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seriousfic) wrote2010-10-04 07:57 am
seriousfic) wrote2010-10-04 07:57 am
Entry tags:
Smallville fic: Apocalypse's End (5/8)
Title: Apocalypse's End
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,689
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis.
Author's notes: Takes place after season nine. Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nonky
Previous: 4/8
Next: 6/8
Summary: Davis Bloom dines with Tess Mercer. They have things in common.
Out on the balcony, in a red dress that matches the fires the people below are burning for warmth, Tess makes you think of Caligula's mother, some depraved Roman matriarch whose only satisfaction comes from schemes and plots. You wonder where you fit in.
Chloe whispers in your ear. "I'm synced up. Just stay put, I'll need some time to hack this. She's got firewalls like you wouldn't believe…"
You sit down at the table with Tess. There's a record player nearby, spooning out servings of Beethoven. She turns it up to drown out the noise below. "Thank you for joining me," she says. "My boys are very loyal, but they're hardly sterling conversationalists."
"Neither am I."
"I'll be the judge of that."
The chromeheads bring steak and hard liquor.
"So, is this my last meal?"
She draws out her answer, trying to enjoy it. "No. Their leader wants to meet you. The one who was good enough to furnish this place for me." She gestures out at not just the mansion, but the city. Then, it's like she realizes this isn't a casual dinner. She has all the power, and social niceties died with civilization. "Tell me about Chloe."
"What do you want to hear?"
She folds her hands up under her chin and rests her head on them like a little girl. "Come on. Give a gal some romance. You spend a year pining away for her… how was the reunion?"
You see no reason to lie just yet. "She pumped me full of drugs and took me to her secret lair."
"We've all been there." Tess makes a little 'continue' gesture.
"I killed her husband. She held it against me."
"Ah, but it wasn't you. It was some alternate you. A mirror universe you. You with a goatee." She chuckles like she's not crying. "She can't hold that against you."
"I'm still capable of that. Bend me the right way, push me the right direction, I'd kill an innocent man in cold blood. Not exactly a panty-peeler, that."
"Oh. Davis. Anyone's capable of anything." She takes another drink. "I mean, have you looked out there? It's the end of the world! How many people are dying with dignity, do you think, and how many are dragging everyone down in an orgy of rape and looting and survivalist cravenness?"
"People do what they have to do to survive," you agree. Sort of. "So do animals."
"Eh. Morality. It's boring. What do you think all our morals and our principles and all our ideals can do against that?" She points up. You never realized the mothership was overhead before, above that overcast sky.
"How long have they kept you here?" you ask.
Her hands tremble. She stills them by picking up the silverware. The cuts she makes in her steak are precise and orderly. "Let's not talk about me. So, you were in Chloe's secret lair…"
"She looks different," you say. "Her hair's grown out. It looks good, actually. And I don't think she's really bothering with fashion. It's just fatigues. I think she changes them when they get too much stains."
"And just seeing her, your heart went 'pitter-patter, pitter-patter'."
There's a drink in front of you. You take it. "Something like that."
"And?"
"It's a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is, she's seeing someone. The good news is, at least I'm not her rebound."
"Oliver Queen." She hasn't touched her steak yet, except to dismember it, but her brandy glass is half-empty. "What a scamp. I have him tucked away somewhere, down in the… I guess you'd be melodramatic and call it a dungeon." You hear Chloe in your ear, tight-lipped, even though she hasn't said anything. "Haven't figured out quite what to do with him. Isn't it funny, how they can hurt us so much, but we don't want to hurt them back – even though we do – we just want things to go back to the way they were."
You toast that. "Bottoms up."
"Maybe later." She's not a happy drunk. "Now then. Finish the story."
"I'm sure you can write it yourself. She said she'd keep an eye on me, took me along until I was of no further use to her, then left me to rot."
"So you came here."
"To you."
She stands. A little tipsy. It's hard to tell how much is the brandy and how much is the fact that she's been liaison to the end of the world. "Chloe Sullivan. I don't get her. Sure, you have baggage, but you love her. All those nights spent calling out her name, all the times you spoke to her like a child holding a teddy bear." It all bounces off you. But the swell of pity you had for her is dying down. You wonder how many times she checked in on you in your six-by-six coffin. "The mere thought of her makes you a better man."
"But I'm not a better man."
"I'm done now. You can go." On some shifty gesture, the door opens and a chromehead stands at attention, ready to see you out.
"I need more time!" Chloe grits out. The line is clogged with the sound of her typing.
A prison is defined by what it keeps you from doing. And Tess is in a prison, one of fine wines and omnipresent servants and fancy dresses. Like any prison, it was her own actions that put her inside. For the crime of betrayal, the sentence is loneliness. So much that she'll take any reprieve, even the words of a murderer she tortured for a year. You wonder if Chloe will appreciate the irony. Try to threaten her, trick her, you'll be playing her game. So get her to play yours.
"Tell him to shut the door," you say.
"And why would I do that?" she replies, knowing full well why. Hoping.
You put your hands in the proper place and your lips to the proper spot. "Tell him."
"Leave us," she orders the chromehead. Her voice is already going weak.
Then it's all a matter of the proper motions at the proper times. You throw her down in the bed and she smiles in a way that's not strictly speaking sane. You thrust into her a number of times and she moans a number of times and eventually you're done. You're both satisfied, in the brute, guilty way of having taken something less than you deserve.
In the distance, like a song in your ear, you can hear Chloe typing away.
Tess falls asleep afterward. You don't. You lie awake and feel the beast scratching around inside you, trying to get out, but it can't. You think maybe the collar makes it think its sated, think it's had the blood that will drive it inexorably toward its target (because, ruler or savior, Kal-El would have to care that a monster was tearing into his adopted home), but it can sense the counterfeit. You offer it a pale shade of what it wants and it takes it because that's all there is.
"Did you enjoy that?" Tess asks when she wakes up; the first thing she does is run her hand over the cool metal at your throat. "Me neither." One stream of verbiage. She's talking in monotone, but it feels more sincere than all the inflections and lilting that came before. "I guess even that's been taken away from me. Poor little rich girl."
You don't say anything. You don't think she'd listen to you if you did. You wait until it'll seem polite for you to dress.
"You know, sometimes I go downstairs to Mr. Queen and I rant and I rave like a bad sci-fi movie about how I'm saving humanity from itself and culling the weak from the herd. I guess after all the lives I've taken and the friends I've betrayed, the only thing left to hide behind is Nietzsche."
She stands up, and the sheet falls away. Naked, she's a vision. You wish the inside could match the out. Under better circumstances, there'd be a lot to like about her. Strength. Cunning. It's just that there's too much bad to fit inside the good.
"I didn't mean for things to go like this," she says, walking out to the balcony. It's a tabloid photographer's wet dream. You throw on your pants to follow her out. You still don't know what to say, even when she turns around and leans against the balustrade and her eyes beg for forgiveness you have no idea how to give. "I think… you're pulling a con. It wasn't that you fucked me. It wasn't even that you defected. It's Chloe. You could never stop loving her. She loves this sick world too much for you to take it from her… I hope when you pretended it was her, you fooled yourself."
"I didn't," you say. "It's not too late," you go on, and you're surprised to find that maybe you mean it. You don't hold what happened against her. Something's broken inside her that should've stopped her from doing what she's done; you don't think it's her fault. As irritatingly Clark as it is, you want to save her.
"Are you here to kill me?" she asks, and you shake your head slowly. It was a possibility after all.
She doesn't believe you. You can tell by the way she smiles.
"I would hate to be on your conscience, Davis. It'd be crowded."
Behind you, the door swings open. Chromeheads. "Davis Bloom, you're wanted."
You tell them to hold on. When you turn back around, Tess has climbed up on the ledge.
"No," you say.
"Tell Ollie I said hey."
She falls.
The paramedic in you, long dormant, comes alive. The fall wasn't so bad… she might still be alive. You run out the door, but the chromeheads grab your arms.
"He will see you now."
They drag you along. It's useless to resist. And whether she's alive or not, Tess is beyond saving.
"I got into the system," is the epitaph Chloe delivers.
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,689
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Davis.
Author's notes: Takes place after season nine. Betaed by
nonkyPrevious: 4/8
Next: 6/8
Summary: Davis Bloom dines with Tess Mercer. They have things in common.
Out on the balcony, in a red dress that matches the fires the people below are burning for warmth, Tess makes you think of Caligula's mother, some depraved Roman matriarch whose only satisfaction comes from schemes and plots. You wonder where you fit in.
Chloe whispers in your ear. "I'm synced up. Just stay put, I'll need some time to hack this. She's got firewalls like you wouldn't believe…"
You sit down at the table with Tess. There's a record player nearby, spooning out servings of Beethoven. She turns it up to drown out the noise below. "Thank you for joining me," she says. "My boys are very loyal, but they're hardly sterling conversationalists."
"Neither am I."
"I'll be the judge of that."
The chromeheads bring steak and hard liquor.
"So, is this my last meal?"
She draws out her answer, trying to enjoy it. "No. Their leader wants to meet you. The one who was good enough to furnish this place for me." She gestures out at not just the mansion, but the city. Then, it's like she realizes this isn't a casual dinner. She has all the power, and social niceties died with civilization. "Tell me about Chloe."
"What do you want to hear?"
She folds her hands up under her chin and rests her head on them like a little girl. "Come on. Give a gal some romance. You spend a year pining away for her… how was the reunion?"
You see no reason to lie just yet. "She pumped me full of drugs and took me to her secret lair."
"We've all been there." Tess makes a little 'continue' gesture.
"I killed her husband. She held it against me."
"Ah, but it wasn't you. It was some alternate you. A mirror universe you. You with a goatee." She chuckles like she's not crying. "She can't hold that against you."
"I'm still capable of that. Bend me the right way, push me the right direction, I'd kill an innocent man in cold blood. Not exactly a panty-peeler, that."
"Oh. Davis. Anyone's capable of anything." She takes another drink. "I mean, have you looked out there? It's the end of the world! How many people are dying with dignity, do you think, and how many are dragging everyone down in an orgy of rape and looting and survivalist cravenness?"
"People do what they have to do to survive," you agree. Sort of. "So do animals."
"Eh. Morality. It's boring. What do you think all our morals and our principles and all our ideals can do against that?" She points up. You never realized the mothership was overhead before, above that overcast sky.
"How long have they kept you here?" you ask.
Her hands tremble. She stills them by picking up the silverware. The cuts she makes in her steak are precise and orderly. "Let's not talk about me. So, you were in Chloe's secret lair…"
"She looks different," you say. "Her hair's grown out. It looks good, actually. And I don't think she's really bothering with fashion. It's just fatigues. I think she changes them when they get too much stains."
"And just seeing her, your heart went 'pitter-patter, pitter-patter'."
There's a drink in front of you. You take it. "Something like that."
"And?"
"It's a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is, she's seeing someone. The good news is, at least I'm not her rebound."
"Oliver Queen." She hasn't touched her steak yet, except to dismember it, but her brandy glass is half-empty. "What a scamp. I have him tucked away somewhere, down in the… I guess you'd be melodramatic and call it a dungeon." You hear Chloe in your ear, tight-lipped, even though she hasn't said anything. "Haven't figured out quite what to do with him. Isn't it funny, how they can hurt us so much, but we don't want to hurt them back – even though we do – we just want things to go back to the way they were."
You toast that. "Bottoms up."
"Maybe later." She's not a happy drunk. "Now then. Finish the story."
"I'm sure you can write it yourself. She said she'd keep an eye on me, took me along until I was of no further use to her, then left me to rot."
"So you came here."
"To you."
She stands. A little tipsy. It's hard to tell how much is the brandy and how much is the fact that she's been liaison to the end of the world. "Chloe Sullivan. I don't get her. Sure, you have baggage, but you love her. All those nights spent calling out her name, all the times you spoke to her like a child holding a teddy bear." It all bounces off you. But the swell of pity you had for her is dying down. You wonder how many times she checked in on you in your six-by-six coffin. "The mere thought of her makes you a better man."
"But I'm not a better man."
"I'm done now. You can go." On some shifty gesture, the door opens and a chromehead stands at attention, ready to see you out.
"I need more time!" Chloe grits out. The line is clogged with the sound of her typing.
A prison is defined by what it keeps you from doing. And Tess is in a prison, one of fine wines and omnipresent servants and fancy dresses. Like any prison, it was her own actions that put her inside. For the crime of betrayal, the sentence is loneliness. So much that she'll take any reprieve, even the words of a murderer she tortured for a year. You wonder if Chloe will appreciate the irony. Try to threaten her, trick her, you'll be playing her game. So get her to play yours.
"Tell him to shut the door," you say.
"And why would I do that?" she replies, knowing full well why. Hoping.
You put your hands in the proper place and your lips to the proper spot. "Tell him."
"Leave us," she orders the chromehead. Her voice is already going weak.
Then it's all a matter of the proper motions at the proper times. You throw her down in the bed and she smiles in a way that's not strictly speaking sane. You thrust into her a number of times and she moans a number of times and eventually you're done. You're both satisfied, in the brute, guilty way of having taken something less than you deserve.
In the distance, like a song in your ear, you can hear Chloe typing away.
Tess falls asleep afterward. You don't. You lie awake and feel the beast scratching around inside you, trying to get out, but it can't. You think maybe the collar makes it think its sated, think it's had the blood that will drive it inexorably toward its target (because, ruler or savior, Kal-El would have to care that a monster was tearing into his adopted home), but it can sense the counterfeit. You offer it a pale shade of what it wants and it takes it because that's all there is.
"Did you enjoy that?" Tess asks when she wakes up; the first thing she does is run her hand over the cool metal at your throat. "Me neither." One stream of verbiage. She's talking in monotone, but it feels more sincere than all the inflections and lilting that came before. "I guess even that's been taken away from me. Poor little rich girl."
You don't say anything. You don't think she'd listen to you if you did. You wait until it'll seem polite for you to dress.
"You know, sometimes I go downstairs to Mr. Queen and I rant and I rave like a bad sci-fi movie about how I'm saving humanity from itself and culling the weak from the herd. I guess after all the lives I've taken and the friends I've betrayed, the only thing left to hide behind is Nietzsche."
She stands up, and the sheet falls away. Naked, she's a vision. You wish the inside could match the out. Under better circumstances, there'd be a lot to like about her. Strength. Cunning. It's just that there's too much bad to fit inside the good.
"I didn't mean for things to go like this," she says, walking out to the balcony. It's a tabloid photographer's wet dream. You throw on your pants to follow her out. You still don't know what to say, even when she turns around and leans against the balustrade and her eyes beg for forgiveness you have no idea how to give. "I think… you're pulling a con. It wasn't that you fucked me. It wasn't even that you defected. It's Chloe. You could never stop loving her. She loves this sick world too much for you to take it from her… I hope when you pretended it was her, you fooled yourself."
"I didn't," you say. "It's not too late," you go on, and you're surprised to find that maybe you mean it. You don't hold what happened against her. Something's broken inside her that should've stopped her from doing what she's done; you don't think it's her fault. As irritatingly Clark as it is, you want to save her.
"Are you here to kill me?" she asks, and you shake your head slowly. It was a possibility after all.
She doesn't believe you. You can tell by the way she smiles.
"I would hate to be on your conscience, Davis. It'd be crowded."
Behind you, the door swings open. Chromeheads. "Davis Bloom, you're wanted."
You tell them to hold on. When you turn back around, Tess has climbed up on the ledge.
"No," you say.
"Tell Ollie I said hey."
She falls.
The paramedic in you, long dormant, comes alive. The fall wasn't so bad… she might still be alive. You run out the door, but the chromeheads grab your arms.
"He will see you now."
They drag you along. It's useless to resist. And whether she's alive or not, Tess is beyond saving.
"I got into the system," is the epitaph Chloe delivers.
no subject
no subject
You know not of what you speak, Davis :P
If Tess wasn't thinking of Lois with a strap on during that little sexcapade I'm a Chimmy shipper.
no subject
no subject
Wow. You've made Tess both a tragic figure _and_ a bad guy. I'm extremely impressed.