ois could see the tense atmosphere between Clark and his parents. "Am I interrupting?" she asked sheepishly. As usually happened Clark and his parents stopped their heated discussion and started inanely smiling at each other, as though everything was perfect.

"Lois…" Martha went up and hugged her. "Everything is fine." Lois could see from the red rings around Martha's eyes that she had been crying and things were far from okay.

Clark's smile did not last long. "Let's celebrate, Lois is home." He announced harshly as he brushed past her and headed out of the door. "I am going over to the loft."

Jonathan shouted after him. "Clark, come back now and apologise to Lois."

He then turned to Lois. "I am so sorry. He doesn't mean it. I think he is stressed from university."

"I will go and see him." Lois said determinedly. She did not wait for a reaction, and smiled and left.

Clark was sitting down with his back to the sofa, throwing a ball at the wall repeatedly. "I would have knocked but I have never found the door."

He did not even look up. "Look…I am not in the mood for jokes."

"No kidding, Smallville. I have been back in town for 2 minutes and you still manage to rip my head off. What is going on?"

He looked up at her; his expression was odd. He looked nervous, almost like he was living on the edge. "Since when do you have right to know what is going on in my life."

"Look, Clark, don't tell me and to be honest I don't care. I am sorry to bother you." She turned around, and started to head down the stairs, walking slowly with the hope he would react.

He did. "Lois, come back. I have just had a bad few days. Someone ran me off the road yesterday and made me flip the truck. The police and my parents think I am going mad, as they have found no evidence that I was followed. They think I lost concentration, and made the truck roll."

"Who was following you?" she sat down on the sofa behind him. He stood up and sat next to her.

"You don't have to humour me!" he managed a weak smile.

"I am not humouring you. I want to help you find out what happened. You are not exactly a reckless driver, and I cannot see you being able to flip a truck, somehow. I tell you what, let me drive you to where it happened and we will see if we can find any clues." She said with encouragement.

She found herself looking at Clark in a different way. This young man sitting next to her was allegedly the future love of her life, if an alien computer was to be believed. She could see in his eyes that he was scared and puzzled by the events.

"I bet you have somewhere else you would rather be." He announced softly.

"No, not really. I will cancel my busy schedule for the day, just so I can hang around with you."

Clark's expression suddenly changed and he started to get up. "You don't believe me either, do you?" he said with paranoia in his voice.

Lois grabbed his hand, and pulled him back down. "I do believe you, and I want to try and find out what happened. " she said with enough sincerity to make him believe her.

"Ok…, shall we go? I will let you drive." He joked.

They climbed into her car and drove off much to the confusion of Martha and Jonathan who were watching out of the window.

Lois could feel how tense Clark was but decided she needed to continue as he would expect. "So Clark, what was all that about with Chloe? She must have really annoyed you to make you threaten her like that. Of course, I know it was just a figure of speech."

He looked across at her. "I was wondering how long it would be before you brought that up. I don't really want to talk about it."

"But you are speaking to her now. "

"No… but I am sure we will be fine." Clark did not sound too convinced.

"Did you not get hurt yesterday? You look okay." She asked.

"I jumped clear before it rolled." He explained. "I guess I was just lucky. The truck is totally wrecked."

"You are lucky!" she said. "We're here."

Clark got out the car and walked over the where it happened. He was looking intensely at the road, making Lois realise that he was probably scanned with his super-vision, as she called it. She concentrated too, and low and behold, she started to zoom in on the road. But there was nothing, confirmed by Clark's disappointed look on his face.

After a few moments, he stopped. "Lois, maybe I was imagining things. "

"I don't think you were. You seem very lucid to me."

He looked at her in a different way. "Thank you… Lois… for believing in me." He hugged her, as though he needed support.

Lois held on to him and realised that the silver meteor rock was starting to infect Clark more. She needed to make sure she stayed close to him.

"Whoa… easy on the hugs, Smallville" She pulled away grimacing, pretending he had gripped her too tightly.

Clark grabbed Lois's hand and led her back to the car. He suddenly seemed to have a new spring in his step.

"Lois, will you drive me to CKU? There is someone there who believes me." He explained.

"Who?" Lois asked.

"My professor, Milton Fine. He said he was followed by a similar car to me the other day. Maybe it was the same one."

Lois smiled, realising she was going to come face to face with Brainiac.

Lois was expecting a fight to get Clark to allow her to stay with him, and was shocked when she didn't.

"Lois, can you come with me? I need someone sane to back up my story." He smiled.

"You call me sane!" she laughed back.

For some reason, Clark took hold off her hand and led her into the campus. It was as though he needed someone to hold onto, to support him.

They approached the lecture hall, and waited outside of the door. Lois looked in and noticed a man standing in front of the projector screen. As he turned around, she was shocked.

"My god, Clark. Take a few pounds and years off him, and make his hair blond, and you know who he looks like."

Clark smiled. "Yes, he looks like Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Meanwhile, Milton Fine excused himself from his class for a few moments, and approached Clark with a puzzled look. He took Clark to one side away from Lois. "I was wondering if you'd forgotten about me. Is everything all right?"

" No. Chloe's in on it, too, so are my parents." He announced thinking Lois was well out of earshot

"In on what?" Fine asked as though he had no clue what Clark was going on about.

Clark looked at him. "The black truck that's been following us around - did you get any information from campus security?"

"Campus security?"

"Professor Fine! You said you were gonna talk to them earlier today when I told you about it yesterday."

" Clark, I haven't seen you in over a week."

Clark was becoming more uneasy, looking at Lois for support. "No, no. We spoke this morning. After class we talked about it - the black truck. You were gonna talk to campus security."

"I had a classes all day yesterday, but you weren't in any of them." Fine explained.

"Yes, I was. No, I - yes. No, we talked. I know" Clark stuttered back.

Fine stayed composed. " Look, Clark, I got a faculty meeting right now, but why don't you wait for me in my office, and I'll make an excuse - I'll be right back. Clark, whatever is happening, we're in this together.

Lois has listened in to everything. She hated seeing Clark being made to feel that he was going mad, but she knew she could not intervene. She needed to sit back and keep an eye on things.

Fine headed back into class.

Clark turned to Lois, and hugged her again. "I feel like I am going mad, and I don't know what to do about it."

"Clark, I am not letting you out of my sight. I think there is something more to this than meets the eye." She replied without giving too much away.

He looked at her with a sparkle in his eyes. "Why are you doing this for me?"

"We're friends, Smallville, and friends look out for each other." She said, as she punched him playfully on the shoulder. "Are you going to wait in his office?"

"No, I think we should head back to Smallville and see if we can find out what is going on." He took her hand again.

"So, why would your professor lie about talking to you?" she asked, as they drove home.

"I don't know. You don't believe me?" He inquired again.

"Clark, I swear I believe you 100%. Did you see the way, Fine kept looking across at me, as though he did not want me there?"

"I think he is probably worried about you hearing. Fine and I have been working together for a few months to try and expose Luthorcorp."

"Why does he have anything against Luthorcorp?" Lois asked curiously

"He has never said, and to be honest I have never asked. Bringing down the Luthor's would not be a bad thing. I hate everything they stand for." There was anger in his voice.

"That is not you talking! I want to bring down Lionel too, after what he did to Chloe, but for some reason I do not trust Fine. " Lois announced hoping that she was not pushing Clark too far.

"He just seems to understand me, Lois. He has the same goals as me." He explained.

"Well, let's agree to differ and not say anything more about it. Can we stop for some lunch?" She asked as the sound of the her stomach growling filled the car. "There is a café just down the road. Maybe they do maple donuts."

Clark sat watching Lois eat her maple donut as she waited for her burger and fries. "Why do you eat dessert before the main course?"

"Because I do." She smiled back, her chin covered in maple syrup.

"That's a good enough reason, I suppose."

"So, Smallville. What is our plan of action when we get back? Do you want me to smooth the path for you and Chloe to make up."

His face changed. "No, I don't trust her. When I was at the Daily Planet, she was getting emails about me from Lionel."

Lois was surprised. "How did you know they were about you? Did they have 'Clark Kent' on the subject line."

"No, but it said something about there being no secrets."

"So how do you think that is about you?"

He became defensive. "I just know okay, and can we talk about something else."

"Okay, no problems. What shall we talk about?"

Lois looked at him, and unexpectedly felt her stomach doing somersaults. It was as though her feelings for him had started to come to the surface. Even she had to admit that she had always had a soft spot for him otherwise she would not have spent so much time annoying him. To add to this, Clark had a body to die for and often made a point of hanging around the barn when he had his top off.

She was still having trouble working out how her sudden crush on Clark would lead them to become soul mates. Maybe Jor-el had made that up to convince her to help. She decided to just see how things progressed…