A/N: For anyone actually trying to place this into a season, you should probably know I've included things from several different seasons in here. I might be including Jason and Lionel.. So there you go. Both in the picture, but Jason's just simmering in the back of my mind for now.
…Also, no riddles in this chapter were created by me, and no credit is therefore claimed. I Googled 'em.
Chapter 7- Man in the Window
Chloe glanced sideways at Lana and Lex as they tailed after Clark. She could barely hear the sound of faint music playing in the theater across the hall from theirs, but Clark seemed to hear it quite clearly. Pondering the mystery of Clark Kent and trying to keep up in her heels was proving more difficult that she could have imagined. She wasn't sure how Lana was pulling it off like such a beauty queen, but it was starting to put Chloe in a foul mood.
"Why don't you just take them off?" Lex asked, looking at Chloe with a hint of impatience. It took her a moment to register what he was saying, and she was glad she hadn't immediately replied. She'd never responded well to "Just take it off."
"Because I'd rather not contract some weird incurable foot fungus," she answered uneasily, gripping the smooth metal railing as she strode up the inclined hallway behind Clark and Lana (who had magically paired up again).
"I mean, yeah, they pretend to clean the floors… But for all we know, they could just be mopping the same spot over and over again. Also, I think they're holding a grudge against me."
He looked curious, so she continued, surprised had slowed his pace just to listen to her.
"The last time Lana and I came here, we got an empty theater. Naturally, I had this crazy idea that we should try to sit down in every seat one at a time as fast as we could. Lana wasn't very good at it; she was worried about getting caught or something. Anyway, the janitor came in about a minute into it and told us to 'sit our asses down or get the hell out!'"
Chloe had to laugh as she remembered the ashamed look on Lana's face.
" Lana was so embarrassed, she wouldn't go to the movies with me for a month."
Lex was looking an interesting medley of amused and apprehensive when she looked to him for a response. Still, at least, one thing he certainly wasn't looking was surprised. She could just imagine his thoughts. Probably something like "why do I waste my time on high school kids?" For a moment, Chloe had to wonder just that. It wasn't like either of the Luthors to engage in normal social activities like movies or casual dinners too often. After all, what kind of business profit would come from that? They were in the public eye, so naturally they treated life outside the mansion as a careful game of chess. If there was one thing she was sure Lex had inherited from Lionel, it was his nature of anticipating every possible event and adapting to it. Whenever she was around him, Chloe got the sense that he planned each action in advance, had a strategy for everything. Occasionally people threw surprises at him, but that was just it; he always accounted for those, too. He never fed anyone pure emotion, only cool indifference with a hint of something deeper. She suspected that his father was the only one who'd seen him with his guard down before. But that made sense when one considered the younger Luthor's childhood. He was still a little boy when his mother passed away, and Chloe knew what it was like to lose a parent. Had that been the last time his father looked at him as a real person, as his son? Was that the day Lionel decided to raise him as an imitation of himself? Maybe even Lex didn't know the answers.
A soft crackling sound accompanied the old classical music as they entered the theater. None of the lights in this room were working, and the hypnotic gray glow of the screen was the only radiance. Crooked lines danced across the screen with the crackling sounds, as though an old black and white film was being played. And yet, there was only blankness. The music grew louder in volume as the four of them stood in the aisle staring at the screen.
"Strange," Lana breathed, barely a whisper since she couldn't seem to muster anything more.
Suddenly aware of the black darkness to her left, Chloe drew automatically closer to Lex and Clark as they stood. The stillness pervading the massive room gave her an uneasy feeling, as though there was something nameless lurking in the aisles. It made her shiver, though the air conditioning was non-operational. The heat had been getting more intense almost in sync with the strange events, and Chloe was finally glad she hadn't dressed too conservatively. Her feet were still slowly killing her, though, and she wished they hadn't cost her forty dollars. There was no way she was leaving them behind.
"This is officially peaking my investigative interest," Chloe added, trying her best to find the humor in the situation. Still, the neurotic feeling of being watched lingered in the back of her mind.
This was no ordinary monsters-under-the-bed kind of feeling, either. There was something sinister in the movement of the lines crackling across the screen, and the music was slightly off, somehow. It all felt a little too coincidental. Honestly, weren't there any other people in Smallville to get caught up in these messes? It seemed like all Smallville's problems singled out her group of friends, Clark in particular. But then again, half the time they went looking for the problems.
Naturally, Chloe surveyed the expressions of her comrades in capture. That was what it felt light, anyway, like being captured. At her right, she could see each of their profiles lit up by the screen, and each was wearing a slightly different face. Clark was a sturdy show of concern and curiosity, his normally boyish features somehow more mature in his concentration. Lana was her typical lovely self, wide eyed and uneasy as she pushed her hair away from her face. Lex was characteristically the most composed of them all, his intrigue illustrated by a slightly raised eyebrow and the start of a smirk. Apparently, he found some part of this entertaining. To Chloe, details were of great importance, and sometimes they made all the difference. For that reason, she noted people's reactions to things and tucked them safely away mentally for later use.
Just as Chloe was about to suggest they move on, the music became slightly louder. Her attention drawn back to the screen, she was surprised to see elegant black letters slowly appearing as though written by some imaginary hand. The cursive went onto a second line just as the image of a black and white door appeared behind the text. A bolded black question mark planted itself firmly on the door, and the text became suddenly white so it was visible against it. When the words finished writing themselves, Chloe could hardly make out the letters and was having trouble reading it. She glanced at Lex who seemed to be a step ahead of her. He read aloud, over the music,
"What force and strength cannot get through
I, with a gentle touch, can do.
Many there are in the twisted halls
Were I not, as a friend, at hand."
As soon as he started, Chloe had taken a notepad and pen from her purse and begun recording his words at light-speed. Somehow, she was sure this was significant, and they didn't know how long the writing would remain onscreen.
"A riddle?" Clark asked with confusion.
"Yes, and most likely a clue," Lex said, not hiding his intrigue as well as before. "Someone wants us to find them."
Chloe could have done without the last part, since she was already bordering on paranoid, but the truth remained. Someone was playing a game and wanted them to be the pawns. The only rule seemed to be that they couldn't leave the movie theater.
Just then, the cursive writing disappeared from the screen to be replaced by the sound of a man's piercing laughter. It was all around them, filling the dark room with its maniacal sound. Chloe finally twisted around to look up at the projector booth and gasped at the eerie silhouette. She grabbed Lex's arm and, without taking her eyes of the window, anxiously tugged until he followed her gaze. The black outline of the man in the top hat raised its arm and waved a gloved hand playfully at them. Since the window was more than halfway up to the ceiling on the back wall, it was impossible to make out any of the features of his face. Then, without warning, the projection booth dimmed to blackness and the screen went blank again. The man in the window was either gone or cloaked in darkness.
"Chloe," Lex said gently, as though she might shatter if he spoke to harshly, "was that the man you saw earlier?"
Her mind still fixed on the riddle and the mysterious man, she only managed a nod.
"Then I'd say he's the creator of our game," he said with an icy edge to his voice. He obviously didn't like playing by someone else's rules.
Lana and Clark had turned around just as the window had gone dark, missing the mystery man by mere seconds.
"You saw him again?" Lana asked with shock as they stumbled down the isle towards the door. "The guy in the hat?"
Chloe nodded again, too busy turning the riddle over in her mind to form a sentence. She glanced down at the scribbled phrases on her notepad as they emerged into the dim hallway, biting her lip as her eyes ran over the words. It was one of those old non-rhyming riddles they used to give out middle school for fun. When there was a holiday break coming and no one felt like working, the teachers used to hand out little crossword puzzles, word searches and such to keep the kids busy. Of course, no one took them seriously back then, but now Chloe was really wishing she'd paid more attention. This one wasn't ringing any bells.
"Can you read it back to us?" Lex asked distractedly as they all stood under one of the fluorescent ceiling lights, glancing at Chloe's notepad.
"Yeah, sure," she answered, "but unless one of us has a hidden talent for deciphering impossible riddles, I don't think it's worth much."
Clark crossed his arms in thought as she began reading each line slowly, and Lana leaned her weight on one leg as she listened.
"What force and strength can not get through," she said, though not as fluidly as Lex had, "I, with a gentle touch, can do." She paused for everyone to think it over.
"So this is one of those 'what am I' riddles, like back in middle school?" Clark said with distaste. Clark had never been fond of the holiday word puzzles, and Chloe could understand that. There was something about searching through three hundred small-print letters for the word "snowman" or "reindeer" that was permanently scarring.
"Yeah. So,… I got nothing on the first part," Chloe sighed, tapping the line on her paper with her thumb. Lex leaned against the glass case of the snackbar behind him, and she couldn't help but admire how polished he looked. Even in the Kansas summer heat, in their compromising situation, he looked like he just stepped off the front page of a magazine. In fact, he'd been on enough Newsweek and People magazine covers for her to know what that was like. Angry Lex, depressed Lex, overjoyed Lex, impious Lex,… they were all nearly identical in appearance but for their subtle trademarks. He was one of those occasions where details made all the difference. She could probably have taken a college course on him and still never mastered the study of his idiosyncrasies. In Chloe's mind, people were rarely so inexplicably complex.
A the ridiculous thought had just popped into her head, and she started to smile. She could see herself frantically scribbling notes from a chalkboard in a lecture hall, trying desperately to understand the professor's lecture on the influences of Lex Luthor. Proffesor, she could see herself asking, I still don't understand the part where he decides to stay in Kansas even though he's one of the richest men in the world. And professor, I didn't understand the chapter on whether or not he actually shampoos his head. And professor,… why always the purple shirt?
She snorted a laugh but quickly realized how out of place it must look. Sure enough, Lana and Clark were staring at her with their "she's weirder than we thought" expressions. Lex was actually looking downright pissed off.
"Forgive me for not seeing the humor in this," he said in a mock apologetic tone.
She straightened up a little more, determined to hold her ground.
"It's not funny," she said flatly, "I was…" she trailed of for a moment.
I was just thinking about all the things I'll never understand about you. Somehow, that came out as,
"Let's just get back to the clue, alright?"
How come I always have to censor myself around him? I'm starting to wish they actually did teach a course on him.
"That's fine," Lex said shortly. Chloe wanted to laugh again at the way he was almost pouting, but she knew it would only cause further problems. An argument was the furthest thing from what they needed right now. They needed to brainstorm, to bounce ideas of each other until the answer revealed itself. Unfortunately, that would require staying on his good side.
"You seem like the most qualified person to do the mental detective work, here," she said with a smirk, handing him the notepad.
He hesitated a moment, apparently wavering between the want to shun her and the need to figure the message out. Finally, he took the notepad in one hand and skimmed the words with careful gray eyes. He definitely knew what he was looking for, even if Chloe didn't. That was what she liked about; he didn't share all his secrets. That was what annoyed her about Clark, because Clark was so obvious. She hated having something to investigate right in front of her face and not being allowed to do it. Lex's secrets were understated by his actions, his words only implications of their true meaning. Someone like that deserved her reporters' attention.
A/N: TBC… as in, the next chapter is flipping amazing, so stay tuned. (Comments are greatly appreciated. I'd like to know where people want this to go… I think that would be fun!)