"Never."

Rating: PG-13
Season: 7?
Summary: Alternate take on how the series could end, originally written for another story, but ended up as a standalone.


Seagulls.


She woke up to the sound of seagulls somewhere overhead.


Chloe opened one eye, the light of a summer day too bright to force the other one too. Maybe if it weren’t for the searing headache in her left temple she could manage both, but for now, Chloe squinted through a hazel eye, scanning her surroundings.


She was in a car. An unfamiliar car.


Outside, titanic sized ships were docked on both sides of her with rusted cargo
containers stacked high on their decks.


And the seagulls. Dozens of them soared above, gliding with the steady breeze while others perched upon the corroded containers , watching their black, beaded eyes.


The shipyards. Chloe frowned.


Why was she at the shipyards?


“Welcome back.”


She jumped, the sudden voice beside her breaking the silence. She opened her left eye, revealing the exact reason why she was at the shipping yards.


Lex.


Chloe jumped again, this time her back into the door, trying to move away from the sneering grin he wore across his pale face.


She heard clinking, and felt it too, around her wrists. Chloe followed her arms down to where they were handcuffed to the dashboard in front of her.


“I know what you’re thinking.”


She looked back at him, knowing full well he had no idea what she was thinking.


Lex searched her eyes, seeing fear there, and smiled. The same smile as a shark‘s, circling red waters.


“I’ve brought you here today to witness a miracle.”


Chloe blinked several times, halfway turning towards Lex, halfway figuring out how to get free from the cuffs; Halfway trying to remember how she’d gotten there in the first place.


She watched as Lex slid in his long fingers into black, leather gloves, tightening his fists as he did so. The way his knuckles cracked over the taut leather reminded her of a slaughter house, stretching its raw, butchered hides.


Lex had killed several people before and gotten away like the serial killer he was. Chloe dearly wished she wasn’t about to be the next victim that would soon be forgotten about in the papers…


She tugged on the cuffs, pulling until her flesh turned white around her wrists.


Lex reached over, resting a firm, black gloved hand across hers, steadying her weak attempts.


“Don’t touch me.” Speaking those first words felt like dragging sand paper through her throat, but she would never let it sound that way. She repeated it again after Lex curled his finger around hers.


It infuriated her when his lips tilted again, leering.


Lex coolly dragged his leather index finger down her wrists, over the bulky metal clasps of the
restraints, and further down the slender curve of her arm right down to the soft indenture of her elbow.


All she could do was watch him do this while she restlessly conceived a plan to escape…


“As you can see, I can touch you,” his eyes grazed, “wherever I like.” He rubbed the exposed nook
of her elbow with his thumb, feeling her pulse there. It was normal, he noted, and grinned again. He knew
he could get that heart of hers to play a little faster than that.


“Why am I here?” She snarled again, shaking her clenched fists chained to the dash. Several pieces of hair slid onto her brow in the struggle.


He reached over with his other hand, brushing those dark blonde hairs back into its place. Silently, he took her chin into his palm, forcing her to look into his grey irises. They were ashen, as if life hadn’t been there in a long time.


All she could do was helplessly look into them, watch them as they traveled down ward from her eyes, to her lips, down to her neck and the exposed skin that was escaped from her blouse.


Chloe had been wearing a suit jacket last time she remembered. But somewhere or another, that had been discarded from her, leaving her only in the thin, silk blouse that splayed open across her chest.


If she had a free hand, she’d cover herself. But there wasn’t any use of that when she knew Lex had everything exactly where he wanted it.


Her. Her cuffed hands, and her exposed flesh.


Slowly, the grey disks floated upwards again, meeting her eyes once more. “I told you. I’ve brought you here to witness a miracle.”


She blinked, regaining her bearings and her wit. “Yeah? So where is it? In side that port-o-potty over there?” She nodded towards the docks, quickly losing her sense of humor. “Uncuff me, Lex! She pointed her eyes, “Release me-- before you rack up any more felonies today. Kidnapping is--”


“Irrelevant, Ms. Sullivan.” He spoke in an odd, detached manner, letting go of her face and arm. Suddenly, she thought Lionel might have been sitting next to her. “Kidnapping is irrelevant. Especially after what happens next.”


Chloe knitted her brow, creating the small crinkle in between them. It was a snare, she knew. But she couldn’t help but fall into the trap, willingly.


“What happens next?”


He revealed a small set of keys, fingering them until he found the correct one, inserting it into the ignition, turning it.


The car purred to life, then roared, as he pressed his custom-made, Italian boot to the accelerator.


A possessed satisfaction surged through him with every pump of the accelerator, the car revving to go, yet Lex kept the gear in neutral.


His voice was also neutral. “This is a Porsche.” His eyes glassed over, distant. “Much like the same car I drove off that stupid bridge years ago.”


Chloe looked to the tachometer, its orange arm waving up and down frantically. She looked ahead to the long road that laid before them, all the way up to where it ended.


Abruptly.


“Lex,” she turned tentatively, voice gentler this time, “let’s slow down, okay? Talk about this.”


He didn’t hear her. “You wanted to know why you’re here, Chloe. I’m showing you why. Don’t you want to see?”


She couldn’t help the involuntary shaking of her head. “Lex, just uncuff me and let me out so--”


“NO!” White teeth flashed as he snapped. “Call him, Chloe! Call him!”


“What?” Chloe blinked rapidly and yanked hard at her restraints. “Lex call who-- my hands are tied up and my cell phone is somewhere in my jacket which I don‘t--”


He slapped her.


She wasn’t expecting that.


“Stop lying to me!“ He grabbed her roughly by the chin. “Don’t play stupid with me!“


She stared back at him through fallen chunks of hair, rotating her jaw from the pain. In addition to her throbbing temple, the origin of where Lex had initially knocked her out, she really had a good headache building now.


Possessed energy behind his ashen eyes pierced hers.


“Stupid is that gets you killed in the end, Ms. Sullivan.”


Stiffly, Lex slid back into his seat, mood shifting to something else, something more scary and haunting than his raw rage.


“Trust me,” he whispered with wide, delusional eyes. She stared back at them, hoping to find any sanity left in them.


“Trust me, Chloe. I don’t want you to get hurt. But if you don’t comply. I can promise you. You wont survive. Just like I wouldn’t have survived.”


Chloe finally let herself blink, the total situation sinking in. It was clear now that Lex had finally lost it.


She realized then she wasn’t going to be able to fix this in the conventional way she would have in the past. She really needed him. But she wouldn’t risk exposing his secret.


No, Lex was just waiting for that.


“Lex, wait--”


“I’m tired of WAITING, Chloe!” He pressed the brake, and then the clutch. “It’s time to finally know the truth! The truth about everything!”



He shifted to first gear.



That’s where Chloe started yanking her arms loose like no tomorrow, desperately trying to free herself before Lex committed them both to early graves.


She tried lifted her foot up onto the dash for leverage, but Lex scooted her seat forward, pinning her knees underneath the dash.


“I’ve been searching my whole life, Chloe. My whole life for the purpose of it all.” He turned to her with that vacant, dead look. “Do you know what I found? Nothing. There was nothing, no purpose, no love ,no true life anywhere. Just death, and the debt that I owed my father in the never-ending battle to win his affection when there wasn’t any to begin with.”


She was gritting her teeth now, the stinging, numbing pain encroaching up her arm where her blood no longer circulated. She wrapped her wrists in every contorted position trying to squeeze through…


“There was only one time in my life, one time when I thought God had actually looked upon me, and granted me a second chance. I was saved from death, given a second life, this time with a purpose, with some sort of meaning.”


He removed his dead gaze from her and to the road ahead of them. “But that too was taken away from me. With lies, and more deception. Even from one the closest friends I’ve ever known. A brother.”


He shut his eyes. “A second brother.”



Chloe stilled, panting from all the exertion she’d committed to breaking free. None of it had worked, only succeeding in bruising her arms to where they welted up. She slouched over, her head pressed against her arms.


Lex looked over to her. “We were friends. Why couldn’t he trust me?”


She caught her breath and sat up. “Lex, please. Let me out of this car.”


“Why you?” He shook his head. “Why you and not me!” He screamed, slamming his foot against the gas, tires screeching.


The car jolted forward and slid, the wheels desperately trying to catch up with the road.


Chloe looked up, seeing yards of concrete fly underneath them as the car gained speed. If she had any negotiation tactics left, now was the time to use them.


“Stop the car! Stop the car and I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”


Second gear.


Lex seethed. “Everything that I want to know is on the other side of that edge!”



Third gear.


Chloe stared in horror.


Fourth gear.


He turned to her. “Call him!”


“Who? No one is coming!”


“Who else!” He snarled, desperate. “I know, Chloe-- I know the kinds of miracles he can do! He will save us like he saved me off that bridge! He can bring us back!”


She swallowed, forming the words she knew would be her last. “There’s no such thing as miracles, Lex. It’s just you and me going over that edge. No one will save us.”


He searched her wildly.


Forty yards.


Seconds.


She knew she only had to utter his name past her lips, and he’d be there. But she didn’t want him there. She wouldn’t expose him to single greatest threat to his life, Lex Luthor. A man bound to unravel every good thing in the world and burn it alive. Destroy it.


She wouldn’t let him destroy this.


She’d promised a long time ago that she’d never betray him. She’d die before she’d ever betray him, and today it looked like she was going to honor her words. Right down to the last syllable and watery grave.


At least, she thought, Lex would die with her. That in it self would save more people than she ever could.


She turned from him, and braced herself against the hand rail and leaned forward. At this proximity, the airbags would break her forearms and knock her unconscious.


At least she wouldn’t be awake when she drowned.




Fifth gear.




He hesitated a little when he shifted this time, the shiny red Porsche racing ahead, running out of road.


Lex looked her over once more, his expression shifting again.


This time, Chloe noted, he looked almost… afraid?


“Now or never, Chloe.”


“Never.” She answered with no hesitation. She’d never betray him.


It was that last look Lex gave her that chilled her. He was paler than before, any previous life remaining drained from him. His eyes wilder, darting everywhere at once as if looking for his next move.


But there wasn’t one. Chloe wouldn’t surrender any more moves.


They only moved ahead, racing towards the edge where their horizon cut off and plummeted down.


She glimpsed at him, recognizing horror in his eyes.


Do I look that scared? She asked herself, counting the last piers passing by like tick marks.


She watched as the car past by the last ship docked and as the long stretch of road gave way to the wide open view of the open, swelling water.


A croak escaped her throat as she anticipated the drop. “Lex--”


He opened his door.


“Lex!” Instinctively she grabbed for him, forgetting them chained in front. But she did anyway, she wasn’t about to let him jump out now, like the demented coward he was, and leave her to sit this out alone.


But helplessly, she did. Lex threw her one last cautious glance before he rolled out, hitting the pavement like a rag doll and out of view.


The car jerked and swerved.


But it wasn’t decelerating. She looked over.


Cruise control.


Sh*t.


Furiously, Chloe made a last attempt to throw her body to hit the lit up button on the steering wheel, but it was after her second try when she felt the car become light, the engine idling faster now.


The horizon moved down.


Blue skies. The windshield was all sky, with those puffy, perfect little clouds that reminded her it was summer.

For a moment, Chloe thought he had caught her. Saved her like always, carrying her up. Her heart smiled.


That was before she felt the car tilt forward, suddenly very heavy, gravity catching up with her. Taking her heart with her. The pretty clouds disappeared.


This time the horizon hitched up and then flipped, her body floating up and then slamming down violently, hitting the roof with an unpleasant thud. And before the car flipped completely, she saw through the windshield a flash of a dark field below.


That’s when she knew he wasn’t there. Not like always.


That’s when she closed her eyes.


She wasn’t scared, nor did she feel despair. In those last moments Chloe only thought of one thing that always reminded her spirit she wasn’t alone.


Clark.