Chloe was getting a crick in her neck from following Clark's gaze to the ebony sky, but nonetheless remained as transfixed as he was by its unchanging blackness. Like a train wreck or a plane crash or a thousand other things too horrible to be real and too real to look away from, the darkness of the early morning carried with it the crushing weight of impending disaster.

"You know, they say a watched pot never boils," Chloe recited, breaking the glassy silence.

"Spouting farm wisdom, Chloe?" Clark teased, but his tone was humorless. Banter had become the easiest way to pass the time without giving voice to his fears.

"Well, you know - when in Rome," Chloe reasoned. "Or in a cornfield, as the case may be - and usually is." They'd returned to the flattened cornfield where they'd landed earlier, a wide-open space with no shade, no barriers between them and the first rays of the sun.

Clark shook his head dejectedly. "I can't believe we're stuck here. This is all my fault."

"What is? Your parents and my cousin being under house arrest? Uh, not your fault. For one thing, you couldn't do anything because your house was full of meteor rocks - "

"Kryptonite."

"Right - Kryptonite - so you couldn't help anyway. You - well, basically the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed - flew - probably saving my life, incidentally - got us both out of harm's way, and now you self-sacrificially called Lex to help. But hey, if you insist on blaming yourself for something - then I'll let it be your fault that I have a corn stalk stabbing me in the butt."

Clark smiled wanly. "I just don't like feeling helpless."

"It's just part of being human," Chloe shrugged. "Sometimes you have no choice but to wait and hope."

Clark huffed. "You sound like my dad."

"I could do worse, I suppose. Just so long as I don't do it in flannel."

Clark was about to retort when Chloe's phone came to life in his hand, its screen illuminated with his home number. "Mom? Dad?" he answered.

"Clark! Are you all right, Son? Where are you?" Jonathan's voice was fraught with concerns that his mind was still searching for words to address. Through the duration of his internment, the only thought that continually pierced him was that he didn't know what had happened to his son.

"I'm fine, Dad, we're okay."

"We? Who's with you? What happened?" Jonathan fired his questions at a rapid clip, unable to believe that his son was unharmed until he could see him for himself.

"Chloe's with me, we - I'll tell you when we get home. But you're okay? You and Mom? And Lois? What did they do to you? Are they all gone?" Like father, like son, the vein of familial concern ran deep.

"We're okay - they had us tied up, but they didn't do anything else. Except to Lois - they hadn't expected her and they hit her to knock her out. She's okay, but she had a pretty nasty cut behind her ear. Lex took her to the hospital."

Clark was dumbstruck, although he should have expected it. "Lex was there." He didn't bother asking for verification, he should have known that Lex wouldn't have stayed away. He never had before.

"Yeah, we'll have to talk about that. For now, I just want you home safe. We'll clear out the Kryptonite. Where are you?" It's amazing how narrowly a father's mind focuses when his child is in any peril - there were so many other questions to ask, so many things that had happened over the course of the night that for now would remain unanswered, until he was assured his son had escaped unscathed. Nothing else mattered.

"Uh… we're in Minnesota. I think the town is Roseville?"

Jonathan's silence was palpable. "What are you doing in Minnesota?" Martha glanced up sharply from the table, where she was soaking her long-bound wrists in a bowl of cool water.

Clark hesitated, glanced at the sky and then at Chloe. "Waiting for sunrise."

Marin was at first dismayed to find that the end of the bus line left her at the crossroads of two dusty country lanes, but as she trekked toward the slowly growing spot on the horizon that was Smallville she realized how much she'd been craving the solitude. She'd needed to be all alone in the only space she'd ever been that was wide enough to contain the storm that raged inside her, to give it room to rain down without drowning her. With each breath she expelled a tiny crumb of her turmoil, and the calm emptiness of Kansas at that moment absorbed her into its serenity. For a full minute as she trudged along the lonely stretch of highway, Marin Blake felt at peace.

It wasn't until she'd penetrated the outskirts and found herself walking through the center of town that she began to feel stifled again. She suddenly realized that, despite all she knew about Clark Kent, she didn't know his life, his family, or even where in this one-horse town (at least it would be if it weren't a farm community) his home was. She knew his secrets, but now she had one too, and that was the unknown she feared the most. No words came into her head that didn't sound trite and useless, too weak to carry such heavy news. How could she tell a man - no, he really was just a boy - who had never been with anybody, that he was going to be a father?

Marin had just begun to consider running back down the road to wait for the next bus when one of the quaint storefronts spat out a gaggle of over-caffeinated teenagers, all laden with pastries and paper cups. She looked up at the marquee over the door, boasting a two-for-one cappuccino special in celebration of its grand re-opening. The Talon. She knew she'd find someone there - a specific someone. She heard a somewhat agitated female voice when she stepped through the door.

"Still no answer," the girl reported as she stepped through a green swinging door, pulling strands of her long dark hair away from her lip gloss. "It's not like her to be late like this without calling, but I shouldn't leave until she gets here. Or at least not until Linda does."

"Maybe she had car trouble," speculated a young man with sandy blond hair. "Happens a lot around here, doesn't it?"

The girl behind the counter smiled with perhaps more amusement than the comment warranted. "I'm sure she'll be here any minute, and then you and I - "

"Excuse me?" Marin interrupted, deciding there wouldn't be a perfectly convenient time for her to disrupt the lives of Smallvillians, so she may as well jump in.

The girl looked startled and somewhat guilty, and the man wheeled at Marin's words. "Oh - I didn't realize we had a customer. I haven't kept you waiting, have I?" The girl brushed her hair out of her face again and then began to wipe the counter briskly, her eyes darting fleetingly back to the suddenly silent blond. "Well, thanks for dropping in, Coach Teague. Good luck at the game."

He smiled bemusedly. "We'll need you there for support. What do I owe you for the coffee?"

"Oh, it's on the house… for faculty, of course."

"Well, thank you… Miss Lang." Jason Teague took a sip from his cup as if nothing were amiss, and when he'd passed out of Marin's view he turned to bow charmingly and blow his girlfriend an animated kiss.

"So," the flustered brunette began, turning back to Marin. "Six fifteen on a Sunday morning - definitely a caffeine quest. What can I get for you?"

Marin stepped up and leaned on the counter. "Actually… um, you're Lana Lang, right?"

Lana, having had more than her share of run-ins with off-beat admirers, raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Yes…"

"I'm looking for… a friend of yours."

Lana didn't like the cryptic nature of the conversation, but took the bait anyway. "Who?"

"Clark Kent." Marin bit her lip, trying to gauge Lana's reaction to the name.

"Ah," Lana responded ambiguously, resuming her high-gloss buffing of the empty countertop. "Clark. Of course."

"You are… a… friend, of Clark's - right?" Marin found herself stumbling over the supposition, wondering what feeling Lana would have - if any - if she knew the secret that Marin carried, knowing that Lana couldn't know how she came to possess it. There are certain kinds of revelations that have a way of reminding people of feelings they'd hoped had been put out to pasture. And sometimes those feelings breed contempt.

Lana looked contemplative for a moment. "Yeah, of course, just - you know, people grow up, sometimes they don't see each other the way the used to think they did. Clark's great, he's just… Clark. You know, what can I say?" She tipped her head to the side and eyed Marin peculiarly. "So, you - you're a… friend of Clark's?"

Marin blushed involuntarily. "Yeah - well, sort of."

"Not from around here, right?" Lana gave Marin her open, designated welcome-wagon smile.

"Metropolis, actually."

"Metropolis? How do you know Clark?"

"Just bumped into him one day - right time, right place kind of thing."

Lana nodded knowingly. "That's definitely Clark."

"Yeah… so, can you tell me how to find him? I have his address, I just don't actually know how to get there."

Lana glanced up at the clock. "Actually, I was thinking of stopping over there myself - his mom works here, and she was supposed to open this morning but she didn't show up. That's really unusual for her, and nobody's answering their phone, so I was going to check in - make sure everything's okay. You could go with me, if you want to."

Marin froze. She didn't know exactly what was happening at the Kent farm, or even if it was still happening, but she was certain that in any case it was the last place Clark would want Lana to be. "Oh, no, I couldn't ask you to do that - you have a shop to run here, I can get there myself, I just need directions."

Lana waved a nonchalant hand. "Oh, don't worry, it's no big deal - I'm going either way, as soon as Linda gets here. Once the six .a.m. crowd breaks down the door for their caffeine fix, it's pretty dead here until around nine on Sundays. Besides, we have another person coming in at seven."

Exhausted and at a loss for any other course of action, Marin gave in - going with Lana was better than Lana going to the Kents' alone, at least. "Okay, if you're sure it won't be an inconvenience."

"Not at all - we'll go as soon as Linda gets here."

Lex was driving Lois' car, asking her inane questions to try and keep her conscious as he tore up the road at his usual break-neck pace en route to Smallville Medical Center. "Talk to me, or I'm going to have to resort to asking how many fingers I'm holding up."

"Go ahead and do it, then I'll hold one up for you," Lois retorted, dousing her voice in a syrup of mock sweetness.