Fic post: Mariposa end part one

[roxy]

Title:Mariposa
Fandom: SV
Pairing: Clark/Whit…
Rating: 2
Summary: This story is an AU version of my personal hell Smallville.

Parts 1-36 here



This is where I died
I can’t stop walking around the tangled mess on the road…this is the hood of the truck, peeled back from the body…this is where the windshield exploded, and the side mirror and the driver’s side—there’s glass like stars all over the blacktop. This is the driver’s seat, this is the…
I feel glass all over me...I hear sirens, see the flashing lights, I feel like the top of my head is exploding in slow motion over and over, and I feel a hand on mine. I feel like the top of my head is exploding in slow motion over and over the top of my head is exploding in slow motion over and over
over and over
A soft voice says shhh, shh, and I realize then that I’m screaming. It’s a dream; I know it’s a dream. The boy is right there, outside of my window and he’s smiling. I can see it, like looking underwater…my head hurts a lot. Open the door get out of the truck Kal, he says and I push against it .and it’s gone I have to get Whit out I say and he shakes his head. I take a step back to the car; I don’t remember moving away from it.
Whit?
The truck flew from this side of the road, to this side, and about this point right here, this is where I died

******

Lights were too bright, everything had a hard edge, an edge that seemed to vibrate, he felt as if he touched anything he’d cut himself. People were running, there was screaming…he was wrapped in a blanket and his mothers arms, his dad was staring at him and looked so scared and it reminded him of…of. His mouth hurt, his teeth hurt, his eyes hurt. “Where’s Whit? Is he okay, can I talk to him?” Lights got brighter and brighter… “Has anyone seen my dog?” he asked, and heard someone crying.

******

The lights swam for a moment, and he moved. His back didn’t hurt anymore, there was something warm, a blanket under him. He blinked and recognized Smallville Medical’s emergency room. His mom was wiping the hair back from his forehead, and he asked her, “Whit? Is he here too?”

“Honey, not yet,” his mom said. “Baby…”

“Let me talk to him—I want to talk to him,” and his voice got louder, and he pushed his mom back from the table and tried to get down. His whole body flipped and there was a nurse, holding his head as he threw up into a bowl.

“Don’t move yet, okay? You’re fine—but you got tossed around pretty good…he’s fine,” she repeated to his mom and dad. “He’s just bruised, he’ll be awfully sore.”

Dad nodded. “We talked to the doctor…when can we take him home?”

“Just as soon as the paperwork comes up.”

“Not without Whit.” Clark set his feet and stood. “Where is he?”

“Clark,” his dad said. shaking his head, “sit down son, please sit down.”

No. No. No. No--

*****
Clark was home, the only thing to show of the accident a long scratch at the base of his skull. It had bled freely, was frightening to his parents but was just a scratch, hidden by his hair. His headaches were constant, but he said nothing to anyone. His mom had been so upset, they’d worried, and he didn’t want to upset her more, and make her sick. He didn’t want to talk about the headaches anyway, or that he felt afraid all the time. He didn’t want to tell her that he felt dead.

Chloe tried to divide her time between her dad and Clark, and Clark appreciated it, he really did. He hoped she’d forgive him for throwing her out, but her presence made him twitchy and angry. There was only so much pity he could take.

Mom made him angry. She kept telling him that she understood, and that some day he’d feel better. How could she know? Besides, she had the baby to think about.
The baby.

He went into town with his dad. He went…not to Fordman’s. To the mall, the big faceless mall stuffed with people, moving around and not giving a flying fuck about him.
He was in a mens shop, looking at the black suits. The pants from his only suit fit in the waist, a touch short but not too bad…he kept telling his dad they were fine, but the jacket was too short in the sleeves, and his mom’s face had wrinkled unpleasantly when he’d pulled it shut and it was too big. Too big. All his shirts were too big, his pants…he looked across the mall and was caught by…some thing, some thought….

“Clark.” His dad’s hand was on his arm, but for a moment he didn’t know it was him, and he jumped, with a little cry.

“Clark, it’s okay. Do you want to go home?” He stared at his dad for a long minute; it seemed to take that long for the string of words to connect into meaning in his head. He shook his head, and took a jacket, black, into the fitting room. It fit. It was black. It was cheap and it was fine.

He was home in the kitchen and reading the obit page.
Again. Again.

His mom slid a plate covered by a slab of pie as big as first base in front of him, ice cream sat on it, melting. He swallowed thick saliva and tried not to grimace. He’d already shoved as much as his dinner as he could down his throat and there was no way…he tried to smile at her. The phone rang, and she groaned, pressed her hands into her back and levered herself out of her chair. She waved him down when he rose to answer the phone. “You eat, hon—I’ve got it. It’s probably for me…” she answered it.

“Hello? Oh, hello—excuse me? *Excuse* me?” Clark watched the blood drain from her face, and her eyebrows draw together, her lips thinned out. “I can’t believe that you’d call us and ask such a thing. I can’t believe that—disrespect? You’re insane.” His mom slammed the phone down and he knew before she spoke.

“I'm going. They can’t stop me.”

“Clark…they can. Please don’t cause a scene—Whitney wouldn’t want that.”

He stared at his mother in open mouthed horror. “What makes you think *you* know what he wants? Or those people? No body knows him, not like I do.”

He left the house and climbed the stairs to the loft. He sat on the couch, wrapped around a red pillow, it felt like the only thing he had left in the world that was his….he buried his face in it and cried for everything he’d lost.

*****

He was waiting for his dad outside of the feed store, and suddenly she was standing in front of him, like a corpse floating to the surface of a lake. “I’d like to talk to you.”

He tilted his head, trying to understand what she was saying. Words percolated slowly through his head, and he opened his mouth. “Leave me alone.”

Her expression didn’t change, it just kind of…tightened, all over, her eyes, her mouth, she said, “You have no right. You act like you’re the wronged one—you’re not. I’m the one. You weren’t being laughed at; you weren’t at the center of the gossip and the butt of jokes, not like I was. No one talked about *you* the way they talked about me and I had to walk around with my head high, and smiling, smiling all the damn time…you think you’re hurt? What about me?”

Clark felt…something, finally, he felt something. It roared up from the ground, swept him until it filled his head, a great roaring black wave of hatred—so swift, so hot, it made him gasp. He was afraid, that he might kill her…

And then the tight veneer cracked, her face crumbled, her lips twisted and shook. “Every time he left my house, I knew where he was going. I knew the smile on his face wasn’t for me. When he kissed me, he wasn’t with me.” Tears stood in her eyes. “I know you hate me, and I certainly can’t pretend that you’re my favorite person—but you can’t go to the funeral. I’m asking you, please. You think it’s a punishment, some last cruelty, but it’s not. It’s all I have left, and all his parents have. Let them hold onto the idea that some happy future was possible, for their son and his fiancé-- please.”

Fiancé? Clark let the word roll over him like a razor tipped combine…he nodded. “I won’t go to the funeral. I understand.”

She nodded, and walked away.

Clark took one step closer the road, and waited for his dad.

******
He had to come out here—to this place. That thing, that something, kept calling him out to it. Day, night, it called him

Heat made the black top shimmer, and waves of heat danced over the fields, the dry weeds marching back into the corn. His hair dripped, sweat rolled down his ribs and soaked the waistband of his pants. It was ridiculously hot for May, almost unbearably hot. He trudged on through the powdery roadside dust, he had to find it, he knew it was here…he shuddered, his stomach flipped and he felt ghost pain in his jaws—he’d stepped on broken red plastic, chunks from a tail light. The crack it made as his heel snapped it sounded briefly like bones breaking. Farther into the weeds, a headlight sat, throwing back painful reflections from the glaring sun. He shook his head and tried to focus on the here and now. A few feet beyond that, on the edge of where the corn began, a truck side mirror was partially buried in the dirt. He turned away.

Clark walked farther up the road, heard a car behind him, heard it rolling to a stop in the roadside gravel. He kept walking, when the door opened and footsteps rattled behind him, he kept walking.

“Hey—shit! Ooof!” He stopped, sighed deeply and turned.

“Pete. Why are you here?”

Pete was picking himself up from the dirt, wincing and wiping at his pants legs. “Question is, why are you here? What are you looking for? You’re folks tell me this is the third time you’ve been out here. Stop coming out here Clark. Nothing you find is going to make you happy.”

Clark closed his eyes, and waited a beat before answering. “Whitney was going to give me something, he had a box, his grandmother’s. He said he was going to give it to me and when—when," He flailed, speechless, all control gone, so upset, he lost words, lost air…Pete was at his side in a flash.

“Okay, okay, let’s look together---how…maybe they, unh, picked it up. Maybe his folks have it?”

Clark shook his head. “I asked Lana.”

Pete was open-mouthed in astonishment. He looked so staggered, Clark might as well have told him that he’d secretly longed for Lana all this time… “What the fuck? Why would she tell you the truth, dude?”

Clark shrugged helplessly. “She would, I just—know. She wouldn’t lie to me about that anymore, not now.”

“Okay, okay,” Pete said, in the tone of voice reserved for possibly violent dogs and armed men on rooftops. He held his hands up, nodded. “Let’s look, okay…”

Clark sighed. “Thanks Pete.” He directed him to cover an area directly across from where the other driver’s truck had come to a stop, and he walked the weeds opposite that area. The heat pressed against him, his shirt stuck and shifted against him, wet, sticking and unsticking…the grasses on the roadside glued to him, and pulled away reluctantly as he pushed through them. He didn’t care, he ignored everything except searching. He had to find it, whatever it was Whit wanted him to have, he had to find it, it would explain everything.

“I found something,” Pete yelled, and Clark whirled around and raced back out through the weeds, stumbled to a stop in front of Pete.

“What? Where is it?”

Pete held up a belt buckle. “Ah, sorry. This doesn’t look like what you want,” he frowned.

“No Pete, it really doesn’t. I’m pretty much fucking certain he didn’t want to give me a mother-fucking ‘Keep On Trucking’ belt buckle.” He snatched it from Pete’s hand, ignoring his yelp of pain and threw it, intending to wing it back into the weeds…they watched it sail off into the sky….

Pete and Clark stared at each other for a long moment, before Pete whispered, “I’m sorry,” and Clark shook his head, “No, hell no. I’m sorry, that was crappy of me. Are you okay?”

Pete nodded. “I’ll keep looking. Clark…that’s some arm you got…”

“Um. Yeah. Thanks Pete.”

Back to the weeds, even hotter now, and his heart was still beating hard. He felt an odd wave of…something, something dark. Hot and cold at the same time. He bent, and half buried in soft dirt and gravel of the shoulder was a box. An ugly gray box, right under his foot. He scrabbled at the dirt, pulled up the box and the bent cover fell off, a ring fell out and bounced off his boot.

He knelt…Whit’s school ring. He snorted. A school ring, like—like he was his girlfriend. That was a fucking laugh. He sat suddenly, his legs too weak to hold him. He dropped his head leaned it on crossed arms. A black wave rolled over him, rolled him up, a wave deep and sharp, made of night and razorblades...he slipped the ring on his finger and knew, finally he understood—he was death, a curse, everything he touched died or withered, corrupted because of what he was. The best thing he could do for his friends, for his family was to leave, before he killed them, too.

The ring felt heavy on his hand, he could feel the CKWF engraved inside the band. He rolled it on his finger, and he couldn’t take it off. The red stone winked up at him, blood red, and deep in the center, fire danced. It was a stupid ring. Whit had said he’d think it was stupid, and he did, it was so fucking stupid, and he’d cut his finger off before he removed it ever again. The thought made him feel even more lost than he’d felt before.

******

Since there was only a half day at school, he didn’t bother going. He packed some clothes in a backpack. He took the red pillow from his bed, and pressed it to his face. Remembered the first time...the first time. How he’d held the pillow.

Clark took the pillow into the room that used to be the guest room, and tucked it into the rocker, the only piece of furniture in the room. The room looked nice with its fresh coat of paint, it was going to look cute when the crib and everything else was in place….

Downstairs, he checked the clock. His mom and dad were at the doctors, and most of the school was at the funeral, and he was headed downtown. He stopped in the kitchen, and leaned against the doorframe—Buddy’s bed was still next to the mudroom door. He wiped his eyes, and walked out, across the yard, and sprinted to the barn, up to the loft.

Into the backpack, he crammed the robe Chloe’d given him, and the junk in the drawer. He stuffed it deep into the bag, and grabbed the can he’d been shoving change and bills into, saving for Christmas, saving to get something really nice for…

He couldn’t get out of Smallville soon enough. He hated the town. He’d head out to the road where—the bus stopped to pick up folks headed to Metropolis. If he was fast enough, he’d make it before his parents came home…he could run that fast.

A car pulled up in the driveway, and his heart turned over with a painful slam. But it was Fred.

Only Fred. Fred got out of his car, and walked towards him. He had a bag in his hand.
Stopped in front of him. “Here. She didn’t want it. So his parents gave it to me. It don’t fit.”

Clark stared down at Whit’s red and yellow Crows jacket stupidly. Nothing came to mind, his mouth didn’t work. He just kept staring.

“Funeral's over. You going somewhere?”

“…bus…stop.”

“Yeah? Get in. I’ll drive you.” They didn’t speak, and Fred kept his eyes on the road. They got to the stop ten minutes before the bus came. Fred finally looked at him. “He loved you a lot.”

Clark nodded and climbed out, and Fred handed him a handful of bills. “For the bus. Hey, don’t be stupid,” he snorted when Clark tried to shove them back. “Go on. Don’t get hurt.”

Clark nodded and climbed on the bus and before the doors shut, Fred called out, “Me too!” and drove away.

Clark sat in the back of the bus, and stared at his reflection in the window for all the miles it took to get to the city.

End of Part one