Fic: Summers [1/7] Clark Kent , Scott Summers(rated teen)
Fandom: Superman/X-Men (comicverse)
Characters: Clark Kent (Superman, Kal-el), Scott Summers (Cyclops)
Rating: Teen for strong language
Summary:There was a boy who fell from a burning plane and landed in a farm in Smallville, Kansas. He was adopted by a kind, old couple who could not have their own children. But they had plenty of experience raising boys who fall from the sky.
Disclaimer: Scott Summers (Cyclops) is the property of Marvel Comics, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Clark Kent (Kal-el, Superman) is the property of DC Comics, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. This work is for entertainment only; no money is made. Gosh darn it.
Author's Notes: All the chapters are available at my website but for those who want to read on LJ, I'll be updating it regularly at least twice a week if not more. It's just a coding thing.
=^o.O^=The plane bled smoke over the wheat spikes of back forty. Clark's eyes stung as he pushed himself faster than he ever had before. His own trail of dust traced the plane's descent. He had to get there in time. He just had to.
Fiery bits of debris arched out behind the fuselage. He hoped Pa and the fire brigade would come along quickly or one of those sparks could set a whole field of crops off. One speck of debris fell so oddly, Clark paused. It spiralled wildly, as though resisting the fall. Now Clark skidded to a full stop. He squinted and for a second, he could've sworn his vision zoomed in like the Great-Great Grampa Clark's old nautical telescope. In that moment, he saw two figures hanging from a collapsing parachute. Survivors. If he got to them in time. He turned sharply.
The closer he got, the closer they got and Clark realized this wasn't the pilot and a passenger. They were kids, young as the ones Lana looked after for Sunday School. He pushed himself all the more. The world became swathes of yellow and blue on either side. Those kids became his only focus. Clark read a lot of books and remembered nearly everything he read. He knew, because he'd been looking it up pretty recently, that those kids were free-falling at hundred-twenty miles an hour, terminal velocity. He knew few parachuters managed to survive if their parachutes deployed under a thousand feet. He knew low altitude jumpers could deploy at three hundred feet but that was only because their terminal velocity wasn't as high. Because his brain calculated equations much too quickly, he also knew that at his current speed, he'd never reach them in time and even if he did, the force with which his body hit theirs would kill them as much as a crash landing.
Without quite knowing why, Clark jumped.
He felt… strings. No, strings weren't quite right. It felt more like a stream of silk threads, flowing over him, some even curling around him and-- was he floating?
Then the kids grew bigger in his line of sight and Clark opened his arms to catch them. The older boy-- they were both boys-- cried out when he collided with them. Clark tried to hold on to the younger boy, too, but all he managed to catch was his shirt. He fisted the cloth in his hand, tightened his embrace around the older one and tried to figure out how to land. He should roll, possibly sideways to decrease the force of the impact. What could work better is if there were trees nearby; it might hurt them but at least it would slow them down more but they'd already passed the nearest hedgerow. Then Clark had to stop thinking and simply do because the ground was coming up fast. He tucked one boy each under his arms, bent his legs, cupped their heads close to his body to protect them from the shock. Heat from the parachute chased his heels but he couldn't worry about it right now. Half a blink after the ripening wheat stalks whipped his jeans, the ground slammed into his boots. Clark felt the hard pack crunch and sink, felt the older boy's head thump against his chest. He lifted off again. This time, he controlled the jump to a mere fifty feet. His second landing was softer. He jumped one last time, a normal human height and finally, they landed.
Gently, he put the boys down. The parachute still had to be taken care of but the rope ripped easily and when he bunched the silk in his hands, the fire put itself out. He returned to the boys. The younger one wailed, clinging to the older one's neck. Clark's heart thumped.
"Hey there," he said. "Hey, I'm going to check your brother, okay? What's your name?"
"A-Alex."
"Okay, Alex, my name's Clark. I'm going to need you to move just to one side so I can see if your brother's hurt." The little boy nodded even as his wails increased in volume. Clark talked some more, to calm him as he checked the over boy over. "Is he your brother? Yeah? What's his name?"
"Scuh-Scuh-Scott."
Clark leaned in right at the older boy's ear and yelled, "Scott! Scott! Wake up, Scott! Wake up!" He pinched his arm hard as he dared then his leg but Scott didn't even flinch. Alex began to wail again. In the distance, a fire truck and ambulance echoed his cries.
#
Newspapers and TV stations swarmed around the story of the downed plane but Clark disappeared back home. That night, when the local station reported the crash of a small private plane, he paused in the middle of algebra homework to listen. Ma knowingly turned the volume up.
"The pilot, Maj. Christopher Summers, and his wife, Katherine Summers, a valued engineer at Arnold Engineering Development, were killed instantly when their personal plane crashed into this field behind me here in Smallville."
Clark closed his eyes.
"Their two children survived the crash and are being treated in Via Christi St. Francis for injuries."
"I hurt him," he said. "The older one, Scott. He was awake going down but he hit his head on me when I caught him. Then he wouldn't wake up."
His mom patted his shoulder. "Honey, if you hadn't caught him, he and his brother would be dead."
#
Inconceivably, to Clark, news about Scott and Alex petered away within a week. They were both receiving care in one of Wichita's best hospitals but the reports remained frustratingly vague. Speculations on the cause of the crash went on-- Maj. Summers had several DUIs in the past five years, the plane was way off course from their original flight plan to Nebraska, Mrs. Summers had installed a few modifications on the plane-- but the FAA hadn't released anything official.
Clark rested his chin on his hand and stared out at the back forty. He saw that black tear in the sky still, from the smoke on the plane. If only he could control his jumps better. What was the use of his powers if he couldn't use them properly?
"Ma, do you think Pa will let me go to Wichita?"
Martha continued to stir the lentils. "Are you planning to check in on those boys?"
"I just want to make sure they're okay. I read that if you save someone's life, you're responsible for them."
She laughed. "If that's true, I reckon you're responsible for a full quarter of the people in the county. Come here and grind these for me, will you, honey?"
Clark dusted his pants off. After washing his hands, he swept a small pile of spices into his one cupped palm. "Where do you want it?"
"Right in the pot, please."
He rubbed his hands together. Cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, and dried herbs came out as fine powder.
"Thank you, dear."
"You're welcome, Ma." He washed his hands again. "I'm done my homework for the weekend. And all the chores needs doing for the day are done. If I start now, I can be in Wichita and back before dark."
The screen door slammed. "What's in Wichita?" asked Pa. He placed his worn baseball cap on a hook by the door where it always fell off.
"Those poor boys who landed in the wheat crop," said Martha. "Clark wants to visit them."
Pa went "hrmph" and Clark's shouldered slumped. He rarely got his way when his dad went "hrmph." "I suppose you know where they are?"
"Via Christi St. Francis," he said. "I won't be long. I just want to say hi and see how they're doing and if they've got family waiting to get them."
"Hrmph." His father washed his hands at the sink.
"Jonathan," Ma admonished. "He's done his chores."
"That he has. Did a fine job fixing the damage done in that field." Pa wiped his hands slowly, thoughtfully. "Soon as you finish lunch, you can head over. But mind you don't get caught."
"No, sir."
"Fourteen years old and he's already making plans to leave town."
"Aw, Pa, it's not like that." But Pa was smiling, teasing, so Clark didn't feel as bad.
"I think you should bring a pie," said Ma.
"Ma, I'll spill it!"
"Sweetheart, how's he supposed to carry one?"
She placed her hands on her hips. "That's why God made coolers and cobbler tins. Honestly, boys, you think this is the first time we used the Clark Kent Express Delivery Service?"
By the end of dinner, Clark not only had berry cobbler in a cooler, he also carried leftover stew, a loaf of whole wheat bread and a small container of Ma's special cocoa mix. He ran slower than he would have liked to keep all the food intact, arriving in Wichita just over ten minutes later. The hospital sprawled over an area bigger than the busiest part of Smallville. Clark stood at the main entrance for a while, drinking in the strangeness of it all. It wasn't his first time in a big city; he ran all over the country whenever he could. But the idea that so many buildings were needed to house so many sick or injured people took his breath away with its sadness.
A maroon-shirted volunteer pointed him to the elevators for the pediatric wing. Clark's face slowly flushed, his shyness coming to the fore. He didn't know what to say to the staff. He wasn't family, he couldn't let on how he stopped Alex and Scott from falling too hard, heck, he had no idea what to say if either boy asked him why he didn't save their parents either.
"Excuse me, ma'am." He gave the nurses at the station a wobbly smile. "I'm, um, looking for Scott and Alex Summers?"
One of them nodded, smiling politely back. "Who're you, hon?"
"Oh. Uh. I'm, uh, just visiting. I... I have food from my mom and, and..."
"I meant how do you know the patients?"
"Oh!" He leaned forward. "They kind of landed in our farm," he whispered, blushing deeper. "I'm sorry. I know we're not family but we just wanted to make sure they were all right and so if you could just give them this from my Ma, I'll be on my-- oh, and you all can have some, too, of course but I'm not sure if there's enough to go around. I suppose I could see if we have any more pie and come back tomorrow--"
"Clark!"
Something small and pajama-clad slammed into his legs. He leaned back automatically to make sure the other person wouldn't get hurt. It was Alex and, boy, did he look a lot better!
"They gots Nintendo!" the little boy proclaimed, utterly thrilled.
Clark took a knee. "Hi, Alex. That's a neat cast you've got there."
"Yuh-huh. It's blue. Jackie, lookit! It's blue!"
A middle-aged couple stood a few feet away. The woman said, "That's right, Alex. You've got a blue cast," while the man held his hand out.
"Gary Masters. So you're Clark," he said. "Alex here says you flew and caught them."
Clark rubbed the back of his neck. "Flew? Gosh, wouldn't that've been something? I'd've liked to, sir, but all I did was use the walkie to ask my pa to call the fire department." Belatedly, he shook the man's hand.
"That's plenty," said the woman, Jackie. "I'm so glad you visited."
"Thank you. I mean, you're welcome. I mean--" Clark gave up and just held out the cooler. "My ma made this for the boys. I wish there was more."
"You saved their lives and feed them. You're more than a hero, Clark. Now the only way we'd accept this is if you eat it with us in Scott's room."
Because Martha Kent raised him right, Clark politely refused while the Masters' politely insisted and after four or five rounds of that, he found himself in a two-bed room with a nauseating amount of equipment, all of which were attached to Scott Summers.
"Scott's sleeping 'cause his owie's real, real big," whispered Alex.
Jackie clarified the situation. "His head is bruised and was starting to swell up. They have a stent in-- that's like a drain-- to keep the fluids from doing too much damage but they've got him sleeping as much as possible to keep his brain activity down and prevent more damage."
"Does he... does he have a lot of it? Th-the damage?"
"We won't really know until more of the swelling comes down."
He did this. He should have secured Scott's head better or twisted to one side like he initially planned instead of meeting the ground at a dead stop. He was just a kid; he didn't look old enough to be in middle school. Clark swore he'd make it up to Scott. He didn't know how just yet, but he would.
#
Chance tripped into Clark two weeks later. He'd taken to visiting Scott at least once a week, usually around the weekend, more often since the Masters' took Alex home. Alex really took to his foster parents especially since they promised to get Scott too once he woke up. Last he heard, they just needed to sign on a line to adopt Alex.
When Clark visited, he read his books aloud or did math homework. Sometimes, he just talked about chores and the people in school. The doctors decreased Scott's analgesics by half but he still wouldn't wake up. Scott's room had a strange sort of quiet to it. Not peaceful by any means; desperation with varying degrees of hope soaked Neuro-ICU. That hope though, especially when proven true, gosh, it was almost as beautiful as the first shoots coming out of the greenhouse.
That day, that chance day, Clark was doing science homework out loud when one of the nurses tapped his shoulder. "Do you mind coming into the meeting room?"
"Sure. Is something wrong?"
"Why don't you talk with Jackie and Gary first."
Besides the Masters', Clark recognized the social worker and the head nurse. Jackie looked like she'd been crying. He sat down on the nearest empty seat, his chest threatening to break.
Gary shook his hand. "Thanks for coming. You've been such a good friend to Scott when you've already saved his life--"
"Is he going to die?" Clark blurted out. He usually didn't interrupt but he was so scared and worried the words burst from him.
"No!" the head nurse said. "No, Scott's fine. I know it doesn't seem like it but he's doing so much better now."
The cracking in his chest dulled to an ache. "Oh. I'm sorry. Please, go on, Mr. Masters."
"I'll just get to it then." Gary stuck his hands in his pockets. "I've gotten a promotion which is great news considering our family's grown. The bad news is we have to move to back to Hawai'i. It's too good an opportunity to miss."
"But... but what about Scott?"
"That's it exactly. We're going to keep in touch and we still very much want to adopt Scott the way we've adopted Alex. But he's just too fragile to transfer all the way to Hawai'i now. We were hoping you could keep him company until he wakes up or we get settled, whichever comes first."
"You've been so good," Jackie added. "Alex adores you, of course, but we also really appreciate you as well. I've never known a teenager willing to spend his weekends at the hospital for someone he barely knows."
"Gosh." Clark rubbed the back of his neck, beet red and speechless.
Scott didn't wake up for another month. The Masters' never returned.