Disclaimer: All Smallville characters belong to DC Comics, WB and whoever whatever.

-----

The Butterfly

-----

It's late and you can't sleep. But you close your eyes because right now, thinking just hurts. The pain you feel every time you so much as say her name in your head transcends any physical pain you've ever felt in your life. You take a deep breath, inhaling a lungful of the muggy air as the sound of a boring infomercial continues to fill your ears. You wish that it were loud enough to drown out the thoughts of her playing inside your brain.

If only you could sleep; then she wouldn't be able to haunt your every waking moment. She would haunt your dreams instead.

Your eyes open and you're looking up at a ceiling concealed by darkness. Slowly you sit up from the couch and blindly pat around the floor for the remote control. The obnoxious Anglo-Saxon man on the infomercial shuts up as you switch the television off. You get up, and walk out of the house. You had tried to get to sleep first at the loft, then in your bedroom, before proceeding to lay in silence for a whole hour in the lounge. Since that location proved futile too, you figure you may as well give up on sleep and sit out on the front-porch where there's a cool nighttime breeze. You sit on the stairs, a dim lamplight illuminates the area.

You remember what it had been like the first time you met her. She was new, and you were assigned to show her around. Movies and clichés had told you that often, that was the usual way future lovers or friends were introduced to each other. You never thought that it would turn out to be real. That day had been the start of a wonderful friendship that would be put through every single trial and tribulation possible.

You sigh and put your hands inside your jacket's pockets. It was the letterman jacket you received when your parents finally let you join The Crows – a jacket you haven't worn for a long time. As of this morning you're an official high-school graduate, even though you hadn't gone to the ceremony. Though joining the team was in your freshman year, you can still remember when you told her you were going to play football. She had taunted you about it, and it had made you smile. You wonder you'll be able to smile like that again. You close your eyes and try to picture her face. She comes to you clearly, but a pang of pain hits you in the gut when you realize that eventually, her genuine, relentless smile that could light up a room will be lost to your memory as time goes by.

Your fingers touch something inside your pocket and you frown. Clutching onto the material, you bring it out and hold it up to the light. Captured by a camera and frozen in time, an image of you and her laughing happily stares back at you from the old photograph. You remember the day the photo was taken vividly. Sophomores at the time, you, Pete and herself had decided to get away from everything and spend a day just hanging out in the outskirts of town. In a field of tall grass and flowers you'd spotted a large tree that seemed like the perfect place to set up a picnic. The three of you lay around eating, talking, staring at the sky and forgetting all your cares and responsibilities. It was at some point during that day, whilst Pete had gone to get more refreshments from the car, that she initiated an interesting conversation.

"Here's a totally out of the blue question you'd expect a philosophical five-year-old to ask," she said as you lay side-by-side, staring at puffy clouds painted on a blue canvas of sky, "If you died and could come back to life as anything, what would you be?"

From the corner of your eye you saw her use an elbow to prop herself on the side. You had furrowed your eyebrows in thought, and she was looking down at you, watching the whole time with her bright blue eyes.

"A human."

She frowned at your answer then laughed, hitting you gently in the stomach, and making you smile because she didn't realize the full meaning of your response.

"Any possibility in the world and you choose to come back as a human?" she smirked, "Talk about a zero on the Imagination Scale. I would come back as a butterfly."

"A butterfly?" you repeated, finding it a strange choice.

"I don't know," she shrugged and lay back down, "Don't ask why. I just think they're so beautiful."

Pete then came back a few minutes after and said that he would come back as a jaguar. His choice had been obvious, but you never imagined she would choose to be a butterfly. A tiger, a hawk, and a dolphin maybe – an animal with smarts and edge. Not a fluttering butterfly that you thought to be so measly and weak. You had spent the rest of that day thinking about it then and now, even after two years, you still think she has nothing in common with butterflies.

Sure, you've saved her plentiful times, but you've only truly seen her 'measly and weak' twice. The first was when you broke her heart. It was only a month ago and thinking about it now still makes your chest ache. The love in her eyes as she confessed the feelings she had harboured for so long changed into sheer hurt as you tried your best to gently let her down. She had asked you if there would ever be a possibility that your love for her may transcend platonic. You had said, 'No,' even though you didn't know if it was the truth. At the time your love for Lana was still strong and you didn't know how long it would take for you to get over it. The last thing you wanted to do was to lead your best friend on – and make her put her life on hold as you took the time to figure out what you wanted. She had already waited for years, and you just wanted to set her free.

A sudden gust of wind pulls you out of your thoughts and the picture you're holding nearly slips from your hand. You sigh and look at the picture one last time, hoping that her smiling face will stay in your mind as you put it back in your pocket. You lean your head against the banister and close your tired eyes. You remember the moment you found her; it was her second and last moment of true weakness. She was lying on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. She had been missing for a week and for that whole week you had gone insane. You never stopped once to eat, sleep, or rest until you found her. Your father and mother had asked you to take it easy and acted like they understood how you felt. People assured you that wherever Chloe was, she was fine and she would eventually come back. But she had gone missing shortly after you had broken her heart so you knew that you were responsible. Turns out you were, but not for the reasons you thought. When you found her on the roadside nine days after her disappearance, she had been dressed in white. She had cuts all over her body, and what looked like tubes stuck to her skin. Her hair had somehow gone paler and she looked as though all the life had been drained from her normally vibrant self. When you saw her like you knew what it felt like to have someone rip your heart right out of your chest.

With the little energy she had left she told you that she had been kidnapped, taken to some interrogation room, tortured and tested on when she refused to speak. Throughout her story she repeated the word 'sorry' an incredible amount of times and you wiped her tears away, ran your fingers through her hair and held her close when she began to sob. She clutched your shirt, clung to your body and your sleep-deprived eyes began to well up with tears causing your vision to become a blur. You asked her who did it and what they wanted to know.

"Your secret Clark," the answer you dreaded came as a whisper from her dry lips, "They wanted to know your secret."

Your eyes went wide.

"You know?"

"I found out on the day…on the day…"

"On the day you told me you love me," you finished for her in realization. You understood that she had confessed her feelings not because she grew impatient of waiting for you but because she wanted you to know she still loved you more than anything – despite your lies, despite your secret, despite of who you truly are.

"I wanted you to know it doesn't scare me."

"Chloe…why didn't you tell me you knew?"

"I wanted you to tell me on your own. When you were ready," she barely managed a small smile, "I always knew there was something special about you Kent. At least now I get why you said you wanted to come back as a human."

You couldn't help but smile. That day had been a lifetime ago…

"But I don't understand why," she continued, her voice so soft and so genuine in its tone of puzzlement, "You're perfect the way you are."

It was only when she closed her weary eyes and took her last breath that you realized she had taken a bullet in the back, most likely during her escape. For what seemed like forever you sat on that gravel crying, holding her lifeless form to your chest, rocking back and forth like a child who had just lost everything he held dear. And now, you have to live every day knowing that she died because of you. That memory will forever be engraved in your mind, and just as you feel heat gathering in your eyes you see the headlights of a car coming up your drive.

The engine stops and its door opens. You stand up from your spot on the porch and watch Lana walk towards you. You wonder what she's doing here. It's well past midnight.

"Lana?" you ask, worried, "Is everything okay?"

She halts at the foot of the stairs and looks up at you, her lips curved into a sad smile. The two of you stand in silence before you eventually sit back down and raise your gaze to the sky. You remember the nights you've spent in Metropolis. Its impressive buildings and glittering skyline are nothing compared to the millions upon millions of stars visible only to places like your small country town. You remember that Metropolis was where Chloe had wanted to go to college.

"What are you thinking about?" Lana breaks the silence.

"Just…thinking."

"Everyone missed you at graduation today," she says, rubbing her hands together in an attempt to fight the winter cold, "They all wish you well."

You nod.

Nothing but comfortable silence transpires between the two of you for a while, until Lana's eyebrows furrow when she sees something truly strange.

"Clark don't move," she exclaims, a hand forming the universal sign for stop, "There's a butterfly on your shoulder."

You turn your head gently, just enough to see the beautiful array of color in the wings of a butterfly resting on your left shoulder. Slowly you reach up with your right hand to touch it. It doesn't scare away from the contact – instead it moves to stand on your index finger. You look at it and a warm feeling that you haven't felt in a long time returns to your chest as you remember the conversation with Chloe so long ago. Then it hits you, but before the absurd idea even has time to cement in your brain, the butterfly flies away into the darkness.

"Wow," Lana breathes out in amazement.

"Yeah," you say, still staring at the spot where the creature disappeared.

You tell yourself to relax. You think it's just a big coincidence.

"That is so weird," Lana tilts her head, "Butterflies don't ever come out at night."

-----

The End

-----