Story: cinderella don't you go to sleep

Summary: She tries to hate Davis but his eyes downturn in the corner like Clark's did when they were young and stupid and she was in love with Normalcy and the way that it made her oddness pop with hysterical brightness.

Notes: I'm putting this out essentially unedited and it's stupidly emotional, but I'm feeling more for Chloe right now that I can when I'm actually rational, and yeah. Okay.

Set post-"Beast," possibly mid- or pre-"Injustice."

Disclaimer: The Killers wrote "A Dustland Fairytale" and lots of people own lots of pieces of Smallville but I'm not one of them.

Once, Chloe wrote a report for Health—tenth grade, Mrs. Morgeston, Clark sat two rows behind her—about clinical depression. She still remembers the details as Davis curls his fingers around the steering wheel and cuts a glance at her from the corner of his eye; the uncontrollable lethargy, the weariness deep inside like a weight around the victim's lungs, the want to do nothing and something all at once.

(She is shopping for groceries in a little store in Out of the Way, Nebraska, and finds herself crying over the decision over whether to get Green Giant or Stop and Shop brand canned peaches) (Davis likes the syrup)(and the store attendant is a teenager in a green striped polo who politely asks Chloe if she is all right, and even though she has about four equally scathing comments on her tongue, all she can do is turn on her heel and make her way to the deli).

Chloe is about fourteen percent certain that she is not, in fact, clinically depressed, despite all crazy tendencies that she shares with her mother, and that the tears are a byproduct of being on the run with a serial killer who has an unfortunate habit of gutting anyone idiotic enough to stray near their misappropriated minivan in the middle of the night.

(She has gotten rather talented at getting bloodstains off of the silver paint of the car, and some days she wonders when this stopped being odd and whether she really is just hollow inside like she sometimes feels on her really awful days, and then Davis comes back and she fixes this bland smile on her face and tells him Yes, of course, I'm fine, and he gives her chocolate as though he is threading the pieces of her heart back together).

The phone in her palm is always slick and warm, so disgustingly seductive that she presses the keys into the familiar strokes even before she realizes, and sometimes she actually gets through and just listens to Clark on the other end of the line, until he can filter out her heartbeat and his voice is roughly jittery as he whispers Chloe, can you hear me? Are you all right? Where are you? and it's always the questions that make her hang up.

(She tries to hate Davis but his eyes downturn in the corner like Clark's did when they were young and stupid and she thought she was in love with Perfection, but really she was in love with Normalcy and the way that it made her oddness pop with hysterical brightness, and he's like a four year old or a sniffling puppy in the way that he makes her head congest with feelings like sympathy and heartache and dependency).

Some days it's Oliver's voice in the back of her mind, when did you become one of the bad guys, and sometimes it's Jimmy's vaguely doped and mostly concerned, be careful, Chlo, and she knows it's really bad and one of Those Days when it's Clark's frustrated, I will never stop looking. Except—here's when Chloe sort of suspects that this (desertion) was long coming—whenever she thinks of Clark she remembers that look in his eyes when he thought she was Lois and the utter adoration and she wonders if Davis looks at her like that.

(She used to watch Davis, but he thinks too much of it, and she attempts to kiss him just once, but she stops herself about two seconds into the motion and twists it so that she is reaching for a soda in the cooler behind his seat, because while part of her wants to help him and guide him and make him grow like a neglected bit of ivy, the rest of her is disgusted and rollicked by guilt and an aching deep in her gut and that sense of duty that has fallen on her shoulders since she first learned and kept Clark's Secret).

Chloe is used to being wanted for her cappuccino and her computer hacking skills and what she is told to be a very comfortable shoulder for crying on, but Davis wants her in a way that she thought she wanted Clark to want her and she knew that Jimmy sort of needed her, in a way that she needed her mother, and maybe that Abandoned Child syndrome she never really grew out of is what really pulls her to his side so hard, like magnetism multiplied by fourteen.

(She knows that Abandoned Child syndrome sounds neater than Really Fucked Up and Clinical Depressed and makes her feel a little better, although her Psych professor would probably shoot her to hear it).

The thing about being a martyr is that the Bible never says anything about musty motel rooms and the ratchety throttle of the dry showerheads and how she times the rattle in her chest with each indrawn sob, huuuuh, thuuuuh, thuuuuuh, with the patter of the drops against moldy tiles. The stories never tell her that she will hate herself. They never say that the Great Good isn't as great an incentive for goodness as it is for just leaving in the middle of the night and screwing the consequences.

(She wants to write new stories, tell someone about how she feels, because she can't be a martyr without someone to appreciate her sacrifice, but she is so utterly terrified of being away from him or talking to Clark for so long that he can find her, and she is mostly afraid that they will all be like Oliver and they will stop respecting her and start pitying and despising her, and they won't recognize it as a sacrifice at all but just idiocy).

Sometimes thinking about recognition is the only way she pulls her aches and her bones and her red-rimmed eyes out of the shower and back into the blue or pink or orange Generic Hotel Bathroom, where she can hear Davis switching irritably through channels in the next room. Someone—anyone, everyone—appreciating what she is doing is what propels her to firm her smile in the corners and offer to make Davis pancakes on the little stove catty-corner to the plywood dresser.

(This is how the good girls die).