[Kent farm, Smallville]
A thin thread of sunlight lingered briefly on the horizon. Night had fallen in Smallville. With his chores done, Clark sat in his loft and opened the gold-trimmed envelope. It read:
"To: Clark Kent
You are cordially invited to attend the party in honour of Oliver Queen, of the Star City Queen family. 6 p.m. Luthor Hall, Metropolis Museum. Formal attire required."
He had been excited about the party – until his unfortunate confrontation with Lex and Oliver. Now, he wasn't sure if he was even welcome there. He had pried too far into Oliver and Bruce's college past. Dinah Lance was definitely a source of tension between them. She's also causing tension between me and Lex as well, Clark grumbled to himself. Chloe had warned him, but he went ahead and crossed that fine line of privacy.
I should know better, he thought, considering how much I want to keep my own past hidden.
He spotted bright headlights in the distance. A car door slammed shut, then footsteps crunched on the gravel road.
"Clark?" Lex inquired, as he looked through the barn doors. "Are you there?"
"Lex," Clark was surprised. "I didn't expect to see you here. I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk to me, or even if you wanted me to still go to Oliver Queen's party."
Lex smiled slightly. "It's a misunderstanding. I wasn't aware how strongly you felt about this situation between Bruce and Oliver."
Clark climbed down from the loft. "I'm sorry about pushing the envelope with Oliver's relationship with –"He checked himself.
"And you did push it," Lex stated. "But Chloe Sullivan gave you the envelope, so I can't fault you for being curious about Ms. Lance. For the record, Dinah and Oliver are not an "item" now. It's pretty hard to keep up a steady relationship when one party is shipwrecked for one year on some deserted South Pacific outpost of French imperialism."
"I guess," Clark shrugged. Lex wasn't going to elaborate on Ms. Lance, and Clark was just pleased that Lex was willing to put the mess behind them.
"I, too, owe you an apology," Lex extended his hand, "for not keeping you abreast of the niceties observed between the so-called Metropolis elite. But next time, whenever you feel like you want to address a sensitive issue like that ... err on the side of discretion."
"Agreed," Clark shook his hand, relieved that one handshake had smoothed over the problem.
Another set of headlights interrupted their conversation. The car pulled up beside the Porsche. More footstep crackles on the gravel path. Pete walked into the barn, clearly displeased that Lex was already there.
"Hey Clark," Pete greeted, then out of necessity nodded at Lex. "Lex."
"Pete," Lex nodded. "How's your schedule for 6 p.m.? I'm hosting a party for Oliver Queen at the museum. Would you like to go? You can ask Oliver about his motocross adventures in Brazil."
For a moment, Pete thought about going. He would like to meet Oliver, who had become a legend among the extreme sports crowd. But it was a Luthor party. And he didn't need – or want – any favours from Lex.
Thank god I really have something to do, he thought.
"You know, I would," Pete replied, "but I'll be at the Fawcett City- Smallville basketball game. The Crows' season hangs in the balance, and all that ..."
"It's too bad," Lex said, apparently disappointed that one of Clark's friends couldn't go. "Queen's quite the character."
Pete couldn't stand this polite chatter. But he had to put up with it, out of respect for Clark. "Yeah, well, perhaps I'll catch him at some other event. Clark? We'll talk some other time. 'night, guys."
"Actually, I've got to run, too," Lex checked his watch. "I've got to make some important calls to Congress and the Canadian trade minister. The NAFTA board will be awaiting our responses soon. Clark, we've got tuxedo fittings tomorrow morning. I've scheduled them during your spare, so I'll have the car pick you up then."
Before Clark could protest the offer, Lex and Pete endured an uncomfortably long stroll to their cars. Lex's Porsche screeched away first. Not because he was in a hurry to talk to a congressman, Clark thought, but because he couldn't bear the unspoken tension between Pete and anything Luthor- related.
Clark picked up the elaborate invitation again.
Dinah Lance may have a role in Bruce's dispute with Oliver, he considered, but that role will have to remain silent for now. I still owe Oliver an apology.
[The Sullivan house, Smallville]
During the drive home from Metropolis, Pete had asked Chloe about her biology work. She could truthfully say that she had been to the library to look at a textbook.
Well, truth stretched to the limit, Chloe mused as she walked the few blocks towards her house. I only stopped by the library half an hour before my rendezvous with Pete at the campus coffeehouse.
Mr. Alfred Pennyworth, late of Britain's MI5 spy agency and currently Wayne's butler/bodyguard/father-figure, was mindful of his responsibilities. He would not betray Bruce's confidence, and whenever Chloe raised a delicate topic about Bruce – why did he study a subject, why did he learn this or that martial art – Alfred kept a stiff upper lip.
But, in the j-school's archives room, he was glowing whenever he talked about Bruce's friendships. As if those friendships represented something happy in 'Master Bruce's' college life. Chloe found it odd that Bruce rarely smiled in any photo. Not when he was handing out medals. Not when he was photographed with friends. If he did smile, it seemed to be forced: an expected reaction for an actor playing a role. She was curious about Bruce's secretive nature, but she figured that it was not the time then to explore her theories about Wayne.
She found herself laughing, when Alfred said something about picking up after Master Bruce.
"It is not so amusing," Alfred quipped, "when one finds his red scarf mixed with his whites. Which would explain the pinkish hue of his linens of late."
Alfred's tales fascinated Chloe. But he clammed up, she observed, when Chloe strayed too close to Bruce's private life. She had learned Oliver, Lex and Bruce had crossed paths in various European and New England boarding schools and academies. Lex and Oliver were closer friends, but Lex seemed to understand Bruce better. She realized that all he revealed was only the veneer of the truth. He would not yield anything beyond that.
On the topic of Gotham State criminology student Dinah Lance, Chloe learned that Bruce had known her first – since they had gone to college in Gotham City. She has signed up for the Metropolis U. program exchange for one year, without realizing that Bruce had already decided that he needed to upgrade his degree with courses there. Alfred wouldn't say – or didn't know – how close they were, but apparently her introduction to old buddy Oliver changed everything. He literally dazzled her, and their relationship was supposedly intense. She gathered that Bruce did not like the way Oliver handled the relationship, but it still seemed vague to her.
"That's all I know," Alfred concluded. "I regret, Miss Sullivan, that any further elaboration would breach the protocols I have imposed on myself regarding Bruce's privacy. I may have already said too much. Please do not inquire further about Bruce's relationships. It would only hurt him, which might affect his friendship with Clark."
Alfred had invoked Clark's name, so Chloe relented. She knew more than before, but the whys still evaded her. Did Bruce truly love this Dinah Lance? Had Oliver broken some unspoken rule of etiquette among boarding schoolmates about seeing 'someone else's girl'? That would be so parochial, she smirked. She wouldn't learn about that final argument, three months before Queen's disappearance. Oliver had said something to dishonour the memory of Bruce's murdered parents. In Bruce's eyes, that could never be forgiven – and Alfred would not help to prolong this alleged slight to family honour.
Chloe could barely contain her giggles, when Alfred had outlined the precise procedure for leaving the building separately ... so no one would suspect that they had been there together:
"I will get up and walk for 10 minutes, towards the business school. You shall wait until then before you get up to leave. You will ensure that I am beyond the horizon before you leave the building, lest we are being watched. If you are asked if anyone was with you in the archives, you shall say: no one that I knew. Which wouldn't be a lie, because you didn't really know that I was going to be there. If I hadn't introduced myself, you wouldn't have known."
It revealed that Alfred was more than just a tea-serving manservant. She imagined Agent Double-O Pennyworth spiriting Soviet turncoats out of the East Berlin, dodging sentry snipers as they hopped the Berlin Wall to freedom. He was a living John Le Carre Cold War character, she smiled to herself.
Her smile did not last, as she turned the corner towards her house. Perhaps I should have let Pete drive me to my doorstep instead of just the intersection, she frowned.
Chloe had pulled out her personal security alarm, but paused. Lionel Luthor appeared, like a wraith, as he stepped from behind a tree.
"A lovely, late spring evening walk will do you wonders, Miss Sullivan," Lionel smirked. He was well-hidden in his dark overcoat. Chloe noticed the unmarked sedan, with its lights off on the opposite side of the street.
"Have you resorted to stalking as an intimidation tool?" Chloe demanded. "I told you I'm not helping you destroy Queen!"
"Oh come now," Lionel tut-tutted playfully. "I have given you an assignment, with specific expectations. Think of me as ... hmm ... a newspaper editor with very abrupt deadlines. If you miss the deadline, you get dropped from publication. Except in my case, no paper from Buenos Aires to Yellowknife will hire you."
Chloe tried to march past him, but he seemed to hover to block her path.
"How was your visit to the journalism school's archives room?" he inquired innocently.
How did you --, she gasped to herself. Alfred's supposedly outdated precautions now seemed eerily practical. They were in a shadowy war: one of whispers and shifting coalitions. Alfred knew the rules of the game all too well.
"It was for the basketball game," Chloe blurted, with the faint hope that Lionel would believe her story.
He didn't. "A basketball game," Lionel cackled. "Your terminal spat out 30 results. With the words 'wayne queen dinah lance'."
Chloe's jaw dropped. Lionel has moles, even within the objective halls of Metropolis U.'s journalism school.
"What you'll find is nothing that isn't already common knowledge," Chloe argued.
"I wonder," Lionel tapped his finger against his cheek. "I wonder how young Master Bruce would react if he were to learn that you were looking into his college life. I dare say, Gotham's favourite son would not be amused. 'How could one of Clark's friends betray me like this', he'd claim. Hmm. A wedge between Wayne and Kent. I like it. Isolate poor Brucie from one of his closest friends. And, it would also serve as a warning to that meddlesome Clark – not to interfere in my affairs again."
"Why should Bruce believe you?" she demanded, glancing over Lionel's shoulder. She hoped that Lana might see them.
"Why should he believe you?" Lionel countered. "Face it, Chloe. I can save you, or damn you. I've taken many risks to encourage your reporting ambitions. I need a demonstration of good faith. Now. I don't want dull facts."
Chloe remained silent. By threatening to reveal her snooping to Bruce, he implied that he knew nothing about Alfred's visit. It was an advantage. My only advantage, she lamented.
"Then what is it you want?" Chloe replied, making it seem like she was fatigued.
"I want perspective," Lionel remarked. "An opening. You see, in the Napoleonic Wars, it was a rule of war that a well-formed and disciplined infantry square could always stop a cavalry charge. Picture it, if you will: a bristling hedge of bayonets, with infantry at the ready. No horse in its right mind would impale itself against that! God Himself could not break that square, Miss Sullivan."
"Why are you boring me with your 'Horatio Hornblower' footnotes?" Chloe rolled her eyes at the pompous display.
"It's resolve, my dear," Lionel noted. "Resolve of the men. If they held, nothing could break their deadly hedge. But all it took was weakness. A few soldiers who'd break ranks. A few shot out of line. Then, those horses – glistening with bloodlust – would hammer down upon that broken square."
Lionel motioned his arm in a slicing motion. "The cavalry would chop, behead, impale and otherwise grind that pitiful mass of weakened humanity to bits! I can't allow Oliver, Bruce and likely Lex to align themselves like that square. Queen is vulnerable now. I want to exploit that breach. Tell me what you've concluded about his rift with Wayne."
"No!" Chloe declared.
Lionel clicked his watch. The neon reflection displayed a running timer. "You have thirty seconds. Tell me what you think is the critical issue in this conflict of silver-spooned brats. Tell me, or Bruce will learn of your archive treachery. You will cause an air of suspicion between Bruce and Clark, a mood that I can exploit to achieve my ends anyway. Without you. Tell me what you think, and you can perhaps protect Clark's maturing friendship with Wayne. Deny me ... and you alone can wear that albatross for destroying their bond."
Chloe hesitated. He cornered her again! She knew about Dinah. She knew that Ms. Lance was – if not the main reason – an aggravating factor in the Queen- Wayne tension. She knew that Bruce had misgivings about Oliver's relationship with Dinah.
"Ten seconds," Lionel observed. "I'd like to be home for Koppel's report, if you don't mind."
"Okay," Chloe stated. She struggled to find some detail in her discoveries that might not be so revealing.
"Four seconds," Lionel continued, "three ... two ..."
"Dinah Lance," Chloe stated.
"Oh please," Lionel groaned. "The feud is little more than a tug of war between two frat boys hung up over some blonde Gotham tart? If that's all you have, I can do better on my own. But that isn't all – is it?"
Chloe wrinkled the corner of her mouth, reluctant to give up what she had worked to uncover. "It was a matter of honour." She hoped that was still vague enough not to cause immediate harm.
"Ah yes," Lionel clapped his hands in satisfaction. "The testosterone-driven point of honour. Queen had none; Wayne had too much. It was inevitable: their shared hunger for some perky co-ed would bring that conflicting character trait into play. Thank you, Miss Sullivan. You have performed your duty well. Oh ... if I even sense that you've gone to warn Oliver Queen, I will make it so that you lose your ability to think for yourself, let alone type. A lifetime strait-jacketed in a padded psychiatric ward would be a terrible place to end your budding career."
In moments, Lionel disappeared into his sedan without lights. Chloe could only hope that Lionel didn't have the ability to exploit what he had learned.
Lana turned on the porch light and opened the house door. "I was getting worried when Pete said he had dropped you off and you hadn't arrived yet."
"Sorry," Chloe sighed. "I was just admiring the big Kansas sky. I read that you can see Venus tonight."
Lana, apparently moments from going to bed, smiled and closed the door behind them. Chloe shuddered. She knew that her bargain with Lionel would give her no rest. After checking her email – apparently Clark was going to some museum soiree tomorrow for Queen – she turned off her lamp.
But she couldn't sleep. She nodded off. Something prodded her awake. It was Oliver Queen, dressed in Metropolis U.'s athletic colours. An arrow had impaled his chest.
"Why?" he demanded. "You sold me out. Bruce ignored me, but you damned me, Chloe! Enjoy your bright career. It was paid for with my family's honour! I will see you in Hell, Sullivan. Damn you." He gasped his last breath, and collapsed atop her bed.
Chloe woke up from the nightmare. She inhaled. Her chest felt constrained. She wanted to believe she was handling this crisis, but she couldn't escape that feeling of guilt.
Have I betrayed Queen to doom, condemned Wayne to ruin and served Lionel his Austerlitz victory, she feared.
A thin thread of sunlight lingered briefly on the horizon. Night had fallen in Smallville. With his chores done, Clark sat in his loft and opened the gold-trimmed envelope. It read:
"To: Clark Kent
You are cordially invited to attend the party in honour of Oliver Queen, of the Star City Queen family. 6 p.m. Luthor Hall, Metropolis Museum. Formal attire required."
He had been excited about the party – until his unfortunate confrontation with Lex and Oliver. Now, he wasn't sure if he was even welcome there. He had pried too far into Oliver and Bruce's college past. Dinah Lance was definitely a source of tension between them. She's also causing tension between me and Lex as well, Clark grumbled to himself. Chloe had warned him, but he went ahead and crossed that fine line of privacy.
I should know better, he thought, considering how much I want to keep my own past hidden.
He spotted bright headlights in the distance. A car door slammed shut, then footsteps crunched on the gravel road.
"Clark?" Lex inquired, as he looked through the barn doors. "Are you there?"
"Lex," Clark was surprised. "I didn't expect to see you here. I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk to me, or even if you wanted me to still go to Oliver Queen's party."
Lex smiled slightly. "It's a misunderstanding. I wasn't aware how strongly you felt about this situation between Bruce and Oliver."
Clark climbed down from the loft. "I'm sorry about pushing the envelope with Oliver's relationship with –"He checked himself.
"And you did push it," Lex stated. "But Chloe Sullivan gave you the envelope, so I can't fault you for being curious about Ms. Lance. For the record, Dinah and Oliver are not an "item" now. It's pretty hard to keep up a steady relationship when one party is shipwrecked for one year on some deserted South Pacific outpost of French imperialism."
"I guess," Clark shrugged. Lex wasn't going to elaborate on Ms. Lance, and Clark was just pleased that Lex was willing to put the mess behind them.
"I, too, owe you an apology," Lex extended his hand, "for not keeping you abreast of the niceties observed between the so-called Metropolis elite. But next time, whenever you feel like you want to address a sensitive issue like that ... err on the side of discretion."
"Agreed," Clark shook his hand, relieved that one handshake had smoothed over the problem.
Another set of headlights interrupted their conversation. The car pulled up beside the Porsche. More footstep crackles on the gravel path. Pete walked into the barn, clearly displeased that Lex was already there.
"Hey Clark," Pete greeted, then out of necessity nodded at Lex. "Lex."
"Pete," Lex nodded. "How's your schedule for 6 p.m.? I'm hosting a party for Oliver Queen at the museum. Would you like to go? You can ask Oliver about his motocross adventures in Brazil."
For a moment, Pete thought about going. He would like to meet Oliver, who had become a legend among the extreme sports crowd. But it was a Luthor party. And he didn't need – or want – any favours from Lex.
Thank god I really have something to do, he thought.
"You know, I would," Pete replied, "but I'll be at the Fawcett City- Smallville basketball game. The Crows' season hangs in the balance, and all that ..."
"It's too bad," Lex said, apparently disappointed that one of Clark's friends couldn't go. "Queen's quite the character."
Pete couldn't stand this polite chatter. But he had to put up with it, out of respect for Clark. "Yeah, well, perhaps I'll catch him at some other event. Clark? We'll talk some other time. 'night, guys."
"Actually, I've got to run, too," Lex checked his watch. "I've got to make some important calls to Congress and the Canadian trade minister. The NAFTA board will be awaiting our responses soon. Clark, we've got tuxedo fittings tomorrow morning. I've scheduled them during your spare, so I'll have the car pick you up then."
Before Clark could protest the offer, Lex and Pete endured an uncomfortably long stroll to their cars. Lex's Porsche screeched away first. Not because he was in a hurry to talk to a congressman, Clark thought, but because he couldn't bear the unspoken tension between Pete and anything Luthor- related.
Clark picked up the elaborate invitation again.
Dinah Lance may have a role in Bruce's dispute with Oliver, he considered, but that role will have to remain silent for now. I still owe Oliver an apology.
[The Sullivan house, Smallville]
During the drive home from Metropolis, Pete had asked Chloe about her biology work. She could truthfully say that she had been to the library to look at a textbook.
Well, truth stretched to the limit, Chloe mused as she walked the few blocks towards her house. I only stopped by the library half an hour before my rendezvous with Pete at the campus coffeehouse.
Mr. Alfred Pennyworth, late of Britain's MI5 spy agency and currently Wayne's butler/bodyguard/father-figure, was mindful of his responsibilities. He would not betray Bruce's confidence, and whenever Chloe raised a delicate topic about Bruce – why did he study a subject, why did he learn this or that martial art – Alfred kept a stiff upper lip.
But, in the j-school's archives room, he was glowing whenever he talked about Bruce's friendships. As if those friendships represented something happy in 'Master Bruce's' college life. Chloe found it odd that Bruce rarely smiled in any photo. Not when he was handing out medals. Not when he was photographed with friends. If he did smile, it seemed to be forced: an expected reaction for an actor playing a role. She was curious about Bruce's secretive nature, but she figured that it was not the time then to explore her theories about Wayne.
She found herself laughing, when Alfred said something about picking up after Master Bruce.
"It is not so amusing," Alfred quipped, "when one finds his red scarf mixed with his whites. Which would explain the pinkish hue of his linens of late."
Alfred's tales fascinated Chloe. But he clammed up, she observed, when Chloe strayed too close to Bruce's private life. She had learned Oliver, Lex and Bruce had crossed paths in various European and New England boarding schools and academies. Lex and Oliver were closer friends, but Lex seemed to understand Bruce better. She realized that all he revealed was only the veneer of the truth. He would not yield anything beyond that.
On the topic of Gotham State criminology student Dinah Lance, Chloe learned that Bruce had known her first – since they had gone to college in Gotham City. She has signed up for the Metropolis U. program exchange for one year, without realizing that Bruce had already decided that he needed to upgrade his degree with courses there. Alfred wouldn't say – or didn't know – how close they were, but apparently her introduction to old buddy Oliver changed everything. He literally dazzled her, and their relationship was supposedly intense. She gathered that Bruce did not like the way Oliver handled the relationship, but it still seemed vague to her.
"That's all I know," Alfred concluded. "I regret, Miss Sullivan, that any further elaboration would breach the protocols I have imposed on myself regarding Bruce's privacy. I may have already said too much. Please do not inquire further about Bruce's relationships. It would only hurt him, which might affect his friendship with Clark."
Alfred had invoked Clark's name, so Chloe relented. She knew more than before, but the whys still evaded her. Did Bruce truly love this Dinah Lance? Had Oliver broken some unspoken rule of etiquette among boarding schoolmates about seeing 'someone else's girl'? That would be so parochial, she smirked. She wouldn't learn about that final argument, three months before Queen's disappearance. Oliver had said something to dishonour the memory of Bruce's murdered parents. In Bruce's eyes, that could never be forgiven – and Alfred would not help to prolong this alleged slight to family honour.
Chloe could barely contain her giggles, when Alfred had outlined the precise procedure for leaving the building separately ... so no one would suspect that they had been there together:
"I will get up and walk for 10 minutes, towards the business school. You shall wait until then before you get up to leave. You will ensure that I am beyond the horizon before you leave the building, lest we are being watched. If you are asked if anyone was with you in the archives, you shall say: no one that I knew. Which wouldn't be a lie, because you didn't really know that I was going to be there. If I hadn't introduced myself, you wouldn't have known."
It revealed that Alfred was more than just a tea-serving manservant. She imagined Agent Double-O Pennyworth spiriting Soviet turncoats out of the East Berlin, dodging sentry snipers as they hopped the Berlin Wall to freedom. He was a living John Le Carre Cold War character, she smiled to herself.
Her smile did not last, as she turned the corner towards her house. Perhaps I should have let Pete drive me to my doorstep instead of just the intersection, she frowned.
Chloe had pulled out her personal security alarm, but paused. Lionel Luthor appeared, like a wraith, as he stepped from behind a tree.
"A lovely, late spring evening walk will do you wonders, Miss Sullivan," Lionel smirked. He was well-hidden in his dark overcoat. Chloe noticed the unmarked sedan, with its lights off on the opposite side of the street.
"Have you resorted to stalking as an intimidation tool?" Chloe demanded. "I told you I'm not helping you destroy Queen!"
"Oh come now," Lionel tut-tutted playfully. "I have given you an assignment, with specific expectations. Think of me as ... hmm ... a newspaper editor with very abrupt deadlines. If you miss the deadline, you get dropped from publication. Except in my case, no paper from Buenos Aires to Yellowknife will hire you."
Chloe tried to march past him, but he seemed to hover to block her path.
"How was your visit to the journalism school's archives room?" he inquired innocently.
How did you --, she gasped to herself. Alfred's supposedly outdated precautions now seemed eerily practical. They were in a shadowy war: one of whispers and shifting coalitions. Alfred knew the rules of the game all too well.
"It was for the basketball game," Chloe blurted, with the faint hope that Lionel would believe her story.
He didn't. "A basketball game," Lionel cackled. "Your terminal spat out 30 results. With the words 'wayne queen dinah lance'."
Chloe's jaw dropped. Lionel has moles, even within the objective halls of Metropolis U.'s journalism school.
"What you'll find is nothing that isn't already common knowledge," Chloe argued.
"I wonder," Lionel tapped his finger against his cheek. "I wonder how young Master Bruce would react if he were to learn that you were looking into his college life. I dare say, Gotham's favourite son would not be amused. 'How could one of Clark's friends betray me like this', he'd claim. Hmm. A wedge between Wayne and Kent. I like it. Isolate poor Brucie from one of his closest friends. And, it would also serve as a warning to that meddlesome Clark – not to interfere in my affairs again."
"Why should Bruce believe you?" she demanded, glancing over Lionel's shoulder. She hoped that Lana might see them.
"Why should he believe you?" Lionel countered. "Face it, Chloe. I can save you, or damn you. I've taken many risks to encourage your reporting ambitions. I need a demonstration of good faith. Now. I don't want dull facts."
Chloe remained silent. By threatening to reveal her snooping to Bruce, he implied that he knew nothing about Alfred's visit. It was an advantage. My only advantage, she lamented.
"Then what is it you want?" Chloe replied, making it seem like she was fatigued.
"I want perspective," Lionel remarked. "An opening. You see, in the Napoleonic Wars, it was a rule of war that a well-formed and disciplined infantry square could always stop a cavalry charge. Picture it, if you will: a bristling hedge of bayonets, with infantry at the ready. No horse in its right mind would impale itself against that! God Himself could not break that square, Miss Sullivan."
"Why are you boring me with your 'Horatio Hornblower' footnotes?" Chloe rolled her eyes at the pompous display.
"It's resolve, my dear," Lionel noted. "Resolve of the men. If they held, nothing could break their deadly hedge. But all it took was weakness. A few soldiers who'd break ranks. A few shot out of line. Then, those horses – glistening with bloodlust – would hammer down upon that broken square."
Lionel motioned his arm in a slicing motion. "The cavalry would chop, behead, impale and otherwise grind that pitiful mass of weakened humanity to bits! I can't allow Oliver, Bruce and likely Lex to align themselves like that square. Queen is vulnerable now. I want to exploit that breach. Tell me what you've concluded about his rift with Wayne."
"No!" Chloe declared.
Lionel clicked his watch. The neon reflection displayed a running timer. "You have thirty seconds. Tell me what you think is the critical issue in this conflict of silver-spooned brats. Tell me, or Bruce will learn of your archive treachery. You will cause an air of suspicion between Bruce and Clark, a mood that I can exploit to achieve my ends anyway. Without you. Tell me what you think, and you can perhaps protect Clark's maturing friendship with Wayne. Deny me ... and you alone can wear that albatross for destroying their bond."
Chloe hesitated. He cornered her again! She knew about Dinah. She knew that Ms. Lance was – if not the main reason – an aggravating factor in the Queen- Wayne tension. She knew that Bruce had misgivings about Oliver's relationship with Dinah.
"Ten seconds," Lionel observed. "I'd like to be home for Koppel's report, if you don't mind."
"Okay," Chloe stated. She struggled to find some detail in her discoveries that might not be so revealing.
"Four seconds," Lionel continued, "three ... two ..."
"Dinah Lance," Chloe stated.
"Oh please," Lionel groaned. "The feud is little more than a tug of war between two frat boys hung up over some blonde Gotham tart? If that's all you have, I can do better on my own. But that isn't all – is it?"
Chloe wrinkled the corner of her mouth, reluctant to give up what she had worked to uncover. "It was a matter of honour." She hoped that was still vague enough not to cause immediate harm.
"Ah yes," Lionel clapped his hands in satisfaction. "The testosterone-driven point of honour. Queen had none; Wayne had too much. It was inevitable: their shared hunger for some perky co-ed would bring that conflicting character trait into play. Thank you, Miss Sullivan. You have performed your duty well. Oh ... if I even sense that you've gone to warn Oliver Queen, I will make it so that you lose your ability to think for yourself, let alone type. A lifetime strait-jacketed in a padded psychiatric ward would be a terrible place to end your budding career."
In moments, Lionel disappeared into his sedan without lights. Chloe could only hope that Lionel didn't have the ability to exploit what he had learned.
Lana turned on the porch light and opened the house door. "I was getting worried when Pete said he had dropped you off and you hadn't arrived yet."
"Sorry," Chloe sighed. "I was just admiring the big Kansas sky. I read that you can see Venus tonight."
Lana, apparently moments from going to bed, smiled and closed the door behind them. Chloe shuddered. She knew that her bargain with Lionel would give her no rest. After checking her email – apparently Clark was going to some museum soiree tomorrow for Queen – she turned off her lamp.
But she couldn't sleep. She nodded off. Something prodded her awake. It was Oliver Queen, dressed in Metropolis U.'s athletic colours. An arrow had impaled his chest.
"Why?" he demanded. "You sold me out. Bruce ignored me, but you damned me, Chloe! Enjoy your bright career. It was paid for with my family's honour! I will see you in Hell, Sullivan. Damn you." He gasped his last breath, and collapsed atop her bed.
Chloe woke up from the nightmare. She inhaled. Her chest felt constrained. She wanted to believe she was handling this crisis, but she couldn't escape that feeling of guilt.
Have I betrayed Queen to doom, condemned Wayne to ruin and served Lionel his Austerlitz victory, she feared.