Fic: Moving On (1/6)
Fic: Moving on (1/6)
Authors: muses-circle and Pen37
Series: Slayer!Chloe
Beta: muses-circle
Fandoms: Supernatural, Smallville, Buffy/Angel Verse
Pairing: Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13
Wordcount: 2,605
Summary: With new friends and a new outlook on life, Chloe is settling into her role as a slayer post-Winchesters. But the Winchesters aren't completely done with her.
A/N: This one is written. Not sure how many chapters it'll be. But probably shorter than Getting Up was.
Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6
Dean stared at the computer resting on his lap with unseeing eyes. Chloe’s laptop. Her American Express card in the Don’t-leave-home-sense - only she had left that behind.
The file on the screen mocked him, a piece of Chloe’s life Dean had never taken the time to learn. And maybe for good reason, since she’d been so quiet about her world pre-Slayer. Dean sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate - and denied the flutter of butterflies in his gut. What do I have to be nervous about? Hell, Sammy’s read her stuff and he hadn’t turned into Emo Boy yet.
He glanced towards the other side of the room to his brother, who was still on the phone with Willow, the nerdy red-headed witch they had met while still in Cleveland. Based on Sam’s animated face, Dean assumed he and Willow were talking some kind of nerd-speak. Rolling his eyes and marveling at his brother’s capacity to make geeky look like the world’s best poker hand, Dean began to read.
*****
To start with, this isn't some silly diary. I'm not like Lana Lang. I don't write on pink paper with a purple pen. There aren't any unicorn stickers on this thing, or some silly title like 'my Diary.'
My name is Chloe Sullivan. I'm fourteen years old, and I only want to know the truth.
One day, I'm going to work for the greatest newspaper in the world. The Daily Planet. But until then, this is a virtual extension of my Wall of Weird.
I'm keeping these notes the way Bob Woodward did when he was investigating the Watergate break in: To keep the facts straight in my head.
A year ago, my Dad and I moved to Smallville Kansas from Metropolis. Perhaps due to my outsider status, or perhaps because I'm just a little more observant than the average Smallville citizen (or perhaps because my brain isn't rotted by watching too much football), but I seem to have picked up on something that the rest of the citizens in this leafy little hamlet haven't.
Smallville is one weird place.
*****
Dean fought back a small smile that threatened to crack his stony facade. This was the Chloe Sullivan he had seen a few times in Cleveland: curious, snarky, intelligent, and no-nonsense. Someone who could put up with the likes of him and keep coming back for more. She didn’t want to be a Lana Lang - the brunette who was with her former best friend, Dean recalled. She wanted to be her own person. He felt a surge of jealousy and admiration for her, since that was something he always wanted: control of his own destiny.
But unlike the woman he’d come to know, this Chloe had dreams. A reporter. The Daily Planet, which according to her, was the best thing since sliced bread in the newspaper world. And she was hoping this Wall of Weird - whatever that was - would help her get through her tedious teenage years and into the ground floor of the newspaper business’ Taj Mahal.
Intrigued, Dean scrolled through the hundred of articles Chloe had written for her high school newspaper, The Torch, and after reading about things like shapeshifters of the mutant variety, the pyro football coach, and Chloe being kidnapped and buried alive - which Dean suspected left a permanent, telling mark on her - he wondered whether that October 1989 meteor shower she had written about hadn’t attracted demons or something. Because your average town in the middle of nowhere didn’t have issues like Smallville did.
But more importantly, it seemed like Chloe not only believed her allegations, but also backed them up with as much factual information as she could find: coroner’s reports, eye witness accounts, interviews with victims and alleged killers. Even her first-hand accounts of tangles she’d been involved in - which numbered in the hundreds, if he had time to count them all. She loved the truth and everything it encompassed. Not unlike us, Dean mused thoughtfully and clicked on another file.
But unlike her, he, Sam, and Dad were just doing a job and protecting people. Carrying on with the family business and hoping along the way to get justice for their family being torn apart. Chloe seemed to want to expose the truth for the entire world to know.
However, the next thing Dean read made him realize that she had learned that sometimes, the truth was a double edged sword.
*****
Excellent investigative reporting follows the facts. Theories abound here in Smallville about the strange goings-on, and certainly the Torch has never shied away from trying to find answers to the mysteries, leading some to say that the paper is no better than The Inquisitor. The Torch should never yield to conservatism, and those who put themselves in the public eye through their deeds open themselves up to journalistic scrutiny. I argue that our school paper is only interested in the truth.
However, though the search for truth is noble, not every enigma needs or warrants an explanation. At what point does "good journalism" simply become invasion of privacy? A reporter must always ask herself what are the relevant facts. But relevancy sometimes gets swallowed in the hunger for "the story," and the line between seeking truth and just plain snooping is crossed.
I have learned a valuable lesson recently and now see where my relentless search for truth became self-serving at the expense of a close friend--a friend to whom I'd like to say: I really would choose your friendship over my press pass.
Okay, I obviously wrote this. And while it has nothing to do with the meteor rock theory, it's important and relevant on a personal note.
For a little background, let me explain a few things. When I was little, my mother left us. I didn't find out until a few years ago, that she was developing catatonic schizophrenia. In all likelihood, she left in order to save me from having to remember her in the hospital.
Which seems kind of silly now. With Dad gone, I'm the one supporting her treatment.
Anyway, moot point. Moving on.
So I grew up without a mom. Tons of kids grow up in single-parent households. They did it on Gilmore Girls and made it look easy.
But Mom probably didn't think about the effect her leaving would have on me. Because I grew up feeling that if she didn't love me, then how could anyone else?
All of this becomes relevant because my friend Clark was adopted. When I found that out, I thought I could give him this great gift. I could find his real family. But as it turns out, he didn't want me snooping around in his past.
It's a hard lesson, but the bottom line is that I have a major failing. I can get so consumed with the search for truth, that I can lose sight of what's important.
I can't ever lose sight of that again.
*****
“Chloe’s done this before,” he muttered to himself and sat back on his bed, deep in thought. And it wasn’t because she was snooping into her friends’ lives or she was looking for the latest gossip. She’d felt like looking into Clark’s past out of loyalty, because being the child of a broken home, she wanted to give her friend - the same guy who’d rejected her, Dean thought with a wince - some peace of mind.
The fact that she’d realized what she had done hurt, that she wanted to take it all back because the friendship was more important, hit Dean between the eyes like a ton of bricks. Had she been doing the same thing with them? Gathering information because she was only doing what came naturally to her: helping out those she cared about? Have I been wrong about her from the beginning? he wondered as he shut his eyes and wanted to slink beneath the hotel room floor.
Anger bubbled up inside him. She could’ve just said something. It wasn’t like I’d rejected her or anything, he thought and rubbed his eyes. It figured he had to fall for the one who chose to run away because she didn’t know how to speak her thoughts and do what was in the best interest of everyone.
More frustrated than before, Dean nearly slapped the laptop shut. His palms itched to toss it across the room and watch it connect with the opposite wall. But he couldn’t, because this was Chloe. Her words, her actions, her lessons. Her. The wounded soul behind the woman he knew and loved.
But the next several personal journal entries told an all-too familiar tale, one of loss and uncertainty; of anger and despair so deep you could drink it. And of how that innocent, wide-eyed and filled with dreams girl became the Slayer.
*****
I think more than anything, I'm afraid of becoming like my mother. Not catatonic (although God, I hope that doesn't happen either). But someone who gives up.
She ran. She suffered from a generational curse called Catatonic Schizophrenia. And she chose to slip away from us.
I don't know why, but she would rather that I grow up thinking that she didn't love me. That I was completely unlovable, rather than have me watch her slip away. She would rather that I remember her as she was - and utterly hate her, rather than see her locked inside her own head, and pity her.
Sometimes, I look in the mirror, and I see her eyes in my face. Are the thoughts that go on behind those eyes the same as hers?
I haven't physically run. But inside, I'm my mother's daughter. I lock my emotions away, so scared that if I show someone the real me, they'll reject me the way I thought my mother rejected me when I was little.
I can't help but wonder, am I an apt pupil at the lessons she taught me with her absence?
*****
In Chandler's field, there is a hole in the ground I was once buried in. And in the Smallville cemetery, there is a headstone with my name on it, but an empty box beneath it.
Today, two markers down from my own headstone, I buried my heart. What's walking around now is a puzzle with the center missing. I'm breathing, eating and sleeping at night. But without a heart, I'm just a dead thing.
Which is appropriate. According to the Watcher's Journal, my days are numbered. If I'm a dead woman walking, I may as well be dead inside as well.
*****
It's funny the way small towns work. One day people look at you strangely because you're that city girl with the strange clothes that won't be in style here for another two years. Then you're that strange girl with the crazy theory about the meteor rocks. Then you're that trouble making girl who published the story about how the coach was helping the football jocks cheat on tests. Then they're crossing the street to get out of your way and staring at you when they think you can't see because everybody knows that you killed your father.
*****
I can't take this much longer. Lois and Clark have both been there for me, and Mrs. Kent said that I'm allowed to stay at the farm as long as I need to.
I can't go back to that house where he died. Not ever again.
But I can't impose on the Kent hospitality either. And besides, sooner or later, Clark will notice that I'm not exactly breaking a sweat when I'm helping with the farm chores. And even if he doesn't, what if more vampires come sniffing around? I've already gotten my father killed. I don't think I could stand it if I put Lois or the Kents in danger, too.
I'm not willing to wait for them to clear my name in Dad's murder investigation. I need to be as far away from here as I can get. My life is over. So why drag anyone else down with me?
Starting tomorrow, I'm giving up on being Chloe Sullivan. From now on, I'll just be the Slayer.
*****
Unable to read any more, Dean shut the laptop and gently placed it beside him. He crossed his arms, shut his eyes, and sighed heavily. The raw emotion and defeat cut him to the quick and made him wish Chloe was in the same room, so he could hold her to him and tell her that none of this was her fault. That being a Slayer was, in a sense, like being a hunter. Dangerous, bloody, and dark. Complete with the illegal activities that all led to a shallow grave and your body being burned to a crisp.
He understood what it was like not having a mom around, though somehow he suspected knowing your mother deliberately left you because of some horrible disease was worse than what he had lived through. Dean had seen his father driven by vengeance all these years; Chloe was fueled by emptiness and the knowledge that everyone would leave her. So when push came to shove, Chloe had been the one to leave first. Better to hurt than be hurt, right?
“Sam, please tell me you got a lead on our missing girl?” he yelled from his position, having just realized that Sam was silent, save for the sound of keys clacking on his computer.
“Working on it, dude,” came the hasty, impatient reply - that tone which suggested Dean should help in the search if they were to locate the church in Sam’s vision.
“Screw that, Sammy,” Dean huffed and sat up. “If she’s still in town, then chances are she’s haunting cemeteries or something. I’m going out to look for her.”
“If you’ll give me a couple hours, maybe I’ll have something.”
Dean eyed Sam curiously. “Why, you know something I don’t?”
“Did you read all of her stuff?”
“I read enough.”
“And?”
“And . . . I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
Sam stifled a laugh. “You’re pissed at her, aren’t you?”
“What’s there to be pissed about? Chloe’s just a scared little girl in Slayer clothing.”
“Susan was a scared little girl,” Sam pointed out. “Chloe's . . . just kind of regressed.”
Dean nodded but didn’t say anything for a moment. Chloe had no idea how powerful she was, how much she still cared despite her claims that she was of the walking dead. Her wannabe undead Watcher filled that particular quota. “Point is, Sam, I don’t know whether to kill her or . . . kill her when we find her. She should’ve told us what was going on in that pretty little head of hers.”
“And why should she?” Sam protested. “We turned on her pretty quick when we thought she was getting too close to our past.”
“The hell we did,” Dean said. “She threw us out of her apartment, remember? We were there, fighting with her, protecting her. Even when she nearly . . .” He swallowed hard at the memory of her near-death experience. “We did all the right things to prove that we could work through this.. Not my fault that she doesn’t know how to trust people.”
“I think there's enough blame to go around,” Sam said quietly.
Dean frowned at Sam and sat back, lost in the swirl of thoughts, and turned on the television. He only hoped some Chuck Heston or James Garner movie could help him process what he’d learned about Chloe Sullivan.
.