Left Behind

Title: Left Behind
Rating: PG
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark-ish
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Series AU, diverges during Season 7.
Disclaimer: I own very little, certainly not these characters. Please don’t sue!
Author’s Note: I just love the idea of an immortal Chloe. It gives us so much more to play with.

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"I always loved you, Clark Kent."

Her last words to him, before he lost her forever, broke him. There should have been a good response, she deserved one. But his mouth just worked silently, and like a summer breeze, she was gone in the span of a breath.

A sad smile and eyes laced with finality haunt him every day.

He tries to at least show his care by living up to her expectations. He finally dons the suit for the bright girl with a blinding smile and enough faith to fill a stadium. Every person he saves owes their life to her.

It's hard not to seek her out. There are days he trembles with the urge to look her up. He read her book five times, at normal speed. The pseudonym wasn't trying to hide her identity from anyone who knew her, and he wasn't the least bit surprised that she was the one to finally take Lex down with a stroke of her mighty pen.

It held no photograph, but the dust jacket had been enough to keep him away until now.

Moira Lane, investigative journalist for the Washington Post, lives with her husband and two daughters in rural Virginia.

Now, it’s news ink that won’t let him leave her alone.

Author Miraculously Survives Explosion, Family Perishes

It took a surprising effort to find her. Apparently, the FBI shored up their procedures for setting up safe houses and fake identities. Good thing, too. Their first attempt obviously wasn’t successful.

He finds the empty studio apartment in the Upper West Side that’s supposedly been owned by Amelia Hawkins for the last three years. It takes a few minutes, but he follows her heartbeat to a nearby park.

She’s sitting on a bench overlooking the playground. God, even from behind the agony is evident in her tiny frame.

Dressed in street clothes, he approaches silently. When he’s close enough to look over her shoulder, he can’t help the tears that spill onto his cheeks.

She’s holding a tattered snapshot of a handsome, dark-haired man wrapped around her from behind and smiling like she’s his whole world while two little girls hug her from either side.

In all the time he knew her, he never once saw her that happy. The photo doesn’t betray a trace of the guarded sadness her eyes always held for him, even when she laughed.

He doesn’t know how to start this conversation, but he wants to be surprised when she takes that burden from him. After all, he’s here to lighten hers.

“I should have known you’d come.”

“I…” Every platitude he’d planned falls right out the window. “I’m so sorry, Chlo.”

“I tried to save them, but it was too late when I woke up.” Her voice cracks and her body curls around the grief. “They left me behind.”

“Chloe, I’m sure they’ll wait for you.”

She finally turns, and her eyes are a shade of dead that tears at his core. A sardonic smile twists her impish features.

“You don’t understand, Clark. The girls had been fighting, so I sat between. I didn’t have a scratch on me.”

It takes a moment for his brain to register the amount of damage there should have been. He saw the condition of the car. The police report said she was thrown clear before getting in, but this…

“I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again.” The tears flow unchecked down her cheeks as she regards the photo. She looks back up. “It was my fault. I suppose eternity is an appropriate penance.”

It’s more than he can take. He ignores the boundaries erected by almost a decade apart, slides onto the bench beside her, and envelopes her in a hug. His heart breaks for all of them.

Immortality isn’t a curse he’d share with his worst enemy, but at least he’s prepared for it. He hasn’t let his heart lean on someone thoroughly since he truly understood how alone he is destined to be.

As long as he’s know her, Chloe Sullivan has always given her all, heart and soul. She cares more than anyone in the world, and now the world will leave her behind, again and again.

“Oh, Chlo. You just did what was right. You couldn’t have known.”

“But I did. We had to uproot Richard and the girls three times because of my work and it still destroyed us in the end. I never should have dragged them along.”

She could have taken the safe road and still they would have left her behind one day, but he stays silent on that point. In his minds eye, he sees the growing up those two little girls missed, the family and the holidays and the joy. So much lost already. So much left to lose.

He holds her tighter. There is plenty to grieve for, but it’s hard not to be glad to know he will have a companion in eternity.

“I won’t leave you, Chloe. I swear.”

They cling to each other, bound by love and loss, and let merciless mortality pass them by.

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End