"You love me, don't you?"
"You know I do…"
"Then come with me. We can be happy there. I can make you happy there."
"But our friends, my family…"
"They're there, Chloe. Maybe a little different but I can make it work…"
Clark raised her hands in his and kissed them gently, then looked up at her.
"Everything will be perfect. Just come with me."
He had time-jumped multiple times but dimension and time jumping gave him a jolt even his Kryptonian body felt. He sputtered and spit something dry from his mouth.
'Hay,' he realised.
Looking around, Clark Luthor saw wooden rafters above him, rusty tools around him and a bale of hay underneath him. He smiled. He remembered that the other one used to be a farm boy so he had to be at least in the right area.
He got up and made his way towards the big red door through which the sun was shining annoying bright to his still-recuperating eyes. When he saw people, he sped to one side and made himself scarce, still peeking out.
He saw an older blonde man, putting supplies in a truck, seemingly nonplussed by the blur whizzing around him.
'Jonathan Kent,' he thought to himself, 'The adoptive father.'
Then he saw an older woman come from the house, holding a cup of something hot. She kissed the older man and held the cup out away from her body.
'Martha Kent, the adoptive mother.'
As she did this, the blur around them stopped right by the cup, took it with a smile and drank.
Clark Luthor smiled darkly, "Hello, me."
It wasn't hard to follow Clark Kent to school; he just followed his blazed path through the cornfields of Kansas. Clark was actually surprised his other self never realised he had a super-speed tail but that was part of the reason he had chosen to come to this time.
He could have chosen to use BrainIAC simply to go to Clark Kent's dimension and fight him yet again but Kent had shown himself to be resourceful and Clark Luthor couldn't be sure he would win. By using BrainIAC to jump not only into Kent's dimension but to go back to a time where his counterpart was younger ad weaker, he basically guaranteed his victory.
That had been the extent of his plan until he remembered his father's words.
'It never hurts, son, to do your research.'
Lionel Luthor was a bastard but no one had ever accused him of being stupid.
He had forced BrainIAC to give him information of all of Clark Kent's closest associates before he left, if only so he wouldn't be at a total loss as to what was going on. It had paid off, though. Although all his close friends had done great deeds for him, Clark Luthor realised there was one without whom Clark Kent would never rise to become the man he knew was not to be toyed with. Thus, his plan became clearer and so simple: locate and kill the acolyte.
He peeked out from his shadowed spot next to a tree behind the Smallville High parking lot and almost gagged at the small-town, teenage scene of Americana before him. Clark had an arm around the waist of one exotic, brunette beauty, who leaned into him and smiled at his words. In front of them were an excitable-looking Black guy who Clark head-locked affectionately after a friendly jibe probably and a perky yet brainy-looking blonde who was obviously leading the conversation and looked at Kent like he hung the moon.
'Lana Lang, Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan,' Luthor checked off mentally.
The acolyte had been located. It was actually boring how easy that was; Kent's manciples literally just hung around him. Now just to terminate…
And this had to be handled carefully, nothing about the kill could lead back to him. It had to appear like an accident.
After two days of watching Clark's every move, Clark Luthor realised that, when at school, he often hung out with the Ross boy and the blonde in a room seemingly dedicated to the school's rag-tag newspaper as well as occurrences the blonde thought to be connected to Smallville's meteor showers. The brunette was there less often and more often at a coffee shop.
Luthor decided to go into this room and root around, to see if he could find out what the group would be up to, so as to plan his assassination.
Shedding his signature, suave black clothing, he donned a plain, blue short over jeans. Couldn't hurt to look the part.
He sped through the hallways and right into the room the blonde affectionately called 'The Torch' after the newspaper. Wasting no time, he scanned the walls, both the surface and with x-ray vision. He rifled through the drawers, finding nothing but school notices and obscure conspiracy theories.
He quelled his desire to rip that useless room to shreds and was just about to leave when the blonde rushed in, all out of breath.
"I'm going to put you on my Wall of Weird soon, you know," she said, giggling, "I just left you in Calculus. How did you get here before me?"
"I'm a man of many mysteries…Chloe."
As preoccupied as she was rifling through her even messier than normal drawers for the article on the under-funding of girls' sports as opposed to guys' sports and cheerleading at Smallville High that had to be approved by the principal before it could go to print (oh, the irony), she barely registered that Clark's voice sounded deeper now than it ever had and even the cadence of his speech was off.
"And you know how much I love a good mystery, Kent. Speaking of which, should I even ask if you finished that article I set you about the missing mascot costume?" Chloe asked, finally turning to him with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't have it. I'm sorry," Clark Luthor said, going for a simple answer.
Sighing, Chloe quipped, "I would have been more surprised if you actually did have it…"
Impulse striking, Clark stepped forward and ran his hand down Chloe's upper arm, murmuring, "I'll make it up to you, Chlo. I promise."
Stirred by the sincerity in his tone, Chloe dared a glance into his eyes. Clark Luthor smiled, kissed her on the temple and made his way out, leaving Chloe Sullivan with a very foggy head and no idea why she had come to the Torch in the first place.
As he rounded the corner, he bumped right into Lana, who, laughing, told him to watch where he was going. He chuckled back, and right when he was resuming his trek, she grabbed his arm and asked him whether he was still going to help her tonight.
Clark Luthor's mind went to some very dark, perverted places at the question but he just pasted on Kent's signature confused expression and went, "Huh?"
Deflating slightly, Lana replied, "The benefit for the children's home. At the Talon this weekend. I have to mentor a study group and I don't have the time. Remember you promised you'd help me decorate?"
"Oh yeah of course, "Luthor said quickly, smiling.
Using the same arm she was still holding onto, Clark pulled Lana in to him, capturing her lips with his own. He poured as much passion into that one kiss as he possibly could and then pulled back, nibbling at her ear.
"Beautiful, intelligent and kind, it's no wonder he loves you…" Clark whispered.
"Wha-," Lana started, eyes still closed.
"So those are your plans this weekend. Just benefit stuff?"
"Well, you know the football team is planning a kegger in the woods behind Francis Farms. I might stop by," she said breathily, still wrapped up in him.
Smiling like a shark, Clark said, "Cool," and sped away, leaving a very dazed Lana Lang.
A lot of accidents could happen in the woods.