Committed

Clark/Chloe futurefic, angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

It was called Isis. Long years ago, she'd run the place.

Now she lived there.

She'd been committed to Isis years ago, her brain fried by an alien artificial intelligence. The Brainiac virus had first taken her over when she was twenty-one, but with help, they'd defeated it and expelled it from her mind.

At least they'd believed they'd defeated it.

But when she was twenty-five, it had risen a second time from the depths of her mind and taken her over again, and this time the battle had left her a shell of her former self. Clark had done everything he could to eradicate the infection, and in the end, he'd won, but at a terrible cost. Everything that had made her Chloe Sullivan had been erased along with the virus. He'd tried desperately to save her, but failed.

They'd only been married for six months, and he'd lost her.

She wasn't dead, of course, just... vacant. Most of the time, she lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling. But sometimes she grew frightened, lashing out violently, attacking people without provocation.

He hadn't wanted to commit her to the care of a sanitarium, not even the one she had created, with Ollie Queen's help, for the meteor afflicted.

But even he couldn't watch her every second of the day. He had other jobs, other people to take care of, other people to save. And when he'd left her alone on the farm for a few moments, and she'd plucked a knife off the counter and attacked some hapless Jehovah's Witness who came to the door-- well, he'd realized then he didn't have much choice.

Even so, he came to see her every day. Ten years had passed, and he'd never tried to move on, never tried to file for divorce, never dated anyone else.

Hell, he'd never even flirted with anyone else.

He'd married her, vowed to love and cherish and protect her forever. And that was a commitment that he would never, ever break.

So every day he went to visit her, even though she almost always stared at the ceiling, oblivious to his presence. He held her hand, with no way of knowing if she was aware that he was touching her or not. Every single day.

He intended to keep on doing this every day, until the day she died. It might be sixty more years. He didn't care. He'd promised for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and he'd meant every word of it.

He was committed.

-The End-