A/N: Hey everyone. I've been meaning to come back to this story for a while now, but the inspiration only recently hit me. Hope you enjoy this chapter and sorry for the long wait.

Clark Kent does not like heights. He knew that ever since he was little and climbed to the top of Smallville's windmill on a dare. It wasn't a particularly long climb, but when he slipped and fell, he screamed the whole way down. As an added bonus, because his powers were still developing, he actually mildly hurt his arm when he hit the ground. Since then, he made a concentrated effort to stay as close to the ground as possible. Sure the ground can be a dangerous place too, but at least Clark has control over his body and isn't at gravity's cruel hand. And yet, in his dreams, Clark felt himself sometimes looking to the sky; like it was calling to him. No fear. Just a sensation of weightlessness and then Clark would levitate off the ground and slowly climb up into the air. It didn't take long for him to go from levitation to flight.

The dream takes him past the windmill first at a leisurely speed, but still quick enough that he's there in only a few minutes. He lands on the top platform of the windmill, then takes the windmill's sail in his hand and spins it with such strength that it actually blows him off the platform.

"Whoa!" Clark yells and outstretches his arms and legs in an effort to steady himself in the air then finds himself laughing at the wind blowing in his face and wonders if this is what it would feel like to be flying at the same speed he can run.

He stays in the path of the windmill for another minute or two, but feels a compulsion to fly higher. This desire takes him into town where he circles around and lands on top of the water tower. Clark smiles at the view it grants him of the entire town and he thinks about getting Tess and bring her up here with him. But those thoughts find themselves replaced by a desire to go even higher and only one place could satisfy that need. Since he can run faster than he can fly, Clark floats down to the streets and then sprints off at top speed towards his destination. In no time flat, he finds himself standing before The Daily Planet in Metropolis.

"Top of the world," Clark whispers gazing in awe at the Globe resting at the top of the building. He takes a deep breath, bends his knees, and a powerful force gathers around him. He doesn't know what it is, but he likes it. The force practically throws Clark and he rockets up into the sky, unable to control the speed of his ascent.

Clark?

The Daily Planet seems to get higher the further Clark soars into the sky.

Clark?

His fears start to return.

Clark?

What if he leaves Earth's orbit and can't fly back down? He

Clark?

He feels himself starting to slow down and gravity starting to take back over.

CLARK!

Clark's eyes snap open; his heart pounding against his chest. It actually stings a little.

"Thank goodness you're awake," he hears his mother's concerned voice.

"Mom? What happened?" Clark asks rubbing his eyes as his blurry vision attempts to bring things back into focus.

"Um, we were hoping you could tell us, son," Jonathan says.

"What?" Clark asks trying to ignore the pounding sensation in his head. He tries to pull himself off his bed, but realizes he isn't lying on his bed. "Oh my God," he whispers realizing he's floating a good few feet in the air. That lasts for all of five more seconds and then Clark falls from the air and crashes on to his bed breaking the piece of furniture's legs.

"Clark!" Martha and Jonathan run to their son's bedside.

"Son, are you ok?" Jonathan asks, helping Clark sit up. Clark gives a light chuckle at his father's question. "You know what I mean," he laughs.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sort of. This isn't a dream is it?"

"I'd pinch you, but that would probably hurt me more than it would hurt you," Martha laughs as well.

"So, were you planning on telling us at that you can fly?" Jonathan asks.

"I didn't know I could," Clark answers truthfully.

"I've lost track. How many powers does that bring us up to?" Martha asks.

"Speed, strength, invulnerability, and flight, I think," Jonathan replies.

"Oh, don't forget about the X-Ray vision," Martha remembers.

"Don't remind me. I still have nightmares from the first time that power developed. Speaking of which, I have been having this recurring dream where I could fly, but nothing like this has ever happened before. Do you think this might've been because of that meteor rock blast Rudy caused a few days ago?"

"I don't know. How do you feel, now that you mention that? Any changes?" Martha asks.

"I still feel fine if you can believe. It's like I wasn't even there. It's everyone else that I'm worried about; Chloe, Jimmy, Pete, Lana, countless others. If anything happens to them, it'll be because of me."

"No. Don't do that to yourself," Martha tells him. "Rudy needed to be stopped, and you stopped him."

"But," Clark begins.

"No buts," Jonathan interrupts. "You can't let that fear eat away at you. If you want to keep using your powers to help people, then use that fear to your advantage." Clark gives his parents a half smile in response and the two of them give him a joint hug.

"I love you," he tells his parents; the warmth from them melting away his anxiety.

"We love you too son," Jonathan replies.

"Very, very much," Martha adds.

This is stupid, Sullivan, Chloe thinks pacing around the cemetery.

She'd never been too found of cemeteries, but she thought an ironic setting could help put her mind at ease after the incident at the hospital. It wasn't working.

It's one thing to have a brush with death. To come this close to being removed from this world only for luck, fate, or something else to intervene. It's quite another thing to actually die. To feel the warmth of your body slipping away. To see the world slowly turning dark and not being able to do a thing to stop it. That's what Chloe felt when she tried to shield Lana from Rudy's attack only ten times worse. It all happened in an instant. Her body just shutting down; heart beat, blood flow, every major function stopped dead in its tracks. But somehow, coming back to life scared her even more. It wasn't like waking up. It was something Chloe couldn't put into words.

A shadow passing overhead draws Chloe away from her thoughts. She gazes up and notices a bird she's never seen before. A bird with blood red feathers, a majestic tail, and flying closer and closer towards her. It lands on top of a tombstone in front of Chloe and stares in her direction. Chloe takes a few steps towards the bird and she could almost swear that it has an inquisitive look in its eyes. She moves to her left and the bird looks left. She moves right and it looks right.

"I wish I had my camera with me. No one's gonna believe I saw you. Whatever you are," she says and the bird tilts it head. Chloe laughs and stretches out her hand to touch it. "You're a curious thing aren't you?"

Her hand touches one of its wings and it scorches her palm. Chloe leaps back, but suddenly stumbles into an open grave she didn't even notice. But she doesn't hit the ground. Instead she keeps falling, falling, and falling some more; the light of the world slowly diminishing before she finally hits something. She tries to stand up, but her body bangs against a steel door that wasn't there a moment ago. She's in the coffin that Watts and Pierce trapped her in.

"Help!" Chloe screams. "Someone help!" She bangs against the front and sides of the coffin, but nothing gives. She looks out the small window the coffin has and sees the light starting to fade. "Please no," she begs and catches sight of something fluttering towards her metal prison. It's a feather. One from the bird she saw. It passes through the window and touches Chloe's chest, which promptly catches fire.

"OH MY GOD!" Chloe screams. She quickly tries to smother the flames with her hands, but they catch fire too and so do her legs. "PLEASE, NO!" She cries out, but the fires continues to spread and overtake every inch of her body.

CHLOE, WAKE UP!

Chloe sits up in her bed so fast that she nearly knocks over her father at her side.

"Chloe, it's alright! You're ok!" Gabe exclaims as Chloe holds onto him for dear life. "I got you. You're fine. It was only a nightmare."

"No. Not a nightmare. So real, so real," she whispers.

"Don't worry. That's just how dreams are. You're safe now," her father continues to comfort. Chloe wants to tell her father everything, so he'll understand her fear, but worries how he will react, if he believed her at all. So instead they sit there for an untold amount of minutes. Chloe too frightened to let go. Afraid that if she does, she'll fall back into the dark.

Was this her punishment for trying to expose so many of the meteor infected? To have a power that could literally drain the life out of her. Chloe said it before and she wanted to say it again.

Irony sucks.

Tess runs down a hallway. Her heart beating a mile a minute. Those images, those grisly images flashing before her eyes with each step.

Bones splitting like twigs, blood coating the floor.

Tess shakes her head. She can stop it. She has to stop it. A door comes into view at the end of the hall, but the faster Tess runs, the further away it gets.

"No! Please don't! AHHHHHHHH!" Someone screams.

"NO!" Tess shouts.

The door suddenly appears right in front of her and she smashes through it and falls to the floor. Tess' breath is as shaky as the rest of her body feels from the impact. She lifts her head up and sees blood dripping in front of her. She glances further up and sees it dripping from a knife someone holds.

"What did you do?" Tess whispers. The person turns around and Tess finds herself staring at her own face.

"What did you do?" The other Tess asks. Tess glances behind her and sees the bodies of the dirty cops she killed.

"That wasn't me. It was the Nicodemus flower."

"No. You were asleep and it woke you up. No fear. No limits. No inhibitions. But now you've gone back to sleep."

"Do you realize how you sound? You killed them and you don't even care." The other Tess bends down, grabs Tess' neck, and pulls her up to her feet.

"That's right, I don't. Neither did you and it was the most alive we'd ever felt."

"Let me go," Tess whimpers.

"Why don't you make me?" The other Tess holds her knife up to Tess' neck and she flinches. "Still the victim after all this time," she chides.

"Let me go!"

"MAKE ME!" Tess throws out a punch, but the other her catches it, spins Tess around and jams her knife into Tess' neck. Tess gasps and her hands limply fall by her sides. "Wake up," the other Tess whispers.

Tess opens her eyes and finds herself safe and alive in her bed at the Luthor mansion. She rubs the spot where she got stabbed in her dream and she swallows thickly. Try as she might, Tess couldn't block the images of the men she killed from her head. Worse yet, someone possibly knows what she did. While she never received any follow up threats, the paranoia she felt was there to stay.

Maybe going for a run will take my mind of this, Tess thinks.

She gets out of bed and changes from her pajamas into the clothes she jogs in. Tess leaves her room and heads for the main entrance of the Luthor mansion. A few of the servants bidding her good morning as she passes by. Tess smiles and wishes them the same.

"Ah, Tess. Glad to see you have woken up," she hears Lex call out to her from atop the staircase.

"Good morning, Lex," she greets. "Sorry about my late start. I had some trouble sleeping last night."

"Tess, there is no reason to apologize," Lex assures her while descending the stairs.

"I'm going for a run to clear my head, but when I'm finished, would you mind taking me into town, so I can visit Lana?"

"I don't mind at all Tess. We'll leave as soon as you are ready."

"Thanks, Lex." Tess waves to him and then runs out the door. Lex's affable persona fades away when the door shuts behind Tess. His thoughts drifting back to the 'Project Mercer' file he came so close to accessing. Lex doesn't like secrets. One way or another, he'll find out what's being kept from him.

"I know I should be resting, Aunt Nell," Lana says leaning against the front counter of her aunt's flower shop.

"Then why aren't you? You were shot. In fact, you really should've stayed an extra day or two at the hospital," Nell says not even try to mask the worry in her voice.

"Being there, it-it just reminded me too much of the incident," Lana says and feels her chest flinch at the thought of it."Being out and around my friends, it's helping me cope." Lana feels her mood turn somber and she gives a weak sigh. "I do wish mom and dad were here to help me get through this."

"What are you talking about? They're right over there," Nell points out.

"What?" Lana turns around and sees her parents exiting their car across the street. An overwhelming sense of elation overtakes Lana and she runs out of the shop towards her parents.

"Mommy! Daddy!" She shouts out and she's a little girl again. Dressed in the same Fairy Princess outfit she wore all those years ago. Lana's parents bend down and hold out their arms to embrace their daughter. Lana is so close to them their fingertips are practically touching, but then, from out of nowhere, a meteor strikes her parents. The blast from the impact sends Lana flying backwards with countless meteor fragments following her. Lana cries out for her parents and runs to where they were, but Nell grabs Lana and pulls her away from the chaos.

"Mommy! Daddy!" She cries stretching her free arm towards their enflamed car. The meteor fragments start to turn green and something flows out of them and encircles Lana. She screams and Nell loses her grip on her niece. The green substance enters Lana's body and she collapses to the pavement.

"Dear God in Heaven," Nell breathes out at the sight of Lana's veins turning a sickly greenish color.

"Mommy! Daddy! It hurts, it hurts!" Lana cries, but there is no one to help her. Her vision turns green and she feels something about to burst out of her. Nell turns and runs as far away as she can as fast as she can. "Aunt Nell! Aunt Nell!" Lana screams and her whole body starts to turn green.

The green vision dissipates revealing Lana's hospital room and her deeply concerned aunt standing just outside the door.

"She's back. She's back," the doctor says.

"What happened?" Lana groaned. Nell now sitting by her side and taking her niece's hand.

"We don't know. One minute your heart rate was normal and the next is was going off the charts," the doctor explains wiping some sweat off his forehead. Lana glances at her heart monitor. The number is still decreasing from the low triple digits.

"This can't be because of a gunshot can it?" Nell asks.

"I don't know," the doctor explains. "We'll have to run some tests to try and figure it out."

"Great," Lana sighs. "I'm sorry for how much trouble I'm being, Aunt Nell." Nell gives her Lana's hand a comforting squeeze.

"Don't think like that for a second, Lana. You could never be trouble to me. Never." She leans down and kisses Lana's forehead.

"Thanks," Lana says and smiles. "Hope our insurance will be able to cover this," she half jokes.

"It's all been taken care of by Lex if you can believe it," Nell reveals.

"Lex is paying for everything? Not that I'm complaining, but why?" Lana asks.

"You are a friend of Clark's who's a friend of Lex's, remember?"

"Oh right," Lana recalls.

"By the way, I've been waiting for you to get better before I gave this back to you, but you could probably use something comforting after what just happened." Nell reaches into her pocket and pulls out Lana's missing necklace. Lana eyes widen, but she swiftly tempers the look before Nell notices. "It was taken into evidence because Rudy was wearing it when he attacked, but Lex got involved again and got it back." Nell holds the necklace out to Lana and she uneasily takes it back.

"Thank you," Lana thanks again and puts it around her neck.

"I have to go back in to the shop now, but I'll come back later this afternoon," Nell promises and gives Lana a hug. "I love you."

"Love you too, Aunt Nell."

Once Nell leaves the room and is out of sight, Lana takes her necklace off making sure she doesn't touch the green rock. She opens the drawer of a table beside her bed and places the necklace in it. She starts to feel dizzy and lays her head back against her pillow praying that terrible nightmare won't plague her sleep. But as she shuts her eyes, she's almost certain she can see the faintest traces of green in her veins.

To Be Continued...