Chlark Fanfic: All The Way, Chapter 9
Some more Chlark in the House!
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Title: All The Way
Author: BabyDee1
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: PG13 (for now)
Warnings: None
Timeline: All Seasons. Works as a sequel to Daisychain.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Summary: Chlark: as they were, are and ever should be.
Feedback: …makes me squee. :)
Author’s note: written for ellyfanfiction, the greatest Chlark author in fandom :)
Read previous chapter here.
Read story from the beginning here.
Chapter 9
Soar
“There you are!” Chloe said with a big grin as he slowly ascended into the branches. “I thought you’d run off on me.”
“No, I was just…taking my time,” he replied, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.
“Oh, okay. Let’s go, then.” She turned and hoisted herself higher, climbing at an astonishing speed.
“Hey, slow down!” he pleaded.
“You hurry up!” she scolded, but she slowed down nevertheless. “I promised Dad I’d be home in time for a late lunch, so the less time spent on the ascent, the better.”
“But…but don’t you want to enjoy the view?” he asked as he cautiously negotiated his way up.
“The whole point of the climb is to get to the top, where the view actually is,” she replied smartly. “There’s nothing to see here but leaves. So as great as the journey is, I’m much more getting above the foliage than staring at it.”
Clark sighed and struggled upward, getting more and more anxious with every step of the ascent until he made the mistake of glancing down. Upon finding himself about halfway up the tree he froze, his limbs clamming up on him.
Chloe, who despite having slowed down was still several branches ahead, paused and turned to look at him. When she saw that he’d stalled she rolled her eyes and made a most unladylike snort.
“Ah, what the heck. See you when you get here.” She picked up speed and disappeared into the dense foliage.
“Chloe, wait…!” He took a deep breath and forced his reluctant limbs back into action. He managed to make it up a few more branches, but the higher he got, the harder the fear gripped him until his heart thudded so hard it threatened to give out. He glanced down and managed to see the distant ground between a crack in the leaves, and his limbs started to shake.
“Chloe…stop,” he pleaded, hanging onto the tree for dear life. “Please…”
“What now?” she groaned, peering down. “We’re almost---”
Her sarcastic expression quickly changed to one of worry when she saw his trembling frame.
“Clark!” she exclaimed. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
He didn’t answer. His vocal cords, along with the rest of him, was frozen in his irrational fear of altitude.
Chloe quickly descended, staring at him in concern. “You don’t look too good.”
He swallowed and managed to find his voice. “I, er…” he squeezed his eyes shut at the sight of the ground now several feet below him, and he clutched the branches for support.
“Chloe, I don’t think I can do this,” he finished hollowly.
Understanding dawned in her eyes. “Clark…are you acrophobic?”
He scowled at the unfamiliar word and wrapped his hands tighter around on the tree trunk. “No, I…I just don’t like heights.”
A kindly smile briefly appeared on her face. “It’s kinda the same thing,” she said softly, resting one of her hands on his clammy one. “Clark, why didn’t you tell me?”
He sighed and lowered his head. “I didn’t want to disappoint you,” he replied quietly.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have minded. We could have done something else…”
He shook his head and managed a smile. “You had your heart set on tree-climbing this weekend, and I wasn’t gonna let you down.”
“That’s so sweet of you, Clark,” she said, returning his smile. “Thank you.”
“…and I didn’t want you to think I was some lame cissy,” he added, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. She must definitely he was one now, what with how he was clinging to the tree like a limpet and all.
He gave her a sheepish smile. “Guess I still ended up making a fool of myself, huh?”
“We’re all scared of something, Clark,” she said softly, squeezing his hand. “Heights just happens to be yours. And you did so well confronting your fear by getting into the tree in the first place, not to mention making it this far up. I don’t think you’re a coward at all. I’m so proud of you.”
His heart melted and he gave her a red-faced smile. It was nice of her to be encouraging and supportive; Pete wouldn’t have been so sweet about it.
“Thanks, Chloe.”
She patted his hand and got to her feet. “Let’s go back down---”
“No! No, Chloe, you don’t have to do that,” he protested. “You go on up and have fun.”
“Not without you,” she insisted. “It’s no fun unless we do this together.”
“Um…” he swallowed. “Okay, I think I can make it the rest of the way up---”
“Clark, I know you don’t want to,” she insisted. “Really, I’m okay to go back down…”
He sighed and shook his head. “We’re going in circles here, Chloe.”
She nodded bleakly. “Agreed. Okay…what do you want to do, Clark?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m gonna climb this tree,” he declared resolutely. “I will, I just…I’m…kinda scared.”
“Clark…” she rested her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “We’ll do this together, okay?”
He hesitated. “But I don’t want to fall…”
“I won’t let you fall,” she replied, her voice sure and confident. Clark stared at her and drew belief from her assertive declaration.
“I can do this,” he whispered. “Let’s do this, Chloe.”
***
Her face lit up in a bright grin.
“Okay, first rule of heights in general: don’t look down,” she instructed solemnly. “We don’t want to add vertigo to your acrophobia.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“I’ll explain later. Rule Two: keep your eyes on me,” she went on. “If your focus is on something that’s above you, then you won’t be looking down.”
He nodded. Her logic made sense. Still…
“But what about when we get to the top?” he queried.
“The perspective’s slightly different,” she explained. “Yes, you’ll be looking down, but you’ll also be looking straight ahead…and it’ll be a beautiful sight, I promise. Okay?”
He took another deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
“Don’t worry, I’m right here,” she reassured him. “One step at a time, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Eyes on me…” she lifted one booted foot and placed it on the next branch, then reached up with her hand to pull herself up. Clark followed suit with a concentrated frown, concerned when the branch he stepped on made a slight creak.
“Try and keep your feet as close to the trunk as possible,” she called down. “That little groove just between the branch and the trunk is the strongest point. If you step further out, that’s when you run the risk of snapping the branch.”
He nodded. “Got it.”
She took another step up, and his gaze wandered from her foot to the seat of her pants…and stayed there. Her bottom looked nice in those combat trousers; very nice, especially when she stretched each leg up to get to the higher branch…
“Hmm,” she mused, her voice cutting into his wandering thoughts. “Maybe I should have worn that frilly pink dress, after all.”
“I’m not looking at your butt, Chloe, I swear!” he lied loudly and quickly - too quickly.
Chloe laughed. “I love you, Clark. You’re delightfully easy to wind up. I just meant that you’d have no trouble climbing if I’d given you something to…well, look at. It's a joke, that's all.”
Oh, she didn’t need a frilly pink dress for that, he thought with amusement. She was commanding his attention pretty well just as she was. Lucky for him that she didn’t have the ability to read minds, or she’d have given him a rude glare and stamped on his fingers by now. He grinned and returned his visual focus to her feet.
“Chloe, can I ask you a question?” he said after they’d been climbing a while.
“Sure.”
He swallowed hard. “Have you ever fallen out of a tree?”
“Dozens of times,” she said cheerily. “And yes, I did hit every branch on the way down.”
He winced. “That sounds dangerous. And painful.”
“Well, the branches actually saved my life by breaking my fall,” she pointed out as she climbed up onto the next branch. “Can you imagine what it would have been like if I hadn’t hit them?”
“I’m trying not to,” he said weakly, feeling his stomach dropping at the thought of her falling through the air.
“This one time was really bad. I was nearly at the top of the tree, and the branch I stepped on suddenly snapped and broke clean off,” she went on, oblivious to his flash of panic. “I was clinging to that trunk for dear life all the way down. It was one bumpy journey, and by the time I hit the bottom, my hands were raw. I had to wear bandages for a month.”
Ouch. “And you back in a tree after that?” he asked, scandalised.
“Yep, as soon as my hands healed,” she replied. “I wasn’t going to let an overgrown piece of oak get the better of me.” She shifted to the left, and he hauled himself up beside her.
“That was very brave of you,” he said.
“And this is very brave of you,” she said gently. “You did it, Clark. We’re at the top.”
***
Clark’s eyes widened in shock.
“We’re at the---”
“Don’t look down,” she commanded. “Look at me, Clark. Keep your eyes on me…”
He swallowed and did as she asked, maintaining her hazel gaze.
“You’re alright,” she said with a smile. “You’re okay. You did it; you’re at the top.”
“I’m at the top,” he said in a daze.
She nodded. “You are. Are you holding on tight?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Good. I want to show you something.”
“What is it?”
“Take a look around you.”
He did as she instructed…and stared. His eyes widened as he was treated to the most spectacular view he had ever seen. The tall treetops of Walsh Forest gave way to the lush, rolling green fields and sprawling landscape of Lowell County, beyond which he could see the towering skyscrapers of Metropolis dotting the furthest edge of the horizon.
“What do you think?” she asked quietly. “Was it worth it?”
He remained silent for a long, long while. Eventually he reached out blindly and took her hand, giving it a light squeeze.
“Definitely,” he whispered. “Chloe this…this is beautiful.”
She smiled. “Glad you like it.”
A reverent stillness descended on them both as they simply revered in the magnificent view around them. After a while Chloe dug out the second bottle of water and they shared it in silence, smiling as the quietness was occasionally broken by the squawk of a passing bird or the calling of one tree-dwelling animal to another.
“We should get going soon,” Chloe advised. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry for some real food.”
“Okay,” he said hesitantly. “Only, um…how do I get down without looking down?”
Same way we got up, kinda,” she replied. “Just re-trace your steps backwards by feeling your way with your feet. Can you manage that, or do you want me to go down first?”
“I’ll be okay as long as I don’t look down, so…” carefully he treaded downwards, sighing in relief as his foot found the right spot. He continued descending until he got to the lowest branch, and jumped out of the tree onto solid ground.
“You did it!” Chloe squealed as she dropped out of the tree beside him.
“I can’t believe it,” he said in amazement. “I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it,” she said, hands on her hips and a big grin on her face. “Took us a while, but you got there in the end.” She glanced at her watch, and her face fell. “Shoot, it’s almost three-thirty. Let’s head back---”
“Chloe?” he interrupted quietly. When she stopped and stared at him in silent query, he wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you so much.”
Her arms went around his neck as she returned his hug. “Anytime,” she whispered. Time seemed to stand still as they stood there in each other’s arms, until she suddenly stepped back and gave him a shy smile.
“Race you back!” she chirped, and before he could reply she trotted off in the direction of the path.
Clark followed her with a big grin on his face, easily catching up and falling into step beside her. He would love to be able to share with her just how fast he could actually run; but he figured he’d conquered enough new ground for one day.
There’d be time for revelations in future; of that much he was sure.
***
Chapter 10…