slayers_desire | kidnapping Clark to a red-sun Earth

He's given up now, too exhausted to fight, just accepting whatever is going to happen to him. He has his eyes closed, not wanting to watch, too tired to watch and fear them, their faces shifting around him and becoming monsters he doesn't recognize. And when he's set down, he doesn't register the change in texture beneath him, doesn't take any comfort from it at all.

Placing him on the bed, April gently smooths his hair. Noting that his temperature is high with concern. She reaches to gently remove the charm around his neck -- the one that protects him against magic.

With a nervous glance at Victor, she speaks, "You mentioned restraints?"

"I did. I brought two." She gets them out of the first pocket of her bag, there for easy access in case Clark got freaked and started thrashing. Two sets of police-grade handcuffs, none of that fuzzy, lined stuff -- not that she owns that, she just knows a guy.

She hands the cuffs over to April and pulls chalk out of the bag, drawing symbols on the footboard, sketching from a notecard. This method of kryptonite extraction was taught to her from this dude in Tibet who swears by it. It won't work.

His struggles renew a little when he feels the cool metal of the cuffs slipping closed around his wrists, because this can't be happening to him, not after all he's done to try to prevent it, and in his mind he's being chained down in a laboratory somewhere, drugged and helpless. The hallucinations are getting stronger. Brainiac never intended that the infection would get this far or this powerful.

Her eyes are wetter by the time that April finishes confining Clark with the handcuffs. She watches Victor create the magic symbols.

And doesn't see any difference in his aura yet.

"His hallucinations are getting worse..." Fetching a wet cloth, April will do what she can to keep the fever down. Sending soothing touches of comfort and safety to any area of Clark's mind that is willing to listen.

"Well, looks like I'm going to be making a grumpy visit to a monk. Foolproof my rear end," she mutters, setting the chalk down and starting with candles.

A white candle, a red one, blue, yellow, green, black, flipping open the lighter, hissing when she accidentally burns her thumb in her haste. That's fine, though, it's just a little burn.

She sprinkles dried herbs on each candle's flame and the fires glow bright blue, and crackle, and it smells like peppermint and cloves and ozone, but it isn't going to work, either.

The cool wetness on his forehead is shockingly cold, and he can't figure out what it is, maybe they're cutting open his head and he's bleeding down his face, maybe he's being dunked in the kryptonite tank at Summerholt again. He doesn't know, and can't figure it out, lost in a sea of confusion and terror.

The little touches of April's mind are like tiny raindrops trying to quench a fire, and he can hear the little echoes they leave behind, some part of him recognizing what they are, but he can't respond.

Watching the bright blueness of the candle's, April's eyes go red at the sound and the smell. She senses the horrible imagery of where Clark's mind has him trapped. And tries to focus more of her gifts into his mind, to give him something to hold onto.

"No change." She reports to Victor.

"Clark sweetie. You can fight this." She gives him the imagery of the Tree.

A twinge of panic, bubbling up, actually becoming apparent instead of hidden under layers of control. "I'm so sorry. God. I have a few others, I-I...."

She's choosing them in the wrong order, and she thought she was choosing in the right order, based on probability and the reliability of each source and -- stop, not important, she gets out a brown felt charm bag that she sewed herself, solid white stitched designs all over it, it looks like Voodoo. She places it on Clark's chest. Nothing.

She reaches into her bag for something else.

Clark sees the Tree, but it's burning, hot as the fire consuming him from the inside out. He can't even see what's going on around him anymore. There's nothing but the pain, and the fear, and wanting to just die. There's nothing left for him, he thinks, so there's no point.

Only the unbreakable thread, stretched thin by his poisoned mind, keeps him bound together with April. Keeps him holding on, even if he doesn't consciously realize it.

April shifts her calming thoughts around the tree, so that the raindrops can stop the imagery of it burning. She needs him to remember that he still has something to live for.

"Victor..." She reaches out a hand to the other woman. Concerned that the only lifeline for Clark is freaking out. "I know this is frightening. And scary. But we need your mind to work its logical wonders."

"We can have an emotional breakdown later. Promise."

In her mind, all she can think is about how stupid she is, about how she needs to be smarter, why isn't she smarter, she should make better choices, what if this doesn't work. She looks at April, stricken, big brown eyes shining, and there's a look like pain. But she nods, tries to dunk her doubts underwater, expression folding in on itself like fresh laundry, hiding her self-loathing under layers of forced and heavy calm, like hiding a body under wet concrete.

"Yeah. Of course, yeah."

A potion, teal in the bottle, darker blue once it's exposed to air, and she cups Clark's face, drips it into his mouth. It tastes like cough medicine and lavender. And she recites:

"Warmth of day and cold of night
screw that stupid kryptonite.
Get that crap out of his blood;
nip this issue in the bud."

Clark's whole body goes rigid, tugging against the handcuffs like he's having a seizure, and he lets out a strangled cry. His whole body hurts, as the silver kryptonite invading his brain and blood is forced downwards, collecting together in one spot, cohering into a dense little splinter. It works its way out of him, dropping from the cut on his finger and landing on the bed with a heavy thump. It's tiny, almost deceptively innocent-looking, but behaves as though it weighs eighty pounds.

His fever breaks, fresh sweat forming on his face, and he relaxes back down with a sigh. He still hurts, like the aching aftereffects of having the flu, deep down in his bones. But the fire is gone, the hallucinations are clearing, and his fear is fading away. He keeps his eyes closed, just trying to breathe, and the image of the Tree takes root more fully in his mind, the flames going out in a torrential downpour.

When the seizure starts, April's face goes pale. She feels a weight of guilt and panic. Angry at herself for demanding that Victor continue, when the other girl is in pain. Angry at herself for allowing Clark to open the damn package in the first place.

But when the splinter of silver drops from his finger with a thump, she realizes the magic worked. "Oh God... Victor... its out."

She wipes the cooling forehead down again. "He is back." Her own eyes are wet with tears of relief, and released anxiety.

Her first thought is that she's killing him, God, she's killing him, she's killing Clark, the way he's screaming, she's--

She feels physically ill, stomach lurching like a drunk man trying to walk a tightrope, and she presses her hands to her forehead, sinking down next to the bed.

It's not until she says that he's back that she realizes she did a good thing. And then she starts crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I hurt him, is he really okay? Is he really... God."

For Clark, it's rather like finally coming to the surface after being submerged underwater. All those muffled sounds becoming clear and coherent, and he slowly tunes in to what they're saying, that there are people here talking about him, and he knows those voices.

"Ow," he breathes, half-opening his eyes, so tired but needing to see them. To make sure that this nightmare is really over. He doesn't know where he is, or what's going on, but he's not afraid anymore.

Seeing Clark's eyes open, April whispers to him. "You are okay. Its just me and Victor here. We sort of had to handcuff you."

Those are the first thing that she will remove.

Looking to where Victor is crying, April bites her bottom lip. "Come ask him yourself. I am sure he will tell you it is alright."

There's a lot going on under the surface with Vic, a lot that people don't usually get to see, inner dialogue that stays inner.

She doesn't want to get up when she's still so out of control, when her hands are shaking, and she's crying, and she feels like her entire stomach is going to defect from the rest of her body. So she goes through the processes of calming down. Deep breaths, hiding the hurt, putting on a mask to cover that vulnerability.

When she gets up, carefully, holding onto the bed, she looks almost normal again. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry."

"Hey," he says, voice rough and feeling like he weighs a million tons, with how badly he wants to just sink into this bed and rest. "It's okay." He's still confused, and even though he knows now that he must've been really sick to see a lot of the things he saw and heard, he still isn't entirely sure how much was real and how much was just hallucinations. "What happened?"

April moves so that she can remove the ejected silver kryptonite away from him before it does more damage. She fiddles with her hair. The emotions in the room are raw and she tries not to show how it affects her.

"I believe it was Professor Fine who sent me that silver kryptonite. It infected you with paranoia. Really bad..."

"The reactions made you do and say some things. Both in Smallville and in the Nexus. We had to bring you here... to a world where your powers won't work."

"Speaking of, we should get him to a place with a yellow sun. Recharge his batteries." She's completely forgotten that just an hour or two ago she was asleep. She scratches at her scalp through that rainbow cap, plucks at the sleeves of her jacket. Her throat feels thick with the want to apologize again.

He makes an attempt to sit up, but doesn't get much further than gathering his strength for the attempt before he has to concede defeat. Fighting off the silver kryptonite has really drained him, and if it had taken a few more hours to cure him, he might genuinely not have made it.

"Did I hurt anyone?" He seems to have vague recollections of his hand around someone's throat, striking someone else, and things breaking around him.

She hates having to tell him this. Knows it will make him feel guilty. "You attacked your parents. From what I understand... Chloe showed up just in time with green kryptonite."

Moving closer, April uses her PINpoint to take all three of them to a beautiful clearing. It is a forest setting, familiar to Clark as where they went in animal form. And has a nice beautiful warm sun above.

But still gives them privacy.

Victor doesn't know much about the situation at all, so it's up to April to explain while she just nods, uncertainly.

Victor holds her bag close to her, biting down hard on the inside of her cheek, looking around the clearing with a sort of comfortable numbness. Taking deep breaths, to try to slow the thudding of her heart, even though she knows her pulse won't slow until it's darn ready to slow.

There's the guilt, just as expected, and he closes his eyes for a moment. "I'll have to thank her. And apologize. I... I think I said some awful things to her. To everyone." And if his dad's heart condition worsens because of whatever Clark did to him, he'll feel even worse.

He flinches a little when they PINpoint, because suddenly finding himself elsewhere is an uncomfortably familiar sensation right now, but when the warm sunlight hits him he takes in an audible breath, deep and steadying, as the yellow sun's rays seep into his body and push out the stored red energy, beginning the slow process of strengthening him.

He opens his eyes again, nowhere near back to normal, but more awake. Definitely more coherent than he's been since this whole crazy thing started. "Are you both okay?"

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