Collaborator

Author: Cy Panache
Category: Dark/Romance
Spoilers: This starts from the end of the Season 6 episode "Freak", from that point on I get to play as I wish.
Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.
Summary: Chloe's willing to do anything to protect Clark, even if its from herself.

A/N: This fic has been posted on the N-S board for awhile, but I'm finally getting around to posting it here in an effort to keep everything I write in one place. People over there seem to like it, but I have no idea how a broader audience will react to this concept. Still I wanted to see if I could do something with these two in the middle of Season 6. All comments would be greatly appreciated.

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Chapter 1

All I know is that every single Meteor freak I've ever run into has ended up either dead or in Belle Reve. I'm a walking time bomb.
-- Chloe Sullivan "Freak"

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"Mr. Luthor will see you now." The receptionist had an incongruously warm and pleasant voice that almost made the words sound like an invitation, a promise of good things just behind the glass doors and down the hall.

Chloe thought it was insanely unfair, putting someone at ease like that only to send them into jaws of a shark. Lex probably loved it, had probably selected the woman based purely on her voice. It wouldn't surprise her. He was like that, attentive to every detail, always aware of exactly what kind of impression he was creating. Obsessive compulsive bastard.

"Ms. Sullivan?"

The question jerked her out of her musings, and Chloe suddenly realized she was still sitting, lock-jawed, hands clenched around the strap of her bag. Forcing herself to exhale a long breath, she stood and tried to look more composed than she felt.

If she'd been here to spy, to investigate or report, if she'd been running on the righteous indignation of protecting her friends, she wouldn't have hesitated. For other people she could be an amazon, or a valkyrie. But she was here for herself, and she'd never been all that brave on her own behalf.

The receptionist pushed open the glass doors and led her down the hallway, the click of her stilettos muffled by the plush carpet. If Chloe hadn't been so distracted, she might have been intimidated by the immaculate, statuesque elegance of the woman beside her, but as it was her mind was already thirty feet away, down that hall and behind those doors. Already on what what she'd come here to do.

What the hell did she really think she was doing?

If anyone knew what she was doing, Lois, Jimmy, Lana, Clark . . . God, no don't think about Clark. If Clark knew he'd stop her. If Clark knew he'd look at her like he didn't know her anymore.

Maybe he didn't.

Ever since she'd found out she was meteor infected, she barely felt like she knew herself.

Her. Chloe Sullivan. Curator of the Wall of Weird, a 'meteor freak'.

A meteor freak.

She'd told herself over and over again it shouldn't make a difference, didn't change her. That 'meteor freak' wasn't a death sentence, wasn't a curse. That she was still the same person, still the same Chloe.

But it didn't feel that way.

She felt strange, disconnected, laid awake at night and wondered whether she'd recognize herself in morning.

If anything can turn a law abiding citizen into a card carrying serial killer it's kryptonite.

She'd said that once without thinking, almost half a joke, but now it felt like a prophecy she couldn't escape, like she was just waiting to go off. And yes, Clark had promised to act as her 'bomb squad', in that voice that said everything would be all right, that he'd keep her safe and protected the way he always had before. And yes, she'd smiled like it made everything better, okay. But it didn't, nothing could.

Because everything was different now, because stopping her wasn't the same thing as saving her. Might break him if he had to do it.

The fear of that had become her nightmare, a vivid technicolor dream that cut her sleep short, and forced her awake gasping for air. It was coming more and more often, almost every night now. Sometimes it didn't even have the courtesy to wait until she was asleep. She'd be at the computer, at the copier, standing in Clark's barn, and suddenly it would be there, Clark throwing her into a wall, Clark strangling her, sometimes it was even Lois with a gun, or Jimmy with a knife, but really in the end it always came back to Clark.

It always came back to Clark.

Because as much as she didn't want to die, didn't want to become the thing that went bump in the night, she would not be responsible for derailing Clark that way. She just wouldn't. And maybe it was presumptuous to think she'd have that much of an impact, maybe she'd be nothing more than a blip on the radar of his psyche. But frankly she had to believe she was more important than that. Because the alternative was just too painful.

So here she was, high on her own self-importance and fear and desperation, walking straight into the lion's den.

She tried to remember if she'd ever seen him in his offices at LuthorCorp, sitting behind that expansive desk, framed by a city he manipulated like a puppet, looking coolly powerful in his dark suit. Decided she probably hadn't. If she had she would have known better than to trust him years ago, would have seen him easily for what he was. Idly, he finished flipping through the file in his hands, making her wait. She wondered if it was hers, because he was just that sick. She bet he probably got off on knowing something about her she didn't know herself. Finally, he looked up with that smile that never reached his eyes.

"Chloe, to what do I owe the pleasure?" The words were perfect, the inflection cordial, almost pleased, and somehow he still managed to make the entire phrase feel like a sneer of condescension.

Someday she was going to find his vocal coach and get lessons.

But until she did, she couldn't do insinuation, or veiled threats with anywhere near the acuity of Lex, so she didn't even try. Went with her strengths, blunt and brash. "I know you're experimenting on meteor freaks."

If she'd been expecting a reaction, she would have been disappointed. Lex simply leaned back in his chair and looked at her, an amused, almost appreciative, smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. "Really. Everyone seems to know this except me." He gestured casually to one of the sleek leather and metal chairs. "Please, sit down, tell me all about my nefarious dealings and evil ways."

Chloe sat, acutely aware she was about to do something monumentally stupid and potentially deadly. 'Lana,' she thought, 'Remember he can't hurt you and keep Lana'.

Her friendship with Lana was her ace in the hole, possibly her only source of protection. She wasn't so naïve to think it was an absolute shield. No doubt Lex could make her disappear and turn up in some plausibly tragic accident or mugging, and Lana would never be the wiser of her fiance's hand in her best-friend's death. But for all that she knew Lex was a monster, had personally stared into his abyss, she'd also seen the way he was with Lana. Heard his declaration of love through the static of a ham radio. Even Lex Luthor couldn't be that calculating all the time, so Chloe had to believe he actually felt something for her friend, would avoid doing something which would hurt Lana if she didn't force his hand.

If she was wrong. Well, God help her.

"You've been transferring the most powerful and dangerous meteor infected patients out of Belle Reve and to special facilities all over the country, where you're performing highly illegal human experiments. You've also been kidnapping latent and developing meteor-infecteds so that you can implant them with tracking devices and keep an eye on them."

"I think this is usually the part where I make the obligatory and ultimately futile protestation of my innocence."

"Don't exert the effort on my account." That got her a twitch of a smile.

"And I'm sure you have proof of all of this," he retorted in that way that said he was absolutely certain she had no such thing.

And now they came to the delicate part, the critical part. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out the plain white envelope and set it on the edge of his desk, just far enough that he had to move to reach for it. Somehow the petty little powerplay gave her a feeling of control she hadn't had before.

Lex beat her at her own game. Rather than stretching across his desk, he simply stood up and walked around it, so that he was now towering over her. Perching casually on the edge he picked up the envelope and gave her a long, evaluating look. It made her squirm, made her feel like he was stripping down all her bravado and snark, and really seeing through the pretense to the scared little girl she felt like right now.

Refusing to back down she met him stare for stare, and prayed he couldn't actually hear her heart beat. Finally, he picked up a silver letter opener and with a flick of his wrist slit open the edge of the envelope, tipping its contents out on the desk.

One tiny, mangled tracking device.

For just a moment she thought she saw a flicker of recognition on his face, but it was gone so fast, she barely believed it herself. And she knew it had to have been there.

"Are you going to tell me what I'm looking at or are we playing twenty questions. We already know its not bigger than a breadbox."

"It's one of the tracking devices you used on the meteor freaks." Standing up, she unbuttoned her suit jacket and slid it off so that she stood across from him in the pretty silk camisole top she'd deliberately chosen because it left the scar on her shoulder clearly visible. "It's the one you used on me."

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but she'd been expecting something—a sneer, a denial, a laughing accusation she was coming on to him, anything. What she got was one elegant finger tracing along the edge of the scar, in a twisted caress. His touch evoked a series of bizarre sensations she hadn't been prepared for, prickly heat along her skin, ice down her spine, rapid fire changes that left her a little dizzy, a little nauseous, and she had to fight not to hiss, not to shudder, not to give him the satisfaction of any reaction at all.

Lex's eyes flicked back to hers, a strange heat in them that told her she'd probably failed. "You should have that looked at. I can recommend a good plastic surgeon."

At his cool appraisal, all her calculation, all her planning went out the window to be replaced by swift and all encompassing rage. Unthinkingly, she lashed out, her hand landing across his cheek with satisfying smack. "You sick sonofabitch!"

She wanted to hit him again, wanted to claw out his eyes and watch him bleed. But he caught her wrists before she could act on the impulse, and backed her into the chair with such force she had to sit to keep from toppling it. Still pinning her wrists to the arms of the chair, he loomed over her, dark and intense and there.

Neither of them could seem to do anything but stare at each other, ragged breaths coming almost in sync, and Chloe was acutely aware of the smell of him, the heat of his body, the bite his hands on her wrists, the fact she was sitting there in a top that was just this side of lingerie. And for an insane moment she thought he might kiss her, thought she might let him.

It was enough to snap her out of it, and she began to struggle again. Lex just clamped down harder on her wrists. All those times she'd watched Clark toss him like a rag doll had given her a false sense of security. Lex might not be a kryptonian or a meteor freak, but he was strong in the way of normal human males, the way of will and exertion and sweat and blood.

But he was also weak in the way of normal human males.

She kicked out with her right leg, directly towards his groin, forcing him to shift quickly to avoid the blow. As it was she still managed to catch him hard in the right thigh.

With a grunt of pain, Lex released her and stepped away, out of firing range. But it still took him a minute to recover his composure, and Chloe momentarily reveled in the tiny victory.

"Well, as . . . stimulating," he rolled the word on his tongue like he could taste it, taste her, "as I always find our conversations, I have a board meeting in a few minutes. It was nice of you to stop by Chloe. I'll have Rebecca see you out."

Unwilling to do this staring up at him, she got to her feet.

"You don't even know why I'm here."

"Threats. Posturing. Moral sermons." He shrugged. "Really, I don't care." He reached over for the intercom, but Chloe got there first and covered the button with her hand.

"I want you to find a way to turn me off."

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All comments and criticisms greatly appreciated.