Life in the woods was dull but safe. Clark didn’t mind it too much, since Kara liked mating and let him mate with her every night, sometimes in the morning too, as long as they were outside where they couldn’t break the new bed Kara had fashioned from a tree she’d torn down. The bed wasn’t padded like the first one. It was just a wooden slab, but neither of them minded it. It was big, and roomy enough for them to roll around on.
Every day Clark listened to the water at the nearby lake, but people had stopped coming. He knew it was because most people found the weather too cold, though Clark wasn’t bothered by any of the temperature changes. Hot or cold, it didn’t matter to him, and it didn’t matter to Kara either.
At that moment she was gone, having put on her clothes and flown away. He’d watched her rise into the sky and felt a spark of jealousy. He was good at mating. Why couldn’t he be good at flying too? How come she could do it, and he couldn’t? He could jump really high. High enough to see the entire town, rising into the clouds, only to fall back down to earth no matter how hard he tried to stay up. Kara had caught him at it and scolded him, saying he may have been spotted by the bad people. When he’d pointed out that she could be spotted too, she’d reminded him that he could only go up and down, jumping, while she could move around through the air faster than anything the bad people could fly in to catch her.
Though he’d promised to stay inside during the day, Clark had been drawn outdoors. The air was really cold, which felt kind of good on his bare skin, but white things were falling from the sky, and they had accumulated on the ground. Kara had called it snow, and he decided he liked it. It was pretty, and he could ball it up in his hands into little balls that he could throw at the trees.
But the lake is what really called to him. He’d wanted to see it for a long time, but Kara was never interested in going, saying it was too easy for someone to come along and spot them. Now that she was gone, he decided he could go see the lake for himself. If she didn’t like it, then she could yell about it later. He took off running, loving the feel of the wind as it moved over his skin, and enjoying the feel of his muscles working. The only exercise he got was mating with Kara, but that couldn’t begin to compare to running through the forest, darting through the trees at super speed.
A second later, perhaps less, he arrived at the edge of the trees lining the lake. It was perfectly deserted of human life, though he did spot some animals and fish with what he called his funny-vision. Approaching the end of the dock, which went out a considerable distance into the water, Clark used his funny vision to peer into the depths. The water was deep, and dark, but there seemed to be an entire new world beneath the surface of the water.
Using less effort behind the pull, Clark started to clumsily swim, pulling his hands and instinctively kicking his feet. Soon he was gliding through the water, watching vistas of moving grass, valleys, and populations of fish move below him. He traveled fast at first, wishing to see how big the lake was, and it was considerably large, and then began to slow down, taking his time to enjoy the view. It was like flying, only under water and not quite as much a feeling of freedom. It wasn’t as exhilarating as when Kara swooped and dove through the air, holding him tight, but it was wonderful in its own way. He wondered if Kara would enjoy it as much as he did.
He was on his third round when he heard it. A voice calling his name. It sounded strange and indistinct under water. Still, he almost regretted his disobedience to Kara’s wishes. She would yell for sure, and be angry, and possibly refuse to mate tonight. He swam fast to the dock where the voice came from, and poked his head out of the water to look.
It wasn’t Kara.
A woman with blond hair stood on the finger dock looking at him in shock and relief. He knew her. He’d briefly remembered her face in the bad place, but he didn’t recall her name.
“Clark !”
“Hi,” he said cautiously. Kara had told him to trust no one, that they didn’t know who would or would not be from the bad place. She’d told him to be especially mistrustful of people who knew their names, because only the bad people knew their names. This woman, however, didn’t seem bad to him.
“Why are you crying?” Clark asked.
“Clark , where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you! We all have.”
Uh-oh, Clark thought. She had to be from the bad place, since people from the bad place would be searching for them.
“You’re from the bad place, aren’t you?” Clark said.
“Bad place?” the woman said. “Clark its, me, Chloe. Don’t you know me?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“What happened?” Chloe asked, and she had such a look of concern on her face for him that he felt he could trust her. “Clark , what happened to you? Where is this bad place?”
“I forgot,” he said. “I’m supposed to wear clothes around other people. Wait here.”
He ran back to the cabin, hurriedly put some clothes on, and came back. The woman didn’t look at all surprised that he had been able to run home, change, and return to her in under five seconds. She reached for him, and he backed away, but the look in her eyes told him to trust her. She reached for him again, and then hugged him.
“Are you trying to mate with me?” he asked.
“What?”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to mate with anyone besides Kara. She might get angry.”
The woman looked up at him, her eyes wide with shock. “Clark , have you been…mating…with Kara?”
Before Clark could answer the woman was ripped from his arms and thrown violently through the air where she landed on her neck at a bad angle hundreds of feet away. Kara stood glaring at her fallen, crumpled form.
“Chloe!” Clark shouted. He ran to her side, but her eyes were wide and unseeing, her heart had stopped beating. Clark straightened out her body and looked up at Kara in a mixture of anger and fear. “You broke her!”
“She’s from the bad place, Clark !”
“No she wasn’t! She was different.”
“You can’t believe her lies. You can only believe me.”
“She was good. I remember her from before!”
Kara hesitated at that. “You do?”
“Not very well, but I remember her face. Her name was Chloe.”
“I know, I’ve met her before.”
“Then why did you kill her?”
“I don’t trust her. You can’t trust her either. It’s better this way.”
Kara held out a hand. Clark looked at it and hesitated. Could Kara break him too?
“Kal-El, come with me,” she said.
“Kal-El?”
“I meant Clark ,” she corrected. “Come home. I have food, all your favorites. And we’ll mate. It’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want to mate anymore. You killed a weak human. She couldn’t have hurt either one of us!”
“Clark —”
“And I’m not hungry!” Leaving Chloe’s body on the ground, Clark ran from Kara as fast as he could, heading into the forest and hoping Kara would just leave him alone.
****
Chloe awoke with pain in her neck like she’d never known, and Oliver Queen standing over her, back-lit by the headlights of his car. She was still at the lake, her body cold and stiff and covered under three inches of snow. Twisting her head, she felt several things pop painfully back into place.
“What happened to you?” Oliver said. “You wouldn’t answer your phone, and the GPS said your car was parked here for the past ten hours.”
“Kara happened to me,” said Chloe. “I found Clark swimming in the lake.”
“What made you come up here?”
“I was driving down the road when I saw someone in the air.”
“Flying?”
“No, jumping, I think. Even from a distance I knew it was him, so I sped up here and called for him. He came to me almost at once, but he had no idea who I am. We were talking when Kara came along and threw me. I landed on my neck.”
“Kara killed you? That’s so hard to believe.”
“Believe it,” Chloe said. Oliver pulled her to her feet and maneuvered her to the Hummer he was driving. Inside the heat was warm and the snow that had clung to her hair and clothes melted. She shivered.
“What did Clark say?”
“That’s the scary part,” said Chloe. “He didn’t know me, Ollie. And worse, he was so…so…child like. He’s completely lost his memory.”
“That would explain Kara stealing clothes and food. She's lost her memory too.”
Nodding, Chloe thought about something else Clark had said. She told Oliver how Clark had mistaken her hug for an advance, and how he shouldn’t mate with anyone other than Kara. Oliver looked worried.
“You don’t think they’re…”
“Yeah, they are.”
“We’ve got to find them, now, before she ends up pregnant or something,” Oliver said. “I’m calling in the guys.”
“I could holler for them—”
“Why, so Kara can come back and kill us both? No thanks. We need special equipment to deal with her, and you know it.”
“Yeah, I know it,” Chloe said, but she didn’t like it. The idea of using Kryptonite on Clark galled her, but it would have to be done. They had to be reasoned with. A way had to be found to bring back their memories.
She just pitied the both of them when they finally did regain their memories. How would Clark and Kara feel when they learned they’re family, knowing they’d spent the past couple of months in a sexual relationship? Would they ever be able to look one another in the eye again?
****
Eventually Clark ’s anger cooled, and he returned to the cabin. Kara sat at the kitchen table, her head on her hands, and he wondered if maybe she was ill. He heard her sniffling, and realized she was crying.
“Kara?”
“Kal-El!”
She all but flew into his arms, slightly unbalancing him.
“Please forgive me!”
He stroked her hair as she sobbed into his shoulder. He couldn’t really stay mad at her, though he saw her in a different light now. He had no idea she could be so violent, and he wondered if he was capable of the same.
“I do,” he said. “But why do you call me Kal-El?”
“I don’t know,” she said wetly. “It seems right. Let me call you Kal-El instead of Clark .”
“Okay,” he said. “Just don’t cry.”
He held her for a long time, until she calmed down. When she did, he took a seat with her at the table.
“There’s some things I haven’t told you,” Kara said, and handed Clark a red can of something to drink. “When we were in the bad place, the woman told me that we were there because we’d hurt people. She said they took our memories because we were bad, and as long as we didn’t have our memories we wouldn’t be bad. But that’s not true. I don’t have my memory, Kal-El, and I still hurt someone. I was still bad.”
Fresh tears spilled down Kara’s face.
“Why did you hurt Chloe?”
Kara shrugged. “I thought maybe she was from the bad place and would take us back. She scared me. But then…I saw her hugging you and I wondered if maybe she wanted to become your new mate.”
The desire to kill off the competition was something Clark understood, but it was something else entirely when the competition really wasn’t competition at all.
Or was she?
Now Chloe was gone forever because Kara had killed her, and a seed of dislike and distrust for Kara had taken root in his heart. He just hoped it remained a tiny seed, and didn’t blossom into something worse.
“I’ve got food—”
“Hush,” said Clark , his ears perking up. “Do you hear that?”
There was something in the sky above the cabin, something loud and artificial. A few seconds later something hit the ground outside. First one thump, and then another, and another, landing all around the cabin. A terrible feeling flooded both Kara and Clark. A feeling of weakness and nausea. Outside, familiar green light glowed.
“The bad people have found us!” Kara said fearfully.
The door to the cabin opened, and Chloe Sullivan stepped inside. Kara’s eyes widened at the sight of her. Chloe was soon followed by the man Kara knew to be named Ollie.
“I’m alive,” Chloe said. “Don’t be afraid, okay? I’m your friend. So is Oliver. We’re taking you home. We’re going to help you remember who you are.”
Two other people, a black man and another blond man, entered the cabin, smiling at Clark and Kara as though they were old friends. They had cuffs glowing with green with them, and they put them around Clark and Kara’s wrists.
Once again they were caught, captive, and at the mercy of strangers.
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