Solace

Title: Solace
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark, mention of Chimmy
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Arctic, vague spoilers for season 8
Disclaimer: I own very little, certainly not these characters. Please don’t sue!
Author’s Notes: Written for the August’s Chlark 24/7 theme, vacation. Guaranteed AU for the start of season 8. Lyrics are from All We Are, by OneRepublic. Yes, I chew Stride gum on occasion, too. :P

---
I tried to paint you a picture, the colors were all wrong
Black and white didn't fit you, and all along
You we're shaded with patience, and strokes of everything
That I need just to make it, and I can see that...

Lord knows I've failed you, time and again
But you and me are all right
---

She’s never where he expects her.

With his memory back, he shouldn’t be surprised to find her sprinting away from the facility when he arrives. He covers her body with his own out of instinct as the explosion brings down the squat cement structure.

In the strange silence that follows, he sees all the conversations they’ll never have in her eyes. The finality terrifies him, and he can’t will himself to break contact.

He doesn’t let go of her hand all the way to Oliver’s.

They spend the week after her “rescue” roaming the Queen estate in Star City. It’s the vacation she would never allow herself if she didn’t still have a warrant hanging over her head.

Clark suspects Ollie might be slow-rolling the process of clearing her name. Chloe is so eager to get back to life, it’s a little scary. She hasn’t talked about her captivity, and they’re out of ways to ask.

One afternoon, she packs up a basket, grabs Clark’s hand, and leads him out to the cliffs that line the West end of the estate. They can see the Pacific from here. Once the blanket is spread, they eat quietly and watch the sea.

She breaks the silence first. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is anyway.

“I missed you.” Her voice is soft and low. Her eyes linger on the horizon.

“I missed you, too.”

She quirks her head at that, finally looking at him. “I thought you said you didn’t remember?”

“I didn’t know why I was so lonely, not until Oliver…” She nods, looks away, so he presses on. “It felt like I was looking for someone, all the time.”

“Hey now, don’t tell me you’re confusing me with Lana.”

He catches the hand that waves away his sincerity, holding it firmly. “I’m not confused, Chloe. Believe me. I’m sad Lana left, but it was you I was looking for.” He looks down, swallows. “It’s always you I look for first.”

She stills, and he finds himself scared to look her in the eye. When he registers the sob, she’s already curled against his chest. He’s not sure who moved, but he’s holding her and she’s trembling and he can’t check the tears that threaten.

“I was so scared, Clark.” She sobs into his shirt. “I thought you’d come and I hate that.”

“I’m sorry, Chlo. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry.” She’s clutching fistfuls of his tee shirt, seeming to pull him close and hold him at a distance simultaneously. All he can do is whisper apologies into her hair.

“You don’t know... You can’t know what they did, what they took from me.” She looks up, and he can hardly breathe at the devastation in those eyes. “You’d hate me.”

“Chloe…” He starts, pulling her away so he can look her in the eye. “Chloe, listen to me. There is nothing, nothing that could make me hate you. Do you hear me?”

She searches his face almost desperately before nodding. He doesn’t miss the hesitance.

He sees the moment she pushes past the fear. Her lips tighten, and her tearstained features quiet. He wants to follow when she backs away, but stills at the purpose in her movement.

She sets a hand past the edge of the blanket, and a russet shadow begins stretching past her own. The ever-growing circle of withered grass stretches around her, expanding until it reaches a nearby tree. He watches, shocked, as the limbs droop and the leaves shrivel to dust.

As quickly as it began, it ends. When he looks back to Chloe, he sees her attention is on a glowing gold orb floating over her now upturned palm.

“I can take it away Clark. Everything, if I wanted to.” She looks up, and he can almost feel the crushing weight of this responsibility in her gaze. “I don’t know if it was Brainiac or the scientists, but it’s so much worse, so much stronger than it was, and I’m not sure I can hold it all.”

She looks back up, a little wild, and he finally gets the desperation. “I loved you, Clark. I would have given you everything. But they…they took it all. They took…me.”

He’d do anything to get the last three months back.

“So, I…I took it away from them.” Her voice is small, and Clark reels in denial.

“No…”

“I begged them to stop. I promised I would help them understand.” Tears trace silent paths down her face. When her voice shifts from monotone to venom, Clark can’t decide which is worse. “But they just wouldn’t. They could have. They knew I was a person, and they treated me like a thing. Like some freak cross between a lab rat and a savior.”

Her voice drops to a whisper. “In the end, I showed them all of it…everthing. I showed them all.”

Oh, God.

Clark surveys the scorched earth around them, imagines the withered skeletons that must have occupied the facility before it blew, the shock on the researchers’ faces when they realized what she’d been hiding.

She watches with eyes he doesn’t recognize, weighing his reaction. He has to search his own heart, wonder what three months of torment would drive him to do in her place. The answer isn’t hard.

“Chloe, I told you. I could never hate you.”

She sags, and the alien look in her eyes fades to a weary relief he knows too well. She lowers the orb to the grass, and he watches the light spread, leaving new growth in its wake.

When she turns, he’s there. Holding on for all the times she’s been his shelter.

---
I walked a minute in your shoes, they never would have fit
I figured there's nothin’ to lose, I need to get
Some perspective on these words, before I write them down
You're an island and my ship has run aground

Lord knows I'll fail you time and again,
But you and me we're alright
---

By day, she maintains the façade, but the nightmares are killing her. The entire security detail came running the first time, and she swung at anyone who got close until Clark arrived.

She sobbed her terror and shame into his shoulder for the better part of an hour before falling into a fitful slumber. He moved into the room next door a few nights later.

After three weeks, she asked him to stay when he walked her to her room.

It’s not sexual, just a matter of safety. She dreams of lab coats and needles and lasers and scalpels, and fear drives the desire to make it all go away.

Clark always made her feel safe, even before she knew his secret. She needs that if she’s going to protect the rest of the world from her power.

She tried the only permanent solution she could think of in the lab. The resurrection that followed served to make her a more fascinating subject.

Tonight, she’s curled against him, head resting on his shoulder while his fingertips trace circles on her arm. She finally voices the words that have been bouncing around inside her head.

“I want to talk to J’onn. See if he can help.”

“You sure?”

“I have to try.” She smiles wryly. “After all, we can’t be bed buddies forever.”

The hand on her arm stills. She can barely make out his profile in the inky gloom, so she can’t imagine his reaction to that little slip.

After a pause, he sighs. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. What would Jimmy think?”

She snorts. “I doubt he’d think anything before trying to punch you. And that would just get messy.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” The smile in his voice fades. “You know I love you, right?”

“Of course you do. What’s not to love?”

“I’m being serious, Chlo.”

“So am I.” She giggles before sobering. “I know you love me, Clark, and I’ll always love you. I just…I don’t think it’s enough this time. I can’t hold onto what happened any more and be who you need me to.”

“You don’t have to be anything, Chloe. Just be my friend.”

“I want to be that, Clark. God, how I want to be that.” She sighs, wrapping her arm around him and snuggling closer. “I miss being the one supporting you. It’s not as fun the other way around.”

“You sure? Because I seem to make a great body pillow, and there was less spooning with your support.”

“That’s because you’re a prude.”

“I can’t believe you said that!” He chokes.

“What’s the matter? Too much truth for you, mister pure-as-the-driven-snow?”

“Oh, now that’s it, missy. You think I’m prude?” He shifts, and suddenly her arms are pinned over her head while he tickles her ribs mercilessly with his other hand. “I'm prude?”

“I think you're scared. Always have been.” She forces the words out between giggles.

He silences her the last way she expected. His lips are warm and softer than she remembers. When he parts them to nip at hers, she can’t help surrendering herself to the kiss.

Suddenly it’s light and life and everything she’s missed. He keeps her hands pinned and rolls more fully toward her, pressing against her.

There’s nothing but gasps and sighs for a moment, and she hates how quickly the heat builds in her. Nine years and she still hasn’t tamed this wish.

She knows how precarious things are right now, and losing Clark would break her in a way she couldn’t come back from. It takes every ounce of self-preservation to push him away.

He backs away as though burned, and she can practically see the blush in the hunch of his shoulders.

“I’m sorry.” She speaks first because he apologizes far too much.

“No, I…I shouldn’t have.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Clark. Any other time and…” She stops, realizing any direction she goes with this is terrifying. “Look, things are really shaky for me, and I need you. I just…if anything happened I don’t know what I’d do. I can’t risk it.”

“I understand.” His hand covers hers and she wonders if he ever can, really. She hopes not.

His hand comes up to brush the hair out of her face, lingering a moment too long.

“Tomorrow, I’ll talk to J’onn.”

“Thanks, Clark. It means a lot.”

When she settles against him, she holds on even tighter than before, willing him to understand how much she really loves him.

---
We won't say our goodbye's, you know it's better that way,
We won't break, we won't die, it's just a moment of change
All we are, all we are is everything that's right
---

When he calls J’onn in the morning, he can’t quite place the uneasiness. The Martian arrives that afternoon, and meets with Chloe alone.

He waits outside the library where they talk, hating himself for wanting to peek. When he does, they’re just sitting, facing each other in silence.

Kara said Martians were psychic. He wonders what else they are.

One hour passes, then another. After three, they finally emerge.

Relief floods him at the open smile on his friend’s face. She quirks her head when he hugs her just a little too tight and brushes past saying something about needing to talk to Oliver.

He turns to J’onn, confused.

“You were right to call me, Kal-El.” The Martian intones. “She was barely containing the power, even with your support.”

“How did you fix it?”

“I merely removed the trigger so she could focus on the positive side of her gift.”

“What trigger?”

“Her captivity, of course. She no longer has any memory of it.” The pause is bursting with meaning. “She also asked that I remove her recovery. Your friend knows herself. If left the clues of her recovery, she would find the trigger again.”

It’s strange. He just found out Chloe’s going to be okay, and it feels like someone knocked his feet out from under him. The fact that she won’t remember the distance they crossed together shouldn’t matter in the face of her being okay, but somehow it does.

J’onn places a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Sit, Kal-El.”

He does.

“Chloe Sullivan is a brave girl. She gave me a gift. I would be honored to deliver it to its rightful owner.”

Clark nods, and suddenly, he’s somewhere else.

He can see himself on his old couch, eyes closed and face flushed with a fever. He can hardly believe he ever looked so young.

“I want to let you in on a secret.”

Her voice washes over him and it feels like coming home.

“I'm not who you think I am. In fact, my disguise is so thin I'm surprised you haven't seen right through me. I'm the girl of your dreams masquerading as your best friend.

“Sometimes, I want to rip off the façade like I did at the spring formal. But I can't because you'll get scared and you'll run away again. So I decided that it's better to live with the lie than expose my true feelings.

“My dad said there are two types of girls -- the ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. I really hope I'm the latter.

“I may not be the one you love today, but I'll let you go for now, hoping one day you'll fly back to me. Because I think you're worth the wait.”

The words warm him and he can’t help the awe at anyone feeling that way about him, especially someone as amazing as Chloe.

He sees himself stir, hears Lana’s name, and understands more about the last seven years than he ever wanted to.

He was a fool, but he can do better. He knows she has Jimmy, but if there’s even a chance, he has to try. Fear has led him for far too long.

---
And every single day that I can breathe,
You change my philosophy,
I'm never gonna let you pass me by

So don't say our goodbye's, you know it's better that way,
We won't break, we won't die, it's just a moment of change
All we are, all we are is everything that's right
---

-End-