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ethrosdemon ||| Smallville
American Girl
by ethrosdemon
Email: naturallycalm@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Pairing: none
Improv: #1 scorch, bluff, free, trial
Spoilers: Hothead and Cool
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Smallville and all it's characters, plots
and setting are owned by WB and other major, soul-sucking
corporations.
Author's Notes: This is just a quickie so people won't be afraid to
post silly, fast fics.
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Chloe rolls her neck from to side to side, feels the burn when she
leans to the left. She's never learnt not to cock her head to the
side when she types, sits catty-wampus in the chair, all her weight
on one leg, and this is her reward. The cursor blinks and her eyes
lose focus, lulled by the monitor's glare and the hum of the heating
system overhead. Alone in the Torch office, she can just sit and let
her thoughts free. Her breathing evens out, and she imagines there's
still a faint trace of scorch underlying the scent of toner from the
copy-machine and stale coffee in the air. She's knows it's
imagination, what with the three coats of new paint on the walls.
The fire isn't really what preoccupies her in these quiet moments
after-hours and unhindered by Clark or Pete. It's more the Sean-loop
that draws at her. Easy, teen-aged thoughts about normalcy and what
it's like to have someone to call at times like this, when there's
nothing really to do but homework, and that's to be avoided at all
costs. She cringes when she thinks about how easy it was to lose the
cynical veneer and let Clark and Pete in on how much she wants the
same things they do, that they knew she was all about the kind of
guy she's always dissing and listing out personality flaws for. That
little piece of American pie just waved in her face, and she forgot
to be bitter for long enough to look stupid in the end. She tried to
blow it off, bluff her way back to seeming unaffected and above it
all, but she knows it was pointless. They saw into that dark corner
where she imagines herself not only smart and witty but popular and
attractive too.
She knows it's a trap, that everyone sublimates and internalizes the
media ideal, that no matter how hard you fight it, every girl wants
to be Lana. Wants it and wants to disdain it at the same time. To
just have to ability to BE her, even if it's just to show how
pointless it all is. Chloe knows everybody wants what they don't
have, the eternal trial of being human. Lana wants a chance to make
her own mold, to not have to conform to Cheerleader, Jock's
Girlfriend, Pretty Girl. But it's somehow not enough sometimes to
know that the grass is always greener, to know that if she had
everything she'd ever want it wouldn't be enough. Chloe thinks it
would be nice to have the opportunity to want to be just average.
She refocuses her eyes and sees the unfinished story about the
spoiled dairy products in the cafeteria last week, glances away and
takes in the Wall of Weird. Wonders what it would be like to be one
of those people instead, takes in the tear-stained, stricken face of
a small girl and decides she already knows what it'd be like to be
one of them.
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