Chasing Shadows

Title: Chasing Shadows
Rating: PG
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark friendship, a smidge of Clana reflections, but only because the show made me.
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Gemini
Disclaimer: I own very little, certainly not these characters. Please don’t sue!
Author’s Notes: Just pondering Clark’s musings in the fortress. What does one do while trapped inside an alien crystal? Lyrics are from The Counting Crows’ Hard Candy.

--
On certain Sundays in November
When the weather bothers me
I empty drawers of other summers
Where my shadows used to be
--

Clark Kent has been patient. His mind has rebelled and he’s gone a little mad. He’s been furious, and worked himself into exhaustion trying to escape.

All of that hasn’t earned him a blink.

He can’t see anything but the darkened fortress, distorted through Kryptonian crystal; can’t hear anything but his own heartbeat. Occasionally, his stomach growls and he has to fight not to think about his mother’s last Thanksgiving at home.

Even one of Lois’ god awful cakes would appeal to him at this point. That’s when he starts to worry.

He has no idea how long he’s been here, but the dark blanket of winter seems to have fallen upon the Arctic Circle.

Dreams tumble into the silence that stretches between slumber and waking.

--
You send your lover off to China
Then you wait for her to call
You put your girl up on a pedestal
Then you wait for her to fall
--

He sees Lana, small and happy, guiding her horse across a meadow, and he’s shocked at the innocence. The woman he knows now is badly scarred beneath the surface. He can’t help but wonder how much of that is his doing.

Seeing her, happy and young, reminds him how far Lana has fallen.

--
She is standing by the water
As her smile begins to curl
In this or any other summer
She is something all together different
Never just an ordinary girl
--

He sees Chloe, laughing and bright in his mother’s garden. He’s almost more surprised at the lack of innocence he sees when he looks back at the girl he knew. She was always sunshine and light, laughter and swirling justice; never innocence.

He knows more about the past that drove her, now. Understands how many times life had knocked her down by the time she moved to Smallville, where there was practically a secret under every stone.

Despite all that, Chloe puts all of herself on the line an awful lot. She was only ever conservative with matters of the heart, more so for knowing Clark.

Seeing her, young and wary, reminds him how far Chloe has climbed.

--
When you sleep
You find your mother in the night
But she stays just out of sight
So there isn't any sweetness in the dreaming

And when you wake the morning covers you with light
And it makes you feel alright
But it's just the same hard candy
You're remembering again
--

Strange that he should love two women in such different ways.

Lana buries the darkness deeper at every injury. Chloe lets the tears and the anger loose and frees herself. Where Lana’s tragedies chip away at her soul, Chloe’s seem to make her stronger and keep her hopeful in ways Clark can only ever dream of.

Even if he never leaves this awful place, he is a lucky man. Faults aside, he has known love in many incarnations, had the most amazing friendships imaginable, and saved the world once or twice.

His one true regret is that he never got to put into words what they meant to him - any of them. Not in the way they deserved.

Lana embodies every hope he has ever had to live a blissfully ordinary life. Her simple acceptance gives him relief from the crushing responsibilities of his powers, his heritage.

His mother grants him acceptance beyond all measure. She is strong, and loves him with the same certainty and strength of spirit she approaches everything with.

His father showed him how to be a hero when the odds are against you. He could be harsh, but he always fought to be fair. It is a battle Clark fights within himself.

Lex was the first person in his life who didn’t try to make him into anything else. All he wanted was to know the man Clark was becoming. It breaks his heart that he was never able to give him the truth he so desperately sought.

He doesn’t want to know where he would have ended up if he had never met Chloe Sullivan.

Where Lana may never understand the obligations that come with his powers, Chloe always understood them better than he did, even before she had her own. It’s her prompting that teaches him patience and understanding. She shows him the good in people when his faith starts to falter.

She is so integral to his existence that he is terrified of the day she outgrows him. He sees her for the hero she is already, and despite her fears, he has a feeling she is destined for greater things than he can imagine.

It’s crushing to think he might not get to see her become the woman she was meant to be.

--
Time expands and then contracts
When you are spinning
In the grips of someone
Who is not an ordinary girl
--

He spends an eternity in unbroken silence before she comes, her very presence chasing the shadows that haunt him.

Of course it’s her. It’s always her.

Clark wants to scream, to laugh, to jump. The warm relief is intoxicating, even if he can do nothing but stare at her image, fractured by the angles of the crystal.

She’s here. It’s going to be okay.

Later, after he’s dealt with his doppelganger and Lana’s frightening acceptance of his twisted motives, he’ll remember the dreams that occupied his mind for months. Some lessons are learned easily. Others take longer to sink in.

--
I put my summers back in a letter
And I hide it from the world
All the regrets you can't forget
Are somehow pressed upon a picture
In the face of such an ordinary girl
--

End