Work Text:
~late November, junior year
If you want me to wait
I would wait for you
If you tell me to stay
I would stay right through
If you don't wanna say
Anything at all
I'm happy wondering
--Good Charlotte, “Wondering”
“What does he mean, ‘events have already been set into motion’?” Jonathan questioned suspiciously, staring at Clark from the other side of the kitchen island.
The teenager shrugged, his frustration evident. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “He’s said it before, though. But he won’t say when this ‘next phase of my journey’ or whatever is going to start—I mean, he’s been hinting at it since summer...”
“Well, what kind of... ‘phase’ do you think it is?” Martha asked, clutching her coffee cup nervously. The last time Clark’s biological father had been talking about his ‘destiny’ and his ‘journey,’ the teenager had ended up running away for two months. She didn’t know if she could cope with Clark disappearing again.
Clark shook his head. “He keeps talking about... ‘preserving the legacy of my race.’” Jonathan and Martha glanced at each other, then back at Clark. They both knew that Jor-El considered them merely temporary guardians for the child he had sent from his home—and that in his opinion, their usefulness had almost come to an end. Clark sighed and added reluctantly, “I think—I think he wants me to... have children.”
His parents’ eyes widened and they both spoke at once. “Well you just tell him that’s out of the question,” Jonathan insisted fiercely, while Martha gasped, “You’re too young! Practically still a child yourself...”
Clark had to smile at that—of course his mother would look at a six-foot-four junior in high school and still see a toddler. “Well, I mean—maybe I’m at the age that they start having kids, back... where I’m from.” He knew his parents didn’t like him to use the “K” word too much. Clark’s expression sobered as he continued, “It gets worse, though. At least I think it does.” Jonathan and Martha shared a look of concern and braced themselves. “He said that my...” Clark paused a little, embarrassed, then pressed on. “...my... mate, who would help preserve the legacy of my race—he said she would be ‘the one my heart has long desired.’”
“’The one your heart has long desired’?” Martha repeated blankly.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Clark replied quickly, “maybe he learned English by reading Lord of the Rings or something. Anyway, I think he has to mean... Lana. And I told him,” he continued rapidly, “I told him that Lana was seeing someone else, and I was seeing someone else, but that’s not really the kind of thing he cares about, so...” Clark tried to remember Jor-El’s exact words. “The thing is, he said that there had been a ‘miscalculation,’ an ‘accident,’ and the results of that had kept my... mate and I apart, but through some... complex series of events we’d been brought back together, and soon we were going to, um, you know...” His cheeks reddened a bit. “...start preserving the race.”
His parents were both staring at him, mystified, so Clark hurriedly went on with the theory he’d developed on his way back from Jor-El’s latest lecture in the caves. “See, I thought maybe he meant Lana’s parents being killed in the meteor shower, which would, you know, mess up the course of her life. Then she started wearing that necklace made of the meteor rock so I couldn’t even get near her without tripping over something. And,” he added with a sigh, “we’ve become... much better friends the last two years, but you could definitely call it ‘complex.’” Jonathan and Martha had to agree to that one, at least.
Clark shook his head, trying not to think of all those times he’d made an utter fool of himself in front of Lana over the years, when he’d been so desperate to be perfect for her. If Jor-El had mentioned this latest “phase” this time last year, Clark would have been thrilled at the prospect of he and his long-time crush finally getting together—thrilled, and freaked, and maybe he would have worked against it anyway so Lana wasn’t forced into anything by alien voodoo, but it would have been exactly what “his heart had long desired.” Now, however... He and Alice had only been dating for about two months, but Clark already felt like his... fixation on Lana, although long-lived and intense, had been juvenile, unrealistic even—Alice was someone he was just so much more comfortable with. But however he felt about the two girls, Clark certainly wasn’t ready to call either of them—or anyone else, for that matter—his “mate” just yet. Trying to explain that to an alien memory implanted in a cave wall, however, was next to impossible.
“Well, um, son,” Jonathan began a bit awkwardly, “I understand that you... are dating Alice now, and maybe you don’t have those same kinds of... feelings for Lana now”—Clark raised his eyebrows to indicate this ought to be obvious—“but I’m not sure why you’d say that was the worst part of Jor-El’s message.”
“Aside from the fact that you’re much too young to be having children,” Martha interjected firmly. Sometimes Clark thought that if his mother would just go down to that cave and face Jor-El, a few things would get straightened out right quick.
“Well, if he thinks that Lana and I are supposed to... get together,” Clark explained worriedly, “to me that means Alice and David have to be... out of the picture. ‘Obstacles are being removed from your path,’” he added, quoting the alien voice. Clark sighed heavily, frowning as he finished, “And that means somebody’s going to get hurt.” From the look on Clark’s face, his parents knew he was taking Jor-El’s words as a physical threat, not just an emotional one.
“Well, Clark...” Jonathan began after a long moment of silence. “I think there isn’t really anything we can do until we know more about what Jor-El has in mind. I mean, the things he says are pretty vague...”
“I think your father’s right, honey,” Martha concurred, much to Clark’s distress. “I just don’t see how Jor-El has the power to make something happen to someone, like Alice or David. He doesn’t even have a ship to control anymore...”
Clark stared at her, then his father, frustrated by their lack of understanding. “But he has me,” he pointed out sharply. “He can control me, make me do what he wants—make me hurt someone.”
“Clark, he can’t control you,” Martha countered, then added uncertainly, “Can he?”
“Well, I don’t know what he can do,” Clark tried to explain, angry that he couldn’t put what he meant into words. “But remember the day I burned that symbol onto the wall of the barn? It was only a few seconds, but—I couldn’t turn the heat vision off, I couldn’t control where it went. If he could somehow—turn that on, even for a second, when I was with Alice—“ Clark was beginning to get the feeling his parents thought he’d spent way too much time brooding over this, but they just didn’t understand how dangerous it could be. “And sometimes—in Metropolis—that scar he gave me would burn—“ Clark rubbed lightly at his t-shirt, still half-expecting the Kryptonian symbol to be etched into his flesh. “What if—what if he did something to me, through that, gave me something that he could—call up when he wanted to?” Clark sighed, leaning back against the counter hopelessly. “Or what if I just get mad at him and do something really stupid on my own?”
That question his parents at least knew how to deal with. Martha was out of her chair in a moment, wrapping her arms around him, and Jonathan reached over to put a hand on his shoulder. “Son, we all do things we regret,” he assured him, “but we can fight this, if we do it together, as a family. Just—don’t go rushing off into anything, okay?” Read—don’t go blowing up spaceships and sending a shockwave across the county without consulting us first, Clark thought darkly—the shockwave that had overturned his parents’ truck, causing his mother’s miscarriage, leading his father to look at him with eyes that saw only the alien, leading Clark to break their hearts further by disappearing for months, leading to them almost losing the family farm... Look how much he’d screwed up their lives without even really using his superpowers. Imagine what damage he could do if he somehow couldn’t control those superpowers.
Clark half-heartedly hugged his mother back, knowing how anxious she became whenever he spoke like that. He knew she sometimes checked on him in the middle of the night, making sure he was still in his bed and supposedly asleep; and if he was ever late coming home from town her relief at seeing him walk through the door again was almost as painful as her concern. That was one reason he hadn’t been telling his parents as much as they would have liked about his most recent “conversations” with his biological father... or some of the thoughts he’d been having over the past several weeks.
His parents thought he was finally settling back down—attending school, hanging out with his friends, dating Alice... but sometimes it seemed as if, despite its name, there was just too much in Smallville: too many people and places he cared about that he could hurt, or that could be hurt because of him, or that could just hurt him. Too many secrets, too many things he had to hide, too many lies to remember--especially which person he had told which lie to. Too many things he thought were important that he couldn’t tell anyone else about, too many things other people got upset about that just didn’t seem important when he found himself lying in the middle of the road at three in the morning, terrified that he’d been “sleep-floating” past the neighbors’ houses. And that was really one of his lesser concerns.
Clark pulled away, gently, and headed for the back door. “Where are you going? Sweetie?” Martha asked, pasting a smile on her face and trying not to sound too worried that he wasn’t coming back.
“Just to the loft,” Clark assured her. “I’ll be back for supper.” She seemed relieved—slightly. He felt guilty as he turned away and left the house, but he told himself he didn’t have any reason to—it wasn’t like he was actually leaving tonight. Necessarily. He just needed some time, alone, to think. About when to leave.
“Clark? Are you up there?” He jerked his head at the sound of a familiar voice cutting through the quiet of the barn. Alice must not have gone to the house first, or his mom probably would have made some excuse about him “not feeling well” and not wanting company.
He thought about getting up and turning on a light for her—darkness was coming faster now, in late November, and with clouds over the sliver of a moon it was nearly pitch black in the barn—but he half-hoped that she might figure he wasn’t around and just leave on her own. It was so much harder to think about leaving when one of the people you cared about was standing right there—and he was afraid, given his mood, that he might be tempted to tell her something that he shouldn’t.
The darkness didn’t seem to discourage her, however, and she climbed the stairs with a surprising amount of confidence. At last he had to move, and make noise, as he grabbed his jacket and yanked it on—it would seem weird enough that he was sitting here in the dark alone, he ought to at least look like he felt the chill in the air. “Is that you, Clark?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he answered. “I’ll get the light.” He snapped on one of the worklamps hung from the ceiling, casting an eerie glow over the loft. Both of them turned their eyes away from the sudden light, although in Clark’s case it was, of course, just for show.
When Alice looked back at him, she frowned in concern, and Clark knew he had to get better at hiding how he really felt—at this moment, anyway, the last thing he wanted to deal with was a girl who demanded to know what was wrong with him.
“Clark?” Here we go, he thought. Let the interrogation begin. “Is anything wrong?”
He started to say no. He really did. Not that she would believe him, of course, and she might say something about how he should be more honest with her. Okay, Alice didn’t usually talk like that, but this would be a good opportunity for her to start. “I can’t tell you,” he finally admitted, surprising himself with an answer that was, technically, quite honest. He braced himself for her reaction—more questions, demands, assurances of trustworthiness and helpfulness, that he had to brush off.
Alice crossed the wooden floor, her hair and clothes blending into the dark background and leaving only her pale face and hands standing out. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his denim-covered shoulder, taking a deep breath like she was filling her lungs with him. She liked to do that, and although it made Clark feel a little... strange, he kind of liked it too. “Okay,” she replied, letting the breath out.
Clark’s arms automatically went around her and his fingers landed on warm skin, courtesy of her low-cut cargo pants and the just-tight-enough t-shirt that was cropped within a quarter-inch of the Smallville High School dress code. “What?” he whispered, startled by her response. His lips were right beside her ear, close enough to smell the shampoo her mother got in bulk at the hair salon.
“I said, okay,” she repeated casually, as if possibly he had asked because he really hadn’t heard her.
They just stood there, silently, for a moment, Clark waiting for her to say something like, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to—but TELL ME ANYWAY!” Or words to that effect. And then when she didn’t say anything at all, he couldn’t stand the silence and wanted desperately to tell her everything. He pulled away quickly and walked to the other side of the table, keeping his back to her.
“Clark?” She was approaching him, reaching for him again, he just knew it, and if she touched him that was it, he’d be powerless.
“I’m thinking of leaving,” he said quickly, and that stopped her in her tracks.
“Leaving Smallville?”
“Yeah. For good, this time.”
“Oh.” She sounded—disappointed. Any second that would turn to anger. “Why?”
The question was posed with curiosity, not shock or frustration, but it was only one word after all. He should snap back and tell her it was none of her business, or start swearing complaints about “this f-----g town” like some of their bitter classmates did, or at least repeat that he couldn’t tell her and suggest she go home. “It’s too dangerous,” Clark replied instead, and for a moment he honestly thought perhaps Jor-El was controlling his actions, because it seemed like someone else had made him say that.
“For you?”
“For everyone. For everyone else. Because of me.” He turned back around to face her in the dim light, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. For a second an expression flashed across her face that Clark couldn’t identify—he would have called it understanding, except of course there was no way Alice could really understand what he meant.
“Where will you go?” It wasn’t exactly the question he had been expecting next. It wasn’t exactly a question he had gotten around to answering for himself, either.
“I don’t know, Metropolis maybe. Some other big city.” Somewhere he could get lost, be anonymous, be whoever he wanted. He didn’t think he’d even need the red K to do it—although if he could find some on short notice it would make things a h—l of a lot easier.
“Can I come with you?”
Clark was taken aback by the suggestion, mostly because it was made so seriously—as if it were a viable possibility, and not just some desperate proposal that was supposed to show him the strength of her affections. “I—“ He was about to say no outright, but staring into those deep blue eyes of hers, it seemed almost reasonable. “No,” he said firmly, turning away to face the darkness of the barn below them. “No, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
She was beside him again, one hand on his arm, another on his back, her head on his shoulder. She was just the right height to do that, without stretching up in some ridiculous pose. “I wish you wouldn’t leave, Clark,” Alice told him quietly, and he was glad he was leaning on the railing because his knees almost buckled. She felt the tremor go through him and slid under his arm until he was leaning more on her than anything else, and he knew he must be crushing her with his weight but she didn’t seem to mind. Alice felt so solid, real, warm, and for a moment he entertained himself with the thought that she wouldn’t break if he leaned harder, that she could literally catch him if he fell, but of course that was impossible—and it would only lead to her being injured. He moved them towards the couch instead, abusing the battered cushions yet again by collapsing on them heavily, and pulled her closer.
Martha didn’t want to crowd her son. She knew he needed time to think. But she could only make herself wait fifteen minutes after supper was ready before starting to look for him—usually Clark came running at the first smell of hot food, and it had been an especially long fifteen minutes. She stepped carefully through the barn, hoping neither of the Kent men had left anything sharp or heavy lying in the middle of the room, and began gingerly climbing the stairs towards the dim light she had seen in the loft opening. “Clark?” she asked, almost afraid to speak in the darkness.
There was no reply, and Martha climbed a little faster, a little less carefully. She told herself to slow down, but she was out of breath by the time she reached the top anyway. When she saw the lump stretched out on the couch she sagged in relief and almost dropped into a nearby chair—until she realized the lump was too big for just one person, even Clark.
Martha crept softly across the loft floor until the occupants of the couch were in a better light for her to study them: Clark, wearing the coat he didn’t need, looking more relaxed than he usually did when she checked on him at night in his own room; and Alice, in those strange clothes Martha just had to shake her head at, fingers clutching Clark’s shirt like he was a rock in a storm. Or maybe it was the other way around, Martha thought, judging from the way her son’s arms were clasped about her waist—the poor girl would be sore when she woke up. It was a wonder she was even breathing, but—and Martha pushed away her shame at actually checking—her chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm, in time with Clark’s. Tears sprung to Martha’s eyes for some reason she couldn’t name—they just looked so... so much like how she wanted them to look. So much like how she wanted her son to look, with someone he cared about. Peaceful and right and...
She shook her head quickly, tightened the jacket around herself, and snuck quietly back down the stairs. At the bottom she paused, then called out more loudly, “Clark? Clark! Are you in here?” There was a creak and a mumble and then a thud and a squeal from upstairs, and Martha remembered with a small smile how narrow that couch was. That was one reason why she and Jonathan had banished it to the barn to begin with. “Clark?” she asked, only partly feigning concern. “Are you alright?”
“Um, yeah... Mom...” he replied, sounding a little sleepy. “S’okay...”
“Dinner’s ready,” she reminded him, not bothering to start up the stairs. She waited a moment, then added innocently, “Should I set an extra place?”
There was a muffled giggle from above her. “Yes, please, Mrs. Kent, if you don’t mind,” Alice replied politely. Martha could just barely hear Clark muttering something and she smiled.
“Not at all, dear,” Martha assured the girl. “Do you need to call your mother and tell her where you are?”
Additional thumps told her that the pair of lead-footed teenagers were making their way down the stairs. “Yes, ma’am, I should probably do that.”
“Alright then,” Martha answered. “Dinner’s ready whenever you are.”