A/N:This chapter… Well, I liked writing it, but it's very much a history lesson into Clark's origins… which means it's not a lot of my own… which I'm not sure I like…

Chapter 2

Chloe turned around, leaving the door wide open. "Is that the only reason why you'd bother to come and visit?" She could feel the sharp stab of disappointment and a bitter taste formed in the back of her throat.

"Chlo, if that was true, would I have bothered to bring flowers?" Clark stepped into the apartment and quietly shut the door. "Plus, you've only been here for maybe a couple of months!"

"Semantics," she muttered, trying to straighten up her apartment inconspicuously.

"Chloe, sit down," Clark said quietly, grabbing her arm and guiding her to her sofa. "It's not like I care if your apartment is messy. Where do you keep your vases?" After receiving her muttered instructions, he took some time to do such a little domestic chore that might allow Chloe time to calm down and be more rational. When he finally finished, he came and sat next to her. "I suppose I can't really blame you for your reaction. I shouldn't have started out the way I did…"

"Gee, ya' think?" Chloe bit out. She knew she was being unreasonable, but her reminiscence from earlier had suddenly made her extremely touchy. She took a deep a breath. "Clark, I'm sorry… You just caught me…"

"At a bad time. Yeah, I figured." He smiled gently. "That always seems to be my problem…"

Chloe laughed. "Clark, if you didn't have the gift of showing up when it was most inconvenient for the bad guys…" She shuddered slightly. If Clark didn't have his impeccable sense of timing, she would have been dead ten times over or more. Even tonight, it was a rather good thing he'd shown up. "I'm glad you're here. What's going on?"

Clark looked at her for a long minute, his face gone from teasing to serious in .000001 second. "Chloe, I didn't know who else to turn to… Who else could help me find the answers…?" He started wringing his hands together and Chloe was glad he'd put the flowers away or she'd have flower goo all over her sofa.

She placed her small hand over his and he stilled. She turned his face so he'd look at her. "Clark… Just tell me."

Clark took a deep breath. "OK, so you remember when we came back from the Fortress?"

Chloe shuddered in remembrance. "I was so glad when we left… I was so sure I would never be warm again!"

Clark laughed, which lightened the mood somewhat. "Jor-El wasn't very nice to sweep you up in his portal in your summer graduation finest!"

"It's not like he was that concerned about what happened to me…" Chloe frowned. She wasn't fond of Clark's birth father and what he had done to those nearest and dearest to her heart… Let alone the demands he had put on Clark…

Clark drew her into a shoulder hug and she was warmed by his concern… both then and now. "And you remember that I had to swear to him that I'd come back to learn more…"

"Right!" Chloe bit out. "He wants you to learn how to rule the world…"

Clark stood up suddenly, but still made sure that Chloe wasn't just thrown aside. As he began to pace, Chloe could feel his indecision and conflicts. She knew that Clark had initially rebelled against Jor-El out of loyalty to Jonathan Kent. No wonder he was feeling conflicted if he was reconsidering his opinion of Jor-El. "I'm not sure that's actually what he wants…"

Even with that, she was still shocked. "Excuse me? Didn't he tell you point-blank?" She felt flabbergasted at that radical a change of attitude and she wanted to play the devil's advocate so he would be forced to look at all the angles for this one.

Clark looked at her and sighed. "The only reason why we think that is because that voice said he was Jor-El. I knew him as a baby, but I don't remember him. But he sent me here to save me… and he'd come here and loved here as well. Why would he want me to change that culture and make it mirror a society that ignored their planetary danger to the point that I'm the only survivor?"

Chloe could only stare. "How in the world do you know all that?" she whispered, stricken at the stupidity of such a supposedly "advanced" society.

"You know that the entire summer I've been going back and forth to the Fortress…" He paused and smiled. "Have I told you how much I love to fly?"

Chloe burst into peals of laughter. "You haven't taken me again… like you promised…" She pretended to pout. She knew he was purposefully delaying their discussion, but she wasn't that anxious to start it up.

"Ah, Chlo!" he sighed. "You know I've been busy…" He had never been able to be strong against the force of her pouts.

"Too busy for your best friend?" She lowered her eyes so he couldn't see the twinkle she knew was lurking there.

"Chloeee!" Clark drawled, obviously reluctant to continue playing the game. "You're interrupting the story." They both laughed, which was a nice release. She patted the sofa next to her and he sank down. They let the silence spread before they delved into a story thatcould only enforce Clark's feeling of being alien and alone. "The Library has a number of video-style records and this summer has been all about learning Kryptonian history, really. And I found one that I think was somehow snuck in…"

"Snuck in? Seriously?" Chloe looked at him, her eyes round with surprise. "Why? Why would they sneak it in? Why would they need to? Why would you think that they had? Just… Why?"

"Well, you know how people are… Everyone wants to be viewed in the best possible light. But the records of the days and months leading to the explosion… It's focused on Jor-El and his struggles with the government. It helps that the House of El has always been a house of scientists and historians with a fierce need for discovering and revealing the truth."

Chloe thought about this for a moment. All of a sudden Clark's skill as a journalist and investigator became clear. He was bred for it…

"It was really nice to find it because I was able to learn and see more about my family. Jor-El was a dedicated scientist and he's the one that foundthe initial chemical imbalance of the planet's core. He reported it to the Council and they rejected his findings by the insistence of the planet-wide computer system..."

"They had a planet-wide…?" she interrupted, while Clark finished with "…Braniac…" They stared at each other a moment before Chloe began to giggle. "Braniac? Are you serious?"

Clark grinned. "I know. I had a hard time with it myself initially. I was really thrown with a fit of giggles and had to pause the playback." He smiled, but it quickly drained off his face. "Braniac pretty much controlled the planet without much Kryptonian involvement. Supposedly, he made life easier for them by controlling day to day decisions which left them open to work on scientific and artistic breakthroughs."

"So he really controlled Krypton…" The name of Clark's planet didn't necessarily trip off her tongue with ease.

"Exactly… and monitored the health of the planet. So when he said Jor-El's calculations were wrong, everyone accepted that… including Jor-El. But what Braniac didn't count on was Jor-El's dedication to finding where he'd made his mistake so he could make sure he wouldn't make the same mistake again. He rechecked his numbers with the help of my mother Lara and decided he needed to take a physical reading, which was very unusual."

"How did they do their research then?" Chloe asked. She couldn't seem to wrap her mind around the concept since she was always "getting dirty" in pursuit of article research.

"Chlo, you really aren't getting the picture of the Kryptonians. They were a hyper-sterile society. Most births were really test-tube babies of the true "test-tube" variety. All research was done with Braniac's data." He sighed. "They thought they had fulfilling existences but to us it would have been like living in a prison. Braniac monitored everything to monitor any deviations from what had been pre-determined as Kryptonian perfection."

"What would happen if you were considered 'deviant'?" Chloe asked breathlessly, dreading the answer she knew was coming.

"You were sentenced to behavior modification therapy if it was considered 'dangerous'… and if you refused the therapy or were resistant to it, you were sent somewhere…" His brow wrinkled. "I don't really understand what that means precisely, but you were put somewhere called 'The Phantom Zone'. It sounds like their version of a prison colony." He grimaced again. "Some deviations were considered 'acceptable' and the person was usually humored as we would humor a retarded person… but we're really off-track."

"It's just really interesting," Chloe said, feeling a little guilty for taking up their time with a history lesson. But it's not like we're really in some sort of big rush or anything…

Clark smiled. "I'm glad you're interested. My folks… well, mainly Dad… would rather pretend that Krypton is an imaginary place and I'm really just a meteor-affected Earthling."

"I can see why he'd prefer that. Krypton hasn't really been great for your family… besides providing you, of course." She smiled at him and was glad when he returned it. She knew Martha and Jonathan Kent would have suffered many more horrors just to have the chance to raise this b… man. "And I know I can't do an article or something on this, but I've been researching my Wall of Weird for so long that to learn about the origins of the meteor rocks is waaaayyy too tempting!"

Clark grinned at his friend… and she had always been a true friend… even when he didn't know it. She was showing superhuman restraint considering she had the top story in the history of the world in her hot little hands. "Listen, Chlo. How 'bout I bring you back to the Fortress and you can go through all the historical records."

Chloe jumped onto her knees and squealed, looking like a 10-year old just given the surprise of her life. I'll just have to dress better this time and maybe I can convince Clark to help me bring a gas-powered heater… "Seriously? Are you sure?" Clark grinned and nodded. He was surprised (but really shouldn't be considering Chloe is who she is…) to have a bundle of blonde energy in his arms. He smiled and held her close, almost surprised at how nice she felt in his arms… and how humbled he was to have her as a friend. He shut off the part of his brain that was insisting on recognizing the chemical attraction. He was ever aware that a romantic relationship with Chloe had too much potential for disaster. She pulled back and looked at him with worried eyes. "Won't Jor-El object?" In her eyes, there showed a disappointed look but also the determination not to cause him further trouble.

Clark's grin widened. "If you let me finish my story…" Chloe immediately disengaged herself and sat beside him, emanating her fullest attention. "Okay, so Jor-El took his physical readings and they confirmed his previous findings. His only conclusion was that there was something wrong with Braniac."

Chloe gasped. "How did he plan on fixing Braniac when he controlled the planet and refused to acknowledge he was malfunctioning?"

He nodded. "That's what I thought. But Jor-El was smart." Chloe heard the note of pride in his voice and hid a small smile. Boy, this change of heart really goes deep… "Ever since he'd come back from Earth, he'd been dissatisfied with Braniac's constant surveillance. So he came up with a way to bypass that security occasionally… To do so constantly would have definitely raised suspicion. So he found a backdoor into Braniac. But he didn't want to be found at his home checking on the super-computer… so he went to the main facility. What he found was that Braniac had decided that all of Krypton was deviant from the pre-defined perfection previously programmed in and had therefore set Krypton's destruction in motion."

"So no Robotic Law #1?"

"Nope. He'd taken on himselfthe roles ofjudge, jury and executioner. Jor-El knew that Braniac would just deny his new findings… and there was no way for him to correct Braniac's programming… so he started printing out his findings, hard copy. But because that was so unusual, it alerted Braniac, who then sent robot sentries to get Jor-El. Thankfully, his backdoor entry system allowed him to escape."

Chloe was spellbound and Clark smiled. She tried to pull herself together. "So Jor-El was able to defeat Braniac? Was he erased?"

"Actually, no. Braniac hadn't been planning on dying with the planet, so he set up programming to continue the every day activities of the Kryptonians and told the Council that he was going to instigate a system-wide check and would be unavailable for serious consultation for a week. He'd always done that occasionally, so they felt no worries…

"Jor-El presented his further findings, but the Council still didn't believe him. They determined that he was trying to promote a world-wide panic and was, therefore, deviant. They ruled that he was to go home and remain there until Braniac was available to begin a modification program. Because he was such a popular figure in the society and such a brilliant mind, they didn't want to lose him."

"Now he's trapped," Chloe said sadly.

"Exactly," Clark's face looked extremely tense and unhappy. "And Krypton's easy off-planet transportation had been destroyed long before… when they wanted to avoid the 'contaminating influence' of other cultures. So he began building a small shuttle to test the feasibility of saving his family. Unfortunately, just as he was about to test it, the planet began its final death throes."

"Oh, Clark!" Tears streaming down her face matched the state of his own.

"Jor-El thought Lara and I could fit in the shuttle, but she refused to abandon him. So they put me in and Jor-El programmed it for me to come to Earth with all the knowledge of Krypton… and specifically to find the Kent family, whom Jor-El really liked." Clark trailed off and they sat for awhile to mourn his birth parents.

But Chloe's mind was racing. Finally, she couldn't hold it in any longer. "But Clark, that doesn't sound anything like…"

"The Jor-El we know?" Clark nodded after quickly wiping his cheeks. "I know. That's why I was so glad to find that record… I'm not sure that the voice was Jor-El…"

A/N: I only updated yesterday, but I got my very first review. So here's my shout-out…

Star999: Thanks for the kind words. As I've continued writing, I have yet to include Pete, but your comment made me remember how much I love the three of them. (Can I just say that I miss Sam?)