“I’m 19, and my mother is in her mid thirties. Yeah, teenage pregnancy and all that,” Chloe explained. “My stepfather – your father – asked me to call you for him. They – my mom and your dad - went on a cruise, and won’t return for a couple of weeks. They’re planning on coming east as soon as they get back. Your father was so happy to hear that you were alive.”
Well, not bad. Chloe seems like a relatively nice girl. Of course, we haven't yet seen that she isn't just trying to exploit Lois's connection with Superman to get a piece of the action herself - but, well, so far she seems okay, and Lois could probably do a lot worse for a step-sister.
And Sam was glad to hear that Lois is alive - really?
I’m going to be transferring to Met U from UCLA next semester. I’m majoring in journalism. Maybe you’ll be able to put a good word in for me, so I can get an internship at the Daily Planet?
Of course, Chloe's asking for favors already....
Lois did a search engine inquiry for the name “Chloe Sullivan” and got 2 hits: Dean’s List, fall 1996 and spring 1997, UCLA; and another hit for a story she had written for her high school newspaper about the strange effects of meteorites on the residents of a quaint California coastal town, Little Ville. Apparently there had been a meteor shower back in the early 1990’s and several of the townsfolk had been demonstrating unusual abilities.
Now
this is interesting, to be sure. A spaceship from Krypton brings Superbaby to Smallville in 1966, and a meteroite shower in the early nineties over
Little Ville (of all places!!!) gives the people there some kind of superpowers! Coincidence? In a Lois and Clark fic? I think not....
So, Chris, I expect to be enlightened as to what those meteorites were, why they affected people the way they did, and why they would hit the Earth in the early nineties (which is when Lois and Clark first met in "our" universe, hmmm?
Chloe had constructed a “wall of weird happenings” bulletin board in the office of her high school paper
A wall of weird happenings? Chris, you can't just leave it like that, without explaining it to us!!!
<Hmmm… she’s legit, I guess. At least she didn’t lie about being a writer.>
Good to know that Chloe is really a writer.
Lois brought up the archives of the Daily Planet and keyed in the name “Ellen Lane”. An obituary popped up, but now her date of death had changed!
“Oh, no, no…. Clark!” Lois groaned. “It didn’t work. Now she didn’t die of alcoholism, she was killed by a hit and run driver… one week after Herb and I left.
NOOOO!!!!! Now Ellen didn't die of alcoholism two or three
years after Lois disappeared, now she was killed by a hit and run driver one
week after Lois had come to see her!!!
)
“Where are we, Herbie George?”
Oh, I
love Lois's way of speaking! No Mr Wells, Herbert or even Herb for her!
As she knocked, she was acutely aware that there was a possibility that this would be the last time she ever saw her mother.
And it was! <sniffle>
“Mother – you’re living in the past. Maybe if you got out more, mingled with people – you’d actually meet someone nice, that would treat you well. Have you ever thought of that?”
Ah, such good advice - but how horrible things turned out when Ellen took her daughter's advice to heart!
“Me? Be with someone other than your father? No, Lois. Your father may be a bastard, but he was *my* bastard. No man can take his place.”
Like others have pointed out - this was priceless!
Ellen looked at the obituary with her name on it. “So that’s the date I cash in my chips, huh? You could have had anyone at the Daily Planet print this up – I know! Is this some type of intervention? Is that what you’re up to? Because it’s not going to work, Lois. I’m perfectly fine.” Ellen took the article, scrunched it up in a ball, and threw it across the room.
Lois has inherited her bluntness and her sarcastic deadpan in almost any situation from somebody... from her mother, that is!!
“That’s it, Lois! Now you’re talking crazy. Why would someone abduct you? Did you do an expose on some underworld figure that’s out to get you? I warned you how dangerous a career in journalism could be…”
“Now I know who I got the babble gene from, Mother,”
And she has inherited the babble gene from Ellen, too!
Ellen Lane peered into her daughter’s eyes. “I know I shouldn’t believe you, but … somehow, I do. All right, Lois, I’ll do it. I’ll stop drinking. Right now.”
Ellen got up, grabbed her wine bottle and dumped the contents down the sink. “There! I did it! I don’t understand what the Hell you’ve been rambling on and on about, Lois, but … okay. I’ll get out more. I can’t believe you’re telling me I won’t see you again for five whole years. There’s just so much a mother can take. Losing her baby girl for all that time….oh, Lois.”
The two women clung to each other for what seemed like an eternity.
Even though Ellen died only a week after her talk with Lois, I'm glad she and Lois had such a sweet and heartwarming last meeting. Ellen did change, if only for a week.
“I guess you were right, Herb. You said this Tempus guy loved irony. How would he like this story? I got my mother to promise to stop drinking so she wouldn’t die of alcoholism. I suggested that she get out and mingle with people instead of feeling sorry for herself. She actually listened to me…first time, ever. And then – she gets killed by a drunk driver. So, in a way, alcoholism killed her anyway – not hers – someone else’s.”
Over in Sue's Faustian in the nfic folder, Lois asks Clark if something was sadly ironic or ironically sad - I'd say that what happened to Ellen Lane (and by extension to Lois) was sadly, ironically sad.
Lois was almost afraid to find out how her rescue effort to keep her sister alive had fared, after seeing how miserably her attempt to change her mother’s life had turned out.
Clark looked around the bullpen and was suddenly shocked to see James Olsen and a beautiful blond woman kissing in front of his office door. He gently tapped Lois on her shoulder. “Lois… you’re not gonna believe this,” Clark whispered. “Over there,” he said, pointing towards the office of the owner of the Daily Planet.
Did the somewhat bitchy Lucy manage to avoid the plane crash? And has she hit it off with James Olsen?
Questions, questions. It's so interesting to see where you are taking this!
Ann
