A/N: Chapter Two is finally up. Sorry about the delay. My week has been
like the Odyssey. We got stuck in the blackout in NYC and couldn't get a
flight back until three o' clock Monday morning and I ad to start school at
eight. However, in the blackout (which was absolutley fun) I started
thinking how would Chloe and Lex react in a blackout. hmmmm
A/N/N: This chapter is knid of dark. It will get funner. There are also some issues of drugs so if this offends you please don't read it.
Chapter Two: Pre Introductions
When she had first moved to Smallville the one thing Chloe Sullivan had missed the most had been the feeling of being lost in a crowd. The random faces that passed you and nameless figures who brushed past your shoulders. She had reveled in the feeling of anonymity that came with being in a sea of people.
The closest that she had come to that feeling in Smallville had been the time Junior year when she got lost in the Kent's corn field and that was more scary than anything else.
As an aspiring writer she and her friends used to sit on the patio of one of the local coffee shops and make up stories about people. Where they had been, what they had done, and how of all the places they could have been they ended up there on that street at that time. Everyone who passed was turned into a spy or royalty. She had learned much later on that the former queens and CIA agents of her childhood were nothing more than average clones going to their average jobs to pay for their average lives. Presently she surrounded by a world of grey and average people all of them seemingly above average height. 'Why am I the only person here under five and a half feet,' she wondered as yet another business man shoved into her.
"Hello. Person standing here." He didn't even glance back at her. "Jerk."
The feeling that encompassed her now was something akin to panic. Scratch that. It was panic. She could feel the bile rising in her throat and the tears were threatening to spill five minutes ago had given in and were sliding down her cheeks. She jumped once again trying to gain a sight line above the hustle of the crowd.
If you had told her two years ago that she would be standing in the middle of the Metropolis lunch crowd, trying to hold back sobs because of a young man named Joey Carter she would have laughed in your face and told you she didn't cry for people she didn't like. 'Oh what a cruel fate life is.'
It just goes to show that no matter how much you plan for your future sometimes life happens to it anyway. She could remember the day she got the call three years ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The boxes were still stacked against the far wall of her living area. Her laptop was set up on the floor the table not scheduled for arrival until later that week. The smell of new carpet filled her nose as she closed the door behind the last mover. It was her own apartment and she could do with it what she pleased.
Chloe was reveling in the independent life, staying up late, however childish it was, watching whatever the hell she wanted on TV and keeping her refrigerator sparsely stocked with yogurt, pizza, and coffee.
"Ah the diet of every reporter," she sighed to herself.
When the shrill ring of her cell phone cut through her thoughts of a grocery list she jumped and began searching for the obtrusive object. She ended up having to climb over a pile of boxes and rummage through a heap of magazines before finally finding her purse and answering it without so much as a hello just before the machine picked up. It was always the same person.
"Hey Clark. I'm fine. No one has broken in and threatened my virginity so there's really no need for you saddle up your white horse or to call every hour on the hour for that matter. Getting you own apartment." she trailed off when she realized it wasn't her bumbling farm boy that she was talking to. "Who is this?"
"Chloe. It's your mother."
"Oh." Possibly not the response she was aiming for. Not hearing from someone in months tends to have that effect on the conversation.
"I need you to come over," she said almost pleadingly. Chloe's breath hitched as she tried to quell the feeling rising in her. Sliding down the wall she wrapped her arms around herself suddenly feeling like a very small girl in a very big world.
"I don't have any money for you." 'That's the only reason she called, to get money for her little addiction.'
"I'm not calling about money. I need you to meet someone Chloe. I need your help please just come over." The tone of her voice stirred something within Chloe that had been lying dormant since her mothers' departure a decade earlier. "Please."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chloe looked down at the scrawled writing on the paper. 1603 Terrace Park Apartment 7f. 'God it's in the projects,' she thought looking up at the dingy apartment building.
As much as she dreaded going in it was getting dark and she shivered at the thought of staying out on that street after hours. She climbed the stairs in the 7 block of and walked down the trash littered cement hallway. D.E. and there it was. Apartment F.
In there sat her mother. The person who had abandoned her and left her with a hole that nothing could replace. It had taken her a long time to realize that she could never fill the void and it had taken even longer to build the bridges over it.
The door was made of wood that, at one point, a tenant had painted red. After years of neglect and misuse the paint had chipped around the edges and the color had faded to nothing more than a murky brown.
Standing there contemplating the door she realized that if she knocked on it her life would be irrevocably changed. She looked back down the hallway at the trash and dirt and suppressed a laugh that the easy way out looked so bad. 'It would be so simple to walk away. Put one foot in front of the other and leave all of this behind.'
She raised her hand to knock, then put it back at her side. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know what would happen when that door was opened. She was just turning to leave when the hinges creaked and the murky brown was replaced by the figure of her mother. Sometimes fate opens the door for you. How fucking polite.
'I guess the easy road was under construction,' she thought as she took in the sight of her mother for the first time in nearly twelve years.
"Look at you. You're so pretty. How are you? How's your life? Tell me all the wonderful things you're doing," her mother said as if she was a long lost college buddy instead of her long lost daughter.
Chloe just stared at her. There were no words that could be said to someone who had abandoned you. The occasional phone call had only been a temporary reprieve from her motherless world and had usually ended with Chloe in tears over how low her mother's life had spiraled.
She supposed the drugs had started after she was born. When her father had found out they put her in a program and moved to the other side of town where nothing was familiar. Chloe was too young to understand what was happening but she was not too young to understand that it was tearing her family apart. She saw the look in her father's eyes every time her mother left the house, and heard the yelling when she came home. The last time she saw her mother she had come home high again, her eyes wild and unfocussed. When she woke up in the morning there were the infamous burnt waffles staring back at her. Four years later her father told her that it was him who asked her mother to leave. At first she had hated him for it, much later she admired him for it, fully understanding the courage it took to tell someone you loved to leave.
And here she was staring back into those eyes she had almost forgotten. Her mother half smiled and stepped aside so Chloe could come into the shabby apartment. The couch on one wall had more holes in it than actual covering. The carpet was stained several different shades and the smell of the places filled Chloe's nostrils. The kitchen to the left was lit by a fluorescent light that reflected against the yellow table top casting the ugly color over the room. Dirty dishes piled high in the sink and the broken faucet dripped in a maddeningly slow pace. The only other door from the 'living area' was into the bedroom that Chloe could only guess was as decrepit as the rest of the place.
"Why am I here," Chloe asked more to herself than her mother.
"Because I needed you to come," her mother replied. In the silence that followed that statement Chloe wanted to yell at her. To scream at the top of her lungs for all the times she had needed a mother. Her nightmares, her period, her first kiss, her first day of high school, falling in love, Algebra, graduation, getting her heart broken, healing, and every day in between she had needed her mother to talk to her. But she had done it herself, and more importantly she had never compromised herself to do it. She was better than her mother and she realized it now more than ever.
Suddenly the room became too small for Chloe to breathe, the smells rushed her senses, and the heat pounded into her. She grabbed her bag and turned toward the door when a small cry sounded from the bedroom.
She froze. Eyes closed she turned to her mother. When she opened them the answer to her question was written clearly on her mothers face.
"His name is Joseph. Joey for short. He has your eyes. He's a year old yesterday, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner but I just couldn't pick up the phone and call you," she rushed out. "I'm sorry. Really."
"Is he okay. I mean you didn't. You know. While you were pregnant.?" It was the only thing she could think of.
"No. He's healthy. I didn't... I stopped when I found out." The words came out broken and wrought with emotion.
All Chloe could do was take a shaky breath. The feelings inside of her were too much, and the words that needed to be said were buried somewhere underneath them. Her mother walked into the other room and a few seconds later returned holding a little bundle and a diaper bag.
"I need you to take him."
"What?"
"I need you to take him Chloe," her mother said a little louder. "I have debt with a few bad dealers and they're coming. Soon. I can't risk him being here when they do."
Her mother held the baby out to her and he let out a small mewling sound. She took him and he snuggled into her chest. It felt strange to Chloe having someone so close. "I can't do this."
"Chloe you have to. This is the last time I'll hurt you, I promise. Please." The fear in her mother's voice scared her and she began backing her way to the door. She didn't know how to care for a child. She didn't want to know. She had a life, had friends, and a future, and all that was going away.
When she reached the door she swallowed all of her fear looked her mother straight in the eye and said the one thing she had always wanted to say. "I'll never be like you mom. Never. I promise you that."
"Don't break that promise Chloe. I'm sorry." And with that she closed the door.
That had been the first second of the rest of her life. After that day Chloe had made another promise, and that was to never be scared of anything again. She was breaking her promise horribly. She jumped one last time in the direction of The Green Room and saw a bald man who seemed to be talking to his feet.
'Feet, Ground, Short, Joey.' She thought rushing in that direction. When she saw him she nearly started crying again. She grabbed him and pulled him into her chest. When she was done chastising him she set him down and knelt in front of him checking him for injuries. He appeared to be alright and she was about to turn to the bald man when he said in the snidest tone possible. " I don't think any harm has come to him in the last three minutes unless you consider good conversation a harm."
Chloe's inner She-Bitch woke up and lengthened her nails. Who the hell did he think he was first of all not immediately finding out who the little lost four-year-old belonged to. Secondly of all the arrogant, pig-headed, male egotistical things to say. He was bald and that only looked sexy on one man and she knew he didn't think he could pull off Lex Luthors look.
"You arrogant, bast. son of a. man," she stated remembering she was standing in front of a four-year-old.
Whirling to face him she prepared to dish him one of his own when she stopped short. 'Oh God.'
"Chloe?" 'Oh god. She looks good. Oh God. Chloe has a kid.'
A/N/N: This chapter is knid of dark. It will get funner. There are also some issues of drugs so if this offends you please don't read it.
Chapter Two: Pre Introductions
When she had first moved to Smallville the one thing Chloe Sullivan had missed the most had been the feeling of being lost in a crowd. The random faces that passed you and nameless figures who brushed past your shoulders. She had reveled in the feeling of anonymity that came with being in a sea of people.
The closest that she had come to that feeling in Smallville had been the time Junior year when she got lost in the Kent's corn field and that was more scary than anything else.
As an aspiring writer she and her friends used to sit on the patio of one of the local coffee shops and make up stories about people. Where they had been, what they had done, and how of all the places they could have been they ended up there on that street at that time. Everyone who passed was turned into a spy or royalty. She had learned much later on that the former queens and CIA agents of her childhood were nothing more than average clones going to their average jobs to pay for their average lives. Presently she surrounded by a world of grey and average people all of them seemingly above average height. 'Why am I the only person here under five and a half feet,' she wondered as yet another business man shoved into her.
"Hello. Person standing here." He didn't even glance back at her. "Jerk."
The feeling that encompassed her now was something akin to panic. Scratch that. It was panic. She could feel the bile rising in her throat and the tears were threatening to spill five minutes ago had given in and were sliding down her cheeks. She jumped once again trying to gain a sight line above the hustle of the crowd.
If you had told her two years ago that she would be standing in the middle of the Metropolis lunch crowd, trying to hold back sobs because of a young man named Joey Carter she would have laughed in your face and told you she didn't cry for people she didn't like. 'Oh what a cruel fate life is.'
It just goes to show that no matter how much you plan for your future sometimes life happens to it anyway. She could remember the day she got the call three years ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The boxes were still stacked against the far wall of her living area. Her laptop was set up on the floor the table not scheduled for arrival until later that week. The smell of new carpet filled her nose as she closed the door behind the last mover. It was her own apartment and she could do with it what she pleased.
Chloe was reveling in the independent life, staying up late, however childish it was, watching whatever the hell she wanted on TV and keeping her refrigerator sparsely stocked with yogurt, pizza, and coffee.
"Ah the diet of every reporter," she sighed to herself.
When the shrill ring of her cell phone cut through her thoughts of a grocery list she jumped and began searching for the obtrusive object. She ended up having to climb over a pile of boxes and rummage through a heap of magazines before finally finding her purse and answering it without so much as a hello just before the machine picked up. It was always the same person.
"Hey Clark. I'm fine. No one has broken in and threatened my virginity so there's really no need for you saddle up your white horse or to call every hour on the hour for that matter. Getting you own apartment." she trailed off when she realized it wasn't her bumbling farm boy that she was talking to. "Who is this?"
"Chloe. It's your mother."
"Oh." Possibly not the response she was aiming for. Not hearing from someone in months tends to have that effect on the conversation.
"I need you to come over," she said almost pleadingly. Chloe's breath hitched as she tried to quell the feeling rising in her. Sliding down the wall she wrapped her arms around herself suddenly feeling like a very small girl in a very big world.
"I don't have any money for you." 'That's the only reason she called, to get money for her little addiction.'
"I'm not calling about money. I need you to meet someone Chloe. I need your help please just come over." The tone of her voice stirred something within Chloe that had been lying dormant since her mothers' departure a decade earlier. "Please."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chloe looked down at the scrawled writing on the paper. 1603 Terrace Park Apartment 7f. 'God it's in the projects,' she thought looking up at the dingy apartment building.
As much as she dreaded going in it was getting dark and she shivered at the thought of staying out on that street after hours. She climbed the stairs in the 7 block of and walked down the trash littered cement hallway. D.E. and there it was. Apartment F.
In there sat her mother. The person who had abandoned her and left her with a hole that nothing could replace. It had taken her a long time to realize that she could never fill the void and it had taken even longer to build the bridges over it.
The door was made of wood that, at one point, a tenant had painted red. After years of neglect and misuse the paint had chipped around the edges and the color had faded to nothing more than a murky brown.
Standing there contemplating the door she realized that if she knocked on it her life would be irrevocably changed. She looked back down the hallway at the trash and dirt and suppressed a laugh that the easy way out looked so bad. 'It would be so simple to walk away. Put one foot in front of the other and leave all of this behind.'
She raised her hand to knock, then put it back at her side. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know what would happen when that door was opened. She was just turning to leave when the hinges creaked and the murky brown was replaced by the figure of her mother. Sometimes fate opens the door for you. How fucking polite.
'I guess the easy road was under construction,' she thought as she took in the sight of her mother for the first time in nearly twelve years.
"Look at you. You're so pretty. How are you? How's your life? Tell me all the wonderful things you're doing," her mother said as if she was a long lost college buddy instead of her long lost daughter.
Chloe just stared at her. There were no words that could be said to someone who had abandoned you. The occasional phone call had only been a temporary reprieve from her motherless world and had usually ended with Chloe in tears over how low her mother's life had spiraled.
She supposed the drugs had started after she was born. When her father had found out they put her in a program and moved to the other side of town where nothing was familiar. Chloe was too young to understand what was happening but she was not too young to understand that it was tearing her family apart. She saw the look in her father's eyes every time her mother left the house, and heard the yelling when she came home. The last time she saw her mother she had come home high again, her eyes wild and unfocussed. When she woke up in the morning there were the infamous burnt waffles staring back at her. Four years later her father told her that it was him who asked her mother to leave. At first she had hated him for it, much later she admired him for it, fully understanding the courage it took to tell someone you loved to leave.
And here she was staring back into those eyes she had almost forgotten. Her mother half smiled and stepped aside so Chloe could come into the shabby apartment. The couch on one wall had more holes in it than actual covering. The carpet was stained several different shades and the smell of the places filled Chloe's nostrils. The kitchen to the left was lit by a fluorescent light that reflected against the yellow table top casting the ugly color over the room. Dirty dishes piled high in the sink and the broken faucet dripped in a maddeningly slow pace. The only other door from the 'living area' was into the bedroom that Chloe could only guess was as decrepit as the rest of the place.
"Why am I here," Chloe asked more to herself than her mother.
"Because I needed you to come," her mother replied. In the silence that followed that statement Chloe wanted to yell at her. To scream at the top of her lungs for all the times she had needed a mother. Her nightmares, her period, her first kiss, her first day of high school, falling in love, Algebra, graduation, getting her heart broken, healing, and every day in between she had needed her mother to talk to her. But she had done it herself, and more importantly she had never compromised herself to do it. She was better than her mother and she realized it now more than ever.
Suddenly the room became too small for Chloe to breathe, the smells rushed her senses, and the heat pounded into her. She grabbed her bag and turned toward the door when a small cry sounded from the bedroom.
She froze. Eyes closed she turned to her mother. When she opened them the answer to her question was written clearly on her mothers face.
"His name is Joseph. Joey for short. He has your eyes. He's a year old yesterday, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner but I just couldn't pick up the phone and call you," she rushed out. "I'm sorry. Really."
"Is he okay. I mean you didn't. You know. While you were pregnant.?" It was the only thing she could think of.
"No. He's healthy. I didn't... I stopped when I found out." The words came out broken and wrought with emotion.
All Chloe could do was take a shaky breath. The feelings inside of her were too much, and the words that needed to be said were buried somewhere underneath them. Her mother walked into the other room and a few seconds later returned holding a little bundle and a diaper bag.
"I need you to take him."
"What?"
"I need you to take him Chloe," her mother said a little louder. "I have debt with a few bad dealers and they're coming. Soon. I can't risk him being here when they do."
Her mother held the baby out to her and he let out a small mewling sound. She took him and he snuggled into her chest. It felt strange to Chloe having someone so close. "I can't do this."
"Chloe you have to. This is the last time I'll hurt you, I promise. Please." The fear in her mother's voice scared her and she began backing her way to the door. She didn't know how to care for a child. She didn't want to know. She had a life, had friends, and a future, and all that was going away.
When she reached the door she swallowed all of her fear looked her mother straight in the eye and said the one thing she had always wanted to say. "I'll never be like you mom. Never. I promise you that."
"Don't break that promise Chloe. I'm sorry." And with that she closed the door.
That had been the first second of the rest of her life. After that day Chloe had made another promise, and that was to never be scared of anything again. She was breaking her promise horribly. She jumped one last time in the direction of The Green Room and saw a bald man who seemed to be talking to his feet.
'Feet, Ground, Short, Joey.' She thought rushing in that direction. When she saw him she nearly started crying again. She grabbed him and pulled him into her chest. When she was done chastising him she set him down and knelt in front of him checking him for injuries. He appeared to be alright and she was about to turn to the bald man when he said in the snidest tone possible. " I don't think any harm has come to him in the last three minutes unless you consider good conversation a harm."
Chloe's inner She-Bitch woke up and lengthened her nails. Who the hell did he think he was first of all not immediately finding out who the little lost four-year-old belonged to. Secondly of all the arrogant, pig-headed, male egotistical things to say. He was bald and that only looked sexy on one man and she knew he didn't think he could pull off Lex Luthors look.
"You arrogant, bast. son of a. man," she stated remembering she was standing in front of a four-year-old.
Whirling to face him she prepared to dish him one of his own when she stopped short. 'Oh God.'
"Chloe?" 'Oh god. She looks good. Oh God. Chloe has a kid.'