Notes : Thanks to everyone who sent me feedback : ) Laura, Kesha, Shar, and Markers.

To quote Kesha… more please : )





Shadows : Chapter 6

Her pillow was moving. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, in fact it was kind of nice in the way the rocking of a boat could be nice but, still, it wasn't typical. Neither was the fact that her pillow was heated, also nice but also atypical. Nothing about the morning seemed normal from the shoes and dress she'd fallen asleep in to the finger that was softly making patterns on the back of her hand.

"Clark?" Her voice was dry and raspy for some reason, not a good start.

"Morning."

All the questions she'd buried started pounding on the inside of her head, this time they'd brought sledgehammers with them and she found herself reliving events from the night before. Clark snapping the lock on the door like it was a toothpick. Clark a blur as he raced towards her.

Clark not dying when he was supposed to die. After that one she had to take a calming breath.

"So, do you think Lex would mind if we raided his kitchen?" Liquid, she needed something liquid before her throat gave out on her. Some aspirin wouldn't go amiss either, why did she have such a horrible headache?

"After I tell him that I broke his door, and slept with Chloe Sullivan in one of his beds, I don't think he'll even hear me when I mention his kitchen." Chloe poked Clark in the stomach, such comments deserved punishment. "Owe!"

"You will first mention horrible danger, then you will carefully point out that not only was there full clothing but that shoes were present." On second thought, Lex might just consider that kinky. Scary thought. "That didn't actually hurt did it?"

Resignedly giving up her pillow Chloe propped herself up on an elbow. Clark was looking at her with amusement. He'd been teasing. He looked happy. She really wanted to kiss him. The last thought was absurd of course, when she finally convinced him to kiss her morning breath was in no way going to enter the picture.

"No. But if it makes you feel better it sort of tickled." Chloe briefly considered poking him again but decided that she was, in fact, enjoying herself. How could she not be? Almost her entire 'to do with Clark' list had now been made redundant. Only one thing left and one item was not a list, it was a goal. Deciding to compromise on her earlier decision she leaned forward and gently brushed her lips against the corner of his mouth.

The contact lasted for only the briefest of moments and when she pulled back Clark was practically staring at her lips. His tongue reached out to lick his own and Chloe suddenly realized it was time to get out of there before she swooned. "You get some coffee started, and I'll meet you downstairs."

When she left the room in search of the nearest bathroom Clark was still spread out on the bed, completely flushed, and obviously in search of a coherent thought.

Chloe kind of liked him that way.





A cup of coffee, some orange juice, and several Tylenol later and Chloe had found her voice again. According to her watch it was only six in the morning, an hour where she normally would have still been deep in slumber.

Putting down her coffee she faced Clark, who looked far too awake for her tastes, and prepared to find the truth. "So, are we going to do this the easy way, or do we need to play twenty questions?"

"There's an easy way?" Twenty questions it was then. But where to start…

"Ok. Here goes. This is from the Meteor rocks, right?" There was no other explanation. They'd seen weird things from the meteor rocks before so it made perfect sense…

"No. It's not." …or not. That was unexpected.

It also left her at square one. "If you're not a benign version of the meteor freaks syndrome, then what are you?"

For some reason he seemed to find that funny. "I'm the 'original' meteor freak."

Still not helpful. "Meaning?"

Clark finally seemed to get his thoughts in order. "When the meteors came down, they were hiding something. A ship."

A ship…

"A spaceship?"

He nodded. "A spaceship."

A spaceship… he was telling her that he was what, an alien? She, Chloe Sullivan, was making first contact. It was going to pretty much be all down hill from there. "Ok… so, assuming that you're an alien, who by some freak of the universe looks exactly like every human on the planet that you just happened to end up on… no coincidences there… assuming all that, this explains your…"

"My very good impression of the road runner?"

Smart ass. Then again she'd been comparing him to Speedy Gonzalez so she shouldn't criticize. "What about the lock…?"

"Do you want a list?"

Did she? Yes, in fact a list was definitely called for. "I'm all ears."

He took a deep breath. "I'm fast, I can lift a truck without getting winded, I can stick my hand in a wood grinder and it's the wood grinder, not my hand, that's going to break and if I really work at it I can see through walls."

The last got her attention. "Just walls?"

"No, pretty much anything."

Chloe's eyes widened and she looked down at her dress, compared to a wall it probably wouldn't be much of a barrier. When she looked back up Clark's face had turned completely red in a good approximation of an apple

"Chloe, give me some credit." And she did. It was still a disturbing thought.

"My god, you're a real live super hero." It explained everything. She suddenly felt silly for ever thinking he'd need 'her' to pull 'his' ass out of a fire. He could probably sit quite comfortably in a fire and use it to warm his backside. He seemed to find her suggestion comical.

"I'm not a super hero."

"Clark have you ever read a comic book? You make most of those fictional heroes look like wimps. All you're missing is a costume and a really cool invisible jet." She briefly tried to picture Clark dressed up and wearing a mask. Weren't most of those costumes drawn as tights?

Clark in tights. Ridiculous on one hand but on the other…

It was Chloe's turn to blush.

"Invisible jet?" Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned the jet. She'd once seen a comic book that featured an invisible jet and for some reason it had struck her as just the neatest idea.

"What, you wouldn't want an invisible jet?"

He grinned. "I like to keep my feet firmly on the ground thank you."

"You're no fun. Hold on, you said you were in a space ship. A real honest to god space ship. What happened to it?" For some reason he was staring at his coffee as if it had become the most fascinating object in the entire world. "What?"

Clark mumbled something incomprehensible.

"What?"

"It's in our storm cellar."

Oh, of course, where else would you keep a spaceship?

"How did you fit a spaceship in a cellar it would have to be…"

"I didn't say it was a big spaceship. My parents found me, they were there when it crashed."

"Thus the weirdness with the adoption agency. And that's why you were so freaked out when I started looking into your background." Piece by piece the person that was Clark Kent slowly began to make sense in a distinctly nonsensical manner. "Ok, one more question before I silently and completely, flip out. Why didn't you ever tell me? Or Pete…"

"Or Lana or Lex or Whitney or my second grade teacher or…" Put that way it did kind of make sense. "When Mom and Dad raised me they knew I was different than the other kids. They didn't care but they always figured it would be safest if, well, no one knew. It's allot easier to tell no one than to pick and chose, trying to figure who you can trust and who you can't."

"Clark. You know you can trust me, right? I won't tell anyone." And she wouldn't. It was a little piece of Clark Kent she got to keep all to herself, why would she want to share it? Clark simply smiled in reply.

"I'll call dad and get him to come pick us up. Unless you want to see my road runner impression again…"

"No, that's all right. Really. Let's save it for special occasions. Impending death, that kind of thing. Of course there's still one thing we don't know."

"Who our friend was last night?"

"That's the one."







When lunchtime rolled round Chloe was in the Torch offices, sans Clark, once again doing research. Clark had disappeared to help Lana study and, for a change, it hadn't bothered her. There had been no anxiety at Lana's name and no fear that Clark would open his mouth and express his undying love for her. Chloe wasn't quite sure where the sudden confidence had come from but she wasn't about to question it.

Pete on the other hand…

"You do realize that Clark is in the cafeteria, alone with Lana, and there's no Whitney in sight. You do know this don't you?" He, for whatever reason, was doing his absolute best to get a rise out of her.

"Yes, I am fully aware of Mr. Kent's activities. What I don't understand is why you seem to think I should be concerned."

"It's not so much that I necessarily think you should be, it's the fact that this is the first time in a long time that Clark plus Lana hasn't equated to Chloe chomping at the bit."

Chloe didn't get it and she dutifully expressed herself with suitable eloquence. "Huh?"

"Chloe, weren't you wearing the same dress yesterday?"

Suddenly she clued in to why exactly Pete seemed so pleased with himself. "Um…"

Pete laughed. "Come on, spill, something weird is going on here and when I tried to ask Clark about it he turned into a mute. On the bus this morning I don't think I could have fit a piece of paper between you two. Now don't get me wrong, I thought it was cute, but the most I've ever seen you two do before this morning was hold hands."

He was definitely enjoying this far too much.

Chloe buried her face in her hands. "Pete, are you going to let this go, or are you just going to sit here nagging me until I throw you a bone?"

"Oh I'm definitely staying until I get my bone."

Oh well. If it would shut him up… "We got stuck at Lex's place last night."

"I thought Lex was out of town."

"He is."

"Uh huh, so you spent the night, just you and Clark, at Lex's pad."

She nodded.

"Why?"

"Why do you think, so I could have my way with him."

Finally, Pete went silent. Chloe congratulated herself.

It didn't last long. "Really."

She reached over and hit him. "No not really. Would you believe that a big scary monster chased us there?"

"This is Smallville Chloe, why wouldn't I believe a statement like that." Oh, yah.

"Well, good, because that's what happened."

"So you two got chased to the Luthor mansion by… a monster… and then instead of going home ended up staying the night there. We can get into the logic of that later. You each grabbed a guest room and that's it." Chloe squirmed in her chair at the last statement before she could stop herself. Too bad, he probably would have stopped. "No, in the same room?"

"Did I mention it was a scary monster? Pete, nothing happened, we just slept. Neither of us even took off our shoes."

"You, and Clark, alone in bed together for the night; shoes or no shoes that explains everything. My work here is done. Now I'm going to go to my next class where I can spend the next hour teasing Clark until he tells me the rest of it." Pete stood up with a big shit-eating grin on his face.

"You wouldn't" Actually he would and she knew it.

"Before I go, what was this about a monster?"

That particular issue had been a sticking point for her. For once there was no indication that meteor rocks were in anyway involved so she'd had to go to wider sources in search of answers. "Pete, what refuses to go into the light…"

The creature appearing out of the darkness as if it was a part of it…

"…can move really fast…"

… a rolling wave of shadow reached out to take her and Chloe knew it would never give her back…

"…is incredibly strong…"

… its hand pounding into Clark's chest, an impact that would have ripped a normal person to shreds…

"…needs or wants to kill at least once a day…"

… on the first day it had been the bus driver, on the second the bank manager, on the third the FBI agents…

"… and… no, that's too obvious."

Pete didn't seem to think so. "Is this a riddle or something."

Chloe had spent the past twenty minutes checking for an exact match with everything from fairy tale monsters to daemon legends in hopes that what they were dealing with was more than just a one shot occurrence. What she hadn't done is take the items as loose foundations for something that might have been warped on its way into popular mythology. One version getting one fact right, another focusing on a different attribute entirely, and all of them tied together by some of the more significant characteristics.

Nosferatu. Vampire.

"Chloe?"

Turning to her computer she quickly brought up a browser and began working. The two million hits resulting from entering the word 'Vampire' in the Google search engine was daunting. She needed to narrow it down. Legends? Mythology?

"Chloe?"

"What?"

"Did I just miss something."

"Umm…"

"That's what I thought. Have fun."

Sure. Vampire Legends and Mythology. That was better. Numerous webpages with names like "Vampires Mythology and Folklore" and "Vampire Fact – vampire research articles" popped immediately to the top. Much better.

She looked up and found Pete still staring at her. "You were serious about the monster part weren't you."

"Completely."

When the end of lunch bell rang Chloe didn't even notice.





In the past half-hour Clark had managed to make over a week's worth of equations and formulas understandable. Where he'd developed the ability to make the confusing become simple she didn't know but at that moment Lana felt extremely grateful for the talent. With any luck, and several more lunchtime cramming sessions, she might actually pass her finals after all.

Unfortunately, at some point in the past five minutes, she'd lost him. Not physically misplaced him, but lost his attention. Lana had never really thought about it before but whenever she'd spent time with Clark he'd been completely focussed on her, each of her words was heard and considered, each of her thoughts was taken in and remembered. Now that he was sitting across from her, his mind obviously somewhere else entirely, she realized just how important that had become to her.

She missed it.

"Clark?" He blinked, looking around as if he'd just woken up from a dream. It was an amusing performance and she found herself smiling in response. It was nice, she hadn't had much to smile about lately. "Where were you just now?"

No trace of brooding or pressure was present in his features. The impression that he always carried the weight of the world had somehow been left behind during his excursion and for once he looked completely relaxed and happy. It probably wouldn't last, but it was a good sign. Clark was far too nice to deserve anything other than happiness. "Just remembering."

"Was it a nice memory?"

"Very nice."

"Was Chloe there?" The brief pause was answer enough. "You should go see her."

"What? Lana…"

"No, really Clark. You're a lifesaver. There's no way I could have figured all this out so fast on my own but one more x-squared and my head is going to burst."

Clark looked up at the cafeteria clock before shaking his head. "There's no time, the bell's going to ring soon." Closing his math book he began to pack up his things and Lana started doing the same. "How did you sleep last night?"

"Like a baby." She wondered if he could see the lie in her face. She'd spent several hours at Whitney's place last night and while they were starting to recover, she was still feeling unbearably tense around him. She still cared about him, but everything was different. He wasn't the same person he used to be, and neither was she.

Unfortunately it had taken her far too long to come to terms with that. She'd lost her chance.

But Clark didn't need to hear that. He was happy, so let him be happy. If it was Chloe making him happy then all the better, Lana had always liked Chloe even if they had never really become friends.

"Lana?"

"Yes?"

"Could you do me a favor?"

Remembering the past half-hour and the promise of several more such sessions she figured she owed him several. "Name it."

"When you go to sleep tonight, keep the lights on."

By the time Lana thought to ask why Clark was already on his way out of the cafeteria.





Smallville was, well, small. Not in a tiny way, but in the way that caused every part of the town to be within walking distance of every other part of the town if you were sufficiently motivated. Thus Clark and Chloe had set out after school to recover the car they had left stranded near the Talon.

"A vampire?"

"Yes a vampire, nosferatu, nesuferit, vampyre, pick your word he's it. If you start looking at him as a set of individual pieces then pick a trait you'll be able to find it some where in a vampire legend. Now, there are hundreds of different kinds of vampires but the ones we're interested in originated in Eastern Europe. Russia, Bulgaria, Romania… there's a huge amount of inconsistent folklore built up. If you make the assumption that for each of these stories there is one consistent source, one type of creature that people rarely actually saw but feared and as a result built up large amounts of falsities about them over the truths, then allot of things begin to make sense."

It was amazing. If such an old and supernatural legend was based in actual fact then one was forced to re-evaluate every other deep-seated piece of mythology. What if Daemons, Angels, Fairies and Leprechauns had all been based on real live prototypes instead of the simple imaginings of superstitious peoples.

Chloe continued. "Take sunlight, it's the most obvious one. It wasn't until the eighteenth century that anyone ever even suggested you could kill a vampire with sunlight. In the earlier myths though most of them seem to agree that they did most of their killing at night. You wake up in the morning and your live stock is all mutilated or your neighbors are dead."

Clark interjected. "So maybe they simply don't normally function in the daytime? But eventually someone suggested it was because the light would kill them…"

"And everyone found the thought very comforting so it got passed along until all modern myths agree with the convention."

"But from what we saw last night its not just sunlight that scares this thing, it doesn't seem to like any light."

Chloe grinned, feeling rather proud of herself. "Thus explaining the myth that a vampire can't enter your home unless invited. It's not so much that it needs an invitation as that you have to go around and turn all the lights off first or it won't bother with you. Just like everything else it somehow got twisted around and misinterpreted."

"Ok, you've got me convinced. What else is there?"

"Well, there's not much specifically relating to its speed and strength but everything agrees that they're nasty and you wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley. That was sarcasm by the way. Some of the later interpretations, post Dracula, suggest that a vampire can turn itself into a mist. Some that predate the word 'Vampire' but are commonly agreed to be referring to the same type of creature talk as if it's a spirit instead of something flesh and blood. Its easy enough to see where that came from if people found themselves putting their fists right through them."

"Then," Chloe had to stop and take a deep breath, "there's the whole thing with sleeping in graves. If you were a vampire, without the modern conveniences of huge twentieth century slums and buildings, and you couldn't always or didn't always want to slaughter a family to use their home, where would you sleep during the day? Why not under a big pile of dirt?"

"Aren't vampires supposed to be dead? You're bit by a vampire, you die, you rise again…"

"That one I'm not sure about. It does feature in most of the Slavic derived legends but then again they list a thousand different causes for vampirism from a dead body falling under a man's shadow to being struck by lightning. I even read that the seventh child born of the same sex is destined to become a vampire. I get the impression no one really knew where vampires came from so they just let their imaginations take hold."

"But they all agree that vampires weren't always vampires right? That at some point a vampire is a person."

"Allot of them, not all of them but allot of them. There's also universal agreement on a fixation with blood but I can't figure out when pointy teeth first showed up. The bad fashion sense though, that's purely pop culture."

Having shared the results from a large part of her research, Chloe decided to give Clark a minute to process. Wrapping one of her arms around his while they continued to walk, she waited for him to start asking questions.

"What did you tell Pete?" Not the question she'd been expecting. "Every chance he got during third period he was asking me about our 'love tryst'. He didn't exactly keep his voice down either so don't be surprised if people are looking at us funny tomorrow."

"Love tryst? Oh god. He came in at lunch and wouldn't leave me alone until I told him something."

"And so you told him we engaged in an illicit af…"

"No! I told him the truth," at Clarks sharp look she hit him "minus the superhero portion of course. You, me…"

"Spending the night alone in the Luthor mansion, frightened for our lives…" She briefly considered hitting him again. "Think on the bright side, we'll probably be more popular tomorrow."

More popular?

Oh…

"Oh!" Clark was doing a very good impression of Pete. "Keep it up and you won't get a repeat"

That stopped him in his tracks, and since their arms were entwined she wasn't able to continue more than a step before being forced to stop with him. Obviously Clark's hadn't thought that far ahead yet.

Score one for Chloe.

Several minutes later, as they were nearing the Talon, Clark obviously decided it was time to talk about monsters some more. When she registered what he was saying it was her turn to stop in her tracks. "So how do I kill it?"

She let go of his arm and turned to face him. "What do you mean, how do you kill it?" Was her voice a little loud? That must be her imagination.

"We think we know what it is, so you must have found stuff on how to kill it. What do I need, crosses, holy water and a wooden stake?"

"Clark that thing nearly killed us last night."

"No, it nearly killed you, which is why you'll be safely at home with all the lights turned on while I'm running around trying to stop this thing from killing someone else."

It made sense, he was probably the only person in Smallville that it couldn't tear limb from limb. That said, logic could go take a flying leap off a bridge. "Maybe it couldn't kill you last night, but that doesn't mean it won't get creative. I'm not the only one that it practically hypnotized last night Clark, what's to stop it from…"

"Is that part of the myths?"

Didn't he realize she was in the middle of a tirade? "What hypnosis?"

"Yah."

"Mostly post-Dracula but yes there's some mention of them being able to capture a person's mind with their eyes."

"Don't look at their eyes. Got it."

"Clark are you really so invincible that you're just going to run off and beat up on something that has been around for who knows how long?" Clark looked slightly uncomfortable, he was hiding something. Damn him. "What aren't you telling me."

"I'm not invincible."

Point, Set, Match…

"Just close."

Foul.

"Close?"

"Remember Sean Calvin?"

"What, the guy who asked me out on a date, froze a pool around my foot, and then tried to kill me? Nope, I'd completely forgotten him."

"When I caught up with him later he froze me solid."

Clark's skin and lips cast in shades of blue, his eyes staring blankly at nothing… she pushed the horrifying image from her head. "But, how… You almost died and I never even knew about it?"

"I thawed. Apparently aliens come with efficient heating."

"Damnit Clark." How many times had she almost lost him and not even known about it? "What else?"

"I got sprayed with bullets, it didn't really hurt me but I did bruise." Why had someone shot a gun at Clark? Later… that could wait until later… "And meteor rock makes me completely useless."

"What?"

"If I get too close to the green meteor rocks it makes me sick, I have no idea why but its always been that way. It's the reason that for ages I couldn't get anywhere near Lana, she was always wearing that necklace of hers."

Thank you meteor rock…

At some point Clark had shifted into what she was henceforth going to call 'the superhero mode', she could see it in his eyes. The savior complex was in full swing. He was going to go out and try to stop that thing no matter what she said.

Would she really want it any other way? It was part of what made Clark… Clark. Push the fear down and focus Chloe, he needs your help.

"Fine. I don't think you'll be able to kill it at night. Most of what I found just talks about decapitation and immolation, crosses and holy items as a defense are actually rarely mentioned and all showed up late. If it's weaker in the light, maybe it has to stay solid during the day. They can obviously be killed or they wouldn't be almost completely extinct which means at some point they've got to be vulnerable."

"So if I can't kill it at night I'll just find it and follow it until morning."

"And then what? Throw gas on it and light a match? Use a machete?"

Clark looked a little queasy, "Actually I was thinking about a chainsaw."

Ok, that was truly disgusting. "I've changed my mind, I'm never going to one of Pete's Halloween marathons again. They're starting to bare far too much resemblance to real life and that is 'really' freaking me out."

Eventually they reached her car, safe and sound where they had left it. Soon after she was dropping Clark off at his house. Too soon. He was going to go and risk his life trying to kill a monster they barely understood, and no one would ever even know about it.

After Clark said goodbye, smiled at her as if to tell her that everything would be fine, and left the car, she suddenly remembered that she still had one item from her list that hadn't been completed.

It was cliché, the damsel wishing the hero well as he went off to war, but that didn't matter. Sometimes cliches were cliches for a very good reason. Getting out of the car she ran after him and, when he turned, threw her arms around his neck.

Chloe Sullivan spent the next several minutes losing herself in a kiss.

One last shared breath, one last sensation of lips pressed against lips, and she let go. Turning on slightly shaky legs, not saying a word, Chloe walked back to her car and drove away. It hadn't been a kiss goodbye, Clark was going to be fine.

To prove it, Chloe began making a new list.