Fic: Virus (3/7)
Fic: Virus (3/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: A stopover at Ellen's is not as restful as the group hoped it would be, thanks to computer-literate Demons.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #98 Writers Choice (tech). The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Chloe looked utterly dejected as she returned to the bar. Dean frowned as he kicked out a stool for her to sit at. “You look like someone just murdered your puppy.”
“If someone had - that might have been less painful,” Chloe said. “That was our friend in Gotham.”
“What happened?” Sam tilted his head to the side in curiosity.
Chloe quickly relayed to them everything that she'd just discussed with Batman over the phone. When she was finished, Sam and Dean looked at each other. Their faces were twin masks of trepidation.
“Why is Lex - or the demon in the Lex suit -- so hot and bothered to get his hands on your mom?” Dean asked.
Chloe gave him a funny look before shaking herself. “That's right. I told Sam. I just assumed that he told you.”
“Told me what?” Dean shot Sam an annoyed look.
“My mom has meta abilities from the same meteor storm that mine came from. If she has something that belongs to someone meteor-affected, she can control them with her mind. Or she would if she wasn't catatonic.”
Dean's eyes widened. “Holy shit!”
“Basically,” Chloe nodded. “Lex developed a serum that would pull her out of her catatonic state. He offered it to us - if she would help him control his meta army. But . . .”She shook her head. “It's better this way. She said that she didn't want to be anyone's weapon.”
Dean slid from his stool and pulled her into his arms. She rested her head against his chest and traced random, nonsensical patterns on his shirt. He shot Sam and Ellen a pointed look, and the two of them nodded at him.
“I could use some help re-arranging the storeroom,” Ellen said quietly to Sam. “I never can reach those boxes on the top shelf.”
“I'd love to help,” Sam nodded. He shot Dean and Chloe a final, worried look, and then followed Ellen out of the room.
Dean turned his attention from Ellen and Sam, to the quietly despairing woman in his arms.
“I don't want my mom catatonic like that,” Chloe whispered. Her words were heavy with guilt. “But there's this little part of me that's glad. She couldn't keep from using her power. Even when her intentions were good, she still gave in to the temptation. I think - she used it on me a lot when I was little. It got out of hand a few times.”
Dean tightened his grip around Chloe, as if he could soak up all her pain like a sponge. Just absorb it into his skin, and keep her from ever having to feel it again. He didn't like the implications of her mother's power getting out of hand when it was used on Chloe.
“It hurts to see her that way, but at the same time, it's a relief,” Chloe continued, “because she can't hurt anybody, can't be used as a weapon, either-- if she's doing a passable impression of a carrot.” She leaned back, and looked up into Dean's face. Blinking against the tears that threatened to fall. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“Oh hell no,” Dean shook his head in vehement denial. “I don't know what your mom has done to you, Chloe. But you are not a bad person. Folks like Lex are the bad ones. You're . . . Just human.”
She smiled at him wryly through misty eyes. “Most of me, anyway.”
Dean cradled her face in his hands, and wiped at her tears gently with his thumbs. “The part that counts.”
She gave him a tiny smile. Dean watched her tearstained face, and felt his heart swell. He pulled her closer and tucked her head under his chin. She sighed against his chest, and rested her cheek there.
Dean stared at the top of her head thoughtfully. “Chloe?”
“Hm?”
“What was it like? When you found out that you were different, I mean.”
Chloe tilted her head back and regarded him with hesitant eyes.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” Dean said.
“No,” she said as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m just not used to talking about it much. . . You know I was in the first shower.”
“Yeah.” He’d been watching her have nightmares about it for weeks now.
“Mom and I were passing through Smallville. We’d gone to see my grandparents on her side of the family in Grandville, and we were on our way back to Metropolis. It’s funny when you think about it. If we’d decided not to visit that day. Or if we left earlier - then my life would have been very different. Mom wouldn’t have been catatonic. I wouldn’t have powers.”
She shook her head. “I don’t get maudlin like this very often. No sense dwelling on a past that never was, or a future that never could be.”
“I kind of know where you’re coming from,” Dean said. Chloe glanced up at him with curious eyes. “I used to wonder what it would have been like if the Yellow-Eyed Sonovabitch hadn’t gone after Sam. If Mom had lived.” He looked down at her with a soft smile. “But then I wouldn’t have met you.”
“Guess not.” Chloe returned his smile with one of her own. “Anyway, one of the meteors hit the car, and the impact just - pulverized the rock. The car flipped over and the meteor just trashed everything. I was in a car seat, upside down. The dust came in through the vents. It was everywhere. In my hair. On my skin. In my clothes. In my eyes and nose and mouth.”
She made a face, as if recalling the way the dust tasted in her mouth.
“Mom must have realized that there wouldn’t be anyone coming to rescue us, because she climbed out of the car and pulled me out through the passenger window. I just remember her sitting on the side of the road and holding me and rocking. She kept telling me that I was alright. And that I was going to grow up healthy and that nothing would ever hurt me.”
Dean raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s kind of ironic.”
“Don’t get me started,” she said wryly. “It’s all kind of fuzzy after that. I think she tried to take us to the hospital. They must have been dealing with a lot. Lana and Nell would have been there - the meteors killed her parents that day. Also Lionel would have taken Lex. Probably shouting the whole way for the head doctors to work with him personally.
“They were probably working on the worst ones first,” Dean said.
“I guess,” Chloe nodded. “I remember that I was put into a line with a bunch of other kids my age, and we were given a shot of something - probably vaccines. Tetanus and antibiotics. As if that fixed everything,” she chuckled bitterly. “And then they just sent us home.
“Come to think of it, a lot of those kids were probably my classmates. Kids that went up on the Wall of Weird, back when I didn’t know I was meteor affected too. I just don’t remember much more than the man in the white coat, and the needle. After that - I never did like doctors.”
“Anyway,” she shrugged. “I got the rocks into my system. Swallowed them, breathed them. Probably absorbed some of it through my skin. Nose, eyes, ears. You name it. It’s everywhere. In my lungs, my heart, my brain. Lymphatic system. Bone marrow. Sometimes I think about it, and I wonder how I went so long without a mutation.”
“Did it just suddenly appear?” Dean asked.
“It seemed that way, but I think I was always being changed in subtle ways right from the start. Nothing that was obvious. In me it was a very slow-acting radiation. And my immune system was fighting all the side effects to having that much foreign matter in my body. So it’s not really surprising that the immune system was what changed.”
“I had a fear of needles, so I tried to stay out of the hospital as much as possible. I wouldn’t give blood, or submit to tests. And I didn’t play sports -- If you don’t count my brief insane foray into cheerleading and quarterback stalking -- so I never had to give a physical.
“I found out the worst way possible, too. A lot of metas had been vanishing around town and then later turning up with no memory of where they’d been. When it happened to me - it didn’t take much to put two and two together. Finding the tracking chip in my shoulder was just icing.”
“What about when you got your power?” Dean ran his hand over her hair in a soothing way.
“Relief, I guess,” Chloe said. “That was years later. Lois and I were working together on a story, and I zigged when I should have zagged. I got shot, and they thought I died. I woke up in a drawer in the morgue.”
“Shit,” Dean said. “With your claustrophobia . . .”
“I handle the claustrophobia okay, mostly,” Chloe said with a half-hearted shrug. “But you’re right, that wasn’t a good day for it. Fortunately, someone heard me screaming and was brave enough to check out the drawer.”
Dean chuckled at that thought. “I would have checked out the drawer.”
“You’re brave enough to check out the drawer,” Chloe said. “But you still would have had a gun in your hand.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m not stupid.”
“No,” Chloe chuckled. “You’re not.”
“Damn straight.” Dean grinned at her. He relaxed his grip on her, and let her lean into his body. “Hey Chloe?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be okay, you know that, right?”
“Hope so,” Chloe said. “’Cause, Dean? Lex and the other demons --they wouldn’t have to wake my mom up now. They could just possess her. If that ever happens, you may have to stop me. By any means possible.”
“What?” Dean blinked.
“She can control the meteor-affected with her thoughts. And I’m meteor affected.” Her eyes took on a distant look, and she shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. But if a demon is controlling my mom, then she would make me do things.”
“Chloe,” Dean leaned back to look more-fully into her face. “I won’t let that happen. You believe that, right?”
“I believe that you mean that,” Chloe said. “But I don’t see how you can make a promise like that.”
“No,” Dean said. “That’s not the way it works. You either have faith in me, or you don’t.”
“Dean - she told me to wash my hands. And I kept scrubbing at them until all the skin was gone. Do you think I wanted to do that?” She raises her eyebrows. “I understand that you’ll try your best but--”
“No buts,” Dean said. “You either have faith in me, or you don’t, Chloe. This isn’t like the time you were in the box. I’m not Clark, Chloe. I’m not someone who is going to put you last on my list of priorities. I know you, Chloe. I know your expressions. I know what makes you sad. I know the sound of your heartbeat. If I ever thought you weren’t yourself, I would tie you to a chair and keep you there until I figured out what was wrong.”
“You mean that, don’t you?” Her eyes widened as she realized the sincerity of his words.
“Every damn word.” Dean said. “I . . .” he choked on his words. Not quite ready yet to admit, even to himself, the depths of his feelings for Chloe. Instead, he settled for a safer word. “I care for you, Chloe. More than any woman in the world, next to my mom.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
Dean watched in trepidation. He felt cut open, bare before her. His heart hanging by a thread. Everything hinged on her reaction.
“I’ve never been anyone’s first choice before,” she whispered. A half-smile lifted the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t you think it’s time you started?” Dean asked.
Chloe’s response wasn’t framed in words. Instead, she lifted her hands to frame his face and leaned into his touch. She tilted her own head back and shut her eyes as his lips slanted against hers in an affirming kiss.
Their kiss was sweet and sensual. Demanding nothing and promising everything. As Dean held her, he could see their future stretch out before him in an endless promise. He knew, in that second, that he’d never be able to give Chloe up.
The realization hit him like a bolt of lighting. He relaxed his grip, and went kind of slack-jawed. Which never works for kissing.
Chloe must have sensed some kind of change in him. Either that, or she was curious as to why kissing him was suddenly like kissing a fish. She leaned back and looked questioningly into his face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean nodded. “I just realized something.”
“What is it?”
“I just --” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you sometime.”
“O - kay?” Chloe nodded. She let it drop, but her curious, wondering expression told Dean that she’d filed the questions away for later.
Dean didn’t mind. If she wondered, then she’d remember when he did tell her. Until then, he was going to just enjoy being with her.
Series: Special Projects
Summary: A stopover at Ellen's is not as restful as the group hoped it would be, thanks to computer-literate Demons.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #98 Writers Choice (tech). The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Chloe looked utterly dejected as she returned to the bar. Dean frowned as he kicked out a stool for her to sit at. “You look like someone just murdered your puppy.”
“If someone had - that might have been less painful,” Chloe said. “That was our friend in Gotham.”
“What happened?” Sam tilted his head to the side in curiosity.
Chloe quickly relayed to them everything that she'd just discussed with Batman over the phone. When she was finished, Sam and Dean looked at each other. Their faces were twin masks of trepidation.
“Why is Lex - or the demon in the Lex suit -- so hot and bothered to get his hands on your mom?” Dean asked.
Chloe gave him a funny look before shaking herself. “That's right. I told Sam. I just assumed that he told you.”
“Told me what?” Dean shot Sam an annoyed look.
“My mom has meta abilities from the same meteor storm that mine came from. If she has something that belongs to someone meteor-affected, she can control them with her mind. Or she would if she wasn't catatonic.”
Dean's eyes widened. “Holy shit!”
“Basically,” Chloe nodded. “Lex developed a serum that would pull her out of her catatonic state. He offered it to us - if she would help him control his meta army. But . . .”She shook her head. “It's better this way. She said that she didn't want to be anyone's weapon.”
Dean slid from his stool and pulled her into his arms. She rested her head against his chest and traced random, nonsensical patterns on his shirt. He shot Sam and Ellen a pointed look, and the two of them nodded at him.
“I could use some help re-arranging the storeroom,” Ellen said quietly to Sam. “I never can reach those boxes on the top shelf.”
“I'd love to help,” Sam nodded. He shot Dean and Chloe a final, worried look, and then followed Ellen out of the room.
Dean turned his attention from Ellen and Sam, to the quietly despairing woman in his arms.
“I don't want my mom catatonic like that,” Chloe whispered. Her words were heavy with guilt. “But there's this little part of me that's glad. She couldn't keep from using her power. Even when her intentions were good, she still gave in to the temptation. I think - she used it on me a lot when I was little. It got out of hand a few times.”
Dean tightened his grip around Chloe, as if he could soak up all her pain like a sponge. Just absorb it into his skin, and keep her from ever having to feel it again. He didn't like the implications of her mother's power getting out of hand when it was used on Chloe.
“It hurts to see her that way, but at the same time, it's a relief,” Chloe continued, “because she can't hurt anybody, can't be used as a weapon, either-- if she's doing a passable impression of a carrot.” She leaned back, and looked up into Dean's face. Blinking against the tears that threatened to fall. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“Oh hell no,” Dean shook his head in vehement denial. “I don't know what your mom has done to you, Chloe. But you are not a bad person. Folks like Lex are the bad ones. You're . . . Just human.”
She smiled at him wryly through misty eyes. “Most of me, anyway.”
Dean cradled her face in his hands, and wiped at her tears gently with his thumbs. “The part that counts.”
She gave him a tiny smile. Dean watched her tearstained face, and felt his heart swell. He pulled her closer and tucked her head under his chin. She sighed against his chest, and rested her cheek there.
Dean stared at the top of her head thoughtfully. “Chloe?”
“Hm?”
“What was it like? When you found out that you were different, I mean.”
Chloe tilted her head back and regarded him with hesitant eyes.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” Dean said.
“No,” she said as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m just not used to talking about it much. . . You know I was in the first shower.”
“Yeah.” He’d been watching her have nightmares about it for weeks now.
“Mom and I were passing through Smallville. We’d gone to see my grandparents on her side of the family in Grandville, and we were on our way back to Metropolis. It’s funny when you think about it. If we’d decided not to visit that day. Or if we left earlier - then my life would have been very different. Mom wouldn’t have been catatonic. I wouldn’t have powers.”
She shook her head. “I don’t get maudlin like this very often. No sense dwelling on a past that never was, or a future that never could be.”
“I kind of know where you’re coming from,” Dean said. Chloe glanced up at him with curious eyes. “I used to wonder what it would have been like if the Yellow-Eyed Sonovabitch hadn’t gone after Sam. If Mom had lived.” He looked down at her with a soft smile. “But then I wouldn’t have met you.”
“Guess not.” Chloe returned his smile with one of her own. “Anyway, one of the meteors hit the car, and the impact just - pulverized the rock. The car flipped over and the meteor just trashed everything. I was in a car seat, upside down. The dust came in through the vents. It was everywhere. In my hair. On my skin. In my clothes. In my eyes and nose and mouth.”
She made a face, as if recalling the way the dust tasted in her mouth.
“Mom must have realized that there wouldn’t be anyone coming to rescue us, because she climbed out of the car and pulled me out through the passenger window. I just remember her sitting on the side of the road and holding me and rocking. She kept telling me that I was alright. And that I was going to grow up healthy and that nothing would ever hurt me.”
Dean raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s kind of ironic.”
“Don’t get me started,” she said wryly. “It’s all kind of fuzzy after that. I think she tried to take us to the hospital. They must have been dealing with a lot. Lana and Nell would have been there - the meteors killed her parents that day. Also Lionel would have taken Lex. Probably shouting the whole way for the head doctors to work with him personally.
“They were probably working on the worst ones first,” Dean said.
“I guess,” Chloe nodded. “I remember that I was put into a line with a bunch of other kids my age, and we were given a shot of something - probably vaccines. Tetanus and antibiotics. As if that fixed everything,” she chuckled bitterly. “And then they just sent us home.
“Come to think of it, a lot of those kids were probably my classmates. Kids that went up on the Wall of Weird, back when I didn’t know I was meteor affected too. I just don’t remember much more than the man in the white coat, and the needle. After that - I never did like doctors.”
“Anyway,” she shrugged. “I got the rocks into my system. Swallowed them, breathed them. Probably absorbed some of it through my skin. Nose, eyes, ears. You name it. It’s everywhere. In my lungs, my heart, my brain. Lymphatic system. Bone marrow. Sometimes I think about it, and I wonder how I went so long without a mutation.”
“Did it just suddenly appear?” Dean asked.
“It seemed that way, but I think I was always being changed in subtle ways right from the start. Nothing that was obvious. In me it was a very slow-acting radiation. And my immune system was fighting all the side effects to having that much foreign matter in my body. So it’s not really surprising that the immune system was what changed.”
“I had a fear of needles, so I tried to stay out of the hospital as much as possible. I wouldn’t give blood, or submit to tests. And I didn’t play sports -- If you don’t count my brief insane foray into cheerleading and quarterback stalking -- so I never had to give a physical.
“I found out the worst way possible, too. A lot of metas had been vanishing around town and then later turning up with no memory of where they’d been. When it happened to me - it didn’t take much to put two and two together. Finding the tracking chip in my shoulder was just icing.”
“What about when you got your power?” Dean ran his hand over her hair in a soothing way.
“Relief, I guess,” Chloe said. “That was years later. Lois and I were working together on a story, and I zigged when I should have zagged. I got shot, and they thought I died. I woke up in a drawer in the morgue.”
“Shit,” Dean said. “With your claustrophobia . . .”
“I handle the claustrophobia okay, mostly,” Chloe said with a half-hearted shrug. “But you’re right, that wasn’t a good day for it. Fortunately, someone heard me screaming and was brave enough to check out the drawer.”
Dean chuckled at that thought. “I would have checked out the drawer.”
“You’re brave enough to check out the drawer,” Chloe said. “But you still would have had a gun in your hand.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m not stupid.”
“No,” Chloe chuckled. “You’re not.”
“Damn straight.” Dean grinned at her. He relaxed his grip on her, and let her lean into his body. “Hey Chloe?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be okay, you know that, right?”
“Hope so,” Chloe said. “’Cause, Dean? Lex and the other demons --they wouldn’t have to wake my mom up now. They could just possess her. If that ever happens, you may have to stop me. By any means possible.”
“What?” Dean blinked.
“She can control the meteor-affected with her thoughts. And I’m meteor affected.” Her eyes took on a distant look, and she shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. But if a demon is controlling my mom, then she would make me do things.”
“Chloe,” Dean leaned back to look more-fully into her face. “I won’t let that happen. You believe that, right?”
“I believe that you mean that,” Chloe said. “But I don’t see how you can make a promise like that.”
“No,” Dean said. “That’s not the way it works. You either have faith in me, or you don’t.”
“Dean - she told me to wash my hands. And I kept scrubbing at them until all the skin was gone. Do you think I wanted to do that?” She raises her eyebrows. “I understand that you’ll try your best but--”
“No buts,” Dean said. “You either have faith in me, or you don’t, Chloe. This isn’t like the time you were in the box. I’m not Clark, Chloe. I’m not someone who is going to put you last on my list of priorities. I know you, Chloe. I know your expressions. I know what makes you sad. I know the sound of your heartbeat. If I ever thought you weren’t yourself, I would tie you to a chair and keep you there until I figured out what was wrong.”
“You mean that, don’t you?” Her eyes widened as she realized the sincerity of his words.
“Every damn word.” Dean said. “I . . .” he choked on his words. Not quite ready yet to admit, even to himself, the depths of his feelings for Chloe. Instead, he settled for a safer word. “I care for you, Chloe. More than any woman in the world, next to my mom.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
Dean watched in trepidation. He felt cut open, bare before her. His heart hanging by a thread. Everything hinged on her reaction.
“I’ve never been anyone’s first choice before,” she whispered. A half-smile lifted the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t you think it’s time you started?” Dean asked.
Chloe’s response wasn’t framed in words. Instead, she lifted her hands to frame his face and leaned into his touch. She tilted her own head back and shut her eyes as his lips slanted against hers in an affirming kiss.
Their kiss was sweet and sensual. Demanding nothing and promising everything. As Dean held her, he could see their future stretch out before him in an endless promise. He knew, in that second, that he’d never be able to give Chloe up.
The realization hit him like a bolt of lighting. He relaxed his grip, and went kind of slack-jawed. Which never works for kissing.
Chloe must have sensed some kind of change in him. Either that, or she was curious as to why kissing him was suddenly like kissing a fish. She leaned back and looked questioningly into his face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean nodded. “I just realized something.”
“What is it?”
“I just --” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you sometime.”
“O - kay?” Chloe nodded. She let it drop, but her curious, wondering expression told Dean that she’d filed the questions away for later.
Dean didn’t mind. If she wondered, then she’d remember when he did tell her. Until then, he was going to just enjoy being with her.