Title: Embittered
Author: Savage Midnight
Site: See profile
Rating: PG-13 (for swearing)
Disclaimer: Smallville and all related elements belong to Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Currently I own David Aden and Helen Dalton.
Summary: Set three years after the events of season three. In a moment of weakness, Chloe Sullivan's life was irrevocably destroyed when the young reporter accepted an offer from the devil himself. Now, three years later, an orphaned Chloe is out for blood. With the help of hacker-friend David Aden, she plans to bring down the very man who destroyed her life and murdered her father - Lionel Luthor. But when an embittered Chloe is reintroduced to an old friend, the son of the devil himself, things start to get complicated. Will Lex Luthor be a flaw in her plan or will he prove vital to Chloe's mission?
Authors Notes: My first shot at a novel-length fic. Feedback definitely appreciated, especially the constructive kind. Huge thanks to my fantabulous beta, Aimee, for her help. This fic would seriously be lacking without her.

---

There were some nights when Chloe Sullivan could not sleep at all. The screaming, gaping face of her father occasionally drove her from the unsatisfying warmth of her bed and pulled her here, to the graveyard.

Tonight was one of those nights. She stood with quiet awkwardness in front of the black marble headstone, feeling out of place as usual but not making any move to leave. These moments were her penance and her solace, and she held onto them with an iron fist, unwilling to let them go. She had sacrificed too much in the face of her cowardice; she refused to sacrifice these scarce, precious moments with her father.

She knelt and caressed the elegant scrawl of his name. Her eyes swept over the clear, gold lettering of the short epitaph that never seemed to serve much justice to a man who was more than just a loving father and devoted friend. Her fingers trailed the memorised path of his name, fingertips stroking the soft curve of the G, the sharp dip of the A, the curl of the B, the--

--she broke, falling back into the wet mud, her fingers slipping from the headstone. She didn't cry. Instead she dug her hands into the dirt beside her, absently clawing tracks into the vibrant green grass. Her breath hitched and cracked into a muted sob. Her tears, which had yet to escape, dried in the harsh wind and left her dull eyes stinging.

She crawled along the grass, ignoring the mud that streaked her penguin-print pyjama bottoms, and draped herself over his headstone, resting her wind-kissed cheek against the cool marble. She pressed a light, fleeting kiss to the stone and closed her eyes to the lull of serenity that swept through the silence of the graveyard. Sorrow welled in her chest, but she welcomed it with a smile, because the tightness was a sign that she could still feel more than the simple, cold remoteness of grief. It was nice to know that after almost three years she was not emotionally deadened.

It didn't make her any happier, though. Not that happiness was her top priority, but she had expected to feel some sense of neared relief or closure. After all, it was almost over. She could taste the sweet bitterness of revenge on her tongue already and she hadn't even dealt her final blow yet. Soon, though. Soon.

"Not long now, Dad," she promised, rising from the ground with none of the awkwardness from moments before. She brushed absently at the mud clinging to her pyjamas and pulled her raincoat tighter around herself.

She looked younger than her twenty years, standing in the quiet darkness of the graveyard, clad in the pyjamas she refused to throw out because her father had bought them for her seventeenth birthday. Her hair was bunched up into a small ponytail, but some of the shorter strands of her blonde tresses had refused to stay put and were now fluttering wildly about her bare face. There was no make-up, no jewellery, none of the glamour that made Chloe Sullivan the adult she was forced to be. There was just the childlike twist of her lips and the large, wounded eyes that were masked by her lowered lashes.

Strange, how she was here because of her rush to grow up. While other teenagers had been off trailing the path to future dreams, she had wanted her dreams right then and there and she had made what she had once considered reasonable sacrifices to achieve them. In the end she hadn't grown up at all, and now here she was, a twenty-year-old child with a wisdom she should not have had to bear.

With one last look and an affectionate smile, Chloe turned away from the headstone and made her way back home. If she were anyone else she would have feared walking the streets on the bad side of Metropolis in the middle of the night, but two years of martial preparation and twenty years of intelligence had rewarded her with a mean right hook and a stun-gun in her purse. It might not do her a lot of good in the long run, she thought, but she was satisfied knowing that she at least had a fighting chance if anything were to happen.

Ten minutes later found her clambering a flight of stairs to her small, studio apartment. When Chloe had been in school, she had always dreamed of having a studio apartment, but her current residence had none of the flair and glamour that she had fantasized about back then. Instead it was one large room based on the second floor of a two-storey apartment, with a bathroom that she was forced to share with the residents downstairs. Luckily she had had Harry, her favourite handy-man, install a shower in the right-hand corner of the room, because the thought of sharing a shower with her "neighbours" had wigged her out no end when she had first moved here. She just hoped that her landlord wouldn't suddenly decide to pop round for a surprise visit and find that she had gone DIY on his ass. She had no doubt she would be out on her own if he did. Teddy didn't like people messing with his property.

With a heavy sigh Chloe shut the door behind her and shrugged out of her coat, throwing it absently on the armchair to her right. She headed for the kitchen, which dominated most of the left side of the studio, and clicked on the coffee-pot. She rinsed her mug under the faucet and splashed her already chilled face with cold water, blinking away the shock and turning to pour herself a coffee. With a healthy gulp of the hot, bitter liquid she moved over to her work area, which was concealed by a long, sliding door that stretched across the length of the back wall. It was locked with a simple combination lock, which opened easily as she spun the code into place. There was no point in a high-security lock because the door itself would only take a little battering before it buckled. That was why she made sure the information they found was secured elsewhere as well as here. The door simply served as a screen in case anyone came round for a surprise visit. Which wasn't often.

Removing the lock from the door she slid it across towards the right wall of the apartment, where it folded neatly into the crevice beside her closet. Several desks were revealed, which lined the length of the back wall. Each desk was packed with hi-tech machinery, flashing monitors, piles of newspapers, magazines, articles and post-its printed with valuable information. At the end lay a number of folders that were organized into neat, appropriate piles. The information in them was valuable and most people would have thought it stupid to leave such information out, but Chloe wasn't stupid. She had back-up. She always had back-up nowadays. Every week any new information she or David discovered was downloaded onto discs. Those discs were then scattered across Metropolis, some of them locked away in deposit boxes, others hidden in locations nobody but her and David knew about. After a second brief encounter with the renowned Perry White she had taken his advice and left discs at four different banks in Metropolis, with the instruction that the discs were to be released to a number of sources in the event of her death. Whenever anything new was found, those discs were then updated or refreshed and the cycle went on, just like it had for the last two years.

And now, after months--years--of hard work, it was almost over. Just a few more months to fool-proof her plan and then everything would be ready.

Lionel Luthor was going to pay.

---

The black, cordless phone beside Chloe rang at exactly eight-thirty. She answered it on the first ring with a short, sharp, "Yeah?"

David answered with a loud grunt and Chloe faintly heard the sound of tapping in the background. "Why the fuck you insist on me ringing you at this ungodly hour is beyond me. Why can't we do the midnight rendezvous thing like everybody else?"

Chloe smirked into the phone. She was used to David's complaining. For the last two years he had spent most of his time grumbling that she was a slave-driver and that one day he would die of sleep deprivation alone. She knew it was complete bull. Before Chloe had met David he had been a full-time hacker and had spent twenty-three hours a day writing and selling viruses to an elite group of underground yuppies. Sleep wasn't in David's vocabulary.

They had met not long after Chloe had moved to Metropolis. Nine weeks into her mission one of her sources had contacted her about a well-known underground hacker who went by the name D-Hakey. At the time she had been attempting to track down a reliable source who could provide her with a virus deadly enough to temporarily shut down the LuthorCorp system and her search had eventually led her to David Aden, hacker-extraordinaire and former technician at LuthorCorp itself.

It was love at first sight. For David, anyway. The only thing Chloe had fallen in love with was David's equipment. At the time his hi-tech computer system had made hers look miserably pathetic and it had been David who had financed her own system; a system that had proved far more useful than her previous one.

Of course, things hadn't been as simple as that. As an underground hacker David suffered from trust issues. Chloe's own trust issues, which had been seriously impaired by a select number of "allies" in the past, didn't make things any easier and for the first three weeks they had exchanged nothing but money, illegal programmes and wary looks. Eventually a starry-eyed David had spilled the figurative beans and Chloe had responded in kind. They had been a team ever since. David had given up hacking full-time and now kept his clientele list short but financially pleasing. He spent most of his days helping Chloe and after two years she had grown pretty fond of him. Luckily for her he'd grown out of whatever infatuation he had had with her after she had politely informed him that nothing would or could ever happen between them. Her being an emotional wreck and all.

"Good morning, David," she said sweetly, rubbing the sleep from her clammy eyes and stepping out of her chair, coffee mug in hand.

"Fuck off."

"I think I liked it better when you were head over heels for me. I got bagels in the morning instead of abuse."

"You got bagels in the morning because you spent six weeks camped out in my lounge."

"Good point. Continue, soldier."

She heard him sigh over the phone and knew it was bad news.

"Nothing on this front. I've been following the leads you gave me, but half of them have been paid off and the other half are worried they'll be eating bullets if they talk."

"What about the girl? Dana Leigh? Did you get anything out of her?"

The phone was silent for a second and then she heard David's rough voice echo over the line. "She's dead."

Chloe exhaled slowly and ran a hand down her face. "Shit," she breathed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Dana Leigh had been their last lead to a story they'd been working on for over a year. A source from one of their earlier stories had accidentally left bread crumbs in their wake and that had led both she and David to an intriguing discovery that would undoubtedly bring Lionel to his knees. While the other information they had collected would serve to destroy LuthorCorp, this story would be the one to destroy Lionel Luthor himself. After this there was no chance of him rising from the ashes to seek his vengeance. And when it was done, when the eldest Luthor was finally driven to his knees, Chloe planned to finish him off permanently.

David, of course, didn't know that.

But right now the story was nothing more than bits and pieces; rumours and scattered facts that was slowly but surely building up. Gradually one source led to another and another and pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.

Dana Leigh had been the final piece and now her death would surely slow them down. But more than that was the revelation that someone was finally onto them. Someone knew about their little investigation and was doing their best to put a stop to it. Chloe knew that they would have to be more careful if they were going to see this thing through.

She only hoped they survived long enough.

"Where does that leave us?" she asked, pouring herself a coffee. She strode across the room towards the far-right wall of her studio, where her four-poster bed (her only luxury, bar her shower) stood against the wall. Her small closet stood to the left of it, a damaged chest of draws was snuggled in the groove opposite the right side of the bed and beside that her tiny shower stood proudly in a deep recess in the wall.

"With twenty-three families fearing for their own lives and three scientists shitting dollar signs," David said wearily. He was obviously as frustrated about their situation as she was.

She moved over to the chest of draws and opened the top one. She pulled out a fresh pair of underwear and threw them onto the bed behind her, moving next to her closet, which she flung open with two hands, leaving the phone clamped between her ear and her shoulder.

"How does he do it?" she declared tightly, moving the phone again to clutch it in one hand. "How does he get away with killing all these people without the authorities sniffing up his fuckin' ass crack?"

She picked out a charcoal grey skirt and matching jacket from her closet and bent down to dig out a creased, white blouse. She frowned at it in disapproval and muttered to herself, "I hate ironing."

"It's because the authorities are sniffing up his ass crack that he gets away with it. We are talking about Lionel Luthor here."

She sighed heavily and threw the clothes on her bed. "I don't give a shit if he's Lionel Luthor. He shouldn't be able to get away with murdering innocent people, God-complex or no. I swear, once this is over--"

"--we'll get him, Chloe," David cut in gently. The distant tapping of a keyboard ceased momentarily and for a long second there was nothing but static silence. Then, softly, he added, "I promise."

Chloe nodded subconsciously into the phone and ran a hand through her hair. "I know," she said. "But if we don't move fast, more people are going to die."

"I'm gonna try the Sanderson family. They're my best bet. Apparently Margaret Sanderson's son, Mark, knows something about his brother's death, but she won't let me speak to him." He paused. "They're afraid, Chloe. They know what'll happen if they talk."

"Then we better wrap this up before anything does happen."

"I'm working on it."

"Good."

"What about you?"

"I've got three bank appointments today and one on Tuesday. The discs need updating."

"Ring me when you're done and I'll let you know what I've got."

"Will do."

She hung up, dropping the phone onto the bed, and flopped back against the mattress. She rubbed at her eyes roughly with the heels of her hands, willing the overbearing fatigue and weariness to lift, if only for a few hours. She was not in the mood to be stepping out into the cold, harsh wind today, but she knew she had no choice. If the discs were not updated and the information was lost, they would be right back at square one again. It would take months for them to retrace their leads and recollect the evidence and meanwhile people would die, maybe even her. Their lives depended on those discs and Chloe wasn't willing to let another innocent die because she wasn't on the ball. Enough blood had already been spilled.

With a heavy heart Chloe reluctantly rose from the bed and headed for the shower.

---

The Central Bank of Metropolis was the last stop on her list and by now Chloe was reaching the point of exhaustion. She had barely salvaged three hours sleep last night before the nightmares had pulled her to the graveyard, and after spending two, repetitive hours in two different banks, she was starting to feel the effects.

Exhaling loudly outside the revolving, glass doors, she smoothed down her knee-length skirt and shifted the black bag on her shoulder. She stepped through into the hustle and bustle and moved towards the reception desk, where she informed a sombre looking secretary that she was due for a one-thirty appointment with Mrs. Dalton.

The secretary nodded and politely asked her to take a seat while he notified Mrs. Dalton she was here. She did so, glancing down at her watch as she settled herself into one of the low, leather armchairs in the centre of the lobby. She sighed tiredly as the long hand slipped to twenty-three minutes past.

At thirty-nine minutes past, Mrs. Dalton, a healthy looking woman in her early fifties, stepped through into the lobby and asked Chloe to follow her through to her office. She did so and found herself standing in a familiar, plush office, richly decorated and oozing elegance and class. She moved to sit down in one of the high-backed chairs opposite the manager's desk and settled her bag onto the polished, mahogany surface.

"Miss Sullivan," the older woman greeted, smiling widely at her from across her desk. "What can I do for you today?"

Chloe opened her bag and pulled out a simple, grey safety box about half an inch thick. She pushed it across the desk towards the woman. "Just the usual, please, Mrs. Dalton."

The manager nodded politely. "I don't know why I even bother with this formality crap," she said, shaking her head. "I think you know the routine better than I do."

Chloe laughed softly. She liked Mrs. Dalton. She had a sharp sense of humour and a deep dislike for pretence. She did not enjoy flaunting her prestige and she seemed the most comfortable when she was being blatant and honest. Chloe also knew that despite being in her early fifties and married, Mrs. Dalton was somewhat of a wild child. She knew this because Mrs. Dalton was an associate of David's; one who had helped him on occasion in regards to security and one he trusted. She had also done her own background check, because Chloe was especially careful when it came to the people she did business with. One could never be too sure exactly who was on Lionel Luthor's pay roll, and it would not do for those discs to fall into the wrong hands.

Mrs. Dalton picked the safety box up and rose from her chair. "Come on," she said, and Chloe followed her out of the office and down the same corridor she had been down numerous times before. She waited patiently, as she always did, while numerous doors were unlocked and locked. Finally Chloe was left alone in a small room that was lined with rows upon rows of safety deposit boxes, one of which she held two keys to in her right hand; one her own and the other, Mrs. Dalton's. For safety reasons Mrs. Dalton was supposed to be in here with her, using her own key while Chloe used hers, but after two years of visits, the manager no longer bothered. She knew there wasn't a lot of damage Chloe could do with two keys that only fit her own deposit box.

She slipped each key into either side of deposit box number 236 and pulled out its contents; a safety box similar to the one cradled in her left hand, this one a shade darker than the other. She carried them both over to a small table in the centre of the room and placed them both side-by-side. Not bothering to sit down, she unlocked them and transferred the contents, returning the darker one to the deposit box after she was done. Satisfied, she stepped back out into the corridor where she found Mrs. Dalton dragging heavily on a cigarette.

The older woman grinned at her from around a cloud of smoke. "Only chance I get," she explained and took the proffered key from Chloe's hand. Chloe slipped her own key into her bag and turned to walk beside the manager.

"No change to your instructions, then, Miss Sullivan?"

"Call me Chloe." They had known each other formally for nigh-on two years. It was about time they left the pretence behind.

"Helen," she said with a smile, pausing to dot out her cigarette against the rim of the garbage bin. She slipped the cigarette butt into her pocket. "So any changes, Chloe?"

"No," Chloe replied, "no changes."

Helen nodded. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, thank you."

The manager strode past her office door and carried on towards another glass door that led towards to the bank lobby. She opened it and stepped aside so Chloe could pass through. Closing the door behind her she turned to face Chloe. "I'll be seeing you in a few months, then, Miss Sullivan."

Chloe smiled and nodded. She hoped so. "I'm sure you will, Mrs. Dalton. Bye for now."

She turned and crossed the large, marble lobby, heading towards the exit. Yawning loudly she pushed herself through the revolving glass doors and blanched visibly as the afternoon soon glared down at her. A buzzing pain hummed behind her eyes, signalling the beginnings of a headache and with an agitated grunt Chloe opened her bag and bent her head, searching the dark confines for her sunglasses. Six blind steps later found her colliding with a hard chest. She apologised absently, dug a little deeper and exclaimed loudly, "aha!", as she finally found them. She pulled out the black shades and slipped them on. "Bingo," she muttered to herself.

"Well done, Miss Sullivan," a smooth voice said, "I'm glad to see your investigative skills haven't diminished any since I last saw you. Although I must say, investigating the depths of your bag is a far cry from your earlier endeavours."

Chloe glanced up into the smiling face of Lex Luthor, who stood looking as smug and defiant as she remembered him to be. She blinked, momentarily lost for words. A split second later she offered him an aloof smile and greeted him with a curt, "Mr. Luthor."

He smiled insincerely. "Please, call me Lex."

Chloe nearly laughed at that. The simple comment reminded her of a time when innocence and naivety were respectable flaws, when she had voted loyalty over betrayal and when dreams hadn't taken precedence over family and friends. It was from a time when she had loved Clark Kent and not betrayed him, when Lionel Luthor had been a textbook villain and not the reason for the venom in her blood, and when Lex Luthor had been her father's boss and not her one-time benefactor. Such an innocent remark but it pulled something inside of her and she felt tears prick her eyes. Here was a man that had indirectly destroyed her, whether he was aware of it or not. After all, it was his father that had made her what she was today. A twenty-year-old orphan with a thirst for vengeance and a waning appetite for life. Lionel Luthor was to blame for the misery that was her life, though she knew, deep inside, that the blame was also her own. No one had forced to accept his offer. Yet it had been a genuine mistake on her part and one she had paid for over and over again. She knew that once this thing was over she would have sated her own guilt and shame, but the fact was that Lionel Luthor felt neither. Her father's death was a drop in the bucket to him, a single tear in an ocean wept by those that had dared to cross him, and nothing short of his death would be penance enough. And she was going to see to it personally that justice was served to Lionel Luthor, in the cruellest sense of the word.

Lex Luthor, however, was a different matter entirely. He had supported her financially when her father had died. He had paid for the funeral expenses when it was discovered that Chloe could in no way afford to pay for them herself, and he had provided her with a constant source of funds for the remaining month she had stayed in Smallville. It had been Lex's money that had helped her to escape the little hamlet and had set her up in Metropolis for a short while. It had run out eventually, of course, and Chloe had been forced to resort to other means to support herself. She shuddered at the memory.

But even though Lex had helped her, he was still his father's son. The devil incarnate. This was a man who had his destiny rammed down his throat every day of his life and soon enough the young Luthor would have no choice but to swallow it. It would surely choke him if he didn't. He had no emotional investments in the world--bar his wife, who Chloe guessed only served as yet another trophy on Lex's shelf--and was therefore not bound by obligation or loyalty. He had only but himself to worry about and Chloe knew it would remain so until there was no one left to prove otherwise. It was the way the Luthors worked and Chloe knew that better than anyone.

"Maybe you should save the formalities for when you truly mean them, Mr. Luthor," she said, agitated. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have things to do." She stepped past him, hand posed ready to flag down a cab, but a gentle, insistent hand wrapped itself around her arm and pulled her back from the curb. She turned her head and glared at Lex.

"What part of 'I have things to do' didn't you understand?" she sniped, pulling her arm from his grasp.

"Funnily enough," he said coldly, "I'm having difficulties comprehending your attitude. Have I done something to upset you, Miss Sullivan? That wasn't quite the welcome I was expecting."

She glanced up at him mock surprise, widened her eyes and gasped, "I'm sorry! Was I meant to bow? Kneel, maybe?" She paused and the feigned joy slipped from her features. Voice dripping with sarcasm she added, "Give me a warning in future and I'll be sure to curtsey next time you're in passing."

His jaw tightened and she stared in fascination as his lips drew together into a thin, white line. She ignored the sudden, sharp pang of regret that tightened her chest and instead watched solemnly as he retreated a step, withdrawing from her completely. His hands buried themselves in his pocket and he nodded.

"Fair enough, Miss Sullivan. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

He turned from her then and disappeared into the hustle and bustle of the Metropolitan streets. She watched him leave, head held high but her heart in her stomach.

I'm sorry, she wanted to say, but knew that it would mean nothing. She could not apologise for the boiling hatred that was her life now. She could not apologise for the venom that laced her words every time she spoke, because it was the only thing she had left. Bitterness, hatred, anger, and a little slice of compassion and love reserved only for her father, David and a select number of friends. Everyone else was neutral ground. Whether she hurt them or not she didn't care, because she did not have the capacity to. She refused to let others in for fear she would lose them, too, and she knew that their absence in her heart would only serve to encompass her. It had happened before and she was determined not to let it happen again.

But Lex had been kind to her once. He had supported her in the only way a Luthor could and although he had not been her proverbial rock, he had made things slightly easier. If it wasn't for him she would never have escaped Smallville and she guessed that she would still be working under Lionel's watchful eye.

She closed her eyes at the thought and pushed it aside. There was no time for what ifs. Chloe had to get home so she could ring David and check up on his progress. She hoped that he had gotten somewhere with the Sandersons, because without them they were completely screwed. Unless they could get one of the other families to talk, which was doubtful, the whole project depended on the Sanderson boy and whatever information he had.

Chloe hoped that David was having some luck. They were in desperate need of it. And she hoped that wherever Lex was, he would know that she was sorry, because as cold as she had been, she truly was.