Fic: Deliver us from Evil, 1/1
Title: Deliver us from Evil
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: None you know are belong to us.
Warnings: AU times N; unbeta'ed; confusing capers with canon; Superman's a naughty boy; first person POV
Characters: Clark Kent, demons, Sam, Dean
Rating: G
Summary: AU future-ficlet: the fate of the world rests on Superman's shoulders again. Supernatural Season 3.
ETA: Graciously, wonderfully podficced by twasdark.
Crossposted to sammessiah, supernaturalfic, crossoverfic.
Taking on the Demon King of Hell?
It was a given that I'd go. All in a day's work for the saviour of the world, after all. For Great Justice, Freedom and America.
So I went and fought my way to him, through throngs of demons. Some of them I recognized, some of them I'd met before and thought to have banished from physical realm. Some of them sneered at me, taunted me with sharp tongues and asked after Ma and Pa, old flames and fires I couldn't control. They grew quieter the redder my hands got.
They were demons, the civilians squirreled away.
They were hellspawn, immorality incarnate, and I'm the very paragon of all things a man could be, should be. There's nothing and no one that can stand in my way, not anymore. Because I personify righteousness, and Good will ever triumph over Evil.
And Armageddon is but a heartbeat away, the world burning wherever the King laid his hand.
I trailed him for three days, followed in his footsteps only to reach him in Metropolis just before dawn.
He had no horns, no barbed tail or wings burnt to tatters. He had a harem of fiends, and a single man beside him, facing the east and the first rays of the sun.
He looked like someone I could've gone to school with. Frayed jeans, worn t-shirt. Hands in his pockets and wind in his hair. I could've killed him with ease, save the world and go for breakfast with barely a blink in between.
But there is no honour in backstabbing a man. Nothing even distantly noble in shooting them in secret.
So I stood, and watched the burning star paint the world out of dullness, the Demon King before me.
The sun spread his shadow over the world, did the same to the shades of those with him. The crouched man beside the King was still a human; it's easy to tell after living among them for years. His leather jacket curled around him, marked by hellfire, stained with sins no man should ever commit.
I watched them, the Sun-silhouettes like paper dolls. So easy, so simple, to burn a hole in the flesh, snap the spine no stronger than baby's breath.
But not honourable, not noble. Not right. If their paragon fails, what hope does the humanity have?
The light bathed the world, painted out the jagged edges of the buildings' bones, the veins of ways bled dry, silent, and yet the rays still warmed.
It felt wrong.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" The Demon King asked, voice calm and melodious, like he didn't have the souls of so many on his conscience. He hadn't turned, eyes still staring at the sun, but I could hear him, his heartbeats like his chest was under my cheek. "Did you know no dawn is identical? That you can see each sunrise only once, never to be repeated again?"
He could have been talking to his cohorts, to the man beside him.
It felt like he was addressing me and no one else.
The man, who couldn't be anything else but what the whispers rumoured, glanced at the Demon King, his profile carved against the pale sky.
"Can I call you Clark...or do you prefer Kal-El?"
I shouldn't have been surprised that the Demon King knew my name. The murmur shouldn't have slithered like a serpent around my spine, the sins of the flesh the lightning down a viper's back.
There was no point in sinking down to his level. He'd face me, I'd save the world and go home. Everyone else would get to live happily ever after. Until a new Armageddon threatened.
I waited for the Demon King's move; the man beside him turned his back to the sun, eyes on me, fingers playing with an old blade. He was still human, no matter what he'd been through. I could still save him.
The Demon King laid a hand on the man's chest, the shades around us standing down, fleeing before the rising sun.
"You've hunted me across America," the Demon King said softly, watching his brother, talking to me. "Followed me only to find me at the threshold of your home. But what shall it be, man of steel?"
It would have been so easy to let my gaze heat up, scorch the skin and turn to ashes all that stood before me.
But that was not the code I abided by. There was a chill in the morning breeze, the ghost of a lament on the wind.
The Demon King lowered his hand, a caress on the cotton, turned to finally face me. There was a smile on his lips, his eyes a spectrum of sun.
"I was going to punish the world for all it's done to us," he murmured, and I couldn't move. "I was going to feed humanity to the elements and the animals, one after the other." He took a step forward, and my lips were sealed. "But then you stepped up, laid the world to waste. Killed indiscriminately the possessed and the madmen, dealt death to those you'd sworn to protect."
It was a lie.
I had saved civilians, slaying demons. But there was blood on my hands that bore no scent of sulphur; there was brimstone on my tongue.
And not a single heartbeat in a milewide radius around us, save for the ones belonging to the man and the King, and my own.
The King stood in front of me, and his eyes were green, burning brighter than copper iodine.
"Thank you, Superman," he whispered, and leaned forward.
In his kiss, I tasted my fall.
A/N: This was essentially written just to prove that tigriswolf still speaks the language that the Muse understands... *sigh*
But how'd you talk me into writing in the first person? As the Superman, no less?
A/N the second: I don't even pretend to know anything about the Man of Steel, beyond three half-watched and even more forgotten seasons of Smallville. And the Kingdom Come-graphic novel, which... *SMISH*