smallville fic: lathe
(Lathe- a machine tool for shaping metal or wood.)
Notes: As you requested paraxdisepink , I come bearing angst. However, it's Chloe angst; and serves to explain her actions/perspective a bit. (I hope), as well as her reasons for sheltering Davis. And it was affected by the trailer to Infamous and then ties into the sheltering stuff. Imagine that the big reveal in Infamous is not quite a completely reset episode. (More on that later.)
Follow the cut!
I.
Chloe Sullivan isn’t a reporter anymore. Not a counselor, not even a copy editor.
The people behind the flashes of camera phones in her face and the voices pressing on her don’t care about that.
To them, her story will always be tied to Clark Kent.
Like every sentence ever uttered in journalism, that’s both the truth and a lie.
i. After Lana Lang left, (this time she’d gone for good, super powered and packed full of the only thing that could hurt him) he’d called her, set her cell ringing in the antiseptic corner of the hospital room, just to talk about it.
She’d felt like his constant.
ii.
It only took two days for her to see that he wasn’t hers.
She’d been spying on Oliver. (Being blackmailed did that to a girl.)
Oliver Queen’s private jet had four security cameras, feeds for every single day she’d been taken over. When she found the feed about her memories it felt like Watergate.
iii.
When she fought Clark on it, he looked hurt and baffled, made her feel guilty for every word she spit out.
He’d taken a piece of her.
“I did it so you could have a normal life.”
“The only way you could have done that is turned back time and kept from hitting Metropolis. You couldn’t have.”
“My secret burdened you. You told me that.”
“It must have been the construct. I don’t remember that.”
“You told me I was right.”
“That’s complete crap. You did it because you were scared.”
“I was scared for you. I couldn’t let you be hurt because of my secret. You needed a normal life.”
She’d been living in a hospital room as husband she didn’t remember marrying clung to life support.
His legacy of normalcy. She didn’t say that, wouldn’t hurt him.
“Those memories were part of me. I asked you…”
She didn’t know what she expected, an apology, for him to see her?
Clark was eternally Clark. The boy who loved Lana (that one girl) with a fearful intensity, the one who grew up on a farm in the middle of a small town, the boy who was sure he could cure the ills of the world.
He couldn’t understand.
iv.
The first week passed as Jimmy recovered, cracked jokes across their dinner table over a sling, got all the variables right. She wanted to make him happy even though things weren’t quite easy.
v.
More than once she found herself reaching for the phone, calling up the last number she’d added to her address book. She’d known him all of a month and he’d somehow ended at the top.
Davis Bloome.
One ring…two rings… three rings…
(She didn’t know if it was because she was desperate to see if he was alright or if she wanted to feel like herself again.)
She only knows that she felt lost and sick when she didn’t get a response.
II.
Then, two weeks after she found Clark had stripped every memory of his powers from her mind, he’d told the world, because the world needed to know.
i.
This moment, he’s everywhere. Lois’s scoop- the face on the first page of the Planet, the Inquisitor, plastered on newspaper headlines across the world.
She distances herself from this ‘Superman’. He is alien to her
“Miss Sullivan, what was it like to know about the man behind the red and blue blur all these years?”
“I didn’t.”
ii.
There are walls, new ones that form as she gets mobbed by reporters, curious about the super man’s very first confidant.
“You should have told me.” Jimmy tells her.
(He wanted to be the first. The one she doted on, the one she told secrets to, the one who never fell behind Clark Kent.)
There are more of Clark’s secrets, things she can’t tell him because they are not hers to give. He knows they are there.
Soon enough there is no point in not acknowledging the rift. He leaves earlier, comes home later, while she fills out applications for jobs that did not fill her qualifications just because she needs to get away.
She speaks to him before he leaves from work; he kisses her stiffly on the cheek before bedtime.
They try.
She thinks that she should let herself be happy
And still isn’t.
iii.
She keeps her memories as her most jealously guarded secret- her own vanishing on her, of clutching onto Davis’s neck tighter than a tourniquet and feeling completely safe, of running away from her husband and her best friend until he brought her back.
He wanted to be the good guy.
She thinks he shouldn’t have, not for this.
iv.
She can’t be the tragic heroine.
The story didn’t end and he didn’t give up on her.
He’d dropped all the noble excuses, told her he couldn’t see her marry the wrong man. She’d been kissing Davis, feeling something squeezing at her gut even as her mind told her she needed to go though with the wedding.
She’d been the first to pull away.
He told her he’d wait.
v.
Maybe he wants to be a good guy, still. She’s gone off and gotten herself married, and it means more than she wants it to.
He’s been raised that way, with guilt and denial in equal parts. She’s out of bounds now because he won’t be that guy.
She wants her friend back.
III.
She’s given up on the anger now, and Clark feels more like a stranger than ever. He’s full of good deeds, unburdening himself on growing up, his newly scrutinised relationship on every tabloid she sees.
Lois and Clark.
It feels to fast, too sudden, he’s still her friend and she’s her cousin and she knows that rebounds always shatter the second party to bits.
(She’d seen Clark heartbroken when he ended up at the pushed into the corner of a girl’s heart. He couldn’t help it himself. “Lois is so… Lois.”)
He was justified.
She finally sees that she’d looked so hard for the man in him that she fancied he was there.
i.
Some days she wishes he hadn’t shaped her, but knows she can’t blame him for what she is now.
She’s been treading a fine line for so long she doesn’t know how to stop.
She would have killed for Clark. It was the mantra, in her head, the construct had been integrated into her, turned her to something steely and cold, made her do things she wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Braniac would have had a practical reason to back up every action. Not emotions, not loyalty.
Those were all her.
ii.
(She still has them buried deep- the emotions, the loyalty. They were for some boy called Clark, her hero. This new Clark is the hero of the world.
Neither of them belong to her. Neither of them has to define her.
She should let herself be happy.
She isn’t.)
iii.
It annoys her, how she remembers nothing about walking down the isle, saying wedding vows, being abducted at her wedding.
The construct always has a reason.
iv.
Finally, the heroine comes out of her tower.
She looks for Davis,
His place at the hospital has been vacated, he has stopped showing up for work since before her wedding. Two other emts have disappeared, too and she knows this is why he sounded so scared.
All her anger at Clark for leaving her alone and she wasn’t there when the only friend she had left needed her.
For once, she feels like the betrayer.
v.
Chloe doesn’t need the super genius IQ to put it all together.
Davis and his blackouts (worse, more frequent), the Kryptonian symbol for Doom she’d drawn on the pad in her desk, her mind telling her she had to get married. His disappearance.
The construct always had a reason.
vi.
She has skills enough to find his address on her own.
(She goes with caution, makes double sure that Clark won’t follow her. She doesn’t want to think of how Clark would help Davis if he could.)
It’s a cathartic moment, but the door is as plain as any other in the little complex. It doesn’t say ‘Here be the Beast.’
She has a reason without logic. She’s been here, she knows this
Davis is behind that door and he needs her.
I.
Chloe Sullivan doesn’t have to be a reporter or a counselor or even a copy editor. She knows enough about being a friend.
Endnotes:
The outline format is because for the pay it forward fonapola wrote me an awesome fic with Chloe/Davis and she gave me the idea.
Although I used it differently, I'm interested to know if it works for this or makes me look like a nut.
And of course this is not the end because I errr, got the urge to write Davis angst and actually have something happen. And this may be becoming a bad habit, but there is a part 2 I'm working on with the actual sheltering, from a Davis perspective. (Fine, paraxdisepink, you know I love writing the woobie face. ;) )
In case anyone else is reading, btw, I am slightly bitter about Clark. hmf! :p
So, what do you think about it? Quibbles much loved, as well as anything else.