Chloe didn't expect to move to Smallville. She needed some time to process.
Disclaimer: Smallville is not mine.
She leaned back as far as she could manage without losing her balance and falling off of the swing. She let her eyes drift shut and allowed the back and forth motion do its best to settle her somewhat frazzled nerves. She was too young to have frazzled nerves, but her dad seemed determined to do his best to cause her the most personal trauma he could inflict on her. He just did not get it. She loved the man dearly, but he was the goofy, roll with life as it comes at you type. He tended to not understand that there were some things that required that you take a few moments of your life to be contemplative and maybe just a little bit sullen over the fact that things kept happening that were outside of your control. That was the way that she was wired, and it was just one of the many ways that the two of them functioned on different levels. He wanted to jump right to the ice cream and moving on stage, and she was so not ready for that. Don't get her wrong - she would definitely not be saying no to ice cream later. She just needed some time for reflection first.
It was not just her life that had been uprooted, but unlike her dad, she was not treating this as if it was some sort of grand adventure. She was sure that she could get to that point eventually. (She would need to get to that point eventually.) There were, however, priorities. She needed to wrap her head around how much had changed for her and how quickly it had happened. Metropolis was not a place that she had ever before considered leaving behind. That had been nowhere in her plans (and she had many of those). Her whole world had been plotted out for at least two decades in advance. School, internships, college, her career, and her advancement track within that career were all plotted and sketched out stretching out in front of her in a line of goals and checklists. They were written lists that her dad chuckled over and ruffled her hair about in that eye roll worthy way that parents had when you were being completely serious and they just thought of it as you being cute. Her uncle, on the other hand, gave her approving nods and complimented her on her related lists of contingency routes for getting to where she wanted to be if her first choices ran into temporary issues or delays. She liked to be prepared, and Uncle Sam was a huge fan of being prepared. He was always requesting to see copies of her lists and asking her helpful questions or making pertinent suggestions even as he made backhanded comments that left Lois rolling her eyes and making faces behind his back.
The move was unexpected. She had not planned for it. It was one of those temporary issues that required contingency planning, but she was not quite ready to get down to the business of that at this point. She needed some time for . . . her dad would make some comment about the dramatic teen years if he heard her call it mourning, but she always chose her words incredibly carefully. It was an occupational hazard (because a reporter was what she was whether it was official yet or not). Mourning was exactly what she was doing. She was mourning the loss of a part of her life that had always been stable - she had never not had Metropolis as a constant. She was currently comforting herself with the knowledge that the city would be waiting for her to come back to it. It was not the same, but it, at least, had not entirely disappeared on her. She had mourned more complete losses of stability before.
She could not quite decide how she was feeling about the quiet of the little park into which she had found her way. The parks back home had never been deserted (there had only been times of day during which the visitors were of the slightly less upstanding variety). Being alone in one was a novel experience for her, and she was not sorry that she had uncontested possession of the swing on which she was resting. She was not, however, sure that her mental health was going to survive the lack of activity around her. She was used to bustle. She was used to focusing on whatever task was ahead of her by blocking out all of the distractions that surrounded her. She was not sure that she knew how to focus without that. She supposed she was going to have to learn. She would think about it later. The blood that was probably pooling in her head from the angle at which she was reclining was strangely relaxing, and she was in no hurry to leave the sensation behind. She was enjoying the feeling.
She did not have to be in a hurry anyway. There would be no one at home. Her dad was trying to get settled in at the new job, and it was his way to always put in more effort over less. She was confident that she would not see much of him for the next couple of weeks. She had been a latchkey kid for a long while, but it was different somehow when she was in a whole house all to herself instead of being surrounded by neighbors in apartments that were only separated from her by not always so very thick walls. For some reason that she could not quite determine, the lack of noise was more disconcerting within the confines of the house than it was out in the open.
She needed this time to drift lazily back and forth on the swing with the world around her inverted for her viewing pleasure (should she decide to open her eyes and take it in). She could not let her dad see any of the things that she was feeling. He knew that this was not her first choice, of course, but she had tried to keep her complaints to a minimum. He was so excited - about the house and the quiet and the less crowded school. He had, at one point, even nearly waxed poetic about the improvement in the dental plan. The sweet sometimes oblivious man was all about all the just imagines and think of all the possibilities. He saw nothing but opportunities and his version of adventure.
Obviously, she had not inherited her particular brand of sense of adventure from him. She was trying really hard to not be the rain cloud that came to hover over his parade. She did that a lot. It was kind of their thing. It had sort of had to be in some areas because there just was not any other way for it to be. There were realities that went along with single parenting (and the absence of a mother); she knew that, and she never blamed him for it. She was sure it had been as little his idea for them to be left behind as it had been hers. They could make the best of it (even when that meant sometimes pretending that those realities were what they would have chosen anyway), or they could make each other miserable dwelling on all of the things that were not. If there was one thing she had most definitely gotten from her father, then it was the fact that neither of them saw much point in being miserable.
That did not mean that she did not have her moments when she really just needed a little space to let everything in her head sort of coalesce. She most certainly did, and this whole moving thing was one of those occasions. The swing, however, and her uncontested possession of it might just turn into one of those bright points that her dad had taken to throwing out between bites of carry out eaten sitting on the floor next to stacks of as yet still packed boxes. She would toss out a mention the next time that he paused in his list of new things that he had decided were great about the move. She could envision the pleased expression on his face at her offering a contribution now.
She sighed and slowly pulled herself right side up; she waited for the momentary lightheadedness from the change in position to pass before she opened her eyes. She did have things that she should get around to doing. She had boxes to unpack, her initial impressions to convey to Lois, and research on a natural disaster to do. She was here. She would make it work. She was already making it work.
She could learn to like this swing. Really, though, she could probably do with a little less quiet.