Encounters
Title: Encounters
Author: latetothpartyhp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: drama
Spoilers: for Pandora and Persuasion
Pairing: Chruce, implied one-sided Chlark
Warnings: Character death. I'm coming to realize I really enjoy offing people. Also some angst, vulgarity and references to sexual situations.
Summary / Author's Note: Smallville/Nolanverse crossover, set sometime after TDK. This is a post-Doomsday AU that started out as a few drabbles and grew from there. I tried to connect them so they made sense as a story. No idea if that worked. Mainly I wanted to use this incredible icon by eklipsed .
Encounter: Anne and Alfred
"Now tell me that is not the best apple pie you've ever had."
It was close. She could hardly tell him that under the circumstances, though.
"It's amazing. You don't take requests, do you?"
"Only from very valued employees. The secret to this pie, though, is the apples. The orchards at Wayne Manor are some of the oldest in the country; you couldn't buy apples like these anywhere for love or money."
"So if I don't take this job I'll be cut off from Apple Paradise forever? And mild-mannered Mr. Pennyworth is the serpent and the angel with the flaming sword all in one."
The old man chuckled. "One often needs to multi-task when one works for Mr. Wayne."
----------------------------------------
Encounter: Anne and Ollie
The dress was ... utterly inappropriate. She was supposed to be supervising security. There was no way she could do that while wearing something that didn't have a back.
"Mr. Wayne values discretion on the part of staff when he entertains. He doesn't want his guests to feel intimidated."
"Which is why he sets his houses on fire when his guests are in them. Alfred. No."
"He told me to consider it a condition of your employment."
She wore it. It was cold. But useful. Unknown to the other guests and wearing something no one in their right mind would have mistaken for a uniform, ignored by all but a tipsy few, she was able to watch and listen. She was able to listen to the moaning when she got the call to the library, and she was able to watch as the male half of the couple hastily zipped up his pants upon being interrupted.
"I'm so very sorry," she said. "I realize that as a personal friend it may seem inhospitable, but for a semi-public event like this I'm sure you understand that Mr. Wayne wants to keep certain spaces restricted."
"You're a real bitcs... shit."
She watched him slide to the ground, listened to his date gasp.
She had really thought her days of dragging an unconscious Oliver Queen out of parties were over.
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Chloe and Green Arrow
He came out of the sky, out of the night, shooting arrows into the darkness.
They were unnecessary. It being Gotham, the thugs in question had run when they heard the zip-line.
"Aren't you just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she told him.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I know how hard it is for you to make friends," he replied.
"No, really, I'm the one who's sorry." She started walking; however he was here, it was not good.
"Too bad that nose job didn't change those dulcet tones, Watchtower. I'd recognize that voice anywhere."
------------------------------------------
Encounter: Ms. Royall and Mr. Wayne
"Mr. Wayne."
"Ms. Royall. Anne. May I call you Anne? Alfred tells me you've turned in your resignation."
"That is correct. I no longer feel I'm an asset to the household."
"Because of the incident with Queen? Don't worry about it. You did your job, and I doubt Ollie remembers it anyway."
"It's not that, sir."
"Is something else going on? Something personal? Alfred's been concerned for you."
Concern would be counter-productive to her very personal plans.
"I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I don't think Wayne Domestic Management, LLC and I are a good fit. I know the dress wasn't."
--------------------------------------------
Encounter: Gotham and The Blur
Gotham was his city, his duty. When rumor whispered of a wind blowing in her streets, a wind capable of mischief, of pranks, of theft, a knot formed in his gut. Rumor exaggerated and twisted, but it also informed. Something was out there, something that couldn't be contained in prison or Arkham. Perhaps, immaterial as it was, not even in hell. It blew mostly along the river, over the docks and and the bridges. It blew over Blackgate, leaving not a few dead. And then one night, it stopped blowing.
--------------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Kal
She came from nowhere, stepped between them as if they were two lamp-posts instead of two deadly weapons. Him, she spared not so much as a glance at, but the other. He got a big grin.
"Hello, stranger."
The other grinned in return. "Didn't your mother teach you not to talk to strangers?"
She shook her head, walked toward him, put a hand on his chest. "It's called irony. You remember me, don't you Kal?"
He tensed as the other's expression went from flirtatious to stony.
"How do you know that name?"
"Oh, I know all kinds of things. I know bullets bounce off of you. I know a grizzly couldn't tear into your skin. I know you could rip the grizzly in two if it tried. I know you. Don't you know me?"
She was giving him a warning. The other was a meta, one who combined invulnerability with strength and a speed that concealed him from sight. How she knew that he would have to find out later. The important thing was to get her out of here so there would be a later.
She was smiling hopefully into the other's red eyes. Not blood-shot eyes; red eyes. The way hers were green. The other smirked, ran his finger down the inside of the strap of her shirt.
"Baby, I could never forget you."
Without changing at all, her smile turned hollow. "Well, that makes this easier then," she said.
-----------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Chloe
"You knew who he was."
She nodded.
"What did you do to him?"
She shook her head.
"You did something."
"It's personal," she replied.
"Torture can get personal, I agree. You just don't look like the type of girl who's had much practice at it."
She looked at him then, her face utterly blank.
"The ring," she said, and held out her hand.
"I'm afraid I can't do that."
She frowned. "It doesn't belong to you."
"It doesn't belong to you either. It's evidence. It needs to be examined."
She smiled. "We'll talk tomorrow."
----------------------------------------
Encounter: Alfred and Chloe
The rain fell in hard, heavy drops, battering her umbrella and ruining her shoes. Alfred met her at the security check, holding her case, waiting politely for the guard to check her purse. When they were finished he guided her to the library, pushed a button, and watched the huge grandfather clock slide to one side. Cold air brushed her face. "If you'll follow me, Miss Royall," Alfred said.
----------------------------------------
Encounter: Bruce Wayne and Chloe Sullivan
"That is some sweet set-up," she told him.
"You would know, Ms Sullivan." Every monitor held the DP top-of-the-fold photo of Davis with the headline "Cornfield Killer". "You were cute as a blonde," he continued. The monitors changed to her Daily Planet I.D. photo. "But I prefer the auburn. It brings out your eyes."
So he knew about her. As she'd known about him. And he knew she knew and she knew he knew and blah blah blah. "What have you learned about the ring?"
A new photo was brought up. Clark and Chloe. "Best Buds".
"I know it wasn't originally sized to fit him. What happened? You two love-birds break up?"
"Wrong tree, Mr. Wayne. You got any coffee? It's freezing down here." Maybe the wrong thing to say, she thought as the words left her mouth. Lex's eyes had always been condescending. Lionel's had been calculating.
Bruce's were hard.
"I don't think you understand the magnitude of what I am offering."
"Oh, I get it," she said. "Carrot and stick. What I don't get is why. You've done your homework. You know who he is. What he's done."
"I have, yes. My concern is what he is going to do."
She held her breath. He still had the ring, and whatever could be gleaned from it. Given his resources, she'd bet a lot.
"Clark is a hero. What he will do is save people."
"His recent behavior would indicate otherwise."
"Look, I get that you're a ... batman, not a social worker. But, I think this case my require a different approach. I believe he may have ... fallen in with a bad crowd."
"You're telling me he's a super-powered 23-year-old juvenile delinquent?"
"I wouldn't quite put it -- "
"Really? How would you put it?"
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Green Arrow
Metropolis. Night. He took a position a few floors above the coordinates she'd given him. Habit kept him hidden. How well was a different question. He knew a little more than he had: the full run-down of Kent's abilities, and that they had made him lazy. The other man could see through walls, but didn't. The confrontation in Gotham would have come much sooner if he had.
Maybe Kent had learned.
Maybe he hadn't.
The figure scuttling over the roof-tops toward him, however, was as gravity-bound as the next human.
"You're not who I was expecting."
"Or where you were expecting," the man in green grinned. So he was not the only one to whom she'd passed information. Maybe next she could tell the anachronistic frat boy in front of him to stop smirking his way around Suicide Slums. Junkies and hookers read tabloids too.
"Where's Jones?" he asked.
"He's been unavoidably detained. Happens to metas these days."
"Just so long as it doesn't happen in Gotham."
"How very parochial of you. Good thing we don't mind you acting locally as long as you're thinking globally," said the archer, raising his bow. "Relax, bat-boy. This won't hurt a bit."
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Bruce Wayne and R.A.O.
He let Lucius keep the arrowhead for study. Probably wouldn't do much good without the specifications for the bow, but it was a start. He kept the flash drive for himself, anticipating privacy-violating data on persons of interest. What he got were building schematics. The R.A.O. Towers. He'd read about them. Gutsy move in a city with a twelve-and-a-half percent office vacancy rate. Especially with this design. Why the hell he was supposed to care about them was another question entirely.
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Watchtower
"I don't appreciate having my time wasted."
"Was it?"
She will not come to the house again, so they meet at night, in the streets, where Batman can be expected and Bruce Wayne will not. It makes it hard to read her face, but she seems genuinely disturbed.
"The environmental claims R.A.O. is making are bullshit, but that's not why you involved me. What aren't you telling me?"
"If you know enough to know the claims are bullshit, then you know enough to guess at what that technology is meant to do."
"So why isn't Queen stopping it? It's his damn company."
"His company has a board made up entirely of LuthorCorp flunkies. Just because you'd never be dumb enough to try it doesn't mean he wouldn't." She sighs. She's wearing frustration like safety vest, glaring even in the dark.
He understands. She's frustrating the hell out of him. "None of this tells me anything about your friend or how to stop him."
"Different metas work different ways. Some have been researched, others..." she shrugged. "Some, technically, probably, aren't even human. The Towers will do more than transform the planet. They will stop him. He will be powerless. But they will create an army of others just like him, with the heat vision and the invulnerability, but not the hometown upbringing surrounded by a white picket fence. They will be soldiers trained for battle, and I don't believe they will consider Gotham off limits."
"This would be the bad crowd you mentioned earlier."
She nods.
"Does he know?"
She nods again. The tiredness in her shoulders and neck does not appear faked; she is truly brittle, he thinks. Ready to break.
"Then what does he stand to gain?"
She shakes her head. "We have a working theory," she says.
------------------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and The Blur
"You can't find anyone else to do this?"
"No. Unless you're in the mood to stage a prison break?"
"There's your friend in green."
"He's got some issues he's gotta work through. Besides, you've got better gear."
It was easier to track Kent in Metropolis. There he had a job, a girlfriend, a life that required him to move at human speeds and in observable patterns. Even acting as The Blur he was a creature of certain habits. While Batman might lose visual contact, betting on where Kent would re-appear was always easy money.
And Kent never looked back.
For her sake he was glad the man had never attracted the attention of anyone who genuinely wanted to kill him.
----------------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Clark Kent
He came out of the night, the angel of death, accelerating into destiny at 9.8 meters per second per second. His target did not realize what he was hearing was a threat until the effect of the rock she had given him took hold. The target turned, stumbled, and collapsed as he was hit. The needle, dipped in a molten formula of the same mineral, slid in easily, and he was treated to the sight of said target malformed in pain, his veins bulging in an unearthly shade of green.
This had better damn work, he thought, or the needle went into her next.
In the time it took to think it, Kent had stopped breathing.
Two of his own cardiac cycles -- systolic, diastolic; systolic, diastolic -- passed, and then he saw it. Instead of air, a dark, vicious fluid dripped from Kent's nostrils. He raised the vial she had given him.
Her instructions had been explicit -- "Get all of it" -- and now, seeing it for himself, he thought it prudent to follow them. He kept the vial close to the nostril, eye to the drip, fingers to Kent's pulse.
"How long is this supposed to take?"
"Not long. A few seconds."
It had been more than a few, it had been -- the force of Kent's inhale nearly sent the vial flying. He jumped back and stoppered it. The other man stared up at him for a second before blurring up and pinning him by the neck to the wall of the pawn shop behind them.
Struggle was useless. He could only hope to divert his opponent. He lifted the vial to eye-level.
"What is that?"
Having been lowered, he shrugged. "You tell me," he said. "Came out of your nose."
-----------------------------------------------
Encounter: Chloe and Herself
It is out of her hands now. It always has been, but control is the fantasy to which she clings. She knows it will never go smooth, that's why she tries to plan for the worst. It's just that in this case, the worst, is, well, The Worst. She had thought she had faced it last spring with Davis, but now she knows better. The Worst is a Hydra. There is always another head.
-----------------------------------------------
Encounter: Chloe and Bruce
She is huddled over herself, head to hand, hand to stomach. She has been waiting.
"He's alive," he tells her. He moves to hand her the vial, but she stands, abruptly, and steps away.
"No, please. You take it. Destroy it, if you can. Encase it in lead. Just don't open it, don't touch it, don't let anyone know you have it. Not Alfred, not anyone."
Whatever it was that had oozed out of Kent's nose had frightened Kent. It obviously frightens her, too. He does not remember seeing her afraid before this. He considers that for a moment.
"He misses you," he says, and when her eyes flash at him with incredulity and desire he knows he misspoke. "He's been baking up a storm hoping you'll come back to work."
She tries to recover, to laugh. "I've had better. Don't tell him that," she whispers, voice cracking, and he wants nothing more than to take his words back. "I should, uh... I need to thank you, you didn't need to get... " She pinches the bridge of her nose. "He's alive? Clark's alive?"
He knows that question; he dreams it at night with another name. He wonders now if he will begin to dream it with hers.
"Yes," he says.
Author: latetothpartyhp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: drama
Spoilers: for Pandora and Persuasion
Pairing: Chruce, implied one-sided Chlark
Warnings: Character death. I'm coming to realize I really enjoy offing people. Also some angst, vulgarity and references to sexual situations.
Summary / Author's Note: Smallville/Nolanverse crossover, set sometime after TDK. This is a post-Doomsday AU that started out as a few drabbles and grew from there. I tried to connect them so they made sense as a story. No idea if that worked. Mainly I wanted to use this incredible icon by eklipsed .
Encounter: Anne and Alfred
"Now tell me that is not the best apple pie you've ever had."
It was close. She could hardly tell him that under the circumstances, though.
"It's amazing. You don't take requests, do you?"
"Only from very valued employees. The secret to this pie, though, is the apples. The orchards at Wayne Manor are some of the oldest in the country; you couldn't buy apples like these anywhere for love or money."
"So if I don't take this job I'll be cut off from Apple Paradise forever? And mild-mannered Mr. Pennyworth is the serpent and the angel with the flaming sword all in one."
The old man chuckled. "One often needs to multi-task when one works for Mr. Wayne."
----------------------------------------
Encounter: Anne and Ollie
The dress was ... utterly inappropriate. She was supposed to be supervising security. There was no way she could do that while wearing something that didn't have a back.
"Mr. Wayne values discretion on the part of staff when he entertains. He doesn't want his guests to feel intimidated."
"Which is why he sets his houses on fire when his guests are in them. Alfred. No."
"He told me to consider it a condition of your employment."
She wore it. It was cold. But useful. Unknown to the other guests and wearing something no one in their right mind would have mistaken for a uniform, ignored by all but a tipsy few, she was able to watch and listen. She was able to listen to the moaning when she got the call to the library, and she was able to watch as the male half of the couple hastily zipped up his pants upon being interrupted.
"I'm so very sorry," she said. "I realize that as a personal friend it may seem inhospitable, but for a semi-public event like this I'm sure you understand that Mr. Wayne wants to keep certain spaces restricted."
"You're a real bitcs... shit."
She watched him slide to the ground, listened to his date gasp.
She had really thought her days of dragging an unconscious Oliver Queen out of parties were over.
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Chloe and Green Arrow
He came out of the sky, out of the night, shooting arrows into the darkness.
They were unnecessary. It being Gotham, the thugs in question had run when they heard the zip-line.
"Aren't you just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she told him.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I know how hard it is for you to make friends," he replied.
"No, really, I'm the one who's sorry." She started walking; however he was here, it was not good.
"Too bad that nose job didn't change those dulcet tones, Watchtower. I'd recognize that voice anywhere."
------------------------------------------
Encounter: Ms. Royall and Mr. Wayne
"Mr. Wayne."
"Ms. Royall. Anne. May I call you Anne? Alfred tells me you've turned in your resignation."
"That is correct. I no longer feel I'm an asset to the household."
"Because of the incident with Queen? Don't worry about it. You did your job, and I doubt Ollie remembers it anyway."
"It's not that, sir."
"Is something else going on? Something personal? Alfred's been concerned for you."
Concern would be counter-productive to her very personal plans.
"I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I don't think Wayne Domestic Management, LLC and I are a good fit. I know the dress wasn't."
--------------------------------------------
Encounter: Gotham and The Blur
Gotham was his city, his duty. When rumor whispered of a wind blowing in her streets, a wind capable of mischief, of pranks, of theft, a knot formed in his gut. Rumor exaggerated and twisted, but it also informed. Something was out there, something that couldn't be contained in prison or Arkham. Perhaps, immaterial as it was, not even in hell. It blew mostly along the river, over the docks and and the bridges. It blew over Blackgate, leaving not a few dead. And then one night, it stopped blowing.
--------------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Kal
She came from nowhere, stepped between them as if they were two lamp-posts instead of two deadly weapons. Him, she spared not so much as a glance at, but the other. He got a big grin.
"Hello, stranger."
The other grinned in return. "Didn't your mother teach you not to talk to strangers?"
She shook her head, walked toward him, put a hand on his chest. "It's called irony. You remember me, don't you Kal?"
He tensed as the other's expression went from flirtatious to stony.
"How do you know that name?"
"Oh, I know all kinds of things. I know bullets bounce off of you. I know a grizzly couldn't tear into your skin. I know you could rip the grizzly in two if it tried. I know you. Don't you know me?"
She was giving him a warning. The other was a meta, one who combined invulnerability with strength and a speed that concealed him from sight. How she knew that he would have to find out later. The important thing was to get her out of here so there would be a later.
She was smiling hopefully into the other's red eyes. Not blood-shot eyes; red eyes. The way hers were green. The other smirked, ran his finger down the inside of the strap of her shirt.
"Baby, I could never forget you."
Without changing at all, her smile turned hollow. "Well, that makes this easier then," she said.
-----------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Chloe
"You knew who he was."
She nodded.
"What did you do to him?"
She shook her head.
"You did something."
"It's personal," she replied.
"Torture can get personal, I agree. You just don't look like the type of girl who's had much practice at it."
She looked at him then, her face utterly blank.
"The ring," she said, and held out her hand.
"I'm afraid I can't do that."
She frowned. "It doesn't belong to you."
"It doesn't belong to you either. It's evidence. It needs to be examined."
She smiled. "We'll talk tomorrow."
----------------------------------------
Encounter: Alfred and Chloe
The rain fell in hard, heavy drops, battering her umbrella and ruining her shoes. Alfred met her at the security check, holding her case, waiting politely for the guard to check her purse. When they were finished he guided her to the library, pushed a button, and watched the huge grandfather clock slide to one side. Cold air brushed her face. "If you'll follow me, Miss Royall," Alfred said.
----------------------------------------
Encounter: Bruce Wayne and Chloe Sullivan
"That is some sweet set-up," she told him.
"You would know, Ms Sullivan." Every monitor held the DP top-of-the-fold photo of Davis with the headline "Cornfield Killer". "You were cute as a blonde," he continued. The monitors changed to her Daily Planet I.D. photo. "But I prefer the auburn. It brings out your eyes."
So he knew about her. As she'd known about him. And he knew she knew and she knew he knew and blah blah blah. "What have you learned about the ring?"
A new photo was brought up. Clark and Chloe. "Best Buds".
"I know it wasn't originally sized to fit him. What happened? You two love-birds break up?"
"Wrong tree, Mr. Wayne. You got any coffee? It's freezing down here." Maybe the wrong thing to say, she thought as the words left her mouth. Lex's eyes had always been condescending. Lionel's had been calculating.
Bruce's were hard.
"I don't think you understand the magnitude of what I am offering."
"Oh, I get it," she said. "Carrot and stick. What I don't get is why. You've done your homework. You know who he is. What he's done."
"I have, yes. My concern is what he is going to do."
She held her breath. He still had the ring, and whatever could be gleaned from it. Given his resources, she'd bet a lot.
"Clark is a hero. What he will do is save people."
"His recent behavior would indicate otherwise."
"Look, I get that you're a ... batman, not a social worker. But, I think this case my require a different approach. I believe he may have ... fallen in with a bad crowd."
"You're telling me he's a super-powered 23-year-old juvenile delinquent?"
"I wouldn't quite put it -- "
"Really? How would you put it?"
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Green Arrow
Metropolis. Night. He took a position a few floors above the coordinates she'd given him. Habit kept him hidden. How well was a different question. He knew a little more than he had: the full run-down of Kent's abilities, and that they had made him lazy. The other man could see through walls, but didn't. The confrontation in Gotham would have come much sooner if he had.
Maybe Kent had learned.
Maybe he hadn't.
The figure scuttling over the roof-tops toward him, however, was as gravity-bound as the next human.
"You're not who I was expecting."
"Or where you were expecting," the man in green grinned. So he was not the only one to whom she'd passed information. Maybe next she could tell the anachronistic frat boy in front of him to stop smirking his way around Suicide Slums. Junkies and hookers read tabloids too.
"Where's Jones?" he asked.
"He's been unavoidably detained. Happens to metas these days."
"Just so long as it doesn't happen in Gotham."
"How very parochial of you. Good thing we don't mind you acting locally as long as you're thinking globally," said the archer, raising his bow. "Relax, bat-boy. This won't hurt a bit."
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Bruce Wayne and R.A.O.
He let Lucius keep the arrowhead for study. Probably wouldn't do much good without the specifications for the bow, but it was a start. He kept the flash drive for himself, anticipating privacy-violating data on persons of interest. What he got were building schematics. The R.A.O. Towers. He'd read about them. Gutsy move in a city with a twelve-and-a-half percent office vacancy rate. Especially with this design. Why the hell he was supposed to care about them was another question entirely.
-----------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Watchtower
"I don't appreciate having my time wasted."
"Was it?"
She will not come to the house again, so they meet at night, in the streets, where Batman can be expected and Bruce Wayne will not. It makes it hard to read her face, but she seems genuinely disturbed.
"The environmental claims R.A.O. is making are bullshit, but that's not why you involved me. What aren't you telling me?"
"If you know enough to know the claims are bullshit, then you know enough to guess at what that technology is meant to do."
"So why isn't Queen stopping it? It's his damn company."
"His company has a board made up entirely of LuthorCorp flunkies. Just because you'd never be dumb enough to try it doesn't mean he wouldn't." She sighs. She's wearing frustration like safety vest, glaring even in the dark.
He understands. She's frustrating the hell out of him. "None of this tells me anything about your friend or how to stop him."
"Different metas work different ways. Some have been researched, others..." she shrugged. "Some, technically, probably, aren't even human. The Towers will do more than transform the planet. They will stop him. He will be powerless. But they will create an army of others just like him, with the heat vision and the invulnerability, but not the hometown upbringing surrounded by a white picket fence. They will be soldiers trained for battle, and I don't believe they will consider Gotham off limits."
"This would be the bad crowd you mentioned earlier."
She nods.
"Does he know?"
She nods again. The tiredness in her shoulders and neck does not appear faked; she is truly brittle, he thinks. Ready to break.
"Then what does he stand to gain?"
She shakes her head. "We have a working theory," she says.
------------------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and The Blur
"You can't find anyone else to do this?"
"No. Unless you're in the mood to stage a prison break?"
"There's your friend in green."
"He's got some issues he's gotta work through. Besides, you've got better gear."
It was easier to track Kent in Metropolis. There he had a job, a girlfriend, a life that required him to move at human speeds and in observable patterns. Even acting as The Blur he was a creature of certain habits. While Batman might lose visual contact, betting on where Kent would re-appear was always easy money.
And Kent never looked back.
For her sake he was glad the man had never attracted the attention of anyone who genuinely wanted to kill him.
----------------------------------------------
Encounter: Batman and Clark Kent
He came out of the night, the angel of death, accelerating into destiny at 9.8 meters per second per second. His target did not realize what he was hearing was a threat until the effect of the rock she had given him took hold. The target turned, stumbled, and collapsed as he was hit. The needle, dipped in a molten formula of the same mineral, slid in easily, and he was treated to the sight of said target malformed in pain, his veins bulging in an unearthly shade of green.
This had better damn work, he thought, or the needle went into her next.
In the time it took to think it, Kent had stopped breathing.
Two of his own cardiac cycles -- systolic, diastolic; systolic, diastolic -- passed, and then he saw it. Instead of air, a dark, vicious fluid dripped from Kent's nostrils. He raised the vial she had given him.
Her instructions had been explicit -- "Get all of it" -- and now, seeing it for himself, he thought it prudent to follow them. He kept the vial close to the nostril, eye to the drip, fingers to Kent's pulse.
"How long is this supposed to take?"
"Not long. A few seconds."
It had been more than a few, it had been -- the force of Kent's inhale nearly sent the vial flying. He jumped back and stoppered it. The other man stared up at him for a second before blurring up and pinning him by the neck to the wall of the pawn shop behind them.
Struggle was useless. He could only hope to divert his opponent. He lifted the vial to eye-level.
"What is that?"
Having been lowered, he shrugged. "You tell me," he said. "Came out of your nose."
-----------------------------------------------
Encounter: Chloe and Herself
It is out of her hands now. It always has been, but control is the fantasy to which she clings. She knows it will never go smooth, that's why she tries to plan for the worst. It's just that in this case, the worst, is, well, The Worst. She had thought she had faced it last spring with Davis, but now she knows better. The Worst is a Hydra. There is always another head.
-----------------------------------------------
Encounter: Chloe and Bruce
She is huddled over herself, head to hand, hand to stomach. She has been waiting.
"He's alive," he tells her. He moves to hand her the vial, but she stands, abruptly, and steps away.
"No, please. You take it. Destroy it, if you can. Encase it in lead. Just don't open it, don't touch it, don't let anyone know you have it. Not Alfred, not anyone."
Whatever it was that had oozed out of Kent's nose had frightened Kent. It obviously frightens her, too. He does not remember seeing her afraid before this. He considers that for a moment.
"He misses you," he says, and when her eyes flash at him with incredulity and desire he knows he misspoke. "He's been baking up a storm hoping you'll come back to work."
She tries to recover, to laugh. "I've had better. Don't tell him that," she whispers, voice cracking, and he wants nothing more than to take his words back. "I should, uh... I need to thank you, you didn't need to get... " She pinches the bridge of her nose. "He's alive? Clark's alive?"
He knows that question; he dreams it at night with another name. He wonders now if he will begin to dream it with hers.
"Yes," he says.