There are a few Smallville scenes that are so ominous they are just begging to be screwed around with. So that's what I did. Watch out for the violence, suicidal tendencies and swearing. What a lovely little fic it is.

Huge thanks to htbthomas for beta-reading!

Nobody

"He used to be a somebody."

"This 'friend' of yours? Only used to?" The Psychiatrist's pen pauses inquisitively over the sheet of paper.

"Yes. Only used to."

"And what became of that somebody?" The Psychiatrist leans forward, closer to the Patient, but the cell remains doused in shadow.

"He found out something about himself that he couldn't live with."

"But he did," the Psychiatrist points out, logically optimistic.

"Because he had to," comes the cryptic reply.

---

The sun's warm glow comforted and soothed away his worries. He closed his eyes and let the square of light wash over him, and for a second, just a second, he was tempted to forget the troubles of that morning. So what if Lex Luthor had hit him at 60 miles an hour? So what if he'd miraculously survived? So what if Lex Luthor had probably seen?

"Clark?"

He reluctantly opened his eyes and let reality hit him. Jonathan Kent was walking towards him, his hands holding an oddly wrapped package and his face holding such gravity that Clark immediately felt like running. Repressing a sigh against the oncoming berating for ruining the thresher, Clark looked back towards the sunset as his father took a seat beside him.

Jonathan opened his mouth to speak, but what he said came as a surprise. "It's time, son."

"Time for what?" Clark replied bitterly, eyes fixing curiously on the package in spite of himself.

"The truth," Jonathan said steadily. "I want you to take a look at something." Clark's bewildered eyes flicked up to meet his.

Jonathan directed their attention towards the package; he slowly began unwrapping from its cocoon of cloth with intimate care and patience.

"We think it's from your parents - your real parents."

Clark's eyebrows raised quizzically as the cloth fell away to reveal a strange sort of metal plaque. He took it and turned it over in his hands, noting the strange symbols down the sides.

"What does it say?"

This time Jonathan sighed. "I tried to decipher it for years but it's not written in any language known to man."

"What do you mean?" Clark had a sneaking suspicion but there was no way he would voice it out loud.

"Your real parents weren't exactly from around… here," Jonathan revealed, with a significant glance towards the telescope.

Clark's head shot up. He stared for a crucial minute, then suddenly grinned. "What're you trying to tell me, dad? That I'm from another planet?"

Jonathan said nothing but his face said it all.

"Oh, I suppose you stash my spaceship in the attic." He infused just the right amount of sarcasm into his voice to make his father wince.

"Actually," Jonathan corrected, "It's in the storm cellar."

---

The wind buffeted him mercilessly on the way down. His eyes stung fiercely, but not because of the wind. His breath came in short, sharp bursts, but not because of the wind.

He closed his eyes and forgot to breathe. It didn't hurt much when he hit the concrete. The only evidence was a few already yellowing bruises on his torso. Not a scratch on his face, thankfully.

He pulled himself up and dusted himself off, and it was only then that he opened his eyes and remembered to breathe.

He walked home instead of running, and when his parents inevitably asked where he'd been, Clark told them he'd been bumming around the Torch with Chloe.

---

"Let's talk about his life before. What did he think of himself, back when he was a somebody?" the Psychiatrist asks after a slight pause. The Patient seems to consider the question thoughtfully.

"He was conflicted. He wanted to play the hero; he wanted to be there for his friends. He ended up doing neither."

"And what about these friends? Were they close to him?" The Psychiatrist listens carefully for her Patient's reaction to this question.

"That was impossible." There is derision in the Patient's voice. The Psychiatrist quickly jots down the display of emotion.

---

He'd chosen the storm cellar as a suitable setting, finding it appropriate since the solid proof of his secret had lived down here for the last thirteen years.

Pete followed him somewhat apprehensively down the creaky old steps, then stood, shivering slightly, close to the door. Clark walked a few steps further into the room, opened his mouth to speak twice and twice closed it. Eventually Pete broke the silence.

"What happened to you? How did it happen?" he asked. His voice was not accusatory but Clark still flinched as if he'd shouted. Pete thought he was a meteor freak.

"Nothing… happened… I was born this way," he told him evenly, and silently congratulated himself for keeping his voice so steady. Pete's eyes narrowed.

"The spaceship is mine," Clark continued. Pete's eyes widened. The silence stretched, until Clark clarified, "I came to earth in the meteor shower."

"The spaceship is yours," Pete eventually repeated dully. "You came to earth in the meteor shower." His voice suddenly rose in pitch and he paced away from the stairs, waving his arms wildly for emphasis. "I'm best friends with E.T.! Best friends with E fuckin' T!" Pete didn't notice the hurt in Clark's eyes as he stalked angrily around the cramped room.

Clark let the dust settle and eventually Pete's pacing and sporadic swearing fits calmed. At length he turned to Clark, calmer now, and said, "So you're some sort of… what, you're not even human?"

---

Pete got over himself because he had to. Within the next day they were friends again. Within the next week they were best friends once more. Within the next month Pete was dead.

It was Martha who took the call on an innocent enough October night, a bowl of pastry mix in her hands with the phone balanced precariously between her left ear and shoulder. Clark sat at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee and some trig homework.

"Hello? Yes, Clark's in… what?"

Clark caught the bowl before it could shatter on the floor. Martha hung up the phone and turned unseeingly to her son. He was shocked to see tears welling in her eyes.

"Clark…"

"Mom? What is it?" He put a steadying hand on her shoulder and led her to a seat at the kitchen table.

She sat, rigid, staring straight ahead, and when she spoke it was in a shell-shocked monotone. "Pete… he's dead. Murdered."

The world whirled suddenly and Clark had to sit down, too. "No," he shook his head adamantly, "Pete can't be dead." His oldest friend. His best friend. His only friend who knew the truth. Dead.

Martha went on, oblivious to her own tears and Clark's denial. "He was shot just outside of Wichita. Once in the head. He was tortured first. They don't know who did it."

But Clark knew who did it. He stared so long and hard at the wooden table top that his X-Ray vision flashed on and he found himself staring mindlessly at the bones in his toes.

"All my fault." He whispered.

---

"What did he aspire to be when he was little?" the Psychiatrist changes tack in hopes of a more informative response.

"He never really thought about it." No such luck.

"And when he was older?" the Psychiatrist persists.

"To help. He wanted to help those weaker than himself."

"So where did he go wrong?" the Psychiatrist asks the obvious question, trying to hide any curiosity.

"He was naïve enough to think that he could control his destiny."

"But he couldn't," the Psychiatrist prompts eagerly, despite the promise of professionalism.

"Of course not. He was doomed from the start," the Patient replies stoically to cover his derision.

---

Before, he'd always felt a sense of belonging to something greater than himself when he'd looked at the ship. Now when he looked at it, he'd never felt more isolated in his life. The key sat like a cold, dead weight in his pocket.

Behind him, he heard his father sigh sadly and start to leave. Clark finally tore his gaze from the ship and faced Jonathan. "I figured out what this is," he held up the rectangular artifact from his parents, fingering the key in his pocket with his spare hand. "It's the ship's heart."

"Really?" Jonathan was obviously at a loss for what to say. He took the heart from Clark and surveyed it speculatively. "Have you used it yet?"

"I didn't want to do it alone," Clark replied honestly. He'd had more than enough of being alone for today.

Jonathan shot a look at the silent ship. "Let's do it together."

Wordlessly, Clark fished the octagonal key from his other pocket and approached the ship. Without hesitation he placed the key into the indent and waited as the ship rumbled then rose smoothly into the air. A blue light shone faintly from within until the top slotted down in bars and revealed the inner chamber.

"It's hard to believe you were ever that small," Jonathan commented wistfully as he handed his son back the heart. It glowed with a pure white light as he inserted it into a side of the inner chamber.

The Kryptonian language spilled out in a spiral across the ship's innards, reflecting alien symbols onto the cellar's walls. Clark stared at the symbols like a dead man.

"What is it, son?"

"It's a message from my biological father…" He stopped and shook his head slightly. "I'm sure I'm reading it wrong…"

"Why, what does it say?" Jonathan prompted with more than a hint of curiosity.

"'On this third planet from this star Sol, you will be a God among men. They are a flawed race; rule them with strength, my son. That is where your greatness lies.'" The message sank in and rattled horrifyingly around his brain. He stepped back and walked agitatedly away. "I think I was sent here to conquer. What kind of planet am I from!"

Left beside the ship, Jonathan glanced over at his son. "Maybe you did misread it, Clark, but even if you didn't, it's you who decides what kind of life you'll lead. Not me, not your mother, not your biological parents." The steel in his voice betrayed his anger, but at what, Clark could only guess.

"What if it's a part of who I am?" Clark retorted, his ire rising, too. "Is that the kind of person I will become!"

"Clark Kent, you're here to be a force for good, not a force for evil." Jonathan told him sternly. Clark wanted to believe him more than anything.

"But, how can you be so sure?"

"Because I am your father. I raised you, and I know you better than anyone." In an effort to make Clark understand, he put his hands on his shoulders, forcing him to meet his eyes.

This time Clark had no response ready, but the truth was, he wasn't even sure how well he understood himself. Jonathan drew him into a hug as he hesitated, trying to soothe away his son's fears just as he had when he was a child.

Clark hugged back rather unenthusiastically. He couldn't bring himself to interact with normal human beings when the ship lay only a few feet away. The metal reflected a select few rays of light from the open cellar door and absorbed others into its unknown depths as if to show how unnatural the ship - and he - really was. It still hummed quietly and threw the alien writings of his destiny across his face.

---

The usual dank emptiness greeted him like an old friend. Clark had ran straight to the caves as soon as he'd managed to shake off his Dad. He clutched the key in one shaking hand, concealed inside his jacket pocket. He skipped the perfunctory scan of x-ray vision to check no one was around and instead strode directly to the inner chamber. There he paced along the length of the wall like a caged animal, pausing periodically to glare angrily at said wall. His eyes appeared to glow a fiery orange and when he spoke his voice shook out of all control.

"I understand, ok? I get your message," he broke off and gathered himself together. "You can't make me do anything I don't want to do. I don't want to do this. I won't do this. You hear me Jor-El? I'm not playing your sick little game, I'm not like you, I won't become you!" A mocking silence greeted his outburst. "TALK TO ME!"

Clark ran to the wall and slammed the octagonal disc into the indentation. The key fell lifelessly to the floor as if to purposely spite him.

Clark stared at the dead symbols for several long minutes until his sight began to blur. He blinked furiously and was surprised to feel tears running down his cheeks. Defeated, the anger drained from him and he sunk to the floor, closing his eyes. The cave remained as it always had, dead and empty.

---

"I see. Let's talk about his career. How did he get into journalism?"

"He had a friend to help him out with that. It was always her dream, not his." The Psychiatrist almost detects a hint of wistfulness in the Patient's voice.

"A close friend, then?"

"As close as she could be without knowing his secret, and the closest friend he ever had once she did." Something in the Patient's tone sparks the Psychiatrist's curiosity again.

"Anything more than a close friend?"

"At times. She was his rock. He was her first love," the Patient says carefully.

"The love was not reciprocated?"

"At times." There was definite wistfulness if the Patient's voice now.

"How did that end?"

"She couldn't be his rock anymore."

---

He immediately felt like very carefully backing away and closing the door upon finding the Torch full of a frenzied Chloe.

No such luck. She dashed up to him and started talking in high-speed-can-you-believe-the-nerve mode.

"I can't get a statement from LuthorCorp! I mean a huge chemical explosion causes the town to relive their worst nightmares, what is that! And there's no sigh of a lawsuit! I mean it's like this whole thing is just being completely forgotten about!"

Chloe paused long enough to take a breath and Clark raised an eyebrow in the intermission.

"What!" she exclaimed, suddenly rounding on Clark. "What! What?"

"I've seen you worked up before, but this is amped even for you," Clark answered with concern as he set his bag down.

"Yeah, I guess it's just misplaced anxiety," Chloe stated, looking away to avoid eye contact and prevent Clark from seeing the depth of her distress. "I found my Mom, Clark." Chloe blurted.

"Wow… that's, Chloe, that's great!" Clark smiled encouragingly and moved around the desk to be closer to her.

"Yeah, I mean I put my feelers out for years and something finally, three months ago came through, so… um… turns out she's…" Chloe looked away again. "She's not exactly MIA, so to speak." Pausing, the pressure of his gaze made her look him square in the eyes as she said it. "She's in a mental institution."

Like the cork popping out of a bottle, Chloe couldn't hold her tears at bay any longer. She let out a small sob and wiped her eyes quickly in hopes of not having a complete breakdown.

Clark sighed quietly. "I'm sorry." There was nothing else to say.

"The real kicker is it's hereditary." Even as she said it she knew there was no chance of her face staying mascara-free.

"Listen, hey, if there's one thing I've learned it's that you're not destined to follow in your parents' footsteps, alright?" Clark said soothingly, putting his hands on her shoulders.

It wasn't alright and it never would be because no amount of soothing words could change the fact that her Mom was in a mental ward. "Thanks," she said instead, because there was nothing else to say.

In an effort to stop crying, she edged away from Clark and cast about for a different topic.

"So, popular question of the day: what is Clark Kent's worst nightmare?" She said in overly-chipper voice that she knew Clark wouldn't buy for a second.

"When I woke up." Uncomfortable with the subject change but accepting it for Chloe's sake, he sat on the nearest desk and continued. "Everyone I knew was gone. I was completely alone."

Chloe smiled sadly. "I wish I could say that I'll always be there for you, but… somehow I get the feeling that may be a promise I can't keep."

---

His breath left a thick mist on the glass. He didn't wipe it away, but let it disintegrate slowly into water vapour, revealing the young woman behind the glass line that separated the sane from the insane. Clark wondered how they knew where to draw that line.

Chloe didn't appear to notice him for a long time. She sat, hunched over with her arms strapped awkwardly across her chest, in the furthest corner. Clark hadn't wanted to visit her for a long time. For the longest time he'd told himself that it was a dream, that he was the insane one, that he hadn't known someone called Chloe Sullivan who was his first kiss and his last best friend.

Chloe muttered incoherently in the corner and Clark blinked back tears. He carefully raised his hand and tapped on the glass. Chloe's reaction was slow and uncoordinated, but she looked up at him. He was devastated not to see the usual happy recognition in her eyes. Not even a flicker to suggest that she'd once loved the man standing before her.

Clark again breathed softly on the glass and wrote the word 'Hi' backwards so that she could read it. His finger squeaked as he did so and she watched interestedly, as a baby would watch television with amused ignorance.

Eventually she got to her feet with the ease of long practice and Clark's heart sank at the reminder of how many times he'd visited her in the three months she'd been institutionalised. She walked straight up to the glass and waited opposite him, head tilted curiously to one side. His writing eventually faded and Clark's heart jumped with hope when Chloe breathed on her side of the glass. Then she let the mist fade without attempting to write anything, smiled strangely at Clark then padded indifferently back to the furthest corner.

End of Part One

Before you go, humour me and tell me who you think the Psychiatrist and the Patient are, thanks. I'll post the last half tomorrow!