Smallville/Torchwood - fic - Our Last Hope, part 6/10?, PG, Clark/Lex, Jack
Title - Our Last Hope, part 6/10?
Author - laurab1
Characters/Pairings - Jack, OMC, OFC, Clark/Lex, Lana
Rating - PG
Length - approx 1640 words
Spoilers - Rosetta
Summary - Torchwood pick up and translate Jor-El and Lara's message, and locate Clark Kent, aka Kal-El, the last son of Krypton
Disclaimer - None of the recognisable people are mine, TWIZ TV transcript used, for some dialogue
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
WIP, will later be re-posted as a completed and betaed version. Currently about 7500 words, in total.
Original drabble Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Parts 3 & 4 Part 5 Covers
Our Last Hope
by Laura
part 6
That afternoon, Lana entered the Talon and spotted Clark, scribbling away on something. She made her way to his table. To get his attention, Lana had to say his name a couple of times. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said faintly.
She sat down opposite him. “I heard about the fire.”
“It was no big deal. We got it under control. I think Chloe's over at the Torch right now writing an exclusive.”
“I wouldn't know. Her and I aren't exactly talking right now,” Lana admitted.
“Sounds serious,” Clark said.
“Well, invasion of privacy usually is.”
“Let me guess, you caught her snooping around in your stuff.”
“Actually I was the one doing the snooping. I didn't mean to. It kinda just happened.” More admissions.
“Well, you'd think all the times that she's overstepped her boundaries, she'd cut you some slack.”
If only it actually worked like that, she thought. “It just reminded me that as great as Chloe and her dad have been, I'm still not family.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Can I tell you a secret?”
At last, she thought. “That would be a first,” Lana said, with a hint of bitterness.
“I've been looking into my roots and it's freaking my parents out, but I think I'm getting close to finding out where I'm from,” Clark told her.
This was an incredibly big deal, from the sound of his voice. “Then you shouldn't stop,” she said, smiling at him. He didn’t exactly smile back. Lana cast her eyes at the table instead, and then noticed that Clark had been scribbling away on the dreaded family tree assignment. She couldn’t actually see any names, though.
And what she could see looked like shapes; like the paintings in the caves.
“Is that your family tree?” she tried asking. He just looked back down at the sheet. “Clark, what's wrong?”
“Nothing, um, I gotta go,” he said distractedly.
Lana watched him crumple up the paper and throw it at the trashcan. He missed, but didn’t notice. And then Lex came into the Talon, and in his hurry to leave, Clark almost physically bumped into him.
“Clark, I've been looking all over for you. Are you okay?” Lex asked.
“Sorry, Lex, I can't talk right now,” Clark replied, before dashing off.
Lex wandered over to her. “Looks like we've been abandoned,” he said.
Tell me about it. “Story of my life.” Lana went to the bar, Lex following her. She thought she’d better say something about what she’d seen. “Lex?”
“What’s up, Lana?”
“The paper down there.” She pointed to it. “You need to take that with you. Clark was writing on it, and I don’t think it was in English.”
***
Lex picked up the ball of paper and opened it up. Lana was right; he could see symbols from the caves and the disk among the drawings. It would appear the beam of energy Clark had received had provided him with more symbols than those that were in the caves. “Thanks, Lana,” he said, folding up the piece of paper and pocketing it. After ordering a coffee, Lex left the Talon and sped off in his Lamborghini.
***
Arriving home, Lex called Clark, who arrived a second after he had hung up, a copy of the Torch in his hand. “Clark? What else happened in the caves? I picked this up, in the Talon.” Lex handed Clark’s family tree back to him.
Clark sat down opposite him, looking like he was still trying to process the experience in the caves. Eventually, he confirmed what Lex had suspected, and showed him the Torch. “I burnt this on the side of the barn, with my heat vision,” he said, pointing to the picture, under a headline reading, Burning Question: Aliens or Arsonists. “It means hope, in...something.”
“And that something’s not Kawatche, we know that much,” Lex said.
“And I have no idea what it is, Lex.” Clark handed the copy of the Torch to him. “You can have this. I need to talk to Chloe, I can pick up another copy back at school.” They both rose from their chairs, and shared a quick kiss.
“I’ll call you later,” Clark said, and left.
Lex sat back down, and ran a finger over the symbol, tracing its lines and curves. “Where are you from, Clark?” he wondered.
***
In Cardiff, it was late, and Peter and Jack were the only two people in the Hub. Peter had the Smallville Torch’s website open, and was reading the headline story. Over the past couple of months, he’d discovered that Smallville had suffered a horrific meteor shower back in 1989. Since then, there had been a huge number of strange occurrences, some blamed on LuthorCorp, the town’s main employer, and some blamed on the meteors. And now, one of the symbols from the cave was scorched over the side of a barn belonging to Jonathan and Martha Kent. “Jack,” he called, “come and see this.”
“What have you got, Peter?” Jack said, walking over.
“This,” he said, indicating the picture. “We found the same symbol -"
“- in the cave,” Jack finished. “Yeah. I couldn’t quite make out what it was at the time, but I know exactly what it means.”
“And what’s that?” Peter asked.
“It means hope - they used it in the same way you people use the cross, the crescent moon, the star of David. Combined.”
“Sounds like a big deal.”
“It was a very big deal.”
Peter sighed. “Jack, this is new, and it isn’t a crop circle thing or a prank. This was deliberate, it means something. It doesn’t get us any further in translating the message, though.” He then noticed Jack looked like he had something to confess.
“Yeah, I know, Peter. However, I may have something that’ll help,” he admitted. “I found some names in my wristband, when you first discovered the caves - Marcus Ventra, and Krypton, both in Kryptonian.”
Peter laughed, a rather bizarre idea going through his mind. “So, we’re going to play Hangman, then, to try to actually get somewhere with translating the Kryptonian?”
Jack was smiling. It seemed he’d had just the same thought. “Yep. Unless you have a better idea?”
“No, I don’t. It’s not terribly scientific, though.”
“Peter. Has that ever stopped us before?”
“Hardly.”
“Exactly. C’mon, then. Let’s go.”
Rolling his eyes, Peter got a copy of the message up on his screen, and sent two copies to Jack’s LaserWriter. Jack went back to his office to get the printouts. Peter followed, dragging his chair behind him.
“Our message is in letters. But they did have a another variant of their language, where symbols represented a whole word or concept. This one, the diamond and the square, with the dot, that’s an ‘M’,” Jack said, handing him a sheet.
They went through the rest of the letters they had. Peter’s ideas about which symbols could be equivalents to vowels were proved right, which was rather gratifying. “Now what do we do with all this?” he asked, about midnight.
“You go home and get some sleep. Thanks for staying so late. I don’t want to see you until noon, tomorrow.”
Peter left Jack’s office, but as he was packing up, he heard Jack make a phone call.
“Siobhan, it’s Jack.”
Anticipating the yelling, Peter left the Hub.
***
Peter was right, this burnt symbol was new. This had happened today.
A dozen scenarios went through Jack’s mind, and he had a sneaking suspicion he hadn’t been told everything he should have been, when Siobhan sent him the files, all those years ago. He dialled her number.
“Siobhan? It’s Jack.”
”It’s midnight, Jack. You woke me up, you bastard. Why the hell are you calling me this late at night?”
“Well, maybe you should have thought that this might happen, before you gave me your home number. Was there anything you deliberately or accidentally forgot to tell me, Siobhan, thirteen years ago?”
Jack heard her sigh, and she was silent for a couple of minutes. “Siobhan?” he asked, a little more gently.
”There was a ship, Jack. And the meteors, of course, which I’m sure you know about. We calculated the ship’s trajectory, and organised an FBI team to collect it from the expected crash site. But when they got to the site, there was nothing, like someone had already taken it away. We asked the team to stay, to help with clean up, and see if they could discover anything, but they found nothing.”
“What size was this ship?”
”We thought it was just big enough to hold a baby, maybe a toddler.”
“Thank you. I’ll let you get back to sleep, now.”
”Thank you. I didn’t tell you any of this, of course.”
“Yeah. ‘Night, Siobhan.”
”Good night, Jack.”
They hung up on each other. Just one scenario was now in Jack’s mind, but some research was clearly in order. 51st century computer systems and their security may have eluded him on occasion, but 21st century systems were a piece of cake.
Twenty minutes later, Jack had a whole load of information.
There were all the strange occurrences in Smallville since 1989. There was an organisation called Metropolis United Charities and its one single adoption. And then there was the homepage of the Smallville Torch, complete with exactly where the hope symbol was.
Jack’s supposition was:
1. Jonathan and Martha Kent had been harbouring an alien for over thirteen years.
2. This alien was their son, Clark Kent, or whatever his birth name was. His Kryptonian name.
3. They might need to bring this alien in. The Torchwood motto was, after all, “If it’s alien, it’s ours.”
Whatever else they did, they needed to pass the message on. With all that in mind, Jack emailed the Torch.
tbc
Author - laurab1
Characters/Pairings - Jack, OMC, OFC, Clark/Lex, Lana
Rating - PG
Length - approx 1640 words
Spoilers - Rosetta
Summary - Torchwood pick up and translate Jor-El and Lara's message, and locate Clark Kent, aka Kal-El, the last son of Krypton
Disclaimer - None of the recognisable people are mine, TWIZ TV transcript used, for some dialogue
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
WIP, will later be re-posted as a completed and betaed version. Currently about 7500 words, in total.
Original drabble Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Parts 3 & 4 Part 5 Covers
Our Last Hope
by Laura
part 6
That afternoon, Lana entered the Talon and spotted Clark, scribbling away on something. She made her way to his table. To get his attention, Lana had to say his name a couple of times. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said faintly.
She sat down opposite him. “I heard about the fire.”
“It was no big deal. We got it under control. I think Chloe's over at the Torch right now writing an exclusive.”
“I wouldn't know. Her and I aren't exactly talking right now,” Lana admitted.
“Sounds serious,” Clark said.
“Well, invasion of privacy usually is.”
“Let me guess, you caught her snooping around in your stuff.”
“Actually I was the one doing the snooping. I didn't mean to. It kinda just happened.” More admissions.
“Well, you'd think all the times that she's overstepped her boundaries, she'd cut you some slack.”
If only it actually worked like that, she thought. “It just reminded me that as great as Chloe and her dad have been, I'm still not family.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Can I tell you a secret?”
At last, she thought. “That would be a first,” Lana said, with a hint of bitterness.
“I've been looking into my roots and it's freaking my parents out, but I think I'm getting close to finding out where I'm from,” Clark told her.
This was an incredibly big deal, from the sound of his voice. “Then you shouldn't stop,” she said, smiling at him. He didn’t exactly smile back. Lana cast her eyes at the table instead, and then noticed that Clark had been scribbling away on the dreaded family tree assignment. She couldn’t actually see any names, though.
And what she could see looked like shapes; like the paintings in the caves.
“Is that your family tree?” she tried asking. He just looked back down at the sheet. “Clark, what's wrong?”
“Nothing, um, I gotta go,” he said distractedly.
Lana watched him crumple up the paper and throw it at the trashcan. He missed, but didn’t notice. And then Lex came into the Talon, and in his hurry to leave, Clark almost physically bumped into him.
“Clark, I've been looking all over for you. Are you okay?” Lex asked.
“Sorry, Lex, I can't talk right now,” Clark replied, before dashing off.
Lex wandered over to her. “Looks like we've been abandoned,” he said.
Tell me about it. “Story of my life.” Lana went to the bar, Lex following her. She thought she’d better say something about what she’d seen. “Lex?”
“What’s up, Lana?”
“The paper down there.” She pointed to it. “You need to take that with you. Clark was writing on it, and I don’t think it was in English.”
***
Lex picked up the ball of paper and opened it up. Lana was right; he could see symbols from the caves and the disk among the drawings. It would appear the beam of energy Clark had received had provided him with more symbols than those that were in the caves. “Thanks, Lana,” he said, folding up the piece of paper and pocketing it. After ordering a coffee, Lex left the Talon and sped off in his Lamborghini.
***
Arriving home, Lex called Clark, who arrived a second after he had hung up, a copy of the Torch in his hand. “Clark? What else happened in the caves? I picked this up, in the Talon.” Lex handed Clark’s family tree back to him.
Clark sat down opposite him, looking like he was still trying to process the experience in the caves. Eventually, he confirmed what Lex had suspected, and showed him the Torch. “I burnt this on the side of the barn, with my heat vision,” he said, pointing to the picture, under a headline reading, Burning Question: Aliens or Arsonists. “It means hope, in...something.”
“And that something’s not Kawatche, we know that much,” Lex said.
“And I have no idea what it is, Lex.” Clark handed the copy of the Torch to him. “You can have this. I need to talk to Chloe, I can pick up another copy back at school.” They both rose from their chairs, and shared a quick kiss.
“I’ll call you later,” Clark said, and left.
Lex sat back down, and ran a finger over the symbol, tracing its lines and curves. “Where are you from, Clark?” he wondered.
***
In Cardiff, it was late, and Peter and Jack were the only two people in the Hub. Peter had the Smallville Torch’s website open, and was reading the headline story. Over the past couple of months, he’d discovered that Smallville had suffered a horrific meteor shower back in 1989. Since then, there had been a huge number of strange occurrences, some blamed on LuthorCorp, the town’s main employer, and some blamed on the meteors. And now, one of the symbols from the cave was scorched over the side of a barn belonging to Jonathan and Martha Kent. “Jack,” he called, “come and see this.”
“What have you got, Peter?” Jack said, walking over.
“This,” he said, indicating the picture. “We found the same symbol -"
“- in the cave,” Jack finished. “Yeah. I couldn’t quite make out what it was at the time, but I know exactly what it means.”
“And what’s that?” Peter asked.
“It means hope - they used it in the same way you people use the cross, the crescent moon, the star of David. Combined.”
“Sounds like a big deal.”
“It was a very big deal.”
Peter sighed. “Jack, this is new, and it isn’t a crop circle thing or a prank. This was deliberate, it means something. It doesn’t get us any further in translating the message, though.” He then noticed Jack looked like he had something to confess.
“Yeah, I know, Peter. However, I may have something that’ll help,” he admitted. “I found some names in my wristband, when you first discovered the caves - Marcus Ventra, and Krypton, both in Kryptonian.”
Peter laughed, a rather bizarre idea going through his mind. “So, we’re going to play Hangman, then, to try to actually get somewhere with translating the Kryptonian?”
Jack was smiling. It seemed he’d had just the same thought. “Yep. Unless you have a better idea?”
“No, I don’t. It’s not terribly scientific, though.”
“Peter. Has that ever stopped us before?”
“Hardly.”
“Exactly. C’mon, then. Let’s go.”
Rolling his eyes, Peter got a copy of the message up on his screen, and sent two copies to Jack’s LaserWriter. Jack went back to his office to get the printouts. Peter followed, dragging his chair behind him.
“Our message is in letters. But they did have a another variant of their language, where symbols represented a whole word or concept. This one, the diamond and the square, with the dot, that’s an ‘M’,” Jack said, handing him a sheet.
They went through the rest of the letters they had. Peter’s ideas about which symbols could be equivalents to vowels were proved right, which was rather gratifying. “Now what do we do with all this?” he asked, about midnight.
“You go home and get some sleep. Thanks for staying so late. I don’t want to see you until noon, tomorrow.”
Peter left Jack’s office, but as he was packing up, he heard Jack make a phone call.
“Siobhan, it’s Jack.”
Anticipating the yelling, Peter left the Hub.
***
Peter was right, this burnt symbol was new. This had happened today.
A dozen scenarios went through Jack’s mind, and he had a sneaking suspicion he hadn’t been told everything he should have been, when Siobhan sent him the files, all those years ago. He dialled her number.
“Siobhan? It’s Jack.”
”It’s midnight, Jack. You woke me up, you bastard. Why the hell are you calling me this late at night?”
“Well, maybe you should have thought that this might happen, before you gave me your home number. Was there anything you deliberately or accidentally forgot to tell me, Siobhan, thirteen years ago?”
Jack heard her sigh, and she was silent for a couple of minutes. “Siobhan?” he asked, a little more gently.
”There was a ship, Jack. And the meteors, of course, which I’m sure you know about. We calculated the ship’s trajectory, and organised an FBI team to collect it from the expected crash site. But when they got to the site, there was nothing, like someone had already taken it away. We asked the team to stay, to help with clean up, and see if they could discover anything, but they found nothing.”
“What size was this ship?”
”We thought it was just big enough to hold a baby, maybe a toddler.”
“Thank you. I’ll let you get back to sleep, now.”
”Thank you. I didn’t tell you any of this, of course.”
“Yeah. ‘Night, Siobhan.”
”Good night, Jack.”
They hung up on each other. Just one scenario was now in Jack’s mind, but some research was clearly in order. 51st century computer systems and their security may have eluded him on occasion, but 21st century systems were a piece of cake.
Twenty minutes later, Jack had a whole load of information.
There were all the strange occurrences in Smallville since 1989. There was an organisation called Metropolis United Charities and its one single adoption. And then there was the homepage of the Smallville Torch, complete with exactly where the hope symbol was.
Jack’s supposition was:
1. Jonathan and Martha Kent had been harbouring an alien for over thirteen years.
2. This alien was their son, Clark Kent, or whatever his birth name was. His Kryptonian name.
3. They might need to bring this alien in. The Torchwood motto was, after all, “If it’s alien, it’s ours.”
Whatever else they did, they needed to pass the message on. With all that in mind, Jack emailed the Torch.
tbc