crucible

Reccing Notes: In case you were wondering where I was going with this series, the plotplotplot starts here. The format is still experimental. Remember the spoilers about the thug that happened in Stiletto. Well this was my take on it before the episode aired.

by vagrantdream at her/my journal
4876 words, m/nc-17, beast (in a manner of speaking),
She had seen birth and death before and thought them to be different.

She had seen birth and death before and thought them to be different.
T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi

I. Chloe Sullivan is focused on the here and now. She’s almost stopped thinking of danger outside of her little world.

i. She lets herself in with the key around her neck, two enormous green apples balanced precariously on the tray.

ii. Davis should be out of the trance by now. She’d told him to take a walk outside, just for a little while. The time he can go without a shot is down to forty five minutes, but he knows she worries about the worrisome pallor that constant hours in the dark have brought to his skin.

iii. She doesn’t have a hand to turn up the light. Shutters are drawn, but she can make out the vague form of the pile of reference texts toppled messily into her path. She’ll deal with it later. No hands.

iv. She has hands enough to send the tray flying behind her when she feels the cool pressure of a knife at her throat. It doesn’t help, leaves her completely unarmed, arms pinioned to her sides. She has to stand on her toes to keep the sharpness from slicing into her trachea.

v. The smell is stifling and dirty, too hot breath and tobacco. “Care to introduce me to your little friend?” A voice that sounds like yesterday’s liquor. It’s not about Davis. Can’t be about him. She’s been careful.

v. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. Word on the street tells me you can hook me up with a nuisance called Stiletto.”
“Hate to break it to you buster, but if you’re looking to score some shoes this isn’t the way to go about it.”
“Stop lying, bitch. Your little friend. Where is she?”
“All I know is that you are a demented Jack-the-Ripper wannabe. Let me go!” A kick to his shin and he makes no reaction but tightening his grip.
“I’m in the position of power here, you may notice.”
She watched a video about how to defend from a man holding a knife. To poke him in the eyes was the big thing, but she can’t move her fingers without breaking them. She can’t knee him, trapped like this. She should turn his weight against him, but she doesn’t know anything other than verbal judo.

vi. “Let me go and I might decide not to send you to prison for assault.”
“One question and it can all be over.”
“I don’t know anything.” More pressure. Her neck is cold; the feeling is liquid like a few drops of blood.
“Let me refresh your memory. You’ve been coming this way with lots of food; every single day for the past week. Little lady like you couldn’t eat that much. So, I’m thinking we might be pretty close to that friend of yours.” “Maybe I have an appetite.”
“I don’t like wasting time. Next time you lie, I make you bleed it out.” He doesn’t tighten the knife anymore, presses one corner down more firmly than the rest of it and she won’t heal from that.

vii. She’s got to survive now.
“I’ll take you to her.”
“That’s better.” The knife encircles her neck from the back now and she walks stiffly.
“What’s in it for me?”
“I might decide not to slice you up too bad.” She considers tripping, taking him down for a few seconds. But he’s been here longer and she can see less than he can in this dark. She finds the knob, pushes in the key. Her hand wants to start trembling. But she stiffens, pulls it open. “You first.” He’s going to push her ahead of him, walk one step above her. She won’t be able to lock him in or get away.

vii. She walks down one step, another, a third; he moves heavily behind her. The fourth step she jerks her head down, nearly smacks it on the rail, crouches. The momentum throws him forward and she scrambles to throw herself behind the heavy wood, turns the key, tries to block out the sounds of his body hitting the cement.

viii. She might not have killed him, she thinks. She’s injured him, badly and she can’t afford to stay and wait. She’s got minutes to find Davis outside, pack a few texts; they’ll go on the lam somehow, where they can’t be found. It’ll be the end of her life as Chloe Sullivan.

ix. (She can’t have killed him. She can’t have.)


x. She thinks she’s done worse than that when she hears that sound for the second time in her life.


II. She doesn’t know how she keeps behind the door for the seconds until the human sound smothers and there’s nothing at all.

i. He’d made her promise. There’s another thirty minutes, painstakingly counted out before she pulls it open.

ii. There’s nothing on the stairs, and there’s no body at the bottom of the steps. She can see ripped fabric first, knows whatever is left of the thug will confront her as soon as she gets down. She did this, forced Davis into everything he never wanted to be again.

iii. (Maybe the transformation won’t be over. She can die now, just like anybody else.)

iv. Davis will be down there and he’s going to wake up with blood on him. She pushes the trembling down and tries not to see what she does.

v. They’re both tossed on the cement, equally caked in it; only one of them is breathing. Davis is not aware yet. She pulls what’s left of the other together, isolates, and doesn’t drag for fear of leaving marks. Brings bags; thick and black to bind it up. Her green suit jacket is a study in contrasts.

vi. She’s still scrubbing at her hands when he wakes.


III. His consciousness passes from white to shades of black; the scent around him is all too familiar. He isn’t this, he won’t be and the evidence is coating him, taunting. (This is all he can be.)

i. He can almost taste the sickly sweet, dizzying emptiness it leaves in its wake. He wants to double over the sink and make it go. But she’s there, back to him. She should never have to see. He pushes himself back toward the wall; finds it covered too.

ii. He doesn’t know who the hapless victim was this time. It has finally caught up to him and things between them will never be the same again.

iii. Her shoulders move, releasing barely hitching breaths obscured by the run of water. She’s holding so much back and she’s seen. (It’s one thing to hear it from his lips, to decide logically that she wants to save him. This was never in the cards and he can’t expect…)

iv. “Chloe?” His hands are crusted brown and the familiar sickly nausea won’t ebb. It isn’t pushing at his mind, and he knows what it all means. She doesn’t turn toward him and he doesn’t blame her.

v. He doesn’t see anyone else; doesn’t remember anything since the last injection. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and the blood is on her too.

vi. The things start to piece themselves together, and he doesn’t want to believe. In those lost minutes he could have looked liked himself, been It…done things. Hurt her.

vii. She wouldn’t turn toward him if she had been hurt. “Chloe. What did I…” he steadies her elbows, pulls her around gently. She doesn’t jump at the light pressure; she as pliant as a life-size doll. No bruises on her arms. He almost startles when her head buries itself onto what’s left of his shirt. “Oh god. I’m sorry.” He thinks she’s trying to say, and doesn’t understand.

viii. The floor around him is almost spotless and he drips onto it. His hands were once talons, so he doesn’t think of how it got to soak up to his elbows.

ix. “We’ll get you cleaned up.” The sink runs, sputters out icy water. There are towels. More than the time when she got that scar.

x. She speaks, the words come out and he thinks that she’s still trying to distract herself. Her touch is gentle, and he closes his eyes for the minute it lasts. The water flows pinkish as it comes off his neck, his arms; his face.



IV. They tell you jokingly that true friends help you hide the bodies. Both of them may have had true friends and false friends and none would be here now. There’s something else to this.

i. There are the black bags, too familiar, which they move. The smell of death is everywhere and he tries to push down the very human nausea. He’s lived as a paramedic and he’s felt this before, she hasn’t and yet she stays.

ii. Its savagery, something worse than a mauling is not something fit for her eyes. All because he’s not capable, strong enough.
“Don’t, Davis.” She throws all the authority she can in her voice and it still comes out shaky. “It was me.”

iii. A minute passes, two, in silence. He knows the hidden horror because he’s had it, feels it even now because he doesn’t feel pity with it. “He was going to kill you.”

iv. (He used to believe life was equally important; no one meant more than anyone else. Maybe this is the start of him, changing. But this is Chloe and he wonders how many of the tenets of his life break when it comes to her).

v. “So I beat him to the punch. I told myself I was going to knock him down the steps and lock him down here just while we got away…And instead I made a stupid mistake, used you as a weapon. I was supposed to stop this.”

vi. She almost retches twice through their morbid task; but keeps on methodically despite the speed. She never thought that she would use the knowledge from books on forensics, a viewing or two of Dexter, this way.

vii. They have only forty-five minutes and she watches him for all the little signs she’s gotten to know so well. He’s on tenterhooks but he’s not going to let her on her own, still worried for her even though she just murdered a man.

viii. She’s no saint. When they finish she won’t be the one to keep her mouth shut.



V. His time is up and he waits for the change that doesn’t come.

i. The fact that it got free buys him time; it’s no longer moving restlessly in the back of his skull, fighting against its bonds. He may have a whole night free of the change to see what it has done.

ii. Under Clorox and stinging antiseptic, the room is still redolent of the sickening scent. It’s completely changed, killed in this room now. He used to picture days upon days of drugs where it didn’t break free; tried so hard to believe it was not a lie.

iii. She’s stayed safe, somehow, because of blind luck, because of its first victim. He’s learned not to trust luck. It could snap past that barrier next time, it could be her blood staining his hands, her eyes.

iv. No matter what he does, this always seems to follow and he wants to tear both parts of himself from the other before it’s too late. If he can’t do it, maybe the other Kryptonian can.

v. (Despite the fact that they’ve been on the outs lately, Clark might be strong enough to stop him somehow, find away to neutralize the threat before she gets into the crossfire. The one who’d called himself her best friend owes her that much.)

vi. He’s been excellent at lying to himself so far, but she won’t be the casualty. “You’ve seen it now. It can’t get better.” He won’t sugarcoat things, not now. He hasn’t told her about the white outs, where he doesn’t feel pain or drugs or it; where he thinks it’s adapting, trying and seizing control of his rational mind

vii. “How do I know that it won’t be you laying there next time?” She can’t come up with an infallible answer. He’s Davis; and he’s fighting.

viii. Another barrier broken and it’ll keep pushing itself past its restraints. He’s not strong enough. She refuses to believe.


ix. “I’m going to try and live up to that. When I go this time you’ve got to let me go and not look for me.”

VI. It is not a matter of digging in her heels and waiting until one of them topples. He’s got to see.

i. “Were you listening to anything I said? You don’t get to punish yourself for my mistakes.” There’s the bag still red and the blood is hardly visible. “It’s killed again.” The taste of blood will bring it out again faster.

ii. “It doesn’t matter where you go, don’t you see? You don’t get to do this, play the noble hero card. Not now.” She tugs the luggage from his hands and he lets it fall. He won’t need it where he’s going.

iii. (He’s making excuses to watching her face even tinged in anger. This is their moment, and for the first time he realizes it’s not that only that she cares. Inexplicably, she needs him, too.)

iv. “Fine. You want to hear something? I opened the door too early. Fifteen minutes too early. Do I look dead to you?” She looks straight, challenges; doesn’t tell him he was human at the time. Omission is truth when the situation calls for it. “If you leave it’s because you want to, not because of me. So don’t.”

v. (He used to like logic. Probability, the things he could measure. The numbers are against him and he’s not going to gamble.)

vi. It’s a principle. She can’t let him go and he can’t let her be hurt. Go. Go. If he says it out he knows she won’t move, will let the door close behind him. “Do you want to go?” He’d have weeks left before the memories would start to fade again. “I-” He doesn’t want to think about how much it will be like tearing apart.

vii. “Don’t, Davis.” It’s not a command and her face is opened up, like light that vanishes when she sees his hand on the door. Maybe, he thinks, he’s hurting her already. There’s no Clark, no Lois, no Jimmy for her now. She’ll be alone in a room with too many ghosts. “No.” It wavers on the edge of his breath, almost defiant.

viii. She’s Chloe Sullivan; she’s got a sure-fire remark for every minute and the words are clumsy, conceal and reveal too much. (She wants to say how everything else has almost gone away; how this little room has become her life, now.) “I trust you.” He’s the only one. She wishes he could trust in himself; that he didn’t have to ask ‘why’. She wants to intercept the words before they leave his mouth, about how she can care when he’s ‘this’ because he isn’t.

ix. There’s no evidence she can give for instinct, so she finally falls back on the one thing that’s already been said. “I think you know why.” She used to mock lines like that, as they were repeated in countless tired romances as the music swelled. The cheesiness of the moment does not escape her but he looks as if she gave him the world. (Maybe it’s not the words as much as the fact that they can’t be taken back, the fact that she doesn’t want to.)

x. He’s doesn’t listen to the words as much as the way she says them and he understands. The gap closes. Words want to build in the back of his throat, how there are things she still needs to know, so many things that can’t possibly be easy.

xi. This is the second time it happens and he’s not prepared for it. She moves first. Her lips are on his and the soft sensation is insistent, hiding under the surface, mirrored. He can taste bitter coffee, her, blood from the split on her lip. His hands are tight on her shoulders; she’s breakable. He draws back and loosens his grip, tries to breathe. He’s never wanted to smile more than now.

xii. She’s still looking at him with that expression, seeing more than he manages to say. The aching returns, a slow nervous flutter (she burns the white and black from the back of his mind until there’s just her image in his eyes). There’s a cut on her jaw that he’s careful to avoid when he frames her face. He kisses her and he’s nothing if not human.
Not yet.


VII. And it’s just that easy.

i. Davis is not pushing her, fingers barely tangled in her hair. He kisses constantly, opened mouth meeting hers with no intrusion of tongue. Pulling her to him, holding on. There’s intensity to everything that makes it hard to breathe. She stretches up, clutches to his shoulders. She can have this. He’s here, regardless of what this could have done, what she could have lost. Even with her eyes closed she’s aware of that one purple stain stark against her sleeve; drops her jacket onto the floor. She tells herself this hasn’t made her reckless. The goose bumps form on her arms and when his hands slide up her shoulders she feels it more than she should. Her skin is vulnerable and safe. (They go on, and she knows where this leads.)

ii. She manages to hold on, arching into him, unable to think further than this impossible 'now'. She forgets about visions of scrubbing her hands, the knot in her stomach that lingers like fear. She can’t afford to forget, not… “Not here.” She chokes out. It feels too much like a portent, and she can’t take that. Not when she needs them to be just them. She can’t make the rest of it go away, and maybe she doesn’t know what she’s playing at; but she believes. Steadies her breath, opens her eyes into his, shakily draws a thumb across his cheek. “Come with me.”

iii. His eyes are dark in the light, there’s fear there, but less, and a word about the danger doesn’t leave his lips. Don’t, she’d said. He’s so open and trusting and she hates that she could break him. There’s the danger there, but there’s him too. She won’t give moth to flame allegories. Right now he’s the man, and her friend and the one thing she won’t let go of. It’s built so far down it’s her foundation. She’s making this choice sober. She links her fingers though his, tries not to look at the steps as she walks, focuses on the warmth of his grip. Somehow she propels them, up and away, out of the dark.

iv. It’s brighter here, even with one of the light bulbs knocked out, sobering. She’s taking that step out to the ledge for the first time. It’s never felt like her skin was anymore than that; when physical sensation could ever change her.

v. She’d kept herself on a pill, a habit, although time passed and there was no need. She remembers how it used to be, sometimes pleasant and sometimes numb, never with the lights on. So she could pretend that it couldn’t have been any face but hers, so he never saw when her thoughts went to another place. (Maybe the hesitant, old Chloe would feel guilty for this, for the once-husband called Jimmy and a nightstand with a wedding ring laid out there.)

vi. But not her, not when the things she’s already said feel more like vows than anything she ever remembers. So she keeps leading, looks into his face. His fingers clutch onto hers. He won’t ever voice the fear now, not when he’s afraid of hurting her. She wants to give him reassurance; wants to tell him that they can have this always and he won’t break her heart. Instead, she lets herself feel the fear until it vanishes to him.
She pretends it is the first time.


VIII. They never say the words out between them.

i. She doesn’t say and he doesn’t ask, and he hopes she understand what he means to. She pulls at his hands. The couch, too red, symbolic; there’s no where else to go in this room.
ii. He doesn’t know what the custom for this is, it’s normal to be caught like this, like two teenagers. It’s just what people do.

iii. But he isn’t ‘people’. He used to dream of another world, another time where they could have been this. Where feeling could come first and he’d repeat phrases like ‘I love you’ over and over.

iv. As it is, they have only hours. Maybe they can’t go on like this, a guy only gets so many second chances before the door shuts; and she can’t go throwing herself to his salvation when it may only break her. But he can’t stop, not when he sees the question in her eyes. There’s fear, and he thinks he has it too. He can be anything for her now, this moment. She feels like his.

v. Her knees hit the arm of the couch, he does and when she makes a sound it knocks the wind out of him. He doesn’t know what his invulnerable body could do to her. His skin shatters knives. Even his human weight could crush her. He quickly pulls his weight off. “Are you?” “Just cold.” She makes a tiny discontented sound and lunges forward to pull him back with her. He hesitates.


vi. He can’t help seeing the marks on lightly tanned skin, the bruise over her breastbone; the deeper jagged cut under her chin. “We should look at that.” It’s a reflex, how he traces the outside of the mark, gauging the severity. “Mr.-uhh… got a bit knife-happy.” If she hadn’t been coming here for him, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt. “Stop that. He came because of a project of Lois’s. He wanted to find her and I wouldn’t tell him.” “How’d he find out?” “Word on the streets. You know reporters.” He knows what that means. Some soft justification, like ‘Lois just forgot to say I was the source.’ Lois could have gotten Chloe killed. He can feel the whiteness again, seizing up; wanting to tear through something. He squeezes his eyes shut, thinks of climbing off and locking the door. Her voice draws him out of visions of paralysis and scarlet mist. “Hey, I’m still here.” She draws his hand to her chin. “See? You won’t hurt me.”

vii. It’s a contradiction. He’s the one with the psychotic monster in him and he’ll hurt her if he goes. Don’t. “So give a girl a little help?” Her lips are swollen, her face is flushed but it’s all pushed behind the gentle look in her eyes. He wonders for a moment if it will ever see what he sees at this moment; if it can download these memories. She leans forward, brushes her lips across the side of his mouth. It has no place here. “It’s hot and all, but don’t think so much, Davis.”


viii. He braces himself against the sides of the couch, leans down because it must hurt her to angle like that. Sensations. Her thin shirt rides up a little and his hand stumbles she keeps it there. It barely skims flesh because one misstep could leave a bruise. He wants to take it farther, feels the prickle under his skin, the need for warmth, her. The only place she’s safe is where his skin doesn’t touch hers.

ix. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. But she responds; flips them over so that he almost thinks she learned one of those Japanese wrestling disciplines. She’s half kneeling at either side of him this time and the burning pushes anything but those sounds and monosyllabic thoughts from his mind. Pulling away, coming back; teasing. Legs at the side of his hips effectively trapping him before his hands tug her down again. Sounds that she doesn’t realize she makes. It’s physically painful to come this close and not merge.


x. He’s breathing faster now, strangely reminiscent of the change, but so, so different. She doesn’t look scared. Just throws various articles haphazardly behind her with the arm that’s not touching him. He’s still mostly dressed. The hands on the buttons of his serviceable cotton shirt don’t shake until barely calloused palms brush the pulse on his neck.

xi. The rough materials rub between them, strangely unneeded barriers that seem to shed sparks as they get kicked away. Red leather, cold as it sticks to his back. Then, a shock of skin and he realizes the air is making her cold. She draws closer and they are actually doing this. “Chloe, promise you’ll tell me if…” “I will stop your mouth.” It should be out of the place, this; the way she nearly laughs, pulls out old Shakespearean references like they have time. “Just let it happen.”

xii. Blond hair teases at his cheek as everything freezes. Warmth and heat, and he won’t shut his eyes. The first hesitant movement together and it feels like he’s sinking into his skin, just his human skin and there’s nothing else. This moment of oneness is all they have; and he feels her heartbeat over him. He feels himself drifting, moving to nowhere and everywhere.

xiii. He wants it to stay, but the movements get wilder, his pulse races in something akin to desperation. It’s dangerous to hold on to tightly, and this is going to have to end. “Davis.” Her eyes flicker open and closed and there’s sweat damp on her temple. He feels the tightening, can read the signs. “Wait.” He says. He reaches up, breathes her air; pretends this is not an end. Kisses her with every breath left. Finds himself pushed deeper, feels the trembling overtake them and then doesn’t know of the cry is his or her own.

xiv. He’s spiraling back, feeling the sweat growing cold on both of them. He rolls them over carefully in the small space and they barely manage to stay on, limbs tangled over the edge of the couch. His nose somehow brushes her neck and she shivers so that the movement goes through him.

xv. When everyday physical sensations return he finds the afghan, always thrown haphazardly over the chair arm, unfurls it and pulls it over her shoulders. Rumpled hair, a tired warm smile. “Hey.” It’s in the little things, how she smoothes back hair that is too short to need it, the quickness of emotions that play across her face. He thinks she must see it to. Something clenches in his gut, and he can’t help the smile. This is everything.

xvi. The afghan scratches lightly, and her head rests on his arm. There are soft words, theoretical questions set in a world that has a future for both of them. And he lets himself fall.

xvii. An hour, two; her breaths fall evenly against his chest and time and place realign. There’s a giddy joy dizzying him, mixing with the all too familiar fear. (He wonders how it can ever return after this. He knows it will.)

xviii. Time will pass whether he clings or not. He won’t be able to be without her; and before the end he’ll have to let her go. He holds in the convulsing need to pull her closer, to hold on with desperate fingers to sand. He unclenches his fingers, presses a cheek to the top of her head; waits until the dawn. (He’s not anything but human, not now.)
Not now.



IX. Her dreams cloud her eyes with blood she’s spilled and tears. It’s still an unpleasant jolt to wake.

i. The sun filters in, shines uncomfortably in her eyes without warming her. The leathery texture of the couch feels cold without his warmth; and she feels that strange blooming of feeling that makes her want to hang on to him.

ii. She realizes they won’t ever be able to sleep together, side by side.

iii. The afghan is tucked carefully around her shoulders, even now and his scent lingers on her skin. Then, the thought hits her that there’s no trace of him.

iv. After the initial panic, she notices her clothes are neatly folded over the coffee table and the key dangles in the basement lock, ready to be turned. It’ll be two hours before she opens it again.

v. It’s illogical that she doesn’t feel guiltier, more frightened. Soon it will crest on her, what all of this means.

vi. The dreams tell her things that she can’t bring herself to accept yet. There’s dirt under her fingernails and somewhere out there there’s a fresh grave.

vii. They aren’t safe at Isis any longer. She finds a map, draws out a path, thinks of Alaska and tries to reason out how they’ll handle the car ride.

viii. The signs are all down now. So it shocks her to find a small business card shoved under the crack of the door. Who leaves calling cards these days, anyways?

ix. Linda Lake. She’d failed in her destruction mission of Clark and now she wanted fuel for the fire. The hasty, ugly scrawl on the back. Appointment?

x. Two more hours left.

I. Chloe Sullivan can’t just see the here and now. There’s the future because she has to believe in it. There is a future because this is her whole little world now.



Comments= XD

lithophane

Reccing Notes: The third installment of the universe started by lathe and continuing in vessel. Just by way of explanation, a lithophane is an etched artwork in translucent porcelain that reveals a three dimensional picture with depth and detail. This has fic relevance. really. ^^

by vagrantdream at her/my journal
2633 words, pg-13, infamous and eternal (in a very AU manner of speaking)

Davis can’t die; he can only live, trapped and Isis is the prison of his choosing.
I. The One Who is All.

The foundation was named for Isis, she'd told Lana, the Eqyptian goddess of love, and life, and healing. She saw Isis as the nurturer; the one who went to the ends of the earth for only one person, brought Ra to his knees.

i. Lana had seen the Isis Foundation a front for anti-Luthorcorp operations; only later as a place where the meteor-infected got on their feet. It was like a ward for patients with non-terminal diseases, a stopping place until they stepped into the whole wide world again. Isis was not meant to be a prison.

ii. Davis was looking for a prison, kept himself walled from the world the only way he could. He wasn’t like all the other cases that she’d tried to help meteor infected, all those times she’d failed miserably. The other meteor mutants had wanted the connection of seeing other people like themselves. He needed to stay as far away from others as possible.

iii. She never actually wrote anything on that pad of hers. It was another typical gesture of avoidance, like reading her first love letter out loud. She told Davis he couldn’t stay. She’d found him through coincidence and good guesswork. Someone else could find him just as easily, and if something happened they’d both be torn to bits.
“I’m a risk wherever I go, Chloe.”
“…I don’t think my apartment would work, considering... I was thinking you should come with me to Isis. That’s kind of the purpose of the place.”
“I can’t go there. I can’t just go into a room with other people. I might hurt somebody.”
“Isis has been closed down for almost a month. The friend who gave it to me kind of became the project. There’s no steady traffic in and out of the building, and I couldn’t get more tenants to come in.”

iv. “It’ll be safe.” So sure. He’d seen it there, the raw commitment with ‘her kids’ at Isis, the belief that she could help them, the pain after one of them had turned out to be a sadistic killer. He was the one person she’s helping, and he thought that he’d do everything he could to do this, whatever they were attempting. It was almost easy to think he wouldn’t break her heart in that hour when he felt just human.

v. (He didn’t have anything to take with him but those injections and neatly folded changes of clothes already packed in a red canvas bag.) It looked to her as if they’d been there for a week.

II. She Who Seeks Shelter

The blood red lettering over the wall reminds her of blood, the sacred pendants entombed with pharaohs. Isis was also the Queen of the Underworld, of death. Davis can’t die; he can only live, trapped and Isis is the prison of his choosing.
(Chloe doesn’t have a plan, not in the true sense of the word. He’ll be down there and she’ll be…around, kind of like a warden. The Queen of the Underworld, indeed.)

i. She’s careful to lock the front and basement door behind them, merely visual protections that can splinter to bits. (She doesn’t let herself think of what could happen next, what she’ll have to do to keep him inside.) It won’t come to that.

ii. He’s got about an hour left before he takes the injections again. He barely pays attention to the look of where he’s going to live. The dust on the boxes of documents, the fact that there’s only one corner where he can possibly sleep. She pretends to clean ineffectually, wonders how long it’ll be when until she forces him to come out with it.

iii. There, in the half opened bag, are her excuses. She doesn’t know how she’ll get the drugs analyzed exactly, but it always pays to be prepared.
“Give me.” He puts the needle in her palm so fast he almost drops it. It’s not subtle when he goes to the corner of the room, as far as he can from her personal space.

“Any particular reason you want to melt into the wallpaper, there?” He stiffens, and his eyes tell her the rest. “So it was a bad nightmare.”
“You died, that’s not just a bad nightmare, that’s...” (When she walks it’s not like the construct used to, but he can’t move any farther backwards and he’s trapped. Two yards left between them and it hurts.)
“My dad used to tell me that if you have dreams like that, they never ever come true.” “They’re frequent. The drugs cause trances and I saw you…”
“You may have some alien stuff going on, but I don’t think you’re Nostradamus. You’re not transforming or on meds now. Nothing will happen. I can’t really help if you act like a scared rabbit.”
Her hand hovers above his and he shudders. In the dream everything didn’t sound so sensible. “You’ve got to be okay with this.” The particulars blur so he’s not sure how long her hand lingers or what the exact words in what she says.
(She had healing once and she doubts it’s possible for her to be hurt; he doesn’t have to shut himself off.) There’s more than triumph, and something a little sad, in her smile.

iv. It’s all in the small steps. When he does take the drugs, she locks the door between them. Part of it is because he doesn’t want her to see him like that; part of it is because she has her own task to deal with. She wonders how he’ll react to the bandages on her left palm and the paper towels soaked in blood.

v. He’s the paramedic, still. When the bandages fall apart he resets them for her so they don’t chafe. It’s the barest touch, and it lingers like a phantom limb.

vi. She wants to reassure him, tell him that she won’t die, that he won’t hurt her. Only they’ve never been able to keep lies between them, and the scarlet marks her like a brand. “We’ll figure out something.” she says.

III. Lady of the Words of Power
She’s no great lady of magic; possesses no magic touch to make this right, no abilities than will suddenly make this easy.

i. It’s been a week of looking over her shoulder every minute, telling Clark about her work with Lana, telling Jimmy nothing because he won’t ask and she doesn’t know what she’d answer anyway. The threads to her old life keep her in limbo, but his desperation drives her as her own. She feels locked into research and hope.

ii. The drugs she analyzes on the Isis computers were just that. Drugs that ought to have been fatal to any human being; that his body is resisting more every single time. The only way they could possibly work if they were something like Kryptonian viruses capable of adapting at It’s own speed, like the ones that had changed Lionel Luthor; destroyed. Human drugs give him only a few weeks before time runs out. There are some sketchy research projects on DNA inactivation; where the risks outweigh the possible benefits almost ninety percent, where the Davis she knows could vanish forever just as easily as it.

iii. No idea is worth discarding at this point. She even buys steaks, bloody and raw, as if they will satisfy Its bloodlust.

iv. The next time he blurs into her life, Clark finds her with four packages of steak in her arms. He says nothing at first; neither does she. She’s perfectly aware she’s been shopping for two the past weeks; and she doesn’t want him to be. He pushes the cart behind her.
“Are you alright, Chloe? You’ve been distant lately. Jimmy’s worried. I know you need time to process, but so early after you’ve married, you two should really spend more time...”
Of course that was the reason he’d always wanted to see her.
“Thanks for the help, dear Abby. That work with Lana is more time consuming than you’d think”
“I talked to Lana.” He says. There went her alibi, but he won’t just go out and say it.
She wants to be able to shock that noble look off his face, just once. Something like ‘yes, Clark, I’ll confess to the torrid affair.’ Once she would have expected him to ask for the punch line. Now, he might actually believe her. It doesn’t hurt as much as it should.
“I want to help you, Chloe.” He tells her, looks like it’s actually him in pain when he doesn’t ever worry if he has tomorrow. (She thinks it’s become a reflex for him.)
“We both know how that turned out, don’t we?”

v. She should feel worse about it, in hindsight. Clark’s been having a tough time of it lately, with discovering that not all people fawn over acts of heroism, powers like his. Linda Lake just takes it to a whole new level by turning him into something from War of the Worlds, tearing down any comfort in the life he’s constructed.


vi. Chloe can’t be around Clark now, not when there are people calling out for blood. Not when there are just two thin doors between the world outside and Davis and her. She would feel much calmer if Linda didn’t remember her at all.

IV. The Brilliant One in the Sky

She’d always wanted to see the carvings in the sacred temple: My veil no mortal has hereto raised. The cool stone face, at once distanced and comforting. Invulnerable. She’s never been good disguising things or putting up fronts. They come up thin and flimsy and she thinks he must see through them in a minute.

i. She used to be able to hide behind words. ‘Engaged’ should have been so much flimsier than ‘married’. But she doesn’t feel any firmer, any farther from him at all.

ii. Despite what it might seem like, there’s nothing to sneeze at; nothing at improper at all. They have been friends, have seldom touched. He still looks at her like she’s at the center of everything and that’s as far as it goes.

iii. She’s the only one to initiate touch, at moments where she can’t take the space and the gaps between. When she does hug him there is no change rippling through him, no drugs in his system. She can still feel the unsteadiness of how he draws in breaths, even as his hands come up to her back.

iv. She finds her lie in the dull look in Jimmy’s face. He finally throws the word ‘affair’ out as a challenge as she packs the lunches one morning. (She disappears for stretches at a time; he knows she’s not thinking of him as she sleeps, there’s something about her that he doesn’t understand.) Her eyes feels raw but she looks at him steadily until he stabs his fork angrily into his omelet. “I don’t know you.” He says. She knows he’s right.

v. (She’s lost her capacity to lie to herself. She doesn’t deny that she feels that pull toward Davis, like gravity. There’s a mix of desire, comfort and protectiveness that she never tries to define; that she can’t voice because that’s not who they are.)

vi. Maybe she’s always known that she was in as deep in this as he was. Davis spends more and more of his time in a haze of pain, and those moments he is with her everything has a purpose and she feels like she has something. For a little while.

vii. She won’t deny the feelings, something all at once more and less complicated anything she ever felt for Clark. She thinks ‘affair’ is an ugly word, exactly the Jimmy would see it if he could.

V. Mistress of the House of Life
(He lives in a room that’s like a box, but everything about his life is more normal than he can remember. )

i. She forces him to eat, plays music by Bach and Handel, draws him out. All of this, in some hope that it’ll keep him human.

ii. It’s easy to remember to have faith in his humanity when she lingers everywhere in his conscience. It’s the details, how she tucks a pen behind her ear, drops references a mile a minute, reaches out when he least expects it.

iii. They talk plans; she lines up every outlandish idea that can possibly be of help. He watches when she stacks piles and piles of research texts on each other and he catches them before they topple. No one else will have these moments, for however long they last.

iv. Even when she’s gone, she keeps an old red jacket hanging over the couch, a scent he recognizes. It’s easy to close his eyes, fall into the deception. She’s not his. She’s married, and he doesn’t have the right to thoughts like that. Right or wrong, these are the memories he calls on when it begins.

v. She’s never seen him change. He can’t be sure what is quite real with the drugs, what he really sees versus what happens. But sometimes he feels it sparking of some parts of him, an arm flickering with spines; worse the thick heaviness in the back of his skull. He tries, squeezes his eyes shut, goes to a good memory, and remembers that some nights she sleeps with her back to the door.

vi. Pain is better than the oblivion. The drugs don’t cause him quite so much pain now, leave in their wake curiously blank moments to infringe on him, when his mind feels like its going, floating off into oblivion.

vii. It starts out small increments-seconds lost, minutes. He doesn’t think he changes, stays in his place and she’s been safe so far. Oblivion is what he fears most, no conscious control, no pain. If he lets go, these are the moments when he could easily become a monster in human form; when he can’t control what his body will do.

VI. Moon Shining Over the Sea

She’ll have to make a choice soon; cut ties with one world or the other because she can’t live in both. When she does it, everything will change. The world will be turned on its head, and she won’t be swayed by what used to be her life.

i. Lois. Clark. Jimmy. They were her life, once. They can’t always be. Soon, she thinks. Soon. Not just yet.

ii. She leaves the foundation for a trip with Lois, a girl’s night out. Lois is cross at the farm boy again for reasons unknown, but they make it a pact not to speak of anything important. It’s just time with where she is just Lois’s cuz, time she wishes she had to give.

iii. Things don’t go as planned. They end up walking on their own through ugly, un-crowded streets, two girls in impractical shoes. Easy targets for a couple of thugs. She ducks and weaves ungracefully; wallops one with her purse. Lois incapacitates the other with a pair of heels. Stilettos; perfectly fierce…

iv. That becomes Lois’s plan, something to draw attention away from Clark. A dramatic description of her superhuman prowess, a few exaggerations should do the job; maybe even stall the front page. Maybe she won’t ever say it out, but Clark is the center of her life.

v. Chloe thinks that that was her once. (When she drops her as the anonymous source in her latest column, Lois thinks it still is.)

vi. Clark and Lois, Jimmy…They have each other. They’ll be alright. And she has him. (Chloe thinks she is ready now.)

I.
Regardless of what she said, she never really understood Isis; never understood the counseling, what her role meant. But she’s living it now. It’s unavoidable how it all merges; shapes her into the girl who’s willing to go to the ends of the earth. The one who’s going to open that door and face it all.
Life, love, home and death.
Isis. She thinks she almost understands the name.

She who makes the Right Use of the Heart.

Endnotes: Header titles taken from Egyptian mythology, the book of the dead.