After her talk with Lana the evening before, and having picked up the least nutritious and cheapest thing available – otherwise known as a Big Mac – Lois had retired to the Daily Planet once more. Work kept her mind occupied, let her focus on other things while what Lana said truly sunk in. Of course, her chat with Lana ended around 7.30pm and Lois guessed it was around 2am that she had passed out on her keyboard, uncovering the mystery of why she awoke glued to her desk.

Lois checked her watch. It was 7.51 Tuesday morning, and had risen before the die-hard reporters would arrive at 8am. That would give her 9 minutes to clean herself up. She headed for the ladies' toilets in a hazy fashion. Having spent all of the evening and night alone watching clips from the earthquake, Lois found herself in desperate need of a long bath and an even longer sleep in a bed made of linen and feathers, not wood and computers.

However, she did find that Rick's theory was right. She found what she could only call 'light' evidence of the Red-Blue Blur's involvement in the earthquake around some homes collapsing and in the buildings that supposedly welded themselves back together after breaking apart. It seemed the mystery of the Red-Blue Blur was unfolding, as they could now determine that he had some kind of heat power as well as super-speed.

As Lois looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, she could only groan. Her hair was out of place, her make-up smudged and her suit creased, and still smelt slightly of smoke from the building; a memory she could barely recollect after everything else that happened yesterday. She stroked her hair back into a pony-tail which took care of most of the damage and reapplied her make up as well as she could.

Lois strolled back to her desk and began packing up her things and stuffing them into her bag, she downloaded the footage from the earthquake onto her memory stick for her laptop at home, let it load and then switched off the monitor. She strolled out of the Daily Planet and headed for home, hoping that her bath would afford her at least 15 minutes of release from Clark, earthquakes and Red-Blue Blur mysteries.


Chloe had walked to the grocery store with the same enthusiasm she did for any task her new husband asked her to run; seeing him almost broken, knowing that he could have died... She didn't blame Clark, she blamed herself. Chloe knew that the Kryptonian mega-monster picked her out because she was Brainiac's host, and deep down, she knew it wasn't personal, but it still happened to her. It happened to Jimmy, and she couldn't help feeling partially responsible for her husband ending up in a hospital bed on their wedding night. Consequentially, Chloe dealt with her imagined or real guilt by doing everything and anything he asked of her, and did them happily.

The late morning was a bright one, almost abnormally so, and gave Chloe a warm feeling inside her, like something good was about to happen, as if she was close to the happy ending she wanted but it was more like a new beginning. She'd had an uncomfortable night tossing and turning, feeling a little light headed, and sipping her morning coffee along with a much needed lie-in, she felt much better and alert. As she walked along her familiar Smallville street, her cell phone started buzzing in her purse. She stopped to pick it up, and once more 'Clark' flashed on the screen; she smiled to herself, if there was ever anyone Clark really needed, she knew it was her, and she hoped that would never change.

"Good morning, Clark." Chloe smiled and continued her morning walk to the store.

"Hi, Chloe. Where are you?" Clark asked, and Chloe knew what was coming.

"On my way to the Grocery store, in fact... I'm there. Don't worry, it's pretty quiet." Chloe added, she knew subtly was his best friend when the occasion called for it.

"Ok." Just as he said the second syllable, she felt a gust of wind and there he stood in red and blue beside her, ending the call on his phone. He smiled sheepishly; Chloe couldn't help but smile, that would never get old for her.

Clark gave her a hug. "So how's Jimmy?" They broke apart.

"He's doing better." She said optimistically. "He gets out of bed when the need for food calls," She grinned, "Thus the need for restocking." Clark nodded, glad that his friend was recovering quickly. Chloe turned to begin her shopping ritual, and lowered her voice as she said, "So, am I to assume that you were responsible for the miraculous life saving activities in San Fran yesterday?"

Clark glanced around like a nervous rabbit waiting to see if there was a wolf on the other side of the hedge, luckily his super-hearing afforded him the luxury of being comfortable that no one was around to hear Chloe. He followed her down the aisles, "Yeah, I contained most of the damage. I did what I could."

Chloe turned to face him and smiled, "That's great Clark, I'm really proud of you. It's almost like you were built for this." She teased.

"Yeah, almost." Clark replied dryly, and Chloe could sense that something was up and looked inquisitive until Clark responded. "I went to the Daily Planet this morning, and one of the guys told me that he thought the Red-Blue Blur was involved and then mentioned that Lois showed a lot of interest. She took the video footage home, and I don't know..."

"Ah. Right." Chloe nodded, slightly worried herself. Once Lois found a story, her claws rarely came out. "But Clark, you're way too fast, even if the cameras caught the Red-Blue Blur, that's all it is – a blur. There's no proof, let alone anything connecting you to it."

"But Chloe, just the fact that reporters are looking for the Red-Blue Blur when anything like this happens is bad enough, Lois is smart, she's not going to believe I go to the dentist every day of the week." Clark pointed out.

Chloe pulled a face. "Clark. Wait, you told Lois that you went to the dentist? Very convincing Clark." She said sarcastically. "No wonder she didn't believe you."

"It was an emergency and all I could think of – wait, what? How do you know she didn't believe me?" Clark grabbed her shoulder and turned her round. "Did she say something to you?"

Chloe smiled weakly, "Well, and don't freak out, but, Lana came up last night just as she was leaving and said that Lois stopped by and they had a... chat." Chloe smiled. "Lana seems to think that Lois... well, she just said that you might think about either lying a lot more convincingly or coming clean. Lois knows you're not being truthful with her. You're gonna have to talk to her."

Clark turned in frustration. "And what? Tell her my secret?"

"Maybe. You know she could handle it, Clark." Chloe reassured him.

"Chloe, I'm not even sure what Lois and I are yet, let alone tell her my secret. Give me some time to figure that out and then maybe I'll think about it." Clark sighed. He wished he didn't have to enter a relationship lying, he wished he could tell Lois, he just feared that she wouldn't want to be with him knowing his secret. Clark couldn't deal with Lois not being in his life, he needed her there.

"You might have no choice. Clark, you're not dealing with Lana anymore, Lois has an inquisitive mind, you know that, and you know her. If you don't tell her, she'll find out." Chloe warned. She readjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and turned, feeling suddenly ill. She took a step forward, clutching her stomach.

"Chloe? Are you alright?" Clark asked, noticing her suddenly pale complexion. Chloe grabbed his arm and then headed for the store's bathroom, leaving Clark in the lurch. He shouted in a few times, but she kept telling him not to come in, that she was fine, all the while throwing up profusely. After a few minutes, she exited the bathroom, looking gauntly at Clark.

"Chloe, were you just –" Clark asked worriedly.

"Yeah... I think I have a bug." Chloe smiled weakly. "It pays not to spend all your days and nights in a hospital, you tend to catch things from other patients."

Clark winced. "It might be an aftershock from being Brainiac's host, Chloe, maybe we should take you to a doctor."

"No Clark, I'm sure it's fine –" Chloe started, smiling from embarrassment.

"Chloe, please." Clark's eyes pleaded with his words. "I wouldn't want anything more to happen to you."

Chloe nodded, deep down she was worried as well. For everything she'd been through with Clark, her health had always been the one to take the hit, and with her happy ending feeling so close, she didn't want to take any chances. "Ok, I'll call Jimmy and tell him I'll be a while longer. I don't want him to worry."


Lois was at home, lying in her bathtub and surrounded by steaming hot water and a tranquil set of candles. She wasn't usually a candle-in-the-bath girl, but if anyone needed to be calm and relaxed right now, it was her. However, as hard as Lois tried she couldn't get calm, or tranquil. She was barely getting passed comfortable. I guess I just wasn't built for baths. She'd been in for maybe 10 minutes and already felt frustrated at the lack of space and the thought of stewing in her own filth. The apartment was quiet enough, Chloe was out and Jimmy was asleep – again – meaning she could have had a nice morning. She rolled her eyes at the unlikely prospect and gave up, having washed her hair and body, she found there was nothing else she could do in there, nothing productive. Standing and grabbing the towel, she struggled out of the tub and drained the water.

She closed all relevant doors and dried her hair as quietly as she could, knowing that one day she was going to have to get her own place and stop hogging the newly-weds' space. The only alternative was Clark's house, and that wasn't going to happen again, not since they were... whatever they were. It occurred to her that she hadn't seen Clark since their non-lunch yesterday, and also that she was still peeved at him. He never even called to apologise. She shook her head in anger; if she'd known that being with Clark Kent was this frustrating she never would have thought about it in the first place. Not that she'd ever had a choice, like she said to Oliver, it just snuck up on her. She smiled at the thought of Oliver, he genuinely was a great friend that night, and she always knew him to be a decent guy. Looking back, she realised that if he were the right guy the superhero thing wouldn't have bothered her, she would have loved him no matter what. She concluded that that meant it really wasn't meant to be, and something else was awaiting her. Whether that was Clark or not she had no idea, she could only go on what she felt; a warm, happy sensation whenever he smiled at her, a looked-after comfortable feeling when she was in his arms...

Brushing the last of her hair, she threw on her work clothes. She had to go to the Planet, she knew she needed the income, as small as it was. She had actually done the fire article last night and emailed it to Tess to make the morning edition; she knew it was no competition for the earthquake as page one material, but she liked to think it would be somewhere before page four. Of course it was written by a person surviving on caffeine around midnight, which may have detracted its value slightly; Lois was never a great speller even on a well-rested day. Thank God for spell-check.

She grabbed a pop-tart from the kitchen for breakfast and grabbed her laptop filled with images from the earthquake involving the Red-Blue Blur. She found the guy intriguing; he didn't want fame or credit, his only motivation seemed to be to help people. And she had to admit, the crime rate had dropped slightly – only slightly – since his appearance, and Lois had nothing against criminals getting their comeuppance, or good decent people surviving potentially fatal incidents. She only wished she could see his face. In none of the photos or freeze frames could his hair colour be seen let alone his face. She could only imagine what he looked like; dark, tall and handsome was her usual preference, or blonde if it really suited.

She sat down in front of her laptop, accidently hitting the play button with her coffee mug, losing the freeze frame image. "Dammit!" It had taken her ages to carefully freeze the images at the exact right time to see the blur. She paused the footage in its new position, double checking the keypad to make sure she hadn't spilled anything. She hit the save button, deciding to start again with that video at work, and was about to turn off her monitor when something struck her attention. She leaned into the laptop and didn't take her eyes off the screen. The new frozen image was of one of the neighbourhoods especially damaged by the quake; there was the picture of the house which would in the next frame almost collapse before the Red-Blue Blur would be almost seen; there was the crack in the road, the families from the surrounding houses crying out in panic as they looked on, and a small crowd forming to watch the scene unfold. Lois double clicked to enlarge, but there was only so much zooming she could do from a helicopter's shoddy video angle. She zoomed in until the pictures became fuzzy and the crowd was focused on about five individuals. Lois winced and tilted her head to the side, slowly edging closer to the screen. A figure was behind the crowd of four, only its head poked out, hard to tell the gender, but it looked male, and what's more it looked a lot like, from her angle, like... "Smallville?"


Hey, sorry it's been so long since an update. You know, easter holidays are a distraction. Anyhoo, hope you enjoyed this one.

Feral XXX