bleed

Reccing Notes: This is the failfix fic. It takes everything that Smallville failed to do in the Fail and fixes it brilliantly.
Painpainpain, Davis starting over from nothing again, Davis finding out his Zod parentage, an IC use of the pipe, affirming free will, dealing with the Clark issue, Chloe getting back to her hero and journalism roots, their amazing (and seriously hot) lovestory with all it's challenges..... And somehow the story is more than the sum of its parts. If you read it I suggest reading it more than twice. You will notice something new every time.

by paraxdisepink at xxthesefourwalls
33145 words(EPIC FIC), m/nc-17, doomsday


He’d been condemned to a living hell with no choice but to come out of it a good man again.

I.

The Black Kryptonite had unleashed a monster on Metropolis. She should have thought about that before shoving it against Davis’ chest to keep Oliver from killing him, Clark should have thought about that. But it was too late to think twice and all she could do was stand there and listen while buildings crashed and people screamed outside.

Davis lay passed out on the floor, his blue shirt torn from the transformation she’d stopped in the nick of time. She used to think of him as fragile even when he couldn’t bleed without healing as good as new five minutes later, but he looked completely spent now, something the monster had tossed aside and didn’t need anymore. He’d come face-to-face with it, that had to be the worst part for him when it came to his little parade of horrors. He’d be lucky if he didn’t spend the rest of his life babbling in Belle Reeve a broken man. But even that was better than the alternative, she hoped. Broken had to beat dead.

He stirred, and though hearing was usually the first sense you regained when you came-to, he seemed deaf to the noise outside. “What . . .?” He lifted his head, as though trying to see where everyone had gone and why the Plant was so quiet.

Chloe stopped looking over her shoulder where his apocalyptic alter ego was tearing apart the city and possibly Clark at this very moment. She went cold with the thought. Clark had to be all right. He had to be. “The black meteor rock, it split you from the Beast,” she told Davis. “It’s okay now.”

Except it wasn’t okay. They’d set Doomsday on the loose and Clark and the others had gone to stop him. They hadn’t come back and the destruction still raged outside. Chloe bit hard into her lip. At least they’d freed Davis from that thing. That made for half the day saved and saving the day was what she and Clark did.

Davis sat up, staring at his hands as though expecting to see bone protrusions and grey talons, marveling at his own fair and very ordinary skin. “I’m human.” He looked up at her with the same wonder on his face he’d shown that first night in the alley when she’d stopped him from morphing on Jimmy. “I was sent here to kill Clark and he found a way to save me. Chloe . . .”

Chloe cut him off. Davis wasn’t sent here to do anything other than be a cover for that monster and fade away once it got strong enough to carry out its mission. The thing destined to kill Clark was still out there. “You can thank him later,” she said. “Right now, we’ve got to –“

Something crashed outside. It wasn’t in the distance this time, but close enough to shake the building beneath them. Chloe heard growling, screams, and the sound of a huge fist smashing through concrete and wood. Doomsday. Davis knew it too and got to his feet as the scene outside registered.

“We have to get out of here.”

She stared at the empty facility, the doors leading out. They could run in the direction opposite the noise, but . . . Davis grabbed her arm and tried to pull her forward, but Chloe planted her feet and refused to move.

“What about Clark? We have to help him?”

“You can’t, Chloe.” He shook his head. “Clark has a chance against that thing. He’ll be all right; the guy has to have some kind of plan. But you? You won’t. I’m sorry.”

He sounded sorry, he even looked sorry, nervous for Clark and halfway sick at what the dark part of him was out there doing, but she pulled back from him anyway. Clark was in danger. How could Davis expect her to abandon him? “So what? We’re just going to let that monster destroy him? He saved you.”

That didn’t work. Davis wasn’t Clark; you couldn’t rule him with guilt. He saw what he thought he had to do and he did it, regardless of how he felt. That was how he’d stomached killing over fifty people to keep Doomsday at bay and save everyone else. His dark eyes flicked past her head now to where the shouts and destruction were getting closer, but he grabbed her hand and managed to sound patient.

“Chloe, listen to me. Clark’s going to be fine, just . . .”

“No.” Chloe tried to yank her hand free. She wasn’t some confused accident victim he had to coax into accepting medical attention. This was Clark. But his arms locked around her, lifting her up as he started to drag her away. “Davis!” She kicked him and struggled to break free of him. Funny how she never thought about it before with the beast inside him, but he was strong. His arms were like iron and she couldn’t fight him off. She gritted her teeth and tried though, bracing one foot on the floor as he yanked her toward the back exit while she tried to get her arms loose. Her voice climbed higher when that didn’t work. “Davis, let me go!”

He opened his mouth, but instead of some stupid logical argument about how the best way he could repay Clark right now was by keeping her from getting torn to pieces a choked sound came out. She heard footsteps and the clink of metal. Or maybe she heard those things before Davis made the sound. She didn’t know. His arms loosened and she stumbled backwards. He stumbled backwards. Then he sank to the floor, holding his side and looking up at her with a face that went ghostly pale.

“Davis . . .?” Her own voice became faint. Blood leaked onto Davis’ fingers, bright red on blue fabric and white skin.

“It’s okay, Chloe. He’s not going to take you away again.”

Chloe’s eyes snapped up at the sound of that voice. Jimmy? He was standing behind Davis with a broken metal pipe in his hand, the sharp end wet with blood.

Oh God. She pushed her hair out of her face. This had to be some kind of nightmare. Jimmy was safe somewhere else in the city, and . . .

“Jimmy, what did you do?” The words sounded so small and her eyes went back to the ground. Davis had slumped onto his side again and he was breathing hard, and Jimmy was just standing there.

“He’s a monster, Chloe. Look, I know I haven’t been the great guy lately. But I get it now, all those secrets you kept. You’re a hero like Clark. And being here when it counts has to make up for something, right?”

She stared at him. He’d just stabbed a man. How could he call that being here when it counted? “He was trying to protect me. I cured him. The monster’s out there now!” She gestured in the direction of the noise behind her. She didn’t have time to explain. He shouldn’t be here, meddling in things he couldn’t understand.

Jimmy’s face went as white as Davis’. Whoever sent him here hadn’t told him about the plan to split the man from the monster or enlightened him on all things Kryptonian any better than she ever had, and when he tried to speak his voice was hoarse with shock. “So, what? You love him? Is that it? He’s a killer, Chloe. What happened to us? I never gave up.”

Her stomach twisted with guilt and she looked away. He had given up. He’d shouted to the entire lobby at Metropolis General that marrying her was the biggest mistake of his life. But that was her fault. She’d ruined his life. If she hadn’t gotten infected by Brainiac Doomsday never would have injured him at her wedding. He wouldn’t have turned to drugs, lost his job, any of it. He wouldn’t have tried attacking Davis that night in the alley either and he wouldn’t have attacked him now. Chloe swallowed all that down. She had to keep her head clear. They could talk about the rest later.

“I know what he is, Jimmy, but I was the only one who could stop him. Now, please, get Davis some help.”

Davis was still breathing, thank god, and as long as he could talk he could tell her what to do until real help came. Chloe’s hands started to sweat as she stared down at him. She could forgive Jimmy – he was just trying to protect her too – but it couldn’t end like this.

“Jimmy, go!” she yelled without looking up when he didn’t move. She heard sirens coming for what had to be dozens of victims around the city and it would only take a minute to get someone in here.

Jimmy dropped the broken pipe in his hand and went. Chloe sank to the floor, laying the back of her hand against Davis’ face. He was cold and going into shock. She took off her pink jacket and laid it over him, though it wouldn’t do much good.

“Davis . . .?” She had to talk to him, keep him with her, but a lump had risen in her throat and the corners of her eyes stung. She cared about him. She couldn’t lose him this way. He was supposed to win out against that thing inside him. He was supposed to be the hero again she’d met that day in the fire and smoke.

His eyes opened, melting brown and glazed over, and the fingers of his right hand twitched at the sound of her voice where they pressed against the wound in his side. His lips parted, but he couldn’t speak. Chloe’s vision blurred as the wetness at the corners of her eyes spilled over. He didn’t have to.

“Davis, just hold on okay? Jimmy’s getting help. He . . .” She swallowed, wishing she didn’t sound so strangled. “He didn’t know.”

He nodded, though it seemed to take too much effort. “I know . . .” It came out rough, broken, and his breathing was getting more and more shallow. He wasn’t going to make it.

Chloe laid her fingers against one side of his neck. His pulse was faint. Maybe if she tried to stop the bleeding. How could she be such an idiot? That was the first thing she was supposed to do. He was the paramedic. He was supposed to tell her this. But his head rolled back and his lashes fluttered as though he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

“Davis . . .” She remembered running to him in that Kryptonite cage, wanting to say something and now here they were again and nothing but his name came out. She wet her lips and tried once more. “I wanted to save you . . .”

She hadn’t realized how true that was above everything, the dreams she pushed away, the fear, the need to protect Clark. She’d had other options, but giving up wasn’t one of them and now she had to.

He caught her hand, his fingers cold but sticky with warm blood. “You did.” His eyes opened enough to focus on her face. “All three of you did.” He glanced at the spreading stain of blood along his side. How could he be so calm? He was going to die. But he’d been calm when Oliver was ready to kill him earlier and he’d been calm in asking her to pull that lever weeks ago. This was what he wanted.

**

He’d lost consciousness by the time the paramedics took him away. They didn’t think he’d make it into the ambulance let alone to Metropolis General. He’d lost too much blood. Chloe stared at the dark stain on the ground as they wheeled him out. He and Jimmy were even now. She’d even lied, told the paramedics it was the monster who’d attacked Davis and that she’d just found him there. What else could she do?

Maybe she should have gone with him and been there until the end, but Davis wasn’t the only one who needed her now and she didn’t want to watch him die a second time. Once they recognized him as the Cornfield Killer they wouldn’t let her anywhere near him anyway and he wouldn’t want her arrested as an accomplice.

The noise outside was further away now and she walked numbly out of the Plant toward it down deserted city blocks littered with rubble and the occasional scrap of clothing from a victim already taken away.

The streets were crowded with police and ambulances when Chloe got deeper into the city, covered in debris or blocked by whole timbers or pieces of collapsed buildings. She saw people lying on stretchers, confused and panicking. It was like the day she and Davis had first met, only a thousand times worse. He should have been here, helping, saving people, but he was gone now. All he’d left behind was the dark part of him on a rampage and a hole inside her.

Something crashed through the window of a tall building across the street, a blur of grey spikes and bright red cloth. Clark. That thing had Clark – or he had it. Chloe’s hands went to her middle and she stood frozen, holding her breath.

They hit the ground in the middle of the street right in front of her. People screamed, and Chloe looked around for Jimmy, Oliver, and the others. They were gone, maybe unconscious or buried under one of the many tumbled buildings, or with any luck they’d gotten away. She hoped so. Clark was still alive at least, his face bloody and his clothes torn. He scrambled to his feet where he’d hit the pavement hard and she called out to him.

“Clark!”

She didn’t know what she was going to say or what she could to help him. She just wanted him to know she was here, that she was done playing the invisible best friend and abandoning him for Davis when he needed her. Davis was dead. He didn’t need her anymore, but Clark did. Clark turned to look at her. Blood ran from his mouth and he didn’t bother wiping it away. “Chloe, get out of here! Run!”

Chloe shook her head. She couldn’t do that. This was all her fault. She’d been so intent on doing what she thought was the right thing that she’d let this monster loose on her best friend. She’d failed at saving Davis and now all she could do was stand there and stare while the beast inside him got up and advanced on Clark.

Clark turned to face him, but he had to look up to do it. Clark was tall, but Doomsday towered over him, too tall to have been inside Davis. And the sounds it made . . . she’d seen Davis transform, but this was worse. There was no struggle, no pain in the attempt to hold it back, the thing just growled and swiped at Clark with its huge clawed hand and sent him flying like a child’s toy. He crashed to the ground again whole yards away. Chloe held her breath. He was having trouble getting up again.

The thing descended on him, moving so lightly it may as well have floated over. Clark stared up at it helpless from the pavement. Chloe looked around her where timbers and chunks of concrete lay everywhere. If she could find something to hit the Destroyer with, anything to distract it and give Clark a chance to get this feet and catch his breath.

It was too late. The monster balled its claws into a fist and crouched over him, striking him hard. Clark’s head flew to the side and a stream of blood flew from his mouth. People scattered, and time seemed to slow as a small caravan of police cars and ambulances sped away in a blare of sirens and flashing lights before Clark reacted to the blow. Chloe pressed her hands to her stomach as Clark finally struggled to free the arm pinned under him from the fall and coiled his body to strike back. It took all his strength to do it. God only knew how long he’d been holding Doomsday off before she’d gotten there. He hit Doomsday hard in the chest and he roared, not out of pain but rage that his prey fought back. Clark hit him again, this time with enough force to send him staggering backwards.

Chloe felt a twinge of hope. Clark had superhuman strength and Davis had been right. If anyone had a chance against a creature like this, it was Clark. He was supposed to save them all. But his strength was failing him. Clark swayed as he got to his feet and he was too slow to escape the big grey fist swinging at him like a mace from one of those medieval movies where everything was bloody and savage.

The blow struck his skull this time and took half the life out of him. His blue eyes fixed on the monster whose shadow fell over him, but they didn’t seem to focus the same. The Destroyer hit him again, this time with the other fist and for the first time Chloe could remember Clark looked childish and terrified.

He didn’t give up though. Clark never gave up. He gathered his strength and hit back. He didn’t stop hitting, nor did the beast. It pounded Clark’s skull over and over until his head bobbed from one side to the other like a broken rag doll’s. Chloe didn’t know how many blows it took before it sank in that Clark couldn’t triumph this time, that this was really happening, her worst nightmare unfolding before her eyes. There was something out there stronger than Clark and she couldn’t stop it. There was no Davis to hold it back with a few gentle words and no levers to drench Doomsday with Kryptonite just in time. They couldn’t even send Doomsday to the Phantom Zone anymore. The Widow Luthor’s prophecy was coming to pass and all Chloe could do was watch.

In the end, they both lay on the ground a few feet from each other. Chloe didn’t know who’d struck the final blow, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Clark went down one last time and didn’t get up again, and beside him lay an oversized mass of grey spikes coated red with his blood.

“Clark!”

The world had shrunk to just the two of them and frozen since she’d called out the first time, but the fight must have gone on for a good hour. Chloe ran to him. He lay on his back with his head to one side, his face and hair matted with blood. His red jacket was torn, as though Doomsday had known that jacket was a symbol of hope for the city and wanted to mock him for it, rip that hope to pieces like he did everyone else. Chloe couldn’t even look at that hard grey skin and those glaring red eyes beside her. At least Davis wasn’t in there anymore. At least he hadn’t done this.

Except that he had and she blamed him regardless of what the Black Kryptonite had done. She’d been so selfish. Davis had been created to destroy the world. When had she become so arrogant as to believe she could whisk him away and side-step fate when a god like Clark couldn’t do it? How did she think this would end? She’d told Clark she wouldn’t risk the world for his code of ethics, and that was exactly what she’d done. She’d let Davis charm her into believing in another way, into believing she was enough to make the thing inside him disappear.

“This is all my fault,” she choked out as she sank to her knees beside Clark. She put her hand on Clark’s chest. He wasn’t breathing. Her eyes burned and her tears spilled over. “Clark?” her voice broke. She pulled his head into her lap. “Clark, I’m so sorry . . .”

There was no pulse under her fingers, no way for him to hear her. All she could do was cradle his head and cry.

II.

This wasn’t Hell. There were no screams or flames licking at his flesh or angry faces of his victims before his eyes. This was a hospital room and one that looked nothing like Metropolis General where he used to work.

Someone had drawn a blue blanket over his chest and hooked him up to a morphine drip. No wonder he felt so numb. But how could he feel anything after coming so close to freedom a second time? It was like finally finding an exit after being terrorized in a dark maze for so long only to have the door slammed in your face at the last moment. His newfound humanity meant nothing if he still couldn’t end it all.

Maybe he could override the morphine drip, give himself a fatal dose. That had to work now. Or maybe he’d been taken into custody. He deserved that, if you could take an unconscious person into custody. The meds wouldn’t let him think straight.

But this wasn’t prison. Otherwise he’d be under guard as a known serial killer and wouldn’t have a private hospital room with daisies growing in the window and a gold-framed painting on the wall. Davis remembered the Luthorcorp woman and her interest in him. Had she taken him somewhere, kept him alive to try and force him to fight Clark to the death like some kind of sick gladiatorial match?

He was human now. He didn’t have to hurt anyone. He’d never hurt anyone again.

The door opened, and instead of that red-haired lady who’d blown him up weeks ago or Chloe – his only real human lifeline since – none other than Oliver Queen walked in. He wore a well-cut black suit that probably cost more than Davis made in a year and it didn’t take more than the look on his face to figure out he’d come from a funeral.

“So you made it.” He didn’t sound happy about that. Davis couldn’t blame him. After all, Oliver had almost been his last victim. “We had our doubts.”

Who was “we” and why would Oliver Queen be involved in an effort to save him? He was Chloe’s friend, but . . . “Where am I?” Davis didn’t have the strength to make the question a demand. His voice was hoarse and his throat raw. He’d been intubated. Wherever he was they’d operated on him. His hand moved to his side under the blankets. There was a dressing and a drainage tube, not to mention the smell of antiseptic hospital soap all over him.

Oliver walked around the bed, eying him like he expected to have to subdue him at any moment. “Old Luthorcorp medical facility I inherited from my merger. They used to do experiments on the meteor infected here. The doctors patched you up and from what they tell me you’ll make it.”

Davis turned his head away. Was he supposed to be grateful? He didn’t want to make it. He wanted his nightmare of a life to end. “Why’d you bother? I was ready to die.”

Olive shook his head, not bothering to hide his disgust that the monster thought it had a right to want something. But he dragged out a stool from the corner and sat down, studying him for a long moment as though he couldn’t understand how anyone could see a person in there. He gave up and sighed.

“Maybe I think a peaceful death is more than you deserve. You might believe in Hell, but as far as I’m concerned you need to pay for the things you’ve done.”

How did Oliver Queen know what he believed in? He rarely talked about things like that, even with Chloe. “So, what? You’re turning me in?”

Davis knew the question didn’t make sense the instant it left his mouth. If Oliver wanted to see him behind bars he wouldn’t have had to stash him away someplace. His face was all over the papers. Someone would have recognized him during his trip from the Geothermal Plant to the ER.

Once again, Oliver shook his head. “I’m clearing your name. Jimmy got pictures of Doomsday and what he’s capable of. I’m willing to let the world think those murders you committed were all him. It’s what Clark would have wanted, to give you a second chance. Apparently he thought there’s still some good in you.” He must have read the confusion in Davis’ face, because he looked at the floor and added, “Clark’s dead. He and that thing killed each other in the street.”

Davis stared at him. The morphine had to have done a number on his mind. He couldn’t have heard Oliver right. Clark wouldn’t give his friends that black meteor rock without some kind of back-up plan once the beast inside him emerged. But hadn’t that been Oliver’s objection to Chloe using the thing in the first place? How could Clark be so stupid? He knew he couldn’t stop the monster without dying in the process. His enemies on Krypton had engineered the thing to kill him.

“No. He’s supposed to rise again. There’s some kind of prophecy . . .”

Oliver laughed. “I see you’ve been talking to Tess. She’s a zealot, man, don’t listen to her. Clark’s gone.” He sounded hollow and hopeless. Clark’s death had hit him hard and no wonder. Davis had called Clark a hero the first time they’d met and he hadn’t known the half of it at the time. You had to be a real hero to risk the world just to save the human “camouflage” of your immortal enemy.

“You helped save my life once,” Oliver went on. “I don’t know if that was your way of maintaining your cover, acting like one of us, or if there really is something in you that resembles a conscience, but Clark could have sent you to the future. He could have sent you to another dimension where you’d never hurt anyone else, but he didn’t and he died because of it. I hope you’re worth it.”

Davis shook his head. He wasn’t worth it. Clark should have done what he had to do. “What about Chloe?”

It hurt to say her name and that hurt echoed in his voice, but Oliver Queen didn’t have any pity for him. “She thinks you’re dead and I haven’t told her otherwise. It’s time you did the right thing and gave up this obsession of yours. She needs to get her life back together and let’s face it; she’s done enough for you.”

It was Davis’ turn to look away. He curled his lip under hard and stared down at his hands for a long time. “She didn’t do it for me.” His fingers curled into the blue blanket. “She just wanted to protect Clark.”

She’d proven that back at the Luthorcorp Plant, fighting to get away and run to Clark when he’d tried to get her to run. She wouldn’t have been that frantic if saving him wasn’t her goal all along. I was the only one who could stop him, she’d told Jimmy. She’d never cared for him, never loved him. He was a thing she had to lie to and keep at bay and there wasn’t enough morphine in the world to numb that pain. The truth shouldn’t have surprised him though. He’d known. She’d called out to Clark in her sleep once, Don’t worry, Clark, I won’t let him hurt you, while she lay warm against his chest under the sheets they’d tangled. They’d been together for the first time and she’d felt so willing. He could still hear the sounds she made, feel sweat-slick skin under his and the burn of her fingernails as she started to shake.

It had all been a lie. The morphine was wearing off and Davis wanted to tear something apart, destroy it. It had all been a lie. She’d never loved him. No one would now.

Oliver pushed the button on the drip, though the look on his face didn’t come anywhere near sympathy. Not that it should. “What’d you expect? Chloe to love you back? You haven’t earned it,” he said. “The Beast has a long way to go before he turns into the prince again. If he can.”

They’d left him no choice but to try. Davis couldn’t spit in the face of what Clark had done by blowing his brains out the second he got out of here like he wanted to. Clark had died because of him. He had to honor that. The guy he’d tried to make himself into would have, and doing so might be the only way to hold on to whatever shred of that guy he had left.

Oliver pushed the drip again and the pain started to dull. The weight of his life now didn’t though. He hadn’t been saved. He’d been kept alive to serve out a punishment, to suffer for what he’d done. He’d been condemned to a living hell with no choice but to come out of it a good man again.

III.

Her job as Watchtower swallowed her life. Chloe let it; it wasn’t like she had anything else to pour her heart into these days. Clark had risen from the grave like a true miracle, traveled through time to get Lois back, but on the inside he wasn’t the same. Or maybe she wasn’t the same.

She and Oliver had buried him beside Jonathon Kent in Smallville. That’s where he belonged, or so they’d thought. He’d sold the farm as soon as he returned to them, decided it was time he stopped looking to the past and holding on to a life he wasn’t meant to have.

The old Clark Kent had died. The entire city of Metropolis had seen him fight the monster by now, thanks to Jimmy who had braved the flying rubble and Doomsday himself to snap the photograph Tess Mercer had plastered on the front page of The Daily Planet the very next day. Clark couldn’t run from his destiny anymore and he didn’t want to. He’d come back for a reason, he’d said, and he couldn’t save the world hiding on his farm.

Smallville held nothing for Chloe anymore either. Her Talon apartment was soaked in memories and she couldn’t bear to hear about another meteor freak wreaking havoc with a power they couldn’t control. Once upon a time she’d believed she could save people like that, but she realized now that was arrogance. Chloe Sullivan had to get her head on straight before she could save anyone.

Breaching the two hour commuter gap didn’t bring her any closer to her friends. Oliver still glared at her and blamed her for Clark’s death and she read Lois’ articles about the latest exploits of the Red and Blue Blur as though the city’s mysterious hero was a complete stranger to her. She spent time with Clark as a friend, but whenever it came to save the day stuff she backed away and reminded him she had her own work to do.

Oliver might not have forgiven her for keeping the rest of them in the dark about a major threat to the planet and everyone in it, but he kept her busy. Her job meant meeting up with the occasional contact at odd hours of the night and this time it was Suicide Slums where only an idiot would walk around wearing jewelry or anything else of value.

Her contact was supposedly a Luthorcorp insider. The Widow Luthor had proven elusive lately and seemed to have lost interest in Clark now that he had risen from the dead. She’d stepped up security at the mansion to such a degree Oliver had no luck spying on her either. She was up to something, a Luthor no matter what her name was, and this insider was the only crack they had in the evil empire’s fortress.

Chloe waited behind a run down record store neglected since the world had decided to go digital while cars passed by blasting loud rap music and guys in baggy clothes and hoodies trudged down the street swearing and kicking bottles. She bit her lip nervously. Why couldn’t secret meetings happen in the good part of town?

“Are you her?” a low voice came out of nowhere. Chloe jumped, so busy keeping her eyes on the shady characters ahead of her she hadn’t noticed the lone figure stepping up on the other side of her.

He wore a black trench coat and boots, but in the darkness Chloe couldn’t see much more of him. A round face, a dark beard – that was it. He was more nervous than she was and kept his hands in his pockets as though to keep them from shaking. Chloe swallowed. Not a good sign.

“I work for Green Arrow,” she told him in the toughest voice she could manage. If the thought of crossing Tess was what had him on edge, she wanted him to break into a sweat at the thought of crossing the Emerald Archer himself – though she had to admit she wasn’t the most intimidating operative. “Look, we know Mercer’s been hiding something. You tell us what it is and the Green Arrow will make it worth your while.”

The man’s face went pale and his hands tightened in his pockets. “It’s not a ‘what’ she’s hiding. More like ‘who.’”

That caught Chloe off guard. She expected information on illegal experiments or dangerous weapon deals, not a mystery person. “What?” Oliver Queen had better not have sent her to the wrong side of town in the middle of the night because Tess Mercer had a new guy friend.

Her contact stepped closer and lowered his voice. “It’s a him. Looks like the guy they called the Cornfield Killer only this one’s got a beard. He runs the place now. Mercer does whatever he says. He’s promised to make her some kind of savior and to reward those who serve him.”

Chloe felt sick. Davis had been the Cornfield Killer and he was gone, buried in an unmarked grave somewhere according to Oliver, a grave she couldn’t make herself seek out and visit. He wouldn’t have grown a beard anyway and he wouldn’t sit around playing mad Emperor in the Luthor house, not the tortured Davis she knew. But Davis wasn’t the only tall, dark-haired guy in the world. Plenty of people could resemble him in the basic sense.

“Anything unusual about him? Does he have . . . abilities?”

“You mean from what you call the meteor rocks? They’re poison to him.”

Chloe’s mouth fell open. Another Kryptonian. If this one had promised Tess spoils of war then he had a mission in mind, and if he was promising to reward obedience he probably hadn’t come to Earth for cookies and tea with the humans. Clark had to do something.

Her contact read her mind, moving far too close in the darkness for her liking. “If you think you can stop him he has a message for you.” Sweat shone on his forehead. This new Kryptonian terrified him. Chloe couldn’t blame him, but she’d been through too much by now to let fear get the better of her.

“What message? Whose side are you on here?”

Instead of answering, his hand swept toward her and he grabbed her by the throat. “Kneel,” he growled and pushed her toward the ground. His grip tightened. She swallowed and couldn’t get air in. He was too strong and her knees buckled.

Bare skin scraped the pavement where her skirt didn’t cover her and she looked up with nothing to fight back but the anger in her face, her eyes bulging from the lack of oxygen. His face was blank, shining with sweat though he’d stopped wrestling with his nerves. He’d come to carry out a mission all along. She saw that now. He’d double-crossed Oliver on this new Kryptonian’s orders, and worse, he was going to squeeze the life out of her and leave her dead for Oliver to find.

She tried to scream, but nothing more than a thin sound came out. She tried yanking at her attacker’s wrist with both her hands, but he pulled something from the inside of his coat and her hand fell away when she saw what it was. A knife blade flashed, reflecting the streetlight behind her and all of a sudden her own heartbeat was hammering in her ears.

He brought the knife toward her face, angled it to carve something into her skin. She pulled herself backwards, but the grip on throat came close to crushing her now. Her eyes watered and her hands started to sweat against the pavement. She had to get her foot out from under her, kick him away from her and free herself. But she was getting lightheaded.

Something rustled on the sidewalk behind her and then she froze while the world moved around her in slow motion. Another dark-clad figure shoved her attacker aside. The knife clattered to the asphalt and the hand around her neck loosened. Chloe sank all the way to the ground and barely managed to balance herself with her palm to keep from falling over. She rubbed her throat with her other hand, paralyzed inside but sucking in air. Blood thrummed in her ears and when this second figure yanked her contact back from her and growled at him to run she thought she was hallucinating. Where had he come from? Her heart had pounded so loudly in her skull she hadn’t heard so much as a footstep until he’d come up upon her.

Her hand moved down to slow the frantic rise and fall of her chest and she remembered the last time she’d been rescued from a maniac with a weapon. She could still see the Talon’s striped wall paper, feel the blood trickling hot from the cut on her throat and hear the sounds coming from the darkness, the growls and tearing flesh. Sickness and relief had swam together inside her, but there was nothing like those sounds now, just the rustle of a trench coat and pounding feet as her attacker ran back to his Kryptonian puppet master.

Chloe opened her eyes. There was no massive spiked monster or collection of body parts scattered several feet from each other like gruesome puzzle pieces this time, just a rundown building and a dirty street, and a man in dark clothes turning to her.

“He’s gone.”

He spoke in a whisper, but it carried and she nodded, still too freaked out to move and holding her hand to her skin. She gathered herself enough to take in the man who had saved her. He was tall, not like Clark or Oliver, but tall enough. She couldn’t see much more in the dark beyond the black sheen of a leather jacket and what looked like loose dark jeans. His face she couldn’t see at all. He had his hood drawn up, and oddly enough kept the rest of himself covered by a dark ski mask.

Suddenly her knight’s armor didn’t look so shiny. For all she knew he wasn’t any better than her contact if he had to hide his face. This wasn’t exactly the part of town where guys helped ladies across the street. Maybe he thought she had money. Maybe he’d pushed her contact out of the way to prey on her himself. But he didn’t look threatening when he came toward her, and to her surprise he held out his hand.

Chloe took it and let him pull her to her feet. His skin was warm and her palm felt small in his. She didn’t realize how badly she was shaking from her brush with death until she tried to stand. Her masked friend noticed and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. “It’s okay.” He still didn’t speak above a whisper. “You’re safe now.”

She jumped at his touch, but didn’t back away. It had been a long time since anyone had comforted her, and those exact words . . . Her chest squeezed and she stared hard at the ground, remembering the last person who had said them. Someone may as well have twisted a knife inside her.

None of them were safe in any case, not with an alien conqueror setting up shop in the Luthor mansion and another apocalypse brewing. She couldn’t go through that again, but she had to warn Clark and had to trust that he could get them through it, because the last time . . .

She raised her head. Her new friend had stepped closer and her eyes met his when she looked up. Dark eyes, like a light had gone out of them. She could feel their weight as easily as she could his hands and she swallowed. He’d saved her. All she’d ever wanted was someone to be there when it counted. Her head fell on his shoulder and her fingers curled into his jacket. She felt ridiculous for clinging to a stranger like some hysterical bimbo in a horror movie who couldn’t take care of herself, but you were supposed to throw your arms around someone who’d stopped you from being strangled and carved up in the nick of time. After everything she’d been through, he was lucky she didn’t start sobbing on his shoulder. God knew she’d felt like it more often that not over the past few months.

He was sturdy and smelled like leather and cologne and something familiar, but instead of putting his arms around her and telling her everything was okay he let his hands fall and held himself stiff. He held his breath too, or tried, but the weight of her had an effect on him and he let it out slowly, as though fighting to steady himself. For a moment they stood there like that, until he got the courage to raise his voice above a whisper and spoke in her ear.

“Here because of Clark?”

Chloe froze, and then pushed herself away when that voice registered. She’d lost her mind. This couldn’t be happening.

“Davis . . .?”

He was dead. He’d held her hand while he bled and faded away right in front of her. But he was standing right in front of her now, close enough to touch.

She did touch him, reached right up and tore the ski mask off. There wasn’t much of a moon to see by, but the dark hair, the pale skin, the chiseled features . . . It was enough. She swallowed and felt strangled all over again. She didn’t know what to say.

**

They had to talk. He followed her back to her apartment in his beat-up SUV and she started in on him the instant she slammed the door behind them.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?”

She was yelling, though she realized she should be asking Oliver why he hadn’t told her Davis was alive. Unmarked grave, her ass. Oliver knew how hard Davis’ death had hit her. Maybe he still held a grudge, but that didn’t give him the right to lie. And Davis . . . what, was she useless to him now that he no longer needed her to control the monster? Since when did newfound humanity make a guy forget you existed? That didn’t sound like Davis though and her weird-o-meter told her something else was wrong.

His face had vanished from the Planet’s front page weeks ago and his connection to the cornfield killings had mysteriously vanished too from the county records she’d hacked into after he “died.” That move had Tess Mercer written all over it. What better way to pimp her super-powered savior to the masses than to forget Davis Bloome now that she could print picture after picture of Clark defeating the real monster responsible for the gruesome murders around the city? That made Tess twice as dangerous if someone else was pulling the Luthorcorp strings. But that problem had to wait until Chloe untangled the mess in front of her. Did Davis know he wasn’t wanted anymore? Where the hell had he been all this time? She refused to believe he’d passed the days moonlighting as Tess Mercer’s bearded evil overlord.

The wicked witch might have taken her sights off Davis, but he’d left a hole inside Chloe the day she thought she’d lost him for the second time and that hole had grown bigger and bigger as the weeks passed. He was her friend. Friends protected each other and Clark had a plan to save him. It wasn’t supposed to backfire and cost both their lives in the same day. She could still feel his hand curled around hers, the calm in his face as he’d slipped into unconsciousness. She swallowed and pushed the image away. He’d come back just like Clark and what had happened that day may as well have been nothing more than a nightmare they could finally put behind them.

Davis stood across from her now with his arms folded. He looked the same, brooding and handsome and weighed down, but his demeanor was different and guarded. The Davis she knew would have been relieved to find her again and would have shown up the instant he recovered from his injury. The Davis she knew would have hugged her back earlier instead of standing there with his arms at sides like a coat rack. Chloe bit her lip. Maybe he’d suffered some kind of amnesia and barely remembered her. Maybe Tess Mercer had found a means of controlling him that had worn off after all these weeks.

Chloe braced herself for something like that, some nightmarish story about how he couldn’t remember anything since rising from the dead and came back to himself in the Luthor mansion set up as some kind of conqueror. She definitely didn’t expect the answer that came out.

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

Chloe stared at him. His voice didn’t hold any warmth and didn’t hold any doubt or regret either that he’d let her think the worst because he’d decided all on his own he didn’t need to bother telling her otherwise. Davis wasn’t big on doubt. She couldn’t remember him ever saying anything he didn’t believe and right now that certainty infuriated her.

“How can you say that? I gave up my life to stay with you.”

He studied the floor, but instead of drowning in guilt like she was used to his face hardened like he was trying to keep from crumbling.

“You did it for Clark.” She’d have to be deaf to miss the bitterness in his voice. “You don’t have to keep pretending, Chloe. I’m not dangerous anymore.”

Chloe’s mouth opened. This wasn’t fair. Worse, it was like a re-run of her break-up with Jimmy. She forced a smile just like she had then. He couldn’t have stayed away all these weeks because he was jealous of Clark. That wasn’t like him. What had whoever brought him back from the dead told him? “Davis, sit down. We can talk about this.”

She had gotten used to soothing him. A few calm words and a little physical contact worked wonders whenever the beast within got riled up. Once, the physical contact had gone way past “a little” but that hadn’t had anything to do with Doomsday. She remembered his hands, working a crick out of her neck where she’d fallen asleep crooked in the car. The warmth from his fingers had gotten to her after she’d been alone for so long. She’d rationalized it all in the time between turning to him and pulling his mouth down on hers. They weren’t going to make it sleeping in the same bed every night without crossing thatline. He loved her, but he’d obviously had no intention of laying a hand on her and she’d told herself that sooner or later he’d wonder why she didn’t ask him to.

She’d asked him to, and if she expected a desperate push for release after he’d been scared and horrified for so long it wasn’t what she got. His mouth had been painfully soft trailing along her jaw and down her neck, and by the time her head had hit the pillow and she was flushed and breathing hard she had to face the fact that this wasn’t some favor she was doing a friend in need but a complete surrender on her part, and Davis hadn’t exactly been willing to leave any inch of territory unclaimed.

Her stomach knotted and she felt both ashamed and exposed knowing he was probably remembering the same thing. That had been a different her though, one who acted on impulse and ignored the fact that it hadn’t been the time to lose her head or make Davis’ emotions any more volatile. He’d already torn apart a man to protect her. Davis hadn’t moved now and he definitely looked at her like she was another person. He used to look at her with slavish devotion.

“There’s nothing to talk about. I heard you, Chloe. You called out to Clark in your sleep one night while you were with me.” His voice broke on the last part, and she didn’t miss what “with me” meant. “You said you wouldn’t let me hurt him. You told Jimmy I had to be stopped and Oliver told me about your phone call to Clark. I thought you cared about me, Chloe. I trusted you.”

Her eyes went straight to the floor. She couldn’t have been stupid enough to mutter Clark’s name while she lay curled up in Davis’ arms, and Davis didn’t have to look at her like some kind of cheating whore either – Jimmy had called her that in his e-mails. But how could she not have called out to Clark in her sleep? She still had nightmares of Doomsday ripping him apart and the beast didn’t magically vanish just because Davis could make her call his name. She’d learned that the hard way. But she hung her head all the same.

“Davis, it was complicated . . .”

He shook his head. Nothing was complicated for him. He loved her and he’d believed that could stop the monster inside him. He’d been wrong. They’d all been wrong in one way or another. But couldn’t Davis just be thankful he and Clark were both alive? She was.

“Just tell me why you thought you had to lie to me. Do you think I wanted to ruin your life? You let me believe that you loved me.”

He came closer and Chloe put up her hands as though to fend off his accusations physically. He had it all wrong. It wasn’t as clear-cut as love conquering all. It was . . . “I –“

“Why?”

It took her a moment to realize he’d shouted it. He’d never raised his voice at her before and the long tumble off the pedestal he’d put her on hurt more than she thought it would. But she bit her lip and forced herself to look up at him no matter how he suddenly seemed to tower over her or how hard it was to face his angry dark eyes and wish they would go back to being soft and melting like they’d always been for her before, when they weren’t glaring red and full of violence. That was just it. If he wanted an answer she could give him one. She was tired of everyone pulling her in ten directions and pouring on the guilt for trying to keep her feet planted.

“There wasn’t anything left of you to love!” She shouted back. “The minute I turned my back you were trying to kill my friends. I couldn’t trust you to stay in the basement like you promised and you said yourself my magic touch or whatever it was had stopped working. How was I supposed to love you? You aren’t supposed to care about someone who has a driving need to kill your best friend.”

His mouth opened, then closed, and for a moment Chloe thought the hard truth would get him to stop rehashing the past and get back to the here and now, but it didn’t work. Her words had hurt him like a kick to the gut, she could see that in his face, but he swallowed it down like he’d swallowed every other hardship in his life and stared down at her like she was making even less sense.

“Then why not let Clark send me to that other dimension? I would have gone if I’d known I didn’t mean anything to you.”

She stiffened. Now he was putting words in her mouth? When had she ever said that? “Then you wouldn’t be here!” She shouted it louder than she meant to. His eyelids fluttered, taken aback, and she tried to draw in a long steadying breath but her words still came out in a rush to defend herself no matter how angry he was making her. “I meant what I said, I wanted to save you.” She couldn’t let him spend eternity as that monster. It hadn’t been his fault he had Doomsday inside him. She’d thought that if Clark had long enough to get his conscience brewing he’d come up with a plan to save Davis, and he had. But once again, Davis wasn’t buying a word she said.

“So Clark wouldn’t have blood on his hands, I get it.” He was calmer now, resigned to the fact that everything she’d done had been a deception and a lie. “I’d get why you’d want to protect him from that better than anyone. But level with me, Chloe. Just how desperate for him are you? If Clark hasn’t fallen for you after knowing you this long, throwing your life way isn’t going to make him notice you.”

She slapped him. How could he cheapen what she’d done to a ploy for Clark’s attention? She’d said what she’d said when she’d told Clark goodbye, but what was she supposed to do? Clark had looked so betrayed when she’d stopped him in the Fortress. He’d counted on her to stand by him and she’d skipped town with his enemy. She had to let him know she was still loyal and that she hadn’t abandoned him. And maybe a part of her had wanted him to save her. She’d felt closer and closer to falling off a cliff every moment she spent with Davis. Who could blame her for wanting a good old fashioned superhero rescue from that?

Davis rubbed his cheek, the red mark she’d made stark against his white skin. He didn’t look angry, just quietly crushed that he’d lost something that had never been there in the first place. Chloe knew that feeling. He’d crushed her too when she’d found pictures of his victims and had to face the fact that the heroic paramedic she knew was just a mask for something that belonged in a horror movie.

“I'll take that as my cue to go,” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather coat. “You’re probably wishing you’d never met me.”

He headed for the door without giving her a chance to answer. Chloe pushed her hair out of her face. He couldn’t leave like this, distorting everything and making her out to be some two-faced slut. She grabbed him by the shoulders and had enough adrenaline going to shove him back against the door.

“I got Clark killed because I couldn’t give up on you.”

He opened his mouth once again, but she didn’t want to hear whatever was about to come out and she didn’t want him to go either. She kissed him. She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it and for a moment he just stood there completely still with shock. His mouth was soft though like she remembered and when she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer his lips moved against hers on their own.

It wasn’t gentle. She didn’t need it to be with the way her blood was pumping. She made a hungry sound and pushed him further back against the painted wood, wedged her hand under his shirt and went for warm skin. He kissed her harder, muscles tensing under her touch as her palm smoothed over his chest and down his stomach. She’d touched it all before, seen it all, but not like this with no monster to worry about or Clark to betray. She kissed him open-mouthed with this new sense of freedom and her hand traveled all the way down to his zipper.

He caught her wrist and she pulled back, raggedly drawing in air. His eyes shone when she looked up at him. He wanted her and couldn’t hide it, even when her hand was inches away from any hard evidence. Maybe he hated her for it. You couldn’t love someone and not hate them just a little. She couldn't help hating him for the restraint in his face and the way he wouldn’t let her hand do what it wanted.

“So, what? You’re just going to stop?” She didn’t mean to sound impatient or turn it into a challenge, but all this distortion and hesitation was getting in the way.

He closed his eyes, drew in a slow breath as though gathering the strength to walk away. “This would be a mistake,” he told her, letting go of her wrist.

She could have taken the easy route, plunged her hand into his jeans and touched him until he promised her just about anything. But she put both hands on his shoulders instead and let her eyes hold his. She’d made mistakes and so had he and Clark and the two of them had survived. “Davis, I thought you were dead, just let me have this. You’re only the second guy I’ve done this with. I married the other one.”

He curled his lip under, gauging whether he could believe her or not. She pushed his jacket off his shoulders and the sweatshirt with it, fastened her lips to his again until he seemed to decide that since she was offering he might as well take and gave in. His arm wrapped around her and he spun her just enough to shove her back against the wall beside her.

Her hands had room to move now and they roamed over his arms his t-shirt left bare and down his back while his mouth grew hungrier on hers. Before she knew it her hands were clutching his ass, pulling his lower body closer and sliding her thigh between his legs, driving him crazy with the pressure against his groin. Chloe kicked her shoe off and her hand went under her own skirt when she couldn’t take it anymore and just wanted him in her. She peeled off her underwear and hooked her leg against his hip, panting, “Come on. I want you.”

Davis lifted her up and her legs folded around him. His zipper scratched the inside of her thigh for a brief second before he pushed it out of the way. He still trusted her somewhat if he didn’t ask about . . . precautions – she’d told him the first time, pills, female problems – and her body locked with anticipation when he poised to slide into her. It was so easy, smooth hard heat and an electric rush of exhilaration. His eyes slammed shut and the arms holding her up trembled. His palm gripped the underside of her thigh, pushing her leg up to get deeper as his body went into motion like it was either that or burn alive.

It wasn’t like the first time, with all the careful touches and slow, drawn-out friction. He wasn’t making love to her now, just thrusting into her hard enough to push her back against the wall behind her and groaning each time gravity pushed her all the way down on him. He didn’t hold back either, afraid of losing control and what might happen. He was angry, frustrated by the layers of clothes between them, unsatisfied.

Her arms wrapped around his neck to support herself. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking anymore. Maybe he wasn’t. He thrust into her with enough force for her to feel it tomorrow and she clenched her legs around him, close now. It didn’t take much, a little more pressure and her toes were curling and she clung to his neck with her all strength, whimpering and forgetting to breathe and as her head spun and she felt like she was flying with her feet dangling above the ground. Warmth burst through her and there was nothing but him panting in her ear and choking out a cry like something was tearing its way out of him as his body tightened all over and shuddered hard.

Her head dropped onto his shoulder when it was over and Davis had to brace one hand against the wall to steady himself. She could feel his heart pounding and the dampness of sweat through his shirt where she’d draped herself on him like a coat on a hanger, but once he caught his breath he lifted her off him and set her on her feet like she weighed nothing.

Her legs wouldn’t work and anyone who saw her trying to walk right now would know what she’d been doing. She used to think Davis the type to tenderly carry her at a time like this, and maybe he would have if he weren’t too busy staring at the wall with his back to her, upset with himself for letting this happen. Maybe they’d both come like they were going to die, but encounters like this weren’t him. Another thing for her to feel guilty about.

She sank down on the couch and dragged the throw blanket over her, cold after being so close to the heat of him. Davis zipped his pants up and sat down with her. He looked exhausted and less than thrilled with the fact that now they really had to talk, but he did her the favor of going first.

“You know, Chloe, I never expected you to stop wanting to protect Clark from that thing inside me. I just thought you knew you could be honest with me. But I guess you’re right. I didn’t take a good enough look at myself. I can’t blame you for being scared of setting me off.”

Chloe shook her head. That wasn’t it. She’d been terrified of Doomsday, but not him. She drew in a deep breath. Something else had been gnawing at her all this time and he’d just put his finger on it. “I had lot of time to think while I thought the two of you were six feet under. The truth is, if I’d been more honest none of this would have happened. Clark came up with the plan to use the black meteor on his own. I should have believed in him more. He came back from the dead on his own – he doesn’t need me to protect him when I ended up making things worse. If I’d just admitted I wanted to help you he could have used the meteor rock earlier and banished Doomsday to the Phantom Zone like he wanted. The world would have been better off and neither of you would have died. Who can say the beast is dead for good? And if he comes back for seconds that’s my fault.”

Davis looked away. Clearly he thought he had a monopoly on the blame. “I don’t think your friends would have listened, Chloe. I tried to kill Oliver and Jimmy. I had to sit there holding on to locks of your hair to fight down the rage inside me.”

At least he’d tried to fight. Any normal person would have been a babbling lunatic the second they’d found out they were an alien experiment. “I tried explaining what I could to Jimmy. I told him Luthorcorp did something to you. He said it didn’t matter, that I never gave him any credit in the first place. He’s left town, as far as I know.”

“The two of you couldn’t be friends?”

Chloe shook her head at the surprise on his face. Since when had he become so naïve? “Come on, Davis, you know once you’ve waded into intimate waters with someone there’s no going back to the kiddie pool.”

His face fell and he frowned down at his hands. “Right,” he nodded. Did he have to look like something was cutting him up from the inside? He couldn’t think it would be a good idea for him to vanish into thin air too? Again. “So you’ve been alone,” he said, before the silence got too awkward.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, sighing. Alone, cutt-off, confused. The average thesaurus didn’t cover what she’d gone through these past months. Clark, Jimmy, him – how could any normal person understand? She couldn’t make the three of them understand. “I guess when you try not to be anyone’s Judas you end up looking like everyone’s. Or maybe I need to meet some men who don’t come with a high-maintenance tag.”

She expected a smile, a little dark humor in this mess they’d made, but he only lowered his head and turned up the gloom a notch. He was so good at being damaged. “And by being here I’m making it worse.”

Chloe didn’t know how to answer that. She’d just mauled him to keep him from leaving. But she’d never bothered asking herself the hard questions when it came to him. She could see being here made things worse for him though and salt on his wounds was the last thing he needed.

“Listen, Chloe,” he sighed when she didn’t say anything, “if you ever need anything you know you can call, but right now, I’m going to go.”

She let him. He didn’t exactly look at peace with himself or with her at the moment and she could see he needed the space more than she did. Besides, she had Oliver to call and a Kryptonian conqueror to warn Clark about. How could she have time to sort out anything when she was busy saving the world?

IV.

Davis drove two hours that night out to the Kent farm in Smallville only to learn Clark had sold the place and moved to Metropolis. He looked him up the next night and made himself get out of the car and knock on the door. He didn’t have a reason to stay away anymore. He’d gotten used to avoiding Clark at all costs, terrified of the crippling urge to kill his presence used to bring, but leaving Chloe’s had left him with a compulsion to look Clark in the face. Chloe’s life had revolved around Clark Kent. His life had revolved around Clark Kent long before Davis had laid eyes on him and it still did. Clark had found a way to save him. Worse, Clark was a constant reminder of all the things he wanted but couldn’t have.

He visited Clark’s grave once after he’d gotten out of the hospital, knelt on the grass among the mounds of flowers his loved ones had left and tried talking to him. He’d felt like a god then, ripping Davis’ life apart because he’d been sent to destroy him and yet finding a way to deliver him at the last minute in his mercy. They should have been enemies, but Davis couldn’t hate him. He owed him too much. He couldn’t get the pictures in the papers out of his head either, of Clark battling the monster like some kind of urban Hercules. That was supposed to have been him in there destroying Clark and everything else, but instead Clark had set him free and literally let him get away with murder. If Davis wanted to turn himself in for his crimes, he couldn’t. The DNA evidence didn’t match anymore now that he was human – he’d learned that when the Luthorcorp facility had transferred him to Met General once he was out of the woods. He couldn’t put a bullet in his head either. Clark hadn’t saved him so he could take the easy way out. Davis didn’t miss the irony. He’d been forced into one nightmare because of the other Kryptonian and now he had to live another because he owed it to Clark to make the most of his second chance.

The photos on the front page of The Daily Planet hadn’t stopped with Clark’s death. Within a couple of weeks the Red and Blue Blur was back in action, risen from the dead and saving people like the Mercer lady had predicted. It felt like swallowing glass, reading the words “hero” and “savior” under Clark’s picture and realizing his own life would never be anything but a sick reflection. Davis cruised the streets sometimes looking for someone to help and instead of satisfying the monster’s bloodlust like before he did it to quench the pain – anything to stop thinking about throwing himself from a building at the end of the day.

It must be easy for Clark, having the better life lauded on the front page instead of skulking in the shadows. He’d never had to look in vain for redemption or pray to save a soul he might not have while he decided to play God and soak his hands in blood because he’d been forced into an existence that didn’t leave him any choice, at least until Chloe had saved him in that alley. Love could heal anything. Davis believed that. Why else was his life so empty when that was the one thing he’d never had? But Chloe couldn’t love him; for her he was an addiction that had gotten her friends hurt. A part of him doubted she loved Clark or Jimmy either, but for one reason or another she needed the three of them to believe in her devotion.

He took a deep breath, wondering when she’d become such a fraud and whether he was to blame. He tried to remember what it was like not having anything to feel guilty about. Even before he knew what he was there’d been the homes he ran from, the ones with moms who didn’t drink and dads who didn’t use their fists to make their point. He remembered hiding from them on the streets praying for forgiveness knowing they were worried half to death searching for him. It seemed like he’d spent his life asking forgiveness for one thing or another and now it was ruining Chloe’s and mass murder.

The door opened and Clark poked his head out, still in his dress shirt and tie from work. “Davis.” He didn’t sound thrilled to see him, and those baby blue eyes that looked a little less innocent after having the life beat out of them gave him a suspicious once over. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Clark might be caught up in doing the right thing but he’d made it clear he didn’t want anything to do with him.

“You shaved.” The door creaked wider before Davis could answer and none other than Oliver Queen appeared at Clark’s shoulder.

Davis braced himself. Here they went again.

“What?” He touched a hand to his cheek. “I always shave.” His job required it and he made a point of keeping himself as clean-cut and respectable as possible, the complete opposite of someone who’d spent too many nights on the streets. Davis had to hand it to himself. He was good at being his own camouflage.

Oliver didn’t agree. “You sure about that? I find it hard to believe you have an evil twin.”

Davis looked from him to Clark. The only “evil twin” he knew of had been blown up and buried in a hole underground somewhere by Oliver himself or Bart Allen or another of Chloe’s exceptional friends. “What’s he talking about?”

Clark shot Oliver a look and opened the door all the way. According to Chloe they didn’t always get along. “Maybe you should come inside.”

Davis hesitated. Something was wrong and he hadn’t come here for an interrogation. But he followed them in anyway and looked around as Clark locked the door. Apparently in giving up the farm Clark had upgraded himself to a modern lifestyle. He had a flat screen TV in the living room and his suit jacket slung over the back of a barstool. Oliver Queen had made himself at home there. An open bottle of Scotch stood on the counter without a glass in sight. Davis wondered why he was here on a Friday night. He had a reputation as a party guy. He’d learned that when he’d met him on his death bed feverish from an unknown poison.

Oliver made no move to reclaim his seat at the bar. He and Clark stood shoulder-to-shoulder and stared at him like a dog they couldn’t trust to “stay” and Davis didn’t know what else to do but shove his hands in his pockets and face them like the guilty party he was. Both guys were taller than him and Clark wouldn’t have any trouble throwing him around anymore if he wanted to. He definitely wasn’t about to invite him to sit down, which meant Davis should say what he came for and let them get back to whatever they were doing.

“Look, I didn’t realize you had company,” Davis told Clark. “You saved me and I never got to thank you.”

Clark didn’t look the least bit touched, let alone convinced. “You’re just coming by after all this time? No one’s heard from you in weeks.”

What did he expect? Him to submit himself for tagging like some wild animal they needed to monitor? But Clark was right. He’d made a point of not showing his face and of staying out of certain people’s way, until last night, and for some reason his timing had both guys on edge.

“Yeah . . .” Davis folded his arms and studied the carpet at his feet, fighting the urge to pace. “I ran into Chloe and it got me thinking it was time I came by.”

He’d tried everything he could to get her out of his head – a cold shower, sleep, driving for hours on gas he couldn’t afford. None of it worked. He thought seeing Clark would put it all in perspective and get him back to moving on like he’d been trying to do for the past few weeks. Chloe didn’t want to feel anything for a man who was everything Clark could never be. But facing him all Davis could think about was that she’d never been with Clark, and as much he tried not to be the guy who judged his worth according to where he put his dick that meant something. It didn’t matter though. Chloe didn’t want it to mean anything and if he was lucky he had yet to meet that someone who did – if he could ever earn that, like Oliver had said.

At the moment, Oliver was glaring at him. “I thought we agreed to give the fatal attraction a rest.”

Anger bubbled up in him and Oliver was lucky Davis didn’t have the beast in him anymore. What right did Oliver have to play big brother protector? Chloe worked for him. It was his fault she’d been attacked in that alley. “She almost got throttled to death in Suicide Slums last night and God knows what else. I couldn’t let that happen.”

By the expression on Clark’s face Davis guessed Oliver had left out the part about putting Chloe in danger. Then again maybe Oliver didn’t know. Chloe wasn’t the most forthcoming person on the planet and didn’t seem to care about her own well-being when it came to what she thought she had to do. Why else would she throw everything away to keep him and Clark apart or marry a man she didn’t love? But if Clark agreed with him he wasn’t about to show it in front of his pal.

“What were you doing in Suicide Slums?” His questions weren’t getting any friendlier. Was everything out of his mouth an accusation?

Davis went back to examining the floor. What better way to drive the knife in then to be asked that question by the Red and Blue Blur himself? “I drive the streets sometimes,” he admitted without raising his head, “looking for someone I can help. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. I know what goes on.” He knew things spoiled kids like Clark and Oliver Queen couldn’t imagine.

Oliver shook his head. “And by help do you mean mutilate criminals and bury them in a cornfield?”

Davis curled his hands in his pockets. Why had they bothered saving him if they didn’t think him any better than the beast inside? But he’d tried to kill Oliver. He deserved all the hate he threw at him. He sighed anyway and sank down onto Clark’s couch without being asked. “It’s different now. There used to be this rage and this need that made all the killing make sense. Now, whenever I think about it I just . . .” He closed his eyes and saw it all again, the bodies, the blood, himself growing calmer and calmer as the beast got what it wanted and receded back under the surface. He felt sick.

The monster twisted him. He used to get so angry at work bringing in some kid hit by a stray bullet because a couple of drug dealers couldn’t take their beef somewhere else or some poor girl with her head bashed in because she wasn’t making her pimp enough money. Night after night, victim after victim. Someone had to die, why not the people who hurt them? It had made so much sense. He could be some kind of hero, damning his soul to save everyone else. Why would God give him power like that if not to smite all the wickedness around him?

Clark’s face softened when Davis let his head fall in his hands and he sat down next to him. “You weren’t yourself.” He said it stiffly, but seemed to mean it at least.

Davis shook his head. That was the nightmare of it, facing the fact that the murderer inside was “himself” and that the part of him that cared and felt horror and remorse didn’t have control once the beast got stronger. Only Chloe brought that part out after a while, but that had proved to be just as much of an illusion as everything else he thought he knew.

“And maybe you still aren’t.” Oliver came around and perched on the arm of the couch, scotch bottle in hand. He had him cornered now and he knew it. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve been doing at the Luthor Mansion with Tess Mercer these past weeks?”

What? What would he want with Oliver’s psychotic girlfriend? “I haven’t set foot in the Luthor Mansion since she blew up my car and kidnapped me.”

“Then who’s her new Kryptonian friend?”

“Kryptonian?” They couldn’t mean him? He was human now. Davis pulled up one corner of his shirt and twisted so Oliver could see the scar where Jimmy had tried to run him through with a broken pipe. “I wouldn’t have this if I still had the darkness in me.” He healed faster than most people and he was stronger too, but with the beast inside him he’d recovered from full-body third degree burns in a matter of hours, not to mention bleeding to death from metal pole shoved through his chest. It’d taken him two weeks just to walk again after Jimmy had tried to kill him.

Clark looked the mark over, faded and pink now. “He has a point.”

Reluctantly, Oliver sighed and decided to explain what the hell his problem was. “Chloe called me last night. She works for me. The contact she was supposed to meet told her Tess Mercer has been taking orders from someone at the Mansion who looks just like the Cornfield Killer if you add a beard. That’s you.”

The contact who’d almost squeezed the life out of her? Chloe wasn’t the only one who wasn’t streetwise around here. Who the hell sent a girl like her to Suicide Slums by herself?

“Whoever this guy is, he’s obviously Kryptonian,” Clark chimed in. “The guy told her the meteor rocks make him sick.”

“Well don’t look at me. I’m immune to the meteor rocks as far as I know.”

Clark nodded. He remembered. He’d talked about finding another way, but all Davis had wanted was peace. The Kryptonite had rained down and he’d felt so close. Who’s going to meet me he’d remembered asking in that alley as a kid, and then she was there kneeling beside him through the glass, crying her heart out trying to touch him and let him know how she felt. His whole life he’d felt like that child waiting for someone to find him and she’d been the one, or so he’d thought when he’d seen her through the smoke that day, taking care of Bette who was lost just like him. But that was in the past now and Clark was talking again.

“So if you’re telling the truth, then what Kryptonian would look just like you with a beard? Someone who’s trying to make Tess Mercer a savior.”

Davis shook his head. Clark was the one with all the answers about Krypton. But then he smoothed his shirt back down and remembered what he’d been thinking about a moment before. Lois claiming to be his mother and stabbing him through the chest.

You’re the spitting image of your father. She’d sounded so pleased.

“Oh my god . . .” Davis put a hand over his mouth.

“What?” Oliver and Clark were staring at him.

“Lois. She came into the ER one day raving about spaceships and Krypton. She said I was her son and that I was the exact image of my father – someone she called ‘Zod’.”

Clark’s face went stony. The name rang a bell. “Zod. Why didn’t you tell someone?”

He had. He’d written it all in a letter to Chloe, the one he’d never gotten the courage to deliver. But Clark didn’t need to know that. “Look, Clark, I didn’t know what to do. I thought Lois was hungover. Next thing I knew I was lying in a pool of my own blood perfectly fine and thought I was going insane. What was I supposed to do? Call one of you guys up talking about aliens and other planets and say ‘hey I’ve just been impaled and come back from the dead. By the way, does the name Zod mean anything?’”

Clark didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “You could have told Chloe what Lois said. We could have helped you. Doomsday would have been a whole lot easier to defeat back then and Jimmy wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

Davis pressed his lips together. He could have done a lot of things. He could have asked for Chloe’s help sooner and avoided killing over fifty people. Did Clark think he enjoyed living every moment of his life second guessing his actions over the past few months? But Clark was right. He should have said something. Chloe would have known what to do. She helped the meteor infected. He could have at least asked her if he might be one of those. “I’m sorry.” She’d said she couldn’t see him and he’d wanted to respect that.

“Look, nevermind,” Clark shook off should have and could have. “What else did Lois say?”

“She said that her and this . . . Zod made me from their DNA because they couldn’t have children – theirs and the most violent creatures they could find. She told me I was a weapon. I didn’t believe her, but Clark . . .” Davis looked up. “This Zod, who is he? I don’t know anything about him.”

Clark’s face told him everything in a heartbeat and Davis’ stomach turned when he said, “He was a conqueror. He started a war to rule Krypton that ended up destroying our home world.”

“And this is my father?” He used to imagine his father as some deadbeat who knocked up his mother and couldn’t do the right thing, not some alien Hitler responsible for the destruction of an entire planet.

Oliver laughed like he was being naive. “What other kind of father makes a thing like you.”

Davis stared down at his lap. He had a point, but he’d thought maybe the thing inside Chloe was responsible, that maybe his father hadn’t known what he’d done. Who would make a weapon they couldn’t control? Who would . . .?

Oliver pushed his bottle of scotch into Davis’ hand as Clark kept talking.

“The Science Council on Krypton had his body destroyed and my father banished his essence to the Phantom Zone for his crimes. I opened the portal when I tried to send you there. He must have escaped. But let’s say you’re telling the truth. How did he get his body back? That’s impossible.”

Davis shook his head. The concept of “impossible” had lost most of its meaning over the past few months. He let the bottle slide between his lips and took a long swallow. He didn’t drink, the smell alone made him sick with memories, but since nothing else dulled the pain lately he may as well give it a try. At least Oliver’s poison tasted better than the cheap stuff he’d find around the house as a kid. “And now what’s he trying to do? Take over the world?” That had been his mission, kill Clark and destroy everything else. Davis poured back another mouthful and swallowed hard.

“Didn’t Chloe tell you anything about him? The two of you spent so much time together.”

“Yeah . . .” Davis let the bottle swish and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. The stuff would go to his head in no time if he kept on like this, but at the moment he didn’t care. Why did Clark have to bring up Chloe? He may as well have cut him open and poured Oliver’s liquor on him. “We never talked about anything like that. Actually, I’d rather not talk about her at all.”

God knew he’d spent the whole night thinking about her. He couldn’t believe in her, but he couldn’t get the warm wet sensation of her out of his mind. At least he didn’t have to worry about her pretending that. It didn’t matter though. He should have stopped her before things went too far and right now she was probably at home agreeing with him.

For the first time, Oliver looked halfway sympathetic as Davis sat there and drank like every other heartbroken guy in the universe. “We’ve all been there.” He sighed. “Let it go, man.”

“I’m trying.” Davis didn’t plan on seeing her again. He was a complication she didn’t need and Oliver was right; she’d done enough for him. Besides, he was a long way from being in a position to have anything to offer anyone. “I’m trying to get my life back together.”

He’d taken steps, small ones, but he didn’t look like he had anything together now sitting between two guys he barely knew with a bottle in his mouth and his head starting to spin. Clark at least didn’t fault him for it though. He watched him with a solemn face as though trying to imagine where he’d be in his shoes. He gave up and offered, “You’re saving people again. That’s a start.”

Davis sighed. He used to think that’s who he was, someone who saved people and made the world a better place, not some invulnerable weapon spawned in a lab by a maniacal warlord. Nothing was stopping him from being the man he wanted to be anymore. The man he wanted to be had dreamed about meeting his parents time after time, but he’d never asked himself what he’d do if he found out one was a conqueror who might endanger the whole planet. It was yet another question no one would think they’d ever have to ask themselves. He should be used to those by now.

V.

Zod was nothing like Doomsday despite being the architect of his mindless destruction. If you wanted to stop the good Kryptonian general you had to find him first, not an easy task when Tess Mercer kept evil overlord central strictly off limits.

At least they had a heads up when it came to Zod’s game plan. He wanted to destroy the world and remake it in his image and he’d managed to dupe the Luthorcorp ice queen into believing she was integral to the process. She’d turned over The Daily Planet to none other than Perry White in order to make Petain-style collaboration a full-time job and God only knew how many Kryptonian artifacts Lex had left her to help Zod on his apocalyptic crusade. Clark had yet to figure out how he’d magically corporealized in the first place.

Lois complained non-stop about her new editor, when she wasn’t too busy dreaming of an exclusive with “the face of the Metropolis Monster” now that she knew Davis was alive and exonerated of the cornfield killings. Chloe had urged her to leave Davis alone, only for Lois to decide there was something equally newsworthy about her lingering respect for a tortured man’s privacy, pushing her for details about life on the run with an alleged serial murderer. Chloe tried to imagine it all in print. I told him everything would be okay about every ten minutes and counted ourselves lucky if he didn’t rip anyone apart by the end of the day, and whenever he’d turn the water on for a shower I’d huddle on the floor and cry. I didn’t want this, but I couldn’t turn my back on him. Apparently I couldn’t keep from lying on my back for him either. Wouldn’t Davis love that on the front page?

Lois made it out to be such a harlequin novel with her visions of headlines about the wronged man and the woman who believed in him that Chloe had accused her of writing for the wrong paper. Lois ran into him in Metropolis though, at a coffee shop with a skinny redhead. Apparently he was serious about moving on this time and a little less than charming when Lois approached him for her story.

Chloe curled up with a blanket and an awful Lifetime movie that night, and the hole Davis left inside her grew a little bit deeper. They’d spent plenty of quality time in front of the TV after Jimmy had called it quits. He used to make her laugh with his running commentaries on whatever ridiculousness the remote landed on and his insistence that his boys-only sci-fi shows contained layers of meaning. She remembered when she’d first met him and how digging into the deep dark mystery of Davis Bloome had completely fascinated her. She’d never really gotten there, not with the monster in the way.

She thought about picking up the phone, but she could imagine the voice on the other end hesitant and guarded and only agreeing to come over because he was kind and cared for her too much to say no. He’d hate himself and she’d be taking advantage of him. Besides, he had a right to put painful things in the past and get back to his life.

Chloe definitely had to focus on hers and on stopping Zod. She hacked her fingers off searching out the goings on at the Luthor Mansion for Oliver and when that led to yet another dead end the Emerald Archer got a better idea. He recruited the Justice League to kidnap two Luthorcorp security guards.

Clark didn’t approve of Oliver’s methods, but once their prisoners were subjected to Dinah’s super-sonic scream for a half hour they gave him something he could use. Zod planned to resurrect Doomsday from the rubble to do his dirty work, and after wasting time and Luthorcorp money drilling underground he wasn’t pleased to find the place empty. Clark had taken precautions against Doomsday’s escape a long time ago, a small victory for the good guys but a long way from stopping Zod for good. He wasn’t stupid and would devise a new plan to do his spring cleaning of the genocidal variety soon enough.

Chloe spent her time keeping up with Oliver’s operatives and monitoring the globe for anything out of the ordinary that screamed “alien takeover.” She uncovered a Luthorcorp purchase in the middle of the night involving an unusual quantity of explosives, but when she ran with it to Oliver at the Watchtower she didn’t get further than inside the door.

A dark-haired figure pinned him to the wall with a hand around his neck, letting his feet dangled above the ground. Oliver’s eyes shot toward her and he opened his mouth to scream at her to run but nothing came out. He couldn’t breathe. His face was already scarlet from lack of air. Chloe remembered her own encounter that night in the alley weeks ago. This guy didn’t have a knife, but he didn’t need one if he was strong enough to hold a big guy like Oliver off the ground. It didn’t matter how strong he was though. She had to do something.

“Let him go!” Chloe could have kicked herself the instant the words left her mouth. She shouldn’t have given herself away. She could have snuck up on him and attacked him from behind. But it was too late.

The figure prepared to snap Oliver’s neck like a twig turned to her, and an iceberg formed in the pit of her stomach when she saw his face. He had a beard just like that nutjob of a contact had said, but the rest . . . the same handsome features and white skin. Her only consolation was that Davis would have to age a good twenty years before anyone could call him an exact copy. But even if he did, Davis could never wear a face like that.

Zod had the same dark eyes, but where Davis’ were either melting or haunted his were completely unfeeling. He stared down at her like he really was a god and she some kind of vermin so ridiculous for overstepping her place he couldn’t bother getting angry.

“You think you can stop me?” At least he didn’t sound like Davis. His voice was deeper, harder, and Davis had never sneered at her like a villain in a bad movie.

Chloe pushed her hair out of the way, surprised her hands weren’t sweating. She had to forget Davis. Zod shouldn’t be so smug. If she had a meteor rock she could stop him, but right now she had to distract him from squeezing the life out of Oliver.

“Clark can.” She drew herself up and tried to pour every ounce of conviction she had into her words. “He’s beaten you before.” If anything would distract him it was Clark.

It didn’t work. Oliver made a rasping sound as Zod’s face hardened with a look of disdain that could have withered all the crops on the Kent farm. “Clark,” he shook his head, “an Earth name.”

Chloe swallowed. Oliver’s eyes were bulging. She had to think of something fast, get this Kryptonian psychopath to turn his anger on her instead. Her heart was racing and she had to clench her hands where they wanted to shake. Zod could kill them both in a heartbeat if he wanted. He could turn and use his heat vision to burn her alive. But she’d faced Brainiac and Doomsday. She couldn’t be afraid of him. Doomsday. Her courage bounced back now that she had something to fight with. Doomsday would definitely get Zod’s attention.

She took a step closer. “If you let Oliver go I’ll tell you where you can find your son!”

Zod let Oliver fall. He turned his whole body to her this time and it took everything Chloe had not to back up a step, let alone run from the place as fast as she could. She remembered when looking Lionel Luthor in the eye had taken all her courage, but this monster was worse than Lionel and all the bloodthirsty conquerors in the history of the world put together. He’d made Doomsday, and he was the closest thing to the Devil she’d ever lay eyes on.

“Tell me,” he commanded, “and I’ll count you among those who served me well when the time comes.”

Oliver scrambled up from the floor, rubbing his bruised throat and gulping in air. “Don’t tell him anything, Chloe! Clark will deal with him.”

Chloe ignored him. She wasn’t an idiot and he should be running to get Clark anyway, or a meteor rock if he knew where to find one. She didn’t take her eyes off Zod. She could tell him so much and that actually gave her a sense of leverage. She’d set his real son free with the black meteor rock so he couldn’t live Zod’s nightmare anymore. That had to count for foiling his plans. But it was his other half Zod wanted. She didn’t have anyting to do with foiling that plan, but she held her head up anyway.

“Clark sent him to a place you’ll never find him! He doesn’t exist in this world anymore.”

That unnervingly familiar face twisted. He didn’t know she was telling the truth – he’d never heard of the Legion Ring or guessed that his favorite blood enemy could travel to the future and no amount of Luthorcorp money would get him there. He grabbed her by the front of her jacket, and her only thought before she went flying was surprise that his eyes weren’t glaring red.

Glass shattered and she landed on her side, sharp pain and hot blood spreading down her chest. Her fingers pressed weakly into the pavement beneath her in a dazed attempt to push herself up and run, but the pain washed over the rest of her and she couldn’t move. She sucked in a breath and gathered the courage to look down at herself. Blood soaked through her tan jacket and a red-stained shard of glass lay next to her that must have broken when she hit the ground.

Zod would probably kill her now, or Oliver still inside. But when the glass doors creaked open it wasn’t Zod who emerged and he was no where that she could see. She shut her eyes and choked on a small sound. She tried to breathe, but her chest wouldn’t expand all the way. Oliver swore, his shadow falling over her, and then she heard the clicking of keys on his touch-screen phone. He dialed more than the customary three numbers.

Everything went into slow motion as he waited for someone to pick up. He paced in front of her and switched the phone from one ear to the other and after what felt like forever barked, “Chloe needs you help,” at whomever he got on the other end. It was a man; Chloe could hear that much when Oliver dropped down beside her. Bart or Clark maybe – someone who could speed her to the hospital. The voice had questions, but Oliver didn’t have the patience. “Look, she’s hurt pretty bad, so if you want me to believe a word you say then you’d better get over here. You know where Chloe works. ”

He shoved his phone in his pocket and turned to her. Maybe he’d spent the past few weeks mentally flaying her alive for Clark’s death, but his face was pinched above her in the streetlight now. “You’re going to be okay, Chloe.” He tried to put on a brave face. “Just hold on.”

Chloe bit hard into her lip and concentrated on keeping her breathing steady. It was getting harder, exhaling again, but it was the only way to keep her mind from the pain. She could see the blood soaking through her jacket as well as Oliver, not to mention the broken glass around her. The shard beside her had pierced her chest and broken off when she hit the pavement. She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew that was bad. And what about Zod? Someone had to find him.

She had to lie still and focus on staying conscious. Clark or Bart would whoosh in soon and they’d get her help. She was getting light-headed and even Oliver a few inches away seemed distant and her chest felt tighter and heavier each time she tried to draw in air. Her fingers dug into the concrete, her vision tunneling darker around the edges. Where were they?

After a small eternity of staring at that shard of glass and her own blood on the dark pavement, sirens blared and red and blue lights flashed as an ambulance peeled into the parking lot. Great. Either one of her friends had called 911 or someone else had heard her crash through that door.

The sirens stopped and she heard running feet. They halted abruptly and a familiar voice breathed, “Oh my god . . .”

Davis. Had she started hallucinating? Sweat stung her skin from the pain and the effort to breathe, but she turned her head as much as she dared. Silver reflective tape flashed on his navy blue uniform as he hurried toward them in the dark. He had his job back and she’d had no idea – a stupid thought while she was lying there bleeding and struggling to get air in.

He threw his red medical bag on the pavement and dropped to his knees in front of her. Chloe looked up into that chiseled face for the second time that day. This time it was clean-shaven and his dark eyes weren’t relentless and cold, just tired and shocked and Oliver didn’t make things any easier.

“Your father did this,” He tried to burn holes in Davis with his eyes as Davis looked her over, “right after he tried to choke the life out of me. Guess we know which parent you took after.”

Davis squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard. Chloe wanted to tell Oliver to shut up. Obviously he’d come to help and with the pain searing through her and the pressure in her chest that only let her breathe in shallow rasps that left her more and more light-headed she couldn’t take Oliver’s anger right now. Davis’ face had gone a shade paler; he knew what was wrong and it didn’t look good. He glanced at the jagged piece of glass on the concrete, ignoring what Oliver had said. “Tell me you didn’t pull that out.”

Oliver shook his head and Davis grabbed a pair of shears from his bag, cut away the top of her jacket and shirt until there was nothing but bloodstained skin and the red edge of her bra peeking out. Chloe closed her eyes, remembering a dim motel room and his hands taking their time undoing the buttons on her top while his mouth smothered hers. She remembered his face practically glowing with love as he pulled back to look at her. She blinked that away. All that openness was gone now. His features were hard in the darkness where he bent his head, and worse, he didn’t say a word to her. So much for keeping the patient calm and promising everything would be all right.

But she wouldn’t have understood him if he tried. Her vision went darker and she saw his mouth moving where he raised his head and looked past her, but whatever came out sounded ten miles away. She felt like she was sinking into a hole in the ground. She tried drawing in more air, but she couldn’t let it out again. Her chest was frozen.

Someone else had come up behind her and Oliver was holding a flashlight now as Davis pushed something into the wound in her chest. He was agitated and talking again and so was Oliver, but not to her. A pair of hands held her steady as Davis snatched something else from his bag and then the blackness rolled over her

**

The sound of sirens brought her into the light again. She could breathe now and the searing pain in her chest was distant. Her head felt like someone had scooped her brains out and the fact that she was moving at what might as well have been light speed didn’t help.

It took her a minute to realize she was in an ambulance strapped to a stretcher with a collar around her neck and a pillow propping her up. She glanced down, thankful she wasn’t showing her bra to the world anymore. Victoria’s Secret model had never made her list of career aspirations. They’d thrown a blanket over her and she curled her fingers into it as her groggy mind pieced the situation together. Not they. Davis.

He sat on a little stood beside her and she could barely turn to look at him with the collar stabilizing her neck, let alone bring him into focus with the whirling in her head. He’d taken his jacket off and he looked almost soldierly with his shirt buttoned up and tucked in. For a moment she just stared at him. She hadn’t seen this Davis in a long time. The uniform and the clean lines of the face above it looked so right on him she really could believe the monster was part of a nightmare and the guy who saved people had never gone away.

The hard reality was in his face though. He looked exhausted from much more than his twelve hour shift and if everything over the past few months had been nothing but a nightmare he would have reached for her hand the instant she opened her eyes. All she got was a frown when she couldn’t stop blinking to keep him and the world in focus.

“I gave you something for the pain,” he told her. “Just relax. Met General isn’t far away.”

Did that mean don’t talk and let him pretend she was just another patient? The stiff words weren’t exactly the bedside manner she expected from him – he cared about his patients. But they couldn’t talk about anything that mattered anyway. Someone else was driving – someone Chloe couldn’t see facing the back door – and he obviously had his professionalism to maintain. Either that or his distance. He’d gotten pretty good at the latter these past weeks.

“Right. I’ll just lay here and enjoy the regular flow of oxygen.” And feeling like she’d had a dozen of Lois’ martinis and gone on a roller-coaster ride.

She tried to smile, but Davis wasn’t in the mood. She remembered the last time they’d been this close and the sheer frantic heat of him as he pushed for release. That frustration was gone and he looked so strained. Everything with him used to be easy. He sighed though and set the stethoscope he was holding on top of his jacket on the floor.

“Yeah well I had to stick a needle in your chest to keep you from crashing. You’re headed straight to the OR. Your lung’s punctured and you’re looking at a few days with a tube in your chest.”

Okay, she’d rather not know that yet. She was getting squeamish in her old age. She went for another smile. “You and I have a serious issue with needles we need to resolve in the future.”

She shouldn’t have said that. Maybe he didn’t want his partner in the driver’s seat to know they had a past. But if he’d answered a phone call from Oliver to come help her his partner had to know something.

Davis’ expression didn’t change. Maybe reminding him of the time she’d thrown herself at him thanks to the alien computer inside her head wasn’t the best tactic either. “It’s nothing to joke about, Chloe.”

Her wound or the past? It didn’t matter. She didn’t miss the point in her usual defense mechanism of making light of things. “You probably saved my life.”

His face told her there wasn’t a “probably” – she didn’t have to be a regular on ER to know what crashing meant – but he lowered his eyes. “It’s what I do,” he sighed, with a painful sense of irony.

Chloe wanted to shake her head, but she couldn’t. It’s who he was and it’s who she’d wanted to save, the reason Clark wouldn’t forgive himself if he didn’t save him and the reason she couldn’t really love him with the monster inside; it would mean having to love the thing that took him away.

The sirens shut off as they sped into a parking lot and Davis didn’t say anything else. His partner opened the back doors and as they wheeled her out Chloe got her first good look. It was a woman, her hair tied back and definitely red in the light. She didn’t say a word to her or Davis; the two of them hurried Chloe through the ER entrance where a half dozen members of the emergency staff descended on them in dark blue scrubs.

They were calling for a doctor and to prep the OR. Chloe bit her lip, remembering what Davis had said about surgery. She’d never been under the knife before, and though she’d die before admitting it aloud cold anxiety swept over her the drugs couldn’t quite numb. She didn’t hear Davis’ voice anymore throwing around medical words that drove home the reminder that he’d had a profession and a life before Doomsday had taken over. She couldn’t turn her head to see where he’d gone either after he handed her over. He was the only familiar figure in the flock of people surrounding her. Someone could have squeezed her hand and told her that going in to the operating room didn’t mean she wouldn’t come out.

VI.

He’d stood in the ER dozens of times wondering whether a patient would make it, more than a few of them mauled by the monster inside him worse than Jimmy. This was different. Chloe would make it, but she was the last person he wanted in the back of his rig. His father had thrown her through a glass door. If the hospital staff was uneasy about working with the alleged Cornfield Killer they would run if they knew what he really was – the lab experiment of an alien conqueror.

His quest for a human life was a joke. He was what he was.

They got a few more calls – a shooting, a stabbing, a couple of car wrecks that made a few of the other EMTs on scene lose their dinner. The blood didn’t bother him anymore. He’d buried bodies, and as Davis took the victims away he wished he were out on the streets doing some real good. His job didn’t feel like enough most of the time. But fending off muggers and rapists didn’t feel like enough either considering what else was out there.

The calls slowed down and he asked after Chloe once he had the chance to go ten feet from the ambulance without jumping right back in it. She was out of surgery and recovery and in a room upstairs. He should have left it at that, but he couldn’t not check on her after he’d brought her in and before he knew it Davis was stepping out of the elevator on the third floor.

He expected her friends to have covered her room in flowers and teddy bears by now, but it was empty. It was also four o’clock in the morning, not exactly visiting hours and she didn’t have immediate family to notify. She was awake staring at nothing, restless and bored knowing her, and if he thought he could just come up here and take a quick look in on her he wasn’t quick enough; her head snapped in his direction through the window.

Davis drew in a long breath, steadying himself. He’d always tried to act like a man. A man didn’t run from an injured person he cared about because she didn’t turn out to be what he wanted. Chloe hadn’t run from him when she found out what he really was. She’d killed him to protect her friend, but she’d reached out to him in the end. Clark or no Clark. She’d never been unkind to him and deserved the same.

She actually smiled when he came in. Then again she was hooked up to a morphine drip.

“Hey.” He looked her over. She had her arms folded over the blankets and her make-up had smeared, and she wore the vaguely traumatized look of someone who’d just puked from emergency anesthesia. He could spot it a mile away and for that he definitely pitied her. On top of her other injuries she’d cracked a rib or two in the fall. “How are you feeling?” he asked, shutting the door.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Like morphine is the best invention since highspeed internet.”

Apparently, considering she wasn't making sense. Morphine had been invented long before WiFi. “It’s good stuff.” He knew that from personal experience. He’d spent a couple weeks with that drip in his arm.

“The doctor’s say I’ll be here for a few days. They found more glass they had to remove.”

Thanks to his father out there on the loose. That shard could have pierced her heart instead. Davis sighed. “Yeah that tends to happen when you get thrown through a glass door. We don’t remove impaled objects. We generally leave that for the OR.”

She nodded and then her smile resurfaced and she stared up at him like he fascinated her. Probably the morphine. He’d seen patients stare at light fixtures that way. “Still,” she said, “we’re lucky there’s a dashing paramedic answering Oliver’s calls.”

The old him would have cracked a smile at that, but the truth was he’d only picked up hoping Oliver had something else to bitch about that would shed more light on his father. Why else would he call? He’d never guessed Chloe would get caught in the middle, though in retrospect he should have. Getting caught in the middle was what she did. He was tired of seeing her hurt because of it. But he was just as guilty of putting her in that position and as selfish as her friends. “Guess he figured I’d keep the details quiet.” Davis had veiled the truth a little on his paperwork, claimed he and his partner had spotted Chloe on the sidewalk on their way to a bathroom break and had no choice but to assist. Oliver might not trust him, but he knew Davis cared about her and wasn’t above using that when he had to.

Good for him.

Chloe hadn’t taken her eyes from him. “You said you’d always be there.”

She said it like it meant something. He’d said a lot of things, that he wouldn’t hurt anybody for one and look how that turned out. But he’d thought that’s who he was, the guy she could count on when she needed someone, the guy who was so amazed by her he just wanted to show her how he felt.

“Yeah . . .” He stared at the tops of his shoes. “Yeah, I did.” He’d never met anyone like her, or so he thought until the illusion that she loved him came apart. Maybe that was just it. Clark told him she’d do what she did for him for anyone. Her compassion was the first thing he had admired in her. He couldn’t hold a grudge against her for it. He changed the subject. “This . . . Zod, did Clark stop him?”

“He will.” She believed that – or wanted him to think she did. “It’s just, he’s so cunning he makes Doomsday look like a loose animal escaped from the zoo. He looks almost like you.”

So he’d been told, once by Oliver and once by that demon inside Lois claiming to be his mother. Some mother who left you dying in a pool of your own blood. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t want anything resembling him putting anyone in here, least of all Chloe.

“Davis –“

He shook his head. He shouldn’t be here talking like this. He’d only come up here to look in on her. “Look, I should probably go. My partner’s taking a nap in the back of the ambulance and we could get a call any minute.”

Chloe nodded. She knew how his night routine worked – run a call, sleep, load up on caffeine. He’d posted at Isis a few times when she worked late and explained all the ins and outs to her. “Come back when your shift is over? There’s so much you haven’t told me.”

Her face was hopeful, but he stiffened anyway. Either she didn’t trust him any more than Clark and Oliver or she still felt a sense of obligation toward him. “You don’t have to keep tabs on me anymore, Chloe.” He might look pathetic grasping at a semblance of a normal life, but he was managing.

She bit her lip and put on a determined face. She used to be a reporter like her cousin, she’d said. He’d hate to be the source that tried playing dumb with her. “Davis, I miss having you in my life. This you – the one who’s kind and saves people. The one I could talk to.”

There was only one him. Putting on a uniform didn’t wash away the murder and the bloodshed. “I don’t sleep at night, Chloe.”

Her mouth twisted and she turned her head on the pillow. “Neither do I.” By that cryptic tone he guessed they weren’t talking about the same thing, but she didn’t elaborate. She looked tired in fact, and gave up with a sigh. “Davis, can we just . . . start over? In a sense, I feel like I never got to know you.”

What happened to not going back? Maybe you had to have something real before that rule applied. That was the problem. Her presence didn’t calm the beast anymore, it reopened wounds. She’d seen the worst though, what he’d been capable of with the beast inside him. He didn’t have to talk around the truth with her like he did the people at work and Lois who thought he was some slandered victim. He needed that and maybe if things weren’t all sunshine with her friends as she let on she needed company. She’d kept him company down in that basement often enough.

He sat down on the edge of her bed. There was something else too, something he’d been thinking about. “Stopping Zod, can I help?”

She blinked. She wasn’t expecting that. “It’s dangerous.”

He didn’t care about that. Risking his life was the least he could do. “I’m stronger than most humans these days and I still heal pretty quick. He’s my father, Chloe. I have to help stop him.”

His “mother” had told him the duty of a son was to continue the legacy his parents started and that their family was destined to take this planet as their own. They’d sent him to earth to accomplish their mission and maybe he’d had no real hope of fighting the thing inside him back then, but he had free will now. He could choose what side he was on.

Chloe read the determination in his face and maybe it was his imagination but Davis thought she looked proud. “We’d like that. But you’ll need a codename.”

“Like what? The Dark Defender or something?”

She cracked another smile. “Cute. I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

The moment held until the pager in his pocket went off. He forced himself to look away from her and glanced at it. “They need me downstairs.” He sighed. He’d run a record number of calls tonight and he still had about four hours to go.

Chloe caught his hand before he could stand up. Her fingers felt small in his and with the way she was looking up at him he couldn’t just pull away. She didn’t want him to leave here on bad terms and hurting her was the last thing he wanted. She'd been through enough tonight.

He leaned down and laid a kiss on her forehead. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he muttered. Her chin tilted up on instinct toward his mouth and her face fell when he pulled back. It hurt to have to – her warm mouth and warm skin were the only heaven he’d ever know – but with the morphine in her she didn’t know what she was doing. She’d have to ask and he’d have to be whole to ever get back there. For the time being, he had too many things to straighten out to pin his hopes on it.

VII.

Chloe got out of the hospital a week later, sore and loaded with painkillers she tried not to take. Clark came by with a helpful dose of Starbucks and pastries, but judging by his sullen face they were more a guilt offering than an attempt to spare her the hard work of getting up and making her own breakfast.

“This wouldn’t have happened if I’d stopped Zod sooner,” he grumbled, nevermind that up until her latest brush with death, the evil sorcerer had been playing a game that didn’t involve showing his face and leaving his tower. But knowing Clark, he probably thought he was single-handedly responsible for all twelve million Holocaust deaths for failing to figure out how to build a time machine. Chloe sighed. You had to know Clark in order to appreciate him.

Lois didn’t give Chloe any puppy-dog eyes, thank God, but inventing a story about how she’d ended up with a shard of glass in her chest that wouldn’t send her cousin on a hunt for the responsible party proved as tiring as reassuring Clark everything wasn’t his fault. Lois brought pizza and a movie, which happened to be some British history flick about a mistress of Henry the VIII cast aside for her prettier, famous sister. The mistress didn’t do too badly though; she ended up with a handsome man in uniform who worshipped the ground she walked on. More importantly, she didn’t get her head cut off.

Speaking of men in uniform, Davis offered his services should Chloe need anything, and when the dreaded pain meds wouldn’t let her keep anything down she decided to pick up the phone. It was a little awkward, inching down one side of her pajama bottoms so he could give her one of those nausea shots in the hip while Lois lurked in the kitchen, but not as awkward as it would have been with just the two of them – for her anyway. Davis stayed long enough to see whether the meds worked, not enjoying in the least Lois’ not-so-subtle attempts to butter him up in hopes of getting her story. She seemed to put him off balance and he went home as soon as he put the foods Chloe could attempt to eat on one side of the fridge. Chloe frowned. So much for hanging out. Lois either really rubbed him the wrong way or his crushed heart wasn’t mending. Chloe watched him go with her lower lip between her teeth only for her cousin to accuse her of admiring the view.

One thing went right though. Clark understood his need to join in the crusade against Zod and Oliver had grudgingly agreed they could use all the help they could get considering that his other operatives were on a mission across the globe he couldn’t pull them from without the risk of arousing Tess Mercer’s suspicion. If they were monitoring her, she was monitoring them, he figured. The new super trio waited until Chloe recovered enough to sit in a chair for any length of time, and soon enough her magic fingers hacked up the latest Luthor Mansion schematic. Clark decided that was all they had time to dig up. They’d wasted enough time already without giving Zod the opportunity to concoct the means for another Dark Thursday, or worse a full-on government takeover.

The four of them gathered at the Watchtower one night, Oliver in his trusty green leather and Clark in his customary red-and-blue combo. Davis looked out of place in black jeans and a black t-shirt. In fact, with his white skin he looked more like impending death than one of the good guys.

He paced with his arms folded while Oliver checked his arrows and Clark did his best to stave off an earful from Lois on the other end of his phone. Chloe had seen Davis pace like that half a dozen times – in a Kryptonite cell, for one, silently saying goodbye to the world and preparing to die.

Chloe swallowed, watching from her chair in front of the dozens of glaring LCD monitors. “Nervous?” she broke the silence. Clark and Oliver stood too far off to overhear.

Davis stopped, folded his arms tighter and looked at her over his shoulder. He did have nice shoulders. “Not in the way you’re thinking,” he told her.

Chloe chewed her lip. Did that mean he didn’t care whether or not he came back tonight? He was getting his life together. He had to have put that death wish of his behind him. “Davis . . .”

He sighed, paced a couple more times, and let his arms fall. “I don’t trust myself,” he said. “I’m not Clark, but these powers I do have . . . if they don’t come from the beast, they come from him. My parents gave them to me to destroy. I don’t know what would happen if I lost control.”

She couldn’t blame him for being afraid of that, and maybe it was one reason that ill-advised encounter in her apartment had sent him running. For him, losing control meant killing, losing the person he’d made himself into who wasn’t capable of such a thing. She saw through his words now though. He hated Zod more than the rest of them and she doubted the human part of him had every truly hated that way before. He had to face him tonight and after the nightmare Zod had inflicted on his life rage very well might get the better of him.

Clark flipped his phone shut before she could answer. He was the person Davis needed to talk to anyway, the official poster boy when it came to paranoia about what his powers could do.

“Ready?” Clark glanced at Oliver. The good archer slung his quiver onto his back and nodded. It was time. Clark and Davis didn’t have weapons but with any luck they’d have each other’s backs

Chloe folded her hands over her stomach as they headed for the doors. She’d never been good at the whole heroic send off, but she had to say something. “Good hunting?” she called out to them. Only Davis looked back.

She tried to smile reassuringly, but her insides were in a knot when she put on her headpiece and watched her boys go off to war.

VIII.

The Luthor Mansion didn’t look any more welcoming than when Davis had first seen it through the bars of a cage. It was dark now, and the men who had brought him here weren’t holding guns on him this time, but that didn’t make them friends.

Oliver was surveying the grounds through a pair of green binoculars while Clark stared at the stone walls as though he could see through them. Neither liked what they saw.

“The minute we set foot inside the gate Tess will know we’re here,” Clark said. “We have to find a way in that doesn’t tip her off right away.”

Davis fixed his eyes on him in the shadows. Clark could have been He-Man the way he was built, if not for the dark hair, but apparently he hadn’t learned anything since getting pummeled to death by the monster inside him. Willpower wasn’t enough to get a job done. “You don’t have a plan?” And here he’d assumed Clark and Oliver hadn’t seen fit to share. In the movies the heroes always had a plan. Hell, even he didn’t rush in on a scene without one.

Clark made a face Davis would have called pouty on a girl. “I usually figure these things out as I go along.”

Davis shrugged. Fair enough. Far be it for him to tell Clark how to play the hero. His job paid him good money to save lives everyday thinking on his feet. Why shouldn’t Clark save the world by doing the same? “I guess you just have to ask yourself what Warrior Angel would do?” Davis half joked.

Those baby blue eyes blinked. That name caught him off guard. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

Why would he? It wasn’t the type of thing you expected from an alien monster. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Clark,” Davis told him. That the two of them weren’t all that different, for one. They both wanted to make a difference in the world, though Clark was obviously doing a better job of it. Davis sighed and remembered what he’d said to Chloe earlier. “There’s a lot I don’t know about myself.”

Clark opened his mouth to say something, but Oliver put his binoculars down and glared at the two of them. “As much as I’m enjoying the Kryptonian heart-to-heart, we have a mission to accomplish.”

He hopped the fence and Clark followed. Apparently the coast was clear of security for the moment. Davis gritted his teeth as he hoisted himself over the elaborate wrought iron. He’d jumped fences all the time as a kid, running away, but it took more effort than he remembered now. It made him feel more human than anything since the monster had left him. He was closer to thirty than the other two and everything got harder with age.

The three of them took cover behind the trees growing against the stone wall of the castle. Oliver didn’t waste any time catching his breath. He unslung his bow from his back and shot it a third story balcony. A grappling hook latched onto the railing and Oliver gestured to Davis with an irritatingly smug look on his face.

“Think you can climb?”

Davis looked up in the darkness. Oliver wasn’t exactly asking him to mount the Cliffs of Insanity, but the climb was still high. He had to try though, and more importantly had to trust that Oliver wouldn’t let him fall to his death.

His arms burned by the time he got to the top and waited for Oliver to join him. Clark didn’t need to climb like the rest of them. He got a running jump and managed to propel himself over the railing. He didn’t need a crow bar to break into a high-security mansion either. He pulled the balcony doors open with his bare hands and led the way inside.

Oliver touched his silver earpiece they second they set foot on the polished floors, “Watchtower, we’re in,” he muttered. Chloe. Davis tried to imagine her sitting before all those monitors, watching three blips come into view on the screen. It couldn’t be easy for a girl like her, hearing all the action through a headset unable to do anything but wait. She might shed a few tears if he didn’t come back tonight, but it was probably the other two she worried for.

They ended up in a wide hallway lined with expensive wainscoting and paintings. Two security guards came at them, one with a walkie in hand, the other with a gun. Oliver was quicker then both of them. He took what looked like a dart gun out of his belt and fired. The guards dropped to the ground and nothing but static sounded on their radio. Davis recognized those darts. Oliver had shot him and Chloe with his tranquilizers before.

Clark didn’t pay the fallen guards much mind; he was too busy scanning the walls and the ceiling. “This place is crawling with cameras,” he said, and all of a sudden beams of fire shot from his eyes and blew out a light fixture in a flash of purple light. Davis stared. He knew Clark wasn’t human. He’d seen some of abilities in the ice fortress. But this . . . To think, his parents had made him to take out someone as powerful as that.

If Clark noticed his reaction, he didn’t say anything. He was all business now. “If we take out a main power source we can knock the rest of the cameras offline. There should be one this way.”

He made the turn where the hall branched off into another corridor. Davis glanced at Oliver. Either Clark had a hidden talent for memorizing schematics or he had another secret Davis didn’t know. Oliver read the look on his face and shook his head.

“Clark spent a lot of time here in the past. Believe me, you’re not the first windmill he’s tilted at.”

Before Davis could say anything Clark explained on his own. “Lex Luthor and I used to be friends.”

Davis blinked. No need to ask why a hick-town farm boy like Clark Kent would be allowed in the Luthor Mansion. He already knew. Lionel Luthor was as desperate as Tess Mercer to get her hands on this “Traveler.” That wasn’t what caught Davis off guard.

“You and Lex?” He’d seen Lex’s name in the papers all his life, but to him Davis wasn’t the billionaire’s son or the heir to the biggest corporation in the world subject to so much ridiculous gossip. He was a part of his first memory, the one friendly face when everyone else had hunted him, just a lonely kid who wanted to play. “He was the first good person I met when I came to this planet,” Davis told Clark. “I asked him if he was Warrior Angel. He said he wanted to be.”

Clark’s eyes went to the floor. Whatever had happened between him and Lex, the wounds left behind went deep. “I loved him,” Clark said quietly, “but he lost his way and turned out to be more like Devillicus in the end. Zod used him for a vessel. If you ask me that’s what drove him over the edge.”

So his father was responsible for that too? Davis would think about Lex during his first few months of foster-care life. He’d pretend they were long-lost brothers. He thought about running back to him at the Luthor Mansion once, but even then deep down he knew something terrible would happen if he did. Little did he know Lex was with Clark instead. Strange, how one man could have everything you wanted without realizing it.

Clark went back to studying the walls until he found his power source, and once again he took it out with fire from his eyes. Oliver touched his earpiece, and apparently Clark’s plan wasn’t good enough for Chloe.

“She says they’re bound to have back-up power. You’ll have to take the cameras out individually.”

Clark thought about it and nodded. “Fine. I’ll use my speed and disable them and meet back here. In the meantime, you two find out what you can from Chloe about where Tess is hiding Zod.”

He took off with a whoosh and his trademark blur, leaving Davis and Oliver in a paneled alcove. Oliver went back to his earpiece, going back and for with “Watchtower” on schematics and energy readings. Davis knew Chloe was a tech genius, but he couldn’t get used to this side of her, the cold almost military operative. The Chloe he’d gotten to know laughed all the time and was all warm golden sunlight, at least she used to be. She didn’t belong with machines in the dark. Oliver let her go and began to pace, searching the corridors with a pinched expression. He let a few minutes pass before turning back to Davis.

“Something’s wrong. Clark should have been back by now.”

Davis glanced at his watch. “He’s only been gone six minutes.” It was a stupid thing to say. Chloe called what Clark could do “super speed” for a reason.

Oliver shook his head. He was getting impatient “Tess has him. Don’t you think it’s strange we haven’t run into any more security? She’s probably been waiting for him.”

It made sense. Sneaking in to the Luthor Mansion shouldn’t have been this easy. Davis had had more trouble getting into parts of Metropolis General without his badge.

“So we go after him?” That wasn’t enough conviction for Oliver, but Davis had always thought of himself as a practical guy. They were two men against a madwomen, an alien conqueror, and God only knew how many trained security guards. They couldn’t just rush in like Clark. Oliver looked down his nose at him anyway.

“Why are you here, Davis?” He cocked his head. “You think one good deed can wash away everything you’ve done?”

Davis didn’t back up. If Oliver wanted to start something this wasn’t the time. “Nothing can wash away what I’ve done.”

Apparently that was the right answer. Oliver sighed and relented. “Look, I know what it’s like to want to kill the person who’s responsible for ruining your life. Lionel Luthor killed my parents and I hunted Lex down and took my shot when I had it. If you’re here to do the same with Zod, trust me it won’t change a thing.”

Davis started to shake his head – he didn’t need his motives for coming tonight questioned – but Oliver went on before he could. “It’s better if we split up.” He pulled something from his belt, a leather sheath with a knife inside. Davis pulled it free. The bright steel blade was inlaid with green meteor rock. “Had it made special just for the occasion,” Oliver said. “I don’t need to tell you where to aim.”

Why? Because he was a medic or a killer? He’d never killed with a weapon before, just his bare hands.

He tucked the thing under his shirt and moved through the Luthor Mansion alone, remembering when he’d come here before, not wound up in bandages after Tess Mercer had blown up his SUV, but the first time. He found his way to the study where he and Alexander had played. It was empty. Tess Mercer must have needed all her guards to deal with Clark. Davis looked around. He remembered lying on the floor and the pain from the meteor rock. He opened a drawer in the desk. The box that had held what Chloe called “Kryptonite” was still there, and something else, the red and blue action figure the Luthorcorp doctor had put into his hand to stop him from sobbing after the endless needles and tests that day. Warrior Angel. He’d given it to Lex. Even then Davis had known he wasn’t meant to be the hero.

Footsteps sounded on the marble floors. The double doors swung open and four security guards stormed in. They ran at him. He went cold. His mind flashed him images from the sick things he’d done. He remembered the killing rage, the urge to tear through flesh, the blind red anger whenever one of his victims fought back. He didn’t know which was worse, waking up from a black out covered in blood or living through the violence aware and yet unable to stop it. He’d sworn he’d never hurt anyone again, but these guys coming at him now weren’t any different than the criminals he fended off on the streets sometimes. He had to fight now.

One of the guards tried to grab him, but Davis punched him in the gut and he staggered back. Two more jumped at him, and he kneed one in the groin and twisted away from the other. They got a couple good hits in. His jaw ached and his chest did too. They didn’t give up either. One of them kicked him and he lost his balance and fell to the floor. He kicked back and knocked one of them down, only to get a hard boot in his back before a third guard clubbed him with something one the side of the head. He went queasy inside as his mind tried to process the pain and then everything went black.

**

The pain in his skull throbbed ten times stronger when he woke. The right side of his face was sticky and he didn’t have to touch it to know he was bleeding. Scalp wounds always made a mess and he had other things to worry about at the moment. Like where the hell the guards had taken him.

He wasn’t in the study anymore, but some kind of cramped storeroom with a small square of glass in the wooden door to let the light in. He wished he had Oliver’s earpiece, but to tell Chloe what? That he’d messed up and gotten caught? The Warrior Angel figurine was lying next to him and he picked it up. So much for playing hero.

Footsteps echoed in the hall outside, coming toward him. Davis sat up. The door opened and he stared with his insides in a vice grip at the man who strode through it.

His mother had called him the spitting image of his father and Chloe had said this General Zod looked almost like him. Davis searched the bearded face above him for the resemblance, but he didn’t see it. There was nothing human about the man who planted himself in front of him, and yet Davis couldn’t take his eyes away.

This was his father, this conqueror from another planet who if nothing else had his height and his build and his coloring. He’d destroyed a civilization and Davis had his blood in his veins. He wanted to throw up. He would have taken any deadbeat addict on the street for a dad over this demon straight out of Hell.

Zod loomed over him, studying him with an expressionless face. “Faora always wanted a handsome son.” Davis swallowed. That was the last thing he expected out of this guy’s mouth. His father seemed to enjoy that and stepped closer. “She thought she was so brilliant – she and the Brain Interactive Construct – engineering you with adaptive evolutionary abilities to hide from Kal-El until you were strong enough to destroy him. Look what you’ve become.” He snatched the plastic figurine from Davis’ hand and threw it to the floor. “Human.”

Was that what Zod saw, something that disgusted him as much as he disgusted Davis? Compared to an all-powerful being like himself Davis must have looked pretty pathetic huddled on the floor with his face and hair sticky with blood and bruises starting to form from the struggle in the study. He was definitely a far cry from what he was supposed to be, just as he’d been when his “mother” had found him taking care of a little boy in the ER. He’d spent his whole life making himself into the opposite of what his “parents” wanted, and now that he was free he would do the same until the day he left this world. If that day came tonight then so be it.

That gave him enough resolve to raise his head and look his father in the eye. “I plan on staying that way,” he answered. “Clark saved me.” And Chloe, but he kept that part to himself.

Zod laughed. The sound had an eerie hollow ring to it. A father’s laugh should be warm. “Saved you from what? Immortality and unrivaled power? Look at you,” he shook his head at the blood and bruises, “a son of Krypton, as vulnerable as the humans you serve. Kal-El may have damaged you, but what is done can be undone. My plan requires you be whole.”

Who the hell was Kal-El? And what did his father plan to do? Use the meteor rock to fuse him and the beast together again? As far as Davis knew Clark had found a way to send the monster to the future with a mysterious time travel ring.

“That’ll never happen. That thing you tried to turn me into is long gone.”

Again, Zod laughed, stalking in front of him with his hands behind his back. “Kal-El will tell me where to find your better half soon enough.”

His better half? Davis meant what he’d said to Chloe that morning in the hospital; he still had nightmares of walls soaked in blood and floors strewn with pieces of human bodies. Only in the mind of a monster was that better than he man he’d tried to be.

“I’m not going to help you destroy the world.”

He’d said the same thing to Chloe when she had that alien computer inside her. He’d sworn he wouldn’t hurt anyone, that all his feelings mattered, but his father seemed to find his objections as meaningless as she had.

“And what would you rather do? Spend your days tending to these human vermin because their evolution is too primitive to heal themselves? Have they treated you well? Did they revere you as they should have? I hear they discarded you over and over. You were born of the House of Zod, boy. You were made to conquer and rule. What kind of son goes against his father?”

Davis’ hand slipped under his shirt where he had slipped Oliver’s knife in his belt. He didn’t have a father, just this Satanic thing who wanted to use him as a tool of war. Devillicus had offered Warrior Angel an alliance once so they could rule the Guardian Realm together. Devillicus had also killed the woman he loved. Davis shook off the thought. This wasn’t a comic.

“What kind of father makes a son like me?”

Zod’s mouth twisted and he hauled Davis up faster than he could see. He blinked and the next thing he knew his father’s hands were balled into the front of his shirt, slamming him hard against the wall at his back. Those dark eyes had feeling in them now, but even Zod’s anger was cold. Davis didn’t blink. It wasn’t the first time he’d been pushed around by an angry “father” and what’s the worst this one could do? Kill him.

Zod didn’t appreciate the lack of fear in his face. He shook Davis so hard his already throbbing head hit the wall behind him.

“I designed you with more power than any life form on Krypton,” he hissed. “What more do you want?”

Designed him? Children weren’t designed; they were made by a man and a woman, out of love in the right circumstances. Love . . . the one thing Davis had never had. He’d run away from anyone who could have loved him because he sensed the darkness inside. Except for her. He’d run to her when he didn’t know where else to go. She’d met his eyes through smoke and panic and fire and that hole inside him had disappeared. Davis blinked. His blood was boiling. He looked into that bearded face and all of a sudden he was so angry.

“I saw what you did with the one thing I really wanted. You threw her through a glass door and almost killed her.”

At least he’d been there to save her. She’d looked so terrified struggling to breathe. That wasn’t the least of it. Chloe would never look at him without seeing the Talon basement spattered in blood or Jimmy’s chest torn open in her arms. Davis used to think it was Clark who had ruined his life. The murders had been about him, after all. The blackouts had worsened when Clark had moved to Metropolis and the more Clark roamed the streets saving people, the more lives Davis took and destroyed. The thing inside him perceived Clark as a threat and Chloe had watched it beat the life out of him. As messed up as she was, she’d never let herself love anything engineered to hurt her best friend.

Zod had brought this on him, made Davis into the killer he was. He’d done it out of a cold calculated need to succeed in his sick conquest at all costs and the nightmares and stains on Davis’ soul were all insignificant. Wasn’t that the definition of a monster?

Zod’s expression shifted from outraged to intrigued. He saw something he could use. “The Earth woman?” he mocked. “Is that what you want? I’ll give her to you as a mate if that’s what it takes.”

The anger inside Davis mounted. You couldn’t just give someone like a pet. “Chloe would never want that.”

Zod lifted him off his feet up only to slam him against the wall once more, hard enough to knock the air out of Davis’ lungs. “Whose son are you? Mine or Jor-El’s? Earthlings are inferior, boy. You don’t give her a choice.”

Davis’ stomach turned. He could never . . . She’d made him feel like he had though, deep down, that night she’d called out to Clark in her sleep. Worse, none of her friends would have put it past him. Zod had done that too. No one would have thought the same of the man Davis had tried to make himself into.

The cold metal hilt of Oliver’s knife pressed into his skin. His hands were free and this demon had to be stopped. He could do it. He’d taken so many lives already. Why not one more? They’d all been criminals and Zod was the most dangerous criminal the world would ever face.

More footsteps echoed on the marble floor. Clark’s tall shape filled the doorway and Tess Mercer stood behind him, a glowing purple sphere in her hand. Zod’s hands uncurled from Davis’ shirt and he sagged into the wall. His father wasn’t looking at him anymore; his eyes were on Clark.

“Kal-El . . .” He sounded so satisfied. Clark had stopped him before, according to Chloe. Zod should have been afraid, but he wasn’t. “Show my son that you have seen the error of your ways in trying to stand against me.”

Davis waited for Clark to say something defiant, his hand ready to draw Oliver’s knife from under his shirt. Clark didn’t say a word; he moved forward with dead blue eyes and of all things dropped to his knees on the hard floor.

“I serve and obey my lord Zod,” he recited in a flat empty voice. Someone must have drilled the words into him. Davis couldn’t stop staring. This wasn’t Clark.

“What have you done to him?” He’d been brainwashed. Clark had come here to stop Zod, not serve him.

His father turned back to him, smiling at the shock on Davis’ face. “That weakling Jor-El was kind enough to provide a means of controlling Kal-El should be became a danger to this world.” He glanced at the crystal ball in Tess Mercer’s hand and smiled. “He’ll obey me in all things now. Do you know what that means for you, boy? With you restored and Kal-El under my power I’ll be able to rid this world of its human garbage twice as quickly.”

That was all Davis was to him, a broken tool he had to fix. His fingers tightened on the hilt of the knife. He’d open his veins before he let that happen and he knew exactly where to cut. His father might think him weak now, but his human “weakness” gave him a chance at freedom. He’d die a man before he lived a monster. His death wouldn’t stop Zod though and if Clark couldn’t now, someone had to. Zod was a demon. He deserved to die and the green rock inlaid in Oliver’s knife would do it. It’d be a painful death. The stuff felt like acid disintegrating you from the inside. Davis had welcomed the pain – it was a small penance, the beginning of the end, or so he’d thought – but he doubted Zod would see it that way. It didn’t matter. He deserved it for what he’d done to him.

Another pair of feet sounded on the hard floor. A tall, green-clad silhouette staggered into the hallway, hunched over and breathing hard. Oliver must have tried stopping Clark earlier. He was limping and there were marks on his face that would soon be bruises.

He aimed his bow, but the sound of his footsteps had already given him away. Zod whirled once more and Tess Mercer cried out a protest.

Twin beams of heat shot from Zod’s eyes, but the Mercer woman had stepped in the way. She convulsed where she stood and fell to the floor. Oliver caught her just in time.

Zod’s face twisted, enraged that his disciple had betrayed him for one of his enemies. “Finish him!” he growled at Clark, gesturing to Oliver. Clark nodded, empty-eyed as he stalked toward him. His mind was gone. He had no free will anymore.

Davis’ heart was bucking against his chest, but he ignored it. He had to seize his chance. He pulled the knife free and pushed the point against his father’s chest, a little to the left, right where the heart was. He didn’t have to worry about him using his powers. The meteor rock on the blade would weaken him.

It did, and his father’s dark eyes went wide in shock. Davis stared into them. They were his eyes, only colder, and they didn’t have to be glaring red to radiate pure evil. The monster’s sick compulsions had twisted Davis into believing God had given him his powers to stamp out sin, but that was just another lie. Everything about his life had been a lie and that was Zod’s work. Davis pushed the knife point harder into his father’s chest. Wasn’t this how the story went? The evil creation rose up and destroyed its maker? What was one more life after everything he’d done?

Something dropped to the floor. The purple orb had fallen from Tess Mercer’s hand and it was rolling toward him. She’d slumped to the marble and Clark had Oliver by the throat now, lifting him high off the ground.

This wasn’t Clark. He’d never turn on a friend or an ally or whatever Oliver was. Taking a life would destroy him, so much so that he’d saved a monster sent to kill him. Davis felt sick again. Zod didn’t care. He would use Clark and turn him another mindless killer if that’s what it took to accomplish what he wanted. Worse, he’d take pride in it. Clark was naïve and childlike in so many ways. He’d never survive the memories of his hands soaked in blood and the horror in his victims’ faces. It would tear him apart and Clark would never be the same. Clark had saved him. Davis couldn’t let this happen.

He shoved his father aside and lunged for the purple crystal. Zod growled words Davis couldn’t make out in his desperation and yanked the knife from his hand. Sharp, fiery pain shot up his right arm as the blade drove deep into his flesh and stayed there. Davis swore and started to sweat. He could feel the blood leaking out around the metal and he swore again when he and Zod fell to the floor. His father’s fingers dug into him in a feeble attempt to summon his alien strength and push him away from the crystal. It didn’t work with the Kryptonite so close embedded in Davis’ skin. He tried kicking Davis aside, and even weakened his blows drew out grunts of pain. Davis had to ignore it though, had to keep fighting.

He grappled for the crystal and on an instinct he did the stupidest thing the logical part of him could think of; he gritted his teeth and yanked the knife from his arm. His stomach clenched and he fell onto his back, struggling not to pass out. He couldn’t. Instead, he forced himself to roll over, Zod’s hand weak around his wrist. He slammed the knife into the purple crystal and sure enough it shattered.

Something happened. A blinding purple light enveloped Zod were he lay on the floor. He shook and screamed as though something was tearing its way out of him, exactly as Davis had when Chloe had split him from the beast. A translucent form floated away from his body and vanished, taking the purple light with it.

Davis stared. Clark had said his father had been nothing more than a phantom when their home world had been destroyed. He really was nothing more than a demon. But why did the vessel that remained look so much like him?

That vessel pushed himself to his knees and stared wide-eyed around the room. His eyes fell on Clark just as he set Oliver down. Something that could have been terror or rage twisted his face and he bolted up and ran. He was just a shell, empty and confused and viewing everything around him as a threat – the very thing Davis had been afraid of being after Chloe separated him with the meteor rock.

Clark went after him and the sounds of a fight echoed in the distance. There was nothing Davis could do to help. His eyes fell on Tess Mercer instead where Oliver had gathered her up into his arms once more. He stepped over the pieces of broken crystal and knelt down beside her.

She had no pulse and her skin was cold. It was too late. “There’s nothing I can do,” Davis told Oliver quietly. “Zod’s heat power must have destroyed her heart. I’m sorry.” He brushed Mercer’s red hair away from her face. She may have been insane, but she was a pretty woman and she’d died saving someone she cared about. That deserved respect.

Oliver didn’t say a word. The commotion further down the hall died and Clark came back. His eyes weren’t empty anymore, just tired.

“He’s dead. Without Zod he was nothing more than a Luthorcorp clone. He wasn’t meant to survive on his own. Brainiac made him.”

Davis nodded, dull anger burning through him under the pain in his arm and his skull and the rest of his body. How many living beings had to suffer because of these Kryptonian experiments?

Clark glanced at Oliver cradling Tess Mercer in his arms, but either he didn’t want to intrude or he didn’t know what to say. He turned back to Davis and took him in as though he’d never given the human part of him any real thought before beyond his own reluctance to kill and the look on his face was the same one he’d worn that day Clark had recognized him as one of the EMS guys at the bus explosion.

“Listen, Davis,” he said after a long time, “Our fathers may have been enemies, but you and I don’t have to be. It feels good being on the same side.”

“Yeah,” Davis nodded. “Yeah it does.” But had they ever really been on opposite sides? Davis had never wanted to kill him.

IX.

Chloe didn’t let out her breath until the boys returned in a whoosh to superhero central. She’d lost contact hours ago, and in between tapping her feet listening anxiously for signs of life on the other end of her headpiece and hacking her fingers numb searching for more Luthor Mansion schematics, she decided Oliver was going to have to start telling her when he wanted to go radio silent. A little consideration for the person who couldn’t do anything but dream up the hundred things that might have gone wrong with their mission would go a long way.

Clark didn’t have a scratch on him, but Oliver was limping so badly he had to lean on Davis for support – a sight Chloe never thought she’d see. Davis looked the worst. Blood coated his right arm and caked one side of his face and hair. Chloe got to her feet and hurried toward the three of them.

“What happened? The two of you look terrible.”

Oliver untangled himself from Davis and staggered to the nearest chair. Davis didn’t say a word. He clapped his big hand over the red gash on his upper arm and made to walk past her. Chloe stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Davis, are you all right? Maybe we should get you to a hospital.” She might not be a doctor, but the blood had streaked all the way down to his wrist and had dried thick in his wavy hair. He looked a mess.

He shook his head. “I’m fine. I just need to sit down and put some pressure on this.”

Chloe let him go. He was the paramedic. He’d know what to do. He went out the back door and sank down onto the curb. Maybe he was dizzy from the blood loss or maybe after facing his father he wanted to be alone. Chloe turned back to Clark and Oliver. She could worry about Davis later, so long as he didn’t pass out on them.

“Well did we stuff the evil genie back in his bottle?”

Clark nodded, gloomy as ever. One of these days he had to learn to celebrate saving the world. “Brainiac used Zod’s DNA and Luthorcorp Level 3 technology to give Zod a replacement body. He tried to use the Orb to make me his next Doomsday. Davis saved me. He destroyed it. Zod’s gone and so is the vessel he left behind.”

That explained Clark’s gloomy demeanor. He didn’t take losses well. But the sad thing was there were always casualties. Saving the world came with a hefty price tag. Last time Clark had paid that price, and before that Davis in a Kryptonite cell trying to save the world from the thing inside him. Maybe it was selfish of her, but she wouldn’t have minded a little joy that things had gone better this time, in the end anyway.

“Well I guess we know what those holes in my memory were about when I had Brainiac inside me. Little did I know I was busy making a body for Davis’ daddy dearest.” She folded her arms and felt a little colder. Thank God Brainiac was gone. Clark didn’t look the least bit relieved though. He looked like an uncertain child in need of reassurance. Chloe sighed. “Listen, Clark, whoever this clone was he had Zod’s DNA. You couldn’t have saved him.”

“You wouldn’t say the same about Davis.”

Okay. That was hitting below the belt. Davis wasn’t a mindless clone grown in a Luthorcorp lab at an accelerated rate. He’d had a life long before he learned what he was. He’d taught himself right and wrong and love and compassion and those values made him fight all the harder to stay the man he wanted to be, just as Clark would have fought in his shoes. Besides, Davis had apparently saved Clark’s ass tonight. Clark should be grateful he was still around and not in the Phantom Zone where he’d tried to put him.

“You can’t save everyone Clark,” Oliver sighed from his chair. “Take it from me.”

Clark turned to him with a long guilty look. Something else had happened they weren’t telling her. Clark let out a mournful sigh of his own and changed the subject. “You know, Chloe, it was good saving the world together again. For a while there I was afraid you’d given up after you lost Davis.”

She opened her mouth to say she’d given up because she’d lost him, but there was no point in denying that she’d grieved. Her friends couldn’t share in that grief and it had left her more cut off from them than anything. She put on a smile for Clark though. He wouldn’t understand why she’d kept her distance and those baby blue eyes and that wounded expression could make even Zod feel guilty.

“Well I thought our would-be overlord warranted coming out of retirement.”

His phone rang and apparently it was Lois. He answered it like an eager puppy, trotting off to the corner where he could talk in private. Chloe glanced over her shoulder at Davis through the doorway. He hadn’t come back in.

“Is he okay?”

Oliver shook his head. “He got between Zod and his plans for world domination. You can’t blame him for being a little worse for wear.”

Well at least he ended up in one piece, that was something. Last time Zod showed his face she’d ended up in the ER. Then again, she wasn’t Kryptonian. “So you’ve changed your mind about him?”

Oliver pursed his lips. His staunch views of right and wrong didn’t often shift and he’d definitely put Davis on the “wrong” side, but he gave the condemnation a rest for the moment. “Whatever he is, he chose doing the right thing over revenge tonight. He’s trying, that’s something.”

“He’s always tried. It’s not like he went along with what he was skipping and singing.”

“Maybe not. But I wasn’t born yesterday, Chloe. You didn’t give a damn about anyone else when you shoved that meteor rock against his chest. Maybe you were right to save him, maybe not – I don’t know anymore – but these feelings you have for him, they’re not going away no matter how hard you try. Trust me, before it’s too late.”

Chloe bit her lip. Since when had he taken such an interest in her love life?

Clark and Oliver left for the night and Chloe found Davis sitting on the curb staring out into the alley behind the building when she went out to him. He’d torn a piece of his shirt and tied it around his arm. It was still red-stained, but the wound seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind. He could give Clark lessons in brooding.

“Stop the bleeding?”

He glanced around at the sound of her voice. “Hey, Chloe.” His voice was rough and surprise flashed across his face to see her out here before he went back to staring into the alley again

He’d been lost in thought and she was interrupting. Part of her wanted to take the path of least resistance and head back inside, but she couldn’t.

“Davis, are you sure you’re okay?”

He’d stopped his evil conqueror of a father. He was supposed to be happy. But she recognized that look and that slumped posture. She’d seen it a hundred times in the basement. If he was beating himself up . . .

He drew in a long breath, and out of nowhere said, “You know, Chloe, I understand why you’d worry so much about Clark. He’s innocent. You need him to stay that way. We all do.”

Chloe blinked. Clark was her best friend, wasn’t that reason enough? Jimmy hadn’t thought so. He’d looked betrayed every time she uttered Clark’s name. She used to tell herself it was because he didn’t know the truth, but Davis knew and apparently her loyalty to Clark still warranted analyzing. He was right though. Sometimes Clark was so childlike in his idealism she forgot he was a nearly invincible being destined to save them all. She’d made deals with the devil Lionel Luthor, had a meteor power that could turn her psychopathic any day. She’d had Brainiac inside her and had been used as a lab rat. She’d murdered a man to protect her friend and dumped body parts like garbage. If there were grey choices to be made after all that, they’d hurt her a lot less than they’d hurt Clark. The world couldn’t afford for him to make mistakes and grow jaded like the rest of them. If he wasn’t there to never kill and never give up then she wouldn’t be here. Davis wouldn’t be here. How could she not love Clark more than ever? She’d learned though that she didn’t have to hold on so tight. Not even death could change him.

She stepped out of the doorway and came around to face Davis. “I heard what you did. I always knew you were worth saving and now Clark and Oliver do too.” He’d helped save the world by destroying the Orb. Who knows what Clark could have done under Zod’s control.

Davis let out a hollow laugh. “I don’t know about that.”

She sighed. They could argue the merits of his existence later. Besides, she didn’t plan on standing around in a dirty alley all night. At least Clark had the comfort of his loft to brood in, or used to. “Can I drive you home? You look like you could use some help.” Someone had to clean the blood off his face and his arm needed attention, and she couldn’t let him go home alone when Oliver had God knows who to fuss over him and Clark had a charming evening with Lois to look forward to.

Davis pressed his lips together and Chloe prepared herself for a “no.” She couldn’t blame him if he wanted to push away every painful reminder of the past now that Zod was gone for good. He deserved that after everything.

“What about Oliver?” He glanced past her into the building. “He could use a friend. He watched Tess Mercer die today. He loved her.”

The last part came quietly. Love meant everything to Davis. In his mind it should have saved her. Chloe smiled sadly. He was a far cry from Clark, but just as naïve in his own way. Sometimes love didn’t save anyone. Sometimes it got your friends killed.

Still, she wondered whether Oliver would be touched to know Davis cared so much and she had to snort at the idea of offering Oliver Queen tea and a shoulder to cry on. “We’re not exactly the heart-to-heart type,” she told Davis. “Besides, I highly doubt I’m the kind of ‘friend’ he’s likely looking for right now.”

Davis shook his head. He wasn’t Clark, who blushed at the idea of what happened when a man and women lay very very close, but the playboy one-night-stand lifestyle didn’t hold any interest for him either.

**

Chloe drove Davis back to his apartment, washed his face, and heated up leftover chicken parmesan while he took a shower. Thank God he kept his kitchen cleaner than Clark or Lois did and she didn’t have to call in the hazmat team before daring to set anything on the counter. His apartment was pretty sparse and they had to eat on the floor. His job paid him decently, but he hadn’t been back to work long enough to earn a paycheck. It didn’t matter; the two of them had a history of roughing it. They’d eaten in the dim Talon basement or on the hood of a car dozens of times. She felt a little nostalgic kneeling across from him. Team Chloe and Davis versus Doomsday hadn’t been all tears and terror. She’d missed the better moments in the weeks of thinking him dead, the quiet presence she’d gotten so used to.

He’d found a t-shirt and a pair of sweats and after they ate he sat on his bed while she taped gauze to the gash on his arm. It was deep and red, but he claimed with his leftover Kryptonian DNA it didn’t need stitches and that it would heal on its own in a matter of hours. Then again he also claimed it didn’t hurt and by the way he squinted when she touched it accidentally she knew that was a lie.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said as she wound a bandage around his upper arm to keep the gauze from getting dirty. “You might be the last person to think so, but I can take care of myself.”

Chloe shook her head. He was the last guy she expected to pull the macho “man alone” crap on her. If he didn’t want her around she wished he’d come out and say so. Still, she put on a smile.

“It may have escaped your notice, Davis, but I do care about you.”

His expression didn’t change. “And that’s difficult for you. I get it.”

He thought he got it. He either didn’t believe he was worth caring about or didn’t believe a word she said. She tried to keep from gritting her teeth. This distance and this stoic acceptance that he deserved to be cut off and miserable had to stop. This . . . thing . . . between them had to stop.

“It was,” she admitted.

Davis didn’t know what to make of that. “What do you mean?” The question couldn’t get any tenser. Since when had everything out of her mouth become a riddle?

She closed the nightstand drawer with her foot and sat back on her heels to look at him. He was tired but clean now, and looked far less pale these days. He’d never stopped being beautiful in the way that screamed tragedy with his soft mouth and striking dark eyes that could pull a girl into a whole other world where she didn’t have a fiancé or a best friend to protect from the monster inside him, and that was just it.

It was comfortable sitting here with him, taking care of his wound with the dishes in the sink for tomorrow after they’d both pitched in to save the world from an alien conquest. It had always been comfortable with him, most of all when it wasn’t supposed to be.

She’d spent so much time with him after Jimmy had left her and she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit to the temptation to make a move – kiss him while they sat on the couch together or put her arms around him when he pulled something from her kitchen shelf she couldn’t reach. She hadn’t needed a Power Point demonstration of the pros and cons of crossing that line with a friend to know she couldn’t though, not when it would prove Jimmy right about their marriage crumbling because of her attraction to another man. She couldn’t be that kind of woman.

She’d spent hours in the basement with him too – talking, eating the meals she cooked – and sometimes she pretended he was a friend who just needed a place to stay. It would have been so easy to let one thing lead to another whenever he came upstairs for a shower or to shave. But what kind of person went there with someone sent to earth to kill their best friend?

That line had been easy to cross when she crossed it though, in a quiet motel in the middle of nowhere, and the fact that she wanted to stay tangled in the damp sheets with him forever didn’t help. He had been so patient and warm that night, but there was always a reason to feel guilty for being with him.

She had no reason to feel that way now. Jimmy didn’t want her anymore and his grievances went way beyond her these days anyway. Apparently learning Clark was the Red and Blue Blur convinced him of how little all the people he thought he cared about trusted him, considering the lengths they went to hide Clark’s identity from him. He worked for The Daily Star now, according to Lois, and wasn’t coming back. Davis wasn’t a threat to Clark anymore either and her friends had grudgingly acknowledged which side he was on. The monster wasn’t him, even Oliver had seen that. Nothing was keeping her from giving in to what she felt.

Funny how moving a few inches felt like jumping a mile wide gap. Chloe rested her chin on his shoulder. He radiated warmth and smelled like soap and she couldn’t help wrapping her arms around him from behind. He was strong and easy to lean on and who didn’t want someone to lean on that you didn’t have to keep secrets from after a long day of saving the planet?

He sat perfectly still with his hands on the comforter and she could feel him breathing in and out. The old Davis would have drawn her against him by now, but this one didn’t move. She swallowed. She’d made the first move before . . .

Her mouth settled on his neck and she closed her eyes and let herself taste warm skin. There had always been this electricity between them since the first time they’d been close enough to kiss and she felt it now tingling through her where her body pressed into his back. He felt it too and went so still he stopped breathing. His hand came up and covered hers, ready to pry her away.

“What’s this?” His voice was low and his pale coloring couldn’t hide the flush to his skin where her mouth had begun tracing the slender angle of his jaw.

Her first instinct was to pull away. Some things were easy to do, but not to talk about. He didn’t work that way though.

“I want to be with you.” She took her mouth away to look at him and for a moment she was afraid all he’d give her was his chiseled profile where he’d bent his head, fighting with himself. God knew he didn’t deserve more of that.

“Be with me how?” The question came painfully quiet when he did turn to her and his dark eyes searched her face trying to figure out her motives or whether she just wanted another quick thrill so they both could walk away confused. He didn’t want that. He’d never say it, but he either wanted everything she had or he wanted her to go. She was good at running, but what good would that do? They’d already spent enough time trying to stay away from each other and clinging to noble excuses when they couldn’t. When in doubt pull out the good old save Clark card, nevermind that her actions had placed Clark in more danger than ever and Clark had done a better job of saving Davis and the world than anyone. Now Davis had saved him and she didn’t have make excuses to her friends anymore.

Chloe wet her lips. “Davis, I know I’ve struggled with what I felt for you in the past, but all the reasons for that are gone now.”

His eyelids fluttered, but he still didn’t move. “I want something real, Chloe. I’m tired of finding out everything I thought I knew is an illusion, that includes how you feel about me.”

Okay, she deserved that, and she could understand it after finding out destroying people was more his nature than healing them, but what about her? “What makes you think I don’t want the same?”

Planning a wedding with Jimmy let her believe she had her life figured out, but she didn’t miss the strain of not being able to talk honestly about her day or having to watch her words for fear he’d catch on to her one of her friends’ secret identities, and she couldn’t make happily ever after out of a one-night stand just because she wanted her first time to mean something. And Clark . . . he was her best friend, but Davis was right, no matter what she did for him she couldn’t buy this, and even Davis had felt like an illusion once the monster inside reared its spiny head. Now she knew better which was the real him.

She kissed his cheek, closer to his mouth, remembering when his lips would melt into hers at the slightest encouragement. Things had changed, but her dad used to say anything too easy wasn’t worth the effort.

Her fingers slipped free of his and she moved her hands down his chest through the cotton of his shirt. His lashes fluttered and he bit into his bottom lip as her hands smoothed over muscle and warmth. He twitched when she brushed his nipple and his breathing quickened. She smiled and leaned in, touched her lips to the corner of his mouth, expecting him to give in a moment of weakness. But he still didn’t respond.

Chloe pulled back, frustrated. “Okay, are you just not in the mood, or do you not want . . . me anymore?”

The possibility hurt, that maybe he’d just given up and stopped loving her. From what she’d seen these fast few if he hadn’t it wasn’t for lack of trying. Maybe he had someone else. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken for granted that he’d jump at the chance to have her like this again.

Slowly, he shook his head and said very softly, almost ashamed, “You’re still the only one, Chloe. It’s just . . .” He swallowed hard, gathering himself. “I understand why you felt the way you did before. I do. But I need to know you’re being honest with me now. I’m pretty messed up, Chloe. I can’t deal with you not knowing what you want on top of everything else. I’m not going to be some source of torment for you. I’m sorry.”

A little late for that. But she’d underestimated him; he was as good as saying it aloud, all or nothing. Part of her wanted to get up and say she didn’t need ultimatums. But she’d hurt him in the past. He had every right not to go down that road again. Ollie had been right too. Her feelings weren’t going away.

She stared down at the blue comforter for what felt like forever. Her life’s passion used to be digging for the truth as a journalist. When had being honest with herself let alone anyone else become so hard? She gathered what courage she had left and forced herself to lift her head. You had to start somewhere, even if it felt like taking a step with nothing but thin air beneath you.

“I think I’ve known what I wanted for a long time, I just lost him for a little while. Now he’s back.” She smiled at him, but he lowered his head, ashamed again. It wasn’t that simple for him.

“I don’t know, Chloe. My . . . General Zod. I wanted to kill him tonight. I could have. I was angry enough.”

“But you didn’t, that’s what counts. Just because you lost your spiky friend doesn’t mean you’ll never get angry.” What was he afraid of her or himself? Both probably. The first problem had to work itself out in its own time, the second . . . He’d helped the save world and his abilities didn’t do any of the things he was afraid of. He needed to relax and live a little.

She brought her hand to his face and stroked his clean-shaven cheek. His eyes fixed on hers. He wanted this. He just needed encouragement, or standing orders. She leaned closer and rubbed her cheek against his, brushed his mouth with hers and murmured, “Kiss me.”

His fingers dug into the comforter, and she didn’t have to touch him to feel the strain in his body. His lips pressed against hers, unbearably soft but far too hesitant. It wasn’t enough. “Davis . . .” Chloe’s fingers curled into his jaw. He could do better than that. He’d done way better before. She’d melted inside in that brief moment his mouth had met hers for the first time – melted and contemplated sewing a scarlet letter on her shirt. “Kiss me.” She closed her eyes and teased his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. He made a sound and put a little more hunger into the kiss. That was better. Her hand left his face and stroked his shoulder. The muscle there was rock hard. If he’d just let go a little, let this happen . . . “Kiss me,” she said again, pleading this time. His hand tangled in the back of her hair and his mouth smothered hers warm and full. Her whole body hummed with sensation and her hands went to the bottom of his shirt, gathering it up.

He let her pull it off and her hands settled on his bare shoulders, stroking down his arms to melt some of the tension away until his mouth opened under hers. Now that she had him, she eased him onto his back on the mattress.

He looked up at her from the pillow. His expression wasn’t tense and resisting anymore, just vulnerable letting her in again. He’d been indestructible, yet she could crush him no problem if she broke his heart now. She didn’t want to. Her lips didn’t leave his as she settled over him. He groaned against her mouth and his hands came up to her shoulders but she didn’t let him pull her down on him. She remembered that sense of freedom the last time they were together, no Clark and no monster, and she remembered wanting to kiss him the first time he’d gotten into her personal space. Hell, she remembered her hands all over him that night in her apartment and the fire she ignited in him. Memories weren’t enough and nothing was stopping her from losing herself now.

Her mouth slid from his down to his neck and along his chest. She ran her tongue across smooth skin and soaked up the small groan he let out. His breathing quickened and she could taste the heat radiating from him as his heart sped up. That was nice, strangely exhilarating, and she realized she’d never really given herself to anyone and seen then look back at her half afraid of falling apart. She’d made sacrifices for Clark because of who he was, but his heart didn’t race at her touch and he would never have shared his secret if she hadn’t found out first.

She looked up at Davis. His skin was so white it gave the lean, muscular lines of him a marble quality in the lamplight. His face was flushed and his dark eyes burned as he watched her as though trying to figure out whether he was dreaming or not. She smiled and let her mouth explore the hard muscle of his stomach. His whole body tightened under her and his back arched, and when she glanced up at him through her lashes he’d rolled his head to one side and was biting his cheek in anticipation.

Why disappoint? He hadn’t when the tables had been turned. Chloe untied the drawstrings of his sweatpants and inched the soft fleece off his hips. She’d never done this before, but his body jerked when her fingers wrapped around him and when her lips followed he cried out like she was hurting him. He tasted like warmth and clean skin and just him, and if she’d put her mouth on any other part of him why not there? She remembered the heat of his cheek against her thigh and the way she’d trembled . . .

His fingers threaded into her hair and she figured she was doing something right. He threw his head back and clawed at the comforter with his free hand when she followed the gentle roll of his hips and found a rhythm. Her ears filled with his rough breathing and the sounds he made and then his body tightened and there was nothing but the warm taste of him and the clutch of his fingers against her scalp.

She crawled back up to him when he stopped shuddering and sank into the mattress. His lips were parted gulping in air and when he opened his eyes they were wet and staring up at her like she’d invented orgasms. If she wanted back on her pedestal she’d found an easy way of getting there. She’d seen the tears before, fighting the beast, and although this was the complete opposite she felt the urge to comfort him all the same. She kissed him and this time he didn’t hesitate. His mouth yielded under hers and kissed her deep as his fingers found the buttons of her shirt and peeled it off. Her bra followed and his big hands smoothed over her back until he reached the edge of her pants. She let him unfasthen them and push them off and before she knew it she was as naked as he was draped on top of him.

Chloe felt small against him, with one of his hands cradling the back of her head while the other slid up her thigh. His tongue pushed into her mouth and his fingers teased her with the heat she’d have inside her any minute now. She squirmed against them and he laughed at her impatience, but his hand went to her hip and he eased her down on him.

She watched the pleasure come into his face as his warmth and her warmth melted together and he watched hers – all of her on top of him. His hands went from her shoulders to her breasts and down her sides and she shivered, wrapped her fingers around his upper arms just below the bandage she’d wrapped, and started to move. His mouth fell open and his head tipped back. He liked what she was doing. She’d never thought about things like that with Jimmy – she thought the whole male process only had one setting – but she wanted this to be good for him. She wanted to savor the feeling of really giving herself and having it mean something.

Davis was inching himself up, leaning back against the headboard so he could pull her closer. His arms went around her waist and gently crushed her against hot damp skin and she held onto him and let the friction build. There was so much warmth. She was either going to melt against him or shatter into pieces from the inside. He attacked her mouth, growing hungrier, and then his hand cradled the back of her head again as he drew her down onto her back.

Her heels left the mattress and rested against his lower back. That was good. That was perfect. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “Davis . . . “ The rest of the words died. The only answer she got was a rush of breath against her ear anyway. She didn’t need an answer. She just needed to feel this, needed him to feel it. His movements got more erratic and before she knew it she really was breaking apart, exploding with so much delirious heat it was a wonder she wasn’t glowing with white-hot light.

It didn’t stop and she needed him to join her. She wrapped her arms around him, rubbed his back and wanted to tell him it was okay, the worst was over now – he could lose control with her, trust her. But she could barely exhale, let alone speak. She squeezed at him and that did it. He let out a cry that echoed more like a sob and shook so hard he was going to tear the wound in his arm.

Chloe lay catching her breath for a long time afterward and the room dropped into complete silence once her blood stopped pounding in her ears. Davis was heavy on top of her, completely drained, and she hadn’t let go of him.

She ran her hand up and down his back to calm his still rapid heartbeat and smiled at him sprawled naked on top of her, all hard muscle and slender lines. He was so well-made.

“I guess we know which part of you gets the job done,” she quipped. “Which half of you, that is. I’m pretty sure we both know which part.”

He snorted, and with a prolonged and exhausted groan summoned the strength to drag himself off her. She shivered where his body heat had seared her before. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m a little too tired to explain how it all works, Chloe.” He pushed the extra pillows to the floor and pulled the covers back far enough to climb under them, adding once he settled on to his back, “It’s the one part of my biology I do understand.

Chloe grabbed the sheets and climbed in with him. He held out his arm to her and she let herself curl against his chest. “I don’t see why it matters,” she smiled back. “All men are from the same planet anyway.”

Davis rolled his eyes at the ceiling and pretended to look annoyed. “The other guys are from Mars, Chloe. Clark and I are from Krypton. Get it right.”

She laughed and drew the blankets up. It was good to hear him crack a joke again.

X.

He woke up warm. He used to dream he was stranded in the arctic and that if he didn’t find someone to kill within the hour the world would cease to exist. In his dream, the media went crazy and Chloe would be the reporter on the TV posting updates on the search for him. Somehow, he’d find his way back to civilization. Maybe he flew – he didn’t know. He’d look around him and see women and children and Clark in his suit on his way to work. He’d start to panic. He couldn’t give any of them to the beast. The police would line up death row inmates for him take instead, shouting at him to do it before the world ended. But he couldn’t choose.

This time he didn’t dream at all. He drifted in and out of sleep distantly aroused by the softness of Chloe’s breast against his chest and her warm thigh against his. But he was too tired to reach for her again and light streamed through the window by the time he got the strength to open his eyes.

He glanced at the clock on instinct and his heart sank. He had to get ready for work. Tearing himself away from Chloe was like waking from a gooddream. Maybe that’s all this was. Maybe she’d call him later telling him this was a mistake and she couldn’t do this. Maybe . . . Maybe he’d gotten too used to everything going to Hell and it was too early for thinking so hard.

She groaned when he eased his way out from under her, but her eyes didn’t open. Davis kissed her cheek and drew the covers back around her. She looked a mess, with her gold hair starting to curl and her make-up smeared, but that didn’t stop her from being beautiful.

He put coffee on and heard her phone ring while he showered. He caught a few “Clark”s and the words “I can’t make him” and by the time he got into his uniform she was out of bed and helping herself to toast in the kitchen with a flustered look on her face.

That look faded into a smile when he came around the counter to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Hey, you.” She was glowing in the light coming in from the window and caught him off guard by wrapping her arms around his neck. He barely had time to get an arm around her before she stretched up on her toes and captured his mouth with hers.

It was so normal, a good morning kiss, him in his uniform and her in her clothes from last night. She honestly looked happy and in no time at all she pressed her body against his and her mouth went from tender to hungry.

His head spun with idea that she wanted him, right now at seven thirty in the morning in the kitchen. The sensations from last night flooded back and from the other times he’d had her. The blood rushed to his groin and he gently pushed her away.

“What?” She looked hurt, or maybe annoyed. “Afraid I’ll wrinkle you? I can iron.”

He doubted it. If it didn’t involve a computer, Chloe was lost. He’d have to take her camping sometime, see how long she survived. But the state of his uniform was the least of his worries.

“No, I just . . . I don’t want what we have to be just this. I was thinking in the shower. I never got the chance to take you out. How about it, Chloe? Doing anything tonight?”

If they were going to do this, it had to be right, and if he didn’t want her to have doubts he had to do his part to make her happy. The media had gotten over the Cornfield Killer by now, and they couldn’t hide away like they had before, in the basement or on the run. He wanted all the things he never had with her, not more secrets. He wanted to start over, be the man the monster wouldn’t let him be, a man who worked twelve hours most days and wanted the same as everyone else.

Chloe smiled and put another piece of bread in the toaster. “I’d like that.” She made a face and added, “Assuming I survive Lois calling me all day trying to determine whether I should put out or not. She still wants her exclusive interview. Now she has Clark calling me. He thinks I can persuade you.”

Davis shook his head. She probably could, if she tried. That wasn’t the problem. “If I was going to give a big story to anyone I’d give it to you. You said you lost your position at the The Daily Planet. If I’m really that fascinating it could get you back your job as a reporter.”

The toaster popped, but Chloe ignored it, staring at up him and trying to gauge whether he was serious or not. “What are you, my personal career finder? First the Isis Foundation and now this?”

He set his coffee down. He couldn’t let her toss this aside with another half-hearted wisecrack. She deserved to do something with her life that didn’t involve getting throttled in dark alleys and flying through glass doors. “Why not? I know your job as a journalist meant something to you. You used to talk about it all the time.”

“It’s not that. I just . . . Davis, I can’t capitalize on the painful experience of someone I care about.” Why not? He was asking her to. She couldn’t tell the whole truth anyway. She was there, she knew the real nightmare, not just the drama of the police hunt and his picture slapped on the front page day after day – no one had to know she knew, but she did. “Besides,” she went on after a moment, and here came the real truth, “I can’t work at the Planet with Clark and Lois there. I . . . It’s stupid but, all my life I dreamed of being the best, the star reporter working under the Tiffany lamps and looking out at Gotham City from my office. I don’t want to compete with my friends.”

She meant she didn’t want to outshine her friends and feel guilty about it. He knew the story. She’d run the Smallville Torch for four years and had a summer job at the Planet at sixteen. He didn’t know about Lois, but Davis doubted Clark had that kind of enthusiasm.

”The Daily Planet’s not the only paper in the world, Chloe.” He picked up his coffee and went to look for his work pager and his keys. “Think about it. Tell the world who I am. You’re the only one who really knows.”

He felt her eyes on him as he zipped up his jacket. He didn’t know if he’d ever let himself dismiss the killings as something the monster did instead of him. He couldn’t tell the truth without endangering Clark’s identity, but he was ready to say the blood and the bodies had horrified him as much as they did anyone else and that all he’d ever wanted was to do good.

He turned just in time to get an armful of Chloe. It was a good thing all his wounds had healed or he would have been wincing she hugged him so tight. It felt right, like he’d clawed his way back to something. Out of the monster’s lair and into the light, and he just wanted to stay there.



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