Chlark Fanfic: Wounded Heart, Chapter 17
This chapter kicked my ass, I tell ya. But it’s finally here. And it was so gloriously long that LJ didn't let me post it. So I've split it, and will see if I can add a bit on to the rest of it to make another complete chapter.
My work never ends.
Enjoy! Banner by the lovely ctbn60. :-)
Chapter 17
Title: Wounded Heart
Author: BabyDee
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Some potty-mouth; nothing too major
Timeline: Post-‘Legion’
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Read previous chapter here.
Read story from the beginning here.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered.
Chloe looked up at him, and he could see a sadness in her eyes that mirrored his own. “I couldn’t,” she said quietly.
He raised a hand to cup her cheek. “Why not?” he asked softly.
She shook her head. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me,” he challenged.
She shrugged and bit her lip, wincing as she hit the sore spot where she’d bitten through it when she was in labour. “I didn’t want to mess up your life,” she finally said.
He stared at her. “Chloe, that’s crazy,” he said, wounded. “Look at this…this beautiful child. How could you possibly think that making me a father would ruin my life?”
Chloe stood and wrung her hands, a sure sign that she was nervous. “Clark, Lana had just left and you were moving on,” she said. “I didn’t want to get in the way of that. If I’d told you I was pregnant, you’d have felt duty-bound to stand by me, and I didn’t want to interfere with your chance for happiness.”
“Don’t you think I deserved to be the one to make that choice?” he said gently.
“You don’t understand,” she said in a small voice. “This is bigger than just you and me.”
“Stop hedging, Chloe,” he said, his voice hardening. “Just tell me straight why you left and took my child with you.”
She clamped her mouth shut and stared at the floor.
“You owe me, Chloe,” he continued in a low tone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having my baby?”
She took a couple of deep breaths, and finally lifted her head and looked at him. “Because I’m not the one you want to have babies with, am I?” she finished sadly.
“Oh?” he said, rising and putting the wriggling infant in the bassinet. He turned to face her. “So who is, then?”
She glared at him. “You don’t need me to tell you that,” she snapped, turning away from him to face the window.
He reached out and grabbed her chin, turning her face toward his. “Actually I do, Chloe. I really do. I just suffered the six loneliest months of my life without you, so I need to know exactly why you thought running away from Smallville with my offspring was such a good idea.”
Her eyes teared up. “Because I couldn’t bear to watch you fall in love with my cousin!” she blurted. “I just couldn’t. Not after waiting years for you to get over Lana. To have you move on to Lois was…just too painful for me.” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t bring a baby into that environment, surely you understand that?”
“Chloe…why would you think I was in love with Lois?”
She scowled. “Are you saying you’re not?” she challenged. “I’m not blind, Clark. I saw you with my own eyes.”
“Oh? And what did you see, exactly?”
She glared. “I saw my cousin, in your lap, sucking face with you at the Daily Planet Christmas Party!” she accused.
Clark shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “God help me, that was the reason,” he breathed. “What a waste. What a fucking waste.”
She gasped. “Don’t say that filthy word in front of my baby!” she said, scandalised, covering Kallie’s ears.
He ignored her. “Why didn’t you just ask me about this?” he said helplessly. “You could have confronted me anytime-”
“And have you lie to my face, like you did with Lana?” she countered.
“Damn it, Chloe, I’m not frickin’ fifteen anymore! Will you stop dangling that over my head?”
“Stop swearing,” she warned sullenly.
He ignored her again. “I expected better from you, Chloe. An investigative reporter who does nothing to confirm her findings.” He shook his head. “You’ve been out of journalism too long.”
“I got confirmation with my own two eyes!” she seethed. “I know what I saw!”
“What you ‘saw’ was your shit-faced cousin slobbering all over me, taking advantage of the mistletoe I’d hung on the wall waiting for your arrival!” he yelled.
She narrowed her eyes. “Clark Kent, if you swear in front of this baby one more time, so help me, I’ll-” she stopped, blinking. “Sorry, what did you say?”
He sighed, tired of fighting. “I hung the mistletoe for you, Chloe,” he said wearily. “It was the only way I could get to kiss you. You’d already made it clear in Isis that you wanted nothing more from me than friendship.” He shrugged. “I thought if I got to kiss you again, I might be able to convince you otherwise.”
Chloe looked dazed. She walked shakily over to the chair and sat down, silent for long moments. Finally she looked up at him.
“So you and Lois, you’re not…?”
“Together?” he finished. He shook his head. “Never in a million years.”
She shook her head, and he could practically see the journalist in her coming back online. “But you said - just now, you said that love agrees with her. You said she was in love.”
“I did. And she is. But not with me.”
She blinked. “Well with who, then?” she asked, perplexed.
He looked at her carefully. “With Jimmy.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Jimmy? Jimmy Olsen, Jimmy?” she repeated.
He exhaled in relief. “For a second there, I thought you were going to say, ‘my’ Jimmy,” he breathed.
She shook her head. “He was never my Jimmy - not really. He knew it, and I knew it.” She gave a short laugh. “Lois and Jimmy?” she said, amused. “When did that happen?”
He smiled wryly. “I think she’s had feelings for him for quite a while, but couldn’t say anything because he was marrying you,” Clark said. “Looking back, the signs were all there. Remember how drunk she got at your engagement party?”
Chloe nodded, realisation dawning. “I thought she was upset that I was getting married before her…”
“So did I,” he said. “But then Oliver told me he saw her on the porch on your wedding day knocking back a bottle of bubbly.”
“Hang on,” she said suspiciously. “Call me crazy, but weren’t you two dancing pretty close that evening?”
He reddened. “I must confess, we did almost have a moment there,” he said. “But what was I supposed to do, Chloe? I’d just lost you to Jimmy. And not just that, but because of my stupid decision to remove your memories of my secret, you were like this…this Stepford zombie. And Lois thought she’d just lost Jimmy forever without ever letting him know how she felt. We were both on the rebound.”
“Wow.” She shook her head. “Thank God for Lana Lang showing up when she did, huh?”
He looked at her intently. “It wasn’t Lana that snapped me out of it, Chloe. It was you. Your voice. You said ‘no way!’ and it suddenly hit me that I was about to make the third biggest mistake of my life.”
She frowned. “Third biggest?”
“The first was taking your memories of me,” he clarified. “The second was standing by and watching you marry Jimmy, knowing how I really felt about you.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you saying that even before we slept together, you…”
“Knew I wanted to be with you?” he finished. He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Oh, my gosh.” She sat in stunned silence. Then she spoke again. “So I guess that’s the real reason Lois went to Star City with Jimmy.”
He nodded. “Yep. And also the reason why she was sloshed at the DP Party. He was on the mend, and her time with him was over. Or so she thought.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“After you sorted out the annulment papers, Jimmy came back to Metropolis. He hobbled into the Daily Planet, went straight to Lois’s desk and laid one on her, ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’-style.”
She chuckled. “He did? Why didn’t Lois tell me this?”
He raised an eyebrow at her sardonically. “Says the woman who ran away with her best friend’s baby.” He smiled. “She probably thought it would be awkward, just like you did.”
“That would explain why Jimmy was always so cold and distant whenever I came to visit,” she mused. “He was falling for Lois, and married to me.” She laughed hysterically. “How did all this happen? It’s like a cheap knock-off of Shakespeare!”
Clark smiled ruefully. “As close as we are, and as much as we talk, we really don’t communicate, do we?”
Chloe shook her head. “This has all been one crazy mix-up.” She furrowed her brow. “So Lois and Jimmy are both okay?”
He nodded. “Better than okay. They’ve both been to rehab - Lois to get off the booze, and Jimmy to shake off his dependency on the pain meds. They’ve both been clean and sober for three months now.”
“That’s good,” Chloe said. She rested her chin on her hands and sighed.
“I should have asked you if you were seeing Lois,” she said quietly. “I know I should have confronted you and asked you personally, but I…I guess I was terrified of hearing an affirmative answer from you.”
“You were scared of rejection, I understand,” he said. “But Chloe, I’d just tried to ask you out, and you shot me down. I invited you the DP Party. You think I’d have done all that if I wanted to be with Lois?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand…”
“So explain it to me,” he insisted. “No more crossed wires, Chloe.”
She sighed, and looked up at him. “Clark, when we made love-”
“So you agree we ‘made love’ then? He cut in eagerly. She glared at him. He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. Continue.”
“Thank you. As I was saying, when we made love, it was the most amazing experience of my life. But then Lana called…”
“…and I supersped to her side without so much as a backward glance, just like I did on the day of the Spring Formal.” He shuddered. “Even before I left, I knew I was making a hideous mistake. I wanted to tell you how I felt about you there and then, but I didn’t know how you were gonna take it and…well, lets just say you’re not the only one scared of rejection.”
Chloe sighed. “So Lana’s phone call just gave you an excuse to gather your wits, as it were.”
“Exactly.” He shook his head. “But when I found out what she’d done to herself, I was horrified. Grafting a genetically engineered suit onto her skin so we could be together?” He shuddered again. “That’s obsessive, to say the least.”
“Clark, I have to ask…” she paused, and then continued. “Since we’re putting everything out on the table - if Lana hadn’t absorbed all that Kryptonite and become a no-fly zone for you…do you think that you two would eventually have gotten back together? I need you to be honest with me.”
He smiled. “Funny you should ask that,” he said wryly. “She swanned back into town a couple of months ago.”
***
Chapter 18…