TITLE: Double, Double, Love & Trouble? – Chapter 13
WRITTEN BY: Heather Ferguson (fergus80)
EMAIL: http/webpages. (Jensen)
RATING: PG-13 (NC-17 where applicable will be separate)
SUMMARY: Rewrite from the end of the episode 'Unsafe.'
SPOILERS: Everything!
DISCLAIMER: All Smallville character belong to their respective whatever, the WB, etc. etc.
FEEDBACK: Always makes me smile:)
DEDICATION: To all the fellow Nuns, writers, reviewers, and readers at NWP, and of course Jensen!
RANT: Okay, this one is a little longer. Forgive the whole crouching tiger, hidden dragon thing. I swear… it was the show… not me. ;)
The group of three were walking through the large hallway of a familiar looking temple. The Chinese woman almost seemed to be giving a tour of the place. "During the cultural revolution, the government destroyed most of the ancient temples. But for some reason, they protected this one. Maybe because it's always been shrouded in superstition. Villagers have refused to cross the threshold, fearful that the god will one day return as he promised." She continued to walk, leading the American pair into a worshipping room.
Clark looked around at the paintings and carvings on the walls. He stopped at one, taking longer to look at a growling dragon. But what held his interest were the circular groves in the wall, large enough that a person could step through. Red Kryptonian symbols had been painted on them. His X-ray vision told him there was a statue on the other side.
"Clark, did you find something?"
He turned quickly, "Just more symbols. Why don't you two keep searching around? I'll look more in here."
The woman turned to Lana and pointed, "This way." She gave Clark a curious look, and then left with the woman. "There's another chamber in the east wing."
The two started to walk down another hallway, until they both stopped hearing something ahead, "What was that?" They looked around nervously. Just then many guards rushed around the corner towards them.
"Run, Lana!"
But before she could move, two guards grabbed her, pushing her to her knees. Another man grabed the other woman, and quickly broke her neck, her body falling to the ground. The third guard moved behind Lana with his gun. Slowly he moved the gun up her slightly exposed back, showing her tattoo. He yelled at the other men, and they pull her to her feet, dragging her down the hallway past the dead woman as she screamed and thrashed against them.
He struggled against the guards as they dragged him into the dark room. His wrists put into chains, his shirt ripped from his body. "I don't know anything!" He screamed at them as they secured the chains above his head, his feet barely able to touch the floor. His shoulders wanted to pull out of their sockets as they stretched over his head.
"That is not true," one of the guards said, finally speaking English.
"Listen. I don't know…" He was cut off with a crack of a whip to his side. He let out an unexpected scream of pain. He could feel the trickle of blood already start to travel down his side.
"If you knew nothing, you would not be here." Jason could not argue with that logic. The guard pulled out the map, "What do you know about this?"
"Nothing."
The guard looked at one of his men, and Jason felt a hard blow to the side of his head.
"What. Do. You. Know."
He gave him a hard look. "Nothing." A harder hit came this time, and now he could feel a slightly thick liquid run down the side of his face. He then saw another man move in with a pair of jumper cables towards him. Connecting them to the chains above him.
The main guard picked up the other end that held a drenched sponge. "Now… Where does this map lead?"
Jason's eyes got big as he saw the guard walk towards him with the jumper cable, his eyes darting to the other one turning on the electrical current. "I don't know." He ground out. His eyes closed as the sponge hit him and the current zapped through his body. His mouth and lungs betraying him in a scream of horrible pain.
"Where?" He was asked again. But he didn't have an answer, and again he was rewarded for his silence. The laughter ran through his ears as the searing heat ran through his body.
He was barely conscious when he heard the sound of another person struggling, being tied up next to him. His eyes barely opened to notice the bald man next to him. His brain partially comprehending that he was arguing with them. That they were questioning him too. An image of a flick of a whip. The sound of someone else screaming. The guards concentrating on someone else long enough for his brain and body to start to come back once again.
Blood could be seen through the unbutton shirt, dripping down Lex's chest. His head was bobbing and sweating from the beating. His brain almost unconscious. Giving up on him, the guards turned back to Jason. "What do you know?" he was asked again.
"NOTHING!" he screamed back at the guard. Only to have another one press the electrified sponge to his chest again. His body convulsed with the electricity, as they turned up the voltage.
After what seemed like hours, but was really only moments, the main guard spoke, "Enough." They turned off the electricity and he walked up to Jason. Holding the map and shoving it in Jason's face as his other hand grabbed him by his hair and forced him to look at it. "Tell me where this leads to." He didn't respond to the question and just held the guards eyes coldly. The guard's eyes moved from Lex and then back to Jason. "Do you really think your friend will have such strong will?" He then turned to his guards and they moved the jumper cables to Lex.
Lex's eyes widen, "No." But the sponge hit his chest and he instantly screamed in pain.
The guard yelled at him, "Where is the stone?" But Lex just continued to scream. "Where is the stone! Where is the stone!" He still screamed, and the guard motioned for the other to stop. He shook his head at the two men, "I hope your young friend will have more sense than you."
With a shout in Chinese, two more guards dragged Lana into the room, kicking and screaming in their grasp.
Jason's heart about riped from his chest, his eyes wide. "No! Lana!" Nooooooooo his mind screamed as his body struggled to get free.
"No! Leave her alone!" The man next to him yelled as well.
The guards force her into a metal chair, and strap her arms down.
"Lana!" Jason screamed again, continuing to struggle. "No! No, no!" He couldn't believe she was there. He couldn't believe they had her. This was not supposed to happen.
The guards connected the jumper cables to the arm wrest as she protested, "No, I don't know anything!"
"She has nothing to do with this!" Lex screamed at them.
The guard smiled, "Maybe not."
"Leave her alone!" He yelled at them once again. The guard touched the sponge to Lana's arm and turned up the voltage. "Lana!"
"Noooo!" Jason screamed, his whole body lifting from the floor as he tried to get away.
Lana screamed through her clenched teeth, her body starting to convulse, then almost in un-human speed her head become a blur. All of a sudden she was perfectly still. It seemed as if a soft wind moved through the room blowing at her hair. Her eyes closed, her body perfectly peaceful, she started to chant in Latin. "Mitere meus animam." And with that her eyes burst open. Purple swirling in their depths.
Jason and Lex watched, frightened into pure silence, both knew what had happened.
"Liberate!" she yelled and a flash of purple light flashed through the room knocking the guards unconscious. She broke the binding on her wrists and stood up. She picked up the map from one of the fallen guards and calmly walked over to the two men.
She smiled at the two of them, "Did you really think I would let any harm come to this body I possess?" Her grin got wider, "You two again."
She walked over in front of Jason, "Isobel," he said almost as a question as he looked into her eyes.
Isobel ran Lana's hand, or her hand now, over Jason's face. "You are a resilient lad, aren't you? So earnest, and yet so tragically doomed to pay for the sins of your ancestors." He swallowed at her look, at her statement.
"Lana, if there's any part of you in there…" Lex was cut off as she turned towards him.
"And you, greedy boy." She put her hand around his neck, threatening him. "I can only imagine what mischief you would cause were you to unite the stones of knowledge." She moved away from the two men bound in chains. "Too bad that neither of you could see what was right I front of you all along." She opened the map, showing it too them. "It was never a map." She smiled and turned away from the two of them dangling there as she grabbed a long red robe pulling it on.
The two men tried to free themselves but stopped at the sound of someone coming.
"Clark!" Lex yelled once he recognized him.
Isobel turned around quickly and sent a shot of pure purple energy from her hand towards him. It hit him squarely in the chest and he was flung backwards, landing hard on the floor, unconscious. She walked over towards him, and patted the side of his face. "You put up a better fight last time." With that she stood back up and walked out of the basement.
The two men struggled at the chains, both yelling Clarks name, hoping he would wake up soon. Finally his eyes opened and he got to his feet. Fortunately finding a convenient pair of bolt cutters just sitting out he moved over to the pair.
"Clark, what are you doing here?" Lex asked as Clark cut his chains. His body fell to the floor with a loud grunt.
"I could ask you the same thing." He said as he moved towards Jason.
"How could you put Lana in the middle of this?" He asked as his chains were cut. "I swear, Clark, if anything happens to her…"
Clarks angry voice cut him off, "She's here because you lied to her."
The two men glared at each other as Lex stated, "I get the feeling Lana can handle herself right now."
Jason's jaw clenched, "If Isobel gets her hands on that stone, there's no telling what's gonna happen to Lana."
"Clark, if there's anything you know that we don't…"
He swallowed, "I think I found something." He motioned for them to follow him. Jason rolled his shoulders and picked up his torn shirt, trying to pull it back on over his bruised and battered chest. The two men stumbling after Clark and into the chamber that had the statue, now exposed in the open wall.
Clark stood away from the statue, and pointed towards it. The pair stare and move slowly towards it. "Clark, how did you just stumble on this when my father had this placed searched from top to bottom?"
"What do you want me to say Lex? It's obviously been here a long time."
Lex reached out and touches the statue, and turned back to Clark noticing his distance. "Don't you want to take a look at this?" He got no answer.
Jason looks at statue, his eyes looking over the green stone eyes and then to the embroidery on the jacket covering it. "Hang on…" He moved over to Clark. "Let me see the map." Clark just looked at him blankly for a moment. "Let. Me. See. It."
He sighed and took the map out of his jacket and handed it to him. Jason unfolded it, and moved back to the statue.
"Well?"
He looked from the map back to the statue and shook his head. She was right. "Gus, this isn't a map to the temple. It's a drawing of the temple through the tree." He held the map up to the jacket. The map and the picture on the front were identical. What seemed to be a long river was actually a tree trunk.
"That's why no one could find the stone here. But from this perspective, the background goes on for miles. It could be anywhere."
"What if it's not in the background? Think about it." Clark told them, "The artist would have been standing right where you are. What if it's located there at the base of the tree?"
The two men turned back to the statue in thought, just as a piercing noise filled Clarks ears. His hands covered them from the pain. Seeing the other two looking at the statue he zoomed out of the building.
Her dark hair and long red jacket blew in the wind as she stood at the base of a familiar looking tree trunk. She folded the picture back up and put it away. She opened her left hand and red rose petals slowly fell to the ground as she began to chant in Latin once again.
A Kryptionian symbol appeared in the soil. She waved her hand over it, and the ground began to move and separate. Orange light and smoke moved out of the hole and a small horse like statue was pushed up out of the dirt. She picked it up, staring at it. She then walked towards a bidgrock and quickly brought the statue down onto it hard, shattering it into pieces.
Isobel smiled as she picked up one of the stones of power, and placed it on a red silk handkerchief in the palm of her hand. She stared at it, but then it disappeared.
She turned quickly to see Clark standing there, holding the stone. She shot a bolt of energy at him. He was flung backwards and landed into a nearby bush, dropping the stone. She moved over and picked it up, wrapped it in the silk, and put it in her pocket. She hurried back to the temple, and away from Clark.
As she walked down the hallway a rush of air moved past her and Clark was standing there in front of her. She eyed him angrily, "Nobody has sacrificed as much as I have for these stones."
"They don't belong to you."
"And you think they were meant for you? They were left for nobody. The god of this temple hid them for his return." She held her arms out at her side, and two swords flew to her hands from nearby statues, as she shouted in Latin once again. Bringing the two swords together they glowed in purple and she threw one at Clark. It fliped towards him and stabbed him in the chest.
Clark stumbled backward in shock as he saw his own blood actually dripping down his jacket.
Isobel smiled as he tried to pull the blade from his shoulder. She doesn't give him much time as she leaped towards him, soaring through the air with her other sword raised. Just before she can hit him, he was able to take the other sword out of his shoulder and block her swing with it. He then dodged another attack by moving out of the way and into another hallway.
She followed him, leaping once again. The two swords struck each other. She spun around full circle striking out again. Each time the swords blocked each other. She crouched low and successfully swept his legs out from under him. He fell onto his back, but blocked her next attempt and flung her sword out of her hand and pushed her away.
She is tossed across the room, but rights herself before landing. They rushed towards each other, and this time Clark ripped the pocket of her jacket, the red silk and stone falling to the floor. She panicked as she looked down. Clark reached for it, and she grabbed his hand. A bright flash of energy passed from the stone, through Clark and then into Isobel. The current so intense they both were flung backwards from it in opposite directions. Isobel hit the close by wall, as Clark was flown into another room.
Hearing the thud both men stopped examining the room. Jason looked towards the door, "I'll go…" He left before Lex could budge. He moved into the hallway and saw Lana leaning against the wall. He ran towards her, but stopped as he saw the stone lying on the floor. He paused and then picked it up quickly, hiding it in his jeans pocket. He shook his head and rushed over to her.
Jason was almost ready to wrap his arms around her but decided better of it. Not sure exactly whom would wake up. He touched her arm lightly. "Lana?"
Slowly her eyes opened and she sat up. Confusion was evident in her eyes. "How'd we get away from the guards?"
He smiled back at her, seeing that Isobel was gone.
Clark moved back into the hallway, having heard what she said, "It was Isobel."
Her eyes widened, "What'd I do?"
He pulled his jacket closed to make sure the blood soaked shoulder wouldn't be seen as Lex entered. "Did you find the stone?"
Jason hugged Lana to him, trying not to look at the other two men.
Clark moved over to the red handkerchief, but it was empty, "It's gone."
Jason ignored them, and kissed the top of Lana's head. He looked down at her, "Are you okay?"
She nodded, "Yes. But you…"
He could tell that she was angry with him. "You can yell later. But I think we all need to get some medical help, and get out of here." She nodded in agreement as he gave her another hug, pulling her slowly to her feet.
She smiled wickedly into the embrace as a flash of purple ran through her eyes.
To be continued.
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