Title: Seasons of Change
Author: Lucy Mars
Rating: PG
Summary: What she wanted, she could never have. What he longed to give, he would never say. The story of true love, tainted love and broken love told in four seasons.
Pairings: Chloe/Lex, Lex/Lana, Chloe/Bruce
Disclaimer: If they belonged to me, I would not be so ruthless.
Metropolis - Spring 2015
His knock is customary but unnecessary because he has never been unwelcome in her home.
So it is with great shock that instead of finding the mistress of this common dwelling, but magnificently magical manor, eagerly waiting for him with a glass of wine and a witty debrief of her day - he finds her weaving through a maze of open boxes, and tearing down this place he feels most at home with her bare hands.
Her eyes watch him as he gazes around the room in obvious shock. He had come to expect the unexpected from her over the years but this, this was too much.
Fighting to school the apprehension he can feel filling him with ruthless abandon, he finally finds his voice to demand an answer to the countless unasked questions he's built up over the years. "What's going on?"
"I'm leaving."
The words tasted bitter in her mouth. They were laced with false excitement, glaring lies and whimpering with regret. But he believed them and all that they falsely represented because what else did he have to believe? Their entire existence together had been built around unspoken truths, invisible feelings and impossible desires.
Why would their end be any different?
She couldn't stay any longer. She did not want to live in this world of incredible joy and smothering sadness anymore. She could only live so long living with the lingering hope that one day, one fine day he would look up at her and finally say what had always gone unsaid. The love was there - they practically glowed with love for each other - but the trust was always in short supply.
He could not trust himself not to hurt her. He could not trust himself to protect her from everything that threatened to destroy him. It was a lingering fear from the days when safety had always been a rarity and danger had constantly been looming in the shadows of his life.
She could not trust herself to be enough so that he would not disappear into the world of possibilities that beckoned for him everyday. She could not trust herself to be enough so that one day he would not look up into her face and wonder why it was he was wasting his time with her.
They were both so broken that neither knew how to be content with the moment. The only thing either of them knew how to do was to fear the coming dawn and all the troubles it would undoubtedly bring. Their lives had taught them both that nothing good ever stayed untainted. Everything they loved always left them or stayed in their hands, shattered beyond repair.
She couldn't bear the thought of watching him walk out of her life one day, never to return because she had nothing to offer him. He couldn't bear the thought of looking into her eyes one day and seeing hate reflected in the eyes that were torn and tattered by his tainted touch.
They were quite the pair really. Their love for one another cackled between them, as did the hate that simmered beneath the heat of their devotion.
He admired her yes but he hated her as well. He hated that she was all that he could never be. The shameful vessel of hate he carried was not in reaction to her because of all that she had, but because of all that he did not. He hated himself for being so broken - so dark and tainted, that surely she would flee the moment she saw how much of a monster he was. He could not bear the thought of her looking at him with disgust, once she finally delved her fingers into his assortment of sins and became as dark and twisted as he was.
To him, she was a fearless figure as pure as the summer sky. She was made of everything he longed to be. She was gentle in her actions but always firm in her resolve. She knew who she was and what she wanted. Never would she be molded into what others thought she should be. Her spirit would never allow it. The sheer force of her will would crush anyone who dared tell her that she was not allowed to be herself - that who she was was not enough.
Little did he know that she told herself that everyday - that she constantly thought herself unworthy of him.
What he didn't know was that she was built from the finest glass. She stood tall, yes, but always strikingly alone. She spoke loud and firm, but always with the knowledge that she would never truly be heard. She had it all, and yet, she had nothing at all. What she had were dark corners of misery of her own creation, shadows of doubt that tainted her moments of happiness and expressions of failures to keep her company.
She ached for him to love her in the way that she would eternally love him but it was a useless type of longing because after all these years, she had learnt the hard way that love was a fickle emotion that never came in perfect denominations.
She hated him for being all that she could never have. She hated him for only enjoying the finest goods the world had to offer.
She hated herself for longing so desperately to be better so that he could one day look at her and love her the way she loved him.
It was not that he did not love her. His love for her was tried and true but it was not the love that she needed for him to express. She could feel his own brand of love in the mocking smiles, tender embraces and moments of unbiased clarity. But it wasn't enough. It never would be. She could not live in this world of in-between, where she was eternally left to hesitantly hope for the words she could hear him whisper in her mind to finally materialize under a cloudless sky.
They had both taken all the ingredients for a timeless love and let it all fall to waste, all because neither could trust in their love.
She could not let herself be forgotten any longer because in his resolve to never hurt her, he had destroyed her.
He had run away from the light that she brought to his life and immersed himself in the light of another; a light that didn't shine nearly as bright and didn't expose all his flaws for the world to see. He had found a dimmer, yet softer, light to lie beneath because it was easier to love a bit and lose, than love with all he had and risk losing his world in one fell swoop.
She could not watch him fall in love with another that she believed suited him so well. She could not possibly make herself stand by his side with gentle encouragement and comforting words as he found the love he could never feel for her, rising without abandon or limit for a woman that loved him in return, so fiercely and true.
She could not watch as she once again lost everything she held dear to the smiling face of Lana Lang.
As her words finally registered, his face shone with betrayal and fear because he believed all the lies she told with her whispered sentence.
They were two words that would set them both free.
Looking up at her with an expression of surprise, he believed her shinning eyes to be an expression of excitement and not heart wrenching sadness.
Her hand begged to smooth the errant lines of his face away but her resolve held firm. She was shattered and broken inside but he need never know. There were so many things that he would never know. He would live happily ever after with the woman who had laid claim to his beating heart without the knowledge of how terribly she ached for him. Their love, it was a strange love. They built each other up just to crumble all over again.
It was a mystery why she loved him so dearly, when it had been so obvious from the very beginning of their days together that he could never feel the same way.
In many ways, she had shattered herself with each notion of false hope that she fostered over the years. He had not broken her heart. She had crushed it herself with every heaving and longing sigh she released in his name.
It scared her, the intensity and frequency with which she thought about him.
It scared her even more to know that no matter what she did, what she said or how she changed - he would never love her the way that she needed for him too.
How broken was she, that he could look at her and love her but never want her?
"What are you saying?" Lex asked, unconsciously moving forward and closing the space that had always stood between them.
Smiling lightly through the tears she refused to cry in his company, Chloe tried to move away because the only solution left in this muddled game of half feelings that they played was running away. Running was the only option left if she was to keep her shattered remains from becoming common knowledge.
"Why so surprised?" Chloe asked flippantly as she moved around plucking books off shelves and pictures off mantels and settling them in the boxes she had scattered everywhere. "You always knew that I had this nasty habit of doing silly things when bored."
Effectively killing all possible exits, Lex grabbed her hand to still her nervous and frantic movements. "Bored? Since when have you been bored?"
The words that she had so diligently crafted in the darkness of her room days before fell forgotten into an abyss of muddled sensations as the fingers she had watched him use to caress another, wrapped so tenderly around her shaking hand. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as he waited and searched her eyes for all the answers that he already knew.
Boredom was not what was ailing her. It was watching all her hopes for the life they would never lead together crumble before her eyes as he laughed and loved a woman who she could not hate, or even dislike. She could only watch with burning regret for everything that she could never be and hate herself for being so fiercely incomplete.
She couldn't stay here and grow to hate herself even more than she already did.
"What's really going on?" he begged to know, his fingers lacing with her own. They were the very same fingers she had watched him use to pull a face that was not her own to his for a kiss so gentle and pure that it broke a piece of her every time she thought about it.
Pulling away, Chloe looked down at her own hands because she could not meet his eyes with her own. "Nothing is going on. Just the job of a lifetime. The biggest media outlet in London wants me, Lex. They want me." she unconsciously stressed, "This is a great opportunity for me."
He should have understood everything she left unsaid because of all the things that Lex Luthor was dumb was not one of them. However, choosing to be blind was an entirely different matter. "Why do you have to leave?"
Because, she wanted to scream, because I can't stay here and watch you live happily ever after with someone that isn't me. Because, she could hear herself cry, because I can't stay and pretend to be happy for you.
"Because," she whispered so softly he could barely hear her, "Because I can't stay."
"You can't just leave your entire life behind for some job! All of your friends and family are here. You're life is here." he stressed, grabbing her chin and making her look into his frantic eyes. "What can moving to the other side of the world possibly give you that you can't find here?
Freedom, her heart whispered.
Distance, her mind promised.
"A fresh start," her lips revealed as her eyes drank in his unabashed surprise.
"A fresh start?" he echoed, stepping back as if she had struck him.
Not trusting her voice, all she could do was nod and wait. Wait for what, she was unsure but the part of her that would eternally hope for her own fairytale ending waited for him to realize all that could have been and all that they could still have. A small part of her begged for him to fold her into his arms and never let go. And yet, another part of her - the smaller part that was tired of the tears and the constant fear of being forgotten - just wanted to let go.
Each moment that he let slip by was a reminder of all the nights she wasted wondering when it would be he would finally see all that they could have together. Each step that he took away from her was a reminder of how far apart they really were. She didn't need an ocean between them to remind her of how far apart they were. She could feel the distance between them and he was standing in the same room.
"Why do you need a fresh start?" he suddenly demanded, shattering the silence that had descended upon them.
Startled, she didn't know how to respond.
Her silence only fueling the anger he could feel beginning to build in the coldness that seized his chest, he stepped forward to reclaim the space that he had put between them. "Why?" he demanded.
"Because," she replied both fearful and resigned, "Everyone has found a home of their own. Everyone we know has left behind the sublets of our youth and moved onto something more solid, something more complete." Lowering her eyes, she didn't want him to see the tears or the regret. She didn't want him to see the shame she felt at loving a man who would never love her. Sighing, Chloe whispered so softly Lex was sure he had misheard her. "Everyone but me,"
Watching the sun sink from the sky and paint Metropolis a thousand shades of crimson, Lex didn't know how to keep his world from sinking into the horizon.
"And you can't do that here?" he asked, almost afraid of her answer. Reaching out now and wrapping his hands around Chloe's sunken shoulders, he didn't understand how she could leave him. "You can't find all of that here?"
"No," she hears herself say as images of their countless days together flood her mind. She wants more than mistaken assumptions by complete strangers that they're two lovers in love. "Even you've built an entirely new life of your own. I need to do that. I need to find all of that for myself."
His stare is an incredulous as his proclamation of surprise. "You're punishing me for falling in love?"
The unspoken question slays her already broken heart. No, this isn't about punishing him for falling in love with a woman that wasn't her. This is about not punishing herself anymore by watching him build a life with the love of his life and sitting silently as he forgets all about her.
Her eyes wide and hard, Chloe doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at his exclamation. "No," she laughs darkly pushing him away, "No," she repeats as she wraps her arms around herself, looking for comfort that he either cannot or will not give.
Frustration, at himself, laces his voice as he stands in the despair that he's created for himself. "Why do you have to leave?"
She has no answers for him. Not any that he'd want to hear or she'd want to express. What has been left unsaid for so many years are not going to be brought up now. Not when all she'd receive for her troubles would be a pitying look of rejection.
"We'll stay in touch," she lies. The words are stale as they fall flat and echo with insincerity.
His eyes tell her that he knows that they will not but he does not object. Actually, he does nothing but stand in the silence that they've immersed themselves in. They began their time together on an unspoken attraction and built their friendship on a foundation of silent love and glistening lies. It was only fitting that they ended it the same way.
"Yeah," he finally sighs, weary and tired from the years of unspoken longing and suppressed desires. "Yeah, we'll keep in touch."
She drinks him in, desperate to memorize ever last detail about him that she's already burned into her mind because she knows, she can feel it to the tip of her toes, that this may very well be the last time they will ever stand in the same room again. This is the end of their life together, never as one, but always longing for a unity that they've never been able to achieve.
"I'll miss you," he finally utters, the closest he has ever come to admitting what has always laid beneath the surface.
She wants to tell him that she knows. She wants to be able to shout the words that will reassure him that she knows it all - all that they have always left unsaid - but no matter how much she wants to reassure him, she cannot.
Because she does not know. She has never known what it is that he feels behind the closed doors that they never speak about. All she knows is what she has longed for and what she can never have.
She has nothing to give him that he would want, so all she can give him is the truth. "I'll miss you too."
Spring is the first fragile steps of life through the thick morning mist of the unknown. The days to come begin here where life finds its foundation in the deaths of yesteryear.
TBC.