Smallville and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Buffy the vampire slayer and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Four

"And then," one of the many girls sitting amongst the mess of weights in the living room said, "we're handed these pictures, all of us expecting some hideous bumby headed demon, and instead it's this sexy boy with these smoldering eyes. We're all squished in two hotel beds, talking into the night and we decided that we were terrified. The more beautiful they are the more murderous, tends to be the general rule. I mean, Angelus and Spike are two prime examples."

The rest of the girls nodded in agreement. Pizza boxes littered the room, and Clark sat at the table, grinning sheepishly and protested as the other girls yelled, all of them trying to add their own perspective on the story.

Clark couldn't help but feel comfortable with these people. Usually, he thought, he would have been entirely embarrassed to be doted upon by ten such outgoing girls, but they were all so entirely at home with each other. Willow had explained to him about the powers that they had, and he watched in amazement as they casually demonstrated their abilities.

Spike and Buffy had left a while ago, supposedly to go to the butcher, and Dawn had convinced Clark to stay. She had seemed shy, and had rambled for twenty minutes before the pizza had arrived.

"Anyhow," the loud girl continued, "Buffy told us that she had dealt with you, and we all thought you were dead. But with Buffy, eh," she nudged the girl next to her, "if it's a hot demon, you never know if he'll end up dead, or in bed with her." The girls giggled, and Clark turned pink.

"We didn't, I mean, we never," Clark protested.

"Oh, but you will. The hot evil ones can never resist Buffy's charm," Willow said. She was eating her pizza over her computer, typing awkwardly with one hand and chewing noisily. She gestured for Clark to move closer to her.

"Girls!" she called out. "Eat your food, and then get out. There are streets to patrol, vamps to kill and evil green stones to be destroyed. Giles had a big lead box installed in the basement. Bring the pretty green rocks back here 'til we can figure out how to destroy them on a larger scale."

She turned to Clark. "I'm sorry about the girls. The only boys they've seen in a while have been Giles and Xander, and Giles is, well, old, and Xander is still pining for his dead demon ex-fiancé."

"Does everyone around here date demons?" Clark asked, thinking about the gibe regarding Buffy.

"Just Xander and Buffy, but Buffy dates exclusively vampires in the way of demons. And only two of them, and I don't even know if Spike counts, since it wasn't dating so much as lots and lots of boinking."

"So," she said, putting her pizza back on the table, "what can you tell me about these meteor rocks?"

Clark shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "They change people," he started, "give them powers. Usually only when the person is in a near death situation."

"Like how?" Willow asked.

"Listen, my friend Chloe keeps files on all the people that we've encountered who have been changed by the meteor rocks," Clark said in a rush. "I can have her email them to you."

Willow shrugged. "Sounds good to me, but, where do you factor into all of this? I mean, that symbol on your chest, it's not of any hieroglyphic humanoid language that I could find."

Clark stood up, alarmed. "You were looking into it?" he demanded. "Why?"

"Professional curiosity," she said, picking up her pizza again, and taking a bite, seemingly unperturbed. "I do research. It's what I do."

Still tensely standing, ready to bolt or attack, whatever the occasion called for, Clark jerked in surprise when she touched his arm.

"How did you get it?"

He looked down at her, and was surprised by the empathy that shone in her dark eyes. "My biological father was trying to control me," he said. He hadn't really meant to say anything even close to the truth, but something seemed to be compelling him.

She removed her hand and started to type on her keyboard. Using the touchpad on the front of her laptop, she loaded a close-up of the scarring.

"It's a very strange scar," she muttered, and Clark sat down again and looked at the screen. She had brought up several other pictures, all of them of skin deformities, and had superimposed several of them onto the image of his flesh.

"It most closely resembles a burn scar," she explained, "but the irritation around it looks almost like a rash or allergic reaction. I can't explain it." She turned to him, her eyes lingering on the neckline of the flannel shirt. "Can you?"

"No," he said, standing up. "I'll have Chloe drop by with the files."

He turned to leave, but Willow stood up and grabbed his hand. When Clark looked at her he noticed how her eyes were darker than they had been before, her iris and pupil had melded into one.

"It would be helpful if I could see the scar," she said. "Let me see it."

Clark tilted his head to the side as he stared at her eyes. He wasn't sure if the darkness of her eyes had gotten to a point where it was unnatural. "I can't," he said, truthfully. "It's gone."


After a silent hike to the butcher's (Giles and Xander were still out with their respective cars), Buffy dropped Spike off at the house just as Clark stormed out of it.

"What's wrong?" she called, hurrying after him. He walked into the cemetery that separated their houses, and didn't reply.

She took a running start and dived at him with enough force to drop a large cattle specimen. He barely faltered in his determined walking. She hung on for only long enough for the smell of the back of his neck to make its way to her nostrils, before dropping and hurrying to walk beside him.

"Stop, Clark," she said. "I need to talk to you."

"I don't like this," he said. "Overnight I've gone from four people in the entire world knowing about me, to twenty-four, and people are asking questions and for some reason I couldn't even lie."

"Will put the truth mojo on you, did she?" Buffy asked. "I'm sorry, she shouldn't have done that."

"Mojo?"

"Willow's a witch; a very powerful witch. She almost destroyed the world when she was in her prime." She laughed. "I told you before: there's not a powerful person that I know who hasn't gone kamikaze at one point or another."

Clark stopped walking. "Even you?"

Buffy nodded. "One day I woke up, and I wasn't at home. I was in a hospital, bound to my bed, and they told me that I'd been unconscious, in a paranoid schizophrenic coma for several years. They told me that the world I'd been living in since I'd become a Slayer wasn't real. There were doctors; my mom wasn't dead; my dad wasn't AWOL with his secretary, and they told me that I had a chance at a life now."

Clark frowned. "How is that even possible?" Buffy gestured that they keep walking; the barn was just in view.

"It was some sort of demon spell, but it was so, so real. They told me that the only way for me to wake up, and stay awake, was for me to sever all connections with the world in my head. They told me to get rid of everything that I stayed for."

"What did you do?" Clark asked. He was astonished at the honesty that this girl was offering him. He could tell, by the slight waver in her voice, that it was a painful memory.

"I tied up each of my friends: my sister, Willow, Xander, Spike, and put them in the basement. There was a demon down there, and I untied it."

"What stopped it?"

"I felt better when I realized that I could be a normal girl, but it was painful, you know? Watching them die… it was like losing a part of myself. And no matter how my mother told me that I could do it, that I was strong, that it was okay to be afraid, that she loved me; it made me feel so good to hear my mother's voice again, but I realized that strength didn't mean accepting this world, with all it's promises of a perfect, easy life. It meant knowing which world was real, which world needed me. So, I apologized to my mom and came back to the real world."

When Clark didn't reply, Buffy held up a hand. "I put my fist through the demon. It had goo-y blood."

Clark couldn't imagine waking up and realizing that the world you'd been living in was nothing more than an elaborate dream. The world all seemed so tangible: the cold wind blowing around them, the dark blue moon lighting up the tombstones; this girl, looking so vulnerable.

"Do you think that you made the right choice?" he asked quietly. They were inside the barn now, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"Every day," she said, "I think about it. I think about how my mother could be by my side, how the world wouldn't be ending every day; I think about how I could have been normal—no Chosen one, no powers, no agents of darkness trying to kill me. In this world I have responsibilities that most people couldn't even dream of. But, yes. I know that I made the right choice. How could this be anything but real?"

The last sentence caused her voice to squeak, and Clark looked down to see that her eyes shone bright with tears and she looked terrified.

"It must have been so hard," he said.

She shook her head as if she was trying to shake something off, and then looked up at him again. "I know that this is hard for you," she said. "And that you're not used to people knowing what you're capable of. If it makes you feel better, what the girls know about you will stay at a minimum. They can keep thinking that you're some sort of demon spawn, and those girls are trustworthy. They're not going to tell anyone." She grabbed his hand, and he nodded.

"But I need you to trust me," she continued, "because what we're facing here is apocalypse-big. We're talking about vampires that can't be killed, and you know more than you're telling." She frowned. "A lot more, I think."

Clark sighed. He looked away, because he always found it easier to lie when he wasn't looking at the person, but she didn't give him time to speak.

"It's doesn't need to be now; but it needs to be soon. Knowledge is powerful, and we're running dangerously low on it. We're in new territory here, and these meteor rocks are undocumented mysteries. I'm not asking for you to lay your life down for my cause. All I'm asking is that you trust me."


After pulling slowly down the drive of the Kent farm, Lana realized just how tired she was. As soon as she had heard the news about Senator Jennings, she had planned to drive back to Smallville to see how Clark was, but she had been held up by the intense amounts of Astronomy homework. With any other sort of homework, she would have just packed it up and brought it with, especially considering the distinct lack of touch in their relationship lately, but Clark seemed to be uncomfortable with the topic of Astronomy.

She remembered how he spent almost every night in his loft with his own telescope, watching the stars, planets and galaxies rotate with the seasons, and couldn't figure out exactly what had turned him off of it. She had hoped that studying Astronomy would bring them closer together; help them find some answers. She needed those answers: needed to know where those people who had come out of the spaceship had been; why they had killed so many people; who they were looking for.

"We are looking for Kal-El," they had said.

As she neared the barn door, she realized that voices were coming from inside—Clark was talking to someone.

"…is that you trust me," a girl's voice said.

And then Clark, with only a moment's hesitation, replied, "I do trust you. I don't understand why, but I do. You're right; there is something I need to show you."

Lana walked into the frame of the barn door and watched as Clark grabbed the arm of this blonde girl and started to pull her around, toward the door, and then he stopped.

"Lana," he said.

"Show her what?" Lana asked. As the girl's face came into view, Lana realized that she recognized her.

"Buffy?" she asked. That night in Metropolis came rushing back to her—the taste of fear in her mouth as the man had overpowered her, and the shock as he was pulled back by a girl as small as she was, but many times stronger.

"Er," Buffy said slowly, "it's Lana, right?"

"What are you doing here?" Lana snapped, anger creeping into her voice. Clark was slouching away from Buffy, whose arm he had just been holding, and was looking guilty. She turned to him. "And what were you going to show her?"

Clark straightened himself up, and Lana knew, instantly that he was gearing up for a lie. "I was going to take her to the Kawachee Caves."

"Why?" she demanded.

"I'm here to do research," Buffy interrupted. "We're researching the meteor rocks that landed here, both in the latest meteor shower and in the one more than a decade ago. The caves are an important part of Smallville history. Clark here," she shoved him affectionately, "didn't really want us doing research in the caves. He was afraid we'd hurt them."

Clark nodded along with the story, but to Lana, he looked more surprised than anything.

"She's living in your old house," Clark added, rather uselessly.

"Really?" Lana asked. "Let me drive you home; I'd like to see what you've done with the place."

Without much protest, Buffy loaded into Lana's SUV, and braced herself. This was the prodigal girlfriend, and though Buffy had saved her life, she didn't think that her past good deeds held any weight against her current infraction. Clearly, her boyfriend wasn't supposed to be having other girls in his barn. She guessed that the barn held some sort of historical significance to the couple. She thought maybe that there were some serious trust issues hanging in the air between them.

"Why are you researching the meteor showers?" Lana asked, interrogation style.

"I'm not, so much as Giles is," Buffy replied. "He's, well, kind of my surrogate father. He was the librarian at my high school and we've remained very close."

"Why is he interested in Smallville, then?"

"Two meteor showers hitting the same town within fifteen years of one another seems a little suspicious," Buffy answered. She was really glad that she and Willow had done some research before embarking on this mission. The Kawachee caves, the meteor showers, the strange properties that the stones seemed to have—all of this information and more had been readily available in Luthorcorp's secure database. Willow had spent the better part of a day hacking into those files, and Buffy had been sure to look over the stolen information.

"What was he really going to show you?" she asked. The suspicion in her voice was pungent, and Buffy knew that she should choose her words carefully. The last thing she wanted was to say too much and lose the trust that she had built with Clark.

"The caves, just like he said." When Lana didn't reply, she continued, "Do you not trust him?"

Lana pulled into the drive at her old house, and turned to Buffy, looking angry.

"Clark lies," she said shortly. "Clark has secrets. Clark doesn't trust anyone." Buffy could see something in her eyes, something desperate; something hungry. "How did you make him trust you? He said it, just like that, and I heard it. He said that he trusts you, and he barely even knows you. I've been his friend for five years and he still doesn't trust me."

Buffy hesitated. "I trusted him," she said simply.

"What do you mean?" Lana asked.

"I opened up to him first; told him about myself without asking anything in return."

Lana sat back on her seat, looking up at the roof of the car. "He told me, no more secrets, no more lies, and for a while it was perfect."

"What changed?"

"This is going to sound crazy, but I swear it's true," Lana said. "He died."

Buffy stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"He was shot, and in the hospital he flat-lined and the doctors declared him dead. I saw it all happen, and he was really, really dead. It was like the end of the world, but then his body was gone from the hospital, and the next thing I knew, I was dropping by the Kent farm to see his parents and he was standing there, his clothes torn to shreds, dirt, or something, all over his face, and he was alive. He had no explanation or anything, and after that he was guarded and secretive and lying to me all the time, just like it had been before."

Buffy stared at this girl, and tried to see what Clark saw in her. She was frantic and suspicious and confused; and suddenly Buffy understood a lot more than she had before.

"Dying changes a person," she said quietly.

"How do you know?" Lana asked. Buffy looked down at her hands, wondering how much she should be telling this girl. She knew a lot already, probably more than she realized, having seen the vampire and Buffy's Slayer abilities, but she probably suspected nothing about the extent of the demonic world. Portals to demon dimensions, sisters made from pure energy, witches bringing people back to life; it all seemed so far away from the world that Lana was in.

"I died."

Lana turned toward her, eyes wide in amazement. "What was it like?"

"It seemed like a long time…something close to forever. Obviously, it wasn't that long in real life, but it seemed like forever."

Buffy paused and Lana was ready to jump in, but before she could, Buffy continued, her gaze locked on the dash in front of her. "I was happy. Wherever I was, I was happy, at peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was alright. Time didn't mean anything. I was warm, and I was loved, and I was complete. I don't understand theology or any of that, but I think I was in Heaven.

"When I came back, everything was hard and bright and violent: everything I felt, everything I touched. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost; this is Hell."

Lana's eyes, wide with wonder, were fixed on Buffy. She seemed so much more sincere than anyone she knew, and she could tell, without doubt, that she was telling the truth.

"Do you think… do you think that Clark is going through what you went through?"

Buffy raised her eyes from the dash, and she met Lana's eyes. "I withdrew from the people that mattered to me. I became distant; in some ways I blamed them for bringing me back. I knew that they loved me and that life could be good if I let it, but I didn't want it to be. I was intoxicated by the misery that life could offer and I couldn't shy away from it. No matter how often a way to make life better appeared, I couldn't take it. It was like after what I had experienced, no feeling on Earth could compare."

She laughed bitterly. "I'm only telling you this, because I hope that you can help Clark. I usually don't get this personal with strangers."

"How can I help him?"

Buffy thought about how her friends had stayed by her for so long, how they had stood by her, even when she pushed them all away. It had been so hard for them to learn where she had really been, that they had not saved her from an untold Hell dimension.

"Just be there for him," she said. "It's going to take time."


Lana's mind was swimming as she relived the past few weeks. Clark had been so distant, though at the time she had been mostly angry at him for pushing him away, now she could start to empathize, at least a little bit.

Her hands were shaking. She pushed them against her cheeks and leaned forward, resting her head on the steering wheel. She had silently refused Buffy's offer to show her around her old house, and instead had asked her one last question.

"Are you happy now?"

Buffy had smiled and touched Lana's shoulder. "It's better. It's never perfect, but it's better."

Closing her eyes, Lana tried to imagine Heaven. Buffy was special, Lana could tell. She possessed strength that she had never seen any other human show, and somehow, she could tell that her strength penetrated deeper than the physical strength she had displayed. When she had spoken about the pain she had gone through, it had sounded so honest; Lana couldn't envision ever being able to be that truthful about her feelings, despite what she had preached about to Clark.

She remembered when Chloe had gained the power to make people unable to lie around her. She thought of how her stomach had turned to lead when she realized that the truth was inevitable. No matter how unimportant the question was, Lana liked that escape being there.

When she opened her eyes again, the world came rushing back to her in stunning clarity. The smell of her car, the cricket song and rustling leaves, the forest and cemetery not far away; Lana heard Buffy's words echo in the empty car: "This is Hell."


The pain in the place where Xander's eye had once been was persistent. It wasn't sharp, or particularly strong, but it was always there, ever since the operation. Xander was all for board-approved surgeries and the eradication of back-alley abortions, but in this case, a highly experimental, and very illegal procedure was the only option that he faced.

Since he had lost his eye, Buffy had looked at him differently. He knew, without doubt, that she blamed herself completely for what happened to him, and despite his assurances that he did not blame her in the least, he knew that action spoke worlds louder than words.

Soon after the incident at the wine vineyard there had been a major upheaval in the Summers' household. The dozens of potential Slayers that had congregated there, the rebellious Slayer Faith, Buffy's best long-time friends and even her own sister had stood up against her and asked her to leave. Thinking back on that day, Xander felt more than sick. When he considered what she had given up for them, for the world, he started to shake.

It had made so much sense at the time. The world was ending, and Buffy had made a wrong call. She was acting irrational and detached—she was responding with pure instinct, with no regards to the feelings or alliances of those involved.

But she had been right. As the rest of them had gathered in the basement, trying to figure out what their next move should be, Xander could tell just by watching that no one had a clue. They were amateurs, even Faith, who had never had the inclination to lead, had never considered herself anything other than a body—for fighting, for fucking; she had always been sensation seeking and illogical.

And Buffy had returned to them. She had brought them the weapons they had needed: the scythe, which she still kept close to her, and the amulet. She had come back and she had said the words, had declared her forgiveness. Through her friendly banter and playful manner Xander could tell—she saw her battle scars on each of them.

So Xander was going to try to fix himself. When they had signed on the Lex Luthor in order to start their Slayer School, Xander had also gained a job in construction and, more importantly, an opportunity to set things right.