Last time
She watched him disappear around the corner, her stomach twisting anxiously at the idea of being alone in her current state. Why was he running off when she was so scared? If he knew her as he claimed, wouldn’t he know that she felt vulnerable right now, that she needed someone to reassure her? Was her small expression of defiance some sort of sore point in their relationship? The idea caused her brow to curl angrily as she wondered what kind of jerk would leave just as she was getting a grasp on her identity.
He said he’d be back, a small, defensive voice in her head reminded her.
And he’d looked at her when he’d promised to come back. At this point that was the only thing about him she was certain of and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was actually a good thing.
Now...
The nerve-wracking shudder that reverberated through him wouldn’t go away. He’d broken his earthbound stride, diving into the dusky sky as soon as he was clear of the building, but not even the rush of wind could drive the trembling from him.
She’d linked him again.
She’d got inside his head and--and tweaked his conscience! Her involuntary tap on the long buried surface of his integrity had bared the tiny inkling of shame that had thrust him from her mind.
This could ruin everything! How was he supposed to get her on track with her new life if she was leaving accusing little sticky notes in his brain? He was doing this all for her! This was the safest plan after all; maybe a little round about, but Luthor would never know about her this way.
As if he won’t find out about all the paperwork and strings you pulled, his inner conspirator warned him. Your resources are *his* resources, don’t forget. All Luthor has to do is get nosy…
“He won’t!” Kal growled, his words lost in the jet stream somewhere over Canada. All the sources I used are scrubbed. Most of them don’t even remember I work for Luthor when I finish with them all.
He’d been perfecting the use of his mental scrubs in the three weeks he’d taken to condition her to her new identity. His unexplained reluctance to scrub her mind was impetus for him to try minimizing his mental invasions from having such a destructive affect. Thus he’d begun experimenting with the underlings assigned to him.
In his efforts to hide his latest project, he was learning to localize his technique to a more precise measure of memory instead of a generalized clean out. His recent successes with this method had inspired him toward a new method for an internal process of shutting Luthor’s information channels down. Once he was able to figure out which operatives Luthor had confided in as far as his background, he could perform those localized scrubs with Luthor none the wiser before he broke off his alliance.
I just have to keep up appearances with Luthor for while until I get Lois…no, Wanda on her way. The by the time I’m done shutting him down, she’ll be recovering from a broken relationship and writing her first book.
He’d seen the inner workings of her mind and was certain that with the right direction and within the ideal environment, she’d put the resources he’d made available to her to good use. He’d been able to have legal documents created that made her a distant relation to his adoptive parents. She had a bank account under her new identity. She was the new owner of the Kent property.
Two years ago he had made arrangements to pay the taxes on the forfeit property and purchase it from the county. He hadn’t known why he’d made this investment, especially since Luthor had offered to procure the property for him when he was younger. He’d refused then, but finding out that the land was available two years ago, he’d jumped at the chance of owning it. He still had regrets about the loss of the small Kansas farm, but once he’d made the commitment to redirect this woman’s life, he considered the gesture a small amount to pay to keep her safe.
Besides, he was hoping to break the bogus relationship off in an amicable fashion. That way he could still check in on her and the property; make sure she was settled comfortably on the tranquil stretch of land. Wanda Kent *would* be motivated and…inspired to express the wealth of topics he himself knew she kept repressed in the hidden corners of her mind. His patronage would unleash the country’s newest author.
Seems like an awful lot of effort just to get another writer out there.
But that wasn’t really what this was all about; getting her started as a writer was secondary to keeping her safe from Luthor and making sure she had a happy life from now on.
But why? Why did it matter if this one was happy and safe? Why such an effort to rebuild *this* one when you consider the ones still out there…?
Because *this* one wasn’t like the others! She’d been…she had…she was…
…someone you feel a connection with?
Full of potential! That’s right! She’d had this potential to be…
…someone you care about?
An awesome talent!! There! She’d been ready to unleash this awesome talent until he’d screwed it up and he’d be damned if she was going to get left by the wayside when he could prevent it.
She was going to be a writer and she was going to be happy in her new life, DAMMIT!
Now he just had to get her to go along with it.
***
He arrived back at the hospital with a bag of casual clothing he’d obtained from her previous living quarters. Most of her stuff had been put into storage in anticipation of her long overseas assignment. The jeans and sweatshirt set was one the few articles of casual outfits he could locate, but they were clothes that she owned, thus a lesser chance of her rejecting them.
As he re-entered the room he found her awake, her bed railing lowered so she could dangle one alluring leg, while she was thoroughly engrossed in the Ivory Tower evening soap that was showing on her small in-room television. Her eyes were wide and shimmering, tweaking that little nerve in his conscience again, but he quashed it fiercely as he dropped the bag of clothing where her other foot was still tucked beneath the sheet, startling her attention away from the screen.
He was surprised to see an annoyed glare take over her expression as she turned on him, her lips almost pouty with consternation. The tweaking *that* caused wasn’t anywhere near his conscience, but he tamped that one down too. There was no way he was traveling that road either. She already evoked too many emotions in him that he wasn’t prepared to deal with; he wasn’t about to let her arouse his passionate nature, even if he had to play the love struck fool.
“Doctor been back yet?” he asked her as he seated himself at the foot of her bed.
“Yes.” Her reply was distracted as her attention returned to the TV show, which was thankfully wrapping up its last few minutes.
Her fingers clutched anxiously at the edge of the sheet as the show’s voice over announced, “…tune in next week as….”
Kal started to take this as his cue to elaborate on her information from the physician only to see her raise a halting hand as she listened intently on what was supposed to happen next week. His audible sigh of exasperation earned a pointed finger from her as her jaw clenched in aggravation.
Only when the commercial broke in did she finally raise the remote to turn the TV completely off and give him her full attention. She met his impatiently furrowed brow with an air of indifference and he was suddenly more convinced that this break off he was planning was going to go a lot easier than he’d thought.
“The doctor,” she began imperiously, “has explained that my MRI and CAT scans turned up nothing out of the ordinary, considering the small amount of data they have on me. He says what they need is some past history medical records to get a full picture of why I’m having seizures and black outs.” She squirmed a little as she listed her symptoms, as if they might sneak up on her when she mentioned them. “He wasn’t able to explain my memory loss this time either, but he said the same thing you told me. I should have a full recall over the next couple of days, and I think that’s true, because I remember the episode of Ivory Tower I saw last. I think I’m a big fan.”
Shoulda erased that part of her memory too, Kal thought derisively, but now that she had established what seemed to be another comfort source he was reluctant to take it away. “Yeah, you tried to catch every episode when we weren’t traveling,” he agreed. “You mentioned something about having them taped.”
“Having a someone tape them while I was gone?” she presumed.
Kal rushed to fix that. “No, you have the episodes on tape already.” I’ll bet there’s a way to get all those shows on tape with at least one of our tech contacts. He couldn’t allow her to think she had anybody besides him to fall back on to start with. He was confident she’d make new friends in Smallville, when she wasn’t busy writing.
“Anyway,” she continued, “he was telling me that he’d like to get a look at my prescriptions and maybe make some future appointments for more tests, but I’m free to check out.”
Good doctor, that’s what you get paid for, right? “It’s a good thing I brought your clothes then.” Kal pushed the bag he’d brought in up to her lap, watching intently for any signs of recognition as she pulled out the sweater first, then the jeans, socks and sneakers. She poked around in the empty bag a couple more moments, then unbundled the sweater with growing suspicion before looking up at him dubiously. He felt tension in his hands as the impulse to pounce trickled through his limbs, his mind gearing up for an emergency scrub if she somehow reverted.
“Kal…where are my underwear?” she blurted out.
The absurd nature of her question during in his tense deliberation tipped him off guard enough to ask, “Huh?”
“My…bra,” she sheepishly divulged, “…panties…underwear?” Her eyes shifted around the room nervously in the obvious worry that someone might hear her.
Kal relaxed immediately. Of course she wasn’t going to revert. No one ever relapsed to their old memories once he’d scrubbed them. He didn’t know why he was worried that she might, but it didn’t matter because she wasn’t going to. She was just acting funny because she wanted her…
Ah, geez he’d forgotten her underwear.
“Aren’t you wearing any?” he murmured, though he knew half the answer to that. The cottony gown had slipped sideways on several occasions, giving him an inadvertent glimpse on her physical status up top. Almost enough to tempt his x-ray vision, but he’d held firm on his resolve to bury those impulses. She confirmed his half-guess bashfully.
“Well, I can go without a bra I suppose, but I feel like these bottoms are,” she paused as her lip curled with slight repugnance, “…a couple of days old. How long before we get…get to where I can change?”
I could fly you there in less than ten minutes. “About a two and a half hour drive,” he answered, “two back to town and thirty minutes to the house.” He mentally smacked down his initial whim to blurt out about the flying. Dumb-*** , what’s wrong with you?!
“I suppose I could go without,” she muttered at a volume that was meant more for herself, but he heard her anyway.
The way he could hear her heart thumping while he stood in the hallway with the door closed, or her soft snores as he floated over the roof of the building. Her whispered admission arrested his thoughts completely except to envision exactly what she was suggesting.
She hadn’t been looking his way at first, but when his silence caused her to look up, she was captured by the intensity of his gaze and her cheeks flared into a combustive pink as her eyes dropped back to the clothing in her hands. She pinched her lips together as she attempted to calm her suddenly erratic breathing and galloping heart.
She wasn’t sure what she had done to make him look like that, except, of course, if he had heard her, which was impossible really, because she had spoken so quietly, not even above a whisper she thought, but there he was looking at her like she’d offered herself up with a can of Redi Whip™ and here she sat kneading her socks in her hands with no idea how to handle having a gorgeous guy like him staring at her like that, and herself ready to let loose a goofy giggle like the world’s biggest thirteen year old.
He startled her with a hard shake of his head, as if his brain were some kind of etch-a-sketch™ that he could wipe clean with a robust jiggle. And then he was blinking, looking around the room, she guessed to familiarize himself with where they were. Which reminded her that she would be going home with him tonight. Right now. As soon as she changed.
She suddenly wasn’t so concerned about getting out of her old underwear. But sharing the same room with him at the moment wasn’t that comfortable either.
“You know, I should go to the washroom and get ready to leave.” She was grateful to see him turn toward the TV screen with the remote as she gingerly slid backwards from the bed. She clutched the gaping gown closed behind her with one hand and held the bundle of clothing against her chest with the other arm as she backed toward the open door of the bathroom. The sound of the TV coming to life followed her through the door just before she turned around to close it.
Kal heard the bathroom door click shut and raised the volume on the television up so he could avoid hearing her remove her gown or washing up before she dressed, but that still didn’t stop his runaway imagination from taking over. He even had to strain to keep from turning to stare through the bathroom door to see how far she’d gotten in or out of her state of undress. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out where his brain had gone! She’d merely asked for a scant piece of underclothing… probably something lacy that rode up high on her curvy hips---WHOA! There he went again!
I should go outside and take a quick trip to Antarctica, he considered, calculating the time the journey would take and if it would make a difference. After all, SHEwas the reason he was so frazzled…that thing she could do with her thoughts, that--that linking thing that threw him for a psychic loop. And the babbling, the nonstop incongruity of her mental blather making him insane! How was she doing that with no physical contact? How was she doing that at all??? If he didn’t know better, he’d think she wasn’t human. Like him.
But that couldn’t be true.
He’d been told he was the only one left. During that sequestered portion of his past, the one thing that seemed to creep out from under the lid most often was the fact that he was the *very* last productive specimen of his kind. He’d been harshly conditioned to believe that statement. And so far, she was only having episodes of mental ability; not like him with his vision gizmos, the hearing, the fast moves, the strength, and the floating, flying, gravity defying creature that he was. Though he could very easily test her once they were alone.
And it was a bad idea for him to want to be alone with her. Granted the situation called for him to be her sole support for the beginning of his plan, but he wasn’t about to push that any farther than the lines he had drawn for himself when he’d come up with the arrangement. Right? Right??
Reanalyzing his motives, he began to wonder if he’d had everything worked out properly before initiating this insane experiment.
Hell no.
Hell.
His hearing perked up as the sound of the shower coming on roared over the tinny blare of the mini TV. He was gazing so intently at the screen, he could have burnt a hole through it if his heat vision kicked in. And she was taking a shower.
Hell.
He left her room by the window this time.
***
She’d had to hunt him down. After her shower she’d waited fifteen minutes in the room for him to return, long enough to contemplate leaving her undies in the trash. She’d flushed them down the toilet instead and went out to the floor desk to see if he’d passed by. Eventually she’d wandered down to the snack bar where she spotted him near a coffee stand. He’d just finished filling one of those small Styrofoam cups and was setting the pot down as she approached. She stopped in the doorway to watch him gulp the steaming liquid down like a liquor shot. His gaze turned to catch her appearance as he reached to pour another cup.
She stood still, waiting while he poured another cup and replaced the pot, only this time as he picked up his cup, he brushed past her into the hallway. “Ready to go?” he threw over his shoulder as he continued down the hall. She gaped after him in astonishment, his instantaneous dismissal of her almost stinging in its chill. Her earlier instinct to be wary about him came back full force, but she was checked out of the hospital. Where else was she supposed go? So far *he* was her only link to her self and her emotional connection with him was too obvious to deny.
TBC...
TEEEEEJ
