Author's note: Started this last year before Jonathan died as an explanation why Chloe's dad was never around. Will finish quickly.

Chloe knew all about bad days.

Escaping through a tunnel as an egomaniacal billionaire engineered the explosion of the "safe house" above you, fell in the category of having a bad day.

Seeing your best friend shot and left to die in a ditch while being dragged away to a bunker to await Smallville's destruction by nuclear warhead and subsequently having to kill your abductor, also easily qualified as a bad day.

In order to avoid suffering from terminal cheerfulness, Chloe learned to keep life in perspective and rarely judged her regular day-to-day existence by those standards. Therefore, with the obvious caveats, Chloe was ready to admit she was having a lousy day.

She told herself chaos was a normal part of college life, but today, all the little things that could go wrong piled up into a list like a bad joke.

She was young, in college, and cramming for her final exams of the winter semester. Only getting a quick hour's worth of sleep wasn't that uncommon. Getting even that hour of sleep meant skipping breakfast in the cafeteria and when she went to make coffee in her dorm room, she dropped the glass carafe, shattering it before any of the precious caffeine made it into a liquid form. She was desperate enough to bum a cup of instant from the neighboring dorm.

On her way out, she snagged her sweater on the door jam and by the end of her first period, it had unraveled almost to the obscene. A perpetually hot and stuffy building housed her second class of the day, but Chloe's wardrobe malfunction forced her to keep her coat tightly wrapped.

Two of her professors arrived late, which cut the testing time short for one while the other went over time, causing her to race to her next class like the sprinter she now knew she was not. She arrived just in time, but broke the heel off her new pair of favorite shoes.

Now, instead of leisurely taking her time to pack, she was frantically tossing clothes in a bag. The Planet called and left orders to stop by the office ASAP. Right after squeezing that into her schedule, she was heading home for the weekend. Finally, she'd have a chance to see her dad. They barely had talked since she left for college. On the bright side, she had a deep and meaningful relationship with his voicemail.

She was glad Gabe had a job he truly loved, but even during her senior year of high school, he had been constantly gone on company trips. This weekend, Chloe intended to bridge the distance that had grown between them.

As she was leaving, Chloe left a message telling her Dad to expect her around nine-thirtyish. Hopefully, she wouldn't be too long at The Planet. She would just pop in, find out what they wanted, and still be on the road by five-thirty. Three hours later and she should be pulling into Smallville. It could happen! Or maybe not.

The quick consultation about her submission on the effect on nightlife brought on by a proposed change in bar closings, morphed into helping Trina in editing, Jack in layout, and finally being bribed, bullied, and coerced into covering the tip line. If she expected her article to be included in the next edition, she would need to free up the more experienced staff for the next few hours. Chloe called her dad and left him a message to say she'd be in after midnight.

Finally, she and the highway were one and her favorite CDs helped speed the trip along. There had been a moment just before she left the Planet, when she thought of her bed, soft and warm, and how simply alluring it would be to slip back to her dorm and go to sleep. However, knowing that Lana had a date with Clark and with them expecting Chloe to be gone all weekend, well, the possible unpleasant scenarios rolled out much too vividly for Chloe to risk it..

Chloe stopped several times for refueling, for both her car and herself. Caffeine kept her moving; but still, as she entered Smallville city limits, she was fighting off exhaustion. Her phone rang and with pleasure, she saw her dad's cell number flashing. "Hello," she answered cheerily, "called to talk me through that final stretch. Hello?"

For a moment, she thought they had lost their connection and then she heard him sigh and say, "I was hoping you hadn't left Metropolis yet."

"Why, what's wrong?" She asked in confusion.

"I'm here at the airport. My flight is leaving in five minutes. I'm sorry for the mix up, but I won't be around this weekend." He sounded brisk, business like, and a not a bit like the man who had been everything to her after her mother left. "We can talk next week."

Swamped with disappointment, Chloe tried to put on a brave face. "Sure, when you get back. I suppose something last minute came up at work." Gabe didn't pick up her hint to elaborate, but in the background, she heard an announcer on the loudspeaker clearly say, "Last call for flight 457 to Aruba, last call for boarding flight 457 to Aruba…"

Gabe broke in, "I've got to go, they just announced the final boarding for my flight; have a…" He paused. "Goodbye."