Come to Me, Chapter 4

Clark/Chloe
Season 8, "Doomsday" and future
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Read Chapter 3 here.
Read the story from the beginning here.

He hung outside her window in the darkness. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't help himself. He'd missed her so much. The sight of her smile, the sound of her laughter, the steady beat of her heart...

Put your emotions away, he reminded himself. They accomplish nothing.

Hanging in midair, he breathed slowly, steadily, trying to quiet the feelings churning in his chest. Through a window of the tower, he saw Chloe sitting at her son's bedside, reading him a story. The soft maternal glow in her eyes made Clark's chest ache.

He could have exerted his superhearing to listen, but he didn't. It was enough to watch this quiet domestic moment. At last she closed the book, kissed the little boy's forehead, and stood up and walked out of the room.

She turned off the light as she closed the door, but a nightlight still glowed in one corner. Clark hung there for a moment, watching the child. Chloe's child, he thought. She had a baby, and I wasn't here to see it... to help her through the pregnancy... to hold her hand while she gave birth...

He reminded himself that she had a husband to help her through these things now. George. Her destiny. She didn't need Clark Kent when she had George.

He sighed, and began to turn away, when something caught his eye.

In the child's bedroom, there was a movement. Clark turned back, and gaped.

The boy-- Jason-- was floating, three feet over his bed.

Clark stared. It can't be, he thought stupidly. It can't be. It just can't. We never... we never...

He closed his eyes, trying to recall every detail of the little boy's face. He'd gotten a good look at the boy this afternoon, and had no difficulty calling his face to mind. Jason had dark hair, a decided jaw, a nose that was a little too prominent, and green eyes.

Green eyes.

But no. He opened his eyes and shook himself. Sure, the child looked a little like him, but that was just because he and George bore something of a resemblance. At any rate, there was no way, simply no way, because he and Chloe had never...

The child must be meteor affected, he thought. That made sense. Chloe was meteor affected, although her ability had faded away into nothingness after a little more than a year. But the mutation in her genes remained. And they knew that meteor affliction could be passed from one generation to another.

It was even possible that George himself was meteor affected. Chloe might have encountered him through her work with the superpowered, or while writing a story.

Sure, that had to be it. Jason was meteor affected, and just happened to have a meteor ability that mimicked one of Clark's abilities.

It was the only reasonable explanation he could come up with. After all, he knew perfectly well he couldn't be the child's father. Because he'd never made love to Chloe.

He'd remember making love to her. Of that he was absolutely certain.

*****

He stood at the door to the Planet's bullpen the next morning. She worked on the top floor rather than in the basement now, right in the middle of all the action. She was a top reporter now. Pride rose in him, but he pushed it away with the ease of long practice. Pride was an emotion, and emotions were to be avoided.

He studied her for a long moment. She was typing, looking entirely absorbed in whatever she was working on. He recognized that intent expression-- he'd seen it enough times at the Torch. It was the focused, determined look of a reporter on deadline. Her long brunette hair was pulled back in a ponytail, she wore a dark blue power suit, and her eyes were narrowed as she studied the words on her screen.

She looked exactly like what she was-- a professional at the top of her game.

He took a step toward her, but then froze as he saw the name plate on her desk. Lois Lane.

Shock ran through him, despite all his efforts to suppress it, and suddenly he remembered the headline he'd seen yesterday: WHY METROPOLIS DOESN'T NEED THE RED BLUE BLUR.

Now he understood. She'd written that article.

She was Lois Lane.

He wondered what had happened to lead her back to the Planet writing, not under her own name, but her cousin's. Drawn by curiosity, as well as by the affection he couldn't tamp down, he walked toward her.

She glanced up from her computer, and then her eyes went wide. Her eyes, at least, were unchanged, a bright hazel fringed by dark lashes. He knew those eyes as well as he knew anything on this earth.

"Clark?" she whispered, staring up at him.

"Hello, Chloe," he said, trying very hard to keep his voice steady. "I'm back."

There was so much more that he wanted to say, most of it variations on I missed you, God I missed you so much...

But he couldn't say any of that. He shouldn't even be thinking it. Emotions made him weak. Friendship made him weak. Human connections were to be avoided.

"Clark!" She leaped up, ran around the desk, and flung herself into his arms. Suddenly he was transported back to a similar moment, years earlier, when she'd run down the stairs of her tower and flung herself against him, and he'd held her tightly, rocking her, comforting them both...

He let himself hold her for a moment, frozen in the memory, and in a flood of emotion he couldn't escape.

"Clark," she whispered. She tightened her arms around him in a hug, squeezing him. And then she pulled away.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. They stood there, simply staring into each other's eyes.

And then she slapped him.

More to come...