Complete drablet. Many bad words on their hiatus. I might be in prison for all I know before we see Lex again. As for making money from them? Bah. Better ways than the powers that be are doing, but they came up with it first. Hrrmph.
Explanation for tacky reposting: several of my reviewers caught some errors (shout-outs to all of you!) that seriously did need correcting. The lime jello on the alarm clock, though, is purely LaCasta's fault (vengeance is mine, saith the cats).
Kyle
"Chloe, I need you to -- "
"Find something, I know, Clark," Chloe said tiredly. "You could maybe come up with a better opening line? Like 'hi, Chloe, how are you? Good to see you again? Wanna hang out?' Like I'm a person instead of your personal search engine?"
Clark frowned, his hazel-green eyes darkening in confusion. "Chloe, I --"
"Save it, Clark. I've long ago given up on you acting like a normal human being." She spun her chair away from him so he wouldn't see her biting her lip and forcing back her emotions. "So, what is it you need this time?"
Clark was very glad she'd turned away, because she would have made all too much of him going pale at her words. "I'm, I'm sorry, Chloe. I wasn't thinking. As usual. You know, Clueless Clark. It's just, this is really bad, and I just had this idea, and you're the only person who might be able to help -- "
"Clark. Stop. You will drive me insane one of these days, and sooner rather than later. Go and get me some decent coffee, and write down what you need me to do in two hundred words or less. Try to put the commas in the right place so I don't confuse the subject with the object. I have to finish up six other projects before I start on yours, and I get the impression that yours is going to be an overnighter. Go. Coffee. Now. And it had better be the good stuff!" She hollered after his disappearing wake.
Chloe sighed. It would be a hell of a lot easier if Clark would just admit to her that he could move like a bullet, and she could just ask him outright for some Cuban Black in so many words instead of him making some lame excuse about his mother making a brew that she knew came from nowhere closer than Metropolis.
She didn't know what was the deal with his freaky speed and strength and tougher-than-nails skin, and frankly, despite her journalist's blood, she didn't care. For one thing, this was Clark, the small-town puppy dog that she'd known for years, and he hadn't tried to kill her or mutilate cows or sell weapons to terrorists or anything that caused her any more than the normal run of hate and discontent in all that time.
For another, she'd seen way more weird things in this town than a farmboy who would lift her car out of a mud hole (with one hand, and geez, Clark, you couldn't at least pretend it was an effort? -- cover your ass much?) one minute and end a sentence with a preposition the next.
But she was pretty sure that whatever he wanted her to do would be more interesting than reporting on the new sheriff's girlfriend or the principal's peculiar office decor. Clark was like that. Everything about him, everything that happened around him, was fascinating. The rest of the meteor freaks got boring after awhile, they were so obvious once you figured out their angle, but Clark's reticence and the wild and crazy happenings that he kept getting mixed up in was an enigma wrapped in a mystery and tied up with a tantalizing sparkly multi-colored bow. Life's blood to a born investigator.
It was the only reason she put up with a geek who was half Hercules and half Rain Man, both wearing the facade of Charlie Brown.
Fifteen minutes and five Cuban Blacks later (Chloe idly ran the numbers on the Add program later, and whistled -- NASA really needed to study Clark for streamlining tips, because she hadn't heard the sonic boom), Chloe changed her password and leaned back to glare at the sheepish winded farmboy over her sugared caffeine. "So for what thankless job are you begging at my feet now?"
Clark sucked in a breath. "I need to find Kyle Tippet."
Chloe stared. She nearly dropped her coffee. "Why don't you settle for finding Jimmy Hoffa? Or Bigfoot and the Loch Ness plesiosaur? Or the man from Atlantis? Clark, our old friend Mr. Tippet can make anyone believe whatever he wants them to, and then forget about what he's told them to do, just by touching them. According to you, he made me kiss you. And then forget that I did it! If he could do that, he could make even Bill Clinton -- never mind. How the HELL am I supposed to find someone who can make you forget he exists?"
"I don't have any idea," Clark said dejectedly. "Chloe, I'm not the smart one. I need your help. There's not much I can offer in return, except coffee."
Chloe felt her heart racing, and not just from the challenge. She had an opening wedge here, but she had to use it carefully, against such a fragile crack. "Why do you need Kyle?"
Clark worked very hard on being able to breathe calmly. This was pushing the edge of what he was willing -- or, truthfully, able -- to give up. "I have to get Lex out. Kyle is the only one who might be able to get through the guards."
Chloe got up and walked around Clark. Twice. Glaring at him. He had a really nice profile. That jawline was touchable. "Clark, Lex is psychotic. He needs to be in treatment. Your personal feelings notwithstanding. This is over the limits of here-I-come-to-save-the-day, even for you."
Clark's head snapped up, and he glared at her. Chloe took a step back. She hadn't figured out yet what it meant when his irises red-shifted, but she was pretty sure she didn't want them directed at her. "Lex was being DRUGGED," he snarled at her. "He's STILL being drugged. They, someone, is trying to destroy his mind, because of something he found out. Something about Lionel and Morgan Edge. I don't know who's behind it. But I have to get him out while he still has a mind left." The farmboy pleading was not feigned. "I have to, Chloe. I need your help."
"Morgan Edge is seriously bad news," she said quietly. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how Clark even knew that name.
"I know." Clark's head hung as low as his voice. "I found that out -- the hard way. More than once." At her raised eyebrow, he made himself go on. He was the one asking the favor, after all. "It was last -- last summer. When I was being such a," his mother would wash his mouth out with soap for using the most accurate description, "a really rotten person." Another lie between them, another apology he'd never be able to make without telling her why. "If Edge is behind that -- I can't leave Lex to him."
And that was nothing to joke about. Chloe swung around and considered her three remaining cups of Cuban Black, and her computer screen. "Go warm one of these up, will you? And log in. I'll send you the less complicated links to trace down, just in case."
If she kept Clark awake and deprived of coffee long enough, maybe he would admit to her why he hadn't busted Lex out himself.
The answer to that was very simple, but Clark had no idea that he would have had to explain it to her, much less how. Clark thought Chloe didn't have any idea that Clark was capable of kicking through concrete and steel walls.
Chloe thought Clark had an IQ not much higher than his shoe size.
The truth was that both Lionel and Morgan Edge knew how to stop him. Lex's cell, hell, the entire building where Lex was being held, had been practically painted with kryptonite. He couldn't get within fifty feet of it without being reduced to crawling. He'd tried, moving a little too fast for caution. He'd spent the next half hour dragging himself away, more often than not curled up and desperately hoping not to throw up and leave evidence. Or pass out and be found.
Working all night with Chloe was somewhere in the same category of scary. The young woman was MANIC. She would find a lead, a trail, a trace, and chase seven thousand eight hundred and fifty-six links, make a phone call, and wheedle, whine, make sultry sounds, or scream at the person on the other end until she was satisfied that she had milked them dry. At four in the morning, she demanded coffee again. Clark took one look at the way her brows were knit and decided not to even try to claim that he didn't know any places open for espresso that time of morning.
Chloe looked up when Clark took off, letting her thoughts roam. She wasn't that great at science herself. But her father had once introduced her to Lex's chief engineer, a woman Chloe's size who had been known to put a man on the ground with his arm twisted up behind his back for faking a valve reading.
She planned to ask Dr. Kate Roth how fast someone had to be moving before they basically disappeared. She knew Dr. Roth had some questions on the subject of Clark Kent herself. And not only had the thin-lipped, no-nonsense woman with the ugly glasses not made fun of her meteor rock theories, she had demanded copies of everything Chloe had and spent a week making life pure hell for anyone who interrupted her studies of them. The sheaf of notes she'd given Chloe in return had included figures and terms that were not covered in high school science textbooks, not all of them purely technical.
Kate considered anyone who wasn't an engineer to be barely one step above slime mold, but maybe this topic would get her another interview with the only person she had ever known to scare her father, the EPA inspector, and Lex Luthor all spitless with a one page report.
What was LuthorCorp doing with all the meteorites they'd collected, and to what insane person would it occur to try to synthesize it? Like fat-suckers and heat-suckers and sex-suckers and life-suckers weren't bad enough? Probably anything the chief engineer had to say on the matter wouldn't be printable.
Chloe sighed and drummed her fingers, waiting for coffee.
How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found, and has the ability to make people forget they've ever seen him?
(Chloe had spent a lonely youth listening to her granddad's old favorites, and they echoed in memory at the oddest times. "The ability to cloud men's minds!" taunted her. Chloe shrugged that off impatiently. The Shadow had nothing on meteor-freaks-ville, and the serial villains were light comedy compared to the Luthors.)
If you could hide what you could do, how would you do it? What kind of trail would you leave? Aside from Clark's idiotic excuses.
People who confessed to crimes when the trail had gone cold. Guilty conscience, or Kyle's special touch? People who did things totally out of character to put something right. (Okay, maybe they were possessed by Sam Beckett. Chloe put them in the maybe file.) People who came out of nowhere to be heroes. Double-maybe file. There had been a lot of volunteer rescuers over the years.
(She worshiped firefighters herself, ever since she had seen one man carrying a little boy in one hand and a kitten in the other out of an inferno she wouldn't have gone into at gunpoint. His own hair had all been burned off right to his eyelashes, despite the helmet, when half the roof caved in on him; and bald, he wasn't nearly as challengingly sexy as Lex, but she would have offered to have his baby on the spot. Heroism did that to people.)
Heroes. Like Clark, the doofus who would wade into situations and count on his weird abilities to make it all right for everyone even when he could obviously barely stay conscious himself. One of these days, she was going to hit doofus with one of those green rocks he thought no one noticed (hah!) that he so carefully avoided, just to get his attention.
Coffee, decision, a productive internet search, and enlightenment at the end of what felt like lifetimes of speculation crammed into a computer-speed minute all arrived at the same time. She let out a long whooshing breath, and picked on the coffee first.
"I think we've got it, Clark. Believe it or not, a political campaign helper. An obscure politician who started with no money and an organization of like five people is suddenly making every cause that's unpopular to the elite now the hit of the day. And one of those staffers is," she pointed to the tiny print at the bottom of the screen where the legal BS was required to be, "Kyle Tippet."
Clark blinked and then pretended to squint at it. Chloe was not fooled. Clark was always a half-second or so too late with the pretenses. "He's using his real name?"
"You do, don't you?" That was a snarky shot, but it gave Chloe more satisfaction than even coffee to see him blink in real surprise -- and not a little bit of fear. "Clark, I doubt even Kyle's talent could change the minds of the IRS computers. More power to him for taking the risk and going for the bigger picture. If his candidate wins, this could end up helping the whole nation. Hell, the whole planet. Now, the question is, how are you going to get to him? One, I doubt your dad's truck will make it that far. Two, all he has to do is shake your hand like a good political staffer and you'll forget he exists."
Careful, careful ... Chloe wanted to pry open that little crack, not shatter it.
Clark looked down and his face went utterly blank, the way a really experienced but not naturally talented liar does when they're coming up with a whopper. "I can borrow Pete's car. He owes me for helping him fix it up, anyway."
And he'll cover for you, Chloe read in that insincere blankness. Whatever was up or down with Clark, Pete seemed to have gotten the story, because he made even worse excuses for Clark than Clark did for himself whenever the weirdness hit the fan.
She'd caught the "maybe I shouldn't have said that" look on Pete's face after Pete, laughing so hard he could hardly stand up, had told her about taking advantage of a sleepover one night to put a pile of those awful lime jello cubes collected from the school cafeteria on top of Clark's alarm clock, which he habitually smashed when it kicked him out of an interesting dream. (Chloe could sympathize, she'd taken a hammer to an alarm clock more than once herself.)
The part about Jonathan and Martha peeling a panicked Clark off the ceiling, covered with spatters of green goo, he suddenly shut up about and passed off as "figuratively speaking, of course." When she'd laughingly mentioned it to the Kents, they had just smiled indulgently and said they hoped she wouldn't terminally embarrass Clark by telling such a story in the school newspaper.
So she smiled as brightly as possible for oh-dark-thirty, as her dad called it. "I've got a better idea. We'll take mine, and we can switch off driving to catch some z's. Go get stocked up for a road trip, and I'll pick you up in about an hour."
Clark very nearly said a bad word. He could have been to the east coast in less than an hour. Then again, the campaign headquarters wasn't likely to be open yet by then. And he doubted Kyle would appreciate being carried back at that speed for such a distance. And he really didn't know what other excuse he could make to Chloe.
So he nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Thanks, Chloe. You're a diamond. You have weird taste in coffee, but you're a diamond." On impulse, he kissed her on the forehead, which was about as low as he could reach without bending double.
"Get out, Kent. You have no room to talk about weird. Tastes."
Oh, the flinch that one-second pause got! Careful, careful -- she'd have plenty of time to pry at that crack on the trip.
And he hadn't answered the question of how Kyle's overwhelmingly convincing touch wouldn't be a problem for him.
And did he REALLY think she wouldn't have noticed that there were no cars in the parking lot by now except hers?
Clark explained his plan to his parents and got the predicted lecture, times three. But the deciding factor was the kryptonite being used to keep him away from Lex. That was all too clearly a personal threat against Clark. No one else would have even noticed.
Whatever else was going on with Lex, the enemy of an enemy is best treated as a friend.
"Have I said 'be careful' enough times for you to remember it by now, son?" Jonathan's voice was rough, but he was forcing a smile.
Clark made himself chuckle in return. "I think so. Those were probably the third and fourth words I learned."
"Then I'll just say, good luck." Martha pressed a kiss to his cheek and a backpack into his hand. "Snacks and things. Better than the junk food you'd scarf every time you stopped for gas."
Clark pretended to bend under the weight. "Sheesh, mom, when did you get superhuman strength? What did you pack in here, the refrigerator?"
"Between you and Chloe, I doubt it will last two hours." A car horn sounded impatiently, and Martha gave him a last quick hug. "Be care-- well, just come back to us safe."
"Thanks. Both of you. For understanding." There were times it was hard to remember that Clark wasn't a biological Kent, much less not human, because his smile was an exact blend of Jonathan's and Martha's.
Jonathan and Martha glanced at each other as he ran out. "Like we ever had a choice," Jonathan muttered. Martha nodded. She hated it too. She wondered if parents of human children ever had to be scared and worried and helpless like this.
Chloe had simply told her father, via a message on his answering machine at work, that she was going on a trip with Clark to see an old friend who might want to come back with them. Here was her itinerary, here was her route, and yes, she had fresh batteries for her cell phone and laptop. Updates as they occurred. If he didn't hear from her for ten hours, send the Marines.
Gabe had long ago gotten used to his daughter's take-charge attitude. She got it in equal parts and double measure from both parents, complementary pieces fitting perfectly, and the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts that sometimes he was surprised that she hadn't developed powers like Clark's.
Clark. Gabe frowned at that. The boy meant well, but he attracted trouble like stink on fertilizer. Sure, he was stronger and faster and harder to hurt than any of the other meteor freaks they'd had in town, not to mention much more reliable and better mannered, but sometimes he had the brains of one of his family cows. That business with Level 3.... His chief engineer had said several words that convinced him that the military special forces training on her resume was not an exaggeration when she'd discovered what Clark had done to the walled-up elevator.
Whatever Chloe was getting into with Clark, either they'd be safer than in a mother's womb or dead within a day. He shook his head and sympathized with the Kents. Maybe they could get together for dinner.
Chloe drove for the first hour, claiming that the coffee had wired her too much to sleep. Clark pretended to sleep. Chloe was not fooled. There was no such thing as a man who did not snore.
Clark took over once the sun was high and the highway was clear (Chloe told him that she didn't trust him with a stickshift, either, to which Clark patiently explained that farm tractors and trucks were usually stickshifts, until he caught Chloe turning red with the effort not to laugh at him.) He munched through about a third of the backpack while he drove. The sun in his eyes made him feel happy, optimistic, whole. He could do this. He WOULD do this.
He was very glad that Chloe had not brought any John Denver CDs.
Chloe was muttering in her sleep when he stopped for gas. He caught what sounded like "meteor" and froze. Then "Clark," so clearly that he thought she'd woken up and was speaking to him. Then "meteor" again. Then a plaintive, interrogative sound, something like "tell me?"
Clark's stomach knotted and his eyes burned. It wasn't as bad as the green poison, trying to keep living a lie to her, to all the people who he was supposed to think of and treat as close friends, but not by much. And apparently Chloe knew something, or at least suspected. And Kyle knew something, and he was going to have to tell him more to explain why he couldn't go in after Lex himself.
Suddenly, this seemed like a very very bad idea.
"Want to take a break, Chloe?" he said softly. "I can drive the rest of the way, if you want to sleep."
Chloe yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Nah, I need to stretch. And you need to nap, before we barge in on a room full of politicians who will all be trying to get something from you. Not to mention Kyle." Her eyes were way sharper than someone who had just woken up should have been, but Clark missed it cold. Human physiological clues were tough for him to catch unless he knew specifically what he was looking for.
Chloe, on the other hand, was an expert on reading body language. She went to the restroom, and paused on the way out to watch Clark filling the gas tank, shoulders hunched and neck stiff. Looked like she'd punctured his enthusiasm just by muttering "meteor."
Good. Maybe he'd be a little more careful. Because they were headed into dangerous territory, whether Edge was really dead this time or not.
Chloe found the old ("genteel," she corrected Clark, mock-sternly, to Clark's disbelieving comment) building serving as campaign HQ with the honed instinct of a city girl, while Clark was still trying to figure out if the map was printed backwards. Chloe took the opportunity to make fun of him some more. "Just wait until you try to find the Smithsonian from the DC airport." Not that she believed that Clark would ever actually use an airport.
What Clark couldn't believe was that Chloe changed clothes right there in the parking lot before putting on makeup. Heat vision and x-ray sight and supersonic speed and tractor-tossing notwithstanding, nothing had ever shocked him as much as his best friend shucking to the raw behind a car door (and his firmly turned back) and slinking into a dress that was, if not revealing, at least somewhere between business casual and evening eye-attracting.
Chloe snorted. Obviously Clark had a lot to learn about dealing with movers and shakers.
The handful of staffers all looked up at the obviously in-command young woman and her plaid-clad bodyguard. Assessment: not much money, but maybe assistance and contacts. A woman Gabe's age stood up and shook her hand warmly. "Welcome to home base. What can we do for you?"
"I'm pretty good with computers and PR, if you need any help there." Clark marveled at Chloe's instinctive reading of the give-and-take. He'd always been in awe of Chloe, but obviously he'd still been underestimating her. "But right now, I really need to see an old friend. Is Kyle here?"
A wave of sudden stiffness in the room that Clark didn't need enhanced senses to detect. "Kyle? He's pretty busy, but I can take a message, Ms...?"
"Chloe Sullivan." Chloe gave her a grin sharp enough to penetrate the studied defenses. "And Clark Kent. I think he'll be interested in giving us a ... hand."
Damn if that one second pause didn't get a blanch from everyone in the room. So they all knew about Kyle's talent. Chloe decided to go into radio or TV. She was good at writing, but timing was a visual and vocal thing, and timing, as the old saying went, was everything.
"It's okay, Penny," said a familiar voice. "They really are old friends. Hello, Chloe. Clark."
"Kyle!" Chloe went up to him and threw her arms around his neck, startling everyone even more. Her mouth to his ear, she whispered, "I am going to get you, but good, for making me forget I kissed Clark. Can we go somewhere?"
"Sure," he said in a normal voice. "I'm taking a donut break, guys. Anyone want anything?"
A chorus of assents concerning chocolate and icing made him grin, and put his arms around Chloe and Clark as he turned to walk out with them.
Clark staggered and went to his knees with a gasp. Kyle's touch *burned.* And the draining weakness and sickening vertigo was all too familiar.
He'd been vaguely aware of the meteor-effect when Rickman tried to control him, but Kyle must be a lot more powerful. He backed away, holding up a hand to keep them from coming to see what was wrong with him. "I'll just -- follow you guys, all right?"
The staffers looked at each other. Apparently Kyle's "old friends" had something going on beyond the ordinary looking young woman and man they had first appeared to be.
Chloe, as if under hypnosis, led them to her car. (Clark had already x-rayed it, several times, for listening devices, and found nothing but a timing belt that needed to be fixed before they got on the road again.) Clark swallowed and got unsteadily in the back seat, as far from Kyle as he could get. The meteorite-infused touch, especially when Kyle was outrightly exerting his influence, did not put him much in the mood for donuts.
"Okay, spill." Kyle's voice was not in the least salesman-like. "What are you doing here? How did you even find me? What do you want?"
Clark closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on why he was here instead of wanting nothing more than to get away . "Mr. Tippet, could you turn it down a notch? I'll tell you everything, I promise. But the green stuff you're radiating hurts me a lot worse than being shot."
"Oh." Kyle closed his eyes too, visibly relaxing. "So that's why my nice handshake doesn't affect you. I thought it was just the bullet-proof business."
"Sorta kinda." Clark didn't dare shake his head. "With Rickman it was just -- unpleasant enough to keep me focused. And enough that I kind of returned his handshake." At not nearly full strength, but enough to ensure that Rickman wouldn't be tempted to try to put the touch on him again. He would have smiled grimly at the memory if he still weren't so pissed at that remembrance of almost losing the farm. Also, right now his clenching stomach and burning skin made it hard to be much amused about anything.
In retrospect, Clark wished he'd broken both the jerk's hands, to keep him from turning his power on Lex. Twenty-twenty hindsight.... "But you.... Being too sick to see straight makes it a little hard to pay attention to anything else."
"Sorry, kid." Kyle moved back against the door. "Should I get out?"
"No, it's -- I'll be okay. So long as you don't try the control thing on me again. I'd probably just pass out before I could do whatever it was you wanted, and Chloe wouldn't be happy to see everything I've eaten today all over her floor." Clark swallowed again and took a careful breath. "She won't remember any of this, will she?"
Kyle eyed him. "Son, don't you think she ought to know? Hiding your gifts from your friends usually just ends up losing you your friends."
"I'm -- I want to tell her, honest. But it's hard. We're, we've been close. I couldn't stand it if she thought of me as a freak and pushed me away."
Kyle threw back his head and laughed. "Kid, if you don't want to be a freak, then don't be one. Otherwise, you don't have much of a choice. You either give it up to a friend or you end up hiding out in the woods like I did."
"I was born this way," Clark said sullenly. "I don't want to ... have to...." The car swam around him and Clark fought for breath. "Kyle ... please...."
"Whoops, sorry. Working with politicians has kind of honed my persuasion instincts. Geez, kid, you really do look awful. I've never seen anyone hurt by the glow before. Well, except for that bastard Bob, good riddance to bad garbage. What is it with you?"
"I'm," Clark worked at finding the words. It was even harder than he'd expected. But every time Kyle pushed him for a response, involuntarily seeking to force Clark to his bidding, it felt like a kryptonite band tightening around his brain. The man's power had definitely gotten stronger. He could probably influence a room full of people just by walking through it.
And Clark was either going to have to satisfy his curiosity or get out of here before he lost it completely. "I'm ... not from ... this planet," he managed, weakly.
Kyle stared at him for one full minute, motionless. The green agony spiked with Kyle's desire for more information. Clark doubled over with a choked sob, head pounding, gut twisting. Just the small effort of reaching for the door handle made everything go to cold shards and swirls of gray-out. "S-stop ... please...."
Kyle cursed and bolted from the car. He stood leaning against the building, eyes distant, as he worked through a new attempt to control a power he'd never really bothered to suppress, and the implications of the insane story he'd just been handed.
Chloe blinked, not having been given any direction except to follow Kyle's lead. "Clark? Where...? Oh my god, what's wrong? What happened?"
"Kyle ... touched you." Clark managed to lift his head and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. "And me. You went ... under. I...."
Chloe's eyes narrowed. "His make-you-do-things power is meteor based, and it did something really bad to you." She fished around in the floorboard for a paper towel and wiped the sweat off his face. Clark decided he didn't want to know how long that scrap had been there.
"Y-yeah. How did you...?"
"Find the paper towel? There's always one in here somewhere. Know about you and the meteorites? Name of all the gods in Latin class, Clark, even the whole football team and cheerleading squad knows that you don't like anything green. They just think it includes astroturf."
Clark tried very hard not to laugh. His stomach wasn't quite up to it yet.
"So what did that jerk do to you? Where's. ... oh, I see him. Excuse me for a minute while I go beat the crap out of him."
"Chloe, he didn't mean to," Clark protested feebly. "Besides, as soon as you touch him, he can control you."
"Better me controlled than you throwing up in my car. Besides, you haven't seen me really mad. Let's see him control THAT."
Chloe stormed out of the car like a miniature fusion reactor on overload. Clark sat back and tried to get his surroundings to stop spinning, distracted by the thought that, if he'd never seen Chloe really mad, he was pretty sure the sub-version of it was impressive enough.
Kyle wasn't paying attention, and certainly wasn't expecting the backhanded fist across his face. Or the elegant pointy-toed boot into his ribs. But what probably made his eyes bulge the most was the fact that he was looking straight up Chloe's dress from flat on his back on the sidewalk, and she wasn't wearing any underwear.
Clark suppressed the x-ray, fast.
He missed most of the rant, his hypersensitive hearing still unsteady from the radiation poisoning. Something about Kyle being a cheat and taking advantage of helpless girls. That last bizarre claim was enough to finally help him work up enough strength to get out and drag Chloe away from the bruised and bloody-nosed and cowering man on the sidewalk, who obviously had not been able to use his power of persuasion on her at all.
"Chloe! He didn't mean to hurt me. And he was just trying to keep you from doing something stupid." He gave Kyle a sympathetic glance. "Obviously a wasted effort."
Chloe squirmed in his grip and kicked him in the knee with her heel. Fortunately for her own bones, her boots were padded. "He made me forget kissing you! I want to kick him some more!"
Kyle struggled to his feet and braced himself against the wall. "That'll teach me to think I can always make people believe things. Chloe, I can't give you that memory back. But you can just kiss him again, you know. Instead of kicking him."
"Oh." Chloe slid around in Clark's arms and planted a full-tongue monty onto a Clark too startled to do anything about it, even at super-speed. Clark spent a few seconds blaming Kyle and the kryptonite for not being able to put her down and move her away, until he gave up and forgot about everything except the taste of Chloe and the feel of her lips and hands and warmth.
"That's right," she finally gasped. "Good thought, Mr. Tippet."
Clark choked. Kyle laughed himself into breathlessness. "Glad to see I'm useful for something. I'm still wondering what you kids are doing here. Among other things." He glared, though more bemused than truly angry. "I was with security in Miami and didn't get beat up like that."
Clark was still working through how to explain when Chloe took it out of his hands. "Do you know who Morgan Edge is?"
Kyle's eyes went storm dark. "All too well. I've been -- well, up against, some of his people."
"He, or his minions, or maybe his own father, are holding a friend of ours. In an asylum."
"Lex Luthor," Clark added. "They've been drugging him. Because he knows something about Edge. I need to get him out."
Kyle raised an eyebrow. "So why haven't you?" He glanced pointedly at Clark. "You may as well explain. I get the impression that your girlfriend knows a little more than you think."
Clark glanced nervously at Chloe. "Um. It has to do with the, you know, glow."
"The meteorites," Chloe corrected impatiently. "It damn near kills Clark to be around the space rocks, which is practically the only thing that sets him apart from the rest of weirdsville's mutants, although he stalks Lana and gives me grief just like the rest of them. Lex's prison glows green until damn near full daylight. My dad's chief engineer has the radiation readings on file, annotated with some words I'd better not say around the house. Clark can't even walk up and knock on the door."
"You KNEW?"
"Clark, for pitysake, I pretty much knew it all before we spent my entire night of quality beauty sleep searching for your fellow meteor mutant here. I don't spend all my own personal search engine time just drawing targets on pictures of your head." She shook her head in disbelieving exasperation. "And they're still not exactly going to buy me as a head shrink. There are times when I'd even trade places with that nutcase Tina to get into the good places with a decent disguise. Mr. Tippet, we need you to get me through security and convince them to let him go."
"You?" Clark and Kyle looked at her in simultaneous disbelief.
"Who else? I can fake some kind of credentials. I can wear some makeup to make me look old and stern. Kyle is known -- no offense, Mr. Tippet, but it only took me about ten hours to find you. If Lionel's or Edge's people know to look for you, it won't take them much longer. So you should stay in the background. But we need you as a diversion, and a convincer."
A long minute of silence. "Will you help us?" Clark asked finally, quietly.
Kyle ran his hand through his hair and shook his head, laughing. "You are both totally insane. A fifteen year old girl breaks a billionaire out of a prison that's probably personally owned by either a crime boss or a corporate magnate? Without even the help of mister super-heroic here?" He flicked a glance at Clark, who winced. He couldn't exactly be either super or heroic in this particular scenario.
"I'm seventeen," Chloe said defensively. "And I've crossed swords with Lionel before. Worst comes to worst, I'll accuse him of rape."
Clark swallowed a gag at that thought that had nothing to do with Kyle's green fire.
Kyle straightened. "All right. You have a partner. I owe both Lionel and Edge more than one. But there are two conditions. One." He looked at Clark. "Are you sure you can stand to be in the car with me all the way back? Because what I've been practicing is making it stronger, not reigning it in. If I so much as doze off, it could hurt you."
Clark braced himself and nodded. "I'll take that chance. My friend is worth it."
"Condition two." Kyle stared into Clark's eyes. Clark felt sick and weak again. Kyle was using his power, probably unintentionally, but he wanted something from Clark, and the stabbing growing pain of the man's demand was making his knees tremble.
Clark fought to keep the nausea down in his stomach. Think of it as a toothache. Think of it as a broken rib. Don't think of it. Hold it off to the side for later. Don't think. "Yes, sir?"
Kyle suddenly realized what he was doing, from Clark's pale and sweat-glazed face. He pulled back as much as he knew how. "Condition two. You have to tell Chloe the rest of the story."
Chloe's eyes went wide and bright and wet and very careful. "Mr. Tippet, I am not going to demand that. Clark and I are friends. I trust him."
"You need to know what you're getting into. You're going up against Morgan Edge, or whoever inherited his empire, may he rot in the lowest circle of hell. And Lionel Luthor, more than likely. Chloe, I can walk through the White House and the chambers of congress and toy with any mind I want to, but Lionel scares me."
Chloe crossed her arms defiantly. "You can't control Lionel?"
"I couldn't control you. When you were trying to put me in traction, no less."
"That's different. I was too mad to think."
"And you taught me a valuable lesson. That no matter how hard I push, there's at least one way to block it."
"Then let's get through there before they figure out any other defense against us than the green glowy crap. If they find out about you, it might be computer-guided missiles next."
Kyle looked at Clark. The bulletproof not-from-this planet boy didn't look like he wanted to be subjected to a moving vehicle anytime soon. He gulped. "Yeah. Let's go."
Kyle nodded. "Let me just make my excuses to the staff. They'll forgive being shorthanded for a few days," Chloe snorted at the inadvertent pun, "But they won't forgive me for forgetting to bring back the donuts."
"I'm with you. I need coffee anyway."
"I'll just -- wait in the car." Clark wished he could fit in the trunk.
Chloe was oddly quiet when they came back. Clark wondered what Kyle had told her, but at his inquisitive raised eyebrows, Kyle shook his head. "Not mine to tell," he said simply. Apparently Chloe had just been thinking, her analytical capabilities still fitting together the pieces.
She was uncharacteristically quiet for most of the first hour, too, after a rude sound of loud disbelief when he started off by telling Chloe that he wasn't a meteor mutant. She became very attentive to the road for a long time after that.
The full story of the summer in Metropolis, high on red radiation and all but schizophrenic, made her stop for gas unnecessarily and lock herself in the restroom for long enough that Clark got out and walked around while Kyle caught a nap. Clark pinched himself several times to keep the x-ray and hearing under control.
The confession was long and difficult, and not just because every time Clark tried to gloss over or evade something, Kyle gave him a pointed look until Clark ended up hanging his head out the window and being grateful only that he hadn't eaten the rest of their snack supplies. Chloe recovered her volubility when she cursed repeatedly at both of them, promising that someone was going to pay for a really good car wash.
Getting Lex out, on the other hand, was ridiculously easy.
Chloe borrowed an outfit from Kate, who seemed pleased that Chloe might be showing some engineering tendencies. (Chloe privately gagged over the blue jacket, green pants, and black shirt with purple and silver threads. Just looking in the mirror, she thought she had some idea what the meteor rocks did to Clark. She took one look at Kate's threadbare paisley socks and steel-toed shoes, and went with her own footwear.)
Chloe barged through the asylum, white overcoat flapping, promising demotions at the very least, borrowing Kate's attitude when she had told off the EPA inspector, snarling imprecations in all directions, as Kyle followed meekly behind her, shaking hands and apologizing. The staff was all but catatonic when they found Lex.
Lex put up a fight, not believing Chloe was real (at that, neither Clark nor Kyle could have blamed him, considering her makeup job). It took pretty much all Kyle had to convince the ranting madman to come calmly with them.
Once they were more than a hundred feet away from the poisoned walls, Clark picked up Lex like a small child and held him tightly. "Lex. Calm down. It's Clark. You're safe."
Lex's eyes narrowed. "I hit you with my car," he accused. "Or Morgan Edge did. No, Edge hit me with his car. Then I shot you. No...."
"Yes, you hit me with your car. But that was years ago, and it was an accident. No, you didn't shoot me. At least, not this time. You shot Morgan Edge. Edge hit me with his car. Then I ran off without you and the doctors came and got you. I'm sorry about that. I didn't know they would lock you up."
"Oh." Lex, still completely under Kyle's compulsion, might or might not remember when the drugs and the control wore off, but for now it seemed to satisfy him. He snuggled into Clark's carryhold. "That's all right then."
Clark looked up somberly from his friend to the man who'd gone from hiding in the woods to risking all he had for the greater good. "Thank you. Kyle, you, you're.... Don't ever doubt that you're a hero. I don't know what else to say. If there's ever anything I can do for you, please, let me know. Um, preferably without touching me, though."
When Kyle had learned what he wanted to, the subconscious attempt to force information from Clark with the kryptonite-enhanced sales-pitch had abated. But Kyle still carried the glowing dust in his skin and blood and bones, and having honed the use of that fire, just laying a hand on Clark's shoulder could still send him to his knees.
Kyle grinned at him. "You could hand out flyers for our campaign. With your speed, you could save us a fortune in stamps."
Even Lex chuckled.
* * * * *
Author's note: Dr. Kate Roth was introduced in "Engineer," and is based on a person I loved and respected very much. If her ghost is still hanging around, I hope she approves of, or at least is amused by, her fantasy role in "Smallville."
Explanation for tacky reposting: several of my reviewers caught some errors (shout-outs to all of you!) that seriously did need correcting. The lime jello on the alarm clock, though, is purely LaCasta's fault (vengeance is mine, saith the cats).
Kyle
"Chloe, I need you to -- "
"Find something, I know, Clark," Chloe said tiredly. "You could maybe come up with a better opening line? Like 'hi, Chloe, how are you? Good to see you again? Wanna hang out?' Like I'm a person instead of your personal search engine?"
Clark frowned, his hazel-green eyes darkening in confusion. "Chloe, I --"
"Save it, Clark. I've long ago given up on you acting like a normal human being." She spun her chair away from him so he wouldn't see her biting her lip and forcing back her emotions. "So, what is it you need this time?"
Clark was very glad she'd turned away, because she would have made all too much of him going pale at her words. "I'm, I'm sorry, Chloe. I wasn't thinking. As usual. You know, Clueless Clark. It's just, this is really bad, and I just had this idea, and you're the only person who might be able to help -- "
"Clark. Stop. You will drive me insane one of these days, and sooner rather than later. Go and get me some decent coffee, and write down what you need me to do in two hundred words or less. Try to put the commas in the right place so I don't confuse the subject with the object. I have to finish up six other projects before I start on yours, and I get the impression that yours is going to be an overnighter. Go. Coffee. Now. And it had better be the good stuff!" She hollered after his disappearing wake.
Chloe sighed. It would be a hell of a lot easier if Clark would just admit to her that he could move like a bullet, and she could just ask him outright for some Cuban Black in so many words instead of him making some lame excuse about his mother making a brew that she knew came from nowhere closer than Metropolis.
She didn't know what was the deal with his freaky speed and strength and tougher-than-nails skin, and frankly, despite her journalist's blood, she didn't care. For one thing, this was Clark, the small-town puppy dog that she'd known for years, and he hadn't tried to kill her or mutilate cows or sell weapons to terrorists or anything that caused her any more than the normal run of hate and discontent in all that time.
For another, she'd seen way more weird things in this town than a farmboy who would lift her car out of a mud hole (with one hand, and geez, Clark, you couldn't at least pretend it was an effort? -- cover your ass much?) one minute and end a sentence with a preposition the next.
But she was pretty sure that whatever he wanted her to do would be more interesting than reporting on the new sheriff's girlfriend or the principal's peculiar office decor. Clark was like that. Everything about him, everything that happened around him, was fascinating. The rest of the meteor freaks got boring after awhile, they were so obvious once you figured out their angle, but Clark's reticence and the wild and crazy happenings that he kept getting mixed up in was an enigma wrapped in a mystery and tied up with a tantalizing sparkly multi-colored bow. Life's blood to a born investigator.
It was the only reason she put up with a geek who was half Hercules and half Rain Man, both wearing the facade of Charlie Brown.
Fifteen minutes and five Cuban Blacks later (Chloe idly ran the numbers on the Add program later, and whistled -- NASA really needed to study Clark for streamlining tips, because she hadn't heard the sonic boom), Chloe changed her password and leaned back to glare at the sheepish winded farmboy over her sugared caffeine. "So for what thankless job are you begging at my feet now?"
Clark sucked in a breath. "I need to find Kyle Tippet."
Chloe stared. She nearly dropped her coffee. "Why don't you settle for finding Jimmy Hoffa? Or Bigfoot and the Loch Ness plesiosaur? Or the man from Atlantis? Clark, our old friend Mr. Tippet can make anyone believe whatever he wants them to, and then forget about what he's told them to do, just by touching them. According to you, he made me kiss you. And then forget that I did it! If he could do that, he could make even Bill Clinton -- never mind. How the HELL am I supposed to find someone who can make you forget he exists?"
"I don't have any idea," Clark said dejectedly. "Chloe, I'm not the smart one. I need your help. There's not much I can offer in return, except coffee."
Chloe felt her heart racing, and not just from the challenge. She had an opening wedge here, but she had to use it carefully, against such a fragile crack. "Why do you need Kyle?"
Clark worked very hard on being able to breathe calmly. This was pushing the edge of what he was willing -- or, truthfully, able -- to give up. "I have to get Lex out. Kyle is the only one who might be able to get through the guards."
Chloe got up and walked around Clark. Twice. Glaring at him. He had a really nice profile. That jawline was touchable. "Clark, Lex is psychotic. He needs to be in treatment. Your personal feelings notwithstanding. This is over the limits of here-I-come-to-save-the-day, even for you."
Clark's head snapped up, and he glared at her. Chloe took a step back. She hadn't figured out yet what it meant when his irises red-shifted, but she was pretty sure she didn't want them directed at her. "Lex was being DRUGGED," he snarled at her. "He's STILL being drugged. They, someone, is trying to destroy his mind, because of something he found out. Something about Lionel and Morgan Edge. I don't know who's behind it. But I have to get him out while he still has a mind left." The farmboy pleading was not feigned. "I have to, Chloe. I need your help."
"Morgan Edge is seriously bad news," she said quietly. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how Clark even knew that name.
"I know." Clark's head hung as low as his voice. "I found that out -- the hard way. More than once." At her raised eyebrow, he made himself go on. He was the one asking the favor, after all. "It was last -- last summer. When I was being such a," his mother would wash his mouth out with soap for using the most accurate description, "a really rotten person." Another lie between them, another apology he'd never be able to make without telling her why. "If Edge is behind that -- I can't leave Lex to him."
And that was nothing to joke about. Chloe swung around and considered her three remaining cups of Cuban Black, and her computer screen. "Go warm one of these up, will you? And log in. I'll send you the less complicated links to trace down, just in case."
If she kept Clark awake and deprived of coffee long enough, maybe he would admit to her why he hadn't busted Lex out himself.
The answer to that was very simple, but Clark had no idea that he would have had to explain it to her, much less how. Clark thought Chloe didn't have any idea that Clark was capable of kicking through concrete and steel walls.
Chloe thought Clark had an IQ not much higher than his shoe size.
The truth was that both Lionel and Morgan Edge knew how to stop him. Lex's cell, hell, the entire building where Lex was being held, had been practically painted with kryptonite. He couldn't get within fifty feet of it without being reduced to crawling. He'd tried, moving a little too fast for caution. He'd spent the next half hour dragging himself away, more often than not curled up and desperately hoping not to throw up and leave evidence. Or pass out and be found.
Working all night with Chloe was somewhere in the same category of scary. The young woman was MANIC. She would find a lead, a trail, a trace, and chase seven thousand eight hundred and fifty-six links, make a phone call, and wheedle, whine, make sultry sounds, or scream at the person on the other end until she was satisfied that she had milked them dry. At four in the morning, she demanded coffee again. Clark took one look at the way her brows were knit and decided not to even try to claim that he didn't know any places open for espresso that time of morning.
Chloe looked up when Clark took off, letting her thoughts roam. She wasn't that great at science herself. But her father had once introduced her to Lex's chief engineer, a woman Chloe's size who had been known to put a man on the ground with his arm twisted up behind his back for faking a valve reading.
She planned to ask Dr. Kate Roth how fast someone had to be moving before they basically disappeared. She knew Dr. Roth had some questions on the subject of Clark Kent herself. And not only had the thin-lipped, no-nonsense woman with the ugly glasses not made fun of her meteor rock theories, she had demanded copies of everything Chloe had and spent a week making life pure hell for anyone who interrupted her studies of them. The sheaf of notes she'd given Chloe in return had included figures and terms that were not covered in high school science textbooks, not all of them purely technical.
Kate considered anyone who wasn't an engineer to be barely one step above slime mold, but maybe this topic would get her another interview with the only person she had ever known to scare her father, the EPA inspector, and Lex Luthor all spitless with a one page report.
What was LuthorCorp doing with all the meteorites they'd collected, and to what insane person would it occur to try to synthesize it? Like fat-suckers and heat-suckers and sex-suckers and life-suckers weren't bad enough? Probably anything the chief engineer had to say on the matter wouldn't be printable.
Chloe sighed and drummed her fingers, waiting for coffee.
How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found, and has the ability to make people forget they've ever seen him?
(Chloe had spent a lonely youth listening to her granddad's old favorites, and they echoed in memory at the oddest times. "The ability to cloud men's minds!" taunted her. Chloe shrugged that off impatiently. The Shadow had nothing on meteor-freaks-ville, and the serial villains were light comedy compared to the Luthors.)
If you could hide what you could do, how would you do it? What kind of trail would you leave? Aside from Clark's idiotic excuses.
People who confessed to crimes when the trail had gone cold. Guilty conscience, or Kyle's special touch? People who did things totally out of character to put something right. (Okay, maybe they were possessed by Sam Beckett. Chloe put them in the maybe file.) People who came out of nowhere to be heroes. Double-maybe file. There had been a lot of volunteer rescuers over the years.
(She worshiped firefighters herself, ever since she had seen one man carrying a little boy in one hand and a kitten in the other out of an inferno she wouldn't have gone into at gunpoint. His own hair had all been burned off right to his eyelashes, despite the helmet, when half the roof caved in on him; and bald, he wasn't nearly as challengingly sexy as Lex, but she would have offered to have his baby on the spot. Heroism did that to people.)
Heroes. Like Clark, the doofus who would wade into situations and count on his weird abilities to make it all right for everyone even when he could obviously barely stay conscious himself. One of these days, she was going to hit doofus with one of those green rocks he thought no one noticed (hah!) that he so carefully avoided, just to get his attention.
Coffee, decision, a productive internet search, and enlightenment at the end of what felt like lifetimes of speculation crammed into a computer-speed minute all arrived at the same time. She let out a long whooshing breath, and picked on the coffee first.
"I think we've got it, Clark. Believe it or not, a political campaign helper. An obscure politician who started with no money and an organization of like five people is suddenly making every cause that's unpopular to the elite now the hit of the day. And one of those staffers is," she pointed to the tiny print at the bottom of the screen where the legal BS was required to be, "Kyle Tippet."
Clark blinked and then pretended to squint at it. Chloe was not fooled. Clark was always a half-second or so too late with the pretenses. "He's using his real name?"
"You do, don't you?" That was a snarky shot, but it gave Chloe more satisfaction than even coffee to see him blink in real surprise -- and not a little bit of fear. "Clark, I doubt even Kyle's talent could change the minds of the IRS computers. More power to him for taking the risk and going for the bigger picture. If his candidate wins, this could end up helping the whole nation. Hell, the whole planet. Now, the question is, how are you going to get to him? One, I doubt your dad's truck will make it that far. Two, all he has to do is shake your hand like a good political staffer and you'll forget he exists."
Careful, careful ... Chloe wanted to pry open that little crack, not shatter it.
Clark looked down and his face went utterly blank, the way a really experienced but not naturally talented liar does when they're coming up with a whopper. "I can borrow Pete's car. He owes me for helping him fix it up, anyway."
And he'll cover for you, Chloe read in that insincere blankness. Whatever was up or down with Clark, Pete seemed to have gotten the story, because he made even worse excuses for Clark than Clark did for himself whenever the weirdness hit the fan.
She'd caught the "maybe I shouldn't have said that" look on Pete's face after Pete, laughing so hard he could hardly stand up, had told her about taking advantage of a sleepover one night to put a pile of those awful lime jello cubes collected from the school cafeteria on top of Clark's alarm clock, which he habitually smashed when it kicked him out of an interesting dream. (Chloe could sympathize, she'd taken a hammer to an alarm clock more than once herself.)
The part about Jonathan and Martha peeling a panicked Clark off the ceiling, covered with spatters of green goo, he suddenly shut up about and passed off as "figuratively speaking, of course." When she'd laughingly mentioned it to the Kents, they had just smiled indulgently and said they hoped she wouldn't terminally embarrass Clark by telling such a story in the school newspaper.
So she smiled as brightly as possible for oh-dark-thirty, as her dad called it. "I've got a better idea. We'll take mine, and we can switch off driving to catch some z's. Go get stocked up for a road trip, and I'll pick you up in about an hour."
Clark very nearly said a bad word. He could have been to the east coast in less than an hour. Then again, the campaign headquarters wasn't likely to be open yet by then. And he doubted Kyle would appreciate being carried back at that speed for such a distance. And he really didn't know what other excuse he could make to Chloe.
So he nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Thanks, Chloe. You're a diamond. You have weird taste in coffee, but you're a diamond." On impulse, he kissed her on the forehead, which was about as low as he could reach without bending double.
"Get out, Kent. You have no room to talk about weird. Tastes."
Oh, the flinch that one-second pause got! Careful, careful -- she'd have plenty of time to pry at that crack on the trip.
And he hadn't answered the question of how Kyle's overwhelmingly convincing touch wouldn't be a problem for him.
And did he REALLY think she wouldn't have noticed that there were no cars in the parking lot by now except hers?
Clark explained his plan to his parents and got the predicted lecture, times three. But the deciding factor was the kryptonite being used to keep him away from Lex. That was all too clearly a personal threat against Clark. No one else would have even noticed.
Whatever else was going on with Lex, the enemy of an enemy is best treated as a friend.
"Have I said 'be careful' enough times for you to remember it by now, son?" Jonathan's voice was rough, but he was forcing a smile.
Clark made himself chuckle in return. "I think so. Those were probably the third and fourth words I learned."
"Then I'll just say, good luck." Martha pressed a kiss to his cheek and a backpack into his hand. "Snacks and things. Better than the junk food you'd scarf every time you stopped for gas."
Clark pretended to bend under the weight. "Sheesh, mom, when did you get superhuman strength? What did you pack in here, the refrigerator?"
"Between you and Chloe, I doubt it will last two hours." A car horn sounded impatiently, and Martha gave him a last quick hug. "Be care-- well, just come back to us safe."
"Thanks. Both of you. For understanding." There were times it was hard to remember that Clark wasn't a biological Kent, much less not human, because his smile was an exact blend of Jonathan's and Martha's.
Jonathan and Martha glanced at each other as he ran out. "Like we ever had a choice," Jonathan muttered. Martha nodded. She hated it too. She wondered if parents of human children ever had to be scared and worried and helpless like this.
Chloe had simply told her father, via a message on his answering machine at work, that she was going on a trip with Clark to see an old friend who might want to come back with them. Here was her itinerary, here was her route, and yes, she had fresh batteries for her cell phone and laptop. Updates as they occurred. If he didn't hear from her for ten hours, send the Marines.
Gabe had long ago gotten used to his daughter's take-charge attitude. She got it in equal parts and double measure from both parents, complementary pieces fitting perfectly, and the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts that sometimes he was surprised that she hadn't developed powers like Clark's.
Clark. Gabe frowned at that. The boy meant well, but he attracted trouble like stink on fertilizer. Sure, he was stronger and faster and harder to hurt than any of the other meteor freaks they'd had in town, not to mention much more reliable and better mannered, but sometimes he had the brains of one of his family cows. That business with Level 3.... His chief engineer had said several words that convinced him that the military special forces training on her resume was not an exaggeration when she'd discovered what Clark had done to the walled-up elevator.
Whatever Chloe was getting into with Clark, either they'd be safer than in a mother's womb or dead within a day. He shook his head and sympathized with the Kents. Maybe they could get together for dinner.
Chloe drove for the first hour, claiming that the coffee had wired her too much to sleep. Clark pretended to sleep. Chloe was not fooled. There was no such thing as a man who did not snore.
Clark took over once the sun was high and the highway was clear (Chloe told him that she didn't trust him with a stickshift, either, to which Clark patiently explained that farm tractors and trucks were usually stickshifts, until he caught Chloe turning red with the effort not to laugh at him.) He munched through about a third of the backpack while he drove. The sun in his eyes made him feel happy, optimistic, whole. He could do this. He WOULD do this.
He was very glad that Chloe had not brought any John Denver CDs.
Chloe was muttering in her sleep when he stopped for gas. He caught what sounded like "meteor" and froze. Then "Clark," so clearly that he thought she'd woken up and was speaking to him. Then "meteor" again. Then a plaintive, interrogative sound, something like "tell me?"
Clark's stomach knotted and his eyes burned. It wasn't as bad as the green poison, trying to keep living a lie to her, to all the people who he was supposed to think of and treat as close friends, but not by much. And apparently Chloe knew something, or at least suspected. And Kyle knew something, and he was going to have to tell him more to explain why he couldn't go in after Lex himself.
Suddenly, this seemed like a very very bad idea.
"Want to take a break, Chloe?" he said softly. "I can drive the rest of the way, if you want to sleep."
Chloe yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Nah, I need to stretch. And you need to nap, before we barge in on a room full of politicians who will all be trying to get something from you. Not to mention Kyle." Her eyes were way sharper than someone who had just woken up should have been, but Clark missed it cold. Human physiological clues were tough for him to catch unless he knew specifically what he was looking for.
Chloe, on the other hand, was an expert on reading body language. She went to the restroom, and paused on the way out to watch Clark filling the gas tank, shoulders hunched and neck stiff. Looked like she'd punctured his enthusiasm just by muttering "meteor."
Good. Maybe he'd be a little more careful. Because they were headed into dangerous territory, whether Edge was really dead this time or not.
Chloe found the old ("genteel," she corrected Clark, mock-sternly, to Clark's disbelieving comment) building serving as campaign HQ with the honed instinct of a city girl, while Clark was still trying to figure out if the map was printed backwards. Chloe took the opportunity to make fun of him some more. "Just wait until you try to find the Smithsonian from the DC airport." Not that she believed that Clark would ever actually use an airport.
What Clark couldn't believe was that Chloe changed clothes right there in the parking lot before putting on makeup. Heat vision and x-ray sight and supersonic speed and tractor-tossing notwithstanding, nothing had ever shocked him as much as his best friend shucking to the raw behind a car door (and his firmly turned back) and slinking into a dress that was, if not revealing, at least somewhere between business casual and evening eye-attracting.
Chloe snorted. Obviously Clark had a lot to learn about dealing with movers and shakers.
The handful of staffers all looked up at the obviously in-command young woman and her plaid-clad bodyguard. Assessment: not much money, but maybe assistance and contacts. A woman Gabe's age stood up and shook her hand warmly. "Welcome to home base. What can we do for you?"
"I'm pretty good with computers and PR, if you need any help there." Clark marveled at Chloe's instinctive reading of the give-and-take. He'd always been in awe of Chloe, but obviously he'd still been underestimating her. "But right now, I really need to see an old friend. Is Kyle here?"
A wave of sudden stiffness in the room that Clark didn't need enhanced senses to detect. "Kyle? He's pretty busy, but I can take a message, Ms...?"
"Chloe Sullivan." Chloe gave her a grin sharp enough to penetrate the studied defenses. "And Clark Kent. I think he'll be interested in giving us a ... hand."
Damn if that one second pause didn't get a blanch from everyone in the room. So they all knew about Kyle's talent. Chloe decided to go into radio or TV. She was good at writing, but timing was a visual and vocal thing, and timing, as the old saying went, was everything.
"It's okay, Penny," said a familiar voice. "They really are old friends. Hello, Chloe. Clark."
"Kyle!" Chloe went up to him and threw her arms around his neck, startling everyone even more. Her mouth to his ear, she whispered, "I am going to get you, but good, for making me forget I kissed Clark. Can we go somewhere?"
"Sure," he said in a normal voice. "I'm taking a donut break, guys. Anyone want anything?"
A chorus of assents concerning chocolate and icing made him grin, and put his arms around Chloe and Clark as he turned to walk out with them.
Clark staggered and went to his knees with a gasp. Kyle's touch *burned.* And the draining weakness and sickening vertigo was all too familiar.
He'd been vaguely aware of the meteor-effect when Rickman tried to control him, but Kyle must be a lot more powerful. He backed away, holding up a hand to keep them from coming to see what was wrong with him. "I'll just -- follow you guys, all right?"
The staffers looked at each other. Apparently Kyle's "old friends" had something going on beyond the ordinary looking young woman and man they had first appeared to be.
Chloe, as if under hypnosis, led them to her car. (Clark had already x-rayed it, several times, for listening devices, and found nothing but a timing belt that needed to be fixed before they got on the road again.) Clark swallowed and got unsteadily in the back seat, as far from Kyle as he could get. The meteorite-infused touch, especially when Kyle was outrightly exerting his influence, did not put him much in the mood for donuts.
"Okay, spill." Kyle's voice was not in the least salesman-like. "What are you doing here? How did you even find me? What do you want?"
Clark closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on why he was here instead of wanting nothing more than to get away . "Mr. Tippet, could you turn it down a notch? I'll tell you everything, I promise. But the green stuff you're radiating hurts me a lot worse than being shot."
"Oh." Kyle closed his eyes too, visibly relaxing. "So that's why my nice handshake doesn't affect you. I thought it was just the bullet-proof business."
"Sorta kinda." Clark didn't dare shake his head. "With Rickman it was just -- unpleasant enough to keep me focused. And enough that I kind of returned his handshake." At not nearly full strength, but enough to ensure that Rickman wouldn't be tempted to try to put the touch on him again. He would have smiled grimly at the memory if he still weren't so pissed at that remembrance of almost losing the farm. Also, right now his clenching stomach and burning skin made it hard to be much amused about anything.
In retrospect, Clark wished he'd broken both the jerk's hands, to keep him from turning his power on Lex. Twenty-twenty hindsight.... "But you.... Being too sick to see straight makes it a little hard to pay attention to anything else."
"Sorry, kid." Kyle moved back against the door. "Should I get out?"
"No, it's -- I'll be okay. So long as you don't try the control thing on me again. I'd probably just pass out before I could do whatever it was you wanted, and Chloe wouldn't be happy to see everything I've eaten today all over her floor." Clark swallowed again and took a careful breath. "She won't remember any of this, will she?"
Kyle eyed him. "Son, don't you think she ought to know? Hiding your gifts from your friends usually just ends up losing you your friends."
"I'm -- I want to tell her, honest. But it's hard. We're, we've been close. I couldn't stand it if she thought of me as a freak and pushed me away."
Kyle threw back his head and laughed. "Kid, if you don't want to be a freak, then don't be one. Otherwise, you don't have much of a choice. You either give it up to a friend or you end up hiding out in the woods like I did."
"I was born this way," Clark said sullenly. "I don't want to ... have to...." The car swam around him and Clark fought for breath. "Kyle ... please...."
"Whoops, sorry. Working with politicians has kind of honed my persuasion instincts. Geez, kid, you really do look awful. I've never seen anyone hurt by the glow before. Well, except for that bastard Bob, good riddance to bad garbage. What is it with you?"
"I'm," Clark worked at finding the words. It was even harder than he'd expected. But every time Kyle pushed him for a response, involuntarily seeking to force Clark to his bidding, it felt like a kryptonite band tightening around his brain. The man's power had definitely gotten stronger. He could probably influence a room full of people just by walking through it.
And Clark was either going to have to satisfy his curiosity or get out of here before he lost it completely. "I'm ... not from ... this planet," he managed, weakly.
Kyle stared at him for one full minute, motionless. The green agony spiked with Kyle's desire for more information. Clark doubled over with a choked sob, head pounding, gut twisting. Just the small effort of reaching for the door handle made everything go to cold shards and swirls of gray-out. "S-stop ... please...."
Kyle cursed and bolted from the car. He stood leaning against the building, eyes distant, as he worked through a new attempt to control a power he'd never really bothered to suppress, and the implications of the insane story he'd just been handed.
Chloe blinked, not having been given any direction except to follow Kyle's lead. "Clark? Where...? Oh my god, what's wrong? What happened?"
"Kyle ... touched you." Clark managed to lift his head and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. "And me. You went ... under. I...."
Chloe's eyes narrowed. "His make-you-do-things power is meteor based, and it did something really bad to you." She fished around in the floorboard for a paper towel and wiped the sweat off his face. Clark decided he didn't want to know how long that scrap had been there.
"Y-yeah. How did you...?"
"Find the paper towel? There's always one in here somewhere. Know about you and the meteorites? Name of all the gods in Latin class, Clark, even the whole football team and cheerleading squad knows that you don't like anything green. They just think it includes astroturf."
Clark tried very hard not to laugh. His stomach wasn't quite up to it yet.
"So what did that jerk do to you? Where's. ... oh, I see him. Excuse me for a minute while I go beat the crap out of him."
"Chloe, he didn't mean to," Clark protested feebly. "Besides, as soon as you touch him, he can control you."
"Better me controlled than you throwing up in my car. Besides, you haven't seen me really mad. Let's see him control THAT."
Chloe stormed out of the car like a miniature fusion reactor on overload. Clark sat back and tried to get his surroundings to stop spinning, distracted by the thought that, if he'd never seen Chloe really mad, he was pretty sure the sub-version of it was impressive enough.
Kyle wasn't paying attention, and certainly wasn't expecting the backhanded fist across his face. Or the elegant pointy-toed boot into his ribs. But what probably made his eyes bulge the most was the fact that he was looking straight up Chloe's dress from flat on his back on the sidewalk, and she wasn't wearing any underwear.
Clark suppressed the x-ray, fast.
He missed most of the rant, his hypersensitive hearing still unsteady from the radiation poisoning. Something about Kyle being a cheat and taking advantage of helpless girls. That last bizarre claim was enough to finally help him work up enough strength to get out and drag Chloe away from the bruised and bloody-nosed and cowering man on the sidewalk, who obviously had not been able to use his power of persuasion on her at all.
"Chloe! He didn't mean to hurt me. And he was just trying to keep you from doing something stupid." He gave Kyle a sympathetic glance. "Obviously a wasted effort."
Chloe squirmed in his grip and kicked him in the knee with her heel. Fortunately for her own bones, her boots were padded. "He made me forget kissing you! I want to kick him some more!"
Kyle struggled to his feet and braced himself against the wall. "That'll teach me to think I can always make people believe things. Chloe, I can't give you that memory back. But you can just kiss him again, you know. Instead of kicking him."
"Oh." Chloe slid around in Clark's arms and planted a full-tongue monty onto a Clark too startled to do anything about it, even at super-speed. Clark spent a few seconds blaming Kyle and the kryptonite for not being able to put her down and move her away, until he gave up and forgot about everything except the taste of Chloe and the feel of her lips and hands and warmth.
"That's right," she finally gasped. "Good thought, Mr. Tippet."
Clark choked. Kyle laughed himself into breathlessness. "Glad to see I'm useful for something. I'm still wondering what you kids are doing here. Among other things." He glared, though more bemused than truly angry. "I was with security in Miami and didn't get beat up like that."
Clark was still working through how to explain when Chloe took it out of his hands. "Do you know who Morgan Edge is?"
Kyle's eyes went storm dark. "All too well. I've been -- well, up against, some of his people."
"He, or his minions, or maybe his own father, are holding a friend of ours. In an asylum."
"Lex Luthor," Clark added. "They've been drugging him. Because he knows something about Edge. I need to get him out."
Kyle raised an eyebrow. "So why haven't you?" He glanced pointedly at Clark. "You may as well explain. I get the impression that your girlfriend knows a little more than you think."
Clark glanced nervously at Chloe. "Um. It has to do with the, you know, glow."
"The meteorites," Chloe corrected impatiently. "It damn near kills Clark to be around the space rocks, which is practically the only thing that sets him apart from the rest of weirdsville's mutants, although he stalks Lana and gives me grief just like the rest of them. Lex's prison glows green until damn near full daylight. My dad's chief engineer has the radiation readings on file, annotated with some words I'd better not say around the house. Clark can't even walk up and knock on the door."
"You KNEW?"
"Clark, for pitysake, I pretty much knew it all before we spent my entire night of quality beauty sleep searching for your fellow meteor mutant here. I don't spend all my own personal search engine time just drawing targets on pictures of your head." She shook her head in disbelieving exasperation. "And they're still not exactly going to buy me as a head shrink. There are times when I'd even trade places with that nutcase Tina to get into the good places with a decent disguise. Mr. Tippet, we need you to get me through security and convince them to let him go."
"You?" Clark and Kyle looked at her in simultaneous disbelief.
"Who else? I can fake some kind of credentials. I can wear some makeup to make me look old and stern. Kyle is known -- no offense, Mr. Tippet, but it only took me about ten hours to find you. If Lionel's or Edge's people know to look for you, it won't take them much longer. So you should stay in the background. But we need you as a diversion, and a convincer."
A long minute of silence. "Will you help us?" Clark asked finally, quietly.
Kyle ran his hand through his hair and shook his head, laughing. "You are both totally insane. A fifteen year old girl breaks a billionaire out of a prison that's probably personally owned by either a crime boss or a corporate magnate? Without even the help of mister super-heroic here?" He flicked a glance at Clark, who winced. He couldn't exactly be either super or heroic in this particular scenario.
"I'm seventeen," Chloe said defensively. "And I've crossed swords with Lionel before. Worst comes to worst, I'll accuse him of rape."
Clark swallowed a gag at that thought that had nothing to do with Kyle's green fire.
Kyle straightened. "All right. You have a partner. I owe both Lionel and Edge more than one. But there are two conditions. One." He looked at Clark. "Are you sure you can stand to be in the car with me all the way back? Because what I've been practicing is making it stronger, not reigning it in. If I so much as doze off, it could hurt you."
Clark braced himself and nodded. "I'll take that chance. My friend is worth it."
"Condition two." Kyle stared into Clark's eyes. Clark felt sick and weak again. Kyle was using his power, probably unintentionally, but he wanted something from Clark, and the stabbing growing pain of the man's demand was making his knees tremble.
Clark fought to keep the nausea down in his stomach. Think of it as a toothache. Think of it as a broken rib. Don't think of it. Hold it off to the side for later. Don't think. "Yes, sir?"
Kyle suddenly realized what he was doing, from Clark's pale and sweat-glazed face. He pulled back as much as he knew how. "Condition two. You have to tell Chloe the rest of the story."
Chloe's eyes went wide and bright and wet and very careful. "Mr. Tippet, I am not going to demand that. Clark and I are friends. I trust him."
"You need to know what you're getting into. You're going up against Morgan Edge, or whoever inherited his empire, may he rot in the lowest circle of hell. And Lionel Luthor, more than likely. Chloe, I can walk through the White House and the chambers of congress and toy with any mind I want to, but Lionel scares me."
Chloe crossed her arms defiantly. "You can't control Lionel?"
"I couldn't control you. When you were trying to put me in traction, no less."
"That's different. I was too mad to think."
"And you taught me a valuable lesson. That no matter how hard I push, there's at least one way to block it."
"Then let's get through there before they figure out any other defense against us than the green glowy crap. If they find out about you, it might be computer-guided missiles next."
Kyle looked at Clark. The bulletproof not-from-this planet boy didn't look like he wanted to be subjected to a moving vehicle anytime soon. He gulped. "Yeah. Let's go."
Kyle nodded. "Let me just make my excuses to the staff. They'll forgive being shorthanded for a few days," Chloe snorted at the inadvertent pun, "But they won't forgive me for forgetting to bring back the donuts."
"I'm with you. I need coffee anyway."
"I'll just -- wait in the car." Clark wished he could fit in the trunk.
Chloe was oddly quiet when they came back. Clark wondered what Kyle had told her, but at his inquisitive raised eyebrows, Kyle shook his head. "Not mine to tell," he said simply. Apparently Chloe had just been thinking, her analytical capabilities still fitting together the pieces.
She was uncharacteristically quiet for most of the first hour, too, after a rude sound of loud disbelief when he started off by telling Chloe that he wasn't a meteor mutant. She became very attentive to the road for a long time after that.
The full story of the summer in Metropolis, high on red radiation and all but schizophrenic, made her stop for gas unnecessarily and lock herself in the restroom for long enough that Clark got out and walked around while Kyle caught a nap. Clark pinched himself several times to keep the x-ray and hearing under control.
The confession was long and difficult, and not just because every time Clark tried to gloss over or evade something, Kyle gave him a pointed look until Clark ended up hanging his head out the window and being grateful only that he hadn't eaten the rest of their snack supplies. Chloe recovered her volubility when she cursed repeatedly at both of them, promising that someone was going to pay for a really good car wash.
Getting Lex out, on the other hand, was ridiculously easy.
Chloe borrowed an outfit from Kate, who seemed pleased that Chloe might be showing some engineering tendencies. (Chloe privately gagged over the blue jacket, green pants, and black shirt with purple and silver threads. Just looking in the mirror, she thought she had some idea what the meteor rocks did to Clark. She took one look at Kate's threadbare paisley socks and steel-toed shoes, and went with her own footwear.)
Chloe barged through the asylum, white overcoat flapping, promising demotions at the very least, borrowing Kate's attitude when she had told off the EPA inspector, snarling imprecations in all directions, as Kyle followed meekly behind her, shaking hands and apologizing. The staff was all but catatonic when they found Lex.
Lex put up a fight, not believing Chloe was real (at that, neither Clark nor Kyle could have blamed him, considering her makeup job). It took pretty much all Kyle had to convince the ranting madman to come calmly with them.
Once they were more than a hundred feet away from the poisoned walls, Clark picked up Lex like a small child and held him tightly. "Lex. Calm down. It's Clark. You're safe."
Lex's eyes narrowed. "I hit you with my car," he accused. "Or Morgan Edge did. No, Edge hit me with his car. Then I shot you. No...."
"Yes, you hit me with your car. But that was years ago, and it was an accident. No, you didn't shoot me. At least, not this time. You shot Morgan Edge. Edge hit me with his car. Then I ran off without you and the doctors came and got you. I'm sorry about that. I didn't know they would lock you up."
"Oh." Lex, still completely under Kyle's compulsion, might or might not remember when the drugs and the control wore off, but for now it seemed to satisfy him. He snuggled into Clark's carryhold. "That's all right then."
Clark looked up somberly from his friend to the man who'd gone from hiding in the woods to risking all he had for the greater good. "Thank you. Kyle, you, you're.... Don't ever doubt that you're a hero. I don't know what else to say. If there's ever anything I can do for you, please, let me know. Um, preferably without touching me, though."
When Kyle had learned what he wanted to, the subconscious attempt to force information from Clark with the kryptonite-enhanced sales-pitch had abated. But Kyle still carried the glowing dust in his skin and blood and bones, and having honed the use of that fire, just laying a hand on Clark's shoulder could still send him to his knees.
Kyle grinned at him. "You could hand out flyers for our campaign. With your speed, you could save us a fortune in stamps."
Even Lex chuckled.
* * * * *
Author's note: Dr. Kate Roth was introduced in "Engineer," and is based on a person I loved and respected very much. If her ghost is still hanging around, I hope she approves of, or at least is amused by, her fantasy role in "Smallville."