Title: Duality (1/14)
Author: Cassandra Mulder
Rating: PG-13
Classification: Chlark; Chlois (Chloe-as-Lois); AU; futurefic
Spoilers: Everything's fair game up through the season three finale, "Crusade". I've messed everything around from there.
Disclaimer: Al and Miles own everything but intelligence, Tollin/Robbins, DC Comics, and the WB also put up with those clowns. I'm just playing, and no fringement is intended.
Word count: 18,890
Written: April 2004 - August 31, 2005
Distribution: My site, Bound, AMO, anyone else, please ask.
Summary: Secrets long buried and secret identities come to the surface as two lives merge again in unexpected ways.
A/N: This thing is an epic, for me. I don't do long as an unwritten rule, but this is looong. However, I'm happy to have finally given birth to this brain child, and I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I did writing it. Because even when it was a struggle, it was an adventure.
Thank you: HUGE thanks and much love go out to Jen, my wonderful, thorough, patient beta. She kept this story coherent (or at least as coherent as anything I write), grammatically correct, and punctuation sound. With something this big you definitely need someone to catch all the things you don't, and I never could've pieced it together correctly without her.

Clark Kent walked the halls of the Daily Planet trying to quell his nerves. It's just first day jitters, he reminded himself. I've been through worse. He had had enough intern experience in college that he shouldn't be nervous at all. That thought didn't help ease his anxiety. He was working for Perry White now, and he was afraid his new boss was going to see him as the crazy farm boy he had thought him to be during their first encounter in Smallville.

A whole lot had changed in the years since, and that farm boy was no exception.

He adjusted the glasses he didn't really need, and finally found his cubicle among the many that framed the ever-buzzing newsroom. How anyone got any work done with all the noise, he would never know. It was definitely nothing like working at a small town paper, and neither compared to the solitude of the farm where he had grown up.

Not that he had been to the farm much lately. Since Jonathan Kent succumbed to heart failure at an all too early age, Clark's heart hadn't been in visiting his childhood home. The only reason he endured the visits were for his mother. She was devastated by the loss of her husband, but had insisted on keeping the farm going. With a couple of hired hands, plus her small pie business, she was doing fine.

Martha told Clark repeatedly that Jonathan's death was not his fault, but he still couldn't help feeling responsible. Too many of his thoughts started with, "If it wasn't for me..."

Clark brought himself back to the present when he heard a cough, and blinked at the woman standing before him, looking expectant. He realized his mouth was hanging open, and tried to apologize, only to find his voice wasn't working.

I She looked just like her...

The petite brunette waved her hand in front of his face.

"Hello? Earth to..." She leaned sideways slightly to read the nameplate on his desk. "Clark Kent."

She didn't talk like her. Her voice was just slightly deeper and huskier.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Clark stammered. "You are?" he asked, a puzzled look crossing his features.

"Lois Lane," she said simply, holding out her hand for him to shake.

As he did, a realization dawned on him. "You're..." he stopped, not sure whether to broach the subject or not.

"I'm?"

Clark cleared his throat. "You're, uh, related to Chloe Sullivan, aren't you?"

A troubled look danced across her face. "Yeah. Yeah, I was her cousin. Am. Whatever." She seemed flustered now. "Come to think of it, you must be I the /I Clark Kent from Smallville that she used to go on about all the time."

He blushed a bit, and readjusted his glasses. "I'm the only one as far as I know."

"That's good, because from the stories she used to tell, she couldn't have kept up with two of you."

Clark was at a loss for words, so he cleared his throat again. "You look a lot like her," he blurted out.

To his surprise, she only shrugged. "Some cousins do."

He nodded. "Right." Pause. "Well, Miss Lane, I better get to work. I'd hate to screw up my first day."

"You can call me Lois," she said, then turned and walked away.

This is not good, she thought to herself. He can't be here.

She watched him from across the bullpen. He seemed to be doing research. He was... still beautiful. She sighed. This wasn't going to work. He would discover her secret sooner or later, and that might put her in danger again. Not to mention what it would do to him.

She got up and made her way to the ladies' room. Leaning against the sink, she looked into the mirror, wondering how he wouldn't eventually just know.

Sure, her short, blonde hair had been replaced with longer, darker tresses, and her blue-gray eyes were now brown thanks to colored contacts. She'd changed everything about herself, from her hair and eyes to the way she walked, talked, and dressed. It hadn't been an easy process. If there was one thing Chloe Sullivan had prided herself on, it was being herself. Now she had to be somebody else.

She rarely thought of herself as Chloe anymore, she had become so immersed in her role. That had been the hardest part of her transformation. It had taken her a long time to automatically respond to a different name, but it had gotten easier over time. Slowly she had begun to dwell less on the life she could no longer have, and think more about the one she had to create for herself.

She sighed and ran a hand through her bangs. Clark being here only complicated things more than they already were. She would have to play her role more thoroughly than ever. One tiny slip and he would know.

He couldn't know.

Clark had lost his best friend seven years ago, or so he thought. She couldn't admit to him that she had made him, and everyone else that had loved her, suffer just to save herself.

Her own father didn't know she was alive and well. She had hurt the two people she loved more than anything in the world, and she had to live with that guilt every single day. She didn't know what it would do to Clark to know that his best friend wasn't really dead, she had just run away.

She turned away from the mirror and took a deep breath. She could only hope now wasn't the time to start paying for the things she had done.

Clark was waiting at her desk when she returned, and she groaned inwardly.

"Can I help you, Kent?" she asked pointedly.

He only raised his eyebrows at first, until he found his voice. "Uh..."

God, he's still a dork, she thought.

"Well? I haven't got all day," she said, shooing him from his perch on the edge of her desk so she could reach her chair.

The girl he thought was Lois, for now, brushed by him and sat down, crossing her legs and folding her hands on top of her short skirt. She looked up at him expectantly, wondering what was taking him so long.

"I - I just had a couple of questions," he stammered.

She had only ever heard him struggle this much around Lana Lang, years ago. Please don't let me become his next brunette obsession, she silently begged anyone who might be listening. There was only so much she could take.

"Okay..."

"Well," he started, pushing at his glasses, "you're one of the big time writers around here... so I was wondering when we get our assignments."

"There's a staff meeting this afternoon at two. Mr. White usually takes care of that then, unless we're already working on something. And I would assume you're not yet."

Clark shook his head.

There was a brief moment of silence, so to cover her frustration, she asked, "You said you had a couple of questions?"

"Oh. Yeah. The second one was, will you go to lunch with me?"

Her face fell. Oh, great, she thought.

TBC