A Thousand Tiny Crumples

Disclaimer: Smallville does not belong to me. It belongs to whoever it belongs to (I'm not sure anymore), and I'm only borrowing the characters for a little fun.

Rating: PG-13

Pairings/Characters: Chloe/Clark, with mentions of Jimmy and Lana.

Warnings: Spoilers for season 8

Summary: 'It sat there glaring at him, laughing. It was ugly, and didn't suit her in the least. At least that was what he told himself as he tried to ignore the knife twisting deep in his gut, firing up his insides with a feeling he didn't dare name, even if he could.'

Author's Note: So I realise it's been done, and done a heck of a lot better than me, but I just wanted to write my version of what might happen when the Fever letter resurfaces (read: hope might happen). This is my first Smallville fic ever, and I know it's not very good, but I would really appreciate any feedback you can offer up.

She opened the door with that big bright smile she saved only for him; the same bright smile that made her green eyes sparkle and her beautiful blonde hair glow like a halo. And though that particular smile could tug the corners of his own lips skyward even when in the foulest of moods; today, he could only manage a forced, poor replica.

Nothing of course escaped his best friend, and he marvelled at how quickly her eyes dulled and her hair lost a fraction of its joyful shine, but it was just enough that he noticed, and just enough that he felt a pang of regret jolt through him at the realisation that it was all his own doing.

"Hey Clark," she said, "Come to rescue me from the packing nightmare from hell?"

He knew what she was doing, so the question didn't throw him at all. She was giving him the space and the time to come out with whatever was bothering him on his own terms. And he wasn't about to turn down her offer, no matter how heavy the pressure against his chest, no matter how fast his heart beat under his steel skin, and no matter just how truly frightened he was about what was to come.

And so he nodded, "Thought you could do with an extra pair of hands."

She grinned, "I'd never say no to an extra pair of hands." Moving further inside, she opened the door wide to let him in.

On entering, he surveyed the scene in front of him with mild amusement. There were boxes everywhere. Some open and unused, others half empty to bulging full, with the contents spilling over the sides. And then there were the stack of boxes that had obviously been taped together forcefully, and although for the moment the tape was holding, he wasn't entirely convinced it would remain that way. Nevertheless, they were ready and awaiting transport to her new apartment . . . her and Jimmy's.

And that's when the amusement, mild as it had been, all but vanished.

The feeling was only to be replaced with a twinge of something unnameable rippling through his stomach. It was something that he had felt not for the first time in two weeks. Something that felt like a heady, potent mixture of regret and jealousy, leaving a bitter aftertaste of nothing but disorientating confusion and gripping fear – he didn't let his thoughts linger on it too long however, as he forced the feeling aside with an almighty internal heave.

"I haven't even started packing away the stuff in the kitchen," she said kicking a half empty box to the side in an effort to clear a path in front of her, "If you find an empty box, you can start there?"

He nodded, "Sure."

Moving in the general direction of the kitchen, he picked up an empty brown cardboard box along the way, and set about dumping cutlery and saucepans into it. He worked in silence, and he could feel her eyes on him the entire time. No doubt she was trying furiously to work out why he was really here, and just what was going on underneath that thick head of hair of his. She may no longer have been working at the Daily Planet, but hard nosed investigative journalist was now synonymous with Chloe Sullivan. She had always been innately curious, and of course, stubbornly determined to uncover truths regardless of consequence. And more often than not, she succeeded. He just wasn't so sure, she'd manage it today. Not with the impossible running through his head; the impossible that was wreaking a havoc that could only be matched in scale and severity by a full blown, third world war outbreak.

Ten minutes of uncomfortable silence was all she could manage before she dropped a box full of clothes on to the floor with a thud. It was a plainly obvious attempt to get his attention, and he would have smiled at her impatience any other day, but today was today, and his mind was too much of a scrambled, chaotic mess for him to remember to conjure up a small smile. She had lasted a lot longer than he would have ever wagered, that much he could admit.

"Ok, that's it!" she said, hands planted firmly on her hips, "What's going on? You've been completely zoned out, and in your own little world, since the moment you knocked on my door. What's going on Clark?"

He sighed, looking up to face her.

Dressed in a pair of old, dusty jeans and a red tank top that almost matched the exertion induced blush of her cheeks, he found himself staring unabashedly, silently wondering in honest amazement as to how he had failed to ever notice it before. She was stunning. Even with the tiny smudge of dirt across her cheek, her hair held up in a messy ponytail with several tendrils falling out of place, she was still so breathtakingly beautiful.

He couldn't help himself; his eyes roved over her of their own volition – his gaze dropping down her bare arms only to be halted in its path by the bright sparkling gem that adorned her ring finger.

His sight was almost magnetically drawn to it.

It sat there glaring at him, laughing. It was ugly, and didn't suit her in the least. At least that was what he told himself as he tried to ignore the knife twisting deep in his gut, firing up his insides with a feeling he didn't dare name, even if he could.

He knew about the engagement, but it was the sight of the ring that Jimmy had slipped on to her finger that made it seem all the more real. He found his chest burning more ardently, as the treasure he had kept tucked away in his shirt pocket set alight under the gem's glare, almost as if it had been personally affronted by its presence.

Several expressions ranging from confusion to concern had fluttered across her face, but it was the latter he caught as she called out to him. "Clark?" Her voice waded through the thick smog of his warring, barely contained emotions, "Clark, what's wrong?"

'Now or never', he thought, closing his eyes and releasing a deep breath.

He opened them with resolve now permanently etched into his irises. Stepping forward, he moved out of the shadows of the kitchen counter, and started to speak.

"I was sorting through some of Lana's old things," he said, stopping momentarily to swallow, his throat having become uncomfortably parched, "The things she'd left behind, before she . . ." He let the rest of the sentence trail.

She stared back at him; understanding and sorrow glinted in her eyes at the pain Lana's absence had caused him, and if he were being truthful, still caused him. The hurt was ebbing away slowly, so that all that remained was a dull ache; but years of pining over and loving a woman, who he had honestly believed he'd spend the rest of his life with, could not be erased so easily. And though in time, he'd come to realise that his love for Lana Lang had been a love wasted on a woman who had only truly existed in his imagination, unreachable and false, he was still learning to float without her – whoever she may have been.

But that was something buried in the past, and he had no desire to dig it up again, not when he had just had a new confusion thrust upon him - that confusion being the woman standing in front of him now.

He came to a stand still in front of her, his gaze unwavering on her wide, curious eyes.

"I found this," he whispered, reaching into his pocket and lifting out an old folded pink piece of paper, marred with thousands of tiny little crumples and creases – the aftermath of a young girl screwing it up in a haze of pain, anger and hurt, and throwing it carelessly in the direction of the waste paper basket that sat hidden under the desk of an old school newspaper office, so many many years before.

He held it out to her, but she didn't reach out for it; she didn't need to open it to know what it was.

The ink may have faded, but the words were forever imprinted in her mind and entwined with her very soul. She knew the words by heart, and even though she had tried desperately to forget, her efforts had all been in vain. She could never forget.

And neither could he. He had read the words over and over. Stared so hard at the words, almost willing them to come to life and point him in the direction of coherency, to make them make sense. But it didn't matter if they made sense or not, for the words were permanently lodged inside his head, and when she had failed to make a single sound, a single movement, he found himself repeating those very words to her,

"I want to let you in on a secret. I'm not who you think I am. In fact my disguise is so thin, I'm surprised you haven't seen right through me. I'm the girl of your dreams, masquerading as your best friend," he read, word for word. Though each letter had been burned into his memory, he knew he wouldn't be able to continue should he chance a glance at her. And so he soldiered on, as she remained deathly still, her eyes focussed obstinately on her hands, "Sometimes I want to rip off this façade like I did at the Spring Formal, but I can't. Because you'll get scared, and you'll run away again. So I decide it's better to live with the lie than expose my true feelings. My dad told me there are two types of girls – the ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. I really hope I'm the latter." He would have continued on, except she was speaking now – the last sentence of a letter that had lain forgotten in a box of old magazines and random useless objects.

The words were but a whisper leaving her lips, but he could hear them perfectly well, just as well has he could hear the thump of her erratic heartbeat – the perfect accompaniment to her poetic words:

"I may not be the one you love today, but I'll let you go for now, hoping one day you'll fly back to me, because I think you're worth the wait."

There was only silence then; amongst the sea of quiet breathing and loud deafening heartbeats, a strange silence.

And then he couldn't bear it any longer, and he let slip one word, just the one:

"Chloe . . ."

And then she laughed. It was the strangest sound he had ever heard leave her lips. It made entirely no sense – mistimed, misplaced. But he couldn't know. And she couldn't blame him. He couldn't possibly remember that he had once heard those words before, and his reply in his fever induced delirium had been "Lana." But he couldn't know, and so she could only laugh at the cruel irony.

"I'm sorry," she finally said by way of excusing her odd reaction, "I just never thought . . . I never realised that Lana had found it, let alone kept it."

"Did you mean it?" He asked. He didn't know why it mattered, but he needed to know.

She sighed, and shook her head. At what he couldn't be sure, but he could only hope that that hadn't been her answer.

She sidestepped past him, walking aimlessly forward, before turning around.

"I wrote that so long ago," she said to his back.

He turned to face her, but said nothing.

"I was young, and I thought I was in love . . . but feelings change," she said after a pause that appeared to go on too long to validate her claims. She was stumbling over her words, shakily spoken and with no great resolve – and for some reason that lit a candle of hope inside him.

"I'm sorry you had to find it," she said then, and that more than anything puzzled him.

"Why?" he asked, bemused.

"Because I don't want things to become awkward between us. Our friendship means the world to me, and that's," she said her eyes falling on to the letter in his hand, "ancient history. It was a schoolgirl crush, nothing more. That letter doesn't mean anything." Each successive word had fallen out of her mouth stronger than the last - and with each word Clark found his hope extinguish just that little bit more.

"Oh," was all he could manage to say.

And even though he tried, he couldn't hide the fleeting disappointment that had spread across his face, and now it was her turn to be confused – her stomach twirled with a sickening hope at the implication, but she fiercely stamped it out, convincing herself she had been seeing things.

Had this been just a few months ago, Clark couldn't be sure he would have ever had the courage to let the next sentence slip from his mouth. But things had changed, and though many things in his life remained a mystery, the alien emotions that had been running through him since Chloe had first announced her engagement were beginning to make sense. He realised he had been faced with this exact same scenario nearly two years ago, and if he had just pushed that little harder, not backed down so fast, taken a risk, their story could have been so very different now. Instead, he had let her go, turned around and let her walk straight into Jimmy's arms. But fate had given him a second chance, and though what he next said could either ruin a precious friendship that had lasted many years, it could also point them in the direction of something new, exciting and frightening all at the same time. Whatever it was, he was more certain than anything that it was worth the risk. One last chance was all he had after all. And so he spoke:

"What if the letter had meant something to me?"

He pinned her to the spot with the earnestness in his voice and the silent, terribly disguised plea shining bright in his eyes.

On registering those words, she lost every pigment of colour in her skin, so that she was now deathly pale, and her pink lips stood out in stark contrast. Her mouth was open wide, and her green eyes met his in evident shock.

"The Chloe Sullivan I know," he continued, suddenly blazing with bravery and confidence, "lives to write the truth, she believes in her words and stands by them. Nothing she writes is meaningless or trivial, and nothing she writes is forgotten. And somehow, I don't believe that this," he held the letter up, "is any different. That this means nothing."

"What are you saying Clark?"

He edged closer to her, "That maybe you don't have to wait anymore."

He watched as she processed those words, one sinking in after another.

"Clark," she said, after a long moment of silence, quiet and struggling with her words, "I'm marrying Jimmy."

"But do you love him?"

"Of course I do!" A flare of indignant anger rose within her at his question, cancelling out her initial shock and pushing that particular feeling into the background – anger and incredulity now taking priority, but Clark remained ever oblivious, and continued on;

"So you're not just settling for him?"

"Damn it, Clark! Why do you have to bring this all up now? They were words written by a naïve young girl, who still had a lot to learn about life and love. But she's grown up now, and she's realised everybody moves on. And I have moved on. With Jimmy. And I'm happy. A fading letter written six years ago doesn't change that."

"You still haven't answered my question, though."

"So what if I am settling Clark? So what? Do you honestly expect me to believe that after eight years, you've finally had some epiphany, and all it took were a few pretty words? Do you think I'm going to risk what I have with Jimmy, because you decide on a whim that maybe you might have feelings for me?"

"There is no maybe, Chloe." He was so sure of it now. All the confusion he had brought with him as he had stepped into her apartment had dissipated without a trace. Those emotions he hadn't understood finally had a name. They always had, but he had just been too scared to identify them.

She shook her head, half snorting in disbelief at his audacity. She couldn't believe that of all the possible scenarios that had run through her mind, this would be the one where Clark Kent decided to tell her he had feelings for her – the one where she had just become engaged to be married to another man, the one where she had finally moved on and was happy. The universe got a real kick out of laughing at her, it seemed.

"I don't believe this," she muttered under her breath, before looking up to face him once again, "What about Lana?"

The question resonated loud and clear, and all he could do was repeat, "What about Lana?"

"Tell me this Clark. If Lana were to come walking through that door right now, tell me you wouldn't run back to her with open arms. Tell me that you wouldn't choose her over me."

And he didn't know why, and he hated the fact that he didn't know why, but nothing came out of his mouth. He struggled for the words, and though he knew the answer and he somehow for the first time in his life realised he had made the wrong choice all those years ago, he still couldn't manage to find the words to tell Chloe that it was her; it should have always been her. And so he continued to stand there and stare at her, his mind screaming out his answer, his mouth refusing to speak the words through nothing but sheer cowardice.

She told herself she wasn't surprised, that it didn't hurt, that it shouldn't have hurt. But it did, and she couldn't do anything to stop the tears welling in her eyes – tears she wouldn't dare cry. Not over him. Not again.

And so with all the resolve she could muster up, she looked up at him and smiled shakily, "Let's just chalk this up to momentary madness, hey. A kryptonite induced freak out with convenient memory repo side effects-"

"Chloe . . ."

She walked past him, and towards the door. She held it open, "Maybe you should just go Clark. I've got a lot to do before the move."

"Chloe, I . . ."

"Please Clark."

She was giving them a way out, a way to forget. But he wasn't sure he could do that. Not this time.

Walking towards the door, he stopped in front of her – close enough to feel the heat radiate from off her, close enough to feel her warm breath on his skin, and so close that the sound of her heart beating away was all that filled his ears, and he could hear nothing else. She wouldn't look at him, but two little words changed all that.

"I wouldn't," was all he said, and then there was that sharp intake of breath, and her gaze found his, colliding, melting into one. He had nothing left to hold him back. 'One last chance' – the thought rolled around in his head, egging him on, bruising his ego with snide suggestions he was coward enough to let it slip by, enough so that he finally gave in - for once letting consequences be damned; not thinking, not fretting, just living.

His lips crashed into hers, and he kissed her with everything he had.

It took a few excruciatingly painful seconds before her shock died away and she finally gave in, and kissed him back. Her arms wound around his neck, his fell to her waist as he pulled her closer, almost trying to replace the very air he breathed with her. Her lips were soft, warm and pliant – her kiss soothed him yet ignited every stretch of skin, muscle and nerve. It was a delicious contradiction, something so perfect and true. He had felt the seismic shift that had occurred the moment his lips had found hers; it was as if the world had finally aligned to the way it always should have been, and it had taken everything that had happened to them, both together and apart, over the last eight years for it to finally meld into perfection.

But it wouldn't last.

She pulled away first. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks were coloured a beautiful pink, her breathing rapid and erratic as her swollen kissed lips remained apart in an expression of horrified shock.

"Chloe," he said softly, reaching out to brush the stray tendrils of hair away from her face. His fingers, however, never made that stretch of contact, for she had backed away from him.

"I can't," she whispered.

And he knew why. Jimmy. But he asked anyway;

"Why not?"

"I can't do that to him. He doesn't deserve this," she said shaking her head.

He nodded in understanding, but there was just one problem with her argument.

"Well you answer me this then, Chloe," he said, echoing the similar words she had spoken to him not a few minutes ago, "Do you love me?"

She didn't answer him, but somehow he didn't really need her to answer. Her silence was very much confirmation of the fact that she was still very much in love with him. It was just her sense of duty and doing what was right which stood in their way.

"Jimmy's a good guy, I know. And maybe you do love him, but can you honestly say you'd rather be with him than me, if you had the chance?"

Again, she had no answer.

He reached out again for her, and this time she didn't retreat from his grasp. He cupped her face in his hands, his thumb rubbing away the small smudge of dirt she still had on her cheek, stroking her soft skin almost reverently, "I know I've never given you a reason to believe otherwise, I know I hurt you so many times with everything that happened with Lana, I know I've been selfish and insensitive to your feelings again and again, and I know you have a lot to risk in trusting me, but I have never been so sure of anything in my life but this: I love you, Chloe. I'm just sorry it took me so long to realise it."

And then there was no holding back the tears, as one spilled over her wet eyelashes and on to the skin of his fingers. He wiped them away, still holding on to her for dear life, waiting with bated breath for her answer.

But she still wouldn't say anything, and against all his efforts to keep her close, she pulled away from him again. His heart broke; there was no other explanation for the searing pain that ripped through him as she stepped away, but just as soon as she had wounded him, did she heal him again with effervescent hope.

With her eyes watching his every expression, she grasped her engagement ring and pulled it off. The symbolic gesture was not lost on Clark, and he couldn't help the huge, relief ridden grin that spread across his face.

And then she smiled at him, wide and beautiful. It was that big bright smile she saved only for him; the same bright smile that made her green eyes sparkle and her beautiful blonde hair glow like a halo. And this time her smile could only succeed in making him smile wider, tugging his lips skyward and matching her grin for grin.

She'd gotten it wrong.

She had flown back to him.

The End

A/N 2: I was gonna go the angsty route, but I have a feeling we're gonna have to put up with enough angst next season, and I'm not sure my Chlarky heart can cope with an angst overload – so fluffy sap it was. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a review, and share your thoughts. Feedback equals love. Cheers,

SmilinStar

xxx