Oliver was making love to Chloe as though she were an enemy to be defeated. There was desperation in each thrust, while the few kisses he’d afforded her had been completely absent of affection, or even his attention. Something was wrong with him tonight. He needed her in a way that only she could be there for him, as a lover, as a confidante, and she intended to help him.
He didn’t, as usual, cry out with his final thrust and the outpouring of his release. Instead he gave a deep, strained grunt that well matched his taut muscles and almost angry face. They remained locked together, Chloe perched on the edge of the bathroom sink where she’d been when she came in to wash her hands and found Oliver filling the bathtub for his nightly soak. Oliver, she realized was looking at his reflection in the mirror behind her. She turned her head, saw his red eyes that refused to spill the tears brimming there.
“Ollie, what’s wrong?”
Oliver withdrew from Chloe. He was already naked, having prepared for his bath. She pulled her panties and jeans back up, waiting for an answer, and fixed her blouse. His sweat slicked shoulders were tense, the muscles all bunched up and knotty beneath his bronze skin.
“Like a bath?” he asked gruffly.
Chloe shook her head. “The soap you use is a little too masculine for my tastes. I don’t mind having your sent on me, but I don’t want to bathe in your soap.”
Ollie sank into the water, disappearing into the slightly sudsy water. He resurfaced a few seconds later and heaved a sigh. “I needed that,” he said. He took her hand. “Thank you.”
“Let me help you,” Chloe said.
There was a very slight, almost unnoticeable glow between their hands, and Oliver closed his eyes, sighing as the weight of the world lessened from its perch on his shoulders. The feeling of stress being drawn from his body came to a stop, and when he looked up, Chloe had a measure of his sadness in her eyes.
“When did you learn to do that? I thought you could only heal physical wounds.”
“I have the power of Empathy. I guess that goes for all wounds, not just the physical. I think I know a little of why you’re so upset, but not all of it.”
“Women,” Oliver said, smiling a genuine smile. He’d thought it would be a long time before he would feel his lips curve up in a grin. Apparently not. “Talking is your answer to everything, isn’t it?”
“‘Communication is key,’ my father always says. “So come on, communicate with me.”
“Okay, I’ll communicate that I want you in this tub with me, now.”
“I plan to take a nice, long, hot soak back at my place. I have writing to finish.”
“You haven’t spent the night in awhile,” Oliver said. “I’m not losing you to that press, am I?”
“Not at all. And I can’t get you to stay over with me, either, mister.”
“There’s a lot of work to be done here, with these Shadow Society people.”
“Work is getting in the way, I know,” Chloe said. “But we can figure something out. It’ll just take time.”
“Time...” Oliver said, falling silent. He stared at the opposite wall, lost in thought, and it wasn’t until Chloe stroked his arm that he seemed to realize she was in the room with him.
“Clark says the Shadow Society was founded by Lionel Luthor.”
Chloe nodded. “I know. Kara told me. Now we know who’s behind it all.”
“It doesn’t answer anything, though, Chloe. Lionel’s dead, and he took his secrets to the grave. We don’t know how big this secret society goes. Finding out about Lionel just raises more questions than it answers. If Lionel’s conversion was genuine, as Jor-El says, then that just makes the Shadow Society even more of a mystery. Did they go rogue when Lionel died, or are they following directives he’d set up in the event of his death? Why would a man who supposedly left his evil ways behind him sanction kill switches in the team without the team knowing about or consenting to them? Would Lionel have really planned to mate Clark and Kara? I doubt he, or even Lex, would condone something so repugnant.”
“They became silent, mulling over all the points Oliver had brought up, but neither could think up answers that weren’t based on wild speculation and conjecture.
“Perhaps Jor-El had a heavy influence in Lionel’s life that we don’t know of. I mean, he was Jor-El’s oracle. Maybe the AI used Lionel to found the Society and it was really Jor-El’s directives that the Society follows, not Lionel’s. Kara did say that Jor-El had wanted Kara to be Clark ’s mate.”
Oliver made a face of pure disgust.
“I know,” Chloe said sympathetically. “Apparently incest doesn’t have the same negative affects among Kryptonians as it does humans, and it was once a time-honored tradition for first cousins to marry to keep the family line pure, or if there were no other suitable matches within a certain caste. No one would marry below them, so they had to marry one another. Considering the AI is a highly advanced computer, it thought Kara made the perfect match for Clark . The only match for him besides…”
“Besides who?”
Chloe hesitated.
“You?” Oliver guessed, and Chloe nodded. “Why you?”
“Because of my meteor power. Anyway, this all comes down to Daniel.”
Chloe was trying to steer the conversation away from her and Clark, and Oliver was more than willing to let her. Now he had an idea of how Jimmy must have felt. Clark was a looming presence in their relationship because he and Chloe were so damned close. No matter who they may end up with respectively, Oliver knew that their new partners would have to either accept Clark and Chloe’s friendship, and what the two meant to one another, or else leave.
And Oliver had no intentions of leaving.
“He’s not talking,” Oliver said, moving along with the conversation, letting Chloe steer. “He’s another dilemma. Do I keep the man captive for the rest of his life? Do I kill him to ensure he’s never able to throw the kill switch on his team? What about his team? I mean…I can’t keep them all prisoner, Chloe. Being prisoner, even in a nice, comfy prison with four star food and every amenity you could imagine, is still a prison. It’s no kind of life, and who am I to play judge and jury…or executioner? I don’t want this decision. I never asked for this responsibility.”
“I know,” Chloe said, stroking Oliver’s hair the way he liked it. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, Ollie, especially you. But I know that whatever you decide, it’ll be the right choice. I’ll back you up, no matter what you decide to do.”
Oliver kissed Chloe deeply. For the first time since she’d come to his place, he was fully present and behind the kiss. It was soft, and gentle, and so full of love it made Chloe feel as though her heart could burst in her chest. God, she loved this man.
Oliver leaned back and looked at her. “I wish I believed in myself half as much as you do.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
There were some things people took for granted without being aware they were doing so, and home was one of those things. The little things of home, like the smell of his mother’s cooking, chores, and sitting in front of a roaring fire for awhile before going upstairs to bed, became so routine that one couldn’t appreciate them until they’d lost them.
Right now Clark found he appreciated every move he made on the farm, and he’d been keenly aware of his blessings for the past few weeks. He now stood in the driveway clearing away the snow that had fallen a couple of days before with his heat vision. He took his time melting the ice and leaving the ground dry as dust so that the melted snow wouldn’t freeze over and turn the drive into a sheet of ice.
It was Saturday, and that was his last chore of the day. He’d moved at regular human speed, and had kept a tiny piece of kryptonite in upper loft area; not enough to hurt, just enough to weaken him. He’d hoped that if he kept his mind occupied on what he was doing, and had to physically strain to do it, then he could ignore his cousin’s constant presence in the back of his mind. It was a lot like riding in a small car, and having the elbow of the person next to you constantly in your side, but you couldn’t tell them to give you space. She was there, and he couldn’t get away from her, no matter how far away he’d traveled.
Hard work, the sweat of his brow, the chill of the cold air had all done what he’d hoped. The physical discomfort had distracted him from Kara for the most part, but now that the Kryptonite had been put away and he was back to being invulnerable and incapable of tiring, Clark felt her there as keenly as ever. J’onn’s meditative techniques worked to quell any kind of sexual desire, but Clark found it unnerving being bonded to his own cousin in that way.
“Clark ! Come clean up for dinner!”
Stepping under the shower, using the old habit of turning on only minimal hot water to save on the bill, since the coolness of the water wouldn’t bother him, Clark began to lather his body. As soon as he did this, he felt an erection coming on. The image of a beautiful blond came to mind, and this time, thank God, it wasn’t Kara, but Chloe. He didn’t know why he would choose her over all the women he’d ever laid his lips on, but Chloe was the one whose face came swimming to the surface of his mind.
Closing his eyes, knowing he could do nothing to fight the need coursing through his body, Clark thought back to the time Pete had slipped him a red meteor rock, and the kisses he’d shared with Chloe. He thought of every kiss he’d ever shared with her, and when that failed to be erotic enough to help push him to release as he worked himself in the shower, Clark steered his mind into the realm of fantasy. He imagined Chloe bent before him, hands on the walls of the shower while he sank the length of his dick into her warm, giving body.
That’s when the guilt settled in. He had no right listening in on Chloe’s private moments with her boyfriend, and using that act to help him come while he jerked off in the shower. Still, the amount of guilt was very slight.
Cleaning up and leaving no evidence of what he’d done, Clark rushed to get dressed and came down to the dinner table. There were four apple pies cooling on the racks by the window. In most homes that would be a lot of pie, but in the Kent house, with two Kryptonians and three other superhumans with unusually high metabolisms, that was barely enough to satisfy everyone’s sweet tooth. Martha was lucky if she managed to get a slice for herself before the others dove in for desert.
Three large chickens that had been baked to perfection and placed on beds of stuffing sat in the center of the table, surrounded by tubs of mashed potatoes, tureens of gravy, a large bowl of peas, and many ears of corn. Bart alone could eat half the food if he’d been running a lot lately, but he’d been fairly grounded at the farm, playing video games and snoring on the couch.
Dinner was filled with nervous small talk. Victor and Bart were lively, recounting recent adventures with more than a little embellishment. It was the cloud of what had happened between Clark and Kara during their time in the woods that hung over the table, over their lives, like a black cloud that Clark doubted would ever be dispelled. When desert was served, Kara excused herself and rushed out to the barn. Taking a pie, and Chloe’s plate, Clark excused himself and moved to follow.
“You two ain’t gonna go out there and—ow!” Bart started, and then winced when Victor stomped on his toes under the table. “Fight! I was gonna say fight!”
Everyone knew that wasn’t what he was going to say. Especially Clark . “No, Kara and I don’t ‘fight’ anymore, Bart.”
“Sorry, big guy. Of course you don’t!”
Shaking his head, Clark ran out to the barn. Kara was on the old couch with a long metal box covered in hand-drawn Kryptonian symbols. Even though it was an alien language, the symbols all had that flowery, embellished look that only a teenaged girl could write with.
“What’s this?” Clark asked.
“It’s what you’d call a diary, I guess.” Kara touched a finger to one of the runes. Clark realized they were Kryptonian dates. The box opened and she took out a small disc, which was perfectly circular and as thin as a wafer. She flipped it like a coin, and it remained in mid-air, spinning so fast it began to look like a shimmering sphere.
“What’s that?”
“A saeshai. A photo album.”
An image came to life in front of them, about nineteen inches wide and so life-like Clark felt as though he could step right into it. It showed a vast landscape of red, the sky streaked with gold. In the distance were the spires of a great city. The image aroused something deep within Clark , something unrelated to Kara’s feelings. It was like a memory that he couldn’t quite grasp.
“I feel what you feel,” Kara said. “Genetic memory. That’s why it’s so indefinable. You were too young to have any true memories of home.”
More images cycled through. Clark got to see everyday scenes of people in a marketplace, living, working, being…normal. He wished the people were in motion, so he could hear them speaking, observe customs in fluid motion. There were a lot of photos, and it took an hour to view the single set she’d called up. Clark was thrilled when he learned Kara had recorded hundreds of thousands of photographs in her lifetime, and kept them never deleting a single one. Clark wanted to see them all, especially ones of his parents.
“Look.”
Kara called up an image of himself, an adult wearing long white robes of a nobleman. “He looks like me!”
“Look closer.”
When Clark did he realized it wasn’t him at all, of course. The man was too old to have been him, with streaks of gray in his hair, and some lines around the eyes and mouth that Clark had yet to acquire, or maybe never would acquire.
“Jor-El,” Kara said quietly. “He did this to us.”
She looked bitterly upon Jor-El, and stabbed at what must have been the off-button on the diary because the disc stopped spinning and she caught it, sliding it back into the box and slamming it shut. If the box hadn’t been crafted on Krypton it would have disintegrated under Kara’s touch. He reached out to her, but she moved like lightning to the window.
“Please Kal-El, just leave me alone.”
Unsure of what to say, and knowing it would do more harm than good to press her, Clark took the food he’d gathered for Chloe and flew from the barn, leaving Kara to hold her diary to her chest, looking small, and alone, and abandoned.
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