Unconditional Love
Rating: PG
Summary: after her father’s death, Chloe’s life becomes a quest for love.
Category: angst. A lot. I mean *a lot*.
Spoilers: up to Asylum.
Disclaimer: everything belongs to the respective owners.
A/N: there’s a reference to Mnemosyne who, for those not familiar with Greek
mythology, is the personification of memory.
To Aimee, whose help made this readable. Also, to Sara: happy b-day! And
Sa:*mwah*
Plick. Plick. Plick.
Chloe was staring at the tap.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
Dropping her head back on the edge of the bathtub with a slow, tired motion, she
hoped with all her might for the headache that had been plaguing her since
morning to let her be.
“Just be patient.” She told herself.
She wished she’d left the window open to fight the stifling summer sultriness,
even more so from the humidity of the hot water filling the bathtub, but she’d
rather the flies stayed out.
Looking out of the open door she could see plenty of pictures covering the
corridor wall, taken as memories of a particular event or just of an every day
smile.
If her father had been alive there would have been a picture of her in the
carefully planned elegance of a spring formal dress together with the handsome
Mark Walden. Mark had asked, she had refused and the dress had stayed in the
closet. In the end she had found something else to do that night.
If her father had been alive there would have been a lot more pictures. But this
wasn’t the case. Her father was dead. If. If. If. How many ‘ifs’ had she
thought in those months, not wanting to believe that wishes didn’t change
reality. A heart attack was much more real than whatever prayer she might have
said in those five months as an orphan. Her mother sure hadn’t changed her
mind on the relationship she broke off twelve years before. Despite being the
one person in the world who should have, she hadn’t loved her daughter then,
she never had. The Kents had had her guardianship until three months before her
emancipation petition had been accepted, with no opposition from the woman who
was still, as far as law was concerned, her mother, but who didn’t even spare
her a call. A paperwork matter, really, with Gabe’s first rate life insurance,
Lex’s lawyers and Judge Ross’ support. She had been living on her own since.
Chloe had researched; she’d wanted to know how much Gabe had suffered, if he
had realized what was happening. Oh yes. Gabe had had all the time to be taken
from the plant to the hospital; he had held on as long as he could repeating his
daughter’s name like a mantra, but not long enough for Chloe to arrive from
school. She had said goodbye to an inanimate corpse.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
The headache was finally subsiding. The silence was probably helping. She
wondered for how long she would be alone in the house. She didn’t have that
many visitors these days. A while back Lana, who by then was compelled to uproot
from Smallville and move in with Nell, had planned to spend the following week
of the holidays with Chloe, but she wouldn’t be coming anymore after the
previous week’s developments. All considered, no one had a reason to knock on
her door. Maybe the postman for a registered letter, but that would imply a
sender too.
Martha had checked up on her the day before. Just a call, no longer than twenty
very awkward seconds, but surprising nonetheless, considering neither Clark, nor
Pete, nor Lana, nor Jonathan, nor Martha herself had addressed a single word or
glance to her since the week before. A week to the day, when in an
uncontrollable crying crisis she had confessed to Clark that she was working for
Lionel Luthor, and Clark hadn’t listened to anything else. And as she’d
searched for the words to explain that she hadn’t gotten those bruises by
falling down the stairs, the door had already been slammed in her face.
Still, Martha had called. Strange thing is the maternal instinct. Chloe put a
hand on her belly. “It’s probably genetically lacking in my family.”
Plick. Plick. Plick.
“Plick. Plick. Plick.“ She whispered, a little more than a sigh. She was
still deciding if it was an annoying or a comforting sound.
Opening to slits the eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed, she tried to
focus on one particular picture between the many. If she’d wanted to stop on
each of them, she could have gone through the story of her life; it was all
there. Her, more or less at seven, sulking and waiting under the tree in which
the neighbour’s cat had found refuge; but not before jumping on her head and
scratching her while running from her attempts to have it in the right pose for
a picture to go with her article in the school paper. She would have gotten rid
of the embarrassing memento a long time ago, had her father not smiled every
time he passed it. The last birthday party in Metropolis. Her trying to keep her
father upright on the skating rink. Ah, here it was. The party for the third
anniversary of the Talon resurrection. Lana with a proud smile, Clark and Pete,
strangely enough, side by side with Lex.
Lex.
In the hours after her father’s death, while Chloe had been trying to tune out
the voices of a sobbing Lana who’d been explaining how to face the pain from
her experience of losing both parents, of Clark and Pete who hadn’t stopped
asking what could they do and offering suffocating hugs to her and her roommate,
of Jonathan who’d been spouting platitudes on what a great person Gabe had
been, of Martha who’d been insisting she eat, Lex had come in and done
something that managed to penetrate the fog wrapped around her. He’d taken her
hand, excused them, taken her upstairs and on the second try he’d found her
bedroom. The closed door behind them, a look between them. Chloe had seen the
understanding of someone who knew what it meant to lose the only person who
loved you unconditionally, and realizing it. When he’d offered her an embrace,
she’d accepted it, long and silent.
In spite of everything that had happened between them afterwards - the phone
calls in the middle of the night, the coffees at the Talon, the meetings in his
study, the nights in his bed – Chloe was sure that hug had been the only
moment of genuine intimacy between them, in which Lex had just been Lex, honest,
straight, sincere.
There had been displays of affection. She’d received it from Lex, but never
love, because the latter needed trust to be born. An abused dog will not let
people caress him anymore. As it was undeniable that Lex enjoyed her company,
however concealed from the outside world, all the same Chloe had understood he
wouldn’t ever trust anyone completely again. That’s why she’d never asked
if that afternoon he’d run back from Metropolis to her house out of respect
he’d felt for Gabe, or because she’d been Clark’s friend, or he’d been
trying to keep the promise to protect her, pronounced in seven weeks that Chloe
deep down was convinced had never been forgotten or at least had been
remembered. She believed that if Lex wanted to know something, he would find the
means to, whatever they might be. He would’ve never been satisfied with the
half-truths he’d been fed; he’d never been deterred by walls of silence
before. He had too many completely innocent but extraordinarily appropriate
questions and satisfied smirks, a drive too staunch, for Chloe to accept that he
didn’t know what happened. Not that she could prove her theory, and by no
means had she wanted to, nor had she asked him because she didn’t want to hear
more lies than necessary while being looked straight in the eye.
If Lex had really wanted to pretend, she’d chosen not to oppose to it. So as a
self proclaimed Mnemosyne, Chloe had told him the entire story of how she’d
surrendered to anger and temptation, offered him again information on Lionel,
Morgan Edge and his grandparents. And she’d listened and nodded when the offer
had come, this time different; simply protecting her hadn’t seemed to fit the
necessity of the situation. He’d told her to keep on working for his father,
pretending to double-cross Lex to gain further news on Clark; and lastly, to
actually deepen the investigation on their common friend. Obviously they would
have had to decide together what to pass on to Lionel to keep him quiet and she
had to follow his lead. After all Lex had been at this his entire life; he knew
how to play the game.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
And then it happened. The moment she’d set foot back in the mansion, under
shock, with bruises she would later justify with a fall down the stairs and the
smell of Lionel and alcohol on her, Lex had listened to her. She’d seen anger
in his eyes while she’d tried to control her broken voice, but after a firm
but fleeting embrace, the veil had been drawn again. Keeping a steady grip on
her shoulders, he’d held her gaze and promised his father would never come
near her again. He had called a doctor of his acquaintance in order to examine
her and collect evidence. The cold instruments had violated her again for proof
that she had known would have been bargain material. The blinding flashes of a
camera had recorded every bruise on her body; Lex had asked for photographs that
would have served as his ace. She hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t cared that
he’d taken all the proofs and that she wouldn’t get public justice. The
meaning of Lex’s request had been crystal clear to her: she was to be the
icing on the cake he’d been patiently cooking for years.
Lionel had never tried to contact her again. Chloe was sure that the reason was,
more than Lex’s threats, the disgust he was feeling for himself to have let
rage for finding out she’d been deceiving him and far too much alcohol make
him lose control. Therein lay the reason why Lex had also wanted the
photographs: in exchange for a painless abdication, he was leaving Lionel out of
prison, while at the same time safeguarding the Luthor name, but he would not
let the opportunity to exploit his father’s guilt and rub salt into a very
much open wound pass him by.
Chloe didn’t need to check her monthly bank statements to know there’d be a
substantial crediting. Together with that, came admittance letters from colleges
all over America and Europe, to whom she’d never sent applications.
Three days later Lionel Luthor had publicly announced his retirement from the
business scene and his beloved son Lex as the new Luthorcorp CEO, who with his
leadership would undoubtedly bring the corporation to a new era of prosperity.
The picture of father and son clasping hands had graced every newspaper front
page.
None of those hands had touched her ever again.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
Seeing two blue lines showing her the day after pill wasn’t one hundred
percent effective and Clark slamming the door in her face without giving her
time to explain all that had happened, Chloe was sure of two facts: one, she
would never be alone anymore because there was a growing little creature inside
of her, who was going to love her unconditionally from its first breath. Two,
she would forever hate it with every fibre of her being.
She’d been searching for love, she’d found it too late, because she was no
longer able to love back.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
Slowly, using her arms as leverage, she leaned forward until she reached the
tap. In the mess that was her life, she wanted everything to be in order. As
much as possible, given the actual circumstances. The dishes were done, the
clothes washed and ironed, the house was cleaned and tidied like it had been on
the day they had moved in. Who would have ever thought she had it in herself to
be the perfect housewife? In the misted full length mirror beside the bathtub
she caught a glimpse of her little satisfied smile as she stopped, with a firm
turn, the seeping water. The vague reflection of her face on the glass was cut
in half by a small drop of condensed water trickling down. Chloe tried to follow
its lazy zig zagging pattern as it made its slow descent, but the heat rising
from the edges of the bathtub lent a steamy, hazy feel to the room, making it
hard to concentrate on it. Even the details of the wrought bronze frame of the
mirror were blurred. The stifling humidity, while constrictive, at the same time
made her want to lean back and relax into its embrace. Closing her eyes, she let
go of her hold and slid backwards, creating small waves in the darkened water.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
In the last second before losing consciousness she asked herself how much longer
the blood would have kept on dripping from her slashed wrists. Too late to
research it now.
Plick. Plick. Pl...