smallville fic: crucible
Continuation of Lathe, Vessel and Lithophane.
Title Explanation: (Crucible- a vessel used for heating, melting and shaping materials at high temperatures).
Notes: An alternate take on the feeding thing. Finally, this part is done, paraxdisepink.Hardest bit so far, and I felt sorry for Chloe and Davis. And yes, I've caved. Stuff happens. So, if you don't want to read angsty smut, skip over VII and VIII.
Follow the cut!
She had seen birth and death before and thought them to be different.
T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
I. Chloe Sullivan is focused on the here and now. She’s almost stopped thinking of danger outside of her little world.
i. She lets herself in with the key around her neck, two enormous green apples balanced precariously on the tray.
ii. Davis should be out of the trance by now. She’d told him to take a walk outside, just for a little while. The time he can go without a shot is down to forty five minutes, but he knows she worries about the worrisome pallor that constant hours in the dark have brought to his skin.
iii. She doesn’t have a hand to turn up the light. Shutters are drawn, but she can make out the vague form of the pile of reference texts toppled messily into her path. She’ll deal with it later. No hands.
iv. She has hands enough to send the tray flying behind her when she feels the cool pressure of a knife at her throat. It doesn’t help, leaves her completely unarmed, arms pinioned to her sides. She has to stand on her toes to keep the sharpness from slicing into her trachea.
v. The smell is stifling and dirty, too hot breath and tobacco. “Care to introduce me to your little friend?” A voice that sounds like yesterday’s liquor. It’s not about Davis. Can’t be about him. She’s been careful.
v. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. Word on the street tells me you can hook me up with a nuisance called Stiletto.”
“Hate to break it to you buster, but if you’re looking to score some shoes this isn’t the way to go about it.”
“Stop lying, bitch. Your little friend. Where is she?”
“All I know is that you are a demented Jack-the-Ripper wannabe. Let me go!” A kick to his shin and he makes no reaction but tightening his grip.
“I’m in the position of power here, you may notice.”
She watched a video about how to defend from a man holding a knife. To poke him in the eyes was the big thing, but she can’t move her fingers without breaking them. She can’t knee him, trapped like this. She should turn his weight against him, but she doesn’t know anything other than verbal judo.
vi. “Let me go and I might decide not to send you to prison for assault.”
“One question and it can all be over.”
“I don’t know anything.” More pressure. Her neck is cold; the feeling is liquid like a few drops of blood.
“Let me refresh your memory. You’ve been coming this way with lots of food; every single day for the past week. Little lady like you couldn’t eat that much. So, I’m thinking we might be pretty close to that friend of yours.” “Maybe I have an appetite.”
“I don’t like wasting time. Next time you lie, I make you bleed it out.” He doesn’t tighten the knife anymore, presses one corner down more firmly than the rest of it and she won’t heal from that.
vii. She’s got to survive now.
“I’ll take you to her.”
“That’s better.” The knife encircles her neck from the back now and she walks stiffly.
“What’s in it for me?”
“I might decide not to slice you up too bad.” She considers tripping, taking him down for a few seconds. But he’s been here longer and she can see less than he can in this dark. She finds the knob, pushes in the key. Her hand wants to start trembling. But she stiffens, pulls it open. “You first.” He’s going to push her ahead of him, walk one step above her. She won’t be able to lock him in or get away.
vii. She walks down one step, another, a third; he moves heavily behind her. The fourth step she jerks her head down, nearly smacks it on the rail, crouches. The momentum throws him forward and she scrambles to throw herself behind the heavy wood, turns the key, tries to block out the sounds of his body hitting the cement.
viii. She might not have killed him, she thinks. She’s injured him, badly and she can’t afford to stay and wait. She’s got minutes to find Davis outside, pack a few texts; they’ll go on the lam somehow, where they can’t be found. It’ll be the end of her life as Chloe Sullivan.
ix. (She can’t have killed him. She can’t have.)
x. She thinks she’s done worse than that when she hears that sound for the second time in her life.
II. She doesn’t know how she keeps behind the door for the seconds until the human sound smothers and there’s nothing at all.
i. He’d made her promise. There’s another thirty minutes, painstakingly counted out before she pulls it open.
ii. There’s nothing on the stairs, and there’s no body at the bottom of the steps. She can see ripped fabric first, knows whatever is left of the thug will confront her as soon as she gets down. She did this, forced Davis into everything he never wanted to be again.
iii. (Maybe the transformation won’t be over. She can die now, just like anybody else.)
iv. Davis will be down there and he’s going to wake up with blood on him. She pushes the trembling down and tries not to see what she does.
v. They’re both tossed on the cement, equally caked in it; only one of them is breathing. Davis is not aware yet. She pulls what’s left of the other together, isolates, and doesn’t drag for fear of leaving marks. Brings bags; thick and black to bind it up. Her green suit jacket is a study in contrasts.
vi. She’s still scrubbing at her hands when he wakes.
III. His consciousness passes from white to shades of black; the scent around him is all too familiar. He isn’t this, he won’t be and the evidence is coating him, taunting. (This is all he can be.)
i. He can almost taste the sickly sweet, dizzying emptiness it leaves in its wake. He wants to double over the sink and make it go. But she’s there, back to him. She should never have to see. He pushes himself back toward the wall; finds it covered too.
ii. He doesn’t know who the hapless victim was this time. It has finally caught up to him and things between them will never be the same again.
iii. Her shoulders move, releasing barely hitching breaths obscured by the run of water. She’s holding so much back and she’s seen. (It’s one thing to hear it from his lips, to decide logically that she wants to save him. This was never in the cards and he can’t expect…)
iv. “Chloe?” His hands are crusted brown and the familiar sickly nausea won’t ebb. It isn’t pushing at his mind, and he knows what it all means. She doesn’t turn toward him and he doesn’t blame her.
v. He doesn’t see anyone else; doesn’t remember anything since the last injection. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and the blood is on her too.
vi. The things start to piece themselves together, and he doesn’t want to believe. In those lost minutes he could have looked liked himself, been It…done things. Hurt her.
vii. She wouldn’t turn toward him if she had been hurt. “Chloe. What did I…” he steadies her elbows, pulls her around gently. She doesn’t jump at the light pressure; she as pliant as a life-size doll. No bruises on her arms. He almost startles when her head buries itself onto what’s left of his shirt. “Oh god. I’m sorry.” He thinks she’s trying to say, and doesn’t understand.
viii. The floor around him is almost spotless and he drips onto it. His hands were once talons, so he doesn’t think of how it got to soak up to his elbows.
ix. “We’ll get you cleaned up.” The sink runs, sputters out icy water. There are towels. More than the time when she got that scar.
x. She speaks, the words come out and he thinks that she’s still trying to distract herself. Her touch is gentle, and he closes his eyes for the minute it lasts. The water flows pinkish as it comes off his neck, his arms; his face.
IV. They tell you jokingly that true friends help you hide the bodies. Both of them may have had true friends and false friends and none would be here now. There’s something else to this.
i. There are the black bags, too familiar, which they move. The smell of death is everywhere and he tries to push down the very human nausea. He’s lived as a paramedic and he’s felt this before, she hasn’t and yet she stays.
ii. Its savagery, something worse than a mauling is not something fit for her eyes. All because he’s not capable, strong enough.
“Don’t, Davis.” She throws all the authority she can in her voice and it still comes out shaky. “It was me.”
iii. A minute passes, two, in silence. He knows the hidden horror because he’s had it, feels it even now because he doesn’t feel pity with it. “He was going to kill you.”
iv. (He used to believe life was equally important; no one meant more than anyone else. Maybe this is the start of him, changing. But this is Chloe and he wonders how many of the tenets of his life break when it comes to her).
v. “So I beat him to the punch. I told myself I was going to knock him down the steps and lock him down here just while we got away…And instead I made a stupid mistake, used you as a weapon. I was supposed to stop this.”
vi. She almost retches twice through their morbid task; but keeps on methodically despite the speed. She never thought that she would use the knowledge from books on forensics, a viewing or two of Dexter, this way.
vii. They have only forty-five minutes and she watches him for all the little signs she’s gotten to know so well. He’s on tenterhooks but he’s not going to let her on her own, still worried for her even though she just murdered a man.
viii. She’s no saint. When they finish she won’t be the one to keep her mouth shut.
V. His time is up and he waits for the change that doesn’t come.
i. The fact that it got free buys him time; it’s no longer moving restlessly in the back of his skull, fighting against its bonds. He may have a whole night free of the change to see what it has done.
ii. Under Clorox and stinging antiseptic, the room is still redolent of the sickening scent. It’s completely changed, killed in this room now. He used to picture days upon days of drugs where it didn’t break free; tried so hard to believe it was not a lie.
iii. She’s stayed safe, somehow, because of blind luck, because of its first victim. He’s learned not to trust luck. It could snap past that barrier next time, it could be her blood staining his hands, her eyes.
iv. No matter what he does, this always seems to follow and he wants to tear both parts of himself from the other before it’s too late. If he can’t do it, maybe the other Kryptonian can.
v. (Despite the fact that they’ve been on the outs lately, Clark might be strong enough to stop him somehow, find away to neutralize the threat before she gets into the crossfire. The one who’d called himself her best friend owes her that much.)
vi. He’s been excellent at lying to himself so far, but she won’t be the casualty. “You’ve seen it now. It can’t get better.” He won’t sugarcoat things, not now. He hasn’t told her about the white outs, where he doesn’t feel pain or drugs or it; where he thinks it’s adapting, trying and seizing control of his rational mind
vii. “How do I know that it won’t be you laying there next time?” She can’t come up with an infallible answer. He’s Davis; and he’s fighting.
viii. Another barrier broken and it’ll keep pushing itself past its restraints. He’s not strong enough. She refuses to believe.
ix. “I’m going to try and live up to that. When I go this time you’ve got to let me go and not look for me.”
VI. It is not a matter of digging in her heels and waiting until one of them topples. He’s got to see.
i. “Were you listening to anything I said? You don’t get to punish yourself for my mistakes.” There’s the bag still red and the blood is hardly visible. “It’s killed again.” The taste of blood will bring it out again faster.
ii. “It doesn’t matter where you go, don’t you see? You don’t get to do this, play the noble hero card. Not now.” She tugs the luggage from his hands and he lets it fall. He won’t need it where he’s going.
iii. (He’s making excuses to watching her face even tinged in anger. This is their moment, and for the first time he realizes it’s not that only that she cares. Inexplicably, she needs him, too.)
iv. “Fine. You want to hear something? I opened the door too early. Fifteen minutes too early. Do I look dead to you?” She looks straight, challenges; doesn’t tell him he was human at the time. Omission is truth when the situation calls for it. “If you leave it’s because you want to, not because of me. So don’t.”
v. (He used to like logic. Probability, the things he could measure. The numbers are against him and he’s not going to gamble.)
vi. It’s a principle. She can’t let him go and he can’t let her be hurt. Go. Go. If he says it out he knows she won’t move, will let the door close behind him. “Do you want to go?” He’d have weeks left before the memories would start to fade again. “I-” He doesn’t want to think about how much it will be like tearing apart.
vii. “Don’t, Davis.” It’s not a command and her face is opened up, like light that vanishes when she sees his hand on the door. Maybe, he thinks, he’s hurting her already. There’s no Clark, no Lois, no Jimmy for her now. She’ll be alone in a room with too many ghosts. “No.” It wavers on the edge of his breath, almost defiant.
viii. She’s Chloe Sullivan; she’s got a sure-fire remark for every minute and the words are clumsy, conceal and reveal too much. (She wants to say how everything else has almost gone away; how this little room has become her life, now.) “I trust you.” He’s the only one. She wishes he could trust in himself; that he didn’t have to ask ‘why’. She wants to intercept the words before they leave his mouth, about how she can care when he’s ‘this’ because he isn’t.
ix. There’s no evidence she can give for instinct, so she finally falls back on the one thing that’s already been said. “I think you know why.” She used to mock lines like that, as they were repeated in countless tired romances as the music swelled. The cheesiness of the moment does not escape her but he looks as if she gave him the world. (Maybe it’s not the words as much as the fact that they can’t be taken back, the fact that she doesn’t want to.)
x. He’s doesn’t listen to the words as much as the way she says them and he understands. The gap closes. Words want to build in the back of his throat, how there are things she still needs to know, so many things that can’t possibly be easy.
xi. This is the second time it happens and he’s not prepared for it. She moves first. Her lips are on his and the soft sensation is insistent, hiding under the surface, mirrored. He can taste bitter coffee, her, blood from the split on her lip. His hands are tight on her shoulders; she’s breakable. He draws back and loosens his grip, tries to breathe. He’s never wanted to smile more than now.
xii. She’s still looking at him with that expression, seeing more than he manages to say. The aching returns, a slow nervous flutter (she burns the white and black from the back of his mind until there’s just her image in his eyes). There’s a cut on her jaw that he’s careful to avoid when he frames her face. He kisses her and he’s nothing if not human.
Not yet.
VII. And it’s just that easy.
i. Davis is not pushing her, fingers barely tangled in her hair. He kisses constantly, opened mouth meeting hers with no intrusion of tongue. Pulling her to him, holding on. There’s intensity to everything that makes it hard to breathe. She stretches up, clutches to his shoulders. She can have this. He’s here, regardless of what this could have done, what she could have lost. Even with her eyes closed she’s aware of that one purple stain stark against her sleeve; drops her jacket onto the floor. She tells herself this hasn’t made her reckless. The goose bumps form on her arms and when his hands slide up her shoulders she feels it more than she should. Her skin is vulnerable and safe. (They go on, and she knows where this leads.)
ii. She manages to hold on, arching into him, unable to think further than this impossible 'now'. She forgets about visions of scrubbing her hands, the knot in her stomach that lingers like fear. She can’t afford to forget, not… “Not here.” She chokes out. It feels too much like a portent, and she can’t take that. Not when she needs them to be just them. She can’t make the rest of it go away, and maybe she doesn’t know what she’s playing at; but she believes. Steadies her breath, opens her eyes into his, shakily draws a thumb across his cheek. “Come with me.”
iii. His eyes are dark in the light, there’s fear there, but less, and a word about the danger doesn’t leave his lips. Don’t, she’d said. He’s so open and trusting and she hates that she could break him. There’s the danger there, but there’s him too. She won’t give moth to flame allegories. Right now he’s the man, and her friend and the one thing she won’t let go of. It’s built so far down it’s her foundation. She’s making this choice sober. She links her fingers though his, tries not to look at the steps as she walks, focuses on the warmth of his grip. Somehow she propels them, up and away, out of the dark.
iv. It’s brighter here, even with one of the light bulbs knocked out, sobering. She’s taking that step out to the ledge for the first time. It’s never felt like her skin was anymore than that; when physical sensation could ever change her.
v. She’d kept herself on a pill, a habit, although time passed and there was no need. She remembers how it used to be, sometimes pleasant and sometimes numb, never with the lights on. So she could pretend that it couldn’t have been any face but hers, so he never saw when her thoughts went to another place. (Maybe the hesitant, old Chloe would feel guilty for this, for the once-husband called Jimmy and a nightstand with a wedding ring laid out there.)
vi. But not her, not when the things she’s already said feel more like vows than anything she ever remembers. So she keeps leading, looks into his face. His fingers clutch onto hers. He won’t ever voice the fear now, not when he’s afraid of hurting her. She wants to give him reassurance; wants to tell him that they can have this always and he won’t break her heart. Instead, she lets herself feel the fear until it vanishes to him.
She pretends it is the first time.
VIII. They never say the words out between them.
i. She doesn’t say and he doesn’t ask, and he hopes she understand what he means to. She pulls at his hands. The couch, too red, symbolic; there’s no where else to go in this room.
ii. He doesn’t know what the custom for this is, it’s normal to be caught like this, like two teenagers. It’s just what people do.
iii. But he isn’t ‘people’. He used to dream of another world, another time where they could have been this. Where feeling could come first and he’d repeat phrases like ‘I love you’ over and over.
iv. As it is, they have only hours. Maybe they can’t go on like this, a guy only gets so many second chances before the door shuts; and she can’t go throwing herself to his salvation when it may only break her. But he can’t stop, not when he sees the question in her eyes. There’s fear, and he thinks he has it too. He can be anything for her now, this moment. She feels like his.
v. Her knees hit the arm of the couch, he does and when she makes a sound it knocks the wind out of him. He doesn’t know what his invulnerable body could do to her. His skin shatters knives. Even his human weight could crush her. He quickly pulls his weight off. “Are you?” “Just cold.” She makes a tiny discontented sound and lunges forward to pull him back with her. He hesitates.
vi. He can’t help seeing the marks on lightly tanned skin, the bruise over her breastbone; the deeper jagged cut under her chin. “We should look at that.” It’s a reflex, how he traces the outside of the mark, gauging the severity. “Mr.-uhh… got a bit knife-happy.” If she hadn’t been coming here for him, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt. “Stop that. He came because of a project of Lois’s. He wanted to find her and I wouldn’t tell him.” “How’d he find out?” “Word on the streets. You know reporters.” He knows what that means. Some soft justification, like ‘Lois just forgot to say I was the source.’ Lois could have gotten Chloe killed. He can feel the whiteness again, seizing up; wanting to tear through something. He squeezes his eyes shut, thinks of climbing off and locking the door. Her voice draws him out of visions of paralysis and scarlet mist. “Hey, I’m still here.” She draws his hand to her chin. “See? You won’t hurt me.”
vii. It’s a contradiction. He’s the one with the psychotic monster in him and he’ll hurt her if he goes. Don’t. “So give a girl a little help?” Her lips are swollen, her face is flushed but it’s all pushed behind the gentle look in her eyes. He wonders for a moment if it will ever see what he sees at this moment; if it can download these memories. She leans forward, brushes her lips across the side of his mouth. It has no place here. “It’s hot and all, but don’t think so much, Davis.”
viii. He braces himself against the sides of the couch, leans down because it must hurt her to angle like that. Sensations. Her thin shirt rides up a little and his hand stumbles she keeps it there. It barely skims flesh because one misstep could leave a bruise. He wants to take it farther, feels the prickle under his skin, the need for warmth, her. The only place she’s safe is where his skin doesn’t touch hers.
ix. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. But she responds; flips them over so that he almost thinks she learned one of those Japanese wrestling disciplines. She’s half kneeling at either side of him this time and the burning pushes anything but those sounds and monosyllabic thoughts from his mind. Pulling away, coming back; teasing. Legs at the side of his hips effectively trapping him before his hands tug her down again. Sounds that she doesn’t realize she makes. It’s physically painful to come this close and not merge.
x. He’s breathing faster now, strangely reminiscent of the change, but so, so different. She doesn’t look scared. Just throws various articles haphazardly behind her with the arm that’s not touching him. He’s still mostly dressed. The hands on the buttons of his serviceable cotton shirt don’t shake until barely calloused palms brush the pulse on his neck.
xi. The rough materials rub between them, strangely unneeded barriers that seem to shed sparks as they get kicked away. Red leather, cold as it sticks to his back. Then, a shock of skin and he realizes the air is making her cold. She draws closer and they are actually doing this. “Chloe, promise you’ll tell me if…” “I will stop your mouth.” It should be out of the place, this; the way she nearly laughs, pulls out old Shakespearean references like they have time. “Just let it happen.”
xii. Blond hair teases at his cheek as everything freezes. Warmth and heat, and he won’t shut his eyes. The first hesitant movement together and it feels like he’s sinking into his skin, just his human skin and there’s nothing else. This moment of oneness is all they have; and he feels her heartbeat over him. He feels himself drifting, moving to nowhere and everywhere.
xiii. He wants it to stay, but the movements get wilder, his pulse races in something akin to desperation. It’s dangerous to hold on to tightly, and this is going to have to end. “Davis.” Her eyes flicker open and closed and there’s sweat damp on her temple. He feels the tightening, can read the signs. “Wait.” He says. He reaches up, breathes her air; pretends this is not an end. Kisses her with every breath left. Finds himself pushed deeper, feels the trembling overtake them and then doesn’t know of the cry is his or her own.
xiv. He’s spiraling back, feeling the sweat growing cold on both of them. He rolls them over carefully in the small space and they barely manage to stay on, limbs tangled over the edge of the couch. His nose somehow brushes her neck and she shivers so that the movement goes through him.
xv. When everyday physical sensations return he finds the afghan, always thrown haphazardly over the chair arm, unfurls it and pulls it over her shoulders. Rumpled hair, a tired warm smile. “Hey.” It’s in the little things, how she smoothes back hair that is too short to need it, the quickness of emotions that play across her face. He thinks she must see it to. Something clenches in his gut, and he can’t help the smile. This is everything.
xvi. The afghan scratches lightly, and her head rests on his arm. There are soft words, theoretical questions set in a world that has a future for both of them. And he lets himself fall.
xvii. An hour, two; her breaths fall evenly against his chest and time and place realign. There’s a giddy joy dizzying him, mixing with the all too familiar fear. (He wonders how it can ever return after this. He knows it will.)
xviii. Time will pass whether he clings or not. He won’t be able to be without her; and before the end he’ll have to let her go. He holds in the convulsing need to pull her closer, to hold on with desperate fingers to sand. He unclenches his fingers, presses a cheek to the top of her head; waits until the dawn. (He’s not anything but human, not now.)
Not now.
IX. Her dreams cloud her eyes with blood she’s spilled and tears. It’s still an unpleasant jolt to wake.
i. The sun filters in, shines uncomfortably in her eyes without warming her. The leathery texture of the couch feels cold without his warmth; and she feels that strange blooming of feeling that makes her want to hang on to him.
ii. She realizes they won’t ever be able to sleep together, side by side.
iii. The afghan is tucked carefully around her shoulders, even now and his scent lingers on her skin. Then, the thought hits her that there’s no trace of him.
iv. After the initial panic, she notices her clothes are neatly folded over the coffee table and the key dangles in the basement lock, ready to be turned. It’ll be two hours before she opens it again.
v. It’s illogical that she doesn’t feel guiltier, more frightened. Soon it will crest on her, what all of this means.
vi. The dreams tell her things that she can’t bring herself to accept yet. There’s dirt under her fingernails and somewhere out there there’s a fresh grave.
vii. They aren’t safe at Isis any longer. She finds a map, draws out a path, thinks of Alaska and tries to reason out how they’ll handle the car ride.
viii. The signs are all down now. So it shocks her to find a small business card shoved under the crack of the door. Who leaves calling cards these days, anyways?
ix. Linda Lake. She’d failed in her destruction mission of Clark and now she wanted fuel for the fire. The hasty, ugly scrawl on the back. Appointment?
x. Two more hours left.
I. Chloe Sullivan can’t just see the here and now. There’s the future because she has to believe in it. There is a future because this is her whole little world now.
Endnotes: So what is your perceived direction?
Shamelessly begging for thoughts. ;)
Title Explanation: (Crucible- a vessel used for heating, melting and shaping materials at high temperatures).
Notes: An alternate take on the feeding thing. Finally, this part is done, paraxdisepink.Hardest bit so far, and I felt sorry for Chloe and Davis. And yes, I've caved. Stuff happens. So, if you don't want to read angsty smut, skip over VII and VIII.
Follow the cut!
She had seen birth and death before and thought them to be different.
T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
I. Chloe Sullivan is focused on the here and now. She’s almost stopped thinking of danger outside of her little world.
i. She lets herself in with the key around her neck, two enormous green apples balanced precariously on the tray.
ii. Davis should be out of the trance by now. She’d told him to take a walk outside, just for a little while. The time he can go without a shot is down to forty five minutes, but he knows she worries about the worrisome pallor that constant hours in the dark have brought to his skin.
iii. She doesn’t have a hand to turn up the light. Shutters are drawn, but she can make out the vague form of the pile of reference texts toppled messily into her path. She’ll deal with it later. No hands.
iv. She has hands enough to send the tray flying behind her when she feels the cool pressure of a knife at her throat. It doesn’t help, leaves her completely unarmed, arms pinioned to her sides. She has to stand on her toes to keep the sharpness from slicing into her trachea.
v. The smell is stifling and dirty, too hot breath and tobacco. “Care to introduce me to your little friend?” A voice that sounds like yesterday’s liquor. It’s not about Davis. Can’t be about him. She’s been careful.
v. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. Word on the street tells me you can hook me up with a nuisance called Stiletto.”
“Hate to break it to you buster, but if you’re looking to score some shoes this isn’t the way to go about it.”
“Stop lying, bitch. Your little friend. Where is she?”
“All I know is that you are a demented Jack-the-Ripper wannabe. Let me go!” A kick to his shin and he makes no reaction but tightening his grip.
“I’m in the position of power here, you may notice.”
She watched a video about how to defend from a man holding a knife. To poke him in the eyes was the big thing, but she can’t move her fingers without breaking them. She can’t knee him, trapped like this. She should turn his weight against him, but she doesn’t know anything other than verbal judo.
vi. “Let me go and I might decide not to send you to prison for assault.”
“One question and it can all be over.”
“I don’t know anything.” More pressure. Her neck is cold; the feeling is liquid like a few drops of blood.
“Let me refresh your memory. You’ve been coming this way with lots of food; every single day for the past week. Little lady like you couldn’t eat that much. So, I’m thinking we might be pretty close to that friend of yours.” “Maybe I have an appetite.”
“I don’t like wasting time. Next time you lie, I make you bleed it out.” He doesn’t tighten the knife anymore, presses one corner down more firmly than the rest of it and she won’t heal from that.
vii. She’s got to survive now.
“I’ll take you to her.”
“That’s better.” The knife encircles her neck from the back now and she walks stiffly.
“What’s in it for me?”
“I might decide not to slice you up too bad.” She considers tripping, taking him down for a few seconds. But he’s been here longer and she can see less than he can in this dark. She finds the knob, pushes in the key. Her hand wants to start trembling. But she stiffens, pulls it open. “You first.” He’s going to push her ahead of him, walk one step above her. She won’t be able to lock him in or get away.
vii. She walks down one step, another, a third; he moves heavily behind her. The fourth step she jerks her head down, nearly smacks it on the rail, crouches. The momentum throws him forward and she scrambles to throw herself behind the heavy wood, turns the key, tries to block out the sounds of his body hitting the cement.
viii. She might not have killed him, she thinks. She’s injured him, badly and she can’t afford to stay and wait. She’s got minutes to find Davis outside, pack a few texts; they’ll go on the lam somehow, where they can’t be found. It’ll be the end of her life as Chloe Sullivan.
ix. (She can’t have killed him. She can’t have.)
x. She thinks she’s done worse than that when she hears that sound for the second time in her life.
II. She doesn’t know how she keeps behind the door for the seconds until the human sound smothers and there’s nothing at all.
i. He’d made her promise. There’s another thirty minutes, painstakingly counted out before she pulls it open.
ii. There’s nothing on the stairs, and there’s no body at the bottom of the steps. She can see ripped fabric first, knows whatever is left of the thug will confront her as soon as she gets down. She did this, forced Davis into everything he never wanted to be again.
iii. (Maybe the transformation won’t be over. She can die now, just like anybody else.)
iv. Davis will be down there and he’s going to wake up with blood on him. She pushes the trembling down and tries not to see what she does.
v. They’re both tossed on the cement, equally caked in it; only one of them is breathing. Davis is not aware yet. She pulls what’s left of the other together, isolates, and doesn’t drag for fear of leaving marks. Brings bags; thick and black to bind it up. Her green suit jacket is a study in contrasts.
vi. She’s still scrubbing at her hands when he wakes.
III. His consciousness passes from white to shades of black; the scent around him is all too familiar. He isn’t this, he won’t be and the evidence is coating him, taunting. (This is all he can be.)
i. He can almost taste the sickly sweet, dizzying emptiness it leaves in its wake. He wants to double over the sink and make it go. But she’s there, back to him. She should never have to see. He pushes himself back toward the wall; finds it covered too.
ii. He doesn’t know who the hapless victim was this time. It has finally caught up to him and things between them will never be the same again.
iii. Her shoulders move, releasing barely hitching breaths obscured by the run of water. She’s holding so much back and she’s seen. (It’s one thing to hear it from his lips, to decide logically that she wants to save him. This was never in the cards and he can’t expect…)
iv. “Chloe?” His hands are crusted brown and the familiar sickly nausea won’t ebb. It isn’t pushing at his mind, and he knows what it all means. She doesn’t turn toward him and he doesn’t blame her.
v. He doesn’t see anyone else; doesn’t remember anything since the last injection. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and the blood is on her too.
vi. The things start to piece themselves together, and he doesn’t want to believe. In those lost minutes he could have looked liked himself, been It…done things. Hurt her.
vii. She wouldn’t turn toward him if she had been hurt. “Chloe. What did I…” he steadies her elbows, pulls her around gently. She doesn’t jump at the light pressure; she as pliant as a life-size doll. No bruises on her arms. He almost startles when her head buries itself onto what’s left of his shirt. “Oh god. I’m sorry.” He thinks she’s trying to say, and doesn’t understand.
viii. The floor around him is almost spotless and he drips onto it. His hands were once talons, so he doesn’t think of how it got to soak up to his elbows.
ix. “We’ll get you cleaned up.” The sink runs, sputters out icy water. There are towels. More than the time when she got that scar.
x. She speaks, the words come out and he thinks that she’s still trying to distract herself. Her touch is gentle, and he closes his eyes for the minute it lasts. The water flows pinkish as it comes off his neck, his arms; his face.
IV. They tell you jokingly that true friends help you hide the bodies. Both of them may have had true friends and false friends and none would be here now. There’s something else to this.
i. There are the black bags, too familiar, which they move. The smell of death is everywhere and he tries to push down the very human nausea. He’s lived as a paramedic and he’s felt this before, she hasn’t and yet she stays.
ii. Its savagery, something worse than a mauling is not something fit for her eyes. All because he’s not capable, strong enough.
“Don’t, Davis.” She throws all the authority she can in her voice and it still comes out shaky. “It was me.”
iii. A minute passes, two, in silence. He knows the hidden horror because he’s had it, feels it even now because he doesn’t feel pity with it. “He was going to kill you.”
iv. (He used to believe life was equally important; no one meant more than anyone else. Maybe this is the start of him, changing. But this is Chloe and he wonders how many of the tenets of his life break when it comes to her).
v. “So I beat him to the punch. I told myself I was going to knock him down the steps and lock him down here just while we got away…And instead I made a stupid mistake, used you as a weapon. I was supposed to stop this.”
vi. She almost retches twice through their morbid task; but keeps on methodically despite the speed. She never thought that she would use the knowledge from books on forensics, a viewing or two of Dexter, this way.
vii. They have only forty-five minutes and she watches him for all the little signs she’s gotten to know so well. He’s on tenterhooks but he’s not going to let her on her own, still worried for her even though she just murdered a man.
viii. She’s no saint. When they finish she won’t be the one to keep her mouth shut.
V. His time is up and he waits for the change that doesn’t come.
i. The fact that it got free buys him time; it’s no longer moving restlessly in the back of his skull, fighting against its bonds. He may have a whole night free of the change to see what it has done.
ii. Under Clorox and stinging antiseptic, the room is still redolent of the sickening scent. It’s completely changed, killed in this room now. He used to picture days upon days of drugs where it didn’t break free; tried so hard to believe it was not a lie.
iii. She’s stayed safe, somehow, because of blind luck, because of its first victim. He’s learned not to trust luck. It could snap past that barrier next time, it could be her blood staining his hands, her eyes.
iv. No matter what he does, this always seems to follow and he wants to tear both parts of himself from the other before it’s too late. If he can’t do it, maybe the other Kryptonian can.
v. (Despite the fact that they’ve been on the outs lately, Clark might be strong enough to stop him somehow, find away to neutralize the threat before she gets into the crossfire. The one who’d called himself her best friend owes her that much.)
vi. He’s been excellent at lying to himself so far, but she won’t be the casualty. “You’ve seen it now. It can’t get better.” He won’t sugarcoat things, not now. He hasn’t told her about the white outs, where he doesn’t feel pain or drugs or it; where he thinks it’s adapting, trying and seizing control of his rational mind
vii. “How do I know that it won’t be you laying there next time?” She can’t come up with an infallible answer. He’s Davis; and he’s fighting.
viii. Another barrier broken and it’ll keep pushing itself past its restraints. He’s not strong enough. She refuses to believe.
ix. “I’m going to try and live up to that. When I go this time you’ve got to let me go and not look for me.”
VI. It is not a matter of digging in her heels and waiting until one of them topples. He’s got to see.
i. “Were you listening to anything I said? You don’t get to punish yourself for my mistakes.” There’s the bag still red and the blood is hardly visible. “It’s killed again.” The taste of blood will bring it out again faster.
ii. “It doesn’t matter where you go, don’t you see? You don’t get to do this, play the noble hero card. Not now.” She tugs the luggage from his hands and he lets it fall. He won’t need it where he’s going.
iii. (He’s making excuses to watching her face even tinged in anger. This is their moment, and for the first time he realizes it’s not that only that she cares. Inexplicably, she needs him, too.)
iv. “Fine. You want to hear something? I opened the door too early. Fifteen minutes too early. Do I look dead to you?” She looks straight, challenges; doesn’t tell him he was human at the time. Omission is truth when the situation calls for it. “If you leave it’s because you want to, not because of me. So don’t.”
v. (He used to like logic. Probability, the things he could measure. The numbers are against him and he’s not going to gamble.)
vi. It’s a principle. She can’t let him go and he can’t let her be hurt. Go. Go. If he says it out he knows she won’t move, will let the door close behind him. “Do you want to go?” He’d have weeks left before the memories would start to fade again. “I-” He doesn’t want to think about how much it will be like tearing apart.
vii. “Don’t, Davis.” It’s not a command and her face is opened up, like light that vanishes when she sees his hand on the door. Maybe, he thinks, he’s hurting her already. There’s no Clark, no Lois, no Jimmy for her now. She’ll be alone in a room with too many ghosts. “No.” It wavers on the edge of his breath, almost defiant.
viii. She’s Chloe Sullivan; she’s got a sure-fire remark for every minute and the words are clumsy, conceal and reveal too much. (She wants to say how everything else has almost gone away; how this little room has become her life, now.) “I trust you.” He’s the only one. She wishes he could trust in himself; that he didn’t have to ask ‘why’. She wants to intercept the words before they leave his mouth, about how she can care when he’s ‘this’ because he isn’t.
ix. There’s no evidence she can give for instinct, so she finally falls back on the one thing that’s already been said. “I think you know why.” She used to mock lines like that, as they were repeated in countless tired romances as the music swelled. The cheesiness of the moment does not escape her but he looks as if she gave him the world. (Maybe it’s not the words as much as the fact that they can’t be taken back, the fact that she doesn’t want to.)
x. He’s doesn’t listen to the words as much as the way she says them and he understands. The gap closes. Words want to build in the back of his throat, how there are things she still needs to know, so many things that can’t possibly be easy.
xi. This is the second time it happens and he’s not prepared for it. She moves first. Her lips are on his and the soft sensation is insistent, hiding under the surface, mirrored. He can taste bitter coffee, her, blood from the split on her lip. His hands are tight on her shoulders; she’s breakable. He draws back and loosens his grip, tries to breathe. He’s never wanted to smile more than now.
xii. She’s still looking at him with that expression, seeing more than he manages to say. The aching returns, a slow nervous flutter (she burns the white and black from the back of his mind until there’s just her image in his eyes). There’s a cut on her jaw that he’s careful to avoid when he frames her face. He kisses her and he’s nothing if not human.
Not yet.
VII. And it’s just that easy.
i. Davis is not pushing her, fingers barely tangled in her hair. He kisses constantly, opened mouth meeting hers with no intrusion of tongue. Pulling her to him, holding on. There’s intensity to everything that makes it hard to breathe. She stretches up, clutches to his shoulders. She can have this. He’s here, regardless of what this could have done, what she could have lost. Even with her eyes closed she’s aware of that one purple stain stark against her sleeve; drops her jacket onto the floor. She tells herself this hasn’t made her reckless. The goose bumps form on her arms and when his hands slide up her shoulders she feels it more than she should. Her skin is vulnerable and safe. (They go on, and she knows where this leads.)
ii. She manages to hold on, arching into him, unable to think further than this impossible 'now'. She forgets about visions of scrubbing her hands, the knot in her stomach that lingers like fear. She can’t afford to forget, not… “Not here.” She chokes out. It feels too much like a portent, and she can’t take that. Not when she needs them to be just them. She can’t make the rest of it go away, and maybe she doesn’t know what she’s playing at; but she believes. Steadies her breath, opens her eyes into his, shakily draws a thumb across his cheek. “Come with me.”
iii. His eyes are dark in the light, there’s fear there, but less, and a word about the danger doesn’t leave his lips. Don’t, she’d said. He’s so open and trusting and she hates that she could break him. There’s the danger there, but there’s him too. She won’t give moth to flame allegories. Right now he’s the man, and her friend and the one thing she won’t let go of. It’s built so far down it’s her foundation. She’s making this choice sober. She links her fingers though his, tries not to look at the steps as she walks, focuses on the warmth of his grip. Somehow she propels them, up and away, out of the dark.
iv. It’s brighter here, even with one of the light bulbs knocked out, sobering. She’s taking that step out to the ledge for the first time. It’s never felt like her skin was anymore than that; when physical sensation could ever change her.
v. She’d kept herself on a pill, a habit, although time passed and there was no need. She remembers how it used to be, sometimes pleasant and sometimes numb, never with the lights on. So she could pretend that it couldn’t have been any face but hers, so he never saw when her thoughts went to another place. (Maybe the hesitant, old Chloe would feel guilty for this, for the once-husband called Jimmy and a nightstand with a wedding ring laid out there.)
vi. But not her, not when the things she’s already said feel more like vows than anything she ever remembers. So she keeps leading, looks into his face. His fingers clutch onto hers. He won’t ever voice the fear now, not when he’s afraid of hurting her. She wants to give him reassurance; wants to tell him that they can have this always and he won’t break her heart. Instead, she lets herself feel the fear until it vanishes to him.
She pretends it is the first time.
VIII. They never say the words out between them.
i. She doesn’t say and he doesn’t ask, and he hopes she understand what he means to. She pulls at his hands. The couch, too red, symbolic; there’s no where else to go in this room.
ii. He doesn’t know what the custom for this is, it’s normal to be caught like this, like two teenagers. It’s just what people do.
iii. But he isn’t ‘people’. He used to dream of another world, another time where they could have been this. Where feeling could come first and he’d repeat phrases like ‘I love you’ over and over.
iv. As it is, they have only hours. Maybe they can’t go on like this, a guy only gets so many second chances before the door shuts; and she can’t go throwing herself to his salvation when it may only break her. But he can’t stop, not when he sees the question in her eyes. There’s fear, and he thinks he has it too. He can be anything for her now, this moment. She feels like his.
v. Her knees hit the arm of the couch, he does and when she makes a sound it knocks the wind out of him. He doesn’t know what his invulnerable body could do to her. His skin shatters knives. Even his human weight could crush her. He quickly pulls his weight off. “Are you?” “Just cold.” She makes a tiny discontented sound and lunges forward to pull him back with her. He hesitates.
vi. He can’t help seeing the marks on lightly tanned skin, the bruise over her breastbone; the deeper jagged cut under her chin. “We should look at that.” It’s a reflex, how he traces the outside of the mark, gauging the severity. “Mr.-uhh… got a bit knife-happy.” If she hadn’t been coming here for him, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt. “Stop that. He came because of a project of Lois’s. He wanted to find her and I wouldn’t tell him.” “How’d he find out?” “Word on the streets. You know reporters.” He knows what that means. Some soft justification, like ‘Lois just forgot to say I was the source.’ Lois could have gotten Chloe killed. He can feel the whiteness again, seizing up; wanting to tear through something. He squeezes his eyes shut, thinks of climbing off and locking the door. Her voice draws him out of visions of paralysis and scarlet mist. “Hey, I’m still here.” She draws his hand to her chin. “See? You won’t hurt me.”
vii. It’s a contradiction. He’s the one with the psychotic monster in him and he’ll hurt her if he goes. Don’t. “So give a girl a little help?” Her lips are swollen, her face is flushed but it’s all pushed behind the gentle look in her eyes. He wonders for a moment if it will ever see what he sees at this moment; if it can download these memories. She leans forward, brushes her lips across the side of his mouth. It has no place here. “It’s hot and all, but don’t think so much, Davis.”
viii. He braces himself against the sides of the couch, leans down because it must hurt her to angle like that. Sensations. Her thin shirt rides up a little and his hand stumbles she keeps it there. It barely skims flesh because one misstep could leave a bruise. He wants to take it farther, feels the prickle under his skin, the need for warmth, her. The only place she’s safe is where his skin doesn’t touch hers.
ix. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. But she responds; flips them over so that he almost thinks she learned one of those Japanese wrestling disciplines. She’s half kneeling at either side of him this time and the burning pushes anything but those sounds and monosyllabic thoughts from his mind. Pulling away, coming back; teasing. Legs at the side of his hips effectively trapping him before his hands tug her down again. Sounds that she doesn’t realize she makes. It’s physically painful to come this close and not merge.
x. He’s breathing faster now, strangely reminiscent of the change, but so, so different. She doesn’t look scared. Just throws various articles haphazardly behind her with the arm that’s not touching him. He’s still mostly dressed. The hands on the buttons of his serviceable cotton shirt don’t shake until barely calloused palms brush the pulse on his neck.
xi. The rough materials rub between them, strangely unneeded barriers that seem to shed sparks as they get kicked away. Red leather, cold as it sticks to his back. Then, a shock of skin and he realizes the air is making her cold. She draws closer and they are actually doing this. “Chloe, promise you’ll tell me if…” “I will stop your mouth.” It should be out of the place, this; the way she nearly laughs, pulls out old Shakespearean references like they have time. “Just let it happen.”
xii. Blond hair teases at his cheek as everything freezes. Warmth and heat, and he won’t shut his eyes. The first hesitant movement together and it feels like he’s sinking into his skin, just his human skin and there’s nothing else. This moment of oneness is all they have; and he feels her heartbeat over him. He feels himself drifting, moving to nowhere and everywhere.
xiii. He wants it to stay, but the movements get wilder, his pulse races in something akin to desperation. It’s dangerous to hold on to tightly, and this is going to have to end. “Davis.” Her eyes flicker open and closed and there’s sweat damp on her temple. He feels the tightening, can read the signs. “Wait.” He says. He reaches up, breathes her air; pretends this is not an end. Kisses her with every breath left. Finds himself pushed deeper, feels the trembling overtake them and then doesn’t know of the cry is his or her own.
xiv. He’s spiraling back, feeling the sweat growing cold on both of them. He rolls them over carefully in the small space and they barely manage to stay on, limbs tangled over the edge of the couch. His nose somehow brushes her neck and she shivers so that the movement goes through him.
xv. When everyday physical sensations return he finds the afghan, always thrown haphazardly over the chair arm, unfurls it and pulls it over her shoulders. Rumpled hair, a tired warm smile. “Hey.” It’s in the little things, how she smoothes back hair that is too short to need it, the quickness of emotions that play across her face. He thinks she must see it to. Something clenches in his gut, and he can’t help the smile. This is everything.
xvi. The afghan scratches lightly, and her head rests on his arm. There are soft words, theoretical questions set in a world that has a future for both of them. And he lets himself fall.
xvii. An hour, two; her breaths fall evenly against his chest and time and place realign. There’s a giddy joy dizzying him, mixing with the all too familiar fear. (He wonders how it can ever return after this. He knows it will.)
xviii. Time will pass whether he clings or not. He won’t be able to be without her; and before the end he’ll have to let her go. He holds in the convulsing need to pull her closer, to hold on with desperate fingers to sand. He unclenches his fingers, presses a cheek to the top of her head; waits until the dawn. (He’s not anything but human, not now.)
Not now.
IX. Her dreams cloud her eyes with blood she’s spilled and tears. It’s still an unpleasant jolt to wake.
i. The sun filters in, shines uncomfortably in her eyes without warming her. The leathery texture of the couch feels cold without his warmth; and she feels that strange blooming of feeling that makes her want to hang on to him.
ii. She realizes they won’t ever be able to sleep together, side by side.
iii. The afghan is tucked carefully around her shoulders, even now and his scent lingers on her skin. Then, the thought hits her that there’s no trace of him.
iv. After the initial panic, she notices her clothes are neatly folded over the coffee table and the key dangles in the basement lock, ready to be turned. It’ll be two hours before she opens it again.
v. It’s illogical that she doesn’t feel guiltier, more frightened. Soon it will crest on her, what all of this means.
vi. The dreams tell her things that she can’t bring herself to accept yet. There’s dirt under her fingernails and somewhere out there there’s a fresh grave.
vii. They aren’t safe at Isis any longer. She finds a map, draws out a path, thinks of Alaska and tries to reason out how they’ll handle the car ride.
viii. The signs are all down now. So it shocks her to find a small business card shoved under the crack of the door. Who leaves calling cards these days, anyways?
ix. Linda Lake. She’d failed in her destruction mission of Clark and now she wanted fuel for the fire. The hasty, ugly scrawl on the back. Appointment?
x. Two more hours left.
I. Chloe Sullivan can’t just see the here and now. There’s the future because she has to believe in it. There is a future because this is her whole little world now.
Endnotes: So what is your perceived direction?
Shamelessly begging for thoughts. ;)