It's heartbreaking, but it's affirming and the ambiguity of the ending lets you fill in the gaps as you will.
She kissed him in the darkness, but in the daylight it was too easy to see the goosebumps on her skin from his touch.
“Let’s leave Smallville.”
Chloe and Davis run away. Far away. They erase Smallville from their maps, not wanting to be found.
-¤-
Wherever they go, they’re just the blond and the dark haired but pale man.
Davis tells her, “I’m okay. You don’t have to sit around with me all day.” (It’s almost painstaking to tell her this. But it’s obligatory--the good guy in him tells him so.)
She shrugs, smiles. “I’m okay, too. I like it here.”
They sit in a dusty motel, the noise of traffic blowing through the cracks of the windows. A shopping mall down the block, a park across the street, a café down the north road. Just minutes from Chloe, from average civilization, but Chloe sits on the stained mattress just inches from Davis, talking about anything that doesn’t remind either of them of home (or in Davis’ case, the lack of any home).
It’s just the first week though, Davis reminds himself. The first week of anything is the toughest.
.
Chloe makes a phone call to Clark.
Davis knows it’s necessary. For her, anyway, it’s necessary. He also knows it’s necessary for her to have a life that isn’t just about him, but any slip away she takes, his heart involuntary sheds a fraction.
She smiles at him--not the most sincere smile, but she smiles. He feels intact. Okay, he remembers. He knows she’s there when he needs her.
This is what the first month is like for the most part.
.
The solitary life is infuriating. Chloe isn’t herself. So Davis gets mad. Davis blacks out. He blames her.
And then he’s sorry.
“It’s not your fault,” he says in puffs, shivering against the dark.
She only rubs his arms.
“I…I’m angry. I want you to be happy. And because you’re not, I yell. But I’m mad at myself. Know that.”
Chloe pulls her hands from his arms. She tilts her head at him and smirks.
“Hey, I made a decision. Yeah, it’s hard to get used to this. To being away from Smallville. From Clark, Lois, Jimmy too. But what’s life if not change? Just constant change.”
Chloe possesses a rare courage. The sort where she has the capacity to say what everyone is thinking, but no one dare speak. She hadn’t spoken one word of Jimmy to him since before she’d left Smallville, hadn’t said the word “missed”--but she said it now. And though the mention or thought of her husband tends to surge rage in him, in this context, it is necessary.
He kisses her then. And she kisses him back.
This is progress for him.
-¤-
Six months after crossing Smallville off their map, Chloe and Davis pretend a dingy apartment in New Jersey is perfect.
Davis sleeps on the sofa bed of the living room-slash-kitchen-area, and Chloe sleeps in the room with a curtain for a door.
It’s laughable, so Chloe laughs after the first night, and soon Davis is laughing too. Kansas was small, as were the houses on occasion, but the rooms were always home. This apartment was the exact opposite, but it was remote and quiet enough to not allow for disturbances. The neighbors were sparse, and mostly working people who couldn’t be around to ask questions. To inquire, or to refer to Davis and Chloe as a couple.
(The terminology was too complicated for Chloe. She kissed him in the darkness, but in the daylight it was too easy to see the goosebumps on her skin from his touch.)
.
Chloe was a trained reporter once upon a time, and a watchtower to superheroes, and now she serves hot plates to ordinary people.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a waitress,” she snaps at him when he slides her a brochure for a local magazine department.
“I’m just trying to help, Chloe.”
Chloe stares up at him, then down at her cereal bowl. She rounds her eyes, scanning the bare apartment and the old-fashioned tinted windows.
“This isn’t permanent, Davis. You know that we won’t stay here forever, that we can’t stand out anywhere we go. You know this better than me. And I get it--you worry that I feel stuck or trapped. But stop worrying. However I feel, or I don’t, that’s something I have to take care of. That’s my responsibility, not yours. So stop trying to make me, this normal. We’re not a normal couple, having breakfast before we head off to work. We’re two people, trying to stay alive, trying to keep people alive.”
“But I care about you, Chloe! I want to know how you feel and…and if you feel trapped.”
She sighs. She lowers her head, and a sound escapes her mouth. But she only stands up, grabs her purse, and says, “I’ll see you later.”
.
The phone in the apartment rings for the first time in the two months they’ve been there. Immediately, he knows something is wrong.
“Hello,” he says into the phone. There’s a strong pause, but he keeps the phone fastened to his hand, a lump strong in his throat.
“Davis, grab the money we’ve saved and get out. Take the 4:15 out to Connecticut.”
The phone clicks--his yells of “Chloe--Chlo!” were obsolete.
He grabs the money, and though she had told him to only get that, he grabs her emergency bag, throws in a couple of his shirts, and heads for the door when he hears steps feet from the door.
“Chloe, I know you’re in there!”
It’s none other than Lois Lane, and Davis feels a wave of fury.
He knows Clark could have found them long ago, but Chloe’s “I don’t want you to find us” must have subdued his search. But of course no such thing would pacify Chloe’s cousin.
He looks at the window. He slings the bag over his shoulder, pulls the window up, and doesn’t even take a breath when jumping down two levels.
His heels break, and a couple stares at him in awe when his bones crack back into place, and he stands up. He doesn’t look at them, despite their staring. He runs, runs impossibly fast.
At the train station, he pulls out a fake identification, buys a one way ticket to Connecticut, and he does something he’d only do for Chloe--he prays, prays she’s on the train, or at least that she’ll be in Connecticut.
On the train, he looks over every face twice. When he finds Chloe, he doesn’t have to do a double-take. He breathes “Thank God” and she hears it, but doesn’t acknowledge it.
He sits down beside her, asks “are you okay? Did she see you?”, but she only says in a murmur “I’m okay”.
She’s silent the rest of the way, and so is he.
-¤-
They reach their destination, Chloe picks out an inn, and they room together. She doesn’t ask for two beds, although she usually does.
When in the room, she tosses him a passport--a fake passport, that is.
“We’re going to Canada. First into Ontario, and east from there.”
“Alright.”
Chloe scrambles around the bag Davis brought, looking for nothing in particular. She stops suddenly, but still looks at the contents of the bag, her eyes stuck.
“I saw her. She went into the restaurant. I told the manager I felt sick and was going home. He said okay, it’s a slow day anyway. I went outside. And I just…stood there for a minute. I looked at her. I stared at her. Half of me hoped she saw me and would chase me. I saw her find the manager, and talk to him. Lois probably got the address from him. But she could have seen me right then and there. Still, I turned around, I ran off. I called you. I could have just as easily not called you. I could have stayed there, waiting until she came back outside, and see me. I could have let her yell at me. Then take me home. But I didn’t. I ran away. Again.”
Davis feels his heart pounding in his chest. Afraid. Scared. He is scared. Sure, she’s here now. But she could have another moment, any second, she could have a moment where wants to go home.
“If I’m trapped, it’s because I want to be trapped. You need me and…I’m not even sure if you want me because I can…save you, or because I‘m me. And I don’t need you, I don’t need this. And this definitely isn’t the life I want. But I want to be here.”
Davis looks over at her, to see her looking at him.
“I want you here,” he says.
Chloe walks over to him. She wraps her arms around his shoulders. And then he feels the burn of her tears.
“I’ve betrayed everyone I love, everyone who loves me. I turned my back on the girl who fell in love with and married Jimmy.”
He holds her firmly. “But you want to be here.”
He feels her nod.
(He feels empowered. He knows it’s wrong to feel this when she’s breaking, but she’s also building something--building a place where she accepts that the blacks and whites of life have no place in reality. )
They share the bed that night, but they only sleep.
He doesn’t black out this night.
-¤-
They don’t stay in Canada long. They remain in Russia for even a shorter period. It’s when they ride through Australia that they agree that it’s not a bad place at all.
They rent a flat in the middle of Albany, looking over a narrow street. It’s a two bedroom flat.
They’ve been sleeping together since Ontario (some weeks after that night they got to Canada--it was a normal night, and Davis knew she was frustrated more than anything, but she was hurting too hard for him to push her away then of all times) but she still wanted a two bedroom place.
Davis gets work at a bread shop and Chloe at a tech factory.
.
There are nights when Chloe can feel the walls shake. They’re only subtle vibrations, but they send her on alert.
“Davis, Davis, stay with me,” she whispers.
She clasps his head with her hands, tries to hold onto his eyes. He hasn’t blacked out in months, but he’s had close calls. He’ll always have close calls. This is something she’s accepted. But she won’t tell him, because he’ll then realize that in that aspect, she’s given up hope.
“Stay with me,” she says even more harshly.
His teeth clench, and his eyes blink rapidly.
Chloe kneels on his bed, and pulls his heavy frame to her. “Davis,” she says close to his ear.
He stops shaking gradually, and she finally feels him holding onto her.
She pulls back and smiles, relief spread over her eyes.
“Thank you,” he tells her.
His room is dark. She can’t even spot his shadow, but her own shadow lingers by the bedpost.
She kisses him, like she kissed him the night she got Clark’s phone call when in Quebec and he told her that Jimmy had filed for an uncontested divorce. She had hung up with a civil “thanks for telling me”, despite feeling like she had been given up on. But she didn’t really have a husband anymore--she hadn’t been a wife for too long now. So she kissed Davis, because she was just a girl alone with a boy who wanted her, needed her. She was alone with someone she chose not only to save her best friend, but also because he made her feel something she hadn’t known existed. (She doesn’t have a word for it, she only knew that Davis made her feel.)
.
She climbs into his bed on the nights when guilt isn’t weighing on her shoulders.
She used to kiss him hard when anger rose in her chest. But weeks passed, and he would make her laugh, he would make her forget they were living in a foreign land. He began kissing her softly on the cheek on his way out the door. He began buying her small insignificant treats and leaving them on the coffee table, or on the kitchen counters. She forgot this wasn’t normal, and when she remembered it wasn’t normal, she realized she was hurting him when she kissed him because someone from her past was pressing on her heart.
So she crashes on her bed when she’s spinning from madness and sadness, reeling from remorse. And when she’s done with tripping away from the world, she walks back into his world and falls into his pattern.
They do their best to keep the darkness outside his door.
.
“A picnic. At night. We’re not doing this with candles, right? There are a dozen trees around us,” Chloe says, a chuckle ringing through.
“Right, and girls are the romantic ones,” Davis muses.
“I’m just being practical,” Chloe shrugs, whilst jabbing his shoulder.
He sighs and shakes his head. “I brought a lamp,” he explains, taking out and lighting an encased lamp.
Chloe smiles widely at him, and sits back, looking at the stars overhead. The stars overhead never left her, and she never left them. It was the closest thing she had to home--in every corny sense of the connection.
“So, you want to start off with a sandwich, or pasta?”
Chloe cocks her head at him, squinting. “What kind of buffet is that?”
“I did what I could!” he yelps, laying out the simple sandwiches next to a Tupperware of pasta.
“Pasta first. We’ll save the best for last.”
“Sandwich rates over Italian pasta in your universe?”
“Oh, like it doesn’t in yours.”
Davis laughs, but nods. “You know me too well,” he murmurs. Chloe quiets, but keeps a tight smile on her face. She waits as he takes out the plates, and serves pasta on their respective plates, and places forks on them. He hands it to her, and she softly says “thank you”. She sits upright, and takes a bite.
“It’s good,” she says after one forkful.
“Thanks,” he says.
There’s a quiet tension, but Chloe doesn’t verbally acknowledge it. This is the epitome of a first date, but the thing is that they’ve been running from Smallville for close to 14 months now. The thing is that they have shared kisses, a bed for several months now. The thing is that they have sex now and then. The thing is that he treats her like his girlfriend, she lets him treat her so, and sometimes he is her boyfriend. The thing is, in all that time, with all their experiences, and with all the loud moments, with all the good quiet moments, they have never been on a date.
This isn’t a date either. She will not call it as such. For all the feelings she has for him, and as real as their situation is, the flat in Albany and the jobs are all pretend. And so too much of it is pretend to allow for something as real as a date.
The plates are empty and the sandwiches are gone soon enough. They lie on a blanket, inches between them, talking about nothing important. Minute facts that are interesting and vital to others, but irrelevant to them. Softened memories of their travels. Casual talk of work.
And then Davis seems to have fallen asleep.
Chloe blinks a slow blink. She breathes in a deep breath, exhales gradually. It’s peaceful and the numbing “You can’t do this forever” conscience dies. In another blink, Davis twitches beside her.
She can’t do this forever.
-¤-
The black outs come back. Stronger than before.
She had gotten used to the close calls, but there was a piece of hope that believed that the close calls were as bad as it was ever going to get again.
Davis told her he loved her one day. She was never able to say it back. She didn’t know why, she was just not able to say it. Maybe it was because love was a cursed word on her lips. Maybe it was because she wasn’t sure what she felt.
She never says she loved Davis for the simple fact that she may have been in love with him, but she didn’t love him. The inverse of loving a man but not being in love with him.
He fights her when she says they have to go back. It’s getting too dangerous for him. It’s too hard to control that foreign part of him. He refuses.
When he hurts her, that’s when he sees the foreign part of him is more Davis than that other thing. He says “let’s go back”.
.
They make a lot of stops, just the two of them. No public transportation.
Any time of day is dangerous. At any sign, Chloe stops for however long it may take. She tries to bring him back, no matter how dangerous he gets. Sometimes she succeeds. When she doesn’t, she still sticks around.
Some days, he wishes she wouldn’t. But he’s thankful.
.
They reach Mexico, but that’s as far as they get alone.
Clark gets to them, and everything is a blur afterward.
From Clark dashing them to his farm in Smallville, to the chains on Davis’ wrists. From Davis’ escape, to his capture and death.
Chloe Sullivan has a hand in it all. There’s blood on her hands in every metaphorical way possible. In a lot of literal ways too.
-¤-
She buries Davis. Clark joins her, but she tells him she can do it alone. It’s not his fault, it’s hers.
(Besides, Clark didn’t know Davis. Only Chloe knew Davis. And Davis was the only one who knew what Chloe was capable of, of what she had done in that year plus months away from home: things not Clark, not Lois, not Oliver could possibly imagine. What Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted of her.)
by falsemurmur at wings_for_craft
3120 words, pg-13, beast
She kissed him in the darkness, but in the daylight it was too easy to see the goosebumps on her skin from his touch.
“Let’s leave Smallville.”
Chloe and Davis run away. Far away. They erase Smallville from their maps, not wanting to be found.
-¤-
Wherever they go, they’re just the blond and the dark haired but pale man.
Davis tells her, “I’m okay. You don’t have to sit around with me all day.” (It’s almost painstaking to tell her this. But it’s obligatory--the good guy in him tells him so.)
She shrugs, smiles. “I’m okay, too. I like it here.”
They sit in a dusty motel, the noise of traffic blowing through the cracks of the windows. A shopping mall down the block, a park across the street, a café down the north road. Just minutes from Chloe, from average civilization, but Chloe sits on the stained mattress just inches from Davis, talking about anything that doesn’t remind either of them of home (or in Davis’ case, the lack of any home).
It’s just the first week though, Davis reminds himself. The first week of anything is the toughest.
.
Chloe makes a phone call to Clark.
Davis knows it’s necessary. For her, anyway, it’s necessary. He also knows it’s necessary for her to have a life that isn’t just about him, but any slip away she takes, his heart involuntary sheds a fraction.
She smiles at him--not the most sincere smile, but she smiles. He feels intact. Okay, he remembers. He knows she’s there when he needs her.
This is what the first month is like for the most part.
.
The solitary life is infuriating. Chloe isn’t herself. So Davis gets mad. Davis blacks out. He blames her.
And then he’s sorry.
“It’s not your fault,” he says in puffs, shivering against the dark.
She only rubs his arms.
“I…I’m angry. I want you to be happy. And because you’re not, I yell. But I’m mad at myself. Know that.”
Chloe pulls her hands from his arms. She tilts her head at him and smirks.
“Hey, I made a decision. Yeah, it’s hard to get used to this. To being away from Smallville. From Clark, Lois, Jimmy too. But what’s life if not change? Just constant change.”
Chloe possesses a rare courage. The sort where she has the capacity to say what everyone is thinking, but no one dare speak. She hadn’t spoken one word of Jimmy to him since before she’d left Smallville, hadn’t said the word “missed”--but she said it now. And though the mention or thought of her husband tends to surge rage in him, in this context, it is necessary.
He kisses her then. And she kisses him back.
This is progress for him.
-¤-
Six months after crossing Smallville off their map, Chloe and Davis pretend a dingy apartment in New Jersey is perfect.
Davis sleeps on the sofa bed of the living room-slash-kitchen-area, and Chloe sleeps in the room with a curtain for a door.
It’s laughable, so Chloe laughs after the first night, and soon Davis is laughing too. Kansas was small, as were the houses on occasion, but the rooms were always home. This apartment was the exact opposite, but it was remote and quiet enough to not allow for disturbances. The neighbors were sparse, and mostly working people who couldn’t be around to ask questions. To inquire, or to refer to Davis and Chloe as a couple.
(The terminology was too complicated for Chloe. She kissed him in the darkness, but in the daylight it was too easy to see the goosebumps on her skin from his touch.)
.
Chloe was a trained reporter once upon a time, and a watchtower to superheroes, and now she serves hot plates to ordinary people.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a waitress,” she snaps at him when he slides her a brochure for a local magazine department.
“I’m just trying to help, Chloe.”
Chloe stares up at him, then down at her cereal bowl. She rounds her eyes, scanning the bare apartment and the old-fashioned tinted windows.
“This isn’t permanent, Davis. You know that we won’t stay here forever, that we can’t stand out anywhere we go. You know this better than me. And I get it--you worry that I feel stuck or trapped. But stop worrying. However I feel, or I don’t, that’s something I have to take care of. That’s my responsibility, not yours. So stop trying to make me, this normal. We’re not a normal couple, having breakfast before we head off to work. We’re two people, trying to stay alive, trying to keep people alive.”
“But I care about you, Chloe! I want to know how you feel and…and if you feel trapped.”
She sighs. She lowers her head, and a sound escapes her mouth. But she only stands up, grabs her purse, and says, “I’ll see you later.”
.
The phone in the apartment rings for the first time in the two months they’ve been there. Immediately, he knows something is wrong.
“Hello,” he says into the phone. There’s a strong pause, but he keeps the phone fastened to his hand, a lump strong in his throat.
“Davis, grab the money we’ve saved and get out. Take the 4:15 out to Connecticut.”
The phone clicks--his yells of “Chloe--Chlo!” were obsolete.
He grabs the money, and though she had told him to only get that, he grabs her emergency bag, throws in a couple of his shirts, and heads for the door when he hears steps feet from the door.
“Chloe, I know you’re in there!”
It’s none other than Lois Lane, and Davis feels a wave of fury.
He knows Clark could have found them long ago, but Chloe’s “I don’t want you to find us” must have subdued his search. But of course no such thing would pacify Chloe’s cousin.
He looks at the window. He slings the bag over his shoulder, pulls the window up, and doesn’t even take a breath when jumping down two levels.
His heels break, and a couple stares at him in awe when his bones crack back into place, and he stands up. He doesn’t look at them, despite their staring. He runs, runs impossibly fast.
At the train station, he pulls out a fake identification, buys a one way ticket to Connecticut, and he does something he’d only do for Chloe--he prays, prays she’s on the train, or at least that she’ll be in Connecticut.
On the train, he looks over every face twice. When he finds Chloe, he doesn’t have to do a double-take. He breathes “Thank God” and she hears it, but doesn’t acknowledge it.
He sits down beside her, asks “are you okay? Did she see you?”, but she only says in a murmur “I’m okay”.
She’s silent the rest of the way, and so is he.
-¤-
They reach their destination, Chloe picks out an inn, and they room together. She doesn’t ask for two beds, although she usually does.
When in the room, she tosses him a passport--a fake passport, that is.
“We’re going to Canada. First into Ontario, and east from there.”
“Alright.”
Chloe scrambles around the bag Davis brought, looking for nothing in particular. She stops suddenly, but still looks at the contents of the bag, her eyes stuck.
“I saw her. She went into the restaurant. I told the manager I felt sick and was going home. He said okay, it’s a slow day anyway. I went outside. And I just…stood there for a minute. I looked at her. I stared at her. Half of me hoped she saw me and would chase me. I saw her find the manager, and talk to him. Lois probably got the address from him. But she could have seen me right then and there. Still, I turned around, I ran off. I called you. I could have just as easily not called you. I could have stayed there, waiting until she came back outside, and see me. I could have let her yell at me. Then take me home. But I didn’t. I ran away. Again.”
Davis feels his heart pounding in his chest. Afraid. Scared. He is scared. Sure, she’s here now. But she could have another moment, any second, she could have a moment where wants to go home.
“If I’m trapped, it’s because I want to be trapped. You need me and…I’m not even sure if you want me because I can…save you, or because I‘m me. And I don’t need you, I don’t need this. And this definitely isn’t the life I want. But I want to be here.”
Davis looks over at her, to see her looking at him.
“I want you here,” he says.
Chloe walks over to him. She wraps her arms around his shoulders. And then he feels the burn of her tears.
“I’ve betrayed everyone I love, everyone who loves me. I turned my back on the girl who fell in love with and married Jimmy.”
He holds her firmly. “But you want to be here.”
He feels her nod.
(He feels empowered. He knows it’s wrong to feel this when she’s breaking, but she’s also building something--building a place where she accepts that the blacks and whites of life have no place in reality. )
They share the bed that night, but they only sleep.
He doesn’t black out this night.
-¤-
They don’t stay in Canada long. They remain in Russia for even a shorter period. It’s when they ride through Australia that they agree that it’s not a bad place at all.
They rent a flat in the middle of Albany, looking over a narrow street. It’s a two bedroom flat.
They’ve been sleeping together since Ontario (some weeks after that night they got to Canada--it was a normal night, and Davis knew she was frustrated more than anything, but she was hurting too hard for him to push her away then of all times) but she still wanted a two bedroom place.
Davis gets work at a bread shop and Chloe at a tech factory.
.
There are nights when Chloe can feel the walls shake. They’re only subtle vibrations, but they send her on alert.
“Davis, Davis, stay with me,” she whispers.
She clasps his head with her hands, tries to hold onto his eyes. He hasn’t blacked out in months, but he’s had close calls. He’ll always have close calls. This is something she’s accepted. But she won’t tell him, because he’ll then realize that in that aspect, she’s given up hope.
“Stay with me,” she says even more harshly.
His teeth clench, and his eyes blink rapidly.
Chloe kneels on his bed, and pulls his heavy frame to her. “Davis,” she says close to his ear.
He stops shaking gradually, and she finally feels him holding onto her.
She pulls back and smiles, relief spread over her eyes.
“Thank you,” he tells her.
His room is dark. She can’t even spot his shadow, but her own shadow lingers by the bedpost.
She kisses him, like she kissed him the night she got Clark’s phone call when in Quebec and he told her that Jimmy had filed for an uncontested divorce. She had hung up with a civil “thanks for telling me”, despite feeling like she had been given up on. But she didn’t really have a husband anymore--she hadn’t been a wife for too long now. So she kissed Davis, because she was just a girl alone with a boy who wanted her, needed her. She was alone with someone she chose not only to save her best friend, but also because he made her feel something she hadn’t known existed. (She doesn’t have a word for it, she only knew that Davis made her feel.)
.
She climbs into his bed on the nights when guilt isn’t weighing on her shoulders.
She used to kiss him hard when anger rose in her chest. But weeks passed, and he would make her laugh, he would make her forget they were living in a foreign land. He began kissing her softly on the cheek on his way out the door. He began buying her small insignificant treats and leaving them on the coffee table, or on the kitchen counters. She forgot this wasn’t normal, and when she remembered it wasn’t normal, she realized she was hurting him when she kissed him because someone from her past was pressing on her heart.
So she crashes on her bed when she’s spinning from madness and sadness, reeling from remorse. And when she’s done with tripping away from the world, she walks back into his world and falls into his pattern.
They do their best to keep the darkness outside his door.
.
“A picnic. At night. We’re not doing this with candles, right? There are a dozen trees around us,” Chloe says, a chuckle ringing through.
“Right, and girls are the romantic ones,” Davis muses.
“I’m just being practical,” Chloe shrugs, whilst jabbing his shoulder.
He sighs and shakes his head. “I brought a lamp,” he explains, taking out and lighting an encased lamp.
Chloe smiles widely at him, and sits back, looking at the stars overhead. The stars overhead never left her, and she never left them. It was the closest thing she had to home--in every corny sense of the connection.
“So, you want to start off with a sandwich, or pasta?”
Chloe cocks her head at him, squinting. “What kind of buffet is that?”
“I did what I could!” he yelps, laying out the simple sandwiches next to a Tupperware of pasta.
“Pasta first. We’ll save the best for last.”
“Sandwich rates over Italian pasta in your universe?”
“Oh, like it doesn’t in yours.”
Davis laughs, but nods. “You know me too well,” he murmurs. Chloe quiets, but keeps a tight smile on her face. She waits as he takes out the plates, and serves pasta on their respective plates, and places forks on them. He hands it to her, and she softly says “thank you”. She sits upright, and takes a bite.
“It’s good,” she says after one forkful.
“Thanks,” he says.
There’s a quiet tension, but Chloe doesn’t verbally acknowledge it. This is the epitome of a first date, but the thing is that they’ve been running from Smallville for close to 14 months now. The thing is that they have shared kisses, a bed for several months now. The thing is that they have sex now and then. The thing is that he treats her like his girlfriend, she lets him treat her so, and sometimes he is her boyfriend. The thing is, in all that time, with all their experiences, and with all the loud moments, with all the good quiet moments, they have never been on a date.
This isn’t a date either. She will not call it as such. For all the feelings she has for him, and as real as their situation is, the flat in Albany and the jobs are all pretend. And so too much of it is pretend to allow for something as real as a date.
The plates are empty and the sandwiches are gone soon enough. They lie on a blanket, inches between them, talking about nothing important. Minute facts that are interesting and vital to others, but irrelevant to them. Softened memories of their travels. Casual talk of work.
And then Davis seems to have fallen asleep.
Chloe blinks a slow blink. She breathes in a deep breath, exhales gradually. It’s peaceful and the numbing “You can’t do this forever” conscience dies. In another blink, Davis twitches beside her.
She can’t do this forever.
-¤-
The black outs come back. Stronger than before.
She had gotten used to the close calls, but there was a piece of hope that believed that the close calls were as bad as it was ever going to get again.
Davis told her he loved her one day. She was never able to say it back. She didn’t know why, she was just not able to say it. Maybe it was because love was a cursed word on her lips. Maybe it was because she wasn’t sure what she felt.
She never says she loved Davis for the simple fact that she may have been in love with him, but she didn’t love him. The inverse of loving a man but not being in love with him.
He fights her when she says they have to go back. It’s getting too dangerous for him. It’s too hard to control that foreign part of him. He refuses.
When he hurts her, that’s when he sees the foreign part of him is more Davis than that other thing. He says “let’s go back”.
.
They make a lot of stops, just the two of them. No public transportation.
Any time of day is dangerous. At any sign, Chloe stops for however long it may take. She tries to bring him back, no matter how dangerous he gets. Sometimes she succeeds. When she doesn’t, she still sticks around.
Some days, he wishes she wouldn’t. But he’s thankful.
.
They reach Mexico, but that’s as far as they get alone.
Clark gets to them, and everything is a blur afterward.
From Clark dashing them to his farm in Smallville, to the chains on Davis’ wrists. From Davis’ escape, to his capture and death.
Chloe Sullivan has a hand in it all. There’s blood on her hands in every metaphorical way possible. In a lot of literal ways too.
-¤-
She buries Davis. Clark joins her, but she tells him she can do it alone. It’s not his fault, it’s hers.
(Besides, Clark didn’t know Davis. Only Chloe knew Davis. And Davis was the only one who knew what Chloe was capable of, of what she had done in that year plus months away from home: things not Clark, not Lois, not Oliver could possibly imagine. What Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted of her.)
No comments:
Post a Comment