Fic: First Against the Wall: IX: Chloe Sullivan

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII

IX
Chloe Sullivan
Sometimes you don't know how far into abnormal your situation has gotten until normal turns up on your doorstep.

And normal's name, this time, was Chloe Sullivan.

I didn't know what to say when I opened the door and saw her standing there, hair tied back and shining in the light from the hall. She grinned at me - "Hey, Lo!" - and my mind shifted gears.

After a moment, she raised her eyebrows. "You gonna let me in?"

I blinked, and shook it off. Then I let myself smile, and said, "Sorry, Chlo." As she stepped in, I closed the door and, in a small-talky tone I hadn't affected in a while, asked, "How was your trip?"

Six months before any of this started, six months before I knew my name could hold power, Chloe had left on a vaguely-directed trip across America.

"It's time I got away from Smallville," she had said to me, by way of explanation, and that was all. I think Jimmy had understood better than I had, but I didn't mention her name around him anyway.

When I turned to look at her, she gave me an instant of the eyes-half-narrowed almost-frown which meant she was studying me, then shrugged her shoulders and said, "Multi-faceted."

It was my turn to study her.

I made some coffee and we sat down in my lounge, my mind still stirring a million colours and ideas about what I should tell her - what I could tell her. After a moment, I let out my breath and smiled at her. "I missed you, Chlo."

She grinned at me sidelong then, "You too, Lois." She paused, and then added, "It really wasn't the same without you and your, uh, 'acerbic wit'."

I raised an eyebrow. "Chloe, I think you have more than enough of that to go around."

It was strange, the way we just settled back into this. Chloe was the cousin who had been my rock when I was kid and the world moved around me with my father's transfers. I couldn't forget that, and I couldn't forget that it was her who had first made me write journalistically, even if it later caused some tension I never understood.

"So how're you?" she said. "I didn't get to keep up with your reporting," she paused there, "although I did hear something on the news earlier about you. You and your relationship with -" she paused, and looked up over my shoulder, "Clark!"

The last syllable was raised, and I knew. I knew, before I looked behind me, that Kal-El was standing in the doorway.

He was watching us, but when Chloe called out the name of the man he had been he showed no sign that it affected him, and when she threw her arms around his neck he just stood there, as if she weren't there at all.

My heart broke a little, knowing I would have to force the same revelation on Chloe, who had known Clark longest, as I had had to make. I looked desperately at Kal-El, whose wide, dark eyes were watching me over Chloe's shoulder, and willed him to react.

And when he didn't, I wondered if he even knew what to do when someone hugs you.

"Clark?" came Chloe's voice, as she stepped back. He looked then at her upturned face, and I could imagine she was frowning. She said again, firmer, "Clark."

"Chloe," I said, standing up. As she looked back at me with confusion, I pressed my lips together, and then said, "It's not Clark."

She stepped back then, and looked from me to Kal-El.

Then she said, in what seemed like a much calmer tone than the one I had used in a similar situation, "OK. Someone tell me what's going on before I start googling identity theft." She paused, and then added, "Again."

And if it hadn't been for this, I might not have realised, and maybe things would have been different: maybe things would have been worse.

When I looked at her face I realised the expression was more disquieted than her tone of voice.

I pulled her quietly into the kitchen, with a request for Kal-El to let me talk to her alone. She leaned against the cabinet and chewed her thumbnail.

"OK," she said, after a moment, "I don't think it's Bizarro, because he wouldn't let on that he wasn't Clark. And if it was Clark dosed on some kind of -" she caught my eye, and then finished evasively, "well he wouldn't be so docile in either case."

I stared at her. "Bizarro?"

She shook her head. "Some super-juiced phantom clone running around, pretending to be Clark a while back."

Super-juiced? I crossed my arms, and looked at her carefully. And then it became so clear, as if the past four years had fallen into place. "You knew," I said, slowly, "didn't you?" When she just raised her eyebrows, I said, "About Clark - that he's an alien."

She stared at me then, and said, "Lois, what is going on?"

And somewhere, somewhere deep inside of me I felt everything I had kept under my skin explode. "Clark's gone," I said, forcefully, "he's gone and he's never coming back. And the person in there," I pointed in the general direction of the lounge, "is who came back instead."

I shook my head. "Kal-El." And burnt out, and let myself fall back against the door.

And for some reason, I felt that Kal-El might be leaning back against the other side. And maybe he was.

I knew he was listening.

"Or maybe it is Bizarro," I added, and then shook my head because I knew it wasn't true. "I don't even know what's going on."

Chloe was uncharacteristically silent, watching me and frowning.

"I'm guessing you know who Jor-El is," I said, and when she nodded, I shrugged. "Kara and I are working under the assumption that Kal-El is the product of something Jor-El did to Clark."

She nodded, and bit her lip. "Does he remember anything?" she said, and I think what she meant was "Does he remember me?" I thought back to their exchange, and the failed hug, and gave her a weak smile.

"He remembers some things," I said, and what I meant was "I don't know."

She blinked then, and I think it was tears she was blinking back. Then she forced a smile and said, "Irony's a bitch."

We went out after that - Kal-El was gone when I opened the door to the kitchen.

The apartment felt oppressive, and tense: I think it always had, but Chloe's presence made me feel it with the sharp contrast against her initial glee to be back. So we went out, and sat in a dive of a fast food restaurant with hamburgers which were more like slabs of fat going cold in front of us.

And I felt normal again, just for a moment.

And I realised I had to say: "Jimmy knows." Chloe looked up at me, her expression blank but her mouth falling open.

"Kara told him," I said, and I knew what that would mean to Chloe.

She nodded slowly, and pressed her lips together. "Wow."

Again, I didn't know what to say. I always know what to say.

Part of me wanted to apologise, as if this were all somehow my fault.

"Lois," Chloe said, after a moment, "there's something I guess I've wanted to tell you."

I looked at her.

She breathed in, and then bit her lip. "OK," she said, "when I was away, I spent a bit of time volunteering at a crisis centre." She became more subdued then, "I spent so much time telling Clark to save the world," she said, "be a hero. But when I -"

She shook her head. I wondered what her friendship with Clark had been like: so much of it seemed to hinge on things I could never have seen.

"I worked with some amazing people." She said. "And I saw the kind of wounds even I can't heal."

I wasn't sure what that meant.

"A couple of times," she said, "people would call and they'd done something drastic already. And sometimes I would find them in the hospital afterwards. I'd go, while they were sleeping so they wouldn't know," she paused, and looked at me. Her bottom lip shook a little bit, "and I'd heal the things I could."

I said nothing, but now I think I knew what she was telling me.

"I'm a meteor freak," she said.

Normal's name was not Chloe Sullivan.

"What would you have done if you got caught?" I said, like I had ever had a plan for that eventuality.

She shrugged. "We've done worse things and not gotten caught." Her lips twitched, and she said, seriously, "I didn't want people to be sick all their lives because they had a hard time and did something they regret."

But I felt like there was something else she wasn't adding, because she looked away then.

"There must be more like you," I said. "More people who use their power to help - people we don't see, people who are invisible because we don't run across them like the ones who -"

I broke off there. My mouth always ran away with my tact.

Chloe gave me a knowing look then. "You can say it," she said with a smile, "the ones who go crazy."

Then she laughed. "It's funny," she said. "All this time I thought my mom was crazy and that it's in my genes - then it turns out she's not, not really, but I'm a meteor freak and they tend to psychosis like no other segment of the population."

I gave her a wry smile, and shrugged. "Well, I'm not much for determinism."

I offered Chloe a bed at my apartment, but she pointed out that "a bed" was effectively floor space: the place was designed for one person, and it currently housed three. She took a room in a hotel instead - temporarily, she said - and I was surprised, but she didn't come straight back to the Daily Planet.

I know she saw Jimmy, but neither one of them told me what passed between them, and it was none of my business anyway.

And I asked Kal-El to act as though he remembered her, or at least cared. And he seemed to try, but after that initial encounter she saw right through him anyway.

And when Chloe and I weren't faking normalcy, I think she was at her laptop, winding her way through Luthorcorp virtual security, one keystroke at a time.

I felt I had a more direct route.

"Lex Luthor will expect you," Kal-El said to me, when he saw me looking at lists of Luthorcorp properties.

"I'll be fine," I said.

"Lois,"

My breath hitched in my throat. When I turned to look at him, he just smiled the shadow of a smile. "I will listen for you."

"You're always listening," I said, and he nodded. Then he did something that shocked me.

He hugged me.

I felt his arms around my shoulders, reminiscent of the times when I had hugged him, and all the times I hugged Clark - but this was the first time, this was the first time either of them had pulled me in. And I wasn't sure what to do, standing there stiff with his warm breath stirring my hair.

I closed my eyes, and ran my hands up his back to grasp his shoulders.

"Be careful," he said, "Lois Lane."