As Chloe finished her story, she watched Rose carefully. She watched the confusion and disbelief cross her face. Admitting that she had an ability had never been an easy thing: seeing a near stranger's reaction to it, even more difficult.
"So you're telling me, you brought me across the space time continuum – because you wished for it?" Rose asked slowly after a moment.
Chloe cringed a little but nodded. "Yeah. Sounds like a bad Sliders episode, doesn't it?"
The other woman's face broke out into a wide, happy grin. "Are you kidding me? I love that show!" she declared.
A little incredulous and surprised by the change in Rose's demeanor, Chloe only managed a weak smile.
"Come on! You've got this cool, kick-ass power!" Rose's eyes sparkled with what looked like gratitude and relief. "Besides, you took me out of my crappy world and into this one. Because of you, I met Dean, and I have the job at the Inquisitor and am applying to the Daily Planet for one of their reporter openings. Where's the bad in this?"
Chloe stood up and wrapped her arms around her waist. Rose's sudden acceptance of her theory as fact had her thrown for a loop. Especially since she wasn't certain it was the true account of what happened. The reporter in her demanded that she keep gathering facts, rather than just cling blindly to the theory.
"Rose, what I'm wondering, is why you didn't once notice anything… different? I mean, if you hopped from your world to mine, shouldn't you have realized it instantly? Things would be changed. The world, your work, the headlines? Anything?"
After what she had admitted, and what Rose had told her, Chloe's mind began to work. Had her longing somehow managed to bring the other woman into this universe the moment she had felt it? Did a crack in time help her along the way, or was it something more? Even more troubling – and Chloe had no desire to contemplate it – was whether she had wished Sam's attraction to her or not.
"Not really," Rose replied after a moment, "though it was weird that the Daily Planet was suddenly the newspaper to work for, where the crème de la crème worked. When I applied for the columnist position at the Inquisitor, I had done my research and that was the place where serious journalists worked. Anyone who was anyone wanted to be with the Inquisitor."
"The Inquisitor was – seriously? That rag was the top newspaper dog where you came from?" She nearly laughed at the absurdity of the question.
Rose laughed. "Crazy, isn't it? And then I found out after the interview – wait a minute."
"What?" Chloe turned to see Rose's face pale considerably. Her eyes widened as she watched her stand up and head for the kitchen table, where her laptop lay. Trust Rose to bring her computer with her wherever she went, Chloe thought. Especially since that was something she did herself.
"Why didn't I notice that earlier?"
"Again… I say 'what'?"
Rummaging through her bag, Rose grabbed her laptop and booted it up, still speaking out loud. "Explains why I had to get a new ID, new social security number, bank account, not to mention the alias I'd been using –"
"Rose!"
Rose didn't look up at Chloe. "Hang on, I'm thinking!"
"Aloud."
"And?" she asked and finally looked up from her computer screen. Intense blue eyes regarded Chloe impatiently.
"And if you're not insane and headed for Belle Reeve, you wanna enlighten me?" Chloe asked and sat down at the table next to her.
Her eyes darted back to the screen as she pulled up a file. "I'd just brushed it off as a surge of confidence because I'd been so nervous going into the interview," she explained as she worked.
"Are you telling me that –?"
"That burst of longing you felt, Chloe. When did it happen?"
"Uh, I told you," she snarked.
"No, I need specifics," Rose insisted. "Date? Time? Anything?"
Chloe wracked her brain for a moment and tried to pinpoint the date. For something so monumental, she would have thought she'd remember more clearly… even if it had been a couple years before. "Hang on," she said suddenly. "I think I documented it."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Rose asked out loud and rolled her eyes playfully.
"I've been tracking metahuman behavior and movements for the last several years, including mine once I realized what was going on." She moved quickly into her room and returned to the kitchen with her own laptop in hand. Sitting across from Rose, she pulled up the file on herself.
"Using a database, right?"
"Used to be on paper. It's been digital for years. I call it my Wall of Weird."
Rose laughed knowingly. "I know. I have one, too." She pushed her laptop across the table and turned it around in the opposite direction.
It was Chloe's turn to laugh with surprised delight. "So I guess it's true what they say about twins and parallel universes." She glanced down at the file Rose had pulled up.
Rose gave her a look. "If you're going to say something about super-powered hot chicks…" She paused when Chloe suddenly let out a squeak of surprise.
"I've got the date listed as July 15, 2005," she interrupted and looked over at Rose. "And according to your file date, you have the same thing listed."
&&&&&
July 15, 2005: Metropolis, Kansas
As she walked through the front doors of The Inquisitor, Rose wondered if she was doing the right thing. Totally uprooting herself from the only home she knew and heading for the city might not be the best thing in the world. Even now, she felt the oppression of helplessness settle on her heart. Her trip to Metropolis that morning had been uneventful and painful; leaving her old life behind had hurt, though it had been necessary. She found the cheapest hotel, taken a shower, and put on her best outfit. Rose had been waiting for an opening to interview, and she was not going to let it get away.
She smiled politely at the front receptionist when she directed her to the group of elevators that would lead her to the third floor. Rose took in the crisp professionalism of the gateway, of the faint scent of ink and paper. Watched people load and unload from the yawning elevator doors towards their individual goals. She swallowed hard and wondered again if she was cut out of this kind of life.
Rose pressed the up button and waited for the car to arrive. This was definitely not The Daily Planet, she thought, looking at the framed front page articles, everything from the latest reports on global warming to the counter-terrorism steps the United States was taking to combat foreign attacks. She shook her head, wondered briefly at the potential employer's audacity, and stepped into the open elevator. The door slid gracefully shut, the shiny metal gleaming in her eyes. With a soft sigh, grateful she had been lucky enough to get a car to herself, Rose let her plastered "happy to be here face" fall into the emptiness she'd kept inside for the last two hours.
She missed her parents. Being alone in the world sucked beyond the imagining. Rose folded her arms around her stomach and wondered why she had even chosen to return to Smallville, Kansas for her senior year. Was it out of loyalty to her parents, to graduate from the school where she'd started? To give closure to the tragedy that had separated her from her parents forever? It wasn't like anyone at Smallville High School had missed her while she'd been gone, or had bothered to keep in touch during her incarceration. Why claim an accused murderer when you could spread gossip about her instead? Wasn't that what had happened? Didn't she deliberately skip the graduation ceremony because she didn't want to be a spectacle anymore?
Leaning back against the far side of the bright, shiny car, Rose commanded her racing thoughts to stop, to keep the despair at bay. They were detrimental to what she had achieved: a life outside Smallville, a chance to rise above the horror and drama that had dogged her steps the last few years. She was tired of being carrion, a carcass that fed other peoples' fears, gossip, and tale telling. She was looking forward to her own life.
And The Inquisitor was her ticket to that life; she knew it.
But the problem still remained: there was no one to share what she expected to be good news, no one to call and celebrate her future employment opportunity. After this was finished, if Mr. Smith decided to take a chance on her reporter's sense, she'd return to the hotel, order a pizza, and spend another lonely evening with the television and her laptop. Rose closed her eyes as the bottomless pit called Loneliness threatened to consume her. Going home was impossible: she no longer had one. Her parents were dead, the result of some freak event she would never have believed for a nanosecond had she not witnessed it with her own eyes.
She frantically blocked the horrible images of her parents' brutal ends from her mind, tears streaming unchecked down her face. My first job doesn't seem enough, she thought wearily. They'll never be here to see it, to see what I have become. Her back pressed against the metal, as if trying to become one with it. She wanted to crawl away from the knots twisting her being into oblivion and didn't know how to escape the onslaught of emotion.
Suddenly, she felt it: a wave of intense longing and utter abandonment hit her head on, unlike anything she had ever felt before. Her stomach churned, making her nauseous, and she choked back a sob of defeat. She had repressed them for so long, did what she had to do in order to survive, which had meant sacrificing her grief over her parents. The emotions flowed through her veins, tortured her soul, made her admit to herself that, more than anything else, Rose Sullivan wanted to belong. To a family, to a friend, to someone who would love and accept her. She wanted to feel loved, to know someone cared whether she lived or died. Her soul heaved towards that acknowledgement, embraced it, and she openly wept as she hadn't since her parents died. The broken, lonely girl wanted to be whole again.
The elevator's ding sounded, and the moment fizzled away in a second. Rose heard the doors gently slide open but couldn't open her eyes to pass through the opening. She feared what she'd see on the other side, especially considering she no longer felt anything remotely emotional any more.
"Miss?" a disjointed female voice called. "You okay?"
Quickly wiping the tears from her cheeks, Rose somehow pried herself from the elevator wall and opened her blurry eyes. A couple women stood just inside the elevator doorway, both wearing masks of confused uncertainty. When she realized she'd reached her destination, she colored deeply and bit her lip. "Er, yeah, I'm… fine," she rasped and cleared her throat. "Thanks for, uh, holding the door." She managed a faint smile and pushed her way out of the elevator and into the nearly empty third floor hallway.
Ignoring the smattering of curious glances from passersby, Rose found the nearest chair and sat down quickly. She let out her pent up breath and made herself breathe evenly: turning purple and collapsing into a heap on the floor would only attract more attention. She pulled a kerchief – one that had belonged to her mother – from her purse and carefully dried her face. She forced her eyes to regain focus.
"What was that?" she whispered aloud and looked down at the small piece of cloth clutched in her hands. Never had she experienced such an all-consuming emotional reaction in her life. Had it been because she'd repressed her grief over the loss of her parents and the life she'd been forced into? Everything else seemed tame, by comparison. Her mind began working theories despite her need to remain still. She wanted to know what happened, needed to find the answers… but she paused, her curiosity becoming shock, as she took a good look at her surroundings.
The third floor looked… different. The color scheme, the newspaper articles plastered to the walls, the coloring of the elevator behind her. Articles of the "real" theory behind the 1949 Roswell incident. Sightings of the Bat Boy along the Montana horizon. That definitely didn't seem right. Maybe I came out on the wrong floor? Rose stood up and looked at the listing of offices on the floor. She saw the editor-in-chief's office listed at the top and glanced down the wide hall at the secretary desk positioned on the other end, the last barrier between her and her heart's desire. Right floor, right newspaper. She turned around in a slow circle and carefully examined her surroundings. Right floor, right newspaper. So why did everything look differently?
Rose composed herself with a sigh and a small smirk crossed her lips. Chalk it up to the boss's prerogative, she thought and closed the space between her and the secretary. She felt infused with confidence, with a feeling of warmth and hope she hadn't only moments ago. She wanted to examine more fully what had happened, and more importantly why. However, she could check out the rest of the floors later, when she'd be hired on as a full-time reporter.
The Inquisitor wouldn't know what hit them, not when she was through with them.