Chapter 18
Oliver met them at the Kent farm and Lois met him on the porch, taking the opportunity to give him the jewelry that Sam had sent them. Oliver opened the jewelry box that Lois handed him. It had her ring and Lucy's bracelet in it. "I'll take care of these. You need to find something with more lead in it if you're going to keep this ring around."
"Martha has a lead box," she replied. "I'll keep it in that."
He took the jewelry box out to his car and returned to the house. "Let's go inside and talk," he said.
Clark and Lois sat on the couch while Oliver told them what he found out. Clark was upset and Lois was livid. "That b!tch! I've been so worried that I haven't done enough to smooth out our relationship and now you tell me this?"
Clark rested a hand on her forearm and looked at Oliver. "What are we going to do about it? You obviously have a plan to deal with her, right?"
"I do and I wanted to talk to you about it. I know that you still care about Chloe; both of you…"
"I don't; not anymore," Lois interjected.
Oliver raised an eyebrow. "Yes you do, Lois. Everyone does but she's gotten out of hand. Clark, you know about her spying and her recording conversations but I didn't learn about this until yesterday. Bart and I figured it out and then set her up. That's when Chloe admitted to everything; giving the General information and sending him kryptonite."
"Did she say anything about the calls?" Lois asked.
"We didn't talk about the calls, Lois. We only talked about the kryptonite. I sent her home and I asked Victor to come over to look at the recorded calls. He found all your previous conversations since Clark returned from his training stored on an offline backup server. She was obviously listening to them based on the file access dates." He paused, and then added. "Not only that, Victor found video files from the surveillance cameras she hid in this house." Lois bit her bottom lip and glanced nervously at Clark. Oliver saw her reaction. "Don't worry; it's pretty mundane stuff I'm sure and there were no cameras in the private areas of the house."
"Yeah, but I assume there were cameras in the living room," Lois replied angrily. "Not that anything big happened but honestly, we've had some private moments together here and I feel violated, Ollie. Damn," she exclaimed, "I feel like I'm in some episode of Big Brother now."
Oliver nodded. "If it makes you feel any better, Clark disabled the cameras a while ago, Lois. I think he disabled them before you two started dating or right after, if that's any consolation."
"I did," he replied. "I disabled them the first day you came over after we started dating, Lois. So if Chloe watched us together, the most she would have seen was you hogging all the popcorn while we watched movies or you getting whipped in Guitar Hero." He smirked.
"Getting whipped?" she cried, and elbowed him. "Maybe it's good that she videotaped us! It sounds like someone's memory needs refreshing." She closed her eyes for a moment and reflected on things that had happened and approximate times when they occurred. She opened her eyes and rocked her head from side to side. "I suppose it's some consolation that the cameras were off after we started dating."
"Don't feel like you're alone, Clark; there were private video files on me as well and not all of them were as mild as yours."
"'Towel girl' sans towel, I suppose?" Lois interjected.
He chuckled. "No, Lois. But, most of them were recorded at a time that I'm not particularly proud of; before Mia but there were others," he said with a tone of remorse in his voice.
Lois instantly regretted her 'Towel Girl' comment and felt sorry for Oliver. At that time, he was going through a rough patch in his life and it was captured on video as a permanent record of his frailty. The thought of Chloe saving those images of Oliver's private agony made Lois angrier than the thought of her saving the mild footage that came from the Kent home; footage that surely included her. "Were they just stored or can you tell if they have been viewed?" she asked with a tone of disgust.
"All of the video files have been accessed in the last week," he replied.
Clark's jaw tightened and he shook his head. "What did she say about the kryptonite?"
"She said she didn't trust you or your plan to deal with Zod and she felt that the General needed to know how to deal with the Kandorians if your plan failed."
Clark exchanged looks with Lois and turned back to Oliver. "I thought the same thing," he admitted. "I suggested Lois tell the General that the kryptonite was an effective weapons against aliens."
"I told him that he was out of his mind and I refused to do it," she interjected.
"Smart girl," Oliver replied and Lois smiled, wagging her head at Clark. Oliver filled them both in on his plan which seemed a good solution to the trouble that Chloe had created.
"I have to say something to Chloe, though," she replied. "To think that she would try to screw with our relationship is just…I don't know the word. 'Evil' seems too mild." She grabbed Clark's hand and squeezed it. "And for what reason?"
"You can't confront her Lois. If you do, she'll know Clark knows everything and it will ruin the plan," Oliver said.
"Lois," Clark added, "why don't you just let it go? After listening to what Oliver has planned, anything you say will be rendered moot. Is it really necessary?"
"It is to me," she replied defiantly. "She's not going to get off this easily; not from me! She's going to know that I know what she did."
"If you must, go ahead, Lois. But you can't let Chloe know that Clark or you know anything about the kryptonite. Do it soon," Oliver warned, "we have to act quickly to shore this thing up, okay?"
"No problem, Ollie!"
Clark looked dubiously toward Oliver. "So you're sure this will work?"
Oliver winked and nodded. "I'm absolutely certain."
After Oliver purchased the Watchtower from her at a very generous price, Chloe had plenty of funds to purchase a townhouse on the outskirts of Metropolis. It was in an upscale suburb, built principally as a result of the housing boom that captured the entire country in the mid 2000's. By the time Chloe began looking; new homes and condominiums in the trendy community had fallen to half their original price. The market downturn enabled Chloe to pay cash for her never-occupied townhouse. The small development was far away from the tedious, cramped existence that living within the Metropolis city limits offered in her price range and allowed her a quiet refuge from the crowds and traffic.
With the money remaining from the sale, she was able to modestly appoint her new home. Lois had been there once, helping Chloe one weekend to move her belongings from the Talon apartment they shared to her new townhouse. Since then, Lois had not set foot in her home - until now.
"Come in," Chloe said haltingly. She had been anxious from the moment she answered Lois' phone call, having sensed a tone in Lois' voice that was usually reserved for people that were headed for an unpleasant encounter. She hoped that Lois had not learned about her tip to the General.
Lois entered and as soon as the door closed behind her, she swiveled around and confronted Chloe. "How could you?" she accused.
Chloe's face drained of blood. "What are you talking about Lois?"
"The calls!" Lois hissed. "You calling me pretending to be The Blur; that's what I'm talking about Chloe."
"Lois, if you'd just let me explain," she replied but the expression on Lois' face made clear that understanding would be in short supply. "C'mon Cuz, come sit down so we can talk. Let me make us some tea."
"I don't want tea, Chloe," Lois snapped. "I want an explanation and I want it now!"
"Go sit down, Lois," she replied forcefully. "I want some tea and then we can talk."
Lois complied and sat smoldering on a white leather couch awaiting her cousin's arrival. She glanced around and thought that Chloe's comfortable surroundings were the result of Jimmy's death and Oliver's generosity, making her even angrier.
Jimmy. Sitting in Chloe's comfortable living room, she thought about him. Clark had told Lois about the events leading up to Jimmy's death but the story lacked an explanation for her cousin's constant departures from Jimmy's bedside. It was unclear at what point Chloe knew that Davis Bloome was harboring an alien killing machine inside of him but it was certainly not immediately after vivisecting Jimmy at their wedding reception. Yet rather than sit beside her husband, she was traveling to Metropolis weekly to ensure the well-being of a thing that turned out to be a mass-murderer. She shook her head.
Chloe came out sipping a cup of tea and noticing the daggers in Lois' eyes when she glanced up. She swallowed, took a deep breath and began. "When did you find out that I made the calls?"
"Five minutes ago when you didn't deny making them."
Chloe blinked and shifted in her chair, unprepared for that answer. She cleared her throat. "You have every right to be angry with me, Lois. But please hear me out. I know what I did seems despicable but I did it for you."
Lois began to speak but Chloe cut her off. "Listen to me, Lo," she said. She leaned forward in her chair. "I had been pleading with Clark to tell you his secret since Thanksgiving. When he came to see me after leaving your apartment that night, I begged him to tell you and he said that he would." She took a breath and set her jaw. "The day the Metropolis District Attorney had his thugs throw you off the roof of the Daily Planet building was the day I swore that I would never let Clark's secret put you in danger like that again. He promised me he'd tell you but he just kept finding excuses not to. The last excuse was right after Christmas. I spoke with him but he said that it would be too disruptive for you to find out while you were on assignment. I couldn't let it continue, Lois." Chloe's eyes grew watery.
She sniffed and brushed aside a tear. "I've kept his secret for years, respecting his wishes even when I saw people I cared about being hurt because of it. But being hurt emotionally and being put in mortal danger are two different things, Lo, and I was not about to let anything happen to you." A tear escaped from one eye and traveled down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and changed her tone.
"There's a madman who may change our world forever if Clark doesn't deal with him the way that he needs to be dealt with."
"Zod," Lois acknowledged, matter-of-factly.
Chloe's eyes narrowed. "Yes; Zod. The day that madman realizes that Clark and The Blur are the same person is the day you will be in that psychopath's crosshairs." She paused. "I could not let you continue to walk around oblivious to the fact that a bulls-eye was painted on your back because you had no idea that Zod was out there or that he would attack Clark by attacking you."
She frowned. "So you decided to torment me, manipulating me with calls intended to cause a rift between Clark, The Blur and me? That's the way you thought I'd be safer, Chloe?" Lois asked incredulously.
"It worked, didn't it?" she replied angrily. "You're sitting here and you know Clark's secret, you know about Zod, and you know that the future is bleak if nothing is done to change it. Jesus, Lois! You keep viewing my calls as some mean-spirited act to hurt you but they weren't; why can't you see that?" Chloe tried to emphasize her frustration by staring at Lois but she couldn't maintain eye contact. "Clark was forced to address his secret because of the calls. I have never betrayed Clark's secret but I wasn't going to let him keep you in danger any longer. I had to do something to make him tell you so that you would know what was going on around you and so that he would move on, focus on Zod, and deal realistically with the threat posed to mankind."
Lois said nothing. She sat, peering into Chloe's eyes and judging the veracity of what her cousin was saying.
The stare made Chloe uneasy and she looked away. "Lois," she said softly, "I can understand if you felt that I manipulated you but please believe that I did it to force Clark's hand, not to hurt you. I would never do anything to hurt you, Lo." She stared at Lois unable to read her eyes. Unnerved, she broke eye contact and took a sip of her tea.
Lois looked down; weighing the things that her cousin had told her. A long moment of silence passed between them, reassuring Chloe that the explanation she gave had resonated with her cousin. When Lois looked up, there were tears in her eyes. "After that explanation, I have to say that I misjudged you, Chloe. I guess it's my turn to explain," she said softly.
Chloe exhaled her relief and a small smile crept across her lips. Standing up, Lois walked to where Chloe was seated and stood in front of her. "I expected an apology when I came here or at worst, some lame excuse from you." Lois searched her eyes for a reaction but found none. "I didn't expect to hear that," she added. "You did it all to protect me?"
Tears welled in Chloe's eyes. She nodded and swallowed hard.
She cocked her head to the side and leaned forward, staring at her cousin for what seemed an eternity. She searched Chloe's face for a sign that might tell her she was wrong but her face held no evidence to the contrary. Lois spoke.
"When did you become such an accomplished liar, Chloe? Or somewhere along the way did you convince yourself this was not about you but about me or other people?" Lois narrowed her eyes. "I'm not buying your BS; not for a minute. If you think I don't realize your true motivation for doing what you did, you've misjudged me."
Chloe's face turned red and her eyes darted around the room. Lois leaned forward, supporting herself by the arms of the chair in which her cousin sat and came within two feet of her face. "What's happened to you that would make you become such a bitter, hateful person? Is it only jealousy because Clark has turned to me as a confidante? Is it payback because Clark wouldn't undo the mess you made that ended up getting Jimmy killed? Or is it a combination of both?"
"But Lo," Chloe began, "you're…."
"Shut up, Chloe!" Lois barked. "I listened to you now you're going to listen to me. I could forgive you if it was just jealousy because I know what it means to be Clark's confidante. I'd feel empty if I couldn't be there for him to share his trials and tribulations anymore. But I know it's more than that and nothing you've said changes my mind. You did it to hurt Clark the only way you knew how. You did it hoping that I'd be so conflicted that it would end our relationship. You did it because you thought it would even the score because he wouldn't go back to save Jimmy to ease your conscience. Maybe somewhere in that f**ked-up head of yours you thought it might force him to run back to you." Lois leaned closer. "But believe me Cuz, that could never happen because I'd never let it."
Tears were in both women's eyes but for different reasons. Chloe felt shame and embarrassment while Lois felt anger and contempt for the betrayal by her one-time best friend.
Lois stood up. "I haven't told Clark what I know because I love him. I know he would somehow feel responsible and it would crush him to know what you've done. He doesn't deserve that so this will remain our little secret, Chloe." She stepped back and dug her car keys out of her pocket.
"Lois, please…" Chloe began but Lois cut her off.
"I'm warning you now: you stay away from me and from Lucy; if you ever want to talk to me again, you let Clark know and he'll tell me." She headed for the door.
Chloe got up and followed until Lois spun back around. "And when you have to deal with Clark, it better be absolutely above board because if I find out you've done anything behind his back to undermine him, he's going to know everything and so will Ollie. You'll have them to deal with at that point. And Chloe," she added, "when they're finished with you, it will be my turn and I promise you, it won't be pretty."
"Lois," Chloe called out in tears, "don't…don't leave like this. You don't…"
Opening the door, Lois snapped back, "Save it, Chloe." She glared at her. "I have other family in town that I trust. You? Well, you just disgust me and I can't stand being in the same room with you for another second longer," she snapped, closed the door and left.