TITLE:  If I Could Live My Life

AUTHOR: Kaya

SUMMARY:  Chloe is secretly dying, and she's finding a way to fully live her life.

RATING: PG-13

DISCLAIMER:  I own none of these characters; I just like to borrow.

PROLOGUE I

I'm gonna live my life

Like every day's the last

Without a simple goodbye

It all goes by so fast.

~ Williams Brothers

I am dying.  It has been two months, six days and forty minutes since I found out about it.  And twelve seconds if you want to be accurate.

My heart is failing me.  Literally.  The disease is called heart failure, and it frightens me that my ailment is so simple that it doesn't even have a fancy name, like tonsillitis or thrombosis. 

Angina pectoris.  Now that's a disease name.  I used to have it, when they initially diagnosed me.  But now my heart has become weak from the testing and the prodding.  Now it has decided to seek its revenge by letting me die.

Today is like any other day as I walk through the halls of Smallville High School.  Everything is buzzing with life, while I have seemed to slow down. 

No one other than my father really knows about my affliction, and even he doesn't know to what extent the damage has become.

So he and my friends continue with their days, making plans as if tomorrow is going to come just for them.  Unfortunately, especially at a young age, I have become fully aware of my own mortality.

And let me tell you that it blows.

I am only seventeen years old.  Many have complimented me on how much potential I hold.  And I am aware that I could have easily met that expectation and more.  But now with the timeline I am given, priorities have changed and dreams are left in my fantasies.  When your death could come knocking at any moment, you don't look to the future.  You look to the present.

This is why my dreams, my goals, my wishes have changed.

In this short life I am destined to live, I only want one thing:  I want to love and to be loved.  Sadly, my circumstances have prioritized this dream at the level of impossible.  Almost as impossible as finding a cure for me.

Yes, Clark will never love me.  Not as anything more than a friend, at least.  He will always have Lana in his heart and mind, and that is just not an acceptable trait for my dream man.

Pete is no better than Clark.  Only he and I know that he has had a secret yearning for Lana since grade school.  The only thing keeping him from making a move is our mutual best friend.

And so in this little corner of the world, there is only one candidate left:  Lex Luthor.

Talk about impossible.