---- Chapter 4: Relative Help

"Pass him this way, Lo. No need to be greedy."

Lois looked over at Clark and raised an eyebrow, making her point silently. She looked down at Jacob, who was sitting in her arms, and went back to plastering kisses all over his cheeks. She lifted up his shirt and blew a raspberry on his stomach for a second, eliciting a giggle from the baby. "Gimme a second, Smallville. I'm playing with my child, so I think I'm allowed to be greedy."

"Fine, fine, but if I could get a little time with him in the next couple days I would be ever so grateful." Lois looked over at him again and he winked at her as he grinned. She couldn't help but smile back, but stuck her tongue out at him for a second while doing so. His eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "Sticking out your tongue at me? I could have sworn you were a mature adult recently."

"Yeah, well, you bring out my tongue using side. In no way do I monopolize Jacob time like you have so insinuated. For that insinuation, though, I plan on monopolizing Jacob's time."

"Huh." He watched her for a second, smiled, then disappeared from sight. Lois blinked then looked down at her arms, finding them to be empty of her ten month old. She rolled her eyes when she heard Jacob giggling in the other room, which was his usual reaction after speeding with his father.

"SO not cool, Smallville!"

"We all use the tools we're given, Lo," Clark said from the other room.

Lois got up off the floor and stretched out for a second before walking slowly from the living room to the den, where Clark and their son were currently playing together. She stood and watched them, hands on hips as Clark held Jacob above him while sitting on the couch. By the sound of all the laughter coming from the smaller of the two, interrupting would just be mean.

"You're completely ruining my plan, you know. I was very ready to take Jacob away with me to some very remote island where you couldn't find us for like, a week or two. It would be a total monopolization of time, and you would have begged me not to be so brilliant in my deviousness."

"I'm sure I would have." He smiled at her and turned a smiling Jacob around so he faced her. "But why? Why would you have wanted to deprive a happy little boy of somebody he loves so much?"

Lois sighed, feeling that she had once again been beaten by Clark in a battle of some kind. She had no idea what kind of battle it was, though. Maybe it was his sanity fighting her insanity, or vice versa. One way or another, he always seemed to win, and if she were the sane one in the scenario, it really didn't say much about her. She was about to respond to him but was interrupted by her phone buzzing in her pocket. She dug it out, and finding that there was no number, flipped it open.

"Lois Lane."

"Whoever it is you have searching for me is very tenacious."

Lois frowned, checking to make sure that there was no number to use on finding this caller. "Who is this?"

"I assume you got my name from a former colleague of mine, Aaron Davis."

Lois's eyes went wide with surprise. A second later, though, she was snapping her fingers at Clark and had the phone situated between her ear and shoulder. "Thomas Hewlett, is it? I'm glad to hear we dragged you out of the woodwork." Lois motioned at Clark for a pencil and paper with her hands, and after he put Jacob down on the floor he jogged to get them, handing each to her a second later. "So, how's life been off the grid?"

"Peaceful. Very peaceful. I hope you can understand that's how I like things and how I intend to keep them, indefinitely."

"I can understand that. I like a peaceful life as much as the next person." Lois frowned when Clark snorted at her from his perch next to a crawling Jacob on the ground. "What I don't like is Chloe Sullivan getting royally screwed for an article that's 100 true. It sits wrong for me."

"I agree that it's unfortunate she was sacrificed in all this, but had I been a source in her article like Aaron Davis was, anonymous or not, I would have been putting myself in danger. Aaron doesn't have any family so he didn't have something like that to worry about. I have a daughter I love to worry about. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I do," Lois said as she eyed Jacob. "I have a son that I would kill for if it meant keeping him safe. But I also want to raise my son in a world where innocent people can't get skewered by the guilty. Standing by while Chloe's life spirals ever downward and Lex sits in his office sipping his decades old scotch is not how I protect my family."

There was a short pause before he spoke. "So why now? This happened in April, and it's now the middle of September. I assume you started a month or two ago, but that's still more time to wait than I would expect."

"I was hoping my cousin would be able to get another job in journalism. Had Lex not blacklisted her, for all intents and purposes, she could have done this herself, and I'm confident she would have. Her life being what it is, though, leaves getting her some justice to me. I intend to do that for her and make the world a place I'm happy to raise my son in."

"Fair enough. Honestly, my work for Lex left a bad taste in my mouth that seems to linger worse than my attempts at making chili. I'll come forward and speak to the validity of your article and my quotes in it. I want the same thing for my girl that you do for your boy. The two stipulations I have on this are as follows: first, the police are going to want to speak to me, if not arrest me, and I want a guarantee of no prosecution."

Lois grimaced, knowing that would be hard to do. She was going to have to call in some serious favors to get that to happen, but if it netted Lex Luthor, she figured the Metropolis D.A. could go for it. "All right, I can arrange that. What else?"

"Call off your search dogs. I'll come out and talk when I'm ready; if I catch a whiff of somebody looking for me that I can connect to you the deal is off."

"You ask for a lot. You better be worth it."

"I'm going to give you justice at risk to my own well-being, so you best believe I'm worth it."

Lois wrote down his demands on the page to make sure that she took care of both ASAP. "Is there any timetable for when I might meet you?"

"It'll be before the end of the year."

"THE END OF THE YEAR?" Lois took a second to collect herself and walked out of the den to where Jacob couldn't hear her so she could express herself as she pleased. "That's bullsht and you know it! You say this is leaving a bad taste in your mouth but you're willing to let it sit there for another three and a half months?"

"I want some time with my daughter before I have a target painted on my forehead. You may be comfortable in that situation because of all the enemies you've made, but I'm not the comfortable with that sort of thing. I may do questionable work, but it's work I believe in and work I always intended to stay quiet about until it was ready for the world. I'm not in the habit of making powerful enemies, and that describes Luthor perfectly."

Gritting her teeth, Lois went on to ask another question. "Will you give me names I can use as sources? The more I have the better the article works."

"There are a lot of names I can give you, but you only get one: Marianne Stone."

"Why just the one?"

"Because she'll be the hardest nut to crack since she believed in what we were doing, and the one that will most help your article. Marianne, Aaron and I were the main scientists on the project. Everybody else was secondary and wouldn't provide you with much beyond circumstantial evidence."

"I'll take what I can get. Now, how can I convince you to come talk to me before the end of the year?"

The line went dead and Lois slammed her phone shut, fighting the urge to throw it across the room. In all likelihood Hewlett was going to wait until the end of December to get in contact again, and she didn't have a clue as to what could happen to Chloe by then. Why did the process of things always have to be so damn frustrating? Why couldn't clearing Chloe's name be easy?

Taking a moment to calm herself down, Lois latched onto the fact that the man was actually going to come forward and be in the article. Even if he didn't do it sooner rather than later, he was still saying he would. It was too bad she couldn't get some kind of written-in-stone lock on that fact, but just getting the man to say it would have to be enough. It was certainly better than hearing him say no and hang up on her.

Lois walked back into the den and sat down on the floor, watching Jacob for a moment. She knew that Clark was watching her, but didn't really feel like saying anything at the moment. She thought about retreating from the room and letting her anger simmer for a little while, which would really put an edge on everything she did the rest of the evening, but in the end decided against it. What good would it do? She'd just end up saying something stupid, and that rarely worked in her favor.

After a few minutes of watching him, Jacob crawled over to her and held out a hand. Having never seen him do that before, Lois smiled and took his hand, shaking it lightly. "Hi there. Nice to see you again, too." She let go of his hand and he started making sounds that generally went with a wet diaper, so she leaned over and picked him up. She gave his diaper a quick check and frowned. "You must have heard my phone call and decided to take a similar action."

After getting Jacob cleaned up, Lois walked back into the den and sat down. When she tried to put Jacob down on the floor he voiced his displeasure, so Lois got him settled sitting against her body as she looked up at Clark. "So, did you listen to the conversation?"

"Not this time. What's the verdict?"

"Willing to talk, wants protection and a deal to not be prosecuted for what he did. He gave me the name Marianne Stone, which was another scientist that knew quite a bit. Here's the kicker: he says that he'll talk before the end of the year, but didn't give a specific date. Until then, we're just flapping in the wind. Oh, and if we keep trying to find him he isn't going to help us."

Clark didn't say anything so Lois looked back down at Jacob, who seemed to be inspecting his hands. She checked to see if he had anything on them, finding nothing but fingers. Funny thing was she'd seen people twenty years older than him sitting in that exact position, baked out of their minds.

Somehow, when finishing school at Met U, she'd found every smokers hideout by pure chance. She'd thought about doing an article on the prevalence of pot smoking at the school, even going so far as trying it a few times to see if she could understand the appeal. She'd found that she preferred drinking. She'd also observed the smokers, and trying to get a decent interview out of any of them would have taken a week. A long, boring week. Combined with the fact that a million similar articles had been done, she'd decided against it. She wouldn't have made a name for herself doing what everyone else did.

Clark pulled the laptop over in front of himself, running through some of the information Lois had found on Marianne Stone. Slipping his glasses on, he looked up as he heard Lois coming down the stairs, pulling her hair up into a ponytail. When she spotted him, she smiled. "Welcome back. How did everything go?"

"Fine, really. Originally I went out to stop a mugging, but after that there was a bank robbery, another mugging, a car jacking and a fire. Thus, it took a while. When did Jacob go down?"

"Not long after you left. He was already getting tired when you were here, and once you were out and not getting him all riled up, he went down without a fuss."

Clark rolled his eyes. "I do not get Jacob all riled up."

"Yeah, because constantly flying him around the room doesn't qualify."

"Making my son laugh shouldn't count as getting him all riled up."

Lois sat down on the couch next to him and pulled the laptop back over where it had been, looking over at him with a slight turn of her head. "You just keep telling yourself that. Now, did you get to read all of the stuff that I found on this site." He nodded, and she continued. "Good. Unfortunately, this is the only site that has her listed, and it's years old. I can't find anything recent. Why did these scientists have to scatter and disappear after their work for Lex?"

Clark smiled at her and sat back, letting his head rest against the couch cushion. "Because if they didn't something in our lives wouldn't be difficult." He chuckled for a second and looked over at her. "Have you ever noticed how many things in our lives are the very definition of 'Nothing worth having is easy,' or something similar? Sometimes situations make me wish the saying had been 'Everything worth having should be easy.' I think our lives would be much simpler if that were the case."

"Unfortunately, I think Chloe's life is determined to be difficult, no matter what we, or more importantly she, wants." Lois sat back for a second before lying down and placing her head in his lap, looking up at him. He started running his fingers softly through her hair. "Do you think this will actually accomplish anything?"

"What? The investigation?"

"Yeah. I mean, we do it, we get Chloe her justice... then what? She goes back to work at the Planet? Will that really turn her life around?"

Would it turn her life around? Clark frowned in thought, but came to one conclusion. "It can't hurt, can it?"

Lois shrugged. "I don't know. Here's what I hope happens: We finish the article and take it to Chloe. She reads it, likes it and we take it to Perry. He gives it his stamp of approval and prints it. Lex looks like the bastard that he is and Chloe gets her job back. She meets somebody great, gets married and has somewhere from three to five awesome kids, because Chloe's kids can be nothing but awesome. Sometime in there she moves in close to us and we can spend tons of time together."

Clark idly scratched at his scalp for a second. "And what's the scenario you're scared of?"

"We finish the article and take it to Chloe. She reads it, likes it and we take it to Perry. He gives it his stamp of approval and prints it. Lex looks like the bastard that he is and Chloe gets her job back."

"I think I've heard something like that recently."

"This is where it differs. Instead of meeting somebody great, Chloe is still so in her head that she can't get back to her life as it was, or at least a reasonable facsimile. Instead of meeting a guy, she's scared of getting hurt and never takes a chance, instead opting to be safe and have no happiness in her personal life. She starts spending less time with us because I always bug her to try and find some happiness in her personal life, and eventually she just gives up on life, dying alone at the ripe old age of fifty."

Clark opened his mouth to say something before finding that he had nothing to say, and promptly closed it. He sat there, not finding much in the way of words for a few minutes before he finally leaned over and placed a soft kiss on her forehead. "Your worries are very specific."

"Once my mind gets rolling, it's hard to stop. Impossible, even. In fact, I'm going to call my mind avalanche prone, especially when it comes to worrying about the people I love."

Clark was about to say something when he heard the front door opening. Lois got up off the couch and walked over, Clark standing up and following. Chloe eased the door shut and turned around, smiling at them. He thought he smelled something, but dismissed it after a second. "Evening, family members. Wasn't expecting you guys to be awake."

"Evening, cousin," Lois responded. "How was the night out with the coworkers?"

She made the OK sign with her hand before walking into the kitchen. Lois followed, as did he, and found Chloe opening up the fridge. She closed it again with orange juice in hand. She put that on the counter and walked over to the pantry, pulling out a bag of Bugles. She took off the clip holding it closed and reached in, pulling out and chomping down on a handful. She smiled at them as she pulled one out and put it on her finger, pointing at each and cackling. Clark glanced at Lois, who looked as confused as he felt.

"Have you been drinking, Chlo?"

She shook her head and grabbed the orange juice, walking out into the living room with her food items in hand. They followed, again. "Nope. Well, I had a rum and coke, but I went and got some pizza with somebody before we joined everybody else at the bar. I just had a good time."

Clark frowned as he caught another whiff of what he'd smelled earlier as he walked through the spot Chloe had been standing in front of the pantry and this time he could identify it: marijuana. Had Chloe brought that smell in?

"So, cuz, if you had one whole rum and coke why are you so smiley? Not that I have a problem with you happy, far from it, but it leads me to wonder towards the why of the situation."

Chloe smiled at Lois, her eyes only half open. "Let's just say that I enjoyed the company. And on that note, I'm going to head to my basement. I bid you guys a fond farewell for the night." She walked off, the door to the basement closing behind her. Clark looked over at Lois.

"She smelled like marijuana smoke."

She spun on her heel and faced him. "What?"

"Chloe smelled like marijuana smoke. I didn't smell it right away, but when I walked through the spot she'd been standing in the kitchen, in front of the pantry, I smelled it."

"So what are you saying? Do you think she smoked pot tonight?"

Clark shrugged. "I don't know. It would explain the random smiling that didn't seem to be her natural smile. I mean, we haven't been awake when she's gotten home from these nights with the coworkers before, so we don't know if she's been like this before. Maybe she is drunk and just didn't want to tell us. All I know is that she smelled like marijuana."

"I bet some of the people she went out with tonight were the ones getting stoned and Chloe was just around them. When I went back to school, while you were doing your training, I seemed to have a knack for finding stoned people. I know the smell well, and didn't catch half a whiff. I would come home from five minutes around those people and smell just like them for hours. If I can't smell it... it's just incidental, Smallville. Chloe wouldn't smoke pot."

Running a hand through her still drying hair, Lois walked down the stairs and attempted to stifle a yawn as she walked towards the kitchen. Jacob had decided to make a long night of it, and Clark hadn't been around to help, so she was working on four hours sleep. Could be worse, she figured. Lois spotted Chloe as she walked into the kitchen, and the blonde smiled at her.
What Clark had said the other night still weighed on her mind. Chloe wouldn't smoke pot. Yeah, she herself had done it some, but that was research for a potential article! It was never meant to be anything but that, and it never was. And hell, if she was smoking it, there were a dozen worse things she could be on. Some people swore it did a world of good for the body, and while Lois didn't buy that, she knew that things could be worse.

She smiled back at Chloe, resolving to find out just what exactly went on at one of these nights out. "So, it's Tuesday night. That usually means you're out with the coworkers drinking. Mind if I join you tonight?"

Chloe walked to the table, her back to her. She looked over a second later. "Actually it got called off tonight. Everybody else has things going on."

"Really? That's too bad." Lois walked over and sat down at the table with her, pulling off a little piece of the bagel for herself. If these nights were so much fun, maybe she could join in on it, or at least be a replacement. "Why don't we make a night of it for ourselves? We can go out to a bar and see if we can't find you somebody to bring home."

"What? No. What? No."

Lois rubbed at the corner of an eye for a second as she spoke. "Why not? You've been going out with them for what, about six weeks now? Not once have I seen a guy sneaking out of the basement or heard you coming home in the wee hours of the night after a one night stand."

"I thought you were just happy I was going out with people!"

"I am. Now I want to be happy that you're back in the game."

Chloe groaned. "Oh, come on..."

Since she couldn't get Chloe to take her on the night out with coworkers, maybe now she could push her get Chloe a guy or some sex plan. "It's been five months, Chloe. It's time to get back out there. I know I tried to get you started dating back in July and I figured that would go over poorly, which it did. But it's been five months. It's time to move on and find yourself somebody to love, or at least use for a night."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," Chloe said. "You've never said anything like this to me before. Espousing me having a one night stand? Are you kidding me?"

"If it gets you back out there, then I'm all for it!"

"Jesus, we're having a conversation better suited for college students."

Lois rolled her eyes and got up, walking over to the coffee maker and pouring two cups. She brought them over and handed one to Chloe. "No, we're not. We're having a conversation that relates to my baby cousin being afraid to get back into the world of sex and dating. I understand you've been hurt, but I will not allow you to end up alone because of it."

"You won't allow it?"

Lois shook her head. "I won't. In fact, if you haven't had some form of a significant relationship within the year I'm going to take it as a personal affront. You know how well I react to personal affronts."

"You can't write an article and take me down, Lois. I've already been taken down so far that my feet can feel the slightest touch of Dante's Inferno."

"What I can do is start setting you up on blind dates and making sure you show up."

Chloe's eyes widened. "You wouldn't."

Lois's eyes narrowed. "I would, and the only way to get out of them would be for you to get into a real relationship."

Lois knew Chloe hated blind dates. The last had apparently been the worst and the one that had caused her to completely swear off of blind dates.

"Fine," she said through clenched teeth.

Lois smiled a self satisfied smile and took a sip of her coffee. If she were honest with herself, she would call it a victory sip, but it would be presumptuous to call getting her cousin to agree to do something within a year victorious. "All right. Now, we're still going to go out tonight. I'll call Lucy and we'll hit a bar."

"She's five months pregnant, Lo."

"Bars have non-alcoholic drinks."

"What about Jacob? If Clark has to run off to save somebody..."

"...then Jimmy will be here to watch my son. There's a baseball game on tonight, I'm sure, so they can watch that together."

Chloe let her head drop. Lois wished that Chloe didn't see this as a chore. Lois thought that it was an opportunity, but lately they hadn't always shared similar views on things. "All right, we'll go out. We're going to be just about the worst trio in bar history, though."

"Why do you say that?"
"You're married, Lucy is married and pregnant and I'm emotionally crippled and not looking to do anything but drink and fend off my cousins and their need to fix my life."

"And hook up."

"I plan on being too busy with the last part to do that."

"We'll see."

Making her way through a small group of people, Lois got to Chloe and handed her the beer she'd gotten for her. "So, who do we like around here, Chlo?"

"Alcoholic beverages. They don't think to try and talk to me, they just make me happy."

"I've known guys like that," Lucy said as she drank her non-alcoholic something or other. Lois frowned at Lucy's drink; the thing looked like it had more fruit in it that liquid. "They can be fun."

Shaking her head, Lois walked back into the crowd as she took drink from her vodka cranberry. She didn't care what anybody said, the things were tasty. She looked around a minute before spotting a blond haired guy all by his lonesome at the bar. He looked like he could be somebody Chloe liked physically, if nothing else. She made her way over and stepped up next to him, smiling. "Hey there."

He looked over at her and smiled. "Hi. I'm Keith."

"I have somebody I want you to meet. It isn't me," she said as she flashed her wedding ring at him, "but it's somebody I think you could like." She pointed back at Chloe. "You see the blonde by herself over there? Her name's Chloe, and I think you two should meet."

"Please, lead the way."

Lois did exactly that, guiding him through the bar to Chloe. She tapped her cousin on the shoulder and smiled. "Have you met Keith?"

Lois backed away and gave a stunned looking Chloe a thumbs up before she walked back towards the area of the bar Lucy had said she'd be in. She found her sister sitting in a booth and sat down across from her. "Well, the first guy is in the firing line. Should I have found somebody homely to start her off with?"

Lucy shrugged. "How the hell should I know? I've never been in the business of setting people up before. In fact, I've tried to avoid it for the most part. I don't like putting my friends or family in that position."
"What position?"

"The position of being angry with me for setting them up with somebody they didn't like."

"What about being angry with you for various other reasons? I recall that when we were younger that didn't seem to bother you, at all because I was angry with you often."

Lucy smiled. "Youthful indiscretions."

"That's one way of looking at it," Lois mumbled. She looked away from Lucy and let her eyes scan the crowd. It wasn't crowded, but it wasn't exactly empty either. People were standing and sitting all over the place, most in pairs or small groups. She watched as a couple guys walked over to them and rolled her eyes. Before they got to the table she lifted up her left hand and showed them the ring, scaring them away.

She'd found the power of the ring to be an odd thing. It was able to scare away men looking for women in a single flash, faster than Superman could think, really. Sometimes it didn't get the point across, but that just gave her a chance to vent pent up annoyances at some unsuspecting guy that couldn't take a hint.

"Do you remember what this kind of night was like?"

Lois snapped out of her thoughts and looked at her sister. "What?"

"These nights, going to the bar and seeing if you couldn't find a guy worth dating."

"I remember it," Lois said. "I don't miss it. The small talk drove me insane. I don't want to have to tell people my life story. I didn't like living parts of it, and I didn't want to relive it. It's why I'm so glad I found somebody that knew all my history before we started dating. It saved me the effort of getting to know somebody, though I did have to get to know Clark again after he got back from his world travels. He had some interesting backstory he'd never told me."

"Like what?"

Lois waved a hand at her. "Nothing worth mentioning. It seemed big at the time, but now it makes total sense."

Just then Chloe walked up to the booth and sat down next to Lucy. "Sorry guys, I struck out."

Lois frowned at her and Lucy smacked her on the arm with the back of her hand. She scowled at each of them in turn. "I told you that your machinations to get me all sexed up were not going to work tonight! Just because you two Lane women feel that I should be doing something does not mean I should actually be doing it."

"I tend to disagree with that statement," Lois said before taking a drink of her vodka cranberry. She hadn't expected the first guy to work, but Chloe sounded like she was already giving up. Of course, that was assuming she'd actually tried.

"I thought you might. Anyway, this night isn't going to lead to anything, so I'm going to go." Downing the rest of her beer, she started scooting towards the end of the seat.

"What? You've only talked to one guy!"

"And that's one more than I wanted to talk to. I'll see you at home later tonight, Lo. Luce, I'm sure I'll see you soon." Getting up, Chloe smiled at each and walked off, making her way through the people. Lois gaped at her as she disappeared into the crowd.

"Well, we tried."

Lois looked over at Lucy. "We did, but she didn't! Why the hell won't she try?"

"She's scared of putting her heart out there again, Lo. She's told both of us that, separately. Maybe we should just accept it since apparently she has."

"She doesn't have to put her heart out there at a bar, Luce! Jesus, all she has to do is smile and three guys will come to her! She won't even fracking try anymore, and I'm sick of it. I know bad things happened, and I don't know how I would have handled it, but I know that I wouldn't quit on the world!"

Lois finished the rest of her drink. "You know what, if she's not going to try, neither am I. Consider me out of this mess. She can wallow all she wants. I've tried to snap her out of her funk, but if this is how she wants to handle things, so be it. I love her, but she's on her own."

"I think that's what she wanted, Lo."

Lois just glared at her sister. "That isn't helping."

"I know, but I think you need to hear it. You can't help somebody that doesn't want to be helped. If she wants to be miserable and alone, that's what she is going to be. Not even the great Lois Lane can change that, no matter how much she wants to."

Lois tried to glare, but gave it up and just slumped backwards. "The great Lois Lane knows that, but she doesn't like it. Not helping somebody she loves causes her heart to hurt, and she hates it when her heart hurts. It's the worst pain she knows."