I fell in love with Laura Lily...
And she was flatter'd, worshipp'd, bored;
Her steps were watch'd, her dress was noted;
Her poodle-dog was quite adored,
Her sayings were extremely quoted.
She laugh'd, and every heart was glad,
As if the taxes were abolish'd;
She frown'd, and every look was sad,
As if the Opera were demolished.
Winthrop Mackworth Praed, "The Belle of the Ball Room" (1831)
---
June 20, 1961 (Relic)
The body of Louise McCallum (whose grand-niece would grow up to be the spitting image of her) lay on the dirt floor of her barn. Lachlan Luthor, a drifter who had just made the leap from petty crime to capital murder, was fleeing the scene--successfully, as it would turn out. The end for him was years away, and would come at the hands of his son Lionel, in a towering inferno. Jor-El of Krypton was fleeing in a different direction, down which he would meet Hiram Kent in an encounter with heavy implications for the future. All this, and more, revolved around Louise, had been set in motion by her. She was the nexus, not because of anything extraordinary she'd done or said, but by her mere existence--she was just that sort of person.
Smallville went into an extended period of mourning the next day; if the town had a favorite daughter, she was it.
May 15, 2005 (Spirit)
Lana Lang sat on the couch in the apartment over the Talon, moodily eyeing the switched-off television set and drumming her fingers on her knee. Three rented videos were stacked on the coffee table: Legends of the Fall, Meet Joe Black, and The Devil's Own. It was the night of the Smallville High senior prom, and she was staying home, alone. As she had told Chloe in the hall the day before, showing up on the arm of fired coach Jason Teague would be uncomfortable, to say the least. Things were getting more than a little weird with him, anyway; skipping the big night entirely seemed like her best move. And yes, maybe it was, but then there was Clark--the look on his face earlier when he told her that while possessed by Dawn Stiles she had asked him to the prom...well, that was something for her to think about, wasn't it?
Back and forth she went--she'd been feeling wishy-washy about the decision not to go ever since she made it, and was by this point quite annoyed at her inability to stop dithering. But even now it wasn't too late--if she leapt off the couch at once, she could still get there in time for the last half of prom night. There was a serviceable dress hanging in the closet; Chloe was going without a date, so why shouldn't she? And if Clark happened to be there...then so much the better. What had earlier seemed a sensible, mature idea, blowing off something so insignificant as a high-school prom, now seemed misguided, perhaps tragically so. Mrs. Kent (although now that she thought about it, it would've had to have been Dawn 'as' Mrs. Kent) had accused her of feeling like she was above it all after spending a summer in Paris, and Lana had denied it, but really, the prom and much of what went on in Smallville did seem trivial to her after her time abroad. But there was only one senior prom, after all, and it was supposed to be one of those memories you carry around all your life. Why should she cheat herself out of it? She was really wavering, now; in her mind, the decision balanced on a razor's edge.
Yes, she would go. Lana stood up, believing herself to have decided the issue. She began moving toward the bathroom, running over in the front of her mind what she had to do to get ready, while in the back of it she was still counting the pros and cons of attending, and then she slowed down for a couple of steps before stopping altogether. "No," she said, and returned to her seat. Such a lot of trouble to get all dressed up, and for what, really? Another rite of passage? She'd had enough of them, after all she'd seen and done--no, she'd rather just relax with a good movie or three, thank you. This had been a long enough day as it was; just that afternoon she'd electrocuted poor Billy Durden in the boys' locker room while possessed by a vengeful ghost--and sadly, this wasn't a particularly unusual occurrence in her life. Anyway, Clark most likely wouldn't even be there, or so Chloe had led her to believe, and oh, by the way, there was the unresolved matter of the malevolent and prom-obsessed Dawn-spirit still at large that would almost certainly be wreaking havoc all night long--and did Lana need any more of that? She did not--meteor-freak lunacy was something to be avoided, where possible, which it rarely was in this town. Now satisfied that she'd made the right decision, she pulled Meet Joe Black out of its case and stuck it into the VCR, then turned on the television. She fast-forwarded through the FBI warning and the previews, and soon she was caught up in the story--she'd already seen this one, but she found Pitt irresistible in it; so inscrutable and mysterious. As the evening wore on, the prom and her dilemma over whether to go or not were forgotten, and when Chloe asked her later if she regretted not being there, she answered, "Not for a second."
And she never did regret it, because she never knew that things would've been different if she'd gone.
---
Chloe stood in the girls' washroom at school, examining herself critically in the mirror--not too bad, given the events of the last half-hour. Fixing her makeup had taken some time; evidently Dawn had gone on a crying jag after winning her precious tiara, and Dawn/Clark smacking her in the face had left some redness. On top of this, she'd had to clean (as best she could) black globs of heating oil off of her nice new shoes--thanks again, Dawn, sorry your idea about burning down the school didn't pan out for you. Actually, though, she really did have Dawn to thank for her finding out another interesting tidbit about Clark: meteor rocks made him sick. Which was weird, because she'd been running on the assumption that his abilities came from the rocks, like every other superhuman in Smallville. Well, she could mull over that apparent contradiction later; now it was time for part two of the prom, in which the unlikely queen returns triumphantly after a brief but nasty bout of ghostly possession--and what's that, you say? Probable no-show Clark Kent did turn up after all, and when pressed for a reason, claimed it was to see one Chloe Sullivan? Interesting; very interesting.
She took a deep breath, and exited the room. She strode purposefully down the empty hallway.
Inside the gym, Clark stood next to Lois by the punch bowl, where they were idly chatting. Lois had taken being dressed up and marched off to a high-school prom by an evil spirit with only moderate outrage, and now seemed to be enjoying herself.
Lifehouse, the moderately well-known band Lex had paid a hefty sum to perform at a school in rural Kansas, started up another of their songs--a slow one. Clark, inclined to make the best of things now that he was here, said, "You know, since you got all dressed up and came to this thing with me tonight, you might as well get a dance out of it."
She smirked. "Chivalry noted, Smallville," she replied, and she might then have taken him up on it, but at that moment she spied her cousin's blonde head across the gym, over Clark's shoulder. "But that's another one of those things that isn't in the realm of possibility." She nodded in Chloe's direction and said, "Perhaps the prom queen might take pity on you." Clark turned, saw her, and smiled at Lois, who chucked him on the shoulder in a somewhat-condescending fashion. He walked over to Chloe.
"How are you feeling?" he asked her with evident concern. She had seemed okay in the basement a few minutes ago, but he was still worried. He'd knocked Chloe halfway across the boiler room into some pipes, while Dawn was controlling him--considering his strength, it was lucky she wasn't dead.
"Okay. You don't get to be prom queen by having a glass jaw." She was, in fact, suffering from a headache, but she had the amusing memory of a fey Clark telling her, 'The crown's mine, bitch!' to compensate her for it.
"Well, then..." He paused, the gravity of the moment weighing on him. Three years had elapsed since the infamous tornado-abbreviated Spring Formal--now they were both back here in the gym, all dressed up and facing each other.
"Clark?"
"...may I have this dance?" and he offered her his hand.
She took it and said with a smile, "I thought you'd never ask," and out onto the dance floor they went. They danced close, while the band ran through "You and Me."
The Kents watched them, pleased, as they danced together themselves. Towards the end of the song, Jason Teague poked his head through the door. He took a long look around for Lana, and, not seeing her, his eye rested on Clark for a moment before he departed.
The song ended, and the band announced that they would be taking a break.
"We got all the way through a song," Clark said wryly. "I don't believe it."
"Yeah; no fire, flood, or funnel clouds," answered Chloe, adding 'or Lana,' in her head. "Maybe the universe owed us one."
"Yeah, maybe so." They walked across the room together. Some tables and chairs were set out at the side, and they sat down. Canned music had replaced the band for the time being, and for a moment they watched people they knew dance and mill about in front of them. The night wore on.
May 21-22, 2005 (Blank)
Clark had amnesia and Chloe was taking care of him--'Clark-sitting,' as he would later put it. They were inside the Talon, investigating--and upon Clark's finding a clue with his x-ray vision, Chloe picked up some coffee to go and they left, hot on the trail of the memory thief. Just as the glass door was closing, Lana came down the stairs and caught a glimpse of them through the window. She thought about going after them, but figured she'd only slow them down. She watched them cross the street and disappear from view.
---
The next day, Chloe and Clark were in the Torch office. He was fine now, though without recollection of the amnesiac period, and she was just wrapping up her account of what had happened, and how with a blank slate, he had made all the same choices but one.
"You trusted me," she finished, and fixed her gaze on him. Clark looked back at her calmly, conditioned to show nothing in situations like this. She knows, he thought. His mind raced with terrible speed. The odd remarks she'd made here and there over the past few weeks had indicated that his cover might be slipping, and he'd been trying to work out what to do about it. Not working as hard as he might have, though; he'd been hoping not to have to deal with it at all, the theory being that if you ignore a problem for long enough it will go away. It hadn't, evidently, and there was really nothing surprising about Chloe figuring it out, given how much time they spent together and how sharp she was--things were always going to unravel at some point. A touch of panic hit him--his thoughts became jumbled and he roiled, inwardly, while on the outside still appearing blandly puzzled by her cryptic statement. Deny everything, that was his instinct in this situation and others like it; deny, distract, misdirect and cover up--it's what his parents had programmed him to do, for his own protection. Pete found out, and that was okay for a while before it became too much for him--but Chloe was different from Pete.
She sat there, still looking at him--only a moment had passed. Then he relaxed a bit--he was suddenly sure that he could just let it pass; she wasn't going to force the issue. And perhaps she didn't really know anything at all, she was just fishing, working off of some vague suspicions--or maybe she was referring to something else entirely. Except she wasn't.
He nearly left it there, very nearly made an inane remark and wandered away. But things were slightly different this time; the balance was fractionally off--he was on the brink, and then over it.
"Chloe," he began.
June 11, 2005 (Larcenous)
Lana isn't herself, Chloe thought, when it comes to these alien widgets--she's completely non compos mentis on the subject, given what Clark said about their trip to China. So it isn't really such a bad thing to do, stealing the one she has hidden in a pipe outside her window over the Talon--it might even be doing her a favor. Clark would blow a gasket if he knew about this proposed cat-burglary, she knew, but she felt she could save everyone a lot of trouble if she could carry it off, Clark particularly, despite his reluctance to pull out all the stops to find these things, which was typical of him. Well, whatever--this job was tailor-made for her.
Amongst other things, Clark had told her--at her insistent prompting--every last detail about what had happened out East, even those he thought were trivial--and obviously Jason or Lana had come away from China with the stone; Lex was absent at the critical moment. She recalled the conversation of a couple days ago:
"Why do you want to know all this stuff, anyway? You really don't want to get sucked into searching for these things, trust me. "
"Clark, they were left here for you, if I understand what you've told me--making at least a slight effort to retrieve them before everyone else isn't too much for you, is it?"
He could be funny about some things. She'd run over the details of the curious 'burglary' at the Talon and the recent behavior of the principals, and...well, she wasn't Poirot, but she'd sifted through the facts and looked at the personalities involved and she'd come up with the idea, correctly as it would turn out, that Lana had run a clever little scam and still had the shiny little chunk of alien matter--so score one for her "little grey cells." Chloe used the Talon as the likely starting point for her search, and knowing that the alien substance was unlike anything else in the vicinity, or anywhere else for that matter, she had pinpointed it by rigging up a scanner that would--
--a police car rolled by just then, disturbing her reverie, and she flattened herself against the wall. It was one in the morning, and she was in the alley beside the Talon. Get a move on, Chloe, she thought--people loitering in alleys in the dead of night are what Smallville's finest are paid to investigate. She went to work.
Seven hours later, she wore a tired but triumphant grin as she handed the artifact to a flabbergasted Clark, in his loft. He, somewhat glumly it seemed to her (and he could've been more generous with the praise, for pete's sake), took it away with him to the caves where he joined it with the other one. Within a safe located in a lawyer's office in Metropolis, the third one began to glow. Clark felt an awful whine in his head that he had felt before, and sped off in that direction. Ninety minutes later, he was standing in an Arctic snow field.
Somewhere in space, a cluster of meteors, at the heart of which was a black ship, drifted through the void.
June 13, 2005 (Forever)
"If Brendan wants high school, we'll give him high school." That was what Chloe had said to Lana when she cooked up this plan to win their freedom from this ridiculous duplicate Smallville High. And the plan had ticked along nicely to this point; Chloe turned on the charm in the Torch office to distract their captor while Lana snuck up behind him and bashed him in the head--crude, but effective. Now he lay on the floor, and they made for the exit--then Chloe stopped and said, "Wait, Lana." Clark wasn't going to come to their rescue if they got this wrong--he was gone, and this might be their only chance to escape from this pathetic-but-dangerous meteor freak. As she turned to look at him, Brendan was already starting to stir. Chloe grimly moved over to the wall, braced herself against it and heaved, toppling a tall shelving unit laden with various heavy objects. It crashed down onto Brendan, who screamed and then fell silent. "Now, let's get the hell out of here," she said to a stunned Lana. They hurried through the halls until they found the way out.
Late that evening, the two of them were drinking coffee at the Talon. Chloe remarked that Lana had seemed more relaxed over the past couple days. Lana agreed, adding that it felt as if a terrible weight had been lifted off her back, so to speak. Chloe smiled.
"Have you heard from Clark?" asked Lana.
"No..." Chloe took a sip and continued confidently, "He'll be back, I'm sure. He's just missing end-of-the-year busywork at school right now."
"I guess. What he missed today was a prime chance to rescue us from mortal danger. We'd better not make a habit of saving ourselves or he'll start to feel redundant."
Chloe snorted. "Yeah, this was a real step forward for us. Remember when we were dating the two Ian Randalls and Clark had to stop them from dumping us over the side of the dam?" They both laughed; a winner's laugh.