Chapter Four

It was difficult to remember what life had once been like, before she had been swept away in such horrendous betrayal and locked up in a little square room with only the coldness to occupy her thoughts, the grayness to occupy her emotions. It felt like she had been there for her entire life. She glanced down at the scars on her palm after the memory of her first awakening in the lab had faded, her first realization that it had been Lex who had taken her there. She had only gotten back from the Table several hours ago, but it already felt like an eternity ago that He was asking about the scars on her hand, making her write her signature on the paper. She now lay on the floor, her left cheek pressed up against the sheet of iciness and her ear listening for sounds through the solid floor. All was quiet.

Chloe's bladder felt heavy. She sighed and tried not to move, but it was no use. She would have to take another trip to the bathroom. Frowning dismally at the floor, she pushed herself to her knees and half-crawled, half-stumbled to the door. When she arrived, she rapped her knuckles against it three times. The only good thing that came from His decision to place a guard by her door around the clock was that someone would always hear her, and she didn't have to wait for hours with crossed legs. A tan, hardened face appeared in the window before she heard the click of the lock being turned. The burly man opened the door to find her scrawny form kneeling rather pathetically on the floor before him. He had dark hair, a crew cut, which accentuated the darkness in his eyes.

"Bathroom," Chloe choked out in a whisper. The man stared down at her pitiful form with his dark eyes, a look of disgust on his face as he gazed at the helpless, disgraceful creature whimpering before him. With a grunt, he bent down and grabbed her by the arms, dragging her down the long corridor as her bare, knobby knees slid against the floor. An overwhelming feeling of weakness and vulnerability splashed over her before fading away, as her rare emotions always did, into the grayness of the surrounding walls. When they reached the bathroom, her knees were beginning to turn purple already; they bruised easily now that she had made this trip twice a day since she first came to the lab. Which was… how long ago? She couldn't remember.

This was her least favorite part of the trip, the part that made her want to crawl up into a ball in a corner of her little room and stay there forever. The man shoved her into the tiny, closet-sized space. Chloe knelt there on the floor for a moment, watching as the man stepped into the open doorway and turned his back to her—the most privacy she would get. It sickened her to sit on the porcelain throne knowing that the door was wide open and the man could turn around and leer at her if he so pleased. The exposure increased her feeling of defenselessness.

Positive that the man had his back turned completely to her, Chloe dragged herself to the toilet, pulled up her robe, and sat down. Her eyes met the gray floor despondently, not wanting to look up and see that there was a man standing mere feet from her. Then she pulled herself to the sink and forced her body to balance itself on her feet. Her legs wobbled unsteadily, not used to standing very often, and she grabbed hold of the edges of the sink to balance herself. There was a single bar of soap lying on the edge of the sink, which she grasped tightly in one hand while the other slowly loosened its grip on the sink.

Chloe scrubbed fiercely at her hands until they were covered in white foam. When she rinsed it off in the cool water, it was clear that her hands were slightly red and raw from the scrubbing. Reaching up, she felt her face and grimaced at the unclean feel of her own skin. Grasping the soap once again, she rubbed it over every inch of her face until she was covered with foam. Replacing the bar of soap on its ledge, she bent over and splashed water into her face, waking up for a moment and feeling slightly refreshed. Yet her feeling of cleanliness vanished when she put a hand to her hair. It felt greasy and stiff between her fingers, and she visibly cringed. The bar of soap was once again in her hand, only this time she was bending over and running the water through her hair as she soaped it up. The bar slipped easily from her fingers and bounced on the floor, sliding across it like a puck on an air hockey table. Rinsing and wringing out her hair, Chloe bent down and searched for the soap. When she found it, she put it back on the sink.

And then she succumbed. She did the one thing that she always tried to avoid doing when she went into the bathroom. This time, she had succeeded for a long time, managing to only look down into the sink. But she always did it, and this time was no exception.

Her eyes turned upward reluctantly, and she met her own gaze in the mirror. Instantly, she wished she hadn't. Her face was pale, gaunt, drawn—like a skeleton. Her hair was wet and scraggly, hanging in knotted tangles around her face and shoulders. It looked brown because of its soppiness and the grease that the soap couldn't wash away, even though she knew she was a natural blonde. The area around her eyes was blackish, making her eyes appear sunken in as they stared blankly into the grayness of the room. She could have scrubbed herself silly, but the darkness in her eyes could not be washed away.

It was clear that the guard was becoming annoyed with the extended duration of the trip to the bathroom, and Chloe didn't want him to become irritated with her lest he should "accidentally" turn around one of these times and shame her with humiliation at his sadistic stare. So Chloe let go of the sink and stumbled to the doorway. "I'm done," she whispered, sliding slowly back to her knees. The guard turned around and grabbed her once again, dragging her emaciated body along the floor until they arrived back at the square room. He dumped her inside like a used tissue and closed the door.

The sky. Chloe lay on her back for once, staring up at the terminable ceiling, and imagined that she was gazing into the starry depths of the fathomless night sky. It was difficult to picture merely for the fact that Chloe hadn't seen the sky since she had come to the lab. Where the stars actually shaped like stars, or were they just pinpricks of white light? No, golden light. Like the sun. Or were they? A sigh escaped her, and she wished that she had paid more attention to things when they were around her. She never believed that she would miss a simple thing like the sky so much—she'd always been too preoccupied with trying to get a good, juicy story to notice something as simple as the what the stars looked like on a warm summer evening.

Something else that eluded her was the sensation of grass on her bare skin. Since she was trying to picture the sky, she might as well try to imagine that she was lying out in the middle of a vast open field, the green grass stretching out on all sides of her until it met the edges of the great navy blue dome that was the sky. She closed her eyes, hoping that she could feel the grass if she blocked out the room around her. The grass. It was supposed to be shaggy and warm, tickling her bare skin as it brushed the soft blades. The grass…

But all she felt was the smooth, hard, cold floor beneath her. For one agonizing moment, she wished for nothing more than the feel of grass against her bare legs, but the pang of desire faded away, and she was left with the cold emptiness inside of her. She could not hope for things like that. Hope led to emotion, happiness, lightness. And that made it even more painful when all she felt was the solid, icy floor beneath her. If she obliterated emotion, hope… then there was no pain. There was only emptiness and a dull ache in the pit of her stomach that sometimes vanished into the nothingness that lived within her.

Grass, grass, focus on the grass! But it was too late. She had given up the whim of warm for the reality of cold, soft for hard, green for gray. The already evaporating whiff of fresh air disintegrated into the stale, oppressive chill within the room.

Thinking back, life in the lab wasn't terribly different to where she was now. Granted, she'd had no rights or freedom in the lab, and she'd been tortured and hurt emotionally and mentally, and she'd lain around in an enclosed room all day that was stifling yet somehow always so cold… That was all different now, of course. But the walls were still an odd tinge of gray, and life outside was still always a mystery to her. But there were windows here, in most of the rooms. Big windows where one could look out and actually see the sun's dazzling golden rays, feel its comforting warmth.

She sat at the table, thinking about that. Sometimes it was impossible to refrain from comparing the lab to life in this place. At times it seemed horribly similar, as if she had gone back in time and been forced to relive everything over and over… other times, it felt refreshingly different, like a complete reprieve. Someone was talking, but she didn't bother listening anymore. She had withdrawn into herself, into her turmoil of thought, into her wonder and awe and horror at the world around her. Often times it was hard to listen when there was so much to explore and discover simply by observing the world around her.

Yet there was still one thing that nagged at her, here in this place. True, the worst parts of the lab were nonexistent here, for which she was eternally grateful. But there was one thing that brought a melancholy feeling into her heart. Despite the great windows in some of the rooms, and despite the fact that she could see the sun, despite all that—she still didn't know what the grass felt like…

There had been one time, one brief moment in the middle of that weeklong window of opportunity between the past and present. It had been perhaps the most glorious moment of her life. Knowing that she shared a small apartment with her father and there was no lawn, she moseyed over to the Kent farm, breathing in the air and the colors and the feeling of being outside. She made it over to a field, clad in a shorts and a tank top, and slipped her sandals off her feet. Then she proceeded to lay down right in the middle of the grass, the cows grazing not far from where she lay.

In that instant, she knew. She knew what the grass really felt like, what the sky looked like when you're laying down and looking up at it, what the earth smelled like from such close proximity. She knew. And it occurred to her that the grass really was tickly, furry like a shag rug only better because it was nature, because it was the earth, because it was not man made but rather sprang organically from a virgin womb and into the fresh, bright world. She recalled a time when she would have stepped barefoot onto the grass and then instantly hopped off, thinking of all the miniscule bugs her feet were crushing and how her ankles itched uncomfortably, as if bugs were crawling on her. But she didn't care now. The grass was too good to bother her.

It was warm, too. The brilliant, fiery sun had been beaming down on it all day, allowing the green blades to drink up its light and grow while becoming pleasantly warm in the process. Warmth. It was like a thick, soothing feather pillow that she could cuddle close to her body and bring with her as she crawled into bed. It was like the smile that her father gave her when he was proud, or when he was affectionate, or when he wanted to show her that he loved her. It was like the leaping feeling in her gut whenever a friend acknowledged her with a grin or a hug or some words of appreciation. It was warmth—something she hadn't experienced since before the incident in the caves—and it felt good.

She turned her eyes up to the robin's egg blue sky that was punctuated by several puffy white clouds drifting lazily through its unblemished depths, which turned a faint orange or pink depending upon the angle in which the sun shined on them. For once, Chloe was at peace with the world, and the world was at peace with Chloe. She was not screaming at it in despair, blaming the world for her pains and sorrows and hating the world, wishing for it all to end. Now she couldn't get enough of the world, the glorious world, that had so much to offer which had been right under her nose, only she hadn't noticed. She'd been too wrapped up in all the little stresses of life to bother noticing the world around her. But she noticed it now—the grass on her bare skin, the warmth of the sun, the scent of fresh earth, the faint mooing of cows—and it felt good.

She could have stayed like that all day, absorbing the simple pleasure of lying in the grass, but her father had discovered where she had gone and had come to fetch her. He had taken her home. It had happened two nights later.

And after that, she felt the grass no more.

x-----x-----x-----x-----x

There was silence. The person just on the other side of the table had stopped trying to get across to her. There was sadness and disappointment creasing the person's face, but all hope was not lost. Chloe did not pay attention. She was too busy trying to figure out if she could recall the feeling of grass, too busy caught up in her memory of the warm green rug. She had fallen back into quiet submission in her memories after her mention of the caves, and there she now remained, pondering what had already passed.

"Do you remember that first night?" The person's soothing voice broke through the silence. Chloe blinked, pulling herself back through the white fog, trying to focus on the words that rippled through the air in waves of sound and pervaded her ears. "That first night that you were free again?"

Chloe blinked again. Free? Oh yes, she had the memory, but she could no longer remember the sensation. Like with the grass. The person watched her with intensely troubled eyes. She forced herself into the present for the moment so that she could look into them and try to understand the meaning of those distraught eyes.

"Chloe, do you remember?"

The latter gazed off into the distance once again and gave an uneven nod of verification. Then she parted her lips and breathed out, "I remember."

Her mind was drifting again, drifting back to that night. She glanced up once more, looking into the endearing yet burdened and quietly miserable face she had seen so many times before. Something in that look upon his solemn face compelled her to open her mouth again and acknowledge that she was aware of his presence, however fast her own was fading.

"I remember, Clark. I remember."