Letters to a Dear Stranger
"Your Friend" Part I
Fic type: Smallville
Placement: TV
Time: 2 years after "Sincerely Yours", 3 years after "Love Always"
Explanation/Descript: Chloe's set. This will be a collection of letters
between Clark and Chloe when finished
Talk: Thoughts welcome.....flame somewhere else
Writer: Manda -- bloodrosedragon@hotmal.com
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
I can't believe you're not in Metropolis. Sheesh, Clark, give a girl an inch and she's bound to trap you down into a small one bedroom apartment and staple you to the walls so you can't wander off. Or maybe that's just me. It's just taking time to get used to you not living just a twenty- minute drive away again. I can't just call you up and say lets have coffee, or come have dinner with me, or listen to me blather about this case for my newest article, or can I come and watch whatever new soap opera drama your watching with you.
I must admit to an envy of you now though that I hadn't expected. Traveling the world with your little, beat up leather suitcase with your little golden plaque that reads 'Clark Kent'. Being a drifter. Finding out all the little stories and truths you always do with those solemn honesty eyes and that easy going, always ready friendly smile of yours.
I wish you were going to be here tomorrow. It'll be what would have been Joseph and I's third anniversary. I've decided on locking away the scrapbooks, forbidding myself from chocolate chip cookie dough and any kind of sappy, romantic movie that could make me cry. I have terrible images of it already. Me, in baggy sleep clothes, clutching the spoon of cookie dough, watching Serendipity with photo books of the last few years spread all around me.
I can't believe six months ago I was secretly contemplating what it would be to marry him, having my two point five children with him in a summer house in Paris and he was busy diddling my best friend. I think the only thing more surprising to me in the past three years than finding out about Joseph and Marie (might I add here, that the best friend and the boyfriend saga is only supposed to soap opera material, not real life??), was you leaving Lana and Smallville for Lex and Metropolis.
I'm still baffled about what happened there since neither of you will talk about it or see each other for much longer than ten minutes before one of you leaves the room. I wonder what could have been so big that after longer than a year of seeing what would and could happen you both dropped each other faster and colder than anything I've seen in a while. No fights. No reasons. Neither of you willing to talk about it and not willing to spend time even in the same room too long with cold civility.
It's very annoying to the reporter. I'm supposed to have clues and detail that will lead me to my answers and the two of you are very unhelpful in that department. You just want it "left alone" or "let go of". Silly boys.
Dammit. That was Cain. He needs me to cover something happening right now and I have to get into work after that. Hopefully your well and having fun.
Your Friend, Chloe
P.S. Lana wanted me to pass it along to you that at the end of Spring Break their putting on another one of those infamous "Smallville Dinners" that are all your fault. Another bring us together dinner and catch up on each others lives. I didn't make it to any last year, so I'll be there. Hopefully, you will be, too.
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
When did Smallville get so small?
I don't remember it being so small. Not in my head. Not in my mind. Not even in the pictures. I know it never took that long to cross the town, even if it took all day to drive across full land lots. I know we only had one of everything we ever had in the main town and that there was never enough of a town to even have a part called 'down town'.
But I never remember it so small, even after coming from Metropolis to Smallville and back again. I knew it was a country town.but it never seemed so small and the more I think about it the smaller my apartment feels right now, too.
It wasn't a bad dinner. It wasn't a bad visit. It wasn't a bad anything. It wasn't even specifically bad.
I arrived the night Spring Break started. Thought it would be good to get away for the entire week. Cain pouted at me a while, but he relented and let "his star" go home for a week. It was odd to here him call it home. I don't think I've called it home in years. I left Smallville for college five years ago now. Five long and short years, which will be over very soon.
I knew then that I was leaving home for good reasons. I also knew where home was then. I'm sure now on returning to the city that I'm not positive where home is now. Five years ago I would have said Smallville. Four years ago I would have claimed my dorm. If you'd asked me a month ago I would have said this apartment I've been living in for the last two years. They're all just places though. I'm missing that sparkle. That sparkle I haven't felt since Joseph left.
I saw that sparkle in Smallville. In every person, every face, every set of eyes. All the smiles between people. That glimmer in all conversations. That laughter behind all the jokes. I don't think I really saw one depressed person, one displaced being. Okay. So maybe that's a minor lie. But I'm not sure I can count you, me or Lex in that.and you were much better at slipping back into place than me and Lex by far.
Dinner was fine and I was pleasantly unsurprised to see that Pete and Lana are blissful. Who would have thought back in high school those two would turn out to be the real lovebirds of all of us? Did you catch the whole pulling out the chair for the table and the way they did all the little cute things all night for each other? I'd be disgusted by the amazing cuteness of it all if I weren't overwhelmingly jealous of it.
Not that jealousy over Lana Lang's life is a new thing at all. I'm sure at this point it's so not news worthy that it was written all over my face a few times. But who would have guessed Pete, the ever desperate for a girl in high school, to show up latest and least expected as the great romantic?
It's not really just that though. It's not even anything I think I can put into words. Pete and Lana have that sparkle. All of our parents have that sparkle. All of that entire town has that sparkle. I don't have that sparkle. Even you have that sparkle somehow still. The only other person who I might say didn't was Lex, but I'm not sure there have ever been many extended periods when Lex ever sparkled though.
I actually sat and talked to him late during two of the nights about Smallville, Metropolis and things that had nothing to do with anything any of us really ever sit and think about. It's remarkable how we connected the second night. We've never really spent time talking much. We even talked about not talking when we were young (was Lex ever young, though?), so he invited me out to dinner in a few days.
Oddly, he reminds me of Smallville still. Of someone I still link with the past. But he's like me, too. Smallville laces in and out of his lifeline, and both of us began and ended here in Metropolis so far. I've so many questions about him, but I really don't want to set dinner completely off by throw all of them at him just at starting. Well, at least not this specific dinner. Especially since half the world can hardly get a hold of him, he hasn't given an interview in two years, and no less get the real him when he shows up is hard enough to hope for.
Wish me luck.
If you can without giving this letter that long soulful, half annoyed, half saddened look you get when you think no one's watching after they ask you something about Lex.
Besides it's not like I'm dating Lex. Most of the time all we do is walk. We meet for coffee, sometimes take in a meal or a show,
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
I'm not sure who's worse about me so much time with Lex now, you or Cain. I expected you. I didn't expect his suddenly vehement reaction. Even Lois doesn't really care that much except for pleading with me to get her an exclusive with him, since no one had gotten a piece on him in person in two years. She doesn't get your beef with him, but then I never told her you two were an item either. It didn't circulate well apparently.
I understand you're problem with it. Completely. Well, until we hit that little patch where I don't, which would be where neither of you will tell why your happy bliss of months ended sharply and suddenly and the fact you can't stand each other's presence.
Cain, though, I haven't the vaguest clue. Actually, that's not true, either. I have many clues, I'm just not sure about what they point to after all he's my editor and I'm his star reporter girl. I get that he doesn't like Lex Luthor at all, I grew up in a tiny town where no one liked the Luthor name at all, but sometimes I think it's more. I'm really flatter by the idea that maybe he does like me, but I've never looked at him that way and it's still too soon.
It's not like theirs even a thing to be jealous of. We're not dating after all. We're just spending time together, sort of like a pair of people who might understand each other. Most of the time we're alone even when we're with each other, and usually it's time spent in silence. We get coffee and take long walks, sometimes together, sometimes apart and come back together down the path.
Sometimes I think I don't know him, other times I think, maybe, I never met the real Lex Luthor the entire time we all grew up next to each other. Sometimes I think it was the loss of his dad, or maybe it's the city, or maybe you, but most of the time I don't know. He just looks so...lonely, deep inside his eyes. Like he's trapped somewhere no can get to, a pit no one can reach far enough in to pull him out.
There are times when we're playing chess or discussing some random topic that I finally see the light come into his eyes and it only serves to remind me that he's so very alone. I try to make it happen more often, but it always seems to happen at the oddest times and it never stays for long enough. What happened to him? What happened to push him so far away from everyone and everything straight into the hands of Lex Corps?
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
Okay. Fine. I get it. I should have told you Lex and I were dating.
I was going to. In person. I didn't want you to find out that way. I didn't expect to become newsworthy material just because I went to The Magic of the Night Ball with him as his companion, date, and whatever else they decided to call me in the article. I really was going to tell. This past weekend even, when we went home for Thanksgiving dinner.
To say the least, you blowing up at us while we were standing there that first night saying good-byes to everyone as we turned to go to separate homes, made for an uncomfortable end to what had been so far a comfortable night. I can't believe you would just come out and act in such a childish way suddenly. I do understand though. I don't like it, but I understand it. You're right. I should have told you sooner, but I felt a letter or a phone message, since we seem to miss each other too often now with the phone calls, would be too impersonal.
Well, we've got our share of impersonal now, don't we?
I'd say you could cut the tension with a knife between the three of us, except I don't think even a knife could get through it. Not that anyone noticed after Pete sudden show of charm the night before Thanksgiving.
We all sit down, some comfortable, some not, enjoy a simply dinner before the bigger one the next night and start talking about what we're thankful for. Suddenly Pete says he has something he wants to give Lana. Next thing we know he's pulling out a small gift-wrapped box which contains - ta da a little velvet box. Then he's spouting all this stuff about how he's loved her for so long and would she be his forever.
Tears and jealousy. Light hearted soft jealousy though. Who would have known? Pete and Lana are getting ready to be married. I'm busy going back to live in the city, with one boy who's happily content with me, and one who's seeing red when we start talking so that we fight. I hate fighting with you, Clark. It doesn't get easier the longer we're apart, and the longer we don't talk to each other.
It's been two weeks since Thanksgiving. You won't return my calls, so I'm writing a letter to be delivered to your home. Maybe your parents will know how to get it to you better than I will.
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
I haven't heard from you in weeks. The silence you're sending in deafening at this point. Lex tries to calm me, but this sudden shut door in my life isn't something he can help much. I'm sorry if I hurt you that much. I'm sorry.
Where have you gone so far away?
When are you coming back?
Please, come back for Christmas.
Please, don't say this is goodbye.
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
I can't believe you're not in Metropolis. Sheesh, Clark, give a girl an inch and she's bound to trap you down into a small one bedroom apartment and staple you to the walls so you can't wander off. Or maybe that's just me. It's just taking time to get used to you not living just a twenty- minute drive away again. I can't just call you up and say lets have coffee, or come have dinner with me, or listen to me blather about this case for my newest article, or can I come and watch whatever new soap opera drama your watching with you.
I must admit to an envy of you now though that I hadn't expected. Traveling the world with your little, beat up leather suitcase with your little golden plaque that reads 'Clark Kent'. Being a drifter. Finding out all the little stories and truths you always do with those solemn honesty eyes and that easy going, always ready friendly smile of yours.
I wish you were going to be here tomorrow. It'll be what would have been Joseph and I's third anniversary. I've decided on locking away the scrapbooks, forbidding myself from chocolate chip cookie dough and any kind of sappy, romantic movie that could make me cry. I have terrible images of it already. Me, in baggy sleep clothes, clutching the spoon of cookie dough, watching Serendipity with photo books of the last few years spread all around me.
I can't believe six months ago I was secretly contemplating what it would be to marry him, having my two point five children with him in a summer house in Paris and he was busy diddling my best friend. I think the only thing more surprising to me in the past three years than finding out about Joseph and Marie (might I add here, that the best friend and the boyfriend saga is only supposed to soap opera material, not real life??), was you leaving Lana and Smallville for Lex and Metropolis.
I'm still baffled about what happened there since neither of you will talk about it or see each other for much longer than ten minutes before one of you leaves the room. I wonder what could have been so big that after longer than a year of seeing what would and could happen you both dropped each other faster and colder than anything I've seen in a while. No fights. No reasons. Neither of you willing to talk about it and not willing to spend time even in the same room too long with cold civility.
It's very annoying to the reporter. I'm supposed to have clues and detail that will lead me to my answers and the two of you are very unhelpful in that department. You just want it "left alone" or "let go of". Silly boys.
Dammit. That was Cain. He needs me to cover something happening right now and I have to get into work after that. Hopefully your well and having fun.
Your Friend, Chloe
P.S. Lana wanted me to pass it along to you that at the end of Spring Break their putting on another one of those infamous "Smallville Dinners" that are all your fault. Another bring us together dinner and catch up on each others lives. I didn't make it to any last year, so I'll be there. Hopefully, you will be, too.
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
When did Smallville get so small?
I don't remember it being so small. Not in my head. Not in my mind. Not even in the pictures. I know it never took that long to cross the town, even if it took all day to drive across full land lots. I know we only had one of everything we ever had in the main town and that there was never enough of a town to even have a part called 'down town'.
But I never remember it so small, even after coming from Metropolis to Smallville and back again. I knew it was a country town.but it never seemed so small and the more I think about it the smaller my apartment feels right now, too.
It wasn't a bad dinner. It wasn't a bad visit. It wasn't a bad anything. It wasn't even specifically bad.
I arrived the night Spring Break started. Thought it would be good to get away for the entire week. Cain pouted at me a while, but he relented and let "his star" go home for a week. It was odd to here him call it home. I don't think I've called it home in years. I left Smallville for college five years ago now. Five long and short years, which will be over very soon.
I knew then that I was leaving home for good reasons. I also knew where home was then. I'm sure now on returning to the city that I'm not positive where home is now. Five years ago I would have said Smallville. Four years ago I would have claimed my dorm. If you'd asked me a month ago I would have said this apartment I've been living in for the last two years. They're all just places though. I'm missing that sparkle. That sparkle I haven't felt since Joseph left.
I saw that sparkle in Smallville. In every person, every face, every set of eyes. All the smiles between people. That glimmer in all conversations. That laughter behind all the jokes. I don't think I really saw one depressed person, one displaced being. Okay. So maybe that's a minor lie. But I'm not sure I can count you, me or Lex in that.and you were much better at slipping back into place than me and Lex by far.
Dinner was fine and I was pleasantly unsurprised to see that Pete and Lana are blissful. Who would have thought back in high school those two would turn out to be the real lovebirds of all of us? Did you catch the whole pulling out the chair for the table and the way they did all the little cute things all night for each other? I'd be disgusted by the amazing cuteness of it all if I weren't overwhelmingly jealous of it.
Not that jealousy over Lana Lang's life is a new thing at all. I'm sure at this point it's so not news worthy that it was written all over my face a few times. But who would have guessed Pete, the ever desperate for a girl in high school, to show up latest and least expected as the great romantic?
It's not really just that though. It's not even anything I think I can put into words. Pete and Lana have that sparkle. All of our parents have that sparkle. All of that entire town has that sparkle. I don't have that sparkle. Even you have that sparkle somehow still. The only other person who I might say didn't was Lex, but I'm not sure there have ever been many extended periods when Lex ever sparkled though.
I actually sat and talked to him late during two of the nights about Smallville, Metropolis and things that had nothing to do with anything any of us really ever sit and think about. It's remarkable how we connected the second night. We've never really spent time talking much. We even talked about not talking when we were young (was Lex ever young, though?), so he invited me out to dinner in a few days.
Oddly, he reminds me of Smallville still. Of someone I still link with the past. But he's like me, too. Smallville laces in and out of his lifeline, and both of us began and ended here in Metropolis so far. I've so many questions about him, but I really don't want to set dinner completely off by throw all of them at him just at starting. Well, at least not this specific dinner. Especially since half the world can hardly get a hold of him, he hasn't given an interview in two years, and no less get the real him when he shows up is hard enough to hope for.
Wish me luck.
If you can without giving this letter that long soulful, half annoyed, half saddened look you get when you think no one's watching after they ask you something about Lex.
Besides it's not like I'm dating Lex. Most of the time all we do is walk. We meet for coffee, sometimes take in a meal or a show,
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
I'm not sure who's worse about me so much time with Lex now, you or Cain. I expected you. I didn't expect his suddenly vehement reaction. Even Lois doesn't really care that much except for pleading with me to get her an exclusive with him, since no one had gotten a piece on him in person in two years. She doesn't get your beef with him, but then I never told her you two were an item either. It didn't circulate well apparently.
I understand you're problem with it. Completely. Well, until we hit that little patch where I don't, which would be where neither of you will tell why your happy bliss of months ended sharply and suddenly and the fact you can't stand each other's presence.
Cain, though, I haven't the vaguest clue. Actually, that's not true, either. I have many clues, I'm just not sure about what they point to after all he's my editor and I'm his star reporter girl. I get that he doesn't like Lex Luthor at all, I grew up in a tiny town where no one liked the Luthor name at all, but sometimes I think it's more. I'm really flatter by the idea that maybe he does like me, but I've never looked at him that way and it's still too soon.
It's not like theirs even a thing to be jealous of. We're not dating after all. We're just spending time together, sort of like a pair of people who might understand each other. Most of the time we're alone even when we're with each other, and usually it's time spent in silence. We get coffee and take long walks, sometimes together, sometimes apart and come back together down the path.
Sometimes I think I don't know him, other times I think, maybe, I never met the real Lex Luthor the entire time we all grew up next to each other. Sometimes I think it was the loss of his dad, or maybe it's the city, or maybe you, but most of the time I don't know. He just looks so...lonely, deep inside his eyes. Like he's trapped somewhere no can get to, a pit no one can reach far enough in to pull him out.
There are times when we're playing chess or discussing some random topic that I finally see the light come into his eyes and it only serves to remind me that he's so very alone. I try to make it happen more often, but it always seems to happen at the oddest times and it never stays for long enough. What happened to him? What happened to push him so far away from everyone and everything straight into the hands of Lex Corps?
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
Okay. Fine. I get it. I should have told you Lex and I were dating.
I was going to. In person. I didn't want you to find out that way. I didn't expect to become newsworthy material just because I went to The Magic of the Night Ball with him as his companion, date, and whatever else they decided to call me in the article. I really was going to tell. This past weekend even, when we went home for Thanksgiving dinner.
To say the least, you blowing up at us while we were standing there that first night saying good-byes to everyone as we turned to go to separate homes, made for an uncomfortable end to what had been so far a comfortable night. I can't believe you would just come out and act in such a childish way suddenly. I do understand though. I don't like it, but I understand it. You're right. I should have told you sooner, but I felt a letter or a phone message, since we seem to miss each other too often now with the phone calls, would be too impersonal.
Well, we've got our share of impersonal now, don't we?
I'd say you could cut the tension with a knife between the three of us, except I don't think even a knife could get through it. Not that anyone noticed after Pete sudden show of charm the night before Thanksgiving.
We all sit down, some comfortable, some not, enjoy a simply dinner before the bigger one the next night and start talking about what we're thankful for. Suddenly Pete says he has something he wants to give Lana. Next thing we know he's pulling out a small gift-wrapped box which contains - ta da a little velvet box. Then he's spouting all this stuff about how he's loved her for so long and would she be his forever.
Tears and jealousy. Light hearted soft jealousy though. Who would have known? Pete and Lana are getting ready to be married. I'm busy going back to live in the city, with one boy who's happily content with me, and one who's seeing red when we start talking so that we fight. I hate fighting with you, Clark. It doesn't get easier the longer we're apart, and the longer we don't talk to each other.
It's been two weeks since Thanksgiving. You won't return my calls, so I'm writing a letter to be delivered to your home. Maybe your parents will know how to get it to you better than I will.
Your Friend, Chloe
~*~*~
Dear Clark,
I haven't heard from you in weeks. The silence you're sending in deafening at this point. Lex tries to calm me, but this sudden shut door in my life isn't something he can help much. I'm sorry if I hurt you that much. I'm sorry.
Where have you gone so far away?
When are you coming back?
Please, come back for Christmas.
Please, don't say this is goodbye.
Your Friend, Chloe