"Clark, are you all right? You look sick." He felt sick, of course; it was the Kryptonite. He was finding it difficult to keep away from the stuff while at the same time keeping Lana from learning its effect on him. Earlier, he'd grabbed a spade from the barn and deepened a natural depression in the ground a few yards away from the house, then turned the hose on it, making a pool of water. Lana had added the Kryptonite, taking a mallet to it and breaking it up into a number of pieces. The downed power and telephone lines lay next to the pool; Clark wore a pair of thick rubber gloves, ostensibly to protect him from the live power cable. A wave of nausea hit him again, harder this time; he went down on one knee and crawled off to the side, finally getting to a safe distance and collapsing in a sweaty heap.
"Clark!" Lana was beside him. "That's it; I'm taking you to the hospital."
"No, no." He felt okay--he'd just tell her he had a stomach bug and...boy, this was ridiculous. Enough, already--what did it matter, now? "No, I'm fine, really. It's just...the meteor rock. I get sick when I'm too close to it."
She looked puzzled. "What? Since when?"
"Since always." He could hardly believe he was telling her this, but he was beyond caring, at the moment.
"Always? But..." She thought back over the years--memories of Clark retreating from her with a pained expression on his face flooded in. "The necklace I wore...oh, Clark, you idiot. Why didn't you just tell me? Is it...some kind of allergy?"
"Not quite. It's complicated, but I'll tell you later. I'll tell you, I promise, but, right now, can we just..."
"Yeah. Okay." Lana looked at him pensively. Doubt hit him, along with his instinct toward secrecy--had that been a good idea? Maybe not, but he found that he badly wished he had told Chloe, now that she was dead.
"Clark? Who was home, yesterday at..." She looked at her watch. "11:45?"
"I thought of that--my mom was here all day, and the machine will pick up if she can't answer the phone for some reason. What are you going to say?"
She thought for a moment. "We can't assume that it will be like before, that the call will go back exactly one day into the past. The call won't be recorded, most likely--"
Clark saw her point, and broke in. "Right--we knew what time you were...going to die, by that basketball game in the background, on the radio."
"And we don't know how much time we'll have; the message has to be short. 'Keep Chloe off the highway on April twenty-fourth,' does that sound good?"
Clark agreed, and there was nothing else either of them could think of--they were ready. Lana asked hesitantly, "Clark, are you all right to do the wires? Maybe I should--"
"No, stay there. I can do it--I'll be fine." Lana's death by electrocution would be the perfect end to a perfect day, he thought bitterly. He walked a circuitous path to where the wires lay on the gravel, while Lana dialed the first six digits of the Kents' number. The two of them nodded at each other, then Lana punched in the seventh as Clark stepped forward and dropped the lines into the pool--his knees buckled and he quickly lurched away. Green-tinged electricity crackled across the surface of the water. He heard the phone ring from inside the house once, twice, and now Lana was shouting into her cell-phone.
"Mrs. Kent!" she cried, and then delivered the message. She began to repeat it, but stopped. "Hello? Mrs. Kent?" The phone had gone dead, and the ringing from inside had stopped.
"Lana?"
"No service--now it says no service. Clark, I heard your mom's voice, I know I did. Damn it, the signal was at full a second ago." As occupied as his mind was with the fate of Chloe and the laws of time and space, Clark couldn't help but smile at Lana's mild and very rare expletive. He walked over to her. The sky darkened, as if a cloud had passed before the sun.
"Lana, look." The pool had stopped crackling--evidently the power was out.
She turned to him. "Oh. What do we do now, Clark?"
"I don't know." He took her hand. "Let's sit down." They walked over to the porch and sat beside one another on the bench. She shivered. The temperature had dropped; it was no longer a nice spring day. He took off his jacket and gave it to her.
"I heard your mom's voice, Clark, and I think she heard me; I heard her say my name. Do you think it worked?"
The sky was still getting darker--now it seemed like early evening, though no moon was visible. "Yeah, I think it did," he replied. Before they started this, they put Shelby inside to keep him out of the way--he was barking now, and scratching at the door. Lana let him out, and he ran to Clark, whined, and looked at him plaintively. Being scratched behind the ears and told that he was a good dog soothed him, and he crawled under the bench and lay down.
Lana sat. "What's going to happen to us?" She sounded scared, and Clark put his arm around her. He felt a twinge of panic, and tried to quell it. Was there a difference between ceasing to exist, and dying?
"We'll be all right," he said, trying to convince himself. "It will be like...going to sleep, and when we wake up, it'll be yesterday and Chloe will be alive."
She nestled in close to him. "Will it, she asked, unsure. She looked out at the empty road and the fields beyond, and said, "I wonder if Adam ever actually did shoot me? Or did you always get to me in time?" Clark started to say something, but she stopped him. "Forget it; it doesn't matter. Clark, before, you promised you'd tell me...about the meteor rocks..."
"I always wanted to tell you," he said, not entirely believing it.. He paused; this was hard. He wasn't going to have to deal with the ramifications of telling her, and still he could barely bring himself to do it. He suddenly felt ashamed, and spat it out. "The rocks hurt me because I come from the same place as they do. I came to Earth with them, in the meteor shower."
"Came to Earth?" She pulled away, and Clark thought, I knew it, I knew it, I was right all along not to tell. She'll think you're a freak, she'll hate you for killing her parents...at least I was right about that, if nothing else.
She studied his face in the failing light. It sounded absurd, but she believed him, of course, and a thousand pieces fell into place for her. So that was it. She felt tired, and sad--all that wasted time, all of that angst. And it would continue, for the Lana of yesterday. How did she feel about him now? She didn't know, really, but she didn't want to be alone, so she took his arm and put it back around her, and leaned against him once more.
"That's interesting," she said. The last of the light faded away, and they were surrounded by darkness, and silence. All they could feel was each other, the bench, and the floor beneath their feet. Clark held her tighter--he was crying gently..
And suddenly everything was gone, including them.
------------
"Clark, honey?" Martha Kent looked slightly perplexed as she addressed her son, who had just come in the door. "I got the strangest telephone call a little while ago--it sounded like Lana, but I could barely hear her. Then I called her back, but she said she didn't know anything about it."
"Huh. What did she say, the first time?" She told him, and then the phone rang. He answered it, and Lana said, "Clark! I'm glad you're there; I was going to leave a message for you with your mom. Did she tell you--"
"Yeah, she did."
"A static-filled call from me that I don't remember making; what does that remind you of?"
-----------
Chloe Sullivan gave her dad a kiss on the cheek and bounded downstairs and out the door into the bright sunshine--no April showers today in Smallville. She made a beeline for her car--she had finally found a man who could help her with a story she'd been running to earth for weeks, but he was in Metropolis and would only talk face-to-face. To her surprise, and pleasure, her friends Clark Kent and Lana Lang were standing by her car.
"Hey, you guys look like you're waiting for me! Anyone up for a road trip to Metropolis?"
They smiled. Lana said, "We were thinking more along the lines of coffee at the Talon."
"Can't today--tomorrow, though, definitely. Gotta go, there's a guy in the city--really, Clark, I'm going to need you to move." He was blocking her access to the driver's-side door, and showed no inclination to budge. "A quick cup of coffee," he said, still smiling. "Come on, Chloe, when have you ever been able to pass that up?"
"Honestly, Clark, any other time--"
"We insist," said Lana. Chloe looked at her, then back at Clark, who nodded firmly. "Okay, fine, you win," she said, only a little annoyed, "but what's with the strong-arm treatment? I know I'm a delight to be around, but really, you're just this side of freaking me out." The three friends walked up the street, and Lana began, "Do you remember Adam Knight?"
END