The Loyal Opposition, Part 3 of ???*
Title: The Loyal Opposition
Author: latetothpartyhp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: drama
Spoilers: through Pandora
Pairings: ETA: I envisioned this as mainly a Chlark confrontation, but what emerged in addition to that were some hints of Chlex friendship, mutual Chless manipulation, and some (mostly) off-screen Clana. There's also a Lexana fight for anyone who's interested. And Cless! We have added Cless!
Warnings: some violence & language - ETA: Character deaths in store.
Summary / Author's Note: Chloe's on a mission for the resistance. Could be a Supernatural crossover if you squint real hard.
(*and much much gratitude to babydee1 for making the userpic that just says it all! And check out the gorgeous banner by go_clo !)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15 / Part 16
Now Chloe waited.
Tess had been sent with a small band of human collaborators and a Kryptonian to shepherd them. That worried her. It was Lana, after all. Lana. She had been sure he'd dash off to the given coordinates without another thought. She'd tried, when she realized he did not mean to drop everything and go himself, to “suggest” that he do so but he'd already begun issuing orders.
At some point in the last year he'd learned caution. From what or whom was an interesting question. One for which she had no answers, no data, no guesses. She was the first person they'd been able to plant inside, and it killed her that she had no way but Madelyn to communicate the situation.
Not that she had much to report. Two days passed without her being summoned. She spent both of them in a tiny room in the basement beneath the kitchens she was pretty sure had once been a pantry. There was no window, but no lock on the door either. She couldn't believe that in all the Luthor mansion they didn't have someplace more specific and high-tech to keep her. Of course, they probably didn't think she was much of a threat.
The thought rankled. She tried not to dwell on it, but there wasn't much to distract her. She had never been very physically intimidating; her strength had always been her mind, but now there was nothing for her mind to do. Of course they wouldn't need a lock. Without information she was nothing.
And the irony was that she wasn't even entirely sure what she was supposed to be learning. Lex had never been specific about what was to happen once she “revealed” Lana's location:
“Resistance 101: Never tell an agent anything she doesn't need to know.”
“That makes me sound awfully expendable.”
“It also makes you sound competent to improvise.”
“Which means I'm fish-food, aren't I? Well, as long as I can take out as many of them as I can with me.”
“That's the spirit!”
Between not knowing her own team's plan and not knowing the enemy's plan she wanted to jump up and down on her little cot screaming. She settled for pacing, instead. She walked a marathon in that pantry.
The one glaringly obvious truth to this situation was that Lana might very well not survive. She'd purposefully suppressed the thought, but after a few hours of crawling the walls she couldn't ignore it any longer. That Clark had sent Tess and a Kryptonian rather than go himself pointed to assassination rather than capture. Of course, capture had its downside as well. The trial and execution of a known Resistance leader would have a demoralizing effect on whoever still cared about something besides grubbing for food. Either scenario probably meant the opposite of a long and full life for her.
Oh, who was she kidding? Even if some pig collaborator or Kryptonian ditto-head didn't get her, she knew Lex would not allow the likes of Madelyn loose on the world. She'd known that from the beginning leaving the mansion would be the end. And yet ... now that she was safely imprisoned in her lock-less door, with only one human standing between her and escape, down from her adrenaline high and past imminent danger, knowing she could be summoned at any moment, that she might see Clark again at any moment: she wanted to live. She couldn't help it.
She had never loathed herself as much as she did with realization.
Maybe, she thought, sitting on the cot and bundling herself into a ball, maybe it would help if she stopped thinking of him as “Clark”, started thinking of him by his Kryptonian name. When she thought “Clark” she could close her eyes and remember the boy who'd kissed her in the hallway freshman year, cried over Martha's miscarriage, worn Jonathan's watch, changed Evan's diapers and got Maddie to talk. Thinking about “Clark” left her here, curled up on her cot and crying.
“Kal-El”, on the other hand - who was he? He was as alien to her as his biology was to earth. Her bones did not turn to water, her breath did not quicken, her heart did not shatter at that name. Instead there was choking, trembling fear and anger. Anger will control you if you don't control it, Lana said in her head. Act in anger and you will make mistakes you can never unmake. Lana would know.
So would she, though. She had made a mistake once in anger and it felt as though she had spent the rest of her life trying to unmake it. She had held on so hard, for so long, in jealousy and in contrition, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse. Now it was much, much worse, and she still struggled to let go. She would never be worthy now. She was human. He was not.
On the third day when the guard entered she was balanced in Ardha Chandrasana.
“You will come with me,” he said.