Nothing Remained But Your Eyes
Rating: PG13
Characters: Chloe, Oliver, Zatanna, John Zatara, Lex Luthor, Lionel Luthor, Clark, Lois
Pairing: Chlollie
Summary: At the end of his life Oliver Queen asked the most powerful sorceress in the universe to grant him one wish. Now he's living a new chance to retrieve what he once lost.
AN: Just one more after this—the epilogue.
Part 7
The peddling and plaiting of thorns is not my concern, and many know this.
I am no weaver of bloody crowns.
I fought with the frivolous and the tide of my spirit runs full; and in sober earnest,
My detractors are paid in full with a volley of doves.
Shadowcrest.
It was a lovely old place, small compared to the mansion where he grew up in Star City. But Oliver painted the castle with such mystery and intrigue that Chloe could not help but imagine lying on that Persian rug that he described, in front of the fireplace, while they warmed each other in the cold Gotham winter.
He was beautiful. So beautiful. She could not believe for most of this time all she could remember were his eyes. Then again, if she remembered his voice, the way he made her matter, the rough skin of his fingers when he brushed them over the tips of her breasts, she would not have survived long enough for him to come back to her.
"I can't wait," he said to her, tugging back at her hand when she was about to leave.
"Neither can I," she answered, pulling the clothes that had been hastily pushed aside back into place. It could have been minutes or hours. The darkness outside the stained glass windows told her they had spent a good amount of time wrapped up in each other.
There were never two people more eager to leave everything they valued behind. Kisses, kisses. If she closed her eyes she would still smell the sweat on his skin, taste the salt of his sweat on her tongue.
"Let me do this. I promised I'd do this," she told him. If she were leaving everything she knew for him, then she would set as much as she could to right. A promise was a promise, especially when the promise was given to a soul like Lex. Of all the people in her life, Lex had been the most unfulfilled, the saddest. Lois and Clark had always had each other, and Lex had been—floating there.
And if it was Oliver's hand that killed him, then they were always going to be connected. Because his universe as hers, Oliver's sin also her own; his life was hers.
"I'll meet you in your office right after," she told him.
"And then Zatanna. Shadowcrest," he said to her, and the words would not have made sense without her faith in what they had, in what throbbed between them, in the pull she felt towards him even before she knew his name. She nodded. His voice was straight from her dreams in his promise. "And then we forget."
If she forgot him, if she forgot those dreams. "How would I know you didn't just abduct me and be terrified?" Looking at him, feeling the way she did, it was easy to say she would trust him. But even in the haze she realized how very tentative and flimsy it was. "We'll write ourselves a note, somewhere we can find it. And I'll tell myself to trust you."
He did not need one. At least that was his thought. Oliver had always been incurably romantic. How she knew that was a mystery. And then again perhaps he was only so with her.
Isis and Osiris. A tale of eternal love. Of course Oliver would believe in waking up with no knowledge of her, and still know believe was everything.
When she walked him to the elevator Chloe noticed his phone lying on the floor, and when she picked it up to return it to him he caught the device in his hand and surprised her with a parting kiss. "Soon," he told her. It was a promise. It was a plea for an acknowledgment.
"Soon," she told him.
Her entire body throbbed, her heart thrummed. Chloe entered the room that Lex had set up for her in that building and turned swiftly around. He had made no noise. He was wonderful that way, so sleek and graceful she swore there might be another lifetime when he could just be some graceful wildcat. But he was satisfactory enough in this lifetime.
"Let me spend the night," he said. And she nodded. On the way inside he discarded his shirt and kicked off his shoes, and Oliver lay on her bed for the first time and nothing seemed strange or out of place. Her eyes watered, and her vision blurred. It was the first time and she would not remember, but as he extended an arm to her and she sank into the bed beside him she thought of the countless times she would lie by his side again until the inevitable.
And then they would have everything he enumerated to her just moments ago—everything he had wanted and never had with her. Marriage. Children. A lifetime of kisses.
These were the promises she held to her heart when finally she joined Lex in the LuthorCorp building. It was difficult to look at him now without wondering. All those years since high school when she took his hand and decided on Lionel's ultimate fate, all the nights she had stayed up on the other end of the line while he recounted the countless injustices that his father had committed.
Who was Lex Luthor, if he were not that man from Smallville who had been on the other side of the door that night she had waited for her father to return? If he was not the man who told her, in quiet, clear, syllabicated sentences that her father—like many parents who worked in the fertilizer plant—would not come home again, then who was Lex?
The surprise in his eyes at her arrival was jarring to her. For a brief moment she remembered how she had turned away when he told her about the accident—now a massacre they both knew—that killed Gabe Sullivan and dozens of other employees in the Smallville plant.
"I thought you wouldn't come," he said easily. Lex's voice was always smooth, belying his anxiety, or his fear, or his anger. It was difficult to make sense of him. It had always been.
"I promised I'd be here for this, Lex," she said to him. Chloe entered his office, like she had done many times before. Only this time she was different. She moved in another way, pulsated in an entirely different manner. This was who she was. She mattered. Lex could not do this without her. The world would be worse if she did not rise in the morning. She mattered.
So this was how it felt once you found the part of your soul that completed you.
Lex poured a glass of scotch and offered it to her. Chloe shook her head. He brought it up to his lips and she recognized immediately that it was a courtesy offer, nothing more. Lex's eyes flickered at her from head to toe, and she wondered if there was any change apparent.
"Do you remember the day we planned this, Chloe?"
Her mind fluttered. From Oliver's arms, to the day a few years ago when she stood over her father's grave. There had been a chill in the air, and little falling snow. She had been in black. The cemetery was littered with little patches of black crowds gathered among several patches of freshly dug soil. Gabe Sullivan was buried in a crowd, unassuming, far from special, just one of many. Then again she had not been special at all, just one of the many teenage girls orphaned by the LuthorCorp accident. Despite the horrific events even Smallville sombered but was far from debilitated.
Smallville had seen accidents far worse, had lost more in the meteor shower. And the LuthorCorp middle managers had not been native to the town.
Chloe had the smallest crowd, the crowd that left the earliest. They had such long drives back home to Metropolis. But Chloe stood over the grave and stared. Her eyes were dry. She had cried enough into the jacket of the man who had brought her the news. And her father had always taken pride in how brave his daughter was. So for him she did not cry.
Lex Luthor made his way from the back and stopped at her side. When the rest had gone, he had remained. Around them there were families interring their loved ones, and he stood beside her with a black umbrella in his gloved hand.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he said to her. Just like he had told her in the middle of the night when he informed her about the accident.
But Chloe closed her eyes and bowed her head. When everyone was gone she could cry. But Lex Luthor remained so she would hold back her tears. Her eyes were burning and she only wished he would leave. "You can leave, Mr Luthor," she said in return. "You've spent enough time with me last night. I'm sure there are other families you need to console." She took a deep breath. "It was an accident."
"I have reason to believe that it's not." And that was when she turned her head and looked up at him, his face grave, his jaw tight. He nodded towards the grave and said, "These were my employees, your family. What will you do if I told you that I may know who did this?"
She had wondered over the years if it was relief that finally broke her. Relief—that this was a murder. Relief—that the pain and the grief could be released in a mission. Either way, she had answered, "I would say we bring the bastard down."
Her memories of the cold snowy day faded and she nodded. Lex brought the scotch up to his lips and downed it in one.
"I keep my promises," she continued.
"For as long as I can remember, that was what I wanted to do," he told her. They had not had proof that it was Lionel Luthor until the last of the documents that Chloe managed to retrieve. But for as long as she knew him Chloe knew the look on his face after every encountered with his father.
"And you know I would help you."
Between Chloe and Lex, he had been physically stronger, even more intelligent in many things they shared. But she had learned from him, recognized the slightest innuendo and sparred verbally. She had always leaned forward when he spoke, burned with the desire to close his open wounds with his father long before she knew that Lionel had killed hers, wondered now if maybe she knew all along how Lex Luthor died.
And Oliver's sins.
They were hers.
The glass hitting the table signaled the reckoning had come. Lex walked towards her and nodded at the folder she clutched to her chest. "After this, are you going back to him?"
Somehow, in some way, neither of them had ever discussed what came after today. The plan had always been to bring justice to the LuthorCorp employees who died all those years ago, until the plan morphed into his father's fall from grace and incarceration. But never—not once—not even in the deep of the night when they pored through the documents and found their hands grazing as they reached for the same reference—had they ever touched tomorrow.
She was silent. It was more than enough of an answer.
"That man," he told her as he stopped inches from her. "I don't trust that man. I went to school with him, did business with him, but not until I saw him in that museum with you that I realized how much I don't trust him."
Was it just the sight of her and Oliver together that elicited such strong reaction?
"You dream you died," he said. "I don't remember exactly how, but I know I was killed. By an arrow." His eyes narrowed.
She licked her lips. "Do you feel it, Lex? That pain when an object tears your skin and muscle."
"No," he said softly. "There's an arrow, but it doesn't gut me. When I dream I dream I was burning in hell." And then he grasped her arm. "I don't want you going back to him," he said urgently.
They never talked about tomorrow.
"I can't do that," she said, her voice gentle.
"There was a time when I just wanted to protect you, Chloe." Lex walked forward and pulled open the door. When she stepped out of the office with him he leaned down and told her, "So think again. If you're afraid of him for one second—"
"Lex," she said gently in a reminder, "let's do what I'm here to do."
"Is this it? Is this how you forget?" Her heart stilled at a beat. In her silence he continued, "Is this how you forget about everything between us? Is this how you walk away, Chloe?"
If it's the end of the world, I want to be in the foxhole with you.
For the briefest moment a certain thrill chased up her nape, and Chloe stifled a small grin at the pleasant thought. Oliver's voice. Despite everything she knew it was Oliver's voice that teased the edges of her brain.
"Come on," she said instead, then held out her hand to him, willing him to take that step. And he shook his head and walked on ahead. He would leave her behind, so easily, when this was over. And she looked forward to the day.
They reached the floor where the boardroom was, and there was no more conversation. Lex accepted the folded piece of paper from his assistant, then turned to Chloe. "My father hasn't arrived. Can you wait in the room next door? I don't want him to see before he steps into the boardroom."
"Sure."
Lex walked away. Chloe pushed the door open. There was another occupant, one she easily recognized. "Clark," she acknowledged. He had on a pair of black-rimmed glasses and he stood upon her entrance. Chloe shut the door behind her. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm covering the story," Clark answered. "Lex seemed to think you'd be delighted if he gave Lois the exclusive."
Of course she would have. Lex knew her well enough that he would ensure that her cousin made the byline, even the banner story for the Daily Planet. "But Lois is gone," she said needlessly.
"And here I am," Clark replied.
"So you are." She gave a tentative smile and sat beside him. "Wishing you were anywhere my cousin is."
She was pretty sure that was true, but Clark nudged her arm and with a small grin told her, "I'm right where I need to be." Chloe looked up at the commotion outside and noted that the mild chaos would have only been created by Lionel Luthor's arrival. She clutched her folder to her chest and fisted her hand. Clark closed his hand over hers. She looked up and met his warm, concerned gaze. "I may not have always been there when you needed me the most, Chloe," he said, "but I'm going to be here this time."
There were tears, she imagined, hot and countless raining down on her. Chloe could almost feel the tight grasp around her. Clark. It was Clark's name over and over, called out in that burning, awful room. And it was Oliver's bloodshot eyes that hovered over her. On the day of her death, she realized.
And so softly, without a hint of malice, she asked, "He needed you."
Not I. Him. Because the rawness of Oliver's cries made it so very real. On the day of her death the calls for Clark unheeded destroyed the one who survived more than the one who died.
"I couldn't come. I regretted that my entire life."
And in Clark's expression she read the truth. She swallowed the lump in her throat and closed her eyes. Chloe turned her hand over and twined their fingers tightly together.
The discreet knock on the door brought her back to earth. Chloe rose and took a deep breath. She held out the folder and looked down, ensured it was complete. Chloe glanced back at Clark. "It's time."
Let Lex go. Release the man that Oliver killed. Balance out the sins of the past. Then maybe there would be a future.
"Chloe, Lex was never a good man."
But the past years in the life she did remember told her otherwise. "I remember a different Lex," she told him simply. And this Lex, she thought, had all the potential in the world, poisoned only by a father like Lionel Luthor.
So Chloe entered the conference room to an eruption of whispers and asides through the length of the table. She listened intently as Lex told the board about the necessity for her presence, tightened her jaw when Lionel Luthor stared her down with his narrowed gaze. The bright light of the projector was burning her retinas. Chloe looked away and saw the eerily familiar shadow standing at the back.
But it could not be, so she blinked the thought away and focused on the men around her.
Chloe licked her lips and started, "I'm a LuthorCorp baby, and none of you would ever know how grateful I am to this company. My family's house, my education, the food on the table—they were all there because of LuthorCorp and my father never let me forget that. He was the prime example of a company man." Her throat tightened and her eyes stung. "LuthorCorp was there for me when my father died. So you can understand how this is difficult for me."
Point by point, Chloe related the discoveries she had made and cited evidence that pointed back to the top floor of LuthorCorp.
"So with great regret and disbelief I tell you that the massacre in the Smallville plant, along with the countless other accidents in various factories in and out of state were crimes of your CEO." Chloe looked back at Lionel Luthor while Lex's secretary went around the table and handed out tablet computers that had the information she had prepared, photographic evidence and PDF versions of the papers she had collected. "I'm sorry, Mr Luthor."
"So am I, dear," Lionel replied softly.
Chloe gasped. The pain came first. How very odd. The shot rang out briefly after that. A man standing behind Lionel Luthor darted out of the conference room. She fell to her knees on the floor. Chloe looked down and saw the familiar sight of a blossoming bright red spot of blood on her stomach. Her hands trembled as she touched it. She looked back up and saw Clark look down in shock. And then it was Lex hovering over her. Her vision blurred. Behind Lex the shadowed figure drew closer and closer until beautiful black eyes drew close.
"I told you, didn't I?" she demanded, her voice soothing at least. Zatanna took a place next to her. "It would happen over and over again until you let go."
"Chloe, stay with us," Clark's voice came through.
In the chaos that surrounded her, there was one clear image that shone brighter while all the rest of them faded in the shadows. Chloe gasped, "Oliver."
And then it was that smooth, wonderful hand that promised her so much and nothing at all. "Take my hand," Zatanna instructed.
The pain ripped through her, the bullet was lodged still inside of her. Lex called for his helicopter and Clark took her in his arms.
"Take my hand," Zatanna commanded. "We have to salvage what we can. Forget now, Chloe, or lose the chance. If you die now—again—I won't be able to make this happen again."
Just one hour more, maybe even now, Oliver waited. But the shadows were encroaching on her sight and she was not going to lose the future. And so, weakly, she raised up her arm and laid her hand on Zatanna's.
And she blazed into her brain. Chloe closed her eyes and was blinded by the light.
And then strong solid arms lifted her capably higher and higher until she could hear the thundering beats of the helicopter, until she felt the cold air bite into her skin. "You're going to be okay," a masculine voice told her.
Down below, Oliver waited in his car. He looked down at his watch and noted the time, wondered why she was late. The gas tank was full, and the plane was waiting to take them to Gotham City. He looked back towards the LuthorCorp building and narrowed his eyes as executives hurried out and immediately entered waiting black cars.
She recognized the figure that exited in a long dark coat. Oliver exited the car and hurried towards her. When Zatanna stopped, Oliver looked down at her blood-stained hand.
"I warned her. The longer you remember, the more dangerous this life becomes."
Oliver held his breath. "Is she-"
The LuthorCorp corporate helicopter sounded overhead. "They're taking her to the hospital. She's forgotten now. She's forgotten you." She offered her stained hand. "Do the same, Mr Queen. Don't invite tragedy to a new life. Not when she's in danger-"
The protest was ripped from his chest. "But we were going to forget. And we were going to wake up together."
"I gave you a whole new life. Maybe you don't get everything exactly the way you want it."
But always he had. Despite the most horrid of the circumstances in this life, when a hasty purchase had pumped hundreds and thousands out of his account like some hole in a water balloon—they turned out to be the very best of things. And in that other life, when he was lost and feared dead he only emerged stronger and better.
Yet when he lost. He lost it all.
The pang in his heart turned to a freezing hand squeezing tightly until his blood ran cold, seeing himself in an endless expanse of white unshoveled snow. His eyes blank until figures formed, surrounding him, sorrowful and quiet, bursting with emotions he could not bring himself to acknowledge.
Chloe Anne Sullivan.
It was a gorgeous tombstone, embossed with golden numbers proclaimed the date of her birth, what should have been unforgettable date when she died.
"Believe me, Oliver. I was there," he heard faintly in the background.
And that figure emerged in the surrounding memories, of Zatanna standing behind a dark hooded figure, standing beside Clark Kent, holding on to a book—that book that he had seen in Shadowcrest sitting proudly in Giovanni Zatara's shelves.
"I was there," she repeated. "And you would not want what happened in the past to chase you here."
Never is no part of me; because I am I with a difference:
Was, and will always be so;
"If I do—when I forget—I need—"
He searched for words, found none. When one gave you a pass to another universe filled with kisses, there was no real way to ask for more and more.
"Make sure I find her again," he managed.
Reluctantly, Oliver placed his hand on Zatanna's, feeling the sticky, dried blood, this last moment in his memory familiar, strange. The scent of blood assailed his senses. Even the scent of her blood, so ingrained in his soul he recognized it as it hung in the air between the two of them.
Right there, so close, and he breathed memories of her death and their lives. Right there.
Then gone.
I speak for the pureness of things in the name of my love's metamorphoses.
tbc