A/N: Thanks so much everyone for the warm words and the reviews! The warms words really touch my heart more then I can express my grattitude for and the reviews any wirter is happy to recieve knowing thier story is being enjoyed. Thanks again so much! Hopefully now with the semester winding down I can be quicker with my updates...hopefully.
Read & Review. Enjoy!
Chloe stepped from her yellow punch-buggy, her feet crunching in the gravel and a smile escaping her lips as she shut the door to her car. In the yard, on the newly 'implanted' oak tree that was restored back to it's rightful place, Erica hung upside down inside the tire-swing making childish noises as it spun in circles.
The blond petite casting a shadow over the raven-haired girl with the hazel eyes as she stood in front of her. Erica placed her feet into the grass, stopping herself to smile up, literally, to her aunt towering over her.
"Heya, auntie Chlo." Erica beamed, too dizzy to attempt to stand.
"Having fun?" Chloe laughed and playfully tickled Erica's exposed stomach causing her to jump and squeal with laughter.
"Yea, I'm seeing how much blood can race to my head."
Chloe gave the girl an incredulous look, much the same way she would do to Lois when she suggested weird enough things to get them into trouble. "Yea, have fun with that. Where are the love birds? I want to know if they found out anything, yesterday."
"From the stake-out?" Erica's voice in a whirling sound as she started to spin around, again, slowly in circles.
"How do you know about that?" Chloe kicked herself for asking that question. "Who am I kidding? Your my cousin's daughter. I probably should be asking you for any details."
Erica only gave out an impish smile as Chloe tried not to stare at her every movement and get as dizzy as Erica was making herself. "He was definitely the guy."
"You guys are sure? He's actually the one whose going to turn into 'Repto Man' in the future?" Chloe gave her a scrutinizing stare, hoping she was a hundred percent correct.
"Yeaaa..." Erica dragged her voice out, the swing spinning faster then before. "He was talking about the genetic research with the pink princess."
"Pink princess?" Chloe mimicked her words before she knew exactly who Erica was talking about and said with shock. "Lana?!"
Erica made a barfing sound in reply, her tongue sticking out in disgust of the name causing Chloe to shake her head in amusement.
"What was Lana doing there?" Chloe asked curiously, it had been a while since anyone heard or seen hair or hind of the girl. She barely sent post cards or emails of how she was, never where, and even with Chloe's talent for tracking down people, Lana had a sticky way of eluding her.
Erica shrugged her shoulders and dropped her hands to drag into the dirt as the tire slowed down in its spin. "Seems like she was warning him of Lex's evil ways and not to get involved."
"He actually admitted to being a part of Lex's experiments to Lana?" This seemed too easy to be true and her reporter eye couldn't help but be skeptical.
Erica shook her head, like she wasn't dizzy enough from the merry-go-round movement. "Not in so many words, but his heart beat gave him away every time Lana mentioned Lex's name."
"Wow. Now all we have to do is watch him and see if he'll lead us to where these experiments are taking place." Chloe was amazed how close they were finally getting to solving this case. Just when she was getting use to having the short-one around, but it gave her something to look forward to in the future.
"Since I'm here, where are the folks? We got major steps to cover for our next plans of action."
"In the barn." Erica answered absently, forgetting the situation her parents were probably in since they spent the night out there.
The retreating back of her aunt coming to sight every few seconds or so was quickly becoming smaller as she rushed to get those plans in progress.
"Aunt Chlo, wait!" She yelled and tried to quickly slide forward from the swing. Landing on one foot as the other got stuck on the tire, causing the small girl to loose her balance and drop harshly to the ground.
"Owwww!"
Chloe raced up the stairs, her hand pulling her along on the rail while her mind was too focused to immediately notice the scene before her.
"So, my journalistic skills were right on-OH MY GOD!" She came to an abrupt halt almost falling down the stairs from stopping so quickly and would have if she didn't grab the wooden rail with both hands.
On the floor, under nothing but Clark's thin red blanket was her best friend and cousin showing too much exposed skin for her taste. Lucky for her all the vitals were well hidden. No one needed to draw her a picture to explain what exactly went on here and the unexpected sight had her looking for Red Kryptonite or at the very least alcohol. The only thing her eyes did find were dried pieces of crust that belonged to some type of sandwich and a quarter-filled pitcher of water-logged orange juice.
"You can't be serious?!" Chloe exclaimed not caring she was waking the two from thier blissful slumber according to the content smiles on their faces.
Clark peeked open a lazy eye and shutting it as he pulled Lois' snuggling body closer to his own bare chest.
"Chloe is here." He mumbled, voice slow and sluggish with sleep.
Lois opened her eyes into half slits, a crawl of a smile sliding over her face as she stretched last night's 'activities' from her body.
"Hey Cuz, what's up?" Lois said in a dopey voice, making Chloe realize the two were too far on cloud nine to think clearly.
She stood there with folded arms shaking her head at their lack of brain-cells at the moment and tried not to laugh. Suddenly Clark sat right up a picture of horror on his face, his actions throwing Lois on her back, next to him, with a loud groan.
"Chloe!" Clark yelped, reality surging through the fogginess of his head and his reaction was to grab more of the blanket, but couldn't as it was wrapped around Lois' body.
"What are you doing here?"
The blond petite turned slightly away to give them privacy as she heard grumbles and scrambling for clothes behind her. "I should be asking the same thing, but I think that one is a bit obvious."
Lois came up and tapped Chloe on the shoulder letting her know it was ok to face them. She was clad in one of Clark's white-dress shirts and very little else, tying up a band to pull her hair in her usual pony tail as Clark stood on the far side of the room, a tinge of pink, doing up the buttons on his plaid shirt.
"Are you two crazy?" Chloe asked, her eyes on her cousin who just gave her a bored expression and a roll from her eyes.
"Don't worry, mother Hen, I'm on the pill." Lois blew off, a bit peeved by her cousin's attitude.
"I'm not trying to be the rain on your parade here, Lo. You two are adult enough to do.....whatever you want...."
"But?" Lois hearing it coming from her beloved cousin as she slipped on her pajama bottoms, and latched all the buttons on the white shirt nearly drowning on her.
"Don't you think you guys are screwing around with time as it is?" Chloe then added at the raise of Lois' brow. "No pun intended....Come on guys, we have no idea how our actions are effecting things in the future."
"Babes..." Lois said taking her cousin by the shoulders and giving her a peck on the cheek. She loved her dearly, but she really was tired of worrying about what was to come and the last thing she wanted was to be constantly reminded of the goodbye she'll have to say.
"Finish scolding, Smallville, over there. I'm going to get some breakfast, I'm starving!"
Chloe's jaw dropped as she watched a lighter-then-air-mood-Lois skip down the steps and out of the barn before settling accusing eyes on one individual who wouldn't meet her eyes and it was more then just being caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
"Clark, what is going on here? This isn't like you to jump head first in the shallow end of the pool." Chloe watched as her best-friend flitted nervously around, cleaning up the remainder of mess on the floor, his shoulders stiff with some underlined emotion.
"I'm not going to apologize for what I did, Chloe. I care and very possibly falling-No, not possibly, I know I'm falling in love with her."
Chloe rolled her eyes in annoyance and stepped closer to him. "I'm not expecting you to apologize, nor was I asking. I'm just concerned about every little decision we make ricocheting into something we can't fix."
The arch in Clark's back seem to stiffen more at her words and he walked over to the open windowless whole in the barn, discarding his actions of cleaning up the mess. Instead he watched as Lois enter the fenced in backyard, Erica screaming wildly as she raced into her mom's arms and she twirled both of them around until they were both laughing and struggling playfully against each other.
His blond best friend took a tentative step toward him, she was fearing the look on his face and she didn't have a clue why. "Clark, you're not defending yourself."
He swallowed hard at her implication, his fingers digging into the wood of the window as he kept his blues locked on his family. The muscle of his jaw flexed and strained as he battled some unseen enemy.
"You weren't talking about you and Lois 'being' together, when you mentioned about apologizing." Chloe cracking the nut wide open and saw his whole body tense.
"Chloe, just leave it alone."
She couldn't, people she loved where in danger of loosing their lives and she wouldn't be on the sidelines ignorant of the game play when she could most definitely help. She took another step closer to him, the floor board announcing her movement as it protested with her weight.
"Clark..." His name slipping from her mouth like a bad omen, and her heart was pounding in fear or what he would say. "What happened when you went to Jor-El?"
Tears stung at his eyes as he squeezed them tightly to keep them from falling. "Will you sacrifice your own child from ever being born after all she has endured, Kal-El?"
Clark shook his head slightly, his hands in tight fists by his sides. He could laugh just about now in hysteric fits, long ago he would have given just about anything to have Lois Lane out of his life but now he would give so much more to keep her there.
"If you so choose for my help, my son, time is of the essence, you'll have until the portal closes to get Erica back home. When the portal closes, time would have balanced itself once again and with it all memories all events erased of Lois ever being in your life to this day."
"What if I decline?" Clark asked of him, feeling his father's touch upon his shoulder but didn't dare face him.
"The portal will still close and I will be unable to help Lois Lane or extend you this offer again."
"What of Erica, what will happen to her?" Clark's hesitant voice barely able to form the words.
A grave sigh rumbled around. "Whether she makes it through the portal or not, she will slowly disappear as time reorders itself and never exist again, my son."
"So either way, I end up loosing them both." Clark seethed, his skin flushing red with anger. "Promise me, promise me, I'll have them both back again."
"I can not promise you such a thing, Kal-El, only the fates know of such importance of our paths. If it is meant, it shall endure."
The visit with Jor-El Playing mercilessly on mind, she could hear the wood splinter under his hand and she could tell it wasn't good.
"Clark, what did you do?" Chloe whispered, feeling the icy grip of fear slide down her spine....this wasn't good at all.
"The only thing I could do!" Clark burst with anger, his body facing her. "She was in a coma, what else could I do?!"
"We don't know that for sure...the doctors would ha-"
"Jor-El told me." His voice in defeat, head bowed to the ground. "He said she wouldn't have waken up for years."
"So, what now? He helped her to come out of it, for what price?" She felt herself on the verge of hyperventilating as every possible dreadful thing came to mind.
"What price, Clark?" She pressed on, seeing he wasn't jumping in with an answer.
"When Erica returns and the portal closes all memory since the day she arrived will be wiped away." Clark explained, of course he had the right to be down about that, but ultimately they will know each other again. "Time will go back to that day and point and go on as if she never enter our world."
She should have been filled with relief, the birds should have been chirping its praises inside, but there were still an overcast of clouds blocking out the rays of the sun in an impending storm yet to come.
"That isn't everything." Chloe stated and with a tight throat watched as Clark shook his head solemnly.
"When the portal closes with or without Erica returning back to her rightful time..."
"What do you mean with or without?" Chloe interrupted wanting clarity on that piece.
Clark took a deep breath and released it as he faced what he was trying to ignore since his visit with his biological father. "The portal is going to close whether Erica makes it through or not. If she doesn't, the closing of the portal is, in a way, time balancing itself back to normal. Things will reset back to the day Erica enter our world and..."
"She'll die..." Chloe choked out softly between her lips, feeling faint and light-headed all at once.
"Since she doesn't belong here, time will get rid of her.....erase her away...." Clark confirmed, barely getting the words to lodge from his throat.
Chloe slid her fingers under her eyelids wiping away the wetness that collected, no way in hell was she going to witness that happening to her niece.
"And Lois? What was the price for bringing her back?"
"The portal closes, time goes back to the day Erica had entered our world, hopefully she made it through the portal back home..."
"She will." Chloe's determined voice broke through and nodded for him to continue.
He looked away and began to pace, his steps leading nowhere in particular making the already on edge Chloe wanting to scream.
"Once the portal is closed, time goes back to normal....back to the day Erica had enter our world....but...time before that....all things before that will be reordered..."
Clark continued despite the need for Chloe to jump in and ask a load of questions he could practically see bouncing around in her head. He swallowed hard, his neck twitching from the rapid pulses just below his skin as his stomach felt like someone was having a field day scooping it out.
"...Lois won't find me in the cornfield...That day I fell out of the sky as Kal-El will be redone. I don't know how, but she doesn't find me. Other things will happen and Lois won't have a reason to stay in Smallville, after being contacted with news that you're surprisingly alive and well..."
"Lois investigation skills weren't as sharp as they are now....So, she ends up following a lot of dead end trails...your parents figure out a way to get you back to being Clark....you discover I'm not really dead...and the rest....is history." Chloe voiced her theory and looked up at Clark, her eyes shinning with tears.
"She doesn't stay in Smallville...not even in Metropolis she goes back to being under her father's dumb just to prove she's better then he will ever give her credit for...just to prove him wrong...And everything....everything....that has happened with her...all the memories all the time we shared with her will....vanish?"
Clark couldn't speak, it was a lot worse hearing what he choose to happen with his stupid bargain with his father. Why couldn't he just help, his own son, no strings attached? Was that so much to ask for?
"I didn't know what else to do."
"So, you condemn her to live a life of solitude?!" Chloe couldn't stop the tears from dropping from her lashes and didn't care about them or the blurry vision they were causing her. She was in pain for her cousin.
"You know how Lois was when she first came to Smallville. She was brash and independent. She didn't show emotions, it's not what she did."
Clark looked panicked as blow after blow of reality struck air from his lungs. "I'll find her...I'll make her stay!"
He was reaching, grasping for anything to hold onto, and he knew it....they both knew it. Chloe shook her head and felt herself back away as if she could rewind time with her very movements, if only it could be that simple.
"You won't have a reason to..." Chloe's voice lowly and hard with pain. "You thought Lois was a hard nut to crack when you knew her here in Smallville, imagine meeting her years from now at the Daily Planet fresh off the battle field of her father's rule."
Clark turned away from her, he'd only met the man a few times and knew being the three star General of the U.S army wasn't a man who'd play dress up and tea party with his little girls. Especially, with the love of his life dying and leaving two girls in his care, his only instinct being that of a commander.
And it's what he did, he treated his girls like he would any of his men...like soldiers. Lois getting the butt end of that deal, with Lucy being sent away to a boarding school.
Lois was the one alone with a man who was suppose to be her father....suppose to be the one she could count on for bedtime stories and hugs and kisses before she slept and when she awoke. Instead she got a barking voice screaming how pathetic she is for crying and to 'man' up about a scrape to the knee or a tear in her favorite dress. The one her mom probably said she looked like an angel in.
Soon though you wouldn't have caught Lois dead in a dress, no, it was nothing but tank tops and loose fitting cargoes...a soldier wear. God, what have he done?
"She was sad....she tried to mask it well, she thought she did....but I could hear it..." Chloe said close behind him. "...the phone calls from the times we were young teens, Christmas...holidays....birthdays. She would call to wish me a happy one, never staying on long at the sound of Sam Lane in the background commanding her to move along. 'As a soldier's job is never done'..."
Chloe mocking Sam's voice as she remembered it, and shaking her head in pity at the memories flooding back from long forgotten doors. "I remembered what she would say....I'm-"
"I'm happy as long as I know you are....hearing your voice....makes the day ok..."
They turned around to see Lois standing there, not realizing she came back to get them for breakfast Martha had already prepared for the morning. Eyes locked straight ahead in deep thought as a shattering cascade broke upon her face at hearing everything they said.
"Lois..." Clark whispered her name, his long steps taking him beside her in a matter of a second.
She pulled away before his hand could touch her arm, as raw emotions stormed behind green gems locking onto his in a boiling demand. "So, this? All of this was for nothing?"
She stepped away again as his touch try to find away to connect to her body to erase away her doubts that the loved they shared last night was anything but nothing.
"No, it was everything!" He corrected willing her to believe him, to have faith in them, in their love. "You 'are' everything I want."
Lois backed away, pain etched into a face he wished was still bathed in the pleasure they both shared. "How can you say that? When in the end you're not even going to know who I am and just end up with Lana. What's the point of having me, when you'll have her, right?!"
He side-stepped quickly blocking her path of retreat as his eyes looked down upon her as if staring through to her very soul. "Because it's you I want, not Lana, and I'm not giving you up."
Lois stared back up at him under heavy lashes, not intimidated by his close proximity or so she told her heart. "It's kind of too late for that, don't you think?"
There was the final gut wrenching blow, he couldn't promise that they would end up together at the end of the replay when he himself didn't know the absolute answer. He was just suppose to trust and have faith that things would lead them back to each other on the path to a futre where they would work together at the Daily Planet.
Him, finally living his destiny, with Lois by his side, soon to be married and have Erica in their arms once again. Faith, he was suppose to have it and believe this would all come...the furture he'd been waiting for would all happen....but with no guaranteed.
Mind distracted, Lois took the opportunity to slip past him and down the barn steps to her escape with her cousin's voice calling after her. Clark she knew would be hot on her trail and she needed every second she could get against someone who could defy the warp of time itself. Erica sat on the top of the white fence where she left her, the smile suddenly dropping from her impish face at the hurried steps from her mom and look of pain marring her earlier features of joy.
In a flowing swoop, Lois picked up the girl from the picket fence and placed her on her hip as quick steps took them toward her stationed car.
"What's wrong? Where are we going?" Erica asked as she looked from her mom and then over her mom's shoulder at her dad who seemed to be barred back by her aunt Chloe.
"We're just going for a little drive." Lois replied, chirpily, the sound too fake even to her own ears and just dismissed the girl's concern with a plastered grin.
Lois heard the front screen-door bang close and her name being called by the elder Kents as she deposited Erica in the front passenger seat with seat-belt in place. Her own seat-belt being slung across her as she sat behind the driver wheel and then peeling off backwards from the driveway with the concerned expressions of Jonathan and Martha burning in front of her eyes before pulling a quick K-Turn and shooting off from the farm as far as she could run.
To Be Continued....
A/N: I do have more in the works for the next chapter, just not finished yet and I didn't want to wait any longer for the next update. Until then, Review! Thanks!