Again: Chapter Sixteen (16/?)
This banner was created by smallvillefics!
Summary: Oliver let Chloe down time and again. She could only depend on two things these days- her rationality and her work. So what was her logic doing, constantly giving him second chances?
Chapter Sixteen
She was at the Daily Planet, sitting at Lois' desk. A false press-pass was printed, and she was working on erasing her tracks on the computer so that her cousin wouldn't get into trouble with Luthorcorp's active CEO.
She powered down Lois' computer afterwards when her tired eyes drifted over to the nameplate across from the desk.
Clark Kent.
He could only hear the thoughts of Lois. One person, and he was already trying to manipulate their heads. Minds are supposed to be where thoughts are safe.
It's a good thing he couldn't hear what she was thinking or else
"Or else, what, Chloe?"
She turned around to see Clark in front of her.
Wait a second, he was supposed to be out on a date with Lois. Chloe was supposed to kick his ass about all of this later. So he screwed around with Lois' brain, and now he was going to stand her up?
She walked up to him quickly. If he wasn't an alien who couldn't be harmed physically without the presence of kryptonite, she would punch him in the face.
"Or else, I would have to tell you that I don't want you breaking my cousin's heart", she said roughly.
He looked at her, confused. Seriously?
"Clark, how was I supposed to react when I find out that you've been rifling through Lois' brain like you lost your keys in there?"
He opened his mouth, about to say something, but she wasn't finished. Not yet. "You can't just trick someone into dating you."
"I didn't trick her into anything. And it's not a date."
Yeah, right. Try again. "You didn't see her when she left my apartment, Clark. Believe me, it was a date. And to add insult to injury, now you're standing her up?"
Clark looked down for a second. "No, I asked her out, not on a date, before I knew our bomber was an innocent man."
Lois mentioned something about a bomber on the go. Chloe didn't exactly get file about it. Or verbal full-disclosure. Clark barely mentioned it at all.
He handed her a copy of the Planet, and she read the front page. Toy Bomber Still at Large.
"Toyman's back", she muttered. Oh no. Oliver.
"Winslow Schott is responsible for the explosion in Oliver's building- that's why I didn't call Lois back. The last thing I need is for her to be following me into harm's way. Winslow's trying to smoke Oliver out of hiding. He's insane!"
One more death's not going to make a difference.
"Yeah, he was crazy enough before Oliver framed him for Lex's murder", she said, thinking about all of the press that would be showing up tonight. "If he's trying to track Oliver down, he won't have a hard time doing it tonight."
She saw the confusion on Clark's face. The guy worked in a newsroom, how did he not know about the shareholder's meeting?
Then again, how did Watchtower not know that Toyman was back?
"Oliver's addressing his shareholders at your requisite, red carpet, black-tie, AOC gala."
"Alright, you head back to Watchtower." What? "If Winslow strikes again, we need to move fast."
He sped off before she could protest, and there wasn't much time for her to do much without a speed-assist anyway. Watchtower wasn't far from here, and the gala was a twenty minutes walk away. She slung her bag over her shoulder and started walking towards her computers.
She pushed open the double doors and got everything running in the blink of an eye. She reached for her com, and then realized that Clark was never officially a part of the team. She put the com away, and waited for something to happen.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up. "What's going on?"
"Chloe, my trials aren't over, I just got the training wheels taken away. I think Jor-El wants me to use what I've learned. Can you hack the security feeds of the building? He's got to be in here somewhere."
"I'm on it", she said, holding the phone with one hand before cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear. It was difficult to hack with only accessible hand. This was why she needed to get her hands on a bluetooth headset if Clark wasn't going to use a com.
Clark hung up on her, and she took the phone, setting it down next to the keyboard before breaking into Ace of Clubs security. There was an unclear voice coming from the computer, and she tried to make the quality better.
There wasn't much that she could do about the echoing of the audio, but she could see a clear picture. She could see Oliver sweating at the podium.
"My name is Oliver Queen", he said. "And I am a coward. I am a thief. And I am a..." He stopped abruptly.
Chloe walked over to another monitor, pulling up the security footage, running everything through an infrared scanning software. If there was someone hidden around the building, their body temperature would set off the scanner.
So far, there was nothing to track down the Toyman. But there was a crackling in the audio. Chloe walked over to her desk, pulled up the information on the first monitor, and expanded the visual image on the touch screen so that it projected on the wall.
There was something here. She froze the image of Oliver and zoomed in. She walked up to the screen and saw that he was wearing some sort of earpiece. She walked over to a third monitor and started typing. Someone was talking to him.
The earpiece was wireless, but that didn't make it a secure com link. It was phone call from a pre-paid phone.
The phone had a SIM card in order to activate the minutes, but she needed some sort of name in order to track it down. There needed to be something here.
She didn't know much about Toyman's past. Only that he used to work for Queen Industries, snapped under the pressure of the job, and got fired after hiding bombs in toys that he brought in.
There wasn't enough time to pull up a complete history on the man to see if she could find something that would create an alias. She needed to get in there somehow.
Her phone rang, and she picked up. "What?" She snapped
"Chloe, we need to get these people out of here now. Oliver's standing on a landmine."
She would bet money that the only two active calls in that room was her conversation with Clark's and Toyman's.
"Just give me one second", she said both to herself and Clark, as she clicked her way into the audio transmission.
"Confess!" She heard Toyman yell.
It echoed throughout the Watchtower, and Chloe walked over to another monitor and tried to hack into the computerized alarm, trick the heat sensors so that they would go off and the people could evacuate the building.
Access Denied.
Oh, come on.
She tried three more algorithms to get into the fire system before access was granted. All that was needed now was the heat sensors. She started typing, and within seconds, heard the alarms sound from her computers.
"The emergency alarm has been activated. Please move in an orderly fashion towards the nearest exit. Thank you."
But Chloe didn't even celebrate in getting into the system. Her eyes were focused on the projected screen on the wall, on the man in front of the podium who was frozen in place.
She saw Oliver looking at his feet for some reason. What was he doing? Why didn't he leave? As far as he was concerned, this place was going to erupt in flames at any given second.
Toyman did something to him, she could feel it. Toyman hadn't said anything else to him, but the transmission was still open.
She filtered the phone call through a software in Watchtower's database, and played it back.
She stopped when she heard Toyman telling him that he was standing on a bomb. From there, she was able to piece everything together. She heard Toyman telling him to confess, otherwise everyone in the room would die.
Toyman wanted to force Oliver to publicly confess that he had murdered Lex Luthor.
She watched the screen closely as Oliver let out a deep breath. Right before he stepped away from the pressure plate.
Nothing happened. Good job, Oliver. He called Toyman's bluff. It was risky, but fine.
Clark stepped back into the view of the camera, and walked up to Oliver. "How did you know that pressure plate wasn't real?" He asked
Oliver was frozen in place for a moment, took off the earpiece and let it drop to the floor. "I didn't."
"Oliver." Clark said, surprised.
"I waited until the last person got out, Clark. I knew the explosion wouldn't kill you."
What?
***
There was a clacking noise on the pavement as Chloe walked, but she couldn't hear it due to the constant pounding noise in her ears. She was a bit sad and confused back at Watchtower, but right now, that didn't matter.
She saw the taco stand in clear sight, and sped up her walking pace as she saw the man in front of her. She remembered tracking down the name of the place, tracking down the ownership records and filtering the name through Watchtower's database before she found a picture. This was the owner, and she needed to confront him while there weren't any civilians nearby. While he was still hanging around the front.
She walked right up to him as he was scribbling something down, and was able to confirm it while he was still writing.
Profile matched.
He looked up at her, and smiled. "What can I get you?"
She reached in her pocket and pulled out two pictures, sliding them across the stand. "You can tell me where to find them."
He looked at her in confusion before taking a look at the photos. Chloe looked at him closely as the confused look quickly turned to nervous.
The man slid the photos back over to her side of the counter. "I see a lot of people. I never recognize them."
She nodded, smiling. Liar.
She grabbed a gun from its holster with one hand, the man's shirt in the other and pulled him towards her before holding the gun firmly between his eyes. "I'll ask you again", she said, her voice even. "Where are they?"
"Listen lady, I own a goddamn taco stand. There are hundreds of people in here every day!"
It was true, and normally, she would have accepted it without a second thought. But she had a look at the video transmissions on the jet ride over, and that was when she found the pattern.
"Yes, but you recognize one of them, at the very least, don't you? He's here every day at exactly 3:45. No matter how busy you are, he's always here, and he's only here for three minutes flat before he leaves. Maybe he hands you a good tip so you'll keep your mouth shut, but he's always here."
"I don't know who he is! Please, I don't know his name!"
Oh, how quickly it goes from not recognizing anybody to not knowing a name.
"I'm not looking for his name. He would have just given you a fake one anyway. I'm not even looking for credit card information. He just gives you cash and disappears, am I right?"
"Yes", the man whimpered. "Always cash."
"Now, are you telling me the truth, or are you just telling me what I want to hear?" She asked, cocking the gun and pressing down on his face
"I swear on my dead mother, I'm telling you the truth."
"There's no need for that", she answered. "I have no way of even knowing right now if your mother is still alive. Does he come with a friend? Anybody at all? Look right there", she said, her head tilting downwards at the pictures on the counter. Her eyes never left the man, and her hands were gripping the gun steadily.
"He's always alone. Please, he just seemed like a good guy. If he's in any kind of trouble, I have nothing to do with it!"
But Chloe wanted to send a message. She wasn't done here yet. She looked over at the street camera that had been causing her so much trouble with transmissions. She kept the gun on the man's head, but let go of his shirt long enough to pull another gun out, cock it with her leg, and shoot the camera to kill the transmission.
The man closed his ears with the loud gunshots and Chloe focused her attention back on him. "What else do you know?" She demanded
She barely had time to register that she was in some random room with Victor on his laptop on the couch, Bart's hand still gripping her arm firmly before he dragged her to the side. "What were you doing back there?" he demanded
It was the first time that someone had made any personal contact with her in a long time. Other than the quick, formalized one-arm hugs from Lois before one of them left the door, and the warm, heartfelt glares that her and Clark exchanged from time to time when they thought that the other one wasn't looking.
She wanted to lie, to tell them that the man was never in any real danger. But the truth of the matter was that at this point, she was so desperate for the two of them to see her, to pull her away from the scene, that she wasn't entirely sure what she would have done if they had waited a couple of more minutes.
She wanted to break down and cry for once, to tell them that it was all her fault. But she didn't.
"Get off of me", she said roughly, pulling herself away from Bart. "I did what I needed to."
Victor closed the laptop that he was working on and put the computer to the side. "For what?" he asked. "The world going up in flames again? How nice to be invited."
"What?" She asked, whipping her head to the side to look at him.
"You can't just pick and choose, you know. We were supposed to be a team. I didn't even know that they found you. That there was even a plan. I didn't even know that someone had died until everyone else had come back from the funeral."
"Yeah, that was an awkward birthday party", Bart added. "But that's not the only point. You can't choose who to damage and who to leave behind."
Seriously? "Is this what you're pissed off about?" She asked Victor. "That you were left out of party? I didn't send you an e-vite? I will next time- it'll be in bold lettering. Let's all track down Chloe and Doomsday", she took a deep breath before continuing. "Kidnap them, and then see what happens!"
"You don't go against protocol", Victor told her. "At least, you never used to."
"Me?" She asked. "You guys went against protocol", she said. "I didn't run off to the side, and call you as the damsel in distress, telling you to save me. Clark did. And Clark went against protocol- I told him specifically to stop looking for me."
"You can't be serious", Bart and Victor said simultaneously.
"What?"
"We were going to look for you, Chloe, regardless of what you said", Bart told her.
She should have been flattered. She should have felt loved and cared for, but she wasn't. "Well, you shouldn't have."
Emotions were not the exception to protocol. She learned that the hard way when she ran away with Davis instead of finding a way to kill him.
"I knew what I was doing", she said loudly over the pounding noise in her ears. "I willingly left with Davis. I knew the risks and I took them. You guys", she continued, pointing first at Bart and then at Victor. "Had no idea. If anyone was going to die, it should have been me!" She exclaimed.
They both opened their mouths to say something, probably something to comfort her, but she cut them off. "No, you two shut up!" She shouted, taking a deep breath before continuing. "I knew what I was doing, and now the team's gone to hell. You two are running around, blocking transmissions, Aquaman's swimming around Atlantis, and Oliver"
She stopped for a split second as the image flooded her brain again, the pounding in her ears disappearing for a moment, being replaced by two words: I didn't.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and came back with her voice stronger. "And Oliver's running around drunk, sleeping with random women, and trying to kill himself. This wasn't in the plan. This wasn't supposed to happen. Nobody was supposed to die!"
"Chloe", Bart started, moving towards her. She knew what was going to happen next if she didn't stop it. There would be a pity hug, maybe some tears. And she was just tired of crying all of the time.
She wanted to move backwards, but didn't. There was a strange strength in her voice with what she said next. She turned to Victor. "Tell me where Dinah is."
"What?" Bart asked
"If I couldn't find her, and you're keeping Impulse here out of the camera", she started, making sure to use Bart's codename for formality. "Then you know where I can find Canary."
"I don't think she would want you to track her down."
"Fine", she said sternly. "Then you do it. I don’t care if you have to follow her for hours, you find her and all of you show up at the Watchtower tomorrow night.”
“The what?” Victor asked
“Bart knows where it is”, she said, not even gesturing to the guy or moving her head to the side.
“You all show up 10:00 PM tomorrow at Watchtower or I’ll track her down myself and knock you all out with my stun gun and fly you over. I don’t care what it takes. Oliver Queen does not fucking kill himself, you hear me?”
They were frozen still, silent. She took it as a yes. “Good”, she finished before leaving the hotel room and slamming the door behind her.
She pulled out her phone, found her own GPS coordinates, and found her own way back home.