Summary: After Chloe is found siphoning money from Oliver's company in order to purchase Kryptonite weapons, she realizes that she losing her sense of humanity. She decides that the only way to escape from who she is becoming is to erase her memories and start over. Oliver has 4 months to stop her before it's too late.
Spoilers: Up to Conspiracy, and then I write my own way.
POV: First chapter is Chloe-centric, and then Ollie-centric for the rest of the journey.
Chapter Two
Days without Chloe Sullivan: 1
After a night of decent sleep, Oliver drove over to the Watchtower. He knew that things were still a little strange between him and Chloe, but he hoped that they could change all of that- move past it.
He may have agreed to her agreement of emotionless sex, but he also knew that having sex with someone who knew him better than he knew himself was going to contain emotion. It was going to create some form of attachment. He couldn't help it.
She saved him from himself, plain and simple. And now that she was starting to feel a little lost herself, he was going to return the favor. He opened the double doors, and heard her voice.
"Chloe?" he called out as he walked in and followed the voice
He expected her to stop talking, or for another voice to join in her conversation at some point. But there was nothing. She was just talking. Was she talking to herself?
As he made his way over to the computers, he saw Clark as he watched some sort of video feed. Was she web-chatting with Clark? It wasn't unusual.
"If you found this CD, then that means that I lost control. Oliver, you saw me as I activated that crystal under Brainiac's influence- too much information is dangerous. If you're playing this, and I left it behind in a place where I knew you could find it, then I decided that it was too much."
Oliver kept watching the feed behind Clark. He didn't know what to expect. He had to keep listening.
"I made a plan before I decided to join up full-time. If I lose control of myself, to the degree that I cross some sort of line, then I pack my bags and leave. Get out of Metropolis, maybe even the country. I'll leave to start over and give normalcy a try. You're the leader, Oliver. You guys are all leaders. Me?" he heard her let out a small laugh "I'm the follower. You don't need me."
He crossed his arms. Her words were giving him a slight chill. He didn't need to hear any more. He wished that the feed would just end. The words were screaming in his ears. Lose. Control. Start. Over. Normalcy. Follower. Don't. Need. Me.
He swallowed a lump in his throat as she continued. What next? "I know that your identities are the most important thing. And if anyone tries to find out your secrets, they can somehow get to me. So I'm not going to pretend that I'll keep everyone's secret until the day I die. But I wish I could. God I wish I could."
She cleared her throat. "I'm getting a surgical operation completed that will…erase my memories. Not completely, but of only one thing. For me, it's not a particular person or place. Just an object: the importance of a newspaper."
His eyes widened. Newspapers connected everything- the meteor infected in Smallville, Clark's identity, Lois' ambitions as a writer. She took care of the press so that they would figure out any identities. She wouldn't have even known about the Green Arrow if it weren't for Lois' story years ago.
She was going to forget about him.
She took a deep breath in the video. "Oliver, you told me that this job would mean leaving my old dreams as a reporter behind. And you were right. If I decided to do it, then maybe leaving any importance of the printed page behind would help me move on in another way as well."
She put a lock of hair behind her ear. "I know that I'm disappointing you. And I'm letting the team down. I'm hoping that I'll never have to use this disk, that one day someone will find it and after a confrontation, I'll laugh about it. But in case you do watch this, I just want to thank you." A tear was rolling down her eye. "Thank-thank you for helping me find some sort of purpose, and for being there on my birthday."
The video ended abruptly.
"Clark, suit up. We're going to find her", he said determinedly.
Clark Kent turned around. "Oliver. Were you here to see the whole video?"
"You tell me. I heard her say that if anyone found the video, then it meant that she lost control."
Clark nodded. "Yeah, that's the whole thing."
Oliver was confident that they were going to find her. With Clark's help, they could move a lot faster than if he was alone. Clark could cover way more ground- together, they could bring Watchtower home by the end of the week at the latest.
"Okay, I'll grab my extra set of gear, while you suit up. And then we can find her." He turned around, his eyes wandering around the building.
"Why?" Clark asked, interrupting his thoughts
He turned around. "What do you mean, why? Chloe's missing, and we have to find her."
"No", Clark shook his head. "Chloe left. There's a difference."
"What difference is there?"
"She chose to leave. It's not the first time that she's done it. And last time, you told me that she was long gone, and if anyone could make herself invisible, it was her."
"I'm not the same person that I was back then. And as I recall, you were the one who said that you weren't going to stop looking for her. Why are you fighting me on this?" he asked
"Because I'm glad that she left."
"You wanted her to leave?" he asked slowly
"Oliver, she was cooped up in here. The two of us", he said gesturing between the two men, "we have lives outside of the hero business. You have your company and I have the Daily Planet. Chloe didn't have that."
"If you're saying that Chloe didn't have a life, or people around her, then don't. You may have not been around, but I've been here every day. And she has always had the team."
"Then, don't you think that Chloe deserves the opportunity to be free from all of this? From this life?"
"Just because you have a destiny Clark, does not mean that the rest of us are stuck here. You may be bulletproof, but I suit up every night for patrol knowing what I'm putting at risk. I'm not unstoppable like you are, Clark. But I still go out and make a difference because I want to. And Chloe's the same way."
"Obviously not, if she decided to leave. She wants a chance at a normal life, and we'd be criminals for not giving it to her."
"She's not thinking straight! She left on a whim last time during Doomsday, what makes you think that she's thinking this through now?"
"She had a reason for leaving before. She knew that she was wrong to keep Davis in the basement, and she didn't want to deal with the consequences."
"She left for you! She left to protect you! And now, she's leaving to protect all of us!"
"And how is that wrong?" Clark asked
"Because she's going to hurt herself again in an attempt to protect all of us! She may be a little lost in her work right now, but do you honestly think that isolating herself from everything that she knows is going to make it better?"
"She won't be isolating herself. She'll be erasing her memory. Starting fresh."
"She will be losing her identity!" Oliver exclaimed "Erasing every single thing that she knows! Imagine if you had your memory erased, Clark. And you walked around without even knowing that you were a Kryptonian? How would that feel?"
"If I had no powers and no memory, then it would feel like freedom." Clark told him "Free from responsibilities, and free from having the world's burdens on my shoulders."
"No, you would be lost. You would feel as if you had some sort of purpose that you couldn't find."
"Not me." Clark said in a calm tone
"You owe this to her. She's been there for you for 10 years, and you're not going to even try to find her?"
"She's been there for 10 years. I owe her peace."
"Fine, give her peace. How are you going to explain this to Lois?"
He watched Clark look down at the floor. "Lois is better off not knowing."
Oliver looked at Clark incredulously. First he wasn't going to find Chloe, and now he wasn't even going to tell the only family that she had left what happened? "Lois deserves to know."
"I'm not telling her, Oliver. I have my own responsibilities to deal with."
Clark sped away before he could get in another word. Clark could go ahead and deal with the responsibilities that would be easy to deal with, regardless of the obligations that he had towards his friends.
That didn't mean that Oliver was going to follow in the same direction. He was sat down at Chloe's desk and saw himself surrounded by all of her computers. The answers were here, he knew it. All he had to do now was find them.