Part One: Bleak

---- Prologue: Loss

April 9th, 2019

"Hey there, you!"

Chloe reached over and pulled Jacob into her arms, grinning as the five month old gurgled and babbled a bit at her. She got him settled against her shoulder and started bouncing him a little, smiling as he rested his head on her shoulder. "I think you just get cuter and cuter every time I look at you."

"If my son is so cute, why is he still without a second cousin?"

Chloe stopped bouncing Jacob and looked over at Lois, eyebrow cocked as she spoke. "First, when you get married, you bug me about getting married. I'm now engaged, so you can't bug me about it anymore. Now you have a baby and I'm getting grief about not having one. When did you become that woman?"

Lois frowned at her, taking a drink of her coffee. "When did I become what woman?"

"The annoying woman that feels her best female friend, or in this case relative, isn't as happy as she is because she doesn't have the same things."

"Hey, I don't..."

"Towards the end of your engagement and right after you were married, every time I told you I had a date you said to make sure he was marriage material! You didn't do that before then!"

"I was just looking out for you, Chlo. You're getting kinda old to just be fooling around with a guy."

Had she not been holding her nephew, or more exactly first cousin once removed, Chloe would have thrown up her arms in disgust. "I'm thirty one! Jesus, you make me sound fifteen years older."

"Your best childbearing years are quickly passing you by, cuz. If you don't act soon, your uterus is going to be a withered husk, unable to host and nurture anything you want to nurture in it."

"Dear lord," Chloe mumbled. She looked away from Lois and switched Jacob over to her other shoulder, where she started drawing little circles on his back with her finger. "Fine. I'll have a baby, but instead of giving birth, I'm going to steal your son, move away and claim him as my own. It'll be very soap opera, but I'll make it work."

"If you had said that when he was refusing to sleep through the night in a very vocal manner, I may have given him to you. Now, not so much. You're good with him, though, and I know you'd be even better with your own."

Chloe was beginning to feel like she could scream in frustration. Lois never stopped with this anymore!

"I will have a baby someday, Lois. Mark and I both want children, but any and all of them will be conceived AFTER the wedding that is three months from now."

"Fine, fine. Ya know, just a random observation here, but have you ever noticed how people that have kids say 'make a baby' and people without kids often say 'conceive a child' or some derivation? Maybe actually having a baby takes the shine off the apple or something. Maybe I'm making a poor observation, who knows. Anyway, on topic, I just want to see you happy."

Chloe smiled at her cousin. "Lois, I'm getting married to an amazing man in July and I'm working at my dream job. I'm freaking giddy about my life."

"Could you at least be visibly giddy? I can never tell, at least not here at work."

"This coming from the woman that has gnawed her way through countless pencils while writing her articles over the years."

"Sullivan! My office, pronto!"

Chloe looked over at Perry, who was already retreating back into his office, before looking back to Lois. "Everybody wants a piece of me today." She slowly and gently transferred the now sleeping infant to his mother and looked over at Clark. "You've been oddly silent. Anything to add before I go?"

"Like my wife, I just want to see you happy. If you're happy now, so am I."

"Isn't a husband supposed to side with his wife, Smallville?"

"I do agree with you because I want her to have what we have. The difference is that I trust Chloe to achieve what she wants and be as happy as we are and have what we have, if that is how she chooses to be happy. We aren't all happy the same way, and seven years ago you'd have laughed in my face had I told you we'd be married and living in the suburbs with a five month old son."

Chloe smiled and patted Lois on the shoulder as she walked. "Have a good argument, you two." Weaving her way through the bullpen traffic, Chloe got to Perry's office and knocked on the door before walking inside. "What's up, Perry?"

"Sit." Chloe slid into a chair, the smile wiped off her face as she noted just how much tension there was in his face. It hadn't been so bad since Lois had come back to work after Jacob had been born. Crossing her legs, she put her hands in her lap and waited patiently for him to speak.

"Lex Luthor is claiming that your exposé on his science division is a fabrication and is threatening to sue the Planet unless we print a retraction and fire you."

Chloe sat forward, eyes wide. "What? I showed you all my information and the legal department said everything looked fine. Let's have them do their job and handle this nonsense."

"The board folded, Chloe."

"What? What do you mean they folded?"

"They're not going to try fighting Luthor on this. The retraction is being printed on the front page of tomorrow's morning edition and... and they're firing you, effective immediately."

Chloe stared at Perry, mouth agape. She felt like somebody twice her size had punched her in the stomach and had taken to squeezing her lungs, just to make a point. After a moment she felt like she could breathe again and spoke. "They fired me?"

"I'm sorry, hun. I've been fighting with every member about this since they told me this morning. They know the readers love your articles, but they don't care and they won't budge."

Chloe stood up, swallowing the bile that was rising in her throat. "It's, uh..." She cleared her throat, giving speech another try. "It's not your fault, Perry. You did what you could, and I appreciate that you fought for me so hard. I, uh..."

Without saying anything else, Chloe walked out of his office, feeling like she was in a God awful nightmare. The world around her didn't feel real. Everything seemed to be kind of hazy, and while she heard people speaking, she couldn't seem to understand anything being said. It was like the world had taken to speaking gibberish as a universal language in the minutes she'd been in Perry's office.

"What happened, Chloe?"

Looking up, Chloe found herself looking at Lois and Clark, who was rocking the baby carrier that held Jacob. She hadn't even realized that she'd been walking anywhere. "Fired," she mumbled.

"What? You're mumbling."

"I got fired." Hands closed in tight fists, Chloe told herself that she wouldn't cry. "Lex claims my exposé is false, threatened legal action and the board decided it would be a whole lot less painful to fire me and print a retraction than fighting." Chloe looked up to find two shocked faces staring at her.

"You're... fired?"

"Seems that way."

Chloe blinked back tears and started towards her desk. A hand took her gently by the arm and she was pulled into an involuntary hug by her cousin. Letting a few tears out would have been extremely satisfying right about then, but if she started she wasn't going to stop. That wasn't something she wanted to be doing in public. She extracted herself from the hug.

"Look, I'm going to go. I... I don't really need to be here anymore."

With a trembling sigh, Chloe grabbed her purse off of her desk, shot a weak smile at Lois and Clark and walked off to the elevator, getting in before the doors could close. The ride down was deafening after the din of the bullpen, and she almost jumped when the bell dinged, indicating the lobby just outside the opening doors.

Bustling out with the few other people in the elevator, she walked through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk. For once, she got a cab after only about thirty seconds of waving them down, and made small talk with the cab driver during the fifteen minute ride, though she was barely aware of what she was saying, only that she was somehow holding herself together.

After paying him and heading into her building, Chloe rode up to her floor and made her way into her apartment. Dropping her bag on the couch as she sat down, she couldn't fight the tears anymore and collapsed into a sobbing heap.

Four Days Later

"This is just what I needed, guys. Sitting in the apartment, staring at the walls and wondering why the universe sucks so much is seriously depressing."

Chloe smiled as she picked Jacob up out of his carrier and pulled him in close to her body, enjoying having the squirmy little boy close. It was a beautiful day outside and being with family made her feel a little better. She'd only been able to talk to Mark a couple times since she'd been fired, as he'd been in Germany on business. Fortunately, he was getting home that night.

Chloe snapped out of her thoughts as she suddenly felt something odd on her chest. Looking down, she found that Jacob was sucking on the side of her boob through her shirt.

"Uh, guys?"

"Yeah, Chlo?"

"I think your son is hungry."

Chloe pulled Jacob away, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead and handing him off to Clark, taking a spit up rag from Lois to dry off her shirt. She shook her head a little as she rubbed the spot into some semblance of dry, though it was still darker than the rest of her shirt. Looking up, she found Lois sitting down next to her.

"Is that what I have to look forward to when I have a baby of my own?"

"Something like that," Lois said. "I would think that it's a much more rewarding when the child is yours and not your cousins. Aside from the fact that I've only ever had my own child sucking on me, it was fairly rewarding. Nice bonding experience."

"One can only hope," Chloe said through a grin as she tossed the rag back to Lois. "I love that little boy of yours, and would do anything for him, but I don't think he's going to get a whole lot out of sucking on me."

"You act like this is the first time it's happened, cuz. I recall you being a popular toy for him to suck on just a few months ago."

"Yeah, well, it hadn't happened in a while and I got used to him not sneak attacking me. Honestly, I don't have a whole lot of experience with babies, but yours is the only one that has ever tried to eat me."

"If you don't have a baby of your own in two years I'll have another just to see that you do get eaten by an infant."

Chloe fought back a laugh at the mental image of a newborn trying to eat a full sized person. She wouldn't put it past a child of Lois and Clark to do some crazy things, but that would really take that cake. "What an odd reason for Jacob to have a little brother or sister."

"Hey, we'd love our child enough to feed you to him or her... this all sounds more cannibalistic than I intended."

Chloe rolled her eyes and stretched her legs out, working a kink out of her thigh with hand. "It did, but I know what you meant. And really, again with the badgering? I thought that I would at least get a small respite, what with all that happened on Tuesday."

"What do you call the last four days?" Chloe leveled a flat look on her cousin, who just grinned at her. "Kidding, Chlo. Consider yourself free of my badgering until your wedding, After that, though, since aunt Moira can't play the part of the mother desperately wanting grandchildren, I've decided to step in for her. You'll never hear the end of it."

"Great. By then I'll be able to look back and say it's just like old times." Chloe sighed dramatically and let herself fall backwards so she was lying on her back, staring up at the sky. "I didn't do that to you, ya know."

"And that's why it was three years until my son was born. If I were to let you wait three years from your wedding just to get pregnant, you'd be thirty five when your first baby was born. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I want you working on child number two by then. And hey, maybe we could be pregnant together or something."

"Well, I'm glad that you have my life all planned out for me, but I really wish you'd have told me that being fired from the Planet on bogus charges by Lex was in the mix."

Chloe watched the clouds float by lazily. They looked as peaceful as she had felt, up until Lois had started in on her 'plans for Chloe's life' spiel. She loved her cousin like she was her sister, but at some point she was going to have to let things go. Hopefully. Did that pitbull on a pant leg thing apply to things like this?

"That wasn't technically part of the plan, Chlo. In my version, you were still working there while gestating kid number two, not to mention the first. Plus, your firstborn was going to be a girl named Jane. She can still be named that, of course."

"Oh, good lord," Chloe said as she sat up and looked at Lois. "You've named my first kid for me? Had I the ability, I would just hand you my life so you can live it for me. I'll pick it up when I'm eighty or so."

"That seems melodramatic."

"To avoid such things, how about we leave living Chloe's life to Chloe, eh? It's not perfect, but it's what I have and I find myself strangely attached to it. You're just going to have to live with me living my own life my own way."

"Alright, alright." Lois held up her hands in a surrendering manner. Chloe didn't believe one bit of the gesture. "Consider my badgering done as of this moment. But once you're married..."

"Thanks, mom," Chloe said as she scratched her ear. "Why Jane?"

"I don't know. I seem to really like J names, if Jacob is any indication."

Chloe shrugged. "I'm not really sure that Jane Roe works. Maybe with the right middle name... gah! Why am I even thinking about this?"

"Because I, Lois Lane Kent, am a very good influence on you."

Chloe heard a chuckle and looked over at Clark, who was still holding Jacob while he ate from a bottle. "You're certainly an influence, Lo, but I think any and all good influence ends with Jacob. Your influence on Chloe ends up with her in nearly as much trouble as you usually get into."

"That is so not true... and if it is, really isn't the point."

Chloe leaned against a baggage carousel, checking her watch again. All these years and planes were still late to their destinations on a regular basis.

She scanned the area, spotting numerous other people standing around and waiting. It was like this was every time she came to pick up Mark. Usually his flights came and went during business hours and he took a cab, but on the odd occasion he was traveling at night or on the weekend and she hadn't been pulled into anything by Lois, she liked greeting him at the airport. Meeting him at the airport meant they got to the welcome home sex a whole lot sooner, and he was usually extra affectionate when they hadn't seen each other.

Chloe stood up straight and stretched her shoulders out, yawning as she did so. The day seemed to have taken forever just to get to this point. If she hadn't done the picnic with Lois, Clark and Jacob, she may have passed out from boredom.

Looking up again, Chloe smiled as she spotted Mark walking towards her. Deciding to meet him halfway, she moved from her spot and walked towards him, wrapping him in a hug when they met and getting the same back. They pulled apart and he leaned down, kissing her softly.

"Hey there."

"Hey there to you too," she said. "How was Germany?"

"I prefer it during Oktoberfest. How are you doing?"

"After two days of crying my eyes out and one of intermittent sobbing, I've been more or less tear free today and am starting to feel better now that you're here with me."

"I'm sorry that I couldn't be here when you needed me."

"You can't help that you were out of town, Mark. You're here now, and I'm happy with that."

After getting his bag, they walked out to the car hand in hand. The ride home took on a comfortable silence. Chloe found a parking spot in front of their building and took it, and they started discussing his trip as they walked in. She noticed he was frowning as they rode up in the elevator, despite the fact that everything he said was good for him and the company he worked for.

"Is everything alright, Mark?"

"What?"

"You're frowning, and not in your usual manner, but in the way you do when you have something you feel you have to do but think it's going to be the most unpleasant thing ever."

His frown melted into a smile. "You really know me, don't you?"

"I hope so, because I love you. Chloe said the last part over her shoulder as they walked out of the elevator and to their door. "So, what's so distasteful that it has you all frowny?"

After he mumbled a response about it being nothing, Chloe unlocked the door and led him inside, hanging her jacket up in the closet as she heard Mark lean his bag up against the wall and close the door.

"So, per usual these days, Lois has been all over me about us starting a family. How about we practice for a while just so I can tell her I remember how it's done, eh?" Chloe waggled her eyebrows at him, grinning lasciviously.

He smiled at her for a second before it melted and he looked away, sighing visibly. Her grin died as it struck her something might be really wrong. "I need to tell you something, Chlo."

"What's going on?"

Chloe sat down on the couch as she watched Mark rub a hand over each cheek and back onto his neck. He stood like that for a second, looking at her. "I'm... leaving."

"Leaving? Leaving where?"

"Not where... you."

Air. Where had all the air in the room gone? It had been there a second ago, because she'd been breathing it. Now it felt like she couldn't breathe. She liked breathing, for Christ's sake! When it finally felt like her lungs were working again, she was able to whisper a word. "Why?"

"I don't..." She heard him swallow and looked up. "I don't love you."

Oh God. Tears stung at her eyes and she blinked them away, not breaking eye contact with him as he started speaking again.

"I wanted to. God, you have no idea how hard I tried to love you, Chloe. I thought that if I said it enough, I would believe it, ya know? I thought that if I asked you to marry me that would do it, because you were so good to and for me. But I never did. I just... couldn't. Then I met Laura and I knew, just knew that I loved her. I didn't believe in love at first sight until I met her."

Again. She was losing a man she loved to another woman again. For a moment she felt her sadness evaporate under the heat of her anger. She stood up and walked over to him.

"Why the hell aren't I good enough? What's so damn lovable about this Laura that I don't have?"

"I don't know. I've thought about it every day for the past eight months and..."

"Eight months? You've been leading me on for eight months? No, not eight months, because you didn't fall out of love with me. You've wasted two and a half damn years of my life!"

He winced as he spoke. "I'm sorry, Chloe."

"Sorry? Well, that solves everything! Get out!"

"Chloe, I..."

"Get the fuck out, Mark, or I will kick your ass and throw you out. If that starts, not even Superman will be able to pull me off you before I'm done." Chloe had achieved a lot more calm than she thought she'd be able to with that statement, and that seemed to affect Mark more than the yelling had. He silently backed away, grabbed his bag and left.

She stood in her living room, seething and looking at the door, willing it to open again so she could beat the hell out of him. That would be the most satisfying thing in the world at the moment. After a few minutes, the anger started to fade and pain started coursing through her. Every time she got close to a man, she wasn't enough.

Her knees wobbled as she walked over to the couch and she was sitting down, she was wracked with sobs.

"Chloe? Chloe, are you in there?"

Raising her head up off the couch, Chloe blinked a few times before sitting up. She ran a hand through her clumpy hair before standing up and walking over to the door. She unlocked it and turned around, walking back to the couch. She heard the door open and close as she sat down, but didn't bother to look over and see who was coming in.

"What the hell's going on, Chlo? We were supposed to meet for breakfast four hours ago!"

Chloe didn't respond, finding staring at her sky blue wall to be a much more rewarding experience. She felt the couch shift a little as the intruder got a little more intrusive.

"Yo, little blonde cousin, what's going on? You've blown me off basically never. If this is about me playing the annoying family member urging you to procreate, I'm sticking to my promise of not doing anything until after the wedding."

Feeling her lip tremble, Chloe shut her eyes and willed herself to be strong. She'd faced meteor powered crazies without crying, so heartbreak of the personal variety should be a piece of cake, dammit! It's not like she was losing her dream job or anything, just her dream of a happy future. No big loss there.

"Hey, where's Mark? He out getting food to help you recover from all the welcome home sex I assume you two had last night? I'm not excusing you blowing me off, but if you did it because you had to recover from a full night of passion, well, you know I've been there."

When Lois grinned over at her, she sighed and looked away. "He left."

"Where'd he go?"

"Don't know. He left for good. He left me."

She looked back over at Lois and watched her eyebrows climb up her forehead as she processed what she'd heard. "He... what... he LEFT you?"

"That, or he decided practical jokes are funny when they're incredibly mean."

"But why?"

"The usual. He didn't love me during the entirety of our relationship because, ya know, I'm unlovable." Chloe swiped away a tear that was making its way down her cheek. "Oh, and here's the best part: he fell in love with a woman named Laura about eight months ago while he was trying to force himself to love me. Love at first sight, apparently. Probably with her right now."

Chloe was surprised at how lacking in bitterness that had sounded when it felt like it should be dripping with bitter, forming a little pool of bitterness beneath it. She felt an arm wrap around her head and had it pulled onto Lois's shoulder. It seemed uncalled for, really. She was doing just fine, not crying and...

That was when she realized she was crying again. She hugged herself to Lois and started sobbing into her shoulder, barely realizing what she was doing. She felt like a little kid going to her mommy for comfort after she'd scraped her knee playing. Jesus, she was a mess. Her whole damn life was a mess.

"Everything is going to be alright, Chloe. I promise, everything's going to be alright."

Chloe lifted her head up off her cousin's shoulder and laughed sadly. "My dream was shattered five days ago and the rest of the future I was planning got pulverized last night, Lois. I have nothing left."

"You've got family, Chloe. You have me, you have Clark and you have Jacob. You have your dad! Go spend some time with him and don't think about Metropolis for awhile. We'll visit you and make sure current events don't pass you by too much. I think you could use the peace and quiet of the country right about now instead of the bustle of the city.

"Then there's my dad, Lucy and Jimmy, even Pete and Lana. I don't even understand how those last two couples work, but I know they'll be there for you if you need them. We're all here for you, whatever you need, whenever you need it."

"Thanks. Family's good to have, now more than ever. I love you, Lo."

"And I love you, Chloe."

One Week Later

Chloe forced her eyes to look beyond what they wanted to focus on, instead settling them on the blue, cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day; warm, with a decent breeze, it almost felt more like June than April.

Her eyes scanned over to some trees, green leaves starting to fill out the branches of some late bloomers, with the evergreens still standing tall next to them, looking like the seasons didn't exist. The branches swayed with the breeze, and she felt her hair shift on her neck as it passed her.

Chloe inhaled through her nose, letting the scent of the day overtake her as her eyes slid shut. The day smelled fresh, new and promising. She figured every day smelled new, since it only happened once, she didn't think she'd ever smell anything promising again.

"I don't know what one is supposed to say here. Bon voyage? Happy trails? I know how much you liked Westerns so it seems like it might be appropriate, but it isn't enough. I guess what it comes down to is the fact that I've never been as good at speaking as I am at writing. When I sat down to write something, though, I found myself without words.

"For me, an experience like that is like walking off a cliff where there's always been land. You don't look, you just walk, and then you're falling. Word's being put on paper were one of the few things in my life that I could always count on, along with you. But with their failure, I've found myself standing here and adlibbing a speech I've always hoped I would never really have to make. I didn't want to go first, but I just didn't want to have to do it. Who does? I still can't believe you managed to pass while I was there."

Chloe sighed and rolled her eyes at herself. She rubbed her left shoulder as she started speaking again.

"Death is such an odd thing. It's pretty much the most final thing in the world, and a concrete reality. But death also gives way to such abstract concepts as the afterlife, reincarnation and the eternal nothing. It's one of the places science can't touch, putting it distinctly in the realm of faith. I've never been good with faith; there's no proof, and as a journalist, I make a living of finding proof. It makes trying to believe in something intangible difficult, for me at least."

Running a hand through her hair, she found herself annoyed that she had wandered so far from the topic at hand. What the hell did her view on faith have to do with any of this? She sighed before returning to what she was saying.

"I'm sorry I don't have any tears left for you, dad. I'm sorry I can't mourn you like a daughter that loved her father should, however that may be. I just don't have anything left in me. My tear ducts are dry and sorrow has become my second skin. I don't notice it anymore.

"I love you. The way things are going, I may see you sooner rather than later. The way things are going, that may be a blessing. Morbid, but true." Chloe bent down and placed a rose on her father's casket, then straightened back up. "I love you, dad, and I miss you. I hope you've found the peace that seems to elude us here on Earth."

Chloe turned from the casket and grave, walking away with her jaw clenched tightly. Her eyes flicked to Lois and Clark, who were standing off to the side a bit. Stopping, she turned her head and looked over at them. Lois had her head leaned against Clark's shoulder for a second before she stood up straight. Even twenty feet away, she could see the shine of a tear in Lois's eye, and it just made her own emptiness more wearing.

She turned around and walked away from Lois and Clark, staring straight ahead at all the nothing she had left.