Surprise

Clark/Chloe futurefic
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

"So what you want for your birthday... is sex?"

Clark Kent grinned at his wife of almost fifteen years. "This surprises you, Chloe?"

"Um... well... I was thinking of something a little more... permanent. You know, like books or CDs or something."

"You said anything I want," he reminded her. "And what I want is sex."

"But you have sex every day. Well, almost every day."

"True. I want something... special."

She squinted at him suspiciously. "Special how?"

"I don't know," he answered. "That's the surprise. You come up with something special, anything special, and I'll be happy."

"But..." She floundered, looking bewildered. His wife had always been a straightforward kind of girl. She usually just pushed him into bed and had her way with him. Not that he minded. "But I don't know... I mean, I can't quite think of..."

"Think about it," he said, grinning at her. "You have three days to come up with something really special."

"Um... special. Like... uh... give me some suggestions here?"

"No," he said firmly. "No suggestions. Put that creative brain of yours to work and rock my world, Chlo."

*****

Three days later, he let himself into their apartment after work with a good deal of anticipation. The place seemed dark and silent. "Chlo?" he called.

No answer. He dialed up his superhearing a bit, and didn't hear her heartbeat anywhere nearby. He flipped on a light, and a paper left on the table near the door caught his eye.

He picked it up, his heart pounding, and read it. It was written in her handwriting, and it read simply, Come find me.

He tilted his head, turning up his superhearing some more. Her heartbeat should be audible to him if she was anywhere in Kansas.

But he didn't hear anything.

He frowned, really puzzled now. He'd seen her at work half an hour ago, and she hadn't had time to get out of Kansas. Well, unless Bart Allen a.k.a. The Flash had given her a lift or something.

He concentrated harder, straining to hear one distinctive heartbeat among millions, but still he couldn't hear her.

He changed out of his work clothes and into his superhero outfit, more quickly than any human eye could have followed, and shot out the window, his cape rippling behind him.

*****

Twenty minutes later, he'd circumnavigated the globe, listening for her all the while, and hadn't found her. He was beyond puzzled and into anxious now, although he tried to tamp down his anxiety, aware that this was probably all part of her surprise.

But he was used to being able to hear her heartbeat. And it made no sense that he couldn't find her. He should be able to find her anywhere on the planet...

Arrested by the thought, he braked in midair and hung there, staring up into the sky.

The moon hung, round and silver, against a velvet-dark sky. The JLA had just finished building its headquarters there, a massive steel-and-glass building that towered over the stark, lifeless surface. He'd been there more than a few times, and Chloe had written a series of articles on its construction, but they'd never been there together.

But if he couldn't hear her heartbeat... then she wasn't on Earth.

He took a deep breath, sucking a substantial amount of oxygen into his lungs, then arrowed toward the moon.

*****

He went in through an airlock and dropped to the floor in the artificial gravity. The vast structure seemed quiet, and he cocked his head, listening.

The heartbeat he'd been searching for echoed in his ears.

He grinned in triumph and headed for her in a rush of superspeed.

*****

She'd obviously used the JLA's teleporter, because she was waiting for him in the great dome of the observatory, at the very top of the huge structure. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, drinking in the warm, familiar scent of her hair.

"Hi, Clark," she said, leaning back against the S on his chest. "Took you long enough."

"It took me a little while to figure out where you were. I can't hear your heartbeat through vacuum, you know."

"Yeah, I knew that. But I also knew you'd figure it out before long."

She leaned back against his chest, her body warm and soft against his. The transparent observation dome rose far over their heads, giving them an unobstructed view of Earth, glowing in the sky like a precious gem, and the stars scattered over the dark emptiness of space.

They were silent for a long while. At last she said, tentatively, "Is this special enough?"

He squeezed her a little. "Making love on the moon? I'd say that's special, all right. We've never done it before, for sure."

"Well, until recently, doing it here would have resulted in my eyeballs being sucked out of their sockets."

"Ewwwww, Chlo. Way to kill the mood."

She chuckled, patting his arm with her hand. "Sometimes," she said softly, "I'm kind of envious that you can do all these amazing things. Some of them, like flying, you can share with me. But flying to the moon isn't something we can do together. Breathing vacuum isn't healthy for me."

"Don't be envious," he said softly. "You're more amazing than I'll ever be."

She snorted. "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious. Your articles change the world, Chlo."

"You're a journalist too, Clark."

"Yeah, but my articles don't make the impact yours do. Some of the stuff you've written, the stories you've broken... well, sometimes I'm envious."

She leaned her head back further, and smiled up at him. "Most of the time," she said softly, "I'm just glad to be married to you."

"Yeah." He squeezed her again. "Me too."

*****

He turned her around and lowered his head. The Earth shone brightly overhead as their lips met, and an odd tremor passed through him, a feeling of unaccustomed awe. They'd never made love with the Earth glowing in the sky above them. This really was special.

Then again, he thought as he kissed her, making love to her was always special.

Her hands stroked over him, divesting him of his costume, tossing it onto the floor, an untidy heap of crimson and blue and gold. He stripped her too, taking off her jeans and t-shirt and her undergarments, exposing every inch of her perfect skin to his hungry gaze.

He knew every inch of her. But here, on the moon, it was all different somehow. Different, and new.

Their mouths fused, their tongues tangling deeply and intimately, and their arms wrapped around one another. They stood there for long moments, holding each other, their bodies moving together. And then, as if by silent agreement, they slowly sank to the floor.

He couldn't wait a second longer. He slid into her warm depths, taking it slow, cherishing every moment. She felt hot and wet, so good he couldn't restrain a low moan. Her arms tightened around his shoulders, and she groaned into his mouth.

And then they were moving together in a slow, intimate dance of shared pleasure. He made love to her for long moments, until his skin grew slick with sweat, his muscles began to tremble, and his hips moved faster.

He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, gazing up into the starry vault of space, and the Earth above. The world where the woman he loved had been born, the world he had grown to love, the world he spent his life protecting.

This one woman represented the very best of Earth, and that was why he had married her.

Because to him, she was what humanity should be.

She rose up on her knees, moving hard on him, and he forgot about staring at the Earth, forgot his thoughts, forgot about everything but pleasure and heat and her body on his. His eyes drifted closed, and his head arched back.

Their bodies strained together, and he heard her crying out, felt her body squeezing his in hard, fast contractions. He clutched her hips, being careful not to exert a thousandth of his strength, and let the maelstrom overwhelm him.

Pleasure broke over him, sending him soaring.

*****

Afterward, he was somewhat surprised to discover he was still on the floor. He'd thought he might have inadvertently floated. But he was still sprawled on the metal planking, gasping for breath, with her collapsed on his chest.

"Hey," he murmured, nuzzling her hair. "You awake?"

"Mmmmm." She lifted her head and gazed at him through sleepy eyes. "Yeah, I am now."

"I just wondered how long we had the place to ourselves."

"A few hours. That was all I could talk Bruce out of. He said the new headquarters hadn't been designed for recreational purposes, but for business."

Clark laughed softly. "He would say that."

"Anyway..." She sat up and stretched. He observed the subsequent bobbing of her breasts with interest. "I thought maybe we could make love in the conservatory, too."

"Or we could just sit here and admire the view." He waved a hand at the dome overhead, but his gaze was still fixed on her chest.

"We could," she agreed, pulling her bra on and obscuring the view, to his mild annoyance. "But then you wouldn't get to eat your pie."

"Pie?" He looked at her with more interest than before. "You got me a pie?"

"I didn't just get you a pie. I baked you a pie. That's the real surprise. I cooked."

"Oh, my God. That isn't just a surprise. It's a shock."

"Shut up," she said, smiling as she whacked him lightly on the head with her t-shirt. "I think it's edible. I got the recipe from Martha. Apple pie, just like your mom used to make."

"Cool." He stood up and went into superspeed, dressing in a fraction of a second. "Let's go have some pie."

She pulled her shirt on and stepped into her sandals, and he swept her up in his arms and headed for the dining area.

When they whooshed into the large room, it was dark. He frowned, because the lights were supposed to go on automatically whenever someone entered any room in this building. All the hairs on his neck rose, and suddenly he had the uncomfortable feeling that something wasn't quite right.

"Chlo," he whispered, holding her against his chest protectively. "I think maybe--"

"Surprise!"

The lights went on, so bright he blinked. The lights illuminated quite a few members of theJustice League, all dressed in costume, as was customary when they were in the headquarters. He looked around, seeing Green Arrow, standing with his arm around Black Canary, the Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, Zatanna, the Martian Manhunter in his human guise, and the Angel of Vengeance. And to the side, standing slightly apart from everyone else, Batman.

A huge banner was strung across the wall: Happy Birthday, Kal!

He couldn't stop a broad grin from spreading over his face. He'd never had parties with his friends when he was growing up, and this was really cool. But he still didn't understand why he hadn't known they were there.

"I didn't hear your heartbeats," he said, tilting his head quizzically.

"It is not easy to surprise you, Kal," J'onn, the Martian Manhunter, replied. "I made certain you did not hear us."

Clark nodded. That made sense. J'onn had all sorts of mental powers, and could make people believe they were hearing all sorts of things-- even silence.

He looked around at the crowd, and smiled. It was nice to know that all these people cared about him enough to surprise him this way. It was nice to have such good friends.

And it was nice to have a wife who was the best friend of all.

"Thanks, everyone," he said, and squeezed Chloe. "And thank you for doing this."

"You're welcome," she answered, hugging him. "Happy birthday. Now, how about that pie?"

He smiled, because the evening had turned out far better than he could have possibly imagined. He'd gotten everything a man could want. Sex, a surprise party with lots of friends, and pie.

Really, it was the perfect birthday.

"Sounds terrific," he said.

-The End-

Holding the Light

Special thanks to leothelion, who made the above manip especially for this story. Thank you!!

The JLA (Ollie, Dinah, Chloe, J'onn, Victor, AC, Bart, Clark)
Season 8
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
The music is "Citizen/Soldiers," by 3 Doors Down.

Beyond the boundaries of your city's lights
Stand the heroes waiting for your cries
So many times you did not bring this on yourself
When the moment finally comes, I'll be there to help

1. Ollie

Darkness was beginning to settle over Metropolis like a shroud as Oliver Queen, a.k.a. the Green Arrow, made his way out into the streets. He knew that with darkness came trouble. It was just as true here as it was in his home town, Star City.

Accordingly, he kept to the darkness as he patrolled, gliding noiselessly through narrow, unlit alleys. His dark green costume helped conceal him, turning him into one of the shadows.

He'd only been on patrol about fifteen minutes when he heard a cry for help. He burst into a run. A moment later, he came to a halt and paused, surveying the situation.

Unlike some of his friends, he wasn't invulnerable to injury, or superfast, or superstrong. In fact, beneath the costume, he was just an ordinary man. As a result, he tended to stop and look a situation over before charging in. More often than not, he was able to help people out without ever showing himself.

He saw a woman up against a brick wall, her eyes huge with fear. She was heavily made up, and attired in cheap clothes that exposed a lot of flesh. Prostitute, Ollie thought. The guy in front of her had his pants half open, but that wasn't the main reason the woman was scared.

In his hand, he held a knife, and he was tracing the tip of it along her throat.

"Please," she whispered. She obviously didn't dare scream again with the knife against her fragile flesh, but she was quietly pleading for mercy. "Please please please..."

"I want to see you bleed," the guy said. His voice was avid, his eyes more so, and Ollie could barely repress a shudder. Ugh. Prostitutes were prey to guys with all sorts of perversions, and the guys got away with it all too often because in his experience, the cops didn't really care about these women all that much.

The glinting knifeblade pressed into her throat a little harder, and Ollie saw a trickle of blood, black in the dim light. Noiselessly, he lifted his arrow and took aim. It was a tricky shot. If he missed--

But he never missed.

The arrow sang through the air and slammed right into the guy's hand. The guy jumped back, yelling in anguish, and the knife fell harmlessly to the ground. The woman looked around, shocked and bewildered by her sudden deliverance.

And then she did the smart thing, and ran like hell.

Ollie went after her. He figured the guy wasn't going anywhere, not the way he was screaming and thrashing. He wouldn't bleed to death, and he wasn't in any real danger. He just hurt like hell, and in Ollie's opinion, pain was a perfectly just punishment for what he'd been about to do.

He caught up with the woman a block away, and brought her flight to a halt by the simple expediency of catching her arm. She rounded on him, kicking and flailing, but he easily avoided her blows.

"It's all right," he said in his altered deep voice. "I'm a friend. I stopped that guy for you."

The woman looked at him with wide eyes. Up close, he realized she wasn't a woman at all-- she was just a girl. He'd be surprised if she was sixteen yet. Probably one of the runaways that populated any city. She'd probably been wandering lost and hungry and unable to find a way to support herself until some pimp had found her.

Poor kid.

He smiled at her, aware that in his hood and goggles, he must look pretty intimidating, maybe even scary. He hoped the smile would help.

"Let me help you," he said gently. "I know a shelter that can help. I'll take you there. Okay?"

She hesitated, looking far more lost and alone than a sixteen-year-old girl ever ought to look.

And then, slowly, she nodded, and let Ollie guide her to safety.

And on that day, when you need your brothers and sisters to care
I'll be right here

2. Dinah

She was always glad to get that damn wig off.

Dinah Lance leaped from rooftop to rooftop, her short blonde hair ruffling in the cool night breeze. Despite her code name, Black Canary, she couldn't fly, but she liked to see as much of the city as possible, and that meant traveling over the city rather than through it.

She traveled block after block without seeing or hearing anything amiss. But at last she paused on a low roof, peering over the edge.

Beneath her, a man knelt on the sidewalk, weeping quietly in the dark. Dinah studied him for a moment, observing his huddled, despairing posture, then jumped lightly down to the fire escape and made her way down to the street.

The truth was that she wasn't really much good at the sympathy thing. Her usual way of dealing with a problem was to kick it until it whimpered and fell to the ground. But this didn't seem to be a situation that called for martial arts moves, or her sound-muffling ability. It just seemed to call for compassion.

"Hey," she said gently as she walked up behind him. "What's wrong?"

He looked around, wiping hastily at his face, and his eyes widened as he took in her black leather outfit, fishnet stockings, and the heavy makeup she used as a mask.

"Don't worry," she said, still as gently as she could. Gentle wasn't her normal mode, but she was pretty sure she could do it if she had to. "I'm one of the good guys. What's wrong?"

He made a visible effort to choke back his tears, but a shudder ran through him. "There's something wrong with me," he whispered. "Something terrible."

She looked him over. He was about six feet tall, with sandy brown hair and an average, pleasant face. If he was ill, it didn't show. "Are you sick?" she asked, puzzled.

"Sort of." He gazed up at her for a long moment, as if trying to gauge whether he could trust her or not, then rose to his feet, facing her. Suddenly he seemed to ripple and become indistinct.

He turned to the side, and she watched as he walked straight through a brick wall and disappeared.

A moment later he reappeared, and rippled, becoming more solid. She stared at him, shocked, and he looked back at her, despair in his eyes.

"I don't know what's happened to me," he said, and she could hear the anguish and confusion in his tenor voice. "I don't know what to do. I mean, obviously something's wrong, but I can't go to a doctor and tell him I can walk through walls, you know?"

"Yeah," she answered, keeping her voice soft. "I know."

"My wife-- she's scared of me. She told me to get out, to get away from the kids, before I... before I infected them somehow. And I don't blame her for reacting that way. I... I'm some kind of freak."

She looked at him with compassion. She knew how it felt to realize you were different, to be rejected because of abilities you couldn't help possessing. But it sounded like his abilities were brand new, and that made her wonder...

"Have you been to Smallville lately?" she asked.

His eyebrows shot up at the question. "Yeah. My wife's from around there, so we drove out to see her family last weekend. After that, we took the kids out for a family picnic at Crater Lake."

Chloe Sullivan, a.k.a Watchtower, had filled all the members of Justice in on the wildly varied effects the meteor rocks could have on human DNA. She'd been researching the phenomenon for years, and had shared a vast quantity of information on the subject with them. Based on what she'd learned from Watchtower, Dinah guessed this poor hapless guy had come into contact with the green rocks somehow, and they'd changed him, the way they had changed so many others.

"There are actually a lot of people like you," she said, as kindly as she could. "Not exactly the same, not with the same ability, but a lot of people have been... affected. I know quite a few of them." His eyes began to brighten with hope, and she added, "But... there's no cure. I'm sorry."

His eyes dulled, and he looked at her more despairingly than ever. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"

She wondered if he was one of the lucky ones, the ones that didn't go bad, the ones that could continue to live a reasonably normal life, or if he was going to start exhibiting symptoms of what Watchtower had labeled meteorite psychosis.

The problem was that there was really no way of knowing. About seventy-five percent of the meteor afflicted turned so psychopathic they had to be locked up in mental institutions, for their own protection as well as others' safety. The remaining quarter seemed to come through the changes just fine, and continued functioning normally, albeit with strange new abilities.

Looking into this guy's eyes, which looked perfectly sane despite his obvious fear and confusion, she had a sudden conviction that he was one of the lucky ones.

"There's no cure," she repeated. "But I do know some people who can help you adjust. They can help you learn to cope with it. Why don't you come with me? I'll introduce you to them."

He narrowed his eyes, as if suddenly aware he'd spilled his guts to a weirdly attired stranger, and took a cautious step backward. "I don't even know you."

"No," she agreed. "You don't. And you don't have any reason to trust me. But I swear to you, I have friends who've gone through this themselves, or who know other people who have. They can help you." She looked at him solemnly. "I can help you, if you'll let me."

She turned and walked away, in the direction of HQ, which was also referred to as the Watchtower. There was a long silence behind her, but at last she heard the sound of cautious footsteps, trailing along behind her.

She turned her head and smiled at him over her shoulder.

And then she led him toward hope.

Citizen soldiers
Holding the light for the ones that we guide from the dark of despair

3. Chloe

Chloe Sullivan, known to Justice as Watchtower, was just leaving the Daily Planet at midnight when she heard the gunshot. She kicked off her heels, leaving them behind her like Cinderella ditching her glass slipper, and ran in the direction of the sound. The concrete of the sidewalk ripped her stockings to shreds and scraped her feet, but she hardly noticed.

No other gunshots rang out, but she heard the sound of coarse laughter and running feet. She kept running in that direction, and moments later she found a body sprawled in the entrance to an alleyway.

She dropped down beside the figure. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, and she had no idea what had happened to him. He might be a hero, but then again, he might be a drug dealer, or even a murderer. But it didn't really matter.

She remembered something Clark had once said after he'd saved a guy who'd turned out to be a killer for hire, wondering if he ought to save people at all: And what if that person's a killer, Chloe? What if the world would actually be better off without them?

She'd answered, That's not your choice to make. You save first, and you ask questions later.

She felt for a pulse while fumbling in her pocket for her cell. But almost instantly she realized that calling for an ambulance was fruitless. The guy was quite dead, and the spreading puddle of blood beneath him showed why. He'd been shot through the chest, and the bullet had made quite an impressive hole.

If she called medical personnel, all they could do was declare him dead.

Which meant it was up to her to save the guy.

Damn it. I hate doing this.

Gritting her teeth, she placed a hand on his chest.

Instantly a terrible, burning pain swept through her torso. It felt like she was being torn apart. She struggled to keep her focus despite the agony, and a golden light flared out from her hand and slowly encompassed the man's body.

Beneath her hand, his flesh began to knit back together, and his heart began to thud, slowly at first, then faster. At last he began to stir, and the light faded away.

Chloe struggled to her feet. She no longer died when she healed someone, even if they were dead themselves, but it still hurt like hell, as if she'd taken their injuries on herself. Fortunately, it didn't last long, and to her relief the terrible pain was already beginning to fade. She staggered away, before the guy could open his eyes and see her face.

Once out on the street, she leaned against a wall, breathing hard. Her head spun and her stomach heaved, but somehow she managed to stay upright.

There were times when she hated the ability she'd been given. In particular, she hated the pain it cost her to heal someone. Unlike most of the meteor powers, her gift came with a price-- and the price was excruciating pain.

But remembering the feel of a stilled heart slowly beginning to beat under her hand, she thought the gift was worth the price.

Standing on guard for the ones that we've sheltered
We'll always be ready because we will always be there

4. J'onn

Metropolis was nothing like a Martian city.

On J'onn J'onzz' home planet, he'd resided in a lovely, graceful city of slender crystal spires that gleamed in the sunlight. The city itself had been a wondrous work of art.

Metropolis was not a work of art. In fact, to his alien eyes, it was something of a mess. It was a jumbled mixture of architectural styles, its highly decorated Art Deco buildings rubbing shoulders with starkly modern steel-and-glass towers.

Its people were just as highly varied as its architecture, and like the buildings, the people all too often clashed.

Tonight, J'onn, whose code name was Manhunter, stood silently watching as two groups of young men circled each other on a back street in Suicide Slum. Unlike the other members of Justice, he didn't have to keep to the shadows, because he was capable of making himself invisible. He stood now, invisible to the human eye, and watched as the two groups of men prepared to do battle.

Gang warfare, he thought tiredly. He'd seen more than enough of it, and its results, in his career as a police officer since he'd come to this fractious planet. He'd seen too many young men with no real purpose in their lives, fighting over some imagined slight or some dispute over territory, fighting over skin color or money or drugs, and in the end dying for nothing at all.

Humans tended to use violence as their first resort rather than their last, and that grieved him.

Knives were beginning to be drawn, flashing in the dim light of the streetlights. Before long, he knew blood would flow, and bullets would probably begin to fly, too. He needed to stop this now, before one of these foolish young humans died.

Making a decision, he stepped between the two groups, still invisible.

He focused his powers, and became visible... in his natural form.

The two groups of men froze, stunned, as a seven-foot, green-skinned alien with glowing red eyes suddenly materialized in their midst. There was a sudden and profound silence. J'onn turned slowly, his crimson eyes glaring at them. To them, he knew, he appeared to be a huge and terrifying monster, rather than the last surviving member of an ancient, philosophical, peaceful race.

Suddenly there was a wild confusion of yelling and cursing and pounding feet, and J'onn found himself alone in the street.

Smiling wryly to himself, he shifted back into invisibility and began to patrol the streets again. He knew well enough he hadn't solved any of the underlying conflict, and those two gangs would probably return to face one another at a later date.

But he'd been on Earth long enough to know he couldn't change the human heart. He understood that no matter what he did, no matter what anyone in Justice did, there would still be violence and anger and hatred in the world. All he could do-- all anyone could do-- was try to deal with its consequences.

Tonight, at least, he'd saved lives.

When there are people crying in the streets
When they're starving for a meal to eat
When they simply need a place to make their beds
Right here underneath my wing
You can rest your head

5. Victor

He could hack into any computer on the planet, break through any secured system, take out any programming that got in his way in microseconds. He could tear his way through solid steel, or pound his way through granite.

And here he was, ladeling out food.

Victor Stone, otherwise known as Cyborg, poured gravy over a serving of mashed potatoes and handed a plate to an older man. The guy was missing most of his teeth, but that didn't stop him from flashing a grateful smile at Victor. And then he was moving on to a table, and the next person in line moved forward.

And it was a long line. Victor had been here for four hours, and despite the fact that it was well after midnight, the line of people hadn't gotten any shorter. It was really sad, he thought, how many people were going hungry in Metropolis. It seemed like a big city ought to have some way of keeping its people fed.

But clearly, a lot of folks were going without.

He'd made some cranky, offhand comment about how Justice saved people from bullets, but didn't do anything to help the people who didn't have food, or clothes, or shelter. Ollie had looked mildly annoyed at his jab.

"Did you know I set up a soup kitchen down on Fourth and Main?"

Victor hadn't known, and he immediately felt really stupid. But he wasn't about to admit he was wrong, especially not when Ollie was looking at him with that annoying, slightly superior smile that said he had all the answers.

"It's easy to throw money at a problem, Arrow, especially when a guy has as much money as you do. You ever go down there and hand out the food? See the homeless up close and personal?"

"Twice a week," Ollie had answered promptly. "When's the last time you worked at a soup kitchen, Victor?"

"Um..." Victor felt beyond really stupid now. Since he'd "died" and had his life ripped away from him, he hadn't spared a lot of thought for the troubles of other people. He had enough troubles of his own to cope with. "Tenth grade," he admitted sheepishly. "Back when I was still going to church. My youth group..."

Ollie had flashed the bright smile that had been featured on Time and People and innumerable other magazine covers. "Time for you to get back to work, Cyborg."

"Past time, maybe," Victor had admitted.

And so here he was, handing out plates of steaming food to people whose best meal so far this week might have come out of a Dumpster. Hundreds of people, in a line that seemed to go on and on and on. It hurt to realize there were this many people going hungry in Metropolis.

It hurt to realize he hadn't given them much thought since tenth grade.

He remembered his earlier thought, that he had enough troubles of his own to deal with. He'd been dealt a lousy hand, no doubt about it. But then again, so had a hell of a lot of other people. There were an awful lot of troubles in this city beyond his own. There were an awful lot of people who needed help.

He handed a plate to a middle-aged woman. She smiled at him.

And he resolved to help more often.

On that day when you need your brothers and sisters to care
I'll be right here

6. A.C.

The body thrashed frantically in the water, but its struggles were growing fainter and fainter. Arthur Curry, otherwise known as Aquaman, had heard it from a long distance away, and he shot toward it, knowing that drowning was imminent.

A.C. loved the water. He needed the water. He wasn't sure why, but if he didn't get water to drink every hour, he suffered badly. If he couldn't be immersed in water on a regular basis, his skin dried up and he got terribly ill. He wasn't sure if he was a mutant, or an alien, or something else entirely, but he was doing his best to figure it out.

As he searched for clues to his origins, with help from Ollie Queen, he worked helping Justice keep the people of Metropolis safe. As usual, he'd been patrolling the waterfront tonight, swimming at his usual incredible speed, when he'd become aware that someone had fallen from a boat, quite a distance out.

He rocketed up toward the surface, and realized as he broke the water that the "someone" was a dog. A puppy, really. A mutt that looked like it might be a cross between a border collie and a Lab. It was black, but with a white stripe down its nose, and a single white paw. He was pretty sure it had some water dog in its ancestry, and he could tell it had been fighting hard, but it was still way too far from land, and it was all played out. Its nose was barely above the water, and as he watched, its churning legs stilled.

He scooped it up just before it sank below the surface.

"Hey," he said in a reassuring tone, cradling it against his chest. He was fairly certain it was a puppy, maybe five months old. It was already a pretty good size, but he suspected it was going to get bigger. He also suspected it hadn't fallen overboard at all-- it had most likely been tossed. That was one popular way for people to get rid of their unwanted dogs.

Bastards, he thought angrily, holding the dog protectively to his chest and swimming, more slowly than usual, back to land. What kind of scum does that to a dog?

The dog seemed grateful to be back on dry land. It collapsed on the shoreline, gasping and sputtering as water streamed from its long coat. A.C. knelt next to it, rubbing the sodden black fur reassuringly.

"It's okay," he told it. "I'll take care of you."

The dog looked up at him with big, trusting brown eyes, and at its adoring expression, A.C. instantly tumbled into love. He'd always wanted a dog when he was a kid, and had never gotten one. And now here was one, like a gift from heaven.

Or a gift from Poseidon, maybe.

Damn it, he thought crankily. The last thing on Earth he needed was a dog. He worked for Ollie, and that meant he had to be ready to pack up and hit the road at a moment's notice. He couldn't have a dog. He just couldn't.

But this dog needed him.

"I'll put an ad in the paper first," he told the dog. It wagged its tail feebly at the sound of his voice. "Maybe you just fell overboard. Maybe they didn't try to kill you."

The dog looked up at him, and its big sad eyes said, You know that isn't true.

"Yeah," he said, rubbing its lop ears. "I know. But I have to try. And then if no one claims you... well, I guess maybe I can figure out a way to keep you. Somehow."

The white paw lifted and rested on his knee in a friendly gesture, and the eyes answered, I already belong to you.

"Yeah," A.C. muttered, patting its head. "Same here, buddy."

Hope and pray that you'll never need me,
But rest assured I will not let you down

7. Bart

Ollie was fond of saying that Impulse was a good code name for Bart Allen, because he was too damn impulsive for his own good. Bart figured that the situation he'd landed in tonight proved Ollie right. Not that he'd ever admit it in a million years.

Bart relied on his speed to get him out of trouble. He was the fastest guy in the world. As he'd once boasted to Clark Kent, Nobody sees me when I'm doing my thing.

But take away his speed, and he was helpless.

Well, not helpless, exactly. But without his speed, he was just an ordinary guy, and a short, wimpy guy at that.

He wasn't sure how the device that had been fired at him took away his speed, but it definitely had. He'd tried to bolt, but had found himself restricted to ordinary human speeds. His ability to run fast seemed to be just out of his reach for some reason. Now he was just standing there in this old abandoned warehouse, his arms held by two big burly guys while a third, much thinner guy stared at him.

He had to admit that he was in pretty serious trouble.

He knew he could call for backup. Since J'onn had joined their ranks, they'd started using his telepathic abilities to stay in contact with one another. All he had to do was call out mentally, and someone would hear him.

But he'd been alone for years before he'd joined up with Justice. He was used to getting out of tight spots on his own. And besides, he was uncomfortably aware that he was the youngest member of the team. He knew perfectly well the others thought of him as "the kid." The last thing he wanted to do was reinforce that impression by calling for help the minute he got in a jam.

No. He'd get out of this on his own.

Somehow.

Some of his trepidation must have shown in his eyes, because the guy who'd shot him lowered the device that had stolen his speed and smiled, almost reassuringly. "Don't worry, kid, it's not permanent. You'll get your speed back eventually."

Bart glared at him. "What do you want?"

"Your speed, little boy. I want your speed."

The guy grinned widely. He was older than Bart, but not exactly ancient. Ollie's age, maybe. He was skinny, especially compared to the two incredible hulks holding Bart immobile, and short blond hair stood up in spikes above his very ordinary-looking face. There wasn't anything particularly striking or noteworthy about him.

But the device he held had definitely gotten Bart's attention.

"What the hell did you do to me?" Bart demanded. Show no fear had always been his mantra. He might be a little guy, but he didn't let anyone know he was scared or intimidated, ever.

The blond guy grinned again, and lifted the device. "I just cut off your access to the Speed Force."

"The what?" Bart blinked at the guy, baffled. He had no idea how his speed worked. He'd been hit by a bolt of lightning a few years ago, and the next thing he knew he could run at the speed of light. Well... near enough not to matter.

"I'm a physicist," the guy said. "And I've made a study of an energy force that acts upon our dimension, so that affected objects can pass through it at greater than normal velocities. You, Bart, were affected by it when you were younger."

"Actually," Bart drawled, "I got hit by lightning."

"No." The guy pointed the device directly at him. "You passed through a strand of this extradimensional force that had temporarily crossed into our reality. It enabled you to tap into the force, which I call the Speed Force."

"Catchy name," Bart sneered, and threw in an eyeroll for good measure.

The guy didn't seem annoyed by his very sincere efforts to be a snot. "I've cut off your access to the Speed Force. Only temporarily, because there's no way I know of to make the effect permanent. Within an hour or so, your ability to access it will return. But in the meantime, I want to use your access. Your... password, if you'll pardon the term."

"What for? You gonna go save people? Go right ahead." Bart yawned ostentatiously. "I'll just take the night off."

"Don't be absurd," the guy said impatiently. "Only a fool would use a power like this just to help people. I have plans, kid. Big plans."

Naturally, Bart thought sourly. Because bad guys never had big plans to help the world, only to hurt it.

That was what made them bad guys, after all.

The guy turned the device away from Bart and fired it at nothing. Bart saw a faint reddish light begin to glow, and alarm hit him. This guy might or might not really be a physicist, but he obviously knew more than Bart did about his abilities.

"Listen, dude," he said desperately, "it's not just the speed, okay? Somehow my metabolism got kicked into overdrive, too. You're normal, and you don't know what my speed might do to you..."

"Your speed!" The guy rounded on him, looking suddenly irritated. "It isn't yours, little man. You just happened to stumble on it. The Speed Force is there for anyone who can figure out to take it for themselves." He turned, and the red glow lit his eyes, so that they gleamed crimson. He looked almost demonic. "And now... it belongs to me."

He flung down the device and ran forward, into the heart of the red light.

He disappeared in the crimson glow, and there was a terrible, drawn-out scream. It was, Bart thought, the worst sound he'd ever heard-- and in his years on the streets, he'd heard a whole lot of terrible sounds. It sounded like a soul screaming in torment from the depths of Hell.

The screaming went on and on, making the hairs on the back of Bart's neck stand up. But at last the red light faded, and the guy reappeared.

He collapsed to the ground, senseless, and Bart saw with horror that the guy's hair was white and impossibly long, almost to his knees. He was no longer a young man. His face was lined, and his body was bent and frail.

He looked ancient.

"Jesus Christ." One of the two guys holding Bart spoke in a hoarse whisper. "Let's get out of here."

They let Bart go and turned away. Bart spun around, trying to grab their arms.

"Are you crazy? We have to get him to a hospital!"

Little guy that he was, he didn't have much chance of stopping two big dudes who'd probably been linebackers in high school. The guys shook him off and fled from the warehouse, apparently figuring they could be in deep shit if the cops associated them with whatever had happened.

Bart ran for the guy and dropped down next to him. He was still breathing, and his heartbeat was still steady. But he'd definitely put on fifty or sixty years.

God, Bart thought. This could have been me. Instead of being superfast when that lightning hit me... I could have just been old.

But it wasn't him. It was just this poor sap, who'd tried for a superhuman power, and crashed to Earth faster than what's-his-name, that guy with the wings who'd flown too close to the sun.

Superpowers were great, for a small handful of people, but Bart knew that many more people were harmed by powers than helped by them. Superpowers had destroyed many more lives than they'd improved. They were definitely a double-edged sword.

Bart tried to move into superspeed, but his ability to move fast was still being blocked somehow. I hope the guy was right about that, at least, he thought glumly. I hope I get it back soon.

He looked down at the guy and tried to figure out what to do next. Because yeah, the guy hadn't been real nice to him, but still, he wasn't going to leave the poor sap here all by himself. He might die.

Not that Bart would feel guilty or anything. Really, he wouldn't. But Ollie probably wouldn't like it if Bart let the guy die. And Ollie was the boss.

Anyway, this was his fault, sort of. Not that it had been his idea or anything. He'd been attacked, and he was still sort of pissed about that. But there was no getting around the fact that it was his ability that had made this poor guy age so fast. Bart figured he kind of had a responsibility to help him.

Bart thought about the problem, and it occurred to him that people without superspeed relied on ambulances. Unfortunately, he didn't have a cell on him, because there wasn't a lot of point in a guy like him carrying one. He patted the guy down, and found a mobile phone in one of the pockets.

He called an ambulance, and waited in the light with the guy till he heard the sirens.

But then, driven by force of long habit, he retreated to the shadows.

I'll walk beside you but you may not see me,
The strongest among you may not wear a crown

8. Clark

He wasn't on patrol.

Clark Kent zoomed along the quiet streets of a Metropolis suburb. He wasn't patrolling the streets. He wasn't even part of Justice, not really. Yeah, he did some work for Ollie when his particular skill set happened to be needed, but he didn't go out every night and keep an eye on things, the way the members of Justice did.

He'd just happened to be coming back from seeing Chloe at the Planet, and had decided to take the scenic route.

The truth was, he'd been taking the scenic route for a couple of months now, but that didn't mean he was on patrol. Metropolis had plenty of protectors, and it didn't really need him. Anyway, he had enough stuff to do in Smallville. So the fact that he was whooshing around Metropolis didn't mean anything.

He just happened to like running.

He left the suburbs and raced toward the tall buildings of downtown. As he approached, a strange, high-pitched sound buzzed annoyingly in his ears. He fell out of superspeed and came to a stop, cocking his head and listening.

What is that noise?

He'd left downtown about an hour ago, when he'd said good night to Chloe and taken off, and the sound hadn't been audible then. But it was more than audible now. It was a terrible, teeth-vibrating whine that made him want to cringe and cover his ears.

It sounded, he thought, almost Kryptonian. Kryptonian artifacts had a way of making a ringing sound, audible only to the members of the family which they belonged to. But this sound was a little different. He thought maybe it was alien, but not from his home planet.

And he also realized that no one in the city could hear it except him. It was too high-pitched even for dogs to hear.

He broke into superspeed, heading toward the sound.

Before long, he found its source, a small box placed in the small park just outside the LuthorCorp building. He x-rayed it, and although the components were indeed alien, he was pretty sure it was a bomb.

A big one.

He frowned at it, trying to figure out what to do with it. He'd once dealt with a nuclear missile by riding it out into space and throwing the warhead into space, where it had exploded harmlessly.

Unfortunately, he couldn't fly, so he had no way of getting it into space on his own. But he knew someone who could.

J'onn, he thought, making telepathic contact. I need some help, now.

I am busy, Kal-El. J'onn's thoughts were clipped. Just give me a few minutes...

They didn't have a few minutes. Clark lifted the box, hearing the ringing growing louder. It was, he thought, about to explode.

He couldn't afford to wait. He'd have to handle this on his own.

He zipped into his highest speed, heading for the nearest national park, where there were few people. The sound in his ears grew more and more piercing, and he knew the thing was about to blow.

And he also knew that alien technology could sometimes hurt him, or even kill him. For all he knew, the thing would blow him to bits when it exploded.

But better him than everyone in downtown Metropolis.

He dropped out of superspeed in the middle of nowhere. He tucked the bomb against his stomach, dropped to his knees, and wrapped himself around the small box. It exploded.

And Clark screamed.

Citizen soldiers
Holding the light for the ones that we guide from the dark of despair
Standing on guard for the ones that we've sheltered
We'll always be ready because we will always be there

9. Justice

"How are you feeling, Boy Scout?"

Lying on the couch in Justice's headquarters, Clark grinned, a little weakly, at Ollie. "Better," he said. "I think I'll live."

"We weren't so sure about it when J'onn brought you in," Ollie said, looking down at his friend. He was fond of the kid, and didn't like seeing him injured. "You have got to be more careful, Clark. Metropolis needs you."

"No." Clark shook his head. "I don't do anything for Metropolis, Ollie. I wasn't even on patrol. I just happened to hear something."

"Sure," Victor said. "The same way you've just happened to take care of stuff for the past month."

Clark shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I just keep running across stuff that needs to be handled. I've just been lucky, I guess."

"Metropolis is lucky," Dinah said. "If you hadn't found that bomb when you did, downtown Metropolis would be a smoking crater right now."

"Anyway," Ollie said, turning to address the room at large, "the Boy Scout isn't the reason I called this meeting. We have some serious stuff to discuss, folks. It's time to rethink our focus."

He looked over his people, feeling no small amount of pride. Bart had temporarily lost his speed last night, but it had returned, and he was gleefully zooming back and forth across the room, annoying the hell out of Victor, who kept tossing popcorn at him. A.C. sat on a chair, a black dog sprawled at his feet. The rest of Ollie's team sat or stood around the room, watching him expectantly.

Behind him, he was aware of Watchtower sitting down on the couch and taking Clark's hand. He smiled.

"Our focus?" Chloe repeated. "What do you mean, Ollie?"

"What I mean," Ollie elaborated, "is that we never intended to settle this whole operation in Metropolis permanently. We have a hell of a lot of firepower here, folks. Way too much for just one city."

Around the room he could see the members of Justice nodding, as if they'd been expecting this for a while. Only Clark looked bewildered.

"Now that we've spent some time practicing caring for a city as a unit," Ollie went on, "we need to break up the operation a bit. There are a lot of other cities out there, and they all need our help."

"Wait a minute." Clark struggled to a sitting position, wincing a little. "Are you talking about Justice leaving Metropolis for good?"

Ollie nodded. "Yeah, Boy Scout. That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"No way." Clark glared at him. "You are not just abandoning my city."

Privately, Ollie was amused by how quickly Clark had shifted from I wasn't on patrol to my city, but he held back his smile and spoke seriously.

"Someone can stay here and take care of Metropolis if they want to."

Clark rubbed at his forehead, looking worried. "There's a hell of a lot to do here, Ollie. Look at the reports everyone just made. Everyone was busy last night. Someone tried to blow the city up, for God's sake."

"Fortunately," Ollie answered, "the guy won't be blowing anything up for a good long while."

After J'onn had found Clark sprawled, bleeding, in the middle of nowhere, Watchtower had done some research and figured out who the bomber was. J'onn had found him, confiscated the alien equipment the guy had stumbled across, and taken him to the police station.

"Still," Clark said. "There's just too much work here for one man."

"But not for a superman," Ollie said.

Clark scowled. "Ollie..."

Ollie waved a hand, cutting him off. "Look, Clark, the fact is that there are other cities that need us. I'm not disbanding Justice, okay? If we need each other, we can always contact one another through J'onn. We'll always be there to help each other when we're needed. But it's time for all of us to start working more on our own."

He paused, choosing his words carefully, then went on. "I'm figuring we need just one or two of us in each city. We'll cover what we can, and as we recruit more people, like the guy Dinah brought in last night, we'll be able to handle more cities. Me, I'm going back to Star City. It's my home, and... it needs me."

"Central City," Bart said quietly.

"Middleton," J'onn said.

Ollie lifted an eyebrow and looked at Clark. "You have a preference, Boy Scout?"

He saw Clark's big fist clench, as if the kid was annoyed. "I don't even work for Justice, Ollie."

"True," Ollie admitted. "Well, it's no big deal, I guess. Metropolis has had our protection for months now. Its people can handle things on their own for a while."

"Over. My. Dead. Body." Clark hefted himself to his feet, despite Chloe's efforts to keep him on the couch, and stood glaring at Ollie, swaying a little. "You are not leaving my city undefended."

"No," Ollie said, looking right at him. "I'm not."

Clark stood there, big shoulders squared, chin lifted, and glared at him for a long moment. Even swathed in bandages, he looked dangerous. But after a moment his shoulders slumped a little, and some of the anger went out of his posture.

"Fine," he said simply. "I'll take care of Metropolis."

Chloe rose to her feet and stood next to him, and Ollie read her silent declaration: I'll help. Somehow he'd known she would. The Boy Scout and Watchtower were never far apart.

Ollie smiled at the two of them.

"I think Metropolis is in good hands," he said.

-The End-

Ghostbusters

Clark, Chloe, JLA
Season 7
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

Sequel to Men in Black.

If there's something strange
In your neighborhood
Who ya gonna call?...
-Ray Parker, "Ghostbusters"

"There's a ghost in the Watchtower."

Clark had been tossing bales of hay up into the loft of the barn, but at Oliver Queen's words, he paused and raised a quizzical eyebrow at his friend. "You're kidding, right?"

"Not exactly." Ollie wore a suit and tie, and looked very much like what he was-- a billionaire businessman, completely out of place on a farm. Clark, on the other hand, wore a flannel shirt and tattered jeans, and looked every inch the farmer he was.

And yet neither of them was quite what he appeared to be.

"Not exactly." Clark mulled that over for a moment, then went back to tossing hay. "Are you going to explain that, Ollie, or are you just going to go all mysterious on me?"

"Put it this way. There's an entity in the Watchtower that we can't identify. Several of us have seen it. But it doesn't register on the sensors, and whenever one of us tries to touch it, it disappears."

"Has Chloe seen it?"

Chloe was Clark's best friend, and an investigative journalist, and he considered her a highly reliable witness. Ollie nodded.

"Yes. She's seen it a few times."

"Okay." If Chloe had seen it, then it was there. Chloe saw more with her eyes shut than most people could see with a telescope. Clark turned around and sat on a bale of hay, looking over at Ollie, who was seated on the old rickety staircase without the slightest concern for his expensive suit. "What does this entity look like?"

"It's diffuse. Translucent. Bluish-white, without defined borders. It kind of floats."

"In other words, it looks like a ghost."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Huh." Clark thought about it for a moment. "So what's the issue, exactly? Is it causing problems? Haunting anyone in particular? Screwing up your equipment?"

"No. Not that we've noticed, anyway. I just don't like having an unidentified entity wandering around the Watchtower. I don't believe in ghosts, Clark. For all I know it's a meteor affected person Luthor's using as a spy. Or it might be a manifestation of some technology I'm not familiar with. I need to figure out what it is, and get it the hell out of my headquarters."

"I'm not a scientist, Ollie. I'm just a slightly unusual farmer. So what exactly do you think I can do about it? You want me to pound on it and see if it whimpers?"

"No." Ollie grinned. "But superstrength isn't your only ability, Superman. I thought maybe your weirdly enhanced senses could pick up something the sensors couldn't."

Clark winced slightly at his code name, which he preferred only marginally to the first code name Ollie had hung on him, Boy Scout. "Okay," he said, shrugging. "I'll give it a shot."

"I have to give you fair warning, though. It might take a while before you spot it. It's kind of intermittent."

"Okay. So are we talking days?"

"Probably. Better bring a toothbrush."

"Awww, Ollie. I thought you'd never ask."

"Shut up, Supes. If you're sleeping with anyone, it sure as hell won't be me." He flashed his boyish grin, the smile that had been featured on magazine covers nationwide. "There's always Watchtower, though."

Clark recognized that in this instance Ollie wasn't referring to his headquarters, but to Chloe's code name. He frowned, and voiced a concern that had been worrying him since Chloe had moved out of her cousin's apartment and into Ollie's headquarters, along with some other people who worked with Ollie. "I thought, uh, maybe Chloe and you..."

"Oh, hell, no. Are you kidding me? She's only got eyes for one guy, and ordinary guys like me pale in comparison. Hell, she won't even give Bart the time of day, and God knows he's tried everything to get her to go out with him."

Bart was Impulse, a superfast kid who worked for Ollie. Bart had never made any secret of the fact that he liked Chloe. Clark had always felt a big brother sort of affection for Bart, but at the news that the kid was still hitting on Chloe, he thought longingly of pounding him into the ground.

Embarrassed by the uncharacteristic violence of the thought, he dragged his mind away from Chloe and back on topic.

"Okay," he said. "For a few days, I'll hang out with you guys at the Watchtower."

Ollie grinned and got to his feet. "Thanks, Supes," he said. "I appreciate it."

"No problem. It'll give me a chance to get off the farm, anyway. This place has been pretty dead lately."

"You mean since Chloe moved to Metropolis."

Clark winced. Metropolis wasn't far away by his standards, but Chloe had been busy since she moved into the Watchtower. She was juggling night classes, a day job at the Daily Planet, and odd jobs for Ollie, and she was so busy he hardly saw her any more. She'd been an important fixture in his life for years, and he missed her a lot.

He was a little embarrassed to realize that he was looking forward to helping out Ollie a little more than he should, simply because it meant a chance to spend some quality time with Chloe.

*****

"Hey, Chlo."

"Hey," she answered absently. She was typing away at a laptop in the Watchtower's living area, and barely seemed to have noticed Clark's entrance. He'd kind of expected a hug, or at least a big bright smile, and her lack of interest in his arrival stung. He pushed away his disappointment and sat down on a chair across from her.

"So," he said. "Tell me about this ghost."

She looked up from the laptop, and he saw her love of paranormal mysteries light her eyes, in a way his arrival hadn't. Chloe had always been fascinated by the paranormal and unexplainable.

"It's really cool," she said, putting the laptop on the table in front of her and leaning back on the couch. She was wearing a purple t-shirt, and the way she leaned back made the fabric pull taut across her breasts in a very distracting way. Clark tried not to stare. "I saw it for the third time yesterday. It was in the hall upstairs."

"Did it move around? Or did it just sit there?"

"Oh, it definitely moved. It followed me down the hall."

He thought about that, and wondered if it was sentient, or if it just followed movement somehow. "Is it just visual? Or can you feel it, or hear it, or something?"

She bit her lip, frowning in concentration. "I reached out and touched it the first time I saw it," she said. "It didn't feel cold, the way ghosts are supposed to. It didn't feel hot, either. But I did get this kind of buzzing sensation. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it made all the hairs on my arm stand up."

"Okay. So it's not just a visual thing." He considered the matter. "Where am I most likely to see it? Where has it been spotted the most?"

She reached for her laptop and began clicking. He could barely repress a grin. He wasn't surprised that Chloe was keeping careful and extensive notes on the phenomenon. Researching and documenting the paranormal was what she'd done, ever since he'd known her.

"Upstairs hallway... five sightings. Library... three sightings. Sleeping quarters... four sightings. Downstairs living area... six sightings. No place really stands out as the most likely place to see it, Clark. It's been spotted all over."

"Any particular time of day?"

More clicking. "Not really."

"Okay." He shrugged. "I'll just walk around for a while and see if I spot it, I guess."

"All right." She went back to typing, looking lost in whatever she was doing, and he stood up, feeling a twinge of dismay. There had been a time when he and Chloe had talked all the time, about everything. She'd been his best friend for years, and he didn't like the feeling that he'd been downgraded to a business associate.

Intellectually, he knew he shouldn't be surprised. Chloe had a new life and new friends here at the Watchtower, a life in which he was peripheral. And the truth was he'd been pushing her away just a bit, because he didn't quite dare get too near to her. His feelings for her were muddled, to say the least, and he was afraid to act on them, so pushing her away seemed like the safest thing to do. Still, her apparent indifference to his presence rankled.

He wanted his best friend back. He wanted to fix the problem, to bridge the space between them. But he just didn't know how.

He stood there for a moment longer, watching her, then turned and left the room to see if he could find the ghost.

*****

Three ghostless hours later, he wandered back into the big living room, which seemed to be being used as a kind of common area. Chloe was still seated on the couch, typing, while Bart a.k.a. Impulse sat way too close to her, whispering in her ear. On a modern black leather chair, A.C. (code name Aquaman) sat, drinking a tall glass of water. Ollie leaned over the couch behind Chloe, looking at whatever she was working on, and Clark noticed his hand was resting familiarly on her shoulder. He had to resist the urge to superspeed across the room and yank it away from her.

He thought that it was a little odd he didn't mind all that much that Bart was practically drooling on Chloe's cleavage, but that he so strongly resented Ollie hanging over her. He figured it was because Bart was just a kid, and not really a rival as far as he was concerned. Ollie, on the other hand... Ollie was a billionaire, good looking, and famous. All of which made him very definitely a rival.

He shook himself, remembering that he'd decided to not get tangled up with Chloe romantically. Which meant that Ollie wasn't a rival. Ollie could have Chloe. Chloe deserved a good guy, and Ollie was very definitely a good guy.

He started across the room again. As he approached, Ollie looked up. "Hey, Superman," he said with his roguish grin. "Find anything?"

"Not a single glow." Clark threw himself down in one of the black leather chairs with a sigh.

"I warned you that you might not find anything right away, Supes. Just hang out with us for a few days. You'll probably see it eventually."

Clark's gaze slid to Chloe. She was still typing, apparently oblivious to his presence. He noticed the way Ollie's hand was still on her shoulder, and jealousy hit him like a ton of kryptonite bricks.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm definitely planning on sticking around."

There was a blur, moving faster than even his eyes could follow, and Impulse was sitting next to him, grinning. "So when are you gonna join the cause, Superman?"

Clark sighed. "I still have things to take care of at home, Bart..."

"Last year you said you wanted to be a part of this," Bart said, talking at his usual warp speed. Clark noticed he had a bag of Doritos in his hand, which hadn't been there a minute ago. God, the kid was fast. And he ate like a starving wolf, devouring everything in sight and then looking around for more. "You said you had something you had to wrap up first, and then..."

"It's not quite that simple, Bart. I have a cousin who's new in town..."

"You're blowing us off for family stuff? This is important, man. We're talking survival. We're talking the fate of every freak, everywhere."

Clark saw Chloe wince, just a little, and anger lit inside him. "Don't," he said sharply, "call people with abilities freaks."

Bart looked at him oddly. "Why the hell not? I'm a freak. You're a freak. A.C.'s a freak. What's the big deal?"

"Just find another word," Clark said through his teeth.

Bart stared at him a moment longer, looking thoughtful, then flashed his carefree grin. "Whatever. I guess it might make Ollie feel left out, being the only normal guy in the place."

"Yeah," Ollie drawled. "It makes me feel like a freak."

Chloe winced again, and Clark glared at Ollie through narrowed eyes. Obviously Chloe hadn't told the team that she'd joined the ranks of the meteor-infected. Not surprising, since they still weren't clear on exactly what her power was or how it worked. But she'd developed a real sensitivity to the term "meteor freak" recently, and Clark didn't blame her. They'd used the term casually for years, but somehow it didn't sound the same when you were talking about your best friend.

Chloe wasn't a freak. She was just... Chloe.

"Look," he said, trying to pull the conversation in another direction, "it's not that I don't think you guys are doing great work, because you are. It's just that there's a whole hell of a lot of stuff I have to deal with in my own neck of the woods. I'm happy to help you guys out, but..."

He trailed off and cocked his head. Chloe glanced at him, and instantly recognized that he was using his superhearing.

"What do you hear, Clark?"

"Not sure." He frowned, straining. "Do you guys hear it?"

"Don't hear a thing," Bart said.

"Not that anyone can ever hear anything over Bart's yammering," Ollie said. "But I don't hear anything, either."

Clark shot a glance at A.C. He knew the blond guy's range of hearing was wider than most people's. But A.C. listened intently for a minute, then shrugged.

"Sorry, dude. I don't hear it."

"Clark," Chloe said. "What does it sound like?"

"I don't..." He strained, but couldn't quite tell what the noise was. It was like listening to something very, very distant-- he knew the sound was there, but he couldn't quite make out what it was. "It's a long ways away," he said at last. "And it... it sounds almost like music."

Chloe stared at him. Whatever she'd expected him to say, clearly that hadn't been it. "Music?"

"Yeah. It's faint, but I think it's music."

"Supes," Ollie said. "Are you sure you're not just picking up a garage band practicing somewhere? Or, you know, an AM station on one of your fillings?"

"I don't have fillings. And no, I'm not sure, but..." He listened again. "It doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before, guys. I think it's our ghost."

Chloe started typing, making notes, and he filtered out the sound of her clicking, and continued to listen. But a moment later the music faded into silence.

"It's gone," he said, feeling an inexplicable sense of loss. Faint though the music had been, he'd gotten the impression that it was beautiful and somber and sorrowful. Which figured, really. He wouldn't expect a ghost to be belting out drinking songs.

Ollie instantly went into Green Arrow mode. "Watchtower," he said. "Cyborg's manning security. Talk to him and find out if the instruments registered anything. The rest of you... get off your asses and fan out. Maybe we can find this thing and get Supes a closer listen."

The team instantly went to work, and Clark went back to listening.

But all he heard was silence.

*****

"We didn't find a damn thing on the sensors," Cyborg complained at the dinner table. It was a huge, round, glass-and-black-wood table, and Clark was annoyed because he'd somehow found himself a long distance away from Chloe. He'd intended to sit next to her and talk to her, but before he'd managed to sit, Ollie had sat on one side of her and Bart the other, and he'd wound up sitting next to A.C.

"Didn't think you would," Ollie said mildly. "The thing hasn't caused a flicker on any of the sensors yet."

"Maybe if we recalibrated them." Cyborg, whose real name was Victor Stone, looked thoughtful. "I mean, if Supes can hear it, then it's real. The sensors ought to be able to pick them up if we calibrate them right..."

He pushed his plate away and stood up, but Ollie spoke, his voice quiet but filled with authority.

"Sit down, Victor. This isn't a rush job. You need to eat your dinner."

"Oh, yeah." Victor looked down with a wry smile. "I forgot about dinner."

"Cyborg," Ollie said to Clark, "is just like Watchtower. Neither of them would ever remember to eat if we didn't remind them every so often. They're both workaholics."

Clark felt mildly annoyed by the familiarity in Ollie's tone. "Chloe doesn't need food," he answered, smiling at her rather than Ollie. "She can run off coffee for weeks."

Chloe didn't seem to hear his gentle jab. She was listening to Bart whispering in her ear, and laughing a little at something he said, and Clark felt even more annoyed. His fingers tightened on the fork in his hand, and to his dismay he felt it crumple. Surreptitiously, he began smoothing it out with his thumb.

Great, Kent. Destroy the guy's ancestral silver, why don't you? What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?

But he already knew what was wrong with him. Chloe was acting like he didn't exist, while talking and laughing and flirting with Ollie and Bart. Flirting. That really pissed him off.

Not that he was interested in Chloe romantically, not really. It was just that he and Chloe had always been close, and now she was acting like he wasn't even there.

Like he was the ghost.

He thought about that grimly. Maybe here, he was just a ghost. A ghost from Chloe's past. Maybe when she'd come to live in the Watchtower, she'd decided to say goodbye to Smallville, and to him as well. Maybe she simply wasn't interested in being friends with him any more.

The thought made him sigh and push his plate away. Bart looked at it with interest.

"You gonna eat that, Superman?"

"No," Clark answered. "I guess not."

There was a flash of movement, and the food disappeared. Bart grinned at him, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

"Thanks, man."

Clark looked at his empty plate and sighed again. Empty... just like his life without Chloe.

For the first time he admitted to himself that without Chloe, he was very, very lonely.

The truth was, he didn't want to stand aside and watch her make new friends, a new life, and leave him behind. He wanted to hold onto his place in her life as her best friend, to talk to her every day, to see her laugh at his jokes the way she was currently laughing at whatever lame thing Bart had just said.

He didn't want to lose her.

*****

The next morning, Clark got up, showered, and dressed. He'd slept in a very nice bedroom, on a very nice mattress-- a far cry from the fifteen-year-old mattress he slept on at the farm-- and yet he'd had a very hard time getting to sleep. He wanted to think it was because he'd been listening for the ghost, but he knew it was really because of Chloe.

He'd tried one more time to talk to her last night. After dinner, she'd disappeared, and he'd steeled himself, then headed to her room to talk to her.

But when he'd hesitated outside the door and listened, he'd realized she wasn't alone. She'd been talking with Ollie.

Ollie had been in Chloe's bedroom. Alone with her.

Clark had been shocked by the strength of the fury that flooded him. He wanted to storm into the room, grab Ollie by the scruff of his neck, and throw him out, then grab Chloe by the arms and kiss her senseless, until her arms were around his shoulders and she was kissing him back...

Of course, he hadn't done any such thing, because he was a civilized person, and he wasn't interested in kissing Chloe anyway. He'd forced back all his anger, turned, and trudged away, careful not to eavesdrop. What Chloe and Ollie were talking about was none of his business.

What they were doing together was none of his business.

And when he saw Ollie this morning, he'd be polite and friendly, same as always. He was definitely not going to rip Ollie limb from limb. Because that would be a rude way to treat his host. Anyway, Clark's mom had always taught him not to make messes while visiting people's houses.

Ripping off Ollie's arms would almost certainly make a big mess on the floor.

Sighing, he followed the sound of voices and the smell of very expensive coffee to the kitchen. Chloe was seated at the granite-topped island, sipping at a cup. Bart and Vic were grabbing plates, fighting over slices of bread, and insulting each other, and Ollie was standing at the stove, frying eggs.

Naturally, Clark thought sourly. The guy's a billionaire, but he can cook.

Ollie was dressed in jeans and a green shirt, and somehow managed to look just as much like a billionaire as he had in an expensive suit. Even in jeans, he looked heroic. Clark was suddenly conscious of his own tattered Levis and his old flannel shirt, which was fraying a little around the cuffs. He didn't look much like a hero. He certainly didn't look like a "superman."

He looked like what he was-- a farmer who was barely scraping by.

No wonder Chloe hardly looked at him any more. Who'd look at a poor farmer when there was a billionaire around?

He knew he was being unfair to Chloe. She wasn't the type to be interested by money. Still, he couldn't help but compare himself to Ollie, and he felt like he came up lacking in just about every department. He wasn't as mature, or as handsome, or as rich, or as generally together.

Compared to Ollie, he wasn't really much of anything.

Chloe was seated at the end of the island, but the stool next to her was unoccupied. Clark headed for it.

Suddenly there was a whoosh, and Bart was sitting next to Chloe.

"So, gorgeous," he said to Chloe. "How do you like your eggs? Easy? Or... hard?"

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Eggs and double entendres don't mix, Bart."

Bart gave his too-wide grin, not at all offended. "Have I mentioned how beautiful you look this morning?"

"Yeah. I'm sure the bedhead is very flattering." She laughed at him, her eyes dancing, and turned away. Her gaze caught Clark's, just for a fraction of a second, and instantly the light died out of her eyes. She lowered her head and sipped her coffee, looking much more serious.

The fact that she'd laugh for Bart, but not for him, irritated the heck out of Clark. He stalked over to the island.

"Bart," he said. "Go make some toast."

Bart grinned up at him. "I'm kind of busy here, Supes."

Clark grabbed him casually by the arms and removed him from the stool, fairly gently, then sat on it himself. Bart stood there and rubbed at his arms, looking put out.

"Ow," he complained to the room at large. "Superman just broke both my arms."

"Too bad he didn't break your jaw," Ollie said mildly. "Then maybe you'd have to quit talking so damn much. Come on, Impulse, get the toast made, or you won't get any food."

Bart apparently took that threat seriously, because with a whoosh he was back at the toaster. Clark turned his attention to Chloe, who still wasn't looking at him.

"Hey," he said cautiously. "Good morning."

She turned her head, as if she hadn't noticed him till just now. "Hey, Clark."

The total disinterest in her tone cut him to the quick. He looked at her a moment, wondering how to get past her walls. Assuming they were walls. Maybe the truth was that she just didn't care about him any more. Maybe their friendship was dead, and he'd just been too self-absorbed to notice.

"Are you mad at me?" he said at last, tentatively.

She cocked her head, regarding him over the rim of her coffee cup. "No. Why?"

"You just seem really... distant."

She shrugged. "Just drinking my coffee, Clark."

He knew nothing got between Chloe and her coffee and survived, so he could almost have bought the excuse but for the way she'd been laughing at Impulse a moment ago. There was a clear difference in the way she was treating him, as opposed to the way she was treating Bart and Ollie.

It was like he was... irrelevant.

"Want another cup?" he offered. He remembered the days when he'd brought her lattes every morning, and every morning she'd smiled at him like he'd saved the world. "I can go to Starbucks and get you a latte if you want..."

"No, thanks." She lifted the mug a little. "I'm fine."

He felt like banging his forehead against the granite counter. Not that it would accomplish anything besides put a hole in the granite. Still. He was frustrated, because talking to Chloe was inexplicably like talking to a wall.

"You want eggs, Clark?"

At the sound of Ollie's voice, Clark realized he'd been staring at Chloe. He jerked his head around. "Sure," he answered. "I can pour the juice or somethi..."

He trailed off, tilting his head. Chloe turned her head and looked at him with sudden sharp interest.

"Guys," she said. "I think our ghost is back."

"It's nearby," Clark said softly, straining to hear the music. It was, he decided, definitely the sound of singing. He could almost hear the words, but not quite, and he strained his superhearing to its limits.

"Words," he said softly. "I can almost hear them..."

"Words?" Chloe looked around frantically, and he realized she was looking for her laptop. She must have left it in another room, because she bit her lip, looking aggravated, and stayed beside him. "What words, Clark?"

"Not sure..." He listened harder, and suddenly he could understand the lyrics. He listened carefully, a few times through, and then spoke the words he'd heard. Spoke, not sang. Singing on key was definitely not one of his superpowers.

"Baby darling, I love you
More and more with every day
Baby darling, I love you
With my boy I'll always stay.

Baby darling, I love you
You are my beloved child
Baby darling, I love you
Sleep now, boy so sweet and mild."

He broke off, shaking his head a little. Now that he'd finally managed to hear it, the song seemed to be on repeat in his head. It was a bit annoying, really. He tried to dial back his superhearing, but it didn't work.

"Clark?" Chloe must have noticed his expression. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He rubbed absently at his ears. "I just... well, it keeps repeating. Over and over again. There's a tune, but I'm not really good with tunes. I could try humming it, but..."

"Don't worry about it," Ollie said. "I know the tune."

He started to sing it, and sure enough, it was the same tune, although it sounded different in Ollie's tenor voice. The ghostly song went on in Clark's ears in a high soprano voice, lovely and eerie... and kind of irritating. Distracting, even. He tried to focus on Ollie's singing, with limited success.

"Okay," Victor said when Ollie had finished. "I never heard that one, but I guess it's a lullaby, huh?"

"Yeah," Ollie answered, frowning. "Is that it, Supes?"

"Uh-huh." Clark rubbed at his ears again. "That's it. I've never heard it before, either."

Ollie looked worried. Behind him, the eggs were starting to smoke, but he didn't seem to notice. "That's because no one outside my family ever knew it," he said softly. "My mom used to sing it to me when I was little. She made it up."

They all stared at him. "Are you saying," Chloe said at last, "that the ghost is..."

"Yeah," Ollie answered. "I think the ghost is my mom."

*****

"I don't get it," Bart said as he zoomed back into the kitchen twenty minutes later. "Supes can still hear her, but we don't see her anywhere."

Clark sat in front of a plate of cold eggs. Despite the fact that he'd hardly touched his dinner last night, he somehow wasn't hungry for breakfast, either. He felt weird... confused, unable to focus, dazed. The song was still repeating in his head, and despite his efforts to turn off his superhearing, it just seemed to get louder and louder.

"Are you sure you still hear it, Superman?" Ollie asked.

"Trust me," Clark said. "I still hear it."

"Is it getting any further away?" Chloe asked. She'd found her laptop, and was busy taking notes in one window, and Googling for information on Ollie's mother in another. Chloe had never met a situation she couldn't multitask.

"No." Clark barely resisted the urge to clutch at his head. "It's getting closer."

"Closer?" Ollie frowned. "But we haven't spotted it anywhere. Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Clark suddenly realized he'd snapped, and everyone was looking at him oddly. He made an effort to tone down his voice and his attitude. "I mean... it's getting louder. I guess I don't know for sure that means it's closer, though. Maybe I just... I don't know, maybe now that I've tuned into the frequency I can't get rid of it. I'm not exactly sure."

"Ollie." Chloe clicked rapidly. "Your mom died in 1989, right?"

"That's right. She and my dad were together on the yacht when it went down."

"Have you ever felt like she was haunting you before?"

"No." Ollie shook his head firmly. "I've never believed in ghosts, Watchtower."

"I do now." Clark sighed and pushed his plate away.

"I just don't understand this," Chloe said. "If the ghost is singing a song that only your mother could know, then maybe you're right, and it's a spiritual manifestation of some sort. But it's been almost twenty years since she died. Why now?"

"My mom made that song up," Ollie said, shrugging. "But that doesn't mean she's the only person who could have known it. We had lots of servants, Chloe. A nurse, a housekeeper, maids... I guess any one of them could have heard it."

Chloe bit her lip, concentrating. "I guess if they were trying to communicate with you, they might sing a song you'd recognize. Did any of them die recently?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Give me their names."

Ollie began reeling off names, and Chloe started Googling. Clark bowed his head and tried really hard to ignore the music in his head, but he couldn't. It was getting so loud it hurt, so loud he couldn't hear anything else, so loud he couldn't even think. He moaned and clamped his hands over his ears, but it didn't help.

"Clark?"

Chloe had stopped typing, and suddenly she was beside him, her arm around his shoulders. He became vaguely aware that he was rocking in the chair, moaning in distress. He leaned his head against her and closed his eyes, trying to shut everything out.

But all he could hear was the song, over and over again.

Ollie said something, but Clark couldn't hear the words over the roar of the music. It wasn't soft and ethereal any more, but agonizingly loud. He struggled against it, but couldn't make out anything other than the music.

And then Chloe spoke, right in his ear.

"Take it easy, Clark. I'm right here."

"Chloe." He realized he was huddled on the floor now, his knees drawn up, his face pressed against his knees, his arms over his head. Chloe was there, right beside him. "Chlo."

"What's wrong, Clark? Is it the music?"

He nodded miserably. "Make it stop, Chlo. Please."

"Cyborg's working on it," she whispered, stroking his hair. He leaned his head against her hand. Even through his misery he liked the feel of her hand in his hair. "He's doing everything he can, Clark. Hang in there."

*****

Twenty more minutes passed, and the music still didn't stop. It went on and on in his head, a terrible, overwhelming roar that drowned out everything else. By now he was curled up in a ball on the floor, his head in Chloe's lap, but even the feel of her hand stroking him didn't comfort him. All he wanted was for the music to stop.

Around him, he was very vaguely aware of voices speaking.

"I can't find a frequency to block it." Cyborg's voice, sounding anxious. "I've tried everything, GA, and nothing's working."

"It's hurting him." Ollie's tones were clipped and angry. "It's hurting the hell out of him. We need to make it stop somehow."

"Maybe if we got him out of here..." Bart suggested. The cheerful, kidding note that normally marked his voice was gone. He sounded just as worried as the rest of them.

"I don't know if we can pick him up safely," Ollie answered. "He's kind of freaking out, and I think even Watchtower is having a hard time keeping him calmed down. If he panics and flails around, one of us could really get hurt. He can even put a dent in Cyborg. Anyway, if the ghost's focused in on him, it might just follow him."

"What about earplugs?" AC's voice. "You tech guys are always looking for a technical solution, but maybe a lowtech solution would work better."

"Not a bad idea," Ollie admitted. "Bart..."

Clark heard the sound of Bart whooshing, and then the triumphant sound of his voice. "Got 'em."

Someone-- Chloe, he thought, from the gentleness of the touch-- inserted the ear plugs. It was a good idea, but it didn't help much. He could hear through anything, and a little plastic pair of earplugs didn't muffle the noise worth a damn, as far as he was concerned.

"Doesn't... help," he muttered thickly.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Chlo." He clutched at her hand desperately. "Help me. Please, help me."

"I don't know how," she said softly. "I would if I could, Clark, but I just don't know what to do."

He listened to the soft, reassuring sound of her voice, and realized that it seemed about five times louder than anyone else's. Maybe that was because she was so much closer.

Or maybe it was just because she was Chloe.

Superhearing was a matter of focus. When the ability had first developed, sounds had seemed so loud they'd almost overwhelmed him, but he'd learned to focus on what he specifically wanted to hear, so that he didn't have to listen to irrelevant ambient noises. Otherwise, just the chirping of the crickets in the country would have made him crazy, not to mention the roar of traffic and the conversation of millions of people when he was in Metropolis.

Somehow the ghost's song had screwed up his focus.

He needed to get his focus back.

"Talk to me," he mumbled into her lap.

"About what?"

"Anything. I don't care. Just talk."

She hesitated, just a moment, then began talking, very softly.

"I miss you, you know," she whispered. "I miss Smallville, too. I never thought I'd miss it, but I do. I miss it so much I'm afraid that when you go back, I might go back too. And I don't want to do that. I have a job to do here. A life here." A pause. "And I'm afraid I might give it all up, just to go home with you."

He could barely understand her words, but he focused very intently on the sound of her voice, and slowly, the awful music began to recede. The ghostly, sweet voice sang the words over and over in his head monotonously, but with effort, he slowly managed to turn it down to a bearable level.

But every time she paused, his concentration slipped, and the music came roaring back.

Her voice didn't work as a focal point, because she couldn't talk to him all day. Sooner or later, she'd stop talking, and he'd drown in music again. He focused on her really hard, struggling for something he could keep listening to, and heard the steady beat of her heart.

Yeah, he thought. That'll do.

He listened to the sound of her heartbeat, letting it fill his ears and his mind, and slowly, the music faded. Somehow the ghost's song had made him unable to turn off his superhearing, and he had to focus on something. So he attuned himself to Chloe's heartbeat instead of the music.

A moment later, the soft, rhythmic sound of her heartbeat was all he heard. He sat up, blinking and rubbing at his eyes. To his horrified embarrassment, they were wet. Jesus. He'd been curled up in her lap, crying like a three-year-old, in front of her and all of Justice.

Just kill me now.

He wiped off his cheeks with an impatient gesture. "Okay," he said. "I think I managed to fix the problem. Sorry it took so long."

Ollie stared down at him, his forehead wrinkled. "Can you still hear it, Clark?"

"Yeah, but only when I listen for it. It's not driving me crazy any more, but it's still there."

He turned his head and shot a shy glance at Chloe, and she looked back at him, as cool and indifferent as ever. Suddenly he remembered what she'd said to him. He'd hardly heard the words, only the sound of her voice, but now that his head was clear, he could call the words to mind clearly enough.

I'm afraid I might give it all up, just to go home with you.

She wasn't nearly as indifferent to him as she pretended. In fact, he meant a lot to her, or she wouldn't be thinking of giving everything up to go back to Smallville with him. The thought made his heart lift like a helium-laden balloon, and he could barely restrain a goofy smile.

He wanted to grab her and kiss her.

But right now, they had a job to do.

"Come on," he said, rising to his feet. "Let's go find our ghost."

*****

"I think it's nearby," Clark said as they all walked down the hall. AC had returned to monitor duty, but Chloe walked beside him, and the rest of them followed. "I'm pretty sure it's trying to communicate with us. That's what the music thing is about. It's trying to get through to us. And in my case, it got through to me a little too well."

"How do we know it didn't intend to hurt you?" Ollie demanded. That was Ollie, always worrying about the people who worked with him.

"I don't know. It's just..." Clark shrugged. "A lullaby doesn't feel like an attack. I don't think it meant any harm. I think it just managed to tune into a frequency I couldn't quite stop listening to. It wanted me to listen."

"If only we knew what it wanted," Chloe said beside him. "It can't just really want to sing lullabies to us, can it?"

"I guess it might," Clark said. "Do you think it's sentient?"

She frowned. "If it's really a ghost, I guess it would be."

"I don't believe in ghosts," Ollie put in. "I don't know what it is, exactly, but I still don't think it's a ghost. I mean, I don't think it's my mother's dead spirit come back from the afterlife or anything like that. I admit I gave into superstition for a couple of minutes this morning... but I just don't believe in ghosts."

Clark turned into an open doorway and found himself in a large, book-lined room. "Nice library," he said, reminded of the study where Lex Luthor spent most of his time. But where Lex's study was all dark, gloomy mahogany and daylight filtered murkily through stained glass windows, this library was light-stained oak and brilliant sunlight shining through tall windows and skylights. And books. A hell of a lot of books.

"The ghost has been spotted here three times," Chloe said. "This is the first place we saw it, in fact."

"Really?" Clark walked slowly into the room, adjusting his superhearing-- very carefully-- and listening. The music didn't sound any louder here, and his other senses didn't pick up any hint of the ghost. "What were you doing in here?"

"Ollie and I were..." She hesitated. "Talking."

The way she paused sent a sudden, violent spike of jealousy through Clark. He felt his eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. "Talking about what?"

Chloe hesitated some more. "It's personal."

Clark decided he was very definitely going to rip Ollie's arms off. But Ollie seemed unaware of his anger. He looked thoughtfully at Chloe.

"Actually," he said, "personal or not, what we were doing might be relevant, Watchtower." He looked at Clark. "See, we were kind of... well..."

I do not want to know this, Clark thought.

"...talking about my mom," Ollie finished.

Clark's taut muscles relaxed in relief. "Okay," he said. "So you guys were talking about your mom that night. But just talking about someone can't conjure up their spirit. Can it?"

"I don't know." Ollie shrugged a shoulder. "I was feeling kind of depressed over things, and I was in here, looking at my old scrapbook of my parents, and Watchtower came in and started trying to make me feel better."

The idea of Chloe trying to make Ollie feel better sent another hot spike of rage through Clark. He did his best to fight back his roiling emotions. "Okay," he said, carefully keeping his voice even, with no hint of the anger and jealousy he felt. "So you and Chloe were looking at a scrapbook. Can I see it?"

"Sure." Ollie went over to a glass-fronted cabinet and opened it, pulling out a leather-bound scrapbook. He placed it lovingly on an oaken table, and Clark began to page through it, very carefully, seeing clippings about the disappearance of Ollie's parents from almost every major paper in the world, along with photographs and other, more personal mementos.

"So the two of you were looking through this," he said, "and the ghost just... popped in?"

"The truth is..." Ollie shut his eyes, looking terminally embarrassed, and then opened them again. "I was kind of... crying over the scrapbook."

Suddenly Clark didn't feel so humiliated about crying in Chloe's lap. If Ollie Queen, billionaire, playboy, and hero, could cry, then so could he, damn it.

"I see," he said in a carefully neutral tone.

"Anyway... Watchtower came in and sat with me, and tried to make me feel better. But we got to talking about her mom, and she started crying, too." Ollie sounded wry. "We were both a sappy mess that night."

Clark frowned as he turned the pages. He paused on a page with a lock of golden hair, in a shade very similar to Ollie's, that someone had taped into the album. "Ollie," he said slowly. "Is this your mom's hair?"

"Yeah."

Clark thought he saw a faint glow in the far corner of the library. He turned his head and squinted, and sure enough, the glow began to brighten.

"Hey," he said softly. "I think our ghost has stopped in for a visit."

Everyone froze, and heads turned. The ghost hovered in the corner of the room, bluish-white and glowing slightly. Clark could hear the music, sweet and gentle, and no longer overpowering.

He squinted, using every aspect of his vision he could, but there wasn't much to see. It was intangible and translucent, exactly as you'd expect a ghost to be. There really wasn't much there.

Clark frowned, looking down, and his gaze fell on the lock of hair again. The idea that was forming in his head was crazy, absolutely insane, and yet...

"Chlo," he said, very softly, for fear of scaring the ghost away. "Did any of your tears fall onto this album?"

She'd been staring at the ghost, but now her head jerked around, and her eyes went wide. "You don't think..."

"I don't know." He shrugged, remembering she hadn't told anyone else she was meteor afflicted. "You want to talk about this outside?"

"No. No, it's okay. I guess... I guess they really ought to know."

"Know what?" Ollie was beginning to scowl. "You know, when the two of you get together, you start talking in code, and the rest of us can't understand what the hell you're talking about."

"Yeah," Cyborg agreed. "You two really ought to just get married."

"Shut up, Vic," Clark said without heat. "Look, Ollie, the thing is..." He trailed off and raised his eyebrows at Chloe. Go on, tell them.

She hesitated a moment, then blurted it out. "I'm a meteor freak."

Clark didn't like hearing her refer to herself that way, and he wished she wouldn't use the term. But no one seemed upset by it but him. Bart grinned broadly.

"No way! Cool!"

"It's not all that cool, actually." She shrugged. "We're not even sure what I can do. I'm not certain, but I think my tears have healing powers."

"Healing powers?" Ollie looked intrigued. "That could come in handy, Watchtower."

"The problem is," Clark said, "the only time she's used the ability so far, it killed her."

"Killed her?" Bart grinned more widely. "For a dead person, she talks an awful lot."

"I came back to life," Chloe snapped.

"It wasn't funny, Bart." Clark spoke seriously. "She was declared dead and put into a drawer in the morgue. She could have suffocated. It scared the hell out of both of us."

"No kidding." Ollie still looked fascinated. "So you can heal people, but it kills you?"

"I'm not sure, actually." Chloe looked embarrassed. "I'm not quite sure how to practice, or figure out how it works. See, Lois was killed, stabbed in the stomach. And when I cried over her... well, it hurt an awful lot. I felt like someone was stabbing me, and then I blacked out, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up in darkness. Which turned out to be a morgue drawer."

"Holy shit," Bart said. "Just when you think you know a person. Chloe's got powers."

"Stupid powers," she snapped. "Powers that kill me."

"Okay," Ollie said, holding out his hand in a chill-out-people gesture. "But getting back to this situation... Clark, what exactly are you thinking here? What do Chloe's abilities have to do with..." He nodded toward the glowing light. "Our friend here?"

"I'm thinking," Clark said, "that one of her tears dropped onto your mom's lock of hair, and her power activated. Maybe it activates on contact with organic material or something, I don't know. But anyway, I'm guessing she sort of tried to heal your mom."

"Only... my mom is dead. So..." Ollie looked freaked out. "She called her back from the grave? Is that what you're saying?"

"No." Clark shook his head, studying the light carefully. "I don't think it's a real ghost, Ollie. I think it's kind of an... echo, created by Chloe's power. That's why it's only singing a lullaby over and over again. I thought it was trying to get my attention so it could communicate with us, but the truth is, that's all it has to communicate. It's not sentient, and it's not really a spirit. It's just sort of a snapshot of your mom. I'm not sure why it sings that particular lullaby. Maybe she had just had you when this hair grew. It would make sense that you'd be the most important thing in her life right then."

"So you're suggesting her experiences got imprinted into her hair? How the hell would that happen?"

"How would I know? I'm just speculating here, Ollie. Maybe it's your memories, not hers. Did any of Chloe's tears get on you?"

"Uh... maybe."

Clark imagined them holding each other, crying, and he barely choked back his jealousy. "So maybe it all got tangled up together somehow, your mom's... essence mixed up with a memory of yours. I'm not sure. Maybe... maybe Chloe wasn't even trying to cure your mother at all. Maybe she was trying to cure you. To cure your sorrow by giving you something of your mother."

"I wasn't trying to do anything," Chloe muttered defensively.

"The thing is," Clark went on, "we don't know how Chloe's power works, or what the extent of it is. But I think it's a pretty safe bet that your ghost and Chloe's tears are connected somehow."

"Okay," Ollie said, studying the glowing light. "Why is it intermittent, then? How come it comes and goes?"

"Ever since I first heard its song," Clark said, "I've been able to hear it. So I don't think it's as intermittent as you think it is. I think it's been wandering around, trying to get through to someone, trying to make someone hear its song. I wouldn't be surprised if it's been roaming all over this part of Metropolis. But I don't think it's crossing over to other planes of existence or anything. I think it's been nearby. We just don't always see it."

Ollie was silent for a long moment. At last he spoke.

"That," he said, "has to be the craziest damn thing I've ever heard."

"Well," Chloe answered, "crazy things can happen with meteor rocks."

"So..." Ollie walked over to Clark and looked down at the scrapbook, then glanced over his shoulder at the hovering blue light. "I guess it isn't really hurting anyone."

"Yeah," Clark agreed. "It isn't a problem for anyone but me, and I think I've figured things out so it doesn't bother me much, either. I don't think it's dangerous. And that's a good thing, because I don't know how to get rid of it. I'm not sure we can get rid of it. We don't know much about Chloe's power yet, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work in reverse."

"I'm not sure I'd want to get rid of it," Ollie said, very softly.

Clark glanced at the older man, and frowned at the look in his eyes. "Look, Ollie," he said, as gently as he could, "it's not really your mom, okay?"

"Yeah, Supes. I get that." Ollie stared across the room at the blue light. "But if it's an echo of my mom... well, I kind of want to keep it around."

Clark looked down at the watch on his wrist, the watch his own father had worn every day till the day he died, and then back at the glowing blue light.

"Yeah," he said at last. "I guess I can understand that."

*****

"So I guess you're going home, huh?"

Bart flung himself down next to Clark on the couch in the living room. Clark noticed there was another bag of Doritos in the kid's hand. God, the kid ate like a horse.

Ollie was sprawled in a black leather chair a short distance away, his long legs stretched out comfortably in front of him. Across the room, Chloe sat at a desk, typing like a madwoman, apparently oblivious to Clark's presence. Clark looked at her, and felt his heart sink like a lead weight inside him, right down to the floor.

"Yeah," he answered at last. "I guess I might as well."

"You could hang out with us for a while," Bart suggested. "Battle bad guys. Rescue damsels in distress. Save the world. Stuff like that."

"I could. But there are still a lot of problems in Smallville, Bart. I can't just turn my back on my hometown."

Ollie lifted his head from the book on Asian philosophy he was reading, and studied Clark with dark eyes. "What about Metropolis, Clark?"

"What about it?"

"There are millions of people here. They have problems, too. There are a lot more problems here than there are in any small town."

"Yeah," Clark admitted. "But the people in Smallville-- they're my friends. My family. My neighbors. They have to be my first responsibility. I have to take care of them."

Ollie looked at him, very seriously.

"Superman," he said, "sooner or later you're going to figure out that everyone is your friends and family and neighbors, and you have to take care of them, too. When you figure that out... come on back."

Clark shifted uncomfortably. He had the distinct impression that Ollie was right, and that made him feel slightly defensive. He looked away from Ollie's dark gaze and over at Chloe.

"Chlo," he said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure," she responded without lifting her head. "Talk away."

"No. I mean, you know... privately."

Bart gave a wolf whistle, and Clark aimed a punch at him, which Bart dodged adroitly. He flashed his most irritating grin. "Getting slow in your old age, Supes. I had time to take a nap. But then again..." The irritating grin got broader, and even more irritating. "I am the world's fastest man."

"Too bad your brain doesn't work as fast as your mouth does," Clark said coolly.

Bart burst out laughing, and dropped the empty bag of Doritos on the floor. "God, you gotta come work with us, man. You totally fit in here."

"That's a scary thought." Clark got to his feet. "Chloe?"

She put the laptop aside, got to her feet, and stalked out into the hall without comment. There was still something very icy in her manner. Clark followed her out and closed the door behind him.

"Chlo..." he said very softly.

She turned to look at him, crossing her arms over her chest. She looked very defensive, and all the half-formed words he'd had in his mind just dried into dust in his mind and blew away.

He wasn't really sure what he wanted to say to her, anyway. He couldn't ask her to come back to Smallville with him. Not after everything she'd said.

He still remembered her words: I miss Smallville, too. I never thought I'd miss it, but I do. I miss it so much I'm afraid that when you go back, I might go back too. And I don't want to do that. I have a job to do here. A life here.

She had work to do here. Meaningful, serious work. She had friends. And most of the time, she was happy. He knew her well enough to tell. Maybe there was a little melancholy in her eyes, and maybe she missed him to a certain degree, but for the most part, she was pretty happy.

He even suspected there might be a little spark between her and Ollie that neither one of them was aware of. They were obviously getting to be really good friends, and he figured that was the first step toward something more.

He thought unhappily that he and Chloe had once been really good friends, too, and he'd always thought it would lead toward something more. But maybe those days were gone. Maybe he was stupid to keep trying to hang onto her.

It was all his fault, anyway. He'd backed away from her, afraid of getting too close, for fear she'd be hurt if something happened to him. He risked his life on a regular basis, and he hadn't wanted to get involved with her as a result. And now that he'd realized how much he wanted her, realized he didn't know how to live without her... maybe it was too late.

Because his life was still in Smallville.

And her life was here.

He remembered what Ollie had said: There are millions of people here. They have problems, too. There are a lot more problems here than there are in any small town.

But he couldn't just walk off and leave Smallville. He couldn't. The people there needed help, too.

"Are Oliver and company going to help you learn to use your powers?" he said at last, breaking the awkward silence.

"Yeah." She nodded. "We're going to work out a way I can practice. Not sure how yet, but we'll figure it out."

"That's great. I hope you can learn to use them without, uh..."

"Dying. Yeah, me too. I didn't like dying much."

"No," he agreed. "I didn't like it the time I did it, either."

Another long silence, while he looked at her and she studied the plush Oriental carpeting at her feet. Her heartbeat echoed in his ears. He hadn't stopped hearing it, as a soft, steady background noise, since this afternoon, and he wondered just how far away he could hear it. He wondered if he'd still be able to hear it back in Smallville . "Well," he said. "It's been interesting."

"Yeah. It has." She still sounded awkward, as if she were talking to a stranger. "We're going to keep on studying the ghost and try to figure out how it's related to my powers, and exactly what caused it. And why it seems to have one particular memory, and nothing else. Cyborg's fascinated with the thing."

"That's cool. I just hope Ollie doesn't get... attached."

"I don't think he will. Ollie's a pretty practical guy, deep down. He knows it's not really his mother."

Another long pause ensued. At last Clark shuffled his workboots on the expensive carpeting. "Well. I guess I should be going."

"Yeah. Okay. Take it easy, Clark."

He turned around before he could kiss her, and headed swiftly down the hall. "Goodbye, Chlo," he said without looking back.

"Goodbye, Clark."

He heard a wobble in her voice, and suddenly he knew that on some level, she didn't want him to go. He thought of Ollie comforting her tonight. He imagined her crying against Ollie's shoulder, imagined him lifting her face and kissing her tears away, maybe sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her to his bed. He thought of her heartbeat accelerating, thought of himself unable to stop listening to it as Ollie touched her, and her heart pounded faster and faster as they made love...

Suddenly pain and jealousy and hurt twisted inside him, so intense he couldn't ignore it any longer.

He broke stride, hesitated, then spun around. She was already moving toward the door, her hand almost on the knob.

In a flash, he whooshed back toward her, caught her by the shoulders, pushed her against the nearest wall, and started kissing the hell out of her.

He heard her make a startled little sound, and then her arms twined around his neck.

And she kissed him back.

When he finally lifted his mouth from hers, her hands kept stroking his hair, but she glared at him defiantly. "I'm not going back to Smallville, damn it. I'm not."

"I know," he whispered, looking into her eyes. "Neither am I."

"But the farm... and Kara... and the town..."

He opened his mouth, and words spilled out. Sometime in the last two minutes, things had straightened themselves out in his mind, and he knew what he had to do. "Kara can live on the farm if she wants, or she can come to Metropolis. Either way, I can be there twenty or thirty times a day with no problem. I can take care of the farm till I find someone to lease it out to, too. I might not be as fast as Bart, but I'm fast enough." He lowered his head and kissed her again. "But I'm moving here. Ollie's right. Metropolis has bigger problems, and a lot more people in need, than Smallville does."

"That's very selfless of you," she whispered against his lips.

He pulled back, just far enough that he could look into her golden eyes, and his mouth twisted wryly. "So I'm not ever allowed to make decisions based on what I want?"

"No," she murmured. "I guess it's okay to do what you want every once in a while. You belong here anyway."

"Yeah. I do." He tightened his arms around her and listened to her heartbeat. He thought maybe he'd never stop hearing it again, and the thought didn't worry him. Unlike the music, it was a sound he wanted to hear all the time. "You think Ollie will let me stay in the spare room?"

"No." She pressed her face into his shoulder. "I think Ollie needs that room for other stuff. I guess you'll have to sleep in my room."

"Damn. I was afraid you were going to say that."

"We all make sacrifices for the cause, Clark."

"True." He did his best to sound noble. "I guess I can give up sleeping alone if I have to. After all, it's for the good of the world."

"Of course it is." She lifted her head and kissed him again, a long, intense kiss that made him tingle right down to his toes.

They kissed for a long, long time.

And then the two of them went back into the living room, holding hands, to tell Justice that Superman was staying in Metropolis.

-The End-