Title: Deserted
Author: scifichick774
Rating: NC-17 eventually (please note the ‘eventually’ part since it will be a long time before anything happens)
Category: Drama/Romance/Angst
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Exodus and anything else through season two is fair game.
Summary: A ‘what if’ fic. What if Chloe had overheard Helen plotting with Lionel and become a liability? Chloe and Lex…deserted island…I’m sure you can put the pieces together. Chloe/Lex
Disclaimer: Not mine, no infringement intended, please don’t sue.
Feedback: YES!! REVIEW!! I’m serious. I really need a feedback fix.
Archival: Sure – just let me know where.
Author’s Note: I’ve received like four different challenges from people to do what’s basically the same fic, but since CC was the first one to challenge me, this is based on her challenge. Many apologies for getting this out so late, but you know how awful my muse has been.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The dark-haired beauty paced back and forth in a crescent-like fashion, almost, but not quite, circling the body of the young woman who lay unconscious on the floor. Her eyes shot up; not to the man who had brought in the body she seemed so fixated on for the last five minutes, but to her partner, if one could call him that since he was obviously the brains in the operation, in crime.
“What are we supposed to do now?” she spat, waving her arms wildly in the air before planting them on her hips and scowling at him. “How did she even get in your house to begin with? Are *all* of your security guards incompetent?”
The older man gave her a rather amused smirk, one which only fueled her anger for the situation.
“She was here by invitation,” Lionel Luthor replied calmly, watching to see what his son’s fiancée’s reaction would be to the news.
“What?!” she yelled and then darted her eyes over to the door to make sure that no one else was showing up in the doorway because of her outburst. “Are you telling me that you actually *asked* her to be here? Are you *trying* to get us exposed?”
Lionel fixed her with a stern glare and she squirmed a little on the inside, but held her ground with her outer physical appearance.
“I intended to meet with Miss Sullivan after you left, which, if I might remind you, was supposed to be a good half hour ago. I hardly think I can be held responsible for your last minute wedding jitters.”
Helen Bryce glared back at him.
“The plan has to be perfect,” she reminded him. “I’m not going to risk my own life just to kill your son.”
“Nor is anyone asking you to,” Lionel said in a collected but almost demeaning way. Helen’s lips thinned into a single, frustrated line.
“What are you going to do with her?”
Lionel looked up from where he had been gazing contemplatively at Chloe Sullivan’s inanimate body.
“I’m certain a disappearing act can be arranged,” he responded coolly to placate her. Helen shook her head.
“She heard *everything*, Lionel,” she argued. “*And* she’s a reporter – granted it’s only high school, but you can’t just give her money and ship her off someplace and expect her never to contact her friends and family again. She might be bitter because of the whole tortured teen triangle thing, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to buy her off.”
One corner of Lionel’s mouth lifted in a bemused smirk.
“I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort.”
Helen stilled herself and blinked at him.
“Oh.”
“Precisely,” Lionel said when the woman in front of him finally caught on to what he was saying.
“Well, what then?” she asked. “I’m supposed to be getting ‘married’ in a couple of hours. I don’t have time to ---” Lionel cut her off with a flick of his hand.
“It will be taken care of.”
Helen pursed her lips at Lionel’s nonchalant attitude. He was going to screw things up for both of them if he wasn’t careful.
“It better be.”
With that, Helen stalked out of the office, ferociously acknowledging the security guard’s presence as she purposefully bumped into him on her way out. The man looked over to Lionel with the unspoken question of what he should do next, a question which Lionel seemed to be considering as well if the expression on his face was anything to go by.
“Sir?”
Lionel let out a small, yet overly dramatic sigh as he kept his eyes fixed on Chloe.
“It’s such a shame, really,” he mused aloud. “She could have proved very helpful.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard automatically replied.
Lionel lifted his eyes, but didn’t even look at the guard as he started walking to his desk. He unlocked one of the drawers and pulled out a medical vial of a clear liquid, along with a sterile-bagged syringe. The guard, as he had been trained, stared straight ahead. There would be nothing to bear witness to if he wasn’t paying attention.
His employer took him by surprise though. Instead of delivering what the guard assumed was poison into her veins, Lionel handed the syringe and vial to him.
“Just give her enough to sleep, not to kill her.”
“Sir?” the man asked questioningly, expecting that Lionel would have wanted her dead right away.
“Then place her body in one of the storage compartments on the jet,” Lionel continued, as if he hadn’t heard his employee speak at all.
The guard nodded in sudden understanding and shoved the syringe and vial into his jacket pocket before bending down to pick up Chloe’s body. Her oversized purse dangled off her side, connecting where she had the strap draped across her chest. Lionel noticed it at the same time the guard did and motioned with his head for him to leave the purse on one of the chairs.
With no further ado, the guard started to leave the room, carrying Chloe’s limp form in his arms. He was confident that Lionel would dispose of the purse, whether by incinerator or more nefarious means; and that would just leave Chloe to ‘mysteriously vanish’, slumbering while blissfully unaware of even being on a plane that would send her plummeting to her death. He stopped and turned around when he heard his boss call his name.
“Sir?”
Lionel gave him an evil, devious expression lined with self-satisfaction in return.
“The other matter we discussed has been taken care of as well, I presume?”
The guard nodded a couple of times.
“Of course, sir. I took care of it myself right before I came back here and caught the girl listening in.”
“Good,” Lionel replied in a pleased tone. He leaned back in his chair. “Very good.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Helen’s gut twisted as they boarded the airplane. If she had to fake one more smile, it was going to drive her insane.
When Lionel had first approached her about coming to Smallville, she was hesitant. Although it was true that she had a personal vendetta against Lex Luthor, blaming him for the rift between her father and herself, she thought it would be a much simpler plan to just kill the guy straight away rather than drag it out. But Lionel was persuasive and convinced her that she would get much more satisfaction out of making his son’s life hell before finally disposing of him.
That thought brought a genuine smile to her face, which ended up being remarkably well timed as Lex had just smiled at her and was undoubtedly hoping for a sign of affection in return.
She reached out and handed him one of the glasses of champagne, the one she knew was drugged because of the almost invisible knick in the glass’s stem. Lex took her hand and raised his glass with his other arm.
“To our new life.”
Helen faked a smile, hoping it would come across as looking timid rather than false, and said nothing. Lex observed his new wife’s demeanor with concern.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Everything’s perfect,” she lied. ‘Or it will be in a little while.’
They clinked their glasses together and Helen brought her glass to her lips and sipped slowly, her full attention on Lex finishing off the liquid in his own glass.
~*~*~*~*~
The sound of thunder rolled by Lex’s window, and slowly awoke him from his previously unconscious state. He blinked a couple of times as he tried to regain his bearings, and then his eyes darted around the plane.
“Helen?”
He told himself to calm down; that just because there was a storm outside that it didn’t mean anything was wrong. After all, planes flew in storms all the time and Helen could just be using the lavatory.
Thunder crashed again, shaking the plane, and Lex took a better look at the scene around him. The emergency oxygen masks were all hanging down from the ceiling, a fact which Lex had been blinded to because of his worry for Helen on his first glance around.
Then, he heard another noise.
A persistent thumping and thudding started coming from one of the overhead compartments near the back of the plane, followed by a loud, struggled humming.
‘Oh, God,’ he thought, his mind immediately flitting to the possibility that they had been hijacked somehow while he was sleeping. ‘At least she’s still alive.’
He frantically pulled at the latch and he stepped back, startled at the sight in front of him when the compartment door opened.
Chloe Sullivan, his best friend’s friend and his plant manager’s daughter, tied up with her hands behind her back and her mouth gagged.
“Miss Sullivan?”
She tried to talk again, but with the gag in her mouth, it still only released the loud hum.
Lex stay immobile for a second until his shock wore off, then he helped her out of the compartment by tugging on her and letting her slide down in his arms. Her restraints were quickly disposed of and she tore the gag from her mouth just as Lex came to his senses enough to say something.
“What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
His voice was stern but distressed and Chloe found herself feeling really bad that she had to be the one to tell him that his father and his now-wife had planned all along to kill him.
“Your dad --- Dr. Bryce ---” she trailed off, for once unable to come up with the words to explain the horrible situation they were in, and shook her head. “I’m sorry.” Lex frowned.
“What about them?” he bit and started to move toward the front of the plane. “Don’t panic. The storm is probably just responsible for the masks coming down, electrical interference or something. Helen is most likely talking to the pilot about it now”
His words sounded desperate and Chloe knew that there was nothing more she could say that would make him believe the truth. She followed him to the cockpit, tripping and falling into him when the engines shut off. She gasped when she saw it in complete disarray. Chloe had expected the pilot to be in on it, but knowing very little about planes, had only thought that he would take the keys out or something, not make it impossible for them to escape.
The control panel was torn out, the wires that had been attached to it hanging and sparking in every direction. But both of their attentions were drawn away from the wires when they looked out the window.
The ocean was getting closer and closer as the plane was diving toward the ground.
“Shit!” Chloe exclaimed and turned around to run toward the other end of the plane. Noticing that Lex wasn’t following her, she grabbed his arm and tugged on him, urging him to come with her. “Come on! We might still be able to get out!”
Lex, in shock and hurt from betrayal, simply stood still. Chloe left him there and rushed to try and rip apart a couple of the seats. Helen and Lionel’s conversation had told her that the parachutes and lifeboat would be gone, and she found herself resorting to the thing she always laughed at when the flight attendants gave their speeches.
“In the event of a water landing, your seat may be used as a flotation device,” she mimicked in a sour panic.
Lugging the two large pads back to the cockpit, she arrived just in time to see the water crashing in through the front window.
TBC...
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