Title: Here Is Gone
Author: Savage Midnight
Rating: PG-13
Part: 2/2
Disclaimer: Smallville and all related elements belong to Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Copyright infringement is definitely not intended.
Summary: Chloe, Bart, and the moments in-between.
Author's Note: This is what happens when Lianne discovers a hidden fannish love for Li'l Flash. Bare in mind I don't know much about comic!Flash; only what I've gleaned from websites. There's too many different Flash's for me to keep track of, so I'm just sticking with Smallville!Flash right now. Thanks to the fabulous maveness for the beta.

I also have to warn you folks that this chapter is currently unbeta'd, so I apologise for any spelling/grammar mistakes and inconsistent jumping between tenses. If anyone would be gorgeous enough to beta this for me, I would love you forever.

Lastly, thanks to becs for the low-down on the numerous Flash characters. I appreciated it.

The search ends (but not really) sometime after Christmas. It's all a little too clean-cut, a little too full-circle for Chloe's liking when she catches sight of him again in the same club she first saw him in.

Except this time he doesn't ignore her. He catches her just as she's leaving the bathroom and pulls her aside, down one of the dark corridors that isn't as vacant as she'd like.

She doesn't know how she ends up pressed up against the wall, but she does, and Bart leans over her with a determined gleam in his eye that Chloe knows she can't argue with.

She's not going to win this one. This isn't her game anymore. It was never her game in the first place.

But she doesn't play (does she?)

She's not a player (is she?)

This was never a game (was it?)

Except Chloe can't help but think that it is. Life isn't this big, profound thing. There's no meaning to it. There's only the search for the meaning, any meaning, and there's the games in-between that we play to keep life a little more three-dimensional.

It doesn't mean she wants to play. She's like the girl who's losing at that board game (Game of Life), because she doesn't have the big career and the big salary and she keeps running into obstacles that makes things worse and worse. She doesn't want the husband and the empty family car because she's not really the domestic type, but life keeps demanding she find these little attachments. She's poorer without them, it seems.

There's no room for the cynic (who isn't really as cynical as people think, because she still has faith in things she really shouldn't) who lives alone (content) and juggles (quite successfully) her college life and her social life without ever feeling empty or alone, without ever needing the perfect partner/life/career/children. She may spend a great deal of her time searching for things she really can't pinpoint, but perfection isn't one of them.

Nobody forgets that, in the end, when you've reached the end of the game and you're forced to retire and give up your career and your salary and your husband and your children, you have no choice but to gamble. The rich don't always stay rich, and the poor don't always stay poor (not when it comes to things that count, anyway), so when it comes down to it, it's all about choice and chance and luck, and only one of those can be controlled.

She gets that now. She gets it.

It's not because she doesn't want to play, can't play, won't play.

It's because she's really not sure if it's a game she can control. She needs that, control. She'll take choice over chance or luck any day. She may take risks but Chloe isn't a gambler.

Except that at some point in the game, everyone is forced to gamble.

But Chloe's just not ready for that yet, and he needs to know that.

"Bart"

"Shut up," he says he demands , and for a long, shocked second, she does. When she finally manages to find her voice again, he's already talking.

"You know what I've realized in the last few months," he asks rhetorically, staring down at her without hesitation, soft hair falling into his wise eyes.

There's no room for her to answer with a snide, "What?", for a number of reasons. One, she's spent far too many seconds watching his lips, and two, he's really not giving her a chance to answer at all.

"I've realized that you talk too much," he finishes. To distract her even more, he chooses that moment to sweep his hand across her cheek and tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear.

That was a cheap shot. If he thinks Chloe's going to go all mushy over that, he really doesn't know her that well.

"You talk too much and you think too much, and that, my sweet Chloe, is very, very dull."

She glowers at him. Could he be anymore of a chauvinist ass?

"Let me guess," she drawls in exasperation, tilting her head and folding her arms over her chest defiantly. "Women should be seen and not heard." She pauses, and then with feigned brightness and encouragement, she adds, "Please, continue. Woo me with your infinite knowledge of all things female."

He chuckles low in his throat and shakes his head at her, like her finds her immensely amusing. "You really don't know me at all," he states and she leaps on to that little slip-up without even blinking.

"No, I really don't," she says. "And I really don't appreciate being molested by near-strangers in a nightclub. Now I'll explain it all again in layman's terms for you you being slow and all and we'll see if you get the message then. I'll even say it slowly, so you don't miss a thing."

She leans up towards him, arms brushing against his hard chest, and smiles. "Fuck. Off."

She saunters off, grinning to herself, but really, she doesn't feel as smug as she looks.

Funny. Usually she considers it a victory when she manages to shut him up. And she's managed to dissuade him, too, it seems. He's not following.

And she's not disappointed.

She's not.

She's not thinking that maybe she took his comment the wrong way; took it to mean more than he'd intended on. She knows what he did mean she was thinking it herself and a part of her knows he's right.

She over-analyses, over-thinks, over-talks her way out of situations she'd otherwise enjoy if she ever let herself. She's already established this as one of her more destructive flaws, but being stubborn and analytical and just a tad defensive is just a part of who she is.

Chloe doesn't like things easy. Chloe likes a challenge, and she likes to challenge everything.

Except she hasn't ever managed to establish her boundaries. She doesn't know when to back down, to say yes instead of no, no, no, to pick the battles that matter and not the ones she just happens to fall across.

She always looks for the bad in people. That's not to say that she never recognizes and acknowledges the good in people she does but the defensive part of herself always identifies the bad in them, uses it as a weapon to hate them or dislike them or mistrust them. Not consciously, but she's aware of it.

Sometimes.

She knows it's more about herself than anyone else. It's because she spends so much time seeing the bad in herself that she knows well, she thinks she knows that people can see it in her, too. These people who judge her by all the bad things they see in her, and she figures it's easier to hate them first.

But hate is such a strong word. She doesn't hate most people. She reserves such loathing and venom and poison for those that have truly earned it.

Lionel Luthor is number one on her list.

She's still not sure where her mother ranks, or even if she ranks at all. Hate is never as black-and-white as she'd like it to be.

Neither is good and bad.

She'd have the same complaints if things were the other way around. If she were sweet and virtuous and easy-going. Sometimes she likes the fact that she's a little stubborn, a little self-centred, a little cynical.

And she likes the fact that she doesn't have to be any of those all of the time. No matter the times she worries about her own life and her own problems there are people who she will always put first. Pete. Clark. Her father. Even her friends from college.

Everything isn't always about Chloe, but sometimes it is.

Everything isn't always doom-and-gloom, but sometimes it is.

Everything isn't always a challenge, but sometimes...

... sometimes she wishes she believed it.

If she'd never seen that gleam of determination in Bart's eyes, she'd have let it go. If she hadn't thought for one minute that he was pursuing her because she'd turned him down two years ago and then again ever since, she'd have never given him a second thought.

But now he knows it's a challenge, and she knows that he knows.

Now she's going to make him work for it. She's going to make him play her game. And it'll be a victory she'll never forget.

It never occurs to her that after months of deliberation, of too much thought and not enough action, of coveting the chase and despising it, of losing control and snatching it back, that she has learnt nothing.

This isn't her game.

It was never hers in the first place.

She wakes up feeling drowsy and weightless, and cranes her neck to see what time it is.

Instead she's confronted by a solid wall of black and it takes her a few seconds to latch on to the fact that it's a chest.

Logic tells her that the aforementioned chest must belong to someone in her present company, so she tilts her head back and finds herself staring into dark eyes.

She knows those eyes. Fucking haunting eyes, they are. They don't let her sleep.

"I'm sleeping," she slurs, and she was sure she was going to say something different but she can't remember what. She's not a morning person.

"No, you're not," Bart replies, and carries on walking.

Walking? She doesn't remember any walking. Since when

"I'm too tired to walk," she says, and the logical side of her brain, which is surprisingly wide awake, reminds her that she's not really doing the walking in this particular situation. She's playing possum, it seems. "Why am I walking?"

"I want to show you something."

She contemplates that for a moment, forgetting in her sleep-riddled daze that she's angry at him because he's a coward. She hasn't seen him for two months.

Seconds later and she's awake enough to analyze her situation, however half-assed it is. Logic argues that it's not normal to find yourself being carried off into the night by a tall, handsome stranger. Not without consent, anyway.

"I think you should put me down now," she argues throatily, and she thinks she's kinda grateful for the fact that she's still a little too drowsy to start panicking. Still, she should be protesting. Right?

"We're almost there."

Okay. She can't argue with that. Not much point in fighting when she hasn't even got control of her feet. Save it for when he puts her down, if he ever does.

She's close to being reasonably awake when he stops and slides her to feet, slowly so she doesn't stumble. One of his arms stays curved around her stomach and he presses against her back.

His breath is hot against her neck when he speaks and she catches only the tail end of his words.

"there. Third table from the left."

He's pointing over her shoulder and she realizes then that they're standing on a street corner, looking towards Blue, a chic, intimate restaurant on the opposite side of the block. She recognizes it from her occasional visits with Lois; her cousin's way of apologizing for never having the time to do anything more than play top-notch reporter, and glamorous girlfriend to Clark Kent.

Some people people who never have the brains to keep their mouths shut ask her if she's still angry.

"No," she replies, when she isn't telling them to mind their own. "I never was."

She never says, "I only have myself to blame. I waited too long, gave up to easily, made the wrong choices and betrayed my best friend."

She's not angry, but she's a little bitter. But she keeps that to herself and doesn't dish it out to people who don't deserve her resentment.

Like Clark Kent and Lois Lane, who she can see quite clearly, sitting together at the third table from the left. If someone had said to her two years ago that her best friend and her cousin two people who had, up until last year, never shared her own enthusiasm for journalism would have ended up landing an internship at the Daily Planet together, she would have laughed. Busted a spleen from the sheer absurdity of it.

Now, at twenty-two, Lois is fast making a name for herself, and at twenty, Clark, like Chloe, is already two years into his degree at Metropolis University.

They both study at the same college, but they rarely see each other. Clark doesn't have the time to contribute to the college paper, not with the added weight of an internship on his plate, and the campus is so large that it's only on rare occasions that they ever bump into one another.

They still see each other during social calls, but they're few and far between, and Chloe learnt long ago that trying to salvage whatever friendship they may have shared in the past is a challenge not worth attempting. She's learnt to let it go with some modicum of dignity intact.

Swallowing that particular regret, she forces herself to voice the question Bart knows is coming.

"Why are we here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" he replies, and she rolls her eyes.

"Obviously not," she snaps, "otherwise I wouldn't be asking. Are you usually this dense?"

"Are you usually this ignorant?"

The comment knocks her off kilter and she whirls to face him. She's been called a lot of things in her lifetime selfish, ruthless, careless but never ignorant.

It hurts to hear him say it.

"I am not ignorant!" she protests indignantly, and she wishes he'd smirk or something, let her know that he's only teasing her, trying to rile her up. But he looks deadly serious. His dark eyes are quiet and solemn and it finally looks like he's tired of playing her game.

"It's right in front of your eyes, and you can't even see it," he says ominously, and she sputters at his use of clichés and shakes her head in annoyance. God is she tired of this jig.

He spins her around, his hold on her arms tight and harsh. He forces her to face the restaurant again and she knows what he's going to say.

"You lost that game, Chloe. You waited and you waited and when he didn't come to you, you betrayed him."

She opens her mouth, instinctively preparing mindless words to defend herself, but all that she manages to get out is, "How d"

"You're not the only one who talks too much," he cuts in, and carries on like he hasn't just dredged up her deepest, darkest secret and the biggest mistake she's ever made; the one that almost got her and her father killed.

It was the beginning of the end of a friendship that she had treasured for years, and she's lived with the shame ever since.

But Bart blunders on past that, past the shame, and digs down into the gnarly pit of truth that sits in her belly.

She had played that game and she had lost. Her pride, her best friend, and her cousin.

All she had gained was bitterness.

And he had come to take that away, and what had she offered him in return? More bitterness. More games. A lesser man would have walked away sooner.

But he hasn't. He walks out of her life and back in again, each time never doubting that he will get through to her eventually.

Does she deserve that sort of faith? That degree of determination?

She is his challenge, but not in the way she had first thought.

And he is her challenge, but again, not in the way she had first thought.

Chloe knows there's learning to be done. He needs to learn that choices are not as simple as saying yes or no. She needs to learn that to know a person she has to acknowledge the good with the bad, and accept them as they come.

Hard lessons to learn. Hard words to hear.

This was only supposed to be a mindless liaison. But they've said things now that they can't take back, done things and felts things that have turned a simple, potential tryst into a complex affair. This has gone way past sex. They've come too far to blame the consequences on simple chemistry and there's too much hurt here for a simple resolve, an easy fix, even if Bart has yet to see it.

She closes her eyes and wonders if things would have been easier had she simply given in the first time.

And then she realizes that Bart is still talking. Still trying to prove to her that playing games doesn't work. Except she gets that now, but what she also gets is that he's gone way past casual at this point. There's been too much effort of his part, too much time spent trying to persuade her into being with him. Months of tracking her down, winding her up, dragging her out at night to confront old flames and bury past regrets.

She's more than a passing fancy. She knows that now.

Whether Bart does is another matter.

"I'm going home," she says quietly, and those three simple words shut him up more effectively than screaming and shouting at him would have. He's about to protest but something must show on her face, she realizes, because he swallows his words. His mouth clamps closed and his jaw tightens.

She turns to leave. When she realizes he isn't following she turns around again and looks at him thoughtfully. He's staring at her, his profile painted dark by the shadows, blonde hair shining through and falling into eyes she can't read.

She smiles gently, but knows he can't see her from here. She wants to say something, anything, to prove to him that she doesn't hate him like she pretends she does, that she doesn't really want him to leave. Just something to show that things were different now.

"I'll see you around," she promises, and knows it's enough.

Note: This fic originally started out as PWP, and then I changed my mind and decided to take a more philosophical standpoint, rather than a sexual one. I had planned for Here Is Gone to be a lot longer, but when I got to this particular point I saw no sense in carrying on. I figured I'd leave it up to the imagination of the readers to decide how Chloe and Bart proceed from this point. I'm actually pretty happy with the ending, but of course, I'd love to hear what you guys think.