The Lesser of Two Evils
NC-17/ Angst
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Spoilers: All up to Season 4, except things will be twisted to the tune of Lex having never moved to Cowtown, U.S.A.
A/N: What would Chloe Sullivan have had to do to get from under Lionel Luthor’s thumb if Lex had never moved to Smallville? What would she have had to sacrifice to earn the son’s help against the father?
AU for Season 3 and 4, and strongly rated for a good reason:
THERE WILL BE BORDERLINE NON-CONSENSUAL SEX.
I’m posting in very short chapters so readers can choose when enough is enough for them.
Chapter One
She sipped the drink and forced a smile at the man sitting across from her in a chair that cost more than her father had in the bank. The whiskey burned down her throat and she calculated how long it would be before it hit her empty stomach and was pushed back up again. She always threw up afterwards, but not just because of the liquor.
“I thought your son’s preference for brunettes was well documented in the gossip pages,” she said, allowing a tint of joking derision in her voice.
When Lionel was laughing it was permissible to laugh a little as well. Actually it was expected, even when you were fighting terror and disgust.
“He does have a tendency toward a certain physical type, but primarily he is a bored young man with passing fancies,” Lionel said, swirling his drink gracefully. His eyes were crinkled with enjoyment, probably at her expense. “You are a lovely young woman and a very different experience from the usual for him. Which is what I have offered him as a token of appreciation for his work on our takeover of Augustine-Jellinek Incorporated.”
Pillaging and burning down villages sure pays well, she thought, even in the modern era. Free virgins for all good corporate raiders.
This man, her patron, was evil incarnate. He hated everything except the things that made his life more pleasant. He tolerated those things that might one day be useful to him.
Chloe Sullivan had just become useful.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
She had been frightened of Lionel Luthor from the beginning, very frightened when he showed enough interest not only to hit on her at the LuthorCorp Christmas Party two years ago but look her up months later. He had walked into her life with what was literally an offer she couldn’t refuse. Someone had destroyed The Torch, her newspaper, and the office would require at least $20,000 worth of repairs the school wasn’t willing to pay for. She had still been grieving over the initial shock when Lionel had strolled in and patted her on the shoulder.
‘Chin up, Miss Sullivan, I think we both know when one door closes another one opens.’
She was standing there wondering how a seventeen year old girl from Smallville had become the subject of a Luthor’s interest, when he had delivered the edict that had ruled her life ever since.
‘You’re going to find out why Clark Kent is involved in so many strange happenings in this little town,’ he had said, ‘And in return I will provide the school with funds to rebuild your office and make sure you are the only candidate for a new position as a junior columnist at The Daily Planet.’
The tears had dried immediately, burned away by rage and suspicion. She had known there was something odd about the convenient timing of the targeting of her relatively unimportant newspaper. Lionel’s smug grin had told her that it was no coincidence he was visiting just hours after she was discovering her journalism career was spiraling out of her grasp.
‘Fuck off, Mr. Luthor, I’m not dumb enough-’
‘I don’t think it would be dumb to accept my offer, Miss Sullivan, in fact I think it’s your only alternative. I can always ask a . . . professional to look into Mr. Kent, but I doubt you’ll find it so easy to come up with such a considerable sum of money and a plumb job offer. I also wonder how much more of a hindrance a professional investigator would be in your friend’s life.’
Her uncontrolled knee-jerk rejection of his offer had angered him, and she had been careful never to show her emotions like that again. The threat was clear and she couldn’t do anything but accept. She had to protect the man she loved.
Clark Kent was her first love, the third most important thing in her life after her father and her passion for journalism. They had been friends since she moved to Smallville from Metropolis for her father’s promotion to plant manager of the local LuthorCorp fertilizer plant.
She had kissed him only hours after her first day of eighth grade in Smallville Junior High, Clark’s first kiss and her second. Every bit of the initiation she had received from a boy on a sofa years earlier had served her well, but it was so much more with the quiet farm boy. She had fallen in love with him on the spot. His bright blue eyes and shiny black waves of hair always brought a smile to her face. His strong body was the stuff of her unfulfilled dreams.
The sad facts of the matter were shamefully typical: They had become friends, peas in a pod with Pete Ross, another classmate. Chloe fell deeper and deeper in love with Clark as time went on, and as time went on Clark fell deeper into love with Lana Lang. He had a telescope to watch her and a fumbling response when she deigned to show him a tiny amount of attention. As Chloe became more a part of Clark’s life she was forced to acknowledge by painful steps that he was in love with someone else and likely would never return her feelings.
The love had cooled but not extinguished itself, was even now burning gently only to flare hotter with a simple hug or an idle comment. The only reason he wasn’t overtaking her future ambitions in her priorities was because he wasn’t really giving her the time of day since Lana had become single.
But Chloe wasn’t naturally a bitter, brooding person, and she was trying to find the bright side. Her time could be spent on getting into a good college and making a name for herself in a combative industry. Eventually, maybe, Clark would turn his eyes to her and see that she had just been waiting for him to realize she was the woman who would love him more than anyone else could.
Her father had once consoled her by telling her there were two types of high school girls; the ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. He had pronounced her the kind of girl Clark would have to grow into, and Chloe had resolved to wait for as long as it took.
She knew the Kent family had a lot of secrets, most of them somehow related to Clark’s adoption as a baby. He was always a bit odd, though she had never minded. He often darted off without explanation and returned without offering one. Chloe had once bothered to ask about those oddities but now she knew better.
Now her life was about making newspaper deadlines joylessly in between meetings to feed tiny bits of information to Lionel Luthor. She knew he was going to hurt Clark and his family and she couldn’t let that happen, but she also had no way to change it yet. All she could do was string him along with what she thought was harmless information until she could come up with a plan.
Or an ally equal to the task of going against him.
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