Chapter II: Snapshot of a Life Destroyer

Chloe let out a huff, placing the polystyrene cup upon the desk. The guy behind it turned in his swivel chair, a phone positioned between his shoulder and ear, with a grateful smile, waving her off as she left. It had been a week since she'd started her internship, and already she had enough heel blisters to last her a lifetime. In honest answer, she thought, heading for the elevator, this wasn't how she presumed her internship would run. For one thing, she thought that at the very least, she would help chase down a lead. So far, she hadn't even been assigned to help a reporter. It looked as if she would be delivering coffees from here on out. This was doing wonders in her experience department, just wonders.

The elevator pinged before the door split apart, Chloe's head rising, and then her eyes widened. In the elevator stood a vibrantly dressed reporter, hollering at what Chloe was most certain was an intern.

"I said, decaf, Olsen!" The woman said in an icy voice, holding the polystyrene cup towards him. "Does this look like decaf to you?"

The boy shamefully shook his head.

"Fix it!" Her eyes sneered at him patronizingly before she flipped her blonde hair and stepped out of the lift with her nose in the air, never acknowledging Chloe.

The boy looked up, his cheeks burning when he caught sight of Chloe. Running his hand over his cropped hair, he tempted to smile in her direction, but failed miserably. Chloe sent him a sympathetic smile, her eyes drifting towards the stairs.

He opened his mouth… "She's scary."

Chloe's eyes turned back to him. "Who, Linda Lake?"

"Have you worked for her?"

Chloe shook her head. She knew who the woman was alright. Linda Lake, gossip columnist for the Daily Planet, the one section Chloe stayed away from, although her column drew in quite a sum of people. Too bad citizens didn't often realize that her column had a knack for destroying lives. "I'm new around here."

The boy smiled as Chloe stepped into the elevator, giving up her internal debate about whether or not to take the stairs. "Oh, well, in that case, welcome to the Daily Planet, I'm Henry James Olsen."

Chloe shook his hand with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Henry."

"Actually, I go by Jimmy."

"Oh."

xoxoxox

Frowning at the cup of coffee Lois had just placed before her, Chloe continued to tap her nails against the tabletop in an uninterested manner.

"What crawled up your cheerful hole and died?" Lois wondered aloud, pushing up the sleeves of her blouse.

Glancing up, frown still creased into her lips, Chloe said, "Oh nothing just met this boy…"

Lois squealed in delight, pulling up the spare chair towards the sole desk and ancient computer that resided in the archive room. "Do tell," she continued in joy, forgetting the reason she'd brought her cousin a cup of coffee.

"Not like that," Chloe waved her off. This was one cheerful mood she couldn't share in on. "The way that reporter was treating him…"

"Reporter!" Lois repeated, remembering her exact reason for the coffee treat. "Chlo, they finally assigned you to shadow someone."

Eyes brightening, Chloe turned interestingly towards her older cousin. "Really, who?"

"Linda Lake."

"Linda Lake?" she repeated as if she'd eaten something terribly unpleasant.

"Yeah," Lois continued, not latching onto Chloe's sudden bad mood, "they posted the list in the bullpen."

"No," the blonde groaned, "out of all the reporters, they assign me to the one I detest." Burying her head onto the desk, she continually shook her head. "Why is the universe against me?"

Patting her cousin's shoulders, Lois answered her rhetorical question. "No it's not, Chlo, and Linda's not so bad." She cringed as a mental picture of the blonde reporter popped into her head. Lois remembered having to fetch a coffee for that woman. She purposely, Lois was sure of it, dropped it and made her fetch another one. The brunette shuddered.

xoxoxox

Her next day of interning had left her with nothing more than a headache, and she hadn't even begun to shadow Linda Lake yet. Shaking her head, Chloe still couldn't believe that out of all the people who wrote for America's most trusted newspaper, she ended up with the one journalist she loathed.

Tossing her cup into the bin as she headed out of the revolving doors of the DP, Chloe welcomed the fresh sunny air. Besides, having lunch with her alien of a best friend was a great way to rid of this headache. Frowning, Chloe noticed that her aim hadn't allowed for the polystyrene cup to land where it was supposed to and was now rolling along the sidewalk. She watched the cup roll down the sidewalk in attempts to catch it and not have to run in the four inch pumps adorning her feet when the cup collided into a shiny black shoe. A male Italian leathered shoe to be exact.

Following the shoe up to the owner, Chloe's frown increased when she discovered who the shoe belonged too. There stood Mr. Queen, blinking in her direction before reaching down to pick up the cup she'd meant to recycle.

Shaking herself out of the stare, she marched up to the man. "Do you hang around the Daily Planet on a regular base?"

Chuckling charmingly, he tossed the cup into the bin flawlessly. "I think your projectile motion needs some work."

"Seriously, Queen, what are you doing here?"

"Tone down Mama bear, I just wanted to see if I could catch Lois."

"Lois doesn't wish to see you."

Raising a brow, he stared at her with a smirk. "And has your cousin told you that."

Chloe blinked. Okay, so Lois may have not uttered those exact words, but she'd seen her cousin's crumpled expression when Chloe mentioned him on her first day, and not wanting to see Mr. Oliver Queen was written under that broken gaze.

"I didn't think so," he stated as if that ended their conversation. "Now if you'll excuse me..."

Before Oliver could even take a step, he found Chloe's palm pressed flat against his chest. Was this petite eighteen year old really serious? "You can't possibly think…I'm twice your size."

"No," she said, continually shaking her head, "you can't just go in there like that. You're Oliver Queen."

"Exactly, CEO and celebrity of Queen Industries, I don't think the DP will mind. In fact, I think they'd welcome my presence."

"Glad your ego keeps you going. You'll send the Planet in an uproar. Every column is practically covering you already. You'll never make it out of the pit of interviews."

"Does Miss. Lane's cousin actually care about her cousin's ex?"

"Wipe that smirk off your face, billionaire, and lower the arrogance. My only instinct is protecting those dear to me."

It was then that Oliver smiled. "Point taken," he stated, giving a slight nod of the head before heading off.

And Chloe was left watching him go in astonishment.

xoxoxox

Realizing she was still staring in the direction Oliver had gone long after he'd disappeared, Chloe turned away. People must have thought she was crazy, or maybe they knew how much Daily Planet interns were required to run around on nonsense coffee runs that did little to help their future journalistic careers, not that she'd divulge that bit to the editor, surely she'd be fired, surely. Turning around, she nearly screamed when she saw Jimmy Olsen facing her with a smile.

Awkwardly walking forward, he ran a hand over his cropped hair. "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," he uttered, holding out his hand. "But you forgot your keychain down in the archives. Lois told me to bring it up to you."

"You know Lois?" she asked, deciding then and there that Jimmy just might have been a smidge more awkward than either Clark or Randal.

"Who doesn't know Lois? That girl is going places."

Chloe nearly snorted. And to think their family was positive that if any member was going to end up in jail, it was going to be Lois. Her moral compass wasn't exactly well rounded, and the way in which she accomplished things was questionable.

"Thanks," Chloe stated, folding her fingers over the cool metal of the Daily Planet Globe keychain Olsen had just dropped into her palm.

Jimmy smiled again, moving his foot around in an imaginary circle. "I know this great place for lunch if you're hungry."

"I am actually," Chloe smiled in return. "Lead the way."

xoxoxox

It turned out, however, that Jimmy's great place for lunch was Tony's Pizza, and although Chloe loved pizza, she didn't much feel like eating it two days in a row, so she offered to show Jimmy another great place for lunch. Unfortunately, Jimmy wasn't the greatest fan of Thai food, but bless his soul, he didn't say a word, and instead sat quietly as Chloe devoured most of their lunch, and he sat picking at most of his portion, wondering what exactly he was eating.

"I heard you're shadowing Lake," he spoke up finally, setting down his utensils and wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Harsh."

"I guess you would know," Chloe said, smiling sympathetically as she recalled her first encounter with Henry James Olsen.

He chuckled humorlessly. "She criticizes most of the pictures I take, calling them rubbish when I'm with her usual photographer. Technically, I'm not shadowing her, but she acts like it."

"You're a photographer?"

"The guy I shadow bought me my first Nikon," he added brightly, sounding the most animated she'd seen him, but to be fair, she barely knew him. "I hope to be a DP photographer."

"And I a DP journalist," she smiled. "I didn't peg you for a photographer though."

Chuckling, Jimmy said, "I'm an adventurous guy, Chloe. It's all about the thrill."

Chloe laughed, realizing she didn't mind this Olsen guy at all. Besides, he was kind of cute, in a boyish sense.