ENDURANCE
DANIELLE FRANCES DUCREST

Disclaimer: Smallville belongs to DC Comics (I think) and the WB. Any copyright infringements were not intended. This story was written for entertainment and not for profit.

Spoilers and Timing: Spoilers are for "Exile," "Covenant," "Crusade," "Run," and "Transference." This takes place after "Jinx."

Author's Notes: The Kryptonian bits are really the English equivalents of the words written in the Kryptonian font available at http://www.smallvillevirtuality.com/index2.html or at my own site at https://www.angelfire.com/la3/daniellesbookshelf/other/Kryptonite.ttf. I have no idea what the actual Kryptonian words would be. If someone knows, please e-mail me at sword_girl@lycos.com.

If you want to know what Clark/Kal-El is saying whenever he speaks in Kryptonian, click on the words. A little pop-up should come up with a translation (I hope). The pop-ups use Javascript.

I know there's someone out there who is going to point out the deus ex machina in my story. Come on, you know you want to...

For those of you who doubt my Bart Allen characterization: let me just say that this is a one-person POV story and we have no idea what's going on in Bart's head. Maybe I'll write a vignette about Bart's thoughts as he speeds across country to see Dr. Swann or something. For those of you who doubt my other characterizations, well...um...just give me a good reason, okay? Come on, I need feedback! Please? My ego isn't getting any smaller if you stay silent!

Clark does seem to be unconscious a lot in this fic. Don't ask me why...<big grin>

I am looking for a beta reader for this fic. If you're interested, please let me know at sword_girl@lycos.com.

Summary: Kal-El isn't as gone from the lives of the Kents as they'd thought. The final confrontations must be made, but will Clark, Jonathan, and Martha have the strength to endure them? Jonathan's POV.

*****

I could hear my pulse beating rapidly in my ears, making it difficult to hear noises coming from outside my body, not that I could hear much over the pounding rain. Listening to my heartbeat, you'd think I would have had another heart attack. So far, I hadn't, and I hoped it stayed that way. It wouldn't do for me to collapse, not now, not ever.

I glanced through the review mirror into the truck bed and wondered why my heart didn't stop right there from shock at what I saw. Martha was cradling Clark's head in her lap, trying to offer him some shade from the rain that had drenched them both within mere seconds. Martha was shivering from both fear and the chill. So was I, but I determinedly kept my hands steady on the wheel. I wasn't about to go careening off the road, just as I wasn't about to have a heart attack. Both would prove disastrous not only to me but to the two people who mattered more to me than anyone else in the world.

Clark convulsed. His left leg kicked out, creating a hole in the side of the truck bed. Some of the water that had gathered on the floor of the bed seeped out through the hole and onto the road. His eyes were screwed shut but his mouth was not; he screamed out in his native language, continually repeating the same phrase over and over, "I, Kal-El, challenge thee, Jor-El, for the right of Leadership of the House of El!"

I wished I knew what my son was saying. It was important, I knew, and it was Clark's only defense in this latest battle against his biological father, Jor-El. My hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel. I stared determinedly out into the weather-begotten night, glaring out at the darkness beyond the headlights. That asshole had messed with this family for the last time.

We passed the point along the road where the 'Welcome to Smallville' sign was set up, or had been set up. A mess of plywood was all that remained of the sign; obviously, a bolt of lightning had impacted with it. Lightning lit up the sky to the left; the thunder that accompanied it came at almost the same time. "Damnit!" I exclaimed, not liking this one bit. Our truck could easily become a lightning rod at any moment. We had to get away from the truck.

I pulled over to the side of the road and screeched to a halt. I was out of the cabin and climbing into the bed in a second. "That lightning could hit us any minute!" I screamed at Martha; even then, I could barely make out my own words. "We have to get away from the truck!"

Martha nodded and stood. I grabbed Clark's legs and she grabbed his underarms. It was difficult enough dragging a 6'3'' frame out of the truck without Clark's endless thrashing. The thrashing made it nearly impossible, but we weren't about to give up. Somehow, we managed it.

All three of us collapsed on the muddy ground. I could hardly breathe. My pulse was as loud as a marching band in my ears. "Jonathan?" Martha queried, placing a hand on my arm. She was also breathing heavily, but I guessed that, for her, it was from the exertion alone.

I glanced at her through water-sprayed eyelashes. "I'm all right," I said. To prove it to both her and myself, I hauled myself to my feet and draped one of Clark's arms around my shoulders. Martha draped the other over her shoulders, and then we proceeded to drag Clark down the road, traveling farther away from the truck with each slow step.

Clark had stopped thrashing as hard, but his body spasmed and twitched. He was a dead weight in our arms. "This isn't working!" Martha yelled at me. I knew she was right, but there wasn't anything else that we could do.

I glanced back. The truck was at least fifty yards away now; it would have to do until the storm cleared. With any luck, the lightning would stay away from our only mode of transportation and we wouldn't be stuck out here for very long.

Martha and I lowered Clark to the ground and crouched beside him. Martha placed a hand on his forehead. "He's burning up!" Even over the rain I could hear the fear in her voice.

Light flooded the area behind my back. Martha's head shot up and her eyes widened. "Jonathan!"

I whirled around and watched as a bolt of lightning struck down from the heavens at our truck. The thunder was deafening. The truck went up in bright flames kept alight by the gas and oil despite the rain.

Martha let out a gasp. My grip tightened on Clark's shoulder. We were stuck there. Jor-El had made sure of that.

Clark started thrashing again. We turned our complete attention back to him, forgetting about the bomb fire burning behind me. He shouted that Kryptonian phrase again. I really, really wished I knew what it meant. If I had known, I would have shouted it with him.

*****

It was the shouts that woke us. Martha and I came awake with a start, looking at each other in confused bewilderment as our muddled brains tried to understand what we were hearing. We both came to the same conclusion at the same time. "Clark," we said.

I didn't know who got to our son's room first, Martha or me, but suddenly we were at his door. Clark was thrashing on his bed. There was a fist-sized dent through his headboard, and his bedside table, lamp, and alarm clock had been smashed to pieces. The bed had yet to give way, but it would soon.

Martha started forward but I grabbed her arm, holding her fast. I was just as frightened for our son as she, but if we got any closer we would likely be harmed more by Clark's flaying limbs.

"Clark!" I called, hoping my voice would waken him. He continued to thrash in the bed. His left foot came down once, then twice on the mattress. A loud snap heralded the foot of the bed crashing to the floor. I heard a number of crunches as whatever had been placed under the bed was crushed.

Clark slid halfway off the bed. As his knees hit the floor, he cried out, "I will not yield! " I recognized the language, if not the words; Clark often muttered in Kryptonian in his sleep ever since the Kryptonian language had been downloaded into his brain two years ago.

His next words were in English. "I am not Kal-El! I am Clark Kent!"

I exchanged a fearful glance with Martha. We knew now what was invading Clark's dreams: his memories of whatever Jor-El had done to him over the summer. What Clark's conscious mind couldn't remember, his unconscious mind could. Clark had told us months ago that he couldn't remember what had happened to him under the clutches of his psychopathic alien father. Those memories must not have been erased from his mind completely.

Ever since Clark's return and my release from the hospital, Clark had slept in his old room in the house. Martha wouldn't allow him to sleep in the barn, and quite frankly, neither would I. After almost losing him for good, we wanted our son close by. I could see now how wise of a decision that had been - if Clark had slept in the Fortress, we wouldn't have heard his screams and the noises of breaking furniture, and in the morning Clark would have passed it off as nothing to worry about. This way, he couldn't. We wouldn't let him.

"Clark! Wake up!" Martha cried.

Clark's eyes flew open and he jerked upright. We rushed to him. He was panting and glancing about in bewilderment.

"Are you all right, son?" I asked.

"Dad?" Clark questioned. His eyes met mine and I smiled reassuringly at him. He began to relax and I did, too.

Panic flashed across his eyes. Clark shot up and was across the room in a microsecond. He crouched down in the corner next to the closet. "Clark?" Martha asked tentatively.

Her voice only made him flinch. "No, you're not real," he said. His body began to shake. He hid his face behind his arms. "You're just illusions conjured up by Jor-El."

"We're real, Clark," I said, approaching him slowly. Clark cringed away from me, curling up further into a ball than before.

"Get out!" he cried. "I will not yield!"

"Clark, it's us!" Martha told him. "We're your parents. You're having a nightmare."

Clark was shivering now. He wouldn't look up at us. On an impulse, I stood up and hit the light switch. Turning the lights on had always worked to calm Clark down when he woke up from nightmares while he was growing up; hopefully, it would work again now.

Light flooded the room. Blinking, I turned back around and watched, waiting. Clark froze. Slowly, he lowered his arms and glanced about him again. His eyes met Martha's first. "Mom?"

She separated the gap between them and developed Clark in her arms. I crossed the room developed them both in a hug and squeezed as tightly as I could. I didn't want to go through that again, but I had a feeling that many more nights like this would be in store in the future.

I had despised Jor-El before, but now I loathed him. How could any father, alien or not, be the cause of so much pain to his own son?

One way or another, this had to end. We couldn't keep letting Jor-El interfere with our lives. I only wished I knew how to stop him.

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