Bring Me to Life (Two/?)
Prologue | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Conclusion
Chapter Two
Chloe closed her eyes, resting her head on Clark’s shoulder and shivering involuntarily. Her mind was muddled and she had no idea how she’d gotten from the Fortress in the Artic to Clark Kent’s bedroom, in his bed, of all places.
There were a whole lot of things that didn’t make sense at the moment but she pushed them all aside temporarily in favor of savoring the feeling of being wrapped up in his arms. It wasn’t like they had never hugged before, but this wasn’t a normal friend-to-friend hug. There was much more emotion in it, much more need, and Clark was…crying? She felt a tear drop splash onto her cheek and she knew she wasn’t crying. Feeling alarmed, she hugged him more tightly.
“Clark, what is it? Did something happen? Is it your parents?”
He said something, but it was muffled against her shoulder and she didn’t understand him. She reluctantly pulled away from him and gazed up into his eyes. “I didn’t catch that.”
Clark gazed back into her eyes, his own shimmering with more unshed tears. “My parents are fine, Chloe, but…”
Starting to feel alarmed, she swallowed hard, her eyes dropping to where the mark on his neck had been. “You’re okay, right?” Without thinking about it, she reached out and brushed her fingertips over the spot lightly, causing him to start, and then shudder. “Clark?”
He stared at her for a long moment. “I saw you,” he whispered.
Chloe’s eyebrows furrowed. “Saw me?”
“I saw you die. In my arms.” Clark’s voice was thick. “In the Fortress.”
The breath caught in her throat. “Wait, you were there?” She tucked some hair behind her ear, feeling unnerved.
“Yeah. No…well, sort of. I don’t know.” She stood up, but he caught her arm quickly. “Maybe you should just stay sitting for a little while.”
“I’m okay, Clark. I don’t really feel like sitting anymore.” She offered him a smile, albeit a somewhat freaked-out one. “Tell me what happened.”
“I honestly don’t know.” He looked up at her, his blue eyes worried. “My parents said I never left the sofa after my fever broke and the symbol disappeared, but…I was there. You were…hurt, dying.” Clark closed his eyes, hanging his head. “I couldn’t save you.”
Her heart was pounding quickly against her chest. “I thought that was just…”
“What?”
“I thought I dreamt that, I guess.” Suddenly feeling self-conscious as she recalled some of the things she’d said, she began to slowly pace the floor.
“Maybe we both dreamt it. I mean…how else could you be here?” He shook his head.
Chloe sucked in a breath, beginning to feel more than a bit overwhelmed. “Clark…what happened there…it wasn’t a dream.” She slowly turned to face him.
He stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…I was dying. I…I did die…but…” She swallowed hard, not sure how to tell him the next part.
“But what?” he whispered, wide-eyed.
“Jor-El…brought me back.”
Clark rose to his feet, not taking his eyes off her. “Jor-El? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s who he said he was.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know why he’d lie.”
He was silent for a long moment. “We should get you to a hospital to make sure you’re all right.”
“No, Clark, I feel fine. Better than fine, actually.” And she did. The truth was she couldn’t remember when she last felt as awake, as alive as she did right then. She chalked it up as a side effect of her miraculous resurrection.
“Chloe, when I got there…you were bleeding and you had broken bones.”
“I guess when Jor-El sent me back, he healed me somehow.” She bit her lower lip.
“Can I…” He hesitated, looking shy suddenly.
“What?”
“Can I check to be sure?”
Her eyebrows furrowed but it quickly dawned on her what he meant. “Oh you mean…uh…” Chloe swallowed hard, then nodded wordlessly.
Drawing in a breath, he scanned her with his x-ray vision and saw she was right: there were no broken bones, no internal bleeding…in fact if he hadn’t known any better, this whole thing had just been a nightmare. Closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head.
“Clark?” Neither of them heard the very soft voice of Martha Kent outside his bedroom door, nor did they notice when she opened the door. It was hard not to hear her exclamation of, “Oh my God!”
Chloe slowly pulled away from Clark and turned to see her, heat climbing to her cheeks. “Mrs. Kent, it’s not what you think,” she began, stunned when she suddenly found herself in the woman’s arms.
“Oh, Chloe. Thank God you’re all right.”
Closing her eyes, she hugged Martha back, letting out a slow breath. “I guess Clark filled you in?”
She nodded quickly and pulled away to look at Chloe. “How did you get here?”
Chloe and Clark exchanged a look. “That’s a little unclear,” she admitted.
Martha’s eyebrows furrowed, but she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re safe. Jonathan!” she shouted from the doorway.
She heard the footsteps pounding up the stairs quickly and a moment later Jonathan Kent stood in the doorway, his eyes widening as he spotted her.
“Chloe?” he said in disbelief. He shifted his gaze to Clark.
“We think Jor-El transported her here when he…sent her back.”
“Sent her back?” Martha repeated, shaking her head.
“From the great beyond,” Chloe said wryly.
Both of the Kents’ stared at her, stunned.
“Chloe, are you saying that Jor-El brought you back to life?” Jonathan questioned.
Shifting uncomfortably, she nodded, biting her lower lip.
“I think we should all sit down and figure out what exactly is going on,” Martha said, looking at Clark meaningfully. She turned and headed out the door. “I’ll put some fresh coffee on.”
Chloe drew in a deep breath, hoping it was a strong brew. She definitely needed it.
* * *
She sat on one end of the sofa, a mug of hot coffee cradled in her hands, glancing around the silent room. Clark sat not six inches away from her--about the farthest he’d gotten from her since he’d found her in his room. It was like he was afraid to let her out of his sight. That was all right with her. Except she was extremely conscious of just how close he was sitting. She could feel the warmth of his body radiating from beside her. His hand rested in the space between them and she had to ignore the strong urge she had to cover it with her own.
That would be inappropriate. He had a girlfriend after all; and said girlfriend happened to be her other best friend.
She looked up as Jonathan Kent cleared his throat and glanced at his wife. “Chloe, we need you to tell us everything that happened.”
She’d almost always felt comfortable with the Kent’s. They were a good family and she felt a special kinship with Martha. Over the last several years the woman had become the closest thing to a mother-figure Chloe’d had in years. Despite that, right then she felt uncomfortable and nervous and she wasn’t all together sure why she felt that way. She met the woman’s eyes and Martha offered her a warm, encouraging smile.
Chloe drew in a deep breath and to her surprise, Clark shifted closer to her, closing most of the small gap between them, as if he was offering her his physical presence as a method of his own brand of encouragement. She felt a stirring of emotion within her that she was usually able to suppress or at the very least ignore, and she glanced at him sideways, noticing he was gazing at her intently.
She knew none of them was going to like what she was about to say. “Lionel Luthor came to see me at the Daily Planet yesterday evening.”
“Lionel?” Clark repeated, his eyes widening a little.
She met his gaze, nodding silently. She knew Clark knew how uneasy she felt about the billionaire, how she still tensed at the sound of the name.
“What did he want?” Martha asked worriedly.
“He wanted to give me a story about someone at Central Kansas.” She paused. “Someone with super strength and the ability to shoot fire from his eyes.”
“He knows about me?” Clark whispered.
“That’s what I thought too. But…no. He was talking about your professor. Milton Fine.” She looked at him, searching his eyes. His gaze was intense and for a moment she forgot what she was saying, and where they were.
“How did he know about Fine?” Jonathan questioned and she blinked, breaking the gaze she held with Clark and turning her attention to him.
“I have no idea. He said he didn’t have any proof, that Fine was too clever to be caught.” Chloe tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear, then took a sip of her coffee, letting its warmth sooth her frazzled nerves. “So after I talked to him, I started doing some research. There’s no record of Fine’s existence anywhere.”
“Well, he is Kryptonian,” Jonathan murmured.
“Yeah, but so is Clark, and…there are records for him. All kinds of them,” she pointed out. “But nothing for Fine. Anywhere, ever.”
The four of them fell silent, absorbing that bit of information.
“That’s when I got your phone call about Clark,” Chloe said softly, looking at Martha. “And I came here on a hunch. And then you said that Fine had gone to destroy the Fortress in order to save Clark and that I had sent him. And I realized that…he may be from the same planet as Clark, but he’s not like Clark at all.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and she gazed into the coffee mug.
Despite the fact they weren’t actually touching, she felt Clark tense, and a wave of barely suppressed anger tugged at her, causing her to frown. She glanced at him sideways.
“What happened when you left?” he asked quietly, his eyes dark and intense.
Chloe hesitated. “I followed him to the cave, and then used the key to get to the Fortress. When I got there…he was opening some kind of portal and talking to someone…I think he called him General Zod.”
Clark shook his head slightly to signal he had no idea who she was talking about.
She shrugged, feeling overly confused. “Whoever this Zod is, Fine was trying to free him. There was a crystal in the center of the Fortress and I heard this voice…tell me to destroy it.”
“What voice?” Jonathan asked, leaning forward slightly.
“I don’t know. But I think it might have been Jor-El.” She bit her lip, then took another long drink of coffee. “So I grabbed the crystal and that’s when Fine spotted me.” Another wave of anger hit her and she stood up slowly, needing to walk off the feeling.
“What did he do?” Clark asked lowly.
She glanced at him as she slowly walked the floor. “I took some Kryptonite with me thinking maybe he shared your weakness, but…” Chloe shook her head. “It didn’t do anything to him at all. But…when I brought it in contact with the crystal, the crystal exploded into millions of pieces. And the portal closed.”
“So this…General Zod didn’t get through?” Jonathan asked and she shook her head no.
“Thank God,” Martha murmured, reaching out and touching her husband’s arm.
Clark didn’t take his eyes off her, though he remained silent.
“I’m guessing that destroying that crystal is what saved Clark,” Jonathan added, glancing at Martha, who nodded.
There was a thick tension in the room that hadn’t been there only moments before.
Clark slowly stood up, gazing at her intently. “Then what happened?”
“You…know the rest.” She avoided his eyes, feeling even more on edge than she already was.
A long moment of anger-filled silence past and without a word, the three of them watched in surprise as Clark left the room, and then headed out the backdoor, slamming the door behind him as he went outside, presumably to his loft.
Feeling overwhelmed by the mixture of emotions whirling around her, Chloe drew in a breath and let it out slowly, looking at the Kents’ uncertainly.
“Go,” Martha said softly, nodding.
She nodded as well, then quickly followed after Clark.
* * *
Clark stared out the loft window and into the distance, his arms folded across his chest. Things were becoming all too clear for him that he wasn’t ready or prepared to see this clearly yet. His shoulders were tense, and every muscle in his body was filled with anger.
He was going to locate Fine and kill him. There was no doubt in his mind. It was what he had to do. The Kryptonian had proven he was anything but trustworthy. He had killed Chloe, had tried to kill Clark, and tried to bring some other being to earth that was undoubtedly evil.
It was the first point that got to him the most. There was a lot that Clark Kent could deal with--meteor freaks and robbers and even the Luthors.
Chloe getting hurt because of him, dying because of him, was not something he could handle. The rage that flooded his mind at the thought was overwhelming, and bordering on uncontrollable. Without thinking about it, he punched a large hole in the side of the loft.
“Nice job.”
He turned quickly, startled to see Chloe standing a few feet away and wondering how she’d managed to sneak up on him without him hearing her. Swallowing hard, he turned away from her once more.
She drew in a breath and slowly came up behind him. “Clark…”
“Don’t.” He shook his head a little.
“I get that you’re upset.”
Clark scoffed and looked at her. “You think?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I get that you’re upset,” she repeated tensely. “But that doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk.”
He was more than a little caught off guard by her words and didn’t know how to respond.
Smirking in the apparent satisfaction of having shut him up, she went on. “Now you wanna tell me what’s going on in that brain of yours or do you just plan to keep punching holes in your loft? Cause eventually it will collapse.”
He let out a breath and looked away from her for a long moment, staring out at the fields. “Chloe, I watched you die.” His voice was very quiet.
“I know that. I was there. I’m just not clear on how you were there.”
“Don’t you get it? You should never have been up there.”
“I went up there because you couldn’t,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, well don’t do it again,” Clark said, his tone harsher than he meant for it to be.
She snorted. “Well, then don’t almost die on me again!”
“Hey, I didn’t choose to get sick,” he snapped, turning to face her angrily.
“No, you got sick because Fine made you sick, Clark. And in case you didn’t notice, I saved your life.”
“And you died in the process!”
Chloe folded her arms across her chest, her eyes narrowed and filled with determination. “And I’d do it again.”
“Dammit, Chloe!” He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “You think I wanted that? You think I ever wanted to see you hurt like that? That I wanted you to die in my place?” Clark shook his head. “You should have just let me die.”
Her jaw tensed. “If you wanna be p*ssed, be p*ssed. I really don’t care, Clark. I did what had to be done.”
Glaring at her, he moved away. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“I get it better than you do,” Chloe snapped.
“I really doubt th--”
“Look at me,” she commanded.
He slowly turned to look at her once more, still furious, though more with himself than her.
“I did what I did because I had to do it, Clark. You would’ve done the same thing if our positions had been reversed. And don’t even try to deny it,” she warned, moving so she was standing toe-to-toe with him.
Clark swallowed hard, suddenly realizing just how close they were standing. His fingers were itching to reach out and touch her, to brush away the strand of blond hair that had fallen on her cheek. “You’re not me, Chloe,” he said quietly. “That’s the difference.”
“No kidding, Clark,” she said snidely, glaring at him. “But that doesn’t mean I was ready to watch you die.” The anger suddenly seemed to fade from her eyes and he felt his own defenses dropping, as well.
“I wasn’t ready to watch you die either,” he whispered, his voice choked. Letting out a breath, she wrapped her arms around his waist and he hugged her back tightly. “Chloe, I don’t wanna lose you. Ever. I’ve never been that scared before.”
Chloe shut her eyes, resting her head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.
He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. After a moment, she slowly pulled away from him, looking up at him intently with her bright hazel eyes. “Come on. Let’s go back into the house. I really need the rest of my coffee.”
Clark started to reply when he caught sight of something behind her that made his eyes widen.
“What? What is it?”
“Turn around,” he whispered.
Chloe turned and stared in shock as her coffee mug hovered in mid-air a few inches away from them. “Uh…”