for the remainder

part 3




It was around the count of eight that I became aware of...

Pupil shrinking brightness.

The light tore me awake from comforts of anesthesia. Awoken to a dream state, Clark's dream, or his mind, caught in the web of an intrusive, parasitic plant that was currently draining the life from him.

But in this world, there was none of that. The room where my body was, the panicking and desperation surrounding Clark's pale body was gone.

I looked around, trying to gain an idea of where I was, but all I could see were reflections of light, like the world had become a giant, rotating prism. It was beautiful, serene, and awfully quiet.

It was a type of silence you only heard when you were absolutely alone, and felt alone. The world caught in the static inbetween my ears, and I could not even hear my own breath.

But suddenly, in front of me, was a boy. I didn't know how he'd gotten there, nor did his expression say that he knew where I came from either.

But we were both there, looking at each other.

 And then I knew.

It was the same feeling you get when you look at a unfamiliar photo, but spotted the one face you knew. I knew Clark. I had known Clark for a long time. I had never known him as a small child, but I knew that this was him, and I felt his loneliness.

I didn't question too long where I ended up. I only wondered how often Clark dreamed of this place. How often every one of us dreamed of a place we never got the chance to experience.

This was his Kryptonian childhood.

I looked into his light blue eyes, wondering if he knew who I was? I tried to speak to him, but I wasn't sure I could even hear myself.

Clark looked eight or nine, although, I knew he must have been younger than that when Krypton was destroyed. This place looked similar to a version I had experienced before.  There was ice structures and crystal spires circling us much like the Fortress, but above us was a perfect red sphere. We weren't on Earth.

"Chloe," young Clark said, his dark hair neatly laid back from his face. My sense of hearing returned to me.

I sighed in relief, the younger version at least remembering who I was. The parasite hadn't removed his mind completely. I knelt down and held out my hand, "Clark, you have to come with me, okay?"

He looked at me the same as a child would a stranger offering help. "I can't, my parent's are waiting for me." His answer was more of a question, and his mind under a compulsion he couldn't control.

Clark sprinted past me and I found myself chasing after him without a thought of my own.

"Clark!" I yelled, the strange landscape overwhelming my voice. Everything was very empty, lonely, unpopulated. Just a vast landscape of white ice and rock. I wondered if this was what Krypton was really like, or was Clark's imagination limited to what he could only remember?

I panted and slowed my run once I saw there was no where to go. Clark's footprints were the only ones to follow here, and they led me to him. I found him standing outside a ginormous cave. A boy on the verge of escaping deeper into the unknown, but hesitant to take the first step. He looked back at me, and with the same eyes I had known most of my life, Clark asked me to follow him.

Boy Clark ducked into a ice cave, which I crawled after him. I didn't know where he was taking us, but Clark travelled down the path to where he believed he would be reunited with his parents. His young voice cried, echoing through the thick walls of ice and which then traveled back wards to me. He was desperate and anxious, and I questioned why Clark would choose this dream over all others.

I could feel his loss of control as the cave became deeper. The black parasite's tendrils digging deeper and darker into Clark's mind, draining him of his life and his last shred of comfort. He had become a shrinking, insecure child, trapped in a world that was destroyed long before he could remember.

When I reached the end of the cave, I found him huddled in the middle of a large cavern opening. Ice so sheer, and beautiful with the rose sunlight. It was difficult to imagine that Clark could have remembered anything quite like this. The sub-level room glowed in amber, giving the illusion of warmth to a world where it was absent.

"Clark," I said, sitting down on the ice with him, "you have to come with me."


"Why do you keep calling me that?" He said, his nose squinched up, "That's not my name."

Of course, I had forgotten. "Kal, do you remember how you got here?"

"What do you mean? I was born here." His blue eyes pierced into mine.

I sat with him for several moments, realizing I had no real plan to break the news.

"How did you get here?" Clark asked later on, and I realized he might have been wondering it since I materialized. "I don't think my parent's will like you here."

The second statement worried me, "Why do you say that?"

"We don't like visitors. Visitors are dangerous."

Boy Clark's voice shook within the fragile ice dome, and the ice shivered too. I knew then that the parasite had manifested as fear within the dream. Clark was deep in it. So tangled with fear that I wasn't sure how to rip him awake to reality without destroying this fabricated world. And perhaps destroying us in the process.

"Clark, this place is not real. You're asleep right now. You're dreaming."

He looked at me curiously, "Then why wake me? This is a good dream. I'm happy here."

I continued to look at him, processing what all his mind really wanted. This was Clark's good dream.

I looked at him still, trying to understand why he would want to go through this nightmare. Or was it? We both waited in long moments where nothing happened. Clark kneeling, facing the same entrance where we'd crawled from, waiting for, someone who would never be there. Or would they? There was a constant suspense of a dangling hope. I could feel it in the air, in Clark's young voice, in his loyal eyes...

I felt that this was the labyrinth the parasite had chosen for him. Perhaps Clark didn't have a choice where his mind wandered. Perhaps, this was the deepest trap it could find. Using a boy's memory against his longing desire to reunite with his family . Boy Clark would end up waiting here for an eternity or more while his real body rotted on the table where his lost friends celebrated both his day of birth, and death.

I waited with him for several hours, our skin glistening from fresh frost. I found that I felt no cold here. I felt hardly anything. I was a spectator in this world of Clark's. And in this spirit form, I felt almost helpless to help him. I couldn't force him to wake up from this place, he'd have to make that choice on his own.

Clark would turn to me every so often, his alert eyes darting to mine. "They're coming. They promised me."

"I know," I answered him each time, hoping his patience would wear. It didn't. His loyalty was heartbreaking, and his stubborn resistance to me was even harder to bear.

I stood up and walked to one of the ice pillars next to us, and kicked it.  I noticed I was still wearing Lois' bathrobe, and my toes looking up at me.

"What are you doing?"

I shrugged, "I wasn't' sure if that would hurt or not."

Boy Clark squinted at my response, but atleast I had broken the strange spell over him. He seemed to notice that I was not dressed like him. I did not have my white Kryptonian robes, or my winter gear. No, I'd arrived in Lois' hot pink bath robe and clashing blue nail polish.

"Clark," I sat back down next to him, "if this was real, how did I get here?"

He looked confused, but on the verge of answering, but didn't.

I pointed to the monogram on the bathrobe, "You see this? This is Lois' robe. Your wife? My cousin? Don't you remember her? Clark, she's waiting for you to wake up from all of this."

I watched as he closed his eyes, and then rubbed them like I had blown sand in his face.

"I have to stay here," he replied after his internal fit had withered away, and then returned to gaze motionless at the cave's mouth.

"What are you so afraid of?" I reacted a little differently than before. My hands grabbed his shoulders and forced him to face me. I was tired of his deflections, and I was tired of competing with a plant that was draining the remains of him. I couldn't let Clark choose this. I couldn't let him waste anymore time. There was no clock in la la land, and I had no idea how long we had been down there.

"Listen to me," I pressed my fingers into his robe, his small body strange to hold, "I can't let you sit here and rot, and die. Alone. Alone, Clark. There is no one else here, and there is no one else coming to save you..."

I choked up at the idea that I had his only chance. Surely that wasn't true? Was it? I remembered Oliver and Emil were working on something, but who knew... Clark's body was in less than poor shape when I left.

His skin was white.

I felt Boy Clark shiver in my grip, the coldness of his world catching up to him. His lips were blue, and I saw flash of Clark's body on that dinning room table in the apartment. His lips, also blue.

"You're cold," I said, touching his cheek, "the Clark I know never gets cold."

"I'm not Clark." He said, then shivered.

I smiled at him, and my tears fell against it, "Yes, you are. No matter who you think you are, you will always be Clark. I know you better than anyone, better than this parasite does and I'm not letting it take you from us."

I took him in my arms, and held him against me. It was something we had shared for years and years, except, not in recent years. There were days when I desperately longed to be held by someone, to be close to someone like I had been close to Clark, long ago. That type of intimacy had both eluded and scared me for years. Now, looking back, it haunted me.

I held onto him, not knowing what else I should do. Perhaps if I squeezed him hard enough he'd just snap out of it. I held onto Boy Clark until I felt him tremble against me. When I looked at him, his condition had gone south, quicker than I thought was normal. His skin was white. I was losing him.

"No," I shook him when I saw his eyes try to close, "Clark, wake up. Wake up!"

It wasn't working.

I looked above us to see the red sun chasing an invisible path in the sky. I begged for more time, but sensed that the parasite was becoming conscious of my prescence. Perhaps that was it. Maybe the plant was reaching deeper into Clark, its damage advancing even faster.

A wind picked up within the vacuum of the cave, and then I really knew.

It knew I was there.

I scooped Boy Clark into my arms and tried to escape the cave. I tried to run. Anywhere. No where. Somewhere.

As I predicted, the mouth of the cave vanished within seconds, newly developed crystalline structures burying any hope of exit.

I collapsed on top of the crumbled ice with Clark's hands still attached to my collar.

He was dying, and I didn't know how to save him. I cursed all of my intellect and suave skills I had not too long ago when I convinced everyone that this would be a good idea. Chloe always had the solutions, or at least something. I had nothing.

There was nothing here.

I told myself that all I needed was to keep him warm for a few minutes longer. I needed to keep talking to him. Reassuring him. I just needed to buy time until someone else stepped in and figured out a miracle.

The thought that 'this was it' didn't cross  my mind. Well, maybe it had, but I refused to acknowledge it. It just seemed so easy to fight this. All he had to do was wake up. That was it, just wake up. After everything Clark and I had gone through together, I refused to believe that this was the one thing that would defeat Superman.

Nothing would ever defeat Superman.

But Clark?

Was Clark letting it defeat him?

The coldness, I felt it now, creeping up from my toes and into my bones. I wasn't sure how much longer I could do it. I thought I felt a presence within my thoughts, bending my memories of  Clark like a entity tinkering with devils.

I held him for what seemed like an eternity, weighing the meanings of why it had come down to this? Why did this happen to Clark? Why today of all days? Why did I come to the birthday party after swearing to myself that I wouldn't?

After all the questions, I realized it. The part of me that I wanted to share with no one. The part of that both desired and feared, being alone.

 I bent down and pressed my lips to his ear, "Is this what you want? To die alone?"

His lips answered nothing in return.

I realized that I had been talking to myself, and that I was, alone.

I cried.

I cried like I had never let myself cry before. I thought I had wept before, but not like this. Not even at my husbands funeral. Not like this.

I cried over that little boy's body because I knew I would never let Clark die alone.

And as the wind gathered stronger, and more violent against our bodies, the snow buried our skin in white erasure. I didn't know what would come after a dream that you didn't wake up from.

I looked down at Clark, and touched my lips to his forehead. I closed my eyes, "I'm not leaving you."


tbc

go by

21


It was a dark room. It was a temperature controlled, sterilized room. There were shelves of servers and hubs stacked up to the ceiling and wall to wall. Everything had to be kept cool, clean. Even the keyboard was sterilized day to day. The Qwerty letters lit by a cool, blue LED.

 The computer monitors surrounded a single console that resembled a futuristic telecommunication system, the type that looked a head of its time, yet so involved in it's hard wiring that you could stand in awe tracing it's inner framework.

All this equipment left alone, waiting.

Humming.

All of the monitors blank, black, hibernating.

Waiting for the operator.

She arrived and sat behind the keyboard, her gloved hands hovering over the illuminated letters in a pause of thought. Behind her meditative eyes, her mind struggled keeping up with her heart. Both raced at the moment, and had been since Clark had arrived.

Chloe took a deep breath, her fingers committing to the first keystroke, never stopping after that. Her hands danced between commands, functions,  and all the  necessary principles of programming. The boolean she read as clear as print on a newspaper. It was either one, or the other, and nothing different. True read true, and false read not true. It was so much clearer this way, behind the keyboard and a controller of the data.

The numbers, the processors hum kept her mind succinct and clear.  Her heart, however, became a distraction of its own. It ached inside of her chest, preternaturally because of her condition.

With every keystroke, a string of programming relayed across her blank screens, her mind turning on as she warmed up, as the computer's warmed up.

Over a decade, Chloe became well versed in the trade of the computer science. She didn't have to hack into security systems with electromagnets or memory cards anymore. All of that was very analog and prehistoric to her standards now. Anything and everything she wanted was at her fingertips, and at the command of a few key strokes.

At the present moment, what she wanted was information. An explanation. Now that he was awake, speaking...

Alive, and well.

Three days ago, Clark hadn't been so well.

Oliver Queen had retrieved Clark's body from the rubble of another 'Monster' incident in Metropolis. His body, shredded like he was tangled in barbed wire. His neck, crushed.

By witness accounts from Lois and Jimmy, Clark  died moments after...

His body was laid on the lab table that night, flown in by Bruce's helicopter and delivered to her front door.

They gave him the serum.

They administered double the regular dosage this time, with Oliver's approval of course. Oliver's own  motives to keep Clark alive were conflicted, but his eyes had witnessed the havoc laid upon Metropolis that night, and the nights prior. And to Clark's body. They all agreed that any hope to defeat this monster waned by the hour, and they needed a solution.  If Oliver and his team wanted to learn more about the Monster,  they needed him alive.

Clark.

Her motives...

Beyond her computer screens, a partition in the wall receded upwards into the ceiling, revealing a glass wall beyond it, recessed further into the room. Beyond the glass, was a bedroom illuminated by a table lamp. It's Victorian decor juxtaposed strangely against the coldness of Chloe's computer room as she looked upon the other space as if she were staring into one of her screens.

It was Clark's room. The one they had constructed for him. He was sleeping in the bed they provided, his feet sticking out from the edge. She had forgotten how tall he was. Preternaturally tall. And handsome as he slept, even with the scars ridden on his skin. She couldn't look away from his face, but often studied the marred symbols on his chest. They were signs of an old trauma, his affected skin darkened, and raised in pock-like wounds that were stubborn to heal.

She wondered where he had got them from. All of them, so very new to her memory, as the last time she had witnessed him so bare, was nearly ten years ago.

Chloe paused her typing, and stretched the gloves over her fingers. Her programming was nearly complete, only the finishing touches left now.

Her eyes settled on empty portion of the room Clark was sleeping inside.

She always appeared when he was sleeping. Or seemed to be. He never kept the same sleeping patterns, and woke in nightmare nearly hour to hour. This was something that intrigued her, deeply, and she was scared to admit why. He wouldn't humor her, he barely had any words for her. He was such a different Clark now.

Within Clark's room, a fizzle of golden light appeared, the not too recently discovered science of 3D projection working within matrix of quantum electromagnetic particles.

A hologram, of her, but not as herself.

A woman appeared, attractive, friendly, dressed a physician and carrying a clipboard.

Chloe smiled, the woman smiled. All of her movements captured via the camera mounted near her keyboard, tracking her muscle movements and expressions. The results were quite natural, fluid, realistic.

Realistic enough for Clark to interact with, without speculation.

He had been told he was in a specialized rehabilitation center, and was kept in isolation for his own safety. He seemed to accept it readily, although his patience waned. He often paced about the room like a caged animal, sometimes peering into the same glass window Chloe stared back into him. Except his side was a mirror finish, and Clark staring back into himself.

Chloe, her hologram, walked to his bedside, his vitals indicating that he was awakening.

Clark's closed eyes moved beneath his skin. He did not open them.

"Good morning, Clark." Her voice deceptively hidden beneath a modulator, but her inflection was still there.

"I don't want to talk to you anymore," he grumbled, but did not move, "I want to be released."

"Actually," Chloe took a seat in the study chair next to his bed, "I may have good news for you."

Inside of the computer room, Chloe began her network of instrumentation and brought up his medical charts.

Clark sat up, his interest stemmed at this slight promise of release, "Yes?"

"Well, I've shown all of your charts to the other doctors here and they are very pleased with your recovery. Everything seems to be going well."

"So I can leave?"

"Not yet," she explained, "We still have to debrief on what happened that night you were brought to our facility... Our interest is to better understand the... person who did this to you, so we can protect the community from it."

Clark eyed the physician carefully, "What makes you think I know what it is?"

Chloe proceeded just as carefully, "Fragments found buried inside your tissue from the assault, fragments of this organism were matched against several samples of meteor rock found in a place called Smallville, Kansas. The town you grew up in. You also have various, documented cases of run ins of the people who were infected by these rocks. There are also  speculations that you yourself were infected by this type of rock, though now you show no signs of  genetic mutation..."

"Sounds like you know more than I do," Clark stated plainly, his hopes of leaving vanishing along with his semi pleasant demeanor. His shoulders turned inward, the animal appearing again. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

Chloe sighed, audibly, and took a moment to reflect, "Clark, you were reported missing for a decade. Do you have any recounts of what happened to you during this time?"

His eyes stared into the large mirrored wall.

"My staff predicts that you suffered a severe traumatic event, one that has inhibited your memory of it... Do you sometimes suffer memory loss?"

"No," Clark said quietly, eyes glassed over, "I remember everything very clear."

She studied him. It was always this, listless position where Clark detached himself from her help. "Why wont you let me help?"

Clark seemed to ignore her, continuing on, "I remember a place they used to call Belle Reeve. I heard they shut that place down years ago after they found the cure for 'freaks'..." Clark thought, and then laughed to himself, "This place must be the new version."

An overtone of anger rose in her modulated voice, "Belle Reeve was a research facility used to exploit infected--"

"--Exploit infected and use them in experimentation to further the scientific research of a tyrannical billionare," Clark finished for her, rattling off as if he was reading it from a manuscript. He was, literally, since they were the same words Chloe had written in one of her papers. "Lex Luthor. But I guess you're the new version of him, too."

Involuntarily, she rose from her chair.

And for a moment, her image flickered. The technology wasn't perfect, but it was close. It relied on the operator to control its flaws, just as a person's internal will needed to control its desires.

Chloe's anger flared, then calmed.

Clark noticed all of this, his deep eyes soaking in her expressions.

Oliver walked into the computer room, observing from her side. "No answers yet."

Chloe looked at him briefly.

Clark looked at her, her eyes. "Who are you looking at?" He peered at the mirrors, "Who are you people exactly? I want to speak to the other doctors, now."

"Keep working him." Oliver whispered," The, monster hit Metropolis again. Forty dead. We don't have enough resources to fight this thing." With that, Oliver left the room, the smell of fresh blood on his clothes.

Chloe turned back to her screens, to Clark.

The hologram walked between Clark and the mirrors, "We've all seen the movies where the detective interviews the guy in the room with double sided mirrors... You know you're not supposed to know who's on the other side."

"I want to talk to her."

"To who?"

"Chloe," Clark said her name for the first time, "I know she's alive. She's the only one who can help me."


The pain in her chest grew, and expanded into her throat. She suddenly didn't know what to say.

"Chloe Sullivan. She's a infected person, or was. I need to see her. I know you're keeping her here." The desperation in his voice made it crack, ever so slightly that it caused her to stop breathing for the same, shared moment.

She found her breath, "What if you were seeing her now?"

He gritted his teeth, "I've had enough of your games."

Frantically, her fingers moved against her keyboard.

"No games." Her voice, without the modulation filters, said. Slowly, the hologram changed to, herself. A petite, fair headed woman with green eyes and...

Even disguised as a hologram, she felt a little safer on the other side of the mirror. What she was afraid of, she wasn't sure.

Clark stood very still, his anger dissolved with his intrigue. He made no words, his body instead speaking for his mind which desperately wanted to know.

He moved towards her, and touched her face. His fingertips found a surface of light, the disappointing vacuum of empty space and a tingling sensation of electro magnetic waves.

"It's a hologram, Clark. But it's me. I'm here. I've been here--"

He shook his head, "I don't understand..."

Chloe pressed a series of keys again, and her image changed once more.

This time, in the appearance of Zatanna Zatara.

"I've developed many aliases, Clark." Chloe explained, knowing that Clark's reaction to the truth would be volatile, but she had faith that he would understand her reasons.

He stared at Zatanna, the disguise, recognizing that he had been...
Chloe watched as he approached the mirror, towards her.

"You are there, aren't you?" Clark said, anguished and humiliated, "I can't believe you would do this to me, Chloe."

"I had to keep my true identity a secret, Clark. You for one should understand why--"

"You let me think you were dead!" Clark's fist punctuated the statement against the glass. "I searched for you, for answers... I fought.." Suddenly, he buried his fists into his dark hair and pulled out his frustration.

Chloe leaned over her keyboard, her eyes welling up in her confession, "Clark, you went missing for ten years... I didn't know what happened to you! When you came back, I... I wanted to tell you, I practically fought myself everyday not to. I created Zatanna so I could..."

"Why not just tell me?" Clark looked at Zatanna, the only version of Chloe he could see.

"Ask yourself why you choose to keep your identity a secret for so long, Clark. Why you never told me who you really are?" Zatanna walked towards him, her dark hair and eyes nothing like Chloe's. But suddenly, he could see her. He asked himself why he had never tried to touch her before, why he never had gotten the inclination to? But now that he knew she was her... he couldn't resist.

"I was afraid," Clark answered thoughtfully, "I was worried, you wouldn't accept me. You were a different person back then, Chloe. We both were."

In the computer room, she bowed her head.

"You've kept me in this room, you know all my secrets..." Clark stared into his own image in front of him, his chest marred by red slashes in his chest, "You've seen all of my scars. I don't have anything else to hide from you. Why are you keeping me here?"

"I can't, Clark." she cried, tears falling onto her keyboard, "I can't let you leave until--"


"What? Until what?" Clark screamed back, "What do I have to do to make you trust me again?"

"I trust you," Chloe said, "There's security precautions since--"

"I'm still the same Clark. I'm still me, and I'm done hiding from you. I'll tell you exactly who I am, I'm not the one hiding behind smoke and mirrors anymore. You are."

"Clark," Chloe tried to explain, "You aren't the only Kryptonian we are aware of."

He paused, "So you know about Krypton."

Chloe smiled faintly, "I know more than I did ten years ago... I searched for you too." After his disappearance, her uninhibited journalistic powers went in full gear. She found a lot of interesting things about Clark Jerome Kent. Things that made everything else in her life, make sense. And yet with all the mysteries she had uncovered about him, he still remained the most interesting man she had ever met.

"The men who attacked us that night, they were also Kryptonian."

Clark's heart sank, "I'm not like them. Chloe, please..."

"I don't know what to think-- Oliver thought it was best to-"

Clark felt his fists curl uncontrollably, "For once, I'd like you hear me out without any of your friend's opinions of who I am!"

Chloe quieted.

"Ever since you left Smallville and moved to Metropolis, its like I've had to regain your trust. Every time  I have to break through a new barrier with you, I.. I just want you to make up your own mind. Do you trust me?"

Instantly, the hologram fizzled out.

And he was alone.

"Clark," this time it was Oliver's voice over an intercom. Stern, and authoritive. "This session is over."

And after that, a seam opened within the opposite wall, parted, and he was free.

*

Outside the maze of hallways, Clark found himself inside of a English garden, fitting for the room he had been kept in these past days. He wondered where he was, and how he would return home.

He continued walking, bare foot through the grass, only looking back once to see the size of the mansion he walked away from. It was strange, that it had all taken place there. So large and obvious among the trees and grass. Clark figured he had been underground the entire time.

When he turned back around, he was confronted with a dark man in his path. Clark had seen him once before, but it was briefly and on the night he had left for the Phantom Zone.  "I knew Oliver wouldn't just let me go."

"Oliver did let you go," the man replied, walking towards Clark casually but with a tactical belt at his hip, and several tools strapped along it, "he wasn't gaining anything by feeding you like a hamster in a cage."

Clark raised a brow, "So what was the point of all of it? Why keep me at all?"

The man shrugged, "Scientific study. You were officially dead for three hours after you were medivaced from Metropolis to Gotham."

Clark thought a moment.

"After you were revived, we decided it was best to watch you, make sure the serum did its job as it was designed to do. The strange part is that it didn't heal all of your injuries, the older ones. But what can I say, it's a work in progress."

Clark thought a moment, and then began to speak but the other man beat him to it.

"The second half to that answer is, Chloe wanted to keep you. She practically litigated Oliver to keep you here. Convinced him that you would have answers we didn't."

"Maybe," Clark said, watching as the other continued approaching him across the long grass until they were a handshake length away.

He offered his hand, "Bruce Wayne."

Clark, skeptically took it. "Clark Kent."

"Clark," Bruce repeated, "I think more than anything, Oliver kept you here to see if you were a threat to him or not. To all of us."

"Between him and Chloe, I think all of you have been watching me for a very long time. What else is there to prove?"

Bruce looked at him for a long while, "There's always something to prove."

*

M I A

Sorry all, and especially to Fallen Sky for dropping off the grid lately. If ya'll are still interested, I'll keep writing. I fell asleep doing so last night, so I'll be posting soon. 

As always, thanks for motivating me!

Elliott