Thank you for each and every review. It is very touching to know that people are enjoying this piece.

Here is the last season. Enjoy the chill of winter.

Title: Seasons of Change

Author: Lucy Mars

Rating: PG

Summary: Life stands still beneath the cold touch of death that winter ushers into our lives, as all our sins are laid to bare.

Pairings: Chloe/Lex, Lex/Lana, Chloe/Bruce

Disclaimer: If they belonged to me, I would not be so ruthless.

Gotham - Winter 2017

Her eyes cast out on the dying light of the frigid day, she did not need to turn around to know that he stood behind her. His presence had always made her heart race. In the beginning of their time together, it had been out of sheer excitement. Later, it was because of the intensity with which she loved him. As of late, even after all these years her heart had continued to race every time he was near - but now it was a result of her abject fear.

She did not need to meet his eyes in their reflection in the window to know that he was regarding her with that contemplative look he had been wearing since the night she had caught site of him dancing with Chloe all those months ago. There were so many things that she did not have to do to know what it was that went on within the silent confines of this man's heart.

"It would be useless of me to ask you if you really loved her."

His sigh soft and almost regretful, Lex merely stood silently as he watched Lana drink in the last slivers of light on the horizon.

Turning, Lana regarded Lex with eyes he had been once foolish enough to believe could fill the gaping void he harbored the moment Chloe had walked out of his life.

"I think I've always known, in some form or another, that you loved her more than she ever realized, you truly understood or I wanted to admit. But redundant or not," Lana whispered as she reached out and touched the smooth line of his jaw that had always mesmerized her, "I need to know Lex. Do you really love her?"

His answer lacks any hesitation because he does not have the strength to lie to her now that he was finally able to overcome the fault of lying to himself. "Yes, I do."

Closing her eyes against the silent assault his words wage against her, Lana did not move her hand from the face she held. She knew what his silent declaration meant. Lana knew what was to come now that he was finally able to answer the question that she had always purposely left unasked. "What if she doesn't feel the same way anymore? What if it's too late?"

Now it is his turn to close his eyes against the questions she raised and the possible answers he would soon find. Pulling away from a touch that did not bring him the golden warmth he longed for, Lex stepped back from the crystal tears that Lana cried for the broken promises that he gave her. "You can have it all," Lex spoke, gesturing to the grandeur that they were immersed in and life he had begun to build with her, "but I won't be coming back."

Raising her eyes to watch him as he prepared to leave her behind, Lana stood tall against the rubble that was her life. "I'll be here, Lex. When you come home, I'll still be here."

He does not say it to hurt her. He says it to set them both free of the lies they've lived with all these years. "This isn't home, Lana. This has never been home for me."

Home was where he could meet the hand of dusk with Chloe by his side. He would be home anywhere, as long as he could greet the first light of dawn with her heart nestled firmly against his.

She was a good reporter, they both knew that. She was smart; he knew that from that start.

He also knew that she harbored doubts about him and his intentions from day one. She wasn't at the top of her field for no reason. Her gut had screamed at her from the very first smile he had sent her way and it had continued to clench over the years. They had lasted this long because as smart as she was, she could not escape the trap of lying to herself.

What he knew about her from the first time she had laughed in the middle of the crowded streets of London, that she had yet to fully understand about herself, was that she needed desperately to believe every overdone show of sincerity that he endured for her and every false promise of love he would eventually make.

Because he was the only one to ever hold her first in his sights. He was the only man who had ever refused to let her go.

But as cunning a man as he was, she was not broken enough to run in circles forever.

"You're using me," she spoke, her tone haunting and clear.

For the rest of his life, he would remember the picture she painted as she stood before a blazing fire and exposed all the sins that he had committed - some in the name of love but most in the name of war.

All the wrongs that he had perpetrated were being laid out to bear because there was always a price to pay.

Turning her haunted eyes onto his shamed ones, she stood taller than her small frame would ever provide her. Everything she lacked in reality, she made up for with her presence. Everything about this woman was presence and her presence had always intimidated him.

In the beginning, he had been overwhelmed by her. From the moment he had orchestrated their collision, he had felt the force of her spirit barrel into him, through him and over him. She had been nothing he had ever experienced before and it was refreshing as it was frightening. With every practiced move he employed in an attempt to win her over, she had a witty and cutting rebuff. His determination to win her over easily became an undeniable infatuation because there was nothing that Bruce Wayne could not have – and no matter what the cost, Chloe Sullivan would be had.

He just never anticipated that having her would cost him his heart.

Despite the fact that she had entered his life on his devious terms deemed as an investment that he would one day use against one Lex Luthor, somewhere and somehow, as time had passed them by it all became a frighteningly intense love. But no matter the degree to which he found himself loving her, it was still a twisted love that found its foundation on lies and deceit.

"You've been using me," she whispered with somber disbelief. Even after reading through all the files he had on her, the files he had on Lex and the single file that comprised of the picture of her and Lex he had found all those years ago - Chloe still could not believe the truth that this love she had taken in order to forget another was not love at all.

Turning away from him, the shadows played over her as she moved across the room. "All this time...all this time Bruce, I thought that you loved me. But all those gentle hints that I could trust you, those subtle looks of understanding when I purged my heart and soul to you - they weren't so innocent were they? You knew what you were doing when you came up to me in London. You knew what you were doing when you made all those grand overtures and told me over and over that you would have me no matter what. You knew what you were doing when you manipulated my doubts into longing and finally into love."

Fingers grasping a picture on the mantel and examining it under the dim light, they both knew that in her hands she held memories of a better time when laughter had not turned to accusations and smiles had yet to become scorn.

"I should have seen what you were doing. I should have realized that you wanted me for a reason and not for myself."

Her eyes finding his in the dark room, he saw for himself how completely he had destroyed any chance of a life with Chloe. He found in her eyes, the darkness he had planted within her with his lies and his deceit.

There had been a time, a single moment in the past, when he had been afraid of this very moment. He had felt the pangs of worry when he had held her in his arms one nameless night and found the hushed murmur of love he vowed to be nothing but the unadulterated truth.

The fear of being discovered had been brushed aside when he had felt the gentle pressure of her lips assuring him of her own devotion and love. In the eerie silence of the coldest Gotham night, Bruce had felt his fear drift away into the pocket of denial he granted himself as he immersed himself in a decadent sea that was distinctly Chloe.

The fear of discovery had drowned with him as he sunk into her arms.

Now, what he feared was not what she knew or what he had lost.

What he feared was what he had made her with his lies.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied, willing the shame that he could feel staining his face back down into the deep corners of his heart that he would rather never examine too closely.

The laughter that fell from her lips was cold and hollow. It chilled him to the bone because he knew he had put the darkness there. There had once been a time when Chloe's laughter had been light and bright, always full of sunshine and rainbows.

Turning now and watching him with eyes as cold and dead as the broken heart she nursed, Chloe let the photo she was holding slip from her grasp. The sound of glass shattering against stone echoed so loudly that Bruce could not help the flinch that tore through him.

"You did it all for what, Bruce? Were all these years just a chance for you to prove once and for all that you could have and hold something that Lex Luthor wanted out of his reach?"

His silence screams louder than any words he could ever shout and she hates him for it. She hates him for standing as silent as stone and not fighting the wrongs she laid at his feet to claim.

She hates him for breaking her when she was already so broken.

"All these years have been a waste, Bruce. Whatever caused you to be delusional enough to believe that you could use me as some pawn in a game against Lex were just that: delusions. I mean nothing to him. I cannot be used as some bargaining chip in whatever business deal you deem me expendable enough for," Chloe hissed, stepping over broken glass. Advancing on him now, she stood before him and made him feel as small and horrid as he deserved. "All those premeditated whispered declarations of love in the middle of the night, every kiss meant to make me putty in your hands, each calculated fuck intended to quiet the doubts that I had about you and I - they were for nothing, Bruce. They were all a waste of your time."

Deflated now, Chloe did not have the strength to fight against the tears that stained her skin. All the warmth she had found with Bruce, all the happiness that she had been foolish enough to believe to be eternal and pure, was washed away with every bitter tear she shed. Looking up into the somber eyes she had mistakenly placed all her hopes in, Chloe did not know this man she had shared her heart, body and life with. "I am valueless, Bruce Wayne."

"I have never thought of you that way." Even to his ears, he sounded weak and broken.

"Haven't there been enough lies?" she roared, letting him glimpse for a moment the broken girl she harbored inside; the broken girl that both he and Lex had loved, and eventually destroyed.

Instead of moving back at her scream of indignation, Bruce grabbed shoulders and pressed a desperate kiss to her lips. "I love you," he promised, broken with regret. "I love you,"

Immobile in his embrace, Chloe met his desperate eyes with her own. Watching Bruce with silent consideration, Chloe shook her head as she pulled off the ring that had weighted heavily against her finger since the night two weeks ago when he had slipped it on her. Examining the simple, yet undeniably beautiful ring, Chloe spoke so softly that he had to strain to hear her. "I don't know who I hate more. You for making me believe that you loved me or me for believing that you ever loved me.

"Please," Bruce begged, "Believe me. Believe that I love you."

"No you don't, Bruce. You love the pawn I could have been. You never loved me. It was all a lie."

Stepping back now, stumbling as if she had struck him with the most deadly of weapons, Bruce knew now what he had not known before.

Yes, knowledge was power - and the woman in the photo with Lex that he himself had become entranced with was undoubtedly power over the Luthor heir.

But she herself was more than a pawn in the game.

She herself was the most powerful of all.

All because of the love she gave and the men who loved her in return.

The broken man that sits before him is not the man he had expected to find. The thick chill of Gotham's unrelenting winter still coating his skin, Lex does not know who it is he sees sitting before him but the shattered air settled around the man watching him with eyes as dark as purgatory itself cannot be Bruce Wayne.

"You finally came," Bruce spoke, breaking the silence that is suffocating them both and leaving the sentence unfinished. It was fitting, Bruce thought, that of all the days Lex Luthor could have chosen to come and tell Chloe all that he needed for her to know, he had traveled to Gotham on the day that she finally found the strength to leave.

"Where is she?"

Tearing his eyes away from where Lex stood judging him with his gaze, Bruce silently studied the ring he held in his hands and the broken dreams that lay scattered around him.

Moving deeper into the dark room, Lex demanded forcefully, "Where is she, Bruce?"

Closing his fingers around the ring that was meant to deliver him from all his lies and into a life of happiness he had never expected and truthfully did not deserve, Bruce didn't have any answers for Lex. "I don't know."

Eyes of blue regret clashing against a black stare of defeat, Lex felt fear clench him at the destitution he found he shared with this man he had come to steal the sun from. "What do you mean?"

"She left," Bruce whispered as he closed his eyes against the truth that swirled around him. A biting chill had filled him the moment she had walked out the door with the intention of never returning - a devastating cold that filled the void he was left with. "She left."

Confused, afraid and aching for answers, Lex did not move from where he stood watching the infamously stoic Bruce Wayne drown in his grief. "Why?"

Sighing, Bruce rose from his seat and met Lex's burning look with his own. "Because neither of us loved her enough for her to stay,"

They had never acknowledged all that was left unsaid and she was tried of everything that had ever gone unsaid.

All these years and all those days wasted as she lied to herself and silently allowed others to lie to her – she would have no more of it.

She didn't want anything from him anymore.

She wasn't waiting for him to come to the earth shattering realization - as he stood alone in the space that could have been theirs - that he could not live without her.

He would not find her waiting with baited breath, content to let life move by without her as she held onto the hope that he would one day sweep her off her feet.

While the longing would always be there, that she was sure of, and the love always in her heart, she would not let time slide through her fingers for a man that did not want her.

She would not live illusions any longer.

Chloe Sullivan would finally do what she did not have the strength to do all those years ago.

She was going to leave it all behind.

Winter finds the faults of yesterday replacing the hopes and dreams that the seasons long past planted in us all. Hope is extinguished by the waning light as night descends upon us all and the moon watches us from the sky. While we all die on the night of winter solstice, not all of us are reborn come the first dawn of spring.

THE END.

For all the readers mildly disappointed that there wasn't a happy ending, find some measure of assurance in the fact that I am toying with a second version of the ending - or even an epilogue of sorts. I left it purposely vague...so you never know.