Title: Here Is Gone
Author: Savage Midnight
Email:
Rating: R
Part: 1/?
Disclaimer: Smallville and all related elements belong to Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Copyright infringement is definitely not intended.
Summary: Chloe, Bart, and the moments in-between.
Author's Note: This is what happens when Lianne discovers a hidden fannish love for Li'l Flash. Bare in mind I don't know much about comic!Flash; only what I've gleaned from websites. There's too many different Flash's for me to keep track of, so I'm just sticking with Smallville!Flash right now. Thanks to the fabulous maveness for the beta.
---
She catches sight of him the night before her nineteenth birthday, in a Metropolis club only three blocks away from Clark's old digs. He looks the same as she remembers, except now there's no swagger to his step. He moves like Clark moves and his arrogance is sharper somehow, or maybe smoother. She doesn't know. All she knows is that he's changed. He's grown. She can tell by his eyes.
She remembers his eyes -- so open, so fuckin' open, and eager and afraid and all those things they shouldn't have been -- and they're none of those things now. They're dark and quiet, and she thinks that eyes like that should be dead or something, but they're not. They're kind of cocky -- the way she remembers him to be -- and mocking, like he's a part of some inside joke that nobody understands and he's sorry that they'll never get how funny it is.
It reminds of her Clark, and how he used to look at people. Except with Clark it wasn't a funny-ha-ha look. Clark's eyes always said differently. They always said: I know things you could never comprehend, and I wish I didn't.
She gets the same vibe from him. Like he has a secret. A secret he wants to share. A secret he's proud of. A secret he has pride in. Clark was never proud of his secret. Not even when Chloe found out and she told him over and over how proud she was of him, because he had this great power which he never abused and never took for granted, and he used it to save people who weren't as powerful or as strong or as moral. And she had been proud -- is still so very proud -- but Clark wasn't. Still isn't. Too many years of hiding a secret from people who would use it against him, use it to hurt him; the same people he saves day in and day out, without hesitation.
She's not sure why he's different. She's not sure if it's because he has faith in people and he trusts that, if they should ever discover his secret, they would love him for it, not hate him, or because he has faith in himself, in his own ability to protect his secret. Chloe knows for certain, though, that he's privy to something not many people are, even herself. Maybe she knows things he doesn't, but he's lived things she hasn't, and it shows.
She doesn't acknowledge him at first. Instead she elbows her way through the crowd, her college roommate in tow, and sidles up to the bar. She orders two Tequila shots and isn't at all surprised when the barman neglects to ID her. Chloe looked legal even when she was seventeen; at nearly nineteen nothing has changed.
She dances the night away with her roommate and a shy eighteen-year-old called Eric she recognizes from college.
She catches sight of him occasionally but loses track of him sometime after one. At almost three her roommate throws the towel in and retires, dragging her along on the search for a taxi. As the cab pulls up and Chloe drunkenly jerks the door open, she peers over the roof of the car and catches sight of a red and yellow flash, disappearing into the blackness of a nearby alley. She pauses for a minute, squints, sees nothing but the dark gloom of the streets, and shrugs. She climbs into the back of the cab and falls asleep against the window.
---
She doesn't see him again for another four months.
The next time she sees him is when he knocks on her apartment door and invites himself in. She doesn't say anything, but she's angry. It's a bad time. She's full of the flu and she's just broken up with Eric. She's not overly sad about it; she's only depressed because Eric is distraught and she doesn't really enjoy breaking people's hearts. She considers it a flaw, considering her future aspirations. Reporters are meant to be heartless, or so she's been told. She never really pays attention to people nowadays. People are fickle and shallow; only concerned with how people see them and not how they see themselves.
She knows what he sees right now and she doesn't care. So she's pale and her eyes are sunken and shadowed. Her head is full of cotton and her brain is seeping out through her nose. She's sweating in her sweats and she looks like death warmed up. She's okay with that.
She closes the door and turns around, expecting to find the arrogant little kid she once knew sitting on her couch.
Instead she turns to find him, a man, facing her. He still has the face she remembers. His features are a little stronger but still a little boyish, a little mischievous. His blond hair is shorter and still slightly spiked, exposing eyes that never belonged to the kid she remembers. They're not the eyes from the club, either. They're different now -- he's different now -- and she realizes then how so much can change in so little time. One moment, two years, four months, a mere second; time flashes by and she can't catch up. She's not fast enough. She'll never be fast enough.
He proves her wrong when he doesn't say anything. He doesn't do anything but stand there, silent and still. The moment is frozen, a freeze frame, and Chloe dares herself not to breathe, not to move, not to run.
"Bart."
The silence cracks and splinters and she finds herself slammed against the door, hands wrapped tightly around her forearms and lips covering hers. She didn't even see him move -- too fast for her eyes -- but she doesn't care, is tired of caring. The moments slip her by because she lets them.
She moves her hands to his chest and pushes, separating them so she can catch her breath. Too fast. She hasn't had chance to enjoy the anticipation. Sometimes the best part of living is waiting for the next moment to come along.
His eyes are darker when she looks up at him, but they're still clear and bright and not in the least bit wild like she thought they would be. The blood in her veins is pumping furiously and she can feel the heat boiling beneath her skin, but he looks calm, collected, cool, like he's used to this; like he lives like he kisses -- fast and furious and fierce.
Right now she's feeling slow and lethargic. Her mind is foggy with the flu and her senses are subdued, blocked. She feels condensed; a watered-down version of herself, and she has the strangest feeling that a lot of people feel that way when they stand next to Bart. Like they're only half-alive somehow. Like they're less. It's disconcerting.
"The hell," she says, finally, taking a step forward. "Bart, what--"
"Don't play with me, Chloe," is all he says, and she shakes her head in confusion.
"I'm not--"
"You are."
"Will you just let me talk!" she demands tightly, but her throat is so sore that the command comes out in a croaky whisper rather than the angry bark she intended on. But she figures her body language signifies enough. She's cranky and tired and not in the mood to play games, especially when she doesn't even know what game it is they're playing. Everything is moving too fast and she's far too exhausted to catch up.
Wisely, he remains quiet.
"Go away," she says, after a long moment.
He blinks. "No," he counters defiantly, folding his arms across his chest.
"Fine. Stay there. I'm going to bed." She steps past him, across the lounge and into the darkness of her bedroom. She closes the door behind her and breathes steadily. She gives herself a minute before she shuffles to her bedside and flips on her lamp. The dim glow is still too bright for her eyes and her head throbs in protest.
"Nice digs," says a voice from behind her and she stills. She doesn't bother turning around.
"Get out, Bart. I'm tired."
"You felt something. I know you did."
"Yes. Nauseous. What's your point?"
"Funny."
"I'm a barrel of laughs," she deadpans and slips into bed, turning her back on him. She really, really isn't in the mood.
"'Night, Bart."
He doesn't answer and she listens for the sound of him leaving, but there's nothing. After a long moment she turns to look towards the door, only to find him already gone. She turns back.
Sleep catches up to Chloe before she catches up to it.
---
Three weeks later and the need to see him is like an itch she can't scratch. The anticipation she craved that night hangs heavy in the air, and she realizes with some degree of disappointment that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Anticipation makes her edgy, and not in a good way.
She returns to college, still fighting the final stages of flu, and is surprised to find that settling down behind her desk as editor of the college paper doesn't calm her any. It usually does. This chair is a wondrous chair most of the time -- it reminds her of how far she's come despite all she's lost. It reminds her that she's not really the dark and deadened cynical she once thought she'd grow up to be. She's content, and that's good enough for her.
Really.
She doesn't even have Bart's number, so she can't ring him and demand the explanation she was too exhausted to ask for, and listen to, that night. She's thought about it a lot in the last three weeks and realizes that none of it makes sense. Chloe's used to things being nonsensical and illogical, but this is way off the bat. The last time she talked to Bart properly was almost two years ago, when she was seventeen. She remembers thinking how cute he was -- but not as cute as Clark -- and how sweet he was -- but not as sweet as Clark -- and how he flirted with her the way Clark never did. She also remembers how in love with Clark she was then and how she barely noticed anyone else. A fool in love.
Two years and two meetings later and Bart has her blood up the way Clark used to get her blood up. Except Clark was her best friend then and Bart doesn't know her near as well. Two meetings -- one barely that -- and already he's asking things of her, asking her to feel things too strong for a bond too weak. She doesn't know Bart; her heart refuses to acknowledge him the way her body does. They're not even friends. They're a long way off from lovers.
But he's a memory now. He's a thought. He's a part of her subconscious in a way she doesn't like and she spends her first day back trying to shake him out of her head.
Except the harder she tries not to think about him the more she does, and she leaves work frustrated and cranky and a little pissed off. Bart gets her blood up in more ways than one, and that pisses her off even more, the thought that he has enough power over her to rile her up.
She finds him leaning against her car when she leaves college. She can make out his form even in the gloomy shadows of the underground parking lot, and maybe she's only seen him twice in the last six months but she knows his stance now. It's not arrogant, exactly, more like proud.
Okay. Maybe a little arrogant.
She can't ignore him and just drive home, either, because he's leaning against the driver's side door. She really wishes she could move him with willpower alone because she's suddenly feeling extremely tired and overly sensitive. She thinks it may be the wrong time of the month.
She lets him speak first because she doesn't have the energy to. She doesn't even feel pissed off enough to shout at him anymore.
"You look like shit," he says, and she smiles and hopes that maybe he'll cut her a little slack simply because she feels like she looks.
"Unless you've forgotten, I was playing the snotty-nosed one last week. Which makes a change, I might add. What do you want?"
He smiles, and she thinks he should be smirking, not smiling, but he's not. Funny.
"For someone so quick-witted you sure are slow."
She blinks and stares at him with feigned boredom, all the while secretly admiring the way his blonde hair falls into his eyes. It's far too sexy for words, and Chloe should know. She's the mother of words.
"I'm bored. Get to the point," she demands with soft indifference, mimicking his stance and folding her arms across her chest. She tilts her head to the side and she's well aware of the way she looks; like she's mocking him. Like she's entertaining a small child.
He's quiet for a second, gazing at her solemnly. Then, in a low, serious voice, he asks, "You really like to draw this kind of shit out, don't you?"
She shrugs. "I'm a reporter. The excitement isn't in having a story. It's in getting it."
He moves forward a step, but not far enough for her to get into her car. It makes her a little nervous.
"You mean to tell me you find no amount of satisfaction in having your story laid out for you to see?" he asks quietly. He takes another step forward. "Knowing it's your story, no one else's." Another. "Knowing that it was your passion that made it." Another, and then he's standing in front of her and meeting her hard gaze without hesitation. "Just knowing it's yours."
Chloe knows she's small and Bart's got at least three inches on her, but she's not intimidated.
She's not.
She smirks and shakes her head. "You know," she starts, "I find it fitting that you've just spent the last five minutes comparing yourself to a rag." She snorts in laughter to drive the message home. Her mockery says everything she can't.
I could never take you seriously.
She can never take them seriously.
She's too grown up for games.
Don't play with me, Chloe.
She's not playing anymore.
"You're not the editor of a rag, Chloe," he argues after a long moment. "You wouldn't love your work so much if you were."
He taps into her anger with just a few choice words and the echoes of her smug laughter are drowned out. She tightens her jaw, and her fists.
"That's funny," she says. "The way you're talking, you'd think you know me." She takes a bold step forward and raises her chin in defiance, in anger. "You don't, Bart," she tells him softly. "You don't know me at all. You think you do, and you think you can twist me with words, but you forget." One more step, a whisper in his ear and control is hers again.
"I'm the master of words."
---
He waits another six weeks.
By the second week she's well aware that he's mocking her, drawing it out because that's what she told him she wanted.
She lied. To him and to herself. He may have tried to twist her with his words, but she's bent the truth so far to her liking that she's not even sure if it's the truth or not.
She thinks she regrets doing that. She thinks she does, but she's not certain. She's not certain of anything, and maybe that's why she draws it out so much.
She's terrified. He's a stranger to her, but he's in her head in a way she doesn't like. He has that effect on her that she hates; the same effect she knows he has on everyone else. It's almost as if, just by simply standing here and thinking about him, she's missing something.
He makes her feel slow and hollow and alive all at the same time, and Chloe reasons that if she lets him in, she'll only spend a lifetime trying to catch up to him.
Not trying to be as good as him -- she's a good person, she is -- but simply trying to be there, where he is. Trying to be with him.
It's harder than it sounds.
What bothers Chloe is that, after only a few brief meetings, she's already getting the same vibes from him that she did from Clark. If she tears away the confidence and the pride that Clark never had, there's still that same vulnerability there, the same harsh belief that no one will ever -- and could ever -- comprehend who and what they are.
Bart's special like Clark is. She knows. She can feel it. Her senses scream it at her, and after spending years of ignoring them when it came to Clark, she refuses to ignore them now.
She refuses to be left behind, left out or left alone.
Bart will probably never even be aware of doing those things, if he were ever given the chance to do them. He lives in a different timeline to her, moves through life at a completely different pace, and Chloe knows he'll leave just as quickly as he came.
She doesn't like to think that way. Doesn't like to look too far in the future and try to predict what will happen, who will leave and how they'll leave. She lives ahead of herself, always striving for more than she has, and she's well aware it's a destructive flaw. She loses what she has because she spends her days trying to find the things she doesn't. It's not healthy.
She wastes her time wondering what-if and why-not and never bothers to wonder why. Why wonder? Why think about the what-ifs and the why-nots? Why live a life of haves and have-nots? Why not simply live?
Some days she tries to reason that the only thing worth living for is the search. She's never really found satisfaction in getting what she wants. She feels accomplished, sure, but it's short-lived, and then she's after the next thing she wants, and the next.
Chloe's an accomplishment in Bart's eyes. She's a want that he has to have, and once he's had her he'll move on to the next thing he wants. It's inevitable. It's what she would do, and she knows that might make her a heartless bitch, but she truly is tired of lying to herself.
Life is one big painful search, and it never ends.
It's not how you live -- fast and furious, slow and steady -- it's what you live for.
And Chloe lives for the search.
It's why she's a reporter. It's the truth she spends her life searching for. World truth, personal truth, it doesn't matter. It hurts, but so do the lies.
She's tired of the lies. Of people lying to her. Of lying to herself. She shouldn't have to chase the truth, to search for it, but she does and she'll continue to do so.
Because that's all she has left.
