Description:
Alt-Clark has not only given up on finding Lois, he no longer wants to find her. What will happen when he returns to his world following the events of “Lois and Clarks” to find that everything has changed?
Alt-Clark: If _my_ Lois had lived, my world would probably be a better place. Especially for me.
Wells: I've been meaning to ask you... She was lost in the Congo, before you two even met?
Alt-Clark: Yeah. It's so strange, missing someone you never even met. And now finding her is impossible.
Wells: My boy.... I never say 'impossible.'
Part 1
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Alt-Metropolis – March 9, 1997
Prologue
~ - ~
Lois shivered as she fiddled with the thermostat. She’d already turned the heat up twice. Shifting the heavy window drapes aside, she expected to see a late winter storm brewing. Instead, a lone piece of trash skittered across the alley on a gust of dying wind. She squinted into the shadows cast by a waning moon looking for signs of life among the surrounding buildings, but saw nothing. A moment later, she let the drapes fall and stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself to banish the frosty emptiness that had taken residence inside of her.
Her eyes stared unseeing as she tried to feel the warmth from the vent behind her. The shabby motel room was just like a dozen other dumps she’d stayed in since her ill-fated trip to the Congo; much better than the rickety shanty in Brazzaville, but no worse than the mission where she’d regained her memory. The image of a dank, windowless prison in a Congolese manor house flashed through her mind and she shuddered.
At least this room was safe. Her near-death in the Congo had taught her caution and the fact that she hadn’t been discovered yet confirmed that her watchfulness and patience were paying off. It had taken a long time to make her way back to Metropolis and reestablish her contacts and twice as long to gather the evidence – Luthor was so very good at hiding his tracks.
Then there was the complication of the woman claiming to be ‘Lois Lane’ appearing in Metropolis a year ago. It had come as a shock to find out that a woman had shown up at the Daily Planet, claiming to be her just days before Lois had regained her memory. Lois had researched the woman as much as she could during the past year and although no one knew whom she really was, where the woman had come from, or where she’d gone, Lois had her suspicions. At first, Lois expected that Lex Luthor had a hand in her disappearance, but from every report, Luthor had frantically searched for the woman for months after Superman’s debut. The rumor was that Luthor had ruthlessly punished several of his lieutenants before finally giving up the chase. The woman had apparently vanished into thin air.
Ironically, it was Luthor’s obsession with finding the woman claiming to be Lois Lane that had finally ensured her own success. Respect and fear within ‘The Boss’s’ organization had turned to hatred. It was amazing how evidence had started to surface. Lois had pushed, pulled, and enticed just the right people and now she just needed one more link to wrap Luthor in chains for the rest of his life.
Her eyes landed on the telephone and she willed it to ring.
She knew the call would come. Lois knew far more than most people realized. Highly sensitive, empathic, clairsentient, psychic, telepathic – it didn’t matter what the label. From the time she was a little girl, she’d known things she shouldn’t, and couldn’t, have known. There was no such thing as a secret from the young Lois Lane.
Thankfully, age and experience had dulled her reception from vivid images and voices to mutable emotions. She’d learned to block them all as a teenager and yet if she focused and made physical contact, she could still tell things about people by concentrating. On rare occasion, she could sense the truth about someone’s strong feelings from a distance, especially if they were *his*.
Try as she might, there was no defense against Clark. His feelings always snuck inside her carefully constructed defenses to pull at her heart. It’d been this way as long as she could remember, but now that he was Superman and she was in Metropolis – his grief, anger, joy, and loneliness – she felt them all acutely.
She’d never known why. Maybe she never would. All she knew was that ever since she was a child, she’d been emotionally linked to a man she’d never met, had never even physically laid eyes on. Until this past year, she’d never even known his last name, yet she felt like she knew him more intimately than anyone else.
Lois leaned up against the wall and released a heavy sigh. Clark’s feelings had spiked tonight, almost as strongly as that cold, winter night when she was nine years old. His desolation when his parents had died had reached across the distance and touched her soul like nothing else.
Since she had learned about Superman, she had considered contacting him. As with everything else, in her quest to bring Lex Luthor to justice, she considered how to make contact with Superman carefully and was glad for her caution. Luthor watched Clark’s movements closely, probably more so that even he realized. Then there were the paparazzi, fans, neighbors, and coworkers. Oh, Lois knew there were ways, but was the risk worth it? So many times she had planned how to safely get a message to him, but had chickened out in the end.
There had been periods in her life when Lois had wanted to be rid of their strange connection, but she’d been glad of the bond since her return to Metropolis. She’d worn his inexhaustible optimism like a warm blanket during a winter storm. She found herself unconsciously reaching out to him, craving his essence. She could hardly wait to *finally* meet him in person once her life was hers again.
A few hours ago, Lois had felt his sharp surprise and worry. A few minutes later, the connection had gone dead and its nonexistence was almost debilitating. She felt his absence keenly, almost like a knife had cut out a piece of her soul. It scared her. Unless Clark had somehow learned to shield his thoughts, she feared the worst.
It took every ounce of determination she had to stay in the dilapidated motel room and not run to Clinton Street. She was dead in the world and dead she must stay until they could put Luthor away. She was close now – so very close to cracking the investigation wide-open and exposing Lex Luthor’s darkness to the light.
Lois breathed a sigh of relief at the shrill ring of the phone. She dashed to the bedside table and picked up the handset.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
“I got it.”
“Yes,” she whispered, pumping her fist into the air. “I’ll be right there to pick it up.”
“Don’t get sloppy, sweetheart. It ain’t over yet.”
“I know. I’ll be careful, Louie.”
She lowered the handset to the cradle and breathed a silent thank you heavenward before kneeling down to dig files from under the mattress. This was it; the final piece to the investigation that would win her the Pulitzer and allow her the chance to return to her former life and her job at the Daily Planet. No more skulking around, staying in rat holes, or living out of her backpack.
Four years – four long years – to break this story.
As she pilled her evidence next to the bed, her mind wandered back to the Congo. She’d been sloppy in Brazzaville and the gunrunners had caught her. They’d held her in a basement storage room for several weeks before she’d escaped, but she still hadn’t been careful enough. She’d been caught again, this time by Luthor himself.
Lois paused in her packing to tremble, remembering the first time she’d seen him. All people kept secrets and Lois knew more dark deeds than she wanted to, but nothing compared to the depravity and black malevolence oozing from Lex Luthor.
Luthor had pulled the trigger himself, but he’d been overly confident in his aim. Left for dead in a dirty shanty at the edge of the jungle, Lois had only survived because a local boy saw Luthor’s execution attempt and brought help. Eventually, her body had healed, but her mind – her mind had been lost. She could function, even sense the emotions of others, but her amnesia was total. For three years, she hadn’t remembered her own name.
Lois knelt down to un-tape several papers from the underside of the bedside table drawer and smiled as she remembered hearing Clark’s voice in her mind a year ago. He must have been close, flying overhead. The anguished sound of him calling her name had pierced both her heart and the barrier in her mind and her memories had come flooding back.
Almost immediately, Lois Lane had slipped away from the mission and then slowly, carefully, had made her way home. She’d been in Metropolis for months, dodging Luthor’s men and quietly gathering evidence. Even with her advantages, it’d taken far longer than she expected to gather the proof she needed to bring him down.
She finished stuffing the last papers into her pack and picked up the phone, dialing a number she had memorized years ago.
“Inspector Henderson, please.”
She pulled on a dark, hooded sweatshirt while she waited for her call to be transferred. She knew she could trust Henderson and had already met with him twice since she’d returned. Henderson hated Luthor almost as much as she did and would be thrilled to get her call.
“Henderson.”
“It’s me. Are we clean?”
Lois waited until she heard the click and hum of Henderson’s scanner. “We’re good.”
“Bill, I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Have I ever let you down before?”
“Well, if we disregard the three plus years you were ‘dead,’ I guess not.”
“Ha, ha. Listen, meet me in the usual place in thirty minutes and I’ll hand over everything I’ve got.”
“You’re just going to give it to me?”
Lois chuckled at his surprise as she slung the pack on her back. “Not a chance. You know me better than that. I want the exclusive… and I want to be there.”
Henderson’s silence spoke as loudly as any words he could utter. She didn’t need to read his thoughts to understand his worries. Her smile dropped away as she reassured her old friend.
“It’s enough, Bill. Trust me. I’ve worked too hard to let him weasel out of this. Luthor is going to jail for a long, long time.”
~ - ~
TBC
