Part Three
----------
The sky was turning a light orange when Lois and Jordan finally arrived at his apartment. It was on the ground floor of a building that looked like it should be deserted, tucked away in the back corner, near the mouth of an alley. Lois reflected that it probably gave Jordan a lot of privacy; she wondered if anyone besides him would notice if she started screaming bloody murder.
“Welcome to my home,” Jordan said as he opened the door and motioned for Lois to precede him.
She had to admit, the place was clean. Of course, Charlotte had certainly been telling the truth: it was very, very small. A breakfast table with two chairs took up most of the space in the kitchen, beyond which was an area filled by a cot and nightstand. A door to the side presumably led to the bathroom; Lois hated to think that whoever designed this place would have prioritized closet-space instead.
Her first thought was “bachelor pad”. However, when she took a second sweep over the sparse but neatly-arranged belongings, she changed her mental assessment to “alimony”. She turned to Jordan with a bright smile. “It looks lovely.”
From his mirthless chuckle, she could tell that he'd seen through her compliment. “It's not much, but the rent's low, and I don't have to worry much about someone seeing me change into Superman. Anyway, let me get you that computer...” He reached into a cabinet and took out a small, flat...thing, as well as something that Lois recognized as being a little keyboard. Jordan connected them and set them down on the table. “It's old, so it may run kind of slow.”
“Wow.” Lois' eyes were wide as she sat down in front of the computer. “Phones that take pictures, and flat computers that you snap together. This is amazing!”
Jordan chuckled. “Welcome to the present day, Grams.”
“You mean the future,” she corrected him. She watched as the sleek device hummed to life. “If Jimmy were here, he'd have a field day.”
A sudden tapping at the door made them both look up. Jordan squinted at the door, and his eyebrows rose.
“Who is it?” Lois asked.
“Jimmy.”
“What?!” Lois exclaimed as Jordan opened the door.
A young, dark-haired man stood outside the apartment, looking rather nervous. When he saw her, his eyes widened and his face lit up. “Holy cow! It really *is* you!” he said, striding right past Jordan and taking Lois by the hand. “Great-grandma, this really is *such* an honor,” he went on, giving her hand a shake. “I've heard all the stories; you're just amazing!”
Jordan shook his head as he shut the door. “Lois Lane, Jimmy Carlyle. He's Charlotte's brother.”
“Oh?” Lois looked at Jordan in slight confusion. “I'd kind of assumed *you* were her brother.”
“Cousin,” both men said at once.
“Ah.” She turned back to the newcomer. “So! You wouldn't be named after Jimmy Olsen by any chance, would you?”
“Nah,” he replied. “I was named after my uncle. Why? Who's Jimmy Olsen? Is he somebody important?”
“He's a friend,” Lois told him. “He's helped me and Clark out of a few jams, before.”
The young man beamed. “Sounds like a swell guy,” he said.
There was another knock at the door.
Jordan rolled his eyes. “That's got to be your sister,” he said as he reached over to answer it.
Lois looked up in surprise. “Charlotte?”
“No,” said Jimmy, “my other sister. Pam.”
“It's not Pam,” said the man on the other side of the door
“Dave!” the other two men exclaimed.
“Hi, Cuz,” he greeted Jordan.
Dave, it turned out, was rather tall, and had to bend a little in order to clear the door. Jordan offered him the chair across from Lois, and he sank into it, gratefully. “Hi, great-grandma,” he said, giving her a toothy smile.
“Hi, Dave,” said Lois. “It's nice to meet you. So, are you related to Jordan, or Jimmy and Charlotte?”
“Jim's mom and Jordan's dad are my mom's cousins,” said Dave. He turned to Jimmy. “Pam texted me earlier; she's running a couple minutes late.”
“Late?” Jordan asked with a puzzled frown.
Lois glanced at the three men in the room and crinkled her forehead, trying to do some mental arithmetic. “So, that's three cousins...” she murmured, half to them and half to herself. “How many descendants do I--?”
She was cut off by another knock at the door.
“It's Pam,” called a voice from the other side.
Jordan opened the door to a sharply dressed woman who stood grinning nervously at them. Beside her was a young girl stuffed into a poofy, floral-print dress. A bow had been stuck on the girl's hair, and she wore the miserable expression of children everywhere who have been forced into formal-wear against their will. “Hi,” said the woman. “I'm Pam.” She gestured to the girl. “And this is Isabelle.”
Lois smiled at them both. “Hi, Pam,” she said. “Isabelle.”
Pam looked down at Isabelle. “Isabelle, this is your great-great-grandma Lois. Say hi.”
“Hi, Great-great-great-grandma,” Isabelle responded, obediently.
Jimmy slid further into the room so that the two of them could enter the apartment.
“Hey, Izzy!” called Dave.
Isabelle looked up at him, her face lighting up into a genuine smile. “Cousin Dave!” she squealed as he scooped her onto his lap.
Pam looked a little chagrined. “Honey, why don't you tell Great-grandma about the spelling bee?” she prompted.
“I won,” the child replied.
“Oh!” said Lois, trying to show enthusiasm. “What was the word?”
“Pterodactyl.”
Lois nodded. “That's a tough one. You must be very smart.”
“Oh, she is,” Pam beamed. “She's at the top of her class! Aren't you, Isabelle?”
“Are Toby and Stevie coming?” Isabelle asked.
“Toby and Stevie?” Lois echoed.
“Martin and Edna's boys,” Pam told her. “They should be arriving soon.”
As if on cue, there was another knock at the door.
“Is that you, Edna?” called Pam.
“It's Patrick!” the voice on the other side replied. “Phyllis is picking up Karen from dance, and sent me on ahead with the baby.”
Jordan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Come on in,” he said, as Pam and Jimmy shuffled themselves around to the back of the breakfast table.
The *next* knock was Martin and Edna.
**********
By the time cousin Jodi showed up with her husband—what was his name, again?—and their four children, the apartment had become standing-room-only. Lois found herself surrounded by a sea of people that flooded the tiny apartment, flowed out the door, and spilled into the alley. Kents and Lane-Kents and Carlyles and whatnots of all different ages and sizes stood around talking, to her and/or each-other.
“--really so wonderful to see you, Great-grandma!”
“Are you old?”
“--should have had this at Mabel's house; she and Ted just had that new sun-room put in, and--”
“You don't *look* old...”
“Is Aunt Minnie in here?”
“Aren't great-grandmothers supposed to be old?”
“Great-grandma, will you hold my baby?”
Lois was beginning to feel just a bit overwhelmed at being the center of so much adulation. She looked around for Jordan, but strangely, she couldn't see him anywhere in the crowd. “Has anyone seen where Jordan went?” she asked with a frown.
A woman by her elbow smiled at her. “Oh, he got called away on an emergency,” she explained. “We'll just mind things here for him until he comes back, because that's what families do.” She gave Lois' arm a pat.
The smell of barbeque began wafting in from somewhere outside.
“So, how did Great-grandpa Clark react, the first time you told him you were pregnant?” A young man asked her.
“Uhm...” Lois stammered, “We haven't—we didn't really get to that point, yet. We're still only engaged; or at least we were when I got here...”
There was a shuffling in the throng outside the doorway, and a cousin—was it Felicia? Lois couldn't keep track—poked her head in. “Great-Nana! How do you want your burger?”
Everyone turned to look at Lois expectantly. “Um, medium?” she hazarded.
The cousin nodded at her and disappeared, only to be instantly replaced by another one.
As the chatter resumed, a man with a bushy mustache began elbowing his way through the crowd in the apartment. “There's too many people in here!” he complained.
“I guess it is kind of a tight fit,” Lois agreed. “I'm sorry, what was your name again?”
“Howard Blake,” the man replied.
“Right, Howard,” Lois noted. “And which side of the family are you on?”
“I'm the landlord!”
Someone passed Mr. Blake a burger.
**********
“--So there I am, at nine-o-clock, sharp, knocking on his door, thinking about how I'm going to get through this investigation while having to babysit a rookie from some backwater town in the middle of nowhere--”
The sky had gotten dark, and the conversations had petered into silence. Now, everyone leaned forward, raptly listening to Lois' story. Even Mr. Blake seemed intrigued as he happily munched on his second burger.
“--and he opens the door wearing nothing but a towel and those glasses. Now, I—well, maybe I'll just skip this part...”
The collective protests from her audience were suddenly interrupted by a sonic boom.
“Was that thunder?” Mr. Blake asked.
Lois squinted out into the darkness and could just make out a shape winding through the crowd towards the apartment, its head bowed and shoulders slumped.
“Um, everyone,” she began, and was once again unnerved by the hush that fell whenever she spoke, “I'm—feeling a bit tired, now, so I think I'm going to turn in.”
There was a lot of nodding and knowing expressions as the relatives clearly saw through her excuse, but went along with it anyway. They filed out the door and down the street, some of them pausing to clean up a little as they left, and vanished into the night. Mr. Blake was the last to scurry off. Lois expected the room to suddenly seem bigger now that it was empty, but it didn't. It still looked exactly as small and compact as it had earlier, leaving her to wonder just how it had been temporarily transformed into the inside of a clown car.
Jordan trudged in, already dressed in his civies, and closed the door behind him. Lois thought he flashed her a brief look of gratitude before collapsing into the unoccupied chair by the breakfast table. He rested his elbows on the table and slumped forward.
“How did it go?” Lois asked, even though she could already guess the answer.
“Bad,” he muttered from behind his hands.
Lois winced. “Do you want to talk about it?” she offered.
“No.”
For a while, they just sat together in silence. Lois tried to think of something comforting or reassuring to say, but wasn't sure that Jordan would be remotely receptive to her platitudes. She finally settled on telling him, “There's food in the fridge.”
Jordan got up and opened the small refrigerator, which had been packed full of containers when the relatives had made their exit.
“Looks like you won't have to buy any groceries for a while,” Lois noted.
The corner of his mouth twitched at that. “Oh, hey,” he exclaimed, pulling one container out of the stack, “Aunt Midge's famous potato salad!” He removed the lid, stuck in his finger, and promptly grimaced when he tasted the contents. “Or rather, cousin Linda's *interpretation* of Aunt Midge's potato salad.” He closed the lid again.
“They left you a burger,” Lois added.
Jordan stared into the fridge and nodded. “Yeah. I see them.” He closed the refrigerator door and returned to his seat, giving a deep sigh. “Grams,” he said at last, “the secret has to go.”
Lois blinked at him in surprise. “The secret?” she echoed. “You mean *the* secret? Clark's secret?”
He nodded.
“Why?” she asked.
He leaned back and looked at her. “Because, I can't do this anymore.”
Lois' expression softened, and she reached forward to rest a hand on his arm, stroking it lightly. “Why don't you just quit, then?” she asked. “There's got to be somebody in the family who'd be willing to take over for you.”
“Stephen offered,” he admitted. “It was a while ago, but he'd probably still be willing to do it.”
“Well, there you go, then!” said Lois, smiling brightly.
He shook his head. “It's not that simple anymore, Grams.”
“Why not?” she asked, crinkling her forehead in confusion.
“We're in a state of war with New Krypton.”
Lois pulled back from him and stared in open-mouthed shock.
He saw her expression, and rushed to reassure her. “Oh, nothing like what you and Great-grandpa went through,” he said hastily. “It's just a cold war. It's been going on for a long time. Sometimes, we even forget it's there.” He leaned back in his chair again and stared up at the ceiling.
“It used to be,” he said, “that whenever somebody new put on a cape, we'd let the world think they'd just come from New Krypton. It wasn't like anybody could call up the place and check.” He sighed. “Since the last president, though, things have worsened. Nobody is allowed to come or go between the two planets. So, if somebody new started flying around in tights--”
“There would be questions,” Lois filled in.
Jordan nodded.
“There were questions when Clark first appeared in Metropolis,” she said after a pause.
“Did anyone accuse him of being an alien spy?” Jordan asked her.
Trask, Lois thought to herself, shuddering at the memory of that madman from Bureau 39. If there was even one person like him, here...
The two of them lapsed into silence again.
“It's not just that I want to retire,” Jordan continued after a while. “Although I do; I really, really do. It's just that this secret has gotten really heavy, Grams, and it's taken so much—more than I even thought I had. I know keeping it is really important, but it's—it's siphoned my life away!” He thumped the table, nearly breaking it, and turned to her with eyes that were full of anguish. “I just don't know what to do anymore, Grams.”
Lois reached forward and took his hand. After thinking for a long moment, she spoke. “Clark was always afraid of losing himself to Superman,” she said softly. She quirked the corner of her mouth. “I wasn't always helpful with that, in the beginning. But, the reason he kept up the charade was so that Clark Kent could have a normal life.” She met Jordan's gaze. “Superman's whole purpose is to protect. He protects Clark, and now that he's made his share of enemies, he protects Clark's loved ones.”
Jordan seemed to digest this for a while. Then, he looked down, took a deep breath, and met her eyes again. “Grams,” he said, “what would Great-grandpa have done—what would *you* have done—if your son needed to go to a hospital?”
At first, Lois was confused by the question; then, her breath caught. Jordan looked away. “Jordan,” she said softly, making him face her again. “It's not something you have to keep at *any* cost. If giving up the secret is what you need to do, then you have my blessing. Clark would say the same.”
He gave her a weary smile that didn't reach his eyes. “Thanks, Grams.” He gently pulled his hand out of her grip. “It's getting late,” he said. “You can have the bed.”
“Where will you sleep?” Lois asked, looking around the tiny room and noting the distinct lack of a couch.
“I'm usually up nights, anyway,” Jordan shrugged. “I'll probably just go out and do a couple patrols.”
Lois looked him over, took in his tired eyes and sagging frame, and shook her head. “You need rest. Whatever happened out there has obviously taken a toll on you.”
“Grams--” he started to protest.
“I still need to fix that script for tomorrow,” she told him. “You go ahead and get some sleep while I'm working.”
He looked at her, warily.
“Listen to your great-grandmother, young man,” Lois said, and pointed to the cot behind them. “Now, get to bed!”
Jordan chuckled and obediently rose from his seat. “Yes, Grams. Let me just show you really quick how to get that script up...”
Five minutes later, Lois was reading a Hollywood dramatization of her life, while her great-grandson lay in the room behind her, tucked-in and out like a light.
To Be Continued...
