Chapter 3: CHLOE
She can still remember that once she believed in the truth.
Once she wanted more than anything else to be a reporter, someone who would strive to bring justice to the people, who would bring conspiracies to the light and weed corrupted man out of the system.
Those days are long gone and she rarely thinks about them anymore. She looks at them like heaven, times when she didn't have to fight everyday with herself to keep on living, when she was still naïve.
Not as naïve as some thought she was. She did, after all, want to be a part of the newspaper system. She knew how the world worked. And still, she let herself be tricked.
And for that, she will never forgive herself. Or him.
She loved Clark in those ancient times, and he knew it. He took advantage of that love, of that once-so-pure emotion, and distorted it to a sense of duty. He told her that she needed to do what he asked for herself. For the world. And for him.
The last request broke her defenses. She was a foolish girl. She thought he was sacrificing, too.
So they married her to Lex Luthor and she got pregnant from him. She hated him in the beginning. He was part of all the lies that she wanted to get rid of, but couldn't.
One day she heard him talking to his father, about her. To the camera. It was in that moment when she realized everything. Maybe his pain in that moment was real, but in every other aspect, he acted. His words were fake. Just like him. So she faked ones of her own as well, and told him that she loved him, knowing as a loyal product of the media consumer that now she had the people on her side.
She always believed in the power of publicity. A reporter must have credibility, and she worked hard on hers. She cooked the meals that he ate silently, hiding cameras in every available spot and played her heartache over the death of the child about whom she felt nothing, with the passions she lacked in their relationship.
But after a time she began noticing small things. Like the way he sat staring for days at the nothing, the real anger when she mentioned Clark, and how he tried to hide the way his hands shook when she told him she was pregnant again. He didn't even try to look happy for the sake of the people of Earth, he simply gawked, and said nothing.
In that time she also began noticing that she didn't mind preparing his meals anymore. Or the way she was fine with him touching her stomach cautiously. The way that her heart really did break when he said that he didn't love her, even when they were away from the camera's reach.
The next day she got rid of all the cameras, and was able to breathe again. Only she was so used of playing already that she didn't know anymore what she really felt. So she had to relearn what happiness was as she stroked her growing belly, or heard it kicking. She re-learnt the meaning of anger when Clark came and told her to put back the cameras. No, he didn't say, he demanded. And she was only too happy to throw him out.
It was good for her emotions practice.
Later that day, all the newspapers celebrated, but Lex looked at her differently. And more than everything else that she came to learn in those days, she discovered she liked the way Lex was looking at her. Even though he knew everything that was ugly about her, he didn't choose to leave.
He never said that he loved her even once but when their eyes met, she saw it and was happy. Because what one doesn't tell cannot be a lie.
But then the labor — oh, the pain!
She never thought she would live through it and in the feeling of "what the hell" she cursed everybody. Herself, for the failure of her body, Clark for tearing her trust, and the world that looked at her pain with damn curiosity, sitting in their homes on their sofas while she was being tortured. And no one said a thing.
Lex never said anything about not cursing him. In fact, he didn't talk a lot anymore; he just looked and kept silent all the time. She found that it was better that way and when she found the dinner he made for her, away from the cameras' eyes, she wept for the first time.
Not for the last.
After everything she had been through they dared to take Anna away. She fought, but the forces they were up against were too mighty. Then Clark called his People to create earthquake and floods and disasters. He threatened that the whole world would be ruined if they didn't give Anna.
The whole world didn't say a thing. The fools, they thought it was the only way to save their planet, when in fact it was condemning it.
They gave up in the end, and never talked about Anna ever again. But they both learnt the real meaning of the world, and truth. Because once Chloe wanted to be a reporter, to help the world.
No more.