"You idiots!" Lucas was not amused by the news his two partners had returned with.
“Lucas, I- *wham*!” Rayne's excuses were quickly silenced by his colleague's fist knocking his head backwards.
"You didn’t bring him back when you had the perfect opportunity! The man of steel, crippled in agony, and you didn't seize him?! Well...in any event...” he took hold of the polished stone the two had returned with, “you were somewhat successful nonetheless. And you’re sure the probes have begun functioning on their own?”
“Absolutely," Leviathan grinned with a proud smile. "Seeing mommy and daddy get torched was just the thing to break him."
“Excellent." Lucas looked up from his monitor. The probes were in fact running on automatic, at maximum output, sending a pre-programmed signal to Superman's brain, and it was enough to deduce his next move. "His heart rate is elevated. Adrenal rise with carpal fluxuations."
"Judging by these readings," Rayne interjected, "it seems as though he's lapsed into a kind of mind loop. His brain's active, yet not fully conscious."
"Even better. Our weapon is primed and perfet- he's ready. You men,” he yelled to the goons already chipping away at the stone, extracting the needed minerals, "get busy. I want enough kryptonite to disperse among this entire city. Metropolis will have a taste of chaos to come.”
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Smallville, Kansas...October 6...
As promised, Perry was early arriving at the Kent farmhouse, Jimmy no more than a step behind him as they stepped inside. Quietly shutting the door behind him, Perry spots the family already sitting in the living room.
"The limo's here," he called over, his eyes darting to the staircase. "Is Clark still upstairs?"
"He was almost done when I came down," Ellen explained, already making a move to retrieve her son-in-law. "I'll get him."
"That's alright, mother," Lois reached for her, a warm hand coming to rest on her shoulder. "I'll get him. Go on out to the car," she yelled down, already halfway up the stairs, "we'll be out in a minute."
For all her hurrying to reach Clark's childhood bedroom, Lois was somewhat reluctant to step inside. Shedding her momentary hesitation, she swung the door open, giving a soft knock to the doorframe so as not to startle Clark. "Hey..." Her whisper carried across the room, falling upon her husband's still frame, quietly seated on the edge of the bed. "We're ready to go."
With his hands resting limp in his lap, his shoulders slumped, Clark remained silent, staring ahead at the full-length mirror standing just a few feet from the bed. He looked so forlorn and inconsolable, his dark suit an extension of his despondancy.
Taking her place beside him, Lois' own eyes remain fixed on their somber reflections as she reached out tentatively for his hand. In his first bit of movement since finishing getting dressed, Clark closed his eyes, willing the tension behind them to disappear, but to no avail. Closing his eyes only seemed to make the scenes of the past week all the easier to relive instead of remove.
As she tried to supress the accompanying shudder, Lois glanced down at him, sensing his growing anxiety, his unwillingness to have to go through with the finality of the whole ordeal. Her lips lowered to brush across his cheek, the hand that had been firmly grasping his coming to rest across his shoulders.
Without a word, his eyes still closed, Clark crawled up against her searching for familiar comfort. Lois rested her head atop his, lightly stroking the curve of his spine. "We should go," she felt him mumble against her side, finally lifting his head to meet her eyes for the first time since she'd entered the room. With a gentle nod, she offered him her hand, pulling them both to their feet and towards the closet. With Clark clinging to her left arm, the couple began their walk downstairs.
Still hugging to Clark's side, Lois' eyes shifted upward as she picked up on the all too familiar sound of Perry's frantic yelling echoing out from the dining room. Her parents and Lucy had already followed Jimmy out to the limo, but Perry was apparently speaking with someone over the phone. "Don't try and lecture *me* about the law, Braden, cause you're jerkin' around the wrong guy!"
The angry frustration in the editor's muttering fell like sweet music on Lucas' ears as he thumbed through the pages of his file in hand. "Okay- you want something legal, Mr. White...without evidence and without witnesses, none of the rag-tag cops here in Metropolis will even try to make a case-"
"We've got an ID on your little punk lackey, and we've got witnesses who've identified him at several of the arson sights. Plus, we've got surveillance tape of him breaking into *your* personal offices at Star Labs. So don't you even dare to try and tell me you've got nothing to do with this!"
"I realize you may be a bit preoccupied at the moment. But upon returning to the city, I would suggest you worry about running that pathetic excuse for a newspaper instead of pestering me? I'm a scientist, not a murderer-"
"And from what I've heard, those two roles go hand-in-hand for you!" he snapped triumphantly, dismissing him for the moment as he angrily slammed the phone down. His heavy sigh followed the loud sound as he turned, spotting Lois and Clark, following the couple out of the farmhouse. An even more unsettling matter awaited them all at Calvary Cemetery.
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"We have gathered here today to remember two dear friends, taken away from us by such tragic means...Martha and Jonathan Kent..."
The sky was an achingly beautiful blue, dotted by clean, white, wispy clouds. Rolling hills of green grass stretched out across the small community of Smallville, the various scattered images playing out before the parked cars' tinted windows.
"We commend to almighty God..."
Clark stared at the caskets in front of the kindly-faced minister; he wasn't really listening to him. The words came from his mouth, unbidden. Every once in a while, he would realize what he was saying. Just words...meaningless, empty words, holding no promise, and no hope of bringing either soul back. Their caskets were both closed- they'd been closed during the mass too. This was a good thing, he supposed; that he wouldn't have to stare at his parents' closed eyes. So he wouldn't be tempted to open them, to see if any shred of forgiveness lay in them. Forcing back an onslaught of fresh tears, his large frame pressed lightly to his wife's smaller one, trembling slightly as he tried to hide the truth from his friends and family, as well as himself. <Oh god...I failed them both.>
"...earth to earth...ashes to ashes...and dust to dust..."
Lois, hand in hand with Clark, had kept her head bowed during the opening prayer, glancing downslope at the gunmetal-gray caskets suspended over the open graves. With her knees threatening to buckle, she winced slightly, as if in sudden pain. Her eyes instantly sealed shut as the terrible images of Jonathan and Martha, flat on their backs, the columns of stone smashed down across their bloodied, burned frames, played out before her yet again. All week, she hadn't been able to rid herself of the nervous tension in anticipation of the funerals, and the finality of seeing the two names on the simple gravestones was jolting. <They never even got to...> By unspoken agreement, their anniversary celebration had been put on hiatus.
Lifting her head, her eyes were hit with another wave of concern as she watched Clark, looking as though he would barely be able to stand for another minute. In an instant, she buried her face against his shoulder, thankful to feel him gather her against him as she kissed him softly against his neck, murmuring whatever reassurances she could offer. It hit her then that she hadn't seen him cry at all. Not once. Not as they'd packed, not when they'd finally gotten into the car, headed for the cemetary.
"The Lord bless them and keep them. The Lord makes his face to shine upon them and be gracious to them..."
Perry had chosen a spot near the back, a few steps behind all the others. Jimmy maintained his supportive presence beside Lucy, as he kept his own tear-streaked eyes down for the duration of the service, preferring to look at his clamped hands than at the flowers heaped at the graves before him.
For Perry, the tears were coming a little faster, dripping down his cheeks to splash and splatter, leaving small, round stains on his black jacket, and with it, the painful realization of why he was crying. For the people whom he had known and loved and had died. More though, he cried for the funerals that were to come, for the memorial services and all the shiny, hard, wooden pews he would sit in and all the unknown friends who would stand and speak, the prayers and the songs that were yet to be sung. He cried because he sensed that somehow this was just the beginning, that this was just the first confrontation with the aftermath of death in a long, as yet to be experienced, line of emptiness and loss. With all that had happened, with all that he knew, he wondered how long it would take before everything else would start unwraveling, at the almost certain prompting of Lucas Braden's command.
For her own part standing beside Sam, Ellen watched the others in their remorse, unsure if the vaguely empty, hollow feeling overwhelming her was normal in the face of such sorrow. It was just that she was...numb. She didn't feel anything right now. Not love, not hate, not pain or sadness...or even happiness, as appalling as it might've sounded. There was nothing really deep, just flitting, empty images of feeling. The illusion of feeling that emptied her and numbed her all at once, made her depressed but in a cold, distant, indifferent way, like a bystander looking in on someone else's world- a world of sounds and images that signified nothing. She should have been sad, but instead she was empty and she wondered at that- wondered if any of it was real; and with the damage done to such lovely people- family- as Martha and Jonathan, as well as their son- helpless in the shroud of his supreme being- she wondered if anything could ever be real again.
"The Lord lift up his countenance upon them...and give them peace."
With a spasm of almost unendurable agony, Clark finally stepped forward as the minister was finishing. Their two simple graves were being set only a few yards apart in a quiet corner of the graveyard. An old tree stretched its branches protectively over them, and had covered them with a soft shroud of fallen leaves. The whole ordeal lasted only an hour. And now, with everyone being left to say their final goodbyes, the sight of the two coffins being lowered into the ground was quickly tightening the chokehold on his heart.
From alongside him, he could make out his friends' and family's sleek outlines, slowly departing from the cemetery. Their heads were all hanging low, as if, by now, lacking the strength to hold them up. Echoing their motions, he found himself feeling suddenly so lost, so sad and desperate. From the anguish that had taken seemingly permanent residence within him came the only words he could muster. "I'm sorry..." his inaudible whisper came, his voice raw with suffering, haunted by memories.
He could feel Lois step to him, looking over to him with huge, worried eyes, asking "are you all right?" and resting her hand clumsily atop his shoulder in that awkward fashion of comfort. And even though he wasn't all right- wasn't anywhere near being 'all right,' would probably never be 'all right' ever again- he managed to smile, stopping the tears that were threatening to finally fall from his weary eyes, and say "yes" before taking his place back beside her in the limo.
