Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville or anything that has to do with it. I own Raina and Mark and Jesse, but that's about it. Oh yea, and I own a cute puppy named Snowball. :-D Not that any of you really care.
Authors Note: Yea, I know it took me forever to post but I was on vacation for the last week in Florida, figured it would rain the whole week but anyway, I'm blabbin. Now on to the show!
Raina knew she could use her speed to go back into a civilized town in a matter of minutes, but she would need help finding the place to take Jesse. She could try to take both of them, but that might be difficult and problems could arise. Clark, Raina thought, maybe he would help. Then a dark thought crossed her mind. Of course he wouldn't help. He was the one who cause the pain to these boys, both physically and mentally, to these boys. She turned around to face the entrance of the cave and her breath caught in her throat. There, standing in the entrance was Clark. He seemed much more subdued than last time but one never could be sure. Clark definitely wasn't the same boy she sent into that ship. He was grown up now, and he definitely had some issues he had had to deal with down here; ones that had changed who he was. He started as a sweet innocent little boy and changed into the cold hearted young man she saw before her.
"Clark." Her eyes searched his face for some sort of regret that he had done this to the two boys and their father.
"Raina? It's really you?" He watched her for some sort of indication that she was who she said she was. She smiled, it sounded like the old Clark. Not quite the same as his voice had deepened but the feeling behind those words.
"Yes Clark. It's really me." She walked over to give him a hug, something she had wanted to do since she had seen her ship depart from their planet over 12 years ago. He hesitated, the wall he had built up between anyone he had come in contact with was slowly crumbling, and then he wrapped his arms around her. There was still a lot of pain in his life that would take a while to heal, but Raina coming back; it meant a lot to him.
"What happened to you?" Raina asked pulling over near the front of the cave and sitting down. "You've changed since I saw you last."
"Well what do you expect? I've lived here by myself longer that I ever did with you."
"You have a point there, but what made you say that everyone abandoned you. Didn't anyone ever befriend you here?"
"Be a friend, to me?" He asked skeptically. "Nobody in this race would ever be my friend. When I landed, some radar or something must have spotted me, because when I landed there were tons of humans around me. They were flashing bright lights at me and asking me things I couldn't understand." There was a slight pause then Clark continued. "Why did you leave me Raina? My life went from being almost perfect to totally disastrous."
"Don't you remember Clark? I had no choice. The Katchins would have killed you, had they found you. I couldn't let that happen. You were the single most important thing in my life at the time."
"I remember. I blocked that out for a while because they all told me that you had abandoned me. That you probably would never come back for me, and I should just forget about ever being rescued. I was only five Raina. I believed them. I had no reason not too. Nobody had ever lied to me before about important things. Now that I think about it, they were probably just trying to keep my spirits low so I wouldn't even think about trying to escape."
"Escape? Escape what?"
"They were all afraid of me. I was different then them. I was locked up in a pen that had metal bars in the front. There was a back section that they locked me in for the first couple weeks. People came and stuck needles in my arm; they talked to each other, but never to me. I was just a test subject to them, like a lab rat; something that could be explored, and broken in for their own uses."
Raina's eyes were wide now. Having to endure that, she could see why he had acted like he did toward the three who had come across his path, in the cave. "So how did you get here?"
Clark continued, sounding like someone looking back on a friend's life, instead of his own. "Well after the first few weeks in the room, they let me out into another room with the bars at the front. People came by and looked at me like I couldn't think. They looked at me like someone looks at a cool inanimate object. I was just a possession to them. Little kids came to look at me, to laugh at me and say how human I looked when they 'knew' I was only an animal. I hated it." Raina could see why. Nobody beside her sweet little boy, she had considered him her little boy ever since Clark's father had left him with her, would endure anything like that for even a short amount of time. "I learned their language as crowds of people came by to mock me. I learned not only their language but I learned to hate them. I learned to hate their awe as they gawked in at me. I learned crying just made it worse. I cried the first few weeks in that pen more than anyone could cry in a lifetime. I tried to break out of their when I was seven. I barely bent the bar, but that was enough for them. The people all screamed and ran away. Because of that incident the people who were in charge of me put in bars so strong that I couldn't do a thing to them. This however only made me more determined to get out of their. I just had to be more careful. I stood those people for three more years and all the while my hate for them grew and grew. Finally I was able to break the bars solely in half. As is expected, the people screamed for help, but this time there was no escaping me. A couple of people flew across the ground as I realized my strength. Nobody could stop me now. A few people died that day because of me and I don't regret it even to this day. They deserved it." Clark's anger was beginning to show. How much pent up hatred he had of those people, how they influenced his whole view of the entire race. "After I broke out I didn't know where to go. My plan went as far as breaking out and no further. There was only one thing I knew I wanted. This was to be as far away from any humans as possibly. My journey took me here where I was isolated from everybody. I was lonely. I was so lonely that I almost considered going back but then everything they ever did to me came crashing back upon my memory and I knew there was no way I would ever return. Nobody had ever gone this far out into the wilderness, until now." Clark looked over at the two boys; one of them quietly watched them with frightened eyes.
The silence seemed to stretch on for eternity as Raina searched for the right words. "Clark…" she began. "I understand how you must…"
"You don't understand anything!" Clark yelled scaring Mark. "All them people poking me, seeing if aliens really did exist or if I was some group hallucination." He calmed his voice realizing how loud he was yelling and went on. "You can try to understand but nobody will ever really know what happened to me. All these years I asked myself, why me? Why was I picked to have the abilities that are considered so special? To me they were a curse. They were the reason I was sent here to begin with."
"I was only trying to protect you."
"I know, but it still seems so unfair."
"It was unfair to you. It was unfair you were spotted as an alien right as you landed. If you had landed somewhere unpopulated, and nobody found out about your powers, you would have appeared just like every other human who lives on the planet." There was a pause and Raina continued. "Not every human is mean like that Clark. You just came in contact with the fear those people had of you. They have never seen anyone from another planet before and they were scared of you whether you realized that or not. When we met another alien in space flight over hundreds and hundreds of years ago, our race was scared of them as well. When they were allowed on our planet they were confined to a small area and everyone came and stared at them. Probably in the same way you were stared at by the humans. If you look at the good thing your presence caused you can see that now humans know that there are other people beside themselves in the universe. The only bad thing is when you escaped it probably made them even more afraid of people from other worlds." Raina looked over at the two boys. "We could fix that image of aliens if we helped these two boys out. They never did anything to you. They are just scared because of what you did to them."
Clark's gaze fell on the boys and he nodded. "But what if they get me again, and do stuff to me like before." Clark started to tremble. All that he had been through slipped into his memory and it scared him. Maybe he wasn't cut out to do this after all.
"I won't let anything happen to you Clark. I will be by your side at all times. Nobody will even get close enough to touch you." And so Clark agreed, even through all he had been through, he still trusted Raina. She was like him, only older, and wiser. She was the only person he could trust at this moment in time.