*
"How are we doing?" A gruff figure leaned against the table with Chloe's body across it. Clark's lifeless body was next to hers, Lois praying beside it. The party was now afterhours, and the hang overs were soaked in dread.
Victor rubbed his eyes, unsure how to answer Bruce without upsetting the entire room. "I don't see any change."
Bruce traced Chloe's lips with his eyes... they had turned blue like Clarks. Her flesh was still luminescent with a rose tinge, but that too had dimmed a degree. Worried that she too had succumbed to the parasite, he turned toward the black plant growing from the Clark's chest. The only hope Bruce had was that its physical manifestation had contained itself to Clark's body, and none of it spread to hers.
"Explain to me why her body temperature is rising?"
Victor nodded to Emil Hamilton, a research doctor brought in by Oliver. He'd only arrived twenty minutes before, and his briefing of the situation was as of that. Brief.
"Her life support systems could be sustaining his," Emil supplied, as a guess.
"So, he's still alive?" Lois perked up from his bedside.
"Possibly." The room quieted. Clark had lost his pulse and brain activity half an hour ago. They'd attempted the defibrillator, but nothing. The charges had only excited the parasite's growth as it fed into his skin. From what all they could read on their monitor, Clark was brain dead. None of them had said it, but those who knew, knew.
"It's a good possibility," Victor added, "this parasite is feeding on something to keep it alive. We're only waiting for the biopsy to examine what we have."
"Realistically," Bruce asked the room, "how much longer can we wait?" He had asked the question before, but he asked it again. How could they be sure Chloe wasn't showing the same steady descent that Clark did in the early stages? What stage had he been in when they found him? Who knows how long he was infected before then. It could have been an hour, or several hours... Lois recounted Clark locking himself away for most of the day. No one knew for sure.
Lois, having refrained from touching Clark and his infected body all night, stood from his bed side and stared at Bruce.
"We could lose her, too."
"No," Lois shook her head, tears all dry by then. She moved in between their two bodies, her hand resting on her cousin's. "Chloe... she'll never give up on him."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
"There is a plan B," Emil suggested quietly, Chloe's faint heart beat in the background, "Ms. Sullivan's brain activity is elevated, unusually so... In fact, there are two, distinct patterns I've been able to trace.. it's as if her mind is in conversation with another. It's nothing I've ever seen."
Victor narrowed his eyes at the sine waves that spread across the screen, "Are you implying...?"
Emil nodded, "She has found a way to communicate with, him."
Victor traced the electrodes connecting Clark to Chloe. It was a fine, insulated wire.
A very fine wire.
What could Chloe Anne Sullivan really do? Was she a spark, a small surge of electricty, of consciousness sent back into Clark? Would that be enough to wake him, to save him? They all waited, counted on a decades old experimental success with Lex's machine. Was it truly working? Or were all the signs of life really just electrical impedance?
Suddenly, all of their questions were interrupted by the panic chirping of the EKG. Chloe's heart became a jagged saw toothed string that bounced from floor to ceiling.
"Her temperature's rising!"
"She's burning up!"
Chloe's body convulsed upon the table, acutely at first, then followed by bouts of violent throws of her abdomen.
"What's happening?!"
Party debris was kicked across the floor as the room shifted sides.
"Do something!"
Someone rolled the defibrillator cart closer to Chloe's side.
"No, wait!" Emil grabbed the paddles, "the voltage could kill mixed with her temperature now!"
The room was hot, sticky. Panic adhering to every face. The thought spurred that they might not lose one, but two of their family that night.
The members crowded around Chloe's unstable body, while Clark's lay behind them.
"Bring me ice," Emil whispered at first, wiping his sweat and swallowing down the stone in his throat, "Lots of ice! We need to cool her temperature down first--"
The room drowned itself in commotion once more, shoes scattering to the kitchen and then back again. Emil commanding orders, and others challenging them. And there was Lois' faint voice, kneeling beside her husband, praying.
They gathered ice packs around her neck, forehead, underarms... anywhere ice would fit.
No one knew exactly how Chloe's elusive healing powers worked, and it was only Bruce who internally questioned if this sudden rise in temperature was a side affect... Nevertheless, no one knew for sure.
Bruce took a step back from the table, gave his face a hard rub. They had lost control. They had lost leadership. Steering blindly, and now, they were about to lose everything. Bruce found Victor at the corner of the room, the other man's face apparent that he shared the same thoughts. Bruce joined him on the wall, "We're only burning time, here."
"We have to give her more time. The brain waves we're scanning shows activity there."
"How much time is too late?"
"Don't know for sure."
"What are our options for pulling her out?"
"Don't know for sure."
"Give me another answer."
"We could disrupt the brain activity and jolt her awake--"
"Will that work?"
"Maybe."
There was silence.
"And what will happen to Clark?"
****
Spinning.
That's what it felt like when I woke up. Some sort of inertia where my guts felt like they were in my brains, and my thoughts were stuck somewhere inside my turning stomach. I rolled over from where I was, my guts telling me I needed to vomit, but I found out I was already face down in the snow.
I couldn't feel my face, or my fingers or toes. All I could feel was this inner inertia, spinning me around, using my chest as an anchor. Spinning, taken captive by a force that wouldn't let go .
Something dreadful had happened to me.
Some thing had brought me here.
But I couldn't remember what it was.
I looked to where a old tree sprung above me. Its branches were bare, and black, a strange dark tendril that reached out, and faded into the night. I stared at that tree branch for what seemed like hours, the memory of something very important just on the cusp of my mind. It was in the pit of my stomach. Lost in the windings of those black branches. Curves and knots covered by a dust of fine snow.
"They're really far away, aren't they?"
The young voice hit me. It was Clark, snuck up behind me as I had pondered why I was there. He looked about middle school age, and I suppose we were around that time. I felt the pit in my chest now, looking at him. His natural smile tugged at mine too, only I couldn't feel mine.
I threw my hands over my face,"Oh no!"
Clark plopped down beside me, "What's wrong, Chloe?"
"I can't feel my face!"
He laughed, "well, don't worry. It's still there." He reached over and took my hand, "You're probably just cold. You've been out here for a while."
I looked down at both of our hands, intrigued to find them so small.
"Even though you can't feel it," Clark said, "you're smiling. Ear to ear, too."
"Good," was all I could say. The spinning took my breath away when he let go. The important thing, it was so close to my tongue. I felt I might have spoken it, but all of my breath was taken at the same moment.
His finger lifted up into the sky, past the dark tree branch and to the glittering blanket above. "You know, I read that the stars we can see now are actually thousands of years old and their light is only now reaching us. Some of them have probably burned all their energy and gone. So in a way, this is kinda like looking into the past."
I looked hard towards where Clark was gazing, sensing that he was both looking at nowhere and everywhere at the same time. As the seconds moved past, I began to look in between the stars, into the abyss that separated them all from another. From afar, it was a microscopic space, but in reality, I knew they were lifetimes apart. The past, turned out, was a vast, dark place.
A bit of snow drifted down from the tree branch, reminding me it was there.
I peered at Clark, seeing his mind wander off somewhere I wanted to be. He looked perfectly at ease with himself. His thoughts no longer restless like I had known them to be. He was in his solitude, looking at the night sky. Only, he wasn't completely alone. For that, I remember feeling very fortunate to share with Clark. Two people, together, without any good reason to be other than, good company.
My world began to spin again. I was trying to remember how we had gotten to this place. But everytime I dug deeper into my memory, I was reminded to enjoy the moment. The stars. The company.
For the first time in a long while, I didn't feel alone anymore.
"What happens..." I asked after some time, "what happens if two stars collide? Does that happen?"
I asked a question I already knew the answer to. But for the same reason why you'd watch a sun rise, the very same sun rise over and over again... no two answers were perfectly the same.
I saw two dark eye brows lift in curiosity and then intrigue. For a moment, I thought he had figured me out. Known all my secrets in just a hairs moment. He hopped up to his feet, and I felt myself being dragged to mine shortly after. He had grabbed both my hands, keeping both our arms taught from another. For a moment we were so close, I thought I could feel his breath on my nose.
Clark lengthened his arms, forcing me to push away with mine.
"Well," Clark's dark eyes steadied me, "I've never seen it, but I've heard it's a rare thing to witness with your own eyes..."
He leaned backward as he spun to the side, forcing me to keep up.
"But, let's say two stars catch each other..." Clark grinned boyishly, "well, they begin to spin kinda like this."
We were dancing, and laughing, the dizziness from before, and from now mingling together and creating a warm fuzz in my head.
We spun faster, "they spin and spin until they get closer and closer..."
"Until?" I looked across the blur of our bodies, the dark branches crowning us like a stationary mobile charm.
"Until..." Clark spun us one last time, only this time caught me in his arms before I fell out of our circle.
We were both laughing until we noticed just how close we had become.
"Well, happens Clark?"
He looked down at me, "They eventually do collide and something really extraordinary happens. Something even rarer, more beautiful than you can imagine."
My stomach made those funny spinning feelings again, my chest lurching after it.
I smiled, and then gazed off into the distance where a bright light lured both our attention. I thought it might have been Clark toying with my curiosities, but after it grew brighter my smile faded into pure horror.
****
"She's coming back to us!" She's back, we got her back!"
My chest hurled forward into a bright light, sharp sensations across my body, reviving it to life. I was back inside the apartment. Screaming all around me.
Everyone all around me.
"Get me more ice! Hurry!"
Pain, I felt pain where ever they were touching me. Bare, and cold, I could feel my face again, and this time I wasn't smiling. I could barely turn my head to see Clark next to me. His eyes were still staring upwards.
"No!" I screamed, muffled and choked by a tracheal tube in my airway.
I couldn't speak.
I couldn't speak.
I could only hope that--
"Hit the AED again, now!"
*
"Chloe?"
I couldn't speak.
I couldn't speak.
"Chloe."
I turned, and found myself back with Clark.
I had seen the future. Or was it the past? The other place that was the dreadful present. A place that was not quite here.
We were in a different place. The tree, the snow, the stars...
Clark looked back at me, the disguises melted away. We were older now. Our childhood long gone behind us. I remembered now the place before this. Who was he really? A scared boy from an alien world? Or was he my confident friend that stole my breath?
"Kal," I said instinctively, feeling traitorous as I did. It was like being naked for the first time, all of your protective layers stripped from you with a single word. He looked back at me, his clear blue eyes devouring mine. He had seen what I'd seen. He had seen his own lifeless body. The realization, the resolve, the clarity. It was within his silence that my own fear grew the same roots of the black tree that loomed over us. I knew that he had seen what I had, too.
"Clark," I whispered painfully.
"You have to let me go," he said to me. His eyes were ever so clearer now. They looked upon me as if they already knew I wouldn't be strong enough to save him on my own this time. They looked understanding, they looked forgiving. But his words to me felt like a betrayal. I couldn't believe this man would ever look into the truth and turn away so easy. Why was it that he could give up with out a fight when he knew perfectly well I never could?
In the back of my mind, I heard all these pent up arguments brewing over like a storm cloud. All the years when I had confronted him, and pleaded with him to trust me. When I had proven him wrong, or proven him right. The years when there was hardly any trust left, followed by the years when I wasn't sure if I even trusted myself. I learned to forget all of those ends, and begin again. I looked at him with these pleadings in my eyes. This man had a family, a great life, he was the world's hero, yet he couldn't fight one last fight?
There were so many reasons why I couldn't just let him go. But I couldn't say anything. Perhaps in the sum of it all, and what ever remained of my love of him, I had nothin' left to say. Somehow, I choked back my tears and whispered, "I'm too weak to go back alone, now."
I could feel how cold we were out there alone. We weren't quite lost, but we weren't quite home.The dark space between us blended together for a moment, our bodies circling. The spinning sensation returning again, only now I knew he could feel what I was feeling. For a moment, just the briefest of moments, there was no space.
"Wherever we end up, neither one of us will go alone."
*********
*********
5
*********
*********
*********
They told me I had asked for two things in my sleep:
The first was Clark.
The second was cake.
I knew that was supposed to be funny somehow, but the residual anesthesia could have lasted into the next day.
Slowly I opened my eyes, feeling my way across the shadows of faces I recognized to be my friends.
"Take is easy Chloe, lie back down."
I felt hands forcing me back down to my bed, but by then I recognized that I was not in the same room as before. It was dim where I was, a light from a window shrouded by a pair of sheer curtains. I looked beside me, and found my bed side, empty.
"Where-"
"Shh.." this time it was Lois who was beside me, "can you believe Clark woke up first?"
"Clark," I said, no longer gagged by a plastic tube, "woke up?'
Lois smiled, brushed the hair from my face, "It was the most wonderful gift in the world."
*
Lois led me inside the kitchen area where I smelled a hot pot of coffee brewing. Most of the house was evacuated, the party guests fled to a place where the suspect in all of this mess roamed. Most of everything was news to me, as I learned I'd been out of it for nearly a day afterward.
Even Clark had risen from his death bed to join the crusade.
I regained my balance, feet snuggled inside Lois' fuzzy house slippers, my arm wrapped inside of my cousins for extra stability. I sat in the Kent's kitchen, sipped my coffee. I waited for its warmth to soak through my body. There were still party balloons, paper mache, and streamers gathered around. The pile of untouched, forgotten gifts scattered across the floor. The extra volts they'd given me made me a little weak ontop of the energy I had expended upon healing Clark. Or I had supposed I had healed him.
Lois debriefed me on that all haps that I had missed while asleep. All the data Victor recorded during Clark's apparent death, and revival. The success of using myself, and Lex Luthor's relic technology. The biopsy of the black plant.
Lois said it was called, "Black Mercy." A parasitic plant that fed on its host until it died. Lois said that once Clark woke up, the plant detached itself from his chest, shriveled and died.
"The plant didn't just feed on its host, the host also fed on it," I said to myself. It had a power over Clark, over both of us. And I knew if the outside world hadn't come crashing down with the crash cart we might have never seen true daylight again.
"I'm just so glad it's all over, Chloe." Lois praised me again across the kitchen counter.
"Yeah," I said, trying to capture the same enthusiasm in my own voice. "I'm glad too."
*
I held my cousin for a very long time before I said goodbye. Explained why I couldn't stay, and was made to promise that I would visit her very soon. Before I left the Kent apartment, I tried, very discretely, and in vain, to find where Jimmy tossed my small gift. I couldn't give it to Clark now. I just couldn't.
I left Metropolis empty handed, and annoyed that I couldn't retrieve something so small. It nagged at me that one day Clark, or Lois might find it. And I hated that they would both smile, and act joyous accordingly when I knew the meaning of it has been lost somewhere before the party.
*
In a few hours I arrived at my studio apartment, a place I kept separate from everyone else. I learned long ago to give up Metropolis and cozy down into a smaller city. Cozy was a good word for my new life now. I had a different name here, even a different hair color at times. And sometimes, when I looked in the mirror in my tiny bathroom, I could see the faintest hint of happiness in my own young reflection. I knew it would take time, and I was patient. That was one thing I had learned all these years. The me thirty years ago wasn't the me now. My own youthful appearance would occasionally try to deceive me, but deep down I felt my history. I turned out the bathroom light and made for my bed.
That night there was no temptation to check my mail, messages or urgent messages. That night I laid down, finding it difficult to turn this page like any other day. I felt that it wasn't over yet.
The sun set for the second time, this time a little quieter in my small apartment. Laying in my own bed, I watched outside my blinds for the first signs of night falling. Shades of deep blue. A distant star. Behind my scattered thoughts, drifts of sleep came. I let go of my quiet anxiety, my restlessness, I let go my consciousness. I wasn't as much tired as that something told me I should rest. My anxiety, my selfishness that I was the one who saved him, yet the only person who didn't get to say Happy Birthday...
I drifted with my eyes closed, not quite asleep, but paralyzed by the stillness of my apartment. My sank deeper into my soft bed, and I heard distant curtains flutter in the moonlight. I had left the patio door open.
I left the patio open.
Why had I left the patio open?
It was enough to drag my eye lids open and myself awake. I shuffled my feet towards the kitchen to where my small patio was. The lace curtains billowed towards me as I reached for the sliding door, and shut it. Before I did, I took a last glance at the dark sky.
"They told me you left without any cake."
My body froze. I turned to see Clark bathed in the shadows of my kitchen. In front of him on my table was a square of red and blue vanilla sheet cake on a paper plate.
I covered my torso with my arms, not wearing much else besides the shadows and moonlight, "I knew I didn't leave this door open."
"Please," he said while staying in his dark corner, "don't be mad because I came here." Clark looked cautious as he spoke to me. He knew he had broken his promise. I knew he had come partly to show that he had defeated the man who had threatened to kill both of us. Mongul. I didn't have to say a word, but with Clark's confident silence I knew at least that part was over.
"You know I like my privacy," I said, reaching for my silk robe I had left by my couch, "how did you find me anyway?"
He said nothing, and offered no explanation.
I knotted my robe around my waist, "If you came here to thank me--"
"I just came to deliver cake."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"Well, thanks."
"You're welcome."
Seconds past, I opened the patio door again, expecting him to leave. "Happy Birthday."
Clark then walked towards me, and I finally saw his face. Healthy, handsome. Dark features and a worried demeanor. He had aged almost as less as myself, except for the tension lines I spied between his brows. He grew closer to me, his large stature towering as he got to the door. But he wouldn't walk out it. He stayed between me and the outside. The curtains rose in the air, the wind catching them. Coyly illustrating the strong current that lingered between us. I remembered feeling this in the early days of our friendship. Perhaps the first day.
Finally, he spoke, "I came to apologize. I never meant for you to... see me like that."
"Everyone saw you."
He shook his head, "I don't mean, that. I mean, what you... what the Black Mercy made you see."
I bent my head down, "I was wondering if that was all real."
"More real than anything else," Clark said reflectively, "I have been wondering how much of it you remember?"
I spied at him, my mind searching through the corners of his careful expression. In the midnight planes of his face, I could still see that scared little boy in the ice and snow, "Lois told me what the parasite was, did. Why would you choose to ever be alone? Out of all your wishes, your inner desires... you could have had everything, Clark."
"I can't explain that," he glanced at me, "But I should ask you the same question. Why a woman such as yourself would choose to hide from the entire world, from all who cares about her?" That's when he took me by the shoulders, "you and I both know our lives..."
I broke free from his arms and stomped over to the kitchen table.
I heard Clark from behind me,"I turned forty, yesterday. That's supposed to mean half of your life, y'know?But we both know that mortal numbers mean nothing."
I stuffed a piece of stale birthday cake into my mouth to prevent myself from saying something I knew I would regret.
"I know you're angry at me. You think I took your life away from you."
I spun back around, but I couldn't retort back enough without spitting cake.
"You think the meteor infection has... well," Clark sighed, "Let's face it. The infection has turned you immortal. And I know you blame me--"
"I don't blame you!"
"Chloe, in another fifty years," Clark shouted over my own voice which wavered with anger, "In fifty years, who all will be there? All of our friends, our family? It will just be us."
It was something I had been avoiding all these years.
Death.
My friends.
And now, here it was lashing out. I took what remained of the sheet cake in my hands and hurled it towards his daring face. "You were going to give it all up!" Weren't you!"
He swiftly ducked of course, cake spiraling somewhere off the patio, the balcony and down below.
"You didn't care anymore, you were just going to leave everyone. Everything!" I snarled, snapped, cringed to hear his answer.
He paused once my tears overwhelmed the anger inside of me. Everything broke at once. All the words I had failed to say to him before. He had cornered my at the end of my world and I had no where else to turn. I had to face what I feared most.
"You were going to leave me here. By myself. Well," I sniffled, "you're right I do blame you."
"I'm sorry," was all he said to me.
I wiped my face, licked the icing off my fingers, and opened a bottle of water from the fridge. I took a cool drink before I said anything else. "I guess what I don't understand is why you would want to be alone."
"Alone?" Clark repeated, "I really don't think you remember much of that dream." He took the bottle from my hand, set it down carefully behind me. His eyes hypnotized the weariness I felt in mine. "I suppose we're all searching for a piece of home, Chloe. A place of solitude, of peace. A place where we're never alone."
Since I had known Clark as a boy, he had loved Jonathon and Martha Kent with all his heart. But he had lost both now, and he explained to me his longing to search for his biological parents. One of his real desires to be reunited with his own. To be immortal among them, even in death. This was Clark's true dark side, tragic if it were. He spoke to me as if he were revealing one last secret about himself. Something I had never seen before. True vulnerability from the Man of Steel, so they called him. Who wouldn't want to be home? To be taken by the hand and led home after a tired journey... Across a long distance, perhaps an unknown distance.
Perhaps Clark knew this possibility was a farce, and could only fool himself for so long. Besides, he said, he knew I would come for him. It was this admission that I lost words for. There was Clark, there, beside me, but the other Clark I had never known so far away from me.
It was a dark space, the void of the past. Who knew when or if these two distances would ever spiral close again. I remembered that everything in the universe was expanding, growing farther and farther apart.
He bent towards me, leaned into my ear as I closed my eyes. Everything shrouded in darkness except for the whispering of his words. I remembered the dream. The cathartic moment of wisdom. The rarity of two things every finding each other in all of the chaos created. It was an explosive, beautiful thing, he told me.
"I brought something else," he set a small gift-wrapped box next to my hand, "Yours was the first I opened."
I barely had time to blink before he did something I never expected, not anymore. Clark bent down, and kissed me. Not on the head or the cheek either. I have often thought about that kiss, and it's meaning. And as I sit here thinking about it now, I still wonder.
He left without another word.
And as I stood in my apartment, my fingers tracing my face, my lips, I opened the small box, finding exactly what I had left inside. It was the same card I had picked, with my own delicate writing.
It said:
Dear friend,
I still do not know what to give to you on this special day. Anything material fades, and so does unfulfilled wishes from the last years...
Know that this came from my heart, from many long periods of time when I was thinking of you. Know that this gift is only for you, and should be kept as our secret.
It is a most sincere wish for your happiness... an elusive, fleeting thing. It's neither a feeling, or a slight moment in your life. It is a cumulative value of all of your life. Selfless as your life is, I know that you would never make this wish for yourself. Don't try to argue, because I know you will. But when you finally come to your senses, know that happiness is a choice.
In all sincerity and love, here is me blowing out the last candle. Here is to happiness in whatever comes in your future, as long at that journey may be.
