Catapult

Title: Catapult
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; Character Death
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark friendship, Chlex...well, not friendship
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Wrath AU; Next in the Murder of One series, following Angels of the Silences.
Disclaimer: I own very little, certainly not these characters. Please don’t sue!
Author’s Notes: This is the darkest of the series, so be warned. I already have a fifth piece in this series ready to post tonight. In keeping with the theme of Murder of One, Time and Time Again, and Angels of the Silences lyrics are from “Catapult” by The Counting Crows.

--
All of the sudden she disappears
just yesterday she was here
somebody tell me if I am sleeping
someone should be with me here
(cause I don't wanna be alone)
--

Chloe Sullivan has never been so thoroughly, utterly, and hopelessly alone. She’s not used to giving up, but she long ago accepted that she is not going to be rescued.

Her hope is far more humble these days. Every time she wakes, she prays it will be the last time.

She ran out of tears an eternity ago. So imagine her shock when she wakes to bright light and beeping monitors. It is a chaos she cannot make sense of after so long a slumber beneath six feet of Earth.

Darkness calls to her through the burn in her veins. Unconsciousness is heavier than usual, but familiar enough to be a comfort.

She wakes again to more bright lights, blurry figures and hushed voices. She has forgotten how to make sense of the spoken word, and lets the sounds wash over her unchecked.

She misses the soft, accepting light of the afterlife with an ache far more intense than the pain chasing its own shadows throughout her body. Ache is all she understands.

Time passes without notice. All she knows is that she is alone, uncomforted, and terrified.

Her caretakers finally register her sensitivity to the light, and she is cast blissfully into a softer glow. A woman with kind eyes appears now and again. She never speaks, but her hands are gentle and unafraid. The others regard her with a mixture of horror and fear.

The kind eyes precede the darkness, for which Chloe is deeply grateful.

--
I wanna be the light that burns out your eyes
'cause I know there's little things about me
that would sing in the silence of so much rejection
in every connection I make
I can't find nobody home
--

She is told it is a month before she resembles a living being again. She only worked up the courage to look in the mirror last week, and the ghostly reflection that greeted her was so shocking that she flung the mirror across the room in fear.

The identity of her rescuer is still a mystery, but they are obviously not lacking in resources. The sterile facility is eerily familiar.

When Lex Luthor strolls in and grins, she knows why. She’s in 33.1.

She can’t do anything but laugh silently at the sight.

“Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Chloe.”

She hasn’t successfully managed more than a croak since she woke, and he knows it. So she just regards him curiously.

“I must admit my surprise. I had my doubts that your abilities could handle a gunshot to the head, but to discover that you survived over six months in the grave. I’m impressed, to say the least.”

Six…Oh, God. Clark. Lois.

“No doubt the intrepid Chloe Sullivan’s first concern is for her friends and family.” He leans in close, unafraid where his staff is terrified to lay a hand on her. “Well, you might want to take a moment and worry about your own fate.

“I am understandably grateful for your forethought. Lana’s treachery did not go unchecked. Her conviction is the reason I felt safe in exhuming your body.”

It is so wrong that knowing Lana will pay for her crimes is this satisfying. Still, Lex’s gratitude is rarely healthy. Look what happened to Clark after he pulled the billionaire from a sinking Porsche.

“Mutually beneficial vengeance aside, I’m sure you can understand how important our work will be, Ms. Sullivan. Between my immune system and your ability to heal, death will no longer have any dominion.”

Dylan Thomas – how quaint. The defiance in her eyes must be telling.

“After what you’ve been through, I’m sure you think nothing you can face compares to the grave. You should remember one thing, though.” The self-loathing in his eyes is palpable as he continues. “If you fight me, I will send you back.”

--
All of these quiet battered voices
wait for the hunger to come
we got little revolvers and stupid choices
and no one to say when we're done
(Well I don't wanna bring you down)
--

She has died thirty times since she came to this awful place, yet she doesn’t have a scratch on her. She’s been shot, strangled, beaten, suffocated, and bled to death a dozen ways.

It’s unlikely that Lex hasn’t uncovered the secret to her gift and extracted it in one of the gallons of her blood now in his possession. Chances are, he simply doesn’t know what to do with her and he doesn’t want to leave her with enough time to find a way out.

She hasn’t been allowed a shred of news from the outside; nothing to let her know how long she has been here. It was the woman with the kind eyes who granted Chloe a lone connection to the outside world.

She leaned across as she adjusted her tubing, subtly dangling a jack ‘o lantern pin in front of Chloe’s face, then leaned back and pinned her with a significant gaze.

She understood, and tried to thank the woman with her eyes. She refuses to give Lex the satisfaction of screaming, so she hasn’t even tried her voice since the first time he killed her.

The next time she wakes, it is to an explosion. Her first thought is that Lex is taking things a bit far.

The shocked recognition on Arthur Curry’s face banishes her assumptions. When Bart appears beside him, she wants to cry.

The boys try to comfort her as they escort her out of the building with the other “patients”. For the first time in almost a year, she hopes for something more than death.

--
I wanna be the knife that cuts into my hand
and I wanna be scattered from here in this catapult
What a big baby won't somebody save me please
You won't find nobody home
--

She’s been dead, in one form or another, for almost a year. It’s a smidge jarring when she suddenly finds herself surrounded by people who care about her.

Near as she can tell, she’s at the team’s Star City headquarters. She did what she could to explain what happened to her. After so much time spent shying away from her captors, it’s strange attempting to put her story into words. She finally settled on the facts:

Lana killed me. I couldn’t die. Lex pulled me out of the dark so he could kill me - again and again. I’m a little messed up.

The tears in Oliver’s eyes as he reads her words are enough to break her where death couldn’t. At his hug, her own tears finally come, and Chloe Sullivan weeps. She cries for herself, for her family; her friends. She cries for Lex and Lana – the ones truly broken beyond repair.

She’s not sure she’ll ever be okay again; not sure where this life will take a girl who cannot die. All she knows is that she matters to these boys.

They give her that, in little ways. Victor shows her all his newest gadgets, Bart brings her food from all over the world, AC takes her to the aquarium to hear the dolphins laugh, and Oliver lets her cry.

It’s what she needs, and all she can take right now.

Green eyes filled with pain haunt her dreams. She will face them soon enough.

--
I wanna be the light that burns out your eyes
'cause I know there's little things about me
that would sing in the silence of so much rejection
in every connection I make
I wanna be the last thing you hear when you're falling asleep...
--

Next in the series...