Time and Time Again

Title: Time and Time Again
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; Character Death
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark friendship; dying embers of Clana
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Wrath AU; Sequel to Murder of One
Disclaimer: I own very little, certainly not these characters. Please don’t sue!
Author’s Notes: So yeah, I couldn’t leave well enough alone with this AU, even after actually liking the Bizzy twist in Gemini. In keeping with the theme of Murder of One, lyrics are from Time and Time Again by The Counting Crows.

--
I wanted so badly,
Somebody other than me,
Staring back at me.
But you were gone.
--

Clark Kent is one of two, maybe three surviving members of his entire race. Raised among humans, he has been uniquely alone all his life. He should be used to it by now.

He’s beginning to realize he’d hardly tasted the ache of real loneliness until now. Even when he had – when he discovered his true origins or a new power manifested, reminding him just how alien he really was – there was always a bright bundle of life and a mercurial smile to distract him, reminding him he was loved, in one form or another.

The gaping maw of his hunger for her face, her laugh, is humbling. He has never felt so alone, and there is no reprieve from this purgatory. It is what he deserves.

There is no mistaking the accusation in Jimmy and Lois’ glares. They wasted little time exposing Lana, and almost lost their jobs for going behind the editor’s back to include it in the morning edition. Only the fact that they scooped every major news source in the country on the biggest scandal since Lex’s arrest saved their careers.

He hasn’t been to see Lana since he understood the depth of her corruption. He still can’t comprehend the finality of her actions. Facing her is admitting it’s not just a nightmare.

He is alone.

Chloe Sullivan will never need coffee at 2:00am. She’ll never crack another code, or laugh at a private joke between them, or take the news world by storm. There will never be another unspoken conversation or overly-perceptive monologue about how he should lean on others more. She will never look at him and smile, her eyes brimming with pride and something…else.

It’s been three weeks since he broke down in a church on the way home from the cemetery. His parents hadn’t raised him to be strictly religious, but that didn’t stop him from screaming at the crucifix until the pillars shook and the banister was little more than sawdust.

How can there be a world with this much pain and injustice in it? How dare the Earth keep spinning like nothing happened?

He wakes up every morning, his chest strangely warm in the absence of pain for a few blissful moments before reality comes crashing in and the vise closes around his heart. It feels like its being squeezed and pushed outward in the same moment.

At first, he thought something had to give. A month in, and he’s learning to accept that the pain may never leave him.

On some level, he relishes the prospect. He never deserved the kind of loyalty she showed him, and he never once rewarded it the way she deserved.

He’s lost himself in fantasies a lot over the last few weeks. If he’d brought his stupid cell phone, they’d be having lunch right now. If he’d listened to his mother and Lionel about Lana, and let her go, he and Chloe might have explored her meteor ability together.

If he had it all to do over again, he wouldn’t have gotten so turned around at a dream of losing her last year, and would have taken the chance while he had it.

--
I wanted to see you walking backwards
And get the sensation of you coming home
I wanted to see you walking away from me
Without the sensation of you leaving me alone.
--

She knew.

She knew, damned it. She backed up her documentation, copied everything she’d found, including the video footage. She watched Lana take out a hit on her.

He could have saved her in a heartbeat, but all she did was mail him a stupid flash drive. She took herself away from him as surely as Lana did.

Some days, it breaks his heart that she didn’t trust him to believe her. To save her.

On days like today, it just pisses him off. How dare her take the choice away from him. He would have chosen her.

He always came back to her.

It will be today. It has to be today, when he’s so angry with Chloe that he has to fight the urge to pound her headstone to dust.

Today, the other woman in his life will give him the peace he can’t find himself. Lana will give him someone else to hate.

He waits, seething beneath the surface as the guards lead her to the Plexiglas barrier. The fear in her eyes is more gratifying because she knows that no barrier could prevent him from snapping her like a twig.

She squares her shoulders, and lifts the handset.

“Clark.”

There isn’t a trace of the whispery innocence she used to wear like a shroud. It’s that much easier to ignore any semblance of civility.

“Why?”

“Lex -“

“Fuck Lex. Why?”

“I can explain. It was -“

“I don’t want your excuses. You’re going to burn for this either way.” That shuts her up. “Tell. Me. Why.”

She stares wide-eyed for a moment, before her features twist with a hatred that makes her look more alien than he ever has.

“She had no right. No idea what it was like to be Lex’s plaything. To have him violate my body and toy with my emotions. She had no right to judge me.”

Reality hits him like ice water, and the anger drains out of him. When he speaks, it comes out as the horrified whisper it is.

“Yes, she did. She had every right.”

“Bull -“

“Lex kidnapped her. He ran tests on her. He took her memories and tagged her like a fucking animal. Then he took her mother and developed a treatment that would have kept her healthy only as long as she helped him control his prisoners. He gave her mother back to her so she could lose her again within 24 hours. Don’t tell me you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be hurt by Lex.”

“But she…I…”

Clark is already rising. He’s not going to find his answers here. Lana is more lost than he is.

--
I wish I was travelling on a freeway
Beneath this graveyard western sky
I'm gonna set fire to this city
And out into the desert
We're gonna ride
--

Alert the media. Clark Kent is finally leaving the farm.

On some level, he’s doing it just because she would have been ecstatic to be the one who finally succeeded in turning him into a Metropolis man. As he checks the house one last time, he can’t help but pause and see her everywhere. For a city girl, she sure left a lot of herself in this backwater place.

Over there, she slipped in the mud with her new shoes. He and Pete were still rolling with laughter when the first barrage hit. The full-on mud-war that followed had his mom spraying them all down with the garden hose while his father detailed how they would all spend the weekend repairing the fence and removing mud from the side of the house.

Up in the loft, she gave him his first kiss so they could be friends. After she learned his secret, she encouraged him to change the weather and the world up there.

There on the porch, they discussed post-apocalyptic awkwardness and the value of peanut butter and jelly in a world with far too many alien AIs.

She is everywhere. Her tiny handprints mar so much of the tidy rural life he had planned. It’s a comfort to know she’s left the same marks on his soul.

He will never see a newspaper layout or a byline without thinking of her; will never hear laughter and not compare it to hers. He’ll never chase down the bad guy and not look for her at his side.

And maybe that’s okay.

Chloe Sullivan was one in a million. She did the right thing even when it was the hard thing. She taught him what true friendship looks like and why love doesn’t always have to be romantic to be forever.

She showed him the inherent value in fighting for truth, justice and the American way. If he becomes a hero, it will be because she showed him how.

The pain in his chest never really leaves him, and sometimes he has to be crushed all over again when he sees someone who looks a little too much like her. But pain means he’s alive, that he’s still fighting for the justice she never found in life.

If he had it to do over, of course he would save her. She’s still his world. But he wouldn’t trade a minute of the time he had with her, even if he’d known how much it would hurt to face a life without her.

He tries to move on, tries to fight the good fight. Because when things are darkest and he’s ready to lose hope for humanity, it still comes back to her.

It always will.

--
I wanted the ocean to cover over me
I wanna sink slowly without getting wet
Maybe someday, I won't be so lonely
I'll walk on water every chance I get
--

Next in the series...