| WHAT WE HAVE LOVED |
Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Smallville characters, but, if I had the choice, I'd make Tom Welling my manservant. All events in this piece are fictional and are from the matrix of my own mind. Please don't steal. It's wrong.
Secrets Kept Are Secrets Wept:
There were times when she knew exactly what to do. This wasn't one of them. Chloe didn't even know what she wanted from Clark. Was it friendship or love? Why couldn't she just settle for the former, as that seemed to be the only thing Clark wanted and all she had known throughout the entire course of their friendship? Why did she even care so much? She had always been a free thinker, and independent soul. She had never needed the approval of men to give her a reason to exist. She was strong, she was self-sufficient, she was… in love.
There was no denying it now. She loved Clark Kent and all of his peculiarities. He was goofy and clumsy. He had his cons and his vices. And throughout all of the years she had put up with his strange ways, she didn't care. She saw him as the boy who had saved her at the curb of the street and who would always, always be her hero.
She sat on her bed and ran a thumb over the pale scar tissue on her knee. Hero. That word sounded odd to her, especially as a journalist who knew that every hero had his weakness. However, any weakness Clark may have had only further fueled her desire for him. She liked the fact that he was flawed and knew it; he never attempted to be anyone other than Clark Kent, hometown-boy extraordinaire.
Only two hours ago she had witnessed him and Lana finally getting the chance he had always dreamed of. Chloe knew her place in Clark's heart would forever be shadowed by the perfect fantasy that was Lana Lang. How could she, a curious—sometimes annoyingly so—smalltime reporter, win his heart over a dazzling, beautiful prom queen? Boys loved that type. She had spent many years flipping through articles in Vogue and Cosmopolitan to come to terms with the universal knowledge that good girls finish last.
"You have to get over Clark," Chloe ordered herself. "Friendship lasts forever. Love always fades. Wouldn't you rather keep Clark as a friend than lose him somewhere down the line as a failed romance?"
Without thinking of an answer to her own question, Chloe reached for her leather-bound notebook on her desk and flipped it open to what she had been working on for several days. It was her admissions piece, still only a half-page long and amazingly legible despite the amount of crossed-out words and phrases. She had to get Clark off of her mind. She had to concentrate on getting into the Metropolis School of Journalism. What meant more to her: Clark or writing? She didn't even attempt to answer that one. Her priorities were shifting.
Without another thought, Chloe turned off the lamp on her bedside table and fell into a dreamless slumber.
* * * * * * *
"Maybe you were just nervous. It happens," Pete reassured Clark. "Well, not to me. But, you know." He grinned at his fretful chum as the two poured a slop-mix of food into the pigs' trough. Menial livestock tasks were Clark's responsibility on the Kent farm. Pete sometimes came over to help, only if it didn't include "freshening the cows' quarters", which was a Kent euphemism for shoveling manure.
"It's not that I was nervous," Clark replied as he poured a bucket of old vegetables into the trough. "Kissing Lana… That was… Wow."
Pete laughed. "That good, huh?"
"But it didn't feel right. Like it wasn't supposed to happen."
"Hasn't Lana been your dream-girl for at least a decade of our time on this planet?" Pete asked him.
"Well," Clark replied, "yeah."
"And haven't you always fantasized about the day when she'd feel the same way about you?"
"Yeah."
"So what the hell are you scared of? It's Lana Lang, not the Ebola virus."
Clark breathed a sigh. His friend didn't understand. "Chloe saw us."
Pete raised his eyebrow. "Saw you what?"
"Kissing. Lana and I were more or less making out and Chloe saw us just as she arrived at Arnold's party. She looked strange, Pete. I have never seen that expression on her face before. It was like she had seen a ghost." Clark furrowed his brow and said, "Do you think she has something against Lana?"
Pete sighed and offered his friend a look of sympathy. "You are a very naïve boy, Clark. Five years with Chloe and you still don't understand a thing about her."
Clark was insulted. Chloe was his best friend. He knew everything about her.
"She loves you, Clark," Pete stated rather bluntly. "For as long as I've known the two of you, she's been gaga over your stupid self. Don't ask me why. I don't find a single thing attractive about you." He was joking, but Clark's serious expression refused to lighten.
Maybe he had always known it. Maybe he had been scared of testing the waters with Chloe. As soon as Pete said those words, Clark knew that he had hurt Chloe incomprehensibly over the years with his talk about Lana and his complete insensitivity to his lifelong friend. Pete was right; he was naïve. More than that, he was completely blind.
"I guess the only question you need to answer now is," Pete continued as he dumped the last bucket of vegetables into the trough and wiped his hands on his soiled shirt, "how do you feel about Chloe? Or better yet, would you choose her over Lana?"
"I honestly don't know, Pete. Do I even have a choice to make? What if you're completely off base with your theory about Chloe? I'll look like a fool trying to talk to her about it."
"You're definitely a fool, Clark," Pete told him as they sauntered back to the Kents' house. "A damn lucky one, at that."
* * * * * * *
It was one of those days when you wake up and feel like a whole new person. Chloe rose from her bed with a sensation of rejuvenation and rebirth. No more would she keep Clark on a pedestal. She had more important things to concern herself with, like university and graduation and the Torch.
Oh God, the latest edition of the Torch! She was quickly reaching the deadline and she knew the rest of the Torch writers would kill her if she didn't complete the first-page article she had promised them, pictures and all.
Hurriedly, Chloe got dressed and soon she donned a knee-length jean skirt and a fading KSU T-shirt. She pulled her hair back into a chunky clip and plodded down the stairs. Story. Need story, Chloe chanted to herself. It was becoming a mantra for her.
"Good morning, Dad," Chloe greeted her father at the kitchen table. Gabe Sullivan was having his usual Sunday breakfast consisting of bagels with cream cheese. "I need a story worthy of front page by the end of this week, so I can't talk!" She quickly crammed a bagel into her mouth and laced up her boots.
"I suppose you've already heard of Clark's valiant rescue two days ago, then?" her father said from behind his newspaper.
"Clark's what?" Chloe queried with a raised eyebrow. "This is the first I've heard of it."
"That's because you've locked yourself in your room writing in that tattered notebook of yours. What happened to the laptop I bought you?"
"That tatted notebook is my journal, Dad. The laptop just seems too impersonal when it comes to writing something so intimate," Chloe replied. "You said Clark rescued someone?" She took a small notepad out of her jacket pocket in an attempt to jot down key points. She followed any possible lead for a scoop.
"Yes, that pretty Miss Rosemary Baker from down the street. She was assaulted and almost raped by a Metropolis hooligan who thought he could lay low in Smallville. I think he was wanted for other counts of assault and robbery. Clark knocked him out and saved Miss Baker, even carried her to the precinct." His father beamed a proud smile. He had known Clark Kent since his vivacious daughter had brought him home for dinner one day when she had just entered high school; sometimes, he forgot that Clark wasn't actually his flesh and blood.
"Do you know the name of the officer who filed the report?" Chloe inquired, writing down Miss Baker's name and a reminder to drop by the Smallville Police Department.
"Ah, yes," Gabe replied. "Martha Kent mentioned his name. Officer Jeremy Kensington, a young British man. Entered the force only a year or two ago. Nice guy."
"Thanks, Dad!" Chloe called to her father. She rushed out the door and was bounding down the street to Miss Baker's house. She only wished the young woman would be comfortable to talk about the attack. A high school boy saving a pretty young woman from the filthy hands of a Metropolis thug—definitely worthy of front page. Maybe she'd jazz the story up a little, perhaps mentioning that Clark was a shy boy and that he had never known the problem of crime in Smallville until his daring rescue of said young woman.
In no time, she was at Rosemary Baker's door and pressing the doorbell. When the door flew open, a comely young lady with long red hair and gentle brown eyes greeted her. "Hello, may I help you?" she asked Chloe.
"Miss Baker," Chloe extended her arm for a handshake, "my name is Chloe Sullivan and I write for the Torch."
Rosemary shook Chloe's hand and smiled in recognition of the newspaper name. "Yes, I've read some of your work, not only in the Torch but in the other local newspapers as well. Great journalistic skills you have."
Chloe blushed. She would never get used to compliments. "Thanks. I'm sorry to say the reason I'm here is because—"
"I know why you're here," Rosemary interjected as she led Chloe into her home. "Have a seat." She gestured toward a beige couch. "I'm not going to be a victim and pretend it didn't happen. I was almost raped, but a boy named Clark Kent saved me."
Chloe beamed as she sat down beside Rosemary. Just knowing that her friend had literally saved the day made her insides warm. "Yes, he is truly a spectacular person."
"How strong he was! From where I was lying, it looked as though he had merely tapped the criminal and he went flying into a brick wall," the young woman continued with a disbelieving tone of voice.
"Pardon me," Chloe interrupted. She once again produced her notepad, prepared with a pen in her right hand. "Did you say that you saw the man hit a brick wall?"
"He not only hit it, he went right through it! He nearly made a man-shaped hole in it," Rosemary joked. Chloe was surprised at her ease with the subject at hand. Every word this woman was saying seemed so unreal. "Bricks flew everywhere. That Clark Kent must have been working out for his whole life, from what I saw."
Chloe was confused. In all her life, she had never seen Clark Kent partake in any school athletics, let alone pick up a dumbbell. "You saw him tap the man and he subsequently went flying," she reiterated as she scribbled down phrases on the pad of paper. "Would you say this was sort of a 'freakish' power?" She scolded herself for even thinking about categorizing Clark with the local Freak-of-the-Weeks in Smallville.
"'Freakish?'" Rosemary repeated, taken aback. "Superhuman, maybe, but not freakish. Oh, that word carries a bad connotation. Though, it was indeed amazing. Clark's strength for a boy is just so… advanced. Almost as if he were a 'superboy'." The woman chuckled to herself as she said this. "I know that sounds ridiculous. I mean, he's just an average teenage boy, right?"
Chloe's lungs felt as if they were failing. "You know, Miss Baker. I think you might be on to something here," she replied. She quickly thanked Rosemary for her time and headed out the door as quickly as she had arrived.