Fic: The Light and the Silence (11/?)
Oct. 26th, 2007 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanThe end is getting near! I mean, the end of this fic. There's one more bit of set-up for the showdown in the next chapter, but then it's happening.
So in this chapter there are a last couple of SV characters and settings who haven't appeared so far.
Title: The Light and the Silence (11/?)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clex, but there are other pairings, slash, het and...um... other.
Fandom: Smallville, a couple of DC characters, inspired by the Man of Steel Annual #3, an Elseworlds Superman story called "Unforgiven", of which I posted scans here.
Genre: AU, science-fiction, action/adventure
Warnings: some violence, minor character deaths
Summary:
Eleven
The wolf left the river behind when they reached a large lake in the forest. The water had gathered there because of a dam, and across the dam and all through the forest went a high wire fence. It cut a straight line through the forest, trees cut down on both sides, and there was a crackle of electricity in the air, raising the hairs on Kal's arms. Vicious barbs barred anyone from climbing over the fence, but to Kal it would only have been a small leap. The wolf, though, stopped, sniffed at the air for a moment, and then turned straight around to trot off into the forest, so clearly not aimlessly that Kal followed.
It took them only another hour, and then Kal heard the first sounds of human life – the voices and laughter of a big group of people engaged in work and play. Through the trees and undergrowth, he got glimpses of a clearing, people walking and sitting around, children playing. Some were sewing, or making flour from corn and wheat. An old man was skinning a rabbit, and a couple of older children were weaving some sort of thread into big patterned blankets. Most of them wore ragged but ordinary clothing, faded denim and shirts, but some, the children especially, were clothed in skins and self-made cloth, and went barefoot in the grass.
The wolf stilled, regarded him with her calm amber eyes, and then nudged him with her snout towards the clearing. Kal shook his head. He didn't want to go there, even though he yearned for the smell of food and the sound of company. They were human, and clearly living in hiding, and he was not one of them.
She scratched at the ground in agitation, her ears flattening against her head, and then she nipped at his calves with a growl.
"No," Kal protested, his voice raspy from disuse.
Her eyes pricked up, but not at him. There was a rustle of leaves and branches, and a man dropped down from the tree next to them, his boots thudding softly on the mossy ground. Even when he straightened, he was much shorter than Kal, and looked younger, too, although no longer a youth. "Who are you?" he demanded, and Kal noticed the club in his hand, and the tension in his shoulders, ready to attack.
"No one," he hastily said. "I'll be going – "
"He's a guest."
Kal spun around at the unexpected female voice, and in the place where the she-wolf had stood a moment ago was now a dark-haired young woman, eyeing the man with the club sternly. At Kal's stare, though, she laughed.
"Take good care of him," she said, and then she turned away, and even as she ran her body melted back into a the white wolf, vanishing quickly in the woods.
The young man gave a small snort. "Don't panic. They do that all the time."
"Who?" Kal asked dumbly.
"The Kawatche skinwalkers. They're an Indian tribe who's been living in these woods for centuries, so they pretty much escaped the notice of any frill-heads."
Kal winced at the derogative name for his people, deciding not to point out that he wasn't human just yet.
"I'm Pete," the other said, with a good-natured smile and offered a handshake with a firm and calloused grasp.
"Clark," Kal replied with a stab of pain at the name he had been inspired to by Martha Kent's maiden name.
"So, where you from, Clark?" Pete asked as he led him to the camp in the clearing. "Most of the people here are from Smallville or Granville, but we've got runaways from the whole Metropolis area. Some other guests arrived a few days ago, they're down in the caves."
"Metropolis," Kal replied to his question. "You're hiding?" The idea that anyone would escape notice so close to Metropolis was staggering. But large arrays of land had been depopulated since the evasion, and it was true that fore those who knew how to survive in the wilderness, they posed ideal hiding places.
Pete nodded. "We're no Kawatche, but they've taught us a thing of two about living in the woods. And they're letting us stay in parts of their sacred caves, which is pretty cool, I guess. Because of," and here Pete rolled his eyes, "the witch. They're all mightily impressed by her."
The entrance to the caves was well hidden by shrubs and rocks. The first cavern was surprisingly big, and yet it was crammed with sleeping rolls and cooking stoves, some parts partitioned off by blankets hung from the walls and ceilings. Yet Kal glimpsed a few cave paintings here and there, in black and chalk-white, strangle signs and circles, all oddly familiar. People sitting inside stared curiously at them, and Pete led them further inside, to a place where other chambers branched off.
"Wait a sec, I'm going to fetch Gabe, he's talking to the guests from Metropolis. They're resistance," Pete added, an admiring light in his eyes, and then he ducked through the curtain that served as doorway and was gone.
Kal craned his neck to see if he was still being watched, but he was all alone now except for the paintings staring down at him. His solitude didn't last long. The another of the curtains shook, and a young woman bowed out, asking a person inside, "Is there anything I can do for you? Don't you want some soup, at least?"
"No, Tina," a soft female voice answered. She sounded very sad to Kal. "Just tell the visitor to come in."
Tina glanced up and found Kal standing there. She gave him a frown, almost a glare, then hissed, "Don't keep her up too long. Lana needs her rest."
"I – " Kal said, but protest was useless, he was already being ushered in. The cavern beyond the curtain was not very large, most of it filled with a massive stone table. A crystal rested on it. Kal recognized it as Kryptonian, but the design was none he had ever seen. Light broke in from cracks in the ceiling, long knife-sharp pillars of dust and light, and it was warm, smelling faintly spicy, almost like incense. On soft beddings by the table, wearing a a cream-coloured dress and a warm knitted sweater a shade darker, sat a beautiful girl. Her dark hair was long past her hip, and though it was neither cut nor well-cared for, it retained a silky softness. Her pale face was almost entirely dominated by large, dark eyes. In her lap lay an open book, so old that it's pages were brown and frayed at the edges, and they seemed to be made of skin rather than paper. Kal felt his breath momentarily taken away, both from surprise and awkwardness.
"I'm sorry," he said, although he was sure what for.
She gave him a wan smile, and half asked, half ordered him to sit. A long pause followed in which she seemed to almost forget him, stroking the pages of the book, her lips quivering. Perhaps Tina had been right, Lana looked like she needed her rest. She was thin to the point of frailness.
"Are you alright?" Kal asked uncomfortably? "Should I go?"
"No," she sniffed. "It's just… you remind me of Jason. They took him away."
"Oh." There was no need to ask who took him away.
"This book belonged to his mom," Lana went on. "There are many spells in it, but none can give Jason his memory back. He doesn't remember me."
The correctional facility in Belle Reve, Kal assumed. They worked with memory treatments. He wanted to apologize again, but Lana was still talking. "He loved his mother very much. She is dead, though. My parents are dead, too. They died when I was just a little girl."
"I'm sorry," Kal repeated miserably.
"Oh, you needn't be," and this time when Lana lifted her face to smile at him, Kal realized that she was quite beyond sanity, a serene madness shining all over her radiant face. "It wasn't your people who killed him. One of your ships was shot down and crushed them. But you'll take me so we can visit their grave."
Kal was too stunned to do or say anything, and she didn't seem to expect an answer, reaching instead for a small bell and ringing it. After a moment there was some rustling and voices, and a then a middle-aged balding man looked into the cavern. His nose was red and his eyes looked as if he had cried just a second ago, but he also seemed barely able to suppress a smile. "Yes, Lana - ?"
She smiled. "He's here, Mr. Sullivan."
Both Kal and Mr. Sullivan started, Kal recognizing Chloe's surname, and Mr Sullivan noticing him for the first time. His eyes widened, and then he hurried inside, grasping Kal's hands and pulling him to his feet. "You're him? You're Kal-El?" he asked excitedly.
Dumbfounded, Kal nodded, and was immediately wrapped into a hug and clapped on the back many times. "Thank you," Sullivan said through a big moist grin, "thank you for saving my daughter. Lana said so and I wouldn't believe it, but Lex has told me everything." He wiped his eyes. "And here you are. My god, what a miracle."
As if summoned by his name, Lex stepped into the cave after Sullivan.
*
"I shouldn't have run like this. I - "Kal's voice halted. "Bruce – "
They were wandering between the trees near the camp, Lex with his hands in his pockets, Kal close to hugging himself in desperation. Lex glanced at him, then down at the ground, looking haggard himself for a moment. "I understand, Kal. It was a terrible sacrifice."
Kal stopped, and suddenly felt the grief and the guilt falling off his like a heavy weight, not relieving, but unsettling, unbalancing. He stared at Lex, his eyes going wide. "Sacrifice," he repeated numbly. "You knew this was going to happen."
Lex sighed. "I knew it was a possible outcome."
"You didn't tell me," Kal ground out, and moved forward in a blink. The punch could have been deadly, but it merely sent Lex stumbling, and when he straightened again dark blood trickled down from his lip.
"You didn't tell me a thing!"
"Kal – " Lex warned, his voice low, but Kal grabbed him, throwing him back against the nearest tree, just barely checking his strength, anger snapping in him like a whip.
"Did you plan it?" he yelled. "Didn't you trust me enough? Did you think I needed one more push to send me on your side?"
Lex raised his eyes, panting harshly, and wiped at his mouth. "I trust you."
Kal shook him, then collapsed against Lex's shoulder, his face crammed against Lex's neck, his chest heaving with unvoiced sobs. He drew in the heady familiar scent, and next thing he was kissing Lex, harshly, bruising, tasting blood and his own repressed tears. Lex just took it, opening up, wholly passive, all he did was breathe when they parted, his eyes dark and hooded, his chest moving against Kal's.
*
"I don't understand how you found me," Kal asked when they had returned to the camp, dishevelled and subject to many more or less furtive curious glances. Only Gabe Sullivan had remained wholly ignorant, still so full of cheer over Chloe's rescue that he neither noticed Lex's split lip, which was already healing, nor their flushed faces. They were made to eat maize bread and a hearty broth of meat and mushrooms, and Kal found out that Lex had come to the camp alone, his father and the Martian both still in Metropolis.
"These caves are more than just a sacred place of the Kawatche," Lex replied. "They're connected to everything. Your father has visited them many times, and stored much of his knowledge there. When he last came to Earth before the invasion, he told my parents and the other conspirators of the location of several Kryptonian crystals – data and power storages, which they were to seek out in case Krypton should be destroyed without any survivors. When the invasion came, those of them who survived split up and went renegade. My father found one of the crystals, Genevieve Teague another. She was the mother of Lana's fiancé, Jason Teague, who was part of the same experiments and Bruce and I. The crystal greatly enhances the dormant power that runs in this family. Lana now possesses both the crystal and a book of spells that allow her to channel this power. It makes her one of the most powerful metahumans on Earth."
"Then why does she stay in hiding?" Kal wasn't sure if Lex literally meant spells, as in magic, but Pete had said that there was a witch in the camp, and if it was Lana, and she really could do magic, then it was more incredible than any metahuman power he had ever heard of. "Why isn't she fighting alongside the rebels?"
"Lana is a very fragile person," Lex answered, but he sounded none too sympathetic. "My father asked her to help them many times, but she is unwilling to leave Smallville. It's where she lost all her family."
"She isn't… healthy, isn't she?"
"No." Lex shook his head. "But she knew you were coming here somehow, and she sent the message to my father, which is why I came here. I don't know whether her powers are truly supernatural, but they are real. And I've been able to convince her to do us a small favour, in exchange for a service. You need to take her to the cemetery in Smallville. The town is well-guarded, a lot of the workers that do maintenance for the machines in the farming belt are houses there, but you should get over the fence easily. All you have to do is take her there."
Kal didn't like the plan, but he knew that if it were the graves of the Kents or his parents, he might take a similar risk just to see them. In any case it was hardly a big feat for him.
"What kind of favour will she do us?"
Lex smiled. "One that will get us straight to Zod."
*
The cemetery was deserted, and unlike the perimeter of the town itself, which they had simply flown across in the deep of the night, it was unguarded. The grass was wet with dew, overgrown in places, littered with old leaves and creeping closer to the untended headstones. A thin mist crawled over the ground, rising to an impenetrable wall of cottony white in the distance, all the light coming from a wan, veiled moon that hung between the tops of the evergreens surrounding the cemetery.
Since they had landed, Lana was leading the way, or at least Kal hoped so, since she was wandering slowly and somewhat aimlessly, touching headstones here and there, her dark hair tumbling about her face and casting it into shadows. She wore a dark coat not her size, the sleeves going past her fingertips, and beneath it a highly impractical fair dress that had made Kal quite nervous to be spotted from the ground.
"It's nice here at night, isn't it?"
"It's quiet," Kal replied, a little confused. It was a strange place, this human burial ground. On Krypton, the dead were frozen and their memories and personalities stored in crystal constructs. But the large memory crystals required for that purpose were rare on Earth, and jealously hoarded by the rich and influential, since shipments from the homeworld were extremely rare.
"I used to come here often," Lana said dreamily. "Sometimes I'd fall asleep leaning against their grave… it was like they were right there with me, watching over me."
She stopped at a row of graves, staring for a moment at a small, undecorated gravestone. "Nell Potter," it said, the date of death lying only a few years back. Uncomfortably, Kal tried to give her space, looking at the other headstones, but Lana was already moving on, finally approaching the grave of her parents.
She turned around to him, suddenly stepping close, and laid her hands on his chest in a bare perceptible touch. "Thank you," she whispered, and slipped a small vial, corked and containing a clear liquid into his hand. "This is your reward. You can go now."
Kal stared, shaking his head in surprise. "No… wait. I'm supposed to take you back. I can't just leave you here!"
Lana was already facing the grave, sinking down to her knees, her hands outspread on the grass, the white dress fanning out around her like the fog. "Lex didn't tell you to take me back, Kal. This was our arrangement."
"No."
He shook his head, touched her shoulder, and she turned her head surprisingly fast, her jet-black eyes glaring at him with staggering force. "I said you could go," she said in a low, soft voice, the strongest command Kal had ever known. Lana smiled and turned back to stroking the grass.
He swallowed. "You'll take care of yourself, right? You know the way back to the caves?" That she could take care of herself he no longer doubted, but he had a creeping fear that she would not even try.
When he got no answer, he slowly stepped back, one, two steps without daring to turn his back on her, and then took off into the air, feeling like a coward, a thief in the night.
So in this chapter there are a last couple of SV characters and settings who haven't appeared so far.
Title: The Light and the Silence (11/?)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clex, but there are other pairings, slash, het and...um... other.
Fandom: Smallville, a couple of DC characters, inspired by the Man of Steel Annual #3, an Elseworlds Superman story called "Unforgiven", of which I posted scans here.
Genre: AU, science-fiction, action/adventure
Warnings: some violence, minor character deaths
Summary:
Eleven
The wolf left the river behind when they reached a large lake in the forest. The water had gathered there because of a dam, and across the dam and all through the forest went a high wire fence. It cut a straight line through the forest, trees cut down on both sides, and there was a crackle of electricity in the air, raising the hairs on Kal's arms. Vicious barbs barred anyone from climbing over the fence, but to Kal it would only have been a small leap. The wolf, though, stopped, sniffed at the air for a moment, and then turned straight around to trot off into the forest, so clearly not aimlessly that Kal followed.
It took them only another hour, and then Kal heard the first sounds of human life – the voices and laughter of a big group of people engaged in work and play. Through the trees and undergrowth, he got glimpses of a clearing, people walking and sitting around, children playing. Some were sewing, or making flour from corn and wheat. An old man was skinning a rabbit, and a couple of older children were weaving some sort of thread into big patterned blankets. Most of them wore ragged but ordinary clothing, faded denim and shirts, but some, the children especially, were clothed in skins and self-made cloth, and went barefoot in the grass.
The wolf stilled, regarded him with her calm amber eyes, and then nudged him with her snout towards the clearing. Kal shook his head. He didn't want to go there, even though he yearned for the smell of food and the sound of company. They were human, and clearly living in hiding, and he was not one of them.
She scratched at the ground in agitation, her ears flattening against her head, and then she nipped at his calves with a growl.
"No," Kal protested, his voice raspy from disuse.
Her eyes pricked up, but not at him. There was a rustle of leaves and branches, and a man dropped down from the tree next to them, his boots thudding softly on the mossy ground. Even when he straightened, he was much shorter than Kal, and looked younger, too, although no longer a youth. "Who are you?" he demanded, and Kal noticed the club in his hand, and the tension in his shoulders, ready to attack.
"No one," he hastily said. "I'll be going – "
"He's a guest."
Kal spun around at the unexpected female voice, and in the place where the she-wolf had stood a moment ago was now a dark-haired young woman, eyeing the man with the club sternly. At Kal's stare, though, she laughed.
"Take good care of him," she said, and then she turned away, and even as she ran her body melted back into a the white wolf, vanishing quickly in the woods.
The young man gave a small snort. "Don't panic. They do that all the time."
"Who?" Kal asked dumbly.
"The Kawatche skinwalkers. They're an Indian tribe who's been living in these woods for centuries, so they pretty much escaped the notice of any frill-heads."
Kal winced at the derogative name for his people, deciding not to point out that he wasn't human just yet.
"I'm Pete," the other said, with a good-natured smile and offered a handshake with a firm and calloused grasp.
"Clark," Kal replied with a stab of pain at the name he had been inspired to by Martha Kent's maiden name.
"So, where you from, Clark?" Pete asked as he led him to the camp in the clearing. "Most of the people here are from Smallville or Granville, but we've got runaways from the whole Metropolis area. Some other guests arrived a few days ago, they're down in the caves."
"Metropolis," Kal replied to his question. "You're hiding?" The idea that anyone would escape notice so close to Metropolis was staggering. But large arrays of land had been depopulated since the evasion, and it was true that fore those who knew how to survive in the wilderness, they posed ideal hiding places.
Pete nodded. "We're no Kawatche, but they've taught us a thing of two about living in the woods. And they're letting us stay in parts of their sacred caves, which is pretty cool, I guess. Because of," and here Pete rolled his eyes, "the witch. They're all mightily impressed by her."
The entrance to the caves was well hidden by shrubs and rocks. The first cavern was surprisingly big, and yet it was crammed with sleeping rolls and cooking stoves, some parts partitioned off by blankets hung from the walls and ceilings. Yet Kal glimpsed a few cave paintings here and there, in black and chalk-white, strangle signs and circles, all oddly familiar. People sitting inside stared curiously at them, and Pete led them further inside, to a place where other chambers branched off.
"Wait a sec, I'm going to fetch Gabe, he's talking to the guests from Metropolis. They're resistance," Pete added, an admiring light in his eyes, and then he ducked through the curtain that served as doorway and was gone.
Kal craned his neck to see if he was still being watched, but he was all alone now except for the paintings staring down at him. His solitude didn't last long. The another of the curtains shook, and a young woman bowed out, asking a person inside, "Is there anything I can do for you? Don't you want some soup, at least?"
"No, Tina," a soft female voice answered. She sounded very sad to Kal. "Just tell the visitor to come in."
Tina glanced up and found Kal standing there. She gave him a frown, almost a glare, then hissed, "Don't keep her up too long. Lana needs her rest."
"I – " Kal said, but protest was useless, he was already being ushered in. The cavern beyond the curtain was not very large, most of it filled with a massive stone table. A crystal rested on it. Kal recognized it as Kryptonian, but the design was none he had ever seen. Light broke in from cracks in the ceiling, long knife-sharp pillars of dust and light, and it was warm, smelling faintly spicy, almost like incense. On soft beddings by the table, wearing a a cream-coloured dress and a warm knitted sweater a shade darker, sat a beautiful girl. Her dark hair was long past her hip, and though it was neither cut nor well-cared for, it retained a silky softness. Her pale face was almost entirely dominated by large, dark eyes. In her lap lay an open book, so old that it's pages were brown and frayed at the edges, and they seemed to be made of skin rather than paper. Kal felt his breath momentarily taken away, both from surprise and awkwardness.
"I'm sorry," he said, although he was sure what for.
She gave him a wan smile, and half asked, half ordered him to sit. A long pause followed in which she seemed to almost forget him, stroking the pages of the book, her lips quivering. Perhaps Tina had been right, Lana looked like she needed her rest. She was thin to the point of frailness.
"Are you alright?" Kal asked uncomfortably? "Should I go?"
"No," she sniffed. "It's just… you remind me of Jason. They took him away."
"Oh." There was no need to ask who took him away.
"This book belonged to his mom," Lana went on. "There are many spells in it, but none can give Jason his memory back. He doesn't remember me."
The correctional facility in Belle Reve, Kal assumed. They worked with memory treatments. He wanted to apologize again, but Lana was still talking. "He loved his mother very much. She is dead, though. My parents are dead, too. They died when I was just a little girl."
"I'm sorry," Kal repeated miserably.
"Oh, you needn't be," and this time when Lana lifted her face to smile at him, Kal realized that she was quite beyond sanity, a serene madness shining all over her radiant face. "It wasn't your people who killed him. One of your ships was shot down and crushed them. But you'll take me so we can visit their grave."
Kal was too stunned to do or say anything, and she didn't seem to expect an answer, reaching instead for a small bell and ringing it. After a moment there was some rustling and voices, and a then a middle-aged balding man looked into the cavern. His nose was red and his eyes looked as if he had cried just a second ago, but he also seemed barely able to suppress a smile. "Yes, Lana - ?"
She smiled. "He's here, Mr. Sullivan."
Both Kal and Mr. Sullivan started, Kal recognizing Chloe's surname, and Mr Sullivan noticing him for the first time. His eyes widened, and then he hurried inside, grasping Kal's hands and pulling him to his feet. "You're him? You're Kal-El?" he asked excitedly.
Dumbfounded, Kal nodded, and was immediately wrapped into a hug and clapped on the back many times. "Thank you," Sullivan said through a big moist grin, "thank you for saving my daughter. Lana said so and I wouldn't believe it, but Lex has told me everything." He wiped his eyes. "And here you are. My god, what a miracle."
As if summoned by his name, Lex stepped into the cave after Sullivan.
*
"I shouldn't have run like this. I - "Kal's voice halted. "Bruce – "
They were wandering between the trees near the camp, Lex with his hands in his pockets, Kal close to hugging himself in desperation. Lex glanced at him, then down at the ground, looking haggard himself for a moment. "I understand, Kal. It was a terrible sacrifice."
Kal stopped, and suddenly felt the grief and the guilt falling off his like a heavy weight, not relieving, but unsettling, unbalancing. He stared at Lex, his eyes going wide. "Sacrifice," he repeated numbly. "You knew this was going to happen."
Lex sighed. "I knew it was a possible outcome."
"You didn't tell me," Kal ground out, and moved forward in a blink. The punch could have been deadly, but it merely sent Lex stumbling, and when he straightened again dark blood trickled down from his lip.
"You didn't tell me a thing!"
"Kal – " Lex warned, his voice low, but Kal grabbed him, throwing him back against the nearest tree, just barely checking his strength, anger snapping in him like a whip.
"Did you plan it?" he yelled. "Didn't you trust me enough? Did you think I needed one more push to send me on your side?"
Lex raised his eyes, panting harshly, and wiped at his mouth. "I trust you."
Kal shook him, then collapsed against Lex's shoulder, his face crammed against Lex's neck, his chest heaving with unvoiced sobs. He drew in the heady familiar scent, and next thing he was kissing Lex, harshly, bruising, tasting blood and his own repressed tears. Lex just took it, opening up, wholly passive, all he did was breathe when they parted, his eyes dark and hooded, his chest moving against Kal's.
*
"I don't understand how you found me," Kal asked when they had returned to the camp, dishevelled and subject to many more or less furtive curious glances. Only Gabe Sullivan had remained wholly ignorant, still so full of cheer over Chloe's rescue that he neither noticed Lex's split lip, which was already healing, nor their flushed faces. They were made to eat maize bread and a hearty broth of meat and mushrooms, and Kal found out that Lex had come to the camp alone, his father and the Martian both still in Metropolis.
"These caves are more than just a sacred place of the Kawatche," Lex replied. "They're connected to everything. Your father has visited them many times, and stored much of his knowledge there. When he last came to Earth before the invasion, he told my parents and the other conspirators of the location of several Kryptonian crystals – data and power storages, which they were to seek out in case Krypton should be destroyed without any survivors. When the invasion came, those of them who survived split up and went renegade. My father found one of the crystals, Genevieve Teague another. She was the mother of Lana's fiancé, Jason Teague, who was part of the same experiments and Bruce and I. The crystal greatly enhances the dormant power that runs in this family. Lana now possesses both the crystal and a book of spells that allow her to channel this power. It makes her one of the most powerful metahumans on Earth."
"Then why does she stay in hiding?" Kal wasn't sure if Lex literally meant spells, as in magic, but Pete had said that there was a witch in the camp, and if it was Lana, and she really could do magic, then it was more incredible than any metahuman power he had ever heard of. "Why isn't she fighting alongside the rebels?"
"Lana is a very fragile person," Lex answered, but he sounded none too sympathetic. "My father asked her to help them many times, but she is unwilling to leave Smallville. It's where she lost all her family."
"She isn't… healthy, isn't she?"
"No." Lex shook his head. "But she knew you were coming here somehow, and she sent the message to my father, which is why I came here. I don't know whether her powers are truly supernatural, but they are real. And I've been able to convince her to do us a small favour, in exchange for a service. You need to take her to the cemetery in Smallville. The town is well-guarded, a lot of the workers that do maintenance for the machines in the farming belt are houses there, but you should get over the fence easily. All you have to do is take her there."
Kal didn't like the plan, but he knew that if it were the graves of the Kents or his parents, he might take a similar risk just to see them. In any case it was hardly a big feat for him.
"What kind of favour will she do us?"
Lex smiled. "One that will get us straight to Zod."
*
The cemetery was deserted, and unlike the perimeter of the town itself, which they had simply flown across in the deep of the night, it was unguarded. The grass was wet with dew, overgrown in places, littered with old leaves and creeping closer to the untended headstones. A thin mist crawled over the ground, rising to an impenetrable wall of cottony white in the distance, all the light coming from a wan, veiled moon that hung between the tops of the evergreens surrounding the cemetery.
Since they had landed, Lana was leading the way, or at least Kal hoped so, since she was wandering slowly and somewhat aimlessly, touching headstones here and there, her dark hair tumbling about her face and casting it into shadows. She wore a dark coat not her size, the sleeves going past her fingertips, and beneath it a highly impractical fair dress that had made Kal quite nervous to be spotted from the ground.
"It's nice here at night, isn't it?"
"It's quiet," Kal replied, a little confused. It was a strange place, this human burial ground. On Krypton, the dead were frozen and their memories and personalities stored in crystal constructs. But the large memory crystals required for that purpose were rare on Earth, and jealously hoarded by the rich and influential, since shipments from the homeworld were extremely rare.
"I used to come here often," Lana said dreamily. "Sometimes I'd fall asleep leaning against their grave… it was like they were right there with me, watching over me."
She stopped at a row of graves, staring for a moment at a small, undecorated gravestone. "Nell Potter," it said, the date of death lying only a few years back. Uncomfortably, Kal tried to give her space, looking at the other headstones, but Lana was already moving on, finally approaching the grave of her parents.
She turned around to him, suddenly stepping close, and laid her hands on his chest in a bare perceptible touch. "Thank you," she whispered, and slipped a small vial, corked and containing a clear liquid into his hand. "This is your reward. You can go now."
Kal stared, shaking his head in surprise. "No… wait. I'm supposed to take you back. I can't just leave you here!"
Lana was already facing the grave, sinking down to her knees, her hands outspread on the grass, the white dress fanning out around her like the fog. "Lex didn't tell you to take me back, Kal. This was our arrangement."
"No."
He shook his head, touched her shoulder, and she turned her head surprisingly fast, her jet-black eyes glaring at him with staggering force. "I said you could go," she said in a low, soft voice, the strongest command Kal had ever known. Lana smiled and turned back to stroking the grass.
He swallowed. "You'll take care of yourself, right? You know the way back to the caves?" That she could take care of herself he no longer doubted, but he had a creeping fear that she would not even try.
When he got no answer, he slowly stepped back, one, two steps without daring to turn his back on her, and then took off into the air, feeling like a coward, a thief in the night.
