Title: Killing Me Softly (1/2)
Author: elgatoneun
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Chloe/?
Summary: Chloe thinks about the effect she has on the men in her life.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me, at all. Just borrowing the song title not the song itself.
Spoilers: Everything up to and including Obscura
Feedback: Would be appreciated
Notes: This was an idea that just wouldn't go away. This takes place at the end of Obscura, after all the excitement but before Clark asks Chloe to the Spring Formal.
Her arms were raised, bent at the elbow, frantically banging away at the solid metal door of the coffin. She heard the thudding of dirt raining down on its surface. Her throat was dry and swollen from all her screaming. The heat was suffocating her; it permeated over her. Oh God, please don't let me die!
She took deep gulping breaths, almost hyperventilating, the rational part of her brain trying to calm her, telling her to conserve her energy and not use up all the oxygen in a futile panic attack. Please, please … and then she felt a rush of cold air. It hit her body full blast and she saw him. Those beautiful blue eyes, filled with worry over her. Clark Kent had saved her … again.
She wrapped her arms around him so tight she thought she might break him in half.
"Chloe, Chloe, are you … Oh my God, Chloe. Sh, it's okay, I'm here now." Clark held her, soothing her, caressing her back. Chloe was incoherent, overwhelming relief hindering her vocal abilities.
Clark pulled back a little to look at her face. Chloe saw love in his eyes for her, not just concern or friendship but actual love. Clark lifted her face to his and kissed her gently.
He touched her cheek softly with his finger. Chloe didn't know if she'd died and gone to heaven, because this was it – heaven. She felt large hands on either side of her neck. Clark began squeezing her neck. She looked at him questioningly. The pressure on her neck increased, she couldn't breathe. He was looking at her as if she were infinitely precious to him, pain exploded in her head. Tears formed, he was choking her, crushing her. Her vision blurred and her world became a maelstrom of vicious pain, physical and emotional. She could feel her heart shatter into pieces, piercing every corner of her body. It was unbearable. Please, please … let me die.
Chloe woke up gasping for breath. She frantically brought her hands up to her neck to pull away at phantom dream hands. Her throat hurt and she could feel the wetness of tears on her cheeks. It had felt so real … just like all the others.
Get yourself together, Sullivan.
She looked in the direction of her nightstand. She had to wipe her eyes; unshed tears blurred her vision. She blinked furiously. It was 3:15 in the morning.
She sat up in her bed, her heart pounding. Her skin felt cold and clammy, she was sweating. It was just a dream, no not a dream, a nightmare, but it wasn't real. It wasn't real. Clark would never hurt her … physically. Never … not like the others.
She turned on the light. She got up and walked over to her desk and pulled out an old cigar box. She opened it and looked at its contents. There were ticket stubs, a couple of dried flowers, pictures, the usual variety of scrapbook type memorabilia, except she didn't have a scrapbook, just this box. She never did have time to make one.
She pulled out the plastic skeleton ring Joey Ralston gave her in the second grade. He'd pushed her down on the playground the next year and called her names. Then there was the My Melody pencil David Wu had given her in seventh grade right before he moved to California, promising to keep in touch and never did. She pulled out old notes, hearts encased with different boys' names. Some crossed out, but still kept.
Old crushes. It's funny how that word fits. Crush. Inevitably it does, crush you, flatten you down until you don't want to get up. It was pretty depressing. Until you bounced back, felt the stirrings of interest in a new boy, deluded into thinking that he might be different. Someone she might actually have a chance with. Stupid, hopeful optimism. Someone who wouldn't hurt her, devastate her. Because a tiny part of her died each time.
It's stupid to be so melodramatic, unrequited love happened all the time. People dealt with it and got over it. So get over it already, Chloe.
She looked down at the box again. She picked up the dried corsage that Pete had given her at Homecoming, it was still beautiful, but fragile now, so easily destroyed. Like the special friendship she'd had with Pete. He had known her better than anyone in Smallville. But for all he knew about her, she didn't know him. Not really. She remembered the exact moment their relationship changed. Having a loaded gun pointed at you wasn't something you could easily forget, no matter how much you tried. It didn't matter that he had been under the effect of the Nicodemus flower, she had seen his eyes. He would have shot her, no question. She couldn't ever totally trust him again. Chloe knew that Pete, in his own way, was very contained, that there were parts of himself he never revealed. There was something dark in Pete that she could never know. And, after that incident, he had sensed her withdrawal. That special bond between them, that in lighter moments manifested in mutual Clark ribbing and paper fights, but had made her feel safe and loved; it was gone. She no longer had someone to bounce off all of her crazy meteor theories or confess her secret hopes to; he had shattered her trust, just as she had betrayed his. She knew she had hurt him; that he couldn't remember what he had done, what he had been about to do, but he felt the bond broken all the same.
That's when the nightmares had begun. Sometimes it was Clark, sometimes Pete, sometimes just some random boy from her past. But it was always someone she had cared about and who had cared about her, if only for a little while. How rational was it to fear and dream about guys you liked trying to kill you? But then again, how often did a girl actually face that situation? Chloe could count four times already this year.
She pulled out the memorial article she had written for Jenna. Sean Kelvin had been a challenge. She couldn't believe how naïve she had been, how egotistical. Flattered that some dumb, but cute, jock had wanted to be with her. All he had wanted was her heat, in more ways than one. That had been the first time, easy to dismiss as a fluke.
But Pete, Pete was different. Special. As much as she liked to believe that she and Clark were close, Pete had been her rock. He had been there to support her, make her laugh at herself. Maybe if she hadn't been so blinded by an oblivious but sweet farm boy, she and Pete might have had a chance. He wouldn't have felt so on guard with her, wouldn't have had to hide his feelings. But she had chosen not to see, and so he hid himself, became a better friend to her than she was to him. Did she take his feelings and twist them to the point where bitterness festered? She felt the separation between them now like a physical barrier. The whole debacle with the student elections crystallized everything for her. When Clark and Pete had closed ranks, she'd felt as if her whole world had crumbled. In the past, Pete would have supported her, or at least tried smooth things over between them. He had cut her off and it had hurt more than she thought she could bear. They were still friends now, but not the kind they used to be.
People always say that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's a lie. It makes you weak, tired and scared of every goddamned thing. If Pete shook the foundation of her world, Justin had demolished it.
Justin – the very thought of him made her physically ill. It had taken less than a week for her to make the decision to throw everything away for him. It had actually only been five days from the time he came back to school to the day he hurled her body up to the rafters and threw her down.
She remembered how she'd boasted to Clark that she "knew" Justin. That Justin couldn't have been involved in Mr. Kwan's death. Six months of friendly bantering e-mail and she thought she knew him. How much stupider could she have been. Her cynical urban instincts had been corroded by two years in this quiet little town. What had happened to her spot-on assessments? This would have never happened to her in Metropolis.
The fact was she had had boyfriends since she was eleven years old. Back in Metropolis, or probably any urban area, kids started young. It wasn't anything that bad, but kids started pairing off and "going out" right before puberty actually hit. She wanted to blame Clark for her whacked out guy radar. He was just too good, to noble and pure to be real. She'd been so surprised when her patented "kiss and let's be friends" routine hadn't worked on him. She'd thought he was actually a little bit slow. Then Pete had confided in her that she had been Clark's first kiss. Well, that had sort of blown her away. Getting to know Clark had been an experiment, she'd never met anyone so ingenuous (with the exception of Lana, of course) and trusting. And then the awful, unthinkable had happened. Chloe Sullivan, big city cynic, had fallen for some doe-eyed yokel from Hicksville USA. She had become immersed in the rhythm of the town, seduced by the general good-heartedness and seeming simplicity of its inhabitants. She'd been duped. But it was too late, her hard shell and sharp edges had been worn away by the relentless onslaught of and exposure to decent and loving people like the Kents.
She was a risk taker by nature, but she'd never been so vulnerable, so trusting. But after waiting two years for her Prince of Flannel to wake up and see what was right in front of his face, she'd decided to move on. She hasn't had much success so far. They've been spectacular failures as a matter of fact. Attempted murder could be classified as such.
She didn't know if was her ego or her very fallible instincts but one of them had created the blind spot for Justin. Even now, looking back she couldn't process the clues that should have given him away, the signs that screamed to say away from the mentally unstable artist. It was disgusting and morbid, but she couldn't throw away the picture he drew of her. It sat in the corner of her room, a mocking reminder of her ill-fated choices.
So now she doubted herself, doubted her ability anymore to be a good judge of character. She could no trust herself to distinguish between a nice normal guy and a borderline psycho. That's something she unfairly blamed on Clark. She knew that. But Clark's left her without any defenses. He's disarmed her with his warmth and innate goodness. So now he's her only defense. She's the damsel in distress and she can only pray that Clark never lets her down. In a way she despised him for it. She hated being so weak and unsure, scared all the time.
Chloe thought of Gary. Gary Watts, one of the promising new deputies of Sheriff Lowell's office. That had been devastating. He had obliterated her, the Chloe that had been confident and strong. Even now her hands were shaking like a smoker going through withdrawal. Her heart constricted painfully. She couldn't reconcile the sweet traffic cop who had flirted with her that first day and the monster in the mask who had terrorized her.
She jumped at a noise from outside. She looked outside her window and caught her reflection in the glass. She couldn't see herself anymore. She could only see where some parts of her old self used to be. The old Chloe was dying and what frightened her the most was that she accepted it.