Dreaming the Wolf - Chapter 10
Title: Dreaming the Wolf
Rating: R
Category: Angst
Summary: After the events of Freak, Chloe finds herself changed more than she thought possible. A spin on the classic tale of girl becomes werewolf.
Spoilers: I haven't been actively watching SV for a long time now, so anything goes and I take liberties. This is set after the episode Freak and careens madly and gleefully towards AU.
Disclaimer: If I owned anything, then there would be no need for me to write fanfic or read it.
Chapter 10
“One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.”
Benjamin Disraeli
Lex finished re-reading the files associated with his project. They were the same files that he had given Chloe. Most of them anyway. There was no way that he would give her all the keys to the kingdom. He had thought he was doing a good thing by initiating the project. It was only supposed to be a general survey, but it had snowballed. “They weren’t supposed to remember.” Smallville had too many anomalies. The hospital statistics showed that more people were treated for broken bones, sprains and the like on at least two orders of magnitude higher than illnesses. This place was uncommonly healthy.
But it didn’t stop there. Reports of the fantastical were in constant supply. Chloe’s Wall of Weird was the pathetically small tip of the iceberg. And everything…everything could be traced to the first meteor shower. Time hadn’t passed long enough to accurately detail the effects of the second meteor shower; but if the results were anything like the first, it would get ugly in about 10-20 years. An entirely new generation would spring up, which would compound the original problem of the previous generation. How this little town wasn’t overrun with scientists itching to study the rocks, land, and anything was beyond him. “It makes no sense.”
Lex took it upon himself to correct the oversight of the government…of scientists. It was why he began the project. It was important. He was doing good work. But as he read the files he had ruthlessly plundered from his own company, he could not help but be shocked on more levels than he thought possible. He was horrified.
When Chloe had come by earlier, he had wanted to see her; but he found that he didn’t have the energy. His mind was racing and the full consequences, the consequences he could discern at any rate, weighed on him. He had failed as a person. How could he look at her and not see his failure? How could he look at her and not beg her for forgiveness? Even if he didn’t care for her? Which wasn’t the case.
And so he was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, contemplating the bottle of Scotch within his line of sight. The only saving grace was that Lana was off somewhere else. Lex had painted himself into a corner and he couldn’t back down now. To do so would be to admit things to himself that he wanted to remain hidden. Lex yelled into his hands and slammed them down onto the desk. It stung.
“I can’t fix this.”
********
Chloe returned to Lex’s mansion at about 8PM and let her senses go. It was overwhelming. She maintained tight control on how much she was willing to focus on a particular sense. It became background noise after a while; but she had never actively focused on them. The wolf mind was hard-wired to interpret the various and numerous input; the human mind, however, was not. Human senses were so dull and it slowly stopped being an evolutionary concern once humans were no longer the prey.
Chloe had to do what no human has ever had to do, but what their genetic brethren have done for millions of years. She had to accept her senses and deny the higher brain functions that defined Homo sapiens as a species. From her observations, Chloe knew that there would only be a short time for her to vault the gate and avoid any perimeter guards. She only hoped that her jeans would survive the ordeal because she couldn’t relax enough to change. Getting shot hadn’t been fun and she didn’t think that was something that would change the second time around.
Her car was parked two miles up the road and hidden in a rather large stand of brush. It’d either be deemed an abandoned car or it wouldn’t be found. At least that was her hope. A towing fee would wreak havoc on her finances. She hadn’t bothered with dark clothes because she could move fast enough to not need to be overly stealthy.
Chloe had to psyche herself up to do this. “I’ve never vaulted a gate. We’ll see how this goes.” A running start would probably be best, but she didn’t have the time to do it. Besides, she was trying to jump up and over an obstacle instead of across a gap. It was more difficult. She was better off attempting a standing jump.
Closing her eyes and praying for a little luck, Chloe jumped. She didn’t quite make it. Chloe grabbed at the ledge and felt claws rip from her hands violently. They caught the gate. She had a tenuous grasp, but it was a start. Her hands hurt because her claws were embedded in the concrete of the gate. She pulled herself onto the ledge and then dropped onto the other side.
It was official. Her life was now a video game and her player was a button masher. She could make that an analogy only because she counted Pete as one of her best friends. Rolling her eyes at herself, Chloe ran to the stables at a dead sprint. She felt an incredible rush of adrenaline and euphoria.
If this euphoric power rush was what Clark had to deal with every day, then she was not giving him the credit he deserved. She didn’t even think that he was giving himself the credit he deserved; but it made sense. If ever he thought he had everything solved and he knew for a fact he wouldn’t ever abuse his powers, then they were all in trouble because he’d have already started descending into abusing his powers.
For a moment, Chloe felt pity for him. He could never be normal and it would break something in him when he finally realized that. But like all great men, he would recover and be better than anyone thought he could be. She would love to know that Clark. The Clark that cast off his youthful follies. The Clark that finally forged his own place in the world and didn’t let anyone do it for him. That man would be someone worth knowing.
The man Clark would become would be a savior to many. He wouldn’t have many friends, but the ones he would have would go to hell and back for him. He’d have relationships that flared out dramatically, but he would always be able to pick himself up. And when he finally found that person he could spend a life with, his strength of character and resolve would get that much stronger. He would truly be invincible. Chloe really wanted to know that man; and she couldn’t wait.
Chloe forced her thoughts away from Clark and back to the situation at hand. From the stables, there would be an unbroken path to the rear of Lex’s mansion. There would be about five minutes that she would have no cover; and there would be ample opportunity for her to be caught. Chloe took a deep breath. She could smell the scent of horses and their waste, but she could also smell the cheap cologne of one of the perimeter guards. He was noisy man, but his partner was not. She came to the conclusion that they were moving away from her.
There wasn’t anyone else close enough to catch her so once again she took off running towards the grounds keeper’s office. She knew it was his office because Lana had once shown her the stables. A part of her figured that Lana was probably bragging on some level; but it came in handy now. If Clark Kent didn’t exist, Chloe knew that they wouldn’t be friends. There was nothing in Lana that she could relate to and vice versa. Lana wasn’t a bad person. She just wasn’t someone Chloe would’ve made the effort to know.
This was going to be the hard part because there was an alarm on the door. Chloe didn’t have a key, but she could’ve picked the lock. Picking the lock wouldn’t be a good idea; the alarm would still sound and she’d be delayed. Her plan was to break the door and then run like the very hounds of hell were chasing her. Lex’s guards came equipped with guns. “God, please don’t let me be shot…again. Here goes nothing.”
Letting out a breath and squaring her shoulder, Chloe threw her body into the door. The door flew off the hinges and there was a blessed moment of silence. Then the hounds of hell started shrieking bloody murder in the form of the alarm. Chloe took off running towards Lex’s office. He was there. He was always there.
She streaked by four armed guards before the yells of “halt” sounded. That wasn’t the problem. The problem came when they started using their walkie-talkies to communicate with each other. They’d be able to anticipate her and trap her. Or shoot her. She could not emphasize enough to herself how much she wanted to avoid being shot.
When Chloe began hearing gun fire, she somehow summoned the will to run faster. She sharply turned left and barreled into Mercy. Chloe had no doubt that if she had not been a werewolf, she would’ve ended up sprawled in a heap; but she was a werewolf and that didn’t happen. Although she did hear Mercy let out a pained breath. It was very satisfying.
Chloe had to get vicious now because they knew where she was headed. She picked Mercy up and turned her around. Mercy would be the first to face any bullets coming from the front. At the last minute, she decided that using Mercy as a human shield would be crossing a line she didn’t want to cross. The only other option was not that much better.
The only thing to recommend it was the fact that she wouldn’t be using Mercy as a shield, but as a projectile. Chloe pushed Mercy hard into the group of men aiming their guns. They all fell like bowling pins. It was amusing. Unfortunately, Chloe wouldn’t be able to savor it because Lex’s door was only a few feet away and a pile of bodies were between her and her goal.
Her body may have been capable of great feats of acrobatics, but Chloe had no knowledge of such things. She did the only thing she could do, which was to run some more. “This has got to be the most running I have ever done.”
Lex had taken note of what his guards were saying. Even before Mercy had uttered a single word, he knew it was Chloe. No one, not even his father or Clark, had been able to so thoroughly disrupt his household like the whirlwind of energy that was Chloe. On the heels of that epiphany was the sound of commotion outside. There was yelling and once again his office doors were being blown open by Chloe Sullivan; except this time, she looked harried, but not feral. Lex had barely stood up from his chair before she closed and locked the doors.
Chloe turned golden eyes to him and said hurriedly, “Lex, call them off. We need to talk.”
Before he could even think about not doing something, she said, “Lex, I am going to kill you if I get shot tonight. Not ‘ha ha’ dead. I mean real, choke you to death dead.”
Lex sighed. He was resigned to this. “I wish this day was over.” Lex walked around his desk and strode towards her. Reaching around her, he opened the door, “Go away and fix whatever door she broke.”
He leveled a look at Mercy. She wasn’t going to go far and she was prepared to come into his office, guns blazing if need be. Lex closed the door and stepped away from Chloe. “I suppose there’s a reason you’ve broken into my home for the second time in as many weeks.”
She was about to answer him, when he began speaking again, “I have no idea why I never press charges,” he shook his head and motioned for her to start talking.
Chloe was suddenly very hungry and thirsty so she followed her nose to a sandwich at his bar. As she walked, she talked, “Lex, we really need to talk about a few things.”
Lex watched as Chloe went to his bar, took his sandwich from earlier in the day, and took a can of coke from the mini-refrigerator. “Why don’t you help yourself to some food and a drink, Chloe?”
A baleful glare was his only reply.
“You really had to break into my home when a phone call or a note would’ve sufficed?”
Chloe finished chewing and swallowing the large bite of sandwich she had, “I came by earlier today, Lex, and you wouldn’t see me.”
He rolled his eyes and sat down on the edge of his desk. He affected a casual pose and laced his voice with arrogance, “Did it never occur to you that I was busy?”
“I saw you in the window. Besides, you and I both know that if you had wanted to see me you would have.”
He crossed his arms, “Fine. What was so important that you had to see me so urgently?”
She finished the sandwich, guzzled the coke, and answered him. “Lex, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to trust that you aren’t a bastard. I’m going to trust that you want to figure out what the hell is going on. But most of all, I’m choosing not to be angry. We need to work together. Whatever is going on is bigger than either of us and neither of us can handle it alone,” Chloe’s voice was harsh when she continued, “If you screw me on this, I swear they’ll be finding pieces of you for weeks.”
Lex ran his hands down his face, “I came to that conclusion about fifteen minutes before,” with this he gestured to his office doors, “But you’re right. Just like old times, Chloe.”
That was what Chloe was afraid of. It being just like old times. Lex smiled a little to himself. It was the smile of a man resigned to his fate and just begging for it to be over.
“Where do you want to start, Chloe?”
“With dinner. All this running around has me hungry; and I doubt that you’ve eaten yet.”
Lex was incredulous, “You came all this way for dinner?”
“No, Lex, I came all this way to talk to you; and now I’m hungry. Feed me.”
He could do this. He could take her jokes and her weird sense of humor. At the very least, it removed some of the tension between them. “And after dinner?”
She sighed, “You tell me. You have all the files and your techs. I’ll follow you on this one.”
It was such a sacrifice to say, but it was the truth. The only way she could see to get through this was to be honest. And she honestly needed him to use his brain because this was his field. He was masterful when it came to business subterfuge. Lionel had trained him well. Of course, she was also trusting him to give her his original project files because she knew he hadn’t. And when he did finally relent, because he would, she had to be prepared to not be angry with him. It was a tall order; but if it increased their chances of success then she would deal with it. It wasn’t as if she had a choice.
Lex shook his head and asked her, “What do you want to eat?”
Chloe looked around, “Lana isn’t around is she?”
“No, why?”
“I’d prefer not to involve her.”
He was giving her the eyebrow raise of “try again”. “Honestly, Lex. The fewer number of people involved the better.”
Lex didn’t believe her. Chloe was an adequate liar. She could usually fool the less discerning. He had seen her do it. He didn’t fool himself into thinking that she had never pulled one over on him; but he could detect many of her lies. And she was most definitely not telling him the full issue. In the spirit of their new alliance, he let her have this lie. She would probably share it with him sooner or later; especially if it became important. He could be patient and not pick this battle. There would undoubtedly be more.
“Yes, I did notice that Clark wasn’t around. I guess you wanted to keep him safe?”
Lex was jealous; but that dig was going to be the last…unless she did something. Allies were not friends.
Chloe chose to disregard his last comment and instead answered his first question, “Have your cooks prepare me a steak, rare, with mashed potatoes. Nothing fancy. And tell them not to be stingy with the portion.”
Chloe Sullivan was nothing if not audacious. He had to admire her for looking him in the eye with a straight face and demanding that particular dinner. It was kind of endearing in an exasperating kind of way.
Lex left his office and found Mercy. Chloe listened as he told her to inform the cooks of her request. He even added shrimp and a dessert to the order…for two.
Lex returned to the room. He actually sounded vaguely cheery and slightly optimistic, “There’s nothing like cementing an alliance than with good food. We’ll be eating shortly. In the meantime, we could always play a game of pool. Or we could stare at each other in uncomfortable silence.”
She rolled her eyes at him, “Turn on the news and let’s play pool.”
This promised to be a long, surreal evening. “At least he’s trying.”
Back to Chapter 9
Onward to Chapter 11