binary

Reccing Notes: This fic is born of the sv_failsday challenge. paraxdisepink won first place for the longfic. So.... She gave me a prompt. Davis: red!k.
It turned out a very, very AU take in the same time line as Bride. Shippier. A Braniac infected Chloe goes to Davis when her memories start disappearing again.

Binary: Characterized by or consisting of two parts or components; twofold. The same system used in computer code.

by vagrantdream at her/my journal
16479 words, m/nc-17, abyss and bride (in a manner of speaking).


He was acting his own tragedy, his own scene from a naïve romantic movie, believing that could be enough.


[Davis Bloome had waited exactly two days, nine hours and twelve minutes for Chloe Sullivan. ‘I’ll wait for as long as it takes’, he’d told her then, full of that same kind of romantic blindness he’d told himself he’d never have.

(She had her own life already and he never wanted to be that guy, the one who wrecked the relationship of someone he claimed to love for his own sake. She had her fiancé and it wasn’t even as if she even knew what she felt for him anyway.)
But he would wait. He had to wait. That was the only thing he had. He hadn’t expected it to be like this.

He didn’t know what he expected really. He hadn’t expected to find her in the middle of road screaming sirens and smoking ash of all things. He hadn’t expected her to be about to marry another man or to believe in him when no one else in their sane mind would. He hadn’t expected her to run back to him, broken and remembering only him, after saying she shouldn’t see him anymore. After that little problem had been taken care of by the prick of his needle no less, he hadn’t been able to fight it any longer. She’d walked away for real.

The old adage was to let someone go and if they came back to you they were yours. That’s what he’d looked at love like before, tentative movements towards some greater connection, something that meant something. It meant something. She knew things about him that no one else did, little secrets he’s hid away inside himself completely deep. He would have given it all to her if she asked. The connection was there and it hurt like a limb had been cut from him, a burning gaping hole left by something that wasn’t even his to keep.

It sounded silly to talk about that, agony, like one of those epic love stories with the violin playing mournfully in the background, those where you know you’ve lost before you’d even begun. Loving her had hurt even as it fulfilled; and a little part of him had always seen it that way.

That was even before he started waking up in the middle of a horror movie, on a floor covered in his blood, completely healed. Before he shattered knives with his skin, before he learned that there was more to the blackouts than he knew. Before he learned that he was a creature created to destroy and this little nine-to-five, everyday hero world he’d created for himself was a complete lie.

She was the only thing that was real and he just couldn’t let go. Forget that it was her wedding in twenty four hours.
Forget that he didn’t have control of himself and it was all he could do to drive by Isis every morning and not stop, just give into temptation once. She didn’t call him and he didn’t go to her door.

This wasn’t fatal attraction. He needed to be around her like he needed to breathe, but the first time he’d stopped breathing he’d woken right back up after the pain had stopped fogging his mind.
He’d wait. ]

----
All she had to do was go to their place to find him. He was on his one break that day, some uneaten whole-wheat sandwich in front of him, absorbed in something. She did not know how he managed to look that…healthy, when he picked at his food.

Chloe knocked on the tabletop with her fist to break him out of his little world, half wanting to hide again. This was all too urgent, too serious. Too late for that. “Chloe.” he said. His eyes seemed to light up under all that brooding and it was alright.

“I thought you’d be…” off planning your wedding, maybe?

“Well I’m just letting loose right now. Being a free agent.” Code for alone, stranded and without a car.
She settled into the chair across from him, hugging her oversized bag to her chest, noticing the way his eyes scanned her face for a clue as to what. She kept her lungs moving, blew the air in and out and tried not to get lost in them. There was nothing to feel guilty about, she told herself. He was her friend, and attraction wasn’t the be-all, end-all of it.

It wasn’t as if Jimmy would get out of his mood just to be jealous that she was confiding in someone else. Clark she wouldn’t go to because… last time he’d panicked more than she had. He couldn’t just listen. He’d haul her back to Jimmy again and she wasn’t exactly ready for that.

She could count on Davis, lord knows she had before, and a little part of her felt guilty for setting his whole world upside down because she needed him to be her shoulder. He had…feelings for her and she was just rubbing salt in the wounds.
“I thought Jimmy…”

“Jimmy and I are on break.” (If forgetting her fiancées name for the second time in the week counted as a break.) “I’ve been losing chunks of time again.”

She told the whole story, racing through forgetting Jimmy’s name, another hospital MRI with Jimmy in the same room and nothing getting better. She should have known that Davis’s miracle cure with the needle, like anything too sudden and convenient, wouldn’t work.
She just wanted to go home but Jimmy had gotten right in the doctor’s face and threatened to sue. She’d dragged him away and suffice to say he wasn’t happy about that. It wasn’t far to walk within the same hospital.

“And he just left you alone like that?” Davis straightened in his chair, eyes full of something unreadable. “That was--”

“He was pretty vehement. And I haven’t exactly made it easy for him these past weeks. I mean the memory going MIA and not being there to support him through the whole wedding thing…Stuff was bound to build up under the surface.”

There was stuff beneath the surface alright, if Jimmy’s rant about being the only one trying for them was something to go by. Any groom would have done it. She shouldn’t have expected him to do anything else.
“That didn’t make it any less wrong.”

“Well, he didn’t leave me at first.”
There was the thing. She’d kind of walked out on his little hospital rant and when she’d come back two minutes later their car had been gone.

She glanced at the clock, one in the afternoon, and realized he’d run out of lunch break.
Here she was spilling all her problems to Davis on the only hour he had. Maybe she really was a bitch.
“You haven’t even had anything to eat. I’m just--- I’m sorry. I should let you get back.”

“Don’t say ever say that, not to me. You’re not going to be alone. Just wait a minute.” He stood up, paramed jacket clinging to well-defined shoulders and she’d looked down at his cup of coffee. Or tried. “The coffee might help. I know it’s kind of your sustenance.”

It wasn’t until after he came back that she realized that he’d taken the rest of the day for a ‘family emergency’. He had this idea that maybe he could help, pulling some strings and getting her an appointment somewhere. She didn’t want to start that again. The memories were just going and maybe it had always been set that way, just like it had for her mother.

“I’ve researched the hell out of it. There’s nothing you can really do. I just want to…” She just wanted to let go of it.

“I kind of take preventive measures, anyway.” She said finally, withdrawing almost everything from her bag.

“You carry notes with you?”

“Pictures, photographs, the whole shebang. A mini-dossier.” There was one for each of them- Clark, Jimmy, him, Lois.... So far his was the only one she never really needed. He was there, completely there. Crystal clear.

The rest of them weren’t and she half-expected them to come tearing around the corner with all their demands and stories that she would not remember. Angry. They were her whole life, but they terrified her, now.

She jerked at the sound of a siren, cool brown liquid spilling all over the front of her blouse. She hastily put down the cup and fanned it away from the files, mopping, making a bigger mess.

“You can say I’ve been on tenterhooks. And I kind of need a ride.”
“I’ll take you.”

“Do you have a bathroom?”

He looked at her, almost startled.
She didn’t want to go to the Talon, home or whatever it was supposed to be. She didn’t want to stay out here, with the sound of cars and traffic and so many people. She just wanted to feel safe.

“I was thinking we could go back to your place if you have to change anyway. Talk.”

The idea of being alone with him didn’t fill her with apprehension. He wasn’t one of those creepy guys who purposely made things happen to take you back their places and have their way with you. He was her entire world once and he could have given her any story he wanted. The mean romantic comedy cliché, ‘we’re married!’ He’d taken her back to her place and her friends and her life instead.

“As long as you need.” There was this look on his face, like he wasn’t seeing anything but her. Tender somehow. Bereft of something. He had learned to shut himself off from almost everybody. And then she just had to go and open him up again.

He shouldn’t have looked like that. It gave her a crazy sudden urge to reach out and touch him, anywhere, didn’t matter. His hand, his shoulder. They used to touch.

She didn’t do it of course. The ring on her finger winked in the light, Jimmy’s actual ring, the ruby that cost him so much.
----


Davis didn’t know what shirt she was about to change into. She was out in about a minute, still in her old clothes, sitting on the couch that adjoined to what he just called his kitchen these days.

There were no masks, no flattering remarks designated to fool him into thinking everything was okay. Sometimes it hurt her to smile. Like her teeth would fall out, she said. Like she was lying just doing it.

“It’s amazing what talking can do. See?” She laughed (something wrong about it somehow) and blotted her cheek with her-his sleeve. “I couldn’t have done this with anyone else.”

Of course, she could with him. It was easy. So easy, like nothing in life was meant to be. Like nothing that could last.

She twisted the very small red ring around and around on her finger and he didn’t want to look at it. It didn’t matter. She would be okay, she’d have to be. Then she would go back to her real life once everything was perfect enough for the people in it.
She was only his in pain; and he hated to see her in it.

“I have to figure out some stuff before I go back. Then maybe…” Maybe what? Guys who did that once would do it again, he wanted to say, but he didn’t. It would be petty.

“And if you don’t? Will you walk down that aisle?” Her wedding had been set for tomorrow. He knew. The invitation was on his desk, spotless; his first crumpled letter to her pressed atop it. He must have rewritten it a dozen times.

“I’m sure about the wedding. It’s like getting married is the important thing in the world.” She didn’t smile, she was convinced. Maybe he was just lying to himself about her settling for Jimmy. “I’m just not sure about—marrying--- him. I’m not sure about myself either, but then why would I think that? I think I’m just going crazy.”

“Worrying about yourself going crazy is not crazy. I do it all the time.” He had come to her certain he was something worse than a killer, and he wasn’t completely sure that wasn’t true.

“Maybe.”

“If you were crazy you might have flown into a rage at me disagreeing. You’re not crazy.”

She pushed her mouth into a smile. “I kept thinking that I’d tell him he deserved someone who wasn’t. Someone who could really want what he wanted. It’s just like….something in me stopped me every time. Crazy.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Which part?”

“Both. You’re worth more than that. We’ll get something decent in you and you’ll relax and it will be amazing how much more can change.” Maybe he could cook again. He barely bought food for himself but there was enough to get by. She blinked at him, quickly, eyes watering again.

“How do you do that? Make it all feel insignificant?” She was already telling herself to say goodbye to her life before it was taken from her. He wasn’t about to let her do that.

He felt something in him loosen, tighten up worse than ever when her arms came around him. He closed his eyes to keep it down and her scent overwhelmed him, something clean like the shampoo she used, her skin. She just needed comfort. But she never seemed to go to anywhere else for it.

“…just letting me unload on you, and I’m sorry I’m totally acting like that girl in Cyrano de Bergerac. I don’t know what I would have done without you here.”

There was another scent, much stronger. He shifted his head over her shoulder and dragged her closer. She didn’t protest, skin hot, burning and her fingers knotted as if she was about to tear through the jacket. It wasn’t like he didn’t feel it enough already.

The pain didn’t ebb at all, more like a physical ache and soon she was going to find out exactly how much if he didn’t stop. Why would he stop? He kissed the side of her head, a breath from her forehead, and let himself feel the slide of her hair, light and delicate under his fingertips. The scent... He wanted her. He needed…

Her hand settled finally, palm flat on his neck and he heard her breath snag, softly. That did it. His mouth found its way lower to the shell of her ear and she stiffened, making a tiny noise in her throat. “Davis. What are you doing?”

He didn’t do this; he spouted things about true love and holding on. He’d given her space and time and nothing had gone away. He assumed she wasn’t ready; but now he could suddenly see through all of that, he could feel it like her body, corporeal in his arms. She didn’t say stop.

“I think you know.” He’d said this after he knew that she would always have him. He was too lost to appreciate the symmetry.

He turned her head, pressing his forehead into hers and fastening her mouth to his own. She returned the kiss for a brief second before jerking her mouth away, eyes red. “I just wanted to talk,” she whispered, voice light and painful. “I just—“
Then again, it was like that time, must have been the first time, and her lips clung. Her taste was headier, marked by sweat and desperation and he wanted it all.

She felt it and her hands made a flailing movement, loosening her small fingers from the cloth and pulling one hand to the back of his neck again, putting the heat there too. The scent of her wanting made it hard to breathe, and somehow he most have let go of her hair to put his hand much lower. She curved into him so easily.

She dragged her mouth against his, eyes closed. She let go with a gasping sound, recited something small and ardor-blocking like “Jimmy, I can’t do this to Jimmy.” off a list.

He was aware she wanted him to say something; maybe he was supposed to apologize. That wasn’t what was really going on. He dropped his head into her shoulder and breathed in there, liked the way her neck moved under the lightest pressure.

“Why are you doing this to me, Davis?” Her pupils were constricted like she’d been staring at the light for too long. “I must love Jimmy. I am going to marry Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?” Oh yes. The fiancé, the one that yelled in hospitals.

“I don’t like him.” He said into her collarbone. Being reminded of that guy dropping Chloe in the middle of nowhere really should have stopped it right there, but she craned her neck back and forth again and that just wasn’t putting the ambulance in reverse.

“I know you don’t. I d--do. I just don’t remember why.”

“We should make a list.”

He followed the little bumps of the vertebra on her neck all the way down until the sleeve of her jacket tickled his ear and her muscles jumped. He did not understand why she wore so many jackets.
“He is nice, most of the --time.”

Plenty of people were nice. Chloe’s cousin, Lois? had been nice and a little spacey before she stabbed him and claimed to be his mother. He hadn’t ever thought of marrying her.

He hadn’t really thought of anyone else when there was Chloe. Chloe, warm and quite, quite willing. He had been an idiot not to see that sooner. When he bit she let out a little rush of air like ‘Oh, that is nice’. Maybe she thought that was nicer than Jimmy.
“—He- said he’d wait until I was ready to tell him things. For a while.”

“What things?” he thought he could be doing better things than talking, but she wanted him to, a little.

“My secrets.”

“What secrets?”

Her mouth was half open and her forehead crumpled. “I don’t know. Something I told you?”
His hands settled onto her waist, feeling the inward and outward motion of her ribcage as she stared at him. He had to tell her something, he knew. It was important.

“…I must have told him some things. When I worried.”

“Not now. You’re telling me.” His lips felt dry and he fought the movement that wanted to happen. “Why?”

“You’re real.”

“He’s real, too.”

“Then maybe I just trust you more.”

She wasn’t trying to smile and he wanted to tell himself to slow down but his hands needed her skin again, slipped closer to her navel. Her scent was changing, and there was less fear. More of something. Or maybe there was more fear.
“Anything else?”

“The seating chart. The cake table? I liked where he put the cake table.”

“That’s a hard one.”

“Did you ever feel like you didn’t exist without him?” He had, with her.
“So who are we really talking about?”

Her face was half-thoughtful, a quarter-melancholy, maybe a little resentful. She wrapped one arm quavering behind his shoulder, fingers drifting at the base of his neck, again, and he supposed that was answer enough.

There were too many obstructions. The green collar, pleasing when it opened to show her throat before, was binding. He tore down but the heat never overwhelmed him until her hands fell beside his and she attempted to slip the thing off her shoulders.

Cloth caught around her wrists and he tugged on one of the ends, pulling it tight when she didn’t try to wriggle free. She stretched, automatic, exposing the shelf of her breasts under flimsy, clinging cloth. She watched his face as he made the knot, blowing in and out, staggered in anticipation. He wasn’t doing what she wanted, pulling her to her feet, fingers dipping into the curve of her spine, running right under sensible lace. Her eyes were wide, almost accusing and she licked dry lips.

He let it go and she let him lift her, wrapped her bound hands deep against his neck. She kissed him the opposite way, trying to keep her breath down, stopping once, for a moment, eyes searching and confused.

“I don’t want to stop this. I can’t.”

It felt like she was going to vanish in his arms when they hooked under her, but then again nothing else existed.
The bed was better of course, his bed, and for a moment his breath hitched as she pushed herself back on it, crumpling dark blue sheets. He’d thought of her there. But it was just a second, his eyes burned and he needed more than that. He undressed, mostly and her eyes did not look cornered.

His hands went to her hips, feeling big and clumsy on the green cloth. She had been wearing that the second time he met her, when he’d thought that a girl could not care about people like that and at the same time have such pretty ankles. It landed, somewhere.

“C’mon then.” She patted the bed in front of her and didn’t whisper it in a breathy voice; she didn’t need to. Her hands tugged at the bottom of his shirt. She didn’t get a chance to pull it away before he’d tangled his hands in her hair and pushed her down.

He felt like he wanted to bury himself right there. His hands caught up, wandered up her knees, maybe a little too hard but her breath got faster and her scent was unlike anything.

She pulled him over, tentative fingers skittering against his chest under the cloth. Maybe he didn’t need his other senses.
“This is crazy. We’re both crazy. I might forget everything tomorrow.” The sun outlined her skin in gold. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Of course not.” She was inches away and it felt like he could just breathe her in. “You just have to say ‘stop’. “

Her mouth quivered at the corner, in pain or amusement he would never know. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He hadn’t been able to let go at all.
“--and mean it.” he continued, shirt landing in the corner.

“Cute.” She wiggled her way from under him and he had an idea. “Let’s see how that bravado holds up, shall we?”
She had smiled that way at him, once, teasing but it wasn’t as if they did anything about it. His thumbs couldn’t be gentle as they brushed her nipples, hard already, and she seemed to like that, but not enough to stop.

One of her hands curiously trailed down his arm, and he wondered at her fascination. The other was almost gentle, tickling at his ribs and trailing down and down and down until he couldn’t be.

“Oh.”
He ground his teeth and pulled her fingers closer and knew he would let her do whatever she wanted, thought of warmth and connection moistureanddarknessandsound. “Oh.” Her eyes were somehow pleased and her mouth drew him before she moved down. Her fingers were a tight ring and his shoulders tightened at the wetness and awkward, sensuous movements of her mouth just there, right there. She moved her other hand up to his hip and he could feel little currents radiating out from it, making everything burn so that it was all he could do not to roll over her.

Moisture fogged his vision and her face danced on the inside of his eyelids. He bucked, too hard and she made a startled noise in the back of her throat. He wrapped his fingers around her arms and tugged her head into his chest. Her eyes were glazed and he could barely open his again and it still wasn’t enough. He needed to be in her, of her.

Her fingers didn’t slacken until he pushed himself higher, nudged his knee between her legs and pressed. She was rubbing up against him and the burn was screaming out at him just to let it all go. The ring on her finger dug into his skin and he wanted it gone. He wanted to claim her completely. It was far too soon.

She didn’t think so, fought a bit when he bit a line down her shoulders, nips really. Her hands flailed and he caught them, rolled once, twice. She found a hold around his waist and she was bearing down slow, a little breathless. His mouth fell open, and she was everywhere. She thought she’d won.

He nudged inside, a little higher than really deep, brushing in once and again and again, just barely, pretending he had all the time in the world. It was little bit of a sensory overload, her scent sharpening with anticipation and her teeth and her shoulders finally shaking when she collapsed under him. He felt the pulse at her wrists thrumming wildly, fingers keeping them over her head. She was looking up into his eyes, like she was half-awake and barely holding it all in. He wanted to hear her breath hitch.

It started slowly. He felt the warmth, heat licking at him. Gradually felt himself pushing too far, perhaps more force than she could take. He couldn’t stop.

Short flat nails bit into his back and hauled against him and he didn’t know when he had let go of her hands, or put his somewhere else. There were little quivers going through her and there were no sounds that weren’t short and choppy, the dull slam of the headboard, her breath. It wanted to take him.

He nudged his head just under her shoulder, into the curve of her elbow and felt her give. His fingers kneaded along her back, an unsuccessful distraction. The second time for her, her heels had already locked around his shoulders with the nylon that had not completely fallen away, straightening, pushing. Her head had fallen back and she was twitching and trembling hard, trying to breathe.
“Can’t. No.”

He could hear her, but it was like a disconnect, like this something had complete control now. He would be the one thing she could never forget.
“No. No. oh--- Yes.”

She squeezed hard with her knees, trying to keep the twitches down and only pulling him in. Her head tossed and jerked like she was being choked but she was moving to him, looking for another kind of intimacy. She didn’t quite get to kiss him. The closest they got were harsh pants, together.

It crested so it could not hold longer, and this wasn’t slow or teasing, it was. His forehead forced her neck back onto the mattress and she felt like she was going be pounded to bits. He was grateful that he could even think about that.

He saw her eyes wide open and fluttering, mouth swollen, face contorted. He felt the softness of skin and depth and texture quivering though him, heightened as he thrust. The burn wanted all that, wanted more, and he just needed her in a way that made this lack of control seem mild. There was something like affection in her eyes and she was the only world he knew for those moments before it all crashed over him.
----

It was a long while before Chloe could get free from under him and the covers or she remembered she had a voice again. She wasn’t thinking of anything more complex that if she could crawl far enough to catch a discarded pillow.

“I wasn’t aware that could be done.” She said, not knowing if it was what he’d done to her or just letting the conflicting thoughts go. Her voice came out a little worn around the edges. This was real.

Davis was watching her, mouth soft, taking in air like he had to catch his breath. She could not look away. He hadn’t moved one bit besides that, which was a bad or good thing because the covers were down around his hips. She looked at his face mostly, mostly, and guessed he wouldn’t have minded if that wasn’t the case. She never felt like she had to look away.

This felt right.
His jaw was smooth and he looked, no not relaxed, but close enough. She felt light and giddy and a little afraid again. She kissed him and called his hands rubbing up and down her shoulders before it happened. She felt every bit as safe and connected to him as she’d ever been when he’d had her on her back. But safe, safe was helpless too.

She crawled back over to him and tried to find a place to settle, somewhere comfortable and couldn’t. Either he was all tensed up or he was just built that way. His eyes hooded when her breast brushed over the spot right over his heart. Oh no, certainly not, not this quickly. “What are you on, Red Bull?”

He was Davis; she expected a teasing analysis of this, or a little bit of cuddling. His brown eyes were more reddish than she’d ever seen them, seeking and then almost confused when she tried to slow him down.
Chloe was Chloe and memory or no memory she got to the bottom of things. “Hey. Hey. Davis!” She tried to sift out the part of him that had been all careful and emotional and the part that was all need and he didn’t seem to like that too much. The words gathered and died a quick death.

His mouth glided steadily and lightly against her abdomen, where it hadn’t been before. She felt a light, unbroken buzz of energy crackling from his touch into her or maybe that was the other way around. She literally was deaf to everything, even the low appreciative sound he made when she stilled completely. She was going to have to move later. They had to talk about the hundred and one things they were completely ignoring. He was just driven now.

He shifted, hard arms wrapping around her shoulders and teeth sinking into her shoulder blade. He started to move, almost violent, fingers digging into her bare skin, keeping her flush against him. A bead of his sweat slid down her back. She froze, only halfway at the sensation of opening from the inside.

Then it was simple for Chloe- the rush of euphoria and lights large and strong and green dancing behind her eyes, a picture she could never catch. Oversensitivity spilled over into pain and when she screamed everything just seemed to slow, dramatically, drastically close. His head tipped into her hair, hard and he shook all over until she knew he was feeling it too. Helpless together was good.

Sometime later his hand caught the fingers that had blindly curled into his face and she couldn’t do anything but slump back against his chest. Some disconnected part of her knew she was just about to miss what was supposed to be her wedding and she should have felt very bad about that. She had to be there. It was not because of the groom—oh, she could not remember why but it did not matter, because she would not have felt like this. Real.

Davis’s hands were running along her fingers, impatient and she saw why. He eased the ring off and while the circlet looked dwarfed in his hand, his chest heaved, strange and uncomfortable. She pulled it away; fingers slick, and let it go to roll under the bed.

“Happy now?” she asked finally, freeing her hands and pulling the sheets around them like mummy wrappings. She covered his mouth, a little wary. “I got that, nonverbally just fine, believe me.”

Something of the frightening tension seemed to leave him, and he kissed her palm. “I’m happy.” He said it almost as if that was surprising. He looked worn down but his eyes were clearing, a far cry from the emptiness before. Half smiling. And she wanted to kiss him again.

“It hurts less now.” He whispered, finally. She had an idea of what he was trying to say, but things deserved to be lighter, for a little while.

“I just think you just had a beef with that thing.”

----

Davis woke up disoriented, from a dream, not his usual nightmare. Colors danced all inside his eyelids and he could not for the life of him understand what they meant. Chloe was sleeping the sleep of the dead, one arm limp over his chest and he didn’t want to move.

The smell of sex was heavy in the air, and he remembered, really remembered the trail of clothes and the warmth of skin, the things she had let him do and done right back. But the memory was a little hazy, not all it could have been. He had held her and there was that need pounding through his head, overpowering everything else. She’d been talking about her fears, Jimmy but she’d pulled him in anyway.

He had always imagined it would go much slower, and when/if they made that step it would be more romantic, dinner with flowers and candles and mariachis at her window.

It had been rough. He’d held her down. Her green jacket was in sight, all twisted up like a makeshift rope. He pulled the sheet away and saw the corresponding marks on her wrists, a light brown. Her fingers had flexed, she’d been that much closer and he’d found that very—
Horror and an unsettling twist of arousal warred in him. It wasn’t in his head. He loved her. Was that the only way he could show that love?
It didn’t feel like that when she finally opened her eyes, make-upless cheek a little red, her voice drowsy with sleep.

“It’s very, very hot in here.” She stretched and knocked the sheet away, leaning over the bed to pick up scattered things, her bag, her phone where the light blinked red, her skirt, her blouse. Her arms were not the only places he had bruised.
“Again?” She laughed. “I could have taken this if you hadn’t kept me busy.” ” Her eyes looked into him even as she smiled and feigned exasperation.

He drew his eyes a little away and tried to get the worried look off his face. She looked happy enough and he didn’t want her to deal with an early morning freakout.

She was asking about the air conditioning. “Your hands are big and sweaty.” She said by way of explanation. “A bath would be fine.”

“I have a shower.” Maybe when she came back he’d have gathered his thoughts enough to find a way to not hurt her, explain the whole crazy story. Maybe there wasn’t a way. It was one thing to go to sleep with someone and their issues. It was quite another to go to bed with a friend and wake up…with whatever he was.

He couldn’t drag her into this, but how broken would she feel if he was lying to her all along? She had enough lies in her life. She didn’t know how long she had either. But she had enough pain too.

She hopped up, pulling his hand behind her and he knew he would not.
“I was going to make breakfast.” He half protested. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“You can make fettuccini if you want, later.” She went on and on about saving water, ecology and knowing he was the socially responsible type. It didn’t matter about his talking about the size of showers. The fight was lost. She was Chloe.

A little piece of him knew it wasn’t just about him. She was talking every minute, trying to seduce him or keep him with her for a reason. She was scared he’d leave, or she wanted to feel close to someone. He wondered if this was what she used to have to do with Jimmy. She made a crack about padded shower walls, and he wanted to prove to her it wasn’t just about wanting sex.

He busied himself finding soap, his back to her, trying to remember that. “You could host a party in here.” She said. “I don’t know what you were on about.” She stepped almost innocently under the hot running water and where the droplets sprayed him, he couldn’t feel the temperature on his skin.

He could feel her and jumped a little when her palms circled on his shoulders, pulling him back under the spray. “Do you have a towel somewhere?” He remembered, third closet to the right. “Just forget it.” she said, said, eyes a little hazy and not from the water.

She took the soap and her fingers shook, just a little. “I can help with that.” He said.
It was not sexual, his fingers brushing between her thighs, cleaning the sweat and remnants of what they did away. Maybe this was taking care of her.

He felt her shoulders quivering and it wasn’t in pleasure. “Something’s wrong, Chloe. You can talk to me.” She didn’t answer.
It was almost like dancing, her hair clumpy and wet against the spot where the knife had shattered on his sternum. She didn’t know about that part of him, but she knew the way he’d been last night. This wasn’t the problem. Her arms were around him tight, not like she was afraid of what he could do. She didn’t even move as his hands brushed over the ugly bite mark on her shoulder.

He would plead if he had to. “It’s the only way I can help. You’ve got to let me help you.”
There was change in the way she breathed, and he knew he’d been right.

“Can you tell me who Clark Kent is?”

That was the name she’d seen on the telephone. Her best friend, at least he’d been once. She’d forgotten all about him before. It was just happening again and she knew somehow. He turned away and he was actually pacing in the shower.
“You have files on all of them; maybe they can jog your memory.”

“I don’t care about those.” she said. The question hung unasked in the air, How long will I remember you?
They were there, the both of them and their ghosts. They were with her broken memories. They were where the blood had swirled down the drain and where he’d finally had to see what he was.

“You’re everything I’ve got, now.” She whispered, and the tentative smile made it look as though she was going to break apart. “I came to you.” She had the first time, and he’d taken her back to them. This was the second time, and that had to mean something.
He turned to face her and part of him was heartsick. What kind of guy made himself into someone’s whole world? What kind of guy wanted to be?

He held her and patted her back, and told her he would be there always because he would. He’d be there, just as long as she existed. He was built that way. They’d find a way out of this.

They stayed there for the longest time and he tried to push away the feeling that this was their place, that this was their one moment before it all broke down.

----

“Let me take you out.” Davis had said, and she’d known that it was important to him to make her feel special. He’d always been a romantic. She remembered him like she didn’t remember anyone else.

It was their fourth day, the fourth day of her whole life and they’d gone out to a Chinese restaurant, to a little corner booth. He was telling her about her life and holding her hand from across the table, and halfway through her head felt like it was going to shatter.

There were colors, colors everywhere, green ones and zeros beneath her eyelids. She’d felt this once before. She couldn’t remember hitting her head against the tabletop, but she must have. Then, he was holding her face, eyes clear on hers, voice steady and firm and they were going to the hospital.

She knew the hospital. Not there. “Please! I don’t want to go back.” Her grip on his hand felt tenuous, like a string that was slowly being cut. “I want to stay with you. Don’t make me go back.”

There was just one color-green and she wanted it to stop, stopstopstop, but it was like that was in her, telling her, HER and nothing and no one could stop it.

“There’s a place called Isis. Take me there. Davis.” he heard. But it wasn’t Chloe who said those words.

It wasn’t Chloe’s eyes who flashed silver, or her voice or her hands on those computer monitors. She was a computer whiz, Davis knew that. But she could not change them at a touch. The screens blinked, green and spinning and the world around them seemed to freeze.

The thing inside her told him what he was, what he was going to do, what he could not help. It was every single one of his nightmares and more. “There is someone you are going to kill.” It said. It drew close, Chloe’s breath cool, her face beautiful, but hard and cold steely the way she never could be.

Davis did not know where Chloe was, but he had to get her back. Words would not bring her back to him, but he told her he loved her, that his feelings were real, that he was here. She felt something too, he’d always known and she just had to reach out and they’d be okay. They’d be fine.

He was acting his own tragedy, his own scene from a naïve romantic movie, believing that could be enough.

“Feelings? That was the program I was running to get you to me.”
It should haven been just like the ground, everything true he had left, was knocked out from under him. But a part of him knew that if it had been it could not be a lie any longer. Not if he felt; not if nothing had changed. He loved her. He always would.

He was holding her body by the shoulders, shaking, waiting from a sign in her cloudy eyes.
“I’m here, Chloe, just listen to me. Focus on me.” She had known him when he hadn’t known himself. She would know him now somewhere down there.

What had happened between the both of them couldn’t have been just program too. Everything she said she felt, every little moment couldn’t have been manufactured by a computer that couldn’t possibly understand. She’d trusted him.
But Chloe didn’t come back.

“She could do nothing without me, my direction or my consent. “ It was ahead of him, her eyes, her lips so close, drawn and white and horrifying. “I started the program.”

“No. That wasn’t...” It was real, it had to be.

“Real? A few memories, a little nudge in your direction, intimacy. She really did break you in.”

“No. Chloe...”

“She never had a choice. Clark Kent destroyed this girl you believe you love. He took every little bit of what made her her and left that much more room for me.”

Clark, her memories, the thing inside her, what he was. It was all connected. Everything was.

“I’m not going to join you; I’m not going to kill him or anyone.” He just needed to stop it and make him get Chloe back. If this alien--- Clark had destroyed her he might want to tear the answer out of him, make him fix this, but he would not hurt someone she had loved.

“I’m not asking. You have no choice. By connecting yourself to this human, you have connected to me.”

There was another program. It used Chloe’s same hands to clamp down over his wrist, and the blackness followed quickly, rippling over him. Painful transformations, it had called them, but that was nothing. It was nothing interspersed snatches of images, screams, fire, sparks of plugs and streets plunging into darkness. A different kind of burning and eyes that were never hers.

He had to remember something, he knew, but that part of him was shrinking to the black. He saw only scarlet, red and blue. If he destroyed that then maybe the pain would just stop.
Davis could not feel the rage of love leaving him. He just could not feel her.
----

After Braniac took Chloe’s mind, it had been like existing in a cage- a seamless cage with four coded walls that went on and on forever. Chloe couldn’t hear, she couldn’t see, but she knew something horrible was happening. There was Clark, and there was Davis and she knew now exactly what the green was, flashing back behind her eyes. She knew why they were mirrors. Doomsday and the Red and Blue Blur. Naman and Sageeth.

She had all her memories here, just like a computer chip with a backup drive. In order to take everything from her, Braniac had to have taken a copy. She finally was whole again but that did not matter. They were all going to die and Davis was going to disappear forever if she did not get out.

She had to take herself back and she did not know how. She slammed her hands up against the green and it sent an unpleasant tingle into her skull. Someone could not know that much and not go mad. It was fluid information, moving through her and around her like a horrible maze. Maybe she had to be fluid, part of it. Maybe that was the only way to get out.

She defined herself by her life and she let the memories flow through her, one by one, let them pass from her into the walls, into the numbers and letters. She felt Clark’s lips against her forehead and Davis’s eyes across a room, paper in her hands and words in her throat. She was Chloe Sullivan; friend and lover, fighter and aid. She was every single thing she’d ever done and all she would not lose.

(She was free.)

---
Her skin smelled burned like she had been struck by lightning. She knew where she was well enough, the gleaming crystal of the fortress. Her hand was against the largest crystal and she didn’t have much time before she had to fight for control again. There were three bodies around her, a man with his hand stiff on a strange curved knife; like an Aztecs sacrificial blade. She knew that Braniac feared this, felt it like the overflow of words and Kryptonian symbols in her mind. He was trying to take control again.

She was almost blind, swamped by the sound and symbols but she groped for the blade and felt it bite into her palm. The noise ebbed. She didn’t pay attention to the rest of them; saw nothing but the titanic struggle ahead of her. There were Clark and Davis; she used the names loosely because they were not just themselves anymore. Davis had become this great, black, horrifying thing and Clark barely looked human, he was that bloodied. They were exchanging blows fast, but It had the upper hand and every time Clark smashed into a wall, he took longer getting up and it circled him like a predatory animal. When he didn’t get up…

She had to stop them. She was human, a meteor freak at the most and they were full-blooded Kryptonian. She couldn’t exactly talk them down, she couldn’t fight, and she couldn’t get near enough to touch either of them. Maybe Brainiac didn’t need to get free for it all to go to hell. She had Braniac’s programming, she had information; she had this thing between them, between the three of them really. All she could think to do was think really hard, so she did, screamed out in her mind. But Braniac was not with her.

The last thing she thought was of waiting until Clark was downed to get close enough to It. Maybe be the last sacrifice and hope that woke Davis up. He’d said he loved her.

When Clark fell, she reached him first, but he could not see her. Blood had leaked into his eyes. She could not reach out to Davis inside It; just put herself in the space in front of Clark’s broken body. It reached her first, thrust a massive hand forward, for Clark maybe, and she felt herself break, a thousand tiny razor like imprints opening up her side. That was not Davis anymore. For once the pain, the thoughts and her memories overwhelmed her, leaked out like a power surge.

It held her up with one massive fist and the blood leaked out over her side. She screamed herself raw, and maybe that startled it. It released her and she fell, crawling on hands and knees and its fist fell upon her again, pushed her back straight down on the ice. She ignored the bite of it, like thousands of tiny diamonds on her skin and waited for it to crush her spine.
Nothing happened, not even the sweet release of death. She panted in and out; the weight putting a strain on her lungs and slowly, so slowly, it felt like it was barely a weight at all. She turned and saw it, still, somehow insect like, but the eyes changing scarlet to brown, the burden lightening.

It felt like forever until it retreated, like the shell of an enormous crustacean, leaving Davis, bloody and naked, behind. It was still inside him but she didn’t push his hand from her back, grabbed hold of the cool fingers and squeezed. ‘I did all this?’ his eyes seemed to ask her and she couldn’t tell him anything.

She thought about secrets, about his keeping his literal monster locked away while he knew every one of hers. Secrets and lies, hadn’t she heard that every minute of her damned life? Before, he told her what he suspected and she’d ignored the signs. He just hadn’t shouted it out.

Clark was bleeding a few feet away. She should have felt disloyal for leaving him behind for the man inside the monster that had nearly killed him. But she wasn’t a cool, logical supercomputer.
Davis had made her feel. She just wasn’t the same anymore. He was bleeding out, too. She wanted him to see something besides carnage when it all ended. She needed to.
Chloe dragged herself halfway to Davis before the dried blood on her skin started freezing. Her head fell just short of his side but the air around him was warm still; she’d always remember he was warm.

“I couldn’t pull you into that again.” He’d choked out and she didn’t want to waste their last moments on that. “I didn’t know it was this.” He whispered and she believed him, that was the worst part.
It changed nothing.

Clark plunged the sacrificial knife straight into Davis’s back before he collapsed. It wasn’t heroic, if was ugly, blood leaking from his punctured lung. Heroes made tough decisions. He’d made his first, and last.

Davis was sorry (why was he sorry?) and he loved her and he was already dead. They were both good as dead, leaving her, and she was trapped in a tomb of ice and glass.

Several things happened then. She felt her body stiffen and something dark pushing out of her, into the icy fortress walls, over Davis, turning it all to black. Braniac was retreating from the dead and the dying, pulling its ultimate tool of destruction right with it.

Her eyes clouded and she felt something return to her, the tears.
She didn’t think of what happened if she could not. There was no choosing, not for her. She reached out her hands, shaky from blood loss and touched them both, tried to feel their pain as well as her own. She was pain.


She still hadn’t woken up, pale and bruised under the covers. Davis hadn’t been able to sleep watching her, saying every prayer he’d ever learned in Sunday school, but Clark left the room more than once. “She’ll pull through,” he said, eyes sure. “She’s done it before.” As if he expected it.

At times like this Davis wondered just how much they shared that he had not. He wondered how much of that Clark had taken from her. He didn’t feel mindless rage, but his knuckles itched with the urge to wipe that look off of Clark’s face. She was close and probably dying and he could not.

Maybe Clark let him stay because he was looking pretty messed up himself, the cuts and burns the powerful side of him had left on It just starting to heal on his skin. But Clark wouldn’t ever let him alone with her for two minutes even holding her hand, as if he would climb all over her like some depraved madman.

He knew what Clark thought of him. Of what they’d been. A biological drive and computer coding. A nudge, Braniac had said. Maybe a little part of her felt that attraction, but it had just been blown out of proportion. That’s why she hadn’t been able to stop. Chloe had probably lived a waking dream and he had just wanted to believe it was all her.

“She was alone and vulnerable and you kept her away from her friends. You might have not known about Braniac, but you used her.” Clark said. Forget that those friends of hers hadn’t given one thought to why she couldn’t trust them enough to come back. Davis said nothing. That was Chloe’s secret to keep or give away. It didn’t matter about Braniac, all or any of that to him. He loved her. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt like this.

Clark was a passive guy, but Davis didn’t doubt from the look on his face that he wanted to toss him out. Physical ejection wouldn’t work for long with Davis. He didn’t know if he was quite human anymore. He wasn’t exactly dead. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if he was pounded into the dirt. Whatever had happened, whatever she thought of him now; he wouldn’t abandon Chloe. If nothing else, they had been friends, real friends. She needed a friend.

“And what do you think she’ll see a friend when she sees you?” Clark kept on. “She was the construct’s tool to bring you into full power. She couldn’t have controlled what she did with you. She betrayed the man she was going to marry and she didn’t have a choice. She’s strong, but she can’t let all that go.”

That was what Clark wanted to believe. Chloe had cared. It he had hurt her so much she just should have let him die. Davis tried to push away the thought that maybe after all this, there would be too many memories for that. If Chloe wanted him to go, he would. Not before.

Clark sat forward, looked straight at him; broad face pushing Chloe from sight. “Let me tell you about Chloe. She’s always wanted to save people...”

She didn’t actually have feelings for you.
Maybe it had been a bad moment, but something inside of him had broken, snapped. The idea that it wasn’t just the lie, but who she was that lead her to care about making him live burned him. He could have been anyone else, Clark said, so damned reasonable, right before blocking his way back in the door. If he’d ever thought he’d loved her, he would let her go.

It all came to a head then, what Clark had done, what he had, the fact that she wasn’t breathing. It was Davis who swung at him, right in the middle of a hospital hallway, blinded by something in his eyes. Clark hit back.
“She will wake up, without you.” Clark said, his own mouth bloodied. “I don’t want to fight you.”

But Clark had already won. Maybe he was really the monster. Davis had hurt Clark because he was in pain. Chloe wouldn’t have wanted him to. Chloe just wanted to save him. That’s what she did, she told him once. Not even being able to know she would live hurt more than the blood in his mouth.


Davis knew about packing up and moving; efficiently and quickly; place to place when they wouldn’t have you anymore.
But he couldn’t leave her. She was more than a temporary resting place, she was home and every part of him rebelled against giving that up.

She hadn’t been in her right mind, Clark said. It was never about him. But she had been broken and she’d trusted him, somehow. There was a world’s worth of difference between relying on someone and giving them your whole heart. If she’d ever wanted it or not, she had his.

She’d needed him. They’d been standing together in that very kitchen. She hadn’t known her name and he’d repeated it to her over and over and over. She couldn’t expect it to be that way forever, she’d said, terrified and half afraid she was going to lose him too. She never expected it. She never thought she could deserve anything; but she did, so much. He felt like she was going to pull all the breath from his lungs. He was hers. He wanted to show her.

He’d bought her a ring the next day. It was soon, crazy timing, but then nothing about them had been normal. It shouldn’t have been right to talk about engagement or marriage right after she’d called it off to another man. But he’d been sure, so sure that it was her-all her feeling something. It didn’t have to mean anything more than that if she hadn’t wanted it to. He’d wanted to give her something real. He’d had the ring in his hand, ready, more sure than anything in his life.

The white wrapping paper around the box crinkled in his hand. He’d been with her, holding her hand until it wasn’t her there, anymore. Maybe she had loved him, a little, all on her own. Maybe she could have. Maybe they could have made it.

He put the ring there, on the table, had shaky. Maybe it was selfish to drag it all out again and she would just want to forget. He didn’t want to leave her, ever. He had to, but he needed her to know what he felt, how he would always feel.

The last thing he did in Metropolis was drop his apartment key into Clark’s hand. It would be hers now. It was the one thing he could do. It held his last message to her. Not his last. Not his last.

----

Chloe woke up in a room with white bed sheets, alone except for Clark. He was alive and coming along well, if the strength of his hug was anything. She waited a few drawn out seconds. If he was alive then…

“Where’s Davis?” she asked.
He’d been lucky. Clark had given him a chance to start over far away.

Chloe’s stomach plummeted. “He didn’t want to see me?” She expected Braniac’s takeover to be poison, to rip him apart inside. The knowledge that you were yanked around like a puppet on a string and everything you’d felt was a lie was capable of plenty. She would know.

He might have lost that connection to her, but the Davis she knew wouldn’t run. “You forced him away, didn’t you?”

“He destroyed half the city, Chloe. What did you really expect me to do?” Clark sounded like Oliver now.

“Gosh, I don’t know, maybe let him see if I was alright?”

“Can you honestly tell me you would have wanted that after what he did?”

“What exactly did he do?”

Clark paced, arms crossed over his chest, face floundering.
“In order for Braniac to have complete control over the destroyer, he would have needed a connection. A physical connection. Garth explained it to me before…before he…was murdered.”

“..the sex.”

“I’m so sorry, if I had been a better friend, I could have found you first.”

“It happened. There were two of us.” She remembered just how much of the two of them there were.

“You were distraught and not in your sane mind, controlled by Braniac. Davis took advantage of that and didn’t even tell you who or what he was. He kept you away so he could… You were pretty beat up when I brought you in.”

“I—Braniac--I wanted to stay away. I wanted…” that. Chloe knew she could better defend her actions if she knew exactly how much of each had played in. But she was too busy trying to separate which parts of her had been just her and which parts hadn’t been. The bigger part of her, just begging for that little push to jump right into what she’d wanted all along.

And Davis… “That wasn’t all him. There was some red kryptonite involved.”

“How the h---how in the world did he stumble on that?”

"Jimmy’s engagement ring was studded with a red rock which I did not remember, because all my memory on the subject was completely wiped clean. You remember your little summer, don’t you? Bits and snatches? There were women for you. With him, there was just me.”

“You don’t have to justify it. He felt something, but he just took…”

“ took? You‘re trying to say rape delicately, aren’t you?” Clark was one to talk about that. He had taken her mind.

“I don’t even know if I can trust you again, so save the compassion. You took my memories away. I asked you, Clark.”

Clark heard very little of that part. He apologized and looked on with sad eyes. He wasn’t sorry. He was willing to do whatever just so she would patch it all up with Jimmy and go back to being the girl who could drop it all to help him.

But Chloe could not (would not) patch it up with Jimmy, not after vanishing for three days. He looked at her and his eyes were so mechanic, mouth petulant. So where have you gone this time?

What was there to say? I happened to use your cheap meteor ring on a friend of mine. We lived together for three days and had hours and hours of sex. Eventually, an alien supercomputer burst out of my brain and turned him into a spiky monster. Before we could destroy too much of Metropolis, Clark (he’s an alien Jesus by the way), stabbed him in the heart. And I healed them both and you’re totally going to think I love them more than you. One of them is somewhere in I-don’t-know-where, the other I’m currently not talking to, but you’d probably be right.

Chloe could have lied, but she was tired of lies- telling them or receiving them. She was standing in front of Jimmy at the door of the apartment, wan in the set of clothes she left the hospital with, but not caring to be perfect for his little world anymore.

She just pulled out the cheating card. Red rocks and computer codes were fine, but it all came down to that in the end. She’d done that in every other sense of the word; going to Davis and trusting him and not this life she was supposed to serve honor and obey. Red rock or coding or no coding, she had imagined her life with him and she hadn’t wanted to come back.

Jimmy yelled a little, said quite a few words she didn’t even know how to repeat and her head felt less heavy than it had in a long time. They weren’t the one true thing. He didn’t sound as if he loved her at all. With her little Braniac-inspired trip and her deep rooted attraction to Davis, she hadn’t betrayed love.

“I always knew there was something going on with you. I just took it, like everything else. You never wanted anything I had to give. You wanted, what was that you call it again, a ‘friend’?” He slammed the door and she cemented that little theory of his by moving into Davis’s apartment that very day.

----

Moving. She didn’t get all that far. Her luggage stayed in a pile at the door. The clothes she had used were already in Davis’s closet, next to those pressed uniforms of his. Still there. Where had he gone?

She sat at his table, her face against the smooth grained wood and tried to push the memories back. She needed to pull them out, to process. She thought she’d be angry, angry and hurt at him.

But the resentment never came. She felt it, but it was on Clark, on Brainiac, on her whole damn world for taking the one thing she had completely and turning and soiling it. Davis had been her friend before he’d been more, and where was he now, in some far off place, trying to put himself back together after all of it. He hadn’t control of himself or what he felt, and maybe that had broken him.

She didn’t know what she’d expected. For them to mutually bond over being used and carelessly tossed aside? She hated that she couldn’t just cling to him and cry. She hated that it had taken her friend too.

Chloe didn’t have memories of the blood when the Destroyer came to life, computer code, all that information being sucked into her extremities like lightning. It had been Braniac using her to direct it all. She was just his tool then.

But Chloe’s memories of Davis were crystal clear. There had been more than one day, all the other memories disappearing like so much dust. The first morning had turned to the next, and she realized he had taken his vacation just to be close to her. There wasn’t that much to be close to.

She’d felt like a shadow. Her temples ached; everything ached so she felt like something could just burst out and more than once she sat over the table, scanning through the memory loss books and wanting to cry like a little girl. She didn’t recognize the faces on the files, but he had been there, bringing the remnants of her back out.

They’d danced in his kitchen to an old vinyl record, something British and completely unlike him, she couldn’t remember the name. She didn’t have anything but him, irrevocably. She’d forgotten her own name for the first time that day; and she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. He’d had as good as made a vow, but who could live their whole life with a woman who knew no more than a child? She couldn’t expect that.

Something had changed in his eyes there, and his face was soft, compassionate and denying, but his eyes were set, determined like she couldn’t move him. He would have told her something. Instead, he pulled her back into their swaying dance, there, standing in the middle of the floor.

He seemed extra determined to make her feel cherished. When he finally joined her than night, he was gentle and unhurried and perversely that made her cry out all the more. She felt loved. That had been the first time he said those words. Not feelings, love. Maybe the uncontrollable need had been a program, but that, that was all Davis. “I promise. I promise.” he’d said. He wasn’t here.

He hadn’t left even any sign, any indication other than that he was trying to get free and wanted to make it up to her somehow. But he was Davis and Davis wouldn’t have…

She saw the bundle.
There was a ring. Deceptively small, a glimmering stone that must have cost half his salary. No letter, no explanation. Just a ring, there, like he wanted her to find it.

What kind of guy made love to you, loved you, left you a ring and nothing else?
She was alone. She’d always known he could break her heart.

----

Once she had known less than that. She’d barely been Chloe and she’d known Davis. It didn’t matter what else she lost. She would always remember his name.

Davis-he was….cuddling with her? He exhaled slowly, in and out against her skin and she bit back a shudder. He was asleep.

Davis looked like a young boy, face pressed against her stomach. He’d been a foster kid, hadn’t grown up like she must have. It must have been a lonely life, home to home, carrying his entire life in one of those black garbage bags. Physical affection had been the exception rather than the rule and now it was like he was trying to make up for that absence of touch.
She knew more about his childhood than she did hers. She must have had one. A mother and a father and a nice red –bricked house. She had to think of the things and people that had been important to her. He’d been helping her do that.

But increasingly her world was becoming all him and she thought she minded the loss of the rest of it less than he did. Maybe they’d been together forever, she thought. Maybe he was her family now. She’d been crying, she hadn’t known why, and he was there and wasn’t that what family meant?

He twisted, cheek lodging itself firmly in her thigh. No, no. He had to be like that. His breath seemed to displace the thoughtful part of her mind, but she couldn’t let that happen. She pressed her head back against the pillow and tried to think.
In this fantasy life of hers she worked, somewhere, at something she liked to do. She knew the names of the people around her. She got home early, precisely at six, to fumble about in anticipation or fall out on the couch. An hour later he came home to her, uniform wrinkled and he’d always iron with the shirt off because she made holes.

Come here. Please, she’d say and he would pad over, measured steps a little faster because he could pick her up and swing her and carry her off if she wanted. He’d kiss her hard like always, a little sweaty because it was burning hot. He’d tell her about the people he saw today, two old ladies who never baked and a boy with the cast on his leg and she would smile because he was so him. His eyes would be light and optimistic but she wouldn’t be able to smile for long.

She’d be seeing the half open collar of his, and the long sleeves making him sweat and she wouldn’t help him with the rest. He would go content and still as her fingers wandered over the heavy cloth and ask her what she was doing but his muscles would seem to fight with themselves as she felt the texture of it in her teeth.

Every girl loves a man in uniform, she said. In uniform?, he’d tease and his breath would catch as that second button went. Yes, yes, tell me more, she’d say, breathing in skin and sweat and a little lust. His voice would get low; a little stumbling and he’d start again.

The zipper would be a hard one but then she would just be wondering at how he could overheat so and she’d meet his eyes, blinking, filling up the world before she slipped down on him. Target. Found it.

He’d jolt a little but his callused hands on her neck and back would be too careful, always trying not to break her. The rest of him would be fighting it and yes and she would feel like she was bobbing for apples and his voice would just …

“Good Morning.” He said.

“Did I wake you up?” she asked. He was just happy, hoping it was a good day for her too.

“No. I was up.” It had nothing to do with—her skin turned all at once terribly hot and terribly cool when he seemed to slow down to breathe. His lips pressed gently at her hipbone, and she was almost certain he was doing it on purpose.

“I know you. You’re a terrible liar. What did I say?”

“Yes.“ he fingered her slippery hand, awfully close to where she had…. Oh. deargodno. “Then you said yes again.”

“Funny dream. I wish I could remember it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you do that. It’s my job.”

“---you really don’t need to…umm…” His eyes were closed, nose nuzzling into her, slow like she was…some sort of cute animal. Or food.

“What is that about turnabout and fair play?” he sounded almost philosophical but that look was definitely not. He hadn’t shaved yet and he was prickling—her fingers slid against his neck, hesitant and a little jumpy.

She had little room for shame with him. He’d probably found his way to every other inch of her but being kissed there... From small, scattered bits of memories, she knew this should have made her uncomfortable. She hadn’t let…someone else do that. It was …private…too embarrassing…intimate…
Let go, he said.

She needed to backpedal but she found herself frozen by the look of him. His tongue was a little rough on her and then... she twisted her ankle into one of the gaps in the sideboard.

Now, awake, she wanted to take that sideboard and deconstruct into little pieces, but she was no Kryptonian. Not like was, had been with his intensity and his eyes and that way he had of making the fear just vanish. Everything that he’d touched just hurt. Her most of all.

But Chloe Sullivan knew hurt. What was there to do after that? You lived. That was the most basic part. You cried to someone, a friend. You changed how you dressed, you found yourself a hobby, you dyed your hair some obscene color.

Chloe Sullivan had no friends to cry to except Lois and half the time Lois gave her a message from Clark. So she cut her hair off, ignored the rest of her world and picked up the pen again.

Clark came by and talked to himself. She didn’t exorcise the memories. She couldn’t do that, couldn’t exorcise Davis. He’d rooted himself deep. It seemed impossible that he would just go.

She didn’t understand his message until a week after, at his desk trying to scratch out something, anything, with her pen. There was a small pad of notepaper, a message written over and over in his writing. She’d written much the same thing herself, once, lovesick on a pad of pink paper and waited for her heart to break.

I’ll let you go for now, hoping one day you’ll fly back to me. Hoping one day you’ll fly back to me.
A sign was all she needed. Just one word. Chimbote.

----

[Chloe Sullivan could wait no more than one week, twenty two hours, three minutes for Davis Bloome. She could not wait, but she had not been the Watchtower for nothing. She could track like nobody’s business.
It took nine hundred miles of jet gas, and hours on the road where she thought she was jumping in feet first, like she only had once before. Maybe she was chasing after a memory of something beautiful and tragic and irreplaceable. Something that had never been hers.

Each mile that disappeared made her think that maybe he would wake up and see it had been just an endless stream of numbers running in both of their heads-or just his. Maybe he wouldn’t love her anymore. Maybe she…Maybe Clark would lecture her on this someday. She couldn’t not try. She found herself waving down a guide for directions, the sun beating down on her face and turning her already worthy tan a tad darker.

She saw him coming out of a clinic, if it could be called that, flushed with the heat, in nothing like his uniform had been. What he wore looked like grimy scrubs, but he was still Davis, still running headlong into things and trying to save people. His hair was different, longer, as if he wasn’t quite taking care of himself.

Then it was like before, that moment they say when you see that person and everything freezes around you and all that is left is yourself, the small shirking part of you, exposed so you can never draw it back again.

He found her eyes in it all, like he always did. This couldn’t be a lie. She felt like someone was reaching into her chest and squeezing. There was so much pain in him, just like there was in her, but that was not all.

He caught her in his arms there in the center of a plaza in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t have to say words, so many words before he could get any out. Somehow he seemed to see it all already, just like he saw her. Maybe not all.

She would remember that her smile wasn’t quite perfect, and wouldn’t care that this wasn’t quite their place. “It hurts to smile doesn’t it?” She whispered. His hand shifted around hers, fingers brushing over her knuckles and her smile did not hurt then, not in the least. His eyes were soft and shocked and then his hand was warm cradling hers. There was just one ring on her finger, with only one stone. It wasn’t red.]

----
Epilogue:

Davis thought she was going to demolish the wall. He wasn’t quite invulnerable, but he wasn’t quite human either, or up there on the self-control meter and she was pushing hard. Maybe he’d be the battering ram; he wasn’t stopping her. She was warm and real and alive and there was no cold glint in her eyes. It had been weeks.

Not that he was complaining about the wall. It worked enough in the context that it had become home, one of the four working walls of an isolated adobe hut. When the rain beat on the roof, a few strategically placed buckets did the trick. After the rain, the air was richly populated with mosquitoes, and last night it hadn’t been. This was the only place they could go.

Oh, they’d held out for a while. She’d held onto him and talked and he’d stared and stared. She had told him about her latest projects, a cross-country Isis group and her own special assignment for a newspaper for the Star. She needed room and board, she told him, almost-straight-faced. A party sized shower could make or break it. She remembered every single moment; she knew. She was still here. He wondered if it still marked her.

They stayed caught up there. How was the clinic? It let him get back by the bootstraps. Her eyes scanned his, half-gentle, half-something-else-entirely and her lips gave a nervous gleam. He had to learn to be the curandero too. That was really very handy for the exorcisms. He hadn’t been able to let go of her hands yet, fingers closed around a symbol of something. She turned her face into his shoulder, smile half-forming and it had been hard not to pick her up right then.

He’d half succeeded, brushed the new bangs from her eyes and felt like he was kissing her for the first time again. Nothing of the past had ever really happened for them, but it had and the memories were strong. It was hard not to think of her body twisting under his with the unexpected hunger of her response.

He’d never expected it but he had hoped. It was more than hope, Chloe with a stranglehold on his shoulders, pressing him against the wall, wrestling her mouth into his. This was so out of place with everything else, the Spartan surroundings, the knowledge and the emptiness and the memories of the cold, cold eyes and the blood he could only half remember.

She was sixteen hours on coffee, unfettered caution and a rush. He bent closer and her back bowed, pulling, leading him, thumbs brushing over his closed eyes, his back, the back of his neck, breath in unsteady puffs. Maybe she was thinking of sparing the wall too.

This wasn’t just it: he had expected she would break down and hold him and they’d be able to deal. He’d be able to fix that. But he couldn’t fix this. It was not broken. There was something slower and more intimate in her touch than it had been before. His hands didn’t know where to stop, hooked into the loops of those slacks of hers and tugged and she had the zipper undone before he could blink. Just a little more. No tugging. She had to know. They had to talk.

She wasn’t looking at him, though. In the distraction she had turned back over her shoulder, looking for a place to settle. There was one bed, a cot really, but the two of them could fit on it. He could almost visualize the thoughts whirring in her head. He really shouldn’t have.

His mouth opened with the reasons they should take it slow and nothing came out. Well something came out, but it wasn’t words. It wasn’t enough. He’d never noticed how overwhelmingly comfortable she was with imbalance, up and down, suspended. Her elbows rested on his shoulders and her mouth barely slipped against his own, her hands actually catching in his hair. His head spun like there was no air in all the world and he needed...

He was supposed to make them something permanent; give her something, not throw her around like some caveman. His fingers hovered over her shoulders, noticing then that the bruises had all gone. He slipped her down again, throat trembling at her little groan. Showed where his thoughts were at. But he was not the last survivor of the bony monster for nothing. “I love you and that’s why I want you to…”

She rubbed at his chest under the torn V of his shirt, fingers unbelievably gentle and the blood went rushing straight to his groin. “Want what?” It was easy to remember how it was.

He just had to close his eyes…think of the bruises and holding still and not where her hands were at. Take it slow. Yes. Take it slow. Two minutes later, he had partially succeeded in slowing himself down, but Chloe was a special case.
“We need to talk” he said.

“So talk.” Before he’d halfway opened his mouth, she leaned down and bit his chin, catlike and unmoving. “Dimples.” she said. He rubbed at his jaw and wondered if she was on the human equivalent of catnip. Sensing his hand might not be as receptive, she circled to the cloth of his shirt. Maybe there were human equivalents of the rocks. The Chloe he knew…. well the one he knew…didn’t bite like….ohh…

"I’m a little wound up.” she said, and her pristine, white shirt hit the floor running. The floor was dirty. Not dirty, in the slobbish way but literally made of dirt and his fingers were fighting to twist the straps of her undershirt. He had a will. He did.

“No. Not yet.” He whispered. It wasn’t a fight. She wasn’t completely sure how much had been her; but then again she really didn’t seem to need anything in her to.

She made a great play of running her fingers along the wall behind him and catching the little flakes under her nails. He closed his eyes, because it wouldn’t work if two different parts of him were sending different signals.
“I need you, you need me, I don’t see what the problem is.”

“We can find a way back, slowly. “ Considering the mixed up nature of their history they had to take time to sort it all out. There were no Machiavellian alien supercomputers, no bony destroyers to deal with. They had time to really get to know each other, again, as they were. This was what he’d wanted, the romance and the chance to make her fall like any normal guy with a girl he loved.

They didn’t need to ‘be together’ to be together. At least not right away. She didn’t look convinced, rolling her jeans up to her knees like she would have sleeves. She really remembered too much about him. “Please understand.”

“Because you are you, you’re telling me I’m going to be celibate.”

She prepared for bed, right there, taking one of his shirts from the wash basket. There was sweat all over that shirt and she knew where the clean clothes were. Oh hell. It was like he was on her by proxy.

It was gentlemanly to turn toward the wall. Facing the wall was like putting his nose into a grindstone, literally. Painful and logically…ridiculous. Of course he could turn to her but then she would look at him and then…. The last thing he wanted was it to end up into something panicked and desperate and unsatisfying. She wanted to feel alive, but that wasn’t all they were about.

He hadn’t asked her how much she remembered and she hadn’t asked how long he kept that secret of his. He told her things, short silly things that must have been romantic in some place and time. For them- that affection, always there, and that banter had become a cushion to walk on when everything else held a fear of falling too far to ever get back again. Everything fell down.

“I feel real now.” She said, clambering behind him.
Her arms brushed against the back of his, her pupils pinpricks in the light. There was no buzz of static noise in the back of his mind, no painful burn in his skin. He wanted to be close to her. Maybe if she just stayed and they didn’t move from this spot ever again...

She settled there, breathed on him and it was hard not to move.

“So you want emotional things.” She said, chin against his back. “I’ll give you emotional things. ”The letter. No one’s ever told me that. No one ever meant it.” Her hands were on the scrubs, tugging them up over his head and a corner of a sleeve snagged under him, against the mattress.

He knew and didn’t really believe in spite of this, her hands being all over him before. It was one thing to convince yourself, to know that someone loved you once. When you had the rug pulled out under you, you had to learn it all over again, regardless of what you saw or felt deep. “What are you doing?” was all he could ask.

“It’s hot.” Chloe said, tracing invisible tattoos, whorls into his skin and he couldn’t make himself ease down. Her touch prickled like warmth, normal human (her) warmth, not like static.
“You were used, too, not just me. You’re scared and that’s okay. You don’t need to move.” That was pretty darned impossible.

“But I need to give you a chance to…” to what, to love him, to trust him again? She could have hidden at that, the thought of Braniac or coding. But the part that had trusted him, that part was all her. She was trusting him.

She thought he wanted her to talk about love, and she’d always been afraid of it.

Her whole life had been one carefully constructed balance; always at the nature of tipping over. She’d loved the Weird and Unexplained, and somehow that had been the guiding compass of her heart. Love Clark, but don’t hold your breath. Stop holding your breath and then backpedal like the devil is at your heels. Find yourself the farthest thing from that and tell yourself you’re happy. Be his friend; help him, that’s all you can do. Don’t let any of it get to you. But it was her fatal flaw, her one salvation. Davis had gotten to her.

Maybe- Chloe did not know what love was. No one ever scared her and made her feel safe. No one ever needed her, or wanted to show her that completely. “Then you were gone and I didn’t have anything.” Do you understand?

She didn’t touch, didn’t tease anymore, but he felt her breath like a warm mist. “Maybe this is what it’s like to learn.” He was disturbed that he couldn’t keep his touch light.

“I don’t want to break you.” She was strong, she had a front, but underneath he thought he’d find that the both of them had deep-matching scars.

“Don’t you think I’m scared of the same thing?” she whispered, waiting. His forehead touched hers and a corner of her mouth slanted up, otherwise.

There were principles. He didn’t want to risk this new clean beautiful thing they had but there would always be a risk here. They didn’t work out alone. Was it so bad to learn together? So he kissed her, much harder than he’d intended. And she took the invitation.

“I still have to take you out.” He protested, but he must have pushed her head back, muffled words in her throat. It had been weeks, but it felt like forever and the scattered impressions whirred by him fast.

They were warmth and light and the thick feel of heat gathering in his palms, moving down her, moving in her. The slow, taunt impact of the mattress under his back. The way she settled over him, eyes soft at the movement, perfectly aligned. He breathed through his mouth. Being with her, trapped in the corner by the wall, he felt like every tissue of his body wanted to gravitate to her, bone and muscle, only held back by resisting issues. He loved her. There could be nothing else.

“We’re still learning, so I luff you.” She smiled, not conflicted, not confused at all. “Our own word.”

The pressure for nownownow was off and there was time for exploration. He learned things, how tension jumped through her calves, how most of her would give a curious little jolt at a certain spot behind her knee. Her hands trailed along with his, following, mimicking and there came a point when what they learned and what they needed were two different things.

She couldn’t hurt him with her hands and nails scraping against his back and he wasn’t hurting her pulling her down. There wasn’t much cloth to deal with and her hands snarled against his, freeing all of him under her body.

He tried to keep his hands firm but not bruising, holding her knees apart as if she needed any help. He felt hesitant smoothness and a moment’s worth of intensity like this was all they needed. Then it was as if she would not stop pushing it farther. Gentle was not exactly the word for it. Feeling was all he knew and the world was suddenly being robbed of air. He was trapped this time. She had control and that was what she needed, to know that it was all her choice what this became. If he survived it.

Keeping still was a harder task than it seemed, and he reacted as strongly as he had before, fighting the pull to bury himself deep and not quite winning. She pushed her head back, leaning into him, being pushed up and away. She was quaking, breasts bouncing lightly against his chest through the semi rough cotton of the shirt, not controlled. But she would never shift her eyes and they were tender.

She was too. He wasn’t about to let himself forget that, but when he touched her she seemed to want more. “Healing, remember?” He didn’t want to hurt her but it was automatic. His hands moved their way up to her shoulders, massaging and pushing deep enough in the muscle to bruise.

Her fingers clenched in his suddenly and he could feel the short nail bitten ends in his palms. She mewled and he thought of catnip again. She was slowing then, trying to hold on and it should have been easier. He smiled; face turning half agonized as her muscles went into spasm.

“---told you—I was wound up.” She licked a bead of sweat off his cheek and her eyelashes fell against his forehead. “Let go.”
She was trying to rush him, but her hands kept floundering, making their way back to his arms, stroking as if he wasn’t really there. He had to notice this, remember the details. Every single one. But it was like his eyes were opening and closing, spastic. It shouldn’t have been possible to feel this much.

They needed something to hold onto and he couldn’t force the trembling feeling down. He leaned up on his elbows. They needed to be close. It was easy then her mouth opening against his, slow and unhurried, tongue running gently against the seams of his teeth. Not lustful, not chaste. Affirming, I’m here. They hadn’t been able to quite—oh damn.
His eyes slammed shut and he must have made a sound, everything squeezing out of him and coming out rough, leaving him spent and shaking. “I’m here. I’m here.” She was murmuring little things, trying to....comfort him?

And she was touching his hair, slowing in circles but she was still drawn tight and her breath was snagging. Spoiled, she said. She had; but she wanted more. She was desperate for it. There was a fire in him again, not screaming or blinding but a pleased warmth spreading through his skin. A sensitivity to her, of her. He wanted to make her happy, free of everything left to tether her to the ground.

She seemed transfixed by the creeping fingers to the inside of her thigh. Her breath was hanging unfinished in the air, encouraging and he didn’t need unnaturally keen sense to know how close she was. His hand crept higher and he had to remember that she was breakable, but he was absorbed in clinging warmth and need and the look on her face.

His free fingers twisted at the nape of her neck and she was rocking, single-minded. Her lips fell against his wrist, feeling the pounding there and she was shaking and making this keening fractured sound in her throat like she just had.

She came down, little irregular shocks going through her frame and she couldn’t move farther than the circle of his arms. He never wanted her to. His hand moved up her neck, smoothing over unbelievably shorter hair. Oh, they had the rest beat, she said. Her head tucked into the notch between his jaw and neck, breathing and it felt like part of him, long last had been reattached. But he was still waiting.

----
Time passed differently here. Davis had to await a disaster call to go on duty again, but every moment he was with Chloe he knew he could easily forget it. They were alone and without the connections to the outside world that a communications expert like her needed like food. They hadn’t really thought about food all the way into that night either.

His home? was cut off from everything else, a two hour walk away from good eats. There were no worries about neighbors pounding on the walls demanding quiet, she grinned. Leave it to her to find the silver lining.

She’d just had a grueling flight though and eventually she was actually sleeping, making a slow whuffling sound into his chest. He put her cheek on the fluffed pillow, didn’t want her to bruise when he slid out from over her, fumbling in the dark, stepping out into the dark night. He’d said they would make their way back once; but this time would be different. Every time it was different, but he refused to think of that now.

Regardless of what she thought, he would change it. But first he had to rouse her, preferably by crawling in next to her. She noticed that. “Come with me, just for a second?”

“I’m happy where I am.” She murmured, curling cat-like into him. (Since when had she learned that?). He was clothed, thank god. It couldn’t be too hard, but it was. She had disturbingly grabby fingers and a soft mouth.

“This is much better.” she whispered, like it was a dirty word, kissing the movement out of his throat and he had to stop her. Had to. Had to.

He leapt up, gathered the two ends of his collar back together, hands moving in dazed slowness. Thoughts. Sentient thoughts.

“Just trust me okay? I have to show you something.” He couldn’t betray his resolution now. He smoothed the sweaty hair away from her ear and held out his hand. “Please?”

“Stop with that face. You’ve won. You might as well cover my eyes while you’re at it.” She grumbled.

She took his hand finally, fingers curling into it. He guided them; closed them over the shutter pull and she didn’t pull right away. She looked so small with the shirt hanging over her shoulder. Vulnerable, like he could have broken her if he ever pushed to hard. “Okay.”

She yanked back on the rope and squinted at the shower of red falling all around her. Rose petals, red as blood. Right outside, the slow strum of guitar strings came to life. There were three voices, bass and tenor, a little rough around the edges. /Recuerda aquella tarde que yo te conoci/

She turned back to him, eyes comically wide, accusing. “You just had the last word, didn’t you? Romance forsooth!”
He shrugged, eyebrows perking and hands sweating. Wait for it.

/Olle esta canzion lleva alma corazon y vida…/
There were three mariachis, mustached and in wide brimmed hats, amiable enough that they agreed to trouping on out in the middle of the night for a few Soles. She was a pretty girl? They’d asked. They didn’t know the half of it.

/Alma para conquistarte, Corazon para quererte y vida para vivirla junta a ti./
Chloe closed her eyes, tapped her fingers to the beat of the solo. She was eclectic; he’d noticed that sharing rides with her to Isis sometimes.

He wanted to learn all those things, too, whatever this thing between them ended up being. He tried to keep back the rustle of sound from the gravel on his knee.

“You’re going to ask me to marry you.” She was kneeling on level with him, knees scraping on the dirt.

“How--?”

“Heart, Soul and Life. Intermediate Spanish. We special coverage reporters need diverse educations.” Her voice wasn’t light and flirting, it was frail.

“And…will you..?” She hadn’t even opened her eyes yet, and the impending words froze in his throat.

What did this look like to her, like he wanted the white dress, a pretty girl on his arm, the flashing camera? Like he wanted to grab onto her with two hands and not let her go? Chloe was his riddle and half the time he didn’t know how to hold on to that answer.

When you find love hold onto it, he’d told her once and maybe he was holding on too tight, too soon. She wanted him, he knew that, but maybe she didn’t want forever. She’d just gotten out of that.

(He didn’t want perfect. He wasn’t Jimmy.) He’d wanted to say ‘It’s out there. It’s open.’ in a less dramatic way than letting her find him. Something she could enjoy for once. He didn’t want her to cry.

Her cheek was wet when her lips hit his and there wasn’t really another explanation. She kissed him harder and he couldn’t breathe. She’d done this before. This part of them was easy, but he wanted the more complex to part to be too. He drew a hand along her cheek, slid it between her insistent lips and his. She wasn’t saying a word now, ducking her head into his neck to avoid his eyes.

“You don’t have to answer today or tomorrow. I just thought it would be nice…” His stomach did a slow turn on itself and this was another one of their moments.

It felt like she had been waiting since forever.


“What else did you think I meant by that ring?” The tentative, almost cobweb-like weight of her hands felt extra sharp and extra real. “I do.” She blinked fast and didn’t turn her away, kept them fixed on his face. “Say something?”

He understood the fear in her eyes then. Not of losing everything; but having it all. She wasn’t running and he wasn’t waiting and this meant something. He remembered what if was like to smile.

The music had long since fallen into a confused jumble but the universe had shrunken, narrowed into this microcosm of their moment.

His arms barely caught up to hold her tight and she didn’t squirm this time, didn’t try to wriggle herself closer so that he would lose his mind and they could forget what it all meant. Her hands drew up his back and stayed there like they were content to rest there forever.

There were many things Davis would remember that night.

The gist was simple. He’d waited. She had. They weren’t waiting any longer.

----

Endnotes: Just for explanation.

Chloe losing her memory after *the cure* in Abyss? Well this fic, along with allowing me to jump into the red!k thing, allowed me to really bring in some spec at the time. What if Clark's mindRAPE (yes I'm saying it) instead of loosening Braniac's hold on Chloe, strengthened it. This fic works on that assumption, as well as Jor-El being unable to fully 'cure' Chloe and a remnant of Braniac staying within her. Green flickers? OMG what is he trying to do with Chloe and Davis?

This also works on the assumption of Braniac pushing the wedding to go through.because we all know that was the only reason a smart girl like Chloe could want to marry something like JimmyHenry. Braniac was trying to activate Doomsday, and Davis's emotions were his only way of doing that. So then he attempted to use the connection with Chloe and we all know how that turned out.