Fic that'll never get written snippet
Apr. 10th, 2007 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanIt's the last week of spring break, I'm slightly sick, suffering from writer's block and excruciatingly bored.
So I went to look at my very huge folder of SV fic to look at old stuff, written before I posted "Protection". Do you like your own fic when you reread it after a while? I often do. There are two pieces I decided I could post. One I'd like to try and write at least a bit more, so it isn't completely unfinished and the other... well. It's a part of Elseworlds, but written long before Elseworlds even existed, last summer. Then, when I posted Elseworlds, I discarded this idea, but now that I've dug up the file again, I have no idea why. It's fun. I even sort of have a plot for it.
Title: Beware My Might
Rating: PG
Set in: Early season 4
Length: 2387
There was a boom, louder than a gunshot fired right next to him, and the sky tore apart in a streak of fire and noise.
A second later, the ground trembled under his feet.
Lex stood petrified, one hand on the roof of his car, the other closed so tightly around the keys it hurt.
In the distance, light glowed over the cornfields, then slowly faded back into the velvety darkness of the summer night.
Lex very deliberately turned around to glance over his shoulder. Behind him still loomed the entry to the caves, silent and undisturbed. Lex felt his jacket for his phone, then stilled and looked back into the direction where – where whatever it was had just fallen from the sky.
A plane. It had to be a plane. Meteors that big didn't strike in the same place twice, not within the space of ten years.
Except this was Smallville. If you walked into cornfields in the middle of the night to investigate, curious things tended to await you.
Lex got his flashlight out of the car and climbed over the rickety wire fence into the cornfield.
This, after all, was the reason he was still in Smallville, when he could be anywhere else in the world.
*
There was a stripe of scorched earth and flattened cornstalks about as wide as a large truck. At the edges, the some of the plants were still burning. Lex followed it until he reached the edge of a shallow crater.
At the bottom lay the wreck of a vessel without any discernible wings. In fact, it looked rather like a small submarine made of an almost white metal.
Most of the hull was blackened by scorch marks, but the side was still mostly intact.
There was a large green symbol that didn't belong to any organisation or country Lex had ever heard of and a bunch of smaller symbols that might or might not be writing.
He compared them to the symbols in the cave before he even consciously acknowledged what this vessel was. What it had to be.
Lex rounded the crater and found an open hatch on the other side of the vessel. He searched the ground around the hatch with the beam of his flashlight, but there were no footprints discernible.
Lex hesitated for a moment, thinking about what was the prudent thing to do and about what was the right thing to do. As usual, neither of those things were particularly satisfying.
Then he climbed down into the crater, carefully avoiding to touch the hull of the vessel, since it was probably still hot enough to burn. The air close to the hatch smelled ever so slightly of ammoniac and more strongly of ozone, tickling his nose and his eyes.
Suddenly, there was a rustle in the cornfield and Lex spun around, pointing his flashlight into that direction and this, but there was nothing but stalks and leaves around him, like a silent green army.
Again, Lex contemplated his phone. Then he took a deep breath and went through the hatch, carefully shining around with his lamp.
Two things became immediately obvious from the inside of the craft. One, it was clearly not made on earth. The design, the symbols, the technology, nothing was familiar in the slightest; it was too spacey and comfortable to be any kind of secret military prototype. Two, something had gone very wrong. The floor was slick with a thin spray of something purple and wet, and two of the four chairs in the front had been ripped out of their sockets and crushed into the walls. The screen in the front was broken and black.
In the rear, the crumpled form of a short man lay on the ground, breathing shallowly.
Even in the light of the flashlight, his skin was unmistakably a vivid magenta.
Now, Lex got out his phone. As he ordered a clean-up team to take the vessel out of the field and to the nearest LuthorCorp facility, he held the flashlight like a sword, his eyes never leaving the being on the ground.
The alien.
Bit by bit, more than the mere fact of alien life registered in Lex's mind. Pointy ears. A bald head, and no eyebrows. Humanoid, down to the number of eyes and ears and extremities, five fingers on each hand, opposable thumb. A spatter of the same purple liquid as on the ground, on the bottom of Lex's shoes – alien blood – and a glitter of eyes in the light.
The alien was looking at him.
When all the calls had been made, Lex slowly put away the phone and made a step closer, carefully keeping out of range of the alien's arms and legs.
There was a hiss and a crackle and then the alien said: "You called help."
It's English had an American accent and Lex tried very hard not to laugh hysterically right then and not to point out the improbability of universal translators. Instead he stared, and really, it was that moment of speechlessness that kept him from telling the alien that, no, he hadn't called help, but people to take the ship, and its pilot, to some hidden lab. It probably wouldn't have been a very smart thing to do, but then, neither was inspecting strange crash sites or walking straight into alien ships.
The alien moved and its head lolled back. It blinked at Lex, a rapid flutter of purple lids without lashes, and then said, in short, heaving gulps of breath: "You're not… a Kryptonian." At least the universal translator didn't function perfectly, Lex thought numbly. "Are you a… lifeform … of this planet?"
"Yes," Lex said, and then made another step closer and bent down, because the alien was dying and it was talking to him and it was the best, most exiting thing that had happened since –
He was going to get answers. He was going to *know*.
"Your race… has not yet made contact… with other civilisations?"
It tried to sit up by moving one of its arms under its body for support, but slipped back onto the ground with laboured breaths and an expression that resembled fear, but could just as likely be pain.
"Officially not," Lex said. "But you aren't the first one, I think."
The alien looked at him, its eyes slipping close, then opening again. It reached for its left hand and curled its fingers around a green ring, pulling it off. "You are unafraid… and you helped a stranger. There is no… I have no time… this ring has to be kept safe at all costs. You must learn… the oath…"
It held out the hand with the ring and Lex could not help but reach for it. But before they could touch, before he could take the ring from the alien and find out whether the magenta skin was warm, or cold, or slick, the ring suddenly glowed, fluorescent like the meteor rocks, and moved like iron drawn to a magnet.
A second later it sat on his ring finger, snug and perfect, too quickly for Lex to pull his hand back. The alien collapsed with a groan.
The ring didn't hurt, but there was a curious feeling of energy flooding into Lex, a current of power and light. He shone onto it with the flashlight, the turned it away, noting the glow of the ring and the symbol of the circle with two bars that was the same as the big green one on the hull of the vessel.
From the darkness, the alien's voice came as a whisper, like someone talking in their sleep. "In brightest day… in blackest night…no evil…shall escape my sight… let those who… who worship… worship evil's might… beware my… beware my power."
There was a breath and a sigh, then silence.
*
Lex returned home about eighteen hours after the crash, more than thirty since he last slept. Not that he slept a lot these days anyway, which was useful for jetting around the globe from business meeting to business meeting and slowly ate up the brittle remains of his sanity in quiet nights spent in Smallville.
He felt a little giddy, a little jittery as he walked into the den. The ship and its pilot had been safely removed from the field before the break of day, and even though there'd be rumours, no Smallville resident would be the wiser as to what had happened the night before.
In the meantime, research teams were being assembled, and lab space cleared in one of the facilities that used to house his father's illegal meteor rock research. Lex greatest concern was that Lionel would learn of the find through the connections he still had all over LuthorCorp. Even after four months, the company was far from scoured of his father's followers, and Lionel might be sick and imprisoned, but he still –
Lex dropped into the chair behind his desk and examined his ring. His goddamn alien ring. He slipped it off, and on, looked at the curious green material from all sides. Not metal, not stone, not plastic – alien in its very substance.
Lionel could go to hell. Lionel *would* go to hell, and nobody would take this from Lex.
He lifted the snifter of brandy and poured himself a glass to still the shaking of his hands.
Nobody would even have the slightest chance to do so, because soon Lex would have alien technology years beyond anything people even dreamed of today and more than that, he'd have the truth.
The truth about Smallville, and about the meteors and the caves and –
The doors swung open and Clark walked in. Lex glanced him up and down; he looked the same as always, fresh faced and slightly dishevelled, yet handsome. Was he wrong about Clark? Was the connections between the boy and the caves and the octagon piece, the powers and the rocks and the mystery not the one Lex had suspected? Was Clark human after all, or as human as anyone in Smallville ever got, or was he even more of a liar than Lex ever guessed?
Was that skin real, or was there something else beneath it?
In a few days, Lex would have the results of the DNA tests done with the dead alien's tissue on this very desk and he'd compare it with the DNA of the parasitic life-forms found in the caves.
"Hello, Clark. It's a bit early for a visit, isn't it?" Do you know that I never picked up a hair from your brush when I visited the loft? Do you know that I never stole a single piece of clothing you wouldn't have missed?
"Looks like it's late for you, Lex," Clark answered, heading towards Lex. "Long night?"
Clark's easy tone was completely wrong for the way his eyes searched Lex, questioning and mistrustful, stopping just a second at the green ring. He stilled and suddenly made a beeline for the pool table, leaning against it.
Lex very deliberately didn't glance at the ring. "Busy night," he replied. "I was just about to settle down."
Clark didn't look at the ring, either, and did so very unsubtly. Lex got up, set his glass down and ambled over to the pool table, only to watch Clark walk around it, putting the purple felt between them like a wall.
From behind the barrier, Clark had the audacity to look at him with challenge in his eyes. "Is it true that a LuthorCorp team picked up something from Byers' field last night?"
"Who says that?"
"People about town say they've seen a meteor strike. So, is it true, Lex?"
"I was out of town, Clark, I wouldn't know."
"You don't know what your own company does?"
Clark was afraid of the ring. Lex wondered what would happen if he cornered him with it. "I don't know what happened in Byers' field last night, but I do know LuthorCorp had nothing to do with it. What about you, Clark?"
Clark didn't look as if he believed Lex, and frankly, Lex didn't care. It wasn't as if Clark lied any more believably than he did. It wasn't as if Lex needed Clark to find out the truth…
"Me?"
Lex smiled and ran the hand with the ring over the wooden edge of the table. "Were you in Byers's field last night? It's close to the caves, isn't it?"
Clark frowned, in that expression that said 'I don't know what you're talking about, Lex, and I'm disappointed in you and you've got no right to ask me questions.' "I just thought I'd rather ask you than listen to the rumours, since we're supposed to be friends."
It was that 'supposed to be' in all its arrogant glory that made Lex pause and take a mental step back.
Whatever else Clark was or wasn't, whatever Lex wanted him to be, he had no compunctions about lying. Clark would *never* tell him the truth. The one consoling thing was that it wasn't because of Lex – as far as he could tell, Clark hadn't told anybody the truth, not even Lana. No, it was because of Clark, because Clark trusted no one and would lie and lie until he was *made* tell the truth.
The least painful way of making him confess was to find out the truth, in its entirety and gather undeniable proof.
If Lex could never get a confession, he could at least stop the lying.
And if Clark was willing to go to such lengths to keep his secrets, then what would he be willing to do to make sure Lex kept quiet?
The truth was quietly horrifying. Lex listened to his own thoughts and the silence between them. The truth was a weapon and Lex was born to wield it. Even as he looked at Clark, he knew that he would. He would use it, the way he used it against his father, but gentler, and more terrible, if Clark let him.
It was that simple.
Lex turned away and briskly walked to the door, where he stopped and forced his voice to show nothing. "It was an alien spaceship, Clark. LuthorCorp scientists are examining it as we speak."
So I went to look at my very huge folder of SV fic to look at old stuff, written before I posted "Protection". Do you like your own fic when you reread it after a while? I often do. There are two pieces I decided I could post. One I'd like to try and write at least a bit more, so it isn't completely unfinished and the other... well. It's a part of Elseworlds, but written long before Elseworlds even existed, last summer. Then, when I posted Elseworlds, I discarded this idea, but now that I've dug up the file again, I have no idea why. It's fun. I even sort of have a plot for it.
Title: Beware My Might
Rating: PG
Set in: Early season 4
Length: 2387
There was a boom, louder than a gunshot fired right next to him, and the sky tore apart in a streak of fire and noise.
A second later, the ground trembled under his feet.
Lex stood petrified, one hand on the roof of his car, the other closed so tightly around the keys it hurt.
In the distance, light glowed over the cornfields, then slowly faded back into the velvety darkness of the summer night.
Lex very deliberately turned around to glance over his shoulder. Behind him still loomed the entry to the caves, silent and undisturbed. Lex felt his jacket for his phone, then stilled and looked back into the direction where – where whatever it was had just fallen from the sky.
A plane. It had to be a plane. Meteors that big didn't strike in the same place twice, not within the space of ten years.
Except this was Smallville. If you walked into cornfields in the middle of the night to investigate, curious things tended to await you.
Lex got his flashlight out of the car and climbed over the rickety wire fence into the cornfield.
This, after all, was the reason he was still in Smallville, when he could be anywhere else in the world.
*
There was a stripe of scorched earth and flattened cornstalks about as wide as a large truck. At the edges, the some of the plants were still burning. Lex followed it until he reached the edge of a shallow crater.
At the bottom lay the wreck of a vessel without any discernible wings. In fact, it looked rather like a small submarine made of an almost white metal.
Most of the hull was blackened by scorch marks, but the side was still mostly intact.
There was a large green symbol that didn't belong to any organisation or country Lex had ever heard of and a bunch of smaller symbols that might or might not be writing.
He compared them to the symbols in the cave before he even consciously acknowledged what this vessel was. What it had to be.
Lex rounded the crater and found an open hatch on the other side of the vessel. He searched the ground around the hatch with the beam of his flashlight, but there were no footprints discernible.
Lex hesitated for a moment, thinking about what was the prudent thing to do and about what was the right thing to do. As usual, neither of those things were particularly satisfying.
Then he climbed down into the crater, carefully avoiding to touch the hull of the vessel, since it was probably still hot enough to burn. The air close to the hatch smelled ever so slightly of ammoniac and more strongly of ozone, tickling his nose and his eyes.
Suddenly, there was a rustle in the cornfield and Lex spun around, pointing his flashlight into that direction and this, but there was nothing but stalks and leaves around him, like a silent green army.
Again, Lex contemplated his phone. Then he took a deep breath and went through the hatch, carefully shining around with his lamp.
Two things became immediately obvious from the inside of the craft. One, it was clearly not made on earth. The design, the symbols, the technology, nothing was familiar in the slightest; it was too spacey and comfortable to be any kind of secret military prototype. Two, something had gone very wrong. The floor was slick with a thin spray of something purple and wet, and two of the four chairs in the front had been ripped out of their sockets and crushed into the walls. The screen in the front was broken and black.
In the rear, the crumpled form of a short man lay on the ground, breathing shallowly.
Even in the light of the flashlight, his skin was unmistakably a vivid magenta.
Now, Lex got out his phone. As he ordered a clean-up team to take the vessel out of the field and to the nearest LuthorCorp facility, he held the flashlight like a sword, his eyes never leaving the being on the ground.
The alien.
Bit by bit, more than the mere fact of alien life registered in Lex's mind. Pointy ears. A bald head, and no eyebrows. Humanoid, down to the number of eyes and ears and extremities, five fingers on each hand, opposable thumb. A spatter of the same purple liquid as on the ground, on the bottom of Lex's shoes – alien blood – and a glitter of eyes in the light.
The alien was looking at him.
When all the calls had been made, Lex slowly put away the phone and made a step closer, carefully keeping out of range of the alien's arms and legs.
There was a hiss and a crackle and then the alien said: "You called help."
It's English had an American accent and Lex tried very hard not to laugh hysterically right then and not to point out the improbability of universal translators. Instead he stared, and really, it was that moment of speechlessness that kept him from telling the alien that, no, he hadn't called help, but people to take the ship, and its pilot, to some hidden lab. It probably wouldn't have been a very smart thing to do, but then, neither was inspecting strange crash sites or walking straight into alien ships.
The alien moved and its head lolled back. It blinked at Lex, a rapid flutter of purple lids without lashes, and then said, in short, heaving gulps of breath: "You're not… a Kryptonian." At least the universal translator didn't function perfectly, Lex thought numbly. "Are you a… lifeform … of this planet?"
"Yes," Lex said, and then made another step closer and bent down, because the alien was dying and it was talking to him and it was the best, most exiting thing that had happened since –
He was going to get answers. He was going to *know*.
"Your race… has not yet made contact… with other civilisations?"
It tried to sit up by moving one of its arms under its body for support, but slipped back onto the ground with laboured breaths and an expression that resembled fear, but could just as likely be pain.
"Officially not," Lex said. "But you aren't the first one, I think."
The alien looked at him, its eyes slipping close, then opening again. It reached for its left hand and curled its fingers around a green ring, pulling it off. "You are unafraid… and you helped a stranger. There is no… I have no time… this ring has to be kept safe at all costs. You must learn… the oath…"
It held out the hand with the ring and Lex could not help but reach for it. But before they could touch, before he could take the ring from the alien and find out whether the magenta skin was warm, or cold, or slick, the ring suddenly glowed, fluorescent like the meteor rocks, and moved like iron drawn to a magnet.
A second later it sat on his ring finger, snug and perfect, too quickly for Lex to pull his hand back. The alien collapsed with a groan.
The ring didn't hurt, but there was a curious feeling of energy flooding into Lex, a current of power and light. He shone onto it with the flashlight, the turned it away, noting the glow of the ring and the symbol of the circle with two bars that was the same as the big green one on the hull of the vessel.
From the darkness, the alien's voice came as a whisper, like someone talking in their sleep. "In brightest day… in blackest night…no evil…shall escape my sight… let those who… who worship… worship evil's might… beware my… beware my power."
There was a breath and a sigh, then silence.
*
Lex returned home about eighteen hours after the crash, more than thirty since he last slept. Not that he slept a lot these days anyway, which was useful for jetting around the globe from business meeting to business meeting and slowly ate up the brittle remains of his sanity in quiet nights spent in Smallville.
He felt a little giddy, a little jittery as he walked into the den. The ship and its pilot had been safely removed from the field before the break of day, and even though there'd be rumours, no Smallville resident would be the wiser as to what had happened the night before.
In the meantime, research teams were being assembled, and lab space cleared in one of the facilities that used to house his father's illegal meteor rock research. Lex greatest concern was that Lionel would learn of the find through the connections he still had all over LuthorCorp. Even after four months, the company was far from scoured of his father's followers, and Lionel might be sick and imprisoned, but he still –
Lex dropped into the chair behind his desk and examined his ring. His goddamn alien ring. He slipped it off, and on, looked at the curious green material from all sides. Not metal, not stone, not plastic – alien in its very substance.
Lionel could go to hell. Lionel *would* go to hell, and nobody would take this from Lex.
He lifted the snifter of brandy and poured himself a glass to still the shaking of his hands.
Nobody would even have the slightest chance to do so, because soon Lex would have alien technology years beyond anything people even dreamed of today and more than that, he'd have the truth.
The truth about Smallville, and about the meteors and the caves and –
The doors swung open and Clark walked in. Lex glanced him up and down; he looked the same as always, fresh faced and slightly dishevelled, yet handsome. Was he wrong about Clark? Was the connections between the boy and the caves and the octagon piece, the powers and the rocks and the mystery not the one Lex had suspected? Was Clark human after all, or as human as anyone in Smallville ever got, or was he even more of a liar than Lex ever guessed?
Was that skin real, or was there something else beneath it?
In a few days, Lex would have the results of the DNA tests done with the dead alien's tissue on this very desk and he'd compare it with the DNA of the parasitic life-forms found in the caves.
"Hello, Clark. It's a bit early for a visit, isn't it?" Do you know that I never picked up a hair from your brush when I visited the loft? Do you know that I never stole a single piece of clothing you wouldn't have missed?
"Looks like it's late for you, Lex," Clark answered, heading towards Lex. "Long night?"
Clark's easy tone was completely wrong for the way his eyes searched Lex, questioning and mistrustful, stopping just a second at the green ring. He stilled and suddenly made a beeline for the pool table, leaning against it.
Lex very deliberately didn't glance at the ring. "Busy night," he replied. "I was just about to settle down."
Clark didn't look at the ring, either, and did so very unsubtly. Lex got up, set his glass down and ambled over to the pool table, only to watch Clark walk around it, putting the purple felt between them like a wall.
From behind the barrier, Clark had the audacity to look at him with challenge in his eyes. "Is it true that a LuthorCorp team picked up something from Byers' field last night?"
"Who says that?"
"People about town say they've seen a meteor strike. So, is it true, Lex?"
"I was out of town, Clark, I wouldn't know."
"You don't know what your own company does?"
Clark was afraid of the ring. Lex wondered what would happen if he cornered him with it. "I don't know what happened in Byers' field last night, but I do know LuthorCorp had nothing to do with it. What about you, Clark?"
Clark didn't look as if he believed Lex, and frankly, Lex didn't care. It wasn't as if Clark lied any more believably than he did. It wasn't as if Lex needed Clark to find out the truth…
"Me?"
Lex smiled and ran the hand with the ring over the wooden edge of the table. "Were you in Byers's field last night? It's close to the caves, isn't it?"
Clark frowned, in that expression that said 'I don't know what you're talking about, Lex, and I'm disappointed in you and you've got no right to ask me questions.' "I just thought I'd rather ask you than listen to the rumours, since we're supposed to be friends."
It was that 'supposed to be' in all its arrogant glory that made Lex pause and take a mental step back.
Whatever else Clark was or wasn't, whatever Lex wanted him to be, he had no compunctions about lying. Clark would *never* tell him the truth. The one consoling thing was that it wasn't because of Lex – as far as he could tell, Clark hadn't told anybody the truth, not even Lana. No, it was because of Clark, because Clark trusted no one and would lie and lie until he was *made* tell the truth.
The least painful way of making him confess was to find out the truth, in its entirety and gather undeniable proof.
If Lex could never get a confession, he could at least stop the lying.
And if Clark was willing to go to such lengths to keep his secrets, then what would he be willing to do to make sure Lex kept quiet?
The truth was quietly horrifying. Lex listened to his own thoughts and the silence between them. The truth was a weapon and Lex was born to wield it. Even as he looked at Clark, he knew that he would. He would use it, the way he used it against his father, but gentler, and more terrible, if Clark let him.
It was that simple.
Lex turned away and briskly walked to the door, where he stopped and forced his voice to show nothing. "It was an alien spaceship, Clark. LuthorCorp scientists are examining it as we speak."
