The Door We Never Opened, Part 5
Title: The Door We Never Opened
Author: latetothpartyhp / FlyingHigh
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, angst
Pairing(s): Chlark, Chlollie, Clois
Summary: Four years after his bachelor party, Clark is still pulling skeletons out of his closet. Sequel to Eradication, The Lens Through Which We Look and The Secret Parts of Fortune. None of them need to be read in order to understand this story. Note "The Secret Parts of Fortune" is rated NC-17.
Author's Note: Season 11? What Season 11? This story takes place after Clark becomes Superman but before the "seven years later". It assumes that Lex was first elected president in 2014 and the 2018 headline was announcing his decision to run again.
Table of Contents
Please see author's note at the end of this chapter.
But what could he say?“Sorry, Ollie, you went to the casino for a few hours on your wedding night and I kinda slept with your wife?” That would go over like a ton of lead, even if it was the only way Clark could think of for Robbie to have been conceived.
Unfortunately, Emil hadn't been there to record it. That meant no proof anything happened, and no proof meant waiting for one of the mansion's load-bearing walls to collapse when Robbie kicked it before he'd be believed. He thought for a moment and then glanced at the clock on Oliver's touch pad. 10:12 PST. That would make it 6:12 GMT. Zee would be awake by now. He took a last look at Robbie, still sprawled out 180 degrees from standard. Sending him a mental hug, he turned and flew north-east.
As it turned out, Zee was not awake. Nor, he discovered after several minutes of banging on her apartment door, was she alone. Luckily the bleary-eyed blond man who'd followed her to the door was content, after a brief once-over, to give him a disgruntled look before pulling a cigarette out of a crumpled white-and-purple pack and lighting it on his way back to the bedroom. Not that his being there was the end of the world, but it did put a crimp into Clark's plan.
As did Zee's stubbornness once he explained why he'd sped her to the roof.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Zee arched a tired brow. “Clark, it's six in the morning. If you have anything to say after dragging me out of bed like that it better be that the Big One just hit Star City.”
“Ah, no.” It occurred to him that he might have jumped the gun a bit coming here.
“That's the good news!” he joked. She failed to laugh. “No, I, uh, need to know what happened the night of my bachelor party.”
“Okay,” she said, looking around. Spotting the service door, she patted him on the shoulder. “I'm going back to bed. Have a nice day, tell Lois I said 'hi'.”
Clark grabbed her wrist before she could lift her hand. “Zatanna, please. I might have … done something … that night. Something that could have unimaginable consequences.” Well, they'd been unimaginable to him a few days ago. Now they were just difficult to fully comprehend. “I need to know if I did what I think I did.”
Pulling her hand away, she crossed her arms and grinned at him. “Oh, I think you'd be surprised at what I can imagine.”
“I'm serious.”
“You usually are. Why do you think I sent that wine to the party?” She sighed. “Okay. So what is it you think you did?”
“I can't tell you.” Not before he and Chloe had discussed it, and not before they had talked to Lois and Oliver. It wouldn't be fair.
“That makes it a little harder to help.”
“There are other people involved. It would … violate their privacy.”
“Would one of those people involved be Lois?”
“Yes,” he said quickly.
“Then discretion's definitely the better part of valor.” She sighed again and lifted her eyes to the sky, thinking. “Do you have anything from that night?” she asked after a minute. “Something you haven't used a lot since then? A memento?”
Clark thought quickly. He'd put back all the stolen street signs the next day; lasered the plastic blow-up crap and half the shoes in his closet after they pulled Lucky out of there; and handed the lemur over to the Humane Society. Chloe and Oliver's wedding rings were about the only things to have survived the general clean-up effort and he wasn't about to fly back and ask Oliver if he would lent him his. “No. It all got trashed.”
“That's unfortunate. Without something to physically connect with from that night, all I can do is a general memory spell, and it's not very specific. You don't have any Christmases with creepy uncles in your past that you've tried to forget, do you?”
“Not exactly,” he said. Try as he might, he'd never be able to forget Zor-El. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it's possible you'd remember it. It's sort of like a magical smash-and-grab. I break down your mental blocks and pull out whatever's on the other side.”
“So, I'll be able to remember what happened that night?”
“Hopefully.”
“You created that mental block!”
Zee gave him the stink eye. “This is what you get at six in the morning after a heavy night. You want something more precise, give me a few days.”
Clark shut his eyes for a second to keep them from over-heating. “Can't you just reverse whatever spell you put on the wine?” he asked.
“No, I can't,” she answered. Her voice was patient but the hand on her hip was not.
“The wine doesn't exist anymore, so neither does the charm.”
“It has to. I still can't remember anything about that night.”
“Maybe you don't want to remember what happened that night.”
“Nobody else remembers what happened that night.”
Zee flung up her hands. “So none of you want to remember. It's nothing personal. Sometimes we're just happier not knowing. But, in your case, that's obviously not the case,” she said hurriedly after catching his eye. Then she sighed again. “You know, a lot of magic is about just freeing your mind from the pressures on it. If you just let yourself relax, it's possible it'll come back on its own. I can help you do that.”
Something in her tone made Clark stiffen. “I don't have the time for that.”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She lifted one of her hands. “Siel era ysae ot ekam tuo, tub detsiwt hturt setaerc tbuod, thgil fo yad sekam dooheslaf tuor, dna htiw ym sdrow eht hturt lliw tuo!” A flash of light too bright even for him burst from her raised hand to his eyes. He winced, grimaced, and blinked. When he could open them again nothing had changed. They were still on the roof, it was still morning in London and she still looked tired and crabby.
Clark waited a moment after she'd stopped talking before frowning. “That's it?”
“Yep. That's it.”
“Nothing happened.”
She waved a hand. “Patience, grasshopper.”
“You said,” he said, and stopped. He could hear Jor-El. Not just in his head, but all around him, ringing off the walls of the cave. “Go with Kara, Kal-El.” “What was that?” he asked.
“What was what?” Zee asked in response.
“That,” he said, but Chloe was asking him a different question: “Why is my mouth minty?” He could see her puzzled face between the sculptures surrounding Kyle Tippet's trailer. As soon as he could open his mouth to answer, the image faded, replaced by a computer monitor in the school library. He was typing: “Sherman's neckties were railway rails destroyed by heating them until they were malleable and twisting--” and then an IM appeared over his paper, flashing lights. Before he could process that he was talking to Chloe again, telling her in the Torch office, “Well, you have to understand there are some things about me that'll never add up” and hearing her say “I know that.” She looked so young. And hurt and confused and resigned or maybe one of a million other things; trying to decode her expressions was too much for any man sometimes.
Except in the next memory - they were his memories, he was sure of that now, even though they were as foreign to him as Oliver's would be. In the next memory, her pupils were dilated and she was panting a little. She looked... turned on. “It'll cost you a groaning to take off my edge,” he was telling her and he knew exactly why he would use that double entendre with her looking like that, but it was still a shock. To see it. See it happening. With Chloe.
“She served her purpose... as has Jonathan Kent.” He started. He was in the caves again, Jor-El's voice filling them, a light shining from within them. His dad was there, he could sense him, physically, standing behind him.
And then they poured over him, thick and confused, too fast for him to guess where and when and why they'd happened:
The dirt was gritting into his wounds and it stung, but it was futile to brush it away. In the dark he could hear faint, random scratching a little below him.
“He's not my father. He tried to prevent me from being reborn.”
“See, you've sort of...taken it upon yourself to be Smallville's self-appointed hero. And if you ask me, I think that … that is amazing.”
“Chloe, I need you to be completely honest with me.” “Honest, huh?” “What'd I do?” “You trusted me.”
“When the buzz fades I'm really not going to regret doing this. Really.”
“Come forward or he will die. Come to me, Kal-El.”
Crushing tons of darkness pressed into him and over him like a cosmic womb.
“I have freaked out every alley cat in a four-block radius!” “You gotta give it some feeling, some passion.” “STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!”
“You didn't have to wait 'til the last second, you know!” “Where's the fun in that?”
“You're gonna forget your friends, your experiences. You're gonna forget me... you're gonna forget me.”
“Five card stud. But it looks like all you got is a pair.” “And I suppose you have a straight flush?” “Damn straight I do.”
“Everything I've ever done, right or wrong... I did for you.”
Then there was light. Light, all around him. Light, sparkling in the clear air. He breathed it in, drunk it, opened every cell to it. He didn't know what is happening to him, only that it was the most wonderful thing that ever had happened.
“Kal-El, my son. Now you shall be reborn.”
Now I am reborn.
Now.
He looked up at Zee, squinting at him in the pale light of the spring morning. “Oh, God,” she said. “There was a creepy uncle.”
“No. No, there wasn't.”
“Well there must have been something. You're crying.”
He was, he realized. Her hand was brushing them away from his face. Circling her wrists with his hands, he lowered hers. Yes, there had been something. A lot of something, as a matter of fact. More something than he'd expected. He'd known about that day not long before graduation. Chloe had teased him after about his worry that he and Lois were related. And he'd known he'd lost time after he'd re-awoken. After both times. His mother had filled him in on the gaps from the first. He hadn't seen or talked to anyone the first few days after the second, so he hadn't been sure what he'd said or done. Still wasn't sure now that the memories had been restored; his mind was now a jumble of puzzle pieces yet to be assembled.
All but for the part in the caves. He knew how that fit together.
“Clark?” Zee's voice was very soft as she said his name.
He shook his head. “Thank you. This was helpful.” It was, even if it felt as if he'd been hit full in chest by Doomsday again. “I need to go.”
“Maybe you should talk to J'onn. I'll call him.”
“No.” J'onn was the last person he needed to see right now. Even if he didn't poke around in Clark's mind he would still know. He always knew things. Never said anything about them, but he knew them. “I don't think so.”
He took off directly from the roof, knowing it was a bad idea and not much caring. He needed to leave and he didn't have time to find a spot guaranteed not to have a satellite trained on him.
Where he was going he wasn't sure. He was hovering over Lowell county before he remembered the farm had been sold and the current owners would likely not understand or appreciate why he was hanging around in the loft of their barn. He could go to the Watchtower, but someone would be on duty there and he didn't want to talk to anyone right now, not even to say hello. He didn't want anyone's concern or advice or freshly baked cookies. He wanted to be alone. These days that meant the Fortress, but at the moment he couldn't help but wonder if he was ever really alone there. Jor-El was always present, even if he didn't want to talk. When he did want to talk, he expected Clark to listen.
Tonight, Clark did not want to listen. He'd forgotten about that girl Jor-El had called Kara. Forgotten her name, forgotten what had happened to her. Truthfully, he didn't know what had happened to her. He'd never bothered to find out. He'd forgotten about the way Jor-El had tried to choke his dad, the rope of fire that had come out of the light to wrap itself around his dad's neck. He'd forgotten that Jor-El would have killed him if he hadn't submitted that night in the caves. He didn't want to remember it, but he did. What Jor-El had done, why he'd done it. Jor-El had wanted him to find the stones and assemble them. Had he done so immediately there would have been so much less death on this planet than there had been. Aethyr and Namek would not have landed. Brainiac would not have begun his campaign of destruction. Doomsday would never have been activated. But he couldn't, now, unsee the defiance on his dad's face, nor unhear the calm, inorganic sound of of the computer telling him: “...as has Jonathan Kent.”
There was no refuge in the Artic for him tonight.
That left him going to and fro along the earth and flying up and down over it. He could stop anywhere, on the peak of Everest, inside the mouth of Mauna Loa, in the middle of Death Valley, but he didn't. Instead he circled in time to the whirl of his mind. He'd remembered the phone call from Zod, the weight of the old handset as it lifted it from the cradle, Zod telling him with Lex's voice, “Hello, Clark. I heard you wanted to see me.” But he hadn't remembered Chloe. Hadn't remembered searching her out, hadn't remembered telling her he didn't want to leave her there, hadn't remembered her telling him that he had to. Yet he hadn't, until now, questioned what he'd been doing in the basement of the Planet that night in the first place. Maybe it was because he spent more time at thethere these days than he did his apartment, but at that time, what would he have been doing there? She would have been the only reason he would have been in that spot to take that call.
Besides which, she'd kissed him. You would think he would have remembered that. You'd think he would have remembered it when he'd met Jimmy. The last time she'd seen him, the last time she thought she might ever see him, she'd kissed him, and then next thing you know she was introducing him to Jimmy like, “Oh hey Clark, Jimmy bought me a candy bar! Isn't he the best?” Why would he have not remembered that? Maybe he had, and he didn't remember not remembering. But if he had, why hadn't he said something, like, “Who are you and what have you done to Chloe?” It wasn't as if -
He pulled up. This was pointless, and unworthy of him. Jimmy had been a friend. Jimmy had died trying to help him, trying to protect Chloe from her own mistakes. Dating Jimmy was one of the best decisions she'd ever made. Jimmy had been good to her. Good for her. He'd thought he'd been. Even if Chloe had kissed him on Black Thursday … well, her kissing him certainly put a new light on what had happened the night of the bachelor party. Going into this he'd pictured a scenario involving some red kryptonite, or maybe blue. Maybe both at once. He'd always assumed that Dax-Ur had conceived his son while wearing his blue K bracelet, so he would have guessed for him to have conceived Robbie he would have needed some of the blue stuff as well, and some of the red because even with the wine he could not have possibly been far enough gone to do that to…
That, however, was not what had happened.
It came to him that he'd stopped flying and was simply drifting, floating in the wind. Just another piece of flotsam tossing in the breeze. Outwardly still and calm. At one with nature, whatever that meant. He was unnatural, at least on this planet. Floating on the breeze isn't what people on this planet did, he reminded himself - which reminded him that by just hanging out here, somewhere over … one of the Baltic states, he wasn't sure which one ... there were probably already a couple of dozen photos of him resting in databases around the world by now. Unless he wanted to run the risk of some bored intelligence operator discovering a guy in civvies floating around like only one guy could, he'd have to have Chloe do a search-and-destroy on them, and on the take-off shots, tomorrow.
Except she couldn't. She was still sitting in the Alameda county jail, awaiting charges. Quietly, from the sound of it. Her heartbeat was slow and steady and she wheezed just a little as she breathed. She did that when she slept, he remembered. A hundred miles north of her, Robbie's smaller heart cantered along, as if it were trying to cover the distance between them.
Clark swallowed the noise developing in his throat. He needed to be getting home.
---------------------------------------------------------
Author's note: Some of the ideas about magic in this chapter were stolen from John Michael Greer at thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com. Some of the Clark's memories in this chapter were taken from dialogue of the show and are not my work. The bit about Sherman's neckties was lifted directly from the Wikipedia article on the subject.
Also, this may be the last chapter on this story for awhile. I signed up for the secret_chlark exchange, and until I finish that it's going to take the Chlark spot on my rotation.