| WHAT WE HAVE LOVED |
Note: It looks like I finally got this last part of my story up. What happened was that I wrote the epilogue, loved it, and then lost it through a computer mishap. I was pissed off to a point where I refused to write it all over again because I felt I got it right the first time. However, one afternoon, I decided to write it. Well, that was boring. At any rate, I've finally closed this story the way I wanted—Enjoy!
Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Smallville characters, but, if I had the choice, I'd make Tom Welling my manservant. All events in this piece are fictional and are from the matrix of my own mind. Please don't steal. It's wrong.
Epilogue :
She tossed her raven black hair over her shoulder as she easily nudged the cardboard box marked "Smallville" back into the storage room with her foot, closing the door to the past with finality. Plopping herself down on her bed, she breathed a sigh of fatigue, her eyes scanning the disheveled state of the room.
She had just moved into a real house, not like the squalid apartment she had lived in for years after she had graduated from the Metropolis School of Journalism. She chanted to herself many a time that she was indeed "on her way to the top," but the mess of her house served as a more telling metaphor of her journalistic career. She had taken up job offers at several Metropolis newspapers, but she was really waiting for an opportunity to work with the esteemed Daily Planet. And until that dream transpired, she would have no time for distractions.
It was another Friday evening and she still refused to go out for a night on the town. Leaving her house infected her with a sense of foreboding that could not be easily erased. Her father had been right for the most part: the crime rate in Metropolis was much greater than in Smallville. And without a superhero to save the day countless of times, she was not always eager to partake in the nocturnal rituals of the Metropolis population. It didn't help that she hadn't made too many close friends over her years in Metropolis, either.
Her eyes rested on the framed diplomas and certificates collecting dust on her dresser. She had not yet had the time to hang them promisingly on her bare grey wall. They certified that Lois Lane was indeed journalist. Maybe not a successful one, but she'd work on that soon enough. Lois Lane was going to be successful where Chloe Sullivan had not been.
Lois noticed a blue envelope peeking out from under a frame and carefully took it into her hands. "Funny," she thought to herself, "I could have sworn I left this in the box." She read the name "Clark" on the front of it and had the urge to toss it into the trashcan. However, she felt a strange desire to re-read the letter at that point, wanting to relive the memories of her adolescence, a small part of her wanting to fall in love with Clark Kent all over again.
She delicately pulled the pieces of loose-leaf paper out from the aging blue envelope and cried out in shock. The papers—they were blank. She could vividly remember all of the nights that she painstakingly wrote out those words of concealed truths—so one boy could read it and know how much she had loved him.
One page was not blank. Stuttering, Lois read the words aloud:
Dear Chloe,
Don't worry, I didn't read it. I just gave it to its rightful owner.
Love, Dad.
The words echoed in her empty room. Her father had given the letter to Clark. Clark had read the letter. And Clark had never replied. Lois realized that the contents of the letter were dead to its recipient, no matter how alive they were to her at that moment.
Without warning, she heard a loud knocking. Could it be fate finally giving her a chance to mend the errors of the past? Would she swing the door open and find her best friend smiling at her once again? Lois quickly scrambled to her front door, pausing for one second, and then threw open the rickety door with a wide grin.
No one.
Lois's smile faded into a vacuous expression. Was she going crazy? Or had she just willed herself to hear something she only wished she had heard? Whatever the case, she felt defeated. And only one thing could cure that kind of emotional affliction.
She quickly opened her freezer door and hoisted out a bottle of Russia's finest vodka. "It's good for what ails me."
Much like another night in her past almost seven years ago, a quiet voice came unexpectedly from behind her along with a light rapping on her window. "Chloe?"
Frightened, Lois dropped the half-full bottle of Smirnoff, letting it crash to the linoleum floor. Hearing her real name unleashed a barrage of memories from the past that she thought she had locked away indefinitely. She was wrong.
Even from behind her dirty kitchen window she could see two blue eyes—the colour of that cursed envelope—attached to a tall, dark-haired man with a smile that still illuminated a room. Without a word, she opened the side door for him, like she had done once before during the ungodly hours of night, and let him into her humble home.
The two stared at each other for what seemed to be eternity. Memories of a childhood friendship that she thought she had successfully caged in the cardboard box sitting idly in her storage room filled her senses. She could hide them no longer. She had waited too long for this moment.
He took Lois in a tight embrace and buried his nose in her newly darkened tresses. This time she didn't hesitate or cower, she simply kissed him. She felt the hot current of electricity, the alien feeling of love, that only this one man could give her. His tongue swept over her aching mouth with a power so overwhelming, and finally she knew completeness. She moaned softly as his body pressed against hers in a sensual harmony of movement. She could only surrender to the bare necessity of this man's being close to her always.
"Sorry, I'm late," Clark Kent whispered into her ear. "You're a hard woman to track down." He took her hot face in his hands gingerly. "It took me so many—too many—years to realize some things. But I know now. I know you, Chloe. And I love you." He pushed the loose tendrils of black hair behind her delicate ear and, like a teenage girl, she blushed. The distance of time between the two bodies disappeared and, in that one moment, Chloe Sullivan was revived in the arms of a hero, the best friend she had ever known.