FIC: Growing up is seeing (Smallville - Chloe, Lana, Lois)
Spoilers up to Tempest. Written long before I ever saw S4. Chloe, Lana, Lois.


Growing up is seeing

Chloe's smarter than Lana, but not as pretty, and at first she thinks it's about that. Her dad says guys grow out of some girls and into others. She holds tight to that image of herself, as someone Clark will grow into, even when the doubt pushes into her, like maybe if her hair was shinier, if her clothes were more generic. She never tries to change who she is, though the message drives home again and again: she is not what he wants. She grows up, they all do, but her dad's wrong. Clark never takes his eyes off Lana.

Chloe likes Lana, and part of that is about wanting to be a big enough person to like Lana. The day Lana moves in, they unpack boxes for three hours. Lana owns clothes and keepsakes; a paste and glitter tiara, dressage trophies, Whitney's red and yellow Crows jacket. It's so Lana that Chloe bites the inside of her mouth. She looks around at the boxes, half unpacked, and the ornaments spread across the dresser, and tries hard not to think, this is what I don't measure up to.

"Thanks Chloe," says Lana. "I really appreciate . . . everything."

"What are friends for?" says Chloe.

*

Lana doesn't love Clark like Clark loves Lana. Clark loves with a steady force of attention that's never wavered. He's loved her since he was five, and everyone who knows him knows it. His love means always being there for her when she needs him, no matter what he has to sacrifice; he loved her when she barely knew his name. He loved her when helping her was the only way he could be a part of her life; and that's burned it's own kind of imprint onto Clark.

Lana's love is more real. It's sitting on Chloe's bed at two in the morning and saying things like, I like him, I just don't want to get hurt again, and, Not if it's going to come between our friendship, and, He's really cute.

"I feel like Clark's built this image of a perfect girl in his head, and that girl's not real, she's not me," says Lana one night, and Chloe's eyebrows rise up into her fringe. She realizes that she has an image of Lana in her head, too. A Lana that isn't real enough to have this kind of insight; or, if she's capable of any insight regarding Clark, it isn't this one.

"Maybe it just means you're perfect in his eyes, Lana," says Chloe, but the brass note in her voice sounds false.

Lana drops her head, smiles and says, "I guess. It sounds romantic when you say it like that."

*

She goes to the prom with Pete.

When Clark took her to the Spring Dance, he told her that she was his first and only choice. She and Pete are more honest with each other.

"I don't have a date for prom," sighs Pete.

"Me neither," says Chloe. They glance sideways at each other.

Clark borrows Lex's limousine, and the four of them ride to the hall together. Chloe and Pete joke around in the limo. Clark and Lana smile at the jokes, but they're kind of oblivious, they smile more at each other, leaning into each other, holding hands.

The hall is decorated with streamers and balloons. It's the end of high school, coloured lights, punch, a band. They dance, take photos, laugh, drink the punch. Chloe has a good time. It starts to get late. She comes to stand by the table, next to Pete.

The band is playing a slow song. On the dance floor, Clark slides his arms around Lana's waist. She leans into his chest.

The ghost of dances past, thinks Chloe, watching them. She had picked Clark up from his house driving a beat up old car. They'd had to shout at each other to be heard over the storm. The early winds of the twister had blown dust in everyone's face, and she'd danced one dance with Clark before he'd disappeared just like she'd known he would. Her perfect moment. Always unconventional, Chloe, she thinks. Lana is by the book.

"They look good together," she says.

"Yeah," says Pete.

It's something in his voice. She follows his gaze, but even then, it takes longer than it should.

"Lana? Pete . . . how come you never said anything?"

Pete smiles and shrugs. "I saw what happened to you and Clark. C'mon, Chloe. You wanna dance?"

*

After a year in Washington, Chloe comes back to Metropolis to work at the Inquisitor. Clark's a junior at the Daily Planet. She doesn't come back because of him. She doesn't come back because she misses Kansas. It's more about the kind of mysteries that appeal to her. Washington has politics. Metropolis has the inexplicable, Superman, Lex.

They had rearranged themselves after high school. Lana stayed in Smallville to manage the Talon. Clark, Chloe and Pete moved to the big smoke. But Clark had driven down from MetU to see Lana every weekend; and when Lana had occasionally come up to Metropolis, the four of them had hung out, Clark and Lana, Chloe and Pete. Lana had been less comfortable around Pete and Chloe's new friends. Chloe had wondered if that was the reason Clark made so few new friends of his own.

"So how's the commuter relationship?" Chloe had asked Lana. "How long are you two going to keep it up?"

"Chloe, my home's in Smallville," Lana had said, but not long after she had given up the Talon and moved to Metropolis.

When Chloe calls Clark to let him know she's back, she half expects him to assemble the old crowd. But Pete's out of town, and instead he suggests they catch up just the three of them, Clark, Chloe, Lana, or, maybe, would it be okay if he invited his partner from work?

*

There's some kind of fracas at the Daily Planet. Lois turns up with a sticking plaster on her forehead, and Clark's eyes go dark with concern. He's rising from his seat.

"Lois, what happened?" he says, at the same time that Lois says, "Sorry I'm late."

Lana would have said, "It's nothing. I'm just a little shaken."

Chloe, shaken, would have said, "You should see the other guy."

Lois says, "It's nothing. What's good to eat?"

Clark watches her with a stymied look in his eyes, and Chloe, watching him, recognizes the look. Feeling the world reshape itself around her, she turns to look at Lana.

Lana's smile doesn't waver. She's dressed in pink and the dress suits her slender figure, her shiny hair and prettily glossed lips. She's waiting for Clark to look back at her.

Dinner's great. They tell tall tales about Smallville. Chloe and Lana trade on easy intimacy, and tease Clark. Lois laughs, answers questions, talks shop. For the first time in years, Chloe finds herself remembering Lex and the castle. Not because Lois resembles Lex, but because she's so clearly Lex's type. Dark eyes, long, shiny dark brown hair, a polished career woman, the type that Lex married with alarming frequency. She wonders if they've met but doesn't ask, because the long slow repair of her friendship with Clark has taught her what she can say in front of him, and what she can't.

After dinner, they start talking about Superman.

"What's the real story behind the exclusive?" asks Chloe.

Lois tells it. Even stripped down to bare bones, it's a good Superman story, with chases, explosions and a ledge on the thirty fifth floor.

"And then you got him to agree to an interview?" says Lana.

"Sure," says Lois.

"And where were you during all of this, Clark?" asks Chloe.

"I missed it," says Clark. "I was, uh, getting coffee."

"Coffee's important," says Chloe, laughing.

"Thanks, Chloe." She sees his comfortable gaze flicker, looking at Lois, looking away. Like his easy self deprecation isn't quite so easy; the small town hero comes to the big city, and Lois is never going to look at him like Lana did back in high school.

Chloe blinks, and in that second understands what it was about Lana that was a siren song to Clark in Smallville, nothing to do with pink lip gloss or perfection, and everything to do with needing to be saved. But Superman saves Lois. Clark doesn't. It's forcing Clark to be someone different with her, and Clark doesn't know what to do with that, though it's obvious that he wants to do something. Chloe feels dizzy, because this is it, it's happening. Clark is changing in Lois's orbit, looking for different things with different eyes. Finding them.

"Lois, are you sure you're all right? I'm worried about you," says Clark as they're leaving. And he's done this to Chloe a hundred times, but there's a new feeling inside her now that he's doing it to Lana. "If you need, I mean, I can take you home."

"You mean in case I need someone to suddenly go to the bank, or rush home because he's forgotten something?" says Lois. "I'll take my chances."

"I--" says Clark.

"No, why don't you two go ahead," says Lana. "It will give Chloe and I a chance to catch up."

Why did you say that? Chloe opens her mouth to say, but she doesn't, riding this brittle new feeling. Since they're catching up, she invites Lana back to her apartment, and they hail a taxi. Chloe leans her back flat against the taxi seat, and says, in a deliberate voice, "What did you think of Lois?"

She forgets that there's more to Lana. That after years as friends fighting a silent war over Clark there are a lot of bruises, and Lana knows where they are, and how hard to press down.

"I think she's a lot like you," says Lana.

.