tthjinni
22nd February 2005, 02:24
A/N: Someone on my LJ, in response to me asking for challenges, wanted a Chlex piece in the tone of grief, with a picture and a dog, and inspired by a song lyric I don't have on hand at the moment. This is it. Warning: short and angsty
Title: Fly Away
Author: Jinni
Rated: Pg13
Pairing: Chloe/Lex
Disclaimer: All things Smallville belong to DC Comics, the WB, et al.
Distribution: The normal places.
Author’s Notes: In response to Kami’s challenge to me on my LJ. AU from after the season 4 finale.
Summary: The earth is still soft…
~*~*~
The earth is still soft as she kneels, turned up and over with a thick spread of perfect green grass to cover the fact that, not too long ago, it was nothing but a gaping hole. There are flowers in wreaths, flowers in cheap plastic vases that can be thrown away just as easily as they came, and flowers just laying on the damp earth where her knees are getting soaked through.
Sniffling, her breath caught in her throat, Chloe looks at the simple marble headstone. She reaches for the words. Not engraved with care, just engraved. How could anyone that made these damn things –care- about the person that it was memorializing? The man or woman… or machine… that had etched these words, those dates, into that stone knew nothing about the man that now lay beneath the earth.
His picture still sits in front of the headstone, propped up against the marble in a plastic frame that kept the intermittent rain from ruining the delicate color print. Her fingers left the headstone, lightly touching the picture. A face she had loved. Adored.
And now would never see again outside of pictures and her memories.
She sighs, the ache in her chest something tangible. For one moment she wonders if maybe, just maybe, it is possible to die of grief. To let those emotions, so powerful and pulling, just suck her down until she opened her eyes no longer.
“Chloe – we need to go.”
She shakes her head, doesn’t look up. Can’t meet his eyes because she hurts so…fucking… much.
Hand on shoulder, gently tugging. She ignores it at first, ignores the rain as it begin to fall again. Ignores the sound of a car starting up the distance, a bird screeching overhead.
She ignores it all and wishes, for just a moment, that she could stop feeling.
And then the hand is back, pulling on her shoulder again, firmer now. He’ll make her get up eventually, she knows, so she just lets it happen now. Lets herself be pulled from the wet ground, her flowers dropping limply from her hand to lie amidst the others that were brought earlier that day, that week. This is her first chance to come here, but not so for others.
“We need to get you indoors.”
His voice, so low and soothing, filled with emotions she knows he hates to show. Chloe just nods, lets herself be turned to face him. Lets him wipe the tears from her eyes because he needs to do it just as much as she needs him to do it. He needs to take care of her, like no one ever took care of him. He’s bought her things and told her things, trying to make her smile. There was even the matter of that puppy that he had mistakenly thought she would adore.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him she was more of a cat person.
“I loved him.”
“I know.”
Simpler words were never spoken, yet no truer existed. She had loved that man that in the cold, wet earth more than anything.
And he was dead because of her.
Because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, couldn’t stop searching for the truth. She had put her nose where it didn’t belong and had ended up not getting herself killed, but one of the most important people in her life.
She had sentenced her father to death just as surely as anything Lionel Luthor had ever done.
Her eyes tear up again as she looks down at the cold headstone. Lex had tried. Oh, God, how Lex had tried. The explosion that was meant to provide cover for both her and her father going into hiding had worked. Unfortunately, people could be bought off. Her father’s protectors had double-crossed Lex for more money than she cared to contemplate, because it would mean she knew the price of her father’s life. They had given her father’s location to Lionel.
And her carefully ordered little world had ended with one bullet. While she and Lex got to know each other better at one of the many dinners they had shared in that tiny, rented house, her father had been shot by a sniper through a crack in the blinds. Shot while he sat on the couch, watching television.
“You’re soaking wet,” Lex murmurs into her ear, drawing her closer to his body, and she thinks that she would not have survived without him.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, but he doesn’t believe her. She can see it in his eyes. He watches her, speculatively. “I am,” she insists.
“I believe you.”
He doesn’t, but that’s okay because she doesn’t believe it, either. It isn’t the truth, after all. No reason for anyone to believe the lie. Nothing is alright. Nothing is okay. Lionel is safely behind bars, but her father is dead. Hardly a fair trade, all things considered.
But when she plays the ‘what if’ game, late at night lying in Lex’s arms, she can’t figure out whether or not she would do anything different, if she could do it all over again. Because she doesn’t know if the world is safer with Lionel behind bars than it ever was with him walking the streets. That is something only time will tell.
It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, because no one can go back in time. There are no do-overs in the real world.
And she has Lex. In her life, in her heart… in her bed. She has his arms to hold her steady, to make sure she doesn’t fall over when that ache in her chest where her heart used to be gets so mind-numbingly bad that she thinks she can’t take it anymore.
She. Has. Lex. And dreams of a better time in her life – past, present, future – when the pain isn’t as bad. Dreams that let her fly away from all that’s still hurting and aching deep in her soul.
One day, she tells herself as she lets Lex lead her to the waiting car, that will be enough to make her smile again.
~*~End Ficlet~*~
Title: Fly Away
Author: Jinni
Rated: Pg13
Pairing: Chloe/Lex
Disclaimer: All things Smallville belong to DC Comics, the WB, et al.
Distribution: The normal places.
Author’s Notes: In response to Kami’s challenge to me on my LJ. AU from after the season 4 finale.
Summary: The earth is still soft…
~*~*~
The earth is still soft as she kneels, turned up and over with a thick spread of perfect green grass to cover the fact that, not too long ago, it was nothing but a gaping hole. There are flowers in wreaths, flowers in cheap plastic vases that can be thrown away just as easily as they came, and flowers just laying on the damp earth where her knees are getting soaked through.
Sniffling, her breath caught in her throat, Chloe looks at the simple marble headstone. She reaches for the words. Not engraved with care, just engraved. How could anyone that made these damn things –care- about the person that it was memorializing? The man or woman… or machine… that had etched these words, those dates, into that stone knew nothing about the man that now lay beneath the earth.
His picture still sits in front of the headstone, propped up against the marble in a plastic frame that kept the intermittent rain from ruining the delicate color print. Her fingers left the headstone, lightly touching the picture. A face she had loved. Adored.
And now would never see again outside of pictures and her memories.
She sighs, the ache in her chest something tangible. For one moment she wonders if maybe, just maybe, it is possible to die of grief. To let those emotions, so powerful and pulling, just suck her down until she opened her eyes no longer.
“Chloe – we need to go.”
She shakes her head, doesn’t look up. Can’t meet his eyes because she hurts so…fucking… much.
Hand on shoulder, gently tugging. She ignores it at first, ignores the rain as it begin to fall again. Ignores the sound of a car starting up the distance, a bird screeching overhead.
She ignores it all and wishes, for just a moment, that she could stop feeling.
And then the hand is back, pulling on her shoulder again, firmer now. He’ll make her get up eventually, she knows, so she just lets it happen now. Lets herself be pulled from the wet ground, her flowers dropping limply from her hand to lie amidst the others that were brought earlier that day, that week. This is her first chance to come here, but not so for others.
“We need to get you indoors.”
His voice, so low and soothing, filled with emotions she knows he hates to show. Chloe just nods, lets herself be turned to face him. Lets him wipe the tears from her eyes because he needs to do it just as much as she needs him to do it. He needs to take care of her, like no one ever took care of him. He’s bought her things and told her things, trying to make her smile. There was even the matter of that puppy that he had mistakenly thought she would adore.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him she was more of a cat person.
“I loved him.”
“I know.”
Simpler words were never spoken, yet no truer existed. She had loved that man that in the cold, wet earth more than anything.
And he was dead because of her.
Because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, couldn’t stop searching for the truth. She had put her nose where it didn’t belong and had ended up not getting herself killed, but one of the most important people in her life.
She had sentenced her father to death just as surely as anything Lionel Luthor had ever done.
Her eyes tear up again as she looks down at the cold headstone. Lex had tried. Oh, God, how Lex had tried. The explosion that was meant to provide cover for both her and her father going into hiding had worked. Unfortunately, people could be bought off. Her father’s protectors had double-crossed Lex for more money than she cared to contemplate, because it would mean she knew the price of her father’s life. They had given her father’s location to Lionel.
And her carefully ordered little world had ended with one bullet. While she and Lex got to know each other better at one of the many dinners they had shared in that tiny, rented house, her father had been shot by a sniper through a crack in the blinds. Shot while he sat on the couch, watching television.
“You’re soaking wet,” Lex murmurs into her ear, drawing her closer to his body, and she thinks that she would not have survived without him.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, but he doesn’t believe her. She can see it in his eyes. He watches her, speculatively. “I am,” she insists.
“I believe you.”
He doesn’t, but that’s okay because she doesn’t believe it, either. It isn’t the truth, after all. No reason for anyone to believe the lie. Nothing is alright. Nothing is okay. Lionel is safely behind bars, but her father is dead. Hardly a fair trade, all things considered.
But when she plays the ‘what if’ game, late at night lying in Lex’s arms, she can’t figure out whether or not she would do anything different, if she could do it all over again. Because she doesn’t know if the world is safer with Lionel behind bars than it ever was with him walking the streets. That is something only time will tell.
It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, because no one can go back in time. There are no do-overs in the real world.
And she has Lex. In her life, in her heart… in her bed. She has his arms to hold her steady, to make sure she doesn’t fall over when that ache in her chest where her heart used to be gets so mind-numbingly bad that she thinks she can’t take it anymore.
She. Has. Lex. And dreams of a better time in her life – past, present, future – when the pain isn’t as bad. Dreams that let her fly away from all that’s still hurting and aching deep in her soul.
One day, she tells herself as she lets Lex lead her to the waiting car, that will be enough to make her smile again.
~*~End Ficlet~*~