Author: Cardinal
Rating: Adult, mostly because I have no idea what's going to happen. I may need the flexibility.
Disclaimer: All the characters, except for my self-created supporting characters, belong to the usual suspects...WB, UPN, Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, DC Comics, etc.
Basically everyone but me.
Shit.
If I had an ownership interest in these properties, both shows would have been wildly different.
A/N:Okay boys and girls, it's time for me to try something completely different.
This is my first foray into the world of crossover fanfics. This one will combine the world of Roswell with the world of Smallville, which was another alien-based TV series that started two years after Roswell and lasted for ten seasons. A simple Google search will show you what Clark, Lana, and the rest of the residents of Smallville look like.
This fic will start at the end of Season Three in Smallville and Season Two in Roswell, which will make the two sets of teens all ready to enter their senior years in high school. It will also make a few changes from canon in each world. These should become plain as the fic rolls along, but if you get confused, PM me and I will likely be happy to straighten you out.
I will also likely alternate between Roswell and Smallville chapters until the two worlds...collide.
Having said that, it's time to post the first chapter.
Chapter 1
Clark sauntered into the Torch office, fully expecting to see Chloe planted in front of her sleek, silver iMac, working on the layout for this week’s edition. He was surprised to find he had beaten her to the office, even after spending some time right after school working with Pete on their Trig homework. Plopping his backpack down on one side of his desk as he sat down, he turned on his computer and was deep into some last minute edits of his story on the Teen Crisis Center when Chloe finally made an appearance.
“Hi, Clark!” she said, as she almost danced into the room.
Hearing a manic note in her voice, Clark looked up from his computer monitor and said hello just in time to see her do a pirouette before setting her belongings down at her desk and bounding over to stand behind him. Wrapping both arms around his neck, Chloe hugged him affectionately as she asked, “Have I ever thanked you properly for saving Lex’s life?”
Clark was well used to Chloe’s high energy persona, but this sort of behavior was a little out there, even for her. Not even bothering to try to turn his neck so he could see her, he asked, “O.D. again on the triple espresso special at the Talon, Chlo?”
She giggled as she released her hold on him and returned to her own desk. “No, something better. Much better.”
He waited a beat, then leaned back in his swivel chair, and said, “All right, I’ll bite. What happened?” Thinking back to what she had just said about him saving Lex, he added, “What did Lex do?”
Chloe’s fingers clicked away on her keyboard as her computer sprang to life. Her eyes were focused on the screen, but her thoughts were mostly on her conversation with Clark. “You remember when Lex fired my dad, and then hired him back right after Lionel shot himself?”
Wondering where she was going with this, Clark nodded his head and said, “I told you Lionel ordered him to fire your dad in the first place.”
“That’s true, and Lex admitted as much when he rehired Dad.” Chloe clicked through a couple of windows on her monitor, and then looked over to Clark. “The thing is, Lex called me last night and asked me to come over to the mansion after school today.”
“What’d he want?”
“I was getting to that,” Chloe said primly. “What he wanted was to make it up to me.”
“Make up to you for firing your dad?”
“Yeah, I know, right? I was happy with dad being back to cracking awful jokes at the factory, but who am I to turn down a free trip from a goofy billionaire?”
“A trip? A trip to where?” Clark asked, as he continued to edit his story.
“Well…that’s currently what’s up for discussion.” Chloe’s fingers flew over her keyboard while she explained how things stood. “Lex wanted to send me to some place like South Padre Island or Cancun for a couple of weeks of all-expenses-paid fun.”
Clark pushed himself back from his desk and swiveled his chair to face her. “Since you said that’s what Lex wants, I have to assume you want something different; something Lex hasn’t signed off on yet. Where do you want to go?”
Chloe tucked her tongue into the corner of her mouth, knowing Clark wasn’t going to be thrilled with her answer. “I originally wanted to go to Las Vegas.” He was wondering what was wrong with that, until she finished what she had to say. “Using Las Vegas as a base, I was going to search around Nellis Air Force Base and Area 51 for any information about alien sightings. You know, more unexplained stuff related to outer space.” Then she gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. “Think of it as an expansion of the Wall of Weird.”
“And Lex said no.” That definitely wasn’t a question. Clark knew Lex wouldn’t sponsor Chloe getting herself into that sort of trouble, no matter how much he wanted to make things right with her and her father.
“Of course,” she agreed. “He doesn’t want me near any top-secret government installations asking ‘pesky questions’ and ‘making a nuisance of myself,’ so I chose the second spot on my list of places to visit.”
“And that is…?”
“Roswell, New Mexico.”
Roswell, Clark thought. Where have I heard of that town before?
“I figured,” Chloe continued, “where else is more likely to have unexplained mysteries than the fabled home of the supposed 1947 spaceship crash landing?”
The words ‘spaceship crash landing’ nearly made Clark choke, and his eyes did try to bulge right on out of his skull, but Chloe noticed none of that because her eyes were glued to her computer’s LED screen. “What did Lex say to that idea?”
“He thought it sounded ‘boring as Hell,’ as he put it so bluntly, but he said it would be okay, as long as I promised to stay away from the White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss. Both are well to the south and west of Roswell, though, so I don’t see what the problem would be there.”
Clark turned back to his computer and minimized his article before firing up Firefox and searching ‘Roswell, New Mexico’ on Google. He spent a few minutes perusing a few websites while he and Chloe continued to talk. “Is Lana up for this trip?” he asked.
“I haven’t brought up the subject with her yet,” Chloe admitted. “Why?”
“Because,” Clark replied, “there are several reasons she can’t stay here with your dad while you leave town for two weeks: one, she’s your guest and it wouldn’t be right; two, leaving her alone with your dad might start some nasty rumors, which would be unfair to both of them; and three, exposing Lana to two solid weeks of your dad’s awful jokes would have to qualify as a ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’”
Chloe was giggling by the end of Clark’s recitation. “God yes. Even though Lana would be working a fulltime summer schedule at the Talon, she would still be ready to kill me by the end of the first week.”
Looking back his computer’s screen, Clark added, “Looks like Roswell is about as exciting as Smallville. It’s even the same size.” Leaning back in his desk chair, he spun it ninety degrees in Chloe’s direction. “Speaking of the Talon, how is Lana going to manage getting two weeks off in a row?”
“If she chooses to come with us, she will have plenty of time to make sure her assistant manager is ready to run the Talon, since we won’t be leaving until the start of July. That gives her more than a month.”
“July?” Clark asked, as he scrambled back to his computer to check the weather in Roswell in July. “Why then? Why not at the end of school?” And then his thoughts caught up with his hearing. His head whipped back over to where Chloe was sitting quietly, and asked, “Us?” he asked bewilderedly. “When did you become us?”
“That’s the other reason Lex doesn’t mind Lana and me going to Roswell,” Chloe said, hurriedly, “because he thinks you’re coming along, too.” The keys on her computer stopped clicking for the first time since she turned it on, as she turned to face him. “Now I just have to convince you to come along with us.” She paused a moment before breaking out the puppy dog eyes and using her most pleading, borderline whining, tone of voice. “Please, Clark. Puhleeeeese?”
He stared at her and grimaced. The blistering July weather in Roswell was forgotten for the moment, as he asked, “You know Lana and I are having a few issues at the moment, right?”
“Yeeeeeaaahhh,” she replied uncomfortably. She didn’t know exactly what was going on between them, but she did know that several weeks earlier they’d had a meeting in his barn loft that had ended with Lana canceling her planned summer at an art school in Paris. Ever since then, things had been different between the two of them; the most innocent mention of Clark threw Lana into a tizzy, while he was becoming increasingly frustrated with her, and given that he had been able to wait patiently for years for her to notice him, his sudden annoyance with her was noteworthy.
Chloe’s boundless curiosity would have led her to look into the situation already, except that it was a Lana and Clark thing. While she wasn’t actively pursuing him anymore, having conceded the field to Lana on that issue, she wasn’t about to spend her time trying to force the two them to settle their differences.
Clark wasn’t happy with Chloe at the moment either. To him, this looked like a potentially very uncomfortable two weeks spent in close quarters with two women he had issues with, if for differing reasons. He and Chloe were still rebuilding their level of trust after she almost sold him out to Lionel, while with Lana, he was waiting for her to come to terms with his secrets. He’d expected it to take a while, but weeks were starting to stretch into months. He was beginning to wonder if she would ever come around, and it was putting him on edge.
“Have you talked to your dad about this yet?” he asked, stalling for time.
“Lex cleared the concept of a trip with Dad before he ever brought up the subject with me,” Chloe assured him. “I can’t see why Roswell, New Mexico, would be any worse than Cancun.”
“Let me talk to Lex and then my parents before I try to give you any kind of answer,” Clark said. “I don’t have any idea why he wants me along on this trip, and my parents might not let me go in any case. Okay?”
“Sure.” Chloe figured that was the best answer from him she could have hoped for at the moment, so while he was dealing with Lex and his family, she would broach the idea to Lana. Cancun would have been a no-brainer for her, Chloe was quite sure, but a dusty tourist trap like Roswell might require a little persuasion. Her last thought before she returned her attention to her iMac was whether mentioning Clark’s possible participation in the trip to Lana would be a good thing or a bad thing.