Title: That Burning Thing
Rating: Strong R
Spoilers: Nah. Kinda AU.
Pairing: Sorta Chlex
Feedback: hmmm…yes!!
Disclaimer: Of course I own them. They live in my closet and act out episodes whenever I like (note the sarcasm). Oh, and none of the songs are mine, they belong to george, The presidents of the US, the beatles and James Horner.
Warnings: Mentions of rape, violence, mental abuse, insanity and some naughty words.
Summary: “There's only one thing that ever changes anything... and that's death. Everything else is just a lie.” – Conner, Home.
Dedication: To Vardaquareien and Gemini, whose signatures always make me laugh.
A/N: This is just part of my 'bored-and-in-need-of-drama' phase.
*************
‘She’s so thin,’ I find myself thinking, ‘So much thinner than before.’
Nobody really notices. Not really. She wears long sleeved tops and baggy pants that are done up with an old leather belt. Chloe wears them to hide the marks that cover her body like a twister board. Left hand, Chloe’s wrist, right foot, Chloe’s breast. I know she’s starving herself, because one time I mentioned I loved her curves. I pounded that repeatedly into her head until she screamed, disgusted with her own body. That was the night she stopped fighting me, and that was the night I vowed to stop. Still I keep going, and still she doesn’t fight.
Usually it’s her fault, I can see her look at Clark with something akin to longing. She assures me that I’m the only one she wants, and she just misses Clark as a friend. I know she is lying, because I know Chloe. It was an accident, I swear, she shouldn’t have been so near the stairs anyway, she shouldn’t have looked at Clark the way she did. When I took her to the hospital, that bitch Helen treated her, I said it was an accident, but she didn’t believe me.
Chloe must have told her, or she could have seen the finger imprints on her upper arms that were now a dark purple. I took no chances, I carried her home and locked her in the closet. Nobody will understand, I can’t take any chances with Chloe. I love her, and she loves me so much it will kill her one day. I have to keep her repressed. At first she was angry, she threatened to leave me if I hit her again. So, I attacked her with my autographed baseball bat. I don’t remember who autographed it, the blood covered the name.
When the hospital took her body, my dad was there. He looked ashamed and disgusted, but he did not breathe a word to anyone. Ha, I thought, I’m not like you dad, I don’t let my loves die, I keep them forever. I was so happy that night, I drunk myself into a stupor and the next day, I collected Chloe from the hospital. She was reluctant to come with me at first, so I punched her on the side of the head. Dr Bryce saw this and called the police, but the charges were soon dropped and Helen was imprisoned for six months on the counts of fraud and libel. She’s never been able to hear out that ear since, but she soon found out who was boss.
Chloe won’t let me make love to her any more, she makes me rape her. Honestly, she resists too much and makes me do it. Stupid bitch, I have to make her see that I love her, and violence gets that across to her quite well, but not well enough. She ran away once, I found her at a cheap motel. Someone had raped her and she was bloody and crying, blubbering about being pregnant. I threw her out the stain glass window, the exact one she had fallen out of years ago. She lost the baby, so that night I offered to make love to her like we used to, if she wanted. She didn’t want. Although I was pleased she still had that fire I loved, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear and she made me rape her. Again.
Right now she’s reading. I love to watch her read, except the bony structure of her face is casting shadows over most of it. But I know her lips are pursed, I know her nose is wrinkled, as I know she is thinking of leaving me. She thinks I am the reason she can’t bear children, she thinks Clark will save her one day. I shove down the urge to hit her as I stride towards the piano. I take my place at the velvet stool, running my fingers over the ivory keys. I play a warped version of Motzart’s fifteenth symphony, because it used to make her smile. I quickly change to chopsticks, then to an old nameless piece I barely remembered for childhood. It’s like glitter in the air and it makes my tongue dry.
“I’m dying,” she says quietly.
I am determined to finish the song, tugging it out of my brain like coloured scarves from a magician’s pocket. It reaches a subtle crescendo, which I over-exaggerate, fucking the whole performance up and making my fingers stumble over the keys.
“How?” I ask, my fingers pounding on the piano as I start an old-fashioned, sassy jazz tune. I close my eyes, enjoying the physical sensation of the change from light to dark.
“Cancer,” she supplies for me. I suddenly switch to the george song ‘Bastard Son’, the sad but fast melody makes the oxygen sweet and I breathe it in. “The doctor says it won’t be long.”
Something in her voice makes me laugh and I change my song to the death march, but with a light-hearted tinkling in the background. She almost sounds smug, so I switch back to Bastard Son.
“Urban enzyme digest slowly, eating crust and crouton wholly, cut up news with froth and frolic, hero doomed and alcoholic…” I sing softly without any real tune to my voice. Like I’m talking the words but my throat is humming. “Is there a cure?”
“Too late for cures. It’s cervical cancer, but it spread to my spine.”
I change to a Beatles song, a sad one that makes too much sense, so no one sane could understand it, “All the lonely people where do they all come from? All the lonely people where do they all belong?” I continue playing, “Could have been famous, Chloe, not just for my name.”
“Don’t see it, Lex,” she answers.
“And everyone wants to be naked and famous, everybody wants to be just like me…don’t correct me, Chloe, it’s not the right tune.” I finish the song, my tired hands resting flat on the white starkness of the keys. “Wish it was.”
She walks over to sit beside me, her skeletal hands gliding over the keys. She’s playing that ten-minute song by James Horner, the elegant sound lolling me into a half-sleep. I suddenly snap out of it and strike out at her, my sloppy punch hitting her jaw. She topples off the seat with only a small noise, her form crumpling into a tired heap.
“Don’t play on the dream, Chloe, it’ll only fight back,” I say, yawning.
“Hardly a dream,” she snorts, rising to her feet, “you took my life from me, Lex, but now it’s getting stolen away from you. How does that feel?”
“Kinda burns, here,” I do feel it. A burning. “I think it’s the fire.”
“You haven’t got a fire, Lex, remember?”
“No,” I say truthfully, “I don’t.”
The END.
**************
A/N: Please don’t hurt me.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks