Chlark Fanfic: Crisis, Chapter 12
Chlark update: Crisis. Basically the most Awkward Conversation Ever.
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Title: Crisis
Author: BabyDee
Pairing: Chlark/Kaloe
Rating: NC-17 (this chapter PG-13)
Warnings: None
Timeline: Season 2-3 (Exodus - Exile; Clark’s RedK Summer)
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Summary: A violent encounter between Chloe and Clark threatens to destroy their friendship forever.
Feedback: …is love. J
Read previous chapter here.
Read story from the beginning here.
Chapter 12
“Chloe!” Martha Kent exclaimed.
Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire, Chloe thought bitterly, wishing she’d taken her chances in the lobby with her Dad.
“Mrs Kent,” she replied evenly. “How have you been?”
Clark’s mother stared at her with a shocked expression of guilt. “Chloe, I’ve been meaning to talk to you; are you okay?”
She pasted a bright smile on her face. “I’m fine, Mrs Kent; just a touch of flu, but I should be back at school first thing-”
“I know, Chloe,” Martha said quietly. “I know what Clark did to you.”
Immediately the false smile disappeared, and Chloe could feel the blood draining from her face. “He told you?” she asked hollowly.
“He didn’t have to,” Martha replied, sounding as hollow as Chloe herself felt. “Jonathan said he knew that something…something bad had happened to you when you came to the farm. He’d prayed to be wrong, but…” she stopped, unable to continue.
Chloe swallowed and stared at the floor, clasping her hands together tightly. When she’d gone to the farm to inform Clark’s parents of his whereabouts, a part of her had wanted them to know what their precious son had done to her; at the same time, the very thing she hadn’t wanted was the pained and worried look of guilt currently on Martha’s face. No doubt Jonathan would be wearing the same expression whenever he came face to face with her.
“How are you coping?” Martha asked quietly, and Chloe immediately clammed up.
“Mrs Kent, this really isn’t something I want to discuss with you,” she replied stiffly. “No offence, but you are the mother of the person who raped me. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” she brushed past the older woman and headed for the door which she yanked open - only to freeze at the sight of her father on the triage queue about to take a number.
Quickly she slammed the door shut. “Oh God, no,” she moaned.
“Chloe, what is it?” Martha asked, her brow etched with lines of concern.
“My Dad, he…he’s going to register me in,” she said frantically, pointing at the door. “That lady at the counter…she’s the nurse who attended to me when I came in after Clark attacked me. If my Dad mentions my name-”
Martha’s brows rose in surprise. “He doesn’t know?”
Chloe shook her head. “I couldn’t tell him,” she replied. “I don’t want him to know; he can’t know, it’ll break his heart...”
“It’s okay; it’s okay. Just tell me what do you want me to do, Chloe.”
“Just…find a way to stop him,” she pleaded. “Please?”
There was a short pause before she nodded. “Okay, wait here; I’ll be right back.”
Martha headed out the door, and Chloe watched through a tiny crack as she got to her father just as he took a number out of the slot. After a brief conversation, the two adults shook hands and her father headed out of the building.
Chloe heaved a huge sigh of relief and sagged against the door, glad that at least one crisis had been averted.
Five minutes later, Martha came back through the door. “I told him I’d seen you in the Ladies’ Room, and that since I was already here I’d look after you so that he didn’t have to take a personal day,” she explained.
Chloe nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“It’s no problem,” she replied, handing Chloe the ticket. “And they’ve classed you as low priority, so you won’t be seen for at least an hour.”
“What about you?” Chloe asked. “When’s your appointment?”
“Me? Oh, I’ve already seen the doctor, I was on my way out.”
Chloe frowned. “Is everything okay? There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?”
Clark’s mother gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Nothing that I didn’t already know, but for a while, there, I’d…I’d hoped otherwise.”
Chloe swallowed past the lump in her throat, a fearful question taking root in her mind.
“Mrs Kent, are…are you dying?” she asked in a small voice.
Martha stared at her in shock. “What? No! Of course not!”
Chloe took a deep breath, relieved. “Okay. Sorry, I thought…I thought maybe that was why Clark ran away…”
The older woman’s eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, I see. No, that wasn’t the reason, though it was still something considerably serious.”
“Do you mind my asking-”
Just then, the door opened and a woman came into the toilet with her young daughter.
“Maybe we should go someplace more private?” Martha suggested. “There’s a small canteen further down the corridor, and we’ll still be able to hear when your name is called.”
Chloe nodded. “Okay.”
***
They took seats in a quiet corner and ordered a few coffees. As soon as the waitress was out of earshot, Martha leaned towards her and spoke quietly.
“So how are you, really?”
Chloe stared back at her with bleak eyes. “How am I?” she echoed. “I was raped by the person I cared about most in the world, Mrs Kent. And then I discover that he’s been lying to me for as long as he’s known me. How do you think I am?”
Martha reached across the table and took her clammy hand. “Chloe, I can’t even begin to say how sorry I am.”
Chloe shrugged. “You don’t have to apologise, you didn’t do anything to me.”
“Have you spoken to someone?” Martha asked gently.
Chloe’s jaw hardened. “I haven’t told anyone about Clark’s true origins, no-”
Martha shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. Have you spoken to someone about what happened to you?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. You mean, like…counselling?”
Martha nodded. “I know you have your reasons for not telling your father what happened, but…oh Chloe, you need to speak to someone.”
“Like who?” Chloe asked, bewildered. “I can barely understand why this happened to me, how Clark could ever-” she stopped and took a deep calming breath as the waitress returned with their coffee and left.
“I can’t make anyone understand what happened, because even I can’t get my head around it,” she continued. “But the nurse knows what happened, and so do the police.”
“You’ve been to the police?”
“I didn’t ‘go’ to them,” she said, almost defensively. “It’s standard procedure at the hospital in…in such cases.”
“Oh, of course,” Martha said quickly. “I understand. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to…”
“It’s okay, Mrs Kent. Like I said, you don’t need to apologise for anything.”
Martha just nodded, looking utterly despondent. Chloe stared into her coffee for what felt like an age as she stirred sweetener into it, feeling so sorry for the sweet, kindly woman who was only trying to help.
“I told them I didn’t know who attacked me,” she finally said quietly. “Said it was a stranger.”
This time it was Martha who took a deep breath. “Chloe, I can’t thank you enough for protecting Clark, and it’s a huge, huge measure of faith for you to still give him the benefit of a doubt after everything that’s happened…but honey, I’m also worried for you. How are you coping?”
She shrugged. “I can take care of myself, Mrs Kent.”
“Do you know if…do you think you might be…” her gaze dropped to Chloe’s belly, and Chloe shook her head with a derisive snort.
“I’m not carrying any rapist alien spawn, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said dryly, and then cursed inwardly at her insensitivity as Martha Kent visibly flinched. Clearly this wasn’t easy for her, either.
“I’m…I’m sorry, Mrs Kent, I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay, I understand,” Martha said, patting her hand reassuringly. “At least that’s one less thing for you to worry about.”
Chloe pulled her hand back and clasped it with her other one under the table. She understood that Clark’s mother only wanted to help, but she was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the entire discussion.
“Okay, forgive me if I sound rude, Mrs Kent, but why do you even care?” she asked bluntly. “It’s not like I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but all I can think about is that you’re the mother of the man who-” she stopped, swallowing hard. “Clark’s your son,” she finally whispered.
And therein lay the problem. Sooner or later, Martha Kent would slip into the default mode of defending her child, regardless of what Clark had done, and Chloe just wasn’t ready to hear any excuses for his despicable behaviour. Nothing could excuse or explain away what he’d done to her.
“I may be Clark’s mother, Chloe, but I’m also a woman,” Martha replied gently. “To know that this has happened to you would have hurt me even if it hadn’t been Clark who’d…who’d done it to you. The fact that he did…” she stopped and sighed, clearly overcome by emotion.
“I’m as confused as you are, Chloe,” she continued, sounding tearful. “I know what he did to you, and I still wake up everyday not wanting to believe it.”
…and there it was, she thought bitterly, pursing her lips. The Automatic Parental Defence Mechanism; so not what she needed to hear right now.
“Maybe talking to you isn’t such a good idea after all, Mrs Kent,” Chloe said, preparing to rise. “It’s in your nature to defend your son, and I don’t begrudge you that.”
Martha stopped her with a quick hand on her arm. “Chloe, I need to know why he did this just as much as you do,” she said, her eyes filled with pain. “Because if something like this happens again, either to you or to someone else…”
“He’s…he’s told me how to stop him,” Chloe said quietly. “He gave me a piece of green meteor rock, said to use it if he ever…got violent again.”
Martha looked thoughtful at that piece of news. “That means he’s genuinely sorry he caused you pain, Chloe. He wouldn’t have told you how to weaken him, otherwise.”
“That much I gathered,” she agreed quietly. “What I don’t get is why he attached me in the first place.”
Martha’s face fell, her attractive features once again clouded over with guilt, and Chloe knew that she was on to something.
“What happened to him, Mrs Kent?” she persisted quietly. “What was so bad that Clark felt like running away was the only answer?”
Martha stared into her rapidly cooling coffee, her eyes bleak. “Clark told you everything about himself, right?”
“Well…he told me the basics, but I didn’t have time to get the full story. I know that he’s an alien from Krypton, sent here by his biological parents when his home planet was being destroyed.”
Martha nodded. “The ship they sent Clark in contained sentient data from his biological father, a scientist named Jor-El,” Martha went on. “It started sending messages out to Clark, telling him that he was Earth’s saviour, sent to rule it with strength. The same message was confirmed by Dr Swann, who was able to decode Kryptonian data.
“Clark didn’t want that kind of future for himself, but the ship wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she continued. “It started…bombarding him with mental messages, insisting he fulfill his destiny. The more Clark resisted, the more insistent and painful the messages got.”
Chloe leaned on the table and rested her chin in her hand as she absorbed the vital information. So her assumptions had been right; he’d been struggling with the knowledge that he was apparently born to be some kind of cruel dictator, when he was anything but by nature. No wonder he’d gotten so moody and miserable over the summer.
“On the day of Lex’s wedding, the signals from the ship were so strong that Clark’s ears were bleeding,” Martha said. “He was determined to destroy it once and for all, hoping that the harassment and the messages would just stop.”
She paused. “Clark did manage to blow up the ship, but Jonathan and I…we were on our way back from the wedding to see if he was okay, and we got caught in the blast.”
Chloe held her breath as Martha’s gaze met hers. “Jonathan and I survived. Our baby didn’t.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “Baby?” she echoed. “You mean…?”
Martha nodded. “I was pregnant.”
***
Chapter 13…