Title: Astral Chloe
Author: Mellifluous (ms-cherryred)
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: T
Spoilers or warnings: Smallville: Thru season 5; Charmed: Thru season 8
Summary: Chloe investigates a bank robbery and gets way more than she bargained for.

Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville or Charmed, but I do own the plot of this story.

Chapter One

Chloe smiled. It had been a normal week, a rare occasion in her life. She was glad for this break from extraordinary circumstance; she planned to get the most out of this normality while it lasted. Nothing major had happened so far, and she wanted to keep it that way--at least for that one week. She took a long sip of coffee and continued her research. It wasn't anything major; just your run-of-the-mill bank robbery. She watched the security footage, which showed how generic the heist really was: Masked man walks in weilding a gun. Teller hands over money. Man walks out. Police don't catch him.

Chloe stopped herself for a moment to think it over. Nothing was ever ordinary, and it wasn't a normal robbery. Some wannabe vigilante chased the guy and cornered him in a dead-end alley, and he still got away? The police had gotten there by then, and were in pursuit along with the vigilante. The police were on both ends of the street anyway, so how did he escape? Something wasn't right. She had to do more digging. She saved her findings, and gathered her things. She had some visiting to do. Her first stop: Mr. Vigilante.

---

"All I want to know is what happened. How you saw it go down," she said, stepping in front of him. First, he'd avoided the question. Then, he'd started blurting out that he saw what he saw, and that he wasn't crazy.

"How I saw it? What, you think I'm crazy too?" She began to shake her head no, but he continued anyway. "Don't patronize me. What I saw was real."

Chloe was getting annoyed. All she wanted was for him to explain what happened, and he kept insisting he wasn't crazy.

She took a deep breath before speaking again. "Listen, I don't think you're crazy. I just want to know what happened."

"The police think.." Chloe cut him off.

"I don't want to know what the police think you saw. Tell me what you know you saw."

He sighed as he told her everything he saw happen. How the robber had come in and left calmly, walked the street leisurely until he realized that he was being followed, and disappeared in the alleyway.

"What do you mean?"

"He disappeared into thin air." She looked confused, and the man panicked. "I'm not-- whatever, it's no use." With that, he walked away from her.

---

She returned to the alley where the crook had been cornered. She looked around for any evidence, but found none. She checked for methods of escape and found nothing. She furrowed her brow; she was hoping that there would be a trap door, or some other unconventional method of egress.

"I suppose you're looking for me." The voice came from behind her. She whipped around to see a man tossing--it couldn't be--a fireball in his hand? You come from Smallville, Chloe. It's possible. "Well, you found me." He threw the fireball straight at her. Luckily she ducked in time.

Suddenly, a pale blue light appeared, and Chloe closed her eyes.

"Care to try again?" a woman asked. All Chloe heard from then on was the man screaming, and... an explosion? She opened her eyes, only to see the strange light again.

"What the...?" She sighed and muttered, "Why me? Am I a magnet for weirdness?"

So much for normality.

---

Clark listened intently as Chloe recounted the story to him. She was pretty creeped out, but he could tell that she would still keep digging until she had the entire story, and he knew what that meant. He'd have to be close enough to get to her within seconds, in case she got herself into a bad situation. He thought about something.

"You didn't recognize him at all?"

"No, Clark. Not at all." He knew it was true. If she had recognized him, she'd have had a file on him by now. But, that also meant that the man was most likely not a Smallville resident. I hope LuthorCorp isn't doing anymore experiments with kryptonite.

"Chloe, maybe you should stay here. I mean, you can call in sick, can't you?" He knew that it was a horrible suggestion and she wouldn't take it, but he had no other ideas to keep her safe and figure out what was happening.

---

Chloe sat at her desk. She couldn't help but think about the story she was working on. Was it worth risking her life? She couldn't be sure that Clark could save her every time she got into trouble, and she didn't want him to have to. She knew how it affected him. It hurt him to know that he arrived in the nick of time.

She got up and headed to bed. She could investigate later. She'd taken Clark's advice and stopped working for a while. Perry just assumed that she had dug too deep and gotten herself hurt, as always. He was glad to give her time off; she'd never asked for it before. He said she worked too hard.

She crawled under the covers and drifted off.

---

"Just when I thought my charge was safe, she goes and gets herself attacked by a demon!" Paige said to her sisters, Phoebe and Piper. She was pacing the room while they were sitting at the kitchen table. Piper was irritated because Paige had been ranting about her new charge, and not noticing what was wrong with the demon course of action. That was more interesting. It seemed like an out-of-the-ordinary attack.

Piper opened her mouth to speak, but Paige wasn't done.

"Why did the elders assign me a reporter? She's going to keep digging, and she's going to get hurt! What am I going to do? She has no powers yet--" Piper finally had it and blew up the spot on the floor where Paige was about to step.

"Piper!"

"We get it! She's a handful. Now, let's focus on the demon," Piper interrupted. "You say he threw the fireball, missed, and didn't throw another one until you showed up?"

"Wait, that makes no sense. Most demons leave if they miss, or at least leave when we show up." Phoebe said.

"Well, this one obviously had no respect for us."

"Damn evil. No respect for the Charmed Ones," Piper said with a smirk. Paige cracked a smile. "I'm sorry for ranting about Chloe. It's just that, she lives in Kansas, so it's a lot harder to protect her and maintain my normal life here. I have no idea how Leo does it."

---

Clark was in his loft, listening out for Chloe. She'd insisted on going back to her apartment in Metropolis, and that usually meant that she was going to be researching. Nothing had happened so far, so he decided to relax more, and reclined on the couch.

He heard footsteps approaching and sat up. "Hey Clark," Chloe said before sitting in his lap and giving him a kiss that was more than friendly.

"Whoa. Chloe, what has gotten into you?" Then he suspected that something may have happened to her and he x-rayed her to check her vitals.

"Clark, are you x-raying me? If you wanted to see what's underneath my clothes, you could have asked," she smirked and leaned in to kiss him again, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Just then, Martha Kent walked into the barn. "Clark? Why don't you turn out the light and get some rest?" she called out. He broke Chloe's kiss and stood up quickly to look down at his mother. "I will. Goodnight, Mom." When he turned around to deal with Chloe, she was gone.

To Be Continued.