Fic: Five times Meta!Chloe thought about telling Immortal!Dean her secret.
Fic: Five times Meta!Chloe thought about telling Immortal!Dean her secret.
Summary:In the shared verse of Meta!Chloe and Immortal!Dean, Chloe kept her unaging status a secret for several hundred years. This is why.
Author: pen37
Fandoms: Highlander/Smallville.
Rating: G
Beta:Strangevisitor7 and Clarksmuse
A/N: This one takes place in scattered moments throughout the shared timeline of my Chloe and the Immortals series, and Strangevistior7's Immortal!Dean series. We still haven't come up with a name for this verse. I think for the moment we're calling it the Immortal!Dean and Meta!Chloe verse.
This story is written for the 5 things challenge at hl_flashfic.
-- During that six month span that they were hunting together, there was a moment in some bar - she forgets the name of it now - where he rescued her from an overly-cuddly, drunk biker named Teddy Bear. Dean had led her out on the dance floor and pulled her closer than skin. She'd looked up in his hazel eyes and for a moment, she'd been lost. She'd opened her mouth right then. The secret of her mutation on the tip of her tongue.
But then he tried to cop a feel, and she mentally decided that he didn't need to know that badly.
-- Six months after that, she'd been on a mission with the Justice League to stop an unaging supervillian by the name of Vandal Savage. While she was dismantling his evil lair of doom, she found files and files detailing her movements.
In the space between heartbeats, she thought about giving up, dying her hair, changing her name, finding Dean and starting over.
In the next, she realized that doing so would put Dean and all of his family in danger.
-- A year after that, she was trapped in Gotham. An earthquake had brought the grim old city to its knees, and the US government had decided to blow up the bridges rather than rebuild. She'd gone in to try and help the citizens in any way she could.
Nights in Gotham were so much more than physically cold. The darkness combined with the random bursts of gunfire that broke the near-absolute quiet had her questioning her sanity for being there on more than one occasion.
The days were one long exercise in survival. Basic comforts that she'd taken for granted just didn't exist anymore. A trip to the park for the fresh water and vegetables that Poison Ivy provided meant a two-hour walk, ducking street gang incursions into neutral territory. Then waiting in line for a half-day, before trying to make it back to her steel-barricaded apartment before dark brought the real weirdos out.
So many of her new neighbors looked to the Gotham City Police Department, now little better than a street gang themselves, for protection.
She'd come home on one of those long, lonely nights to find the Bat himself standing in the corner of her apartment like a column of obsidian wrapped in night. He seemed to bring the coldness with him along with a little present: a kevlar uniform with a stylized bat on it. Like it or not, she'd been drafted into the current game of Musical Chairs :Batgirl Edition.
That night, before she set out on a patrol that she didn't want, she thought of the sat phone, locked in a safe and hidden under the floor boards of her closet. Thought about calling Dean and confessing everything. Thought about asking him how fast he and his Immortal friends could get out here and rescue her from this hell of her own choosing.
But instead, like Persephone taking the pomegranate, she picked up a zipline and headed up to the roof. She doubted that Charon himself would cross the river, even if this was hell.
-- The week Sam died, she turned in her resignation to the private detective's office where she'd been working, and drove cross-country to find him. Under a brunette wig, she'd sat in a darkened corner and watched him try to drink himself into oblivion. Every fiber of her being wanted to cross the bar, and give him a shoulder to beat his grief out upon. But what would she say to him? How could she explain her unlined face, or that she'd faked her death twenty years prior? Would he channel his grief over his brother into anger at her web of lies? Or would he accept her friendship? Most likely she be a rudderless ship, cast onto the rocks of his anger.
With a sigh, she finished her drink and made her way out of the bar. Then she called Richie to let him know of Dean's whereabouts.
--- The last time her feet rested on Terran soil, she thought of calling Dean. Even if she was going to live forever, she would probably not pass this way again. Earth had too many memories. And while most of them were good, the regrets weighed on her.
Particularly after Clark's last cutting remarks before they'd parted ways. Man wasn't meant to live forever. It's unnatural. He'd been talking about himself and his Kryptonian descendants. And in his usual, unthinking way, he'd forgotten that she was also bound to live forever.
So when Methos had told her about the multi-generational ships that were setting off, filled with pilgrims for a new world, or worlds as the case may be, she'd been drawn to the idea of a fresh start.
Why she was thinking of Dean at a time like this was a mystery to her. She doubted that he would be amongst the million or more people who were, in the words of the old song, leaving far behind Terra's history so savage to take the Goddard Passage to the stars. Not when he had all those nieces and nephews of Sam's to look out for.
Maybe, in her eagerness to divorce the Zeitgeist, she just wanted to tie up a loose end, but she could not explain this intense desire to holovid him. Just to confess everything. She supposed it was because she'd never see him again, and consequently wouldn't have to deal with the fallout. She grinned wryly at the thought of seeing his expression as he beheld her unlined face for the first time in decades.
But then Methos patted her on the shoulder, and she realized that there was less time for confession than there was for nostalgia. She spared one last mental apology to Dean. Sorry for wasted opportunity. Sorry for being chicken.
Then she picked up her bag, and followed Methos onto the ship.
Summary:In the shared verse of Meta!Chloe and Immortal!Dean, Chloe kept her unaging status a secret for several hundred years. This is why.
Author: pen37
Fandoms: Highlander/Smallville.
Rating: G
Beta:Strangevisitor7 and Clarksmuse
A/N: This one takes place in scattered moments throughout the shared timeline of my Chloe and the Immortals series, and Strangevistior7's Immortal!Dean series. We still haven't come up with a name for this verse. I think for the moment we're calling it the Immortal!Dean and Meta!Chloe verse.
This story is written for the 5 things challenge at hl_flashfic.
-- During that six month span that they were hunting together, there was a moment in some bar - she forgets the name of it now - where he rescued her from an overly-cuddly, drunk biker named Teddy Bear. Dean had led her out on the dance floor and pulled her closer than skin. She'd looked up in his hazel eyes and for a moment, she'd been lost. She'd opened her mouth right then. The secret of her mutation on the tip of her tongue.
But then he tried to cop a feel, and she mentally decided that he didn't need to know that badly.
-- Six months after that, she'd been on a mission with the Justice League to stop an unaging supervillian by the name of Vandal Savage. While she was dismantling his evil lair of doom, she found files and files detailing her movements.
In the space between heartbeats, she thought about giving up, dying her hair, changing her name, finding Dean and starting over.
In the next, she realized that doing so would put Dean and all of his family in danger.
-- A year after that, she was trapped in Gotham. An earthquake had brought the grim old city to its knees, and the US government had decided to blow up the bridges rather than rebuild. She'd gone in to try and help the citizens in any way she could.
Nights in Gotham were so much more than physically cold. The darkness combined with the random bursts of gunfire that broke the near-absolute quiet had her questioning her sanity for being there on more than one occasion.
The days were one long exercise in survival. Basic comforts that she'd taken for granted just didn't exist anymore. A trip to the park for the fresh water and vegetables that Poison Ivy provided meant a two-hour walk, ducking street gang incursions into neutral territory. Then waiting in line for a half-day, before trying to make it back to her steel-barricaded apartment before dark brought the real weirdos out.
So many of her new neighbors looked to the Gotham City Police Department, now little better than a street gang themselves, for protection.
She'd come home on one of those long, lonely nights to find the Bat himself standing in the corner of her apartment like a column of obsidian wrapped in night. He seemed to bring the coldness with him along with a little present: a kevlar uniform with a stylized bat on it. Like it or not, she'd been drafted into the current game of Musical Chairs :Batgirl Edition.
That night, before she set out on a patrol that she didn't want, she thought of the sat phone, locked in a safe and hidden under the floor boards of her closet. Thought about calling Dean and confessing everything. Thought about asking him how fast he and his Immortal friends could get out here and rescue her from this hell of her own choosing.
But instead, like Persephone taking the pomegranate, she picked up a zipline and headed up to the roof. She doubted that Charon himself would cross the river, even if this was hell.
-- The week Sam died, she turned in her resignation to the private detective's office where she'd been working, and drove cross-country to find him. Under a brunette wig, she'd sat in a darkened corner and watched him try to drink himself into oblivion. Every fiber of her being wanted to cross the bar, and give him a shoulder to beat his grief out upon. But what would she say to him? How could she explain her unlined face, or that she'd faked her death twenty years prior? Would he channel his grief over his brother into anger at her web of lies? Or would he accept her friendship? Most likely she be a rudderless ship, cast onto the rocks of his anger.
With a sigh, she finished her drink and made her way out of the bar. Then she called Richie to let him know of Dean's whereabouts.
--- The last time her feet rested on Terran soil, she thought of calling Dean. Even if she was going to live forever, she would probably not pass this way again. Earth had too many memories. And while most of them were good, the regrets weighed on her.
Particularly after Clark's last cutting remarks before they'd parted ways. Man wasn't meant to live forever. It's unnatural. He'd been talking about himself and his Kryptonian descendants. And in his usual, unthinking way, he'd forgotten that she was also bound to live forever.
So when Methos had told her about the multi-generational ships that were setting off, filled with pilgrims for a new world, or worlds as the case may be, she'd been drawn to the idea of a fresh start.
Why she was thinking of Dean at a time like this was a mystery to her. She doubted that he would be amongst the million or more people who were, in the words of the old song, leaving far behind Terra's history so savage to take the Goddard Passage to the stars. Not when he had all those nieces and nephews of Sam's to look out for.
Maybe, in her eagerness to divorce the Zeitgeist, she just wanted to tie up a loose end, but she could not explain this intense desire to holovid him. Just to confess everything. She supposed it was because she'd never see him again, and consequently wouldn't have to deal with the fallout. She grinned wryly at the thought of seeing his expression as he beheld her unlined face for the first time in decades.
But then Methos patted her on the shoulder, and she realized that there was less time for confession than there was for nostalgia. She spared one last mental apology to Dean. Sorry for wasted opportunity. Sorry for being chicken.
Then she picked up her bag, and followed Methos onto the ship.