_Chapter 18_
Being in her car felt like freedom, and relief. The road gave her comfort, allowing everything to slowly blow off of her as the distance between the old and the new increased. She had only one suitcase in the back, not much of a life when you can shove it all in a small bag. She felt like some kind of cinematic fugitive with all the money to her name shoved in her purse. Tens and twenties.
She still felt shaken up by the unexpected events that morning. Sneaking out of the mansion early, she headed straight to the bank, but their doors weren't yet open. She masked her panic with annoyance, one entire hour to burn in a town she wanted to be a million miles away from. Standing in front of the building for a while, she finally decided to do something before going crazy from waiting. So, she simply started walking, eventually ending up in the middle of one of the Kent's fields before realizing how far she'd gone. Rote memory suddenly seemed a powerful thing. A lingering instinct from all those trips made down that dirt path as a kid. Standing stock-still, she silently took in the incredible blue sky above and the calming breeze blowing through the wheat field.
She could smell Smallville.
This stupid town-- it invoked so many memories of her life, her youthful innocence. And in an instant she was hit, like a punch to the gut, with sorrow that she thought might rip her in two. Dropping her to the ground, sobs tore through her body. It was horrible, but it was emotion, something other than washed-out and for that she was grateful. Lying on the ground, curled into herself, she dosed on and off through tears, coming fully awake again only to be met with the brilliant sky above her. Paralyzed by its expanse, unable to do anything but watch the clouds pass. She remembered doing this very thing for hours with Clark when they were kids, lazing away entire summer days.
Mourning for the loss of her life here, for her childhood dreams and the easiness she had once, made her wonder if her mother had a moment like this before leaving. Hit with heartbreak that slowly evolved into a feeling of calm and inevitability. Because suddenly, that was exactly what she felt: deathly calm. Like she could stop breathing without much effort.
And that's how Martha Kent stumbled upon her, lying in the field, under the wide sky, still as death. She was out looking for a stray calf, she later explained. Poor woman. She nearly had a heart attack, almost tripping over Chloe.
"Oh my god! Chloe, honey, what are you doing out here?"
"I didn't mean to startle you."
A distracted statement at best. Chloe was too wrapped up in watching Martha's reactions to finding her there, observing the way she calmed herself down from the fright. The older woman took deep breaths, sinking down to sit on the ground next to her. Chloe wondered if she did it to get closer, or just didn't trust the sturdiness of her own legs.
"What's going on? Are you okay?"
The nervous questions sounded like an attempt to normalize the situation, establish rapport, but Martha betrayed her insight that Chloe was a million miles from normal. And suddenly Chloe wanted this woman to know her mindset. She wanted to push her into this strange mood too. Maybe she was just tired of feeling alone.
"Just remembering the past, I guess."
Martha's expression turned uneasy at Chloe's tone. Then again, the woman hadn't seen her since she was taken. Chloe supposed she was startled by the difference. The older woman's hand reached out to brush some stray hairs on Chloe's forehead. She would have called it a classic motherly gesture, but didn't really know from first hand experience.
"A lot of people are worried about you Chloe."
Her voice was soft, but her eyes were fixed sharply on Chloe's, trying to bore right in.
From the moment Chloe had met Mrs. Kent, she knew there was much more to her than met the eye. Sharpness of mind had a way of identifying its kindred. She never really talked to Martha Kent at length, no heart to hearts between them, just knowing looks and some kind of mutual understanding. Martha had her ways of letting Chloe know that beneath all of the bubbly snark, she saw a rich inner world. Maybe she knew simply because the two of them were similar creatures. Chloe had always felt a little swell of pride from the thought that she gave Martha a sense of comfort. Letting her know in small ways that, although Jonathan and Clark failed to notice most of the time, someone saw, brewing beneath that perfect farm wife and mother, an intense intellect. A hidden self. Once, Martha's sharp intuition had been a comfort, but at the moment, Chloe didn't want her to look too deeply. They stared at each other for a spell before Chloe broke the silence.
"How's Clark?" She couldn't resist, not that knowing would change much.
"He's fine some days, other days are harder for him."
Chloe could hear caution in her answer. Subtly questioning the motive for asking, protective of her son.
"Has he been in much contact with Lex lately?"
Again, she knew she shouldn't ask. Martha was even more hesitant about that question. Chloe could see her choosing her words carefully.
"Not that I know of. Not since you moved into the mansion, but I suppose you would know more about that than I would, Chloe."
"Well, hopefully they will be able to patch things up after I'm gone. You know what they say, 'Never let the screwed up girl next-door come between a friendship'."
She laughed at her own joke, while Martha continued to watch her.
"They fought over you?" The tone of her voice betrayed that she knew the answer.
"Not over me exactly, more like, over what was best for me."
"Really?"
"Yes indeed, I tried to get across to them that the only person to make the decision was me, but I'm not sure if they really listened."
"But all that happened awhile ago. Why leave now?"
The look in her eye was so knowing. Martha knew what was coming, or maybe she just knew how to ask a question to get the response she wanted. Chloe put a query in her own look; did Martha really want her to say this? It looked as though she did.
"I crushed Clark's faith in me into a thousand pieces and then I fucked Lex Luthor in the bed he so generously allowed me to stay in. I did it all completely intentionally. I've created this whole situation of my own volition, and now I'm running away from the mess I made."
Despite sitting so close, Chloe could feel Martha holding her at a distance. She could tell the woman sensed something foreign in her. It was a keen judgment, but it still stung. Chloe recognized the part of her that still wanted to be the girl Martha had met years ago and adored. Instead, she tried to replace the desire for adoration with the desire to confide.
"Have you ever had the feeling that everything surrounding your life is decaying? Like that impulse to live, to explore, to experience, has been completely snuffed out? My whole life I've always seen the growth in everything around me, life thriving everywhere, beauty in chaos, but everything seems to have turned gray. The surface is the same, but underneath everything has turned still and lifeless. Maybe I see it now because I've joined the ranks. A universe of warm-blooded corpses wandering the earth."
As soon as the words left her mouth she regretted them. Too melodramatic and not quite what she meant, but at the same time she could feel the vulnerability of personal truth being revealed in some small, indirect way.
"I'm not going to pretend that I know what you're feeling, but I *will* tell you that you're not alone in feeling separated from everything and everyone around you. It happens to most people at one time or another."
Chloe felt the twinge of guilt catch her off guard. True enough. She wasn't the first to suffer, she certainly wouldn't be the last, and her circumstance could have been infinitely worse. She hated herself for not being able to pull out of this and come back into her life, but bitterness had grown too strongly in her, it had taken hold. Martha hesitated uncomfortably before continuing.
"When I was 22 years old I got pregnant, did you know that?" Her question was rhetorical; it was obvious no one knew.
"Clark told me you aren't able to have children, but I don't think even he knows exactly why."
"Jonathan and I had only been married a few months, we hadn't planned on having children for several years. It was a surprise, but I really wasn't upset. I'd know since I was young that I wanted a big family. I know it sounds a little small-town for someone born and raised in Metropolis, but I always knew that raising a house full of children didn't sound like a prison sentence to me the way it did for a lot of my friends from home. For me it was more of a challenge, like my own little sociology experiment in creating a healthy, well-adjusted, egalitarian household. Naïve maybe, but I married a farmer, not of some career-obsessed suit, so I thought I would be able to do it."
Chloe could see her begin to detach herself from the memories of her former dreams, as if this were only a recitation and not part of her history.
"It was a difficult pregnancy from the start. I'd been having a lot of... problems, but I wanted that child so badly I thought I could just will it all to work out. I was about five months pregnant when things really started to go wrong. I ended up in the hospital in critical condition. The doctors told Jonathan that the course of treatment I needed would terminate the pregnancy and save my life, or, they could allow me to slip into a coma, bring the baby to full term and risk that I would never wake up. It still sounds like bullshit to me. I fought them so hard. When they first brought me into the hospital, I emphatically told them, several times, to do whatever it took to save that child. Even to Jonathan, I made sure I was clear-- Poor Jonathan, we were so young and he was so scared."
She was getting emotional, trying to fight her way back to telling it like a story instead of a heartbreak.
"Anyway, I'm sure they considered me a completely hysterical and unreasonable woman. So they allowed Jonathan to make the decision after I was too critical to summon the energy to make them understand what my decision was. Jonathan chose my life over that child's. He didn't even look into getting a second opinion-- I can understand, we were still kids and he'd just taken over his parents' farm. Then to have a newborn to raise on his own? It would have been nearly impossible for him. I shouldn't have blamed him, but I did.
"I couldn't even look at him for almost two weeks, and when I was finally allowed to come home from the hospital, I was a living ghost in that house. I remember hearing Jonathan crying up in that stupid barn sometimes, but I couldn't shed a tear. I just alternated between feeling angry and feeling nothing. I was like that for months, completely alone, trapped in my own head. Jonathan tried to help, but he really didn't know what to do. Mostly he just tiptoed around me, left me alone. So the morning of my due date I woke up, drew myself a bath, and used my husband's straight razor to slit my wrists."
Chloe couldn't stop herself from sitting up in surprise. The beautiful, perfect, ever joyful, Martha Kent had tried to kill herself; had felt hatred toward this man she seemed so perfectly in love with.
"Jesus," she whispered. Martha looked her right in the eye.
"Well, I had nothing left. I hated my husband for something that really wasn't his fault. I had already been told that if I ever tried to carry a pregnancy to term again I wouldn't survive. I felt like the entire world had turned dark. And I was so tired, always so tired, I just wanted to rest-- Jonathan found me bleeding and unconscious in the bathtub and when my parents heard about the suicide attempt they immediately had me transferred from Smallville Hospital to some psychiatric facility in Metropolis, spared no expense. It took a week in that hospital before Jonathan came to see me, but instead of inane comfort he came with anger. He yelled at me and I was yelling back. We were having a screaming fight, sobbing, saying horrible things to each other. But strangely enough it was exactly what I needed. After a month in Metropolis I came home and things were rocky, but they got better, and ten years later Clark came along and I felt lucky to be alive."
"I had no idea." Chloe said softly after several minutes of silence. She felt in awe of this woman who had lived a different life for years before her son came along and he knew nothing of it. She felt amazement at the incredible strength that women hide behind the veneer of normalcy. To a certain extent she was doing it herself, wasn't she?
"It hasn't gone away, though, has it? That feeling that you're somehow set apart from them, that you're alone."
"I think a powerful event in anyone's life can awaken that part inside that no one else can touch. No one can possibly understand what you've experienced. So, in that, you will always be alone."
Chloe felt tears welling, a sudden and devastating desire to trust this woman sitting beside her.
"I'm leaving here to go after my mother," she said brokenly, "My motive for doing so may be wholly out of anger and a desire for revenge." She could feel tears breaking over her cheeks.
"Everyone has demons to slay. If you ever need me, you know where you can find me," was Martha's only response, as she wiped a tear from Chloe's cheek, before rising to continue on her way as though she had never stopped.
Eventually Chloe stood too, heading back down that dirt path, getting her money from the bank and leaving everything else. She still felt completely jarred as she drove down the highway toward Metropolis, but Martha had given her something by trusting her with that story. A desire to resolve all this, to resolve what she spent months searching for. Maybe it would give her what she needed.
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