Density, Chapter 5

Lois, Clark, Chloe, Jimmy
Season 8 (spoilers up through 8.10)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

Chloe's wedding day dawned bright and beautiful. Chloe looked lovely in a lacy white dress that swept the grass. Jimmy wore a tux, and looked, well, as good as he was going to get. I was my usual radiant self in blue, and Smallville-- well, a tux suited him. It was almost enough to draw your attention away from the pimple.

Not quite. But almost.

Now that Clark had alerted me to the fact that Chloe was carrying around an extra passenger in her brain, I could see it. Sometimes her expression would change, going so cold and hard and contemptuous that I knew it wasn't her. I wasn't sure exactly what it was-- Clark wouldn't tell me, claiming it was better if I didn't know-- but whatever it was, it scared the living crap out of me.

Jimmy had no clue, of course. He was in a wonderful, expansive mood, because Clark and I had been hanging around a lot together lately-- trying to figure out what to do about Chloe, not that Jimmy realized that-- and he figured I'd successfully distracted Clark. He had no clue that Clark Kent was still madly in love with Chloe Sullivan, or that Chloe Sullivan was being taken over from the inside by some sort of horrible brain sucker. The poor guy.

I guess a wedding in Smallville wouldn't be a wedding without some sort of bizarre, horror-movie occurrence.

If I ever get married, I promised myself, I'm totally heading for Vegas.

*****

"I can't let her go through with this."

Clark was pacing in the grass outside the barn, looking frantic. I'd been directing the florists, but had stepped outside for a moment when Jimmy hesitantly suggested that I might be overstepping my bounds as maid of honor just a tad by sending back the blue flowers Chloe had picked out.

Like it was my fault. They totally clashed with my dress.

Anyway, behind the barn, Smallville looked like he was working himself up into a frenzy. I put a hand on his arm, trying to drag him to a halt. It wasn't easy-- the guy is as strong as one of those beer horses. You know, the ones that play football on those commercials. He's built kind of like them, too.

Where I was a long, leggy Thoroughbred, Clark was a big hefty draft horse. Just another reason why the two of us would never get along, I thought. I was too high-strung for a plodder like him.

But today, he was the high-strung one. At the pressure of my hand on his tuxedo-clad arm, he paused, staring down at me with wide eyes.

"I can't let this happen to her, Lois. She trusts me to save her. She's always trusted me. I can't just stand back and..."

"Smallville." I squeezed his forearm, just a little. "If you barge in to save her, if you sweep her up and throw her in your truck and drive her away from it all... what's going to happen?"

He looked at me, breathing hard.

"I have no idea," he answered at last.

"Which is why you can't do it. You can't go off half-cocked, okay?"

He tried to force a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. "I guess you would know all about going off half-cocked."

"Shut the hell up, Smallville. If we're going to save her--"

"We?"

"She's my cousin, you know. If we're gonna save her, we need a plan. We can't just charge in with all guns blazing."

"I just don't know what to do." He shook loose of my hand and started stalking back and forth again, sounding dangerously close to tears. "She's getting worse, Lois. She lost all her memories last week..."

"She what? Excuse me, but why didn't you share this information with me?"

"I..." He sighed. "It just all happened so fast. Her memories were stripped from her, but they... came back."

"Uh-huh," I said, unconvinced. I may not be brilliant, but I can tell when I'm being lied to. Smallville has a lousy poker face, anyway. I had a feeling there was a lot more to the story that he wasn't telling me, but I also realized he was trying to protect me as much as he could by keeping me in the dark. "So is the thing still in her brain?"

"Yeah." He nodded, pacing. "I think-- I think it's worse than ever, Lois. Last week, I thought she'd been cured, but... she wasn't. I think it's about to take her over entirely. And I don't... I don't know what... to do..."

His voice broke, and he paused, facing away from me. His head was bent, and his shoulders shook. Very slightly, but it was obvious that he was crying.

I thought of the way I'd thrown myself at him over the past month, trying to distract him, and suddenly I felt very strongly how silly my efforts had been. What Clark felt for Chloe was so big and so real and so powerful that I suddenly felt very small and insignificant in comparison.

You couldn't distract a guy who loved a woman that much. You just couldn't.

"Smallville," I said softly, and walked over to him. He turned toward me, and I put my arms around his neck, trying to comfort him. He was a big, solid, muscular guy, but in this moment, he suddenly seemed so impossibly vulnerable.

He pressed his face into my shoulder and cried.

Read Chapter 6 here.