All he could remember of the nightmare was the gleaming scalpel and the soulless eyes above a white mask, flashes of dissection tables and prison bars. It was the same dream that had recurred time and time again since the accident. Being forever locked away, being seen as less than an animal, less than human, of never being loved; this was every childhood fear in a single, terrifying dream.
The world was still muted and dull when Clark finally woke. Remnants of his previous pain remained, living testament that all wasn’t well. It was alien to him now, this dull, throbbing ache, the minor pains that are simply part of the human condition, unnoticed and ignored because they are so universal.
Could this condition be permanent? With years of seeking comfort in normality, the irony was that now with it in reach, it wasn’t what he wanted. Pushing himself up sluggishly, Clark looked at the clock. It was three A.M. He’d been out for almost six hours. He wondered for a moment where Lois was; leaving her alone wasn’t wise. Derailing the investigation was hard enough when he was standing beside her; with her far enough away to think, it would be impossible.
Waves of exhaustion conflicted with unfamiliar body sensations. He moistened his lips and pondered for several long moments before realizing that he was thirsty. He hated this feeling of sluggishness, of weakness, of feeling as though the world was always pulling at him.
He pushed himself up on one shoulder and squinted into the darkness. The hotel staff hadn’t left any cups or glasses, though there was an ice bucket, its shape simply a shadowy outline as seen through the feeble light filtering between the two ratty, tattered curtains.
Clark slipped back down again, temporarily exhausted, staring at the ceiling for long moments before his growing thirst forced him to reluctantly sit up. He didn’t bother to button his shirt or put shoes on. He simply grabbed the bucket, and staggered out the door.
The world tugged at him, and everything felt sluggish and slow. It was as though he was walking through mud. He staggered slightly before regaining his balance. It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. It felt even worse than earlier, in the immediate aftermath of his exposure to green glowing death.
He stepped outside, hearing the door lock behind him with a click. He fumbled for a moment, tensing for a moment before feeling the reassuring outline of the hotel key in his pocket.
The ice machine was across the parking lot. The streetlights were out. Most of the motel windows were silent and dark. Everything was dim; the only light came from above the ice machine across the parking lot. It was unsettling, this darkness, almost a living thing casting shadows that left hints of movement at the edge of his vision.
Clark fumbled in his pocket for change for the vending machine. He froze when he heard an unexpectedly familiar voice.
“Hello, little brother.”
Carl was bigger and heavier than Clark remembered. What had been a small paunch had exploded into a protruding beer belly. His hairline was already receding, and his eyes were bloodshot. He leaned heavily against the brick and stared at Clark with an all-too-familiar expression of contempt tinged with regret.
“Carl.” Clark sighed. He‘d hoped to avoid this; his foster brother was nothing but a constant reminder of the past he‘d spent so many years trying to leave behind. “I haven’t…”
“You haven’t what?” Carl’s voice was hostile. “Don’t try to lie and say you’re sorry.”
“It wouldn’t be a lie.” Clark said quietly. “There hasn’t been a day that I didn’t regret what happened.”
“You regretted that you ever had to live on my side of the tracks.” Carl shook his head and swayed slightly. “You always thought you were too good for the rest of us. Hell, maybe you were.”
“I never said that,” Clark said.
“You didn’t have to.” Carl’s lips tightened. “You left the rest of us behind like a bad rash.”
“I just had to get out,” Clark closed his eyes for a moment. “I just couldn’t be around anymore...not after everything that happened?”
“You think I don’t understand that? Hell, I defended you for years. I even talked to the cops. I was sure that you’d come back. If not for me, then for Pete.”
“I just wanted to move on.” Clark’s voice was low.
“You succeeded at that, all right.” Carl spit noisily, hawking up phlegm. “The thing you forgot was that there were people here that cared about you. Not many, but people around here don’t forget much.”
“I couldn’t face anyone,” Clark said.
“I hear you saying ‘I” an awful lot,“ Carl snorted. “What about the rest of us? I was your brother...Pete was your friend. You had other friends too. You didn‘t call any of us...not one phone call in ten years, not a postcard, not a letter, nothing.”
“I didn’t think any of you would want to see me.” Clark winced at a pain in his neck. “After everything that happened, after what people were saying...”
With his enhanced hearing, he’d known exactly what everyone in town had been saying, even people who had claimed to be his friends. Carl had been one of the people who’d never doubted him. Of course, Carl had been one of the witnesses, one of those who knew he hadn’t been in the right place to have done what everyone said.
Of course, his abilities would have proven that to be a lie, but it was the one secret that he’d never shared with anyone.
“Like I give a rat’s butt about what you did ten years ago anyway. Bill’s in prison, Jess is dead. It’s just me an John rotting away here, the last of the old gang. What the hell do you expect from a bunch of foster kids from the wrong side of the track? Hell, you were one of us, and even you didn‘t believe we could be anything more than street scum.”
Hesitating, Clark scowled, then headed for the ice machine. He felt a moment of irritation. “That was an excuse ten years ago, and it’s an excuse today. You don’t have to live up to what people expect.” It was an old argument, an old pattern. There was no need to fall into old ruts.
“What the hell do you know? Even when you lived with us, you had it all. Brains, looks, the memories of parents who loved you? You always thought you were better than the rest of us, like you were too good to sit at the same table.”
Clark filled his bucket with ice. “I don’t want to get into this argument with you. It never ends well.”
Carl laughed, and it was a short, bitter explosion of sound. “Just like the good old days, eh? I didn’t come here to rehash old arguments, anyway.”
“Why did you come?” Clark asked, finally turning to face Carl.
“I just think you ought to know. There’s a lot of folk that don’t think much of you coming back and stirring things up. Leave it alone. In fact, just leave. Forget what I said about friends and family. You don’t have a lot of those left here. The rest of them...they don’t see things the way you and I do. People have a hard enough time trying to forget without you being here to remind them.”
“I’m not staying long.”
“If you’d had any sense, you wouldn’t have come in the first place. But hell, when did you ever listen to me?” Carl grimaced. “I don’t even know why I bothered to come.” The man who had once been his foster brother stared at him as he pulled a soda from the machine.
Clark stared at Carl for a moment without speaking. Carl stared back for a moment before shrugging. “Have it your own way. I don‘t know why I expected anything else. ” He pushed away from the wall and stood, swaying slightly. “Like I said, you’d better keep an eye out. There’s a lot of hotheads in town.”
He turned to leave, and Clark stood watching him. He was tempted to call out; Carl hadn’t been the worst of his foster brothers. Of all of them, he’d been the one who’d been the closest to being a real brother.
Of course, he’d also always been irritating and annoying.
Clark sighed as he felt himself swaying. He needed rest. He turned and headed back for his hotel room.
He frowned as he noticed his door slightly ajar. Had he been so out of it that he’d left it open?
As he pushed the door open with his hip, he caught sight of movement from the darkness within. Freezing for a moment, there wasn’t time to move as a figure from within lunged at him, pulling him into the darkness.
After that, there was only confusion. In the dimness, he couldn’t quite make out his attackers. All he could feel was the blows as they pummeled him. He thought their voices seemed vaguely familiar, but as he fell to the ground and they kicked him repeatedly, all he could feel was regret for the things he hadn’t yet done.
As the world faded to darkness around him, he could hear the sounds of distant sirens.
*****************************
Lois stared, horrorstruck at the fax pages. Article after article taken from several weeks worth of back issues of the Smallville Gazette. They told a story of scandal, death and of a case that failed to come to trial. She’d come to believe that Clark was a good man. What she saw laid out before her made her question that.
She closed her eyes for a moment. She owed Clark the courtesy of asking him the truth. He’d been reluctant to return to Smallville, and she could see why. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t be able to keep working with him if she wasn’t convinced that he was safe.
Leaving the manager’s office, she frowned for a moment as she noticed that her partners door was ajar. The room inside was dark, and Lois could hear sounds that took her a moment to identify.
She broke into a run, dropping her briefcase as she turned into the entryway.
Three men stood over the bloodied body of her partner. They wore ski masks and were hulking, massive brutes. They stopped kicking her partner to stare at her, before lunging in her direction.
She pulled the door shut before they could reach her, and when one of the men yanked the door open, she kicked him viciously in a vulnerable spot. He fell back, and the other two attempted to break out as well. She grabbed her briefcase from beside her and hit the second man in the head with it.
She heard the sounds of sirens, and the third man pushed past her and began to run.
She would have chased him, but the first two men were already staggering to their feet. Lois kicked the closest in the kneecap, and heard a sickening pop. The second attempted to limp past, and Lois hit him with her briefcase as well.
One of them shoved, and she found herself flying back into the wall, the wind knocked out of her. She watched as they ran off into the distance, one favoring his right leg heavily.
She was barely catching her breath and staggering to the door to look at Clark’s shadowed body on the floor when Rachel Harris pulled up in her police car.
“I think I’ve been seeing too much of you these days, Ms. Lane.”
“Clark’s hurt.” Lois glanced back into the shadowed room. “I think you’d better call an ambulance.”
*************
Hospitals all have the same distinctive smell, of antiseptics and disinfectants, covering an underlying odor of death. Lois was quite familiar with that smell; she’d been injured in the line of duty more often than most policemen and firemen. She’d been shot once in the Congo, had been hit in the head in the Suicide Slum, and she’d twisted her ankle when running after a congressman who’d been on the Luthor payroll. This didn’t count the numerous scrapes, bruises and minor wounds that were part and partial to the life she had chosen.
It was more difficult from the other side. As a patient, all you had to worry about was pain. She hadn’t thought much of what it was like on the other side, what it was like for Perry or her mother, or even Mohammed, her native guide to have to sit and wait and wonder.
Even though the doctors told her that Clark had suffered nothing more than a mild concussion and three cracked ribs, she dreaded the moment when he finally woke up.
Clark had been a different person in Metropolis. The person she knew there was honest and good and caring. He was someone she could almost admire for what he’d accomplished. The person he was here…this person she didn’t know at all. In Metropolis, he was an open book. Here, he was cloaked in mystery, in scandal and deceit.
She’d spent her life ferreting out the truth, unearthing secrets that other people fought to hide. She’d exposed the worst that man had to offer, and she’d never had a qualm.
Yet, for the first time in her career, she didn’t want to ask questions. How was she going to ask her partner whether he was guilty of murder and worse?
