Damage Control
A/N: Thanks for the feedback! Refreshing and inspiring. BTW, I rewrote the first chapter to clarify a couple things-it's probably shorter than this Author's note so please reread.
Hardcore and Susan- I can't answer your question about the bullet just yet without spoiling the story. It will be answered in a future chapter though. And this happens post-GSA. The story is set near the end of S2 for both shows but before the season-enders: before Clark starts hearing voices, before Chloe and Clark's falling out, but after Lex and Helen are engaged; after Adam's brush with the Tribunal but before Mason's hair turns black. Hehe - had to get him in somewhere. I needed Lex to start off the first round. Don't worry, Clark is not far behind.
Goldstranger- Emma's not the only one going to the hospital….Yep. There's gonna be a lot of risk of exposure ; ) before we finish this story….. yells over to Benthos – you REALLY think we're gonna dig ourselves out of this one?
Redhead- actually, I meant to describe Lex as having knowing eyes, the consequences of growing up too soon, of having the gift of being an excellent judge of character. He really does have intriguing expressions. You'll find out about the rest of the characters in this chapter.
Ace- hey! Hope you like what I do to Brennan and Jesse in this chapter. Clark makes his debut here too. Hmm. Clothes burnt off? Looks around innocently
Iris- Elex? Has potential…but soooo close to the wedding? Then again I have suspicions about Helen after the S2 ender so just maybe…..
Magic- A Shal and Bren relationship does exist, I'm not sure how far to take it because being an equal opportunity writer, I want to play with the others too. No slash, however. Let's see how the story writes itself. There's an awful lot of potential.
Bri, Deb, Chesterz and BlackPanther- thanX for writing me the encouragement. It helps me to buckle down and write.
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It was full dark when the farmer located the crashed VTOL.
He had been headed home from working in the fields when he saw the outline of the small aircraft, flying all too close, hurtle out of the sky above him. He heard the craft's shrill mechanical scream as it passed overhead wobbling and spinning then he heard a deadened metallic thunk followed by muffled thunder. He felt the earth quake beneath him. He headed out at a trot toward the sound, dreading what he might find yet hoping that the occupants might be alive. The small aircraft seemed to have been leveling out its descent when it hit ground, perhaps at that angle, it might have skipped like a flat stone on the surface of the water, perhaps a soft landing, perhaps…. The farmer was too far from the house to run back and call for help. He was already late getting home and he knew that his wife would send their son out to him if she got worried.
After 40 minutes of wandering through a maze of corn by the light of the moon, the farmer finally found himself warily circling the downed craft, looking for an opening. Finding the door, he tugged at it, but it wouldn't open. Grunting with annoyance, he kicked at it.
"Hello! Is anyone in there?" he shouted. He listened but heard nothing. He feared for the lives of the occupants, was afraid at the carnage he'd see. "God help us," he said fervently.
Wishing he had a flashlight, he circled the craft again. The moonlight now outlined the small hole that Emma had crawled out of earlier. He cautiously poked his head through the opening into the blinding darkness of the small compartment. He could smell blood.
"Hello? Anyone in here? Can I help?" Suddenly a pair of golden eyes glowed at him in the darkness. Startled, he quickly pulled back and bumped the back of his head.
"Who are you?" a female voice half-whispered.
"I'm here to help you," the farmer replied, straining to see the owner of the voice. The glowing eyes vanished and he could hear a woman speak softly to someone else further back in the aircraft. He could hear the sound of struggling; the woman, trapped, grunted and growled in frustration as she struggled to free herself.
He started as his teenaged son, Clark, suddenly appeared beside him, offering him a flashlight.
"I just got home. Mom heard the crash and thought you'd need this, Dad" he said.
"Thanks," Jonathan Kent replied, looking up at the starlit heavens. He shined the flashlight into the compartment.
His eyes widened in horror at the sight. A fair-haired woman pinned against a panel and the metal casing of their craft struggled futilely to free herself. She was scratched and disheveled, bleeding and obviously in pain, yet she said nothing of her own pain. A young blond man lay motionless in a pool of blood. A tall, athletically built, dark-haired man, his shirt having been ripped into shreds, stood silently over him. Upon closer look, Jonathan found that the reason the dark-haired man was standing at all was that he had been skewered onto a metal shaft. He was barely conscious and was deathly pale in the flashlight's weak glow. The woman kept urging him to stay awake.
"C'mon Brennan," she pleaded as she extended her hand toward him, straining to touch him but not quite able to reach. "Help is here. Stay awake." The beautiful blond woman turned and fixed her expressive dark eyes on him. "Help us." She said.
Armed with flashlight, Clark discretely widened the opening then he and his father squeezed through and crawled into the Helix. They found themselves in a stuffy closed compartment within a bizarre contortion of metal. The older Kent propped the flashlight up on a ledge bathing the small space in its feeble light.
Clark's eyes widened at the horror before him.
"Jesse…is he dead?" the blond woman asked hesitantly. Jonathan immediately checked pulse of the man lying in the pool of blood.
"Clark, see if you can wake him," Jonathan said grimly, moving on to Brennan. Brennan was pale, his labored breathing irregular. The young man was still conscious but apparently conserving his strength. Jonathan was impressed at the discipline of these young people. Jonathan noted that the metal shaft had punctured the young man's shoulder under the shoulder blade and protruded up under the collarbone. He was still bleeding profusely. He hoped that the lung or pulmonary artery hadn't been pierced.
"Clark, can you remove this without jarring him?"
As he knelt next to Jesse, Clark looked up helplessly at the mangled flesh and the sharp metal protrusion that his father was pointing to. His large green eyes were pensive as he stared at the injured man using his x-ray vision. "He has a fractured rib and collarbone, Dad," he said. Shalimar watched Clark thoughtfully. "I don't see any damage to the lung but it looks like a major vein has been pierced.."
The older Kent nodded silently. Jesse suddenly stirred and groaned.
"Jesse!" Shalimar cried. The blond man's eyes fluttered open and he stared in alarm at the blood he was covered in. He tentatively touched his face and winced as he tried to move. "I'm fine," he grunted. He realized that it was Brennan's blood that he was lying in and rolled over carefully, taking inventory of bodily damage.
"Brennan's hurt badly. He's…" Shalimar's voice broke, "impaled on a metal joist".
Jesse snapped out of the mental fog he was in. Pulling himself up to his feet, he nodded briefly at Jonathan and Clark Kent. "I need you to hold him up. I'm going to phase him off the joist."
"Phase?" Clark asked.
Jesse stared helplessly at Shalimar. "I've got to get him off that joist. We have no choice," he said, "we have to trust them."
"I could help if you could get me out of this," Shalimar replied. Jesse started to walk toward her, but Clark had already reached her.
He exchanged glances with his father. "And we have to trust them so we can save them," he said, indicating the strangers. Clark grasped the panel that was pinning the blond woman and easily pulled it away from her. Shalimar dropped to the floor, rubbing her hip and flexing her arms and legs experimentally to see if anything was broken.
"Thanks," she said to Clark. "You're a pretty strong guy."
Clark nodded, marveling that the panel must have weighed a ton yet the woman seemed relatively unhurt. Focusing her attention on Brennan she continued, "But he could bleed to death if you remove that joist, Jesse."
"Uh, I might be able to cauterize the wound," Clark offered.
"With what, a blow torch?" Shalimar retorted, then immediately regretted her outburst. "I'm sorry…." She said, "Just a little touchy just now." She tried to smile.
"We're trying to help, Miss," Jonathan told her, touching her hand cautiously trying to be reassuring. "My son may be able to help your friend if we can carefully remove the metal from his shoulder. But we have to move quickly."
"I'll phase it out of him," Jesse repeated, but he's gonna gush as soon as he returns to his normal physical state." Clark looked at Jesse questioningly. Jesse looked at Clark. "You gotta just trust me on this. You need to start cauterizing as soon as we have removed Brennan from the joist. Don't worry at how he'll look. Just do it. " He nodded at Brennan and added, "he's like a brother to me."
Clark nodded. "I've never done this before but I'm sure I can do it. It would be a rough job and I might damage another part of his body to access that damaged area, but I can try."
"Don't try. Just do it. Brennan's dying." Shalimar said forcefully standing to the left side of Brennan.
"Miss, you sure you're strong enough to support him?" Jonathan asked. Shalimar shot him a Feral stare and Jonathan backed down.
Jonathan took his place on Brennan's right side. Shalimar explained, "This is all going to happen fast. Jesse's going to dissolve the joist and then we'll be supporting Brennan's weight. We'll let him down onto the floor face up so Clark can work on him."
Clark and his father exchanged glances. Jesse touched the side of the Helix and the metal joist and concentrated. Shalimar watched intently, looking for the moment where the metal would dissolve momentarily into air. "NOW!" she cried, "pull him away now!"
Clark noticed the metal rod protruding from the man's shoulder seemed to dissolve away. Shalimar and Jonathan caught the injured man as he collapsed away from the wall that he had been impaled on. Moments later, they had him lying on the floor, blood was still flowing freely from the gaping hole. Jonathan noticed that the metal girder was still in place, stained with Brennan's blood but no longer transparent. He frowned thoughtfully. Jesse leaned forward, keeping a hand on Brennan's shoulder and gestured Clark to do his work. Clark noticed that the man's shoulder seemed to be transparent, like a ghost. He used his x-ray vision to verify damage, then directed a heat beam into the wound while Jesse kept Brennan's shoulder in an intangible state. Finished after several seconds, Clark looked at Jesse.
"I'm done," he said. The sandy-haired man took a deep breath and the shoulder returned to a solid physical state. Brennan lay there with his eyes closed, unmoving.
"Jesse?" Shalimar was looking at him frantically, trying to hide her anxiety.
"I'm sorry Shal. Might have been too late, I tried to keep the outer layer intangible so he could work on the insides…" Jesse replied, his voice catching. He looked down, hiding the single tear that ran down his cheek. Shalimar patted Brennan's face frantically, touching his hands, trying to make him comfortable.
Eyes glittering with tears, she sniffed, "C'mon you bastard, don't you give up."
"We have to bring him to a hospital," Jonathan told Shalimar.
Shalimar looked worried. "Jesse, can we raise Adam?"
"I've stopped the bleeding for now, M'am," Clark explained, but he'll die if we don't do anything. Shalimar and Jesse exchanged glances.
"Where's Emma?" Jesse asked suddenly.
"Another?" Jonathan exclaimed, looking frantically in the remains of the Helix for another body. Shalimar's eyes glowed eerily again while Clark's eyes glowed red with his super-vision as they glanced around the small compartment. They found traces of footprints leading outside of the craft.
"She's not here." They both said at the same time, startling each other with their strange eyes.
"Clark, if you were in Brennan's shoes, would you want to be in a hospital?" Shalimar asked the angular youth.
Clark regarded her carefully with his green eyes. "No," he replied thoughtfully, "but it's a risk worth taking for my family and for the good I would plan to do if I lived."
Shalimar pursed her lips. The kid seemed to be speaking from experience. She kissed Brennan gently. Reluctant that he should leave her, she touched his face tenderly. Jesse wordlessly put his hand on hers and with tears glimmering in her eyes, nodded at Clark. Clark effortlessly lifted Brennan as if he was a fragile doll, wondering if these people had been altered by the meteor shower; the things he had just witnessed were remarkable. It was no wonder they were so reluctant for their friend to go to the hospital. A moment later, he was gone. The opening into the Helix was much larger. Shalimar blinked.
"Where'd he go?" Jesse asked in wonder. "He was here one second and gone the next!"
"He's taking your friend to the hospital." Jonathan Kent replied. "Are you two ok? Who's Emma? It's a ten-minute walk back to the house but we could bring you to the hospital in my truck."
Torn between her need to be near Brennan and the need to find Emma, the distress in Shalimar's eyes was incredible. "We need to find Emma first," Shalimar replied. "But we would love it if you would give us a ride to the hospital."
"It's dark," Jonathan remarked. "We'll be powerfully lucky if we find your friend in the dark."
"If she's out there, Shalimar will find her." Jesse replied, retrieving a small searchlight from a box in the ruins of the Helix. They ranged far out in the cornfield, calling Emma's name. There was no response. After 20 minutes, Shalimar's voice addressed Jesse's com-link. "I picked up a trail that led to the road, but it ended a couple miles from here. She seems to be able to move, although there are indications that she fell a couple times." Shalimar added in a frustrated voice, "I don't know why we can communicate with each other, but not with Adam."
"Shal, she's most likely in good hands. Probably picked up a ride. I'm just surprised that she hasn't replied on her com-link." Jesse replied into his ring.
"I hope you're right." Shal replied. The three trudged back to the Kent farmhouse in the moonlit darkness.
"As soon as we get in, you get cleaned up a little." Jonathan said. "Martha will call Pete to meet Clark at the hospital with the truck. He lives in town and can get there close enough to Clark's arrival to vouch for him. We can get there in about 20 minutes." Jonathan considered them for a moment. "Do you have family you need to call?"
"Yes sir," Jesse replied.
"Feel free," Jonathan said then added, "Name's Kent, Jonathan Kent."
"Thank you Mr. Kent," Shalimar replied.
