(no subject)
[That's it.
No more.
Clark rips at the door, attempting to peel it with his bare fingers. Tony told him to go for it. As if he needed to be told, but somewhere to place his rage certainly has been a push in the right direction. Clark is determined to get past that door.
While it starts to budge, it merges back with the rest of it seconds later, and he can't seem to make any progress, no matter how hard he tries. After a few minutes of attempting to force it open, he steps back, and then steps forward again angrily, pounding a fist against the metal.]
Open! God damnit, OPEN!
[he goes at it again, and again, furiously. He can't stop. He could not possibly give in, not now, just because a door is in the way. No matter how strong it is, no door can surpass his rage and hatred of that Marker and what it's done. No door could ever stand in the way of stopping evil, and stopping this from happening to anyone else.
This is for the dead.
This is for the living.
This is for Lana.
He pounds the door again, furiously. The metal rings and he slams at it again, checking it with his shoulder.
Finally, there's a breakthrough. The door shifts on its hinges and he can feel it buckle backwards under the pressure, and without stopping to think he rams it again. Bang. It folds in, a great dent marking the surface, and he does it again. Bang. Bang. Bang..
And it breaks, it breaks in and crumbles, just like that. Clark steps over the ruins of the door and sees the elevator behind them. He ploughs through, stepping into the elevator. He hammers the buttons and the doors slide closed; the darkness inside doesn't phase him, not for an instant. He's angry to the point of shaking, and the force of his run-in with the door has his knuckles bleeding and his shoulder sore, but he can feel his cells repairing themselves, stitching together skin and sinew.
Clark barely notices. Every single bit of energy in him is focused on destroying the Marker. It'll end this; it HAS to end this.
The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Clark takes a few long strides and rips apart Tony Stark's high-tech doors, the ones he probably spent hours on. It all buckles and folds under Clark's fingers, sparking and crackling, easy as cracking open a tin can. His heart is beating fast in his chest. He itches to get his hands on the thing and tear it apart, piece by piece. "Tear us apart." Clark would give it more than that.
There's the Marker, just barely in sight, light dim. The obsidian panels, a twisting curled mass of stone. It seems to scream mystery and wonder at him but Clark's seen too many foreign rocks to give it even a second glance. It's grooved, easy to grip; he knows he won't have any trouble ripping it apart.
The murderers -- the crazies -- are there, looking at him. It takes little effort to point towards the elevator and speak to them, deadly serious.]
Get out. Now.
[A few scatter. One steps in his way and clutches the thing like she's going to try and stop him, and Clark ignores her. He wants to haul them off of it, but he keeps himself in check. He won't cross the line. He can't cross the line. He will never punish or harm innocent people for something they weren't in control of. This cannot be revenge, or retribution, for what happened to Lana, or happened to anyone else.
But that doesn't mean he'll be nice, either. He doesn't feel any remorse for anyone crying over this.
He's done it a thousand times before, and he does it again; he steps up, fast, and his hand connects to the back of her head perfectly. She's knocked out, and down she goes, unconscious.
Before any others can react, Clark puts his hand to the rock, and there's no hesitation. He breaks it. The crazies don't do anything. The Marker's been marred and with it goes its influence. They change from fifteen psychotics to fifteen lost souls, and Clark doesn't care. He's not done yet.
He rips it apart, right there, piece by piece, the stone breaking apart under his hands, under the sheer force of his anger. It becomes easier, piece by piece, and eventually he's standing amongst the rubble as he rips it right down to its core, furious and determined.
When he finishes, it feels like something's been lifted from his shoulders, leaving him drained. He picks up the tip, which is relatively intact, and ignoring the fifteen insanity cases, Clark walks back to the elevators, exhausted but still running on pure adrenaline.
He closes his eyes the entire trip up the elevator.
He grits his teeth when he exits it and steps over the wreckage of the doors.
Standing in the hall, oblivious to anyone present, he lifts up the hand with the Marker's spire and throws it down. It leaves a dent in the floor, cracking the tile, and the last of the rock shatters into pieces. It explodes in a burst of bright blood-red light, a light that envelops all like some sort of nuclear explosion.
As it passes over everything, the castle changes back to normal, fixing everything -- no, not everything. But almost everything. The walls, the floors, the marks, the scars of siege and horror; it all returns to normal, leaving nothing behind but the memories and the missing dead.
And that's the end.]