Restless Nights (Chapter Three)

Banner by Bkwurm1

Still on alternate Doomsday with some elements from the "Death of Superman" arc as my patron requested.

Warning: Extreme violence.

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands

Chapter Three

There were screams outside. First a few, then more...

Bart rushed back to the window, then turned to the rest of them. "It's here."

"Here?" Chloe moved to the window next to him. "What does that mean? What does..." Clark went to lead it to the plant. Had it... She let out a sob. "Please, God, no!"

Bart gripped her shoulder. "Hey. We don't know what it means. They were trying to get it to the plant. Maybe it was just harder than..."

"Clark," she nearly whimpered in relief. She could see him, skidding to a stop at the other side of the street. But any relief was short-lived. She couldn't see the others. Not one. People were fleeing in the street below, but the Beast wasn't going after them. It stood still in the middle of the street and she swore she could hear its loud breathing below, as if it was sniffing the air. "Davis!" She looked behind her. He stood as if paralyzed. "It must be after him. We can't just..."

There was a roar from the street and she turned back to the window. The Beast was staring up, moving toward the building and she felt frozen and sick, could almost feel its eyes on her. Then Clark ran at the Beast and It faltered. Yet, It recovered too quickly, gripped him by the arm, tossing him over Its head. The building shook.

"So much for this safe haven," Bart growled. He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Get outside, Babydoll. I need to clear this building!" He disappeared.

"Stairs," she yelled, pulling Jimmy and Davis to the door. Davis seemed to wake up at that, but Jimmy looked completely dazed. "Now!" 

She ran for it, pulling an alarm as she passed it on the stairwell, hoping the building's occupants would get the message. She heard footsteps behind her as the building rocked again, then felt someone yank her back as a crack split the floor. 

"I've got you," Davis yelled, pulling her in the other direction, back to the hallway. There were sirens and screams outside, panicked yells inside. She felt something zip past her and knew it had to be Bart before he appeared in front of her, trying to support an unconscious Jimmy. 

"Top floor's clear. I think they're trying to lure it away from this one," Bart said as a distant crash split the air. "I need to be out there. Try to get everyone out." He shoved Jimmy at Davis. "You're a paramedic, right?"

"Bart, go. We got this." At least she hoped so. She knew the evacuation procedure. And Davis had been a paramedic long enough to handle himself in a disaster. She saw a woman frantically pressing the button for the elevator and rushed to her. "Take him down the back stairs," she yelled back to Davis as she grabbed the woman's hand. "We all need to take the stairs," Chloe said, trying to keep her voice clear and calm, even as she was quaking along with the aftershocks. 

The woman nodded. "Okay. Okay. Okay..." She repeated it over and over as Chloe herded her and the fidgety man from the life insurance office in front of her, who was bleeding from his head. 

"Back stairs," she kept yelling as they hit the second floor and a frantic pair of men joined them. That had to be all. It was past three by now. Most of the offices were closed. Thank God. Then again, she wasn't sure if God or anyone else was helping out when she heard a roar and a frantic "NO" from outside.

She'd barely got their small group out the fire exit into the alleyway when she heard something even louder than the alarm, an unearthly, ear-splitting screech that could only be Dinah. It hurt her ears from here. She could only hope the Beast was suffering worse. But the screech was cut off abruptly. She looked around, horrified. 

Davis was tending to the insurance man. The woman was still muttering to herself. Jimmy was standing on his own now, but shaking his head as if in some deep denial that this was happening. One man was trying to dial 911 while the other was arguing with him about the sirens already around them.

"Damn it, just keep the civilians back!" she heard someone yell. It sounded like John Jones. "Nothing you have can fight this!"

She moved almost drunkenly toward that voice, picked her way through the crumbled stone and broken glass, wondering how much was Isis and how much was the apartment building next door. Several people appeared in her path, all dazed and most bleeding, and she wondered if she was going insane until she saw that each was preceded by a flash of red. Bart was piling person after person into the alleyway. 

Chloe impatiently gestured them back, hoping Davis could handle them. She could barely speak, barely think what to do. 

All she knew was that she had to see him. 

She stumbled over a broken lion's head that used to hang from the corner of the federal building... and right into a war zone.

"Just throw all you can at it!" John was screaming. "He can't fight this alone!" 

Oliver was grim-faced, notching arrow after arrow by hand, his compound bow a shattered mess some feet away. Dinah was at his feet, struggling to move. Victor was leaning drunkenly against an overturned patrol car, shooting shockwave blasts from his hands even as sparks flew from the side of his face, leaking some sort of dark fluid, darker than blood. But there was blood, too, surrounding John on the ground while he was shouting into a radio to "stay the hell out of the fight zone!" Sometimes a flash of red moved past and she heard new mewling voices behind her.

And the ground kept shaking.

When she cleared the building's side and saw Clark and the Beast, she saw why. Every punch Clark landed shook the earth, even as the Beast stayed upright. She screamed as It landed a blow on Clark's shoulder, nearly hammering him into the ground. 

Bart appeared before her, holding a bloodied boy. "Damn it, Dollface! Stay back!" he yelled, before putting the kid with the others and rushing at the Beast. But It swatted him away like a fly and she almost felt the impact herself as Bart crashed through the glass door of the movie theater across the street. 

She started for him, for Clark, but someone was pulling at her and she turned, ready to push them away hard before she saw it was Jimmy. 

"Chloe, what are you doing? You can't go..."

"It's killing them!" she screamed as she heard another loud crash. By the time she turned back around, John was crumpled on the ground, his radio smashed next to his gun, just inches from his hand. But she saw Clark, saw him throwing off chunks of rock and dust, his clothes hanging from him in tatters. "Clark!" Jimmy was still holding onto her. "Let me go!" She ripped away, her jacket falling off in Jimmy's hands. "Clark!"

Clark turned, caught her stare and, for a moment, it seemed like there wasn't even a foot between them. She could see everything in his eyes -- exhaustion, guilt, grief, and so much fear and pain, she wanted to weep. Yet there was no time for it. 

Oliver was pulling at a limp Dinah with one hand while his other arm just hung there, bent unnaturally at his side. He looked as if he was struggling to get her out of the Beast's path.

But It wasn't moving to Dinah. It was moving toward the alleyway. Chloe whirled. "Davis! It's coming!" And there were so many injured people piled in with them by now. They were sitting ducks. "You have to get away from the others!" she yelled on a sob. It felt so cold, asking that of him, as if he were bait. But what else could she do? Her eyes darted to the gun near John's hand. It wouldn't make a dent, would only make him angrier, would only taunt him closer to...

She gasped as Jimmy stepped in her line of vision, snatching up the gun. "Jimmy! No!" 

Then it all happened so fast. Jimmy fired with a shaking hand, but the Beast just kept advancing, bullets popping off It like pebbles until It reached Jimmy, slashing a spiked hand through the air. The gun went flying in a spray of gore and Jimmy crumpled to the ground. Clark was suddenly beside her, pressing her to the opposite wall, then gone again, ramming himself into the Beast's torso. The both of them skidded across the street.

She slid down the wall and stared numbly at the puddle of blood, Jimmy's blood, so much blood, too much blood. Jimmy was nearly gray, eyes fluttering shut. She slid bonelessly to the ground, felt something at her side, then let out a scream as she felt what it was -- Jimmy's hand, fingers still wrapped around the gun. She stared in horror at his stump of a wrist, pumping blood into the rubble. He was turning gray. "Somebody..."

Davis appeared over him and she watched, frozen and trembling, bile creeping its way up her throat as Davis ripped off a hunk of his shirt and tried to tie it around Jimmy's forearm. 

And it was suddenly so quiet. 

No more crashing or rumbling, no more screams. Just moans and whimpers around her. 

"Come on. Don't you close your eyes," she heard Davis muttering. "You hear me, you little f*cker?"

She struggled to her feet, tripping over the rubble as she moved into the street.

She saw the Beast's arm, twitching from a hole in the ground. She saw Oliver, cradling a still-limp Dinah with his good arm. She saw John, leaning over a convulsing Victor, whispering for him to hold on. She saw Bart, stumbling drunkenly from the ruined theater. But she didn't see Clark.

"Clark!" She screamed his name, then she sobbed it, then she just sobbed... until she saw him rise up from under a police car and toss it rather weakly off him. She almost smiled.

Then the Beast rose up between them, red eyes on her.

She opened her mouth to warn Davis, but all that came out was a rusty squeak as It silently advanced on her. Her gaze snapped to Davis, still working on Jimmy as It moved closer. 

She stumbled backward and winced, waited for It to leap on her. But it didn't. It only took one step, eyes still trained on her. Then she realized it... The Beast was after her. 

Whatever connection Brainiac had woven between them, the fragments of it must still be there. She stepped tentatively to the side and it followed with one shuffling lurch. She moved slowly around it, further into the street, and it countered her. She madly wondered if it would follow her all the way to the Luthorcorp plant when she slipped, falling into a puddle too warm and sticky to be anything but blood.

It leaned over her with a hot, growling wheeze of breath and she felt strangely resigned. It was only fair. Here she was, covered literally and figuratively with so much blood. It was only right she did her share of bleeding.

"NO!" It was Clark. She was resigned to that, too. She'd always hoped, deep down, his voice could be the last one she heard. 

Something suddenly hit the Beast's back. She dimly registered it was a motorcycle before the thing whirled away. 

Then she could only watch in frozen horror as It ran at Clark, as Clark ran at It. 

They collided somewhere in the middle and the city shook with the impact. The ground seemed to crumble beneath them as they disappeared in a cloud of dust.

"NO!" It was her turn to scream. She scrambled to her feet, slipping in the blood and the rubble. "No, no, no..." She kept repeating it, sobbing it, praying it. She barely glanced at the Beast, face-down in the crater, not even twitching now, because she could see Clark's arm, the cuff of his red jacket stubbornly clinging to it in tatters. She fell to her knees before him, pushing at the bricks and the broken cinderblocks. "Clark?" She saw his face now, dusty and battered and bleeding. 

She pulled at his arm, reflecting on how many times she'd dragged him away from something. He felt almost lighter now. It scared her. "Clark, please..." She sobbed in gratitude as his eyes opened.

"Is it... The Beast... Did I..."

"It's... it's..." She wasn't sure what it was, but she couldn't hear its rumbling, wheezing breath behind her. "You saved us," she breathed, knowing that much for sure. "You were so amazing."

"Good," he breathed, kind of gurgled as blood spill over his lips. "That's good."

"No! Just hold on. You're going to be okay. The sun's coming up," she said, looking desperately around her, then at the still-dark sky. "Isn't it? Please?" 

"Chloe, it's not."

"Then we can get you there. John can. Just like last time. He can..." She looked up and saw John, trudging toward them, dragging his leg, staring at them sadly. His powers. They were gone much like hers. She sobbed and leaned over Clark. Just like last time, she wished she could take his pain, wished it so hard her hands burned.

"Never wanted you to go," she heard him whisper. His hand started to lift before it fell limply to the debris again. "You didn't get it. I didn't get it. But I know now... nothing... not without you."

"Stop talking," she whimpered. She didn't want to think of what he was saying, not like this. "You tell me later," she nearly growled. "Just wait. The sun's coming. You'll see." It had to be. She felt it nearly burning her skin, saw the light as if it was somehow defying the night sky just for them. 

His eyes closed. 

"No!" She shook him. "Please no. Just wait. I swear it's..." She broke off, gasping with sudden, stinging pain. As if her skin was ripping apart in places.

Then she realized it wasn't the sun. The light was all around them, only them. It was emanating from her hands, glowing dimly from inside his wounds. And the pain... God, it was everywhere. 

But she knew this feeling from before. She'd never felt it this excruciatingly. She didn't know how or why she'd been given this gift again. 

But she welcomed it. 

She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain as she felt him struggling. She held him tighter, willed him to let this happen, what she knew had to happen. Her life for his. Of course. Anything for you.

She gripped him tight as she welcomed the pain... the light... then the blackness...

***************************

Apparently, the city was in ruins. Tess couldn't force herself to care.

Luthorcorp cared, apparently. Not with her help. She supposed Oliver Queen was behind the "Luthorcorp Cares" campaign that was spearheading the effort to rebuild Metropolis after a series of unexplained earthquakes.

It was almost laughable. She knew very well what it was that leveled half the city. Hell, most of the news outlets were reporting on the mysterious monster... up until it mysteriously disappeared and eye witness accounts were suddenly "not sure what they saw" and every news source backtracked in abject mortification, citing those damned Kansas earthquakes. 

She laughed and took another slow sip... of the good stuff this time. Not that she'd been letting herself get drunk these last few days, though she told herself she would if she damned well wanted to. Why not?

Anyway, the Beast had been taken care of. It had to be. There were no other "earthquakes." She wondered who did it. She wondered who was covering it up. Was it the government or had Clark made some friends? She didn't wonder hard enough to care, though.

She finished off her drink with a sigh and moved through the top tier of the study in her robe. She'd worn nothing but robes and soft, silky pajamas these past days. No pinching heels or angular power suits. Why shouldn't she be comfortable? Her life had been absolute sh*t up to last year. 

Then she found herself with all the money and power she could have ever dreamed of. And what had she done with it? Chased signs and spacemen. And it didn't even matter how real they were. They may as well be shadows and myths for all the good they did her. She ended almost as many days here bruised and bleeding here as she had growing up. Wasn't this just more of the same abuse?

No. She was finished now. Hell, she could let Oliver buy her out, take the whole thing. Then she'd be truly free. 

She could do everything she ever wanted. She could go sunbathe in the... No. Not the tropics. Never the tropics, after all the death she'd seen there. Maybe some place in the mountains. 

Growing up in a heated, humid swamp that flooded her home every spring, she'd always dreamed of something high and cool and dry. Really, when her search for Lex first sent her to the Arctic, she'd thought it had been kismet, some kind of sign that she'd have what she wanted. 

Well, she could have it now. Something high and remote. That would suit her. Some frightfully large so-called cabin with walls of books without one scientific term in them and wide windows that let in every sliver of light. She moved to the railing, staring at the manor's narrow windows, hating this prison of a house now. Even in the spotty purple light of dawn, it seemed dark. She'd had enough darkness to last a life...

She froze as the room lit in flickering patches. Dawn didn't flicker... or whisper to her. The Orb.

She rushed down the stairs and out into the hall, forgetting that she didn't care, forgetting that this had brought her nothing but pain. Maybe it had, but she had been part of something so momentous... 

She followed the light down the hall and to the conservatory, pushed her way out the door as it glowed even brighter, hovered in the air. She could see a mist forming around it as she moved closer, see it gather into something like a human form, a naked one hovering over fiery symbols burning in the grass. 

Then the light seemed to... shrink away.

"No," she gasped.

There was another glow behind it. A bright, blue one, not a flickering but a steady pin-point of blue light with a dark figure behind it. 

It moved closer and the naked form grew muddy, started to dissolve. The flames on the grass faded.

"No!" She ran faster, then skidded forward in the wet grass, falling to her hands and knees. 

She lifted her head as the dark figure grasped the orb, still holding that source of blue light. It was a man, breathing heavily and becoming clearer as the blinding, blue light faded into what looked like a rock. 

A bald man. 

Tess' eyes widened as he moved toward her.

It couldn't be. Lex was dead. And not the kind of dead she'd declared to the papers. The kind where remains were found. Guilty parties were imprisoned. Celebratory parties for one were thrown.

Yet Lex Luthor was leaning over her. 

"I told you," he said, still breathing heavily. "You're not ready." He moved behind her and she felt a sharp, sudden pain on the back of her head before she slumped to the burnt grass, then into darkness.

CHAPTER FOUR

Yeesh, this was a toughie! I know it was shorter than my usual, but I've never written so much damned action with so many damned characters involved. Hope it was good for you guys.

I have some other updates to tend to, then I'll be back to this one.