Title: Secrets

Rating: PG-13

Fandoms: x-men, smallville

Summary: Continuence of Arrival and First Day. An unscheduled arrival in Clark’s world profoundly alters the flow of destiny for Smallville. Third chapter – the changes begin.

Chapter Three: Secrets

Greg’s voice echoes about the warehouse.

“…Clark? Clark where are you?”

Clark is curled up inside a concrete shell, fighting nausea, desperately trying to think. Lana is depending on him. If he can’t beat Greg, he will go after her again. But right at this moment, it doesn’t look as if Clark can even help himself. He shouldn’t have let Greg lure him here; Greg with whom he had played as a kid, and who had remembered Clark’s aversion to meteors.

“Come on out!” Greg is saying. “I just want to play. Clarky? Come out!

Clark takes a deep breath and abruptly realizes the nausea is fading. He looks down at his hand, which is no longer bulging with green veins, and then at the concrete shell that shelters him with dawning realization.

“It’s lined with lead…”

“Give it up, Clark!” Greg is saying. “You can't fight natural law! Only the strong survive.”

Clark tries to judge how far Greg is from him. Greg is fast, but Clark is faster. If he can get him out of the range of the meteor rocks, he can probably restrain him long enough to…

“Greg!”

Clark freezes. That’s not Greg’s voice.

“Greg, is that you?”

Some poor unsuspecting person has just stumbled on their battle. Clark hears uncertain footsteps and the tap-tap of a cane. With a sinking heart, he recognizes the voice.

“Mr Summers?” Greg says, sounding as surprised as Clark feels. Even the menace in his voice has faded in favour of confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” The tap-tap of the cane ceases. Clark risks discovery to peer round the edge of the shell. Mr Summers is standing in the middle of the warehouse floor, looking completely helpless with the dark glasses covering his blind eyes. “There are a lot of people looking for you right now, Greg.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

Greg sounds supremely disinterested. Clark ducks back into hiding as the boy turns back to scanning the warehouse.

Mr Summers speaks up again.

“I know what you’re going through, Greg.”

Several seconds of silence tick past.

Oh you’ve got to be kidding me…

Mr Summers is trying to psycho-analyze Greg? He’s not even a real school counsellor! It’s just a job that Lex got him as a favour to Clark, and even then Lex had gone a little overboard because he’d somehow become convinced that Scott was some long-lost relative of Clark’s. (“It’s no problem Clark.” (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more)).

What makes it worse is that Smallville has accepted the rumour as truth, and Clark can’t refute it without having to answer some very awkward questions – like where Scott Summers really came from and why he’s staying with the Kents. The only person who doesn’t believe it is Chloe, who’s convinced Mr Summers is some kind of Luthorcorp spy, and possibly a meteor mutant.

Clark could tell her not to bother: Mr Summers is a mutant alright. He’s admitted as much, though he scoffs at the idea that meteors had anything to do with it. He won’t even tell them what exactly it is he does, though it’s not hard to figure out it has something to do with how he ended up lost, blind and confused on the Kents’ driveway.

What Clark really wants to do is ask Chloe to look Mr Summers up on her computer, but if she starts digging up Mr Summer’s background, she’ll probably start with Clark’s and that’s the last thing he wants.

“I know that you’re changing,” Scott is saying, voice low like he’s trying to calm a spooked horse. “That you can do things no one else can, and it’s frightening…”

“I’m not afraid,” Greg says sharply.

“Of course you’re not,” Scott agrees smoothly.

“No,” Greg says, voice low and savage, refusing to be soothed. “You don’t get it.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Footsteps. Greg is pacing back and forth, rubber scuffing on the concrete, working out his agitation through movement.

“When you saw me in your office,” he begins. “I was pathetic. I was weak. I was at the bottom of the foodchain. Everyone pushed me around, and girls didn’t even see me.”

“And that makes you angry?” Scott’s voice is gently querying.

“No. Don’t you see? It’s evolution. The strong prey on the weak and females choose the strongest mates. That’s what happens.”

“So what’s changed?”

“Me. I evolved. I got stronger, faster. I can climb things. I can smell… everything. It’s like the whole world’s opened up. I can have whatever I want, whenever I want!” His voice changed abruptly, going from enthused to something darker and filled with contempt. “Trust me, the last thing I am is afraid.”

Scott is silent for a long moment.

“So might is right?” He says.

“What?” Greg says, confused.

“You’re assuming because you can do something, you should.”

Greg is silent, not answering. When Clark peeps round the corner, he can see Scott tilting his head in that particular way that means he’s listening for something. He could swear Scott is looking at him for a moment, despite the fact the man is blind and wearing dark glasses to boot. Clark quickly pulls back behind the concrete shell.

“They found your mother,” Scott says.

“Yeah?” Greg sounds as if he’s barely even tuned into the conversation.

“Why did you do it, Greg? She was your mother. She loved and supported you. She didn’t beat you, or let anyone else hurt you. What on earth could she have done that would make you want to kill her?”

There is a passion behind Scott’s words that is almost foreign to his usual calm, crisp tones. This is important to him. Personal.

In contrast, Greg’s voice is chillingly casual as he answers:

“Because I could.”

There is another long silence.

“I see,” Mr Summer says at last.

“No,” Greg says with cruel irony. “You really can’t. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“It’s funny about Lana.”

There is a beat.

“What?”

“She’s the one, isn’t she? The one who didn’t see you.”

“Do you have a point?”

“I’m just saying it’s ironic. You changed, became stronger, faster, better. And she still won’t look at you.”

Greg laughs but there is a forced edge to it.

“I have Lana.”

“But you had to kidnap her. She didn’t choose you for your superior genetic material. Despite all the changes, in evolutionary terms, you’re still a loser…”

“That’s it, shut up!”

Clark decides he had better intervene before Mr Summers gets his neck broken.

He rounds the shell, and stops.

Greg has Mr Summers by the front of the shirt, but there’s a look of confounded surprise on his face as he stares at the hyperdermic sticking in his arm.

“Just a sedative,” Mr Summers is saying calmly. “You’ll wake up with a headache, but nothing more.”

“You – you – ”

Greg’s face twists in rage and he flings Mr Summers away, sending him flying across the room. Clark super-speeds in time to catch him, cushioning his fall.

Greg pulls the empty hyperdermic out of his arm and stares at it with rapidly glazing eyes. It slips from between his fingers and clatters onto the concrete floor. Greg staggers a few steps towards Clark and Mr Summers, one clawing hand reaching for them, lips peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl. Then he keels over and is still. The only sound is Mr Summers’ and Clark’s loud breaths in the silence.

Clark rises to his feet and walks over to Greg’s slumped form. He checks Greg’s pulse and finds a steady, reassuring throb beneath his fingers.

Mr Summers pulls himself to his feet, groping for his walking stick. He tilts his head, listening intently.

“Who is that?” He asks curiously.

Clark takes a step toward him, opening his mouth, and something crunches underfoot. He looks down at the broken hyperdermic, unwelcome thoughts rising.

Mr Summers figured out what was happening to Greg. He worked out where he would go, and a way to bring him down. He provoked Greg into coming within range and stuck him with the hyperdermic in a display that was too coolly competent to be anything but familiar.

Who was this person they’d welcomed into their home?

“Clark?” Mr Summers says more softly, questioningly, and a chill runs down Clark’s spine. His mouth is suddenly dry.

He doesn’t say anything. He leaves the unconscious Greg for Mr Summers to deal with and superspeeds away.