FIC: Reunion, Part 27 (SV, WIP)
PREVIOUSLY ON REUNION: The House of El had a reunion on Earth; Chloe and Lois found out Clark's secret; Pa Kent had a heart attack; Clark and Lois had a close encounter; Clark and Lana broke up for the bazillionth time; Zod and Ursa took over Lex and Lana's bodies; Zod killed Lionel; Clark started moping in Kryptonian; Zod and Ursa found the second Kryptonian crystal; and Lara set the curtains on fire.
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
Chloe supposed that putting out the fire started by Clark’s birth mom’s eyes was the most surreal moment of her life - and after living in Smallville for almost five years, that was saying something.
At the same time, it explained something about Clark, she realized. She had seen how the incident had startled him, and how it had unnerved and upset Lara, whose anger (not always sexy thoughts, Lois!) had apparently produced the fire. Was that how it had been for Clark - powers popping up unexpectedly rather than being there from the start? Was he always surprised when a new one showed up? And just how long did it take him to figure out how to control it? She had seen some of this when he’d had amnesia, but she suspected there was a lot of super-power-related baggage on Clark’s shoulders.
Okay. That was a horribly-mixed metaphor. She shook her head. It helped explain Clark’s behavior since high school started. He hadn’t been super-popular in eighth grade, but she’d expected him to get a whole lot more popular once they hit high school - and it hadn’t happened. The tall, athletic-built, not-bad-to-look-at guy who really should have had girls chasing him had gone further into his shell. Not one hundred percent, of course - but enough to keep himself out of the high-level cliques. If she had been the one with superpowers coming out of nowhere, she’d’ve turned recluse herself. It was a wonder he hadn’t closed himself off completely.
She wondered if Pete had ever found out and if that had helped. Looking back on things, it probably hadn’t.
She set the fire extinguisher aside. Good thing that she’d always paid attention during bus drills in elementary school, or the curtains would still be burning. Mr. and Mrs. Kent were too worried about Clark, Clark was… Well, not speaking English after unconsciousness had to be a bad sign in anyone’s book. And after him there were aliens and Lois, and for once the General’s daughter wasn’t being the most proactive member of the unit. Given the events of the last - what, twelve hours? sixteen hours? - Chloe didn’t blame her.
Even after her insistence that she’d dealt with everything, processed everything. Clark’s mom shooting fire from her eyes because she was seriously pissed off was worth a few moments of freaking out.
“Are you okay, Mr. Kent?” Chloe asked, noticing that his startled expression hadn’t let up even a little yet.
“What? Oh, yeah, Chloe. Yeah. You’d think this would be old hat to us, wouldn’t you?” he replied, still a little out of it.
She looked back at Clark. “No,” she replied. “Actually, I think this is probably out of even you and Mrs. Kent’s league.”
Mr. Kent relaxed at that, as if someone else acknowledging the beyond-weird level of the situation was enough to reassure him. It wasn’t often that she saw someone like Mr. Kent scared. It was a little unnerving in its own right and she tried to shrug it off, turning her attention back to Clark and his birth family.
It was obvious that Jor-El and Lara loved him - this Zod guy must have really done a number on Clark the last couple of years to make him think otherwise. And Lara’s angry rant - Chloe had caught “Zod” in there more than a few times, though most of it had been alien gibberish - and subsequent fire-fury proved that Mrs. Kent had a challenger in the mama-bear-protecting-her-cub department. Chloe knew she wasn’t the smartest person on the planet, but she was hardly the most stupid: whoever, whatever Zod was, Lara and Jor-El were going to make sure he went down and didn’t get up again.
The Els - she’d caught on to the repetitive endings of the names when Clark had first told her and figured it had to be something like a last name - stopped their conversation, Jor-El stepping forward. He was always the spokesman (spokesalien?), being the only one who knew English, but it was bizarre to realize that whatever had happened to Clark had officially put him into their side of things. “Martha-Kent,” Jor-El said, “we think it is time to use that field.”
She remembered now that Mrs. Kent had offered them a place to “practice” at breakfast, and given what had happened with Lara minutes earlier, it definitely seemed like now was the time to take her up on it. But what about Clark? Was he really okay? What had happened to him, and was he going to get his English back?
Luckily, Mrs. Kent was thinking on the same wavelength. “Of course, Jor-El,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “But what about Clark? What happened to him? Why can’t he understand us?”
Jor-El grimaced. “Zod has done damage to a machine in the caves and it attacked him. The machine - it teaches Kryptonian language to Kal-El, brings his memories from when he was small, but Zod changed it. He cannot find English language in his memory - it is still there, I think, but he cannot find it, so he can only speak our language.” He looked upset. “It is not supposed to work this way. Another crime of Zod, Martha Kent.”
Ursa led her husband to the dwelling belonging to her vessel. A few of the humans stared at them as they ascended the stairs in the drink-house below, but she cared not if they thought it strange that Lex of Luthor and Lana of Lang were disappearing together into the privacy of her dwelling. Before too long, they would have all the tools to properly make their claim on the planet and whoever countered them would pay the price.
She soon located the small metallic box where the third crystal was hidden and unwrapped it from the fine red cloth that cushioned it. The house sigil of El - the sign of air - stared up at her almost mockingly. She ignored that and presented it to Zod. “My contribution to our endeavor, husband,” she told him, smiling.
He grinned. “Perfect.”
They left the drink-house as indiscreetly as they had entered it and soon sped off toward the caves. They crossed the distance in mere moments - heartbeats, Ursa thought - and then found themselves in the inner chamber. Zod placed the water-stone in its place beside the one Kal-El had put there before. It was a perfect fit. He handed the air-crystal back to Ursa. “You do the honors, my love,” he said.
Ursa smiled and kissed his bald-yet-youthful countenance. “Anything, beloved,” she replied, clutching the stone. She looked down at it, cool in her tiny hand and rubbed her thumb over the sigil of air - sigil of the House of El. She stepped forward, relishing the rare and unexpected honor.
Behind her, Dru-Zod stepped back. She tried her best to ignore what that meant.
Taking a deep breath, she set the air-crystal in the remaining void - a perfect fit - and waited.
And waited.
Nothing happened.
“You placed it correctly?” her husband asked. She nodded mutely - whatever could be the matter? - and then managed to say, echoing her earlier thoughts, “It’s a perfect match. I don’t know what could be wrong.” She heard him step forward again until he stood beside her. “Are we missing something? Have we forgotten something?” she asked.
He was frowning, as he often did when deep in thought. “Step back,” he said and then took the air-crystal and water-crystal out of their places without waiting for her to move. She did so anyway and kept her eyes on what he was doing. He examined the void in the pedestal; he examined each of the two crystals carefully. Apparently finding nothing out of the ordinary, he set the crystals back into their places, first the water-stone as he had done before and then the air-crystal.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, this time placing the air-crystal first and then the water-crystal, and again nothing happened.
“Damn the House of El!” he bellowed in frustration, throwing the air-crystal to the ground. Ursa remained silent. She knew well enough to stay out of his way.
In the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Luthor Annex, Lionel Luthor’s personal assistant made sure her hands did not shake as she selected each pre-programmed number in turn. There were few people in the world who scared her, but an angry Lionel was one of them - sometimes. Right now she was more concerned about his absence. Lionel Luthor might be an egotistic, power-mongering bastard, but he was a punctual egotistic, power-mongering bastard.
Luthors Senior and Junior were half an hour late.
With Lex, it was occasionally to be expected: a remnant of his various adolescent rebellions and an act of power-seeking to offset his youth. But he was always on time for an event like this - a Lillian Luthor Foundation event, one to benefit several charities. Luthor the Younger had political aspirations; he knew how to look like he actually gave a damn.
Lionel, on the other hand, was punctual to a fault. Anything that interrupted his perfectly choreographed schedule brought hell to pay. She’d been puzzled by this at the beginning of her short (so far) tenure as one in a long line of assistants, but she had learned to read it as an act of power-grabbing, as much of one as Lex’s tardiness. If you couldn’t finish your presentation or meeting in the time allotted, then he deemed you unworthy of being listened to. It was a rare individual who was allowed to disrupt the schedule.
“What do you mean, he’s not there?” she demanded of the doorman of the Luthor Towers building, where Lionel had occupied the penthouse this last week. She took a breath. “When did you last see him?”
“I never saw him this morning, Miss Graves,” the doorman replied. “The morning valet said Mr. Luthor called for his car shortly after six this morning. Said it was a little strange because he usually take the helicopter, or a limo and driver, when he goes to Smallville.”
Smallville? What the hell was Lionel up to in Smallville of all places, just before an important event?
Lex.
Mercy Graves didn’t even bother thanking the doorman before she hung up on him. She immediately brought up the number for the mansion in Smallville, thinking as she hit the ‘send’ button of all the ways she would kick Lionel Luthor’s ass - if he wasn’t the boss.
“What we need, beloved,” Ursa was saying, “is a plan.”
Dru-Zod nodded, considering the good fortune in having preserved his wife’s memory in the cave wall along with his own. At times he had truly considered her expendable - there was a reason why he had declined the honor of placing the third crystal himself - but he was always glad to continue having her beside him. Her level head and calm were only two of her many useful virtues. “Indeed,” he said. “There are several possibilities behind the failure of these stones, and in every one of them I see a member of that damnable House of El fixing it. We need some way to draw them out.”
He saw Ursa nod, looking thoughtful. “But which El…” she murmured - and then her vessel’s eyes turned bright with glee. “I have an idea.”
As Dru-Zod listened - and subsequently approved - he took another moment to consider his wisdom in preserving his wife. Ideally, Non would have been among them as well, but in retrospect the decision to abandon his one-time host-brother had been an excellent one. While Non had finished off their trio during the failed uprising on Krypton and had shared their fate in the Phantom Zone, in the end the Kilan-6 man had been good for little more than the heavy lifting.
No, he thought to himself, Ursa had been the wise choice.
Chloe handed Lois another plate to dry and began scrubbing a dirty one.
“This Zod guy sounds like a real bastard,” Lois said, drying the plate and setting it on the countertop.
“Gee, Lois,” Chloe snarked in reply. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“And some people think I’m the sarcastic one,” Lois said, drying another dish. “But really - I wonder what happened to the guy. Clark’s parents are kind of cool - were they normal, or was this Zod guy your standard-issue Kryptonian?”
Chloe nodded. It was a good question, but based on the things Jor-El had said the evening before, she was willing to guess that Zod was that one-in-a-million psychopath, like on Earth. Hitler and the Unabomber and Jack the Ripper were the exceptions, not the rule. “I’m guessing they’re the more normal ones - Lois?”
Lois was staring into the distance through the kitchen window. “Chloe, how long have you known Lana?”
“Um, pretty much since Dad and I moved here, so since eighth grade. The popular girls are hard to miss. Why?”
Lois frowned. “Chlo, is Lana enough of an idiot to come back this soon after her blow-out with Clark?”
[END PART 27]
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
Chloe supposed that putting out the fire started by Clark’s birth mom’s eyes was the most surreal moment of her life - and after living in Smallville for almost five years, that was saying something.
At the same time, it explained something about Clark, she realized. She had seen how the incident had startled him, and how it had unnerved and upset Lara, whose anger (not always sexy thoughts, Lois!) had apparently produced the fire. Was that how it had been for Clark - powers popping up unexpectedly rather than being there from the start? Was he always surprised when a new one showed up? And just how long did it take him to figure out how to control it? She had seen some of this when he’d had amnesia, but she suspected there was a lot of super-power-related baggage on Clark’s shoulders.
Okay. That was a horribly-mixed metaphor. She shook her head. It helped explain Clark’s behavior since high school started. He hadn’t been super-popular in eighth grade, but she’d expected him to get a whole lot more popular once they hit high school - and it hadn’t happened. The tall, athletic-built, not-bad-to-look-at guy who really should have had girls chasing him had gone further into his shell. Not one hundred percent, of course - but enough to keep himself out of the high-level cliques. If she had been the one with superpowers coming out of nowhere, she’d’ve turned recluse herself. It was a wonder he hadn’t closed himself off completely.
She wondered if Pete had ever found out and if that had helped. Looking back on things, it probably hadn’t.
She set the fire extinguisher aside. Good thing that she’d always paid attention during bus drills in elementary school, or the curtains would still be burning. Mr. and Mrs. Kent were too worried about Clark, Clark was… Well, not speaking English after unconsciousness had to be a bad sign in anyone’s book. And after him there were aliens and Lois, and for once the General’s daughter wasn’t being the most proactive member of the unit. Given the events of the last - what, twelve hours? sixteen hours? - Chloe didn’t blame her.
Even after her insistence that she’d dealt with everything, processed everything. Clark’s mom shooting fire from her eyes because she was seriously pissed off was worth a few moments of freaking out.
“Are you okay, Mr. Kent?” Chloe asked, noticing that his startled expression hadn’t let up even a little yet.
“What? Oh, yeah, Chloe. Yeah. You’d think this would be old hat to us, wouldn’t you?” he replied, still a little out of it.
She looked back at Clark. “No,” she replied. “Actually, I think this is probably out of even you and Mrs. Kent’s league.”
Mr. Kent relaxed at that, as if someone else acknowledging the beyond-weird level of the situation was enough to reassure him. It wasn’t often that she saw someone like Mr. Kent scared. It was a little unnerving in its own right and she tried to shrug it off, turning her attention back to Clark and his birth family.
It was obvious that Jor-El and Lara loved him - this Zod guy must have really done a number on Clark the last couple of years to make him think otherwise. And Lara’s angry rant - Chloe had caught “Zod” in there more than a few times, though most of it had been alien gibberish - and subsequent fire-fury proved that Mrs. Kent had a challenger in the mama-bear-protecting-her-cub department. Chloe knew she wasn’t the smartest person on the planet, but she was hardly the most stupid: whoever, whatever Zod was, Lara and Jor-El were going to make sure he went down and didn’t get up again.
The Els - she’d caught on to the repetitive endings of the names when Clark had first told her and figured it had to be something like a last name - stopped their conversation, Jor-El stepping forward. He was always the spokesman (spokesalien?), being the only one who knew English, but it was bizarre to realize that whatever had happened to Clark had officially put him into their side of things. “Martha-Kent,” Jor-El said, “we think it is time to use that field.”
She remembered now that Mrs. Kent had offered them a place to “practice” at breakfast, and given what had happened with Lara minutes earlier, it definitely seemed like now was the time to take her up on it. But what about Clark? Was he really okay? What had happened to him, and was he going to get his English back?
Luckily, Mrs. Kent was thinking on the same wavelength. “Of course, Jor-El,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “But what about Clark? What happened to him? Why can’t he understand us?”
Jor-El grimaced. “Zod has done damage to a machine in the caves and it attacked him. The machine - it teaches Kryptonian language to Kal-El, brings his memories from when he was small, but Zod changed it. He cannot find English language in his memory - it is still there, I think, but he cannot find it, so he can only speak our language.” He looked upset. “It is not supposed to work this way. Another crime of Zod, Martha Kent.”
Ursa led her husband to the dwelling belonging to her vessel. A few of the humans stared at them as they ascended the stairs in the drink-house below, but she cared not if they thought it strange that Lex of Luthor and Lana of Lang were disappearing together into the privacy of her dwelling. Before too long, they would have all the tools to properly make their claim on the planet and whoever countered them would pay the price.
She soon located the small metallic box where the third crystal was hidden and unwrapped it from the fine red cloth that cushioned it. The house sigil of El - the sign of air - stared up at her almost mockingly. She ignored that and presented it to Zod. “My contribution to our endeavor, husband,” she told him, smiling.
He grinned. “Perfect.”
They left the drink-house as indiscreetly as they had entered it and soon sped off toward the caves. They crossed the distance in mere moments - heartbeats, Ursa thought - and then found themselves in the inner chamber. Zod placed the water-stone in its place beside the one Kal-El had put there before. It was a perfect fit. He handed the air-crystal back to Ursa. “You do the honors, my love,” he said.
Ursa smiled and kissed his bald-yet-youthful countenance. “Anything, beloved,” she replied, clutching the stone. She looked down at it, cool in her tiny hand and rubbed her thumb over the sigil of air - sigil of the House of El. She stepped forward, relishing the rare and unexpected honor.
Behind her, Dru-Zod stepped back. She tried her best to ignore what that meant.
Taking a deep breath, she set the air-crystal in the remaining void - a perfect fit - and waited.
And waited.
Nothing happened.
“You placed it correctly?” her husband asked. She nodded mutely - whatever could be the matter? - and then managed to say, echoing her earlier thoughts, “It’s a perfect match. I don’t know what could be wrong.” She heard him step forward again until he stood beside her. “Are we missing something? Have we forgotten something?” she asked.
He was frowning, as he often did when deep in thought. “Step back,” he said and then took the air-crystal and water-crystal out of their places without waiting for her to move. She did so anyway and kept her eyes on what he was doing. He examined the void in the pedestal; he examined each of the two crystals carefully. Apparently finding nothing out of the ordinary, he set the crystals back into their places, first the water-stone as he had done before and then the air-crystal.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, this time placing the air-crystal first and then the water-crystal, and again nothing happened.
“Damn the House of El!” he bellowed in frustration, throwing the air-crystal to the ground. Ursa remained silent. She knew well enough to stay out of his way.
In the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Luthor Annex, Lionel Luthor’s personal assistant made sure her hands did not shake as she selected each pre-programmed number in turn. There were few people in the world who scared her, but an angry Lionel was one of them - sometimes. Right now she was more concerned about his absence. Lionel Luthor might be an egotistic, power-mongering bastard, but he was a punctual egotistic, power-mongering bastard.
Luthors Senior and Junior were half an hour late.
With Lex, it was occasionally to be expected: a remnant of his various adolescent rebellions and an act of power-seeking to offset his youth. But he was always on time for an event like this - a Lillian Luthor Foundation event, one to benefit several charities. Luthor the Younger had political aspirations; he knew how to look like he actually gave a damn.
Lionel, on the other hand, was punctual to a fault. Anything that interrupted his perfectly choreographed schedule brought hell to pay. She’d been puzzled by this at the beginning of her short (so far) tenure as one in a long line of assistants, but she had learned to read it as an act of power-grabbing, as much of one as Lex’s tardiness. If you couldn’t finish your presentation or meeting in the time allotted, then he deemed you unworthy of being listened to. It was a rare individual who was allowed to disrupt the schedule.
“What do you mean, he’s not there?” she demanded of the doorman of the Luthor Towers building, where Lionel had occupied the penthouse this last week. She took a breath. “When did you last see him?”
“I never saw him this morning, Miss Graves,” the doorman replied. “The morning valet said Mr. Luthor called for his car shortly after six this morning. Said it was a little strange because he usually take the helicopter, or a limo and driver, when he goes to Smallville.”
Smallville? What the hell was Lionel up to in Smallville of all places, just before an important event?
Lex.
Mercy Graves didn’t even bother thanking the doorman before she hung up on him. She immediately brought up the number for the mansion in Smallville, thinking as she hit the ‘send’ button of all the ways she would kick Lionel Luthor’s ass - if he wasn’t the boss.
“What we need, beloved,” Ursa was saying, “is a plan.”
Dru-Zod nodded, considering the good fortune in having preserved his wife’s memory in the cave wall along with his own. At times he had truly considered her expendable - there was a reason why he had declined the honor of placing the third crystal himself - but he was always glad to continue having her beside him. Her level head and calm were only two of her many useful virtues. “Indeed,” he said. “There are several possibilities behind the failure of these stones, and in every one of them I see a member of that damnable House of El fixing it. We need some way to draw them out.”
He saw Ursa nod, looking thoughtful. “But which El…” she murmured - and then her vessel’s eyes turned bright with glee. “I have an idea.”
As Dru-Zod listened - and subsequently approved - he took another moment to consider his wisdom in preserving his wife. Ideally, Non would have been among them as well, but in retrospect the decision to abandon his one-time host-brother had been an excellent one. While Non had finished off their trio during the failed uprising on Krypton and had shared their fate in the Phantom Zone, in the end the Kilan-6 man had been good for little more than the heavy lifting.
No, he thought to himself, Ursa had been the wise choice.
Chloe handed Lois another plate to dry and began scrubbing a dirty one.
“This Zod guy sounds like a real bastard,” Lois said, drying the plate and setting it on the countertop.
“Gee, Lois,” Chloe snarked in reply. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“And some people think I’m the sarcastic one,” Lois said, drying another dish. “But really - I wonder what happened to the guy. Clark’s parents are kind of cool - were they normal, or was this Zod guy your standard-issue Kryptonian?”
Chloe nodded. It was a good question, but based on the things Jor-El had said the evening before, she was willing to guess that Zod was that one-in-a-million psychopath, like on Earth. Hitler and the Unabomber and Jack the Ripper were the exceptions, not the rule. “I’m guessing they’re the more normal ones - Lois?”
Lois was staring into the distance through the kitchen window. “Chloe, how long have you known Lana?”
“Um, pretty much since Dad and I moved here, so since eighth grade. The popular girls are hard to miss. Why?”
Lois frowned. “Chlo, is Lana enough of an idiot to come back this soon after her blow-out with Clark?”
[END PART 27]