"They tied her to a chair CK. Slapped her around and tried to make her talk. She wouldn't tell them anything." Jimmy's words, not to mention the bitter look in his eyes, hounded Clark all the way back from Metropolis.

Mindlessly, Clark's feet led him to the barn. Up, high in the loft, that was where he went when his mind got too crowded. He needed the silence and isolation to get a hold of his emotions. It wasn't supposed to be like this, a gnawing ache at the base of his heart and a prickling fear on the nape of his neck.

A split lip, a bruised cheek, a swollen eye. Chloe got off easy according to Jimmy. The Department of Domestic Security wasn't playing by the rules this time around.

Why didn't she tell him? Why would she hide something like that?

The furrow between his eyebrows deepened as he paced back and forth, stirring up the fragments of straw that invariably settled everywhere in the barn. The very night the DDS came after her, Clark had called and she dropped whatever she was doing and came right over to share the satellite imagery. She hadn't said anything about the cost of obtaining it, but being wrapped up in his guilt over Lana, he'd never asked either.

They had been watching her, more than watching, ready to swoop in and cart her off to prison. The frigid temperatures of the Arctic didn't give him so much as a shiver but the thought of Chloe taken away chilled him to the bone. A few weeks ago, he'd almost lost her and it was entirely his fault.

Jimmy apparently decided the same thing.

When his call came, Clark thought it odd, but he had no reason to refuse meeting him at the Daily Planet. He thought it even stranger to be meeting up on the roof, but didn't say anything, which fit the theme of the rest of their meeting. Jimmy did most of the talking.

"I knew she was doing something dangerous, but I couldn't figure out why. Didn't really want to know, ya know. But, I couldn't keep ignoring the obvious. You're the reason she's risking her freedom, her very life even. She's doing it for you. I should have figured it out right away." Jimmy shrugged, resigned, "It's always for you." Clark hadn't known what to say and Jimmy continued.

"I care about Chloe, but I'm never going to be the one she..," he trailed off. "She says you are just friends, but," he shook his head and looked away, turning to study the Metropolis skyline, "but you're not. You two fall in a whole other category."

"What are you saying?"

"You know what? It doesn't matter. You might be blind but I'm not. Not anymore." He faced Clark again. "Look, I used some contacts to get the DDS off Chloe's back, but she's not going to stop taking chances, that's not who she is. You're the reason she's so deep into…" he held his hands up, his finger splayed out in front of him, "Don't tell me what, I don't want to know. But you had better start looking out for her. I've done what I could." He looked away and mumbled, "Maybe I already did too much."

Clark narrowed his eyes. "What did you do?" For a moment, Jimmy hesitated as if he wanted to say more, but he shook his head wearily.

"This isn't about me." He turned to leave. When he reached the door leading back inside to what was now Lex Luthor's domain, he paused and looked back. "Just take care of her CK." A rueful half-smile appeared on his face, "You owe me that much."

Clark continued prowling the loft in the barn, trying to make sense of what Jimmy said. His advice ate at him the whole time he sped back from Metropolis. Of course he would take care of Chloe. Clark was incensed Jimmy thought he had to be told to do so, but he hadn't known of her danger. Chloe kept it from him.

He wasn't a fool. He could guess why, but it didn't make it right. She was his best friend. She was supposed to tell him when she was in trouble. That she hadn't, panicked Clark. Was this a part of a larger pattern? She kept his secrets; didn't she trust him with hers?

The memory of her desperate decision to try Dr. Knox's cure came back to him. He could still taste the emptiness he'd felt thinking she would forget him. From there, his mind visited the terrible eighteen hour vigil he'd spent waiting for her to revive and then jumped back to Reeves Damm and the hospital where for a few agonizing heartbeats, he had lost her forever.

Had he pulled away, afraid to examine his fears too closely? He knew with Lana moving in, the arrival of Kara, and the reappearance of Bizarro and Brainiac he and Chloe hadn't spent much time just being friends. He'd turned to her time and time again for answers and support. Sometime her unfailing belief in who he could become was all he clung too. But why didn't she turn to him anymore?

Clark stopped pacing when he heard the crunch of gravel beneath the tires of Chloe's Yaris. He didn't expect her so soon. He waited at the top of the stairs struggling to contain his fears.

"Clark? I got your text and not that I don't enjoy your cryptic summons, but you want to elaborate on I found out, Come to the barn. What are we taking about?" She asked while climbing the steps.

"I talked to Jimmy."

Chloe hesitated on the landing. "Jimmy? He told you? Ok, didn't expect that, but at least I can stand down the code red."

"This is serious Chloe," he told her as she brushed past.

"What is serious is how empty my bank account has become. I know that the super powered persuasion don't worry too much about the price of gas, but the rest of us are getting skewered." She flopped down on the couch and unslung her purse from around her shoulder, setting it on the trunk that acted as a table. "How about the next time you want to talk, you come to where I am."

How could she act so casually? "Chloe you are avoiding the issue."

"Fine. Look, I would have told you eventually, but I never got the impression you were too interested in my love life and really, I only broke up with him last night. Who knew Jimmy would go all town crier?"

"You broke up with him?"

She shrugged. "He tried, I tried, but something always was getting in our way and worse, I didn't mind. If I didn't mind, it wasn't worth much, so I ended it."

Clark shook his head. "That's not what Jimmy told me."

"Wait, did he tell you he broke up with me? That's kind of immature."

"No, that's not what I mean. Jimmy didn't mention the break up at all." Chloe went still.

"If Jimmy didn't tell you we broke up, what did he tell you?" She carefully asked.

"The Department of Domestic Security." Chloe winced. "He told me what they did to you." Clark returned to pacing.

"Oh."

"Chloe why didn't you tell me."

Chloe sunk deeper in the couch. "It didn't matter."

"Didn't matter? They suspected you of terrorism." Clark sat down on the trunk in front of her. "They were going to arrest you. They hurt you." He reached over and brushed the loose strands of her blond hair back exposing the side of her face. The bruises Jimmy had described were gone and Clark felt worse for never having seen them.

His gentleness was too much, the look in his eyes too close to what she once desperately wanted to see. Chloe scrambled to her feet and pretended to stare out the open loft windows. "I'm fine. No lasting scars, physical or emotional." She heard Clark sigh and then come to stand behind her.

"Chloe, you can't just brush this off as if it's no big deal. Why didn't you tell me?"

Chloe scrunched her eyes shut, trying not to hear the hurt in Clark's voice. How could she explain how badly she had wanted to tell him? How much she longed to be held and promised everything would be all right? How could she make him understand wanting and needing him were the very reasons she hadn't told him. Recent events had made clear how close to the surface her old feelings remained. She refused to sacrifice their current relationship on fantasy. She couldn't risk leaning on him that way, not without some feelings spilling outside the border of their friendship. So instead, she just shrugged. "You've had enough on your plate without worrying about my petty problems."

"You could have been killed!" He shouted and turned her to face him. Clark held on to her upper arms, not tightly, but with a grip firm enough to prevent Chloe from walking away.

"It wasn't like that," she told him feeling her patience slip.

"Chloe, you have to stop putting yourself at risk and taking so many chances." Chloe rolled her eyes.

"Clark, I refuse to sit at home wrapped in cotton because of a bad day. I'm a reporter, taking chances is my business."

"You're out of business. In case you forgot, you got fired." Chloe went pale.

"Thanks for the reminder." A tremor ran through her voice. Clark dropped his hands.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" Chloe shook her head and stepped back.

"No, doesn't matter."

"Yes it does. Working for the Planet is your dream and you won't even talk about it. You're acting recklessly. You're keeping things from me. Maybe getting fired from the Planet is why you aren't acting like yourself."

"Me?" She looked at him with jaw dropping incredulousness. "I'm the one acting strange?" Her temper boiled over. "At least I was out there trying to do something while you were indulging in a pity party." She stuck her hands on her hips, deepened her voice as far as it would go and whined, "I don't care if Lex Luthor takes over the world, nothing matters except Lana."

Clark flinched, stung to hear his own words tossed back at him. "That's not fair. She is only in a coma because of me and …" Chloe cut him off, marching up into his face.

"Lana is catatonic because back when you were a baby someone on Krypton forgot to shut off their evil supercomputer. Not. Your. Fault." She stabbed her index finger into his chest, punctuating her words

"Chloe, you and I both know Lana was targeted by Brainiac because of her involvement with me. I'm responsible for that connection." He turned to look out over the farm. The final pinks and oranges of the sunset were beginning to fade from the sky, but he couldn't see past his guilt. "I'm responsible for your connection to the DDS too. They only came after you because of your involvement with me."

"Stop it, just stop it right now. Sometimes you make me want to scream. I'm a big girl. I make my own decisions, thank you very much. Lana is my friend. So is Kara. Beyond that, I happen to think keeping the world from being terraformed into a Kryptonian nightmare is worth taking some chances." Chloe trembled with indignation, her face was flushed and her eyes snapped with righteous ire.

A fierce emotion, too big for one name, swept over Clark.

Affection.

Pride.

Longing.

Amazement.

Part of him still wanted to lock her away from harm and keep her from taking any risks, but to deny her capability would be to deny the person she was: the only one who made the weight of the world lighter.

She accepted, no, she demanded responsibility for her decisions and actions. However, being responsible didn't mean having to go it alone. First, his parents and then Chloe had shown him that truth. Why was Chloe determined to shut him out?

"I wish you would have waited for me."

"We needed answers and I don't recall patience being a significant virtue of yours lately."

"I know. I'm sorry. I understand why you did what you did. I don't like it, but I understand, but that doesn't explain why you kept this from me." He wanted to soothe the edge to her voice not exacerbate it, but he needed answers.

"I told you," she hissed through her teeth, "it wasn't a big deal."

"Chloe, you got hurt. That is a big deal. You should have told me, I would have…" He raked his fingers roughly through his hair. They were going in circles and he was just making Chloe madder.

"What? What would you have done?" She vibrated with suppressed emotion.

"I should have been there for you."

"Well, you were kind of busy."

"I'm not ever too busy for you."

A humorless snort escaped from Chloe. "Yeah right."

"No, I'm serious."

"So am I." Clark tilted his head in confusion and his willful ignorance infuriated her. "Clark, you can't tell me you've forgotten what happened shortly afterwards. You were going to walk out of my life forever. How is that being there? You left me!"

"I didn't leave you."

"Right, because apparently even apocalyptic nuclear obliteration has a silver lining. You came back, but don't deny if it hadn't been for President Lex and Brainiac running amuck you would have walked away."

"Chloe, I…"

"Clark, I could see it in your eyes when you told me about Jor-el's Wonderful Life. I can see it even now."

He said nothing for a moment. Denials were wasted on someone who knew you better than yourself. Finally, he gave her the three words that might have enabled him to cut off a piece of his soul.

"You were happy."

Chloe choked on her disbelief. "You spoke to my doppelganger for what was it? Two minutes? The meteor shower still happened, I would still have been there, so I was still infected, but this time living in a world where the meteor infected are locked up or exterminated."

"At best," she continued, "it might have still been a latent ability, but my mother would have already left, would still be in an institution and I would still have been quietly waiting to go insane. How could you possibly know if I was happy?"

"I know you Chloe." He spoke softly. "You were glowing. I haven't seen you that happy since," a memory flashed through his mind, a dance floor, her smile, the lights glittering in her hair, her soft form tucked against his chest. The image in his mind shifted from the gymnasium to the basement of the Daily Planet. Her hair down, a bandage on her forehead, her arms locking around his neck like she would never let go. He swallowed hard. "I know what you look like when you are truly happy.

She closed her eyes and bit her lip. "You don't get it. That wasn't me."

"Chloe, it was you. The only difference was you didn't know me, I wasn't there."

"It doesn't work that way." Tears shimmered in her eyes. "It's not me unless you were there. I can't become who I am without you."

Overwhelmed, Clark closed the gap between them, silently pulling her close. He tucked her head under his chin and rocked her gently in his arms. She clung to him in return. "I didn't want to leave," he whispered into her hair. "I thought it was for the best, but it hurt."

Chloe sniffed into his shirt. "Well, I herby forbid you from leaving simply for my own good." He clutched her a little tighter.

"I don't want to lose you." For the moment, she was safe and all his fears were quiet, but he couldn't keep her this close all the time. "You should have told me about the Department of Domestic Service."

"Adding stubborn to your list of superpowers," she muttered pulling away and swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Ok. Maybe I should have said something, but the problem suddenly wasn't an issue and I couldn't see any point in whining about something so minor in comparison to what has happened to Lana."

Clark thought for a moment. "The way I was acting, did you think I wouldn't care?"

Chloe chewed on her lower lip. "I didn't know how you would react." The possibility he would be dismissive of the incident was almost as big an incentive in staying quiet as not knowing how she would handle him being overly concerned.

"Chloe, don't ever believe that."

He had that look in his eyes again, the one that made her heart trip and speed up. The one that made freshman year seem like yesterday and the end of the world a welcome opportunity.

With the kind of determination only much practice can bring, she forced herself to look away from his soulful green eyes. "Well I'm used to standing on my own anyway. I can't come running to you every time I'm upset about the hand fate is dealing me."

Puzzlement and a hint of irritation wrinkled Clark's forehead. "What? Why not?" He demanded.

"Because you are not responsible for me. Because you are my best friend."

Clark scowled. "How does that translate into not telling me anything that important?"

Chloe wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Didn't realize she had a long history of not being able to tell him what mattered most? Why did he have to make this so hard? Weary, she spoke more bluntly than was her habit. "Because I need to make sure I don't mistake friendship for something more." The instant the words left her mouth she wanted to call them back.

She expected him to start stammering and back away. Instead, the moment stretched out, Clark never breaking eye contact. Time stopped. The barricade she kept between friendship and something so much more blurred precariously. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears and this time, she didn't have the will to turn away. His eyes spoke to her again. They seemed to ask, What if it's not a mistake?

Tell him! Tell him! A voice screamed.

Before she could answer, sadness washed over his expression. He didn't back away, but the stammering began.

"Chloe…, I…, Lana."

Like that, the mask of friendship snapped back into place. She closed her eyes and pasted on a familiar smile, suddenly too numb to feel more than a faint echo of pain. "Don't panic, like I said, we're friends, I understand. I'm not forgetting about Lana."

"No, you don't understand about Lana. It is my fault that she got hurt."

"Clark, I thought we talked about this."

"No, just listen. It is my fault. Lana was only a target because of our relationship."

"You can't push people away to protect them. You've tried that before; it just doesn't work. It's not fair to either of you." She was more than vaguely disappointed they were back to this worn out topic.

"No, you don't understand." He grabbed her hand, cradling it between his. "I'm telling you Lana was only a target because I was too afraid to admit the truth and for that I can't forgive myself."

The urgency in his voice broke through her numbness but rather than bringing joy, the spark of hope only begat dread. Nothing he said now could mean anything. His emotions the last few weeks had run to wild extremes. Still, she couldn't help but ask, "What are you saying?"

"It was over. We were over and we both knew it, but it was easier to keep going through the motions. Now she's...and I don't even…"

"No, no. You love Lana. You always have," she told him without any bitterness.

"Maybe, but I'm not in love with her. She's not the one I think about all the time or the one I need to talk to first thing in the morning. That's been true for a very long time, but I didn't make the connection until now that you…" Chloe rushed to cut him off, blocking his words with her free hand.

"Shh, Clark, please. Don't. Please just don't say anything, not now." She couldn't do this yet, couldn't hope to go down that road and come back whole, not now, not with innumerable uncertainties still facing them. Instead, she clung to the plan. "Somehow we are going to find a way to reverse the coma and bring back Lana. I believe that. You believe that too."

Clark obediently nodded and Chloe gave him a watery smile.

"She's going to need you. You may have been having some problems, but all that might change when she wakes up and then wouldn't you fell silly saying things you never really meant." There was a false brightness about her voice as her eyes pleaded with him not to cross a line she couldn't come back from.

The gnawing ache under his heart returned. Clark didn't know how to explain this utter certainty suddenly engulfing him, but he while he no longer had any doubts, he could tell Chloe had plenty and his sincerity topped her list. The way he had been acting, he couldn't blame her and so he played his part.

"Yeah, silly."

The tight lines by her mouth flexed in parody of a smile and she rushed to grab her purse to go. Clark trailed after Chloe, not really hearing whatever excuse she was giving and knowing it was just mindless chatter on her part too. He stood in the drive long after Chloe left, following her heartbeat as she drove away.

He had wanted to stop her and tell her not to go, that she could trust him to know what he really wanted, but she was right. Now was not the time. Lana's condition left them as thoroughly frozen as Jor-el had left him in the fortress.

However, Clark was a farmer's son and Jonathan Kent had taught him to look to the seasons and trust the land. In his gut he felt he wouldn't have long to wait. A thaw was coming. After all, spring never failed to follow winter.

Author's note: Imagine Arctic (Last episode of season 7) happened as shown except that Jimmy is trying to get Chloe back by in that last scene and Clark is upset about Lana not because of her leaving but because of his guilt for how she suffered and the frustration of not being able to say goodbye. She was a big part of his life and it hurt that she ran away from him as she had from Lex.

Story or no story, that's why I think Clark was broken up.