Fallout (NC-17) 8 September, 2009 - Complete

[hfce]

Great update and gregory she is not yours. :tease:



Hope

[S.Ann Smith]

*dances* yay an update



More soon please

[divine02us]

Oh wow

It's back! :yay:


Great update, can't wait for the next part.


D

[lexodus]

WHY? Why did you have to take Chloe away from Gabe? I hope she gives this "new daddy" a piece of her mind for going into her business. Poor Lex. It must suck to be him right now. Thank you for the update.

[Finding Beauty]

I wish I hadn't read this chapter so fast because I now want the next one to come around soon.

I'm not sure where I stand as far as Chloe's 'real' father is concerned. I understand that he's curious, but it's an invasion of her privacy. But then I think about the fact that Chloe's mom basically kept him in the dark about it and I feel sorry for him.

I'll wait to see whether he's a good guy or not.

As far as Lex and Chloe...I trust you to make it work in the best possible and most fitting way. I just can't wait to see where that leads.

[LazyBanana]

Awesome story. Please update soon!

[randa]

dun, dun, dun...*scary music* :biggrin:

great stuff, and i cant wait for the next update!

randa

[Sunny]

Come back here, now! I want moooorrreeeee.....

[scifichick774]

Gabe frowned and ran a hand over his face. Raising one teenage girl was expensive enough; having two live under his roof while he was the only provider was a disaster. The sad fact of the matter was that soon things were going to get pretty tight in the Sullivan household and he didn’t relish seeing the Chloe and Lana’s reactions to the news when he told them.

He had a feeling that Chloe would be understanding, because she always had been in the past, but Lana was a different story altogether. She was a sweet girl, but a bit naïve from having her Aunt Nell endlessly spoil her with material possessions for so many years. Though she understood that her stables charged her almost all of her take-home wages for continued care of her horse, she didn’t get that it also took money to keep the roof over their heads and food on the table.

What it came down to was that she didn’t understand the concept of prioritizing. She had essentially been raised to believe that she was the priority above all else and anything she wanted was temporarily elevated to her same status until she got it. He sighed. She was going to start crying about how unfair her life was when he told her that she would need to start paying for her new clothes out of her own paycheck.

As he sat at the desk in his home office, he couldn’t help thinking that he may have made a mistake in not urging Chloe to meet her biological father. It was no secret that the man had money, and if the two of them hit it off and formed some kind of relationship, he might be willing to provide for some of the expenses that college would inevitably bring.

He sighed again. In the end, he had left it up to Chloe, saying that his own feelings on the matter were irrelevant and that she was the one who needed to make the decision for herself. Stupid supportive parental conscience. If he’d been able to push his pride away, he might not have been so ambivalent about the whole thing; he might not have to feel as bad about telling his daughter that unless he found another job soon, they might have to dip into her college fund to pay for day to day living expenses.

He closed his eyes and smoothed a hand over his thinning hair. There were a lot of maybes, might’s, and what-ifs in that scenario and absolutely no guarantee that things would have gone like that at all. No attempts at communication had been made by either side and there was the very real possibility that Holcombe was having as much of a problem accepting the situation as he and Chloe were.

The sound of the doorbell’s chime jarred him from his thoughts and he sluggishly raised himself up from his chair to walk to the front door. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told him that it was two o’clock in the afternoon and since it was a Saturday, that meant that his unexpected visitor could be just about anyone.

Not having had the same unfortunate experiences with the more colorful residents of Smallville that Chloe and Lana had run into, he didn’t bother to take a look through the peephole to see who was on the other side. He unlocked the door and opened it, offering a tired if not congenial grin to the stranger on the other side.

“Can I help you?”

“Gabe Sullivan?” Gregory asked, already knowing the answer. Gavin’s investigative work had been extensive and there was no mistaking the man in front of him as anyone other than the man who had been pointed out as her ‘father’.

“Yes,” Gabe answered warily. Normally, his tone wouldn’t have been anywhere near as suspicious as it came out, but the stranger’s British accent was thick and he had an uncomfortable knot twisting in his gut at the sight of him.

“Gregory Holcombe,” Gregory said, politely holding out a hand for him to shake.

Gabe frowned and then nodded once, reaching out to shake the man’s hand quickly and get the perfunctory greetings out of the way. “I had a feeling you might show up.”

“Is she home?”

“On a Saturday?” Gabe asked with a mocking arched eyebrow. “You’re joking, right?”

“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed, but I can’t say that I don’t understand your predicament. I’ve been having some trouble with all of this as well.”

Gabe nodded again and stepped aside, motioning with his arm for Gregory to come into the house. “Maybe we should talk.”

“I think that would be a good idea.”

~*~*~*~

She felt alone. Emotionally distanced from everything and everyone around her, Chloe was barely getting through each day. She’d been damaged before, so the heartbreak that inevitably followed was nothing new, but this time was…different.

The hurt had morphed into something cold and icy that numbed her from the inside out, but nearly enough. She still felt every bitter pang and every merciless stab. She was broken. And the worst part wasn’t that her friends didn’t know what to do or say, but that they didn’t seem to notice at all.

Had she really been so invisible all this time that the people who were supposed to be the closest to her couldn’t tell that she was going through something? Lana broke a nail and people took the day off to commiserate with her. Whereas she was raped, the mother who had abandoned her as a child died, and she found out that her father wasn’t her biological father and her friends still greeted her like life was full of flowers and sunshine.

Of course, she hadn’t told them. Out of the many things happening in her life at the moment, not one of them had a good way to be brought into a conversation.

No, Lana. I ordered an espresso, not an extra foamy latte. And by the way, I’ve been thinking about killing myself.

No, no. Not because of the coffee.

Maybe it was a good thing that no one had asked why she constantly had dark rings under her eyes as of late; good that her circle of friends (if they could be called that) were so self-involved not to have even noticed. It was a double-edged sword to be sure. Damned if they mentioned it because they’d blame her for hiding things from them, and damned if they didn’t because it proved once and for all that she truly was the outcast she’d always felt like she was.

And then there was Lex. She wasn’t sure that she considered him a friend, and didn’t know why she expected him to be different than anyone else, but she felt a sad, hollow twisting in her heart when she realized he wasn’t. On either count. He wasn’t a friend and he wasn’t any different than the rest of the people in town. She’d gotten him the information he needed and he proceeded to shut her out of his life – just like everyone else – at least until the next time they needed something.

“Whoa. What the hell happened to you?”

Chloe looked up from her where her absent gaze had been blurrily focused on her coffee cup to find Adam Knight sitting across from her at her table. Great. That was exactly what she needed; Lana’s bickering amour du jour.

“I think you stole my line,” she answered. “You’ve been M.I.A. for the almost a week now.”

Adam gave her a one-shouldered shrug as if it was nothing – or rather, as if it was nothing that he was going to answer honestly. “Hospital in Metropolis for additional testing and the effects of their experiments kind of lingered.”

Oh. So, she guessed he *did* answer it honestly. Well, there a first time for everything, right?

“Your turn,” Adam said, making eye contact with her and then keeping it. Truthfully, Chloe thought it was a little unnerving after having gotten used to people turning the other way when they saw her coming.

“It’s a long story,” she said, bringing her now lukewarm cup of coffee up to her lips to take a sip.

“Always an eloquent dodge,” he commented, causing a grin to quirk at the corners of her mouth. “But, unlike most of Smallville’s sterling intellectual minds, I don’t have the attention span of a fly, so give.”

“My mom died.”

Any teasing expression that remained on Adam’s face dropped with her comment. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry,” he said, thought it was clear that the sentiment was said to be polite rather than out of any genuine feeling over what had happened. “So, is that why you’re going for the night clerk at a convenience store look?”

“Sadly, no. It would be a lot easier if I could blame it on that though.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Chloe glanced around the Talon’s main ‘dining’ room. There weren’t a lot of people, but Smallville lived up to its name and rumors spread like wild fire from the most innocent of eavesdropping individuals.

“Ah. It’s one of those kinds of things,” Adam said knowingly. “I can keep a secret, you know.”

She looked back at him. “I know. But it’s not you I’m worried about.”

Adam raised his eyebrows in surprise, but didn’t bother to argue with her. Instead, he leaned forward, letting his own gaze dart around the Talon for any signs that someone might be listening to their conversation. “We can go somewhere else,” he offered in a hushed voice.

It was tempting. Very tempting. But even if they went somewhere else to actually talk, people would notice them leaving together and jump to the same assumptions that they always made. And seeing as how she lived with the young man’s temperamental girlfriend, she decided that any amount of relief she might feel from getting the weight of the world off her shoulders by spilling her guts to him wasn’t worth it.

“I ---”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but your father told me I might find you here.”

Both Chloe and Adam twisted and looked up to see who the unfamiliar voice belonged to, and while he was technically a stranger to both of them, Chloe recognized him immediately. For there stood a man she wasn’t sure she would ever meet in person - a man she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to meet in person.

“What are you doing here?” Her words weren’t mean or accusatory, just bleak and lacking any kind of emotion whatsoever.

“I see you’re taking the news about as well as I have been.”

The corners of her lips began to lift on their own, but they didn’t make it far before they fell again. “To be honest, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be taking it. It’s…a lot to absorb.”

Gregory sullenly nodded a couple of times in understanding. Planning conversations in one’s head was always a much easier task than going through with them with another person. He could only guess how the person was going to respond, he couldn’t control it.

Adam looked back and forth between them. Obviously there was something more going on in Chloe’s life than just her association with the Luthors, and if he was reading the signs of her stilted interaction correctly, then this stranger was a large part of it. Resigning himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to get any answers today, he stuck out his hand.

“Adam Knight.”

“Gregory Holcombe,” Gregory returned, shaking his hand for but a moment.

Adam rose from his seat and shared a meaningful look with Chloe. “Later, okay?”

She nodded. At the time, she wasn’t sure she meant it, but it wasn’t as if she had anyone else to talk to about what was going on.

Gregory took Adam’s place at the table and they sat there just looking at each other for a few minutes until Chloe sighed and took another sip of her coffee. It was completely cold now and she grimaced as the bitter liquid that was once palatable when heated now made her taste buds want to curl up and die.

She lowered the mug but kept her hands wrapped around it in a nervous gesture. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I should think the answer would be obvious, but in case it wasn’t, I didn’t know how much your Mr. Knight knew about our…situation.”

“Your investigators didn’t tell you everything you wanted to know?”

Gregory’s eyes widened for a split second. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected her not to find out after everything he’d read on her, but he still carried the confident arrogance that money brought with it and it through him for a loop that something he’d had done so discreetly had been found out by a high school student. Even if she was his daughter.

“They told me enough to warrant a visit,” he began carefully. Chloe raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but this town seems as if it has been less than kind toward you…physically speaking. I was concerned.”

Concerned. He didn’t even *know* her; how could he be concerned?

Because that’s how normal people are, she reminded herself. People who haven’t had their minds’ warped by Smallville’s unique atmosphere actually care about other living beings besides themselves.

She sighed. “It’s not just me,” she said. “Almost everyone I know has been in and out of the hospital several times a year since we moved here.”

“And you don’t think that’s a sign that you should leave?”

“Well, sure. But, as is the case for most underage dependants, I don’t really get a say in the matter.”

“I’ve spoken to your father…” Gregory started after a moment of pensive silence.

Something in Chloe’s stomach started to twist; not nervousness or apprehension, this rapidly coiling sensation was more akin to dread; a sense of impending doom that she could do absolutely nothing about. The hands clasped around her cold cup of coffee began to tremble.

“He said that you might need to move after this whole business with Luthor is done with.”

She was shaking all over now. The icy interior that had kept her marginally shielded against a breakdown for the last week cracked and crumbled under the intensity of her biological father’s intense stare and the implication of his words. It seemed surreal and heartbreaking, but she could tell at a glance that Gregory was being honest with her and that meant that her dad had betrayed her by going back on his promise to let it be her decision whether she would search out her. The only person she had left on her side and he’d let her down.

Chloe swallowed down the lump of hurt feelings that suddenly rose up in her throat and shakily pushed her chair away from the table to stand. She shook her head apologetically, frantically reaching for her bag while pointedly ignoring making eye contact with Gregory again.

“I…I can’t do this now…I’m sorry,” she hurriedly rambled out, jolting toward the front door and out of the coffee house as fast as she possibly could.

Her mind was a blur of thoughts and mixed emotions and she could barely see through the tears that were welling up in her eyes. She barely mumbled an apology as she bumped into someone and then kept bounding away, determined to get away from there even if she didn’t have another destination in mind.

Footsteps pounded on the concrete behind her and she was sobbing by the time a hard grip tugged at her elbow and spun her around, almost making her lose her balance because of it. Then she saw who it was. Worry etched over every inch of his face, Adam didn’t bother to ask her what was wrong again and pulled her into his embrace instead.

She buried her head against his chest and unabashedly wept, totally unaware and uncaring of the fact that other bore witness to her sudden and seemingly inexplicable emotional collapse.



TBC

[Queen Of Tact]

Ur back!!!!! yeah, Kris is back!!!! *jumps up and down*
Great update hon...... Poor Chloe....


CC