Gone

As they approached the counter, Chloe grabbed hold of Clark's sleeve and gave it a tug. "Listen, maybe you should let me do the talking. You work on being inconspicuous; try to blend into the background." With a quirk of her lips, she let her gaze travel down the length of his body, and he knew what she was thinking. At over six feet, there weren't many backgrounds he could blend into easily. As if amused by her thoughts, she gave a slight chuckle. "Well, at least try not to talk if you don't have to. We shouldn't take the risk that someone might recognize you if you call attention to yourself."

Nodding his assent, Clark shortened his stride so that he walked a half a step behind her, letting her take the lead. Then, remembering Lois's world in another reality, he slumped his shoulders and lowered his head, trying to make himself as unassuming as possible. If it worked for the Clark in her world, it might work for him here.

"Excuse me," he heard Chloe say, and he stopped walking a few steps behind her. Shifting his body to the side, he stuck his hands in his pockets and focused his attention on the conversation. Chloe approached the bar, where a visibly bored barista stood, snapping a piece of bubblegum between her teeth. "We were wondering if you could help us with something. My friend and I are looking for a family from this area, the Kents. Do you happen to know where we could find them?"

The barista's expression didn't change at the question, and though her gaze did shoot towards Clark, it travelled over him dismissively before returning to Chloe. The tiniest bit of curiosity flickered over her face as she asked, "Oh, yeah? What are you looking for them for?"

"It's…uh…" Chloe stammered, clearly searching for an excuse. "We're doing a…um…"

"Genealogy," Clark offered, and Chloe threw him a grateful look over her shoulder.

"I'm a project for…uh…a sociology class I'm taking at Met U., and the final is this huge genealogy project. Pretty lame, huh?" Chloe offered a shaky smile with this excuse, and Clark tried to resist the urge to copy it. He wasn't entirely sure that any sociology class would assign such a project, but maybe the barista wouldn't know that.

If the barista thought this was unusual, she cleverly hid her suspicions under a veneer of supreme disinterest. "Yeah, okay," she drawled, slumping against the counter again. "Well, the Kents don't live here anymore."

"Any idea where I can find them?" Chloe asked, a bit desperately. When the barista shrugged and snapped her gum again, Clark could swear the petite blonde in front of him had to stifle the urge to reach across the counter and throttle the girl.

Luckily, she was rescued by any homicidal urgings when a man who appeared to be in his late seventies spoke up from the far end of the bar. "You say you were looking for the Kents? Jonathan and Martha Kent?" At the answering nod, he scratched his cheek thoughtfully and continued, "Like Amber there said, the Kents don't live around here anymore." He looked reflective for a moment then said sadly, "It's too bad, what happened. Jonathan was a good man."

"Was?" Clark interjected through the tightening in his throat. "What…what do you mean? What happened to him?"

The man looked surprised. "Oh, well, I guess you're not from around here." With a sigh, he shifted his weight and leaned back in his chair, an oldtimer settling into a story. "Nobody really knows, actually. It was the strangest thing. One day they found him unconscious…there are caves in the area, and they found him there. The doctors said he probably had a heart attack or something, but…I don't know; there was still something damn strange about it all. Anyway, he was in a coma or something by the time they got him to the hospital." Looking sadly in Chloe's direction, he finished, "He was like that for a while; a year at least. And Martha…she went to see him every day after the accident, but he never woke up. After a while, he just slipped away."

"And their son?" Chloe blurted before Clark had a chance to ask. "What happened to their son?"

"Clark? Well, that's the other curious thing. He disappeared that day, the day Jonathan was found in the cave. Gone without a trace; not even Martha knew what had happened to her boy. It had to have been terrible for her – her son gone, her husband left like that. I don't think anyone's seen Clark since." His story clearly coming to an end, the old man sighed. "If you want to know the truth, I don't figure he'll ever be found alive. I knew the Kent boy a little…of course, in a small town, everybody knows everybody. He was a good kid. I can't imagine that boy would ever have left his family like that, not if there was any other choice."

Clark felt like he couldn't breathe. For the first time, he was beginning to feel like he really understood what Lois had gone through that day at his parents' house – taken from everyone she knew and thrust into a world in which she was dead. "W-where's Mo-Martha now?" he rasped.

The old man lifted one shoulder and let it fall once more, a casual shrug. "She stuck around for a while, but she didn't stay long. With her husband and her boy gone, there was nobody left to work the farm, and she couldn't do it on her own. She tried, of course, for Jonathan's sake I think – and I think because she had hope her boy would come back one day. But farming is dangerous work. There was an accident one day, and she was hurt. By the time she got out of the hospital…well, it was no secret that things had been tight at the best of times for the Kents. With the hospital bills and all…the land was foreclosed on within the year. The Luthors tried to help her out, I understand – the boys were friends, Lex and Clark. I think they bought the land and tried to give it to her as a gift, but she wouldn't take their charity. If you ask me, I don't think she could stand to stick around any longer. I've never met a family more devoted to each other than the Kents were; I'm sure it tore her up inside, losing everyone like that. Anyway, she packed a suitcase and left one day, and she's never been back."

Clark felt like he couldn't breathe. It was too much to take in all at once, and he felt his body begin to sway. Taking a step to the side, he lowered his body into a chair and concentrated on not throwing up as Chloe looked at him in concern. "D-Jonathan Kent…where is he buried?"

For the first time, the old man seemed to register Clark's presence, and he seemed to be confused that a stranger was taking this news so personally. "You okay, son?" he asked instead of responding to the question.

"My friend's been sick," Chloe hastily explained, placing her hand on his shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "The flu. He's getting better, but he still gets a little lightheaded sometimes."

The old man seemed to buy the explanation, and he gave a quick nod. "Rose Hill Cemetery," he offered, responding to Clark's earlier question. "If you want to go see the grave for that project of yours, the cemetery's not hard to find. Just take a left when you leave here, and just outside of town, you'll come across a road on your right. Take it for about…oh…six minutes and the entrance will be on your left."

Clark listened as Chloe offered her thanks, and then she put a hand under his elbow and exerted a little pressure, trying to get him to his feet. Though he still felt like he was going to be sick, he stood and started walking towards the door. He had to go see his father's grave, he decided. He'd never believe any of this was real until he saw it for himself.

"I don't understand, Chloe," he said as they walked back out into the sunlight. Clark didn't feel the warmth of the sun beating down on him; he felt like an icy breeze had cut through to the center of him and chilled him from within. "Why are things so different here? My father…why did he…he wasn't supposed to die like that!"

"I know," she said, and when she stopped in front of him and gazed into his face, he saw sympathy, confusion, and concern in her blue eyes. "We'll figure this out, Clark. Okay? I promise you." Swallowing heavily, he tried to nod at her in assent but it was hard to move. He felt like he was disconnected from his body. "Hey…listen to me," she said more urgently when it was clear he hadn't been particularly reassured. "We will. We'll figure out what happened here and why things are different."

"That won't bring him back," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I know," she said softly. "But right now, it's the best we can do."

Clark tore his gaze away from her and stared with sightless eyes down the road to the cemetery. He didn't know what he expected of her; she could bring the Jonathan Kent back to life in this world no more than she could bring their world's Lois Lane back from the dead. "Okay," he said heavily. "I-I need to stop by the cemetery to…to see…" He couldn't finish his sentence. "We'll figure out where to go from there, okay?"

Chloe nodded. "Yeah, sure. Um…hold on a minute, okay?" Before he could respond, she'd ducked back inside the coffeeshop. When she returned a few minutes later, she was frowning and seemed to be lost in thought. Clark didn't press her for an explanation; he had enough to worry about at the moment. They walked in silence together to the outskirts of town, and then Chloe turned to Clark and wrapped her arm around his shoulders and didn't bat an eye as he lifted her and sped towards the cemetery. He would have recognized that she was clearly getting accustomed to the idea of his powers if he didn't have so much else weighing on his mind.

As they stood side by side in front of the open wrought iron gates, Chloe grabbed his arm and gave it a quick squeeze. Nodding towards a nearby bench, she said, "You go on. I'll sit over there and wait for you."

Clark appreciated her consideration, that she knew this was something he wanted to do alone. As she walked away from him, he stepped forward through the gates and into the cemetery, in search of his father's tombstone.

He finally found it, located next to a large statue of an angel. Falling to his knees before the solid block of marble, he tore off his hat and glasses and tossed them aside before sweeping his fingers over the letters carved in stone. "Here lies Jonathan Kent, Beloved Husband and Father…" Clark felt his breath come in short gasps as his world fell away from him.

He had heard that the Jonathan Kent in Lois's world had been dead, and he recognized that his father would one day be taken from him. But somehow the thought of that had never seemed real to him. The thought of a world without his father in it was too alien, too repellent, and his brain couldn't and wouldn't wrap itself around the concept. It was like imagining a world without a sky; it was just too much for him to ever truly imagine.

But this Jonathan Kent was gone, taken too soon from this world and his family. And Clark knew what the old man in the Beanery hadn't known. He knew what his father had been doing in the caves that day. He knew what had caused him to collapse, and where the Clark Kent of this world had gone.

He knew because he'd been there himself.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. What could he possibly say to this man to apologize for the mistakes a different Clark had made? How could he apologize for the fact that this Clark had never returned from that world between worlds, the infinite darkness filled with piercing bright light. The warmth of a long-forgotten memory, the chill of an alien existence. He remembered it all. And there were no words to apologize for what his own decisions had put his family through.

There was no atoning for the past; there was only looking to the future. So rather than try to find words that didn't exist to express his sorrow over what had once been lost, he made a promise instead. "I'll find her, Dad. I'll find Mom. I'll make sure she's okay." Then, as the whisper of his words faded away, his extraordinary sense of hearing kicked into gear and he heard someone start to speak from somewhere else in the cemetery.

Rising slowly to his feet, he tried to hone in on the speaker's exact location. Skirting around a headstone, he didn't even realize he'd left his disguise behind as he tried to follow the speaker's voice. "Hey, cous. It's me. Obviously. Um…okay, so, if you want to know the truth, I don't really know what I'm doing here. Big surprise, huh? But I…I came because…I know I haven't come by here nearly often enough, and I'm sorry about that. It's just…I suck at this, you know? This talking to thin air and hoping…anyway, I wanted to come because…" He heard the speaker pause. Walking around a large mausoleum, he saw her, a silhouette of a woman dressed in black against a sea of stone. She was standing before a slab of marble, her head bent as she spoke softly to the ground at her feet.

Lois.

He froze, not really hearing the words she was speaking as his brain tried to process the reality of her, right in front of him. It had hurt more than he could ever have imagined to have let her go once, but now she was before him again. And he didn't have the first clue of what to do next.

"I-it's over, baby," he heard her say, a tiny catch in her voice as she spoke words that didn't really register in his mind. "The bastard is dead. He died in prison, just like I promised."

On a ragged breath, he heard her continue, "I miss you, cous. I know…I know it sounds crazy, but I thought…I thought once it was over – once he was dead – this pain would go away. And I'm a little mad that it hasn't, actually. Wasn't it supposed to feel better, once he was brought to justice? But it…I have this friend. You'd like him, I think. Well, you'd either like him or you'd want to strangle him. Maybe a little bit of both, which I can definitely understand. Anyway, he told me…he said I might feel better if I came here and talked to you like this, but…

"Oh, this is ridiculous," she said in an exasperated tone as she threw her head back and looked up at the sky instead, raising her hands to her face to wipe stray tears away. "I know you can't hear me baby, but I wanted to tell you that it's over. It's finally over. And I…I miss you, Chloe. More than you would believe." With a sigh, she dropped her gaze to the ground and whispered, "Goodbye, baby."

He watched as she turned and made her way towards the front gates, and he knew he should follow her but he couldn't move. It was Lois, the woman he had been sent to find. But having come so far just for this moment, he found that he was suddenly afraid. He was reasonably certain that this world's Lois hadn't found this world's Clark, given what he'd heard at the Beanery. But what if…there were so many what ifs, but only one of them kept him rooted to the spot. What if he saw in her eyes what he had seen in another Lois's eyes – the certainty that he was so much less than the man she wanted, she needed, him to be?

He knew that he had been sent here to find her, but now that she was before him, he didn't know if he was up to the task. When he'd first met Lois not quite a week ago, she'd told him a story about a man who stood for something far greater than he had ever imagined. And he'd come to realize that he wanted to be that man, even as he doubted such a thing was possible.

He didn't know if he could face that again, seeing that knowledge in another Lois's eyes – the recognition, the disappointment, that he was far less than he had the potential to be. A poor woman's Superman.

The fear that gripped him at the thought of what would be revealed if he walked up to Lois now made it temporarily impossible for him to approach her, and he glanced down at himself self-consciously and ran his fingers anxiously through his hair. What would she see when she looked at him, he wondered. And would he ever be able to live up to that image?

She doesn't know, he reminded himself. She doesn't know about Superman. Clark Kent disappeared and never returned in this world. Remember? But the love the Lois he knew had so obviously shared for Clark had been such an integral part of her, he doubted he could ever think of her without also thinking of how she glowed when she talked about the man she loved. As much as he rationally knew that this woman wasn't likely to do the same – or, rather, if she did, it would be for a different man entirely – he couldn't fathom what it would be like. A Lois Lane not in love with another, better Clark Kent.

He was so lost in his own thoughts and fears that he foolishly didn't follow her as she began to walk away. When she was almost at the gate, however, he realized that this could be his only opportunity to speak with her. If he didn't stop her now, she was going to get away, and then he might never have the chance again.

"Lois!" he called but when she didn't hear him, he jogged after her. Of course, he could catch up easily but he didn't want to frighten her.

He had almost caught up to her when Chloe, who must have heard the approaching footsteps, looked up and saw the woman walking in her direction. "Lois?" he heard her whisper as she jumped to her feet. "Oh, my god, it is you!"

Clark was still a couple yards behind Lois when Chloe rushed forward to throw her arms around the other woman's neck, but she stopped at the last moment, a look of confusion on her face. Clark was confused at her sudden shift of mood until he heard Lois demand coldly, "I'm sorry…do I know you?"

"I-it's me…I…I don't…" Chloe shot a helpless gaze over Lois's shoulder in Clark's direction. She was clearly at a loss as to what to do next, and Clark couldn't blame her. This was all unfamiliar territory to him, as well. It was strange to see a woman who looked identical the one he had gotten to know over the past week, but he had to remember that she wasn't the same person.

"Lois…?" he began softly, and his breath caught in his throat as she turned to face him. For a second, she glanced vaguely in his direction, but then her gaze sharpened on his face and she gasped and staggered back a couple of steps.

"Y-you!" she snarled, and like a deer caught in headlights, Clark found himself rooted to the spot as she grabbed Chloe by the arm and pulled the other girl behind her, using her body as a shield. Raising her free hand in front of her, she gave him a halting gesture.

Clark was taken completely by surprise by her reaction, which was so far from what he had received in another world. "I don't…Why are you…" He tried to take a step forward, which caused her to take another couple of staggered steps backwards, towing Chloe along with her as she went.

"Stay back!" she barked. "I'm warning you…!" When her words stopped him in his tracks, she straightened and lifted her chin at a haughty angle as she glared at him. "You know, after you disappeared, everyone, including me, began to think maybe you weren't coming back. I suppose I should have known it was too good to be true."

From behind Lois, Clark could hear Chloe say in confusion, "I don't understand. Why are you…what's going on? Clark?"

Though Lois didn't take her eyes off the man in front of her, she turned her head a little to ask over her shoulder, "Who's Clark?"

"What are you talking about? He's Clark!" Chloe cried, scooting out from behind her human shield to gesture to the man in question.

With a slight shake to her head, Lois said emphatically, "No, that's Kal-El."

"Kal-who?" Chloe repeated in even deeper confusion.

"Actually, I'm both," Clark offered in explanation, and though he'd tried to keep his tone soft, he noticed Lois jump at the sound of his voice and her head snapped forward again.

"I don't know who you are, but trust me when I say you should stay away from him," she said, clearly still speaking to the woman beside her. "He's dangerous."

"He's my friend," Chloe protested, though her voice lacked conviction. Clark didn't know if this was due to her intense confusion – which he certainly shared – or if she was beginning to have doubts himself. "He…I don't…I don't understand. Why are you acting like this, Lois? You and he…the two of you…you're supposed to be…"

Chloe couldn't seem to express herself, but her stuttered words seemed to adequately convey Clark's own feelings. Why was this Lois so different from the one he'd just left behind? The Lois who had shown up on his front stoop not quite a week ago had been…she'd been warm, looking at him in such concern that he found it easy to believe she might grow to care about him.

This woman, however…there was no warmth in her demeanor as she looked at him. She was all sharp edges – even her appearance, with her hair swept severely back from her face into a ruthlessly controlled bun, made her seem unapproachable. She looked at him in clear distrust, even hatred, and every move he made, she tracked like a wild animal staring down a predator.

And then he realized. The shallowness of her breathing, the rapidity of her heart rate. The whiteness in her lips and the way she watched his every move. Lois wasn't looking at him in hatred.

She was absolutely terrified.