd found it, but he couldn't help but wonder why, if someone had been trying to get rid of the baby, they hadn't just thrown in into the water by itself.
Unless they'd been trying to get rid of the bloodstained jacket, too.
Nearby a twig snapped, and Pete swung his head around quickly. The forest that had always seemed so welcoming now seemed dark and ominous, and Pete's heart started beating quicker.
"Man, I hate this," he grumbled to his small companion. Pete's mother was a judge, but before that she had been a prosecutor for Lowell County. His parents had always tried to shield Pete and his siblings from the dark side of their mother's job, but Pete had heard enough growing up to know that terrible things could happen even in a bucolic place like Smallville. And that was before the meteor freaks had started showing up.
It was all well and good for Clark-Clark couldn't be hurt. He could move through the world fearlessly, his only risk that of discovery.
Pete couldn't. When Pete hit a car windshield, his bones broke. When he was thrown into walls, he got concussions. Not real heroic, but he still tried to make a difference when and where he could.
He knew Clark did everything he could, but still.he was only one guy.
But this was beyond meteor freaks. Pete still couldn't quite wrap his head around all the horrible events that might have led to the baby being left to die in the river.
He looked down at the small head. The baby, lulled by the warmth of his body, had gone to sleep, but Pete didn't expect that to last for long. He felt an odd surge of protectiveness.
"You've got nothing to worry about now," he promised aloud. "I'll make sure nothing happens to you. You've got my word on it, ok? And like my dad always says, a man's only worth as much as his word."
In his heart, however, Pete silently hoped he could live up to his promise.
Several hundred yards away, a crouching figure held her breath until she was sure the boy hadn't heard her movements. The snapping twig had nearly given away her position.
As a taller, dark-haired boy appeared in the clearing she shook her head. She has been considering rushing the smaller boy, but now the odds were against such a strategy.
She would just have to bide her time until another opportunity presented itself.
And it would. Eventually.
The night had settled like a dark blanket over Smallville. In Metropolis, three hours to the east, the skyscrapers and neon signs kept the city bright even at midnight, but here in the country there was nothing but the moon and stars to light the autumn sky. And tonight there was no moon.
A car screeched to a halt on the Loeb Bridge, the tires leaving streaks of black rubber on the concrete. The driver's side door opened, and there were sounds of a scuffle as he or she reached back into the interior of the vehicle, emerging with a rolled-up coat. The driver strode to the edge of the bridge and chucked the bundle into the dark water below.
The waterproof jacket didn't sink. Instead it bobbed along in the darkness. With most of the spring and summer rain still dammed up behind Morley Reservoir the Small River was at the lowest it had been all year.
The coat floated downstream on the slow current. Wrapped tightly inside its unwitting occupant snuffled and blinked blurrily up at the sky as it was carried away from all it had ever know.
Clark rolled over and opened his eyes to an orange ceiling.
Orange?
He blinked a few times and then remembered: he was staring up at the ceiling of a tent. The Ross family's old tent to be exact-much loved and much used by the five Ross children.
He pulled himself out of his sleeping bag and shivered slightly. He had slept in his clothes. October in Kansas wasn't exactly Alaska, but the nights could still get pretty darn cold. To warm his blood Clark stood up and stuffed his stocking feet into his boots without bothering to lace them.
Across the tent Pete's sleeping bag was already neatly rolled back up and stowed away, just like their dads had taught them.
"Show-off," Clark grumbled to no one in particular as he bent his six- foot-plus frame down to squeeze through the tent flap.
Pete was feeding sticks to the fire they'd carefully banked the night before and looked up at him with a wide grin.
"Some farm boy you are," he laughed. "It's six a.m. already."
"Give me a break, Pete-I'm on vacation." Clark sniffed the air carefully. "You didn't try to make coffee, did you?"
Pete held up a thermos. "Nah. Lana hooked me up before we left. I just reheated it."
"Well, better reheated Talon coffee than no coffee at all." Clark fished two tin cups out of the camping supplies and held them out for Pete to fill.
This was real camping: he and Pete had packed in everything they needed, and they would pack everything out and try to leave the woods as they had found them. Of course, Clark could have carried in a lot more, but Pete had insisted this be a "powers-free" camping trip.
The boys drank their coffee and debated over what to make for breakfast.
"We could catch some more fish." Clark offered.
"For breakfast? Ugh. Let's make pancakes. All we have to do is add water to the mix."
Clark took another swig of coffee. "No syrup."
Pete rooted around in the backpack of food supplies and produced a plastic container.
"Jam."
When Clark still hesitated Pete waggled the container back and forth.
"It's you mom's. Strawberry."
Clark grinned. "You talked me into it."
They worked in companionable silence. Clark stirred up the pancake batter and set them to fry in an iron skillet while Pete started dismantling the tent.
Clark took a depth breath of the woodsy, moss-scented air and sighed. He wished they could stay out longer, but his folks needed him back on the farm. He knew his parents' didn't begrudge him this forty-eight hour reprieve from daily life-in fact they had insisted on it. But Clark would start feeling guilty if he didn't get home to help with the harvest.
And he already felt guilty enough. The camping trip had been an annual tradition for the Ross and Kent families as far back as Clark could remember. Usually they would go for a week, sometimes longer. The last two summers their folks had let them go on their own.
But this summer Clark hadn't been around to go camping. Instead he'd run off to Metropolis. Granted, he hadn't exactly been in his right mind at the time, but Pete had been the one person he hadn't even attempted to contact.
Pete hadn't said a word about it. He and Clark had picked up right where they'd left off-one of the benefits of being friends with someone for almost twelve years. But Clark still wondered if somewhere, deep down, Pete was angry with him. It was hard to tell with Pete: he always seemed so easy-going.
But had Clark decided not to push things. The boys ate their breakfast in companionable silence, listing to the wind in the trees. They settled the age-old question of who had to do the dishes in their usual way- rock, paper, scissors. And, as usual, Clark lost.
Pete smiled as he handed Clark his sticky plate and cup.
"I like my dishes extra sparkly."
"Shut up," Clark said good-naturedly. "That tent better be down and stowed by the time I'm done, or you're packing it back out of here."
"You just worry about dishpan hands, man, and leave the tent to me," Pete shot back.
Clark gathered up the cooking utensils and walked the dozen or so yards down to the river. It wasn't moving too fast today, but he still trod carefully along the edge where the sand was damp and squishy.
They had chosen to camp just above a bend in the river, and Clark moved a little downstream to find a dry patch of sand. He had just bent down to start scouring the skillet with sand like his father had taught him when he caught sight of something pink. Something was wedged in some brambles a few feet away, where the water was shallow.
He hated to admit it, but anything pink still reminded him of his girlfriend-or ex-girlfriend-or, heck, Clark wasn't exactly sure where the two of them stood now. And, like the situation with Pete, he had only himself to blame.
But he still stood up, brushed off his hands, and walked over to fish whatever it was out of the river. Only before he could reach it, it moved.
Clark jumped several feet back, half-expecting something horrible to come slithering out of the old coat it had obviously made its home. But nothing did.
Instead Clark approached more cautiously, scanning with his x-ray vision what he could now see was a girl's jacket.
"Pete!"
It wasn't an animal. It was human. He could even see what seemed like a ridiculously tiny heart beating quickly inside a tiny ribcage.
"Pete!" He hollered again. Above him several birds, started out of sleep, took flight.
Behind him he could hear Pete's sneakers crunching through the underbrush as he arrived, breathless from running. When he saw Clark standing there he made a face.
"Clark, man, don't yell like that! You gave me a serious 'Deliverance' flashback."
"Pete, there's something alive in there." Clark pointed at the bundle at his feet.
Pete scowled, his dark eyebrows lowering ominously. "Yeah? Like a dog or something? Man, people are such jerks! Old man Bates once tried to drown this whole litter of kittens but my dad caught him."
"No, Pete," Clark felt strangely numb. "It's not a dog, or a cat. I looked at it, and it looks, well.human."
"Human?" Pete stared at him blankly. "What do you mean, 'human'?"
"Human. Like.human."
"Oh, jeez." Pete looked ill. "Is it.alive?"
"Uh huh. I think so."
Pete looked at him like he was an idiot. "Why didn't you say so?" Pete sprang into motion, unhooking the jacket from where it had snagged on the fallen branches and lifting it carefully onto the sand.
"Pete, there's blood on the jacket."
"I see it, Clark." The arms of the jacket had been knotted around the body inside of it, and Pete wrested to untie the wet fabric. A moment later he pulled it loose, and took a cautious look inside. A second later he nodded at Clark.
"It's definitely human. And it looks ok."
Clark hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. "Are you sure?"
"I think so. It's looking back at me like it wants to know how the heck it got here."
Cautiously Clark glanced over his friend's shoulder. The lining of the jacket was silver, and lying against it was a very, very small baby.
It had the smallest arms and legs Clark had ever seen, and its head seemed out of proportion to the rest of its body. It moved its limbs jerkily, like it didn't have control over them yet, but Pete was right: it had fixed its rather unfocused gaze on the two boys.
"Clark, give me your jacket," Pete ordered.
The tone was so unlike his childhood friend that Clark complied without thinking. Pete carefully lifted up the infant and rolled it into Clark brown barn jacket. The baby's head flopped slightly to one side before Pete steadied it.
"This kid is really young, Clark," Pete said softly. "Like, weeks, maybe. It's lucky it didn't die of exposure out here all alone."
"Yeah, lucky," Clark echoed.
The two of them stared at the dark red smears on the outside of the pink jacket for a long moment before Clark spoke again.
"Pete. I don't think that baby got here by accident."
"No, I don't think so either."
"So what do we do?"
"We get the heck out of here before whoever dumped it comes back to finish the job."
"Hang in there, kiddo," Pete crooned softly to the unknown baby. "As soon as Clark gets back the three of us are out of here."
He knew there was no way the baby understood him, but he also had enough nieces and nephews to know that you had to stay calm and speak quietly around infants. Like dogs and bees, they could smell fear.
And if any kid had a reason to smell fear, it was this one.
Clark had insisted on tracking up and down the river a ways, worried that the parents might be around, might be injured, might be waiting for help to arrive.
Pete knew that was wishful thinking, but he let his friend look anyway. Clark could move fast enough that it wouldn't really make a difference, and he'd seemed so freaked out that Pete thought it was better if he was out of the way.
The baby snuffled again, the sound muffled against Pete's sweatshirt. He'd tucked it into his own coat and zipped it up so that only the top of the kid's head showed. All it had had on was a soggy diaper.
Was that why someone had wrapped it in that pink coat? Pete had insisted they leave the coat where they'd found it, but he couldn't help but wonder why, if someone had been trying to get rid of the baby, they hadn't just thrown in into the water by itself.
Unless they'd been trying to get rid of the bloodstained jacket, too.
Nearby a twig snapped, and Pete swung his head around quickly. The forest that had always seemed so welcoming now seemed dark and ominous, and Pete's heart started beating quicker.
"Man, I hate this," he grumbled to his small companion. Pete's mother was a judge, but before that she had been a prosecutor for Lowell County. His parents had always tried to shield Pete and his siblings from the dark side of their mother's job, but Pete had heard enough growing up to know that terrible things could happen even in a bucolic place like Smallville. And that was before the meteor freaks had started showing up.
It was all well and good for Clark-Clark couldn't be hurt. He could move through the world fearlessly, his only risk that of discovery.
Pete couldn't. When Pete hit a car windshield, his bones broke. When he was thrown into walls, he got concussions. Not real heroic, but he still tried to make a difference when and where he could.
He knew Clark did everything he could, but still.he was only one guy.
But this was beyond meteor freaks. Pete still couldn't quite wrap his head around all the horrible events that might have led to the baby being left to die in the river.
He looked down at the small head. The baby, lulled by the warmth of his body, had gone to sleep, but Pete didn't expect that to last for long. He felt an odd surge of protectiveness.
"You've got nothing to worry about now," he promised aloud. "I'll make sure nothing happens to you. You've got my word on it, ok? And like my dad always says, a man's only worth as much as his word."
In his heart, however, Pete silently hoped he could live up to his promise.
Several hundred yards away, a crouching figure held her breath until she was sure the boy hadn't heard her movements. The snapping twig had nearly given away her position.
As a taller, dark-haired boy appeared in the clearing she shook her head. She has been considering rushing the smaller boy, but now the odds were against such a strategy.
She would just have to bide her time until another opportunity presented itself.
And it would. Eventually.