Disclaimer: Superman, Smallvile and all other incarnations of this wonderful hero are not my property. I write using them because it is a yearning, not to profit. Don't sue.
A/C: Long fic, I have almost finished. Having problems only with the ending, but that is to be expected. Will post every couple of days, hopefully. If you catch any mistakes, they are mine and I'd appreciate a warning. Thanks!
Post-Wrath; Lois and Grant with tension, no kiss at the end; Chloe and Jimmy still separated; Lana and Clark at odds (because of her use of his powers).
CRYSTAL
by Bloodymary2
"Oh, my God..." Chloe's green eyes widened and her mouth literally dropped open at the sight before her. Not only was it completely unexpected, it was… unbelievable! She chanced a look down at the strange crystal in her hands, which was glowing red and blue, then returned her gaze up. "Uh… Lois?"
The woman before her, a darker haired version of her cousin Lois, didn't acknowledge her question, or her presence. She seemed incredibly real, but Chloe could see that the she wasn't one hundred percent solid. Like a projection. Chloe glanced at the crystal once more, her eyebrows arching downwards in confusion.
Could it be?
"Lois?" She tried again, louder this time. Still, the woman didn't answer. She was wearing only a light blue men's shirt that reached past her mid thighs and thick black rimmed glasses. Chloe could see her worrying her lower lip as she stood reading a newspaper. Fascinated at this vision of her cousin, Chloe stepped forward and tried touching her shoulder; her hand went right through.
It was Chloe's turn to bite her lip.
Was the crystal projecting her thoughts, perhaps? She hadn't really been thinking about Lois when handling the rock, but maybe on a subconscious level. Intrigued by her own theory, Chloe concentrated on Jimmy, willing his image to appear; nothing. She tried again, a different person this time. Still no change; Lois continued her perusal of the paper – the Daily Planet, Chloe noticed.
Shooting at a different approach, she traced her fingers up and down the length of the crystal. Besides feeling a bit silly for caressing what looked basically like a phallic ornament, Chloe also felt frustrated at the unchanging image of her cousin. Or someone who looked like her, anyway. The woman's hair was a dark chocolate color Lois hadn't worn in years and she wore glasses she wouldn't have normally been caught in.
"What is this supposed to mean?" Chloe heard herself pondering.
As if in answer, the Lois look-a-like finally moved, her lips parting into a wide smile. She looked sincerely happy. Her smile soon faded into a smirk – a very familiar, superior smirk Chloe knew too well – and the woman finally spoke.
"Nice writing, honey! But cataclysm? Really?" She sounded mocking and too much like the woman who sat next to her at the Planet every day for Chloe to hold onto any doubts regarding her identity. Which only made her even more puzzled.
What was she seeing?
As swiftly as the image had appeared, it faded into nothingness, as did the colors lighting up the crystal Chloe still held. Possibilities and explanations ran rampant through Chloe's mind, as she glanced around the loft in Clark's barn. She wasn't completely sure how much time she lost in contemplation, before heavy footsteps echoed from the wooden stairs.
"Chloe?" Clark Kent dark hair and red clad chest soon came into view.
"Hey, Clark." Chloe studied her friend's troubled face, postponing any mention of the crystal she held and its still unknown origins. "You okay?"
His first response was to sigh – a long suffering sigh -, which Chloe immediately took to mean he was far from being okay. "Lana?" She chanced a guess. It was always about Lana, after all.
He nodded. "Yeah." He buried his hands deep into his pockets and fixed his gaze down. "I just… I can't forget what she almost did to Lex when she had my powers. I know humans tend to go a little crazy when kryptonite is involved, but… The things she said."
Chloe slipped her sympathetic face on and refrained from rolling her eyes. Lois was right; when Lana was involved, Clark was reduced to a bumbling idiot. And not in that good, he's-so-in-love-it's-cute way. She had hoped that now that they were finally together, these conversations would be left in the past. Sigh, no such luck, though.
" Have you talked to her about it?"
"I tried!" He shrugs, looking to all the world like a lost little boy. "But she just dodges the conversation."
Sure this particular talk would lead them absolutely no where, Chloe decided to change the subject. "Well, we may have other things to worry about." She raised her hand, displaying the now clear crystal. "It was left on my desk at the Planet. It looks a lot like the crystals from the Fortress, so I brought it here as soon as I could."
Clark accepted the crystal. "I touched it before, but it wasn't until I got here that it started to glow red and blue. And…" She stepped forward, gesticulating with her hands. "… this image appeared, like it was being projected by the crystal."
"What image?" He was frowning, eyes still fixed on the surface of the mysterious rock.
"Of Lois. With dark hair and glasses. She was reading the Planet and then she talked to someone, before the image disappeared." At her cousin's name, Clark's eyes flew towards her, a dumbfounded look replacing the confusion.
"Lois?"
"Yeah. I tried to talk to her and then I tried touching her shoulder, but it was like a movie. No interaction."
"What do you think it mea…?" His question was cut off when the crystal hummed against his skin and projected another image. Chloe's head snapped to the right. If she was surprised by the first, slightly altered projection of her cousin, she was floored at the sight of a Clark look-a-like.
"Wow." Her lips curved upwards, her eyes glowing. Wow, indeed.
Before them stood a tall man with Clark's features, who looked nothing like Clark. His face, his posture, his costume. He gave off this impression of being powerful and untouchable and larger than life. It was impossible not to stare.
"Is that a cape?" Clark questioned distastefully.
"Oh, yeah." Chloe was still sporting a smitten look, making the normally shy farmboy feel even more self-conscious than he already was.
"How do you turn this off?" His question was met by a smirk and a shrug of shoulders. His attempts met similar results. Not that the crystal shrugged, of course.
"Clark?" Lana's voice sounding from downstairs served to somber the atmosphere. Chloe shared a fleeting look with her best friend. They couldn't hide the crystal even if they wanted to.
"I'm with Chloe." A few moments later, Lana appeared at the top of the staircase. She purposely avoided meeting Chloe's gaze, their relationship still strained from their last conversation at the Isis Foundation. It took her less than a second, though, to focus on the projected image.
"What is that?" She reacted just like Chloe had, amazed.
"Huh…" Clark shuffled his feet, years of lying and misdirection, a hard habit to break. "Chloe found this crystal and it seems to project images. We don't know what they mean, though."
Lana nodded. "You know, you do look older there. You look…" Chloe agreed and the long haired brunette turned away from the image to gaze at the two friends, relieved the subject didn't involve her directly. "What else did you guys see?"
"Lois." Lana was surprised.
"Lois?" Two nods.
"Yeah, except. Like Clark, she didn't really look like Lois. But now that you mentioned it, I guess it could have been an older version of her." Chloe contemplated, perusing the glowing gem with her eyes.
The image of Clark, arms crossed and red cape billowing in the wind as he hovered a little less than a foot off the ground, faded away as the first image had done before.
"Do you think, maybe, this shows the future?" Chloe was excited at the prospect.
"I guess it's possible." Lana answered, seeming to agree with her friend's eagerness. "Can you control it, Clark?"
The kryptonian, for his part, shook his head. "Even if I could control it, messing with time is very dangerous. I should hide this."
"Wait!" Lana called out. "It's not messing with time, right? They're just glimpses." She argued, hopeful.
Clark wasn't budging, though.
"No. Knowing the smallest of details from the future may be dangerous. We might change things without even realizing. And that's not a good thing." He sounded so final, his voice filled with such firm resolve, that Chloe couldn't help but be awed. Sometimes she caught glimpses of the man her best friend was growing up to become and she had no doubt he could one day be exactly like the man with the cape the crystal had shown them.
"I agree with Clark. Besides, we shouldn't mess with it, if we don't know what it is."
Lana frowned, clearly disagreeing. She refrained from saying anything else, though. She loved Clark, she truly did, but there were times when his tendency to see the world through black and white lenses drove her mad. She also didn't want to instigate another fight between them, especially after the Lex debacle.
The silence that followed seemed to trigger the crystal to manifest itself once more.
This time, it was a woman who looked like Chloe. Her hair was a little bit shorter than she wore now and her face, though far from being wrinkled, seemed so much older. She sat in front of a computer, the glow from the screen reflecting against the tears running down her cheeks. She kept staring at the screen, whispering to herself.
Where are you, Lo? Where are you?
The desperation in the woman's broken voice made Chloe flinch. Clark came closer to his friend and placed a hand on her shoulder in comfort. He too was worried about the way she looked in the projection and the words she spoke. Something to do with Lois. Lana continued gazing at the image, feeling sympathy for her friend's grief.
The older looking Chloe shifted, eyes falling onto a picture frame. Her finger caressed the photograph within, more tears marring her reddened cheeks. Lana circled the image, trying to see who it was, but it faded away before she managed to do so.
Surreptitiously, Chloe tried to wipe a tear which had escaped her glistening eyes; Clark simply pretended not to see it, determined now more than ever to put the crystal away.
"I'm going to take it to the Fortress. Maybe Jor-El can…" Proving to be uncontrollable, though semi-predictable, the crystal shone again, a new projection following soon thereafter. This time, it was of Clark, wearing a deep blue, soiled dress shirt and carrying a red-headed in his arms. The woman was looking at him with adoring eyes and was as disheveled as her savior.
"Who is that?" Asked Lana, eyes narrowing.
"I don't know." Clark answered. He had saved people whose name he would never learn. Him, carrying a woman, didn't have to mean anything.
"Huh", huffed his girlfriend. Chloe abstained from any comment. The smirk she was trying to hide, though, showed she was highly amused.
The image disappeared faster than the others had, being replaced quickly by another. This one showed several people, all dressed in different, yet colorful costumes. Clark recognized some, like Oliver and Bart, but others, he had never seen before. They all stood facing the same direction, somber faces and teary eyed.
Do you think she's coming?, asked a black clad man; his costume strongly resembling a bat. Oliver, who wore his Green Arrow costume with the hood up, shook his head. No. I doubt she even knows what day it is. And like that they remained, attention fixed on something neither of the friends could see.
"Are they at a funeral?" Wondered Chloe out loud.
The image faded, leaving in its wake more questions than answers.
"The images are all of people we know. At least one of them. Maybe the crystal reacts to us, somehow. We just have to figure out how." Lana suggested.
"No. We won't mess with it." Determined not to allow another image to appear, Clark tightened his grip on the crystal and sped away.
Chloe watched him go, filled with understanding. Lana bit her lip and gazed at the spot he had been a second before, frustrated at the way he would disappear without warning. The blonde woman felt the tension in the space between them increase now that Clark wasn't there to run interference.
"So… How have you been, Lana?"
Shrug. "Okay. You?"
Nod. "Me, too. Lois is driving me crazy, now that she's working at the Planet, of course, but I'm… okay, too." The word seemed so simple to explain everything that was going on in her life. It also sounded so generic, a word you used to exchange meaningless pleasantry with near strangers.
Is this what their friendship had come to?
xxxxx
Clark sped all the way to the Arctic, not bothering to use the portal in the caves. His speed only diminished when he stood before the main console at his Fortress of Solitude.
"Jor-El!"
"Kal-El, my son."
"This crystal…" He held it up, as if Jor-El was a physical being that had eyes to see it. In a way, though, maybe he could see it. "It projects images; images I think may be from the future." He looked one way, then the other, still not completely sure where to look when his father was nothing more than a booming voice all around him. "Do you know what it is?"
"The crystal is kryptonian, my son, but it is not for you."
"It activates on its own, Jor-El. Can I control it?"
"It is the future and the present and the past. It shows and changes and fixes what has been altered. It is not yours to have, Kal-El, or yours to control."
"But you said time can't be changed without great consequences! My father died because I went back in time to save Lana!" Clark asked, confused at Jor-El cryptic words.
"You can take different paths, Kal-El, but destiny must not be tampered with." The disembodied voice answered.
"What does that mean? What do I do with it?" He yelled. "I cannot leave it for someone else to find! It could be dangerous!"
"If it feels needed, my son, the crystal will find the one meant to hold it. It is not your decision."
"That's not an answer, Jor-El." The Fortress dimmed, as if the artificial intelligence that was Jor-El simply decided to go into sleep mode, dismissing him. "Jor-El!" None of his attempts to revive it seemed to work.
Certain only that he was not meant to have the crystal and that leaving it on the farm might not be such a good idea, considering its bad habit of projecting images at random, Clark placed the stone on an ice pedestal near the console. What could be safer than an ice palace in the middle of the North Pole, after all.
Sparing the crystal and the Fortress one last glance, he sped away.
It didn't feel over, though.
Far from it.
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