Table of contents is here .

LAST TIME ON EMII:

As if in slow motion, he saw Luthor leap in the air, right leg outstretched as he jump kicked at CJ.

It was instinct, not rational thought, that made CJ move to the side and, momentarily forgetting his injury, reach out with both hands. He grasped Luthor's ankle and jerked, hoping to pull Luthor off balance.

It worked.

Too well.

As though Luthor was a hammer being tossed, he rotated through the air, smashing through glass and out into empty air beyond.

CJ couldn't let go in time and he was pulled over the sill behind him.


NOW READ ON...


CHAPTER THIRTY


Lois screamed. She stood frozen in horror for a second after Luthor and CJ tumbled over the sill, plunging to the street below. Then, suddenly able to move again, she turned and ran to the front door. She fumbled with the locks. Pulled the door open. Didn't bother to close it behind her as she ran for the stairs.

She ran down each flight, two steps at a time at the top of each one, but jumping over the bottom four. Between gasps for breath, she mumbled nonsense, half-way between a plea and a prayer.

She charged across the building's foyer, down the steps and onto the pavement, finally skidding to a halt next to the crowd that was already beginning to form.

Where, she wondered, had all these people come from?

Suddenly scared to look, she nonetheless forced herself to push her way through the horrified crowd. There was blood and twisted limbs, but she could see from the angle of his neck that Luthor presented no danger to her now. And CJ...

His left arm was bent, clearly broken by the impact, and, like Luthor, he lay unnaturally still and silent.

Dead, she thought. CJ was dead.

She knelt beside him, tears pooling in her eyes as she tentatively reached out to brush his hair back. His skin felt incongruously normal under her touch. She traced a line down his cheek with her forefinger. Then she withdrew her hand, lifting it to her own mouth. She placed a kiss on her first and second finger then she placed her fingers on her lips.

His breath whispered against her skin.

His breath...?!

Her lips parted in astonishment. Suddenly galvanised by the discovery, she brushed her tears away impatiently, using the sides of her hands as handkerchiefs. Then she leaned over and listened.

Glory be, he really was breathing! It was a miracle!

Weakened with relief, she began to sob again, but this time it was prompted by happiness, not despair.

*****

A hand on her shoulder brought her back to an awareness of her surroundings. "Let me take a look at him, Miss."

She turned her head towards the speaker and found that he was a middle-aged man dressed in the uniform of a paramedic. "He's alive..." she whispered, still not quite believing it.

The paramedic, rapidly running through his list of checks, said without looking up from his work, "Yeah. I can see that. Pity his friend wasn't so lucky."

Lois didn't bother to tell the paramedic that CJ and Luthor had not been friends. There would be time enough for explanations later. For now all that mattered was CJ.

CJ, who was still alive.

"Ms Lane...? If we might have a word with you?" She ignored the voice. She didn't want to talk to anyone. She just wanted to know that CJ was all right. Nothing else mattered. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

Then she felt a hand resting upon her shoulder and noticed that someone was waving a paper tissue in front of her face, offering it to her. "Ma'am...?" asked a kindly male voice. "Are you all right?"

She sniffed loudly and slowly turned her head towards the speaker. He was a grizzled police officer with kind eyes that, just now, were regarding her with an almost paternal concern. She looked behind him and saw that there were three squad cars parked across the road, their sirens mute, but their lights painting the tarmac and surrounding buildings red and blue. Odd, she thought, that she hadn't even noticed that the police had arrived.

"Ma'am?" he said again.

Lois shook her head slightly. Of course she wasn't all right. She'd been held hostage. She'd seen CJ get shot. She'd seen two men fall out of a window... But she couldn't find the strength to say any of that. Instead she mumbled a lie. "Yeah. I'm okay."

The officer nodded, but Lois could see that he also knew that her words were a polite fiction. "Ma'am... We need to ask you a few questions."

"Okay..." she whispered.

"Can you identify the two men?"

"Yes. The one the paramedics are working on is CJ Kent. You know, the assistant DA? And the... the... dead... one is Lex Luthor."

The policeman raised his eyebrows. "Luthor?"

She nodded. "He came... he came to my apartment. He was going to kill me because..." She didn't bother to say why; she assumed that the police were already familiar with her part in his arrest and she didn't have the energy to say anything that might be redundant. "But CJ... CJ saved my life. He..." The tears were coursing down her cheeks again as she remembered how he had flown into the path of the bullet that was meant for her. She turned back towards CJ and the paramedics, just in time to see them loading him into the ambulance. "I... I've got to go with him," she said.

"You can come with us in the squad car, Ms Lane. There are a few more things I'd like to know..."

*****

The police had left the hospital ten minutes ago. She seemed to have explained events in her apartment to their satisfaction, and, with CJ's assailant dead, they had withdrawn, leaving her alone to wait for news of CJ.

Lois sat in the ER's waiting area, one of her feet hooked onto the edge of the plastic chair she was sitting on, her arms wrapped protectively around her knee. She nervously chewed on the knuckle of her thumb. She knew from the way her skin felt taut across her cheeks and the way her eyes were wide open that the terror she felt for CJ was imprinted upon her face.

She thought it was a miracle he'd had survived the fall. It was a second miracle that he'd lived long enough to be hustled onto a gurney and into a trauma room to be treated. Was it asking too much to want yet another miracle – that he would pull through entirely?

She wished someone would tell her something useful, but so far all she'd been told was that, as she wasn't a relation, she had no right to information. She'd tried to explain to the desk clerk that she was the closest thing CJ had to family. She'd even gone so far as to suggest that they were near as dammit engaged. It had done no good.

So, now, all she could do was wait and hope that either the doctors would relent and gave her some news or that CJ would wake up and ask for her. One thing was certain, she wasn't going anywhere until she knew how he was doing.

*****

A tall dark man dressed in a lab coat and with a stethoscope draped around his neck walked towards her. Lois was remotely aware of two things; the doctor was extremely attractive – though not quite as gorgeous as her own CJ – and he looked exhausted. A five o'clock shadow tinged his jaw, his shoulders were bowed with fatigue and his dark hair flopped forward onto his forehead in a slightly unkempt and unruly manner. When he spoke to her, it was with a pronounced accent which she had to sift through in order to understand his words.

"Miss Lane?" he said. "I hear you were asking about Mr Kent."

She nodded and swallowed nervously. "How is he?"

"He's comfortable." The doctor was giving nothing away and she was aware that, once again, she was hitting her head against the rules of hospital bureaucracy. However, the merest hint of sympathy at her situation played across his face as he added, "We have done everything we can to make him comfortable. He's being taken upstairs now. I thought you would want to know."

"Yes," she whispered. "Thank you, doctor..."

He nodded an acknowledgement to her gratitude, then excused himself, saying that he had to see to another patient.

*****

She paced restlessly across another waiting area, too keyed up with energy to settle into any of the uncomfortable-looking arm-chairs. If anything happened to CJ... She couldn't bear the thought of it. No matter what she'd thought earlier, they'd had so little time together; it was too soon, far too soon, for her to say good-bye. Tears pricked at her eyes and she blinked furiously, refusing to give in to them.

When, she wondered, had he become the most important thing in her life?

"You have no cause for alarm, Ms Lane," a voice said, startling her out of her reverie.

She spun around, grinding to a halt at the sight of the speaker. Instead of a white-coated doctor, the speaker was a small man dressed in antiquated looking clothes.

"You... you're not a doctor," she said, rather stupidly, she suspected.

He took off his bowler hat and bowed with a slight flourish. "H G Wells at your service," he said.

Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head slightly to one side. "H G Wells," she said thoughtfully. Then she nodded slightly. "I saw you that day outside the courthouse. And CJ has told me a little about you."

"None of it too bad, I hope."

"No," said Lois. "Not too bad."

Then the implications of his earlier words suddenly hit her; Wells had seen the future. He had to know what would happen to CJ. "You say that I don't need to worry? That means that CJ is going to be okay? It does, doesn't it? I mean..." She trailed off.

Wells smiled sympathetically at her. "He will be fine. Fortunately for him, the last traces of his invulnerability protected him when he fell." He frowned. "Or maybe he has always been slightly less vulnerable than humans, anyway. He does have more sensitive hearing, so I suppose it is possible that his body is metabolising some of the sun's energy... Whatever, he has a few broken bones as well as some severe bruising. Plus, of course, Luthor's bullet went through his shoulder. Fortunately it missed anything major and CJ's injuries were not so severe that he required blood transfusions. Also, he has no internal bleeding. It will take some time, but he will be all right, Ms Lane. And his secret is quite safe."

Lois bit on her lip as she absorbed her words. "Thank you." The tears that, moments before, she had tried to rein in, now spilled unheeded down her cheeks.


***************
Thursday, 22 May 1997
***************

Hearing came back first. CJ listened to a soft medley of beeps, hums and whirs with a background accompaniment of human voices and rubber-soled footsteps. Hospital noises, he realised. He supposed that made sense, given the leaden weight of his limbs and the distant dull ache that permeated his whole body as though it was one big bruise. What was he doing here, though? What was wrong with him?

The last thing he remembered clearly was arriving at Lois's and seeing Luthor point a gun at her head, his finger pulling on the trigger. After that everything was a chaotic jumble of fractured images. He knew he ought to try to sort them out but he didn't have the energy to do so. It would require less effort to simply ask for the answers he needed.

Or so he thought, until he tried to open his eyes. When had such a simple task become so difficult? It felt as though someone had put weights on his eyelids. It was only on his fourth attempt that the room swam into view.

Someone had obviously removed his glasses. He wondered where they were as he tried to make sense of the messages his brain was receiving. White walls, white ceiling, a patch of dark blue or black that was probably a window showing a night time view over the city, a blob of pink that drifted around the room, making rounds.

"Nurse...?" he whispered.

The pink blob moved closer, allowing him to make out a blurred oval face and what had to be a halo of red hair. "Mr Kent! You're awake!" She sounded delighted about that, and he knew that she was smiling even though he couldn't see clearly enough to see for himself. "How are you feeling?"

"As though I've been run over by a tractor..." He let his eyelids flutter closed for a moment. Then he pulled them open again and asked the most important of his many questions. "Lois...? Is Lois all right?"

The nurse nodded. "She is. In fact, she's been here all night, waiting for news about you."

"She's here?" He supposed that it was the drugs in his system that had kept him from noticing the anxious knot in the pit of his stomach until now. Or maybe he'd simply dismissed it as part of his wider pain. However, now that he knew that she was alive, he felt the knot begin to unravel.

"Yes."

"Can I... I want to see her..."

The nurse patted his forearm gently, then said, "Very well. I'll see what I can do."

CJ must have drifted asleep then because, although when he opened his eyes again it seemed as though only seconds had passed, daylight was flooding into his room. Bending close into his field of view, came a face more beautiful than any other in the world. Huge brown eyes full of concern considered him. Her lips smiled encouragingly and her voice was music to his ears as she said, "Oh, CJ! You're awake!"

He experimented with trying to form words and found that his mouth was dry, his lips parched. "Lois..." he managed. "He didn't... hurt you...?"

Lois shook her head and CJ's relief was palpable. "You saved me," she said. "Don't you remember?"

A trace of a frown etched CJ's forehead. He thought for a few seconds and found that the images made more sense than they had done during the night. "A little... I think. The window?"

Lois nodded.

"Luthor?" he asked.

"The nurse said I'm not to tire you. I can only stay a few minutes."

That didn't answer his question, and he knew that she was trying to protect him from... something. "Lois..." he pleaded.

She seemed to think twice about replying but eventually gave up the information. "He's dead, CJ. The fall killed him."

CJ's eyes drifted closed. He wondered if he ought to feel worse about Luthor's death, but the only emotion he felt was a sort of blessed relief. He remembered Clark telling him that whatever came after Luthor could only be an improvement, and guiltily he realised that he was smiling.

"Yeah," said Lois. "I feel like that, too. I wouldn't have wished him dead, but I can't be sorry that he died."

He heard the scraping of metal against vinyl, and he knew that Lois was pulling up a chair. He turned his head in her direction and opened his eyes again. Then he said, "Do you know where my glasses are? I want to look at you properly. See if you're really okay."

"I really am, CJ. Now that I know you're going to make a full recovery, too. But if it makes you feel any better..." She reached towards the bedside cabinet to pick his glasses up. Then she leaned over towards him and slid them carefully on his nose.

"Thank you," he said. He looked at her carefully. There were dark shadows under her eyes that spoke eloquently of a lack of sleep and her make-up was smudged and worn away. But she was, as she'd told him, fine.

She sat down and took his right hand in both of hers and absent-mindedly began stroking his skin with one of her thumbs.

He was content to lie there, basking in her presence and letting his mind wander. Lois, however, was more restless than that and, abruptly, unable to restrain herself, she asked explosively, "CJ, you flew – and, by the way, I want to know how you did that – into the path of a bullet! What on earth were you thinking of?!"

"That's just it, Lois. I wasn't thinking. All I knew was that I had to save you. He was aiming at you when I arrived. I didn't have time to think!" His brow furrowed as he marshalled his thoughts. "And, to be honest, if I had thought about it, I would almost certainly have done the exact same thing."

It was her turn to frown. "But it was suicide! Or it could have been!"

From the look of anguish that twisted her face, he saw just how close he had come to being killed. Until then, it hadn't really registered.

Sombrely, he said, "But I couldn't have known that. Not then."

"How do you mean?"

"I'd just found out that I could fly," said CJ.

She looked askance at him, and he found himself recounting the circumstances of his discovery. Then he continued, "Last time, when I could fly, I had all the other powers as well. I guess I'd just have assumed, you know?"

"But you didn't have them last night." It was more of a puzzled statement than a question.

Of course he didn't have all the powers, he thought. Had he been invulnerable, Luthor's bullet would have bounced off him. "No, I didn't," he said.

"Why not?"

"No idea," said CJ. He suspected that he sounded more blasé than he felt. As he'd just indicated, he didn't understand what had happened, but he desperately wanted to. Just... not now. He didn't have the energy to think things through.

"And if you could fly, why didn't you, when you went out the window?"

That was a good question, CJ thought, and one to which he didn't have a good answer. He frowned, then said, "I don't know. I guess... It all happened so fast, and I didn't have time to think. Besides..."

"Besides, what?" prompted Lois.

"I was hurting too much to think straight. I guess I was pretty stupid..." He yawned. He couldn't help it.

"No. You weren't stupid. Just caught of guard, I guess."

CJ wondered whether Lois really believed that, or whether she was simply trying to make him feel better.

Lois considered him for a moment, then abandoned her interrogation in favour of saying concernedly, "You're exhausted. I'd better go before the nurse comes to throw me out."

"No. Stay. Please." His words were mumbled and slurred. He was already half-asleep.

"I wish I could, but you need to rest and I've got to go into work. I've got a story to write, remember."

"Duty calls, huh?" His eyes drifted closed, and this time they did not reopen.

The last things he remembered were her saying, "Yeah," and the brush of her lips against his cheek. "I'll come back later," she whispered. He was asleep before she reached the door.

*****

When CJ next woke up, someone was sitting in the visitor's chair. One of the nurses had removed his glasses again, but he knew it was Lois by the way her dark hair fell, by the faintest whiff of her perfume and by the way she was making some snorts of derision over whatever magazine she was reading. She was trying to be quiet about it, but, as usual, Lois was unable to suffer in absolute silence.

"Lois..." he whispered.

There was a crackle of paper as she hastily folded the magazine closed. "CJ! How are you feeling?"

"Better."

As she had done earlier, she slid his glasses into place. "Have you ever thought of contacts?" she asked idly.

"Tried 'em once. Horrible things. I didn't get on with them at all."

Lois nodded vaguely. "The nurses told me that you're doing well."

"Am I?" He hadn't thought about it before, but now that he did so he supposed that he was. His mind was clear, he'd recovered all the memories from the previous night, and the pain was easing. He knew that because the doctors had reduced the dosages of his painkillers without him experiencing any noticeable increases in the level of his discomfort. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure that the drugs had been working properly in the first place, given his alien physiology.

"They hope to discharge you tomorrow or the day after. They just want to be sure that you'll be able to cope before they let you go."

"It's just a broken arm, Lois."

"Plus a lot of bruising and a bullet wound. You mustn't put any strain on that."

"Yes, Doctor," he said good-naturedly.

Lois didn't appreciate his attempt at humour. "Do you know how lucky you are that the bullet didn't hit anything major? Shoulder wounds can be fatal, you know."

She had been more profoundly affected by his brush with death than he'd realised. It was too soon to be making light of the situation. "I'm sorry," he said contritely. "Do you want... I mean..." He hesitated.

"What?"

"Well, it's just that we've both been through a traumatic experience—"

"Worse for you than for me."

"Physically, that's true. Emotionally?" He shrugged and wished he hadn't. Maybe his pain was fading, but unnecessary movements were still ill-advised and capable of shooting bolts of pain along his nerves. "I'd say we're pretty much even on that score. I thought maybe it'd help to talk about it."

CJ watched as Lois stood up, walked over to the window and stared out at the city beyond. Then, after a few seconds, she nodded slowly, accepting the wisdom of his words. She turned around to face him, leaned back against the sill, and began to talk.

*****

Lois didn't bother recounting the facts of what had happened before he'd arrived at her apartment. If he wanted to know those, he could always read her article. Instead, she said, "It was like... I don't know... like he'd had a mask ripped off, and there was this whole other person inside." She didn't say Luthor's name. She didn't need to. She sighed. "I knew that he was, well, evil, I suppose. But, even after seeing what he did to Pagliano, I never really thought about how it would feel to have all that hate directed straight at me. It was... scary."

"Yeah. It was."

"And then... I really thought he was going to kill you."

CJ nodded. "And I thought he was going to kill you, too."

"He was going to. He wanted to kill us both, but he kept changing his mind about how he was going to do it. To begin with, he was going to wait for you to arrive, make you watch while he killed me. Then he said he was going to kill you first. Then he got tired of waiting. I thought... I really thought I was going to die. If you hadn't arrived when you did..." She took a deep breath. "I don't think he knew what he was doing. Not really. It was obvious he hadn't thought things through, and that made him more frightening, not less. There was no reasoning with him."

Lois stared thoughtfully down at her hands, focusing on her cuticles and nails, as if she could find the meaning of the universe hidden there. "You know, what I still don't really understand is why he didn't take more trouble to cover his tracks. Before he was arrested, I mean. I'm sure he never used to be that careless. If he'd been just that little bit more careful, we'd never have caught him. I mean, it was hard enough as it was. And what was he thinking when he went after Pagliano like that? Then, when he came to my apartment..." She shivered and she knew that it would be a long time, if ever, before she forgot the horror of that night. "He didn't even bother to try to cover up his actions then."

"I don't know for sure why he got so sloppy, but I think I can make a guess."

Lois glanced at him then returned to the chair and sat down again. "Yes?"

"If this Luthor is anything like the other, then he isn't so much motivated by greed as by power. And what point is there in having power unless other people know that you have it? I'd guess that Luthor's error lay in thinking that he was invincible – that nothing could touch him."

Lois nodded thoughtfully. "So his failure to hide his tracks was arrogance, not carelessness?"

"Something like that, yes."

"I guess that makes sense."

"And his arrogance worked in our favour: the more he threw his weight around, the less the people who worked for him liked and respected him. They feared him, but ultimately that isn't the best way to get people's loyalty. Four years ago, very few people would have been prepared to go on the record about his activities. Now though, that doesn't seem to be too much of a problem."

"And that's the understatement of the year! Especially after what happened last night." She waved her hand vaguely in his direction, taking in his hospital attire. "People have been falling over themselves all day to give evidence. I guess they reckon that, now that he's dead, they've got nothing to be frightened of."

"About last night..." CJ said. "I'm guessing that he was too angry with us to care about being careful. We'd taken away all those things he valued: respectability, power... some of the fear. I guess he was striking back." He paused. "I guess he must have been pretty mad at that point."

"Insane," agreed Lois.

They stared at each other for a few moments, their gazes catching. Then Lois said, thinking back over the last few weeks and the way they had worked together, "You know, we made a great team."

"We make a great team, Lois," he whispered. His voice rasped with quiet emotion, and his eyes glowed with warmth. She half stood and reached out to stroke the side of his face.

He stared at her for a moment. She could hear his breath catching in the back of his throat, and she could see that his fingers were trembling as he, in his turn, reached out to caress the soft skin of her cheek. The almost-touch of his fingers made her shiver.

He whispered softly, his words cracking. "I can't believe how close we came to losing all of this."

"Nor can I," said Lois. She felt a pricking in the corner of her eyes, an echo of the despair she'd felt when she'd thought that she had. She was so grateful that he had survived! She couldn't even begin to put that gratitude into words. She leaned over him, lowering her head towards his. Their lips moving in perfect synchronisation, and she realised that she didn't need to say anything because the kiss conveyed all that and more. It held the richest blend of desperation, pleasure, gratitude and need. Most of all, though, it held the promise of a deep and abiding love.

The last thoughts she had, before she gave into the wave of sensation and emotion, was that CJ was right – they were a great team, in every sense of the word – and that she didn't care what the future would bring, because everything she'd ever wanted was contained in this one moment, shared with this one perfect man.

TBC