A/N: Short note today. Just continuing thanks for everyones support. Whether its something as simple as an 'enjoying this' or as wonderful as a paragraph with questions (which I will answer if you're registered or leave your email), I live for the feedback. Also, we have additional characters joining the fray today, I have done my best to get the voices right (including watching some episodes I'd rather not relive) so let me know if the sacrifice is worth it.
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Chapter 7
You know that darkness you were talking about? I'm not sure we were born with it. I think people like my father find a way to bring it out.
-- Lex Luthor "Suspect"
----
"You . . .are working too hard" Jimmy murmured playfully against her ear before placing a quick kiss on her cheek. "And your devoted slave of a boyfriend is pining away from the lack of attention."
Chloe spun in her desk chair and and quirked an eyebrow at him, just barely suppressing a smile. "Would this be my devoted slave of a boyfriend who's been on assignment for the past week or my devoted slave of a boyfriend who came back last night only to fall immediately asleep?"
"This would be the devoted slave of a boyfriend who has prepared an awesome movie date night for his lady."
Frowning thoughtfully, she pretended to doubt him. "Oh really? So you just whisk back into town, and expect me to drop everything? I'm not sure how devot-"
Jimmy stopped her with a finger on her lips. "Aaah, see this is the beauty of the full-scale inhouse movie date. It waits for you, soooo . . ." He spun her back to the computer. "You go back to being brilliant, and very sexy. And when you are finished, we will be waiting."
"We?"
"Hepburn and Tracy and me . . . . and freshly made popcorn."
Kissing her once more on the shoulder, Jimmy went back over to the couch and made a big production of sitting back down and opening one of his photography magazines. Smiling, Chloe turned back to her laptop and typed in a few quick commands, saving the files she'd hidden just in time when she heard Jimmy come up behind her.
She'd spent the last four days essentially hiding out at Jimmy's apartment in the city, taking advantage of the fact her boyfriend was on assignment to gain privacy one just didn't have living with Lois in a small apartment over the town's busiest social hangout. It had worked out pretty well, Lois assumed she was spending her days in heady sexual bliss, Clark hadn't been around enough to notice the temporary change of address, and Jimmy had been too ecstatic about coming home to find her waiting for him to ask why she was.
Chloe wasn't about to tell him it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Lex Luthor.
She'd needed space, needed time to think about what she'd done and what she was going to do, and somehow she just couldn't bring herself to try to do that in Smallville. So she'd holed up in Jimmy's apartment and thought and worried and thought some more.
In the end she'd fallen back on what she knew, good old fashioned investigation.
For the past few days she'd revisited her 'wall of weird' combed through her records of every known or potential 'meteor-freak', and tried to trace what had happened to them. Were they still in Belle Reve? Traipsing around Smallville? Had they dropped off the face of the earth?
She didn't know what she'd been hoping for. Maybe some clear cut sign. Something that would make the decision for her. But there weren't any. The suspected clairvoyant who'd shown no inclination to do more than gamble was still a regular at the racetrack, and while there was no record of Jed McNally since the incident with the migrant workers, she couldn't find it in her heart to be upset about that.
There were others who were murkier—the teenage firestarter who had 'run away' after her parents perished in a conflagration which may or may not have been intentional; the plumber whose rich clients kept drowning in seemingly impossible scenarios until one day his business simply closed down shop; and the Metropolis University football player who had four girlfriends wind up in institutions suffering from paranoid delusions.
It wasn't right. Made her more than a little uncomfortable, made her think of dictators and police states, of internment camps and people who disappeared in the night. It was in fact the text book definition of wrong.
But she was having a harder time calling it evil than she would have liked.
Purposefully abandoning her moral dilemma for the night, she shut down her computer, and moved over to the couch and the waiting arms of her beautifully uncomplicated boyfriend. Sighing in contentment at the quiet domestic normalcy life with Jimmy always seemed to exude, she snuggled closer and tucked her legs up on the couch.
Jimmy touched her left thigh lightly. "How's your leg doing?"
"Better." She'd come up with a simple and fairly unverifiable story about a tumble from fence, while performing some legally dubious investigative reporting. It had served her pretty well to explain any pain or cramps so far. The needle marks on her arms were trickier, but cool temps and Jimmy's penchant for making love with the lights off had prevented any real questions up to this point.
Working to divert him from follow up, she teased, "So there was talk of fresh popcorn."
"Mmm," he pressed a kissed to her forehead and then got up, ignoring her little huff of protest when she lost her pillow, "We've got fresh popcorn and Milk Duds and extremely large sodas. Only the best for my girl."
Twisting to rest her chin on the back of the couch, she watched as Jimmy moved around his tiny galley kitchen microwaving popcorn and pouring sodas and generally hamming it up for her benefit. She smiled fondly at his antics. "I should bring you home with me. You've got skills."
"You know it." He flipped a box of Milk Duds behind his back for flourish, then returned to watching the popcorn in the microwave. "So what pulitzer prize-winning piece has you chained to your computer, now?"
Not wanting to make up a story she knew he'd continue to ask her about until he saw it in print, she went with her current default lie, "Actually, it was the invitation list for Lana's wedding. I'm helping tabulate the RSVPs. Yes. No. Steak. Chicken. Etc. etc. and so forth."
Jimmy scowled. "Don't they have people for that?"
They did. A very competent and slightly terrifying wedding coordinator, and of course, the ever efficient Rebecca, who was keeping Lex briefed on the guests' business interests. Chloe just shrugged. "Lana is trying to have as normal a wedding experience as possible."
"You know at some point she's going to have to wake up and face who she's marrying. Normal does not come with the solid platinum ball and chain."
"Jimmy!" It was a very convincing exclamation of indignation considering she'd had a lot of the same thoughts. Still, the comment did irk her. He'd made no secret of the fact he didn't like her involvement in Lana's wedding. She'd made no secret of the fact she didn't give a damn. It was one of the few points of contention in their relationship that didn't revolve around Clark Kent.
"Look, I know she's your friend, but any woman stupid enough to get herself mixed up with Lex Luthor . . ." he shook his head, "she pretty much deserves what she gets."
Swallowing hard, Chloe twisted back around on the couch away from him. Even though she knew they hadn't been directed towards her at all, Jimmy's comments had cut too close to the bone. "That's a horrible thing to say."
Coming back over, he set down the now heavily laden tray of movie snacks on the coffee table and sat next to her on the couch with a sigh. Putting both hands on her shoulders, he rubbed them apologetically. "I'm sorry. I just . . . I hate that you have to see that guy, have to be around him and smile like everything's all right after what he's done."
She wanted to get off this topic, wanted to stop having to hear this unconscious litany of why her own actions had been so stupid. Jerking out of his grasp, she snapped, "I don't want to talk about this."
"Of course you don't," he sighed, and for a second she thought he'd actually let it go, but then as his hands closed despondently around empty air everything seemed to overwhelm him, force words to the surface that he'd obviously been keeping back for far too long. "You know sometimes I don't get you. Or Clark. Or any of you. I don't know whether its some kind of weird group Stockholm syndrome or what. But you guys just feed off each other. You spend half your time causing each other so much pain, it's like you think it's the norm. That it's the only way to interact."
"I don't- That's not- It's so much more complicated than that." But Jimmy on a role now, past hearing as he pounded away at the harsh realities of her life, hitting vulnerability after vulnerability, and she couldn't get the words out fast enough.
"Well, I don't see what can possibly be so complicated about standing up at the wedding of a man who is the world's best argument for why some animals eat their young."
Her hand connected with his cheek before she knew what was happening.
"Don't say that! Not after what his father-" she choked on her anger, "Don't you ever say that!"
For a moment, Jimmy just stared at her in shock, and then he was cupping her face in his hands, stroking away tears she didn't even realize she was crying. "Hey," he whispered softly tilting her face up so he could look at her, "Hey, what's going on here?"
Chloe just shook her head. She didn't know. Didn't know anything anymore. Emotions, thoughts, loyalties she'd believed long dead were bubbling up inside her just as real and raw as they'd been three years ago.
"You said something about Lex's dad?" Jimmy prompted softly, "What his dad did?"
It took her a moment to understand his confusion. While her 'death' had been public, Lex's had been private, swept under the rug to keep LuthorCorp stock from plummeting even further at the news of a debilitated interim CEO. It was so strange to realize that what had been a pivotal moment in her life was an unknown to this man who cared for her so much. And she realized, she could tell him this, for all the secrets she kept from him for Clark's sake. This was hers alone. So slowly, haltingly, she started to recount the events of a summer it seemed was destined to newly haunt her.
"You remember how a year after we met I testified at Lionel Luthor's trial . . ."
To his credit, Jimmy didn't say anything beyond the occasional one word prompt to keep her going, just held her and listened and kept his own counsel. And when the whole story was over, when he knew everything she was willing to share from how it had taken weeks for the burns on her back to heal, to how Lex had lain in the shards of his glass coffee table for ten minutes before the paramedics got to him, he didn't ask the obvious follow ups. Didn't try to get her to explain what had driven them apart or why she was going to Sunday dinner with the man who had tried to kill her. Just silently reached out and hit the play button on the remote, held her against him as they both pretended to watch 'Adam's Rib'.
Sometime halfway through the movie, she felt his hand reach out for hers, and she squeezed it in silent reassurance that said they were okay.
But she wasn't sure they were.
Because lying there in his embrace, she was realizing something. Jimmy was sweet and understanding and dependable. He adored her the way no one ever had, looked at her like she was Lauren Bacall and Rosalind Russell and both Hepburns all in one, would do anything to make her happy. By every measure he was perfect.
Except there was something missing. She didn't know whether Jimmy was everything she'd ever wanted and nothing she needed or the other way around.
All she knew was he wasn't everything.
But he was here when she needed to be held, and right now that was enough.
So she tucked her head against his shoulder, savored her reprieve from reality, and made a silent resolution to stop passing judgment on Lana.
-----
In the end her reprieve only lasted five days.
Lana had asked her a week ago to come with her to audition the strings quartets and wedding bands and she'd stupidly said yes.
Now she was trapped. If she pulled out, suddenly developed a story that required her attention she'd just be proving every insinuation Lex had made about her motives for getting involved.
So she wasn't even surprised to arrive at the rehearsal hall and learn that Lex's schedule had suddenly cleared. Having her plan for forced interaction turned on her like this had the exactly the kind of vindictive irony that appealed to him.
Halfway through the fourth string rendition of Pachelbel's Cannon, she decided irony officially sucked and excused herself to go to the bathroom.
Lex was waiting for her in the hall when she got out.
"I don't suppose you've suddenly taken ill and need to be whisked away from all this?"
The teasing question was so unexpected, so exactly in tune with her own desire to be anywhere but here, she almost laughed despite herself, had to bite it back just at the last minute. "You're the one who wanted to be here."
He sighed. "I thought she would have at least let the coordinator screen for the quartets that could play."
Chloe thought they had all sounded pretty good so far. Boring, yes, but good. But then neither she nor Lana really had his ear for music. "Your bride-to-be is very hands on. I'm surprised you don't know that."
Lex just raised a significant eyebrow that implied everything she didn't want to think about, and she could feel the flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck. Trying to appear unaffected and no doubt failing miserably, she crossed her arms and asked, "Should I even bother asking what you really want?"
Stepping closer just into the edges of her personal space, so she was crowded back against the wall, he gave her that half-smile that never reached his eyes. "I can't help thinking we've left things unresolved between us."
"No. Things are perfectly resolved. It's done. I'm done." She turned to head back to the rehearsal room, but he put out a hand to the wall, cutting off her escape route.
"Really?" He brushed the word against her ear, his voice low with something that was both intimate and mocking. "So you know everything now? Have all those answers you came to me for? Funny how that memo missed my desk."
"It's not worth it. Nothing is worth getting mixed up in your filth."
Lex looked down at her for so long that she started to squirm under the attention. Finally he murmured, "You didn't have a problem with my filth six weeks and a million dollars ago."
She turned her face away. "Temporary insanity brought on by shock."
That made him pull back. "And now you're back on the path of moral righteousness. Tell me, does world look prettier from that high road? All charming and safe and meteor infection free?"
It didn't. If anything it looked a lot scarier, more precarious, looked like that much further to fall. Whatever else she'd been doing these past six weeks, whatever horrible sins she'd involved herself in by association, Lex had given her something no one else had . . . the illusion of control. For the first time since learning she was a meteor-freak, she'd felt some kind of power over her life again, like it might not actually be up to some whim of fate.
The loss of that had been acute, left her feeling weak and adrift and hopeless.
Almost as though he knew what she was thinking, he leaned close again, hands braced on either side of her, everything in him persuasive, almost pleading. "Don't do this Chloe. Don't make yourself a martyr in some silent statement that no one will know about and won't change anything anyway."
At that moment everything in her wanted to say okay, just let go of the responsibility in the rationale he was offering her. Instead she said, "I'll know."
"I see." Lex stepped away from her now as if he were considering how this changed things. "And I suppose there's nothing I can do to persuade you?"
"Nothing." She tried to make her voice resolute, certain, but she had hesitated a fraction of a beat too long.
The flare in Lex's gaze told her he'd heard the opening.
Before either one of them could continue, Lana rounded the corner, "There you two are." She stopped and looked from one to the other and back again. "Is everything all right?"
Lex turned his full attention on his fiance. "Absolutely."
Chloe just managed a nod.
Lana gave them both a tentative smile. "Well, the next group's ready whenever you are."
Turning back to her, Lex gestured with his hand in a silent 'after you', but it was his eyes that were sending the more important message.
This conversation wasn't over.
----
On Sunday she returned to Smallville.
She hadn't wanted to. Honestly, she really wanted to stay with Jimmy, continue her exercise in avoidance of reality for just a little longer, but Clark was having a dinner for his mom's birthday, and she wasn't about to miss celebrating the day Martha Kent came into this world for anything.
Unfortunately, neither was Lionel Luthor.
Lionel in the Kent house was not a comfortable thing. There was something so incongruous, so visually jarring about his presence there. Chloe was never one to preach loyalty to a ghost, but sometimes she wondered if she was the only one who felt the utter wrongness of this, that inviting Lionel Luthor's presence on this land might be the ultimate betrayal of Jonathan Kent's memory more so than any relationship he was creating with the Kent family itself.
People were their own, belonged to no one, and she above all others understood that love for one person didn't prevent alliances with another.
But this land, this farm, was Jonathan Kent, his blood and his sweat. He had loved it, fought for it, lived and died on it.
Letting Lionel in seemed like the equivalent of inviting the serpent into the Garden of Eden.
Or maybe she was being ungracious, overly judgmental. God knew she'd felt off all night, jumpy and unbalanced. Every time Martha Kent smiled at her she felt unworthy. Every time Lionel Luthor looked at her she felt exposed, like he could see his son on her. And when Clark had hugged her, part of her wondered what he'd think if he knew the truth of what she'd been doing. Would he be disappointed? Disgusted? Would he ever touch her again?
Which is how she'd wound up out on the porch, staring out at the stars and willing away the minutes until she could make a full blown escape.
"It is quite spectacular isn't it? You know I paid over ten million dollars for my penthouse, just because it was supposed to have the best view, and this porch puts it to shame." Chloe stiffened as Lionel came to stand beside her at the railing, continuing, "It's the stars, of course. You can't see them in Metropolis, too much ambient light."
"I suppose a city wide blackout is beyond even your pull."
"Yes, well," he let out a dry chuckle that sounded like tinder crackling, "we all have are limits. It's a shame though, I think its only by looking out on the sheer magnitude of the universe that some of us can appreciate how truly insignificant we are."
Swallowing, she forced herself to turn and face him dead on. "Don't tell me you're finally giving up on your Ceasar fantasies."
"Ceasar . . . I like that." He smiled unpleasantly, then leaned closer, "So tell me Ms. Sullivan, did that make you Cassius or Brutus? Were you the instigator or the well-meaning one in need of a push?"
"You know," Tapped her hand on the railing, she gave him a tight forced smile, "as fascinating as this history slash Shakespeare lesson is I think I need some fresh air."
She started to step away, but he put his hand over hers, tightened his thumb and forefinger around her wrist in a silent threat. "Please don't let my reference our unfortunate past end our conversation prematurely. There's still so much we have to discuss."
Chloe couldn't help the little shocked explosion of laughter, "Like what?"
"Like what you're doing with my son."
Oh God. Oh God. Her stomach bottomed out the way it does on a roller coaster when the world has dropped from under you and your body thinks it's in free fall. Struggling not to show it on her face, she laughed again, tried to make it sound incredulous and dismissive, but it just felt forced, brittle. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Come now Ms. Sullivan. You should know by now that there is very little going on in my son's life of which I am not fully informed. The servants tell me you've almost become a fixture at the Mansion these days."
Okay, she could do this. She could play innocent. She rolled her eyes. "I'm helping Lana plan her wedding. It requires about the same amount of preparation as the Allies' landing at Normandy."
He continued as though he hadn't heard her. "And then there's the private visits to Lex's offices at LuthorCorp. The phone calls at all hours. I have to say . . . playing second string to Ms. Lang, again?" He tsked in mock disappointment, "It just seems so beneath you."
For a moment he words just hung before her, the implications so insane and unreal that she couldn't process them, and then she did, and the realization of exactly what he was insinuating caused a disconcerting mixture of giddy relief and queasy dread to run through her body. He didn't know the truly important things, but he knew enough not to let go easily.
"Okay now I know Lex's mental problems are hereditary." She made her voice sharp, deriding, thought of how disgusted she'd been with Lex last Sunday and gave free reign to those emotions, trying to burying anything that might be considered remotely friendly. "And even if this wasn't some obvious delusion, my personal life is exactly that . . . personal. So go get your voyeuristic kicks somewhere else."
Wrenching her hand our of his grasp, she started back towards the house.
"I wonder if Clark would see it quite the same way."
The words were a choke collar, pulling her up short, robbing her of the air to respond.
Lionel came up behind her so close she could smell the Cabernet and rosemary from dinner, even the underlying base of cigar smoke and cognac. "You know its interesting you mentioned Normandy. In Europe during World War II towns did not look favorably upon a young woman who gave her favors to the enemy." His voice was razorblade smooth, so sharp you almost didn't feel the cut until you were bleeding out. "They'd drag her the center of town, strip her down, shave off her hair, and draw a swastika on her forehead. And then she'd be turned out without a friend in the world. A pariah to all."
"We're not at war." Even she didn't believe that. Clark might actually be the only one who did.
"Maybe, maybe not. But in the end its really about loyalties. About betrayal. You see you're wrong about this not being my business. I've promised Martha and young Mr. Kent that I will do everything in my power to protect him. That includes making sure those close him don't feel their loyalties pulled in the wrong direction. After all Chloe, you have such lovely hair."
Something brushed her hair against the back of her neck so lightly it might have been his fingers or it might have been the wind or her own imagination. She flinched all the same.
Lionel chuckled, then stepped past her. "Oh, it looks like they're lighting the candles. Shall we go sing 'Happy Birthday'?"
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She just barely made it through the rest of the evening. Spoke only when spoken to, stayed as far away from Lionel as possible, and begged off with a headache as soon as she got a chance, insisting to Lois that since she'd driven in directly from Metropolis, her cousin should stay as long as she wanted.
There was a way she should respond to this.
The truly smart thing would be to stop. To continue on the already preset course of ceasing all contact with Lex, and letting everything drop.
But she didn't like the idea of just letting this rest. It felt too dangerous to let Lionel continue his observations without responding in some way, without knowing exactly what he knew.
And she'd be damned if she let him think he'd successfully scared her away from doing anything. Even if it was something she wasn't doing in the first place.
So rather than taking the smart approach and going back to the Talon and to bed, she drove out of Smallville, took the back roads towards Edge City, where any tail car would stand out like a sore thumb.
When she was about forty miles out and as certain as she could be that he hadn't had her followed, she pulled over at the first gas station old enough and seedy enough to still have pay phones, fed scrounged change into the slot, and dialed an increasingly familiar number with trembling fingers.
She'd almost resigned herself to the fact he wouldn't answer the unknown number, when the phone clicked on. "Yes?"
She didn't waste time with pleasantries or preamble.
"We have a problem."
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