A/N: So, you guys know I love this fandom to itty bitty pieces. But sometimes I find myself reading Kal/Chloe fic that does little to no examination of the psychological effects of these encounters. Not saying that just calling them hot is bad ('cause I definitely don't think it is), but I always wanted to know the effects of this on our dear Miss Sullivan. AU Exile (3x01), because I can.
So when sickness turns my ego up
I know you'll act as a clever medicine
If I turn into another, dig me up
From under what is covering the
Better part of me
—
Dig
Incubus
lie
He gets what's coming to him.
Chloe Sullivan's known for watching everything, and she's watched them all, watched everyone who's been walking around with Clark-shaped holes in their hearts. Mr. Kent, who's stoic and stark without his wide, trusting smile. Mrs. Kent, holding the shadow of a new child, the memory of an old one, always by the phone in case he calls, again.
And Lana Lang. Lana Lang, who she used to hate, because Lana Lang was everything she wasn't. Lana Lang, who she used to hate, with her cheerleader uniform and exotic looks and secret smiles. Lana Lang, who gave Clark her heart and saw it stamped on, kicked away in the dust when he drove off on that shining Harley-Davidson, far and away.
Chloe's long past thinking about herself, and what she is, and isn't, to Clark Kent. She's just so determined to get him back, to have everything be normal again.
Normal.
Imagine Chloe Sullivan, the meteor town's self-proclaimed biggest fan, the girl who goes where Weekly World News and the National Enquirer will not.
Imagine her, wanting Smallville to be normal.
--
Metropolis is a maze of glass and cement, shining pillars of human achievement trying to block out a backdrop of putrid life. No matter what the tourism industries or LuthorCorp may tell you, it's still a dangerous thing to walk in Metropolis at night.
Especially when you're a girl who's only sixteen.
Especially when you're alone.
Especially when the boy you're following could kill you on a whim.
But investigations, especially those held on account of non-biological sisters and family friends, cannot be ignored. Chloe isn't afraid of death, not at this point, because she's figured there are lapses in Clark's behavior.
There's times when the façade slips, when the real Clark reaches out.
To say, "Help me, please. Please, I want to come back. Please. I want to come back. I want to come home."
This is an intervention, she thinks. This is necessary, this is required, there is no escaping the summons now.
Clark, she thinks, c'mon, it's time to come home.
She keeps hot pursuit until he's in an elevator, headed to the flat where he's presumably staying. The complex is a state-of-the-art, expensive place, and she's busy thinking of the ways he could be doing this as she heads up the widely spaced stairs. She's hoping it doesn't go as deep as it could.
The criminal underworld has no place in Clark's life; runaway or not, he's above that, and she's gonna show him how.
She beats him up. Luxury can buy Clark Kent Metropolis' best flats, but it won't buy elevators that can outrun her. She's content to press herself against the wall, ready to hear the sound of his footsteps. She'll give him time, she thinks, wait until he gets inside. And she'll get him to peel away that façade before she makes her move—
His rough voice breaks her thoughts, sends them scattering in a panic. "Who's there?"
It is all she can do not to breathe, much the less think. She hadn't considered alternatives in case she was caught. She had been so busy thinking of ways to get him home that she hadn't thought of anything else.
Faster than she can blink, he's got a grip on her arm, hard as steel, and she can't break it or bear to move away.
All she can do is look at him, at his beautiful eyes that still leave her hoping, at the shadow that still stretches long—
—and the new, leering smile she would rather see him without.
"You were always the curious one, weren't you, Chloe?" His voice is low, almost a purr, and it is all at once too real and unreal for her to feel at ease with it.
"Clark, stop it," she says, more harshly than she would like. "Let me go."
"You never want to leave things alone, Chloe," he argues, his breath hot in her ear and his hand taking hold of her other arm. She is all but rooted on the ground in front of him, still hot from the inner depths of Atlantis' dance floor. "Why would you ever want to leave me?"
She struggles and settles with kicking his foot. It hurts her more than him, but she doesn't care.
"What has gotten to you, Clark Kent?" she demands, frustrated. She sounds very loud, but even at half past one in the morning, she finds it difficult to care. "Why are you doing this? What about…"
He's leaning in, his eyes staring into hers and oh God, it's so hard to breathe.
"Lana!"
The name makes him flinch, makes her hope.
Okay, she thinks, I've got him. He knows what I'm about to say, he knows what direction I'm gonna head in, so here we--
His lips on hers are almost wonderful, if not for only a moment.
He shoves his tongue past them, pins her to the wall with a force she can't fight.
It is both dream and nightmare, because she's wanted this, oh God, more than she cares to ever admit. She wanted this, but not this, wanted it to be different and safe and home, wanted it to be anywhere but in a faraway city when she was supposed to bring him home to another girl.
No. Not like this.
"What the hell are you doing, Clark?"
"Oh, come on," he coaxes, his voice so low it makes her skin stand on end. "You know you liked it."
She is speechless for a minute, tries to regain words as he leans in close again. She twists away and looks at him angrily.
"That isn't the point here," she says, her voice getting stronger. "How could you do that to Lana? How could you just throw away a girl who's in love with you?"
She nods no, fights her way out of his grip. Almost reluctantly, he lets her go.
"And I thought you were different, Clark." She laughs, high and fake among the sirens in the streets. "I thought you were worthwhile."
She has every intention of leaving him behind, of tearing apart everything that reminds her of him when she gets home. She's created things and she can conversely erase them, and she will rip Clark out of her life the way she ripped her way into his.
It is a single word that stops her.
"Chloe…"
Soft, almost too quiet to be heard over the emergencies demanding attention. Gentle, almost too faint to even be felt.
The real Clark.
Not just a boy, a rebel, an underworld king.
The boy she loves.
And when he rushes to her to kiss her again, the idea that it's a lie does not resonate with her, does not stick with her as he grips her hair tight, his school ring glinting bright and blinding her when she tries to open her eyes.
He throws her and pushes her, shoves her into a tight little corner in his room, where she can't escape him. He kisses roughly and urgently, whispers her name like a prayer—Chloechloechloemychloe—and there's only so much she can take, so much before all the resistance she has, all the reasons she knows she should stop, all the loyalties she has back home mean nothing.
Nothing in the face of the boy she loves, mimicking the motions, the words, walking through her daydreams and doing everything she wants.
Everything.
And nothing.
--
She wakes up before he does, her body lined with goosebumps underneath the useless silken sheets. He is peaceful beside her, his subconscious clearly elsewhere, without any lingering thoughts of her.
She wipes soundless tears from her face, rushes to recover her strewn garments from the floor. She dresses quickly, as if there's someone breathing down her neck. She does not want to think, does not want to wait, does not want to see what will happen to her when she looks into those eyes again.
She comes up with a story: she could not find him. Metropolis is a large enough place. Anyone that wants to hide can do so, and usually with next to no trouble. And if the great Chloe Sullivan can't discover him, why, what's the use of looking for themselves?
She leaves without another goodbye.
--
Of course, nobody needs to remind her that she'll speak of this to no one.
How could she?
Not with a reputation to uphold as one of Smallville's good girls, not with her father calling her his little girl. It gets locked away in a diary that she hasn't used in a while, in the hopes that nobody will come peeking through it.
Come peeking and see the story of a girl who loved a boy and took what was presented to her, even if there was nothing behind it.
How sick, how hopeless, how desperate.
Chloe remembers her father as he was about four years ago, listening as she told him about the very handsome boy who she kissed in his barn.
"Now, Chloe," he said, with a laugh, making the warning lighter, "don't you go doing just anything this boy wants you to do."
"Oh, no, Dad, you don't have to worry. I won't," said thirteen-year-old Chloe, while sixteen-year-old Chloe is wondering how in the world only three years can make her forget everything.
Everything she promised, to herself, to others; everything she hoped for, for herself, for others.
It seems all of it so very useless now.
--
He gets what's coming to him.
Clark comes home when Jonathan's patience runs out and he fetches his son himself, much against Martha's calmer idea of waiting it out.
Chloe is terrified at first of the repercussions of her actions, of the morals that chose not to speak up, but Clark is so overwrought with reworking things with Lana that he all but forgets what she did.
Perhaps, she thinks, it's better this way.
Better as a secret, better as a rumor.
Better as a lie.
--