Shadows : Chapter 8b

Somewhere between school and the Kent farm Chloe Sullivan had regained her composure. Lana missed the transition but, when they arrived, Chloe's eyes were dry and her features calm. It was an impressive performance, but somehow Lana was sure that Chloe was still barely holding it together.

What could have happened to push her over the edge like that? What wasn't Chloe telling them?

When Martha Kent greeted them at the door it was a subdued welcome. Her face was drawn from lack of sleep and she lacked the typical friendly air that had always been present during Lana's previous visits. "Chloe, Lana, Pete? Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

Chloe was looking at the ground almost guiltily and Lana had the brief impression that they weren't supposed to know about Clark. But that didn't make any sense.

"We're here to see Clark, Mrs. Kent."

Martha Kent considered them for a moment and then nodded. She stood back to let them pass and the first thing Lana noticed upon entering was the smell of fresh baked pies. Four hot crusts were cooling on the counter and the bright glare of the oven suggested more were in the process of creation. The kitchen table was covered with accounting papers and notes. From off in the distance Lana could hear the sound of an engine, Jonathon Kent working in the fields. "I'll have to get some of those from you for the Talon."

Martha Kent flushed slightly when she looked at the pies, then smiled before nodding. "You three go on upstairs, I'll be there in a minute."

And they did.

His room was more organized than that of most teenage boys. Whitney's room always had just the slightest taste of disarray with a piece of laundry lying one place or an unfinished homework project lying open on the floor. She'd always assumed it was a genetic male trait that teenage boys equated to difficulty cleaning their rooms. If that was the case then whatever gene was involved had somehow skipped Clark by.

Clark himself was just lying on his bed, looking for all the world as if he was simply deep in peaceful sleep. Disturbingly, he was perfectly positioned flat on his back with his legs and arms both pointing straight towards the foot of the bed. He lacked the chaotic sense of movements normally made to get comfortable both awake and to varying extents within the depths of slumber.

She just stood in the doorway, looking, waiting for Clark to wake up and ask them why they were there. Pete, standing beside her, was having a similar reaction and remained equally still. Upon entering Chloe had moved directly to the bed, sitting down on the very edge before letting one of her hands rest gently on his face.

"See, he won't wake up." Chloe sounded like her heart was about to break.

Pete responded with a forced attempt at humor "Maybe you should try harder."

Lana couldn't understand how he could say something like that. "Pete!"

"What, am I the only person here with the strong desire to yell at him until he opens his eyes?" Suddenly Lana understood that in his own way, Pete was as equally unsettled as she was, maybe more so. Now that she thought about it, Lana realized that even though she'd lived near Clark for years both the other people in the room had been his friends far longer than her.

At some point Clark's mom had come up behind them, silently watching as they mourned their fallen compatriot. "We keep hoping he'll wake up."

"Why isn't he at the hospital?" Lana asked the question that Chloe had seemed for some reason unable to answer.

"They said there was nothing wrong with him. He's not in a coma, he's not in shock, he's just asleep. They said there was no danger of leaving him at home in his own bed so…" So they had taken him to the hospital. She'd known they must have. For some reason Chloe flinched when Mrs. Kent spoke the words. Was it because she'd been there? Had she had to sit and listen as a clinical voice told her there was nothing they could do for him?

"I think we're going to stay for a while Mrs. Kent. If that's all right?" Mrs. Kent smiled, the warm kind of smile that always seemed to grace Lana's dreams when she remembered her long deceased parents.

"I think Clark would like that. Pete, why don't you help me get some chairs?"

Pete nodded and followed her out of the room. They returned with three wooden chairs, one for each of them, but only two ever found use and the last stayed propped against the wall in the corner. Pete and Lana talked quietly, sometimes joking, sometimes serious, and the subject of discussion was almost always Clark. Chloe simply sat on the bed, silently contemplating, eyes never straying.

When finally they left, several hours later, the fallen hero slept on.



Over the following days life in Smallville continued. There were no more deaths, no more disappearances, and the horde of federal agents that had quickly descended upon Smallville had disappeared with equal haste. They left behind them a single unsolved case involving a missing local woman who would never again be seen or heard from, a disgruntled police force that would for a long time remember government interference as a prelude to obfuscation and violence, and a large check for one Mr. Finn to cover not only the use of his hotel but the massive cleaning and repair bill he'd submitted. The bill was overblown, but in all fairness he was receiving payment not just for damages but for psychological trauma as well. When your carpets are soaked with blood the massive fees to replace a breaker box that had been ripped out of the wall seem irrelevant in comparison.

Lana spent almost every hour she had keeping the Talon running smoothly while flipping through a math book behind the counter. Without Clark to depend on she'd been forced to push aside her grief and focus on schooling. Lana Lang was not a quitter, and when necessity pushed her in the end she dug in and pushed right back. Trying to catch up several weeks worth of math as well as learning the new material was going to be grueling work but she would persevere or die trying. When between Whitney's recovering family, school, and the Talon she still had time left over she'd drop by to see Clark. Lana was always wondering what had sent him away, always pondering how such a noble heart could turn to such stillness, and always questioning what she herself had given up one warm night while the sun dropped below the horizon.

Pete missed his Friday night date. It wasn't until Saturday morning that he even remembered that he'd sweet-talked Lisa Eliss into dinner and for some reason, it didn't really matter. He looked in on Chloe constantly, making sure to his satisfaction that she was well and herself. He also helped her put together the next edition of the Torch, which had quickly fallen behind schedule the previous week and demanded all effort possible to put it together on time and with sufficient polish. Finally, he occasionally stopped by to check in on Clark, the sight of whom he found disquieting. He tried telling him jokes, reading him the lamest books he could find complete with commentary, but in the end nothing helped and when he left Clark was always the same as he had been when Pete arrived, completely silent.

Chloe buried herself in every ounce of work she could find, accumulating in record time enough articles for two separate editions of the Torch. She also did not only her own homework but half of Clark's. She would have done it all but she was fairly sure he wouldn't appreciate it if she touched his Math or Physics, Chloe knew where her talents lay and it was not in that direction. One thing she didn't do was look up a single piece of information that had anything to do with Vampires or any other creature remotely deemed to be of the night. At the end of each day she always found her way drawn back to the Kent farm where Clark slept, their positions freakishly reversed as somehow she was transformed into the knight errant keeping vigil over the sleeping beauty. She read to him just as Pete had, but some might argue with better taste since most of her subject matter came from the globe or her very own beloved Torch. She relayed to him her latest theories about the meteor rocks and hypothesized on just how he might be related to them. She also found herself just reaching out to touch him, wanting to feel the warmth of his skin and the softness of his hair to confirm that her eyes weren't lying and that he hadn't somehow snuck away and left her for good. Sometimes, when she thought his parents had lowered their vigil or when she simply didn't care anymore, she found herself crawling into the bed to once again lay her head on his chest and feel his heart beat. Remembering a terrifying night filled with death and fear Chloe would push the dark images away and instead dwell on an unfamiliar bed, the feel of a finger gently travelling over the back of her hand, and the briefest touch of lips used as morning's greeting.

Martha and Jonathon Kent simply watched, and waited, knowing in their hearts that Clark was special, that no matter how low he had been lain he would get up again. They knew that their son would wake when he was ready and that they'd be there to take care of him when he did. There were no other possible futures, it was as simple as that.

Friday turned into the weekend, the weekend moved into next week, and as the days passed by subject to the inexorable pull of time Clark Kent slept on, oblivious, as his mind floated somewhere between reality and nightmares, hopes and fear, light and shadows.