kitten
22nd March 2005, 09:22
Lying in State
R-rated Smallville Fanfiction
SPOILER WARNING: General spoilers abound, up to the current episode in U.S./Canadian release.
Disclaimer: Smallville, the characters therein, and all affiliated copyrighted materials are owned by the WB. This is a work of fanfiction not intended for profit or infringement, only for the pleasure of fans of the series.
Distribution: I have posted these stories and have control of them on this site. I don't want them to be posted anywhere else unless I'm the one posting them. Please take down my stories if you have them posted on another archive site. I understand I can't stop you from doing this but I hope by asking politely you'll respect my work and my wishes. If anyone has more comfort and convenience saving the text of a story to their own computer, I have no problem with that.
A/N: An angsty Chlex future, character death. Superman mythos spoilers generally on par with the current comic book universe. When it comes down to life and death, Chloe no longer values truth above everything.
Lying in State
Chloe Sullivan-Luthor sat in the hard wooden seat and tried not to break apart as she looked at the man most people were here to mourn. No, not the man anymore. His body, still and empty on display in a pretty box.
Perhaps his spirit or whatever was left of him was floating somewhere above their heads, spinning and whirling free among the vaulted ceilings of the massive cathedral. It was the largest Metropolis had, because they were anticipating standing-room-only crowds for the funeral. Everyone had known the man he was, by reputation if not personally, and all were eager for a final look at his face. It was a mental souvenir to be told and retold to grandchildren in a few decades. They had seen the man himself, lying in state.
She supposed it didn’t matter to them that the face they would see was built up from sunken decay with wax, and painted to resemble the flesh that would soon be gone. They probably didn’t know about the process the funeral home had for draining the body and sealing it up with glue. They didn’t know how much of him had already been discarded into a red-tinted drain.
Tears rolled down her face as she stared at the body, watched the hands painted nicely and folded carefully over the middle of his chest in the expensive suit. It was mesmerizing to wait for the rise of that chest, to look for a twitch of those fingers. Surely the point of making him look alive was to bring him back and make him walk again. There must be some way to take back this tragedy.
It was inconceivable how much pain she felt, how hard it was to breathe. There was a tinny edge of panic every moment and she was having trouble believing it would ever go away. She knew she didn’t deserve any more peace, accomplice as she was to his death.
Chloe wasn’t sitting with his few relatives, nor was she welcome. Once she had been a favourite to them, accepted in their peculiar way and adored as much as they could. But she had made her choice and given up her role of surrogate daughter. When you married Lex Luthor, loved him and demanded his loyalty, there was no way you could gracefully retreat. Once he was won no woman would have had the audacity to betray that commitment.
She had always carried a surplus of audacity, which was probably why Lex had given her a second look in the first place. One by one she had found all the dark secrets of the men who had surrounded her. Her father’s were easily found - her mother’s defection being the result of a mental illness - and Clark’s would have been equally simple to detect if she hadn’t resisted the urge for so many years. Lionel Luthor’s had been a matter of public record after his trial, even if he hadn’t stayed in prison.
Her husband’s secrets were still surfacing from time to time, horrifying and amusing at turns. He was a rich, powerful man with many interests to protect, and his actions weren’t all legal or moral. But he was also a man who had whispered his love to her before she fell asleep and ate cookies and hot chocolate when he was having a bad day.
That man didn’t exist anymore, and she assuaged the loss by recalling their strange life together.
Chloe had graduated from Smallville High School and left the town behind, intending to keep in casual contact with Clark and Lana but not planning on putting much effort into it. She was still waiting for Clark to trust her with his secrets and still waiting for the Clark-Lana ultimate love to reconnect when Pete had returned to her life. She had missed him more than she’d expected and the quiet love he had lavished her with had been welcome. She had sunk into it like a hot bubble bath and finally been able to do justice to his feelings.
They forged a strong, steady love that lasted for years, then fizzled out by graduation into a friendship. Pete wanted to strike out somewhere new and she loved Metropolis. They had matured into different people than the teenagers who had supported each other through the trials of the strangest small town in the country.
But during their time as a couple, Chloe and Pete had discussed Clark’s secret as the only two people outside of the Kent family who knew it. They had vented the sadness and hurt involved in not being immediately trusted, and the idiosyncrasies of Clark’s Kryptonian physiology. She had finally known why her friend had been so out of character during his summer in Metropolis and learned why he was so cautious about the green meteor rocks. The burden of secrecy was less as they shared it.
After graduating she found a job at a metro magazine and did well with it. Clark reemerged from his travels with a journalism degree and took a job at The Daily Planet, coincidentally ending up partnered with her cousin Lois. They saw each other fondly but infrequently. Her two journalists in training had taken over her old dream, but she was fine with it. She had worked at the newspaper first, and liked magazines for the quality of work she could produce within the longer deadlines. She was busy and content when the assignment came to interview Lex Luthor.
Meeting him again was bizarre, but she had been remembered. The interview had been friendly and he had taken her card afterwards. Once the magazine printed her article about him, Lex asked her to dinner at his penthouse. He was a Metropolis resident once again, having moved from Smallville shortly after she had.
They lived in banter and frivolity before they finally admitted how attached they were to each other. They tried to non date without admitting they were exclusive, then the press got pictures of them together. Once they were in the public eye both insisted it was a take-it-or-leave-it relationship that would play itself out. When they lasted over a year the idea of going home to separate places at the end of the night was lonely, so she moved in with him. After two years he proposed, staring soulfully into her eyes and making her believe they would make it.
They had a beautiful wedding and were touted as the city’s royal couple, but Clark couldn’t leave it alone. His articles were gaining more attention than ever and most of them were exposes of LuthorCorp business. His unquestioning loyalty to Lex had turned 180 degrees and he refused to speak to her as long as her last name was Luthor.
Clark’s alter ego was doing even more to smear her husband’s good name, suggesting things that went beyond what he dared to write under his byline. Under the anonymity of his red and blue costume, Superman derided Lex at every opportunity. Unable to strike out against the man of steel, and unwilling to ruin Clark outright, Lex had been stuck.
Chloe was torn, but she loved Lex and he was being railroaded by Clark’s vendetta. She knew her husband was a complicated man, but he wasn’t the monster portrayed in newspapers. Every PR campaign to rebuild the Luthor good name was rebuked by Superman and then by the average citizen. It was war and Lex was losing.
So she revealed the fatal flaw of the man of steel and entrusted the man she loved to use it wisely. She thought it would be leverage to compel Superman and Clark into silence. She was a fool blinded by love.
Lex had taken his stores of meteor and had weapons made. His wedding band was joined by a Kryptonite ring, and Chloe had ignored the attitude of resentment building between the two men. Lex resented Clark and Superman for living in obscurity, then appearing to gain the public trust in only a few weeks. He had striven to move past his father’s reputation in vain. Clark tried to convince her to mend her ways and leave her marriage, going so far as to kidnap her one day as she left work.
She had been wavering, too, falling under the sway of her old friend’s wholesome morality and her own fears.
A single day after Superman had swept Chloe away to talk her into divorcing Lex, the meteor research had been put into use and only one of the men had survived. Left behind to mourn two wonderful men who had once put aside their differences to be friends, she had lost her place in the world.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, just in case souls did linger.
Then, because the man she fell in love with was dead and the body on display wasn’t going to draw breath, she walked away from the cathedral and into a waiting limo. Without direction the driver took her back to the penthouse.
Chloe bypassed all the other rooms and headed for the master suite. She was tired and wanted the comfort of her marriage bed. Lying down would quell her guilty conscience and perhaps allow her to sleep.
Her shoes and stockings were off before his voice came from the doorway. The man who had replaced her husband was looking at her kindly, touching her like a lover.
“Are you okay?”
His voice was smooth and concerned and it made her ache for better times. Her return to the penthouse had often been the cue for Lex to stop working and join her in the bed. Now it was the cue for his enemy to act as he would have done in pale imitation.
The man who wasn’t her husband embraced her despite the stiffness in her frame, and toyed with the high neckline of her stark black dress. The hand at her shoulder slid down to her hip and then to the small of her back. She wanted to hate it, but there was a sublime remembrance in feeling it. Physically he was a decent replacement and she was so alone without this delusion.
His lips were warm and soft, melding onto hers gently as she let him guide her to the bed. It reminded her of how she had loved him when she was younger and full of hope. It let her float in a sea of denial. This inadequate man could taste like Lex and smell of his cologne. He knew how to touch her tenderly and fuck her slowly and inexorably as she kept her eyes closed. She knew his face as well as her own, but he was still a stranger she didn’t want to look at too closely.
Instead of following her down to the mattress he held her hand and stroked her hair. He wasn’t such a bad person when they were alone together. He cared that she was hurt, that she would probably be mobbed at the funeral by press and snubbed by the people who used to love her. If his presence wasn’t in such poor taste he would go himself to support her.
Chloe feigned sleep and Lex put her hand down on the pillow, creeping back out to continue working. He had eliminated his nemesis but there were always new adversaries. Even if no one would challenge him, he would fight for better efficiency and tighter operations. It was his nature.
As for her, she had lost her will to fight. She had loved and betrayed three men now, Clark, Pete and Lex. She had pledged herself to Lex’s keeping and taken him into hers but she had failed in both. The truth was a cold companion to her guilt and it didn’t hold any water. She had destroyed her life and so many others.
Hate bubbled under every tear that leaked from her eyes but Lex Luthor had become exactly the man she had asked him to be. What wife could ask for more concerted devotion?
She had lost her husband the moment he killed Clark Kent. He was gone, her love for him was a memory, but she had to stay. He was the only person in the world who would have her, and she had made him a murderer.
Is that what they meant by being made for each other?
R-rated Smallville Fanfiction
SPOILER WARNING: General spoilers abound, up to the current episode in U.S./Canadian release.
Disclaimer: Smallville, the characters therein, and all affiliated copyrighted materials are owned by the WB. This is a work of fanfiction not intended for profit or infringement, only for the pleasure of fans of the series.
Distribution: I have posted these stories and have control of them on this site. I don't want them to be posted anywhere else unless I'm the one posting them. Please take down my stories if you have them posted on another archive site. I understand I can't stop you from doing this but I hope by asking politely you'll respect my work and my wishes. If anyone has more comfort and convenience saving the text of a story to their own computer, I have no problem with that.
A/N: An angsty Chlex future, character death. Superman mythos spoilers generally on par with the current comic book universe. When it comes down to life and death, Chloe no longer values truth above everything.
Lying in State
Chloe Sullivan-Luthor sat in the hard wooden seat and tried not to break apart as she looked at the man most people were here to mourn. No, not the man anymore. His body, still and empty on display in a pretty box.
Perhaps his spirit or whatever was left of him was floating somewhere above their heads, spinning and whirling free among the vaulted ceilings of the massive cathedral. It was the largest Metropolis had, because they were anticipating standing-room-only crowds for the funeral. Everyone had known the man he was, by reputation if not personally, and all were eager for a final look at his face. It was a mental souvenir to be told and retold to grandchildren in a few decades. They had seen the man himself, lying in state.
She supposed it didn’t matter to them that the face they would see was built up from sunken decay with wax, and painted to resemble the flesh that would soon be gone. They probably didn’t know about the process the funeral home had for draining the body and sealing it up with glue. They didn’t know how much of him had already been discarded into a red-tinted drain.
Tears rolled down her face as she stared at the body, watched the hands painted nicely and folded carefully over the middle of his chest in the expensive suit. It was mesmerizing to wait for the rise of that chest, to look for a twitch of those fingers. Surely the point of making him look alive was to bring him back and make him walk again. There must be some way to take back this tragedy.
It was inconceivable how much pain she felt, how hard it was to breathe. There was a tinny edge of panic every moment and she was having trouble believing it would ever go away. She knew she didn’t deserve any more peace, accomplice as she was to his death.
Chloe wasn’t sitting with his few relatives, nor was she welcome. Once she had been a favourite to them, accepted in their peculiar way and adored as much as they could. But she had made her choice and given up her role of surrogate daughter. When you married Lex Luthor, loved him and demanded his loyalty, there was no way you could gracefully retreat. Once he was won no woman would have had the audacity to betray that commitment.
She had always carried a surplus of audacity, which was probably why Lex had given her a second look in the first place. One by one she had found all the dark secrets of the men who had surrounded her. Her father’s were easily found - her mother’s defection being the result of a mental illness - and Clark’s would have been equally simple to detect if she hadn’t resisted the urge for so many years. Lionel Luthor’s had been a matter of public record after his trial, even if he hadn’t stayed in prison.
Her husband’s secrets were still surfacing from time to time, horrifying and amusing at turns. He was a rich, powerful man with many interests to protect, and his actions weren’t all legal or moral. But he was also a man who had whispered his love to her before she fell asleep and ate cookies and hot chocolate when he was having a bad day.
That man didn’t exist anymore, and she assuaged the loss by recalling their strange life together.
Chloe had graduated from Smallville High School and left the town behind, intending to keep in casual contact with Clark and Lana but not planning on putting much effort into it. She was still waiting for Clark to trust her with his secrets and still waiting for the Clark-Lana ultimate love to reconnect when Pete had returned to her life. She had missed him more than she’d expected and the quiet love he had lavished her with had been welcome. She had sunk into it like a hot bubble bath and finally been able to do justice to his feelings.
They forged a strong, steady love that lasted for years, then fizzled out by graduation into a friendship. Pete wanted to strike out somewhere new and she loved Metropolis. They had matured into different people than the teenagers who had supported each other through the trials of the strangest small town in the country.
But during their time as a couple, Chloe and Pete had discussed Clark’s secret as the only two people outside of the Kent family who knew it. They had vented the sadness and hurt involved in not being immediately trusted, and the idiosyncrasies of Clark’s Kryptonian physiology. She had finally known why her friend had been so out of character during his summer in Metropolis and learned why he was so cautious about the green meteor rocks. The burden of secrecy was less as they shared it.
After graduating she found a job at a metro magazine and did well with it. Clark reemerged from his travels with a journalism degree and took a job at The Daily Planet, coincidentally ending up partnered with her cousin Lois. They saw each other fondly but infrequently. Her two journalists in training had taken over her old dream, but she was fine with it. She had worked at the newspaper first, and liked magazines for the quality of work she could produce within the longer deadlines. She was busy and content when the assignment came to interview Lex Luthor.
Meeting him again was bizarre, but she had been remembered. The interview had been friendly and he had taken her card afterwards. Once the magazine printed her article about him, Lex asked her to dinner at his penthouse. He was a Metropolis resident once again, having moved from Smallville shortly after she had.
They lived in banter and frivolity before they finally admitted how attached they were to each other. They tried to non date without admitting they were exclusive, then the press got pictures of them together. Once they were in the public eye both insisted it was a take-it-or-leave-it relationship that would play itself out. When they lasted over a year the idea of going home to separate places at the end of the night was lonely, so she moved in with him. After two years he proposed, staring soulfully into her eyes and making her believe they would make it.
They had a beautiful wedding and were touted as the city’s royal couple, but Clark couldn’t leave it alone. His articles were gaining more attention than ever and most of them were exposes of LuthorCorp business. His unquestioning loyalty to Lex had turned 180 degrees and he refused to speak to her as long as her last name was Luthor.
Clark’s alter ego was doing even more to smear her husband’s good name, suggesting things that went beyond what he dared to write under his byline. Under the anonymity of his red and blue costume, Superman derided Lex at every opportunity. Unable to strike out against the man of steel, and unwilling to ruin Clark outright, Lex had been stuck.
Chloe was torn, but she loved Lex and he was being railroaded by Clark’s vendetta. She knew her husband was a complicated man, but he wasn’t the monster portrayed in newspapers. Every PR campaign to rebuild the Luthor good name was rebuked by Superman and then by the average citizen. It was war and Lex was losing.
So she revealed the fatal flaw of the man of steel and entrusted the man she loved to use it wisely. She thought it would be leverage to compel Superman and Clark into silence. She was a fool blinded by love.
Lex had taken his stores of meteor and had weapons made. His wedding band was joined by a Kryptonite ring, and Chloe had ignored the attitude of resentment building between the two men. Lex resented Clark and Superman for living in obscurity, then appearing to gain the public trust in only a few weeks. He had striven to move past his father’s reputation in vain. Clark tried to convince her to mend her ways and leave her marriage, going so far as to kidnap her one day as she left work.
She had been wavering, too, falling under the sway of her old friend’s wholesome morality and her own fears.
A single day after Superman had swept Chloe away to talk her into divorcing Lex, the meteor research had been put into use and only one of the men had survived. Left behind to mourn two wonderful men who had once put aside their differences to be friends, she had lost her place in the world.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, just in case souls did linger.
Then, because the man she fell in love with was dead and the body on display wasn’t going to draw breath, she walked away from the cathedral and into a waiting limo. Without direction the driver took her back to the penthouse.
Chloe bypassed all the other rooms and headed for the master suite. She was tired and wanted the comfort of her marriage bed. Lying down would quell her guilty conscience and perhaps allow her to sleep.
Her shoes and stockings were off before his voice came from the doorway. The man who had replaced her husband was looking at her kindly, touching her like a lover.
“Are you okay?”
His voice was smooth and concerned and it made her ache for better times. Her return to the penthouse had often been the cue for Lex to stop working and join her in the bed. Now it was the cue for his enemy to act as he would have done in pale imitation.
The man who wasn’t her husband embraced her despite the stiffness in her frame, and toyed with the high neckline of her stark black dress. The hand at her shoulder slid down to her hip and then to the small of her back. She wanted to hate it, but there was a sublime remembrance in feeling it. Physically he was a decent replacement and she was so alone without this delusion.
His lips were warm and soft, melding onto hers gently as she let him guide her to the bed. It reminded her of how she had loved him when she was younger and full of hope. It let her float in a sea of denial. This inadequate man could taste like Lex and smell of his cologne. He knew how to touch her tenderly and fuck her slowly and inexorably as she kept her eyes closed. She knew his face as well as her own, but he was still a stranger she didn’t want to look at too closely.
Instead of following her down to the mattress he held her hand and stroked her hair. He wasn’t such a bad person when they were alone together. He cared that she was hurt, that she would probably be mobbed at the funeral by press and snubbed by the people who used to love her. If his presence wasn’t in such poor taste he would go himself to support her.
Chloe feigned sleep and Lex put her hand down on the pillow, creeping back out to continue working. He had eliminated his nemesis but there were always new adversaries. Even if no one would challenge him, he would fight for better efficiency and tighter operations. It was his nature.
As for her, she had lost her will to fight. She had loved and betrayed three men now, Clark, Pete and Lex. She had pledged herself to Lex’s keeping and taken him into hers but she had failed in both. The truth was a cold companion to her guilt and it didn’t hold any water. She had destroyed her life and so many others.
Hate bubbled under every tear that leaked from her eyes but Lex Luthor had become exactly the man she had asked him to be. What wife could ask for more concerted devotion?
She had lost her husband the moment he killed Clark Kent. He was gone, her love for him was a memory, but she had to stay. He was the only person in the world who would have her, and she had made him a murderer.
Is that what they meant by being made for each other?