Disclaimer: All the SV writers' moms are snowblowers. Since my mother is not a snowblower, clearly I do not own SV. It's for the best. My mom is so awesome.

Chapter 3

When Chloe awakened it wasn't to the haggard, if happy face, of her father. It was to an empty room. The blinds were opened slightly and provided a shaft of light that illuminated only a small portion of the room. In some ways, it reflected her life. Actually that image was a reflection of everyone's lives. It was a representation of the things we keep hidden, either because there is a belief that no one will understand this perversion or this oddity or quirk of personality, never truly understanding that the people you love most will eventually see those things even if you don't show them. But sometimes people could get it right. They toss open the blinds, the curtains, and illuminate the entire dark room of their lives. There was nothing scarier, nothing more daunting than to be laid bare in all your color.

Chloe knew all of those things. She could even see which parts of her room she kept needlessly dark, but she didn't want to change that. Or maybe she couldn't. She wasn't a fool. Not for one minute did she believe her father had just stayed by her bed. On some level she didn't know existed, Chloe recognized the fact that her father might have tried to find out what happened. Actually, there was no "might" about it. Her father would've dug deep and he would've found something. She knew it was true. Chloe didn't even need to consult the new feeling of connection with her father to know. All she had to do was remember the look in his eyes when his thousand mile stare confronted her two nights ago.

Knowing this, however, didn't change the fact that she wouldn't confide in him. Chloe was selfish in the way that she knew Clark to be…and Oliver and Lex and Lana and basically everyone she surrounded herself with. She even figured they knew and recognized their own selfishness; even if it looked differently than her own. The overwhelming majority of her, the part of Chloe that felt so deeply couldn't confide in her father. Not because she didn't think he couldn't handle it, but because she couldn't. There were always lines of considerations that were drawn. Her father couldn't be the man that knew that part of Chloe's life.

She didn't want him to be that for her. She didn't need that from him. She only wanted him to be her father: the man that saw her as a budding, delinquent, trouble-making reporter. That she wasn't those things depressed her more than anything because she so desperately wanted her father to see that in her so she could see it again. Chloe may have made a new normal for herself, but it didn't mean she never wanted to go back to what she was. This was only a diversion and she knew she could find her way back, and a large part of that hope lay in the man who raised her to be that person.

Chloe covered her faces with her hands and sighed. "I can't be this. This can't be who I am." Even as she thought that, Chloe knew that she could change it now. Now would be the perfect time to let everything else go. She didn't have to work at the Daily Planet. There were many other ways to be who and what she wanted to be. But it had to start now or she would never make the necessary changes in her life. Chloe recognized that as the truest fact of her life. As she lay dying, Chloe had come to peace with her life and accepted it; but it didn't mean that she couldn't or shouldn't take time to reevaluate where she could go now that she had survived. She would be a fool not to do so.

Even as she felt this heightened connection to her father, there was the nagging suspicion that he was avoiding her. Sure, he left to talk to doctors and nurses, and generally run errands on her behalf; but he wasn't really engaging her anymore. His affability when he was around her remained, but there was an edge to it. She probably wouldn't have noticed it if she hadn't been specifically looking for something different in him. In his own way, her father had been traumatized. Chloe wasn't sure if his avoidance was due to the fact that she wasn't sharing everything, him trying to develop and lay the foundation for her leaving the hospital or a general nervousness because of her condition. Whatever it was, it was painful that he was withdrawing from her. It wasn't a bridge she knew how to cross and she couldn't assume that he would waltz over it.

Clark walking through the door shoved aside what was sure to be more maudlin thoughts of the fissure between her father and herself. It was probably for the best. She quickly retracted that thought when she looked up to greet Clark. Whatever phantom that Chloe believed outlined the form of her father was nothing compared to the shapes that surrounded and clung to Clark Kent and formed a miasma of inky darkness and vapor that flowed around him.

Two forms were distinct from the others. They separated and seemed to be conversing with only each other. A chorus of unintelligible echoes emanated from them.

"You have always been a fool, Jor-El, and you always will be."

"Krypton will be reborn and I will be its father."

"The problems of Krypton are beyond your comprehension, Jor-El! We solved problems once. The thought of more than our lives, however secure, sustained us. You waste us with your static pride. It will destroy us."

The Jor-El that was known to them was noble if a bit single-minded, but that was placed into context and understood: this form was a mere artificial intelligence and whatever adaptability living organisms had were lost to it. But this new vision of Jor-El was something smaller than his AI would suggest. The full context may not have been present for Chloe, but those impassioned words hinted at Jor-El being a weaker man, though she did not trust the motives of Zor-El. Even villains spoke the truth occasionally.

"How did I know that voice was Zor-El?"

There was more, but Chloe was abruptly awakened from her fugue when Clark's warm hand and concerned voice penetrated the darkness.

"Chloe? Are you okay?"

Clark's concerned face snapped into sharp focus in front of her. The dark apparitions faded until they were nothing more than tricks of light in a slightly darkened room. For a moment, even Clark seemed mesmerized by the single shaft of light in the room and an awkward silence stretched between them. It was awkward in the sense that they both needed to do something, but neither knew what that something was. It was a new feeling, but then the tension sagged and Chloe was in his arms before she even knew it. She also didn't know when she started crying. When her sobbing subsided and she calmed down, Clark drew away from her.

His voice was soft and gentle; just like he could be when he let his instinctual compassion take over and he stopped thinking about how he could fail. "Do you want me to call a nurse or maybe get you some water? I might be persuaded to even coffee smuggling."

They both laughed and, for a moment, everything was ok; but they both knew that things would get serious soon. Clark glanced at the door before he left the side of her bed and closed it. He was serious and worried as only he could be. It was like a bad taste in her mouth.

"Chloe, what happened? What were you doing? I asked Oliver, but I don't think he was clear on the details either."

Chloe blew out a breath and leaned back in the bed. She pushed hair out of her face. Despite it being very short a few days ago, it had been making a remarkable recovery in the two days she'd been out of her coma. She stared at the ceiling.

Her voice was a mere whisper when she answered Clark. "I don't know. I can't remember anything other than the crash."

She knew that he wouldn't believe her and that he didn't when his eyes hardened. Chloe flinched away from his anger because, in many ways, it was justified; but there wasn't anything she could do about it but reassure him because she honestly didn't know what she had been doing that night or what was so important that she had to provoke Lex the way she so obviously had.

Clark raked his hands through his hair in frustration. "That's not possible, Chloe. This was important for you to…do whatever it is you did that night."

She sat up and would've made a biting comment if Jonathan Kent hadn't chosen that minute to solidify and speak to her. It was a rasped whisper. "Ask him…ask him if he had to choose between his father and Lana who would it be? Ask him how he could be so arrogant that he would abuse and twist fate and change time itself. This can't be my son."

And just like that he disappeared. It only took a minute and she was sure that it held profound meaning. Clark's voice once more lanced through any thought she might've had. She swallowed thickly; her throat suddenly dry. She might very well be losing her mind.

"Chloe!"

She knew that tone. It was his "adult" tone; the one that said he wanted answers and he wanted them now. The only problem was that she didn't even understand the question. Chloe mentally set her hallucination, for that was all it could possibly be, aside so that she could focus on Clark. She had major brain trauma and was in a coma. These things had to be expected. If she voiced her problem, then she might be forced to stay in the hospital. On the other hand, something could be very wrong. But she considered all the angles and realized that her healing was still in effect and this would pass.

"Look, Clark, I suffered major brain trauma and was in a coma. I think it's pretty safe to say that there might be some ramifications for that. Possibly, I dunno, fucking memory loss!"

Chloe thought that she had been calm and patient during the beginning of her statement, but by the end, she knew she had lost it and was near hysteria.

"That isn't fair, Chloe. Something is happening. Oliver's business dealings are suffering and all of a sudden Lexcorp is rebounding. He's planning something and that only happens when he's afraid of something or trying to stop something."

Chloe sighed. "What do you want me to do? I'm not healing faster, I can't remember anything about that night other than the crash, and my dad will be taking care of me until he's satisfied that I'm ok. You'll have to deal with this yourself because I can't do it for you, Clark. I'm not able."

Clark never thought she'd say that about anything. Chloe had always been fearless, maybe even reckless, but there was always a point to it. Now she was telling him that she couldn't help either himself or Oliver. If he were being honest with himself, he'd even admit that she didn't seem to want to help either. Something was wrong. He just needed to figure it out.

"Maybe Lois can help."

The thought never crossed his mind that he might want to alert Gabe. He had the sinking suspicion that this new consideration, this new reticence, was due to her father. They hadn't been close recently and he had foolishly thought that she was fine with that. He saw first-hand what Chloe's coma had done to her father. It wasn't pretty and as a basic human emotion, he felt sympathetic to Gabe's suffering. Gabe was a good man and he didn't deserve what had happened. Of course, no one deserved such an outcome. Clark could see that it might be a good thing for Chloe to take a step back and get to know her father better. It was an opportunity he would never have and it was a burden knowing why it was that way.

Two more apparitions pulled from Clark.

"Krypton will burn."

"What have you done, Brainiac?"

Jor-El's shocked voice reverberated through her entire body. It was genuine horror and fear, tinged with something else. Chloe thought it might've been resignation. Jor-EL couldn't have been as naïve as the people around him thought. Not if he had the foresight to send Clark to Earth and equip him with the tools that could aid him. Chloe thought that perhaps now was the time for a freak-out. Three times she had hallucinated in the short time that Clark had visited her. There was a portentous quality to them.

They were trying to tell her something but she could not decipher the meaning of it. Were these real things? Was she truly hallucinating? If the latter, she could probably deal with it. She was in a coma as she said. There was medication or tests or something. And knowing the cause, could easily lead to a good outcome for her. But if she was seeing real things, then what next? How was it possible? What greater meaning could there? Because there had to be one if these were real.

"Could they be stopped if they're real?"

Lois chose that moment to unceremoniously barge in and commandeer her attention away from Clark. Chloe knew that in the split second between opening the door and seeing Chloe that she had taken a reading on the tension in the room and sought to dissolve the situation. Lois was in turns a relief and a burden. Right now, she was the drink of water in the desert. Clark gave her a warning look. The conversation was not over. Despite this, Chloe could not quell the nagging feeling that she needed her father right that moment. For now Chloe would relax and let her cousin distract her. Lois did tell the best stories sometimes.