"So now what?" Bug whispered.
They were sitting on the Kents' front porch. Chloe was curled up on the swing, wrapped in a blanket, fast asleep. Clark was fighting to keep his eyes open, looking out on the darkened barnyard as he sipped a cup of coffee. Bug sat beside him on the steps. She glanced over at him as she spoke and pushed her glasses up on her nose. It was a habitual gesture Clark was getting used to the more time he spent with her.
"I don't know. I've been turning everything around in my head and coming up with few answers."
"Have you considered giving up?"
He looked down into his mug. "Yes."
"And what stops you?"
"The fact that this is wrong, Bug. Your Lex shouldn't be dead. In my world, I may be dead. That can't happen. Others may be hurt if I don't fix it."
"What if you can't fix it, Clark? Then what will you do? What if the person who killed Lex comes after you?"
"I'll just have to leave Smallville, try to stay ahead of him, and keep trying to make things right. I don't know, that's all I can do."
She looked away into the night. "Chloe doesn't believe you. You know that don't you? She's worried. She thinks you're sick so she's humoring you."
"I know."
As she turned, the lights from the porch glinted on Bug's glasses. She glanced up at him, studied his face before speaking. "I believe you," she said softly. "You aren't the person I knew. We grew up together, me, Corbin, and Clark, so I know. He always called me Bug and made fun of me. Corbin made him stop. He wasn't as kind as you are. That was Corbin. Corbin was always kind to me, he never called me Bug. He called me Laura." She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, hugging herself. "He used to watch me from the loft. He had a telescope up there and sometimes he'd flash a flashlight out the window. I'd come over and we'd look at the stars."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. We never told anybody. It was our secret. He said when we got to High School he'd give me his ring, and then it wouldn't be a secret anymore." Her voice cracked a little. "I miss him."
Clark put his cup down on the little table next to his mother's rocking chair, and moved his chair closer to the steps. Bug's hair was shorter, but just as soft as Lana's. Beneath his hand he could feel her shivering, but not from the cold. At his touch she turned to look up at him, and he hooked a finger around one corner of her glasses, pulling them away from her face.
Her eyes were Lana's eyes, filled with tears that ran down Lana's face. She blinked up at him and wiped the tears away with the back of one hand.
"Don't wake up Chloe," she said.
He smiled. "I'm not the one crying."
She took her glasses away from him, but held them folded in her hands instead of replacing them on her face. "I told you I believed you, and I do. I've been trying to figure out if I want you to stay, or if I want you to go back."
"What did you decide?"
"I want you to go back, Clark. You don't belong here, and if you stay..."
"If I stay, what?"
Bug wiped at her eyes, and put her glasses back on. "Chloe wants to break up with Whitney. She's always liked you. I think she might like this version better."
Clark leaned back in his chair and regarded her solemnly. "Like you do?"
Turning back to look out across the yard, Bug shrugged. "Chloe gets what she wants. She's got that confidence, you know? I don't try to compete with that." Abruptly she stood, glancing over her shoulder with a small smile. "It's late. I should go."
He raised his fingers in a small wave, but he smiled at her. "Thank you for your help, Bug."
"No probs."
As she skipped lightly down the last stair and moved off toward the hulking black form of the hearse, Clark called to her softly.
"Laura?"
She stopped. "Yeah?"
"Where I come from, I love you," he said, and added quickly, "If that's any consolation."
Her smile told him it was.
Three weeks passed since the midnight excursion to examine the remains of Lex's car and they were no closer to solving the mystery. In fact, they seem to have hit a brick wall.
Clark was certainly no help. In the past weeks he'd gotten his casts off and was busy learning how to walk again with the help of crutches and a lot of extraordinarily painful physical therapy. It exhausted him and made him grumpy. More than that the frustration of being trapped in such a weak body was slowly driving him mad. He was also still suffering from migraine headaches. Frequently Chloe or Bug would come over to see him and he would be asleep.
During one physical therapy session he'd broken down into tears.
Okay, I'm tired of being normal. I just want to go home!
He decided then that it was time to get back to the case. Clark called Chloe over, and the two of them now sat at the Kents' kitchen table leafing through Chloe's notebook. She tapped her pencil against the paper as she spoke.
"So you're not in your right mind, or body as the case may be. Lex is dead, presumably from some sort of alien poison produced by the meteorites. Lionel is proving to be unaccessible." With a chuckle she rolled her eyes at him. "There is no spaceship in your parents' storm cellar."
"We haven't checked out the caves yet. That's where it happened, where I got zapped."
Chloe screwed up her face in a "pondering" expression. Both eyebrows went up, however, after only a moments thought, meaning she was back to doubting Clark's sanity. She tended to waffle between believing Clark's wild tale, and wanting to ship him off to Belle Reve.
"Clark there are no caves, this is Kansas. If you haven't noticed, which you should have considering you live on a farm, it's pretty flat. If you don't believe me," she added, seeing Clark's scowl, "ask Bug. If there are caves, there are bats, and she's all about bats these days."
Clark sighed wearily.
From the other room Clark could hear the sounds of a football game and Martha's quiet comments as she worked on the finances. There was another worry. This Kent family struggled even more with money, and were drowning under the burden of Corbin and Clark's medical bills. If he set things right, would that change? And what was going on in his own world? From little hints he'd been given here and there, this world's Clark had a few issues. What would happen if he were running around in that other world with Clark's abilities?
Don't think about that. Just concentrate on figuring this out and get it resolved. One thing at a time.
Chloe quietly got up from her seat. Clark heard the fridge open and close and she brought him a glass of iced tea. "You look like you needed it," she said. "For someone supposedly on the mend, you look pretty rough, Clark."
He sighed again, and took a sip of the tea. "Chloe," he said quietly. "I just want to figure out what's going on. No, I need to figure out what's going on."
She regarded him solemnly. "And if it turns out this is just some sort of weird side effect of your head injury?"
Clark's chest hurt at the very thought. He had no choice but to nod. "Then I'll accept it. I'll have to."
Chloe's expression was pained. "Clark, we've got zilch," she said sympathetically.
"We've still got the caves. I'm sure that's where we'll find some answers. For all we know, I'm still lying there in the dirt!" He cocked his head and attempted a weak smile. "Well, sort of."
"Right." Leaning over, Chloe picked up her bag from the floor. "Look, tomorrow's Saturday, right? Whitney and I are going to the Met U game in Metropolis tomorrow evening. I'll tell him I feel like taking in some fall color and we'll go exploring. Okay?"
"Okay. Thanks, Chlo." Clark smiled as she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I thought you and Whitney..."
She shook her head. "I know, I know. On again, off again. I just...can't do that to him, Clark."
"Yeah."
Lana never could either.
"I'll see ya."
"Chloe, wait!"
She turned around halfway toward the door. "Yes?"
"Be careful out there. When Pete and I found the caves before, we ran into a shape-shifting girl."
"Shapeshifting?"
"Werewolf."
Chloe's face fell.
"Clark, please talk to your doctor."
He gave her a look of his own. "I'm fine Chloe. Honest. Just...keep humoring me. For now."
After a pause, she nodded. "Okay, I'm trusting you on this, but only because you're my friend."
Clark missed Bug, and not in the same way he would have missed Lana. It worried him. He thought he might like Bug better. Somehow that felt like a betrayal, even though he and Lana weren't officially together and Bug was still...Lana. It occurred to him to wonder if Chloe wasn't feeling similarly conflicted. She had liked the other Clark, but he'd definitely sensed a similar attraction toward himself.
Bug wasn't so charitable when it came to the other Clark. He was too rowdy, too rough, and sometimes his fuse burned too quickly. The only thing they seemed to agree upon had been their affection for Corbin. Clark and his brother had been very close.
He gritted his teeth as he crutched his way down the ramp and out into the yard. Both legs were out of their casts, but he wore braces designed to help support him while he regained his strength. If he couldn't play football before, he certainly couldn't now. He was so full of metal he'd never be able to fly without setting airport security on its ear.
The stairs to the loft were still off limits as far as Jonathan and Martha were concerned. Clark, however, missed his solitude. He planned on making it up those stairs if he had to scootch up backward on his ass. Martha's cell phone was in his back pocket just in case he fell.
Maybe I'll give Laura a call and see if she'll come over. Get her away from her bats for a while
Bug was definitely not Lana by any stretch of the imagination, but Clark did find her attractive physically, and although he hated to admit it, he was getting used to her quirks. This Chloe, despite the occasional reminder that she ran with the popular crowd (Clark's Chloe would never have dreamed of such a thing.) was enough like his own that their comraderie came easily. Likewise he had a fairly easy friendship with this world's Pete.
But Bug had taken some effort, and Clark was finding that effort well worth the rewards.
I really like her.
But I really like Chloe too.
He winced. It all left him unsure about how he felt regarding either girl, and that being a familiar predicament, gave him some measure of comfort.
At the barn doors he stopped, withdrawing the cell phone from his pocket. If anything she could help him get up the stairs to the loft. He started to dial.
Just as he realized her phone number might not be the same as Lana's, Clark heard the screech of tires as a car left the paved road and started up Hickory Lane in a cloud of dust. He stopped in mid stride. The car was big, and it was coming up fast.
"Hey!"
Bug jerked the wheel and the big Caddy that was her hearse slid sideways and came to a stop, spraying Clark with gravel. It's engine roared as she rolled down the window. "Clark! Quick! Get in!"
"Laura! What's going on?"
She scrambled out of the driver's seat and hurried to help him maneuver himself into the car, literally snatching his crutches out of his hands and hurling them into the back as soon as his butt met the seat.
"Chloe found those caves! She just called me." Her eyes, already huge behind her thick glasses, grew bigger. "And she found something else too!"
"What?"
Bug slammed the door shut without answering his question. When she resumed her position behind the wheel, he repeated it. He also hung on for dear life as she spun the car around and tore off back down the lane.
"I don't know, she wouldn't say, but she sounded funny, scared kinda, and Chloe doesn't scare easily."
"I know that," Clark muttered. "I thought she went with Whitney? Don't tell me she went hunting for those caves on her own!"
Nodding, Bug pushed her glasses up her nose. "Whitney had to work at his Dad's store this morning. He couldn't go. I..." She blushed. "Overslept."
Clark chuckled. "Out with your bats again?"
The blush deepened. "Yeah."
"I'm surprised you didn't find those caves first!"
"Judging from the directions Chloe gave me, nobody would have ever known they were there. They're part of an old Indian reservation in a conservation area. Frankly, nobody is allowed to poke around in there." Her gaze left the road for a moment to look at Clark. "Clark I'm not sure you're going to be able to get to them on crutches."
He gritted his teeth. "I'll get to them."