Two days. Arthur Curry knew that his report that it had been two days since Claire Branigan had gotten out of the small cabana-like structure where they had set her up to stay would not be warmly received. If she had shown any signs of accepting her departure from Metropolis, they seemed to be gone now. The woman was despondent, and Arthur felt comfortable concluding that she hadn't spoken a word since they'd arrived to the small sanctuary island a good way from the coast of the island of Saint Lucia.
The first day was understandable. The second was questionable. As much as he admittedly felt a pang of pity for the girl, who was only here at all because she had made a very brave sacrifice, Arthur had also not been tasked with standing idly by as she wasted away. He had given her two days to grieve.
Now it was time for her to act. Bruce Wayne and the others had sent him to accompany her to this island with sufficient provisions, and Arthur carried with him a sleek wetsuit - more for her comfort than anything else, he presumed. He walked into her small cabana and tossed it to her when he spotted her sitting at the edge of her bed. Somewhat awkwardly, she caught the garment and looked back at Arthur with confusion.
"Get changed," he said coarsely before walking out and closing the curtain that served as her front door.
Reluctantly, Claire looked down at the wetsuit and gently sighed. She supposed it was unavoidable. She hadn't come here to go on a vacation and she knew that eventually, she would need to do something - but it didn't mean she was happy about it. She gently slipped off her shirt, sparing a glance at her own torso where the impact of being healed by the Mother Box had taken the most noticeable effect.
The tattoo on her ribcage, previously in black ink, was now metallic much like Victor's limbs - it was warm to the touch, and because the lines were so thin, hardly felt different than her own skin. To Claire, however, it was an indelible mark of a choice that could never be unmade. She quickly pulled the wetsuit on over her torso, determined not to look at the mark for longer than she needed to. For so long, that tattoo had meant something - it had been a reminder of everything she had pushed herself to be. Now, it was only a symbol of everything she was forced to be. It was a mark of powerlessness.
Finally, with her arms crossed over herself, Claire stepped out of the cabana to where Arthur stood facing the water's edge. He glanced back over his shoulder and nodded for her to approach. "Get in," he said, nodding in the direction of the water as she came within earshot without him having to speak louder than he would have wanted to. Claire blinked incredulously.
"I don't swim."
"You do now."
Claire stood at the water's edge, grimacing into the shallows with her arms crossed over her chest. It was beautiful here - she was sure that she had never seen waters so clear or breathed air so fresh - but it didn't change the fact that this was a place she didn't think she even belonged in.
"No one told me -"
"They told you that you'd learn to use your abilities here, and you will," Arthur said sternly, leaving no room for negotiation. "The first step is to understand that there is more to strength than moving mountains with your bare hands."
"I can do that?"
"I don't know, can you?" he asked, his expression growing only more stony the more Claire insisted on interrupting. "In order for you to learn how to use your strength, you have to realize that it is not just in your hands. Your strength changes the way you move through the world around you. You have to keep control. So..."
His voice trailed off, and he hoisted Claire up off the ground with relative ease, practically throwing her forward into the water where the shallows dropped off into deeper seas, the yelp of surprise she attempted to let out cut off by the fact that she hit the water. He swam in after her and caught up to her treading water with a very sour expression.
"What the hell was that?"
"The beginning of your training," Arthur said, paying no heed to her annoyance at having been literally thrown head first into her new training. "Now, try to keep up."
Before she could protest, he had submerged himself underwater and swam off, leaving Claire to try and follow.
It was a clumsy effort at first - he had not been joking when he'd said that her every movement would feel different now. Every stroke and kick prepared her a little farther than she'd expected in the clear waters, every turn was more awkward than it perhaps ought to have been. The most surreal realization, however, was that she was not feeling tired in the least and only needed to stop for the purposes of getting air at the surface. This, however, was a major advantage that Arthur Curry had on her. It dawned on her that he was going easy on her, and this realization caused a strange sense of agitation to stir inside her. She didn't want pity. She didn't want people to go on easier on her. When she got back under the water, still flailing awkwardly and unable to control her movements as well as she wanted to, she also found herself moving more consciously - more purposefully.
After a good while, Claire felt a shift in the way she moved her limbs, the way every shift in the current seemed to elicit a single response from her entire body rather than from each part individually. The fact remained, however, that she had fallen behind Arthur, following only vague trails of bubbles left in his wake and hoping that she caught up with him as she went further and further out to sea. Claire was finally beginning to feel the fatigue in her arms and legs, much later than she knew she should have, when she arrived at a sand bar a good way out into the open ocean.
Claire allowed herself to rest on the damp, clean sand, taking in deep breaths of the light and salty air in hungry gulps. It was a few moments before somewhere along the beach, she realized that she could hear other voices speaking. She got to her feet and walked towards the sound, creeping quietly to see if this was where Arthur Curry had ended up.
"You brought one of them this close to our home, Arthur? To our kingdom?" a female voice asked with evident anger. "If you want to continue being town between two worlds, that is your choice, but you have no right to put our home at risk because you can't decide -"
"The girl is no risk," Arthur said sternly. Claire crept closer to the sound of the voices, looking over a jutted out rock hesitantly to see Arthur Curry speaking with a tall blonde woman whose face, while beautiful, was so severely displeased that Claire recoiled slightly at the sight of her. When the woman's gaze flitted directly towards Claire, however, she found herself wide-eyed, holding her breath in suspense until the woman spoke again.
"Come closer," the woman said to Claire, who sheepishly complied and walked over until she was a short distance away from Arthur and the woman. "Do you know who I am?"
"N-no, ma'am," Claire stammered, immediately regretting sounding so terrified and vulnerable. Wasn't that the first rule of these kinds of interactions? Never show your weaknesses. The response, however, seemed to somehow placate the woman who reached out and placed a hand with a slight grip on Claire's shoulder.
"My name is Mera. Queen of Atlantis," she said simply. "And you are dangerously near my home."
"Shit," Claire said, her eyes widening even more. "I am so sorry, Ma'am. Your Highness. I'm definitely not here to cause any trouble, I'm just here because - because -"
It dawned on Claire that she wasn't quite sure why she was here at all. To learn how to control powers she didn't even want? Would that even be an acceptable answer? Surely, Claire convinced herself, it was far too much information to provided someone she had only just met, especially when that someone was royalty who most likely had much bigger things to worry about.
"Surely you're far from your own home," Mera interrupted, seeing Claire's inability to easily answer the question. "And you seem... afraid."
"I think I just naturally look this terrified when I have no idea what's going on," Claire said with a nervous laugh. It was awful, she decided, how undignified she looked compared to queen of an entire kingdom. It seemed distant and foreign now to think Lex had convinced her she was some kind of queen in Metropolis when really, she was still the little urchin from the South Side that she'd always been. Strangely, however, this too seemed to bring Mera some level of appeasement. She glanced at Arthur with a slightly softened expression, giving him a slight nod.
"Teach her well," Mera said simply as she removed her hand from Claire's shoulder. "And keep her where she belongs. She may not be a threat, but Atlantis does not belong to her kind."
And before Claire could offer any reassurance that she had no desire to encroach upon anyone else's home - that she had practically had to be pried kicking and screaming from her own - Mera had already returned into the sea, out of sight.
"You're not a very fast swimmer," Arthur pointed out as thought the exchange hadn't happened at all. Claire retorted with a slight roll of her eyes.
"You're lucky I passed for a swimmer at all."
At this, Arthur's expression, like Mera's, seemed to soften a bit - not into a smile, but no longer quite as intense of a glare. "You'll learn."
"Dave, Dave, Dave," Lex said into the phone receiver he had perched against his shoulder, steadied by his cheek as he entered an authorization code into the keyboard in front of him before propping his feet up. He looked up into the screen, the face illuminated by the bluish tinge of the computer running the startup commands. "I take it you got the plans I sent you?"
"Arrived last night, Mister Luthor."
"Perfect," Lex said in a near-chirp. "I was worried I'd need to try sending them to you by dolphin, and I don't fancy exploiting sea animals. You saw Blackfish, didn't you?" Lex chuckled to himself, though he paused when he noted after a couple of seconds that David did not seem to be as amused. Some people, Lex realized, were simply all business... and that was fine by him. "So, do you think you can meet those specs? I have very particular needs for this piece of technology."
"It'll take time," David spoke over the phone. "But I think I can design what you're looking for. You just need to have to facilities to manufacture it."
"Oh, trust me," Lex said with a smirk, looking up into the bluish light of the screen as the plans he had been working on loaded up. "If you can dream it, I can build it."
And with no further comment, Lex hung up the phone and slid it away across the metal table of his control room - the inner sanctum of computers and plans where he had taken Claire not long ago.
But Lex sneered slightly. He could think about her now. He couldn't wonder, because wondering would make him weak and weakness was the last thing he could afford. With a little more force than necessary, he clicked on a new file, which pulled up a scan of an article from the day's Daily Planet.
The Planet Welcomes Back Clark Kent.
No, Lex decided with a bitter sneer. Welcoming back Clark Kent was the last thing this planet was going to do.
A/N
After this chapter, there's going to be a short time jump - nothing extreme, but enough so we get to very different, very interesting (at least, to me) place in the story where our new arc can really begin! And yes, we're going to be back in Metropolis soon. Just not yet! We have a little more building to do.
As always, I want to thank everyone for all of their kind words in their messages and reviews! Please now that I really do appreciate you guys pushing me to post more! It actually really helps me stay motivated, and I truly am thankful that all of you are here cheering me on! For those who are curious, my baby's going to be a boy and I'm due in March, so I'm going to try and keep a somewhat steady flow of updates at least until that time. As always, I welcome all of your feedback and suggestions for things you want to see happen in the story. Until next time, cheers!