Chapter 1
Caught in the Act

"Are you sure she didn't see you use your powers, son?" Jonathon Kent asked his son the next morning over breakfast.

"Yes dad, she only saw me once I had 'ran' to the edge of the bridge; she didn't even notice I was there before then," Clark assured his overprotective father. "When she did see me though, she looked scared—almost as if the wings were something I wasn't supposed to find out about." He wondered how someone could conceal something so large from others, then thinking of his own secret.

"Well, you of all people should know about hiding secrets from people," Martha Kent chimed in, hoping to reassure her son. "Didn't you get a little nervous when Pete first found out about your secret?"

"A little, but only because he didn't understand. He looked at me differently, like I was a freak or something," Clark replied sadly, looking up at his mother through pained eyes.

"Clark," Jonathon said, placing a comforting hand on his son's shoulder and squeezing slightly, causing Clark to turn his head and look into his father's eyes. "Pete just didn't understand, like you said. Over time, he has come to appreciate your gift, just like we do."

"I know. It's just that if anyone exposed my secret, I would be really upset—then everyone would treat me differently, and I'd probably end up in Belle Reeve under microscopes while surrounded by green kryptonite," Clark said, revealing his fears to his concerned parents.

"Well, the only people who know are Pete, your mother, and I, and you know we'd never do that to you," Jonathon said, trying to comfort Clark.

"Yeah…I guess I'll tell Chloe not to write anything about it before I have more information. I'll just see if I can find out who it was," Clark replied. "I've got to get ready for school," he said, putting his dishes in the sink before super-speeding up the stairs in his small farm-house.


Two minutes later, Clark had entered Smallville High's hallways, just in time for his first class. Noticing no-one was around, and his usual habit of being late, he super-sped to his classroom, stopping just in time to walk in normally as the bell rang.

"Right in the nick of time, Mr. Kent, good job," Mr. Long said in an annoyed tone as Clark took his seat next to Pete, his best friend since before he could remember. "Let's get started, shall we? Turn to page 117 please…" Clark leaned over and whispered to Pete,

"I have to tell you something important later, meet me at the Torch Office during second."

"Is it Wall-Of-Weird material, or about a certain raven-haired coffeehouse owner I know of?" Pete said, teasing his friend.

"Just be there, I'll explain later," Clark said, ignoring the comment and quickly righting himself so that the teacher wouldn't notice him and Pete talking during class.


"So they just flew away before they crashed?" Chloe said sarcastically after listening to Clark's story along with Pete, lounging in the Torch Office between classes. Chloe was Clark's best friend who ran the school newspaper, the Torch, and didn't quite know if she wanted to be just a friend, or perhaps a girlfriend, but knew she couldn't just be either without knowing what dark secrets Clark constantly kept hidden.

"Look, I know it sounds crazy Chloe, but I saw it with my own eyes!" Clark protested, typing more information into the computer. He, Chloe, and Pete were doing research on the license plate number Clark had recovered from the totaled car, hoping to find an owner.

"Well, we both know that people are rarely who they appear to be," Chloe said, looking at him with raised eyebrows, indicating that she meant him. When Clark hesitated to respond, Chloe continued her interrogation. "Besides, I still don't understand why you were at the dam, Clark. We all know you come running at the first sign of trouble, but you were at the Talon, halfway across town." At this, Clark looked up for a second, caught by surprise and instantly tried to come up with a relevant excuse. After all, "I heard someone who needed help from miles away, and super-sped there in an effort to physically hold back the car before it went over the side of the dam," just wouldn't blow over well.

Just then, Pete finally shoved his way into the conversation. He had decided long ago that he would help in protecting Clark's secret, which he had discovered by accident, and would do what it took to keep Clark's secret from anyone that Clark wasn't ready to tell.

"Uh, c'mon Clark, man, we gotta get to class anyway," Pete said swiftly, even though they still had 10 minutes until the first bell rang. As Chloe looked at him with confusion and interest written on her face, Pete had his hand on Clark's shoulder and was steering him out of the room.

"Thanks Pete, I didn't know how to come back on that one for a second. Even my speed couldn't have helped me in there," Clark thanked his friend as soon as they were out of Chloe's hearing range.

"No problem man, I got your back," Pete said, clapping the man on steel on his back. "So, were you serious in there? Did you really see a chick with wings?" he asked, grinning at his inadvertent pun as they walked down the hallway.

"Yeah, but she seemed scared when I saw her, as if her wings were something she kept secret, like me," Clark replied with concern evident in his voice.

"Well, did she look familiar? Maybe she's been living among us normally and we never even suspected anything," Pete said, thoughtfully, looking at Clark suddenly realizing what he had said.

"I never got a clear look at her face, it was too dark…" Clark said, appearing to not be hindered by the unintentional comment.

"Couldn't you have done the eye-thing?" Pete asked, referring to Clark's x-ray vision.

"It kinda felt wrong to, you know? Like she didn't want me to be able to recognize her."

"…so we're doin' all this research for nothing?" Pete asked.

"No, I want to be able to recognize her, just not exploit her…oh god, I forgot to tell Chloe not to print anything about it! I've got to go tell her!"

"Clark, the 5 minute bell rang about 4 minutes ago, we need to go to class," Pete said.

For the rest of the day, Clark tried to find Chloe between his classes, but she wasn't in the Torch when he had found the time to look. He couldn't find her anywhere. What Clark didn't know was that she was hiding in an inconspicuous crevice in the hallway, trying to identify any suspicious behavior that would lead her to believe that one of the students was concealing a pair of gigantic wings and six sharp talons.

Clark gave up looking for Chloe late that day. He could call her, and tell her not to print the article, but he realized that would result in a lot of question—most that he would rather avoid, if possible. He knew that she didn't know enough information to cause whoever he saw to be abducted and held captive in Cadmus Labs under microscopes and having horrible tests done on her.


The next day, Clark woke early and went out to the barn to do his chores before school. He knew that he could just do them with his super-speed and be done in a matter of minutes, but he was enjoying the brisk morning air and bright blue Kansas morning sky before he had to be locked up in a school for the majority of the day. He put the pitchfork that he was using to bail hay down for a moment, and stared up at the sky, thoughts of being able to soar through the clouds, unseen and unheard by anyone filled his mind; just him and unlimited opportunities. While he enjoyed the morning sun's rays, pondering this, he noticed something unusual: he couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet. Clark looked down to see that he was floating, about a foot above his not-so-normal height of 6 foot 4 inches.

"Clark!" Clark suddenly looked up upon hearing the sound of Lana's voice from around the corner of the barn. Just as soon as the strange floating had begun, he dropped to the ground—tall teenage aliens were not meant to be dropped without a warning. Lana came around from the other side of the barn to find Clark in a heap on the ground near the door of the barn.

"Clark! Are you OK?" she asked, running over and helping him up.

"Yeah, Lana, I'm fine. Just…tripped, that's all," Clark said, hoping she hadn't seen him when he was floating—it would make his regular covering up of his secret seem like child's play.

"You sure you're alright? You looked a little…well, dazed," she said, looking at him through concerned eyes. Little did she know that Clark's invulnerability, part of his well-kept secret, kept him from hurting himself except when he was around Kryptonite—the real name for the meteor rocks that had fallen with Clark during the meteor shower 14 years earlier.

"I guess it's the sun, really bright this morning," he said, knowing it was a poor excuse. "So, was there anything you needed? It's pretty early."

"Um, yeah, there was actually. The other night at the Talon, you left so fast you forgot your English paper…" Lana said, handing it to him. So that's where it went, thought Clark, recalling his frantic search for the paper in his locker during the small amount of time he had allotted himself after telling his teacher he needed to use the bathroom.

"What was so important that the responsible Clark Kent would leave his five-page-paper that was due the next day, at a coffeehouse?"

There was a short pause before Clark's next pathetic explanation was aroused: "I, uh, remembered that I forgot to do a few chores around the farm. My dad has to do twice as much work when that happens…" Strike two for lame excuses, Kent, Clark thought. Lana, knowing that something important had come up upon recognizing Clark's annoying habit of complicating everything, suddenly turned from an interrogating friend, to a concerned one.

"Is everything alright?" Lana asked, knowing that his reply was not the real reason for his departure. "You know, you can always tell me anything, Clark…"

These were the conversations when Clark wanted to just tell Lana everything, and therefore the conversations he tried to avoid, knowing he could never tell her because of the danger involved with knowing a secret so large. Unfortunately, lately this was where their conversations ended up—this, or either Lana's getting fed-up with Clark's never telling her his obvious kept secret.

"Yeah…everything's fine," Clark said. He leaned in closer to her, and she reached up. Right then, they shared the kiss that Clark had been yearning for for so long. He wished it could have lasted forever. They held each other close, neither one wanting to let go. As they stood there, Lana realized that something felt odd, despite this perfect moment. She pulled away from their passionate kiss, only to realize they were floating almost a foot in the air, slowly turning in a slow circle as they kissed. Clark, noticing that Lana had pulled away, opened his eyes to see Lana's own wide, confused eyes.

"Clark, do you know why we're floating?" Lana asked him, looking into his eyes, obviously searching for an honest answer, knowing that he knew it. As she spoke, they slowly drifted back to the ground, Clark mentally thanking an unseen power for being able to control it and not falling back to the ground as he had before.

"Uh, yeah, but you'd never believe me," Clark said, thinking how much he wanted to tell her the truth.

"I think I deserve an explanation as to how we just proved medical geniuses wrong in defying gravity," Lana said, desperate to know what Clark continually held back from her every time they talked.

"I don't have time to talk about it right now, but if you come back tonight, I'll explain then," Clark told her. "Do you need a ride to school?"

"No thanks, I brought my car. See you there?" she asked, holding back the questions that burned inside her.

"Sure. Talk to you tonight," he said, knowing he couldn't back out of it this time. With that, Lana walked away, content in knowing she would soon know what it was that Clark was always so secretive about, and hoping it wasn't a mistake.