| 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.
Addendum: This isn't the end of the story. I have one last piece coming up. I just need to get my ass into gear!
Admission and Acceptance :
The sun was now behind the horizon, leaving traces of violet in the almost black sky. Clark sat in his loft not knowing what to do. He had promised Pete that he would meet him at the bus terminal to see Chloe off. Secretly, Clark wanted to convince her to stay. He would have gotten on his knees and begged her if he had to. But now things were different. Truths were revealed. Promises had been broken—unsaid promises, at least.
"I just talked to Chloe's father on the phone," Martha Kent informed her brooding son as she crept up the steps to the loft. "He said that Chloe left for Metropolis this evening. You didn't mention that to me."
Clark shrugged and turned away from his knowing mother. "I guess it just slipped my mind."
Martha rubbed a sensitive hand over her son's stiff spine. "You might not want to tell me what happened between the two of you, but I can tell what's going through your mind. I'm your mother. Mother knows all and knows best." She grinned at Clark who turned to look at her. "I just hope you know what's best for you."
"I'm still learning, Mom," Clark told her.
Life without Chloe Sullivan seemed impossible. It was one thing that she would be away from Smallville, but it was another that he felt as though he could never speak to her again, regardless of distance.
It wasn't so much that he felt betrayed. Chloe was the one woman who had ever known him. She had even discovered his alien origin yet never treated him as though it made a difference in her perception of him. All his life, he never felt that one person could know him so well, and now he may have let that person slip out of his grasp indefinitely. He didn't feel like he knew her as well as she knew him. After all, she had so easily jumped into bed with Jeremy. That wasn't the Chloe Sullivan he knew—that was contemptible.
They had been through so much over their senior year in Smallville. So many laughs. So many fights. Too many disappointments.
"By the way," Martha said on her way out, "this came in the mail for you today." She tossed her son a nondescript envelope. "There was no return address, only your name and our address."
Puzzled, Clark ripped open the envelope and froze as he immediately recognized the handwriting and knew exactly what was staring back at him, almost right into his soul.
"Well," his mother prodded, "what is it? An acceptance letter?"
"No," Clark breathed, "it's not."
The story unfolds at a very strange time in my life. It doesn't start when I was born or even on my first day of school. It starts when my life began, when I met someone who would forever change the path of my very existence. That is when I first started living, really living. I hadn't known reason until I met him and, even then, reason was overtaken by passion. I hadn't known anticipation until I knew his actions. I hadn't known love until I yearned for his closeness.
He was my friend—my best friend, in fact. That's what made it harder for me to love him. It wasn't that he was different from the rest of us, that he was stronger and more eager than the average boy was. I didn't love him in spite of those attributes; I loved him for them. He was mine…for a time, at least. But I had always known I would have to eventually share his wonderfulness with the world. It was the world that needed his strength, and I needed to find my own.
He isn't from around here. He isn't from the world, as we know it. He is the classic enigma whose puzzle I want more than anything to piece together. And even with the complications of his being here, the trials and tribulations of his less than ordinary life, he is a good person. He is the best person. He saves people—his family, friends, and even perfect strangers—and he saved me. He is a hero, in every sense of the word. Even when he is not here with me, the very thought of him rescues me from the depths of despair. I only hope one day, however far in the future it may be, that I'll be able to save the both of us for old time's sake.
His heart beat quickly in his chest as the letter went on to describe the events, which were imprinted in his memory, of the storm cellar and the prom. "It's an admissions letter," he concluded as he reached the signature at the bottom. Had Chloe left this for him to read? Did she think this would change things? It did. Though, not enough.
"An admissions letter?" Martha queried. "What on earth are you going to do with that?" She was confused by the look of recognition her son gave the mysterious letter.
"Nothing," Clark resolved. He folded the papers in his hands and shoved them into his jacket pocket. He wasn't ready to confront his love for Chloe and the problems it had caused during the last several months. But, perhaps, someday he would be. "Nothing…for now."