- - - - -
"Chloe, is that you?"
Chloe cringed and set her purse down on the floor with a dull thump. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
The light across the room turned on, and a sleep-tousled Lana squinted at her, smiling. "No, it's okay. I was sort of having trouble sleeping anyway. So…how's Clark?"
Chloe crossed to her bed and sat down, kicking her boots off. "I don't know. He's not himself, though. He seems really…unhappy, I guess."
"Must be going around. Lex isn't in the best mood lately either." Lana straitened up, running her fingers through her messy hair.
"This isn't 'had a lousy day' unhappy, this is 'forgetting to put on my socks' kind of a thing."
"Seriously?" Lana looked genuinely worried. Chloe realized that was refreshing to see. Sometimes Lana and Clark's relationship really frustrated her on both their behalf.
"Yeah, I went to talk to him- found him at Smallville High, just sitting around in The Torch. He had his shoes on, but no socks." She shook her head, flopping onto the bed and staring at the ceiling awhile. "The worst part is, from what Mrs. Kent told me, he kind of took it out on the both of them."
"His parents?"
"Yeah, I was shocked too. Clark-loyal-son-Kent? It just doesn't seem right."
"Well, there was that weird incident just a few weeks ago, remember. I mean, Clark went crazy."
"But I told you, Lana," Chloe insisted, sitting up. "It was that silver meteor rock that you and Lex found."
"And lost," Lana added sullenly.
"Yeah. But it's not like it's the first time someone's gone uncharacteristic on us over a meteor rock."
"It's just not usually Clark."
"No, I guess it's not. Still, he's got just as much excuse to go 'normal day in Smallville' on us as anyone." She stood up and hung her jacket up on the hook by the closet, then paused, thoughts suddenly elsewhere. "He's going to be okay…I just wish I could do more for him. He won't open up to me."
"People keep secrets for a reason, Chloe." Chloe turned around, smiling.
"Well that's something I never thought I'd hear out of you."
Lana laughed lightly. "Yeah…you know, Clark once told me, back when I was first getting to know him, that he was the Fort Knox of secrets. I guess I didn't realize then how serious he was. But…now I have all these secrets of my own. Suddenly, I'm realizing how selfish it is to insist upon unconditional honesty."
"You're not selfish, Lana."
"Yeah, I am." Lana shrugged, pulling her knees to her chin, and smiling. "But Clark would be the first to say that people can change, right?"
Chloe smiled back, and tossed a handful of hairclips onto her dresser. "Yeah."
- - - - -
Clark's head lolled back and forth over the seat as the car rumbled beneath him. His chest throbbed painfully where Curtis had stuffed a thin piece of Kryptonite under his shirt. His hands were duct taped in front of him, but he couldn't move his arms anyway. "Curtis," he gritted out as they hit another notch in the road. "Please, you have to…"
"Shh…Clark, c'mon," Curtis looked over his shoulder into the backseat and smirked. "Shouldn't you save your strength?"
"Curtis, you need help. There's no way-"
"No way that I can make a vat of green stuff that magically causes pain when people you like touch you?" He laughed. "Yeah, it sounds crazy, but I'm not insane. You'll see, Clark."
"The…the meteor rock-" Clark groaned, his whole body tensing at another wave of nausea. "Curtis, you've got to take it off me."
"We're almost there, Clark, don't worry."
Perhaps five minutes later, they came to a stop. Curtis got out and came around the side, opening the door by Clark's head. He hauled him out of the backseat, letting him fall, sprawling, into the middle of the road. Kneeling down next to him, he shoved Clark's cell phone in between his bound hands.
"There you go. I told you I'm not insane. Give your worried folks a call, Clark. I'm sure they'll come and get you. But tell them about what I did, about my special elixir, and you'll go down for breakfast tomorrow and find a camera crew from Metropolis wondering why the Kansas farm boy gets sick around space rocks. Tell anyone else you like." He shrugged. "They'll just want to know the same thing, anyway. But don't tell mommy and daddy." He slapped Clark on the shoulder like they were buddies. Clark winced, trying to hang onto his cell phone.
Curtis walked back to the car, climbed in, and called out the open window, "I'll be keeping an eye on you, Clark!" then drove off down the road.
Hands shaking, Clark held down the #2 button on his phone and pushed it as close to his ear as he could. It rang. And rang. And rang…the thought that his parents may not be speaking to him briefly crossed his mind, and then the other end picked up, and Clark felt bad for considering the idea.
"Hello?" a tired voice answered.
Clark panted hard into the receiver, trying to work up the energy to speak. "D…dad-"
"Clark?" Jonathan sounded relieved. "Clark, where are you? We've been worried sick-"
"Dad…help- me. I'm…" with a surge of panic, Clark realized he didn't know where he was. He tried to look around, but all he saw was a field across from him and trees around him. "It's…Kryptonite. I can't-" he convulsed, almost dropping the phone.
"Kryptonite. Clark- Clark, where are you?!" He heard his mom gasp in the background.
Squinting desperately into the distance, Clark suddenly realized there was a windmill far off, in the middle of the field ahead of him. "The road…Chandler- ah! Dad!"
"On the road where? By Chandler's Field?"
Clark wanted badly at that moment to apologize for that evening's argument. To tell his father- well, a lot of things. But he couldn't find the energy to stay awake anymore. His eyes shut and the phone fell limply from his hands.
- - - - -
"Clark!" Jonathan paused for a fragment of a second, then hung up the phone and ran to the front door.
"Jonathan, is it Kryptonite?" Martha ran to the door with him, grabbing her coat off the hook and throwing it on over her nightgown.
"That's what he said."
"Where is he?!"
"I don't know! He said in the road, I think he's near Chandler's Field." They ran to the truck, gunned up the engine and sped away. Dirt road turned to paved road and Martha was suddenly reminded that they lived roughly ten minutes from Chanlder's Field.
"Jonathan-"
"He's going to be okay," Jonathan said sternly, and he pressed the gas a little harder. Finally, Martha sat suddenly forward in her seat.
"Jonathan!"
"I see him!" Jonathan pulled the truck to a wrenching stop, and both of them climbed out of the car and ran down the road. Lying just feet away, Clark was sprawled motionless across the blacktop. Both parents knelt quickly beside him. Martha lifted her son's head into her lap as Jonathan's hands scrambled through Clark's pockets looking for the Kryptonite. Then he noticed the dull glow under Clark's shirt, and snatched the rock out, pitching it as hard as he could across the road into Chandler's Field.
"Jonathan, he's barely breathing," Martha said shakily.
Jonathan pulled his Swiss Army knife out of his jacket pocket, cutting the tape around Clark's wrists. "C'mon, Clark," he whispered, pressing shaking fingers to his son's neck. "He has a pulse…it's weak, but it's there."
Martha picked up his cell phone and shut it, slipping it into her pocket. "Should we move him? Jonathan?"
Jonathan seemed to be jerked from his thoughts. "What? Uh- yeah…yeah, I guess we-"
"Jonathan," Martha whispered, putting a hand on his knee. "This isn't your fault."
He shook his head. "This is exactly what I was-"
"It's not your fault," she repeated firmly, and this time he nodded.
"Let's get him into the truck."
Between the two of them, they managed to pull him into the middle seat of the truck. By 2:48 am, they were driving back down the long road, away from Chandler's Field. Clark's head lay in Martha's lap and she ran her fingers through his hair, thoughts far away.
Jonathan glanced over at her, then back at the road. "Feels like the day we brought him home, doesn't it?"
"Only I wasn't so worried about him then," Martha said quietly as Clark flinched suddenly under her fingers. "Clark?" She leaned over him. "Sweetheart, can you hear me?" Clark groaned in his sleep, his face troubled. "Jonathan, there's something wrong, his pulse isn't getting any stronger."
"We just need to get him home," Jonathan assured her. They finally reached the Kent Farm sign, and drove up their dirt driveway. Jonathan hoisted Clark over his shoulder and managed to carry him into the house and lay him on the couch. "I don't think I can get him up the stairs to his room. Can you get some blankets?" Martha nodded, and ran upstairs to the linen closet. Jonathan knelt beside the couch, watching his son lie, now completely still. He didn't look so troubled now.
"Here you go," Martha came back down the stairs, holding an armload of bedding. They propped his head up on his own pillow and covered him with two red polar fleece blankets.
"He seems like he's doing okay now," Jonathan told her. "You should get some sleep."
"No, I'll stay-"
"It's okay, Martha. I'm not really tired now anyway, you go on to bed. I'll get some sleep when I know he's okay. Clark wouldn't want you staying up all night, you need some rest." Hesitantly, Martha agreed and kissing her son on the forehead, went to bed.
- - - - -
"Morning, sleepyhead. Up and at 'um!" Clark sat up suddenly as though yanked from a bad dream. "Woah, easy there!" He blinked hard in the bright sunlight and realized it wasn't Curtis standing next to him, but his father. "Dad…" he rubbed his eyes hard, then gazed blearily around the room. "How long was I out?"
"We got home about three in the morning, and it's-" he looked down at his watch. "11:13 pm."
"Wow…really?"
"Well, son," Jonathan sat down on the coffee table as Clark pushed himself into a sitting position. "We found you in the middle of the highway with Kryptonite shoved under your shirt. When have you ever just snapped out of something like that?" He leaned forward then, fixing his son with a penetrating stare. Clark was sure he was about to bring up their argument, but instead he said, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah…" Clark's guilt rose a notch. Even now, all his father cared about was his own safety. That argument was sounded worse and worse the further he got from it.
"Clark?" Martha came running into the living room, and sat down on the couch next to him, bright with excitement. "Are you okay? Are you feeling all right?"
"I'm fine, Mom," he smiled reassuringly.
Martha glanced at Jonathan who continued to stare at Clark. Finally, he asked the most obvious question. "Who did this to you, Clark. What happened?"
Curtis, his Kryptonite elixir and his threat about telling his parents anything came suddenly flooding back. He still wasn't sure he believed Curtis, as far as the chemistry experiment went. It wasn't possible to single out emotions to illicit a Kryptonite-like response. He didn't care if the young man was a genius, it just didn't make sense. However, Curtis hadn't said anything about keeping Clark's abduction a secret, so he told his parents about running into him in the woods and how Curtis had used Kryptonite to subdue him. Jonathan's face turned dark and angry when he mentioned how Curtis had dipped twist ties in dissolved Kryptonite to tie him down.
"So basically, he knows your secret?"
"No, not really." Clark shrugged uncomfortably. "But…he knows about the meteor rocks and how the make me feel, and he may know about some of my powers." Seeing the worried expressions on both their faces, he added, "He called me Super Kent, but that doesn't mean he knows. He just…might have an idea."
"So he kidnapped you," Jonathan said slowly, "vented his frustration about his life to you, drove to Chandler's Field, threw you out of the car with Kryptonite and gave you your cell phone so you could call us."
"Yeah." Clark felt bad lying, but what was the point in explaining Curtis' idle threats about poisoning him somehow? So long as he didn't tell his parents about it, Clark would be able to track Curtis down and then if it came up later, it wouldn't matter.
"I just don't get it," Jonathan insisted. "Why would he bother abducting you just to yell at you for a little while, then throw you back?"
Clark shrugged. "I guess…he just wanted me to know how he felt. We used to go to school, you know, I guess…maybe he picked me out just because he knew that he could get me there easily, because of the meteor rocks he had."
"Where were you, anyway?"
"I don't know…" Clark shook his head. "We were in a garage, or a basement. But when he gave me the Kryptonite, everything got sort of hazy. I just remember him dragging me up some stairs, out a door and into the car." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands folded. He did his best to be the picture of certainty. "Don't worry. I'll find him."
"No." Jonathan stood up. "You're not going near this kid, not while he has Kryptonite."
"What else can I do? It's better than having him on the loose."
"There has to be another way-"
"Okay, okay." Martha stood up. "We're all a little tired, Clark hasn't had anything to eat today, you still have chores to do." She squeezed Jonathan's elbow. "I'm going to go make you two some pancakes, we'll figure something out later, okay?"
Clark nodded, grateful, and Jonathan agreed as well. Martha went to the kitchen, and Clark stood up, stretching his aching limbs. One of the worst parts of long-term exposure to Kryptonite was how fatigued it made him feel in the mornings.
"Son, don't worry about your chores, I all ready fed the cows and repaired both gates."
"Sorry," Clark sighed, shaking his head. "You didn't have to do that."
"Hey." Jonathan stood in front of him. "I can take a few extra chores if you can promise not to scare me like that again."
Clark smiled ruefully. "Yeah. Okay." Jonathan thumped him on the shoulder. Clark winced painfully, taking a step back.
"Clark?"
"No, it's okay. I just…feel a little sore."
Jonathan nodded understandingly. "Nothing like a Kryptonite hangover. Well, hang in there." And he went out the back door to finish his chores.
Clark's heart pounded loudly in his ears, but he tried to calm himself. He was feeling sore today, that was the truth. Nothing wrong with that. He walked slowly into the kitchen, standing in the doorway and watching Martha at work by the stove. Quietly, almost silently, he approached her, hand outstretched.
He hesitated. What was wrong with him? Was he really going to believe Curtis, the crazy chemist? No. It simply wasn't possible. Satisfied, his hand stopped shaking, and he set it gently on Martha's shoulder. She whirled around when he jerked his hand back as though he'd been burned.
"Clark! You scared me, what's wrong?"
"Oh…nothing, I just- uh," he rubbed his hand. "I was wondering…did Chloe call?"
"Yeah, she called this morning. We told her about how we found you, she wanted to come straight over." Martha smiled fondly. "But I told her that you'd give her a call when you woke up."
"Okay…yeah, I'll give her a call. Thanks, Mom."
"Sweetheart, are you sure you're okay?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm fine."
- - - - -
