(8/14)
No one had been in trouble, but Clark couldn't take anymore. He paced his apartment, convinced more than ever that Lois Lane did not exist. Chloe Sullivan was alive and well, and he didn't know what to do. Everything added up upon closer inspection, and even though he felt he might have slightly violated her privacy by checking out certain things, he felt he had to do it.
She did a good job with makeup, but he could still see the moles on her left cheek that only Chloe could have. Just to be certain, he had used his x-ray vision while she was walking away. She possessed a birth mark in a place only Chloe could.
He wanted to tell her he knew and he wanted to yell at her at the same time. He understood her reasons, but wondered if she understood exactly how many lives she had destroyed by faking her own death.
Why hadn't she come to him for help?
Things hadn't been the best between them at that point, he remembered, and he had been too wrapped up in himself and Lana's impending departure to think about what kind of danger she was really in. Chloe had never voiced her concerns to him, but then she rarely had. She was always trying to take care of herself, and put on a strong face for the world.
Surely if she had asked for a little assistance they could have taken less drastic measures to save her life.
It didn't matter now. Apparently she had done what she felt she had to do, and he really had no right to blame her.
Now he needed to prove his suspicions were right.
He was at her apartment in under a minute and he impatiently knocked on her door. It was midnight, but if he was right, she wouldn't be asleep. She never was before three in the morning.
Lois was startled by knocking on her door and wondered who would be at her place this late. She was curled up on her couch in her pajamas, perfectly content with Mulder and Scully as company, but she got up to check the peephole anyway.
She groaned when she saw Clark's face. He couldn't see her. Her contacts were out, and he was already acting weird, besides the superhero thing. But, if she didn't answer the door he might break it down, and she could live without that.
Finally she decided to open the door, see what he wanted, and hope the dim light would protect her. There didn't seem to be an alternative.
When she finally opened the door, Clark looked her up and down without a word. The white and blue striped pajamas and the ponytail never registered once he saw her face.
Her blue-gray eyes - Chloe's eyes - looked up at him questioningly.
He didn't know what happened, but something inside of him snapped, and the next thing he knew his lips were on hers, she was in his arms, and he swung them both inside her apartment, shutting the door with his foot.
Her arms had gone around his waist, trying to steady herself, but she fell into his kiss.
Clark had her up against the wall and he felt he was pouring every emotion he had into their kiss. All of the loss, longing, passion, anger, grief, and love he had experienced in the last seven years was in that kiss, and when he finally broke it, the girl beneath him was desperately gasping for air.
Her fists were clutched in the front of his denim jacket as she asked furiously, "What the hell do you think you're doing, Clark?"
"I don't know, Chloe."
She looked stricken. "I'm not my cousin, Kent." She tried to push him away, but she might as well have been battling a brick wall.
"You can drop the act. I know who you are."
Tears were welling up in her eyes, but her voice was deadly calm. "Get off of me. Now."
He took a step back and she removed herself from between him and the wall.
Her cover was blown. What was she going to do now?
"You don't know anything."
"I know that I've thought you were dead for the last seven years."
"Chloe Sullivan is dead. You need to accept that and move on." The pain in her eyes was one thing she would never be able to deny.
"Have you?" he shot back.
"I've had to let go of a hell of a lot of things. Don't act like you have any idea what that's like."
"Do you have any idea what that did to the people who cared about you?"
"Oh, no. Don't you even go there, Clark. What I did was for everyone's sake, not just mine. My dad might think I'm dead, but if I hadn't done this, he really would be. I decided living his life without me would be better for him than not living at all. If the Luthors had had their way, that is exactly what would've happened. My dad would never have been safe as long as they thought I was alive. They weren't interested in him; they'd already ruined him sufficiently. Lionel wanted me out of his hair for good."
"I wasn't just talking about your father."
"Did you care, Clark?" She narrowed her eyes, the bitterness finally choosing to arrive. "Did you really? Because I don't seem to remember you offering to help me out of the mess I was in. You said you would always be there for me, you would always protect me, but where were you? A simple 'Chloe, can I help?' would've meant everything, even if I hadn't accepted.
"But that didn't happen, did it? You were too busy losing your mind over Lana leaving, and God knows what else, to notice that the Luthors probably had it out for me. I put Lionel in prison, did you think they were just gonna let that go?"
He had absolutely no idea what to say, though a million things had rushed through his mind only minutes earlier.
"You know what? It doesn't matter. I was a stupid, selfish teenager, and I got myself into a colossal mess. I was the only one that could get myself out of it, and I did. I think we're both pretty clear on what would happen if Lex found out I was still hanging out in his backyard. As far as he's concerned, Chloe Sullivan died to protect your secrets and her father. End of story."
"Hardly," Clark said. "You want me to just walk out of here and pretend I never figured out the truth?"
"I don't care what you do as long as you walk out of here," she said, but her voice indicated she was running out of steam.
"I can't do that."
"Would you rather fly?" She fixed him with a glare.
Her question made his heart drop.
At his silence she gave a mirthless laugh.
"I'm not the only one that has a secret identity, now am I? I've got news for you, buddy. I knew you before the glasses and the geek act."
"So are you gonna run and write an exclusive for the Planet?"
Her eyes practically shot fire. "If I had one of those meteor rocks, you'd be in a lot of trouble right now."
"I guess I'm lucky they've been 'eradicated', at least according to our mutual friend, Lex."
"Like hell they have. You might be out of luck yet," she said nastily.
Things were escalating to a point he had never wanted or expected them to go and he wanted it to end.
"I didn't mean that. I'm sorry," he said. He should have known better, but his anger at her deceit had taken over.
"Didn't you, Clark? You never trusted me. Not they way you should have. Not the way I wanted you to."
"It wasn't that, Chloe." This time she physically winced at the sound of her real name. "I couldn't tell anyone. My parents knew, and that was it. Until Pete found out, but that was accidental, and it almost cost him his life. I couldn't lay that on anyone else; not intentionally. There were too many people like the Luthors that would have gladly used my friends against me. Lionel tried to, and you didn't even know anything."
"I didn't know much. I always knew you were strange."
He would have to give her that. "We have a lot to talk about."
"You always were the king of the understatement."
He smiled at that, and she tried to reciprocate, but failed miserably. Her tears were back, and he could see the anger draining from her body.
She desperately tried to wipe them away, but only wound up with her face in her hands. "Dammit, Clark, how did everything get so screwed up?"
He took two steps forward and carefully drew her into his arms. "I don't know. We were kids trying to act like adults. It turns out we really didn't know everything."
"No kidding," she sobbed into his chest.
He held her tighter and closed his eyes, feeling her, breathing her. He was so happy she was alive, but it hadn't really sunk in. It had only been minutes since he had received confirmation and it all seemed too much like one of his dreams.
Except the woman currently soaking his shirt front couldn't be a dream. She was too much of a mess, and so was he.
He picked her up as if she were a rag doll and carried her to the couch. He set her down, gathered some Kleenex, and took a seat beside her.
"Brand new woman, still a crier," she tried to laugh through her tears.
"Here," he handed her a tissue. "It's okay. I wouldn't blame you if you cried for awhile."
"You're not still angry?"
"We'll get into that later."
Chloe sighed. "My life is a disaster, Clark. And I just knew it was going to get messier the day you walked back into my life."
"You say that as if I were a trouble magnet."
"Shut up." She curled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.
"You have everything you ever wanted, Chloe. Just not exactly how you wanted it."
"Clark, none of it means anything when you're on the run. You ought to know at least that much."
"You didn't run very far."
"Yeah, well, he didn't think it would be a good idea to run that far. Something about hiding in plain sight," she said, wiping her eyes and wadding up the tissue.
"'He'?" Clark asked.
TBC