A Fresh Start
Marching up the stairs to his loft, a slightly frustrated and still sad Chloe asks "Ok, Clark. What is so important that you had to drag me back to Smallville for?"
Clark turns from the hayloft's window and surprise Chloe by kissing her passionately. He kisses her for a long minute before pulling back. He is clearly expecting her to say something. Too stunned to speak Chloe just touches her lips with her finger trying to figure out if this is a dream.
Clark breaks the silence with "Chloe, I finally figured it out. You are the one. We are destined to be together."
"How dare you!" Chloe shouts as she slaps him. Her anger protects her from feeling the pain of slapping his invulnerable chin.
Confused and a bit startled by her reaction, Clark takes a have step back from her. He stammers "But, I though you would be happy. I thought you love me?"
"Are you out of you mind? I just broke up with Jimmy three days ago! How dare you drop this on me now!" Chloe screams as her bottled up anger and frustration explode out of her.
Clark has never been so helpless in his whole life. He just stands there stammering "but I thought you broke up with Jimmy because of me. I thought Jimmy was jealous of our relationship. That is when I realized just how special what we have is."
"I broke up with Jimmy because I was being unfair to Jimmy! I wanted to love Jimmy like I had you but it just wasn't there. I was marring not for love but because he had always been there for me, unlike some. I realized that Jimmy deserved better so I ended it. That scene in the Planet was just Jimmy hurt and angry. I deserved that." Chloe continues.
"But he said you should just go be with Clark since that is where your heart is." Clark points out. He is hoping she can see the truth of their love.
Instead Chloe hits him again by asking "What about Lois? Weren't you two making out just last week?"
Not able to face Chloe on that topic, Clark admits "I thought I liked Lois but I realized what I liked about Lois was how much she reminded me of you. You were with Jimmy so I settled for Lois. I know that is not fair to her and I did break up with her as soon as I heard about you and Jimmy. I finally know who I am supposed to be with. It's you, Chloe. No one has been there for me the way you have. Please Chloe just give us a chance. Turning his boyish charm to maximum, he smiles at her.
In the past that smile would have melted her heart but not today. "You may think you love me but the truth is you are royally screwed up right now. Ever since Lex destroyed any chance of you and Lana ever being together, you have been broken. You need to figure a lot of stuff out before you are ready to commit to anyone. Besides you have a destiny to fulfill." Chloe fires back with a tiny bit of guilt. She hates arguing with Clark but some things need to be said.
"You are wrong! I do love you. I know you love me. Just admit it, Chloe." Clark begs.
Sighing Chloe reins in her temper. She knows she should be more understanding as he is still clueless Clark after all. Still, she has to say "Look Clark. I do love you but the days of being in love with you are long behind me."
Clark collapses like a puppet with its strings cut. As tears start to fall from the Man of Steel's eyes, he mumbles "I was so sure."
Ignoring the feelings of guilt that surge within her, Chloe also restrains herself from rushing to his side. Instead she lets him sob for a minute before she kneels next to him. She gently places her hand on his muscled shoulder as she tells him "Clark, you will be ok. You will figure out who you are. I have faith in you." She then stands and heads out of the loft. Looking back she tries to burn the loft into her memory as this likely the last time she will see it.
Oliver had been surprisingly helpful and discreet with her plans to move away. She greatly appreciates him arranging a place for her to stay as well as a lead on a job. She does wish she hadn't said "Oh anywhere far from here will do. I just need a fresh start." because Gotham has to be one of the most depressing places on Earth. It is clouded most days and it rains the others. Not a great joke but she still smiles for herself. Luckily, they have wonderful coffee.
At last, she can get out of the rain now that she has reached her destination. Wayne Tower may not be the most beautiful building she has ever seen but its gothic style is impressive. Mr. Wayne sure knows how to make a statement. She enters the building with just a tiny bit of nerves. She will be working directly for Lucius Fox. which while exciting is a bit unexpected. She must have done better in her interviews than she realized. At first, she thought Oliver had pulled some strings but he was surprised as she was to get the offer to work for Lucius directly. He even warned her not to underestimate Lucius. He may seem like everyone's father figure but you don't survive in business, particular Gotham business, without having a lot of brains and backbone.
After some paperwork in Human Recourses, she finds herself on the executive elevator headed for Lucius office. When the doors open on her floor, she is startled to see Lucius waiting for her.
"Good morning, Ms. Sullivan." he says with a genuine smile.
"Good morning. I am not sure of protocol around here but feel free to call me Chloe"
"Only if you call me Lucius" he replies.
Before she can exit the elevator, he steps in next to her. Taking out a metal key he inserts it in the elevator and turns it. A panel opens revealing another button. Lucius places his thumb on the button and Chloe realizes it is a thumb print scanner as well as a button. The scanner, apparently satisfied, starts the elevator going down. Chloe tries to count the floors as they descend. It becomes clear they are headed for a subbasement. When the doors open she finds herself in a large room lined with storage cases. Covering one corner is a bank of monitors, computers, and a ton of equipment she doesn't recognize which Lucius informs her will be her work area.
"There are some things you need to understand, Chloe. First, what happens in this room, stays in this room. You will be exposed to some of Wayne Industries most sensitive secrets and I will know instantly if you betray my trust. Second, you will not touch any of the cabinets in this room. You will only utilize the equipment at this work station. Third, I will have a wide range of task I may request of you. I expect honest answers as to whether or not you believe you can accomplish the task. If you lie to me, you will be terminated. Fourth, the only people authorized to be on this floor besides you and I are Mr. Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth. If anyone else tries to access this floor, you are to use this panic button (hands her a small key chained sized device). All your access cards, elevator key, etc are in the large envelope on your desk."
While hundreds of questions rush through her mind she asks the most important "Why me. No offense but you just met me the other day. Why on Earth are you trusting me with all this?"
"You are mistaken. I know a great deal about you. From your days as a school reporter, your encounters with the Luthors, and, most relevant your work for Mr. Queen." he explains as he hands her a thick file. She is a bit unnerved at the way he mentions her work for Oliver. It is almost like he knows Oliver is Green Arrow.
She is stunned by the level of information in this folder. It contains far more details than she is comfortable with. When she looks up at Lucius, she sees him in a whole new light. There is another man behind those eyes of his. A man she fears is a lot like Lex. "You have a lot of interesting stuff here but it still doesn't tell me why you would trust me. If you think I can give you an inside scoop on Oliver, you are mistaken. What your files doesn't mention is that Oliver only hired me to get in good with my cousin whom he was dating. As far as I am concerned, Oliver is a vain, arrogant playboy and I was glad when Lois dumped him."
Laughing he replies "Believe me I have some experience with men like Oliver Queen."
Again she senses there is more meaning to her words than she can grasp. "You still haven't answered my question." Chloe pushes while casually planning the best way to escape should the need arise.
"The simple truth is you are very good at finding out secrets and even better at protecting them. Oliver and Lex would not have let you live this long otherwise. What I need is someone I can trust and my gut tells me you are that person." Lucius says with such conviction she has to accept he is telling her the plain truth.
There is more to this story than he has shown her but she must admit she is intrigued. Deciding to test him, she replies "Trust works both ways. If you expect me to just sweep things under the rug, you have the wrong person. I only protect those secrets worth protecting." 'Damn, you shouldn't have said.' Chloe thinks to herself.
Lighting up the room with a bright sincere smile, Lucius responds "That is exactly why you are the right person for this job. I am not lying when I say you are a truly impressive young woman. I hope you will come to see my as a friend and a boss. Why don't you look at the tasks I have for you and see how your conscious feels about them?"
From any other man Chloe would have thought this was a come on but from Lucius it was just his honest opinion. Rolling the dice, Chloe replies "Ok."
Chloe spends the next several weeks just digging through different parts of Wayne Technologies to find potential ethical and legal problems. She highlights dozens of problems through out the Wayne Empire, mostly in the subsidiary companies, which she brings to Lucius attention. She is pleasantly surprised to see that Lucius appears sincere in his efforts to keep Wayne Technologies on a moral high ground. He has followed up on her finds quickly despite several of these problem cost the company a lot of money in fines and lost revenue. Even though her guard is still up, she finds herself liking Lucius.
The major downside of her job is working alone. She only sees Lucius once or twice over the course of the day and he is the only person at Wayne Technologies that she has any regular contact with. In fact, the other employees avoid her because the rumor is she is some sort of productivity expert who may downsize them at any moment. She wishes she knew how that rumor got started. While the isolation bothers her somewhat, she gets so lost in her research that she barely notices. In fact, she has fallen asleep at her work station so many times Lucius has taken to sending her a reminder email to go home every night at 8 pm.
She hears the dumb waiter ding and she knows it is 6pm. 'God bless Alfred' she thinks as she gets up to claim her dinner. She opens the dumb waiter and is greeted by the wonderful smell of fresh cup of coffee (prepared exactly as she likes it) and a huge sandwich.
She only met the man once but she instantly knew why Bruce couldn't live without him. He came to her work station, heaped tons of politely phrased praise on her and then smoothly mentioned that Lucius was concerned she had not been eating properly. He then followed with "a person who did not maintain their health would be a poor employee." Before she even got in a word of defense, he informed her that he has arranged for meals to be delivered via dumb waiter at 9AM, 1 PM and 6PM everyday. With that he was gone. She never told him anything about her likes and dislikes but everyday the meals where not only things she ate regularly they were scarily to often exactly what she was craving.
She mentioned Alfred's visit to Lucius and was relieved to hear him confess Alfred arranged the same for him. Lucius spoke very highly and fondly of Alfred. It made Chloe have to wonder what a playboy like Bruce ever did to inspire such loyalty. Her current theory was that they put up with Bruce because of his father. Both men worked for Thomas and both men clearly respected Thomas a great deal.
As for the man himself, she can understand Lucius comment a lot better. Bruce is seen with no less than 3 different women every week. This knowledge has actually helped her relax since she believes Lucius thinks the secrets she protected for Oliver had to do with the stream of women going into and out of his clock tower.
At first, she thought his success with women was his roughish good looks which for some reason all women are drawn too but having researched him more closely she realized that is not the key to his appeal. Bruce Wayne is a man who knows exactly who he is and clearly could careless about what the world thinks of him. Bruce has a confidence that Oliver and Lex only aspire too. Being the focus of that man's attention no matter how briefly must be very intense.
Much later than she realized, Chloe finishes her latest research project. While Lucius has not specifically asked her to use her hacking skills to find the information he is seeking, he has pointedly not question her sources. The fact that her system gets all the latest updates including military grade decryption gear makes it clear to Chloe that Lucius is more concerned with getting to the truth than how she got there.
Stretching out the kinks, she gets up and takes the elevator up to the garage level. There she makes her way out a side exit and start her walk home. Clark would be having kittens if he knew she walked all alone along the back alleys of Gotham this late at night to get home but she isn't afraid. She knows how to handle herself. She still had her car but she spent so much time at work, she hadn't needed it in weeks. It just sat in her parking space at Wayne Technologies so she didn't have to pay for parking at her apartment.
As she makes her way home, gunfire draws her attention. Something is happening on the roof of the building next to her. She looks up trying to see what the commotion is all about but can only see shapes. Two figures are firing at a third whom dives on top of them. This takes the fight out of her view but she like everyone else in Gotham recognized that third figure: The Batman. Her old reporter instincts drag her "get the heck out of here" good sense over to the fire escape. She finds herself climbing up to the roof. As she reaches the top, she peeks over and sees Batman tying up the two men he had been fighting with. They look like common street thugs and she can see a small pile of wallets and jewelry next to them.
As Batman is finishing tying them up, she notices something behind him on the roof across the way. She sees the barrel of rifle pointing towards Batman's back. "Batman behind you." she shouts.
Batman dives forward just as a shot rings out. The bullet grazes the back of Batman's head and she hears the bullet ricochet off something metallic like an army helmet. Stumbling, Batman turns towards his attacker and throws one of his famous batarangs. The rifle goes flying as the goon shouts in pain. The next batarang knocks the goon unconscious. The Batman drunkenly makes his way to the edge of the roof top and fires a grapple line. Unfortunately, his injure has affected his aim so that when he tries to swing away, the grapple line comes free. He tumbles and bounces off the fire escape she is standing on and the opposite alley wall before landing unceremoniously on the pavement. He starts to rise but then falls back. Chloe makes her way quickly down the fire escape. She rushes to his unmoving form. Up close she can see his costume is some sort of body armor. It seems vaguely familiar for some reason. Ignoring the temptation to lift his mask, she carefully checks his head wound. She finds no blood as his cowl prevented the bullet from penetrating but couldn't do much about the force. Chloe is fairly certain he has a very bad concussion. She checks over the rest of his body as best as she can and doesn't find any sign of broken bones.
Unsure of what to do with an unconscious and wounded Batman, Chloe racks her brain to come up with a plan. Suddenly, an idea occurs to her. The Batmobile must be around here somewhere. She drags Batman next to a dumpster to try and hide him from casual observes and goes in search of the Batmobile. Sure enough hidden in another alley only two blocks away she finds it.
Rushing back to Batman, she does her best to drag/carry him to the car. Luckily, he is sort of conscious and is able to walk with her support. Getting him in the Batmobile requires her to sacrifice some of her dignity as he basically climbs over her. The effort of getting into the car causes him to blackout again.
'Why is it never the easy way with these guys' she mentally mutters as she flashes on all the times she had to save Clark. Leaning into the car, she tries to find an autopilot or maybe a comlink so she can get Batman out of here. His enemies may laugh themselves to death seeing with her butt in the air as she is leaning over his unconscious form half in his car but she doesn't want to find out.
Unable to reach the control she thinks is a communicator, she climbs fully into the Batmobile. As soon as she does, the top closes trapping her inside with Batman. "Just great" she mutters. Looking around she sees far too many controls she can indentify to feel comfortable pushing random buttons.
Needing to think, she settles into the passenger seat and tries to come up with a solution to her troubles. Without a better idea, she speaks aloud "Car, open up?"
When nothing happens she slams her fists on the console in frustration and jumps in alarm as she hears the engine start. Suddenly a monitor comes on which displays a map of Gotham. She recognizes that the flashing light on the screen is their current location. Before she can push any more buttons, the Batmobile heads out on to the street. Trapped and too afraid to touch anything else, Chloe just sits on her hands as the Batmobile makes its way out of Gotham. She doesn't know the area well enough to follow the roads on the map particularly since the map has no street names. After 20 minutes, the car turns onto a hidden road and drive straight through the side of a cliff. She figured there must be a hidden entrance in the cliff side if the car was heading for it but she still found herself shutting her eyes right before they reached the cliff face.
The Batmobile comes to rest on a rotating platform which slowly turns the car around so it facing back out the tunnel. When the platform stops, the Batmobile's top opens letting Chloe out. Lights come on the moment her feet touch the ground revealing she is in a massive cavern. There are platforms built into the walls of the cavern with catwalks and stairs connecting everything.
Checking Batman once again, she sees he is still out of it. Becoming increasing worried about Batman, she searches the various platforms for medical equipment. She finds a small but well stocked operating room/clinic on one platform. One odd thing catches her attention. There is a button which says "In Case of Emergency." Conclude this is definitely and emergency, she pushes the button. She is amazed to see a robotic arm slide out of a concealed wall compartment. Attached to it is some sort of sensor array, it scans the cave. When the beam passes over Batman, the arm zips over and gently extracts him from the Batmobile. The arm then places him on the table in the medical area. Sensors and other mechanical arms come to life all around the table. When she sees one of the arms starting to remove his mask, Chloe heads down to the Batmobile.