Chloe paints her room green. It is a sickly bright color and the walls glow in the day when the light hits them. She stays there for three days, not leaving the confines of her apartment. She wait for her father to call her but her brand new cell phone records no missed calls.
The morning of the accident, her father offers to drive her to Metropolis. She says no. After it happens, she is waiting in the hospital for him to pick her up. He looks at her incredulously and tells her that that nothing ever happened.
When her cousin comes over, she steps into Chloe's bedroom and loudly says that the "neon puke" color make her feel nauseous. Chloe grins a little. They go out drinking, tequila for Lois, then more tequila for Lois, then the entire bottle of tequila for Lois. Chloe feels a little sick herself. Lois is too brusque, too raw for her, and Chloe heads home and surrounds herself in a green cocoon.
He would believe her is she told him. She never tells him.
He is wearing red. It clashes with the walls, and he sits on her sofa, looking out of place and uncomfortable. He tells her that he loves her.
Chloe throws up in the toilet. She looks in the mirror and her too-pale face has acquired an unearthly tint.
She starts to feel sick the afternoon after the accident. She goes to her doctor and is told nothing is wrong with her. She notices the weird things the day after. She doesn't tell anyone. She thinks about her mother sometimes.
The next day she drives to the Daily Planet. The elevator ride up to the top floor is so long, and she wonders how someone could just ignore that. How the could just forget that there were so many people working below them, not just two star reporters. Perry White. His name is a color. White like printer paper, white like cleanness and blankness and new beginnings.
He passes her in the hallway. Blue shirt, red jacket, that horrible blinding shade of red.
Perry doesn't give her back her old job.
She is running through the cornfields of Smallville, chasing after someone. But they run too fast. Behind her, sirens wail. Her body is illuminated by the moon. A flash and he is standing before her, plaid and denim.
It has been a week now, and her father still hasn't called. She wants to talk to him so badly, she needs to hear his voice. There is a voicemail from Lois on her cell phone.
Jimmy and her go out to dinner. He is nice and wholesome. She likes that in a guy. She likes good guys, people who would help other people. He drops her off at her front door. She doesn't invite him inside.
The paper arrives at her door every morning. She reads it, newsprint smudging on her fingers and making her indescribably sad. He isn't a very good writer, but his stories are filled with emotion, strong and unabashed and naïve. He writes in primary colors.
She feels so alone. Sometimes in the cafeteria she sees familiar faces and she feels guilty. But she isn't anything like them.
A meteor freak attacks Lana, a throwback to the old days where everything was black and white and pink and green. It was the custodian at the Smallville Medical Center, exposed to meteor rocks on his property. He had lived peacefully for years until Lana barged into the cleaning supplies office (no doubt there with Lex), disrupting his monthly werewolf transformation. Lana calls her on the phone, breathy and whiny, asking why Clark stopped talking to her after it happened. She goes on and on about lies and secrets and Chloe doesn't really care. She tells her that she hasn't spoken to him for weeks. Lana says that she needs to talk to him about that thing that almost killed her. Chloe hangs up.
The doctors show her samples of her blood. Red and green. She goes in for tests once a week, and they tell her that she is very cooperative. When they find out she hasn't been taking her meds, she is in the room by herself for three days. The metallic walls close in on her.
She writes scathing articles of LexCorp, of corruption in the local government. They will never leave her room.
She tells Lois once. About what happened to her, about what the bracelet on her wrist really means. She sighs and tells Chloe that she needs to come to terms with what happened, and that she understands that Chloe is ashamed of her "breakdown". After all, she says, considering your family. Her voice trails off and she looks ashamed. Chloe leaves and goes home and lies down in her emerald bedroom.
He comes over, and she tells him everything. Everything they did to her there. She tells him that she isn't crazy.
He comes to visit her once. He comes into her room, and he clutches the side of his head. He is sick. He falls on the floor and she cries.
He can't save her. This is what she tells herself. She reminds herself that she can't put him in danger. She is so scared sometimes, and she just wants him to be there, comforting her like he always has. So she goes home and the walls remind her that he can't save her.
She hates Belle Reeve.