Lois & Clark Forums Forums Superman In Other Canon Superman In Other Canon Fanfic Twelve Steps From Smallville 44/57 (Smallville & the Superman movies)

Author's note: Events in this section make reference to the movie, "Superman Returns".

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Perry walked carefully down the dim hallways of the large hospital, feeling refreshed after his nap. Clocks told him the time was 3:36 a.m. Perry made his way to the visitor elevators and punched the "nine" button. With interest, he saw that the North Tower had fifteen floors, but there was no thirteenth floor. The numbers in the elevator went directly from twelve to fourteen. Maybe being on the thirteenth floor had a reverse placebo effect on the patients? Did they get sicker?

The elevator doors hissed open, and Perry found himself on the ninth floor. He passed through some large doors and made his way to the nursing station. No one was there, so Perry continued his even walk down the dimmed hall, following the signs to Room 9538.

He knocked gently at the open door, and heard a quiet "Come in." Perry eased his way in and saw Richard smiling at him from the hospital bed. Richard's eyes were dark pools in the ashen pallor of his face, and he looked ten years older than he had earlier that day.

"You look like hell," Perry blurted out.

"Why don't you say what you really feel?" Richard riposted. Then Richard looked down at himself, attached to IV fluids, a blood transfusion bag, numerous monitoring devices, an IV antibiotic drip, a pain pump, and some other equipment that Perry had no idea was for. He looked up to catch Perry's eye.

"How are you feeling, Richard?" Perry asked, pulling up a chair.

"Not bad," Richard said carefully. "They said that I lost a lot of blood, so they're transfusing me." He made as if to point to the blood bag, but winced as he stretched his bandaged arm. "They got the bullet out, and I'm on the happy drugs." He glanced toward the morphine pump.

Perry reached out to touch Richard's hand. "I'm glad you're still here," he said, heartfelt. He felt a fleeting impression of warmth from the other man's hand before he released it.

"I am too," Richard said. Neither man said more. That was it for the uncle-nephew bonding stuff, thought Perry.

The hospital room was quiet for a moment, and the constant tracing of the ECG graph on Richard's monitor in the dimness made tiny reflections off Perry's glasses. Perry sat back in his chair and relaxed.

"Clark was by earlier," Richard said quietly. Maybe it was the morphine, but Richard was being awfully even-tempered about this.

"Um?" Perry said noncommittally.

For a moment Richard seemed to rise out of his lassitude. "He told me that Lois and Jason were safe," he said.

"That's good," Perry said. The dim stillness of Richard's room, the passivity and pallor that Richard displayed, all combined to create an eerie surreality.

"It's like a dream," Richard said, his voice small.

"Uh-huh," Perry agreed.

"But it's not, is it?" Richard asked quietly. "Everything really happened, didn't it?" He seemed almost beaten, a small figure in the large bed. "I mean, Lex Luthor shot up our house and wanted to kidnap Jason because….because…."

Perry only nodded.

Richard shuddered back into the bed. Quietly he said, "I knew it wasn't a dream, but I was hoping it was." Perry noticed that the younger man was blinking back tears. "Jason…." Richard managed to choke out.

What did you say to a man who thought all along that the child he'd raised was his own son? And then found out it wasn't? Perry only sighed. He let Richard struggle, affording him the respect of not minimizing or diminishing his grief. Perry waited, allowing a decent interval for Richard to compose himself.

At last Richard seemed to have control. They were doing an awful lot of communicating tonight with just glances, Perry thought. Perry took a breath and asked Richard, "What are you going to say to the police?"

Richard's eyes widened. He hadn't thought about that, Perry figured. Perry, of course, had covered the city beat and the crime beat for so long that he knew all the ropes. But Richard had worked International – he'd never been intimately involved with the seedy underbelly of Metropolis. In some ways, Lois was tougher, more worldly than Richard.

"Uh – I never thought – " Richard blurted. Then a pause. "Oh."

"Do you want to hear the official story?" Perry asked him.

Richard shot him a gaze from under lowered eyelids. The younger man seemed even wearier. "Yes."

Perry gave him the tale that Clark and himself had agreed to tell the police. Richard nodded.

"I guess after tonight, Perry," Richard said, "I don't want anyone thinking that any of us have some sort of special connection to Superman." Richard's face hardened as both he and Perry thought about the special connection they did have. "I've seen what happens then." He grimaced. "I especially don't want anyone thinking Jason is connected to Superman."

Even though he is, Perry completed the thought.

"And nothing about Lois," Richard added, and his eyes locked with Perry's. The editor could see that his nephew was just as disturbed about Lois' abilities as Perry was. Richard made an incautious gesture with his wounded arm and winced. He fumbled for the patient morphine pump and pushed the button.

"Nothing about Lois," Richard mumbled once again. The morphine was kicking in, and Perry could see Richard's eyes growing unfocused. The younger man slid downward in his bed, and pulled the covers over his knees.

"She loves him," Richard said, blurrily. And the pain in his voice, muffled as it was by the loss of blood and the morphine, wrung Perry's heart. Richard loved Lois too, and he knew he was losing her. "She told me she didn't love him, but she still does."

Perry nodded.

"Damn him anyway," Richard said bleakly. "I'd like to hate him, but I can't."

"He did save your life," Perry offered cautiously.

"And I saved his!" Richard shot back, momentarily arousing. "He pulled me out of the ocean, but, by God, I pulled him out too! We're even!" He breathed heavily for a moment.

Perry knew the episode to which Richard referred, and Jason and Lois (and Clark, of course) were the only others who knew. Lois had told him the story, and begged him to keep it quiet. Even before he knew that Clark was Superman, Perry had agreed. Superman had saved Lois, Richard, and Jason from Lex Luthor's sinking yacht, rescuing them from a flooded galley compartment. And later, after Luthor had stabbed Superman with a kryptonite dagger, Richard had flown the seaplane back and looked for Superman until they found him, almost drowned. They'd pulled him from the sea, and Lois had extracted the piece of kryptonite from Superman's side.

Richard went on, musing. And in his nephew's quiet maunderings, in the resignation and despair of his tone, Perry heard what he later realized was the death knell of Lois and Richard's relationship.

"He loves her. She loves him. They work well together," Richard said, mocking Perry's words to him weeks before. "They complement each other. And why not?" The bitterness in Richard's tone shocked Perry. "He's not human. And neither is she."