Author's Comment: This one is for Chlollie, who requested a Smallville/Batman crossover with Chloe and Bruce.
BlueSuedeShoes
One would think, Chloe sighed internally, that with my lifetstyle, I would be grateful to be a little bored once in a while. She sipped her cocktail, a vacant, dull expression on her face. But I'm not.
She couldn't help it. She was so used to constant excitement and even panic, that the three month standstill she'd been dealing with was actually starting to get old. She knew she should be grateful for the peace, and that clearly the JL was doing its job, but part of her was taking it childishly. She'd actually caught herself wishing someone would threaten humanity - or at least Metropolis - for a moment the other night.
She chuckled to herself at the absurd notion.
"Am I missing a joke?" asked a voice beside her, making her jump. Chloe looked up into the intriguing eyes of one, Bruce Wayne. She smiled nervously.
"Um, no, not really." She paused. "I'm Chloe," she added a little abruptly, offering her hand.
He grinned. "Bruce," he supplied, shaking her hand. "And it's a pity. I could've used a little humor to liven up a dull evening."
So this is her, Bruce thought to himself, sizing her up. He had already heard of Chloe Sullivan from Superman and the Green Arrow, and had been anticipating meeting her for a while. Not of course that Chloe realized she was talking to Batman after months of trying to piece together his identity. He had wanted to get a feel for her first. She was a lovely woman. Pretty and unaware of it, with a friendly, warm smile that could melt many a cold heart. A sparkle suddenly caught the corner of his eye as she lifted her drink and drained the last dregs from it.
No one mentioned she was married, he thought, slightly startled by the sight of the wedding band on her finger.
"Where's your husband this evening?" he asked casually.
For some reason, Chloe blushed a deep carmine, and her eyes darted away. A casual observer might have thought she was a shy newlywed. Bruce Wayne was no mere casual observer. He read in her brief reaction a sense of evasiveness, shame, and deep sorrow.
Maybe they've been fighting? Or one of them is cheating on the other? He thought fleetingly in the few seconds before she responded.
"He isn't here. I came on my own. Business."
"I see. And what business are you in, Chloe?"
This time she maintained eye contact, perfectly confident in her response, which was fairly impressive, considering it was a lie. "I'm a personal assistant to Oliver Queen. I specialize in human resources, recruitment, public relations, and research and intelligence."
Well, not a lie per se, but a carefully constructed truth. A well-rehearsed one, too. "That's quite a mouthful," he joked. "How many times have you had to say that tonight?"
Chloe huffed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. "Too many times," she said in exasperation.
He chuckled. "Well what brings you to Gotham?"
She gave a sparkling little laugh. "Well, apparently, as Oliver has only recently informed me - and by recently I mean yesterday evening - apparently my job also encompasses attending functions he can't. He had something come up at the last minute so I'm here to help him save face," she said conspiratorially.
Bruce grinned. "Well I'm sure most of us would prefer you over Queen any day of the week."
Chloe made an exaggeratedly shocked face. "That's my boss you're talking about!"
"Well nothing against Queen, but between you and me, you look better in a dress," he winked at her.
I'm flirting with a married woman. Why on earth am I flirting with a married woman?
Chloe smiled, though, a flattered blush creeping into her cheeks.
"So," he continued, "now that you've got your well-rehearsed story out of the way, why did Oliver Queen really send you to Gotham?" he asked, pulling a fresh martini off a passing tray and handing it to her in exchange for her now emptied glass.
Chloe looked startled.
"Please," he smirked. "Don't sport with my intelligence."
Chloe looked into his dark eyes searchingly. Bruce Wayne was not what she had been told to expect. She had been informed he was an arrogant, rich lunk-head who had been throwing his life away from the time his parents died. She had heard stories of his rudeness, of his media-captured escapades with women and drink. No one had warned her that he had a shrewd intellect or a sharp intuition for when he was being lied to.
Nor had she in her wildest dreams expected to find him polite and charming.
"The truth, Mr. Wayne?" she asked carefully.
He nodded, a slight hint of mirth in his eyes.
She looked thoughtfully at her drink as she swilled it in the glass. "I suppose," she said, taking a sip, "I can tell you the truth, just not why."
"An interesting clause. What's the truth, then?"
"I'm researching batman."
He faked surprise. "Really? That seems like an unusual thing for Queen Industries to be interested in."
Chloe lifted an eyebrow at him, and slowly a smug smile spread over her face. "You're not the only one who knows when they're being lied to, Mr. Wayne. You knew that was why I was here. How?" she challenged.
He shrugged nonchalantly. "Call it a wild guess. You look like the sort of woman who's attracted to men in masks," he teased lightly, turning out to survey the room as he spoke.
Chloe watched with narrowed eyes. "Uh huh."
Suddenly Chloe looked at her phone. She read something on it and then put it back in her clutch, a different air about her.
"I'm sorry to cut a fascinating conversation short," she said, pulling Bruce's eyes back to her as he sensed her sudden change in attitude, "but I have to get going."
He looked startled. "So soon? Is everything all right?"
But he could already sense that Chloe's focus had left him entirely. "Hmm? Oh yes, no, I just have to get going. Something's come to my attention that I need to deal with immediately. I'm sorry." She looked up again. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Wayne."
"Bruce," he smiled, feeling his own phone buzz in his pockets as he spoke, "and you sound surprised.
She was already walking past him, but she glanced over her shoulder with a smirk. "I am."
Bruce found his eyes glued to her small form, watching her cross all the way to the other end of the room before he was drawn back to reality by a second buzzing of his phone. He pulled it out and saw two text messages from Alfred.
Clear night.
You should see the stars.
Bruce's eyes hardened and his jaw set ever so-slightly. He casually sidled over to a window, glancing out to the real meaning of Alfred's messages: the bat signal.
He texted Alfred back to let him know he'd gotten the message.
You're right. Very clear.
Chloe flattened herself against the brick wall, trying to settle her breath. Around the corner was the open lower roof of the Gotham police department where a tall, world-weary man with whitened hair and an aged face stood waiting in a trench coat beside a giant search light, which painted the image of a bat on the cloudy night.
Her efforts not to be seen were soon rewarded when none other than the Dark Knight appeared in the flesh.
"Gordon," he greeted in a gravelly voice that sent chills spasmodically down Chloe's spine. She caught her breath, somehow sure he would hear her heaving gulps of air.
Police Commissioner Gordon said nothing but handed Batman a manilla envelope. Chloe had seen only a brief glimpse of the Commissioner's face before Batman's arrival, but she had read deep fear, a terrible anxiety in his eyes.
Batman opened the envelope and pulled out what looked from the back to be a large photo. "Barbara." It was the only word he said, but the manner in which he spoke made Chloe tremble for whoever would bear the brunt of his anger.
Barbara? Who is that?
"They're demanding I release Oswald Cobblepot in exchange for her."
"I'll find her. How long do I have?"
"Twenty-four hours."
"I'll find her, Gordon," he repeated, and neither the Commissioner nor Chloe doubted his word for a moment.
Two days later Chloe was still in Gotham, writing home an e-mail to Lois of the harrowing story of how Batman rescued the police commissioner's kidnapped daughter. Not being a reporter would never stop Chloe from telling a story, and she knew Lois understood that. Besides, they both benefitted because in the end Lois would probably end up writing her own version for the Planet.
She hit "Send" and leaned back in her seat and released a slow breath. She couldn't pretend she wasn't impressed with Batman. He was a hero of epic proportions. It was refreshing not to know who was behind the mask. She knew eventually she would have to get down to the gritty task of uncovering his identity, but for the brief moment she could allow him to be someone wonderful, a hero, without having to deal with the humanity behind the mask, and therefore the weakness.
She hadn't told Lois that a night later, she had received her own first-hand encounter from Batman. She had returned to the top of the police department after Barbara was safe and sound, going with an instinct that Batman and the Commissioner would talk to one another again.
She hadn't been disappointed, either. The conversation itself hadn't been important, not in the long run, it was afterward when Batman had once more vanished into the night and Chloe had breathed her sigh of relief. All of a sudden that dark voice had startled her out of her wits.
"Learn anything interesting?"
So surprised had Chloe been to hear that voice just behind her that she'd lost her balance, and he had saved her from what would have been a very upsetting mess on the pavement below.
And he hadn't set her down right away. For a brief moment he had simply held her in his arms. Chloe for her own part, had been so scared for the brief second of her fall that she was clinging unthinkingly to his neck.
In retrospect, Chloe found it odd to think she had allowed herself to hold such a man so intimately. Nothing about Batman screamed "let's hug." He was unapproachable and untouchable in every way possible.
But then, I suppose it takes fear to knock away the boundaries like that. He could have been Godzilla in that moment and I would have been hanging on for dear life.
And after a pause, he had set her gently back on her feet.
"You should be more careful. I'm sure your husband would be sad to lose you to asphalt."
Chloe had flinched, wondering how he had had time to notice her wedding ring.
"I," she stammered, "um...thank you."
"I didn't call you out the other night because I knew you didn't mean any harm, but don't let me catch you eavesdropping again."
Breathless, Chloe had nodded.
"Go home to your husband. I'm sure he's wondering where you are."
And he had left, or rather, made a dramatic exit by grappling straight up to the nearest rooftop, leaving a somewhat stunned and unsettled Chloe in his wake.
Chloe bit her lip and twisted her wedding ring on her finger as she recalled the previous night's events before a knock on her hotel room door startled her.
She got up from her seat and crossed the room, opening the door when she got there.
"Mr. Wayne!" she said in surprise, for, indeed, Bruce Wayne was standing outside her door, holding up a long black coat on a hanger in a plastic bag.
He smiled at her, raising the coat slightly. "You left this the other night. I had it dry-cleaned."
Chloe stared blankly at the coat in his hand before lurching awkwardly in recognition. She took it from him. "Thank you. That was...entirely unnecessary."
He shrugged, still grinning at her.
Chloe looked at him for a moment before suddenly blurting, "Would you like some coffee?" having realized she needed to invite him in to be polite.
"Coffee sounds nice, thanks. I have a couple minutes."
She moved aside to let him in and immediately set to work brewing coffee. Bruce couldn't help the slight smirk that danced about the corner of his mouth as he watched her.
In the back of his mind, he knew it had been an idiot movie to come inside. Even if Chloe weren't married, there would be no point. There would never be a point, not for Batman.
And regardless, she was married. So even if he were only Bruce Wayne, no alter ego to complicate matters, she would still be out of bounds.
And yet, Chloe amused him. He liked her energy and vivacity and apparent ability to get her hands dirty. He swallowed a chuckle at the thought of her on the ledge of that building two nights in a row and had to ask her to repeat the question she'd just asked him. As Batman he had followed her back to her hotel the previous night, partly to be sure she got there safely, partly to find out where he could bring the coat to. It had been happy chance that he had noticed it the other night as he was leaving, and he couldn't have asked for a more innocent excuse to see her one more time.
Their brief talk over coffee was not over-intimate, nothing particularly earth-moving, but it was nice. Nice to be in the presence of the sort of person who reminded him why he donned that cursed mask every night to begin with.
Chloe caught herself flushing once in a while when he spoke to her or made eye-contact. Bruce Wayne was an attractive man, she had to admit, and while he never did anything that could be called overstepping a boundary, the occasional brush of his hand or confident smirk, the few moments where his eyes suddenly pierced into hers had her catching her breath, and she had to admit, when the time came, she was sorry to see him go.
Bruce found himself thinking of her every night for days on end, long after Chloe had returned to Metropolis. She had been beautiful, a breath of fresh air in the dank, rotting sewer that was his world. She was like the brief glimpse of sunshine you caught as you passed a window.
She belonged to someone else. True. But to him, it didn't matter. Had she been free, she would still have been untouchable. He could never have what Chloe must have with her husband.
His fate, his curse, his gift, was to protect those people, but not to live among them.
Chloe had come to Gotham for Batman, he knew that. She had never had a real opportunity to talk to him about why. The one night she'd gotten close, he'd purposefully never given her the chance. He would never be a team player for her little clubhouse, and, pathetically enough, he hadn't wanted to turn her down.
Besides that, a small part of him was convinced that if anyone could persuade him, she could.
He wondered where she was at that particular moment, whether she were lying asleep beside her husband, a man he preferred not to give a face to if he could help it.
For a brief moment he wondered whether the man deserved someone like Chloe.
Chloe sighed deeply. Seated cross-legged on her twin bed in the Talon, she stared absently out the window, twisting the ring on her finger unthinkingly.
Lois entered the room and paused for a moment, hesitating. Finally, she sat down on Chloe's bed and rested a hand on top of Chloe's, stilling them.
"Chlo," she said slowly. Chloe turned her head to look at Lois. "About the ring..." she began, but Chloe was already pushing herself off the bed and heading for the door.
"Please not now," Chloe said in a wearied voice.
"It's been over a year," Lois called after her, stopping her in her tracks. "I can't make you do it, Chloe, not until you're ready. But you need to start thinking about it. Start letting yourself heal, baby cuz."
Chloe didn't respond, didn't look at her as Lois exited the room again, softly closing the door behind her and giving Chloe time to herself.
When she was gone, Chloe sat down in front of her dresser, looking at her own reflection. She looked down at the wedding band on her finger, it's cold sparkle somehow harsh and unfeeling.
Slowly, deliberately she slid the ring off her finger and looked back at herself in the mirror. Nothing had changed, she was still the same woman, but now she felt naked, as though it were out there for everyone to see:
Chloe Sullivan, Jimmy Olsen's widow.
Unable to bear the weight suddenly pressing down on her she collapsed on the dresser, burying her face in her arms, sobs racking her body, echoing in the room's unsympathetic stillness.