gift for sjlikeslists, part 1/2
1) For Whom: sjlikeslists
2) Type of Work (art, fic, vid): fic
3) Rating: PG
4) Length: 13,574
5) Plot Summary (if fic or vid): Sjlikeslj asked for a fic that took place during "Hourglass" in season one where Clark saw at least one future canon scene/Chlarky moment with Cassandra's touch. So basically this is a fairly AU version of that ep.
6) Notes: I had to look up this ep on the Wiki cause I hadn't seen it in like eight years (progress for me!) and I wanted to change the order of things a bit to amp up the drama. So sue me.
Clark hesitated outside of Cassandra's room. They already had enough problems with a serial killer out there that he really should be focusing on, especially if Chloe's theories about a youth sucker were true. Still, he'd been haunted all night by the vision the old woman had accidentally shared with him. He'd do better chasing down this latest threat to Smallville if he could concentrate and sleep, and he'd concentrate better if he was certain that his life wasn't about to be an infinite set of tombstones, of funerals piling on top of the other.
He just didn't quite have the guts to commit to speaking with her.
He'd seen her vision. Clark had been there, felt the world around him, and counted the names off of the looming headstones. The way Cassandra recoiled at his reaction led him to believe that visions weren't supposed to be shared like that.
Lana hadn't mentioned the other people who visited Cassandra talking abougt what they seen. Of course, other people weren't aliens from who-knew-where. It kind of figured in a perverse way that her ability worked wrong on E.T.s.
Still, if he went in there and let her touch him, then he'd see a vision again, and he wasn't sure he wanted that. What he'd already glimpsed was terrible enough. What if he got a front row seat to his parents being ill? What if it was a glimpse of a couple hundred years from now? It could be anything and after last time, Clark wasn't sure he wanted to know.
But there had to be some happy memories too, right?
He was about to leave when Lana caught sight of him and came up to him in the hall. She was smiling, although it was a tight smile that matched with her hair falling from its tight pony tail. Maybe being an aide wasn't settling well with her. Considering not all the residents at the home were as nice overall as Cassandra, then Clark could understand that too.
"Uh hey," he offered, not sure how to explain that he was back again. He was supposed to be done with the elderly for a while.
"Cassandra is definitely our most popular patient. Rumor has it Lex has asked around about her, not seen her yet, but he's curious."
Clark shrugged. "We talked before, but I have my needed hours volunteering. It's stupid."
"People can't see the future. Of course, it is Smallville so you never know."
"Now I know you've been worked too hard. You're starting to sound like Chloe."
"And we still have a serial killer on the loose, and I've seen a few residents talk up Cassandra's skills," she said, quirking her head up at him. "I'm just saying that I'm no longer dimissing the weird out of hand."
Clark was desperately tempted to make a joke and ask if that promise extended to when the weird was him. He wouldn't. He'd promised his parents better than that, and, to be honest, it wasn't the kind of thing he wanted anyone to know about him, let alone the girl of his dreams. There was always a chance that Lana might be okay with his beyond bizarre adoption, but he figured the best way to broach it with her---some day, maybe, possibly---was sincerely. A wise crack probably wouldn't go over at all.
"Maybe. I just...maybe I shouldn't know too much about my future."
Lana grinned as if it was her first time all day. "A little peek never hurt anyone. After all, Clark, where's your since of adventure?"
It was probably left behind in his ship or lost some time at least after Tina Greer almost killed him. Still, even if there were a lot of headstones in his future, maybe he'd be lucky enough to have a spate of good years with Lana. That would definitely be worth bothering Cassandra again.
"You know, that's a way to put it. I'll try. Hey, uh, are you ready for that bio test? I was thinking we could study at The Beanery or maybe even in my kitchen on Thursday."
"Whitney has a big game that Friday and I promised to help him review any plays he might be behind on."
Clark's smile faltered. RIght, Whitney. Maybe he could ask Cassandra if she had any ideas on how he was going to get the quarterback out of his life. That might be a start. "Sure, well, maybe for the midterm. I'm hopeless with cell bio. Anyway, I'll see you around?"
"Of course. I have a ton of bed pans to empty. Glamorous non-cheerleading life."
He laughed at that. "You're pretty nuts."
"Yeah but free of what Aunt Nell wants. That's a big step, and now I know I'm not ready to be in healthcare so I'm working on it. What do you want to be when you grow up, anyway? I never saw you farming like your dad?"
Clark bit back the automatic response of "normal," and just shrugged. "Maybe reporting. Who knows? I'm fourteen. No point in having it all mapped out so fast."
"Hence fortune telling?"
"Peeks only, Lana," he said, passing through the door. She was pressing a bit too much for comfort.
Cassandra Carver turned her head towards him when he entered. That didn't surprise him; he wasn't great at being stealthy and a six foot guy shuffling around in boots. He ducked his head and was glad, though, that she couldn't tell that much about him.
"Clark, I didn't expect you back. You ran quite quickly after our last session."
"I, about that---"
"No one but me can see what I do. You know that in twelve years, no one else has ever glimpsed my visions?"
"Maybe there's a first time for everything."
"I've never quite seen something like that either. Sometimes my visions are a bit metaphorical, so something like an open field can mean so much more but, son, if i had to bet, I'd say that you have very, very long time to live."
Clark swallowed hard and sat down in the folding chair a few feet from Cassandra's own overstuffed recliner. "That's nuts."
"I could be wrong, again metaphor, but you're unique, Mr. Kent. Everyone gets curious about me eventually. I've read hundreds of people's futures---whether they believed it or not---and you're the only one who got it in stereo."
"Then I can't explain that. I'm sorry."
"I don't need to know the reason. We both have our abilities, however yours and mine interact, and I'd say your healthy to a level that is more than just eating your Wheaties. Anyway, what brought you back so soon? I don't usually offer a second reading."
Clark swallowed a second time and clenched both hands in his lap. "I know. I...some of the other patients have said things. I was hoping you could change your rules for me."
"Normally, I wouldn't, but you interest me."
Clark stilled then and looked back at her. "Do you tell people what you see?"
"I never have before, no, and I don't plan to. Besides, no one ever believes me. Oh people come and ask and write it off as fun or real but as a group, no. I won't be an advisor to The Ledger any time soon."
"So, uh, if you saw something weird about me then you wouldn't tell anyone."
"I already suspect you're immortal if not at least long-lived, Clark. What else do you have?"
He stood and cursed his knees for shaking under him. There were pretty decent odds she wouldn't catch a glimpse of him floating or flying. Hell, flying was a pipe dream. He'd tried to expand on that ability since Homecoming and he was hopeless at it, just pathetic. Clark doubted that much would ever change. Easing over, he held out his right hand, palm up, for her.
"I'm ready if you are, ma'am."
"Way you drew it out, kid, I thought you'd never do it," she said, smiling a little and taking his hand.
Clark closed his eyes and forced himself to stay standing at the disorienting onslaught that followed...
**
When he opened them again, he was standing in the middle of a small living room. There was a sofa and a couple armchairs, as well as a glass coffee table littered with back issues of Time, Sports Illustrated, and Highlights.
Wait, oh man.
Frowning, Clark started to open the doors on the sides of the living room. The first door revealed nothing more than a modest bathroom that had a few ocean-themed paintings in it. On the second try, he found a room decorated with a passion for Warrior Angel that even lex would have found impressive. There was a huge mural on the far wall and a collection of action figures on the shelves. There was a bad before him shaped like Warrior Angel's headquarter's and, on it, was a boy who didn't look any older than ten.
"Uh," Clark said, not sure what else to do. Before he'd just seen inanimate objects. He'd never had a vision of the future with a breathing, moving human being in it.
The boy looked up at him and smiled. "Dad, you're home!"
"Oh boy," he said, staying still at the doorway. "Hi?"
The little boy studied him with intense scrutiny and it was a look Clark recognized although he couldn't quite place from where. It wasn't completely his own, and that made sense. After all, the boy...his son had to have a mother. Unless he budded or reproduced like coral. He didn't, did he? Oh God, great, give his body ideas.
Anyway, his son didn't look exactly like him. His eyes were so piercingly green and his nose a bit too large for his face. The smile he wore was large and beaming, almost threatened to swallow his whole face.
The boy laughed a little but stood up and came to face Clark at the threshold. "You're having a weird day, right?"
"I don't know," Clark replied. Since this was just a vision and not actual time travel, since it would be over soon enough, surely there was no harm in interacting. Whatever this was was apparently as destined to happen as the cemetery row of names. He couldn't affect it. "Do I have 'weird days' often?"
"You sometimes act weird if there are meteor rocks, buy you don't seem sick, just confused."
"I might be a little, um, what's your name?"
"Oh you had a lot of rocks. Do I need to call Mom? She said she's working late."
"No, I don't think you need that, I..."
The boy rolled his eyes and that gesture was both condescending and familiar. It disappointed Clark that that action didn't remind him in the least of Lana. "Gene. It's fine. You can stay here and hang out with me, and when Mom gets back---whatever happened---she can fix it. She's really good at that."
Clark nodded and let Gene take his hand. "Alright, do you have any good games?"
"Lots of cards games. You'll like them."
Then there was a blurring again in the world around him and Clark's vision swam...
**
He stumbled back instantly, just managing to prevent himself from walking right into Cassandra's dresser. God, that wouldn't do him any damn good to shatter it just by falling into it. He'd done that once when he was twelve and, okay yeah, running in the halls. He'd tripped and slammed into his Dad's dresser and smashed the wood. He wasn't sure he could do that just walking speed but he probably could. Cassandra already knew he was odd and that, thanks future vision, was also affected in a very different way than most people by the meteor rocks (and were there different kinds, oh crap). He didn't need shards of wood to help confirm any theories she was cultivating.
"I...is that new? Do the visions usually talk?"
"Someitmes, " she said, sitting up a bit more rigidly and he noticed sweat beading on her forehead. "There will be a radio broadcast or TV in the background, something for date and time maybe. Like I said, part of them are metaphorical and part are usually just the subject alone. I get other people but it's very rare to have another person. Of course you know that it can't be a conversation. You're my first for that, Clark." She smiled at that and nodded back toward the sound of his voice. "Congratulations, sounds like a fine boy."
"I...you have to be wrong."
It was a stupid reaction. She had a power, however the meteor rocks had done it, and it worked reliably for her the way Coach Walt had made fire or Tina Greer could morph her bones. He would have a son, and Clark both was nauseated and excited. Nauseated because he was fourteen and he was in no way ready for that even if that had been a vision of his thirties or later, and excited because after all he was an alien and there was no reason why he should fit with a human girl like that. Hell, he got excited sometimes just thinking about Lana and would splinter wood or bend his bed frame.
He wasn't so abnormal that some day, some how...God, he could at least be like other guys in a real way.
"You saw what there was to see. Gene, was it? That was your son."
"And the mom?" He said, reaching out for her hand again and he flashed back to beiing three and having his mom explain patiently to him why he couldn't speed eat cookies. "I have to know."
"I can only get one vision a day at most. Come back tomorrow to see more and we'll let it play out. I admit, after so long, I've rarely felt flashes so complex. You intrigue me. I admit that. I'd like to know who the lucky lady is."
"I...me too."
"But you understand there's no guarantee you'll get a vision of her too or that you've even met her yet. People fall in love with college sweethearts or at their first job, son."
"No, I know who it just has to be." Clark said, slipping back out into the hall and hoping to run into the girl in question before he left.
**
"You're late, should I even be surprised?" Chloe said.
Clark glared back at her. He was not in the mood for her snark at nine a.m. His day was only a few minutes old and it already sucked.
His latest freaky floating dream had ended with him crashing to the bed and then smashing the frame apart on impact. Of course, he'd already been running late so he'd also had to skip breakfast and would also be getting a stern talk from his dad about why it was important for Clark to feed the domestic animals (their few horses and sheep) before he left for school. Nothing was crappier than a platitude-a-thon from his father.
Clark scratched his nose and slouched down more in his seat. Idly, he wondered if he'd do that with his son. When he'd had his glimpse, Clark had been too shocked to say much coherent at all. The idea of wanting to say things like "Because I said so" and "It's because you're special" all the time made him sick. They didn't help Clark now, and he wasn't sure what kind of amnesia he'd have to contract to make him think that those would be great explanations even in fifteen years.
Wait, oh man. Would his son have powers?
"I hope not."
Chloe quirked her head at him and studied him more closely, green eyes boring into his own. "You have something? Should you save it for when Pete gets here for first period lay-out?"
"Nothing, not really."
"Then I still say we have more to talk about than the lunch menu print-out or the latest on the football team's season as it winds down."
"Like?"
"That old lady they found on that stage in the old Talon theater? They haven't done the autopsy, but Chad sent me a few pics of the jacket she was wearing. It was Candy Smith's, even had her name signed in the back on a tag in sharpie in case it got lost. Why would her grandma wear that?"
"Serial killer. It's not bad enough he's hurting old people? That's pretty awful already, Chlo!"
She shrugged. "It's always awful. My point is, though, that I think it's like everything else in this hamlet from Hell and that the serial killer packs an extra wallop. Have you ever heard of a lamia?"
"God bless you?"
She frowned back at him. "I didn't sneeze. God, you and Pete need to read something else besides the sports page. My point is it's different but the same idea. There's myths all over the world of creatures that can suck out a life force. Jody could suck fat literally, so why can't the meteor rocks make it so that someone trades their age for the next victim's."
"So some old person is staying young for a time by sucking the youth out of high schoolers? Chloe, it always sounds nuts."
His editor stood up and flounced---that was the only word for it---toward him, her Doc Martins echoing loudly on the linoleum as she did it. "Fire starting coach, bone morpher robbing banks, a bug boy and the shower itself."
Clark sighed and leaned over his desk. "Yeah the world's largest meteor shower. That stuff has to happen somewhere. We got picked. It sucks. What happened that day was awful." And there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't think about Lex's appearance or Lana's parents. He'd cost Smallville so much just getting there. Now that everyone seemed to be going nuts with power, he owed them quite a bit more to boot. "What's your point?"
"You say my theories are crazy, but we've seen a half-dozen times how the rocks mutate people. That's science, and I've learned enough to no longer assume there's something they can't do. Besides," she said, her tone breezy. "If I wanted to really get you going all Scully on me, then I'd talk about how a few witnesses say more than just rocks came down."
Clark had to remind himself to breathe. "Sure, Chloe. Little green men, exactly."
"Why not? It's mathematically beyond unlikely that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe. The biggest meteor shower on the planet would have been a great time to hide sleeper agents or a ship so why not then?"
"Because aliens aren't real," he replied. Great, now he was going to survive a lightening strike in front of her for being the biggest liar in town. "Sometimes there aren't conspiracies. There aren't youth-suckers or aliens around every corner."
"What's your problem? You never have any fun, Clark, and you never entertain any idea that's not completely expected and usual."
"I don't think serial murder's fun."
She rolled her eyes and sat down on his desk top. Clark pushed back from her, unnerved by her enthusiasm. "I didn't say that, but it's like that Sherlock Holmes thing. If you eliminate a certain set of answers and all that remains is the improbably but still possible..."
"Kansas isn't the home of first contact."
Yup, strike him any time now God or Zeus or whoever.
"Why not?"
"Because that's not how life works."
Chloe seemed appeased then because she stood up and started working on her files back at the cabinets. "Maybe it's not, but wouldn't it be cool if it were? Wouldn't...they have to be smarter than us. More evolved. It'd be cool to talk to an alien, get a fresh perspective on life."
"I guess or maybe we can just get to the lunch menu placement."
**
"You must have set a record getting here. I know it's not even three o'clock yet because my clock is set for that. I have pills to take then. Smallville High still get out at quarter til?"
"Yes, ma'am," Clark said, rocking back and forth on his heels a bit.
"Then you made amazing time. Can you even drive?”
He sighed and sat back in the rickety folding chair beside her armchair. “I am allowed to drive the truck on the farm, private road stuff. I could man the tractor by the time I was eight…which would be more impressive if it ever worked.”
Cassandra’s lips curled up in a smile. “But you can get from your homeroom across town without either in minutes. I see how it is.” She chuckled a little and gestured at her glasses.
“Alright, I don’t but you, Mr. Kent, are a kid of many surprises.”
“Maybe, but I’ve been thinking all day about what I saw, about, well-“
“Your son. You saw him, he exists, you might as well be able to say it,” she added, her tone patient and soft.
Clark leaned closer but didn’t reach for her. She wasn’t a theme park ride, and it would be rude to just try using her gift without her permission. He wouldn’t like it if people just demanded he run them into Metropolis like a shuttle or lift up tables so they could reach fallen keys easier. A small, snarky part of himself he rarely listened to did point out that sometimes it felt like he was set aside for use by his dad and for the farm but that wasn’t fair. They took him in and when he was very little they couldn’t have afforded more hands than just Earl for security reasons. He was too odd for people to be around, so it was fair he learned to do the chores himself. Clark didn’t mind.
Really.
Okay, maybe a little.
“But it’s weird. He looked only a few years younger than me. All that future seer stuff is so disorienting. It looks and feels like now but it’s obviously anything but!”
“I can’t give you continuous peeks at who you’re going to be. You shouldn’t know but so much, Clark. I thought about it all day and, yes, as much as I like you and as interesting as you are, I can’t just give you view after view. Do you understand?”
Clark’s chest constricted and it felt like his throat was stuffed with cotton. “But today, right? I just want to see if I can tell who the mom is. I know you think it could be someone from college or who knows when, but I have this hunch and I just have to know.”
“So you can ask her to the winter dance faster? What would you do if you saw her? My reputation is spreading across town, sure, but wouldn’t it jeopardize everything to put that kind of pressure on her now if she even is a friend of yours?” She quirked her head at him, aiming her ear towards him as best she could. “That girl who comes in here, smells like lilacs and always humming to herself. You’re hoping it’s that girl. Laura was it?”
“Lana and maybe but that’s not the point. To be honest, I have some special, um, considerations, and I was curious if my son got them too. They’re big enough that it’ll take a decade just to figure out how to prepare him for them. My parents, well, I love them and they try very hard but I wish I could do better. I always feel like everything whacks me upside the head as a surprise. A crappy one.”
“That I believe. I’m not here for love connections, Clark, but I can hear so much worry in your voice. I can’t guarantee you’ll see your son again, any more than I can guarantee you won’t see those head stones, but we’ll try. I’d like for him to have a fighting chance.”
“Maybe he won’t have to do that sort of thing if I have any say in it,” he replied, before taking her proffered hand…
**
He couldn’t tell when he was at first since when Clark looked up, he found himself standing in the patch of yard in front of his farmhouse door. There was still a tall spread of sunflowers lining the porch railing and an old, battered truck was before him. It wasn’t the red one his parents had now---this was blue---but it wasn’t really helping him with a time frame. After all, they always held onto cars until they fell in the floor. This model looked contemporary for him normally but it could be twenty years in the future for all he knew. Sighing, Clark looked down at his hands and smirked a little at the football there. His father never let him play, especially after the Coach Walt incident. It didn’t mean Clark couldn’t catch and throw (oh believe him he certainly could).
Shrugging, he tossed the pigskin back and forth between his hands. There was a squeal of joy in the distance and as he watched, Gene ran back into sight. His son stopped suddenly and Clark noted the huge cloud of dust the boy kicked up. He’d always done similar things. Fast stopping meant a fast mess left in his wake.
“So,” Clark said, assuming a quarterback stance. He’d seen Whitney enough from the bleachers and his one week as a player to know it. “Are you ready to go long again?”
Gene put his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes. The attitude felt so familiar but it was also nothing like Lana, who went out of her way after years of Nell’s conditioning to gain people’s respect. “If someone would toss it this time!”
Clark grinned and hurled the ball as hard as he could, curious to see if Gene could keep up. His son ran after it and returned soon after with the pass cradled in his right arm.
Yup, conclusive. His son was at least as fast as he was.
So powers, at least his, were genetic. It figured.
The next question was out of his mouth before he could stop it:
“Do you have all my abilities?”
Gene huffed and shook his head. “One of those days, isn’t it?”
“Maybe? I swear I didn’t stumble onto green meteor rocks if it makes you feel better.”
“You’re lucky that Mom’s inside making dinner for one thing…well, mostly, Mom’s not the best cook. Still, when you go wonky, she’s the best.”
Clark frowned and followed his son up the front porch stairs. Lana also was a great cook. The muffins she baked were amazing. She’d brought some into their homeroom just last week. But there was no way. He and Lana were made for each other; he knew it.
“It’s just…I can’t explain it.”
“Well you were off last week too and I doubt it was magic or rocks. So what? Are you going to tell me now that it was just time travel?”
Clark hesitated. “No, not that.”
“Good, Dad, because something from that Quantum Leap show Mom makes me watch on Syfy would be way too much. I know you’re Superman but there has to be a limit.”
“I’m who?”
Gene rolled his eyes again and Clark wondered if the kid’s eyes would fall out from making that motion all the time. It was a damn good thing he was probably invulnerable too, that was all. “Mom! Dad’s being weird again!”
Looking up and past Gene’s bright blond head, Clark saw the back of someone else’s. His eyes narrowed then, and it grew hard to walk. The head of hair before him was a bright blonde, so bleached it was almost white. The cut was almost like a short bob but with choppy chunks sort of cut into it haphazardly. It was almost punky. She turned and now Clark realized where Gene’s mischievous verdant eyes had to have come from.
Chloe.
He’d…and then they’d have to have…but he loved Lana and Chloe was just his friend, his annoying friend who dragged him into crime sprees and was already looking for alien life in Smallville. He was working on a plan, actually, to avoid her a bit more for a while until she cooled it with the alien investigations. Clark hadn’t talked to his mom and dad about that yet, but he was sure both parents would encourage that cooling it plan.
There was no way he’d fallen for her.
That was it. Cassandra’s power was broken or his own extraterrestrial nature was warping it.
Chloe looked mostly like herself. There were a few more lines at the corners of her eyes as well as a slight scar that peeked out from under the straps of her tank top. That and her different haircut were the only things about her, really, that would have told him she wasn’t the same girl from this morning in The Torch.
“Gene, sweetie, why don’t you go upstairs and wash up.”
“So this is the adult talk where you discuss Justice League things and I pretend I don’t have super-hearing?”
“Huh?”
Chloe shook her head and swatted her towel at Gene. “No spying for one so extra barn chores this weekend. I’m sure Martha will agree. Two, you know what we do on the side but you’re too young to know all the details. We promised you full disclosure in two years when you hit freshman year. Enjoy ignorance and get washed up. You’re dusty.”
“Risks of superspeed,” Gene chirped before rushing up the kitchen stairs.
“Wow, uh, you’re really good at that.”
“Twelve years and counting in practice,” she said, frowning up at him. “You seem off and Gene’s good at telling. So which of Lex’s plans was it this time?”
“Lex? He wouldn’t?”
“He would, has, and will again. This, though, this feels like something else.”
“I can’t tell you but I’m not sure I can. I’m afraid it’s one of those ‘ruin the space-time continuum’ things.”
“You’re basing the lack of communication between us on ancient Michael J. Fox movies?”
“No, just I shouldn’t say too much but I’ll admit since you’re not shocked by anything---and what the Hell is a Justice League, by the way?---that I’m not from here or from now, exactly.”
“Then this is a lot.”
“I, uh, wasn’t expecting this, exactly.” He said, taking a seat at the stools. Those, those were familiar. The adult Chloe who apparently was now Chloe Kent based on the rings on her fingers was a completely new phenomenon. “I met Gene before. I guess it eventually went back to normal at the…our apartment. I just wasn’t expecting, um, you.”
Chloe’s face closed off and she turned off the burners on the stove. “You mean me. Whenever you’re from, you weren’t expecting me to be part of your future.”
“I didn’t say that in so many words.”
“You didn’t have to. I get it. I should be used to the rejection. I know I had five years of it with you, maybe longer.”
“I’m sorry. I just---“
“I’m not Lana.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’ve known you for over twenty years, Clark. I can tell whatever you’re thinking by now. I’m not Lana and you were hung up on her into college, and I get that. No, I guess I’m not, but she wasn’t exactly responsive to you being an alien either.”
“She freaked out?”
“She didn’t take it the best. I’d known for a long time before she did, and I think it’s best not to tell you the hows or whens. Maybe we should Back to the Future it now. All I can tell you is that you’re welcome to stay until you get back to your own time and place, and that, for what it’s worth, we’re very happy and we help a lot of people. Sorry I don’t have alliterative initials and long dark hair. I can stop dyeing mine.”
“I…no. I guess you’re not what I expected.”
Chloe nodded and started toward the stairs. “Maybe you need a few minutes. If you’re here when I’m back, we can talk and have roast beef. If you’re not, well, I’m worth the wait, promise.”
And that was the last thing he heard clearly before the world blurred around him.
**
Clark didn’t get winded.
If the meteor rocks weren’t around or if a meteor mutant like Tina Greer wasn’t beating the crap out of him, he never got tired. He could lift a hundred bales of hay or run to Metropolis. Hell, he’d found out recently he could punch through ice a foot thick without much difficulty, but he didn’t gasp out for breath. It was why doing that currently threw him so much. He was backing away from where Cassandra sat, smirking back at him, and taking in great gasps of air. It felt like some kind of anaconda squeezing his ribs shut.
“Now I know your visions aren’t right.”
She kept smiling and shook her head. “Clark sometimes there are metaphors and sometimes it’s hard to understand at first, but yours…the ones for you come in so clear. Even I can see how similar Chloe and Gene look.”
“You’re blind.”
Her grin widened and she reached toward her radio, taking time to feel for it out on a counter behind her. “I used to be able to see. I mentioned that. The meteors took that kind of sight but the visions are all I can see. It’s just you that really ramp them up. Never had them last so long or be so in depth and, of course, no one yet can see what you can.”
“Yet?”
“Lana Lang was in here, that girl you like so much? And she requested a touch as well.”
Clark quirked his head at Cassandra, not that she could tell the difference. “What? And what did you see?”
“Everyone’s glimpse is private. I think you’d appreciate that.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re at the very least like me. The meteors gave you something, possibly, but I’ve read other infected and you’re not quite like them either. I keep my confidences of the people who ask.”
“Why would someone ask about me?” His eyes widened and he pulled up the folding chair again. “Wait. Do you mean that Lana wanted to know mine?”
“She was a bit curious now that you and I seemed so close, but what she saw---and this is all I will say---was completely about her. It wasn’t about romance one way or the other. Sometimes a girl has more than that on her plate. And it was for her to know.”
Clark sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “This can’t be true though. I don’t care if I’m, uh, different or anything else. It can’t be Chloe.”
“And why not? Is she a friend of yours currently?”
“Sure, she’s been one of my best friends for about a year and a half and my editor at The Torch. That doesn’t mean I want to marry her. She talks all the time and she’s bossy and she never stops asking questions.”
Cassandra finally succeeded and getting the radio on, turning the old knob until it reached a station that played some type of jazz music. Clark couldn’t tell much. It matched some songs the old middle school jazz ensemble played at assemblies but other than that, Clark would never be able to tell you who had composed it.
“That’s the part that bothers you, I reckon. You get defensive when I simply admit what you have to know and that the way you react to me is unique…that you’re unique. Chloe’s noticed that about you. Is she the only one?”
Clark sighed and thought about the way Lex sometimes would try and steer conversations to the Porsche that was crumpled in his garage. That was different. Lex was new and he suspected something had gone wrong after a big accident where Clark had been sloppy. Chloe’d been nattering at him about things that didn’t quite add up since he’d sped to a library in Connecticut to get her a copy of The Tales of the Weird and Unexplained for her very own. Chloe’d always humored him, obviously bought what he wanted to pedal but only out of politeness in public. Clark wasn’t so dense that he hadn’t noticed it.
Still, she wasn’t…he wasn’t the type who could be even related to a reporter and there was no doubt that’s what she had to still be there. As much as Clark sometimes daydreamed about being a reporter himself for The Planet (Chlo’s enthusiasm was infectious), he knew that he couldn’t, that it would be painting a target permanently on his back. So why would he even dare something like that of colleagues of hers at staff parties or just hanging out after work noticing him, of her own curiosity, that fear that she might one day think of him as a good way to get her Pulitzer so much faster.
“We’re not compatible, trust me.”
“It’s because you don’t trust her, but my visions are the truth, they show what’s to come whether you like it or not. I think it’s not about trusting you, Clark. I think it’s about how much or how little you trust her.”
“You a mind-reader too?”
“No, but I know what it’s like to have a secret. I reckon not one as large as yours, not by a long shot, but I
know what it was like to try hiding this from my daughters for the first five years or so. Then I got sick and needed to go in the home and couldn’t stop sometimes sharing what I read on the nurses. Things got both more complicated and harder when I was honest with people. There are days I feel like a damn tourist attraction---“
Clark swallowed and looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry. I…my life never has anything like answers. This was the first chance in months that I felt like things might work out at least okay. I didn’t…It was wrong to exploit you.”
“It was symbiotic, I promise. I was interested in you and it’s a happy future. Sometimes what I see isn’t. I know that it eats at you that you’ll probably outlive everyone. I outlived all my siblings so I know it’s horrible. But I don’t get to see happy families, and I enjoyed it back. I’m just saying you don’t have to be as open about it as I am and maybe telling her whatever it is that worries you so much right now, too fast, isn’t the best way either. You just don’t have to reject a future because you’re afraid. That seems stupid to me. If it wasn’t hard or a little scary then it wouldn’t be any fun.”
“But Lana---“
“Again, all I’ll say is that Lana has more going on, a future of her own and that boy and Chloe, they
seemed happy. I’d think about that.”
It was the last thing Clark wanted to do.
**
2) Type of Work (art, fic, vid): fic
3) Rating: PG
4) Length: 13,574
5) Plot Summary (if fic or vid): Sjlikeslj asked for a fic that took place during "Hourglass" in season one where Clark saw at least one future canon scene/Chlarky moment with Cassandra's touch. So basically this is a fairly AU version of that ep.
6) Notes: I had to look up this ep on the Wiki cause I hadn't seen it in like eight years (progress for me!) and I wanted to change the order of things a bit to amp up the drama. So sue me.
Clark hesitated outside of Cassandra's room. They already had enough problems with a serial killer out there that he really should be focusing on, especially if Chloe's theories about a youth sucker were true. Still, he'd been haunted all night by the vision the old woman had accidentally shared with him. He'd do better chasing down this latest threat to Smallville if he could concentrate and sleep, and he'd concentrate better if he was certain that his life wasn't about to be an infinite set of tombstones, of funerals piling on top of the other.
He just didn't quite have the guts to commit to speaking with her.
He'd seen her vision. Clark had been there, felt the world around him, and counted the names off of the looming headstones. The way Cassandra recoiled at his reaction led him to believe that visions weren't supposed to be shared like that.
Lana hadn't mentioned the other people who visited Cassandra talking abougt what they seen. Of course, other people weren't aliens from who-knew-where. It kind of figured in a perverse way that her ability worked wrong on E.T.s.
Still, if he went in there and let her touch him, then he'd see a vision again, and he wasn't sure he wanted that. What he'd already glimpsed was terrible enough. What if he got a front row seat to his parents being ill? What if it was a glimpse of a couple hundred years from now? It could be anything and after last time, Clark wasn't sure he wanted to know.
But there had to be some happy memories too, right?
He was about to leave when Lana caught sight of him and came up to him in the hall. She was smiling, although it was a tight smile that matched with her hair falling from its tight pony tail. Maybe being an aide wasn't settling well with her. Considering not all the residents at the home were as nice overall as Cassandra, then Clark could understand that too.
"Uh hey," he offered, not sure how to explain that he was back again. He was supposed to be done with the elderly for a while.
"Cassandra is definitely our most popular patient. Rumor has it Lex has asked around about her, not seen her yet, but he's curious."
Clark shrugged. "We talked before, but I have my needed hours volunteering. It's stupid."
"People can't see the future. Of course, it is Smallville so you never know."
"Now I know you've been worked too hard. You're starting to sound like Chloe."
"And we still have a serial killer on the loose, and I've seen a few residents talk up Cassandra's skills," she said, quirking her head up at him. "I'm just saying that I'm no longer dimissing the weird out of hand."
Clark was desperately tempted to make a joke and ask if that promise extended to when the weird was him. He wouldn't. He'd promised his parents better than that, and, to be honest, it wasn't the kind of thing he wanted anyone to know about him, let alone the girl of his dreams. There was always a chance that Lana might be okay with his beyond bizarre adoption, but he figured the best way to broach it with her---some day, maybe, possibly---was sincerely. A wise crack probably wouldn't go over at all.
"Maybe. I just...maybe I shouldn't know too much about my future."
Lana grinned as if it was her first time all day. "A little peek never hurt anyone. After all, Clark, where's your since of adventure?"
It was probably left behind in his ship or lost some time at least after Tina Greer almost killed him. Still, even if there were a lot of headstones in his future, maybe he'd be lucky enough to have a spate of good years with Lana. That would definitely be worth bothering Cassandra again.
"You know, that's a way to put it. I'll try. Hey, uh, are you ready for that bio test? I was thinking we could study at The Beanery or maybe even in my kitchen on Thursday."
"Whitney has a big game that Friday and I promised to help him review any plays he might be behind on."
Clark's smile faltered. RIght, Whitney. Maybe he could ask Cassandra if she had any ideas on how he was going to get the quarterback out of his life. That might be a start. "Sure, well, maybe for the midterm. I'm hopeless with cell bio. Anyway, I'll see you around?"
"Of course. I have a ton of bed pans to empty. Glamorous non-cheerleading life."
He laughed at that. "You're pretty nuts."
"Yeah but free of what Aunt Nell wants. That's a big step, and now I know I'm not ready to be in healthcare so I'm working on it. What do you want to be when you grow up, anyway? I never saw you farming like your dad?"
Clark bit back the automatic response of "normal," and just shrugged. "Maybe reporting. Who knows? I'm fourteen. No point in having it all mapped out so fast."
"Hence fortune telling?"
"Peeks only, Lana," he said, passing through the door. She was pressing a bit too much for comfort.
Cassandra Carver turned her head towards him when he entered. That didn't surprise him; he wasn't great at being stealthy and a six foot guy shuffling around in boots. He ducked his head and was glad, though, that she couldn't tell that much about him.
"Clark, I didn't expect you back. You ran quite quickly after our last session."
"I, about that---"
"No one but me can see what I do. You know that in twelve years, no one else has ever glimpsed my visions?"
"Maybe there's a first time for everything."
"I've never quite seen something like that either. Sometimes my visions are a bit metaphorical, so something like an open field can mean so much more but, son, if i had to bet, I'd say that you have very, very long time to live."
Clark swallowed hard and sat down in the folding chair a few feet from Cassandra's own overstuffed recliner. "That's nuts."
"I could be wrong, again metaphor, but you're unique, Mr. Kent. Everyone gets curious about me eventually. I've read hundreds of people's futures---whether they believed it or not---and you're the only one who got it in stereo."
"Then I can't explain that. I'm sorry."
"I don't need to know the reason. We both have our abilities, however yours and mine interact, and I'd say your healthy to a level that is more than just eating your Wheaties. Anyway, what brought you back so soon? I don't usually offer a second reading."
Clark swallowed a second time and clenched both hands in his lap. "I know. I...some of the other patients have said things. I was hoping you could change your rules for me."
"Normally, I wouldn't, but you interest me."
Clark stilled then and looked back at her. "Do you tell people what you see?"
"I never have before, no, and I don't plan to. Besides, no one ever believes me. Oh people come and ask and write it off as fun or real but as a group, no. I won't be an advisor to The Ledger any time soon."
"So, uh, if you saw something weird about me then you wouldn't tell anyone."
"I already suspect you're immortal if not at least long-lived, Clark. What else do you have?"
He stood and cursed his knees for shaking under him. There were pretty decent odds she wouldn't catch a glimpse of him floating or flying. Hell, flying was a pipe dream. He'd tried to expand on that ability since Homecoming and he was hopeless at it, just pathetic. Clark doubted that much would ever change. Easing over, he held out his right hand, palm up, for her.
"I'm ready if you are, ma'am."
"Way you drew it out, kid, I thought you'd never do it," she said, smiling a little and taking his hand.
Clark closed his eyes and forced himself to stay standing at the disorienting onslaught that followed...
**
When he opened them again, he was standing in the middle of a small living room. There was a sofa and a couple armchairs, as well as a glass coffee table littered with back issues of Time, Sports Illustrated, and Highlights.
Wait, oh man.
Frowning, Clark started to open the doors on the sides of the living room. The first door revealed nothing more than a modest bathroom that had a few ocean-themed paintings in it. On the second try, he found a room decorated with a passion for Warrior Angel that even lex would have found impressive. There was a huge mural on the far wall and a collection of action figures on the shelves. There was a bad before him shaped like Warrior Angel's headquarter's and, on it, was a boy who didn't look any older than ten.
"Uh," Clark said, not sure what else to do. Before he'd just seen inanimate objects. He'd never had a vision of the future with a breathing, moving human being in it.
The boy looked up at him and smiled. "Dad, you're home!"
"Oh boy," he said, staying still at the doorway. "Hi?"
The little boy studied him with intense scrutiny and it was a look Clark recognized although he couldn't quite place from where. It wasn't completely his own, and that made sense. After all, the boy...his son had to have a mother. Unless he budded or reproduced like coral. He didn't, did he? Oh God, great, give his body ideas.
Anyway, his son didn't look exactly like him. His eyes were so piercingly green and his nose a bit too large for his face. The smile he wore was large and beaming, almost threatened to swallow his whole face.
The boy laughed a little but stood up and came to face Clark at the threshold. "You're having a weird day, right?"
"I don't know," Clark replied. Since this was just a vision and not actual time travel, since it would be over soon enough, surely there was no harm in interacting. Whatever this was was apparently as destined to happen as the cemetery row of names. He couldn't affect it. "Do I have 'weird days' often?"
"You sometimes act weird if there are meteor rocks, buy you don't seem sick, just confused."
"I might be a little, um, what's your name?"
"Oh you had a lot of rocks. Do I need to call Mom? She said she's working late."
"No, I don't think you need that, I..."
The boy rolled his eyes and that gesture was both condescending and familiar. It disappointed Clark that that action didn't remind him in the least of Lana. "Gene. It's fine. You can stay here and hang out with me, and when Mom gets back---whatever happened---she can fix it. She's really good at that."
Clark nodded and let Gene take his hand. "Alright, do you have any good games?"
"Lots of cards games. You'll like them."
Then there was a blurring again in the world around him and Clark's vision swam...
**
He stumbled back instantly, just managing to prevent himself from walking right into Cassandra's dresser. God, that wouldn't do him any damn good to shatter it just by falling into it. He'd done that once when he was twelve and, okay yeah, running in the halls. He'd tripped and slammed into his Dad's dresser and smashed the wood. He wasn't sure he could do that just walking speed but he probably could. Cassandra already knew he was odd and that, thanks future vision, was also affected in a very different way than most people by the meteor rocks (and were there different kinds, oh crap). He didn't need shards of wood to help confirm any theories she was cultivating.
"I...is that new? Do the visions usually talk?"
"Someitmes, " she said, sitting up a bit more rigidly and he noticed sweat beading on her forehead. "There will be a radio broadcast or TV in the background, something for date and time maybe. Like I said, part of them are metaphorical and part are usually just the subject alone. I get other people but it's very rare to have another person. Of course you know that it can't be a conversation. You're my first for that, Clark." She smiled at that and nodded back toward the sound of his voice. "Congratulations, sounds like a fine boy."
"I...you have to be wrong."
It was a stupid reaction. She had a power, however the meteor rocks had done it, and it worked reliably for her the way Coach Walt had made fire or Tina Greer could morph her bones. He would have a son, and Clark both was nauseated and excited. Nauseated because he was fourteen and he was in no way ready for that even if that had been a vision of his thirties or later, and excited because after all he was an alien and there was no reason why he should fit with a human girl like that. Hell, he got excited sometimes just thinking about Lana and would splinter wood or bend his bed frame.
He wasn't so abnormal that some day, some how...God, he could at least be like other guys in a real way.
"You saw what there was to see. Gene, was it? That was your son."
"And the mom?" He said, reaching out for her hand again and he flashed back to beiing three and having his mom explain patiently to him why he couldn't speed eat cookies. "I have to know."
"I can only get one vision a day at most. Come back tomorrow to see more and we'll let it play out. I admit, after so long, I've rarely felt flashes so complex. You intrigue me. I admit that. I'd like to know who the lucky lady is."
"I...me too."
"But you understand there's no guarantee you'll get a vision of her too or that you've even met her yet. People fall in love with college sweethearts or at their first job, son."
"No, I know who it just has to be." Clark said, slipping back out into the hall and hoping to run into the girl in question before he left.
**
"You're late, should I even be surprised?" Chloe said.
Clark glared back at her. He was not in the mood for her snark at nine a.m. His day was only a few minutes old and it already sucked.
His latest freaky floating dream had ended with him crashing to the bed and then smashing the frame apart on impact. Of course, he'd already been running late so he'd also had to skip breakfast and would also be getting a stern talk from his dad about why it was important for Clark to feed the domestic animals (their few horses and sheep) before he left for school. Nothing was crappier than a platitude-a-thon from his father.
Clark scratched his nose and slouched down more in his seat. Idly, he wondered if he'd do that with his son. When he'd had his glimpse, Clark had been too shocked to say much coherent at all. The idea of wanting to say things like "Because I said so" and "It's because you're special" all the time made him sick. They didn't help Clark now, and he wasn't sure what kind of amnesia he'd have to contract to make him think that those would be great explanations even in fifteen years.
Wait, oh man. Would his son have powers?
"I hope not."
Chloe quirked her head at him and studied him more closely, green eyes boring into his own. "You have something? Should you save it for when Pete gets here for first period lay-out?"
"Nothing, not really."
"Then I still say we have more to talk about than the lunch menu print-out or the latest on the football team's season as it winds down."
"Like?"
"That old lady they found on that stage in the old Talon theater? They haven't done the autopsy, but Chad sent me a few pics of the jacket she was wearing. It was Candy Smith's, even had her name signed in the back on a tag in sharpie in case it got lost. Why would her grandma wear that?"
"Serial killer. It's not bad enough he's hurting old people? That's pretty awful already, Chlo!"
She shrugged. "It's always awful. My point is, though, that I think it's like everything else in this hamlet from Hell and that the serial killer packs an extra wallop. Have you ever heard of a lamia?"
"God bless you?"
She frowned back at him. "I didn't sneeze. God, you and Pete need to read something else besides the sports page. My point is it's different but the same idea. There's myths all over the world of creatures that can suck out a life force. Jody could suck fat literally, so why can't the meteor rocks make it so that someone trades their age for the next victim's."
"So some old person is staying young for a time by sucking the youth out of high schoolers? Chloe, it always sounds nuts."
His editor stood up and flounced---that was the only word for it---toward him, her Doc Martins echoing loudly on the linoleum as she did it. "Fire starting coach, bone morpher robbing banks, a bug boy and the shower itself."
Clark sighed and leaned over his desk. "Yeah the world's largest meteor shower. That stuff has to happen somewhere. We got picked. It sucks. What happened that day was awful." And there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't think about Lex's appearance or Lana's parents. He'd cost Smallville so much just getting there. Now that everyone seemed to be going nuts with power, he owed them quite a bit more to boot. "What's your point?"
"You say my theories are crazy, but we've seen a half-dozen times how the rocks mutate people. That's science, and I've learned enough to no longer assume there's something they can't do. Besides," she said, her tone breezy. "If I wanted to really get you going all Scully on me, then I'd talk about how a few witnesses say more than just rocks came down."
Clark had to remind himself to breathe. "Sure, Chloe. Little green men, exactly."
"Why not? It's mathematically beyond unlikely that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe. The biggest meteor shower on the planet would have been a great time to hide sleeper agents or a ship so why not then?"
"Because aliens aren't real," he replied. Great, now he was going to survive a lightening strike in front of her for being the biggest liar in town. "Sometimes there aren't conspiracies. There aren't youth-suckers or aliens around every corner."
"What's your problem? You never have any fun, Clark, and you never entertain any idea that's not completely expected and usual."
"I don't think serial murder's fun."
She rolled her eyes and sat down on his desk top. Clark pushed back from her, unnerved by her enthusiasm. "I didn't say that, but it's like that Sherlock Holmes thing. If you eliminate a certain set of answers and all that remains is the improbably but still possible..."
"Kansas isn't the home of first contact."
Yup, strike him any time now God or Zeus or whoever.
"Why not?"
"Because that's not how life works."
Chloe seemed appeased then because she stood up and started working on her files back at the cabinets. "Maybe it's not, but wouldn't it be cool if it were? Wouldn't...they have to be smarter than us. More evolved. It'd be cool to talk to an alien, get a fresh perspective on life."
"I guess or maybe we can just get to the lunch menu placement."
**
"You must have set a record getting here. I know it's not even three o'clock yet because my clock is set for that. I have pills to take then. Smallville High still get out at quarter til?"
"Yes, ma'am," Clark said, rocking back and forth on his heels a bit.
"Then you made amazing time. Can you even drive?”
He sighed and sat back in the rickety folding chair beside her armchair. “I am allowed to drive the truck on the farm, private road stuff. I could man the tractor by the time I was eight…which would be more impressive if it ever worked.”
Cassandra’s lips curled up in a smile. “But you can get from your homeroom across town without either in minutes. I see how it is.” She chuckled a little and gestured at her glasses.
“Alright, I don’t but you, Mr. Kent, are a kid of many surprises.”
“Maybe, but I’ve been thinking all day about what I saw, about, well-“
“Your son. You saw him, he exists, you might as well be able to say it,” she added, her tone patient and soft.
Clark leaned closer but didn’t reach for her. She wasn’t a theme park ride, and it would be rude to just try using her gift without her permission. He wouldn’t like it if people just demanded he run them into Metropolis like a shuttle or lift up tables so they could reach fallen keys easier. A small, snarky part of himself he rarely listened to did point out that sometimes it felt like he was set aside for use by his dad and for the farm but that wasn’t fair. They took him in and when he was very little they couldn’t have afforded more hands than just Earl for security reasons. He was too odd for people to be around, so it was fair he learned to do the chores himself. Clark didn’t mind.
Really.
Okay, maybe a little.
“But it’s weird. He looked only a few years younger than me. All that future seer stuff is so disorienting. It looks and feels like now but it’s obviously anything but!”
“I can’t give you continuous peeks at who you’re going to be. You shouldn’t know but so much, Clark. I thought about it all day and, yes, as much as I like you and as interesting as you are, I can’t just give you view after view. Do you understand?”
Clark’s chest constricted and it felt like his throat was stuffed with cotton. “But today, right? I just want to see if I can tell who the mom is. I know you think it could be someone from college or who knows when, but I have this hunch and I just have to know.”
“So you can ask her to the winter dance faster? What would you do if you saw her? My reputation is spreading across town, sure, but wouldn’t it jeopardize everything to put that kind of pressure on her now if she even is a friend of yours?” She quirked her head at him, aiming her ear towards him as best she could. “That girl who comes in here, smells like lilacs and always humming to herself. You’re hoping it’s that girl. Laura was it?”
“Lana and maybe but that’s not the point. To be honest, I have some special, um, considerations, and I was curious if my son got them too. They’re big enough that it’ll take a decade just to figure out how to prepare him for them. My parents, well, I love them and they try very hard but I wish I could do better. I always feel like everything whacks me upside the head as a surprise. A crappy one.”
“That I believe. I’m not here for love connections, Clark, but I can hear so much worry in your voice. I can’t guarantee you’ll see your son again, any more than I can guarantee you won’t see those head stones, but we’ll try. I’d like for him to have a fighting chance.”
“Maybe he won’t have to do that sort of thing if I have any say in it,” he replied, before taking her proffered hand…
**
He couldn’t tell when he was at first since when Clark looked up, he found himself standing in the patch of yard in front of his farmhouse door. There was still a tall spread of sunflowers lining the porch railing and an old, battered truck was before him. It wasn’t the red one his parents had now---this was blue---but it wasn’t really helping him with a time frame. After all, they always held onto cars until they fell in the floor. This model looked contemporary for him normally but it could be twenty years in the future for all he knew. Sighing, Clark looked down at his hands and smirked a little at the football there. His father never let him play, especially after the Coach Walt incident. It didn’t mean Clark couldn’t catch and throw (oh believe him he certainly could).
Shrugging, he tossed the pigskin back and forth between his hands. There was a squeal of joy in the distance and as he watched, Gene ran back into sight. His son stopped suddenly and Clark noted the huge cloud of dust the boy kicked up. He’d always done similar things. Fast stopping meant a fast mess left in his wake.
“So,” Clark said, assuming a quarterback stance. He’d seen Whitney enough from the bleachers and his one week as a player to know it. “Are you ready to go long again?”
Gene put his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes. The attitude felt so familiar but it was also nothing like Lana, who went out of her way after years of Nell’s conditioning to gain people’s respect. “If someone would toss it this time!”
Clark grinned and hurled the ball as hard as he could, curious to see if Gene could keep up. His son ran after it and returned soon after with the pass cradled in his right arm.
Yup, conclusive. His son was at least as fast as he was.
So powers, at least his, were genetic. It figured.
The next question was out of his mouth before he could stop it:
“Do you have all my abilities?”
Gene huffed and shook his head. “One of those days, isn’t it?”
“Maybe? I swear I didn’t stumble onto green meteor rocks if it makes you feel better.”
“You’re lucky that Mom’s inside making dinner for one thing…well, mostly, Mom’s not the best cook. Still, when you go wonky, she’s the best.”
Clark frowned and followed his son up the front porch stairs. Lana also was a great cook. The muffins she baked were amazing. She’d brought some into their homeroom just last week. But there was no way. He and Lana were made for each other; he knew it.
“It’s just…I can’t explain it.”
“Well you were off last week too and I doubt it was magic or rocks. So what? Are you going to tell me now that it was just time travel?”
Clark hesitated. “No, not that.”
“Good, Dad, because something from that Quantum Leap show Mom makes me watch on Syfy would be way too much. I know you’re Superman but there has to be a limit.”
“I’m who?”
Gene rolled his eyes again and Clark wondered if the kid’s eyes would fall out from making that motion all the time. It was a damn good thing he was probably invulnerable too, that was all. “Mom! Dad’s being weird again!”
Looking up and past Gene’s bright blond head, Clark saw the back of someone else’s. His eyes narrowed then, and it grew hard to walk. The head of hair before him was a bright blonde, so bleached it was almost white. The cut was almost like a short bob but with choppy chunks sort of cut into it haphazardly. It was almost punky. She turned and now Clark realized where Gene’s mischievous verdant eyes had to have come from.
Chloe.
He’d…and then they’d have to have…but he loved Lana and Chloe was just his friend, his annoying friend who dragged him into crime sprees and was already looking for alien life in Smallville. He was working on a plan, actually, to avoid her a bit more for a while until she cooled it with the alien investigations. Clark hadn’t talked to his mom and dad about that yet, but he was sure both parents would encourage that cooling it plan.
There was no way he’d fallen for her.
That was it. Cassandra’s power was broken or his own extraterrestrial nature was warping it.
Chloe looked mostly like herself. There were a few more lines at the corners of her eyes as well as a slight scar that peeked out from under the straps of her tank top. That and her different haircut were the only things about her, really, that would have told him she wasn’t the same girl from this morning in The Torch.
“Gene, sweetie, why don’t you go upstairs and wash up.”
“So this is the adult talk where you discuss Justice League things and I pretend I don’t have super-hearing?”
“Huh?”
Chloe shook her head and swatted her towel at Gene. “No spying for one so extra barn chores this weekend. I’m sure Martha will agree. Two, you know what we do on the side but you’re too young to know all the details. We promised you full disclosure in two years when you hit freshman year. Enjoy ignorance and get washed up. You’re dusty.”
“Risks of superspeed,” Gene chirped before rushing up the kitchen stairs.
“Wow, uh, you’re really good at that.”
“Twelve years and counting in practice,” she said, frowning up at him. “You seem off and Gene’s good at telling. So which of Lex’s plans was it this time?”
“Lex? He wouldn’t?”
“He would, has, and will again. This, though, this feels like something else.”
“I can’t tell you but I’m not sure I can. I’m afraid it’s one of those ‘ruin the space-time continuum’ things.”
“You’re basing the lack of communication between us on ancient Michael J. Fox movies?”
“No, just I shouldn’t say too much but I’ll admit since you’re not shocked by anything---and what the Hell is a Justice League, by the way?---that I’m not from here or from now, exactly.”
“Then this is a lot.”
“I, uh, wasn’t expecting this, exactly.” He said, taking a seat at the stools. Those, those were familiar. The adult Chloe who apparently was now Chloe Kent based on the rings on her fingers was a completely new phenomenon. “I met Gene before. I guess it eventually went back to normal at the…our apartment. I just wasn’t expecting, um, you.”
Chloe’s face closed off and she turned off the burners on the stove. “You mean me. Whenever you’re from, you weren’t expecting me to be part of your future.”
“I didn’t say that in so many words.”
“You didn’t have to. I get it. I should be used to the rejection. I know I had five years of it with you, maybe longer.”
“I’m sorry. I just---“
“I’m not Lana.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’ve known you for over twenty years, Clark. I can tell whatever you’re thinking by now. I’m not Lana and you were hung up on her into college, and I get that. No, I guess I’m not, but she wasn’t exactly responsive to you being an alien either.”
“She freaked out?”
“She didn’t take it the best. I’d known for a long time before she did, and I think it’s best not to tell you the hows or whens. Maybe we should Back to the Future it now. All I can tell you is that you’re welcome to stay until you get back to your own time and place, and that, for what it’s worth, we’re very happy and we help a lot of people. Sorry I don’t have alliterative initials and long dark hair. I can stop dyeing mine.”
“I…no. I guess you’re not what I expected.”
Chloe nodded and started toward the stairs. “Maybe you need a few minutes. If you’re here when I’m back, we can talk and have roast beef. If you’re not, well, I’m worth the wait, promise.”
And that was the last thing he heard clearly before the world blurred around him.
**
Clark didn’t get winded.
If the meteor rocks weren’t around or if a meteor mutant like Tina Greer wasn’t beating the crap out of him, he never got tired. He could lift a hundred bales of hay or run to Metropolis. Hell, he’d found out recently he could punch through ice a foot thick without much difficulty, but he didn’t gasp out for breath. It was why doing that currently threw him so much. He was backing away from where Cassandra sat, smirking back at him, and taking in great gasps of air. It felt like some kind of anaconda squeezing his ribs shut.
“Now I know your visions aren’t right.”
She kept smiling and shook her head. “Clark sometimes there are metaphors and sometimes it’s hard to understand at first, but yours…the ones for you come in so clear. Even I can see how similar Chloe and Gene look.”
“You’re blind.”
Her grin widened and she reached toward her radio, taking time to feel for it out on a counter behind her. “I used to be able to see. I mentioned that. The meteors took that kind of sight but the visions are all I can see. It’s just you that really ramp them up. Never had them last so long or be so in depth and, of course, no one yet can see what you can.”
“Yet?”
“Lana Lang was in here, that girl you like so much? And she requested a touch as well.”
Clark quirked his head at Cassandra, not that she could tell the difference. “What? And what did you see?”
“Everyone’s glimpse is private. I think you’d appreciate that.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re at the very least like me. The meteors gave you something, possibly, but I’ve read other infected and you’re not quite like them either. I keep my confidences of the people who ask.”
“Why would someone ask about me?” His eyes widened and he pulled up the folding chair again. “Wait. Do you mean that Lana wanted to know mine?”
“She was a bit curious now that you and I seemed so close, but what she saw---and this is all I will say---was completely about her. It wasn’t about romance one way or the other. Sometimes a girl has more than that on her plate. And it was for her to know.”
Clark sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “This can’t be true though. I don’t care if I’m, uh, different or anything else. It can’t be Chloe.”
“And why not? Is she a friend of yours currently?”
“Sure, she’s been one of my best friends for about a year and a half and my editor at The Torch. That doesn’t mean I want to marry her. She talks all the time and she’s bossy and she never stops asking questions.”
Cassandra finally succeeded and getting the radio on, turning the old knob until it reached a station that played some type of jazz music. Clark couldn’t tell much. It matched some songs the old middle school jazz ensemble played at assemblies but other than that, Clark would never be able to tell you who had composed it.
“That’s the part that bothers you, I reckon. You get defensive when I simply admit what you have to know and that the way you react to me is unique…that you’re unique. Chloe’s noticed that about you. Is she the only one?”
Clark sighed and thought about the way Lex sometimes would try and steer conversations to the Porsche that was crumpled in his garage. That was different. Lex was new and he suspected something had gone wrong after a big accident where Clark had been sloppy. Chloe’d been nattering at him about things that didn’t quite add up since he’d sped to a library in Connecticut to get her a copy of The Tales of the Weird and Unexplained for her very own. Chloe’d always humored him, obviously bought what he wanted to pedal but only out of politeness in public. Clark wasn’t so dense that he hadn’t noticed it.
Still, she wasn’t…he wasn’t the type who could be even related to a reporter and there was no doubt that’s what she had to still be there. As much as Clark sometimes daydreamed about being a reporter himself for The Planet (Chlo’s enthusiasm was infectious), he knew that he couldn’t, that it would be painting a target permanently on his back. So why would he even dare something like that of colleagues of hers at staff parties or just hanging out after work noticing him, of her own curiosity, that fear that she might one day think of him as a good way to get her Pulitzer so much faster.
“We’re not compatible, trust me.”
“It’s because you don’t trust her, but my visions are the truth, they show what’s to come whether you like it or not. I think it’s not about trusting you, Clark. I think it’s about how much or how little you trust her.”
“You a mind-reader too?”
“No, but I know what it’s like to have a secret. I reckon not one as large as yours, not by a long shot, but I
know what it was like to try hiding this from my daughters for the first five years or so. Then I got sick and needed to go in the home and couldn’t stop sometimes sharing what I read on the nurses. Things got both more complicated and harder when I was honest with people. There are days I feel like a damn tourist attraction---“
Clark swallowed and looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry. I…my life never has anything like answers. This was the first chance in months that I felt like things might work out at least okay. I didn’t…It was wrong to exploit you.”
“It was symbiotic, I promise. I was interested in you and it’s a happy future. Sometimes what I see isn’t. I know that it eats at you that you’ll probably outlive everyone. I outlived all my siblings so I know it’s horrible. But I don’t get to see happy families, and I enjoyed it back. I’m just saying you don’t have to be as open about it as I am and maybe telling her whatever it is that worries you so much right now, too fast, isn’t the best way either. You just don’t have to reject a future because you’re afraid. That seems stupid to me. If it wasn’t hard or a little scary then it wouldn’t be any fun.”
“But Lana---“
“Again, all I’ll say is that Lana has more going on, a future of her own and that boy and Chloe, they
seemed happy. I’d think about that.”
It was the last thing Clark wanted to do.
**