A/N: Okay, first off, if you got this alert and went 'Who the heck is this?'- yes, I changed my username. I don't know how good an idea it was as I've had the other one for like six years or so, and I've used it all over the net, but it was time for a change, so I hope no one got confused.

Second, the wait. I am super sorry it's taken me so long. I made the mistake of signing up for apocabigbang over at LJ, and I thought it'd be easier to just concentrate on that until it was finished. Then I signed up for armor_bigbang and well, time just got away from me. But the biggest problem was that my external hard drive died a very tragic death and I lost all my files. Including my fic stuff. So I've had to start over from scratch on everything. I'm getting there, slowly, but I'm not sure how regular the updates are going to be. Hopefully not another year. Woops.

…0…

its two steps forward and three steps back

when a heart is on the mend

- spilled perfume, pam tillis

…0…

Chloe calls in sick to work the next two days and turns off the new cell phone her uncle had insisted she buy after coming to town. The file Bruce had given her is sitting on her desk, under her ever growing pile of baby books. The edge peeks out, taunting her.

She knows she has to tell Dick. But working up enough courage to actually do it… that's going to require a little more time.

After going through the file, more than once, more thoroughly, she's decided that Bruce was more in depth than she'd originally realized. It seemed like he had ransacked the entirety of her life thus far. There were old Torch articles, Daily Planet editorials from her brief stint as a columnist in high school, a term paper she'd written on journalistic ethics at Met U, even Clark's write up of her winning prom queen. No stone was left unturned. Every single thing that had been so carefully erased, there before her in black and white.

Only one thing had been removed from the file. Chloe rolls over in her bed and opens the top drawer of her nightstand. She had stuck the photo of Bruce and Oliver when they were young in the back, underneath a stack of pamphlets she'd gotten at her last doctor's appointment. She figures that if, on the off chance, somebody were to go through her things, the last place they would look for anything suspicious would be amidst a pile of information on how to alleviate heartburn and how to cope with morning sickness.

All of the articles about her and Oliver, the pictures, even the ones she had brought with her and stashed in the back of her closet, have been burned. It was painful to do it, but necessary. If it was that easy for Bruce to puzzle out the truth it wouldn't be that hard for anyone else. So she destroyed every piece of evidence she possessed that Chloe Sullivan had ever known Oliver Queen.

Blinking her blurry eyes, Chloe sits up in her bed and stares down at the photo. It's the only one of Oliver she has left. The thought hits her harder than she anticipates, and a heavy lump settles in her chest, pressing hard.

It isn't as if Chloe likes hiding and lying to everyone. If she had her druthers, she'd be in Metropolis right now, dealing with an overprotective passel of heroes and a hovering Lois, fielding worried calls from her dad and Martha Kent, in her Watchtower, with her whole life's worth of memories in their rightful place.

And yes, if she wants, she can go back right now and have that. It'd be easy, explanations aside.

But she can't. Zod is there. He's alive, and he's dangerous and there's no way she is willing to put her baby in danger. Chloe's been only too happy to walk into the fire for Clark time and time again. She still would. Only its not about her anymore. Its about someone tiny and helpless, someone who depends on her for everything.

And if she had told Clark about Zod, she would have had to admit that she met him. That she was so freaked out by him that she ran straight to Oliver.

That she overheard Oliver basically planning a murder.

And that she fled. Because she's pregnant.

Dominoes have never been her favorite game.

The life she chose for herself isn't the life she wants for her child. She wants a normal, safe life with a mom who works a regular job and extended family around. Most importantly, she wants her son or daughter to grow up without the fear of what the latest in a long line of lunatics could do to Chloe and the people she had surrounded herself with hanging over his or her head. No child deserves that.

With a renewed resolve, Chloe tears the picture in half, into fourths, eighths, and so on until its nothing but a pile of confetti.

…0…

As he drove her home from the ball, Dick had invited her to a street fair in the park for the following Saturday.

He's running late, so he asks her to just come over to his place and they'll leave from there.

Of course, his place being Wayne Manor, she walks up the steps after exiting her taxi with her nerves twittering like caffeinated hummingbirds. Taking a deep breath, she raises her hand slowly and knocks.

Not two seconds pass before the imposing wooden door swings wide and an older man in a mourning coat smiles warmly at her from behind his small wire rimmed glasses. "Miss Gordon?"

She nods, and he ushers her inside, offers her a beverage.

"No, thank you. I'm fine."

Showing her to a drawing room just off the entrance, he leaves her there.

Chloe looks around, whistling under her breath.

She knows that, over the last decade or so, Bruce has been in and out of the richest man in America slot, usually vying with Lex and Oliver for the top spot. And though she's never been to Oliver's family home in Star City, she has seen pictures, and she's had parts of the Luthor Mansion committed to memory since she was fifteen. But nothing in her past experiences with billionaire homes could have prepared her for what she sees all around her. The sheer size alone is staggering, but everything just looks so perfect; expensive and well tended, and she basically feels as if she's just walked on to a movie set. If rankings were based on houses, she thinks, Bruce would win hands down.

While she soaks it all in, she must zone out, for she turns slightly and sees Bruce Wayne himself staring at her wearing as close to an amused look as she can imagine him capable of. "Miss Gordon."

Her cheeks heating, she manages a weak smile. "Mr. Wayne."

"Bruce, please." Extending his arm in the direction of a sumptuous looking leather couch, he urges her to sit and joins her. "Dick will probably still be a few minutes."

"Okay." She wraps her cardigan a little tighter around her body, subconsciously, and places her purse in her lap a second before thinking about it. Its been happening a lot lately, almost as if she's trying to hide the baby without realizing it. Clearing her throat, she shifts, not meeting his eyes.

Bruce leans in, causing Chloe's breath to catch. It's imposing; being this close to someone so reserved and so good looking. Different. Oliver, he's easy to be around. (For the most part.) He's so charming, so good natured. So… likeable, even without his money and his looks. Lex used to be easy to be around. Back when she first met him and he wanted nothing more than to be liked and accepted. But she'd never been around somebody like Bruce, who's every movement is self assured and thought out. Or at least they seem that way.

He clears his throat, and adjusts his tie, apparently sensing her discomfort. "I know you must be wary of me after our last conversation," he says, "but I assure you; I meant what I said. I'm not planning to do anything with the information I have. Its your business."

Before she can stop herself, Chloe bursts into tears.

Looking alarmed, Bruce reels backwards a ways. "Oh, um, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry."

"That's okay," Chloe says immediately, sniffing a little and feeing like a fool for dissolving into a sobbing mess. "It's the hormones. I cried because there was no milk yesterday." She gives him a watery smile, and he laughs.

He gives a small chuckle in return and hands her a handkerchief. "That sounds terribly inconvenient."

It's probably the closest thing to a joke that Bruce ever attempts, and she appreciates his trying to make her feel more comfortable. Chloe dabs at her eyes and hands his handkerchief back. "Thanks. And it is by the way. Thankfully it hasn't happened in public yet. That's when I may be in need of one of those again."

Dick walks in just then, smiling broadly at her. "Sorry. I was on the phone with a member of my study group," he tells her. "Midterms. You know how it is."

She stood, Bruce rising to his feet beside her, and shrugged. "It's okay. You ready to go?"

Dick's eyes ticked down over her. She knew he was taking in her outfit. It was unseasonably warm for April in Gotham, yet Chloe was still wearing a long scarf and a billowy cardigan over her loose fitting tee shirt.

Not the most fashionable of outfits, but it does a very nice job of concealing her stomach and the very unattractive band on her first pair of maternity jeans. Feeling a sudden bout of self consciousness, Chloe tucks a loose strand of her wig that's escaped from her hairclip behind her ear.

But instead of saying anything about her apparent shift in attitude, Dick just continues to grin at her. "You look nice."

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the very traces of a small smirk tugging at the edges of Bruce's mouth. He turns his head to disguise it, but it makes her grin all the same. Perhaps he isn't as stoic as the press paints him to be - just a man who values his privacy.

She smiles at Dick, hoping that there are no lingering traces of tears or smudged makeup around her eyes. That would take some explaining to do, and she was having some severe communication problems lately. It was hard telling what would fall out of her mouth at any given second. "Thanks. You ready to go?"

Saying their goodbyes to Bruce, they walk out the front door and Dick's car is sitting right in front of the steps. Despite her uncle's insistences, she hasn't gotten a car yet. Years of living in Metropolis has made her acutely aware that, while city transportation isn't always reliable, it is a much more cost efficient and can take her almost anywhere she needs to go. Except out to the Palisades and Wayne Manor, and she'd taken a cab instead.

Then she thinks about lugging a stroller around the Met 1 Express, and thinks maybe she'll let Uncle Jim take her by the same lot where he'd gotten 'such a great deal' on Tony's car.

Like the perfect well bred gentleman, Dick opens her door for her and waits until it closes before he jogs around to his side. Chloe runs her hand along the seat, feeling the buttery leather under her fingers. Its softer than any leather she's ever felt, and the tricked out stereo looks as complicated as her entire Watchtower setup put together. When she ticks her eyes toward Dick he's smirking at her, no doubt thinking she's exactly as impressed as she doesn't want him to know she is. "Nice car."

Silently, he turns the engine and they head off.

…0…

"Where do you put it all?"

Giving him a good natured glare, Chloe took another bite of her huge pretzel and continued browsing through a pile of gauzy scarves and intricately engraved bangles on a small table.

One thing she can't blame on her pregnancy hormones is her aversion to taking off the bracelet she'd gotten in India. Every day since Christmas, she's worn it and doesn't see that changing. (Unless her wrists join her ankles in swelling to the size of grapefruits and she's no longer able to put it on.) she may not be Chloe Sullivan anymore, but that's who she was for twenty-two years and Chloe Sullivan was never as happy as she was that night. It's a difficult feeling to let go of.

Dick reaches over and grabs a scarf that she'd been looking at earlier. Deep, deep purple silk with silver threads lacing through in an intricate flower pattern, Chloe hasn't been able to take her eyes off it since stepping up to the table. He lays it over her shoulder and grins. "Very you."

Chloe ducks her head, the enamel and metal under her fingers feeling cooler with the blood rushing to the surface of her skin. There's a small stack tied together with a length of ribbon, multi color and alternate materials. The mix of hues and metals and plastics and woods and jewels and even porcelains shouldn't have worked together, but they did.

She hears him say "We'll take them," and her head snaps up to see him handing a bill to the vendor, who looks very pleased with herself for some reason. Reaching around her arm, Dick nabs the bangles out of her hand and unties the ribbon. He takes hold of her hand and slides them onto the wrist not wearing her India bracelet.

"Dick, I can't let you-" she protests, but he cuts her off with a wave of his hand.

"Yes, you can," he insists. "So far you've stopped at every table and stall and bought nothing but enough fried food to feed a small army of football players." Teasing grin fixed on his face, he bumps his elbow against hers and leads her away. "Besides," he adds, "they really do suit you."

And despite how silly Chloe knows she looks wearing a pile of bracelets and two scarves - one of which clashes horribly with her outfit - she beams at Dick and winds her arm through his.

…0…

The sun is just beginning to set when Chloe finally collapses on the nearest flat surface - the low wall surrounding a statue - and rubs her aching back. If she'd known that Dick had intended to keep her at the fair all day, she definitely would have worn more appropriate shoes. Her flat boots were probably cracking along the bottom and they throbbed as she leaned her weight back on her palms.

Inside her stomach the baby felt like it was doing back flips. Everything she'd read about feeling the baby move had concerned her, but the doctor had assured Chloe that it was nothing to be concerned about, and laughed when Chloe mentioned that it happened more when she was hungry. Dick offered to swing by the diner again, but she can't wait and he troops off to get her a gyro and a lemonade.

She wonders, amused, if her appetite keeps up this way that her baby is likely to come out weighing twenty pounds.

Dick makes his way towards her just then, and hands her the food which she bites into at once. "I don't see how you can still be hungry," he remarks and plops down beside her. "You must have tried everything in the park by now."

Chloe's too busy inhaling her gyro to reply.

"Hey, they're doing bungee jumps at the end of the park. Wanna go?"

Swallowing down her last bite with a huge gulp of lemonade, Chloe shakes her head. "I don't think so. A hot bath and the pint of Cherry Garcia that JJ thinks I don't know about sound really good right now."

Dick stands, pulling her to her feet as well, and heads off in that direction. "Come on, Babs. Where's your sense of adventure?"

Frowning, she follows along. "About two hours and thirteen stalls ago."

"That'd be what, the write your name on rice place?"

At the far, far end of Gotham City Park is a large tower that would have stood out had it not been erected in an area that let the skyline of Gotham's industrial district looming in the background. As it was, the mass of steel blended in very well.

They came to a stop at the front of a small group gathered around a meshed off barrier a few feet back from a massive inflated plastic mat thing. As they come to a stop, a lone figure falls from the main top of the tower, tethered to nothing but a thin black rope until he gets a few feet from the mat and begins to bounce. The crowd around them cheers.

"Oh, I'm definitely doing that." Dick dashes towards the end of the barrier were the cashier stands and she follows along.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

He grins at her, plopping his money down. "After the trapeze, this is gonna be a breeze."

She shruggs, fully prepared to watch him freefall a few hundred feet, when he suddenly turns to her. "You wanna go?"

Chloe shakes her head so quickly, so hard, that she's almost afraid her neck's going to snap. "Nonono, I think I'll just watch. Wouldn't want all that food to come back up."

Shrugging, he hands her his jacket, making sure his wallet and phone are tucked carefully inside. Then he gets directed over to an elevator like platform that will take him all the way to the top. Craning her neck, Chloe watches as Dick is fitted into a harness and slides a helmet over his glossy black hair. His profile turns, and she has a felling he's looking for her, but the height she's looking at causes a vague sense of vertigo of to sway her, and Chloe, who has never had a problem with heights -feels her stomach turn violently.

She made it to a nearby garbage can just as Dick fell from the top. Sinking down on the ground - her wobbly knees not enough to support her - she listens to the crowd's approval and waits for Dick to come find her.