Chlark Fanfic: Agenda, Chapter 2
Banner by go_clo.
Title: Agenda
Author: babydee1
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: NC-17 (mostly PG-13)
Warnings: None
Timeline: Futurefic; follows Season 8’s Injustice & Failsday Doomsday
Disclaimer: All known characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Summary: More than a decade after the Doomsday Rampage, Clark makes a shocking discovery that changes his life forever.
Feedback: …makes me squee. :-)
Written for the 2011 smallvillebbang long Fanfic challenge. Many thanks to twinsarein for all her tireless organisation and support!
Beta’ed bylegendarytobes & The Fallen Sky at KSite.
Art by sylvanelfmistre& go_clo.
Read previous chapter here.
Read story from the beginning here.
Chapter 2
It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be.
“What?” he whispered hoarsely.
Chloe stared into his eyes. “Gabby’s your daughter, Clark.”
“I…” he started to get to his feet, but the spinning in his head intensified.
“You should sit down,” Chloe urged gently, pressing lightly on his shoulder until he was seated on the couch again. “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”
“I can’t believe…” he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think about anything other than the bombshell Chloe had just dropped on him. He took the glasses off his face with trembling fingers and somehow managed to set them down on the table beside him.
His daughter…
“Take deep breaths,” she said, stroking his back helpfully. “That way you won’t feel so dizzy.”
He did as she instructed, and slowly he could feel the ground beneath his feet again, though he didn’t venture standing up again just yet. Chloe silently got to her feet and fetched a glass of water from the kitchen, which she handed to him. He took it from her and gulped it down, then set the glass down with an unsteady hand.
“I…” He paused and stared at Gabby again, his jaw literally on the floor. “She’s mine? My God, how?”
“Seriously?” the teenager drawled from the kitchen doorway. “The usual way, I would think. You had sex with her, right?”
Chloe flushed a deep red. “Gabby…” she warned.
Gabby continued undeterred. “Unless you two indulged in some freaky Kryptonian mating ritual that---”
“Gabriella?” Chloe interrupted sternly. “Kitchen. Now.”
The girl shrugged and started to duck out of sight.
“No, wait!” Clark yelled. “It’s okay…she can stay if she wants to.”
“Oh, you’ll have more than enough opportunity to bond with your daughter, I assure you,” she said firmly. “But you and I need to talk, Clark, and I can’t do that with her parroting in my ear.”
“But I’m bored!” Gabby complained.
“Then stick your headphones in your ears. You do it often enough when you don’t want to hear what I’m saying, don’t you?” Chloe snapped.
“Hey, don’t be so hard on her---” Clark interrupted, and Chloe visibly bristled.
“Er - excuse me?” she said incredulously. “You’ve been a parent for all of five seconds, and now you’re telling me how to raise my kid?”
“I’ve been a parent for thirteen years, Chloe!” he bellowed. “It’s not my fault you never gave me the chance to be her father!”
“Ooh, fight!” chuckled the teenager, observing them both with undisguised interest.
Chloe sighed and glared at her daughter, inclining her head at the kitchen again. After she was safely out of sight, Chloe sat down beside him and rested a hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Clark. I didn’t mean to come down so hard on you like that.”
He patted her hand. “I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat either, I just…” he sighed. “It felt like you’d been accusing me of being a deadbeat dad, and I had no idea…” he stopped, turning over his new situation like a worm turns over the ground.
He had a daughter. With Chloe. They’d made a baby that one night, all those years ago…
“I’m sure you have questions,” she said quietly.
“She’s definitely mine?” he said raggedly.
She nodded. “One hundred percent.”
He’d long since believed he’d never be a father to a natural child from his own loins, and to have that possibility dangled in front of him and then taken away…
“Are you absolutely sure?” he insisted. “I mean… Bruce and I, we pretty much have the same colouring, and…well…you and he…”
“I fell pregnant on 7th May 2009, Clark,” she said softly. “I didn’t meet Bruce until the end of July. Gabby was born January 2010.”
7th May 2009; was a date he’d never forgotten. It was the day he’d yanked a screaming, shivering Chloe out of the path of an oncoming Mack truck…among other things.
He swallowed. “When’s her birthday?”
“New Year’s Day.”
“Maybe…” he swallowed. “Maybe she was just a really big preemie baby…?”
Chloe smiled. “She was big, and she did come early, but not that early,” she said. “I was eight months along when my water broke.”
Clark did some quick mental math, and realised she was right. For Gabby to have even possibly been Bruce’s child, she’d have been about three, almost four months premature; almost too small to be viable.
“Besides, I…I wasn’t intimate with Bruce until well after Gabriella was born,” she continued. “And there was never anyone else. She’s your daughter.”
“She’s my daughter,” he said in amazement. “I have a daughter.”
Chloe nodded. “Yes, Clark. And she’s the reason why I’m here. Your daughter needs you.”
“Chloe, I…wow. I’m sorry, what does Gabby need from me?” A sudden thought occurred to him, and his flesh chilled. “Is it blood? Does she need some kind of transfusion?”
“No! No, it’s nothing life-threatening,” she reassured him. “But it is dramatic.”
“How dramatic?”
She sighed. “Gabby accidentally set fire to her room last week.” She paused. “With heat vision.”
And there was the proof he was after. Definitive proof.
“Oh my God, she is my daughter,” he whispered in awe. The last shred of doubt that had been lingering in his mind dissipated like fog in the sunshine.
Chloe smiled patiently. “Yes, Clark. She is.”
“This is so amazing,” he said out loud. “I’m a father. I’m a father!”
She chuckled. “From the look on your face, I take it that’s a good thing.”
“It’s a great thing,” he said shakily. “I never thought I could ever father children, Chloe. So from that one night…?”
She blushed. “You know what they say, it only takes the once,” she said with a smile.
“Ugh. Change the subject, please!” came the agonised cry from the kitchen.
“She’s been listening?” he whispered, his face reddening in embarrassment.
Chloe smiled and patted his arm. “You’ve got a lot to learn, but the first rule of thumb is that Teenagers Always Listen - even if their superhearing hasn’t kicked in yet.”
He winced. “We’d better do as she asks, then, before we say something really embarrassing.”
Chloe nodded. “Suits me.”
“I could ask why you didn’t tell me, but I think I already know the answer to that one,” he said solemnly.
“Same reason you didn’t seek me out when you returned from the Fortress,” she said simply.
“I was trying to protect you---”
“I know,” she said. “And I was doing the same, trying to protect Gabby. If your enemies knew you had a child…”
He nodded. “I understand, Chloe; really, I do. Gabby’s your priority. She deserves the chance of a normal life, and so do you. I can’t begrudge either of you that, not after the mess I’d already made of your life…”
She shook her head. “Clark, you never---”
“I did,” he insisted. “Everything that ever happened to you, all you had to deal with…” he sighed. She’d been infected by the meteors, resulting in a harrowing, life-giving-slash-threatening ability. Then she’d lost her beloved job at The Daily Planet, following which Brainiac had infected her, and it had all gone downhill from there. And then Davis…
He shuddered at the memory of how he’d found her tearing through the forest wearing nothing but a thin overcoat. She’d been shivering and her teeth were chattering, her legs and feet scratched and bleeding as she desperately tried to get away from that monster.
“Much as I yearned to get in touch with you after my return, I also prayed that you wouldn’t contact me,” he said honestly. “I knew how to find you, of course, but…I would rather live without you in my life than run the risk of losing you completely. Just knowing you were alive and happy was enough for me, but even then, there was still a small, selfish part of me that wanted to see you.
“But then I discovered you’d had a child, and I knew I couldn’t put her at risk or expose her to danger,” he went on. “So I stayed away. But I always thought about you, and hoped you were happy.” He paused. “Are you happy, Chloe?”
“I’ve been lucky,” she admitted. “Bruce has been there for Gabby and me, and we have a great relationship. But he’s always known he wasn’t her father, and never wanted to take that place in her life. He always said we’d have to contact you sooner or later, and he was right.”
“And here you are.”
She nodded. “Here we are.”
He swallowed. “Um...so, what other abilities does she have?”
“Heat vision’s the only obvious one so far, though she does have a freakishly good memory,” she replied.
“Which she probably got from you,” he said, making Chloe smile.
“Thanks. No x-ray vision or superhearing yet - at least as far as I’m aware. Although she did complain about a buzzing sound in the plane on the way over here; she might have been picking up ultra high frequencies.”
His brow furrowed in worry. “How’s she handling it? Knowing that she’s different, I mean?”
“Surprisingly well, if I’m to be honest. I thought she’d be in a lot worse shape than this, but she seems to have taken it all in stride.”
“So you want me to help her manage her abilities?”
She nodded. “You’re the only one who knows what she’s going through,” she replied earnestly. “I have no idea when her other abilities might show up, or even if they’ll show up at all. But if they do, I want her to be prepared to handle them.”
He took her hands. “Of course, Chloe. Whatever you want, I’ll do.”
She heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Clark. It means the world to me, and I know it’s a lot to ask, just springing it all on you like this.”
“Chloe, it’s not an inconvenience, it’s a privilege,” he said softly. “Gabriella’s my daughter. I’ll do anything for her.”
“So you’ll let me go quad-biking at Sadler’s Range this weekend?” she piped up hopefully, emerging from the kitchen.
“No, he won’t,” Chloe said sternly. “This is not an opportunity for you to wrangle your way out of trouble, or get what you want, young lady. If I hear you’ve been rude or fleecing Clark for stuff, you’ll be in serious trouble.”
Gabby’s face fell. “What’s the point of having my Dad around if you won’t let him be a Dad to me?” she pouted.
Chloe sighed. “There’s a lot more to having a Dad than just getting someone to sign permission slips, Gabby,” she said wearily. “And I’m not in the mood to argue this with you right now. Get your things, we’re leaving.”
***
Chapter 3…