Title: She
Author: GEFM
Rating: T
Genre: General and Romance
Disclaimer: I own nothing and have no friends.
A/N: The purpose of Pete is to be a mediator. You'll see old Pete sometimes in his interactions but I've matured him a lot. This isn't 'Lets go clubbing'' Pete,though he is humorous at times. The situation is serious and personally I don't think he'd act so light all the time. Remember, Pete is going to be the VP one-day and I like showing him clean up his act a bit. He defends and speaks more eloquently than ever before. I apologize if it doesn't seem fitting but I think it serves the goal of the story.

Chapter 1

"She's dying, you know." I came up behind him, slowly but not too quietly that I'd startled him.

He nods, keeping his head ashamedly low. His hands wander, absently touching the surfaces of the many items piled on his desk.

I pull up an old crate and fall upon it beside him, watching his movements intently.

"But do you really know, Clark?"

His eyes are painful and roundly outraged when he snaps his head up to look at me. Still, no words form. Clark Kent has become mute.

"Why won't you come see her then?"

"What's the point, Pete?" He shouted, banging his fist on the table. Rage. "It's not like she's going to know I'm there either way." Leaning his arms on the table, I caught his back relax and his head slump again.

"Maybe not, but what about you?"

"What about me? I don't want to see her that way." He shook his head dismissively. "I don't want to remember her that way."

"How you keep her is your own choice." My voice was solemn and lost of its usual humor. "We all are faced with what we want to take with us. And when the time comes we won't take the illness, we'll take the girl."

"Come tell her goodbye, be there when she passes on. I know you'll beat yourself up no matter what, but more so if you don't go. No regrets, that's the rule we agreed on man."

Clark stilled for a moment, straightening, and then walked away to the window.

"You know it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do." He paused to clear the tightness in his throat. "Harder than seeing my dad die, than giving up Lana, than killing a man."

I knew it was, but I held that response back. He was talking again and I wasn't going to impede on that.

"I promised. Twice actually." A smirk formed on his face, as if he found some humor in the moribund. "Maybe that doesn't mean much to most people, but it does to me."

"I told her she would never end up there, that I wouldn't let it happen. I swore to protect her." Exhaling heavily, he turned his gaze upwards and shoved his hands in his pockets.

"Ironic isn't it, that I was the one to put her there?"

"She asked you to Clark, it's not the same thing."

"No, she asked me to kill her. That's not the same thing…its worse."

"Don't say that." Taking a few steps, I stood directly behind his defeated form. "We had more time. You gave us more time to spend with her."

"Oh come on." The guilt in his voice rang through. "She was vilified because of what we did. How was that fair for her?"

"Chloe killed that man Clark, whether she meant to or not. We had no choice."

"You had no choice. I—"

"Stop kidding yourself, alright?" I cut him off. "We both know you can't kill even when it's absolutely necessary. If you could, Lex Luthor would have been a 6 feet under bitter memory years ago." My own personal bitterness was evident in my words.

"And you love her too much." For some reason it sounded more delicate than I meant. This was always a sore spot for our relationship. My voice strained as I said the words, testing him, seeing the intensity of his despair. How deep did the wounds really run?

"Loved." The correction neither surprised nor convinced me.

"After all that happened between us, I still can't believe she had to freakin die for me to see that." He swung at the wall, causing a huge rupture beside the window. It startled me for sure, but I didn't jump or back away.

He was just a scared little boy, who was losing his best friend to a disease. Again he was faced with a predicament he could not control or understand.

He was mourning. But I wouldn't let him yet, not until I brought him to see her for the last time. Not until he told her how much he missed her and how once upon a time he loved her as much as she always did. He loved her and she needed to hear that. After sitting up all those nights and hearing the girl cry on the phone over him, I knew better than anyone did; she deserved that much before she died.

"And even then I didn't say anything. You know what I said?" Deciding not to continue, he filled the silence with a sigh. "God I was such a moron." He rested his head against the barn wall beside the window, eyes closed.

I remembered what he said, because she called me the very next day and told me (at 6:30 in the morning no less). The phone conversations certainly decreased in number as the years went on as her relationship with you know who improved, but it never surprised me when she called. That morning she tried everything to bait me and I would have noticed too if I weren't fully preoccupied with my own anger at her early call. When she finally got around to working it into the conversation I could literally hear the smile in her voice, the sense of victory it held. The girl would never admit it, at least not out-loud, but she loved Clark more than ever before. At the time she had a boyfriend, a geeky photographer named Jimmy Olsen who sufficiently under-whelmed her. It didn't matter who he was, or what he was...not really. He could have been the Prince of England and it still wouldn't have made the slightest difference. Chloe was cursed the moment the freakishly tall, dark-haired farm boy was assigned to be her tour guide.

He couldn't live without her, because she meant more to him than she knew.

The night after she was admitted Clark and I pushed off our sleep just to sit up and talk. I asked him what he meant by the phrasing.

The shock of my life was realizing that Clark Kent was in love with Chloe Sullivan.

"Well there was Lana." Back in the now, I offered it as explanation.

"Yeah." He became very quiet. "There was." Regret. If only he'd told her.

But what would have changed? Would her powers not have eaten at her morality? Would she never be corrupted? Would she have had the will to become one of the good guys?

I didn't want to think about the answer or the dreadful inevitability of my friend's fate.

Something was so wrong about it. Destiny followed all of us to this very spot and hers was lost somehow.

Where were her Pulitzers, where were her accomplishments, where was the recognition for a fallen hero?

This was wrong.

He stepped into the room a few minutes after me, spending the former loitering in the hallway in front of her door, indecision freezing him.

I couldn't help feeling proud when he walked in without encouragement. He started at the foot of the bed, watching her motionless body intently. Studying its fading vitality, his mouth went dry and he wiped it with his hand out of instinct. Continuing to walk toward her, I noticed how tense he was. Clark was on full alert.

He sat on the edge of the bed next to her, pulling her almost lifeless hand into his own. His free hand brushed away the hair that fell on her now pale face. She looked dead, she felt dead.

She was cold.

And for the first time since his father's death almost five years ago, he cried a long painful cry.

I suddenly felt incredibly intrusive for having remained in the room upon his arrival.

Then something more miraculous happened. Her eyes opened.

They were expressionless and vacant just like every other time she came back online. But today was special, because she spoke.

"Oh quit worrying Clark. It's not even a scratch." She patted his knee sympathetically as we both watched with shocked expressions. "The doctors say I'll be released by tomorrow." Chloe smiled like she used to, like no time had passed and the two were still a duo fighting side by side. Like she never developed unparalleled mental power and lost control, context, and all perception.

I had so many things I wanted to say to her, I couldn't believe that I never thought it through fully. I never thought we'd ever get this chance, when she was lucid and communicative.

But Clark didn't have that problem.

"I love you." Her shocked expression made with cocked eyebrows and wide eyes held recognition, a momentary one.

The chance was fleeting.

"You love me?" She extracted her hand from his and pulled the covers up to her chest protectively. "I don't even know you."

It should have crushed Clark. It would have crushed anyone. Instead, he took it in stride.

"I guess you don't." He replied sadly.

There was truth in his words. This wasn't our Chloe. This wasn't the girl he loved or the girl I've always loved.

She looked like her, but it wasn't… her. There was no quick wit behind those eyes or an undying passion for the truth in her heart.

It occurred to us then that Chloe Sullivan died a long time ago, even if her physical presence was still with us.

An hour later, she went into cardiac arrest. The meteor power continuing to wear down her fragile body until there was nothing left to sustain her. Clark and I looked on helplessly as our best friend flat lined. The faint beep turning into a constant and breaking our thoughts.

Today Chloe died in the face of the two closest people in her life. An old friend and an unattainable crush: her once second family.

The sound intensified until it was all I could hear. Everything around me felt like blaring noise. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. I found myself screaming against it, confronting it. Then I saw her walking away from me and reached out to her. I grabbed at her, but she fell back until she was too far. I was alone. The sound grew louder, paralyzing me.

I was being shaken, throttled. If I could only just get away… I fought, but it was so overwhelming.

I opened my eyes to my mother standing over me, concern written all over her aged face.

Soaked in sweat, I listened incredulously as she scolded me for shouting so loud. I apologized for the entire clamor and she soon left the room.

In disbelief I sunk back into my bed, knowing what I had to do.

It was time Pete Ross went back to Smallville.