Blast from the Past
Summary: An old friend of Clark's shows up out of the blue asking for his help.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
It was a quiet day for Superman which was good because Clark Kent had a deadline to meet and a story to deliver to Perry as he sits at his desk at the Daily Planet, typing. Therefore he tries to tune out, as much as he can and still be listening for trouble, the ambient noise around him. People pass him by in the usual hustle and bustle of his workplace. Lois may have even stopped by to try and…um, actually, he's not sure what she was droning on about.
As much as he may be attracted to the fiery brunette, he really does need to get this article finished so he might have tuned her out just a bit.
There. Done. Finally. Just a quick final read through to check it's all good…while he also reaches for his coffee…only to knock off his desk a stack of papers that was sitting there.
Clark silently curses. You know for once that wasn't even part of the buffoon act.
Down he goes to pick them up. Just as he finishes…
"Here," a female voice with a polished British accent says.
Clark's brow furrows. That voice is familiar. His eyes move to spot feet in well worn boots, then they travel up some exposed legs. Those shapely legs look familiar too. As his eyes move past the black shorts, he finds the last piece of paper being held out for him. His eyes then flicker upward over the black top that flatters every ample curve of the woman in front of him before he finally comes to the face looking at him with a familiar impish smirk.
A flash of a memory hits him. "Stop thinking so much. Start living. If my parents deaths taught me anything it is to grab hold of every second of life and live it to the full."
"Lara?"
"I know I called you a dork, in jest by the way, but I never imagined you would go with the whole cute adorkable nerd look," the named Lara jokes.
Clark rolls his eyes as he stands up straight. That allows him to look down, since he's taller, at someone he hasn't seen in person since he was 18. Hasn't spoken to her much either lately. His eyes roam over her face. When he first met her, he couldn't help but notice her striking beauty. Time had only enhanced it. "So, what brings the famous 'Tomb Raider' Lara Croft to darken my workplace?"
"Archaeologist," she corrects him.
"Hmm, hmm," he says in disbelieving tones.
Brown eyes narrow dangerously. "Can we talk…in private?" she requests.
Clark quirks an eyebrow. That tone changed quick to serious. "This way," he leads her to towards the elevator.
Across the press pen Lois Lane frowns as she watches Clark just wander off with this strange woman. "Where's Smallville off to?" she asks Jimmy Olsen, who just happened to be standing there.
"Don't know…oh my God!" he whispers in shock as he recognises the woman. "Do you know who that is?!" he asks Lois.
"No. Should I?" she asks back with a clear bite of jealousy in her voice.
"That's Lara Croft!"
"The Tomb Raider?"
"Yeah. Holy smoke is she gorgeous," Jimmy just blurts it out.
"The fact you are my cousin's ex-husband and she still likes you is the only reason I'm not smacking you outside the head Olsen," Lois bluntly advises him before turning her laser-like gaze back to the couple waiting for the elevator. "He's interviewing her right? He managed to bag an interview. That's all it is."
"Are you jealous?" the photographer queries at the brunette reporter's ramblings.
"No! Why would I?" she asks back with too much intensity. "Smallville's love-life ain't any of my concern. I shudder just thinking about it."
"You doth protest too much, Lois. If you like Clark so much you've had plenty of chances to ask him out," he points out.
"Get it straight, Olsen. I don't like Smallville that way."
"No. I guess not. I mean whoever could compete with Superman," he references the well-known fact that Lois is smitten with the alien superhero. For that he gets hit outside the head. "Ow! Hey! Whatever happened to not hitting me?"
"There's a line dumbass," she says in snide tones as he watches Clark and guest disappear into the elevator.
The ride up in the elevator is in silence but it gives Clark a moment to think back on how he first met Lara. It was during his last year in high school. His father, or whatever is left of his father, Jor-El had sent him on this quest to find 3 Kryptonian artefacts that had been left on Earth. The Stones of Power or Knowledge depending on what culture you asked.
The first stone had been in Libya, buried in an ancient tomb and that was where he bumped into Lara…literally as matter of fact. Got dual pistols pointed at him for his troubles.
Even in that moment the first thought that entered his head was 'Geez, she's beautiful'. And this was when he was still dating Lana.
Trust after that didn't take as long as you might think. The tomb was protected even against a being like him, so they needed to work together to survive the place and obtain the first stone.
Afterwards they kept working together to find the other two stones. Became friends. For Clark it became awkward in the sense that Lara is utterly magnetic and compelling, yet he was in a relationship with Lana which admittedly wouldn't survive the year.
There was certainly a point he desired something more than friendship but life got in the way. Clark needed to have his 'training' with Jor-El and Lara had her own obsessions in regard to her parents' fates. Kept in touch semi-regularly until the years passed and the contacts got fewer and further in-between until right this moment when she's just back in his life.
Clark's thoughts are interrupted by the elevator doors open as they reach the roof. The two stop out. "So, what's up?" he asks.
In response Lara begins pacing. Even thought she had the whole flight over from England to think on what to say she's struggling on where to exactly begin. "Alister's dead," she eventually blurts out, anger seething in her voice at the death of her friend.
Clark knows who that is. Her research assistant Alister Fletcher. "I'm sorry. I heard your home was destroyed. Was it…?"
"Yes. No. It's a long story."
Clark waits patiently.
"A lot has happened since we last talked. Amanda's alive and she hates me. Natla's still alive as well. They're working together. They created this…this…copy of me!" she says in disgust and violation. "It killed Alister."
"Lara," Clark says her name so softly it actually makes her stop. "Why don't you take it from the top," he suggests to her because otherwise he's not going to be able to understand.
Lara nods while taking a breath and she lays the whole thing out starting with day she was contacted by Jacqueline Natla and the search for the Atlantean Scion, through meeting Amanda again while she searched for what happened to her mother to her latest quest, the search for Avalon where she believes her mother is and how it led to this; her being here in Metropolis.
Lara places Alister's body down on the ground while her family home burns behind her. At least her tech assistant Zip and family butler Winston are still alive.
"What the hell was that thing?" Zip asks in relation to the doppelganger of Lara.
"I've only seen something like it once before. A doppelganger Natla sent after me years ago…but that one didn't have a mind of its own," Lara replies, recalling her encounter inside the Great Pyramid of Atlantis.
"But how could Natla have sent it if she's Amanda's prisoner?" Winston wonders.
When it comes to Natla Lara trusts nothing to be as it appears. She starts pacing in pent up frustration and rage. "They're a team of sorts now, Amanda and Natla, her pet Atlantean God," her hatred of the two burning in every word spoken.
"What are we going to do?" Zip asks.
Good question. Lara thinks fast. Something she excels at. Evaluating the situation and reacting in an instant if necessary. There is one possibility. An old friend. "After I deal with the authorities I'm heading to Metropolis."
"What?" Zip asks, in disbelief. "Alister's dead and you're taking a trip?!"
"I don't buy that Natla is as helpless as she looks and if I'm going to fight a God, I need to have one on my side!"
Retelling all this has emotionally drained Lara as she sits on the ground her face in her hands. Clark slides down next to her, removing his glasses in the process. He places an arm around her and normally Lara does not let anyone get this close she's too spent to care.
"You realise none of it is your fault, right," he says just to make sure.
"It's Natla. She's the centre of all of it. She hired my father to work for her years ago and then when he died, she came to me. Used me. Manipulated me. Violated me with that bastard clone."
"Yeah. I know that feeling."
Lara looks at him curiously.
"I have a clone too. Lex," he explains.
"I know it's asking a lot. To just show up after so long and ask for your help. I didn't mean to lose touch. Honestly. It just…I got busy."
"I know. I read the articles."
"Read the ones about you too…Superman," she teases.
"Not my idea," he defends himself over the name.
"So, what's the story with you and the reporter?"
Clark gives her a confused look.
"I spent the night with Superman," she gives the title of that first interview he gave, adding all the necessary innuendo.
"It wasn't like that," he insists. "I just decided that if I was going to get people to trust me, they needed to know me. Know what I believe in and stand for. Lois came up with that headline all on her own."
"Do you want it to be like that?"
"Honestly?" She nods. "Maybe but she's kinda infatuated with the Superman packaging over Clark Kent."
"Well don't be so hard on her. It is very pretty packaging."
"Thank you oh so much for your enlightening insight there," he drawls with sarcasm.
Lara manages a tiny smirk before sobering and returning to the business which brought her here. "I won't lie here Clark. I need your help. I don't trust Natla despite her promises to get me to Avalon. Last time we fought I barely managed to beat her and if a whole mountain falling on her can't kill her, I don't know what can. Combine her with Amanda and that abomination…"
Clark cuts her off. "I'll help."
Lara's expression softens immensely. "Thank you," she says gratefully.
"What are friends for," he says almost too easily. "Besides you're not giving yourself enough credit. You defeated a God-Queen by yourself."
"I did didn't I," she boasts.
"I'm assuming you have some sort of plan despite it not being your style," he teases her lightly which earns him an elbow to the ribs.
"First, get Thor's belt and his hammer. By then hopefully Zip will have found Amanda and Natla. Then I make Natla take me to Avalon so I can find my mother and when she betrays me, which she will, you'll be my ace up the sleeve."
"I know Natla's type, Lara. She seems too eager to help you to get to Avalon," he points out something he picked up from her story.
"I know," Lara concedes. Natla is scheming something.
"There's something there she wants?" he speculates.
"Maybe. I don't know. It also doesn't matter. This is my only chance to find my mother."
And Clark is all too aware of how much that means to her. As an orphan himself he understands the desire and urge to find some connection to one's biological family. "Right then. We should get started," he decides as he gets to his feet, dusts himself off and helps Lara off. "Just give me a moment to sell a story to my editor about where I'm going."
Helheim. Avalon. Tartarus. Every culture probably had some name for it. The hellish underworld where damned souls are sent and right now Lara is feeling pretty damned herself. Everything she went through. Most of her life spent searching for this place only to find what is left of her mother as little more than a mindless zombie.
So, she ends it in the hope her mother's soul can find its peace. Afterwards she drops to her knees, emotionally shattered, heartbroken. This could be her lowest ebb…so of course that is when Natla appears with that smug, condescending voice.
"I've lived many times longer than your entire civilisation and I've never seen such delicious irony," the former God-Queen of Atlantis announces her arrival, dressed in white with leathery wings attached to her back. "When I heard what happened to the wife of the great Richard Croft, I knew I could set him on a desperate quest to find what I desired most. Then he betrayed me in Thailand and for that I killed him myself," she says with the necessary malice. "But when you showed up with Thor's gauntlet, I knew I could set you off in your father's footsteps, confident it would lead us to this very spot."
Anger and hate burns in Lara's breast as she hears this. She rises to her feet and takes Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, from her back and into her hands. "You seem to have forgotten what I would be holding," Lara says with cold fury but as she as she moves to strike Natla down her double appears as if from nowhere, rips the mighty weapon from her hand and restrains her easily.
Natla walks right up into Lara's face. "When I made this creature for Amanda, she had no idea my true purpose was to have the means to destroy you at this very moment. The two of you never suspected were mere actors in my play. Such a waste, Lara," she says as she cups the woman's chin. "I gave you the chance to stand with me. To rule beside me as we remade the world, but you spurned me for what? Some fanciful notion of morality? You have no idea the life you denied yourself. Immortality. All the knowledge and power of the ancients could have been yours if only you hadn't lacked the strength to take it," the white-haired woman says sounding truly disappointed.
"Sorry. Genocide wasn't my specialist subject," Lara retorts with spiteful sarcasm. "But you know I am pretty good at poker. Like having an ace in the hole. Now!" she shouts.
Whoosh!
Is the sound before Lara's double is thrown away across the room, they were all standing in.
Even Natla, for all her bravado, takes a few steps back at the sudden appearance of Superman. "You," she says.
"I'll only ask nicely once. Surrender," Superman instructs her with his commanding presence.
Natla recovers her poise. "I've met your kind before, Kryptonian," she says, which genuinely surprises Clark. "I also know you are not as indestructible as you appear!" she roars as she summons a ball of fire into her hand and throws it.
The pain Superman feels tells him this was no mere fireball as it propels him backwards hard. It gives Natla all the time she needs to teleport away.
Lara runs over. "Clark! Are you ok?"
"Felt like magic," he says with a groan as he gets back to his feet. "Where did she go?" he asks, looking around, his eyes scanning for the God-Queen.
"Not certain."
"I've found her," he says before movement catches their attention. Lara's double.
"Go. Stop Natla. I've got this," Lara decides as she picks Mjolnir back up.
"You're sure?"
"I owe her for Alister," she says with vengeance deep in her heart.
Superman looks concerned as to where all this is leading for Lara's soul but the sudden rumbling of the whole place tells him he needs to move. He finds Natla activating some immense machine as he hovers a short distance away from her. "Natla!"
"I'm glad you're here, Kryptonian. Someone should bear witness to my triumph!" Natla rants, almost insanely. "Here we stand at the weakest point of the Midgard serpent, the network of ridges that encircle the Earth on the ocean floor, where the ancient supercontinent of Pangea first broke in two. When this relic unleashes its fury below the very seams of the planet will burst. The Midgard Serpent will rise up and spew poison into the air. All the world will be consumed by fire and ash. Ragnarök! The Seventh Age is upon us!"
"I think I got less beat-up when I fought her," Lara is remarking as she attends to the bruises on Clark's body.
"If that is supposed to make me feel better, your bedside manner needs work," Clark retorts.
Lara's response this time is a little impish grin and the fact she can still manage that after all of this is a positive sign.
The fight was over and they were back in England, at Lara's summer house since the manor was a ruin. As it turned out it wasn't just whatever mystical power Natla possessed that affected Clark. The eitr that permeated the place had a negative effect on his invulnerability. It made it a harder fight that it would normally be. Last he saw of Natla was her plunging into the pool of eitr at the base of the relic after Lara smashed Mjolnir into her. Clark couldn't find her body.
"How are you?" Clark asks her.
"Why? You planning to be my nurse?" she says flirtatiously.
"You know what I'm asking," he tells her. He was not referring to her physical well-being.
Lara looks away as she resoaks the cloth she is using. She had beaten her double. Sent the thing over the abyss. Amanda had even shown up to help fight the other Thralls while Lara concentrated on the clone. Of course, Amanda was only there for personal payback after Natla's inevitable betrayal. Not in the name of a friendship that was long past dead. After that fight Lara had only cared about getting to Clark. "Not as sorry as you probably want me to be," she says, her voice heavy with unresolved emotions.
"I wasn't asking about that either." Though he will get to that. "I was talking about your mother."
Lara swallows hard. She has barely begun to process.
"I know what it means to search for your parents your whole life. To hope and cling on to the possibility that they're alive out there, somewhere, only to find they're dead, along with your planet and entire race."
Lara returns to tending to his wounds. "It hurts," she says in small voice, not looking at him. She's not used to being emotionally exposed and vulnerable. Not like this. She hates it.
"If I could take away your pain I would," he says in sincere tones.
"I just have to console myself with the belief her soul is finally at peace."
Clark raises a hand and gently cups her face. "You don't always need to be strong," he advises her.
"Yes. I do," she argues, looking away from him. "Otherwise…"
"Otherwise?"
"Otherwise…" she starts before stopping and looking at him with eyes dark with desire. "I'd do this," she says, before smashing her lips into his. When they were 18 Lara did develop a crush on him but he had a girlfriend and she wasn't the sort of person who stole men from other women. There was, still is, just something so wholesome about him yet she knows that that is simply a layer. Like most people there's so much more going on under the surface. Something, if life hadn't gotten in the way, she would have explored. Something she could explore now if she wants it.
Fun fact; exploring is basically her job so her response is to deepen the kiss, wrapping her arms around him as he wraps them around her.
"God, you are so beautiful," Clark moans the words out when they break apart enough to satisfy the need to breathe. It is insane just how gorgeous she is. Being around her again these last few days had woken up all his old feelings for her and he is having a hard time keeping any self-control.
"And you haven't even opened the box to see the treasure inside yet," she tells him as she peppers kisses and tiny bites along his neck
"That was a terrible metaphor," he replies as he lifts her onto his lap and feels her shapely backside.
"Uh huh."
"You're sure you want to…"
"Stop thinking so much. Start living."
"Yes, M'Lady Croft."
Is this a terrible idea driven by having her emotions exposed and raw with pain and grief? Possibly but God does Lara want to do right now what she has spent her whole life doing. Travelling, exploring, experiencing new thing, discovering adventure and who knows what happens next. She just has an inkling that this could be her greatest adventure yet.
The End.
Author's Note: Had this strange nostalgia for Tomb Raider recently and it inspired me to write a short story. This is Lara from the Legend timeline and Clark is basically Smallville Clark with a few adjustments like him having to go on an actual quest to find the 3 stones and Jimmy not dying(hated that death). And yes Lois and him not being together, obviously. And yes, Lara is athletic, beautiful and shapely. She is meant to be. Thanks to everyone who previously wrote reviews.