Chlark Fanfic: No Compromise, Chapter 2
Banner by the wonderful ctbn60. Thank you so much, Carol! :-)
Title: No Compromise
Author: BabyDee1
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Timeline: Follows Season 10’s Masquerade with reference to Collateral
Disclaimer: All known characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Summary: After Chloe resists all Desaad’s temptations, she finally admits to the truth of what’s in her heart.
Feedback: …makes me squee. :-)
Read previous chapter here.
Chapter 2
“Let me run away with you this time,” he was saying. “No more disguises, no more darkness…”
Chloe’s eyes widened and she stared at Oliver in disbelief. “I would never ask you to do that,” she said, shocked. “Why would you ever think that I would---?”
“It’s okay; we don’t have to try so hard to be heroes,” he went on, cupping her cheek. “We’re just human. There’s plenty enough people here to fight the good fight without us.”
She continued to stare at him as he headed towards the exit, and then turned to her. “Come on,” he offered, holding out his hand to her. “Come on, Chloe, we can be together…just take my hand.”
Chloe frowned, feeling utterly confused. This was wrong. Running away and leaving the world in potential jeopardy was nothing short of criminal. Oliver, with his darkened hair and blue-green eyes, looking remarkably like someone she was trying her hardest to forget…
Everything about this picture was wrong.
“Come on,” he urged, his voice softly pleading as he beckoned to her. “Just take my hand…come on…”
She took a step forward; not to go with him, but to give him a puzzled look as she frowned and issued a genuine query.
“Who are you?”
***
I don’t understand,” Oliver said curtly. “Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do, for both of us.”
“And what, I don’t even get a say?” he went on, his voice rising. “You’re not even going to give me a platform to express my own feelings?” He shook his head. “I don’t get you at all, Chloe. Just yesterday you just said you loved me, no questions asked!”
“I know,” she replied. “And I still do, it’s just…”
“Just what?” he pressed. “What happened between yesterday and today that’s made everything so different?”
She lowered her gaze. “I came face to face with the truth about myself,” she whispered. “About everything.”
“It was a test!” Oliver insisted. “A test which you passed with flying colours, what more do you want?”
“Oliver---”
“…So you got spooked by Desaad, it’s completely understandable---”
“It’s more than that!” she insisted.
“We all get tempted, Chloe. We all want things we sometimes can’t have, but that’s life!”
“Don’t you want to know?” she asked quietly. “What he tempted me with?”
Oliver gritted his teeth and turned away. “It’s not my business---”
“It concerns you, Oliver.”
“I said I don’t want to know.”
“We need to talk about this---”
“Why? Why do we have to?” he said, exasperated. “I just said I didn’t want to know!”
“Even if it explains why I’m breaking up with you?”
“Okay, fine!” He yelled. “Tell me why you’re dumping me, Chloe. Tell me what I did that was so wrong you’re cutting me loose without a second thought.”
She shook her head vehemently. “It wasn’t you, Ollie, you didn’t do anything---”
“Right,” he sneered. “It’s not you, it’s me. Seriously, is that the best you could come up with? From you, I’d expected something a whole lot more original---”
“The Seven Deadly Sins,” she said suddenly. Oliver stopped mid-tirade and stared at her, and she continued. “He modelled my temptations on the Seven Deadly Sins, and I was tempted by every single one he dangled in front of me.” She paused. “Except you.”
“But…but that’s a good thing, right?” he said. “He couldn’t use me to corrupt you, isn’t that what it means?”
She lowered her gaze. “Not exactly,” she replied. “He…presented me with an opportunity to take everything I ever wanted, and…you were the one thing I was able to let go of.”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “You said no to me?”
Without batting an eyelid. She nodded wordlessly, and Oliver took a tentative step forward.
“But you said no to everything else as well,” he pointed out. “Didn’t you?”
“I did; but I didn’t want to say no to those other things, and that’s what worried me,” she said quietly. “I thought you and I were rock solid, but in the vision, when I didn’t go along with you, or didn’t even want to, it…it got me wondering why.”
“Let me guess,” he said wryly. “He offered you Clark first, right?”
Her face reddened. “This isn’t about Clark---”
“That means he did,” he interrupted, nodding curtly. “And of course, you wanted to go with him.” He got to his feet and ran a hand through his hair “Christ, I should have known.”
“Oliver---” She got to her feet and went to his side. “Oliver, please listen to me---”
“When, oh when are you going to learn, Chloe?” he yelled exasperatedly. “Clark doesn’t want you, he never has!”
“I know!” she cried.
“Yeah, you know, but because you were tempted by him for one second, you’re going to throw away what you and I have?” he raged. “For God’s sake, Chloe, he’s marrying your cousin!”
“The same cousin you’re in love with, correct?”
He stopped and stepped back, startled. “What?” he gaped. “No, I don’t love Lois. Why would you even bring her into this?”
She gave a mirthless smile. “Actually, you did.”
“To show you you’re making a mistake by breaking us up!” he explained. “I told you, I don’t love Lois, not anymore. We talked about this months ago, when we were at the MacDougall Inn. Scars, remember?”
Chloe sighed and turned away. “You know the trouble with scars, Ollie?” she said, a faraway look in her eyes as she went to stand by the window. “They look like they’ve healed, but they never do, not really. The scab…it’s like a mask. All you have to do is scratch the surface, and voila - there’s your wound, as fresh and raw and gaping as the day it was made.”
She heard him clear his throat. “Did Desaad show you something?” he asked, his voice low. “About me and Lois?”
“He didn’t have to show me anything, I saw it all for myself,” she replied.
He went on. “If…if you’re talking about that whole Blind Date thing, that was before you and I got together and it was just a kiss, nothing more,” he said hurriedly. “I was …just trying to see if we could get back what we had…”
“You kissed her?” she asked, still staring out the window. He gasped audibly, and then she heard him give a weary sigh.
“You didn’t know.”
She shook her head and turned around to face him. “No; but that’s not even what I was referring to.”
“Then what?” he asked quietly.
“Remember when we were in the hospital, after Lois got shot by your former mentor with that arrow?” she asked, recollecting the code Oliver’s secret organisation had gone by.
No Lovers, No Allies, No Disciples. Even on a stranger’s Hit List, she’d been identified as merely the Ally, while Lois was the Lover.
“Yeah…so?” he prodded.
“I remember the look on your face,” she said softly. “When you saw Lois there with Clark…Oliver, you were devastated. You were,” she insisted when he began shaking his head.
“You don’t understand, he said. “I was upset, yes, I admit it - but only because I knew I had to say goodbye. Chloe, I was letting her go.”
“I know,” she went on. “But not because you chose to, but because you had to. Because she’d chosen to be with Clark.”
Oliver sighed and ran a hand through his hair in despair. Finally he walked over to her and took her hand in his.
“Does it matter?” he whispered. “I know you and I didn’t have the perfect start to our relationship for lots of reasons, but does it really matter how or why we came together?”
“It does to me,” she answered quietly. “Knowing that yet again I came in second to the girl with the long, dark hair…”
“Chloe it’s not like that anymore, you know it isn’t,” he argued.
“But it was, wasn’t it?” she said with a sad smile. “At the time I was the Consolation Prize; just someone you could catch your fun with.”
Oliver’s eyes drifted shut has his own careless words came back to haunt him. She carried on.
“Oliver, all my life I’ve been the girl everyone needed but didn’t want,” she said. “And initially it was enough for me to know that with my skills set I could make a difference. I’d chide myself for being too expectant of anyone’s affections, and remind myself that there were more important things going on in the world that the state of my heart.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting someone to love you Chloe; we all want that for ourselves,” Oliver said quietly.
“We all want it, but we don’t all get it,” she said dryly. “And after years of rejection at Clark’s hands, when you made your…offer…all those months ago, I thought: bit of fun…yeah, why not?”
“But it all changed,” he pointed out. “Chloe, we’re so far from where we were a year ago. It’s all different now; I love you. We love each other.”
“I know,” she whispered, squeezing his hand tenderly. “And up until yesterday I thought what we had would be enough.”
She paused and went back to the table and stared at the picture in the open yearbook.
“I may have resisted all Desaad’s temptations, but he reminded me of the person I once was,” she said, tapping the page. “This girl would never have settled for second best. I’d have insisted that you treat me better from the beginning, not like some booty-call that you occasionally like to tap between business trips.”
He winced. “I apologised for that remark a million times over, Chloe,” he said, thoroughly contrite. “I was upset, I didn’t mean it…”
“I’m not accusing you, Oliver; I’d just siphoned a whole lot of money from your accounts, and you were justifiably angry,” she said. “But again, that’s what I’m talking about. When you found out I’d taken that money, what was the first thing you said to me?”
He swallowed. “That I’d never have expected it from you,” he whispered.
She nodded. “You were right. The old me would never have stolen from you; that’s not who I was. Along the way I’ve lost myself, and I’m desperate to get me back.”
“But you don’t need to break up with me to re-discover who you are,” he insisted, resting a hand on her cheek.
She sighed deeply and shook her head, taking his hand in hers.
“I do,” she replied. “Oliver…my heart belongs to someone else, as does yours. And even though I know you and I have great potential, I…I’m done being that person who always gets picked last. I want to be someone’s first choice for a change. Heck, I want to be their only choice.”
“Chloe…Clark isn’t going to magically fall in love with you,” he said gently. “I’m not saying that to be mean, I just don’t want you throwing away what you could have with me for something you’re never going to get from him. I don’t need to remind you that he’s marrying Lois in six weeks.”
“I know,” she said hollowly. “I hear everything you’re saying, Ollie, but my mind’s made up. I’ve accepted that I’ll never have Clark and believe me I have no intention of going after him; I’m not that pathetic.
“But I don’t want to be the girl who’s chosen by default because the preferred option’s already off the table. She wouldn’t have stood for that,” she said, nodding at the picture in the yearbook. “And that’s why I need to be that person again.”
Oliver sighed and went to sit silently by the window with folded arms. After several minutes he spoke.
“If your mind’s made up, then I’ll respect your wishes,” he said quietly. “I won’t stand in your way.”
“I’m sorry, Ollie,” she said brokenly, sitting down beside him. “I do love, you, b---”
“But,” he said with a sad smile. “You love me, but. That’s never a good sign, and you’re not the only one with some pride, Chloe. You refuse to be a second choice, well…I refuse to be a but. I don’t like buts.”
Despite the soberness of the situation, Chloe giggled. “Actually, you kind of do.”
Oliver leaned back and glanced at her rear and in spite of his pain his eyes twinkled as he chuckled. “See?” he said softly, cupping her face and stroking her cheek. “We’re good together, you and I. We make each other laugh, isn’t that enough?”
Chloe sighed, and Oliver took advantage of her hesitation to pitch one last-ditch attempt.
“We deserve to be happy, and we can be, together; I know we can,” he insisted. “Don’t let your pride blind you to what you could have with me.” He stopped and grinned. “Did you see what I did there? Pride?”
Chloe rolled her eyes and smiled at his nod to one of the Seven Deadly Sins. She lifted her hand to his and gave it a quick squeeze.
“You’re a wonderful man, Oliver,” she said tearfully. “You deserve so much better than me and my silly pride.”
He shook his head. “Self-respect,” he corrected. “You need to believe in yourself again, and to do that you need to reconnect with the old you, the one who only wanted the best for herself; I understand. No compromise.”
She nodded and smiled, her eyes filled with unshed tears as he finally understood and accepted her decision to end things. “No compromise,” she said.
Just then her cell rang. Oliver rose and picked it up off the table, studying the caller ID. “Huh. It’s Clark,” he said, handing it to her with a raised brow. She took it and answered the call, putting him on speakerphone.
“Hey Clark, what’s up?”
“Hi Chloe,” he greeted. “Listen, I need your help with something…”
Oliver who rolled his eyes and folded his arms in a classic ‘I-told-you-so’ pose.
“Really?” she said, her mouth curling in a sardonic grin. “And what might that be?”
“I need to get something from the Kawatche caves, and I was hoping you might want to come along,” he ventured. “Could you meet me there?”
Opposite her, Oliver shook his head sternly and made a sharp ‘here’ gesture with his hand.
“You know what - how about you pick me up on your way?” she suggested, and Oliver nodded in agreement.
“Even better,” Clark said. “See you in five.”
“’Kay, later,” she replied, and hung up.
“Clark Kent,” Oliver muttered wryly. “Wings-for-feet, sludge-for-brains.”
Chloe giggled, and to her surprise Oliver gave her a stern look and pointed his finger at her. “Whenever he calls to ask for your help, let him be the one to pick you up,” he advised. “It’s the least he can do. And it’s not like it costs him anything.”
She managed to stifle a snort of laughter at that. “Yes sir,” she said meekly, and he smiled and ruffled her hair.
“Accept that as my little contribution to your Treat Me Better campaign,” he said with a grin, tweaking her nose before heading for the stairs. “Peace, love, and I’m out.”
Chloe hurried to the railing and leaned over. “Hey, Ollie?” she called.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at her, and she smiled.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For everything.”
He smiled up at her. “Anytime, kiddo.”
***
Chapter 3...