We Were Here

Title: We Were Here
Rating: PG
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark, mentions of Clois
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Series
Disclaimer: I own very little, certainly not these characters. Please don’t sue!
Author’s Notes: A future-fic with a twist that I dug out of the graveyard for tehzo. Chloe will make such a great memory-keeper.

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Chloe Sullivan remembers him, long after the world forgets. Her heart breaks that he could be so quickly forgotten by the people he gave up everything to protect.

She’s in a drugstore when she overhears a kid who can’t be older than seven ask his mother what a Superman is.

She barely makes it to her car before she dissolves into tears. It’s so unfair.

When she can see again, she stares into the darkness. Finally coming to the decision that she’s done enough of that lately, she starts the engine and drives three hours to the tiny town that started it all. She can’t stay away any longer.

The sun is rising over the road, and she is reminded of the thousand Kansas mornings they shared in their years here. She stops at the Talon, picks up a coffee and tries to settle her nerves for the short trip to the Kent farm.

Some of the storefronts are new, and a few of the farms have been turned into subdivisions, but there’s a beauty here that still steals her breath away. It’s little wonder that he loved this planet so much, with this idyllic setting introducing him to his adopted world.

The farm is eerily silent even as her tires crunch along the gravel path, a monument to more peaceful times. It has its share of ghosts.

She gets out of the car, and slides up onto the hood with her coffee. Leaning back to gaze at the morning sky and just…breathing. She takes so little time to relax these days. It feels like the first time she’s stopped in decades.

After a time, restlessness steals its way into her consciousness. The old barn beckons.

The dark, dank structure reminds her just how many years have passed since anyone sought comfort here. Dust a quarter-inch thick covers everything, and cobwebs have overtaken the shadowed corners.

She climbs slowly, taking in every detail. Over there is the toolbox where Clark once kept the key to the caves until she laughed and found an actual hiding place for it.

That loose floorboard once held Kara’s crystal, then her bracelet.

On the landing, her mind flits over a thousand days and nights spend laughing, crying, brooding, planning, and just…being there.

God, she misses him. It’s a physical ache that is as sharp as the day it happened, despite the long years that stretch between then and now.

By a strange twist of fate the farm fell to her after…everything. It is equal parts comfort and pain; honor and burden.

It is her albatross and her most precious haven. Much like he was.

“We were here. We mattered.”

She whispers it to the birds now nesting near the window, to the fields that lie fallow, to the farmhouse devoid of laughter and love after so many generations.

She says it to herself.

A beat passes in silence before she steps lightly over the rotted out wood that composes most of the loft these days. It’s a strange dance she learned over decades, and leads to the same destination every time.

At the old bookshelf, she withdraws the tattered copy of The Catcher in the Rye. She still mourns his veto of her first choice, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, but she wouldn’t know how not to support him, even now.

She doesn’t worry over the photos and knickknacks like she has on other visits. Instead, she pockets the disk and follows her tread marks back to the rickety stairs. She feels compelled, rather than desperate, for the first time…since.

The drive to the caves is smoothed by new pavement paid for by the Kent Foundation. The farm may be her albatross, but the Foundation and its far-reaching charitable impact in meta and human communities worldwide is her tribute.

She’s dressed for the biting cold, but the first sting is still a shock. The snowy trek didn’t get any shorter, so she spends the journey cursing kryptonian travel systems. It’s a good thing she hasn’t aged past 20. She doubts even the spryest 80-something body could cover the ground she needs to.

The silence inside is deafening with the howling wind still echoing in her head. Still, she calls out a greeting.

“Jor-El.”

The lighting intensifies, acknowledging her presence.

She stops before the console, just out of sight of the chamber that holds the reason for her visit. She shakes her head at her superstition.

As long as she doesn’t look, he’s Schrodinger’s Cat.

Never one to lie to herself for long, she sighs and calls out. “How is he?”

“Much better, thanks.”

She spins and sputters, nearly choking on her surprise. “Wh-wha…C-Clark?”

The impossible vision before her blushes and looks down before meeting her gaze. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“Oh my…Oh my God!” She’s leaping into his arms before she registers her feet moving. “You’re not…I mean you’re…You’re alive!”

Her emotions are on overdrive, and she’s babbling through her tears a second later. “You’re alive! All these years, I thought…but here you are, and. God! Do you know what you did to me? To everyone? You big…“ smack “…insensitive…” smack “…alien…” smack “…jerk! Ow!”

“Chlo, stop! ” He’s laughing. That’s good, right? “Are you done?”

She shakes her head into his shoulder, sniffling and not letting go for anything.

“Can I talk now?”

She pauses, and nods hesitantly into his shoulder.

"Are you okay?”

She can’t help the tears that fall at the question. “Not really.”

“I’m…I’m sorry. About everything.”

“I don’t care about everything. I never did. I just…I missed you so much.”

He’s cradling her head and stroking her hair and she’s convinced this is a dream. She never wants to wake up again.

“Oh Clark.” She speaks into his shoulder and breathes him in. She never imagined a single scent could hold so much, but her mind floods with years of friendship and unspoken bonds.

“I’m here, Chlo. I’m not going anywhere.”

At that, she just loses it. She spends the better part of an hour sobbing half a century of grief and worry into his ratty old jacket. Neither says anything and she finally she drifts off to sleep in his strong arms. Hiccups echo her sobs, even in slumber.

Clark Kent regards her silently. No matter how painful it was to return to a world where his wife and baby have rested in the cold ground beneath Centennial Park for fifty years, it feels right ease her pain. She always bore the burdens of the ones she loved without complaint.

No one should be abandoned for that.

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End