Ikaris (eternalhubris) wrote in momadness_log, @ 2022-02-21 19:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | dc: clark kent, marvel: ikaris |
WHO: Clark Kent and Ikaris
WHAT: First Impressions
WHEN: Monday, February 21, 2019, late afternoon
WHERE: New Asgard
WARNING/STATUS: Low (some peril, some pain, but nothing bad), Complete
Between the heavy gray clouds above and the gray sea below, Ikaris was having a bit of trouble differentiating between the two as he rocketed through the winter skies. Trying to keep the horizon in his line of sight was growing increasingly difficult. At this altitude, he kept getting facefuls of ice every time he flew through a billowing pile of white, which wasn't helping matters at all.
Suddenly he saw it, just in the peripheral of his vision: the dark spot of land.
He twisted in the air and shot toward it so fast he broke the sound barrier. The quickly expanding shore was a lifeline he clung to for all it was worth. Ikaris felt it in his constructed bones: his family was close.
The telltale sonic boom signaled the arrival of something flying supersonic, and Kal lifted his gaze to the sky, picking up the man easily with his enhanced sight. Some kind of hero suit fitted the figure tightly, though there was no cape, which would make slowing down (and cornering) much more difficult. Though judging by the way the other was hurtling toward New Asgard, he didn’t think he was too interested in slowing down.
Emptying the last of the hay bales from the truck, he dusted off his hands and lifted into air, flying on an intercept course. Without his own suit he didn’t risk going too fast, but he would be able to catch the other man if he lost control.
If Ikaris's gaze hadn't been fixed on his destination with eye-watering intensity, he may have missed the dark shape rising into the air. Right. This place had its sentinels as well, but he was in no shape to face one head on. Make no mistake, he would if it came to it, but he didn't have much confidence in his abilities at that moment to dispatch anyone who got in his way as quickly as he would have liked.
Just as he was gearing himself up for the inevitable confrontation, nature had other ideas.
A sudden downburst caught him square in the back, and the wind shoved him down. If he'd been having trouble keeping the horizon straight before, that was nothing to the way it spun crazily around him as he hurtled toward the white-capped sea. He had just enough time to think, Well, shit, and then it was all stabbing cold and gray-black crushing darkness.
Kal didn't even have to think before his body was in motion, pushing faster to retrieve the figure from the iron cold waves. His own sonic boom echoed behind his feet as he dove toward the ocean, fists piercing the surface and punching a bubble of emptiness before him in the water. Dark and chaotic, if he hadn't had his enhanced sight he doubted he would have seen the other man as swiftly as he did. His fingers closed around a muscled forearm, and he pulled upwards, breaching the waves only a second before his new companion.
"I've got you." The reassurance was automatic, despite this person having abilities, he knew how disorienting the situation must be. A burst of speed had them standing on the bluffs above the beach in seconds and Kal released his hold on the other. His jeans and flannel stuck to him uncomfortably, but he ignored his own discomfort, more concerned for the other as he pushed his soaked fringe out of his eyes.
"Are you okay?"
Mind still awash with the panic he'd started to feel when he was going under, Ikaris could sense the heat and the power building behind his eyes. He knew when he looked at his rescuer that they were golden. It took everything in him not to release the energy, especially because he was startled by the gentleness and care behind the recognition that rocked him to his core. What were the odds? His mouth still had the rancid taste of seawater, and he wanted to turn and cough and spit the taste from his mouth, but he didn't dare turn away. His legs were jelly, all of his muscles screaming at him, but with different messages. Still, he only stared a moment before uttering one word: "Kryptonian."
The yellow eyes made Kal pause; he could feel the energy coming off of them, and it felt like the sun. Powerful enough to overcharge his cells in minutes. Not that he had that in mind at the moment, he was more concerned by the fact this man knew exactly what he was. Nobody on this earth knew his lineage, except the people at the facility, and maybe the government. He wasn't sure what information had been shared with the State after the Military's unprecedented visit. Despite all this flashing through his mind in a millisecond, he could still see that the other was in serious danger of collapse, and he edged a little closer. "Yes. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I—" He really wanted to assure his fellow alien that he was fine, but there were spots dancing in Ikaris's eyes. Grey and black and getting darker, they grew worse despite the fact that he was trying to focus through them. The shaking in his legs was getting worse and moving up to his arms. He raised them in an abortive gesture, not even sure what he was intending to do, and then the world tilted on its axis and went black. He had an impression of falling, and then the certainty of blessed nothingness.
Clearly the other man was far from okay, and Kal didn't need the abortive attempt at words or gesture to intuit that he was about to pass out. So when the world did go black for him, it was into strong arms he fell rather than to the partially frozen ground. Despite his usual instincts telling him he should go directly to medical, there was something else which had him headed to the hay barn at the farm instead. The flying man had been headed to New Asgard, not the facility, so perhaps he was an Asgardian trying to find home? Alighting in the loft, he laid his passenger carefully in a comfortable bed of hay and scanned him for internal injuries. There was nothing, thankfully and vitals were normal. It was just exhaustion which had finally caught up with the other man.
Sweet smelling hay infiltrated the hazy darkness of Ikaris's mind. It took him back to a time long before all this, before towering buildings of steel and glass and cities choked with exhaust of millions of people going who knows where. Clean, bright sunlight baked the ground of his memory and warmed his skin. A simpler time. Quiet. Life made so much more sense.
Home, he thought. Or maybe said, if the hum in his throat was any indication. He wasn't sure if that's what woke him up, but it probably didn't matter. At least the hay part of whatever he'd been half-dreaming, half-remembering made sense now. He cracked his eyes open slowly; the lids still felt salt-crusted and sticky. Ikaris swallowed slowly, felt it stick, heard it click. A wooden roof swam into focus, and his fingers flexed slightly, the rough wood and dried grass rasping against his skin. "Barn?"
His clothes had dried on the flight back to the farm, as had the other man's, but there wasn't any signs of him waking up just yet. As such, Clark took the opportunity to fetch a couple of bottles of water, returning well before he woke up. The few moments of stillness allowed him to ponder on this fellow flier's origins. Was he an alien like himself? Structurally he was human, or a close approximation, just as he was. But there was something other about him.
The hum had his focus back on the other's face, and he sat back slightly, not wanting to crowd him as he came around. "Yes, it's the safest place I could think of that wasn't Medical. Call it the farm boy in me. But I also didn't think you'd want to wake up at the facility. I have water if you'd like?"
Slowly, carefully, Ikaris pulled himself upright. He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but it was evidently long enough to no longer feel like his muscles and joints were trying to separate from his skeletal structure. The water captured his attention just a second before his rescuer's presence did, but he waited for the question before reaching for and taking it while giving the other a wary, but grateful nod. Half the bottle seemed to evaporate the instant it touched his lips; what a wonder, water's restorative properties—when it wasn't actively trying to suck a body under and snuff it out. He sighed as he let the bottle drift to his side and then looked at the other man head on with a curious tilt of his head.
"You know, the one thing no one could ever settle on was whether you preferred Clark or Kal." He chuckled wryly and extended his hand with a small, bemused twist of his mouth. "I'm Ikaris. Just Ikaris."
His glasses were still on the dash of the truck, so he looked more like Kal than Clark in that moment, despite the clothes. But a puzzled look pulled at his features at the words, wondering exactly who had been trying to decide what his preferred name was. Taking Ikaris' hand in a firm but gentle shake, he offered a wry little smile. "Honestly, I prefer Clark. Not many people even know the name Kal El."
Cracking the seal on his own water, he took a sip, then screwed the lid back on to waste a few seconds before asking the two most brightly burning questions in his mind. "Did you come through the HYDRA portal? Is that how you know who, and what, I am?" If the answers were yes, they had a serious hole in security somewhere in the US Government or at the facility, which they'd need to plug.
Ikaris stared. His mouth twitched. He came very, very close to laughing. This odd combination of amusement and relief got all mixed up with a vicious flash of vindication, but the emotion was there and gone again between heartbeats. He sent Clark a shallow nod. "You've just saved me from having to give you a long, drawn out explanation, and for that I'm grateful. I'm glad to know Dr Palmer and Ms Tarazi escaped. Can I assume that Mr Snart and Kaldur are here, or are they being held captive for interrogation? A squad was sent out for them, myself among them, but I didn't really try my hardest to find them."
The slight twitch of Ikaris' mouth gave him an idea of who bet on Clark as being his preferred name. His own smile came to his face at the nod and the new information supplied. "Ray and Zari did escape, they brought Kaldur'ahm and Leo with them. They're not captives, they're living with us, and are part of our community." He paused, giving a little smile, "I appreciate you not looking too hard, though I'm curious why you were headed our way today? Have you escaped HYDRA too?" He was certain that Ikaris would be similarly welcomed, should he wish to stay with them.
"I—" Pausing a moment, Ikaris took a drink. He wished the answer was a simple cut-and-dried, but it wasn't. Even so, he didn't look away from Clark's face, because doing so would have been an admission of guilt he didn't feel. He'd known what he was doing almost since the beginning. "It shouldn’t be this difficult to tell the truth, but I've been lying so much since I came through the other portal I can't find the right way to start. Did I escape from them? Yes, but this isn't the first time. It's not even the third or fourth time. The reason I kept going back was to keep them safe—my family. I couldn't let them know there were more like me." A complicated emotion worked its way across his face. "And then I didn't sense them at all, even though I searched all over, so there didn't seem to be a point. At least with the other organization, I could keep them from going too far, too fast." Ikaris's mouth tilted in a wry smile. "I was their you, after all."
"Lying can be a really hard habit to break… even if it is only out of necessity." Keeping his expression neutral as he listened, Clark tried to put himself in Ikaris’ shoes. It sounded as if they had put him to work as their ‘big gun’ and the fear for his family being discovered had kept the other extraterrestrial toeing the line. "I would do the same if my family were here, especially if I lost contact with them suddenly." His thoughts strayed to Jason and his powers, especially when they were first developing. He definitely wouldn’t have wanted people like HYDRA knowing about him. In that moment he realised who Ikaris’ family must be, and why he had been flying to New Asgard. "Thena will be happy to have her usual sparring partner back." A tiny frown came to his face, "Too far, too fast? Kaldur spoke of them preparing for some kind of battle and lots of training."
An ugly flush worked its way across Ikaris's face and down his neck. Lying constantly had been the hallmark of his life before the portal; the fact that he'd been doing it again to keep people safe was frankly ironic. His mouth pressed into an unhappy line that only deepened when Thena was mentioned. He let out a puff of air that was almost a laugh. "Happy isn't the word I'd use. We, ah, that is my family and I didn't part on the best terms, which was completely my fault. Is S…" Ikaris broke off. He wanted to ask about Sersi, but didn't feel like he got to do that. If/when he encountered his family, it should be on their terms. He drained the last of his water to buy himself another moment as he turned Clark's question over in his head. "HYDRA—they're absolutely gearing up for something, but I couldn't say what. It's clearly not good, however, but I get the impression that they're not trying to stop whatever it is, they're trying to take it over."
"Oh, I’m sorry to hear that." A slight blush crept up his neck as he realised he’d managed to put his foot in it. Though his new companion didn’t appear too affronted by his mistake. "Hopefully you will have a chance to reconcile with them if you choose to stay here." Clark was a believer in second chances; he’d been granted one in his own world after the multiverse crisis rewrote Lois’ fate. If Ikaris’ family were willing, perhaps he would get his own. "It’s a shame we have no way of finding out exactly what they’re up to. Though I suppose I am perhaps best equipped to try, if I knew the location of their portal I could listen in." Espionage wasn’t exactly his forte, but if it would help, then he could certainly give it a try.
Ikaris released a quiet sigh chock full of open regret. "I wish that was information I could give you, but they found a way to keep their version mobile a few months ago. I can't only tell you where it's been, and can only surmise they've found a way to mask its energy signature—likely using off-world tech they've scavenged over the years." He grimaced and shifted in a way that probably would have been fidgeting if it was anyone else. This next bit was a big ask, but knowing the few things he did about Clark made him fairly confident he wouldn't be turned down cold. "I don't know if you scanned me while I was out, but I don't suppose you found anything like a tracker in me? I'm not proof-positive there's anything there, but I wouldn't put it past them either. It might not even be a chip or anything like that. Chances are it's some bit of irradiated material attached to a vital organ, so tiny most modern devices would miss it entirely. Do you—would you mind looking me over? Now that I'm here, I'd rather not be dragged back, if I can help it."
A sigh of his own followed the news. That was a blow, it would have been a boon to have the location of Hydra's portal to give to the science team back at the facility. "We found one abandoned location in Norlisk. I don't think the team here dreamed that the portal could be stabilized enough to make it mobile." Off world technology. Well, they had plenty of that in New Asgard, scavenged from Thanos' destroyed fleet. Maybe the science team here should be looking there for answers. "I did a cursory scan, yes. Just to see if you had any internal damage which needed attending to. I'm sorry if I overstepped." Thankfully he hadn't found anything, and Ikaris didn't seem too opposed to his actions. A brief scowl pulled at Clark's features, hating the thought of anyone lowjacking a human being, especially with surgically implanted trackers. "Okay. Don’t worry, I won’t let you be dragged back against your will." Focusing his gaze, he looked through Ikaris, past fabric, flesh and muscles, right down to his organs and bones. "You were right… there’s something attached to your spine, on the T-9 vertebrae, close to the spinal cord. It's tiny, organic, and has a distinct radiation signature. I doubt any scanner could pick it up."
A full scale grimace took over Ikaris's face, but that was all of his inner-conflict he would let out. After a moment of silent debate, he shifted until his back was to Clark, and looked over his shoulder at the other man. "I need another favor. I need you to take it out. Or burn it out. I'm sure it's a lot to ask, but it's a small price to pay if it means keeping everyone here safe. Don't worry about me. I heal fast."
Clark couldn’t help but wince at Ikaris’ second request, even though he knew it was coming; he’d have asked the same if their places were reversed. "I can burn it out, I think that would be the most accurate. There isn’t much margin for error." As Ikaris turned his back to him, Clark wondered what he’d done to earn such trust. "Apologies in advance for the pain this will undoubtedly cause." Running his fingers down the join of Ikaris’ suit, he eased open the fastening and held back the fabric. Concentrating on the vertebrae in question, he honed in with his xray and micro vision, before targeting the implant with an intense blast of heat.
The feeling didn't hit him all at once. First came the heat and the burrowing pressure, and then Ikaris was clenching his jaw tight to keep his scream trapped behind his teeth. He'd known exactly what he was asking for, but no amount of bracing prepared him for the reality. Light erupted behind his closed eyes, which he kept closed for as long as he possibly could. The energy poured out of them at the same time as his mouth opened in a cry. He had an instant to feel bad about the roof before twin sets of holes appeared in them and splintered bits of wood and ash began to rain down on them. Then it was over, and he was panting and shaking and trying not to be sick as he curled in toward his own knees. Coherency came a beat later, the agony finally abating to something bearable. He let out a quiet breath and nodded once out toward the barn. "Thank you. I owe you again. I suppose I should make my way to your Facility now that that's taken care of."
The scent of burning flesh wasn't something he enjoyed or cared to smell again any time soon. He winced in apology as Ikaris curled against the pain, and when he was done with his intricate surgery, laid a gentle hand on his new friend's shoulder. "I'm glad I could help." Clark's eyebrows lifted a little in surprise at the twin holes overhead, wondering if he would be blamed for the damage. "We can go as soon as you feel able, I'm sure Colonel Rhodes and Captain Rogers would be interested to hear any intel you can give them on the Hydra operation."
Ikaris turned back and sent his new friend a grim smile. "And I have a family reunion to arrange. Let's hope the area survives."