Clark Kent
“Thanks for bringing me flying,” Clark said, his ears perked up at the sound of whale song beneath the water. It was lovely to listen to.
“You’re welcome, Kal-El,” Kara said, studying him. She casually glided through the air, moving closer to a distant and deserted beach. “We’ve been cooped up on that farm for days.”
“It’s our home,” Clark said.
“Not anymore.”
“We’re no longer the people who used to live there. We’re different now, and they don’t want to see that.”
“Let’s go swimming,” Clark said. “We can hold our breath for a long time. I did it for two hours once, just sitting in my room. I’ll bet I could go even longer!”
“We can go swimming in a moment, Kal-El, but right now we need to talk about what we’re going to do.”
Kara held onto Clark , to keep him from falling when she zoomed toward solid ground and set him down on the sand. Clark was immediately fascinated by it, picking up a handful and watching it sift through his fingers. Everything was new and exciting to him, and Kara knew they could spend years discovering things, and amazing themselves.
“Kal-El, we need to make a choice. We can stay and let them restore our memories, or we can travel the world, swim the oceans, free and answering to no one. Wouldn’t you like to do that? Instead of doing chores on the farm for strangers, wouldn’t you rather run through the deserts, swim oceans and lakes, maybe even learn to fly?”
“That sounds like fun,” Clark said hesitantly, “but what about Mom, and Chloe and our new friends?”
“They’re not as friendly as you think,” Kara said crossly. Clark ’s dark brows knitted together in a frown of confusion.
“What?”
“Kal-El, if they get your memories back you’re going to understand who I am to you. You’ll know what a cousin is, and you’ll understand why it was so bad for us to be lovers. It’ll hurt you so much, and I don’t want you to hurt. Remember how sad I was? You don’t want to be that sad forever, do you?”
“You’re smart, Kal-El!” Kara said cheerfully. A little too cheerfully for Clark ’s liking, and he knew she was lying for his benefit. It was touching, but it was still a lie.
“No, I’m not, Kara. You’re just saying that to make me feel better, but I’m dumb. I can tell when people look at me that they feel sorry for the way I am now. I don’t like that. I want to be like I was before.”
Angry, Kara backed away from Clark . She’d hoped he’d be more receptive to her wishes, but he wasn’t. “That’s not what I want for us. I know what’s best for you, Kal-El. You should listen to me, and trust me.”
“I do trust you. I just think you’re wrong this time.”
“You trust Chloe more than you do me!”
“No,” Clark said, bewildered and upset. What was wrong with Kara? Why was she acting this way? “Don’t me mad, Kara. I just want to be like I was before. You can stay like you are now, if you want. I’ll still be your friend.”
Kara paced, thinking what to do. She knew what Clark liked most, what he’d been doing without for days since Chloe had found them at the lake in Smallville.
“Don’t you miss mating? I can find someone to be your new mate.”
“Nah,” Clark said. “Chloe won’t do it. She likes Oliver now.”
“It can’t be Chloe. She wants to make us remember. I’ll find someone new. Someone who looks like Chloe. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“No. Let’s go home. Mom is making meat for dinner, and she said I could have my own cake, all to myself.”
“Will you stop thinking about food for once!” Kara yelled. Clark backed away from her, his eyes wide and hurt. Kara felt terrible. She was being mean to someone innocent and sweet…to family. “I’m sorry, Kal-El.”
“You’re getting mean,” he said. “I don’t like you very much anymore.”
“Kal-El! You don’t mean that!”
“Yes I do. If you don’t get your way you yell and say mean things. You make me feel stupid.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt-”
He turned and ran, diving for the ocean, only instead of going into its depths to explore, he sped toward Smallville. Sighing, Kara rose into the air and followed. He swam very fast, and soon he was on land, his arms and legs pumping so fast only her eyes could follow them. In less than a minute, he was back at the farm, covered in ice from the water that had frozen to him when he reached the winter landscape of the place he called home. Inside, his mother grabbed him up in a hug, and Kara watched, through the walls, as he hugged her back.
Flying for the barn, Kara curled up on the couch, weeping bitterly. Kal-El had made his choice, and hit hadn’t been her. She imagined the pain he would feel when he did regain his memories, and he finally understood all the mistakes they had made.
****
Screaming was all Oliver Queen was capable of doing, so he did it very loudly. He hung from his wrists, facing a mirror that showed his reflection on one half, and Chloe in the next room in the other half, suffering terrible tortures, her mouth opened in screams that he couldn’t hear through the sound proof walls.
“Leave her alone!” Oliver shouted, but ice cold water sprayed over him, robbing his body of warmth. A second later a man in a white lab coat approached with a wand that sizzled on the end with an electrical current. He touched it to Oliver’s wet skin, sending painful shocks over his entire body. His scream was cut off when his heart faltered, and then resumed at a rapid pace. He was prepared to die—he just didn’t want to do it so painfully.
“Oh, God…” he gasped when the wand was pulled back. “Just do it, already. Just kill me!”
In the next room Oliver watched Chloe struggled against her restraints when the woman torturing her pulled a scalpel over her flesh over, and over again, bringing up lines of blood that disappeared under a rosy glow of light. Seeing Chloe suffer was even more torture than what he went through with the electric shocks.
Feeling weary, Oliver sagged against the cuffs that held him up, but doing so put pressure on his lungs that cut off his ability to breathe. It was the same principal behind the old Roman method of crucifixion. The victim didn’t die of the wounds to the hands and feet. They smothered to death when they were too weak to hold themselves up any longer. Oliver considered putting himself out of his misery by suffocating himself. He hung there, his arms outstretched above him in a gruesome imitation of the Christ, and dizziness overcame him. Just before he blacked out, the cuffs released, and he collapsed to the floor, landing hard on his back.
Air filled his lungs, and he gasped greedily, sucking in as much as he could, feeling his half-numb limbs tingle as blood began to circulate properly. A face appeared over him, handsome and with cold eyes offset with blond hair. The man was a perfect example of Hitler’s Arian dream.
“Trying to kill yourself?” the man said. “I think not, Mr. Queen.”
“Who…”
“I am called Alpha, here in the Shadow Society.”
Oliver tried to place any terrorist organization that bore the name Shadow. He could think of several, but he’d never heard of the Shadow Society.
“You’ve never heard of us, and you will never tell anyone of us. Even if, by some miracle, you managed to escape these walls you could shout our name from the highest mountaintop and no one would know who you speak of, and no one would believe you anyway.
“What…do you…want?”
“My desires are simple. I want you to die. I have no reason why, other than you’re tiresome meddling in one of my greatest experiment I’ve ever had the privilege to conduct. The Traveler has escaped me, but I’ll get him back. He will come to me.”
“No…no I won’t allow that.”
Alpha smiled menacingly. “You won’t have anything to do with it.”
His eyes traveled to Chloe, and he snapped his fingers. The soundproofing that blocked her screams was lfited, and Chloe shouted out in agony at yet another deep cut.
“She will bring him to us.”
“Chloe…don’t…”
But it was too late. Chloe had reached her limit. “Clark ! Claaaaaark!”
Back in Smallville, Clark Kent was pulling on a fresh pair of pajama’s, Scooby-Doo’s that his mother had bought him, when one sound, one tiny voice among the billions he liked to listen to in the quiet of night, rose above all others. He blocked everything out and focused on that one voice.
“Claaaaaark!”
“Chloe!” he said. Crashing through his bedroom window, Clark ran to the barn, but Kara had gone.
“Claaaaaark!” Chloe screamed again. She was in agony. His heart pounding, desperation clenched Clark ’s stomach and he turned. He had to get to her. Focusing on her voice, Clark ran and then leapt, and this time he didn’t fall back down to earth. He had only one goal in mind.
Save Chloe Sullivan.
Chloe was so focused on that one task he didn’t realize at first that he was flying, and when he did, he took very little joy or satisfaction in it. There was only the sound of her voice, and a feeling of blinding rage that someone would hurt her.
His flight was cut short when something slammed into him with the force a hundred atom bombs. Shaking his head, Clark looked up. Kara floated before him.
“Chloe needs me!”
“The bad people have her, Clark . You’re not going back there.”
“You can’t stop me!” Clark said uncertainly. The truth was, he wasn’t sure what Kara could do. Could she break him as easily as she’d broken Chloe that one time? She’d managed to halt him in mid-flight now.
“I’ll try,” Kara said, and lunged for him. They grappled in mid-air among flashes of lightning, the ground below lost to the billowing wet clouds they struggled within. She was strong, and she was winning the battle to push him away from Chloe’s agonized screams.
“Kara!” he shouted, grabbing her arms as she tried to punch him. “Stop it!”
“I won’t lose you again, Kal-El! Not for her. Not for anyone! I have to keep you safe!”
“I have to save Chloe, she needs me!”
“I need you too! You’re all I’ve got left!”
Knowing it was the right thing to do, Clark pulled Kara to him, hugging her close as she cried into the crook of his neck.
“You’ll always have me, Kara. No matter what, but Chloe—”
But it wasn’t the lightning that caused Clark ’s heart to race, or his heart to grow heavy with grief and self-loathing. It was the memories of his past, of who he was, and what he’d become after being kidnapped by a blond man who called himself Alpha, of the Shadow Society. He’d come to the barn, where Clark was trying to teach Kara to dance, shooting Kryptonite into their veins and weakening them. He’d taken them to a lab, he’d robbed them of their memories, and turned them into…
“I remember,” Clark said heavily. “I remember…everything.”
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