They'd been walking for about twenty minutes, Clark spilling as much of his story as he could while keeping up with Chloe's questions, when he spotted a small structure in a somewhat concealed back yard. He eyed it carefully. "It's a guest house, or a shed - or something. Looks like they use it for storage, but at least it'll get you out of the cold air for a while."

"It's fine," Chloe agreed, shivering beneath both her jacket and Clark's as he lifted her over a flimsy wire fence, then easily hopped over it himself. "You're not cold?"

"Nah, doesn't bother me," Clark shrugged as he led Chloe across the manicured garden to the little building in the corner of the lot.

"Of course it doesn't," Chloe realized as they stepped over a path of deliberately uneven flagstones leading to a charming little porch. "It looks like a life-size doll house."

Clark nodded. "Yeah - but there's nobody here, I checked."

"Right, x-ray vision," Chloe assumed.

"What? You don't believe me?"

Chloe rolled her eyes and smiled. "Of course I believe you, Clark - you just massively defied gravity, it's not so much of a stretch to believe you can see through walls. It's just… a lot to take in after I've only known about all this for ten minutes. Let me get used to it."

"You're right - I'm sorry." Clark turned to the Dutch door on the little house. "It's locked," he informed, eyeing the padlock only momentarily before he crushed it.

Chloe giggled. "And all this time I thought you just had a magic touch with doors."

"Well… I do," Clark smiled. "After you," he said, pulling the door open and gesturing to Chloe to step inside. Clark followed, making Chloe laugh when he had to stoop due to the low ceiling.

"Finally, an advantage to being short!" She examined the tiny room. Directly across from the door, a narrow staircase led up to an attic-like loft, and to the right stood a toy wooden stove and a sink. "It's a playhouse," Chloe commented, intrigued by the whimsy.

"That explains the ridiculously low ceiling," Clark replied. "There're some camping mats over here." He moved a rusty bicycle and a broken gas grill out of the way and layered the mats on the floor. "Maybe there are some blankets upstairs - make yourself comfortable, I'll be right back."

"Clark, the ceiling up there is probably no more than four feet at the peak, not to mention the stairs are barely two feet wide. You wait, I'll go. This looks like a job for a small fry."

"Mmm… okay."

Chloe started up the tiny staircase. "I bet this place was really cute once. Before it became the 'island of misfit toys'… and everything else." She reached the top of the stairs and peered around the railing at the loft. "Wow - I don't know if there are any blankets up here. Looks like they have everything else though."

"There are blankets, I can see them," Clark called. He was lying on the floor below, enjoying the look of disgust on Chloe's face when she put her hand in something a squirrel left behind.

"Are you watching me through the ceiling?"

"Yep."

"We're going to have to lay down some ground rules about these powers, Clark. But at least you're getting a nice look up my nose."

"Yeah, you have some serious congestion."

Chloe stuck her tongue out at the dusty floor. "I know you saw that, too. Now where are those blankets? Am I getting warm?"

"Nope, ice cold."

Chloe crawled a little farther into the loft. "Warmer?"

"Yeah, a little. Keep going."

"In a sec," Chloe answered as she moved aside stacks of comic books. "Some caped crusader is in my way." She moved toward the far left corner. "Hot yet?"

"Colder."

"What happened to your hero complex, Clark? Just tell me where they are!"

Clark chuckled and grinned. "They're in a trunk against the middle of the wall on your right. There's no lock."

"Wow, a trunk of unlocked blankets in a stinky playhouse loft. These people are asking for trouble!" Chloe located the trunk and pushed it open. "Whoa, what died in here?" she cried, reeling from the smell. "Actually, I think something did die in here."

"There's nothing in there now except blankets," Clark assured her. "Take them anyway, there's nothing else we can use."

Chloe gathered the blankets and headed back down the stairs. "This one is exceptionally rancid," she said, tossing an old brown afghan to Clark, "so you can have it all to yourself."

"Very generous," Clark quipped, but once Chloe was settled on the floor next to him his mood shifted back to concern. "Lets get you warmed up," he said, wrapping all of the blankets around her one by one. "Better?"

"Snug as a suffocated bug," Chloe affirmed.

"Good," Clark said, then he laughed. "Man, these really do smell."

"I know! It's worse than fertilizer and teenage boy combined! And coming from Smallville, I know what I'm talking about."

"Yeah…" Clark's response held none of Chloe's intended amusement. "I have to get back there." He settled against the wall under a shuttered window and closed his eyes.

"That shouldn't be hard, right? Can't you just fly back?"

Clark shook his head. "I don't know, I've never done it before tonight."

Chloe's surprise was evident. "Never? How did you do it then? How did you know you could?"

Clark rubbed his neck. "Man, there is so much to tell you - it'll take a long time. It's not just the things I can do or where I'm from, it's - well, okay, the really short version is that my biological father, Jor-El, had control over me over the summer, and then he sent me back, but I wasn't me, I was Kal-El, who's sort of my alter-ego, except that he's… not, he's me, but not all of me - anyway, he could fly, but then my mom got this black Kryptonite from Dr. Crosby, which brought me back, and I couldn't fly anymore, but when I went to Dr. Swann's lab for some tests a few weeks ago, they discovered that I might be able to sort of channel Kal-El's power, so… that's what I did. When I flew."

Chloe was stunned into silence, a rarity that had already occurred twice that night.

"Sorry, that's a lot of weirdness in one breath," Clark apologized. "You took the news about me being from another planet pretty well though, so I thought - "

Chloe put a hand on his arm. "No, no, it's fine, I want to know all this stuff - but wow - that's enough to give me mental indigestion for a while."

The two sat in silence, Chloe formulating questions about Clark's past, and Clark posing queries about the futures of himself and those he loved.

"I don't know if I can do it again," Clark mused aloud, breaking the silence. "I could run back, it'll only take a little longer. I can't do either right now, though."

"Why not?"

"I'm sort of solar-powered. I can store the sun's energy to use at night, but the flying took a lot out of me. I'm running on low-watt auxiliary until sunrise."

Chloe looked at her watch, surprised to find it broken. "Guess this watch wasn't designed for higher altitudes - " She was interrupted by the squeal of her phone. "But my cell phone still works!" She rearranged her blankets and pulled it from her pocket. "Hello?"

"Do you know what time it is?" Lois' voice sounded accusatory.

"Uh… no? I was just wondering actually. Hi to you too, Lois." Chloe glanced at Clark nervously.

"It's four in the morning, your dad is freaking out! He called you a million times but he kept getting 'out of area' messages. Where are you?"

"I'm… not far," Chloe lied. "I'm with Clark." She slapped her hand over her forehead. "But you don't have to tell my dad that - "

Lois was frustrated, partially because Chloe had been out all night, and partially because it was Clark she'd been out with. But why does it matter? "Whatever, play house if you want to, just think up a decent excuse to give your dad before taking off all night. I never got any sleep - he went Pacino on me with the interrogations."

Chloe winced. "I'm sorry Lois, I should have called, we just lost track of time."

"Whatever, I'll be there to pick you up in a minute."

Chloe's face went white as milk and she clutched Clark's shoulder. "No, no, don't pick me up, I'm not at Clark's!"

Seeing Chloe panic, Clark tuned his hearing in to the conversation.

"Fine, I'll pick you up wherever you are, I'm just going to grab my boots first since I'm practically there. I have to go back to Metropolis this morning, and I don't have time to wait for your boyfriend to finish being chivalrous."

"Lois, no! Don't go to the Kents', we're - we're at the Talon! We pulled an all-nighter catching up with Lana, and… and your boots are here, Clark brought them - we were going to drop them off - "

"What are you talking about? I'm at the Kent's now, I can see the boots - what the hell happened here? Somebody have a little trouble making crop circles? "

"Lois!" Chloe shrieked. "You have to leave! Now!"

"What? Hold on, I have another call - probably your dad. I'll call you back when I find out how dead you are."

Clark grabbed the phone from Chloe. "Lois!" he cried, but she'd already hung up.

Chloe had thrown off the blankets and ran for the door. "What are we gonna do?" she wailed. "We're not even in Kansas!"

The phone screamed again in Clark's hand. "Lois, listen, you have to - "

"This isn't Lois," a female voice said before he could finish.

Clark felt like his lungs had imploded. "Who is this?"

The voice was tentative and pained. "This is Marin - I'm sorry, I know this is Chloe's phone and you're busy, but I had to talk to you for a minute - "

"Marin!" Clark huffed. "Marin, I'm sorry, this is really not a good time!"

"I know, I wouldn't have called if it wasn't important."

Clark was too distracted to noticed how thick with tears her words were. "Is it about my parents? Or Lois?"

"Lois? No, it's - "

"Then it'll have to wait, I have to concentrate on them."

Marin inadvertently let the cry in her throat escape into the phone. "No, of course, I understand, I shouldn't have called now, I - I'll talk to you later." The phone beeped when she hung up.

Clark couldn't even consider why Marin had called him now, and took no meaning from it. "Kansas and Minnesota are both in Central time, right?"

Chloe nodded. "I think so - if it's four a.m. there, it's four a.m. here."