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Pride, Prejudice & Jimmy Choos
[-6-]
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“Well it’s about time!” Lois exclaimed as she answered Chloe’s knock on the door. “Did you get lost on the way to the kitchen?”
Ignoring her cousin’s sarcastic barb—something she had gotten really good at over the years—Chloe stepped into the room before pausing in shock. “Whoa! You cleaned up?”
Lois frowned and looked around the room. “Cleaned up? No, I packed,” she replied brightly, gesturing toward the suitcases that were lined against the wall near the door.
Chloe grimaced. “Packed?”
Lois’s eyes narrowed slightly at Chloe’s weak return. “Chloe.” The rest of her statement—the ‘what aren’t you telling me?’ part—went unspoken.
Biting her lower lip, the petite blonde smiled gently. “I didn’t come out here to pick you up, Lo.”
Confused, Lois raised a hand. “I see your lips moving, but I don’t understand a word you just said.”
Chloe arched an eyebrow but didn’t reply.
“Chloe!” Lois’s eyes widened as she threw up both hands and paced further into the room. “What do you mean you’re not here to pick me up?! You see the Hell Sam and Tess stuck Lola in!”
Chloe leaned against the closed door she’d just entered through. “I kinda think Lola needs it,” she mumbled under her breath, obviously conflicted about disagreeing with her older cousin about something like this.
Offended, Lois sank down on the bed and sent a heated glare across the room. “Et tu, Brutus? Leave me to rot while you bask in Lola Dakota’s glory?”
Chloe sighed. “It’s not like that, Lois, and you know it. Listen to yourself. It’s Lola this and Lola that. Where does *Lois* fit into all of this?”
“What are you talking about? Lois is right here.”
“Is she really?” Chloe rolled her eyes. Now she had gotten caught up in the whole third person thing. “I mean, are you?” When Lois looked at her with clear confusion, Chloe went on, “With the way you’ve been acting lately, I’m not sure which persona is dominant anymore. The worst part is that I don’t think *you* are even sure half the time.”
Lois replied with a dismissive one-shoulder shrug.
“Or,” Chloe said, warily yet with dawning certainty, “you know exactly what you’re doing and you’re purposely letting Lola possess you twenty-four seven.”
“Geeze,” Lois scoffed. “Possession, Chloe? Really?”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed, undeterred. “Why on Earth would you want to be Lola Dakota all the time? She’s naïve. She’s insincere. She’s…”
“…Fun,” Lois entered. “She’s rich and she has friends. She has a *career* for Pete’s sake! Lois Lane, on the other hand, is stuck on a farm somewhere between Podunk and Hicksville… with a cousin who refuses to play Scofield to her Burrows.”
Chloe rolled her eyes at the Prison Break alliteration. “And you don’t see the correlation there?”
“You mean the correlation of you being free and me being… not?”
“No. The one where you lose yourself to your creation and the people who love you trying to stop it from happening.”
Lois favored her cousin with a mock serious face. “Love doesn’t hurt, Chloe. Didn’t you see my after school special?”
Chloe couldn’t help but release a small smile at the fact that Lois wasn’t angry enough that her humor was gone. Then again, the fact that Lois wasn’t taking the conversation seriously meant that she really was committed to becoming Lola full-time. She suddenly sobered at the thought. “I’m seriously concerned, Lois.”
“You’re seriously overdramatic, Chloe. Lola’s larger than life, but she’s harmless.”
“Harmless? I don’t call missing a nationally televised concert harmless.”
Lois rolled her eyes and fell back onto the bed. “Merely an oversight.”
Chloe let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “An oversight, huh?”
Lois quickly sat back up and peered at her cousin. “Hey what are you complaining about? Sully stock skyrocketed after Lolagate.”
Chloe was quiet for a few minutes as they dueled gazes. Finally she sighed and shook her head, breaking the silent test of wills.
Lois released a long breath, her aloofness apparently waning. “Thanks for brining the phone, but if you’re not here to help me and my luggage cross the border then…”
Chloe’s jaw tightened. Musical ability wasn’t the only thing that the cousins shared. “Not so fast. I’m not leaving yet. First of all, I was invited to dinner, and second, I’m staying the night so you might as well make room for me in that bed,” she countered, making Lois arch an eyebrow, “and finally… I had a feeling you wouldn’t be too happy with me at this point, so I brought you something as a peace offering.”
Lois silently battled against her affinity for gifts as she weighed her cousin’s counter. If she acquiesced to Chloe’s challenge, the conversation they were having—which she wasn’t particularly enjoying—would undoubtedly continue.
She studied Chloe’s face. The smug expression that she saw there made her curious about what the surprise was. It had to be Ace-in-the-Hole good. “Fine. Whatever,” she sighed. Then, trying not to appear eager, “What’d you bring me?”
Chloe grinned, definitely pleased with herself, and pushed away from the wall. Opening the door, she held up a finger toward Lois and leaned outside.
Lois watched in amused confusion as her cousin’s torso disappeared as she bent over to pick something up that was currently out of her sight. When Chloe was upright again, she pulled a black guitar case in front of her and closed the door.
Lois perked slightly. “You brought me a guitar?”
“Not just any guitar,” Chloe responded, picking up the case and carrying it across the room and setting it on the bed next to Lois. She stepped back and nodded at it. “Open it.”
Frowning at Chloe’s just-under-the-lid excitement, Lois flipped the clasps on the case and lifted the top. When she took in the Cherry finish acoustic that lay cushioned inside, she gasped. “Lucy,” she said reverently, hesitating to even touch the prized possession. She looked up at Chloe. “How did you get this out of the vault? Does Sam know you have this? That *I* have this?”
Chloe shook her head. “No, he doesn’t know, and no, I can’t reveal my sources.”
The words after the first “No” were pretty much lost on Lois as she stared down at the guitar.
“She would have wanted you to have it. Not for it to be hung up in some museum-worthy display case,” Chloe said softly.
~\s/~
Clark sighed as he crossed through the main gate of the small cemetery that had served generations of the Kent family for as long as they had been living in Smallville. After his argument with Lois, he’d gone to burn off some steam while finishing up the day’s chores. It hadn’t really worked, and yet while he was angrily pounding nails into repaired posts, a thought had occurred to him to explain his short temper.
He hadn’t talked to his Dad since before Lois had arrived… and that wasn’t normal for him.
Strolling along the path with obvious familiarity, Clark arrived at the solemn headstone that did little to represent the essence and full life of the man whose name and title were etched into the granite surface. Clark held no delusions about the location—he believed that if his father could in fact hear him beyond the grave, he could hear him anywhere—but the practice of coming to the site held symbolic, if not comforting, meaning for him.
“Hey, Dad,” Clark greeted, bending over to clear the few wild grasses that had sprouted during his absence. “It’s been a while. I’m sorry about that.”
He moved over to the stone bench that was adjacent to the grave and sat down. “Things got a little crazy at home for a while there.” Smiling, he raised his eyebrows and added, “Not that they aren’t still crazy. We have a house guest… at least that’s what Mom calls her. More like a house *pest* if you ask me. She’s loud, she’s annoying, argumentative…” Catching himself, he paused. “When I said all this to Mom, she accused me of being attracted to her.”
Shaking his head, he leaned forward and braced his elbows against his knees. “That’s not even in the realm of possibilities.” For a quiet moment he just sat and looked at his clasped fingers. “I let her get to me today. Normally, that wouldn’t happen. Chloe is her cousin—can you believe it? I can’t.
“The thing is, I don’t even know why she got to me. I mean, sure, she made some back-handed comment about me being illiterate, but I can’t really say that *that* was what did it.” He sighed and sat back up. “I know what you’re going to say. The school thing, right?” His brow creased. “I just…”
He stopped just short of his standard response—(“…can’t leave mom”)—knowing that both he and his father would not be fooled by that one… And Clark had been trying to fool himself for years.
Senior year had started full of promise for Clark. Having already accepted a football scholarship to A&M, he was pretty much footloose and fancy free, as his mom had often said. Sure, he’d had to overcome some major weirdness in a relatively short span of time in his life… namely strange abilities and an even stranger tale about meteor showers and space craft… but overall he’d been as close to carefree as they come.
The “we found you in a space pod” story told to him by his parents had thrown Clark for a loop when he was fifteen. The fact that they hadn’t been able to keep the craft had made it even harder to believe, and the huge metal marble that they were able to retrieve didn’t do much to make the case. The non-answers bothered him for a while, but as he got ahold of his powers, his confidence grew. He was invincible.
Then his father died.
And if all of that weren’t enough, the metal marble had chosen the day of the funeral to wake up and speak. Not only was he an alien from a distant galaxy, but he was the last survivor of a dead world.
The death of Jonathan Kent right after Christmas shook Clark to his core and showed him that while he couldn’t be physically harmed, his soul could be shattered. He was vulnerable through love—and so it was by not loving that he protected himself while vowing to protect those of his loved ones that remained… lest once again, he survive alone.
“I’m not illiterate,” Clark ground out, suddenly fighting memories of once-held goals and future plans delayed. “Troglodyte. Noun. From the Latin, Troglodytae meaning he who delves in holes. A crass and savage being. One who dwells in caves and resists civilization and social activity,” he rattled off. “That’s what I wanted to say back to her. That’s what I was *about* to say, but then I started thinking about *why* I needed to say anything back at all and in the end it just looked like I couldn’t think of anything to say.” He sighed. “So I walked away and looked like a coward. Who does that?”
Clark listened to the wind brushing through the leaves and could almost hear what his father would say in response… a response he didn’t like too much.
“Oh, not you too,” he groaned, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at the stone. “I *don’t* like her.” He paused for emphasis before continuing, “but I do have a confession to make.”
~\s/~
“So… I have a confession to make.”
Lois raised her eyes from the guitar she was stroking to take in her cousin’s sheepish expression. “Is this confession in the same category of you leaving me in Salem, Kansas?”
“*Smallville*, Kansas,” Chloe corrected, “and… it depends.”
Lois’s gaze narrowed dangerously. “…On?”
“On… just how stoked you are that I brought you that guitar!”
Lois smirked at the blonde’s effusion and let her eyes fall back down the guitar in her lap. “She always said that I was her first baby and Lucy was her second.” Her brow creased as she began to think, “But if this were Blues Clues, and you were Blue, then the guitar of the late great Ella Dean Lane,” she said, lifting the neck of the instrument into vision, “would be a paw print.” Fixing Chloe unwaveringly in her sights, she arched the I-mean-business eyebrow. “What gives?”
Chloe chuckled nervously. “Coachella. The GMA deal got me a last minute invite… and I, uh, was hoping you’d help me with the playlist.” She flashed a wide pretty-please-because-you-love-me smile and waited for an answer. She kept that smile just as bright for the entire three minutes that Lois glared at her.
Sighing, Lois shook her head and set her fingers in position to play an A-minor chord progression. “How long of a set did they give you?”
“Yes!” Chloe exclaimed, jumping up and rushing the bed. After hugging her older cousin, she settled back onto the sofa and cleared her throat. “I mean, twelve minutes,” she said nonchalantly, acting as if she hadn't just been squealing like a little girl.
“Twelve minutes, huh?” Lois said thoughtfully as she continued working through a few warm-up exercises. She paused to tweak the tuners on the headstock. Closing her eyes, she began working her way flawlessly through Asturias, Issac Albeniz’s classic tune.
Chloe smiled as she watched Lois’s fingers move deftly across the frets. It was in quiet moments like these that she loved being one of the few that knew this softer and freer version of Lois Lane.
A few minutes later, Lois halted the song after one of the slower movements and peered at Chloe with an assessing gaze. “While I definitely think you need to play the chart toppers, most of the people who attend the Fest are probably not going to know your stuff that well. You should really switch some stuff up. It’ll be a great chance to attract a new fan base.” She smirked. “Not everyone gets up in time to see Good Morning America.”
Chloe nodded but frowned slightly. “Switch some stuff up?”
“Yeah, like… here let me show you.” Working through the opening of one of Chloe’s ballads, Lois increased the tempo slightly and started in on the lyrics with a strong soulful voice. “I’m still not used to me/ I don’t know who to be/ Can’t find the missing pieces on my own/ Morning without you is like the sky without the blue/ I’m staring at a picture torn in two/ Torn in two…” Stopping right before the first chorus, she raised her eyebrows at Chloe in silent question.
“Yeah, I like that. I like that,” Chloe said excitedly, chiming in, her voice not as powerful but still quite polished, “I’m still not used to me, whoo! I don’t know…”
“No,” Lois interrupted. “There is no ‘whoo!’” she said copying the high-pitched embellishment her cousin had included in her rendition of the song. “I didn’t add a ‘whoo!’ when I wrote it; it doesn’t need a ‘whoo!’ now. Don’t add the ‘whoo!’”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Fine. No ‘whoo!’ You singer/songwriter types are so touchy,” she said slouching back into the couch with a pout.
Lois smirked. “Yeah, as opposed to you singer/singer types, right?” She started playing the song again, trying out different chord sets and arpeggios.
After listening for a while, Chloe perked up. “Don’t you ever wish you could sing these songs yourself?”
Lois frowned. “Nah. I wrote them for you.
Chloe ran the opening lyrics through her mind again. (’m still not used to me/ I don’t know who to be…) “Did you?”
“Of course I did. A ballad for Lola has a 120 bpm tempo.”
“Aaannd she’s back,” Chloe groaned, thinking that they were back to using the third-person point-of-view.
“Chloe, don’t start. I was really enjoying our campfire-kumbaya moment.”
“I’m just worried that Lola’s on the verge of self-destruction and taking you down with her.”
“Maybe that’s the way it should be,” Lois muttered.
Chloe sat up and turned her body toward the bed where Lois still sat. “What’s that supposed to mean?!”
In frustration, Lois played an ugly broken chord and set the guitar flat on her lap. “Nothing, Chloe. That’s the point. It means nothing.”
“That’s not true, Lois. Your mom created Lola so you could still live your life as Lois. That’s not ‘nothing.’ Nothing is what you are in danger of doing with her legacy.”
“Touchy topic, Chloe. You so don’t want to open that can,” Lois warned in a low tone.
“No. Opening that can is *exactly* what I want to do! Every time someone tries to bring you back from the edge, you ignore them. Your mother wouldn’t like who you ‘as Lola’ are letting yourself become.”
“You always think you know everything!” Lois exclaimed, barely restraining from yelling at the top of her lungs. “My mother started calling me Lola when she taught me to sing Copacabana when I was three. You are right about one thing, though. She was a legend and after she died when I was six, she left a legacy; one so big that Lola Dakota was the only way Sam would let me anywhere near a stage. He said the world would see me only as a piece of the woman they knew as Ella the Great, and that they’d rip me apart just to get her. So I became Lola,” she continued, hardly pausing for a breath in her pique, “and instead of becoming the artist that my dead mother could be proud of, Lois Lane simply doesn’t exist!”
Chloe’s green eyes had grown increasingly wider throughout her cousin’s speech and she felt chagrined as Lois finally revealed a glimpse into the turmoil that her dual identities were causing. When Lois stood from the bed and stalked toward the door, Chloe jumped to her feet. “Lois!”
Lois pulled the door open and without turning to face her cousin, held up one hand with the fingers spread. “Five minutes, Chloe. I don’t want to talk to you for five minutes.”
And with that, she stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her.
~\s/~
Clark looked around the empty cemetery, hesitating to expand on his previous statement. Confessing that he had a confession to make had been the easy part. Now that it was time to reveal the rest, he was having a hard time spilling the proverbial beans.
“I’ve been doing a lot of research on agricultural innovation,” he said. “Lois doesn’t appreciate it but there have been some recent developments in the use of manure to harvest methane gas for sustainable energy. When I tried explaining all of that to the city girl, she started calling me 'manure farmer.' Farming may be what I do, but it’s not who I am,” he finished strongly.
Sighing, he shrugged. “But you probably guessed that the whole manure thing isn’t the confession.” He dropped his head. “I don’t think Mom wants to run the farm anymore… At least not to the extent that we have it now.” He cleared his throat. “She keeps trying to nudge me into talking about law school again and I avoid the topic. I want to believe that she needs me here, but…”
He ran his hands along his thighs. “I found a business plan that she’d put together a while back. Organic foods. It was really good, really sound marketing ideas and everything. I think she’s ready to put that MBA to work.” He reached up with one hand and massaged the back of his neck. “Or she would be, if I didn’t guilt trip her into not pursuing it. I mean, she didn’t know I saw the plan or anything… I just, might have, maybe, emphasized how important the farm was to this family… a little.” Once again, he imagined hearing his father speak, only this time, he imagined the look on his dad’s face as well. Nodding, he said, “I know. I know what you’d say, but… I’m scared,” he finished in a whisper. “Not what you’d expect to hear from the world’s strongest man, is it?”
He sat for a few minutes just letting the guilt of his actions—or inactions—flow over him. Finally, he stood, bending over the gravesite to press his fingers to the silent stone as a farewell. “Well, dinner should be about ready, so I better get back. Talk to you soon, Dad. Still wish you were here. Every day.”
With his head still down, Clark made his way back to the opening in the gate. He was taken by surprise when, in his distracted stride, he ran into another person—accidently causing them to fall. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, stooping to help the other party up. “Lois?”
“I didn’t see you…” she said distractedly as he pulled her to her feet. “I was just… walking,” she explained lamely, moving to go around him.
He frowned as he realized that she seemed to be avoiding looking at him. Against his conscious will, he felt some strain of concern flick through him. “Are you okay?” he asked, dipping his head in an attempt to see her face. Then his eyebrows rose. “Have you been crying?”
She scoffed but still didn’t meet his gaze. “I got something in my eye,” she replied, rubbing at the aforementioned body part. “Probably around the time you ran me over.”
He didn’t buy it but was unsure of how to respond… or even if he should. “Um, dinner… It’ll probably ready soon.”
Lois nodded and stepped around him. “Yeah. You go ahead. I’ll be right there. I just want to walk a bit.”
He turned as she stepped through the wrought iron gates. She was so unnaturally subdued that he found himself looking for something to bring back the spark. “You know, most people don’t really consider cemeteries to be great places to hang out,” he called after her.
She turned around and he could see that she had slid those damned designer sunglasses over her eyes. “Really?” she asked. “So what does that say about you?”
Nodding, he smirked and turned to walk away, all the while wondering the same exact thing to himself.
~\s/~
tbc...
A/N: The song lyrics sung in this part is actually a song by Brooke White, entitled, “When We Were One.”
