Smallville/Torchwood - fic - Our Last Hope, PG (Prologue & Chapters 1-3)
The enormous crossover is done! This is the complete version, much edited since the WIP postings.
Thanks to everyone who offered advice and suggestions and generally helped me work my ideas out, when they were a bit stuck in my head. That's a rather long list, so it's at the end of the story :)
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who, Smallville, Superman comics
Title - Our Last Hope
Author - laurab1
Characters/Pairings - Jack, OCs, Ianto, Suzie, Els, Clark/Lex, Kents, Chloe, Lana
Rating - PG (mostly gen, minor het, minor slash)
Length - approx 11,000 words
Spoilers/plot points - SV/Superman: pilot to Rosetta, Memoria, misc comics, toonverse, Torchwood/Dr Who: general series, Tooth & Claw, The Sound of Drums
Summary - An AU, where Torchwood pick up and translate Jor-El and Lara's message, and locate Clark Kent, aka Kal-El, the last son of Krypton
Notes - The transcripts at TWIZ TV have been used, for some scenes. It's mostly set in 1990 and 2002/3, which is why there's relatively little from Jack's on-screen kids.
Disclaimer - everyone you recognise isn't mine, the OCS are.
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
Our Last Hope
by Laura
Prologue
Another quake. As it subsided a little, Jor-El ran his hand over his computer’s floating controls, and a disk appeared from one of its slots. He looked at his wife and their baby son, before glancing at the ship he and Lara had constructed.
“Put him inside, Lara. Our time has passed. The hourglass is empty.”
Once Kal-El and his yellow blanket were in the spacecraft, Jor-El handed the disk to his beloved. “This will activate the ship, and the route to Earth’s western station is encoded onto it,” he explained.
Lara placed the disk into a groove in the ship. “What if they don't love him?” she worried.
That was his concern, too. As one of their messages to their son began to rotate inside the ship, he took her hand in his. “Lara, his destiny is set. As is ours,” Jor-El tried to reassure her.
“Goodbye, my sweet Kal-El,” she said.
“Farewell, my son.”
She pressed on the disk, and it melted into the ship. Jor-El held her other hand tightly. They watched, as the message rotated, and the little ship closed around Kal-El. The spacecraft launched itself, and flew out of the laboratory window. Seconds later, there was yet another quake, so strong, it caused some of the computer screens to explode.
“Lara, we must send our other message, now.” He waved his hand over the controls again. A second disk appeared, containing an double encoded signal, which spoke of their son, their last hope. Jor-El placed the disk into a transmission device and set it running.
As their laboratory collapsed around them, he knew this was the end, as he had predicted. Alas, this had been to ears which had refused to listen. Pulling Lara close, Jor-El kissed her, their lives, their son and their planet goodbye.
The once great planet Krypton exploded.
Its green and red remains were carried along in the little ship’s wake, as it began its long journey to Earth. Beside it, a parents’ message beamed out across the universe.
***
Chapter 1 - Gotta Get A Message To You
I've just gotta get a message to you
Hold on, hold on
One more hour and my life will be through
Hold on, hold on
In late 1989, a childless couple gained a son, a town earned a new title and two boys met each other for the first time. At the same time, the Torchwood satellites picked up a message, but they were unable to ascertain where it had come from. Torchwood One, London, despite supposedly having the best and brightest, still couldn’t even begin to decode it.
So, a few months later, a copy of the documentation made its way to Torchwood Three, Cardiff, and the hands of Captain Jack Harkness. Siobhan Peterson, head of London’s Satellite Monitoring, Transcription and Translation team, emailed the files to him:
To: jackharkness@torchwood.org.uk
From: siobhanpeterson@torchwood.org.uk
Subject: Message of unknown origin
Sent: 15/01/1990
Attachments: unknownOct89.aiff unknownOct89.bmp
Jack
My boys and girls picked up the attached items last October. We tried to trace the signal, going light years out into space, but found nothing. The sound - it was like computer code, but being sung. The singing then transformed itself into symbols. They just appeared on our monitors; circles, diamonds, lines, squares. That Apple iScan wristband of yours could probably play the sound as it first appeared, but as no-one else has one of them (and you still haven’t told me where you got it), there’s a .aiff and a MacPaint document.
Since then, we’ve been occupied with this, and we really can’t crack the code. These are people whose grandparents worked at Bletchley Park, so many of them are clearly rather embarrassed at their lack of success.
To save face, I’m passing this case to you and your kids. I hope you have more luck.
Siobhan
if it’s alien, don’t touch it - you have no idea where it’s been
Siobhan was a gorgeous six foot redhead, with amazing legs. And as he’d discovered at the 1988 Torchwood Christmas party, at the Dorchester, she was fabulous in bed.
She was also incredibly intelligent, and hard as nails. Jack trusted her implicitly; if she said her team couldn’t figure this out, then they really couldn’t.
The moment he opened the document, and saw the symbols for himself, he knew exactly what they were - one of the variants of the language of the long dead (to him, anyway) planet, Krypton.
Siobhan’s team had been attacking this from entirely the wrong angle. It wasn’t a code to be cracked, it was a language to be translated. They should have been thinking Rosetta Stone, not Enigma machine.
He’d visited Krypton, as a Time Agent. After leaving the Agency, he’d even perpetrated a few cons there. It was only listed as being destroyed in the most accessible Agency records, with the nature of destruction described as merely “unknown.”
Which quite often meant “need to know basis”, in Agency speak, and clearly, most of the agents did apparently not need to. Despite the fact that he was perfectly aware of the need for secrecy, where sensitive information was concerned, Jack still cursed them and their holier than thou attitude for the millionth time, before sighing and returning to the job in hand.
He was less familiar with this version of the language, and he sorely lacked the luxury of the TARDIS in his head, translating for him, there and then. Although he did recognise a few of the alien shapes, he wasn’t sure what message they conveyed.
Walking out to the main area of the Hub, Jack summoned his latest recruits, who’d both been at Torchwood Three for about six months. “Beth, Peter, my office, please.” They acknowledged him, and left their desks as he returned to his.
Beth Jones, 22, local girl, smart as hell, hired straight out of Somerville, Oxford, a double first in mathematics.
Peter McBain, 23, former Londoner, also smart as hell, hired straight out of Exeter, a double first in computer science.
Occasionally, thanks to psychic paper missions, Jack, and Dr Ioan Davies, his current second-in-command, managed to poach some of the best and brightest before London could get their hands on them. They’d gatecrash a university party, give false IDs and hire the people who saw through their lies. And called them on said lies.
Sometimes, as had happened with Beth and Peter, it would later emerge that these kids had chosen a cave in Cardiff, over the considerably more plush surroundings of GCHQ, or even MI5.
That’s the curse of being extremely clever - everyone wants you.
When Harry Pearce had called him, and sworn at him for the thousandth time, for stealing yet more people, Jack had smirked at him down the phone, before giving him the standard reply: “I’m better looking than you, and we’ve got alien tech and a real, live dinosaur here. You can’t exactly compete with that, Harry, can you?”
“Jack?” Beth asked, as she and Peter came into his office.
He looked up at her. “Beth, Peter. Got a project for you.”
Jack then opened a blank MacPaint document and played the sound file for them. They all watched, fascinated, as the sound changed itself into symbols.
When the message had apparently finished, he spoke again, “Once, I’d have known exactly what this meant. Now, I’ve no idea. (A not entirely white lie.) I need you two to work together on this, to translate it. Look for patterns, look for repeats. Write a program, if necessary. Show me why I hired you.”
***
As her captain sent three copies of the document to the LaserWriter, Beth asked, “Is this an alien language, Jack?”
“Yeah, Beth.”
“Where did it come from?”
“The other side of the universe, of course.”
So, they weren’t going to get a planet, then. Beth wasn’t really surprised; Jack was brilliant at not telling them things they might actually need to know. “Anywhere particular, on the other side of the universe?” she chanced. Their captain’s body language implied he knew exactly where.
Jack swivelled his chair around to pick up the printouts. Turning back, and giving them a copy each, he smiled his distracting, Hollywood smile. “Just see what you can work out, guys.”
Leaving Jack’s office, they returned to their own desks. Patterns and repeats, he’d said. “Peter, I think we should see how many different symbols we can identify,” she suggested. Grabbing a pen, a notepad and her printout, Beth dragged her seat over to him.
"Can't we use some piece of alien tech to do all that for us, Beth?"
"I did maths, Peter," she patiently reminded him. "I like doing the manual calculations."
"Oh, alright," he sighed.
Beth pretended she didn’t see him rolling his eyes.
"Come on, then. Let's see what we've got."
Together, they began to catalogue the symbols; drawing each one, and noting how many times it occurred.
***
Over in his office, Jack looked at his copy of the message, and half-listened to Beth and Peter work. Just which symbols did he recognise?
There was the one that resembled an eight, enclosed within a pentagon. But wasn’t that actually the mark of a house, the Kryptonian equivalent of a coat of arms?
There was also the one which looked like Morse Code, turned on its side, with a square in the middle. There were several occurrences of that particular one. Vowel, or their equivalent of one?
Going through his memories a little more, Jack remembered something else about Krypton. In a space on the printout, he drew a symbol - a couple of intersecting circles, two lines and a dot.
Looking at his doodle, Jack realised he’d drawn ‘forbidden’, the catch-all term for anything concerned with love or sex. They really had been so very, very cold, the Kryptonians. No touching, test-tube babies.
That hadn’t always been the case, though. He’d witnessed for himself how much capacity they’d once had for love, and how hard some Kryptonians had tried to bring that atmosphere back again. And then it was all too late, anyway.
***
Ten years previously, Jack had begun enhancing Torchwood Three’s computer systems with the fifty first century technology of his iScan. Of course, as the computers were replaced, he had to ensure he removed the improvements. As twentieth century technology gradually improved, and CPU speeds increased, enhancements took less and less time to complete.
Last October, it had only taken one hour to upgrade all four of the model IIci Apple Macintoshes London had just bought them, along with all the network equipment. Back in 1984, just one fledgling Macintosh and a modem had taken three hours to enhance. The LaserWriter he’d bought the following year had been upgraded in around thirty minutes.
All he needed was a current standard connecting lead and a few spoken commands, and the operating systems would be upgraded by three thousand years.
The Macs then went like lightning.
But all that was seemingly precious little help where their translation project was concerned.
He was sat at his desk, looking at the report Beth and Peter had just presented him with. Three months since he’d received the files, and they’d only got a little further than Siobhan’s team had. They’d analysed the symbols as much as they could, had a few theories about equivalents to vowels and consonants. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Jack?” Peter wandered back into his office.
“Peter.”
“This is going to take years, not months,” Peter said, taking a seat when Jack indicated he could.
“Yeah, I know. I’m gonna call Siobhan and tell her that,” Jack sighed. “Now, I want you and Beth to write a program to look for our alien characters, ready for when the public get on the network, next year. A search engine.”
“What makes you think we’ll get anything?” Peter asked.
“How do you know we won’t?” he countered.
“You’ve got a point there, Jack.” Peter got up, and left his office.
“Beth!” Jack heard him call, as he began to dial.
“Siobhan? It’s Jack. Now, about that message...”
***
That night, when everyone else had gone home, Jack once again sat at his desk, and said, “Krypton,” to his iScan, not knowing whether he still had anything about the planet in it. They needed something to go on, no matter how small that something was.
“Marcus Ventra,” the screen eventually displayed, along with, “Krypton,” in both the English of Jack’s original era and Kryptonian.
That name was one of his many old aliases, the one he’d used for his cons on Krypton, so long ago. Wanting to see what Beth and Peter could come up with, Jack decided to play a long con with this information, keeping it to himself, for the time being.
***
In late 2002, there was finally a hit on the search program Beth and Peter had written, all those years ago. It had been looking for any occurrence at all of the alien shapes.
By that time, Jack had lost her to a Weevil and Ioan to a bullet. Peter was now his second-in-command. Suzie Costello, a research engineer, had been hired in summer 2000. Jack had hired Dr Owen Harper from a Cardiff A&E department in the summer just gone.
He had chosen to identify the language as Kryptonian in the summer of 1995, during a suspiciously quiet patch...
“One single language? For a whole planet?” Peter said.
He was a smart kid, it wasn’t that difficult to grasp as a concept, was it? “C’mon, Peter, it’s not that strange. Just think how many people speak English, either as their first or second language. And if it’s not English, then it’s probably French, Spanish, Portugese or Chinese. Empire builders, the lot of you.”
“Jack!” Peter called. “Get over here, please!”
“Look,” he said, as Jack joined him at his desk. He sounded confused, pointing at two of his monitors, indicating the stories that had been found, in the newspapers of a place called Smallville. “What the bloody hell is some of our alien language doing in a Native American cave in Kansas?”
“What do think, Peter?” Jack asked, looking at him.
“Your Kryptonians managed to get to Earth?”
“I’d say that’s a fairly safe bet. Looks like they’d been coming to Kansas for a very long time.”
Until the space travel and exploration program had been cancelled.
“Let’s watch this Smallville place, see if anything else strange turns up.”
“Okay, Jack.”
***
Over in Smallville, Kansas, USA, Clark Kent was also wondering exactly what the secrets the caves held.
The Kawatche tribe legends he’d heard were far too familiar, far too close to home. Familiar stones, familiar powers. His people, whoever they were, had been here, he was sure of that. But how? A ship, like him? Or some other way?
Months later, the dreams started.
***
Chapter 2 - Dream A Little Dream Of Me
Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me
...Clark’s flying through the clouds, by himself. Descending, he enters the cave, with the paintings that may or may not be Kawatche. The paintings that resemble the symbols on his disk. From his ship. His alien ship.
Still flying, Clark focuses on the circular painting full of symbols with the octagonal groove in the middle. Moving closer, he runs his hand over one symbol - a circle with a line through it and a diamond shape to each side. He has the octagonal disk in his other hand, and it bears the same symbol. Three symbols surround the octagon on the wall, all of them matching the disk.
Clark moves into a standing position. He looks back at the disk and places it into the groove in the wall, lining up the symbols. Nothing happens. Puzzled, he slowly reaches out his finger and touches the disk. There’s a sudden blast of energy, and he blacks out...
***
The next thing Clark knew, a car came speeding up behind him. He turned around and held up his hand, as the car stopped just inches from his face. Lex Luthor stepped out of the car.
“Clark? What are you doing out here?” his friend asked.
And he didn’t exactly have an answer. “Sleepwalking? I don’t really know, Lex.”
Lex took Clark’s hand and pulled him up. “C’mon, in the car. You can sleep at the mansion, and run home in the morning.”
He just let his friend open the passenger door and push him inside the car. Sleepwalking? Sleepflying, more like, Clark suspected. But he needed to get that right, in his own head, before he divulged yet more alien weirdness to Lex.
***
As they travelled, Clark considered his relationship with him.
After the Level Three incident, he had gone over to check on Lex. The closeness and concern had resulted in their sharing a few kisses. Behind Victoria Hardwick’s back (or not, Lex said himself that he didn’t love his old girlfriend; they were just “playing chess”), the kisses then changed into more heated making out sessions. These had continued until the Club Zero incident, when all their cattle died, and his mom made them cool it off.
Nothing else at all happened for nearly a year. Clark discovered the caves, and became very attached to a girl called Kyla. Soon after that, Lex found his half brother, and Mr Luthor kicked him out of the mansion.
Lex had stayed at the farm, and Clark couldn’t have been happier. As there wasn’t really anywhere else for Lex to sleep, they’d shared Clark’s twin bed, and proximity had lead to more than simply making out. Before things could go further than that, Clark confessed his secrets as they stood at the time to Lex, and offered his heat vision as assistance in helping him beat both Lionel and Lucas, at least at one game.
“We’re here,” Lex announced, turning to Clark and drawing him out of his contemplation. “C’mon, let’s get you settled.”
***
The next morning, Clark tried sneaking into his own home. His mom and dad caught him as he was a few steps up the stairs, and expressed their worry over where he’d been. He tried telling them something, just to get them to leave him alone, but his dad knew him far too well.
“Hey, hey. Son, what is going on with you? You've been acting strange all week. It's like your mind's somewhere else. What's up?”
Sitting on the stairs, Clark told them everything - waking up in the road, Lex nearly running him over, going back to the mansion. Then he got to the dream, and the flying - “I've been having this dream all week. Flying over Smallville. I always end up at the cave. It's like it's calling out to me, like it's trying to give me answers.”
“Answers to what, Clark?” his dad asked.
“I'm not sure. In my dream, I take the key and I put it in the slot in the cave wall. And there's this bright light...”
“And?” his mom prompted.
All Clark could say was, “I don't know. That's when I wake up.”
“Clark, dreaming about putting that key in a rock wall is one thing, but we have absolutely no idea what would happen if you actually did that,” his dad said.
“These dreams are getting more intense every night. Who knows where I'll wake up tomorrow?” Clark exclaimed.
“It's too dangerous,” was his dad’s only reply.
“Dad, that cave could have all the answers I'm looking for. Why are you so afraid to let me find out?”
There was no response, and Clark started up the stairs again, saying, “I gotta get dressed for school.”
***
That afternoon, Dr Frederick Walden, the man he’d employed to help translate the cave symbols, entered Lex's study. Lex sat behind his desk, and took advantage of the position.
“Dr Walden. I got a call this morning from the State Preservation Society. They heard a rumour that you plan on removing a section of the wall? Now, I of course told them that you wouldn't consider such a radical move without consulting me.” This was the local Native American tribe’s, the town’s, and Clark’s history the man could be trying to destroy, and he couldn’t let that happen.
“It's a common archaeological practice,” the doctor said, desperately trying to justify himself.
“Among ninteenth century imperialists,“ Lex informed him. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to cut me out of the process.”
“You're paranoid.”
“Really.” ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Lex thought. Standing, he walked over to Dr Walden. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you right now.”
“Because I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough,” he claimed.
“Will this, uh, breakthrough finally allow you to translate these symbols?”
“It's hard to say... now that I won't be able to get a sample back to my lab. Who tipped off the State?”
“The State is threatening to revoke LexCorp's custodial management of the cave. Another foundation is chomping at the bit to take over. If my instincts are correct, I believe my father is behind it. I don't need excuses. I need answers. You've got three days,” Lex sternly dismissed Walden.
Returning to his desk and sitting down again, he could only hope Walden would do something incredibly foolish within those three days, giving him cause to fire the doctor, answers or no answers.
He’d just have to hire someone else. Sighing in frustration, Lex then returned to his reports.
***
At school, Chloe Sullivan, Lana Lang, Pete Ross, and Clark made their way to the Torch office. Stories to write and photographs to take, as always.
Chloe berated the assignment they’d just been given, declaring it lame. “Family trees are so twentieth century.”
Clark could see her point. With the exception of Pete, they were all missing at least one parent, or had another circumstance which would make a family tree difficult to produce. Pete left, revelling in his normality, and Lana tried to arrange a time to talk about the assignment.
Suddenly, there was a screeching sound, making Clark gasp and clutch at his head.
“Did you guys hear that?” he asked.
The girls just thought he was complaining about the assignment, and sort of laughed at him. When it became apparent that the noise was only audible to him, in a brief respite from it, Clark said, “I gotta go,” and hurriedly left the Torch.
***
He ran home, and went to the loft of the barn, where the screeching noise started again. Tracing the noise’s location, Clark pulled a box out of a cupboard. Breaking its padlock, he opened the box. A light shone out of it.
Pushing some things aside, he found the octagonal disk at the bottom, glowing madly. When Clark took the disk in his hand, it calmed down; no noise, no light. It had to be now, he was certain. He closed his hand over the disk, protecting it, and ran to the cave, at superspeed.
***
Chapter 3 - Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
In your mind you have capacities you know
To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Please close your eyes and concentrate
With every thought you think
Upon the recitation we're about to sing
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary most extraordinary craft
As Clark stood before the circular wall painting, it was just like his dreams. Except this time, the disk flew out of his hand, and straight into the octagonal groove in the wall.
Almost subconsciously, he checked no one was watching. Returning his gaze to the disk, he could see its symbols glowing red, yellow and blue. The symbols on the wall also lit up, and both sets began to spin, in opposite directions.
Then a hole appeared in the middle of the disk. He moved closer, to investigate, and a beam of multi-coloured energy shot out. It struck him in the chest. Clark was suspended in mid-air, as the energy kept pouring through him. And then, he once again blacked out.
***
Lex entered the cave. Finding Clark unconscious on the cave floor, he bent over him and shook his shoulder to try and wake him up. Breathing a sigh of relief when Clark opened his eyes, he asked, “Are you okay?”
His friend acknowledged him. “Lex. What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. What were you doing down here? The guard said there was an explosion.” Lex watched Clark’s eyes shift to the octagon surrounded by paintings. What had he done? ”You didn't touch any equipment, did you?”
“Of course not!” he said, but it was too fast, and Lex already knew something was wrong.
This was almost like the early days, with all the lying. “C’mon, then, Clark. You’ve trusted me with everything else. You can tell me, you know you can,” Lex tried.
Clark sighed. “I put the disk in the wall, it glowed and hit me with a beam of energy...”
At that moment, Dr Walden entered the cave, and Lex made frantic “shh!” gestures to Clark.
“I find it interesting that you managed to get around the guard in the first place. What's your secret, Mr Kent?”
“Back off, Doctor. Can't you see he's been hurt?” Lex said.
He heard Clark claim, “I'm okay. I just need to get some air.”
He started to go and Lex dashed after him. “Are you sure you’re okay? Clark, first I find you lying in the middle of the road and now here. Do you want me to get Toby to examine you?” he whispered.
“Lex, I'm fine. I just got to get home before my parents start to worry.”
“Okay,” Lex replied. “But please don’t come back down here on your own. Let’s try and work it out together.”
Nodding his agreement, Clark left.
Walden then asked, “Why'd you just let him walk out of here? He knows more than he's telling us.”
Lex had to maintain the cover, for now. “Probably. But you've got enough on your plate, Doctor. Let me worry about Clark Kent.”
***
The next morning, Clark and Jonathan were loading hay into the back of the truck. When his dad asked him if he’d had any more dreams, Clark lied, “No, I think whatever it is passed.”
“That's good. I'm taking your mother into town for a checkup. You want a ride to school?”
“No, Chloe's gonna pick me up.”
His mom was pregnant, and none of them could still actually believe it.
“As soon as your mother says she's ready, we can tell people. “Don't worry, Clark, this is one secret we can all be very happy to share.”
“Yeah. The baby's lucky.” Clark tried to not sound bitter.
“Hey, son, I didn't mean for it to sound that way. Look, having this child is gonna be a big adjustment for all of us, but it doesn't change the way we feel about you.”
“I know that.”
“I’m just glad things are back to normal,” his dad said.
What was normal to them, anyway? Hiding? Lying? Keeping secrets? Clark sighed.
His mom came outside. “Jonathan, we're late! We gotta go!”
His dad went over to her, and Clark continued loading the hay. Suddenly, the high-pitched whining noise hit his ears again. Dropping the hay, Clark grabbed the sides of his head in pain.
“fireburnheathope,” something told him...mentally, in the language from the caves. And then his heat vision kicked in, by itself. Clark couldn’t control it, and he set the wall of their barn on fire.
“Jonathan!” he half heard his mom shout.
As quickly as it had started, Clark's heat vision stopped. They had to put the fire out! He spotted the hose across the yard and ran over to it. His dad turned on the water, and Clark went back to the barn.
“Clark, what happened?”
“I don't know!” he exclaimed, continuing to spray the barn with water. He could hear Chloe’s VW Beetle pulling up. What were they going to tell her? Parking, Chloe got out of her car, and Clark half saw her run up to his mom.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We came out, and it was... on fire,” Clark heard his mom lie.
Minutes later, the fire was extinguished, and burned onto the wall of the barn was a symbol, a collection of shapes; a circle, lines, a diamond. This same symbol was among those on the wall of the cave, and the disk. Clark and his parents were in a mild state of shock, and before anyone could stop her, Chloe had pulled out her camera and taken a photo.
Now what the hell were they going to do? Clark knew he could hardly go off to school at the moment. “Chloe, you go. I’ll get a ride with Mom and Dad, once we’ve fixed this,” he said.
“OK, Clark. See you later,” she replied, and walked back to her car.
When she’d driven off, Clark grabbed some boards, and his dad began to nail them over the symbol he’d burnt into the barn.
A few minutes later, Jonathan said, “Well, that ought to keep the looky-loos away, at least ‘til I have a chance to patch it up better.”
Clark sighed, before saying, “A couple of boards aren't gonna be able to cover up anything anymore, especially after Chloe publishes her pictures.”
“Well, I-I think I convinced her it was a prank. You can't beat yourself up about this. Your abilities are still developing. You can't always control them.”
Clark could hear how worried his mom was, but he had to tell them the truth. “There's nothing uncontrolled about that drawing,” he said, and prepared to be yelled at. “It's a symbol from wherever I'm from. It means ‘hope’.”
“How do you know that? Since when can you read the symbols?” his mom asked.
“Since I put the key in the cave wall.”
“Wait a minute. Since you did what?”
“Dad, it was calling out to me. It led me to where you hid it.”
“Clark, I told you not to do that.”
There was the yelling, as expected. “I know, Dad, but it was like I didn't have a choice,” Clark said, remembering the feeling of nownownow.
“Where is the key now?” his mom asked.
“I don't know,” he half lied. “When I put the key in the wall there was -- there was a blinding light and I blacked out.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, it didn't hurt me. But everything's jumbled up. It's like it downloaded me with the language from the cave wall. Lex found me, I told him what had happened and we covered when Dr Walden appeared,” Clark explained. He didn’t want to tell them about the key, but he had to.
“Dad, there’s more. The key. I think it disintegrated.”
“You're not completely sure? Clark, we understand you wanting to know more about your origins, but you're putting your own life in danger here.”
More yelling. Was his dad ever going to understand? “Some things are worth the risk,” Clark stated.
“Like what?”
“Like the truth.”
***
That afternoon, Lana entered the Talon and spotted Clark, scribbling away on something. She made her way to his table. To get his attention, Lana had to say his name a couple of times. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said faintly.
She sat down opposite him. “I heard about the fire.”
“It was no big deal. We got it under control. I think Chloe's over at the Torch right now writing an exclusive.”
“I wouldn't know. We aren't exactly talking right now,” Lana admitted.
“Sounds serious,” Clark said.
“Well, invasion of privacy usually is.”
“Let me guess, you caught her snooping around in your stuff.”
“Actually I was the one doing the snooping. I didn't mean to. It kinda just happened.” More admissions.
“Well, you'd think all the times that she's overstepped her boundaries, she'd cut you some slack.”
If only it actually worked like that, she thought. “It just reminded me that as great as Chloe and her dad have been, I'm still not family.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Can I tell you a secret?”
At last, she thought. “That would be a first,” Lana said, with a hint of bitterness.
“I've been looking into my roots and it's freaking my parents out, but I think I'm getting close to finding out where I'm from,” Clark told her.
This was an incredibly big deal, from the sound of his voice. “Then you shouldn't stop,” she said, smiling at him. He didn’t really smile back. Lana cast her eyes at the table instead, and then noticed that Clark had been scribbling away on the dreaded family tree assignment. She couldn’t actually see any names, though.
But what she could see looked like shapes; like the paintings in the caves.
“Is that your family tree?” she tried asking. He just looked back down at the sheet. “Clark, what's wrong?”
“Nothing, um, I gotta go,” he said distractedly.
Lana watched him crumple up the paper and throw it at the trashcan. He missed, but didn’t notice. Lex came into the Talon, and in his hurry to leave, Clark almost physically bumped into him.
“Clark, I've been looking all over for you. Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sorry, Lex, I can't talk right now,” Clark replied, before dashing off.
Lex wandered over to her. “Looks like we've been abandoned.”
‘Tell me about it,’ Lana thought. “Story of my life.” She went up to the bar, Lex following her. Perhaps she’d better say something about what she’d seen. “Lex?”
“What’s up, Lana?”
“The paper down there.” She pointed to it. “You need to take that with you. Clark was writing on it, and I don’t think it was in English.”
***
Lex picked up the ball of paper and opened it up.
Lana was right (how much more did she know?); he could see symbols from the caves and the disk among the drawings. It would appear the beam of energy Clark had received had provided him with more symbols than those in the caves. “Thanks, Lana,” he said, folding up the piece of paper and pocketing it. After ordering a coffee, Lex left the Talon and sped off in his Lamborghini.
Arriving home, he called Clark, who arrived a second after he had hung up, a copy of the Torch in his hand. “Clark? What else happened in the caves? I picked this up, in the Talon.” Lex handed Clark’s family tree back to him.
Clark sat down opposite him, looking like he was still trying to process the experience in the caves. Eventually, he confirmed what Lex had suspected, and showed him the Torch. “I burnt this onto the side of the barn, with my heat vision,” he said, pointing to the picture, under a headline reading, Burning Question: Aliens or Arsonists. “It means ‘hope’, in...something.”
“That something’s not Kawatche, we know that much,” Lex said.
“And I have no idea what it is, Lex.” Clark gave him the copy of the Torch. “You can have this. I need to talk to Chloe, I can pick up another copy back at school.” Clark folded up the family tree, and placed it in his jacket pocket. They both rose from their chairs, and shared a quick kiss.
“I’ll call you later,” Clark said, and left.
Lex sat back down, and ran a finger over the symbol, tracing its lines and curves. “Where are you from, Clark?” he wondered.
***
continues here - http://laurab1.livejournal.com/193269.html
Thanks to everyone who offered advice and suggestions and generally helped me work my ideas out, when they were a bit stuck in my head. That's a rather long list, so it's at the end of the story :)
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who, Smallville, Superman comics
Title - Our Last Hope
Author - laurab1
Characters/Pairings - Jack, OCs, Ianto, Suzie, Els, Clark/Lex, Kents, Chloe, Lana
Rating - PG (mostly gen, minor het, minor slash)
Length - approx 11,000 words
Spoilers/plot points - SV/Superman: pilot to Rosetta, Memoria, misc comics, toonverse, Torchwood/Dr Who: general series, Tooth & Claw, The Sound of Drums
Summary - An AU, where Torchwood pick up and translate Jor-El and Lara's message, and locate Clark Kent, aka Kal-El, the last son of Krypton
Notes - The transcripts at TWIZ TV have been used, for some scenes. It's mostly set in 1990 and 2002/3, which is why there's relatively little from Jack's on-screen kids.
Disclaimer - everyone you recognise isn't mine, the OCS are.
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
Our Last Hope
by Laura
Prologue
Another quake. As it subsided a little, Jor-El ran his hand over his computer’s floating controls, and a disk appeared from one of its slots. He looked at his wife and their baby son, before glancing at the ship he and Lara had constructed.
“Put him inside, Lara. Our time has passed. The hourglass is empty.”
Once Kal-El and his yellow blanket were in the spacecraft, Jor-El handed the disk to his beloved. “This will activate the ship, and the route to Earth’s western station is encoded onto it,” he explained.
Lara placed the disk into a groove in the ship. “What if they don't love him?” she worried.
That was his concern, too. As one of their messages to their son began to rotate inside the ship, he took her hand in his. “Lara, his destiny is set. As is ours,” Jor-El tried to reassure her.
“Goodbye, my sweet Kal-El,” she said.
“Farewell, my son.”
She pressed on the disk, and it melted into the ship. Jor-El held her other hand tightly. They watched, as the message rotated, and the little ship closed around Kal-El. The spacecraft launched itself, and flew out of the laboratory window. Seconds later, there was yet another quake, so strong, it caused some of the computer screens to explode.
“Lara, we must send our other message, now.” He waved his hand over the controls again. A second disk appeared, containing an double encoded signal, which spoke of their son, their last hope. Jor-El placed the disk into a transmission device and set it running.
As their laboratory collapsed around them, he knew this was the end, as he had predicted. Alas, this had been to ears which had refused to listen. Pulling Lara close, Jor-El kissed her, their lives, their son and their planet goodbye.
The once great planet Krypton exploded.
Its green and red remains were carried along in the little ship’s wake, as it began its long journey to Earth. Beside it, a parents’ message beamed out across the universe.
***
Chapter 1 - Gotta Get A Message To You
I've just gotta get a message to you
Hold on, hold on
One more hour and my life will be through
Hold on, hold on
In late 1989, a childless couple gained a son, a town earned a new title and two boys met each other for the first time. At the same time, the Torchwood satellites picked up a message, but they were unable to ascertain where it had come from. Torchwood One, London, despite supposedly having the best and brightest, still couldn’t even begin to decode it.
So, a few months later, a copy of the documentation made its way to Torchwood Three, Cardiff, and the hands of Captain Jack Harkness. Siobhan Peterson, head of London’s Satellite Monitoring, Transcription and Translation team, emailed the files to him:
To: jackharkness@torchwood.org.uk
From: siobhanpeterson@torchwood.org.uk
Subject: Message of unknown origin
Sent: 15/01/1990
Attachments: unknownOct89.aiff unknownOct89.bmp
Jack
My boys and girls picked up the attached items last October. We tried to trace the signal, going light years out into space, but found nothing. The sound - it was like computer code, but being sung. The singing then transformed itself into symbols. They just appeared on our monitors; circles, diamonds, lines, squares. That Apple iScan wristband of yours could probably play the sound as it first appeared, but as no-one else has one of them (and you still haven’t told me where you got it), there’s a .aiff and a MacPaint document.
Since then, we’ve been occupied with this, and we really can’t crack the code. These are people whose grandparents worked at Bletchley Park, so many of them are clearly rather embarrassed at their lack of success.
To save face, I’m passing this case to you and your kids. I hope you have more luck.
Siobhan
if it’s alien, don’t touch it - you have no idea where it’s been
Siobhan was a gorgeous six foot redhead, with amazing legs. And as he’d discovered at the 1988 Torchwood Christmas party, at the Dorchester, she was fabulous in bed.
She was also incredibly intelligent, and hard as nails. Jack trusted her implicitly; if she said her team couldn’t figure this out, then they really couldn’t.
The moment he opened the document, and saw the symbols for himself, he knew exactly what they were - one of the variants of the language of the long dead (to him, anyway) planet, Krypton.
Siobhan’s team had been attacking this from entirely the wrong angle. It wasn’t a code to be cracked, it was a language to be translated. They should have been thinking Rosetta Stone, not Enigma machine.
He’d visited Krypton, as a Time Agent. After leaving the Agency, he’d even perpetrated a few cons there. It was only listed as being destroyed in the most accessible Agency records, with the nature of destruction described as merely “unknown.”
Which quite often meant “need to know basis”, in Agency speak, and clearly, most of the agents did apparently not need to. Despite the fact that he was perfectly aware of the need for secrecy, where sensitive information was concerned, Jack still cursed them and their holier than thou attitude for the millionth time, before sighing and returning to the job in hand.
He was less familiar with this version of the language, and he sorely lacked the luxury of the TARDIS in his head, translating for him, there and then. Although he did recognise a few of the alien shapes, he wasn’t sure what message they conveyed.
Walking out to the main area of the Hub, Jack summoned his latest recruits, who’d both been at Torchwood Three for about six months. “Beth, Peter, my office, please.” They acknowledged him, and left their desks as he returned to his.
Beth Jones, 22, local girl, smart as hell, hired straight out of Somerville, Oxford, a double first in mathematics.
Peter McBain, 23, former Londoner, also smart as hell, hired straight out of Exeter, a double first in computer science.
Occasionally, thanks to psychic paper missions, Jack, and Dr Ioan Davies, his current second-in-command, managed to poach some of the best and brightest before London could get their hands on them. They’d gatecrash a university party, give false IDs and hire the people who saw through their lies. And called them on said lies.
Sometimes, as had happened with Beth and Peter, it would later emerge that these kids had chosen a cave in Cardiff, over the considerably more plush surroundings of GCHQ, or even MI5.
That’s the curse of being extremely clever - everyone wants you.
When Harry Pearce had called him, and sworn at him for the thousandth time, for stealing yet more people, Jack had smirked at him down the phone, before giving him the standard reply: “I’m better looking than you, and we’ve got alien tech and a real, live dinosaur here. You can’t exactly compete with that, Harry, can you?”
“Jack?” Beth asked, as she and Peter came into his office.
He looked up at her. “Beth, Peter. Got a project for you.”
Jack then opened a blank MacPaint document and played the sound file for them. They all watched, fascinated, as the sound changed itself into symbols.
When the message had apparently finished, he spoke again, “Once, I’d have known exactly what this meant. Now, I’ve no idea. (A not entirely white lie.) I need you two to work together on this, to translate it. Look for patterns, look for repeats. Write a program, if necessary. Show me why I hired you.”
***
As her captain sent three copies of the document to the LaserWriter, Beth asked, “Is this an alien language, Jack?”
“Yeah, Beth.”
“Where did it come from?”
“The other side of the universe, of course.”
So, they weren’t going to get a planet, then. Beth wasn’t really surprised; Jack was brilliant at not telling them things they might actually need to know. “Anywhere particular, on the other side of the universe?” she chanced. Their captain’s body language implied he knew exactly where.
Jack swivelled his chair around to pick up the printouts. Turning back, and giving them a copy each, he smiled his distracting, Hollywood smile. “Just see what you can work out, guys.”
Leaving Jack’s office, they returned to their own desks. Patterns and repeats, he’d said. “Peter, I think we should see how many different symbols we can identify,” she suggested. Grabbing a pen, a notepad and her printout, Beth dragged her seat over to him.
"Can't we use some piece of alien tech to do all that for us, Beth?"
"I did maths, Peter," she patiently reminded him. "I like doing the manual calculations."
"Oh, alright," he sighed.
Beth pretended she didn’t see him rolling his eyes.
"Come on, then. Let's see what we've got."
Together, they began to catalogue the symbols; drawing each one, and noting how many times it occurred.
***
Over in his office, Jack looked at his copy of the message, and half-listened to Beth and Peter work. Just which symbols did he recognise?
There was the one that resembled an eight, enclosed within a pentagon. But wasn’t that actually the mark of a house, the Kryptonian equivalent of a coat of arms?
There was also the one which looked like Morse Code, turned on its side, with a square in the middle. There were several occurrences of that particular one. Vowel, or their equivalent of one?
Going through his memories a little more, Jack remembered something else about Krypton. In a space on the printout, he drew a symbol - a couple of intersecting circles, two lines and a dot.
Looking at his doodle, Jack realised he’d drawn ‘forbidden’, the catch-all term for anything concerned with love or sex. They really had been so very, very cold, the Kryptonians. No touching, test-tube babies.
That hadn’t always been the case, though. He’d witnessed for himself how much capacity they’d once had for love, and how hard some Kryptonians had tried to bring that atmosphere back again. And then it was all too late, anyway.
***
Ten years previously, Jack had begun enhancing Torchwood Three’s computer systems with the fifty first century technology of his iScan. Of course, as the computers were replaced, he had to ensure he removed the improvements. As twentieth century technology gradually improved, and CPU speeds increased, enhancements took less and less time to complete.
Last October, it had only taken one hour to upgrade all four of the model IIci Apple Macintoshes London had just bought them, along with all the network equipment. Back in 1984, just one fledgling Macintosh and a modem had taken three hours to enhance. The LaserWriter he’d bought the following year had been upgraded in around thirty minutes.
All he needed was a current standard connecting lead and a few spoken commands, and the operating systems would be upgraded by three thousand years.
The Macs then went like lightning.
But all that was seemingly precious little help where their translation project was concerned.
He was sat at his desk, looking at the report Beth and Peter had just presented him with. Three months since he’d received the files, and they’d only got a little further than Siobhan’s team had. They’d analysed the symbols as much as they could, had a few theories about equivalents to vowels and consonants. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Jack?” Peter wandered back into his office.
“Peter.”
“This is going to take years, not months,” Peter said, taking a seat when Jack indicated he could.
“Yeah, I know. I’m gonna call Siobhan and tell her that,” Jack sighed. “Now, I want you and Beth to write a program to look for our alien characters, ready for when the public get on the network, next year. A search engine.”
“What makes you think we’ll get anything?” Peter asked.
“How do you know we won’t?” he countered.
“You’ve got a point there, Jack.” Peter got up, and left his office.
“Beth!” Jack heard him call, as he began to dial.
“Siobhan? It’s Jack. Now, about that message...”
***
That night, when everyone else had gone home, Jack once again sat at his desk, and said, “Krypton,” to his iScan, not knowing whether he still had anything about the planet in it. They needed something to go on, no matter how small that something was.
“Marcus Ventra,” the screen eventually displayed, along with, “Krypton,” in both the English of Jack’s original era and Kryptonian.
That name was one of his many old aliases, the one he’d used for his cons on Krypton, so long ago. Wanting to see what Beth and Peter could come up with, Jack decided to play a long con with this information, keeping it to himself, for the time being.
***
In late 2002, there was finally a hit on the search program Beth and Peter had written, all those years ago. It had been looking for any occurrence at all of the alien shapes.
By that time, Jack had lost her to a Weevil and Ioan to a bullet. Peter was now his second-in-command. Suzie Costello, a research engineer, had been hired in summer 2000. Jack had hired Dr Owen Harper from a Cardiff A&E department in the summer just gone.
He had chosen to identify the language as Kryptonian in the summer of 1995, during a suspiciously quiet patch...
“One single language? For a whole planet?” Peter said.
He was a smart kid, it wasn’t that difficult to grasp as a concept, was it? “C’mon, Peter, it’s not that strange. Just think how many people speak English, either as their first or second language. And if it’s not English, then it’s probably French, Spanish, Portugese or Chinese. Empire builders, the lot of you.”
“Jack!” Peter called. “Get over here, please!”
“Look,” he said, as Jack joined him at his desk. He sounded confused, pointing at two of his monitors, indicating the stories that had been found, in the newspapers of a place called Smallville. “What the bloody hell is some of our alien language doing in a Native American cave in Kansas?”
“What do think, Peter?” Jack asked, looking at him.
“Your Kryptonians managed to get to Earth?”
“I’d say that’s a fairly safe bet. Looks like they’d been coming to Kansas for a very long time.”
Until the space travel and exploration program had been cancelled.
“Let’s watch this Smallville place, see if anything else strange turns up.”
“Okay, Jack.”
***
Over in Smallville, Kansas, USA, Clark Kent was also wondering exactly what the secrets the caves held.
The Kawatche tribe legends he’d heard were far too familiar, far too close to home. Familiar stones, familiar powers. His people, whoever they were, had been here, he was sure of that. But how? A ship, like him? Or some other way?
Months later, the dreams started.
***
Chapter 2 - Dream A Little Dream Of Me
Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me
...Clark’s flying through the clouds, by himself. Descending, he enters the cave, with the paintings that may or may not be Kawatche. The paintings that resemble the symbols on his disk. From his ship. His alien ship.
Still flying, Clark focuses on the circular painting full of symbols with the octagonal groove in the middle. Moving closer, he runs his hand over one symbol - a circle with a line through it and a diamond shape to each side. He has the octagonal disk in his other hand, and it bears the same symbol. Three symbols surround the octagon on the wall, all of them matching the disk.
Clark moves into a standing position. He looks back at the disk and places it into the groove in the wall, lining up the symbols. Nothing happens. Puzzled, he slowly reaches out his finger and touches the disk. There’s a sudden blast of energy, and he blacks out...
***
The next thing Clark knew, a car came speeding up behind him. He turned around and held up his hand, as the car stopped just inches from his face. Lex Luthor stepped out of the car.
“Clark? What are you doing out here?” his friend asked.
And he didn’t exactly have an answer. “Sleepwalking? I don’t really know, Lex.”
Lex took Clark’s hand and pulled him up. “C’mon, in the car. You can sleep at the mansion, and run home in the morning.”
He just let his friend open the passenger door and push him inside the car. Sleepwalking? Sleepflying, more like, Clark suspected. But he needed to get that right, in his own head, before he divulged yet more alien weirdness to Lex.
***
As they travelled, Clark considered his relationship with him.
After the Level Three incident, he had gone over to check on Lex. The closeness and concern had resulted in their sharing a few kisses. Behind Victoria Hardwick’s back (or not, Lex said himself that he didn’t love his old girlfriend; they were just “playing chess”), the kisses then changed into more heated making out sessions. These had continued until the Club Zero incident, when all their cattle died, and his mom made them cool it off.
Nothing else at all happened for nearly a year. Clark discovered the caves, and became very attached to a girl called Kyla. Soon after that, Lex found his half brother, and Mr Luthor kicked him out of the mansion.
Lex had stayed at the farm, and Clark couldn’t have been happier. As there wasn’t really anywhere else for Lex to sleep, they’d shared Clark’s twin bed, and proximity had lead to more than simply making out. Before things could go further than that, Clark confessed his secrets as they stood at the time to Lex, and offered his heat vision as assistance in helping him beat both Lionel and Lucas, at least at one game.
“We’re here,” Lex announced, turning to Clark and drawing him out of his contemplation. “C’mon, let’s get you settled.”
***
The next morning, Clark tried sneaking into his own home. His mom and dad caught him as he was a few steps up the stairs, and expressed their worry over where he’d been. He tried telling them something, just to get them to leave him alone, but his dad knew him far too well.
“Hey, hey. Son, what is going on with you? You've been acting strange all week. It's like your mind's somewhere else. What's up?”
Sitting on the stairs, Clark told them everything - waking up in the road, Lex nearly running him over, going back to the mansion. Then he got to the dream, and the flying - “I've been having this dream all week. Flying over Smallville. I always end up at the cave. It's like it's calling out to me, like it's trying to give me answers.”
“Answers to what, Clark?” his dad asked.
“I'm not sure. In my dream, I take the key and I put it in the slot in the cave wall. And there's this bright light...”
“And?” his mom prompted.
All Clark could say was, “I don't know. That's when I wake up.”
“Clark, dreaming about putting that key in a rock wall is one thing, but we have absolutely no idea what would happen if you actually did that,” his dad said.
“These dreams are getting more intense every night. Who knows where I'll wake up tomorrow?” Clark exclaimed.
“It's too dangerous,” was his dad’s only reply.
“Dad, that cave could have all the answers I'm looking for. Why are you so afraid to let me find out?”
There was no response, and Clark started up the stairs again, saying, “I gotta get dressed for school.”
***
That afternoon, Dr Frederick Walden, the man he’d employed to help translate the cave symbols, entered Lex's study. Lex sat behind his desk, and took advantage of the position.
“Dr Walden. I got a call this morning from the State Preservation Society. They heard a rumour that you plan on removing a section of the wall? Now, I of course told them that you wouldn't consider such a radical move without consulting me.” This was the local Native American tribe’s, the town’s, and Clark’s history the man could be trying to destroy, and he couldn’t let that happen.
“It's a common archaeological practice,” the doctor said, desperately trying to justify himself.
“Among ninteenth century imperialists,“ Lex informed him. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to cut me out of the process.”
“You're paranoid.”
“Really.” ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Lex thought. Standing, he walked over to Dr Walden. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you right now.”
“Because I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough,” he claimed.
“Will this, uh, breakthrough finally allow you to translate these symbols?”
“It's hard to say... now that I won't be able to get a sample back to my lab. Who tipped off the State?”
“The State is threatening to revoke LexCorp's custodial management of the cave. Another foundation is chomping at the bit to take over. If my instincts are correct, I believe my father is behind it. I don't need excuses. I need answers. You've got three days,” Lex sternly dismissed Walden.
Returning to his desk and sitting down again, he could only hope Walden would do something incredibly foolish within those three days, giving him cause to fire the doctor, answers or no answers.
He’d just have to hire someone else. Sighing in frustration, Lex then returned to his reports.
***
At school, Chloe Sullivan, Lana Lang, Pete Ross, and Clark made their way to the Torch office. Stories to write and photographs to take, as always.
Chloe berated the assignment they’d just been given, declaring it lame. “Family trees are so twentieth century.”
Clark could see her point. With the exception of Pete, they were all missing at least one parent, or had another circumstance which would make a family tree difficult to produce. Pete left, revelling in his normality, and Lana tried to arrange a time to talk about the assignment.
Suddenly, there was a screeching sound, making Clark gasp and clutch at his head.
“Did you guys hear that?” he asked.
The girls just thought he was complaining about the assignment, and sort of laughed at him. When it became apparent that the noise was only audible to him, in a brief respite from it, Clark said, “I gotta go,” and hurriedly left the Torch.
***
He ran home, and went to the loft of the barn, where the screeching noise started again. Tracing the noise’s location, Clark pulled a box out of a cupboard. Breaking its padlock, he opened the box. A light shone out of it.
Pushing some things aside, he found the octagonal disk at the bottom, glowing madly. When Clark took the disk in his hand, it calmed down; no noise, no light. It had to be now, he was certain. He closed his hand over the disk, protecting it, and ran to the cave, at superspeed.
***
Chapter 3 - Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
In your mind you have capacities you know
To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Please close your eyes and concentrate
With every thought you think
Upon the recitation we're about to sing
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary most extraordinary craft
As Clark stood before the circular wall painting, it was just like his dreams. Except this time, the disk flew out of his hand, and straight into the octagonal groove in the wall.
Almost subconsciously, he checked no one was watching. Returning his gaze to the disk, he could see its symbols glowing red, yellow and blue. The symbols on the wall also lit up, and both sets began to spin, in opposite directions.
Then a hole appeared in the middle of the disk. He moved closer, to investigate, and a beam of multi-coloured energy shot out. It struck him in the chest. Clark was suspended in mid-air, as the energy kept pouring through him. And then, he once again blacked out.
***
Lex entered the cave. Finding Clark unconscious on the cave floor, he bent over him and shook his shoulder to try and wake him up. Breathing a sigh of relief when Clark opened his eyes, he asked, “Are you okay?”
His friend acknowledged him. “Lex. What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. What were you doing down here? The guard said there was an explosion.” Lex watched Clark’s eyes shift to the octagon surrounded by paintings. What had he done? ”You didn't touch any equipment, did you?”
“Of course not!” he said, but it was too fast, and Lex already knew something was wrong.
This was almost like the early days, with all the lying. “C’mon, then, Clark. You’ve trusted me with everything else. You can tell me, you know you can,” Lex tried.
Clark sighed. “I put the disk in the wall, it glowed and hit me with a beam of energy...”
At that moment, Dr Walden entered the cave, and Lex made frantic “shh!” gestures to Clark.
“I find it interesting that you managed to get around the guard in the first place. What's your secret, Mr Kent?”
“Back off, Doctor. Can't you see he's been hurt?” Lex said.
He heard Clark claim, “I'm okay. I just need to get some air.”
He started to go and Lex dashed after him. “Are you sure you’re okay? Clark, first I find you lying in the middle of the road and now here. Do you want me to get Toby to examine you?” he whispered.
“Lex, I'm fine. I just got to get home before my parents start to worry.”
“Okay,” Lex replied. “But please don’t come back down here on your own. Let’s try and work it out together.”
Nodding his agreement, Clark left.
Walden then asked, “Why'd you just let him walk out of here? He knows more than he's telling us.”
Lex had to maintain the cover, for now. “Probably. But you've got enough on your plate, Doctor. Let me worry about Clark Kent.”
***
The next morning, Clark and Jonathan were loading hay into the back of the truck. When his dad asked him if he’d had any more dreams, Clark lied, “No, I think whatever it is passed.”
“That's good. I'm taking your mother into town for a checkup. You want a ride to school?”
“No, Chloe's gonna pick me up.”
His mom was pregnant, and none of them could still actually believe it.
“As soon as your mother says she's ready, we can tell people. “Don't worry, Clark, this is one secret we can all be very happy to share.”
“Yeah. The baby's lucky.” Clark tried to not sound bitter.
“Hey, son, I didn't mean for it to sound that way. Look, having this child is gonna be a big adjustment for all of us, but it doesn't change the way we feel about you.”
“I know that.”
“I’m just glad things are back to normal,” his dad said.
What was normal to them, anyway? Hiding? Lying? Keeping secrets? Clark sighed.
His mom came outside. “Jonathan, we're late! We gotta go!”
His dad went over to her, and Clark continued loading the hay. Suddenly, the high-pitched whining noise hit his ears again. Dropping the hay, Clark grabbed the sides of his head in pain.
“fireburnheathope,” something told him...mentally, in the language from the caves. And then his heat vision kicked in, by itself. Clark couldn’t control it, and he set the wall of their barn on fire.
“Jonathan!” he half heard his mom shout.
As quickly as it had started, Clark's heat vision stopped. They had to put the fire out! He spotted the hose across the yard and ran over to it. His dad turned on the water, and Clark went back to the barn.
“Clark, what happened?”
“I don't know!” he exclaimed, continuing to spray the barn with water. He could hear Chloe’s VW Beetle pulling up. What were they going to tell her? Parking, Chloe got out of her car, and Clark half saw her run up to his mom.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We came out, and it was... on fire,” Clark heard his mom lie.
Minutes later, the fire was extinguished, and burned onto the wall of the barn was a symbol, a collection of shapes; a circle, lines, a diamond. This same symbol was among those on the wall of the cave, and the disk. Clark and his parents were in a mild state of shock, and before anyone could stop her, Chloe had pulled out her camera and taken a photo.
Now what the hell were they going to do? Clark knew he could hardly go off to school at the moment. “Chloe, you go. I’ll get a ride with Mom and Dad, once we’ve fixed this,” he said.
“OK, Clark. See you later,” she replied, and walked back to her car.
When she’d driven off, Clark grabbed some boards, and his dad began to nail them over the symbol he’d burnt into the barn.
A few minutes later, Jonathan said, “Well, that ought to keep the looky-loos away, at least ‘til I have a chance to patch it up better.”
Clark sighed, before saying, “A couple of boards aren't gonna be able to cover up anything anymore, especially after Chloe publishes her pictures.”
“Well, I-I think I convinced her it was a prank. You can't beat yourself up about this. Your abilities are still developing. You can't always control them.”
Clark could hear how worried his mom was, but he had to tell them the truth. “There's nothing uncontrolled about that drawing,” he said, and prepared to be yelled at. “It's a symbol from wherever I'm from. It means ‘hope’.”
“How do you know that? Since when can you read the symbols?” his mom asked.
“Since I put the key in the cave wall.”
“Wait a minute. Since you did what?”
“Dad, it was calling out to me. It led me to where you hid it.”
“Clark, I told you not to do that.”
There was the yelling, as expected. “I know, Dad, but it was like I didn't have a choice,” Clark said, remembering the feeling of nownownow.
“Where is the key now?” his mom asked.
“I don't know,” he half lied. “When I put the key in the wall there was -- there was a blinding light and I blacked out.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, it didn't hurt me. But everything's jumbled up. It's like it downloaded me with the language from the cave wall. Lex found me, I told him what had happened and we covered when Dr Walden appeared,” Clark explained. He didn’t want to tell them about the key, but he had to.
“Dad, there’s more. The key. I think it disintegrated.”
“You're not completely sure? Clark, we understand you wanting to know more about your origins, but you're putting your own life in danger here.”
More yelling. Was his dad ever going to understand? “Some things are worth the risk,” Clark stated.
“Like what?”
“Like the truth.”
***
That afternoon, Lana entered the Talon and spotted Clark, scribbling away on something. She made her way to his table. To get his attention, Lana had to say his name a couple of times. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said faintly.
She sat down opposite him. “I heard about the fire.”
“It was no big deal. We got it under control. I think Chloe's over at the Torch right now writing an exclusive.”
“I wouldn't know. We aren't exactly talking right now,” Lana admitted.
“Sounds serious,” Clark said.
“Well, invasion of privacy usually is.”
“Let me guess, you caught her snooping around in your stuff.”
“Actually I was the one doing the snooping. I didn't mean to. It kinda just happened.” More admissions.
“Well, you'd think all the times that she's overstepped her boundaries, she'd cut you some slack.”
If only it actually worked like that, she thought. “It just reminded me that as great as Chloe and her dad have been, I'm still not family.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Can I tell you a secret?”
At last, she thought. “That would be a first,” Lana said, with a hint of bitterness.
“I've been looking into my roots and it's freaking my parents out, but I think I'm getting close to finding out where I'm from,” Clark told her.
This was an incredibly big deal, from the sound of his voice. “Then you shouldn't stop,” she said, smiling at him. He didn’t really smile back. Lana cast her eyes at the table instead, and then noticed that Clark had been scribbling away on the dreaded family tree assignment. She couldn’t actually see any names, though.
But what she could see looked like shapes; like the paintings in the caves.
“Is that your family tree?” she tried asking. He just looked back down at the sheet. “Clark, what's wrong?”
“Nothing, um, I gotta go,” he said distractedly.
Lana watched him crumple up the paper and throw it at the trashcan. He missed, but didn’t notice. Lex came into the Talon, and in his hurry to leave, Clark almost physically bumped into him.
“Clark, I've been looking all over for you. Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sorry, Lex, I can't talk right now,” Clark replied, before dashing off.
Lex wandered over to her. “Looks like we've been abandoned.”
‘Tell me about it,’ Lana thought. “Story of my life.” She went up to the bar, Lex following her. Perhaps she’d better say something about what she’d seen. “Lex?”
“What’s up, Lana?”
“The paper down there.” She pointed to it. “You need to take that with you. Clark was writing on it, and I don’t think it was in English.”
***
Lex picked up the ball of paper and opened it up.
Lana was right (how much more did she know?); he could see symbols from the caves and the disk among the drawings. It would appear the beam of energy Clark had received had provided him with more symbols than those in the caves. “Thanks, Lana,” he said, folding up the piece of paper and pocketing it. After ordering a coffee, Lex left the Talon and sped off in his Lamborghini.
Arriving home, he called Clark, who arrived a second after he had hung up, a copy of the Torch in his hand. “Clark? What else happened in the caves? I picked this up, in the Talon.” Lex handed Clark’s family tree back to him.
Clark sat down opposite him, looking like he was still trying to process the experience in the caves. Eventually, he confirmed what Lex had suspected, and showed him the Torch. “I burnt this onto the side of the barn, with my heat vision,” he said, pointing to the picture, under a headline reading, Burning Question: Aliens or Arsonists. “It means ‘hope’, in...something.”
“That something’s not Kawatche, we know that much,” Lex said.
“And I have no idea what it is, Lex.” Clark gave him the copy of the Torch. “You can have this. I need to talk to Chloe, I can pick up another copy back at school.” Clark folded up the family tree, and placed it in his jacket pocket. They both rose from their chairs, and shared a quick kiss.
“I’ll call you later,” Clark said, and left.
Lex sat back down, and ran a finger over the symbol, tracing its lines and curves. “Where are you from, Clark?” he wondered.
***
continues here - http://laurab1.livejournal.com/193269.html