Author's Note: Okay folks. This is the first time I've ever written a scene like this, so don't be surprised if it doesn't flow well or there isn't enough introspection. I mean, it's long enough all by itself. As far as the technical jargon...I don't really know. I'm just making it up as I go. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville, DC comics, etc.
oOo
Oliver was trying to resist the urge to pace madly within Chloe's tiny Metropolis apartment. So instead, he thought perhaps some surveillance would help to take him mind off of the fact that Chloe's mother was missing, Clark seemed to missing in action, and a determined Lois was out there while he was stuck in here.
So far it seemed that Luthor's men were true to form, which certainly served in his favor. None of them were in a hurry to keep up with anything. An occasional glance towards Chloe's building every now and then, and he was sure that their reports consisted of merely a mundane "she hasn't moved". For good measure, he decided it couldn't hurt to set a humane trap. Oliver had begun to make it look as though Chloe were receiving deliveries from the local pharmacy. Perhaps if Luthor caught wind that Chloe was vulnerable to even the most benign illness, he'd be more apt to make a move and uncover himself in an unwise attempt.
A quick buzz brought him out of his thoughts and he nearly sighed in relief when the caller I.D. showed Clark's number.
"Clark," he said quickly into the phone. "Find out anything?"
Clark sighed as he put a finger in his ear to drown out the noise. "Nothing," he half shouted into the phone, sounding more than a little disconcerted.
Hearing the obscured racket in the background, Oliver furrowed his brows in confusion. "Where are you?"
"Rio de Janeiro," Clark replied. "I've hit Lex's entire favorite 'vacation spots', and 'most likely' areas where he can stay out from the watchful eye of the U.S. government."
"Probably where he hides a lot of his R & D," Oliver added grimly as he nodded.
"Exactly," Clark agreed. "But so far, I've found nothing. Not even the tiniest bit of a clue. I've asked questions, passed around photos, and uh …illegally entered a few establishments…"
Oliver squeezed his eyes shut as if to brace himself. "Lois knows," he blurted.
Clark was momentarily befuddled. "Knows? Knows what?" Clark questioned, his voice deepening.
"She found out about Moira, Clark," Oliver informed quickly.
"What! How?"
"I don't know, Clark," Oliver replied. "She came by the apartment—
Clark's head reeled at that declaration. "She came by the apartment?" he half-shouted.
"Relax, she didn't come in and she didn't see me," Oliver added quickly. "But she knows that Moira is missing and you know Lois," he declared with more than a hint of warning.
Clark sighed heavily through his nostrils. "Yeah. I know Lois." 'Great, as if this needed to get any worse', he thought to himself.
"She's not just gonna sit on this. I need you to run interference, Clark." Oliver said. "I think this is just about to blow up in our faces with some serious casualties."
"With Chloe and Moira at ground zero," Clark added grimly. Clark could only stand there for a moment as he tried not to allow the despair of their situation fall into discouragement. "But let's hope it doesn't come to that," he finally said.
Hanging up with Oliver, Clark looked around unseeing. He was beginning to wonder just how much time they really had.
oOo
"Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty," she heard a voice taunt deep within the mental haze.
Enshrouded by darkness, a musky odor was slowly forcing Chloe awake, which by the pain she was feeling in the back of her head said she'd much rather be in a blissful oblivion.
"Ow," she groaned, rubbing the small knot on the back of her head.
"C'mon," she heard once more. "Up and at 'em," the voice seemed to clap in her ears.
Baffled, Chloe raised her head only to realize that a large piece of paper was oddly stuck to her forehead. Immediately ripping it away, she quickly noted the large scrawl:
"Get Up
and Go Boom!"
Chloe looked about the room that seemed to be obscurely lit only by the streetlight from outside the dusty window.
The moldy cinderblock, the rusted window panes, and rotted wood told Chloe that she was somewhere within the school. Through all the fog, she finally realized that she was sitting in an old dilapidated, wobbly desk.
No binds. No restraints of any kind.
Lifting up the paper, she stared at the scrawl and suddenly became very aware of her circumstances that she surmised to be just under her backside and stiffened. For a moment, holding her breath seemed like a good idea. "Holy crap," she whispered. "My ass is really on the line now."
"Are we paying attention?" was the high-pitched question that grated in her ears.
Stupidly realizing the voice wasn't coming from the ancient television; Chloe began to pay special attention to her surroundings. There was a broken speaker box lying in the corner that might've been used as an intercom back in the school's heyday, but surely…
"I'm listening," she said gravely.
"Oh good," was the cheerfully sarcastic reply.
The sudden and very unwelcome vision of his mangled, painted face came to her mind and Chloe knew exactly who'd orchestrated this.
"Go ahead and ask," he said, tiredly.
No flies on him.
"Why would you do something like this?"
"And I'm so glad you asked!" he practically squealed with glee in a most ironic manner. "Well, you-you fascinate me, Ms…uh…Watch-tower?" he sounding suddenly very passionate with a frightening twist. "Your little articles have made the paper such a joy to read, but lately….oh lately"-he drawled disapprovingly— "you've become a little disappointing." Chloe nearly expected to see him waggling a disapproving finger at her.
"I'm sorry that I'm not living up to your high standards," Chloe snarked.
"I'm not really a guy with standards, just… imagination." he cracked.
In that instant, Chloe heard clicking and wheezing all around her. Making the conscious decision to turn only her head, she could see tiny LED's blinking to life.
"You see, I've never cared much for politics—no—but you…you're starting to get under their skin," he informed blithely. "And now, they want you out of the way."
That cryptic message both frightened and intrigued her at the same time. But now wasn't the time to discover who wanted her out of the way, but how to get out of her current conundrum. "What have you done with Ginny?" she asked, trying not to allow panic to lace her voice as she realized that he probably didn't let the photographer go out of the goodness of his heart.
"My, you are a curious little thing, aren't you?"
"Well, it is part of the job description," she quipped, hoping to delay him with small talk. She began to jerk her head in futility around the room as if the possibility of escape might present itself. "So I take it that you've made it onto Maroni or Falcone's payroll?" she mumbled.
"Do you like cartoons?"
Chloe's head flinched with a little double take. "That's random," she mumbled. "Sorry, I haven't kept up since I was a ten."
"It doesn't matter," he said quickly, sounding as if he were shaking his head. "Do you remember the one with the big, dumb gray bulldog that strutted through the city streets? You see, he had a little companion; a tiny mutt that danced and yapped around," he continued in a very conversational fashion.
"Uh, a vague recollection," she replied with mild uncertainty.
"Then you'll remember that we were supposed to think that the big dumb dog was the muscle protecting his yappy companion, but it was always the little yappy one that had the brains and the brawn," he informed. "He always let the dumb dog think that it was all his idea."
"And your point to this little Looney Tune parable?"
"I just want a chance to shine in your wonderful little paper. Credit where credit is due. However-," he paused dramatically. "- only if Little Red Riding Hood can find you in time before the big bad wolf arrives," he explained, making his first reference to Ginny.
"So why bother with a couple of mundane reporters?" she queried without thinking. "I thought your particular M.O. was volatile explosives plus a few hundred people?"
"Ever heard the expression that more isn't always better? There's no need to sell yourself short….Watch-tower" his voice rolling over the moniker. "All I want is to give your wonderful newspaper a chance to write the truth."
Chloe couldn't contain a scoff. "What would you know about the truth?"
"Well, you see, I know that you're trying to shine a ray of light into the dark, abysmal chasm that is Gotham City; that you're trying to convince Gotham that it can be the newest shining city on a hill."
Chloe simply sat as he continued.
"You see, I also know that right now, Little Red Riding is on her way to Grandma's house with her basket of goodies."
Chloe squinted at his commentary and the sudden, disturbing image of Ginny slowly making her way down some ruined street came quickly to her mind's eye.
"Fairytale versus reality," he stated grimly. "Gotham is trying to live its own version of happily ever after. So here's how this works. In the next twenty minutes, if you decide to raise that pretty little butt out of your chair, Ginny's little basket of goodies blows 6th street all over District 12 . However, if she doesn't find the house made of bricks then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down," he mocked.
There was a pause.
"There is no such thing as happily ever after," he stated in a grim tone. "The reality is that only one of you might walk out of here tonight to show Gotham how it all never really works out in the end."
oOo
"Did you get that, Lucius?"
Lucius sat and watched the screens diligently before him as he listened on an alternate frequency the horrendous plan set by the Joker.
"As usual, he's operating from a separate location," Lucius informed, just a little despairingly. "As of now, I can't get an exact location, but you can bet he's watching. So my advice is…be careful."
"What about Gordon's men?"
"They're closing in on 6th street, but they're moving slowly," Lucius replied. "No sign of a bomb squad. But if the Joker sees them-"
"He'll make sure there will be no need for one," was the gruff prediction. "Patch me in to Gordon."
oOo
His silence was suddenly punctuated by an electrical snap of the speaker that made Chloe nearly leap out of her chair, which she consciously made certain not to do. Instead, she tried her very level best to maneuver around the chair without rising out of the seat. There had to be a detonator, a trigger, anything that could disable the explosive that she was literally sitting on.
"Don't move," was the rough command that came from the darkness.
Suddenly startled, Chloe ceased her struggle. She squinted to peer into the darkness towards the direction of the voice.
"This entire building is wired to explode," the voice came from behind her.
"Really, Sherlock?" she snapped in a mocking tone. "You mean I'm not here just to yell, "Fire in the hole"?
An aggravated growl managed to rumble its way to her ears with such reverberation that Chloe was certain the sensitivity would send her sky high in that second, but felt her nerves jump once she realized he was right beside her, examining the wires beneath her. "Do you mind?" she nearly screeched. But even in the shadows, she could see that he was closely examining the wires to the old desk. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"The Joker never waits. Anything could be a detonator. One wrong move and you could end up blowing the entire district to hell," he informed roughly.
"Me?" she sounded in incredulous
"You get the idea."
"I get that I've been wired to enough explosives to launch the Saturn V rocket," she shot at him. "Forgive me if I'm not exactly Miss Suzy Sunshine."
She felt movement from behind her. "Detonator with weight-compression trigger," he informed. "A pressure plate just under the seat with eighteen minutes remaining."
"All right, hang on," was the voice of Lucius that only he could hear from a headset.
Chloe felt his gloved hands that seemed to be operating around her feet. Immediately she panicked. "No, if you can get Ginny out of here first, then please…" she practically begged.
"No chance," he replied matter-of-factly. "Your friend is being watched. If the Joker so much as catches a whiff of me, she'd dead anyway."
"How do you know that isn't the case here?" she suggested.
"Because I've got people."
"So does H&R Block, but that doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence when the two things you can always count on are death and taxes," she parried, beginning to feel the resolve inside begin to crack. This was exactly the situation that she had been trying to avoid in Metropolis. She should've known that this could happen, that it would happen - that she was the proverbial magnet.
"He didn't plan on either one of us walking out of here," Chloe said with revelation.
"The Joker actually does have a method to his madness," he revealed with a sense of mystery, expecting her to fill in the blanks.
"Sorry, I didn't exactly get my doctorate in Psychotic Clown School."
He only growled in response. "The idea is that Ginny walks into any house on 6th street and the school explodes," he informed, more than a little agitated. "He's testing you. To see if you value your own life over the life of a friend."
"A sacrificial circumstance?"
"Call it whatever you like," he said in a dismissive manner. "There's no reason one of you has to die when I can get both of you out."
"Like hell," Chloe shot back at him. "As long as you're here then it's obvious that she's not coming out of this alive. I won't have her blood on my hands!"
"There won't be any blood if you keep still," he growled in aggravation. "You can feel guilty later."
The anxiety was pushing at her chest. Feeling the beginnings of tears prick the corners of her eyes, Chloe began to panic in earnest and clenched her jaw in frustration. "How could you possibly get us both out of here alive?" she nearly shouted. "If you insist on saving one of us, it shouldn't be me," she declared, overcome with waves of guilt.
Aggravated, he fixed his dark gaze at her. "Are you so ready to die?" he growled angrily.
Feeling only desperation, Chloe took a determined, but shaky breath. "I got her into this," she declared, her voice crackling with guilt-ridden sorrow. "No one needs to die…because of me."
A beat and not a word.
Squeezing her eyes against the tears, she felt him pause for a moment. Chloe let out a gasp of relief only to be confronted by a dark pair of eyes, hard and unblinking; as if trying to drill his strong determination and confidence into her by his will alone.
"You have to trust me."
He wouldn't stop looking at her. Even in the darkness, she could see his strength of mind; an unwavering confidence that managed to fill those empty depths.
Chloe nodded. "Okay," she whispered.
Only then he turned away from her and went back to work. "No one's going to die," he declared strongly. "Besides, the Joker is always watching from a distance," he informed. "He may set the stage, but he never releases control."
"Which would explain why the explosives are on a motion trigger," Chloe deduced, surprisingly feeling a bit more at ease now that her mind occupied with figuring out how to circumvent the situation. "But if he has the detonator—"
"How much do you weigh?"
Chloe's mouth snapped shut for a beat. "Excuse me?"
oOo
Lucius paced determinedly, hands on hips as he listened to the current situation. Without the benefit of true visuals, Lucius' mind was running over possibilities and solutions like well-oiled clockwork.
"Motion and pressure triggers," he said, commentating his thoughts. "With one trigger setting off the other. The devices are individual," he informed quickly as he continued to think. "Either the trigger is disabled or the switch for the detonator must be disabled at the source," he deduced with sudden realization and rushed back towards his console. "I'm sending the information through to Gordon now."
"We may not have time," Batman informed as he watched the digital timer ticking down second-by-second.
"I'm no Martin Riggs, but can't you just cut the red wire?" Chloe interjected.
"It's the blue wire and I can't risk it," he said quickly.
"They're disabling the detonator now," he replied. "How much time?"
"Two minutes."
"Oh crap," Chloe gasped, beginning to feel extremely antsy, wanting so badly to leap out of the chair against her better judgment.
Batman continued to watch the timer. Each second seemed as if it were coming faster with no word from Lucius. He was fast determined that this wasn't happening again. There didn't need to be a wrong or right choice this time.
"Time!"
"No word yet," he informed gravely as he heard the desperation in his voice. "Do what you've got to do."
It was fast coming down to seconds and he couldn't wait any longer.
Chloe could only watch as he rose quickly, looking about the room as if searching desperately. He strode over to where she had noted the ancient television and despite the dire situation, felt quizzical when he picked it up and launched through the glass window.
"What are you doing?" she asked, as he stepped in between her and the window.
He looked down and then back at her with decisiveness and suddenly she knew. "Oh-no. You can't!" she shouted.
But there was no time. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up to him, enveloping both of them into his cape and leapt out of the window.
Chloe felt the full impact of their landing through is body. The ground began to rumble and shake with the explosions that were ripping through the building near them. They seemed to shudder through the protectiveness of his garb along with the sound of debris landing all around them. Chloe began to wonder which was louder; the explosions or the sound of her own heart.
After a moment, all was deadly silent and Chloe was nearly afraid to move. Only when she pressed to get up did she hear him groan. The sudden thought that he could've been killed and glad that he hadn't been ran through her mind.
"You all right?" he asked roughly.
"I'm fine," she declared with certainty, but suddenly realized one thing. "Ginny?" she leapt up and away from him.
"The girl?" was all he said.
"She's fine," Lucius informed. "They were able to disable the detonator."
"Your friend is safe," he informed as he rose to meet her worried expression.
Chloe was near to speechless. What could she say? She'd berated him because of her lack of faith. Now he stood before her, his great chest heaving with exertion and both were still alive. Yet somehow, there were no words. No words, except…
"Thank you."
He seemed unaffected. He only stepped closer to her.
"And I'm sorry," he said gruffly.
Before Chloe could protest, he grabbed her and she was quickly immobilized by a strange mist and then back into blissful oblivion.
oOo
A/N: Whaddya think? :-)