Breakable
Spoilers: Set during "Lineage"
Notes: While this isn't a direct response to 
slodwick's
1000 words challenge (since I found the picture myself while searching the web
for info my mom needed), the concept of it did inspire me to write this. Image
shown below, and yep, the story is 1000 words.
She'd broken the doll the morning her mother left. She still kept it in a box
on a shelf in her closet, carefully buried under a stack of t-shirts she no
longer wore but kept for sentimental value. Chloe liked having it secreted from
prying eyes, hidden the way she guessed some of her classmates concealed packs
of cigarettes or pornographic magazines. It helped her to feel more normal,
despite the fact that her behavior had little in common with the usual teenage
rebellion.
Her hidden vice wasn't better or worse, just different.
It had been a while since she'd taken it out, but after the day she'd had, Chloe
felt entitled. Lifting it cautiously from the box, she kept it prone in her
hands. The bright green eyes, which had lids designed to fall shut in that
position, remained open, staring blindly up at her. The cracked forehead
resembled a demon's grin when she turned the doll around so that its feet
pointed away from her.
She'd discovered that visual when she was thirteen, the day they'd moved into
their new house. It had strangely comforted her, the feeling that in this place
where she knew no one and felt totally out of her element that the doll could
see everything. She'd been tempted to leave it out of the box, let it sit on her
nightstand in knowing sentry. Her father's footsteps on the stairs had prodded
her back to reality. The doll quickly returned to its Reebok coffin, shoved
under a pile of bed clothes just before the door opened and her father asked if
she wanted spaghetti or hamburgers for dinner.
Chloe ran a finger along the jagged fissure in the doll's head. It amazed her
that the edges remained sharp enough to cut flesh if she pressed hard enough.
Time hadn't dulled the fracture at all, though it showed evidence of passage
elsewhere. Ginger curls lay matted against the porcelain flesh. The lace
trimming the gown had yellowed, looking closer to a dingy cream than the ivory
she remembered from that long ago Christmas morning.
She'd asked for a puppy and received a doll, but the disappointment hadn't
diminished her enjoyment of the gift for long. For weeks, she'd cradled the baby
to her constantly, morning and night. She'd gone to sleep with it in her arms on
Christmas night, but had woken to find it on the dresser instead. A flare of
temper had ensured the doll remained in bed with her after that, despite
whispered cautions about the fragility of it. She'd promised to be careful with
it, and that had been the end of the argument.
Chloe remembered the morning that she stopped being careful.
Walking into a kitchen filled with the smell of burned toast and stale coffee,
she'd found her father staring out the window as though he were waiting for a
package to be delivered. She'd padded across the floor to him, slower than her
usual scamper towards the daily hug and smiling inquiry as to what dreams the
sandman had brought her. The tile floor had chilled the soles of her sockless
feet, and Daddy's face had looked too smooth without the morning smile crinkling
the flesh near his eyes.
When he'd finally heard her behind him, he'd crouched down and touched her hair
and called her kitten in a voice that sounded all wrong. He'd pulled her into
his lap and explained how sometimes people change and they can't be happy where
they are until they're happy with themselves and that no matter what, they would
be okay.
"They" now signified two instead of three.
Daddy had said the right words (It's not your fault, honey. Never, ever
think that, okay?), and Chloe had cried the right amount of time (about two
hours on and off before she asked to be excused to go to her room, and Daddy
nodded and said he'd come get her when lunch was ready, because she had to eat
something).
Her bedroom had seemed foreign, like she'd walked into another girl's room by
accident. Everything had been in the same place, though, including the doll.
She'd picked it up and cried into its hair and squeezed it so hard that the neck
creaked in protest. A phantom voice had echoed warnings about fragile things
inside Chloe's skull, but it'd seemed stupid to follow rules that others
blithely ignored.
She remembered the sound of the doll's head cracking on the nightstand. It had
made less noise than she'd expected, and her mother had been right -- it was
very easily broken. A crooked maw had opened in the forehead, revealing the
knotted roots of ginger curls and shattering the magic of the closing eyelids.
Her fault that the perfect surface had become marred by that ghastly secondary
smile and no one could claim otherwise.
Being at fault meant that she still mattered.
Chloe had hidden the doll before her father had knocked on the door. She still
found herself thinking about why she'd concealed it from him, and whether he'd
ever noticed its absence. She figured that if he had, it had been after she was
old enough that the disappearance of a childhood toy could be easily dismissed
as a symptom of growing up. Dad had always said that burying worries just feeds
them so they grow bigger.
Moving to Smallville had changed a lot of things, not the least of which was
Chloe's sense of being alone in her feelings of abandonment. Finding out Clark
had been adopted led her to identify with him more than she would have
otherwise. He never said much about it, but she put that down to teenage boy
stoicism. Despite his protests, Chloe knew that Clark had to want the
knowledge. Or so she'd believed until she saw his eyes flash with hurt betrayal
in the Torch office earlier that day.
Chloe stared at the doll, wondering if seeing it would help Clark understand.
-- End --