Chapter 4

Hours later, Clark was still flying across the Atlantic Ocean, lazily guiding himself across the sky. By now it was closing in on night, but the sun hovered nearly motionless above the sky as he flew westwards about as fast as the earth turned. Clark stared at it as he wafted through the clouds.

Always did like sunsets, he thought to himself. Pa always said, there's no easier time to talk to a woman than on the beach at sunset. Not that does me any good right now, anyway. He sighed deeply. This is pointless. I'm not getting anything done here feeling sorry for myself. There's gotta be something more constructive for me to do.

Clark pulled himself to an upright stop thirty thousand feet up and reached into his bag for the newspaper. Turning has back into the wind so it wouldn't tear the paper apart in his hands, he opened up the front section and began to read. As he swept the pages rapidly, something caught his eye – a small article, hidden deep on the fourth page. New York City Kidnapping Still Unresolved.

There were probably a thousand things at that time around the world that would have been more suitable for a man with bulletproof skin and an urge to change things. Clark, however, had already made up his mind. I haven't been back in the U.S. in months; it's probably time to go check in, Clark thought as he stowed the newspaper again. Besides, to be honest I could use somebody to talk to.

It was just after six when Chloe Sullivan waved goodbye to her editor and walked out the front door of the Daily News. The summer sun was just beginning to disappear over the lower buildings of the West Side. She walked quickly, her legs moving at the rate that seems all too natural for the residents of a massive city but incredibly rushed to someone from the Heartland. Despite her internship in Metropolis back in high school, nothing had really prepared her for life in the Big Apple. It took half an hour for her to get back to her apartment from work, between a five-minute walk to the subway, a fifteen-minute subway ride and another ten minutes of walking – this time through one of the more difficult neighborhoods of the city.

It was this part of her commute that she looked forwards to the least, and it was the part she was facing now. Despite the eighty degree temperatures, she shivered a bit as she walked up out of the station and took her bearings as she always did. The smell of creosote assaulted her nostrils as a siren cried far off in the distance, but the immediate area seemed free of potential muggers and rapists. Chloe silently thanked herself that her tuition at NYU included four years of a dorm room during class – which meant she only had to walk this route during the summer, when it was light longer. She turned eastwards to head towards her apartment –

-only to come face-to-chest with a man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. In panic, her eyes raced up the man's blue shirt to see –

"Clark?!?" Her tone barely began to express her surprise.

He smiled. "Yeah."

Chloe blinked in disbelief as she sized up her old friend. It hadn't been even a year since she saw him, but he seemed far more different than she would have expected. His hair was longer, less kempt, and his chin was covered with an Indiana Jones-like three days growth of beard. His face had changed, too – it had lost much of its boyish charm, and taken on a harder edge. To someone who had only known him from his first two years of high school, he would have been unrecognizable.

As she compiled her mental update of Clark, her reporter's instinct kicked in, telling her to ask any of a dozen questions: Where have you been these last months? Why did you drop off the map? Have you spoken with your parents? With Lex?

"How are you?" she asked, suppressing her curiosity for the moment.

Clark's eyes seemed to fade for a moment. "Good," he replied with a tone that seemed to imply that things were really not. "How about you?"

Chloe decided not to press the issue for the moment. "It's been…fun, really," she laughed. "Being a reporter and all. I mean, it's kind of tough balancing working with classes during the school year, but right now it's really great. Except for the walk back to my apartment, considering the neighborhood sometimes seems more like Black Hawk Down." Chloe eyed her friend with suspicion as a smirk crossed his face at her reference. "What's so funny?"

Clark looked down at her, and his eyes sparkled. "Nothing. Tell you what; how about I walk you back to your place and we can catch up over some dinner. Okay?"

Chloe smiled. "It would be a pleasure."

An hour later as Chloe tipped the delivery man, Clark carted the large paper bag filled with Chinese food over to the small table in her apartment, his olfactory sensors exploding at the aroma that wafted from the bag. My sense of smell has really gotten better in the last year or so, he wondered to himself as he tore open the bag to retrieve to goods inside. Well, at least I didn't have to go deaf or something for it to happen. He placed Chloe's white rice and egg drop soup to one side as his fingers ripped open the top of his spicy beef with vegetables. Behind him, Chloe shut the door and turned, her face transitioning to an amused smirk as she noticed Clark, his fingers (and the hunk of beef between them) halfway to his mouth.

Clark glanced upwards with a look suggesting he had realized the awkwardness of his position. "What?"

Chloe plopped herself down in the ragged chair on the other side of the table. "Nothing – I guess you really did grow up on a farm."

Clark smiled between bites as Chloe continued, allowing her reporter side to begin to assume control. "So - what exactly have you been doing lately?"

Clark paused, as he tried to phrase the answer in his head. "I've been…helping people. Pretty much going from one place to the next and doing whatever needs to be done."

"For example?"

"Kenya."

Chloe's eyes widened. "You convinced Matubi to give up power? How did you do that?"

"Let's just say that when you punch a hole through a concrete wall at Mach 2 and take out five armed guards in half a second, people tend to do what you ask them."

Clark watched as the realization spread quickly across his friend's face. I didn't think she would have forgotten what I can do. It is kind of one of those things that tends to cement in people's memories.

As if on cue, Chloe continued. "So…have your…abilities changed or anything since Smallville?"

"If anything, they've gotten stronger."

"You know why?"

Clark shrugged. "Don't I wish. I think it's normal – as I get older, I get stronger. But I really don't know."

Chloe shook her head with a smile. "I still can't believe that you, Clark Kent, the most mild-mannered, kind person on Earth, have these incredible powers." She stopped to consider something. "Then again, if the meteor rocks made people into teleporters, shape-shifters and…man, what would you call what Ian Randall could do?"

"I never really thought about it. Self-cloning?"

Chloe chuckled. "He was really an asshole, wasn't he?"

Clark smiled as he took a sip from his glass of water. "Yeah. My dad called him the 'Duplicating Douche.'"

"Hah! That's good. I never saw your dad as the swearing type, though."

"He hides it, but he has quite a vocabulary of profanities. My mom's worse, though."

"That I can't believe. Martha Kent, talking like a South Park character?"

"Hey, she grew up in the city. She has more of a backstory than you want to know."

"I can only imagine. Hey, remember Jordan Cross? Kinda short, awkward kid?" she asked.

"Yeah – I was his guide when he first came to school. How's he doing?"

"Well, apparently he managed to get over that whole awkwardness thing. He got valedictorian this past year, and is going to Harvard this fall."

"Get out. That's awesome! I hoped he was going to be okay."

"I heard a rumor that he can tell the future." Her eyes seemed to sparkle as they always did when the subject turned towards the supernatural.

"Off the record – he used to be able to. Saw him do it a couple times."

"Let me guess – meteor rocks."

"What else?"

Chloe slumped backwards in her chair as she polished off her soup. "Did you ever stop to think how many people in town were affected by those damn things?"

"Not to mention, most of them went psycho. How many kids from our school ended up not graduating because of some meteor phenomenon?" Clark too slumped backwards.

"I actually kept track of it – I was going to do a Torch exposé on it, but the principal shut it down. It ended up being somewhere around 50 kids who ended up getting messed up by them – at least that we knew about."

"All of which, of course, went nuts." Another sip of his water.

Chloe grinned. "Actually, it was only about 45 who went Carrie. There were a few who turned the other way and actually did some good – present company most obvious."

Clark set down his glass as he pursed his lips anxiously. I think I'm gonna have to tell her the truth. If I'm going to be honest, might as well have full disclosure. "Yeah…about that…"

Chloe's face registered her confusion. "About what – your powers? You did get them from the meteors, right?"

Oh boy. This is gonna be rough.

"Not exactly…"

Half an hour later, Chloe Sullivan slumped in her seat, her mind overloaded with facts. She had listened quietly as Clark had talked, revealing things about him that she never would have believed. As he finished, she sat silently, unmoving, unblinking as she struggled to comprehend. Outside, the rumble of a truck downshifting seeped into the apartment.

Clark, hands clasped together as he sat on the edge of his chair, looked over at Chloe. "You okay?"

Chloe blinked out of her reverie. "I'm just…wow. So, let me see if I've got all this right. You are an alien from a planet called Krypton."

"Uh-huh."

"A planet that no longer exists."

"Uh-huh."

"And your spaceship landed the day of the meteor shower."

"Yeah."

"And the meteor rocks can hurt you."

"They're called kryptonite, but yeah."

"And your biological father built the caves under the town."

"No, he just used them – I don't know who built them."

"But he came to Earth forty-five years ago. To Smallville."

"Yeah."

"And he tried to manipulate you into becoming a conqueror of Earth."

"Yup."

"From beyond the grave."

Clark nodded. Chloe pressed on.

"Including giving your dad superpowers to bring you back from Metropolis and sucking you into limbo to brainwash you for three months."

"Uh-huh."

Chloe puffed out her cheeks before blowing them out, something she often did when she was stressed. "Wow. You know, you should really try selling that as a story to some movie studio."

"Believe me, the thought had crossed my mind."

Chloe's gaze shifted off into the distance, as though examining possibilities far beyond what she would have ever imagined before. It was exactly the look Clark had been afraid of. He'd seen it many times before, when she had some story she wanted to break that would change everything. Oh, man.

Clark stood from his chair and walked over next to Chloe before crouching down next to her and taking her hand. "Chloe – listen. I need you to promise me that you're not going to turn this into a story or anything like that. Please."

Chloe looked towards her friend as her face began to blush. "Of course! Our friendship comes first – it always has." Her thoughts raced backwards thought time for a moment. "Despite any indications I ever gave to the contrary.

"Clark, no matter how big a reporter I become, I would never betray your secret. I know how much you want your privacy – your track record certainly speaks to it. I promise, I would never betray that trust."

Clark smiled sincerely. "I appreciate it."

He rose from his position and head over to the apartment's pitiful excuse for a kitchen to refill his glass from the tap as Chloe's brain began putting together pieces of a puzzle that had nagged the back of her brain for years. "It all makes sense now."

Clark didn't turn from the faucet. "What makes sense?"

"Why you and Lana never managed to become anything – between her meteor necklace and how you came here…" She trailed off as her common sense caught up to her mouth. Her face drained of color as she turned towards Clark. His eyes had glazed over, staring into infinity. The water flowed over the sides of his cup and down over his hand, eliciting no response. "Clark…I almost forgot…my God, I'm so sorry-"

The glass shattered in his grip with a crack that made Chloe jump. He let the shards fall harmlessly into the sink as he slowly turned off the water with his other hand. "It's all right." The words came deliberately, barely loud enough to be heard.

Chloe rose from her seat and slowly walked to her friend, approaching as if he were a tiger whose actions were beyond predictability. She gently laid her hand on his shoulder. He stared downwards at the sink, as though seeing the face of someone long gone but never forgotten.

"I can still hear her, sometimes." Clark's voice dripped from his throat. "In my dreams. I hear her cry for me, the same two words. Save me. And I always run as fast as I can to get there." He choked on his own words, stifling the emotion that welled up within him, holding it back as best as he could but knowing even he wasn't strong enough to do it for long. "But I never make it."

Chloe stared at him as a pair of tears fell from his eyes into the sink, mixing with the water and broken glass. All at once, she understood. "That's why you do it, isn't it? Why you've spent the last year running across the world. You're trying to save everyone."

He nodded, a gesture that seemed at once both childlike and mature. Silent tears ran down his cheeks. Chloe pulled him around until he was staring her in the eyes. Her heart cracked straight down the middle at the sight of the strongest, greatest man she ever knew in agony beyond what she had ever known.

"Listen to me, Clark. You can't blame yourself for this. Now, I know you. You are the most responsible man this world - any world – has ever seen. But you don't have to take responsibility for this. It is not your fault. And as someone who knows about people you love leaving you forever, let me tell you: you need to come to grips with this. Even you can't run from this forever."

"I failed her. Just like I told her I'd never do," he sniffled. "I…can't forgive myself, Chloe."

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, deeply, as she felt his sadness spilling into her and threatening her own makeup. "Then let her forgive you."