Hypertime by chinae

[teot]

Title: Hypertime
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,259
Cover: Cover #2
Summary: Time Travel
Beta: Sylvie



Hypertime
by chinae

"Kal-El."

"Don't call me that."

"Kal-El, it is not your fault."

Clark let out a bitter laugh.

"Wasn't it?" he practically shouted at the AI. "I let him die!"

"You did no such thing. You were not the one who injured him," the machine tried to reason with Clark.

"No, but I was the one who put my secret identity over his life. I made that choice."

"You could not risk.…"

"I should have." The self-loathing was evident in Clark's voice. "I should have," he repeated. "Instead, I stood and watched, waited for a rescue that didn't come in time. I waited, ignoring his gasps, his silent pleas to help him."

"You cannot blame yourself, Kal-El. Humans are not meant to live forever."

"This one was. This one should have," Clark argued. "God, what have I done?" His knees gave out and he fell to the ground. "What have I done?"

"What you had to do," the AI informed him.

"No," Clark denied. "No." He shook his head, trying to clear this thought and forget the events of that day.

As the years passed, Clark constantly looked back to the day he put his mission before someone's life. Lex's life.

Every rescue he made, he measured against the one he did not.

He would ask himself if keeping the secret identity was worth all the sacrifice.

Had it been worth all the pain and the endless what ifs?

No.

That answer had remained constant, like his pain.

He sighed and looked up. It was a clear day.

A kind of day that could signal a new beginning…or its end.

Lex had told him once that they had a destiny. Clark hadn't believed him at first. Hadn't wanted to. Now, though, he was going to do everything in his power to make it come true.

It took him time to decide on his next course of action and to hide his plans from the AI.

He thought about cloning Lex but...what made Lex his was their shared experience. He thought about travelling back in time, but how would he be able to do this?

A few more years passed, and it was only when Clark had the opportunity to meet with the Linear Men that he truly came up with a plan, to break into their base and render them unconscious. Who would ever cast Superman as a villain?

So on a clear Sunday afternoon he set his plan in motion and soon he found himself stepping into the timestream, riding its invisible current, travelling freely through time to undo the one event that had changed his life.

But like everything in Clark's life, he had miscalculated; he'd thought time would travel in a linear fashion, going from point A to point B. He hadn't considered the possibility of other worlds. Time in reality was a web of 'What ifs?'.

Faster than was humanly possible, scenes flickered before him. Lex's death. Clark's marriage to Lois. Conner. Lex's daughter, Lena.

These scenes he remembered; the others he was shown, though, took his breath away.

In one world, Lex had fallen in love with Bruce; in another, he and Clark had grown up as brothers, kin. Lex as the Last Son of Earth, spaceship crash-landing on Krypton, Lex marrying Lois, Lex as a firefighter, reporter....

He watched the endless parade of 'What ifs?' until he finally found what h'd been looking for.

Lex in Belle Reeve.

His Lex, that Clark had no doubt of.

He stepped forward, about to step out of the timestream he'd been riding, when he was grabbed unexpectedly from behind.

"Superman, stop!"

"Let go of me!" Clark pulled, but the grip tightened. The Linear Man, know as Waverider, would not let go.

"You can't do this," Matthew Ryder, the Waverider, informed him.

"Step aside."

"Superman, let the past be. Let him go."

"I can't." There was no point in hiding the pain in Clark's voice.

"Superman, if you take Lex Luthor out of this timestream, you jeopardize everything. Every action either of you took after Belle Reeve. Every life you saved and person you helped."

Once, that argument would have stopped him, but that was before the reality of a life without Lex. "So be it," was all the warning he gave as he pushed the Waverider aside and stepped out of the timestream.

His scream seemed like an endless echo in the blackness of infinite time.

He was well known to his people. Revered for his power and ability.

He was Kal-El, a hunter of the Wolf Tribe.

Legends spoke that he fell from the sky, amid a shower of fire and rock.

He was, to the tribe, a living god.

Kal-El adjusted the pelt on his back.

Just last night, a messenger from one of their sister tribes had come to warn them. Strangers were venturing into their land. These strangers were as pale as the moon. Some had hair the colour of the sun, some as black as the raven, others of fire. One of the strangers they had captured had eyes as blue as the sky.

They brought death and destruction with them and the tribes considered them demons.

They asked if Kal-El could come and protect them. Could he tame these demons, like he had tamed the wolves?

"Hair the colour of fire?" he asked the messenger. For some reason, his heart began to race and his mouth dried. The thought of someone with hair of that colour…he shook his head and tried to clear his thoughts.

"Yes, and eyes as blue as yours."

Hm…this he had to see.

In the dark wood cabin, Kal-El knelt down beside the unconscious man. He seemed somehow familiar.

For some reason, he was cautious as reached out to touch the other. His skin was so smooth. Fingertips traced along dry lips, to the small spots along the other's nose and cheek.

Kal-El traced a pattern along the other's neck and shoulder blade where he found more small light brown spots.

The man truly was pale, and his hair was indeed the colour of fire.

Fire that would forever burn.

Kal-El blinked. For a moment, it had seemed as though the man had changed and another had been in his place.

"Care for him," Kal-El instructed the attendant. "When he awakens, call me."

In the evening, Kal-El found himself thinking of the pale stranger. Who was he? And why was he here?

He adjusted the bed coverings. Tonight, he was sleeping alone. The tribe had offered its daughters and sons to him, and while in the past he'd enjoyed these encounters, tonight he was unable to commit, to take one to bed.

He got up, left his cabin and walked toward the cabin that held the stranger.

He looked down at the other. Something about him didn't seem right.

Kal-El glanced around. "You there," he said to one of the children from the tribe, who had been sleeping in a corner. "Wake up, bring me a sharp knife and water."

Once he had everything, he knelt down and began the task of painstakingly cutting the other's hair, careful not to make any nips as he cut, and then shaved the man bald.

There, that was much better.

Satisfied, he let his fingers trace over the man's bald head. He discovered a small lump at the back.

"Kal-El, what should I do with this," asked the boy who had brought him the water. In his hand he held the cut hair.

Kal-El held a curl in his hand. "Gather it for me. I want to have it woven into my headdress."

"Nn..."

On the floor where he slept, the stranger tossed in his sleep. He kept murmuring words that Kal-El did not understand.

"Ssh..." Kal-El said as he tried to comfort the other, the back of his hand tracing the other's cheekbone.

"Umgh..." was the response.

Kal-El was one of the best hunters the tribe had ever had. He could sense when prey was afraid or hurt, and this man showed similar traits to the animals Kal-El hunted.

For some reason that Kal-El could not explain, he laid down next to the other and gathered him in his arms. That seem to quiet him down.

At least for now.

Over the next few days, Kal-El looked after the stranger. The man had caught a fever and they had moved him to a sweat lodge.

The other tribespeople hadn't wanted to look after him, afraid of the disease he might bring, but Kal-El was not bothered by it. After all, he rarely if ever got ill.

"Who are you," he thought as he added more wood to the fire. "Why do you seem so familiar to me?" There were no answers to his questions, but he asked them anyway.

"Kal-El," called the youth who had helped him that first night.

"Yes, Honiahaka?"

"How is he?" The boy knelt down by the stranger's feet.

"Alive."

Honiahaka frowned. "The villagers say you are enamoured with him."

"Do they?" Frankly, Kal-El didn't care what they thought.

"You have rejected their sons and daughters. You have not slept with any of them. They had hoped you might sleep with some of the girls and impregnate them. The village would then have had strong sons to hunt for them in the future."

Yes, Kal-El was well aware of why the villagers always offered him their beds. As far as he knew, no children had ever been born from those unions but that had not stopped the villagers from giving him their daughters and later theirs sons

They offered him anything and everything, if it meant that he would stay and adopt the village as his own.

He had never felt inclined to, preferring to travel from one village to another, helping when he could, protecting them all against outside dangers.

"Do you want me to bring you water again, so you can shave him?" Honiahaka asked.

"Yes." For some reason, he preferred the stranger's head shaved.

"All right. Wait for me, then."

Kal-El went back to sharpening his knives. Tonight, he should take a woman to bed. The villagers had been good hosts, after all.

The other man moaned.

Kal-El put aside his weapons. He would start tomorrow.

It seemed more difficult than he'd first thought, taking someone to bed. He compared every touch with the smooth skin of the stranger. He performed, but did not find pleasure.

As soon as he was done, he would use the water Honiahaka had left behind for him to clean himself, to wash away the woman's scent. He would then walk to the lodge that housed the stranger and lay down against him, gathering him in his arms, his chin coming to rest on the other's head.

At night he would dream, strange dreams, of things that did not make any sense. He would dream of creatures that glowed. Of man bats, and women who could fly. Most of all, he would dream of the man named Lex. Those dreams hurt the most. They were filled with extremes, for often in those dreams he was just as happy as he was sad. He felt guilt. Why he did so, Kal-El did not understand but somehow he knew it was tied to Lex.

Lex.

That was the man's name.

Mind you, at times his dream self had called him something else. Luthor.

Kal-El tried not to have those dreams where he called him Luthor, since those dream brought him pain and guilt.

"X..." He tried again. "Ex..." No, that didn't seem right. "Lex." Yes, that sounded just like in his dream. "Lex."

"Lex. Lex. Lex. Lex." He said repeatedly, loving the way his mouth formed the words.

"Clark?"

Kal-El gasped and in his scramble came close to dropping Lex.

"Clark?" Lex moaned, eyes blinking, displaying an unfocused gaze.

His eyes were the colour of the sky, Kal-El thought.

"Clark." The word seem more certain now.

A hand came up to brush against Kal-El's lips. There was wonderment in Lex's gaze now.

"Where…how," Lex paused and closed his eyes momentarily. "My dad… Are they coming for me?"

"No," Kal-El replied cautiously. How was it that he could understand the language Lex was using? Could speak it, even?

"You, Lex?" he asked.

"Clark, help me up, we have to." Lex glanced around, taking in their lack of clothing and that they were sharing a bed. "I don't…I." He shook his head and lay back down. "God, please, I can't be having a breakdown." There was no hiding the fear in Lex's voice.

"You safe," Kal-El tried to reassure him.

Lex let out a laugh. "Even in my dreams, you protect me."

"No dream. Real."

Lex just shook his head. "No, Clark; if this was real, we certainly wouldn't be naked, in bed together. Wait, why are we on the floor?"

Lex asked too many questions. Confusing questions.

"Sleep," he advised.

"I am asleep." The other man smiled up at him.

"Sleep," he said again and, this time, Lex complied.

Tomorrow, they would talk more in this strange language. Yes, tomorrow they would do that and he would take Lex down to the river and help him bathe. He would then offer him his best pelts to wear.

He gathered Lex in his arms once again.

An elder had once told him that Kal-El would know when he had met his mate. Maybe this was what he meant. He was eager to find out.

Please remember to leave feedback and vote when the poll is up!