A/N: I really hate happy endings. And while I was pleased with part 1, I felt it needed a little something more to finish the story. Hate the ending if you like, but I usually only respond to constructive criticism. Enjoy, fellow readers.

PART 2

Sometimes she thinks she doesn't want to be here. There's literally just too much inside her head and all she wants is to sleep and lets the numbness take her someplace else, someplace she can be quiet and thoughtless and let the white of her mind seep into her bones and muscles and let it all blend together.

Sometimes she'd rather be dead. These are blunt thoughts but she has them nonetheless. She sits in her apartment with Clark and he can be smiling at her and talking about his day and she'll still think it.

She'll smile back at him, tilts her face toward the soft summer breeze that dances around her face and think, 'What if I were dead now? What if you came in the door and there I was lying on the mattress, calm and still, and dead. A moment so still you wouldn't believe it was happening. But I know you, you'd hear the empty death rattle of a heart no longer beating and that would be it.'

It's a finality, and she hates that she clings to these thoughts with hope.

It claims her in the oddest places, when she sees a little girl handled too roughly by her mother, it claims her then. When Clark smiles at her like she's still worth what she was six months ago, like she's worth more which is hardly what she could be. These are the impossible things. She could never tell Clark that.

He gets upset when he sees that she's still not willing to talk about things. About what keeps her distant and what really happened. These are the things I want to bury with me, she repeats over and over in her mind hoping that Clark's superhuman abilties can pick up what she so desperately wants to shout.

'These things with me, are burden enough for one, and what keeps the days bright and inconsequential is that only I know and that you can somehow keep the strength to stay with me'

She can barely muster the courage to stay strong for herself. She is selfish. She needs Clark.

On good days she showers and makes breakfast, pours coffee for the two of them while he sets the table. He brushes the hair behind her ear and sees her eyes crinkle and kisses the corners of her mouth. She buries her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck and and looks at him like she always has, like she could look at him for the rest of her life. And he wants her to.

On bad days she can barely stand, and chews at the ends of her fingers, anxious. Her whole body shakes and it almost exhausts him to help her get the pills down, where she'll stare at him (without really seeing that he's there) with the glazed over reflection of someone he can barely recognize, a person who can barely cling to the semblance of living. He looks into her fever eyes and sees only despair. He can barely take it, because she asks of him, always asks of him on days like these, wordlessly, to end it for her. 'Give up' she tells him, 'Or you'll be taking care of my shell for the rest of your life'

'I love you' he answers back. And she curls up a little more on the inside and pretends she cannot hear him.

She gets tired of him asking to live for something she no longer understands. At times it feels as if he reads her a poem in a different language and is begging her to tell him that it's beautiful when she can't understand what the poem is even about. 'It's beautiful!' he shouts at her, 'Tell me it's beautiful!'

She's not sure she ever can.

When her bad days are over and her life doesn't seem to want to tilt off its axis as bad as before, she wakes slowly and dazedly, a side effect of the medecine. She swallows thickly and feels as though she is falling through air, she almost begins to panic. But then she feels him, his arm steady and strong around her waist and she is yet again grounded to this man and to her life.

Turning around in his arms she watches him sleep for just a little, knowing soon he'll be awake.

He's deep in sleep, she places her hands softly, tentatively against his cheek, brushing her thumb over his brow. She moves in closer to him, and whispers, "Remeber when we used to chase the sunset? When all we could see was our hands, ghosting over fields of flowers, weeds, and tall grasses? They linger on after us, we can still lift our hands upwards towards the bluest sky I'll ever know and take root. I promise" This is the end of her, she knows it. When her dialogue slows to crazy babble she knows that it's never far off. The end. She sees it glaring at her in thick red letters and feels relief at the fact that it does not look like a beginning to a story.

Chloe glances over his shoulder at the angry clock whose eyes glare '3:52' in red. Silently, she disentangles herself from him and enters the bathroom. The light flickers on and Chloe stares at her pallid reflection, the reflection that bathrooms with no windows always seem to create. Dazed, Chloe lifts her hands and cradles her face in her hands.

She can feel it, this is the end. If not now, then soon. Very soon. 'I'm sorry'. 'I'm so sorry', she wants to scream. 'I wanted to be better for all of you, I really did. If anything, for all of you. But at the end of the day I'm still me, and no matter how much you change around me and anchor me I'm still slipping farther and farther into matter much heavier than gravity, than love'.

Chloe shuts off the lights, pads softly back to bed, closes her eyes and pretends to sleep. Her head whispers lyrics of songs her mother used to sing when she was very little and monsters still lived under the bed instead of in corners and in the fabrics of her clothes.

Tears leak out of her eyes, they cling to her ears and to the soft of her pillow. She can feel them hot and mournful on her neck. Sorry for the world that brought her here and cannot seem to take her back. 'Please take me back' she thinks, 'Let me go back, if anything, now' she ponders with finality 'Now I'd like to return to the earth'.

The tears come in quicker and heavier torrents. Turning desperately to her side she burrows into Clark; she sometimes forgets that he's there, that he's even an option as a solution to her sorrows (she wonders, but knows, that's a bad sign).

"Clark" she whispers, pausing to kiss his neck and tangle her hands in his dark hair. Inhaling sharply she feels him stir and come to life, his hands settle on the hips that have managed to align with his. "Chloe" he moans, "What is it? What's wrong?" He can feel the wetness of her cheeks as they kiss his neck with fervor. He tries to push those feelings aside when she grips him like she can, with force and passion that he thinks only she can make him feel.

"I just" she stutters, but shakes her head, and kisses him deeply instead and inserts one sinful leg inbetween his and tangles and intertwines in all the wrong, but right, ways.

Clark can only kiss her back fervently, slip his tongue in to mingle with hers, and slide a hand down to her but and pull her more forcefully against him.

Rolling them over Clark crushes her against him, feeling that this is what she needs. What he needs; to know she's there, still responsive. And as her thighs spread open to accomodate him she can feel that anchor losing weight, just a little, but just enough. She slides her hand under the cotton of his t shirt and glides her hands along the silkiness of his back and pulls the offending shirt off.

"I need you" she whines, throwing her head back as his hand uncharacteristically reaches past the elastic of both her pajamas and underwear and touches her wetness with rough hands. "Like this" she moans, "Always like this". She doesn't know where his sudden roughness comes from but she finds herself liking it. In a sadistic kind of way she wants him to hurt her.

He seems to understand the almost primal urge that she needs of him right now, and like a school boy eager on his first day of school to get all the answers right, he meets her with experienced enthusiasm.

"Chloe, look at me" Clark implores, watching as her hazy eyes languidly focus on his own. He watches her mouth open and a tortured moan escape her as he suddenly plunges two fingers inside of her. Startled, she clenches around him, provoking her to groan and undulate against him.

She can feel him, hard, against her thigh. Sucking her bottom lip into her mouth she hastily slides her hand down and into his boxers and grips him with urgency moving up and down with practiced slowness. His contact falters, as his eyes slip and close briefly at the assault of pleasure she gives him.

"Clark please" she begs. In one fluid motion his fingers slip out of her and drag her bottoms off of her. In turn she releases him, not without a groan on his part, and slides his boxers down his body while he shrugs them across the room.

Rolling onto his back he pulls her onto him. Looking down at him, Chloe feels immensely more powerful at the unexplored position he has put her in. Flushed and heaving Chloe braces one of her hands against his chest and brings one to her own breast. Clark heaves one huge breath after the other at the goddess straddling him. Surprised at the her dominant behavior and his own aroused reaction to it. Unable to withstand the tedium Clark leans up and captures her in his arms, pulling her up and over him. Her knees at his side she takes him in slowly and sensually. As they stare into each others eyes, her breath hitches and Clark finds himself unable to think, unable to speak, only able to follow every instinct his body is telling him to do.

He pushes himself up and into her and Chloe cries out and clings to him with a renewed urgency. "Yes, please" He hears her beg again, and wishes he could speak in order to say that whatever she wants, it's hers. Cradling her neck with one hand and her but with the other Clark drives into her harder, and faster, running after his instincts and the moans that seem to urge him in the right direction. Together they ride each wave of pleasure, chasing each others nirvana as far into the night as they can. Until finally, spent, Chloe and Clark give in to their exhausted bodies and chase dreams instead.

But in the morning Chloe wakes, entangled in her lovers arms, and stares at the wall with resigned indifference. She has slept the amount necessary to feel energized but can only feel the fatigue that comes with numbness. 'Today' she's sorry to think 'I can't do this beyond today'

She's not even sure she could tell you what color the wall is, it's so completely beyond any capacity she pretends to have. Chloe feels Clark's breath softly touch her neck and she wants to cry but she can't. Behind her, Clark begins to wake and with practiced ease Chloe's eyes begin to shut once more, feigning sleep and all its diminishing abilities.

'If I sleep' she thinks 'I don't have to tell you how I feel' and she feels Clark nuzzle his head one last time in her neck before he begins to pull away

'If I sleep' she muses once more 'I don't have to tell you why I was crying last night' and she hears the shower start in the bathroom as a solitary tear leaks and spreads over her pillow against her wishes

'But most importantly, my love, I don't have to watch you walk away and wonder if it's the last time I'm going to see you. Because it might, it very well may be'.

She wanted to be stronger, all her life she hated those girls who pretended to be damsels (most of the girls that Clark had to save) but for the life of her she couldn't care anymore.

She's not sure if it's beautiful out, a beautiful late spring day. But she can hear the birds singing, she thinks it's the saddest thing she's ever heard.

When Clark gets out of the shower he can immediately tell something is wrong. Grabbing a towel hastily he realizes there is a certain rhythm missing, a certain bumping, a certain beat.

He finds her there, where he left her. He doesn't need to step closer and feel her chest, place two fingers against her neck to know that she's dead, but he does it anyway.

It's a beautiful spring morning, he thinks. But it's filled only with the things they have lost.

END