-- Chapter 27 -- Green-Eyed Monster --
Two eggs, a strip of bacon, and toast, not very heart conscious, but it was Jonathan's favorite breakfast. So why was he staring at it like he'd been served the plain oatmeal she encouraged him to eat? "Next time this mood strikes whatever it is, warn me so I can save my culinary efforts," Martha said. "Spit it out Jonathan. Whatever it is, you chewed on it all night, and I'm tired of the moping."
"Am I that transparent?" Jonathan continued to stare at his breakfast without eating. The thought of food, frankly, left him nauseated. "Believe it or not, I'm worried about Lex Luthor. Clark asked me to look after Lex for him before he left. I told him I would, Martha. It wasn't something I was looking forward to, but Lex looked after us instead. He wandered around this town playing shepherd to everything Clark left behind. Last night, I think...no, I know I let Lex down last night."
Martha wrapped her hands around one of Jonathan's and frowned. "I take you went to see Lex last night after he didn't come to dinner. Tell me what happened. I hope you didn't have a fight."
"It wasn't like that," Jonathan said. "I didn't go looking for Lex, and I really didn't pick a fight. He was out at the test plots, drinking. I just tried to get him home."
"It doesn't really sound like Lex, drinking in a field that is. Did he tell you what was wrong?" Martha asked. She'd just known something was wrong when Lex skipped out on dinner. "It was his father, wasn't it?"
Wouldn't it be easy if Lex's problem had been with Lionel? At least Jonathan could have commiserated, advised, been a friend. "We're the problem. Chloe made us the problem. She told him just enough that he knows we know something about Clark."
"Chloe wouldn't...Why would Chloe do something like that?" Martha said. "What does he know?"
Jonathan shook his head. "We lied about Clark. It's all he knows." He needed the truth, and we wouldn't give it to him. "What could we do? Telling everyone the truth would make it impossible for Clark to ever come home again. There wasn't anything else to do. We didn't mean to hurt Lex or anyone. We didn't ask them to look, and neither did Clark."
"It doesn't change the fact that Lex and Chloe and a lot of other people fought for Clark. Lex fought harder than most, and maybe we don't have the right to lie to him," Martha said.
"You said that about Chloe. Are you going to tell me to tell Lex Luthor everything now? Because I can't do that Martha, and I won't let you," Jonathan said. We saved Chloe. Chloe was worth saving... "It wasn't about worth, or who worked hardest, or even who cares about Clark the most. Not telling Lex is about trust. We can't trust him, not really."
"Are you sure this isn't about, Lionel. Lex is not his father," Martha said. "I won't argue with you on this. You gave in on Chloe, and it isn't a good idea to start telling Clark's secret to everyone who misses him, but are you sure?"
Jonathan could see Clark, slouched in his seat on his last night on Earth. He was staring into his father's eyes, asking him for a single favor. I know you don't trust him and you never liked the idea that we were friends... Please look after Lex. You might think he doesn't need it, but he does. I'm the only person I know of that he considers a friend, and he doesn't have any real family.
"I don't know, Martha," Jonathan whispered. "I don't think we can tell him, but I don't know."
One chrome door, arched and tall, stood in the path of Clark Kent, amnesiac alien pilgrim. The Eradicator winced at the image, a repetition of her Clark's first arrival to this government building. This time there would be no ascension or betrayal. At least she wasn't planning any. Clark had no concept of what he was facing, or that he was retracing his own steps.
"Let's go already. I have a lot of questions for this guy, Kal-El," Clark said.
The Eradicator nodded to Clark, and she plugged her hand into the wall terminal just adjacent to the door. "They know we're coming now. Go ahead."
Clark might not realize that he was retracing his steps or how his last visit to this place had ended, but Lola remembered. "Be careful. This is where your brain was scrambled. It is dangerous. Trust no one, except for Kal-El, and be wary of him as well. Who knows what effect ascension wrought on him."
Clark pulled Lola out of his pocket and stared at her. "I'm tired of everyone understanding what's going on except for me. How am I supposed to be careful of someone, when I don't know enough to understand the things you're telling me about him?"
"Go," the Eradicator snapped. "Kal-El is both waiting and listening. You wouldn't want to offend him."
"I just..." Clark's shoulders slumped, and the delicate confidence he'd felt growing in him evaporated. "You know what you're doing. I'm going."
One step removed from the real world, Kal-El watched Clark Kent walk back into the inner chamber of the over council. He watched himself, the person he'd buried, make his way across the empty room. It had been easier to subsist, to forget, with his doppelganger safely tucked away sleeping. Now he had to face Clark, sweet and innocent. Strange how different he could become from the original he'd been copied from in only a few short weeks. God, Clark was so timid and nervous. He looked like a schoolboy in church for the first time – a schoolboy in black leather?
Clark tugged at the sleeve of his shirt and tried not to fidget too much. The room behind the chrome door was big and bright and empty. "Kal-El is here, right?"
The Eradicator didn't respond or proceed beyond the immediate interior of the room. Of course Kal-El was there and listening. The question was, what he was thinking and planning. What if he didn't take a confrontation with himself well? He wasn't the sweet child who began ascension. The experience had changed him. She could tell that much from their limited contact. What if Kal-El chose to harm Clark? Whose command would she abide then?
"I'd like to know who dressed you in that."
After giving the tight faux leather ensemble a glance, Clark turned toward the wall which had spoken. "Me? Uh, Aislinn gave me these clothes. All I had was a hospital dress-thing. Kal-El?"
Laser lights shot out from the walls, dancing together in synchrony. A hologram took form, Kal-El dressed in the formal robes of a Kryptonian. "Yes, I am Kal-El. Who is Aislinn and why was she dressing you?"
"It was my fault," the Eradicator said. "I misplaced Clark for a short time. Aislinn is a service professional from district Kappa."
Kal-El laughed and shook his holographic head at the Eradicator. "You let a prostitute play dress up with innocent little Clark here? I do hope that's all this Aislinn did. What would our mother say?"
Delicately raising his hand, Clark cleared his throat. "You look an awful lot like me, Kal-El, and I thought you were actually here. What's with the hologram?"
"Ascension, the gift that just keeps on giving, you have amnesia, don't you?" Kal-El felt a cold anger swell in him. It wasn't fair that he was trapped in the metal box, isolated from the world, when there was a virtually empty shell standing in front of him. Clark could feel the world, smell it, taste it, breathe it. He could go home, but did he even appreciate how amazing that gift was? "Do you remember anything?"
There was a cold clipped note to Kal-El's questions, and Clark instinctively turned to the Eradicator for guidance, but she only stared back at him. "I don't remember much, but things are coming back. I think they are anyway. I'm not hallucinating anymore." Not hallucinating often anyway... "Are we brothers? Twins maybe?"
Kal-El stared at the empty-amnesiac version of Clark. I want to kill him. I want him to die, for what he has and doesn't deserve. I wonder if the Eradicator would snuff him out if I asked? Almost as though responding to his internal question, the Eradicator moved forward and placed herself in front of Clark. Her expression dared him to try something. She knows how crazy I am. With that realization, the desire to kill vanished. "You're protecting people from me now? You are growing into a regular sentient being... We aren't brothers Clark. I'm a copy of you. What's a good metaphor for my creation? Try this. They took the novel that is Clark Kent, cut the binding holding the pages together and made a perfect copy. You're screwed brain is just a side effect of the process."
Clark stepped around the Eradicator, oblivious to his recent danger. "Why though? I don't understand why they'd want a copy of me. What are we? Where do I belong?"
"Well, I'll let you remember that for yourself. You can't stay here." I might kill you if you do. "The familiarity of Earth can only help your mind reorganize itself. I've summoned Dessa. She will take you to the launching point."
"That's it? You're going to send me away with hardly a word? You remember my life, don't you? Why can't you give it back to me?" Clark reached a hand out, but it only passed through the hologram. "Show me who I am. You don't get to just dismiss me. I'm the original, right? Give me back my life."
"Apparently, you don't understand what the Over Council is, or maybe you don't realize that I'm on it. I get to dismiss you. If I wanted, I could send you to Hell, break you, take your life and end it." Kal-El paused, his anger fading back again. "I've already forgotten who I was. I can't help you figure out who you are, Clark. I suggest you get out, before you get hurt." A side door slid open and the stick-thin woman, Dessa, made her entrance. "Dessa, get Clark out of here. I'm making a deal with the Thelosians to get him home as soon as possible."
This wasn't supposed to go like this. Kal-El wasn't supposed to be a copy of him. He was supposed to be a knowledgeable friend, someone willing and able to help, a brother. The ugly boney woman wrapped a sinewy hand around his arm and pulled him toward the door. If Lola hadn't begun her song and a quiet plea for his silence, Clark wouldn't have let the strange interview end. She seemed scared though. He paused in the doorway. "I don't understand. Who is going to help me? Will I see you again?"
"Every time you look in a mirror, you'll see a shade of me. Make it home and there will be plenty of people trying to help you," Kal-El said. The door slid shut sealing Clark from his immediate view. He passed a long moment of silence with the Eradicator. "I wanted to kill him. The sight of him alone made me homicidal."
"I suspected as much," the Eradicator said. "What will become of him? You can't order me to kill him. I won't carry that command out."
"The desire to kill him passed. Clark will go back to Earth, be a good son to Martha and Jonathan Kent, a good friend to Chloe, Pete, Lex... Lana. I won't have to worry about them. They'll have him."
The Eradicator suspected the heaviness in her chest was pity, a new decidedly unpleasant emotion. "What will become of you?"
"Me? Don't worry about me. I've become an anarchist," Kal-El said. The hologram he'd been maintaining vanished. "Would you like to hear about my plans for the galaxy?"
The pure zeal and joy at the declaration of anarchy reminded the Eradicator of herself at some of her darker moments of free thought. "You do realize that you're insane?" the Eradicator said. A playful grin danced across her lips, and she wished this incarnation of Clark, Kal-El, had a body to touch.
"Yes, I know. Funny isn't it – how far the innocent has fallen."
"Hilarious," the Eradicator replied. "How do I fit into your plans? I'm prepared to serve as always."
Dessa refrained from looking back at the physical remains of Kal-El. He seemed relatively stable, a normal Kryptonian. Why had the transfer resulted in such an unstable incarnation for the Over Council? Maybe it was his youth. An adolescent had never been ascended before. Procedure said to give Kal-El time. Time would fade all wounds, all anger, even a bit of insanity. At least that was the theory. "I suspect Kal-El is trading his vote on the proposed Intragalactic Trade Route for this trip. The Thelosians hold a monopoly on instantaneous space travel and they aren't much for sharing."
"Is it safe? Where is he sending me? What is Earth like and who should I look for there?" Clark felt a distinct discomfort, staring at Dessa and her yellow snake eyes in her hollow pale zombie face. A flash, a memory, filled Clark's mind. Dessa was crouched over him smearing something cool and sticky across his chest. He couldn't understand the calm clipped words coming out the memory's mouth.
"Of course it's safe," Dessa snapped. "Wait here and when things have been arranged a technician will come for you, to send you home."
"I met you before, didn't I?" Clark wrapped his arms around his chest. "Can't you tell me more about who I am and where I'm going?"
Dessa felt a twinge of pity in her chest. "We met once, but I didn't know you. I can't help you. I can't even help myself. You will be well on Earth. You were well and balanced and safe there for many years. The rest you will have to figure out for yourself."
