Title: Of Dreams and Madness
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: PG, PG13 in later chapters
Spoilers through Pandora (The episode where Clark sees the future Lois went to)
Summary: My season 9 fix. If Clark Kent was dead, just who was running around Metropolis? Influenced by dreams that call her to the Fortress, Chloe faces a choice of believing in the man or believing in her heart. Not to mention figuring out the key to stopping Zod.
The dream came to Chloe every night now and even here in Watchtower as she refilled her blue with red House of El symbol coffee mug, a new favorite offering from the street vendors hawking a mind-boggling variety of Blur paraphernalia, she couldn't shake the plea playing on a loop in her mind.
I miss you. I need you. Come to me.
She knew it for what it was; a siren's call into madness. She just hadn't figured certifiable would be so tempting.
The past few months, she had worked hard to ignore her subconscious's attempt to soothe and pacify her emotions with a fantasy. The messages began hounding her ever since Clark returned from his aborted training at the Fortress, though even before that, there had been one other special dream.
That dream came the very night Clark returned to tell her goodbye.
"Clark Kent is dead," he had said striking a killing blow to her psyche and a minute later, he left without looking back. The pain had been debilitating. She kept thinking, there should be blood, a gaping hole through her middle.
She had been grieving over Jimmy's death, Davis's betrayal and Lois's disappearance as well as keenly feeling the absence of Oliver and his team; but Clark turning his back and cutting her out of his life brought her to her knees.
Literally.
Starring into the night at the spot where Clark had vanished, she clutched her middle, feeling gutted; afraid to blink, afraid to breath, refusing to believe until finally the hope and determination that had been keeping her moving since Clark left to face Doomsday, buckled under the weight of her loss.
Her head bowed and a few hot tears leaked down the sides of her face, but the depth of this cut went too deeply for tears to bring relief. Stripped of everything she loved, Chloe swayed and crumpled weakly to the floor. She vaguely remembered pounding the cold cement with her fists and silently wailing before giving up and curling into a whimpering ball.
How soon she faded from misery into unconsciousness, she couldn't say but even in her dream, she huddled in emotional agony, only the location changed. Awareness, an odd knowing of where she was, came first. The bright white light of the Arctic Fortress intruded through her closed eyelids and the hard snow packed floor stung her cheek and sapped the warmth from her body. Still, she was too numb, too empty to move or even care how she'd arrived. Then she'd felt the warmth and weight of familiar arms go around her shoulders.
Contact made the numbness recede and she cried out as her shredded heart shuddered under a surge of pain. She tried to twist away, safer alone with her icy detachment, but he wouldn't let her free and pulled her more firmly into his embrace, her back against his chest. His comfort came with cost, freeing her pain and turning loose sobs that jerked her shoulders. He only held her more tightly, murmuring something unintelligible into her hair.
There was never any question as to who the "he" was. In her dream, Chloe simply knew it was Clark, but knowing made her more frantic as she remembered him vanishing into the night. She clawed and fought to be free before finally giving in to her longing and turning around so she could burrow into his sheltering arms. As she wept and trembled, he rocked her, cradling her head with one hand and smoothing the other up and down her back. Time passed and her stormy grief abated.
Her breath still hitched and broke but like a lanced wound, her unleashed pain left room for the healing to begin and she felt strong enough to lift her head from its haven and open her eyes.
Darkness.
A second later and Chloe understood she was still alone, huddled on the floor, still facing the empty doorway leading out into the empty night at the start of an endlessly empty life. She blinked and realized it wasn't exactly night anymore. A faint glowing through the stained glass told her it was nearly dawn. A new day normally cheered her but nothing had changed.
Every dream had failed.
Every love was lost.
She was alone and maybe even responsible for all the ill that had befallen those that touched her life. She had no one. For solace, all she had was a dream. It irked her to remember she'd conjured up Clark for comfort. More irksome, the dream had brought comfort. While the weight of her losses hadn't exactly lessened, a spark of hope returned even though it was fueled by her mind's foolish fantasy. Maybe all is not lost, it whispered. Ha! Another voice mocked. You never had anything anyway.
Chloe wanted to stamp out the hope and fade back into peaceful oblivion. The hope wasn't real. Also, what kind of twisted logic could derive hope from the same source that extinguished it in the first place? How dare her subconscious meddle with her mind! Clark was the one that left her floundering. Clark was the one slinking away. Her irritation grew until she sat up, groaning at the aches in her muscles and stiffness in her joints. Cold cement was a lousy place to spend the night. That was Clark's fault as well, she told herself as she stood up and looked around.
A few feet away Chloe's eyes fell on the rust colored stain that still clung to the cement despite scrubbing. Clark dismissed the space and the idea to open Watchtower. Clark was wrong. Walking away from this place was wrong. Jimmy died as a hero. The world needed its heroes. Oliver and the rest of that group had gone to ground. However, given enough time and resources, she could find them. She could bring them back.
"Clark Kent is dead." The words came to her like a ghost. She squashed down the pain they caused and dismissed the challenge. Her days of bringing back the dead were done.
.