Big Bang Story (part four)

[simplytoopretty]

Click Your Heels Three Times, part four



IV.

2020

It’s a gray morning when she leaves her condo near downtown Metropolis. Thirty minutes later she’s at work, the hour early enough that traffic isn’t much of a problem. She avoided Fourth Avenue because of an accident and took Second instead to get to Third and Burrard, where the Daily Planet is located.

The sky, Chloe notes as she passes through the swinging doors of the building, is a thick sheet of clouds. The clouds are light in color, whites and grays mixing, and she doesn’t think rain is on the horizon. She hopes not because rain makes people less willing to be interviewed if she needs to interview people on the street of some news-generating event or incident.

Even at eight in the morning the place is already busy. She heads upstairs to the tenth floor. The tenth floor bullpen is the highest bullpen in the Daily Planet and it’s half-empty. The people who are there, co-workers she’s intimately familiar with, are bustling and hustling. There is the sound of fingers clacking on keyboards and voices on phones as people arrange and conduct interviews via email and phone. It’s a madhouse and Chloe wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Sometimes she finds it hard to believe that she once thought she could give up journalism, that she believed that journalism might not be for her. It’s hard to believe and yet it happened so many years ago. Now this is her life.

“Perry wants you,” Jade says. She covers the business desk; Chloe is assigned local news, including crime.

“Already? What did I do?”

Jade shrugs. “He just said to send you into his office when you arrived.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going, I’m going. And I won’t even stop for my morning coffee.”

“You have coffee at home every morning.”

Chloe grins. “I need at least four cups!”

“Go see the Chief.”

“He hates that name,” Chloe says. Jade smiles. Perry hates the name and so everyone calls him it. Chloe told him to never let it be known when something annoys him. Maybe one day Perry will actually do this.

When she enters Perry’s office, Chloe stops just inside the door, surprise freezing her in place. Across from Perry, sitting in a plush chair, is Clark. He’s dressed in a black suit with a white Oxford and a gray tie, nothing red or blue on him. His face is older, more mature; his eyes are the same blue color, but they’re also older, wiser, sadder.

“You two know each other, right?” Perry says.

Clark says, “Yeah. We went to high school together.”

Life returns to her body and she’s able to move. She takes the plush seat next to Clark, sinking gratefully into the dark navy chair. “Yeah, we went to high school together. But it’s been years since we saw each other.”

“It’s been awhile,” Clark confirms.

Perry nods, apparently unconcerned with this news. “Kent is joining us from The Globe and Mail, Sullivan. He’s abandoning Canada and coming back home.”

Chloe keeps her mouth shut and doesn’t retort that Clark never truly left Metropolis. He’s been here the whole time, the Red-Blue-Blur, the superhero in the shadows. He never left but no one else knows that apparently. Clark has covered his tracks well. She hates that she’s proud of him for that.

Clark shrugs. “It was time.”

“The Globe and Mail?” Chloe asks.

“I was part of the international desk.”

“But he’ll be doing local crime here in Metropolis.”

“It’s what interests me.”

“Local crime,” Chloe says. “You mean…”

“Same beat as you. I figured you could show him around, help him get acclimated to American journalism again.”

“There’s not that much of a difference,” Clark interjects.

“Enough that you’ll probably find Sullivan’s help useful. What do you say, Sullivan?” Perry asks, turning towards her. Only it’s not much of a question.

She nods. “Yeah, sure, that sounds fine.”

In the first weeks Chloe isn’t sure how to act around Clark.

She has imagined face-to-face meetings with Clark countless times in the years they’ve been apart. She has imagined, dreamed, fantasized. Her, Clark, but not like how it happened. Their reunion occurs in an office, in a bullpen, and it’s far from intimate.

They step out of Perry’s office together. There are inches of space between them, left by the both of them.

“So you’re back. Here, at the paper,” Chloe says needlessly. All that she has wanted to say to him, all the words she had just flow out of her, leaving her with this needless thing to say. The words she had wanted to say are just words of air, unheard by all save her.

Chloe hears those unsaid words. She remembers.

“Yeah, I am. It feels right.”

She knows that feeling. In the decade that has passed going back to journalism has been one of the things that has felt right. It felt right and that feeling hasn’t changed.

“Good. That’s good. You and journalism…that’s good.”

Clark nods. There’s the whole awkwardness of the exchange and it makes her cringe. And it hurts because they used to be close, used to have a relationship where talking was simple. It hasn’t felt like this between her and Clark in far too long.

Then a voice reminds her that she hasn’t had the chance to be awkward with Clark like this in a decade and Chloe isn’t sure whether she should be grateful for this opportunity. If she should welcome it because it is, in theory, better than the silence that has characterized their relationship for so long.

Not that they’re saying anything important. Nothing important passes their lips, and perhaps this is all that they will ever have now. Unsure how to feel, she pushes that thought aside and says, “I’ll show you around.”

“Thanks,” Clark says. “I appreciate it.”

And so she shows him around. And the way things are is set in this brief tour. The tone is set for their working conversations.

They don’t mention anything about the years they haven’t spoken, don’t mention even having missed each other. That is off-limits, a topic that should be avoided at all costs. Or so they have decided without ever having spoken about it.

A part of her hates it. There’s an elephant in the room, to borrow from the common phrase, and they’re just ignoring it. They both know it’s there, the elephant of his leaving, the words he spoke to her, how he just abandoned her when she needed him the most. This is the elephant, the one filling the room; it is the thing that has kept them apart for all these years, the reason why their conversations are bland and impersonal these days. They talk of work and little else beyond the expected how are you today?

The other part of her doesn’t mind not speaking about what has happened, liking the silence while still feeling the discomfort of all that isn’t being said, the elephant in the room that they’re willfully blind to. Likes this silence because it means she doesn’t have to reveal all the emotions she has felt during the years, the anger and the hurt and the acceptance. She doesn’t have to say how much she wanted him by her side when she went back to school, when she wrote the story about Oliver’s death, when she went to Perry White to wrestle control of the Daily Planet from Lex Luthor’s hands. She doesn’t have to hear his excuses, the words he would find to justify his actions, his leaving her.

Chloe thinks that it is his words she’s most afraid of. She watches him from the corner of her eyes at work and has contradictory impulses. The desire to know and the fear of knowing. The fear wins because she doesn’t think she could handle another Clark Kent-generated heartbreak. Been there, done that.

But the situation is unsettled and uncomfortable and it’s hard to be around him. Too many memories swell up inside her, good and bad ones, all wanting acknowledgement. Her ability to converse meaningfully is impaired and their conversations are silted, even though they talk about work, about leads and contacts and nothing personal.

The cause of this boils down to the mere fact that it hurts to be around him. For so many reasons and ones she can’t discuss with anyone because she doesn’t have the close friendships she used to possess. She was closest to the people who died or left years ago, Lois and Jimmy and Davis and Pete. Clark left like Pete although he’s back now, technically. It’s been hard to make close friends in the years since then, a process she hasn’t seemed to be able to master. She still talks to a few classmates via email and there are her work friends but no deep, close friendships like she once had, particularly with Clark and Lois.

She just has to muddle through this by herself.

Two weeks into Clark working at the Daily Planet, he asks her if she wants to grab coffee during their morning break. It’s a causal invitation, given breezily; Chloe always wonders during conversations with Clark if she’s the only one affected by their past. If she is the only one who is uncomfortable because he is normal.

Unlike her, he is never silted during their conversations. Jealousy abounds.

“You still like coffee, right?” he says.

“Yeah, I still like coffee,” she says. She hates the reminder of the past, the way he so easily brings it up. “Coffee sounds good. I could use some that isn’t the crap made here.”

“They really do make crappy coffee here.”

“It’s the coffee maker. Perry refuses to replace it, even when we offer to buy one with our own money. I think he likes the bad coffee and how it’s authentic for a newspaper to have shitty coffee that the people drink anyways because they need their caffeine boost.”

Clark laughs lightly.

It almost feels normal. Almost.

There’s just too much unsaid between them. The elephant in the room, the phrase she keeps thinking about even though she doesn’t like it. It’s cliché but it’s unnervingly true.

“So…want to grab a cup of coffee?”

“Now?”

“It’s ten. Break time.”

“What if a call comes in? What if there’s a breaking news story that I or you or both of us needs to cover?”

“Cell phones, Chloe. We have them.”

“Right,” she says. She reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind her ears, a classic nervous sign. She’s nervous and awkward but she says, “Sure, let’s go,” because it might be an opportunity to move forward.

An opportunity to move forward: the words echo in her head as they head towards the elevator, passing the numerous windows that would allow the early autumn sun to filter through to the floor if it wasn’t for the window coverings pulled down. The coverings, dark gray when the sky is overcast, are a paler gray as they block out the bright sun that hasn’t been dimmed by the changing weather yet. The days growing shorter, cooler, the wind picking up.

Outside they go, tumbling onto the sidewalk with a cluster of other people. The city street busy at this mid-morning hour, the rush of people living their lives, going to and from places in their lives. The breeze touches their skin, different than the harsh air-conditioning inside the Daily Planet building, higher than needed because Perry likes it cool.

There’s silence between them as they walk towards the coffee shop at the end of the block. It’s a small local café with a handful of tables inside and outside. A place to grab coffee on the way to work, not really a place to sit down and chat, and this is where they’re going. It’s perfect and not.

She hates and doesn’t hate the way things are. It’s perfect and it’s not. Contradictions are everything.

Chloe breaks the silence, commenting on the season. There are a few trees on the street, planted in the space between the cement of the sidewalk and the concrete of the road. The trees are loaded with leaves of autumn colors, the yellows and reds and oranges of the dying leaves. Autumn, a season of change, of death.

“The leaves are pretty,” she says.

“They are,” Clark says. He glances at her and adds, “Except for the ones on the street.”

The leaves on the ground are shades of brown and mottled yellow. Ugly shades, the ugly side of death.

“Yeah.”

Cars and buses flash by. Some people stroll and others scurry by. People are talking to each other, to their cell phones. Nothing is quiet except for the occasional person alone and unattached to a cell phone at that moment. Except her and Clark: they’re quiet again.

Without the workplace setting, without a specific article to discuss, they have little to say that’s ‘safe’. Or it could be only her who feels this way. She watches Clark from the corner of her eye and he seems unaffected, like there is nothing wrong or uncomfortable about this walk down this downtown street that at this moment seems never-ending. She thinks her discomfort must show in her face, in how her posture, in the tense shoulders and neck that are giving her a headache already. Her cheeks may be red.

Finally they get to the coffee shop. Chloe withholds the impulse to say that out loud. Some unnecessary words she manages to keep in.

The coffee shop is overly warm. In her blouse and suit jacket Chloe feels overheated. It doesn’t help her building headache.

“For here or to go?” the barista asks.

Clark glances at her. “To go,” Chloe says.

When they left the Daily Planet, she had the thought that maybe this might be a break-through. But it feels like more of the same, the same inability to say what they should, the elephant in his corner and refusing to leave and neither of them acknowledging his presence. It feels the same and it is the same and she just wants to get back to work now, where things feel comfortable. Where she can better deal with what isn’t being said because there are ringing phones and emails and stories to chase to distract her. At work talking to Clark is awkward but never like this: almost hurtful because they can’t say anything meaningful.

They head back. The sun overhead is bright and brilliant.

The Daily Planet building approaches, soaring towards the sky, topped with its gold earth that spins. Its height blends in with the other skyscrapers in the area, but seeing the building makes her feel better. It makes her feel normal, like she had hoped to feel with Clark but didn’t.

Chloe suspects it will never feel completely normal with Clark again. Too much time and she tells herself not to dwell on it. There’s no reason to obsess. Let bygones be bygones, as the saying goes.

“Chloe,” Clark says when they’re almost at the front door. Her name on his lips breaks the silence they’ve settled into once again. He stops walking and she does the same, looking at him.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it won’t always be the same.

“Yes?” she says. There’s a tinge of hope in her voice, not the desperate sort she thinks. Just the normal hope, or so she wants to believe.

He looks at her, and it seems like he wants to say something. Everything gets quiet around them, the traffic of cars and people suddenly muzzled. Or just tuned out. Then he shakes his head slightly and mutters, “Nothing.” Louder he says, “We should get inside.”

“Yeah, we should.”

Clark moves forward, away from her, and she watches him walk for a moment. It doesn’t hurt to see him walk away, not anymore. The hope that had been building in her is extinguished and she isn’t surprised, not really. Years have passed.

“Go inside, Chloe,” she whispers to herself. And she does go inside, her feet carrying her through the front doors and towards the elevator. The air smells as it always does, the noise is the same, and it’s familiar and welcoming and a refuge from what she feels when she’s around Clark. She dives into work because she knows it and it makes her feel good, needed.

Everyone wants to feel needed.

A week passes, time marching forward relentlessly. The sun fades and clouds emerge in the sky. Today it is raining, a hard rain. The window coverings aren’t pulled and the windows are stained with raindrops. The sky beyond the windows is gray and heavy looking.

Clark comes up to her desk, a coffee mug in his hands. Her mug.

“I brought you some coffee,” he says.

Chloe looks up from her computer screen, her fingers hovering over her keyboard. Motion interrupted. “Oh. Thank you.”

“You didn’t seem to be taking a break.”

“Oh, yeah, well, I’m in my zone. You know how it is. Once I get into it, getting out is hard.”

“No breaks even for coffee.”

“Nope,” she says. She isn’t sure what he’s trying to do. For the past week they haven’t talked beyond the most basic topics. They haven’t sought each other out. “I should get back to this. Don’t want to lose my zone.”

Clark nods. “Of course. I’ll just…go.”

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome,” he says and then he leaves her alone.

But later that day, when night has fallen and the bullpen is quiet, he appears again at her desk. No one else is left in the room, tomorrow’s edition put to bed and the tired reporters home to eat and sleep before starting over again tomorrow. A cycle of sorts.

“It’s late, Chloe.”

She hits save on her document before glancing up. She wants to turn back to her computer screen and get lost in her story again. “You’re still here.”

He doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead he says, “What are you working on?”

She hesitates.

“I’m not going to scoop you. You know that.”

“I do,” she says, admitting that. For all the faults Clark does have, stealing a story isn’t one of them. Leaning back in her chair, hands falling to her lap, she says, “It’s a Luthorcorp story.”

Clark pauses. “Luthorcorp.”

“Yes. It’s really-”

He cuts her off: “People say you have a vendetta against Lex Luthor. That you’re obsessed with brining him down.”

“I’m not obsessed. I just believe in karma and I know his time is coming when he’ll have to pay for his crimes.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous to pursue him? Didn’t you almost die when you published the article that alleged he murdered Oliver Queen?”

“He did murder Oliver Queen.” Chloe sits stiffly. “Justice is needed.”

“What about your life?”

“I’m not about to sit back and let a tyrant get away with crimes just because he might retaliate. No good journalist can do that. You have to take the risks.”

“It’s your life,” Clark says, stressing the last word.

The conversation has gone from being just annoying to angering her. It’s her life, not his, and she can lead it any way that she wants to. He doesn’t have the right to come in and judge her. She wants to be calm, wants to show a façade of herself where she’s unaffected by his words, but she can’t.

“Yes, it’s my life. I get to decide what I do with it. Not you! You have no right to judge me for what I think is a worthwhile pursuit of justice.”

Her hands have risen from her lap to the arms of her chair. She grips the black plastic tightly, fingernails digging in the yielding leather. The skin of her fingers grows white from her grip.

“I worry!”

“Well, guess what, I don’t need or want your worry. God Clark, do you ever listen to yourself?”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t I worry about you? I’ve known you since we were thirteen.”

“Have we talked in the past decade?” she asks bitterly. She knows he has saved her at least once, but that doesn’t change the years of silence. It doesn’t. Those years remain.

“I…”

Having already saved her file, Chloe now closes all the screens on her computer. She then shuts down the computer, all the while shaking her head, unable to hear anymore. She doesn’t want to hear his excuses, his explanations of why things are the way they are. She did and she didn’t and right now she’s firmly on the side of not wanting to know. All the explanations in the world won’t make the hurt she has felt over the years disappear. Time made the hurts fade and since he’s been back she has remembered how much it hurt, how hard it was to go on without her best friend at her side. The abandonment she felt at the time when she needed Clark the most, at the time when she was lost and feeling guilty for deaths she didn’t cause directly but ones she might have prevented if she had just been smarter, better.

So many ifs and it took years to get over them. She did get over them, learned to deal with the guilt and the remorse and the pain, but she did it without the help of her best friend. She’s stronger now, older and wiser, but that doesn’t mean she wants to revisit those unhappy years, those difficult years.

She stands, grabbing her stuff. Clark is silent, standing next to her desk, his shoulders slumped and the expression on his face resigned. Finally she knows that he has been affected by everything, that he was hiding it just like she was trying to, but it doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t want to listen. Not right now. She doesn’t want to hear how he worries about her but how he couldn’t be there for her when she needed him. She can’t because it will be about him and not about her and she’s put him before her before. He’s been the most important part of her life in the past and those days weren’t good as she realized in the years since he left her side to be just a superhero and not a human. He was first in her life and she sacrificed so much of what was her for him. Those days are gone, long past.

Her eyes suddenly feel wet. She blinks and looks away from Clark, unsure if she keeps looking at him if she’ll be able to just leave like she wants to.

To his credit, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t grab her arm and try to make her stay. Maybe a part of her is sad about this, wanting him to fight her, wanting him to fight for them like he wouldn’t then. But another part of her is grateful and she leaves, her stuff gathered in her arms, her eyes itchy from the unshed tears.

The rain drenches her as she steps out of the building.

That night Chloe sits in her living room. The blinds are pulled and she can watch the rain falling onto her balcony. The pitter-patter of the rain lulls her, allowing her to curl up on the couch. There are no bright lights, just the muted glow cast by the single lamp she has turned on and the lights from outside, the streetlights. Outside the sky is dark and gray, the darkness penetrated by the orangish light of the street lamps.

The glass of the sliding balcony door is dotted with raindrops. The pattern is random and she likes to look at it. The longer she looks at it, though, the more her thoughts intrude. She could turn on the television but she doesn’t, for reasons she can’t really explain.

She wants and doesn’t want to think. So many contradictions these days. Wants and doesn’t want to know. Wants her friendship back and doesn’t, the anger still strong.

Chloe sighs and rests her head on the soft cushion of the couch. Nothing is uncomplicated right now and life is always like this. You can’t just click your heels three times and say there’s no place like home and end up back home with your unhappiness having evaporated. Life is a struggle, one that’s likely never-ending, and she’s used to this struggle, having fought the numerous battles of the past years by herself, without help.

She knows she has to make some decisions. Either demand explanations from Clark which would mean preparing herself for answers that will likely hurt, answers she likely won’t want to hear, or accept that there will always be this elephant in the room when she’s with Clark. She can get the answers and try to forgive him, let go of the residual anger, or she can refuse, be wary of him because of what has happened, and continue on with her life as it’s been going for the past ten years.

She just isn’t sure what she wants.

Chloe is no closer to a decision when there’s a knock on her balcony doors three nights later. Her laptop is in her lap and her fingers still over the keyboard. She saves the email to her father she’s working on and sets the laptop aside, rising and walking over to the sliding glass doors. She moves slowly, reluctantly.

There’s really only one guess as to who is on her balcony. Only one guess and she doesn’t want him there. She’s not ready.

Pushing aside the curtains, which she had pulled against the setting sun an hour ago. Dusk has come and is nearly gone, the sky darkening and the paler blue of today almost completely wiped out by the encroaching darkness. The streetlights have come on and provide enough illumination for her to see Clark standing on her balcony.

Sighing softly, she unlatches the glass door and slides it open. Chloe steps back and Clark steps forward, entering her condo. Her eyes widen slightly at his outfit: he’s clad in bright red and blue, the colors reminding her of the shirts and jackets he wore back then. This outfit is unlike anything she has seen him in before, an actual superhero costume. The main aspect of his getup is a blue catsuit that’s skintight. The look is completed with a bright red cape and red boots. In another mood she would have smiled at the costume.

She thought they had an understanding that he wouldn’t come to her. If there is to be another discussion then it should be at her initiating it, not his. Yet here he is.

“Hi,” Clark says. There’s a catch in his throat.

He’s standing in front of her sliding glass window, arms crossed against his chest, looking rather awkward and out-of-place in her pale-colored living room. His clothing is bright and colorful, a strong contrast to the white walls, the muted lavender couch, the light blue armchair, and the pine wood of the TV cabinet and coffee table. Even her own clothing is a sharp contrast, her faded jeans and white peasant blouse.

“Hi,” she echoes. Her hands go into her jean pockets and she says, “I don’t understand why you’re here, to be honest.”

“I need…I need your help.”

“With your fashion sense?” The words flow off her tongue.

Clark smiles wanly. “Not quite. But I do need your help with what this suit represents.”

“I’m not following.”

“I want you to write my coming out piece, I guess is the word for it. I don’t want to just be the Red-Blue Blur who no one knows. I want an identity.”

“Like Batman?”

“The opposite of Batman. A hero who people don’t question whether they’re on the side of right or wrong. Someone who gives hope, doesn’t just inspire fear in the heart of criminals.”

“I see.”

“So will you?” he asks. He steps forward. Hope flickers across his face.

“Why me?”

He seems taken aback. “What?”

“Why me, Clark? Why me?”

“I trust you. I don’t want to tell my story to just anyone. I want to tell it to someone I trust, who I know.”

She shakes her head, hair falling into her face. She brushes it back abruptly, hands rising from their spot in her jean pockets. “You think I’m just going to be your mouthpiece? That I’ll do exactly what you want?”

“No, Chloe, that’s not what I want. I trust you to tell, well, the truth. To make the story honest.”

“You trust me,” she bites out.

“Of course I trust you.”

Chloe throws up her hands. The walls of her condo feel too small, closing her in. “I can’t do this, Clark. I can’t.”

“No, don’t say that.”

“We had a screaming fight just days ago. Have you forgotten that already? Have you forgotten it like you have apparently forgotten that you disappeared from my life for ten years?”

For a long minute Clark is silent. He looks at her, his eyes never leaving her face.

He says, “I haven’t forgotten. And I was watching, I never really left your side. I…”

“The Red-Blue Blur saves people! You don’t get a ‘get out of jail free’ card for doing what your alter ego does everyday.”

Now it’s Clark who throws up his hands. “I hate this. I hate all of this,” he says, and gestures between them.

“It is what it is,” Chloe says angrily. “You made it like this. You’re the one who left, who said you just wanted to be a hero, an alien, not human. When I needed my best friend you said ‘sorry, but I can’t be here.’ So what you hate is what your actions created.”

The anger, the bitterness pours out of her. The words hurt to say and the way Clark’s shoulders slump she knows the words are hurting him, cutting him to the core. Yet the truth in the words is why she has to say them, why she needs to say them to make him understand. To begin the process of healing if that is the way things do eventually unfold, which is what she hopes. Healing for herself, to make her whole, because while she’s gone on in the years he’s been gone, there were always pieces missing. Pieces Clark held, pieces broken by him, and she needs to find those pieces and put herself finally back together, making herself whole and hopefully able to move on, whatever moving on will entail.

“I needed you. I needed my best friend and you weren’t there. You don’t know how hard it was to get up in the mornings after Jimmy and Davis and Lois died. They were all gone, permanently, and you were gone by choice. Knowing it was your choice hurt so much, Clark.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. You weren’t here! I had to find a way to go on and it was hard and there was no one for me to lean on. No one knew what had happened. I had only myself and I should have had my best friend to help. I got through it, but it was harder than it needed to be, lonelier than it needed to be.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t make the hurt go away. It doesn’t make the years just not happen.”

“I want to make this better, I do. I’m sorry for what happened.”

“It’s been ten years, Clark.”

“I know that, I know how many years have passed. I wanted to come to you so many times, but I didn’t know how to make things better. I didn’t know how to un-break what I had chosen to break. I still don’t, but I can’t stand the way things are anymore. That’s why I came back to the Daily Planet, that’s why I’m here now.”

Chloe sighs. Feeling drained, she collapses onto the couch, the lavender fabric enveloping her. Clark remains standing.

She knows what he wants. He wants her to forgive him and wants them to mend their bridges, rebuild their friendship. So much has happened and she isn’t sure how to start again, just like he isn’t sure how to start again.

Does she even want to start again is the question. Right now she’s feeling empty, the words having poured out of her. The deluge has stopped, the anger released.

She closes her eyes for a minute. When she opens them Clark is still there. He’s waiting for an answer. The answer of whether there is a chance, whether there is any hope. The part of her that is still angry wants to say no, wants to tell him that it’s been too long and some hurts just can’t be forgotten and smoothed over just because you want it to be like that. Maybe some breaks are permanent.

Maybe some relationships can’t be repaired.

But the larger part of her doesn’t want to let the anger rule. Despite everything, she still loves Clark; he was her best friend for so many years and they shared more than she has shared with anyone else. She misses their friendship and wants it back more than she wants to punish him. And she doesn’t want to think back to this moment in ten years and wonder what would have happened if she had given him a chance, if she had said ‘let’s try.’ Nor does she want to be the bitter person who can never forgive, the person who holds her anger and her bitterness close and uses it as a shield, a reason to avoid truly living.

A line floats through her head. To forgive is to be divine. She’s not divine, not by a long shot, but in the end she misses Clark. She misses him and she’s tired of seeing him at the Daily Planet and not being able to talk to him. She doesn’t want to spend another ten years being lonely because she has so many secrets and can’t connect due to all those secrets, the confidences she won’t reveal even now.

Yet how to say I want to try again? How to say how difficult this will be, the challenges involved, the anger that needs to be let go of and the wounds that need to be healed and not just covered with band-aids?

In the end she settles for saying, “I’ll write the story.”

There will be more to be said later. Much more. Words to be said and hurts to be addressed, wounds to be healed. Time spent apart must be bridged: they can never be who they were but they can become something new. They can become something better.

And Clark smiles and it’s a start. A start of something new, different from what was, and hopefully good.

Chloe pats the space next to her and says, “Sit.”

The End