The crack of a fist falling across her face caused Chloe's head to roll to the side limply.
Calmly, emotionlessly, she turned her face downward and spit the salty blood and bile from her mouth to the floor.
"Good morning," came the male voice she had grown to loathe in the last...how long had she been here? Weeks? Months?
She tallied up the number of days she'd been counting.
Months, she thought blankly. Three months, one week, and four days.
Out loud, Chloe said nothing, just as she always did. She wondered if she were still capable of speech. She hadn't spoken in so long. It made her question whether her vocal chords were still in working condition anymore.
It would be nice to talk, she thought as fist came crashing down again. He was speaking again, but she chose to ignore his words. He said the same things, asked the same questions of her relentlessly. And just as relentlessly, she refused to answer him.
Her mind wandered to thoughts of Oliver, who she was sure would handle this differently...had handled it differently. He would be snarky and sarcastic and that bitter sense of humor he had would have kicked in long ago. It was his defense mechanism.
A hand clamped around her jaw, wrenching her face up to look into her captor's.
Which is virtually pointless, she thought to herself. Her eyes were mostly swollen shut at the moment. Even if they hadn't been, it wouldn't have stopped her expression from glazing over as she sought a memory to focus on today. She didn't listen to him. She never listened to what they said. It was why they were so furious. They thought they'd hit the jackpot when Watchtower offered herself up in exchange for the Green Arrow. She was the next best thing to endgame for them, being the vault of secrets and information that she was.
Little had they known that she would completely shut down to them, not so much as grunting in response to the beatings.
For about a week they had thought to change tactics-she had been cleaned, fed, treated more like a guest as they tried to convince her that they weren't really the bad guys and all she had to do was give them a few answers and she could end all this.
Or, at least, that had been the general gist, she supposed.
She hadn't really been paying attention.
In the end their lack of creative won out. When being "nice" didn't get them anywhere, it was back to the torture. The starvation, the beatings, the manhandling.
God, she was hungry. According to her calculations it had been about three days since her last alleged meal-half a glass of water and stale, hardened bread.
Come on, Chloe, she warned herself, find a memory. If she thought about food too much, she'd get weak. Food didn't matter. They had to have her alive, so they'd bring her some eventually.
Eventuall her mind flitted over to the weekend at the McDougal Inn. She remembered what a little fool she'd been with a small, almost undetectable smile. Vaguely, she recognised that her shoulder was being wrenched in a disagreeable direction. Simultaneously, she recollected that ridiculous spoon.
I was so upset about something so...unbelievably mundane. It was a spoon, for goodness sake.
Her teeth gritted as she registered that her shoulder had definitely been dislocated. That vile voice was growling in her ear as he yanked it still harder from its proper position.
And then he got me a satellite and that was no big deal. God, I was stupid. The spoon upsets me but I can handle the satellite.
She gasped for air involuntarily as the pain in her shoulder deepened.
Please, God, let me black out soon. The days where she blacked out were the easiest, but they were also unnerving because she tended to lose her sense of time.
Then again, maybe that's a good thing.
She knew the time didn't really matter. She didn't know how long she would be here, that things would be like this, but she knew that he would come for her. Oliver would come. She'd seen it.
Even if she hadn't put on the helmet of Nabu, though, she would have had faith. Oliver would never give up on her.
Even in her present conditions she was able to register the irony, though. The helmet had asked her whether she were willing to sacrifice her sanity to save the archer, but having put it on was what was preserving her sanity. By knowing that there would be an end to all of this, she never lost faith, never ran out of hope that perhaps it would be sooner than later. He would come and that was her saving grace. The thing that kept her sane.
She closed her eyes when she was flung to the floor and made the mistake of using the now damaged shoulder to catch herself, but no sound escaped her lips.
Could use that healing ability about now, she gave a bitter internal laugh. Not that it had ever done her much good. She could heal others, but never herself.
Story of her life.
Focus, Chloe, she directed herself. No negative thoughts. That was important. If she slipped into her cynical ways she would lose herself to them. She brought herself back to the weekend escape she and Oliver had taken, trying to remember the exact colors and pattern of the matching tartan robes Lois and Clark had caught them in.
Lois.
I hope she's doing all right. Her blank expression softened slightly, though her captor was too blind to detect the difference. But Clark is taking care of her. No doubt about that. The two of them will look out for each other even with the entire world crashing down around them.
A foot collided with her side, winding her. She coughed forth more blood.
Who knew I had so much blood? she thought idly. I've probably lost enough to save lives by now if I'd been donating. Her mind drifted. So much blood...that sounds familiar. Was that Shakespeare? She thought back to high school. Macbeth maybe. One of the few Shakespeare plays she'd ever read.
Hmm, not a good line of thought, she directed herself away from it as her mind flashed to the story of MacDuff's wife and child.
Oliver and I should go to a play when this is over.
...assuming he ever lets me out of the tower ever again. Somehow I get the suspicion he's going to be more overprotective than the General on prom night. Internally she sighed at the thought of her uncle. He would not be the one to actually find her, but the knowledge that he was looking for her as well was touching and...inexplicably comforting.
Mmph. Bruised ribs.
There was a crack and she corrected herself.
Strike that. Broken ribs.
She wondered how long they would give her to heal from this little escapade. When the beatings got this brutal, they tended to give her a couple of days to recuperate slightly.
She knew she was making it worse for herself in ways. The more constant she was, the more angry they got. She knew something must be going wrong for it to be this damaging.
She physically smirked at the thought.
Good.
And then, as occasionally happened, something he said pulled her out of herself. She fought to close herself off again, but any word of Oliver tended to break her slightly.
"...read about him in the paper today," the voice said smugly. "He's getting on with his life quite swimmingly from what I see. Does it bother you, I wonder?" He landed another kick to her already broken ribs, forcing Chloe's breath from her as she fought not to vocalize the pain. "Does it bother you that he's taken your sacrifice so ungratefully? Shouldn't he have barged in here long ago to rescue you?" She could hear the sneer in his voice when he spoke the word. His contempt for their status as "heroes" had gotten annoying after the first day.
She continued her attempts to shut herself off from him again. It's a lie, she told herself firmly, knowing she was right with total conviction. He's been telling lies like this from day one. I know my fate, and it does not involve Oliver forgetting about me.
"He doesn't even miss you, does he?" She was dragged mercilessly to her feet. "Then again," he hissed, "why would he? He's got his choice of just about any damn woman he wants, doesn't he?"
She shut her eyes, forcing her mind to focus on tartan bathrobes. The corner of her mouth twitched fondly.
He didn't see. "What would he need you for, anyway?"
For my sparkling sense of humor and my remarkable wit, she joked with herself. Oh, and how amazing I am in bed.
When she got out of here she was holding Oliver captive for at least a month and they were going to do nothing but have incredibly hot reunion sex. All day, every day.
Well, except to eat and go to the bathroom. But other than that, a total sex-fest.
She drifted pleasantly into images of Oliver shirtless...she had so many of them stored up.
Why is that man always naked anyway? It's like...shirts literally flee from him.
Fed up with her once again, the hand slammed ruthlessly across her cheek, making her eye feel like it might explode. The force of the blow knocked her to the floor, but her internal laughter over Oliver's lack of clothing kept her from focusing too much on her broken ribs and dislocated shoulder.
She listened motionlessly from the floor as the sound of footsteps faded to her right and a door slammed, a lock clanked.
She heard angry, incoherent and muffled shouts from the other side of the door, all of which eventually faded away as well.
She grinned on the floor.
Another day down. The villains have been thwarted again. Next week our hero will do it all over again.
She sighed a ragged, staggering breath, trying not to take too much air into her injured ribcage. If she was lucky, maybe they were only cracked.
She dropped her head onto her shoulder, too exhausted to exert any effort into standing and lugging herself back to the chair.
Emil was going to have a field day with her.
She shook her head. Emil would be nothing to Clark.
And Clark would be nothing to Oliver.
"Ollie," she breathed, her first word in the entire time she'd been there. She was right, her voice was hoarse and unused. When she got out, she was going to purposefully talk Oliver's ear off about the most nonsensical things she could think of. Spoons and bathrobes and coffee and tights and lots and lots of dirty sex talk.
She gave a painful, breathy laugh, instantly regretting it. She forced herself to roll onto her back, ignoring the pain it induced. Laying on her back with her spine straight was the most she could do for her healing body in her attempts to make sure nothing healed too haywire.
Ollie, please get here soon. God, please get him to me soon.
"God, I love that man," she whispered to God.