Fic: A Scary Story | Superman Returns | Clark/Lois, Lara | PG-13 | 1/1
Title: A Scary Story
Fandom: Superman Returns
Characters/Pairing: Clark/Lois, Lara (the second)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2,050
Prompt: For the EyesSkyward.com April Fic Grab: Ancient
Summary: When Lara demands a scary bed-time story, Clark indulges her. It's probably not a good idea.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything, the schmucks.
Author's Notes: This is officially part of the Aftermath-verse, and it ties into Awaiting the Ghost of Christmas Past, occurring three years before that story, but all you really need to know is that Lara is Clark and Lois's daughter, their first child after Jason. For those that would cry foul at Clark telling Lara a scary story when she's still little, remember: it's all Richard's fault.
A Scary Story
“Once upon a time, there lived a-”
“'Once upon a time' is for baby stories, daddy,” Lara whined, rolling her eyes up at her dad. “And I'm four now. Tell me a scary story.”
Clark chuckled and gathered his daughter closer against his side, tucking her bed covers tighter around her. “A scary story, huh? Think you can handle it?”
Lara just turned those huge blue eyes up at him again. “Uh-huh. Jason said Daddy Richard told him scary stories all the time when he was little like me.”
“I see. Okay then....” Pausing, Clark racked his brain for a tale that his little girl would deem scary enough, but wouldn't have her running to his and Lois's bedroom after a nightmare. Luckily, the solution wasn't far away. “Many thousands of years ago,” he started, “there lived a-”
“Not another princess story, Daddy,” Lara cut him off.
“It's not, I promise.”
“Okay.”
Clark cleared his throat and started again. “Many, many thousands of years ago, there lived a scientist named Bertron. He was a cruel man, obsessed with creating the perfect soldier, the Ultimate Weapon, a creature so powerful that it couldn't be stopped, could never be killed. All he needed to do was to find a specimen that he could experiment on. Animal or man, it didn't matter, so long as it could fight and kill.
“One day, he went to the planet Krypton in search of such a specimen. He'd heard that the people living there were strong, fearless, and fought each other like wild animals, half-crazed and snarling with rage.”
“But I thought that people on Krypton were smart and good and didn't hurt each other,” Lara chimed in, a little pout tugging down the corners of her mouth.
“They were,” Clark answered, tightening his grip around his daughter. “But this was a long, long time before that, when the Kryptonian race was still very young, and didn't know how to behave yet.”
“Like the littler kids at school,” the girl answered with a sage nod.
“Exactly.”
“Okay, keep going.”
“Yes ma'am. Now where was I? Oh, Bertron was on Krypton. Well, Bertron searched high and low, and found a Kryptonian, one that seemed to be the fiercest of them all. The Kryptonian was angry, and when the scientist took him away from his home, he fought hard to get away, killing several of Bertron's assistants on his spaceship. To preserve his own life, and thinking he'd made a terrible mistake, Bertron stabbed the Kryptonian through the heart with a long blade.
“But Bertron couldn't let his experiment end in such a failure. Taking a tiny sample of the dead Kryptonian's body, he grew a clone of him, a new copy that would be all the things that the dead Kryptonian was, but more, better. He changed that little piece, made it so the clone would be loyal to him, and him alone, and then he let the clone grow inside an incubating chamber.
“When the clone got big enough, the scientist let him out of the chamber. And what do you know? The clone didn't try to hurt Bertron at all. He was quiet, calm. It was amazing!
“Bertron had other ideas, though. He didn't want the clone to be calm all the time, he wanted him to be a weapon. So one day he sent the clone back down to Krypton, to a place on the planet where few other Kryptonians lived, but there were large, fierce animals that would've gladly eaten a Kryptonian for dinner.”
Feeling Lara's tiny hands fist into his t-shirt, Clark smoothed down her unruly hair to soothe her.
“Thinking that the clone would surely defeat all those animals, Bertron was surprised when the clone was killed, as hard as he'd fought them. But all was not lost.
“Collecting the body of the clone, the scientist set out to create a new clone. This time even better than before. He added some of the DNA-the little bits that make us grow into what we are-from the animals that had killed the first clone. So the new clone had huge bony spikes sticking out of his face, hands, and arms, he had thick, tough skin like leather, and he had eyes that could see in the near-darkness. The new clone didn't look like a Kryptonian anymore, and he was twice as angry as the original man that Bertron kidnapped. He was a monster, a creature, mindless and easy to control.
“Now all Bertron had to do was to test out his creature. This time, he couldn't fail. So, he took the clone to a far-off star system called Khundia, where the people had been fighting a war for many years. He could release his creature to fight and end the war, his Ultimate Weapon.
“The Ultimate Weapon, however, didn't intend to finish the war. So consumed with rage, his mind running on pure animal instinct, he destroyed everything around him, fighting, smashing, killing anything and anyone that tried to stop him. And they couldn't stop him.
“In all the chaos, Bertron tried to recall the creature, again thinking he'd made a mistake somewhere along the line. Maybe he'd tortured the creature too much, or maybe he'd added the wrong DNA. Either way, he had to start over. His Ultimate Weapon had become a Doomsday Weapon, completely uncontrollable.
“But when Bertron tried to get the creature's attention, relying on that loyalty that he'd built into its mind, the creature only became more enraged, and charged the scientist. With one bony fist, the Doomsday Weapon killed Bertron.
“No one was left that knew the things that Bertron had done to this creature, and no one knew how to stop him. For years the people of Khundia fought the creature, many people dying along the way. The whole system was nearly destroyed in the wake of all the fighting, entire cities knocked down, millions of innocent people killed. It was unspeakable, the horrors that the Doomsday Weapon brought to Khundia.
“But one day, at long last, the people finally managed to overpower the beast, and they killed him. Rejoicing in their triumph, they didn't notice until it was too late that death hadn't actually taken the creature. With one huge breath, the creature came back to life, lifting itself from the bloody ground. In its infinite rage, it destroyed the very people that had celebrated his death.
“And on and on it went, whenever the people had thought the creature dead, it would come back to life, angrier, meaner, and always, always harder to kill. It was unstoppable.
“It wasn't until there were very few people left alive to fight that help finally came, so many years after Doomsday had come to their world that they'd forgotten the name 'Bertron' altogether. The Green Lantern Corps, newly arrived in this sector of space-”
“Uncle Hal!” Lara cut in, nearly jumping at the familiar name.
Clark grinned down at her. “Well, he wasn't born yet, but it was the people he works for. There are lots of them, remember?”
Lara nodded, her curls bouncing.
“Okay, so, the Green Lantern Corps found this star system, and realized that the Doomsday Weapon had destroyed nearly everyone. They couldn't let that slide, of course. They had to stop the creature once and for all, no matter what.
“It took many Lanterns to capture the beast, many dying in the process, but after a long time, they did it! They put it in a stasis chamber, where it would sleep indefinitely, never waking unless they wanted it to, and then took the creature back to their home world, Oa, where it would stay locked up forever, never to hurt anyone again.
“But something went terribly wrong, and during the long journey to Oa, Doomsday got free. He fought and fought, killing many Lanterns and destroying many of their ships. It was beginning to look like he might win, and escape to terrorize the entire galaxy. Until one brave Guardian-remember, the little blue guys with the white hair that Uncle Hal told us about?”
Another nod from the four-year-old, and Clark went on, “Well, this one brave Guardian, knowing that no one and nothing could stop this creature, came face to face with it, ready to sacrifice himself to save the universe. Armed with a special collar made by the people of a planet called Calaton, the Guardian came right up to the Doomsday creature and snapped the collar onto its neck, at the same time it tore him to pieces, releasing all his magical energies in one huge explosion.
“The explosion didn't destroy Doomsday, of course, but with the help of the collar, made to keep the dead from returning from their graves, it forced the creature into a state of hibernation, a sleep much deeper than any stasis chamber ever could've kept it in.
“With the creature finally defeated, the remaining Green Lanterns sealed it inside an asteroid, a big rock out in space, there to slumber forever.”
Lowering his voice, Clark leaned in close to finish, “But, it was said on Krypton that the Doomsday creature slumbers still, lost in space, its ancient form ready to be released from its prison, to fight, to destroy, and to kill. Every time you see a shooting star, it just might be him.”
For a moment, Lara just sat in silence, no whimper to show she'd been frightened, no jumping when Clark lifted a hand to smooth her hair back again. Instead, her eyes shined with unshed tears, and her mouth was drawn down into a pout again.
“Hey, what's wrong, sweetie? That wasn't too scary, was it? You said you were ready for it,” he said, swiping a thumb over her cheeks where a few tears had already fallen.
Shaking her head, Lara sniffled, and she turned her blue eyes up to Clark again as she lay her head against his chest. “He didn't want to be bad, Daddy. It wasn't his fault.”
For a moment, Clark was confused. “What do you mean?”
“The creature. Doomsday. He wasn't the bad guy, the scientist was. He made the Kryptonian into a monster, and everybody fought it, and poor Doomsday didn't know how to stop anymore because he'd been made bad!”
“Oh, kiddo! Hey, it's all right now, it was just a story,” Clark tried to soothe his daughter again, drawing her into a proper hug. “It never happened, and no horrible scientist is out there turning people into monsters. Okay? I promise.”
When Lara nodded against his shoulder, he stood to lay her back down in her bed, tucking the covers around her again and fluffing up her pillow. A few more errant tears swiped away, and Clark dropped a soft kiss on his daughter's forehead. “All right, now you try to get to sleep, Princess. And if you need us, you know where me and Mommy are.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too, Daddy.”
Flicking off the light switch and pulling the door almost closed on his way out of the room then, Clark nearly ran into Lois in the hallway. Resisting a little startle since he'd only been paying attention to his daughter for the last half-hour, he asked, “How long have you been lurking around the corner?”
“Long enough,” Lois said, looking up at him with her arms wrapped around herself as if to ward off a shiver. “That wasn't a true story from the annals of Krypton's vast history, was it? It seemed awfully... specific.”
A deep breath at the unexpected question, and Clark shook his head, his mind turning over all the parts of the story that he'd either left out or lightened up to spare Lara's imagination the horrors that he'd been told in the Fortress, that Hal himself had confirmed. “I wish it wasn't, Lois. I wish to God it wasn't.”
~*~*~*~
Fandom: Superman Returns
Characters/Pairing: Clark/Lois, Lara (the second)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2,050
Prompt: For the EyesSkyward.com April Fic Grab: Ancient
Summary: When Lara demands a scary bed-time story, Clark indulges her. It's probably not a good idea.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything, the schmucks.
Author's Notes: This is officially part of the Aftermath-verse, and it ties into Awaiting the Ghost of Christmas Past, occurring three years before that story, but all you really need to know is that Lara is Clark and Lois's daughter, their first child after Jason. For those that would cry foul at Clark telling Lara a scary story when she's still little, remember: it's all Richard's fault.
A Scary Story
“Once upon a time, there lived a-”
“'Once upon a time' is for baby stories, daddy,” Lara whined, rolling her eyes up at her dad. “And I'm four now. Tell me a scary story.”
Clark chuckled and gathered his daughter closer against his side, tucking her bed covers tighter around her. “A scary story, huh? Think you can handle it?”
Lara just turned those huge blue eyes up at him again. “Uh-huh. Jason said Daddy Richard told him scary stories all the time when he was little like me.”
“I see. Okay then....” Pausing, Clark racked his brain for a tale that his little girl would deem scary enough, but wouldn't have her running to his and Lois's bedroom after a nightmare. Luckily, the solution wasn't far away. “Many thousands of years ago,” he started, “there lived a-”
“Not another princess story, Daddy,” Lara cut him off.
“It's not, I promise.”
“Okay.”
Clark cleared his throat and started again. “Many, many thousands of years ago, there lived a scientist named Bertron. He was a cruel man, obsessed with creating the perfect soldier, the Ultimate Weapon, a creature so powerful that it couldn't be stopped, could never be killed. All he needed to do was to find a specimen that he could experiment on. Animal or man, it didn't matter, so long as it could fight and kill.
“One day, he went to the planet Krypton in search of such a specimen. He'd heard that the people living there were strong, fearless, and fought each other like wild animals, half-crazed and snarling with rage.”
“But I thought that people on Krypton were smart and good and didn't hurt each other,” Lara chimed in, a little pout tugging down the corners of her mouth.
“They were,” Clark answered, tightening his grip around his daughter. “But this was a long, long time before that, when the Kryptonian race was still very young, and didn't know how to behave yet.”
“Like the littler kids at school,” the girl answered with a sage nod.
“Exactly.”
“Okay, keep going.”
“Yes ma'am. Now where was I? Oh, Bertron was on Krypton. Well, Bertron searched high and low, and found a Kryptonian, one that seemed to be the fiercest of them all. The Kryptonian was angry, and when the scientist took him away from his home, he fought hard to get away, killing several of Bertron's assistants on his spaceship. To preserve his own life, and thinking he'd made a terrible mistake, Bertron stabbed the Kryptonian through the heart with a long blade.
“But Bertron couldn't let his experiment end in such a failure. Taking a tiny sample of the dead Kryptonian's body, he grew a clone of him, a new copy that would be all the things that the dead Kryptonian was, but more, better. He changed that little piece, made it so the clone would be loyal to him, and him alone, and then he let the clone grow inside an incubating chamber.
“When the clone got big enough, the scientist let him out of the chamber. And what do you know? The clone didn't try to hurt Bertron at all. He was quiet, calm. It was amazing!
“Bertron had other ideas, though. He didn't want the clone to be calm all the time, he wanted him to be a weapon. So one day he sent the clone back down to Krypton, to a place on the planet where few other Kryptonians lived, but there were large, fierce animals that would've gladly eaten a Kryptonian for dinner.”
Feeling Lara's tiny hands fist into his t-shirt, Clark smoothed down her unruly hair to soothe her.
“Thinking that the clone would surely defeat all those animals, Bertron was surprised when the clone was killed, as hard as he'd fought them. But all was not lost.
“Collecting the body of the clone, the scientist set out to create a new clone. This time even better than before. He added some of the DNA-the little bits that make us grow into what we are-from the animals that had killed the first clone. So the new clone had huge bony spikes sticking out of his face, hands, and arms, he had thick, tough skin like leather, and he had eyes that could see in the near-darkness. The new clone didn't look like a Kryptonian anymore, and he was twice as angry as the original man that Bertron kidnapped. He was a monster, a creature, mindless and easy to control.
“Now all Bertron had to do was to test out his creature. This time, he couldn't fail. So, he took the clone to a far-off star system called Khundia, where the people had been fighting a war for many years. He could release his creature to fight and end the war, his Ultimate Weapon.
“The Ultimate Weapon, however, didn't intend to finish the war. So consumed with rage, his mind running on pure animal instinct, he destroyed everything around him, fighting, smashing, killing anything and anyone that tried to stop him. And they couldn't stop him.
“In all the chaos, Bertron tried to recall the creature, again thinking he'd made a mistake somewhere along the line. Maybe he'd tortured the creature too much, or maybe he'd added the wrong DNA. Either way, he had to start over. His Ultimate Weapon had become a Doomsday Weapon, completely uncontrollable.
“But when Bertron tried to get the creature's attention, relying on that loyalty that he'd built into its mind, the creature only became more enraged, and charged the scientist. With one bony fist, the Doomsday Weapon killed Bertron.
“No one was left that knew the things that Bertron had done to this creature, and no one knew how to stop him. For years the people of Khundia fought the creature, many people dying along the way. The whole system was nearly destroyed in the wake of all the fighting, entire cities knocked down, millions of innocent people killed. It was unspeakable, the horrors that the Doomsday Weapon brought to Khundia.
“But one day, at long last, the people finally managed to overpower the beast, and they killed him. Rejoicing in their triumph, they didn't notice until it was too late that death hadn't actually taken the creature. With one huge breath, the creature came back to life, lifting itself from the bloody ground. In its infinite rage, it destroyed the very people that had celebrated his death.
“And on and on it went, whenever the people had thought the creature dead, it would come back to life, angrier, meaner, and always, always harder to kill. It was unstoppable.
“It wasn't until there were very few people left alive to fight that help finally came, so many years after Doomsday had come to their world that they'd forgotten the name 'Bertron' altogether. The Green Lantern Corps, newly arrived in this sector of space-”
“Uncle Hal!” Lara cut in, nearly jumping at the familiar name.
Clark grinned down at her. “Well, he wasn't born yet, but it was the people he works for. There are lots of them, remember?”
Lara nodded, her curls bouncing.
“Okay, so, the Green Lantern Corps found this star system, and realized that the Doomsday Weapon had destroyed nearly everyone. They couldn't let that slide, of course. They had to stop the creature once and for all, no matter what.
“It took many Lanterns to capture the beast, many dying in the process, but after a long time, they did it! They put it in a stasis chamber, where it would sleep indefinitely, never waking unless they wanted it to, and then took the creature back to their home world, Oa, where it would stay locked up forever, never to hurt anyone again.
“But something went terribly wrong, and during the long journey to Oa, Doomsday got free. He fought and fought, killing many Lanterns and destroying many of their ships. It was beginning to look like he might win, and escape to terrorize the entire galaxy. Until one brave Guardian-remember, the little blue guys with the white hair that Uncle Hal told us about?”
Another nod from the four-year-old, and Clark went on, “Well, this one brave Guardian, knowing that no one and nothing could stop this creature, came face to face with it, ready to sacrifice himself to save the universe. Armed with a special collar made by the people of a planet called Calaton, the Guardian came right up to the Doomsday creature and snapped the collar onto its neck, at the same time it tore him to pieces, releasing all his magical energies in one huge explosion.
“The explosion didn't destroy Doomsday, of course, but with the help of the collar, made to keep the dead from returning from their graves, it forced the creature into a state of hibernation, a sleep much deeper than any stasis chamber ever could've kept it in.
“With the creature finally defeated, the remaining Green Lanterns sealed it inside an asteroid, a big rock out in space, there to slumber forever.”
Lowering his voice, Clark leaned in close to finish, “But, it was said on Krypton that the Doomsday creature slumbers still, lost in space, its ancient form ready to be released from its prison, to fight, to destroy, and to kill. Every time you see a shooting star, it just might be him.”
For a moment, Lara just sat in silence, no whimper to show she'd been frightened, no jumping when Clark lifted a hand to smooth her hair back again. Instead, her eyes shined with unshed tears, and her mouth was drawn down into a pout again.
“Hey, what's wrong, sweetie? That wasn't too scary, was it? You said you were ready for it,” he said, swiping a thumb over her cheeks where a few tears had already fallen.
Shaking her head, Lara sniffled, and she turned her blue eyes up to Clark again as she lay her head against his chest. “He didn't want to be bad, Daddy. It wasn't his fault.”
For a moment, Clark was confused. “What do you mean?”
“The creature. Doomsday. He wasn't the bad guy, the scientist was. He made the Kryptonian into a monster, and everybody fought it, and poor Doomsday didn't know how to stop anymore because he'd been made bad!”
“Oh, kiddo! Hey, it's all right now, it was just a story,” Clark tried to soothe his daughter again, drawing her into a proper hug. “It never happened, and no horrible scientist is out there turning people into monsters. Okay? I promise.”
When Lara nodded against his shoulder, he stood to lay her back down in her bed, tucking the covers around her again and fluffing up her pillow. A few more errant tears swiped away, and Clark dropped a soft kiss on his daughter's forehead. “All right, now you try to get to sleep, Princess. And if you need us, you know where me and Mommy are.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too, Daddy.”
Flicking off the light switch and pulling the door almost closed on his way out of the room then, Clark nearly ran into Lois in the hallway. Resisting a little startle since he'd only been paying attention to his daughter for the last half-hour, he asked, “How long have you been lurking around the corner?”
“Long enough,” Lois said, looking up at him with her arms wrapped around herself as if to ward off a shiver. “That wasn't a true story from the annals of Krypton's vast history, was it? It seemed awfully... specific.”
A deep breath at the unexpected question, and Clark shook his head, his mind turning over all the parts of the story that he'd either left out or lightened up to spare Lara's imagination the horrors that he'd been told in the Fortress, that Hal himself had confirmed. “I wish it wasn't, Lois. I wish to God it wasn't.”
~*~*~*~