Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville.

AU SMALLVILLE

Written for my Livejournal Paranormal25 150 Prompt Table. Prompt of the day # 50: Wild Hunt.

Sitting on top of the hill, the light of the moon her only light, Chloe looked down below at the meadow. She remembered her parents taking her here when she was a child, her mother whispering in her ear and holding her tight, her body warming the child's. Chloe remembered being afraid at first, but with her mother there, whispering in her ear that it was alright, that this was a gift, she'd learnt to appreciate the unique gift passed down through bloodline. Thanks to her mother she'd learnt to embrace what any other child might fear because they just couldn't understand.

Chloe sighed.

It'd been year since she'd come here.

Years since she'd allowed herself to come to this place filled with so many memories.

After her mother walked out on them, Chloe hadn't wanted to be anywhere near anything that reminded her of the woman whom she'd thought had betrayed them. She was sixteen now, old enough to look back on her mother crying and holding her tightly, and wonder why she had whispered how much she loved her, only to let go of her hand and leave her. She'd never heard from her mother again, not even received a card for her birthday. And yet she knew that when her mother had told her she loved her, she'd been telling the truth. It had left her confused and frustrated, and a little depressed.

Of course, that had all been before tonight, when she'd finally been told the truth.

Now she was frustrated and very depressed.

"Hey, I've been looking all over for you."

Chloe didn't look up at her cousin, instead watching the happenings going on below.

"You know, when our moms were young, they used to come here with their mom." Lois sat down next to her younger cousin. "Said that this was the exact spot where they'd come to watch it, and to practice."

Chloe finally tore her gaze from the ghostly figures racing below, following the shimmering white stag. "Weren't you angry when your sixteenths birthday came and they told you?"

Lois sighed, laying back down on the grass, as if unable to look her cousin in the eyes. "Terribly. I couldn't believe what Grammy Mia was saying, refused to believe it. And then I couldn't tell Lucy anything because she was too young. The girls of the family only get told on their sixteenth birthday because that's the age that marks them as adults."

That was when the darker side of the powers granted them through their bloodline kicked in.

"We'll never be able to be happy." Chloe whispered, returning her gaze to the ghostly hunt going on below. "I could understand and learn to love the oddities---being able to see people or things others couldn't, do things others couldn't...but this? How can I accept this? Our future is either loneliness or death. Our moms proved that. Mine chose to leave and live, and yours chose to stay and die."

Lois shifted uncomfortably on the grass, making a face. "I sometimes wished she'd left like Aunt Moira. At least we'd know that she would be alive somewhere out there."

One of the hunters below fired an arrow, but like the others it went wide, missing the translucent stag by a long shot.

"She preferred to die than to be separated from you and Lucy. I think that just goes to show she loved you more than my mother did."

"Don't say something like that." Lois glared at Chloe. "If your mother had died we'd have no one to turn to now, especially since Grammy Mia died. Your mom had to live so that she could show us the way."

"The way to lose the ones we love?" Chloe hugged herself. "Lois, we're cursed."

"Yeah, we kinda are." The elder cousin didn't try to deny it. "But maybe we could get around it?" The blonde snorted. "Every single one of us, once we have a child, are unable to keep ourselves from sucking our husband's and child's life force until that child has hit maturity. There are only two ways to stop from killing our husband and children, one is to leave them and go far away so that we can't come into contact with them, and the other is to turn off your power and slowly wither away to nothing as your life force is sucked out of you." She took in a deep breath. "How can you think there's a way to get around generations of this thing that has destroyed our bloodline's families?"

"Now, you see, i've been thinking this over for a year now, and I think I got it." Lois announced. "The gene activates after our sixteenth birthday, right? But it only starts working after we have a child. So I see three clear solutions. One is we get our tubes tied. Two is that we decide to join the 'Girl' wagon. And the third would be to get with someone who isn't human. Like, per se, a werewolf or something. Because we know from Grammy Mia's lessons that supernatural creatures are on different wavelengths than us and their life force is different so ours wouldn't want to consume theirs. That way even if we did have children, I don't think our life force would do anything either because it'd be a mixture of the father's and ours. Human and yet not."

Chloe was silent, before turning to her cousin in awe. "Those...are actually really good ideas."

"I know, right?" Lois grinned brightly. "Of course, we'd have to run that over with aunt Moira next week, but I'm thinking I'm a genius."

Chloe would have smiled, but she was so nervous now. "I can't believe I'm going to see her again after so long."

Now that Chloe was of age and wasn't in danger anymore of her life force being consumed by her mothers, Moira had sent for her and Lois to join her in her home in Sunnydale. The woman was eager to reunite with her daughter, and apparently Gabe had known about everything, because not only had he been the one to sit Chloe down and tell her about her what was going to happen to her now, but had told her that he and her mother had agreed before she'd left all those years ago that Chloe would go live with Moira after her sixteenth birthday.

"The last time you saw her you were eight, weren't you?" Lois announced. "She really took a risk staying with you that late into your life."

"Explains why I was always so sickly though." Chloe replied, leaning her head against Lois' shoulder, gaze on the hunt below. "They're not going to catch the stag again this year."

Lois looked down towards the ghosts who appeared every year to continue the hunts even in death. "They never do."

"I'm glad."

"That stag is mocking them even in death." Lois chuckled.

They sat in silence, watching the events below.

"We'll be okay, won't we?" Chloe asked softly after a while.

Lois nodded. "Just as sure as the stag getting away again this year."

The blonde smiled, and when the stag finally did manage to shake off its pursuers and win once more, Chloe smiled, having a little more hope.

Couldn't get this idea out of my mind so I had to write it down immediately!

Review?