The Depths We Sink To (Chapter Twenty-Five)

Still spoiling Traveler, then Veritas.

Chapter 25

She giggled as she sort of fell in with the door, only keeping semi-upright by holding on for dear life. The world sort of spun crazily. It didn't stop even when the door stopped. Her own fault. They never did get around to eating. Actually not her fault. It was that damned driver. She and Lana begged him to stop at Sonic, but he missed the exit "accidentally," or so he said. It didn't matter. She had food in the apartment... if you weren't squeamish about expiration dates or...

"Sullivan?"

She fell back against the door as Luthor stepped into the light from the street, her appetite dropping with a clunk. Or was that her keys?

"You've had a busy day."

"What're you doing here?" she groaned, more annoyed than anything else at the moment. She'd had a nice night, damn it. 

"I don't see any reason to explain my wheareabouts to you. I do own the building."

"You own half the state," she muttered. "Why can't you ever be somewhere I'm not?" She lifted her chin while trying to crouch down with some measure of dignity and scrape up her keys. 

"Oh, let me." He bent over and swept them up, taking his time straightening.

She narrowed her eyes. "Oh, no. Don't you start that again. I'm not drunk enough for you to..."

"Don't flatter yourself. I only came here to talk."

"Then it was a waste of your time." She snatched her keys. "I have nothing to say to you... like ever again." She tried to move past him, but he gripped her arm.

"Then it's a good thing I'll be doing the talking."

"Let me..."

"No. You listen. I've been easy on you and maybe you take it for granted that I always will be, but the special treatment stops now. If you continue to meddle in my affairs..."

She laughed. She wasn't sure if it was the booze or her mind becoming just a little unhinged at his words. On the upside, his mouth was shut. "I'm sorry," she said, jerking away and wiping her eyes. "I just don't know what's funnier. The idea that you've been easy on me or that your treatment of me is somehow special or..."

"This isn't funny." He gripped her arms. "Have I pysically hurt you, Chloe?"

She sobered slightly at the hard look in his eyes. "No. Just my friends," she sneered.

"Don't you have a job, your freedom, haven't I watched you screw me over at every turn with no consequences? I've let you slide."

She squeezed her eyes shut. "Jesus, you really do believe your bullshit." She looked him in the eye. "You're right. This isn't funny."

"No, it isn't," he said, her meaning lost on him as he pulled her closer. "I've been working to counteract things you couldn't even believe." His eyes narrowed. "Or maybe you could. What exactly do you know?"

"We're not doing this." She pushed at his chest, though not as hard as she should have. 

"Not doing what?" She could feel his breath on her face, cigars and scotch and everything that should be repulsive. It hadn't even been a week and she wanted to drown in the smell of him, the feel of him... "Not talking shop? If this thing between us is over, then so are your precious rules. We can talk about all of it now. Like Kara and Clark..."

"You talk all you want. I'm finished." She tried to pull away in earnest now, but he pressed her against the metal railing at the base.

"I can explain away Clark. I can find some logical way. Hell, I've been doing it for years. I can open my mind to the possibility that your number one boy is just a simple farmer. But not her. I know. I saw it all too clearly this time."

"You really need to take your hands off me," trying not to digify any of this with a repsonse. She'd been drinking. She didn't know what she'd say.

He didn't let her go. He gripped her harder, nearly shaking her. "What is he? What is she?"

"Get off..."

"I have theories, but nothing real. Is it all connected to the showers? Do they have some power over you? Does the meteor rock in your system make you controlled by them? Is that why you fuck me over every chance you get?"

She finally found the strength to push him away. "I'm not under anyone's control," she gasped as he stumbled backward. "If someone like you is going to needlessly torture people like Clark and Kara, then someone like me is going to do everything I can to stop you." 

"So you admit what you did? You took Kara, you erased my feed on her, you..."

"I admit nothing. Except that Kara Kent should have been free to go and surveilling an unknowing party is illegal, so maybe you actually got off easy before you opened yourself up to a lawsuit and..."

"Don't play games. You know what I'm capable of," he said lowly, stepping up to her.

"No one knows better than me," she said sadly. "I've lost both of my parents to you, in a way. Even my paper is under your thumb. I don't have much else to lose."

"You'd think that, but you'd be wrong." She stiffened as his hands moved to her arms again, but they were lighter now, almost a caress. "I didn't want it to be this way. I only need to know what's happening so I can keep us all safe. Keep you safe." His thumbs slid to where her blouse was open, sliding over her neck. "I don't want to hurt you. I only wanted to know what you can do. Then I could save you from yourself."

She nearly did laugh then. "You can't save someone from themselves. Not when they don't want to be. Trust me on that."

"I've been keepng tabs. But I haven't seen any sign of your power. But I hate to think you're dangerous. I want to think you couldn't be."

"I wish I could say the same for you." She closed her eyes and leaned into him, still dazed by his nearness. 

"I wanted it to be different with us. I wanted to keep you safe while the world burned."

"And who's going to burn it?" She pushed again, and for real this time. "You. All because you have to be right."

"If you're still chalking this up to pride, you're blind and small-minded. Everything I do, I do to fight something that's coming. Yet you fight me? You're on the wrong side."

"You made the sides." She pushed past him and fled up the stairs. 

"Yes. Let's point every finger at me, like always," he said, starting up after her. "It's much easier than actually thinking for yourself."

She turned at the top. "You make it easy. That's why I fight you. Every time you do something despicable, I try to fight it. I may have lost sight of that, but never again." She moved to the door and fumbled with her keys.

"You might want to stop that. You have been a pain in my ass for years and you've reaped the consequences, but it can be worse, Chloe." His voice was a low growl. "You don't want to be treated as my enemy."

"You're a sick, sad, paranoid man and I'd rather be your enemy. At least then I know I'm on the right track." She finally got the door open and closed it behind her. She waited for the tell-tale jingle of his keys without so much as a flinch. "It won't work. The locks have been changed."

"You don't have the legal right to change locks on my property."

"Actually, I do. When you continually invade the privacy of a paying tenant..."

"Damn it!" The door shook in its frame. "I'm warning you, Chloe. You cross me one more time and you'll see what happens."

She waited for something scathing to come to her lips. But she heard his footsteps on the metal stairs and suddenly realized that this wasn't some game of witty retorts and verbal judo anymore. In fact, it never was. 

She found herself shaking as she backed away from the door, thinking of what he was capable of. The fear of it couldn't stop her from acting as she saw fit. Somewhere inside her, she had to keep believing that doing the right thing would pay off somehow. That her entire life wasn't about to change for the worse... again.

Yet she couldn't stop shaking. Everything was going to change. She could feel it.

************************

Lex compared the childish drawing to the locket again. He had to be sure. He had to be sure it was all worth it. It had to be. And he'd had to do it.

He'd had to do something.

She wouldn't take his calls. The driver he'd bribed had assured him she was still in Metropolis. And that her phone was working. Yet she'd ignored him. After the way she'd so obviously played him yesterday, Patricia Swann had brushed him off. He'd had to do something.

She stared at him from the glass of the bookcase. Patricia Swann stared at him. Not now, but then. Three and a half feet tall in a white dress and a pink sash and a look that said she was going to tell on him and he wondered if he was going crazy. 

He looked around. He wasn't crazy. He knew where he was, who he was. He was aware of what he'd done. 

"Not like I did anything," he said, tearing his eyes from the girl and her unending stare. 

He'd just made a call. Took a meeting. Found a man to replace her driver. Told that man to get her locket no matter what. 

Even if he had done it with his own hand, it was for the best. "It will all be worth it in the end," he said aloud, as if that would make her go away. He was fighting something bigger than one person's life. "It's worth it," he breathed, wondering how many times he had to say it before the blood went away.

He wiped at the locket again. It seemed like he'd been doing nothing else since his man had delivered it. The blood should be gone. It speckled his handkerchief and left tiny red trails in the lines of his fingertips. But he could still see blood on the locket. On everything. It was like a red haze coated everything.

He moved down the steps, away from his bookshelves and into his study in that haze. He stuffed the locket into his pocket and tossed his handkerchief in the fireplace, waiting for the blood to go away. It couldn't burn quick enough for him. He stumbled to his sideboard and pulled a crystal decanter near, not even bothering with pleasantries like ice or even a glass. He drank from the glorified bottle and waited for a nicer haze to settle on him.

He dropped it to the sideboard and closed his eyes, waiting for the haze to clear. He opened them and faced the window. It was no good. He still saw Patricia in a white dress and a pink sash and an accusing stare. And that boy, the one with the curly red hair who bothered him most of all.

"Get the f*ck out," he growled, hurling the decanter at the window. It didn't break. Not the window, at least. That particular window had been broken so many times, it was triple reinforced these days. But he hoped they'd at least leave. But no.

Just the broken pieces of the decanter, sliding down wetly in the fading daylight, leaving behind the children.

"I didn't do anything," he insisted again. The girl seemed to shake her head, staring at him sadly before she flounced off to the study's door. He turned, expecting to see her tulle skirts disappear, but there was nothing. He was beginning to wonder, not if he was insane, but just how insane as he turned back to the window. Seeing children where there were no...

The boy was still there, still glaring at him. 

"I didn't even do anything," he hissed. 

*********************

"Are you going to say anything?"

"Uh-huh."

"Chloe? Are you even listening to me?"

"Huh?" She turned to Jimmy. "I'm sorry. Were you saying something?"

"Yes, I was. For the last five minutes, I was..." He sat back in his chair. "Never mind."

Here they were supposed to be having a breakfast date and she wasn't even in the room with him. "I'm sorry, Jimmy. I'm just a little distracted." Who wouldn't be when working for their mortal enemy while constantly undermining that enemy and in constant danger of death or incarceration and... Chloe took a deep breath and tried to focus on her nice, stable, normal boyfriend. Normal. Normalcy was important. She'd better work harder on this relationship if she wanted to keep the only thing in her life that even touched normal. "It's just that I haven't finished my coffee yet." She quickly downed the rest of her mug. "See? All yours."

He turned back to her. "Okay, so we're both in the same boat. Right?"

"Meaning..."

"Meaning we both work for Lex Luthor and can't get a good photo." He gestured to her. "Or byline, in your case."

"And we aren't likely to," she said miserably. And it wasn't just that. It not just about the glory of seeing your name under a headline in The Daily Planet after dreaming of just that since she could string a sentence together. It was that her paper was in the hands of a man, of a company that this very paper should be fighting against.

"So I think, between us, we could get a story that would make even Lex..."

And she hardly had time to worry about that. Clark had called her early this morning, told her he'd been by to visit/threaten him and Kara. So now there was the fate of the world in the balance and what kind of power could she really...

"Power surges," she said, standing. That was how they'd pinpoint Brainiac's location.

"Um... Okay." Jimmy was staring up at her. "But I was thinking more like society scandal or..."

"I need to call Clark." She dug through her purse.

"Why do you need to call Clark? He doesn't even work here."

She shook her head and grabbed her coat. "You're right. He wouldn't be much help with this. I'll just get on it and tell him later if..."

"Chloe, what about our story?"

She stopped, one arm in her coat. "What story?"

Jimmy nodded, thin-lipped. "Exactly." He moved to the door.

"Jimmy..."

"No. It's fine. I'll get on a byline with someone who actually listens to me."

"Wait, I..." What? She watched him walk out of the coffe shop, knowing that she should follow him, should care about getting a byline in the paper of her dreams with the guy of her... Not dreams, exactly. But he was a good guy, a nice guy, a stable...

She shrugged her coat on. She just didn't have time for it. The whole damned world was at risk and she couldn't worry about her nice, stable boyfriend and getting a byline in the horribly twisted paper that was once her dream. Both could be gone tomorrow. She had bigger things to worry about.

PREVIOUS CHAPTER
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

So I had to have Lex have more of a reaction to Patricia's murder. I had to set up Descent and him hallucinating Little Lex (something the show didn't do). I just can't believe he'd be so cool about it. It's not like Lex murders on a daily basis. Hell, they gave him a reaction to Julian Clone. This needed something. I can't believe that the lovely, nuanced villain that Rosenbaum strove to give us would just calmly wipe a bloody locket with no emotion. Just jump to murdering with no remorse, not even deep denial of what he'd done.

I know this season was cut off in many ways by the writers' strike, so I'll give it that. But would it have killed the writers to flesh things out more and make things make sense from a character's standpoint? They could have easily scrapped all the Chimmy scenes for that. I wouldn't have minded at all.

On another note, I was thinking of trying to explain who might have sent Lois' anonymous email from nobody about Patricia Swann's murder, but even I can't explain that. 

And I got newly pissed at the "Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane" anvils when he's revealed to not even BE Jimmy a season later. The only reason I put up with the guy was because I thought he was THE Jimmy Olsen. To have him not be makes every second he was on my screen a waste of my and Aaron Ashmore's time. Poor guy. He was either set up for a fall from the start (though I don't believe that for a second. This wasn't the plan all along) or screwed over in the eleventh hour for a ratings grab --- Okay. That I believe. And the joke's on the show as the ratings can't even break 3 million nowadays. This is what happens when you retcon, Smallville!!!

Okay. Rant over.

Honestly, this season made no sense except for a few bright spots. And it only got worse. Cannot wait to break from canon. It's giving me a headache and anger issues.