The Guardian (9/10)
Part IX: Dawn
Hello future goodbye past
Now each breath can be my last
Will I see another dawn?
Will I be reborn?
Let the sun rise
Let the birds sing
Let there be light
Let there be morning
I don’t know how
I made it till now
Let there be light
Let there be morning
“Lois, I can’t.”
She’s panting now. Her legs burn, and her feet feel like lead. Some of the sharper rocks have cut into her hand, making it harder to hold on.
She looks down and for the first time realizes how high they really are.
She looks up to find that Lois has put another few feet between them.
She’s starting to panic now. She closes her eyes and tries to wish herself off the side of the giant rock. Back to the playground. Back home where her mom would kiss her scrapes and cover them with Snoopy Band-Aids.
“Come on, Chloe.”
Lois is farther away now. Chloe can see the white scuffed soles of her Keds.
She reaches up and searches for a handhold. She sucks in her breath and pulls herself up onto the thin branch by her knee.
And then she feels it give.
She doesn’t have time to scream because Lois has her by the arm.
“Come on,” she says again, pulling her up by her side. “Watch how I do it, okay?”
She nods. She watches her older cousin, just like she promised, and follows her lead.
Focused on Lois, she forgets that’s she’s never been more scared in her life. She’s trying her best now to keep up. The right foot goes here. The left goes there. And then pull…
Before she realizes it, she’s made it to the top. Lois helps her over the final ledge, and she scrambles to her feet.
For a moment she’s speechless. Her cousin has brought her to the top of the world.
“Wow.” She’s finally found her voice. “Everything looks so small.”
“Daddy doesn’t like it when I come up here.” Lois walks back to the ledge and sits down. She pulls her knees to her chest. “But it’s my favorite place in the world.”
Chloe sits beside her, but looks away. She has tears in her eyes even though she’s tried to stop them. She’s a chicken. She wants to be brave, like her cousin. Just like her. But then she hears herself admit, “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
She feels Lois’ arm wrap around her. She’s smiling.
“I knew you would.”
She smiled when she realized that it was the first time since the funeral that she had let herself think of Lois. Real memories. The ones that wrapped her like a blanket and made the world seem safe again.
She had wondered if she would ever let herself indulge in a happy thought ever again. It seemed like betraying Lois to turn to their old memories for comfort. After all, she had failed her in every way possible. It wasn’t new - looking to her big cousin for strength - it was just that after the funeral it was as if she had lost that right.
But it felt okay now. Admittedly, not great, but okay. Imagining Lois was no longer a reminder of what she had lost.
It was a promise of things to come.
“This should be interesting.”
Chloe’s eyes popped open. The older Lana was beside her now, a wicked smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she watched the scene unfold in the center of the cave.
The younger Lana and Clark stood side by side, studying the Scroll of Templar. Chloe’s hunch had been right. The scroll had, in fact, been in Isobel’s tomb. It had only taken Clark a few hours to bring it back to them. Thanks to the flying, he was faster than ever.
Lana held the scroll in one hand and a branch in the other. Her shirt had been pulled up and tied off at her belly button; the small of her back was coated in a sticky, black paste. It was obvious from her expression that she was having a hard time making heads or tails of what she was reading. After a minute she began to slowly trace lines in the dirt.
Chloe turned to the older Lana. “Why is she doing it?”
“I convinced her she needed the practice,” Lana whispered back.
Chloe frowned, confused. “But thanks to that mystical glop you whipped up, she won’t remember any of this.”
Or that’s how she had explained it. With two Guardians in one time period, it was a gamble as to who would come out of it with their memory in tact. The last thing they needed was an amnesiac Lana thrown back into the past.
“I know,” she said, and then quickly held up her hand to shush her. The younger Lana cursed and scuffed another mistake out of the dirt. The older Lana’s smile grew wider.
And then Chloe got it. She was setting herself up. “You’re terrible.”
Lana looked anything but remorseful. “We’re all entitled to beat ourselves up a little bit,” she said. And then her eyes zeroed in on Chloe. “Of course, some of us go overboard.”
Now it was Chloe’s turn to be unapologetic. They were only a few minutes away from hitting that supernatural reset button, but she wasn’t quite ready to let go of the guilt. As long as her cousin was in the ground, that was her cross to bear.
She looked up at the cave wall, and soon found herself walking towards it. Her eyes trailed along the bright, chalky drawings.
“Impressive isn’t it?” Lana said from somewhere behind her.
Chloe nodded. “It’s amazing. Their whole story - past, present and future - all laid out.”
“Yours, too.”
Chloe’s head snapped around. “I’m not on here,” she scoffed.
Lana smiled. She brushed past her and pointed to the blue and red figure; the one that looked like it belonged in a sideshow.
“Do you remember what I told you about this symbol?”
Chloe sifted through a week’s worth of new information for the answer. “Naman and Sageeth. Friends turned mortal enemies.”
Lana nodded. “Their lives are inextricably twined, so much so that a single character represents them both.” She traced her finger along the wall until she got to, “Clark’s soul mate.”
“Lois,” Chloe said, a hint of awe and pride decorating her voice.
“Partly.”
“I don’t understand.”
Lana pointed to something right above Lois’ head. A small black ‘U’ rimmed in gold that circled her like a halo. “That’s you.”
Chloe scrunched her nose. “I’m a boomerang?”
Lana laughed. “It’s a moon,” she explained. “The Kawatche symbol for guidance.”
Chloe stepped forward for a better look. She traced its outline.
“In our lives there is always one person who - more than any other - puts us on our path. Lex pushes Clark to his destiny. You pull Lois to hers.” When Chloe finally looked at her, Lana smiled. “In her story, you’re her guide. Her guardian.”
Chloe’s mouth dropped open. “I am?” She let the enormity of that fact sink in. “I don’t have to get, like, a tattoo or anything, right?”
Lana chuckled. “No.”
Lois’ guardian.
Wow.
She had always thought that Lois was the single most important person in her life. As it turned out, it went both ways. Which meant…
She rubbed her hands over her face. “Somehow that just makes things worse.”
“Worse?”
Chloe bit her lip. She was afraid to say it out loud but, “What if we go back and change things, and I make the same mistakes all over again?”
She wanted to believe she could trust herself to make the right decision, but she just wasn’t sure anymore.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I lived it.” Lana took Chloe by the shoulders. Earnest brown eyes bore into her own. “You weren’t ready to deal with the idea of them together. But soon you will be. And when that day comes, you’ll be the best friend either of them could ask for.”
Chloe looked over at Clark. She imagined Lois by his side. “I don’t want to disappoint them again,” she confessed.
The older Lana simply shrugged. “Then don’t.”
She squeezed Chloe’s arm and then left to join the others. Chloe turned back to the wall.
For as long as she could remember, Lois was her protector. She hefted the weight of the world for both of them. That was all about to change.
And even if she wouldn’t remember it, she made the decision just the same.
Boomerang. Moon. Whatever. She was going to be the best one there ever was.
She felt a hand close softly on her shoulder.
“Chloe, we’re ready.” Behind Clark’s eyes she saw the flickers of friendship and forgiveness. Her chin trembled as she nodded and followed him to the center of the cave.
The older Lana took the scroll from her younger self and stepped onto the symbol that was crudely sketched in the dirt. “I feel like I should be saying something really profound right now, but none of you would remember it anyway,” she said with a smirk. She looked down at the scroll and began to read.
As the air began to spark and snap, Chloe felt the doubt creeping back in. This time she fought it, biting down and pushing it off to the darkest corners of her mind.
She believed what Lana had said. It would be different this time.
Chloe closed her eyes as the bright light consumed them all. Tears slipped down her cheeks. In her mind she saw Lois, alive and smiling, motioning for her to catch up.
***
Chloe Sullivan popped her car into reverse, and her tires ground stubbornly into the gravel. The familiar hand-carved wooden sign swung invitingly in the cool, night breeze. For a moment she sat considering the alternatives - the mountains of financial aid packets that needed to be filled out and filed; her editorial for Monday’s edition of the Torch that was still many drafts away from print-worthy; the prospect of a goodnight’s sleep after hours behind the wheel. And then finally, on a whim - a gut-shot choice - she veered off the road that would take her home and -
Stopped.
A woman stood in the middle of the driveway. She wore a violet trench coat that seemed to swallow up her tiny frame, and a silk scarf that wrapped around her head. She jogged over to the driver’s side and tapped on the window. Chloe hesitated for a moment before rolling it down a few inches.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but my car broke down a few miles from here. Can I get a lift into town?”
Her eyes were hidden behind a large pair of Audrey Hepburn glasses that eclipsed her whole face. Chloe glanced back to the Kent farm, weighing her options. “Sure. Hop in.”
“Thanks.”
The woman darted around and slipped into the passenger’s side. Chloe shifted into gear and pulled back on the road.
Chloe spent the next few minutes sneaking glances at the mystery woman who seemed perfectly content to sit out the drive in silence. She busied herself with the contents of her large, black bag.
Chloe cleared her throat. “So…are you from around here?”
“No.”
Chloe waited for her to elaborate. She never did.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You already did.”
“Right. Can I ask another?”
“I suppose.”
“Um, I was just curious… why are you wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night?”
“I have sensitive retinas. Halogen lights are the worst, especially headlights on a car. They give me migraines.”
“Oh,” Chloe said. That seemed…like a great, big lie.
The woman - the one with the terse replies and the ‘witness protection chic’ - leaned back and gazed out the window. For some reason, Chloe didn’t feel half as anxious as she knew she should have. Maybe it was because the woman didn’t look large enough to take an infant. Or maybe it was because there was something deeply familiar about her.
“So, what brings you to Smallville?”
“A wrong turn, actually.”
“Got lost huh?”
“For a bit,” the woman said. She turned to Chloe and for the first time she noticed the large scar that crossed her lips. It twitched as her mouth drew into a smile. “But I think I’m finally heading in the right direction.”
***
Excerpt from the diary of Lana Lang
November 12, 2004.
Chloe’s home early from college hunt, deciding on Met U. I can’t help but think we avoided a potential disaster the other night. Chloe said that she had planned to drop by Clark’s, but instead played good Samaritan to a woman with large sunglasses and a scar on her lips.
Hello future goodbye past
Now each breath can be my last
Will I see another dawn?
Will I be reborn?
Let the sun rise
Let the birds sing
Let there be light
Let there be morning
I don’t know how
I made it till now
Let there be light
Let there be morning
“Lois, I can’t.”
She’s panting now. Her legs burn, and her feet feel like lead. Some of the sharper rocks have cut into her hand, making it harder to hold on.
She looks down and for the first time realizes how high they really are.
She looks up to find that Lois has put another few feet between them.
She’s starting to panic now. She closes her eyes and tries to wish herself off the side of the giant rock. Back to the playground. Back home where her mom would kiss her scrapes and cover them with Snoopy Band-Aids.
“Come on, Chloe.”
Lois is farther away now. Chloe can see the white scuffed soles of her Keds.
She reaches up and searches for a handhold. She sucks in her breath and pulls herself up onto the thin branch by her knee.
And then she feels it give.
She doesn’t have time to scream because Lois has her by the arm.
“Come on,” she says again, pulling her up by her side. “Watch how I do it, okay?”
She nods. She watches her older cousin, just like she promised, and follows her lead.
Focused on Lois, she forgets that’s she’s never been more scared in her life. She’s trying her best now to keep up. The right foot goes here. The left goes there. And then pull…
Before she realizes it, she’s made it to the top. Lois helps her over the final ledge, and she scrambles to her feet.
For a moment she’s speechless. Her cousin has brought her to the top of the world.
“Wow.” She’s finally found her voice. “Everything looks so small.”
“Daddy doesn’t like it when I come up here.” Lois walks back to the ledge and sits down. She pulls her knees to her chest. “But it’s my favorite place in the world.”
Chloe sits beside her, but looks away. She has tears in her eyes even though she’s tried to stop them. She’s a chicken. She wants to be brave, like her cousin. Just like her. But then she hears herself admit, “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
She feels Lois’ arm wrap around her. She’s smiling.
“I knew you would.”
She smiled when she realized that it was the first time since the funeral that she had let herself think of Lois. Real memories. The ones that wrapped her like a blanket and made the world seem safe again.
She had wondered if she would ever let herself indulge in a happy thought ever again. It seemed like betraying Lois to turn to their old memories for comfort. After all, she had failed her in every way possible. It wasn’t new - looking to her big cousin for strength - it was just that after the funeral it was as if she had lost that right.
But it felt okay now. Admittedly, not great, but okay. Imagining Lois was no longer a reminder of what she had lost.
It was a promise of things to come.
“This should be interesting.”
Chloe’s eyes popped open. The older Lana was beside her now, a wicked smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she watched the scene unfold in the center of the cave.
The younger Lana and Clark stood side by side, studying the Scroll of Templar. Chloe’s hunch had been right. The scroll had, in fact, been in Isobel’s tomb. It had only taken Clark a few hours to bring it back to them. Thanks to the flying, he was faster than ever.
Lana held the scroll in one hand and a branch in the other. Her shirt had been pulled up and tied off at her belly button; the small of her back was coated in a sticky, black paste. It was obvious from her expression that she was having a hard time making heads or tails of what she was reading. After a minute she began to slowly trace lines in the dirt.
Chloe turned to the older Lana. “Why is she doing it?”
“I convinced her she needed the practice,” Lana whispered back.
Chloe frowned, confused. “But thanks to that mystical glop you whipped up, she won’t remember any of this.”
Or that’s how she had explained it. With two Guardians in one time period, it was a gamble as to who would come out of it with their memory in tact. The last thing they needed was an amnesiac Lana thrown back into the past.
“I know,” she said, and then quickly held up her hand to shush her. The younger Lana cursed and scuffed another mistake out of the dirt. The older Lana’s smile grew wider.
And then Chloe got it. She was setting herself up. “You’re terrible.”
Lana looked anything but remorseful. “We’re all entitled to beat ourselves up a little bit,” she said. And then her eyes zeroed in on Chloe. “Of course, some of us go overboard.”
Now it was Chloe’s turn to be unapologetic. They were only a few minutes away from hitting that supernatural reset button, but she wasn’t quite ready to let go of the guilt. As long as her cousin was in the ground, that was her cross to bear.
She looked up at the cave wall, and soon found herself walking towards it. Her eyes trailed along the bright, chalky drawings.
“Impressive isn’t it?” Lana said from somewhere behind her.
Chloe nodded. “It’s amazing. Their whole story - past, present and future - all laid out.”
“Yours, too.”
Chloe’s head snapped around. “I’m not on here,” she scoffed.
Lana smiled. She brushed past her and pointed to the blue and red figure; the one that looked like it belonged in a sideshow.
“Do you remember what I told you about this symbol?”
Chloe sifted through a week’s worth of new information for the answer. “Naman and Sageeth. Friends turned mortal enemies.”
Lana nodded. “Their lives are inextricably twined, so much so that a single character represents them both.” She traced her finger along the wall until she got to, “Clark’s soul mate.”
“Lois,” Chloe said, a hint of awe and pride decorating her voice.
“Partly.”
“I don’t understand.”
Lana pointed to something right above Lois’ head. A small black ‘U’ rimmed in gold that circled her like a halo. “That’s you.”
Chloe scrunched her nose. “I’m a boomerang?”
Lana laughed. “It’s a moon,” she explained. “The Kawatche symbol for guidance.”
Chloe stepped forward for a better look. She traced its outline.
“In our lives there is always one person who - more than any other - puts us on our path. Lex pushes Clark to his destiny. You pull Lois to hers.” When Chloe finally looked at her, Lana smiled. “In her story, you’re her guide. Her guardian.”
Chloe’s mouth dropped open. “I am?” She let the enormity of that fact sink in. “I don’t have to get, like, a tattoo or anything, right?”
Lana chuckled. “No.”
Lois’ guardian.
Wow.
She had always thought that Lois was the single most important person in her life. As it turned out, it went both ways. Which meant…
She rubbed her hands over her face. “Somehow that just makes things worse.”
“Worse?”
Chloe bit her lip. She was afraid to say it out loud but, “What if we go back and change things, and I make the same mistakes all over again?”
She wanted to believe she could trust herself to make the right decision, but she just wasn’t sure anymore.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I lived it.” Lana took Chloe by the shoulders. Earnest brown eyes bore into her own. “You weren’t ready to deal with the idea of them together. But soon you will be. And when that day comes, you’ll be the best friend either of them could ask for.”
Chloe looked over at Clark. She imagined Lois by his side. “I don’t want to disappoint them again,” she confessed.
The older Lana simply shrugged. “Then don’t.”
She squeezed Chloe’s arm and then left to join the others. Chloe turned back to the wall.
For as long as she could remember, Lois was her protector. She hefted the weight of the world for both of them. That was all about to change.
And even if she wouldn’t remember it, she made the decision just the same.
Boomerang. Moon. Whatever. She was going to be the best one there ever was.
She felt a hand close softly on her shoulder.
“Chloe, we’re ready.” Behind Clark’s eyes she saw the flickers of friendship and forgiveness. Her chin trembled as she nodded and followed him to the center of the cave.
The older Lana took the scroll from her younger self and stepped onto the symbol that was crudely sketched in the dirt. “I feel like I should be saying something really profound right now, but none of you would remember it anyway,” she said with a smirk. She looked down at the scroll and began to read.
As the air began to spark and snap, Chloe felt the doubt creeping back in. This time she fought it, biting down and pushing it off to the darkest corners of her mind.
She believed what Lana had said. It would be different this time.
Chloe closed her eyes as the bright light consumed them all. Tears slipped down her cheeks. In her mind she saw Lois, alive and smiling, motioning for her to catch up.
***
Chloe Sullivan popped her car into reverse, and her tires ground stubbornly into the gravel. The familiar hand-carved wooden sign swung invitingly in the cool, night breeze. For a moment she sat considering the alternatives - the mountains of financial aid packets that needed to be filled out and filed; her editorial for Monday’s edition of the Torch that was still many drafts away from print-worthy; the prospect of a goodnight’s sleep after hours behind the wheel. And then finally, on a whim - a gut-shot choice - she veered off the road that would take her home and -
Stopped.
A woman stood in the middle of the driveway. She wore a violet trench coat that seemed to swallow up her tiny frame, and a silk scarf that wrapped around her head. She jogged over to the driver’s side and tapped on the window. Chloe hesitated for a moment before rolling it down a few inches.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but my car broke down a few miles from here. Can I get a lift into town?”
Her eyes were hidden behind a large pair of Audrey Hepburn glasses that eclipsed her whole face. Chloe glanced back to the Kent farm, weighing her options. “Sure. Hop in.”
“Thanks.”
The woman darted around and slipped into the passenger’s side. Chloe shifted into gear and pulled back on the road.
Chloe spent the next few minutes sneaking glances at the mystery woman who seemed perfectly content to sit out the drive in silence. She busied herself with the contents of her large, black bag.
Chloe cleared her throat. “So…are you from around here?”
“No.”
Chloe waited for her to elaborate. She never did.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You already did.”
“Right. Can I ask another?”
“I suppose.”
“Um, I was just curious… why are you wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night?”
“I have sensitive retinas. Halogen lights are the worst, especially headlights on a car. They give me migraines.”
“Oh,” Chloe said. That seemed…like a great, big lie.
The woman - the one with the terse replies and the ‘witness protection chic’ - leaned back and gazed out the window. For some reason, Chloe didn’t feel half as anxious as she knew she should have. Maybe it was because the woman didn’t look large enough to take an infant. Or maybe it was because there was something deeply familiar about her.
“So, what brings you to Smallville?”
“A wrong turn, actually.”
“Got lost huh?”
“For a bit,” the woman said. She turned to Chloe and for the first time she noticed the large scar that crossed her lips. It twitched as her mouth drew into a smile. “But I think I’m finally heading in the right direction.”
***
Excerpt from the diary of Lana Lang
November 12, 2004.
Chloe’s home early from college hunt, deciding on Met U. I can’t help but think we avoided a potential disaster the other night. Chloe said that she had planned to drop by Clark’s, but instead played good Samaritan to a woman with large sunglasses and a scar on her lips.