A/N: This short fic is an accompanying piece to my short one-shot “From Afar”- which I suggest you read before this piece- and it touches briefly on a couple of major events from the current season of Smallville seen from Chloe´s point of view.
SUMMARY: Sometimes looking at yourself in the mirror can reveal things you haven´t expected to see.
SPOILERS: Bride and Stiletto
AUTHOR: Lexie
RATING: PG-13/15
PAIRING: Chlex
“MIRROR”
Ever since her return from Black Creek her life´s been spiralling out of control, to the point that she´s no longer in the driving seat. She´s become this faceless non-entity whose life´s been taken over while she´s on the fringes observing. She can´t remember when she became this complacent, when she lost the will to fight for what she wanted the most, when she compromised and let things happen that she knew would never make her happy. Her life´s no longer hers; her dream career as a reporter is now her cousin´s and so is the young man for whom she´s sold her soul to the devil twice.
This year she´s turned twenty-two and has taken a man´s life for the first time. It doesn´t matter that she´s tried to convince Oliver as much as herself that it was Brainiac the one to commit it; she knows it was her hand the one to end Sebastian´s life and she´s aware of the reason behind her decision. Just like Lex, who killed for the first time at twenty-two when he pulled the trigger and murdered Nixon, she did it to protect Clark.
She loves the farm boy not the way she used to when she was a dreamy teenager, but as a young woman that has looked at darkness in the eye and embraced it because of him- first to hurt him and then to protect him and keep him from getting tainted. There´s innocence and a gullibility in him that makes him dear to her, that enables her to find in him what she now knows she´ll never see in the mirror. Now she understands HIM and his need to preserve and fight for his friendship with Clark. She and Lex are a lot more alike than she´s ever been able to imagine; or maybe she´s been deceiving herself, maybe she´s always known it and that´s the reason she´s fought him because it´s so damn difficult to look at yourself in the mirror.
It´s ironical, really; Lex became her obsession four years ago when he inexplicably shunned her after the trial and she made it her mission in life to bring him down only to end up following in his footsteps. At twenty- two, just like him, she not only took someone´s life for Clark; she married for the first time and divorced just as quickly, even fell under an out-worldly spell that she is now waking out of. She, who used to pride herself on her crusade for truth and justice, is now lying to those closest to her like a true-born Luthor. She, who used to accuse him of using questionable methods and of making morally-questionable choices, has fallen into that grey area that has always been the realm of a Luthor.
Today she´s crossed a line she never thought she´d cross. Today she´s not just decided to aid and abet a serial killer; she´s finally seen blood in her hands and realised Clark will never be able to see her and accept her just as she is. He´ll never understand that sometimes you have to bend the rules and make the hard choices for the greater good. No, Clark will never be able to look at darkness in the face and embrace it or accept it as part of life because he just hasn´t been made that way.
Crimson has smeared her hands and she looks at them trembling. Scalding tears burn in her eyes as it dawns on her she´s alone, that the one person who could understand her, the one man she could turn to is dead, buried somewhere in the Arctic. With a sob she slides down to the pavement in the back alley of The Talon and feels the salty tears roll down her cheeks as she realises she really stopped caring the day she came out of the Brainiac-induced coma, the day Lex met his death in the Fortress of Solitude. It hurts to realise she wasted so much energy in trying to destroy him when she´s always needed him to define her and to feel accepted for whom she really is. He might have been given to lies and secrets but there is one thing she knows for certain, she wouldn´t have had to lie to him the way she is lying to Clark and Lois now.
Chloe wipes the tears away with the heels of her hands and raises her emerald eyes with a puzzled look. She turns her face towards the back door of The Talon, which she has left ajar, expecting to see Davis at the threshold, but no one´s there. Strange; she could have sworn someone was observing her. She stands up on wobbly legs and takes a deep breath and, before she can stop herself, four words are whispered in a raspy voice she barely recognises as her own: Wish you were here.
He replays the video on his laptop on board the jet while he nurses a drink. For the umpteenth time, he zooms in on her face and feels a tightening in his chest. Not everything´s lost.
THE END
Read the sequel: "Lean on Me" (One-shot)
Find a downloadable PDF version on my master list.
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Re: "Mirror" (Companion piece to "From Afar"): PG-13/15
Originally Posted by daria_103
and my muse truly reawakens.
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