Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Stuck in the Dark 10/35

Chapter 10

The familiar rhythm of Moore greeted Kal like a steady pulse—quiet, predictable, grounding. After Metropolis, the stillness felt almost jarring. No honking cabs. No shouting from crowded sidewalks. Just the low hum of wind and the occasional passing car.

He hadn't realized how tightly he'd been wound until he stepped through his front door. He stood there for a moment, suitcase in one hand, cane in the other, just listening to the silence. Then—slowly—he exhaled.

The house welcomed him like it always did—practical, functional, unassuming. He could map it in his sleep. Six steps to the closet. Thirteen to the kitchen counter. Everything exactly where it belonged. He unpacked methodically, setting his clothes in the drawer, his toiletries in their place, his cane on its hook by the door. Each motion a reminder that here, at least, he was in control.

But his mind was still in Metropolis.

Still with Lois.

Once everything was in its place, Kal moved over to his answering machine. He found the button by feel, let the tape rewind, and hit play. The calls from Anderson were not unexpected and neither was the message from his mother, even though the latter caused every nerve to go on edge.

“Hi, sweetie,” came his loving mother’s voice. “It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you. Hope everything is going okay. Let us know how you are doing… please.”

Kal took a deep breath, trying to find his balance. No matter how long he went between messages, no matter how deeply he must have hurt them when he gave up on being Clark Kent, his mother still tried to contact him regularly. He kept telling himself that once he’d figured out how to live his new life, he’d call them; however, it had been years, his new life was established, and he still hadn’t picked up the phone. He could hear Jonathan's voice in the back of his mind—steady, pragmatic, never cruel, but never one to coddle either. He knew his son was alive and hadn't called. The fact that his Dad hadn’t reached out spoke volumes. Jonathan didn’t agree with Kal’s decision but wasn’t going to make the first move either. What would he say if he saw Kal keeping secrets from Lois? That went against everything Jonathan Kent had raised him to be.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he moved to the table to focus on problems he thought he could find answers to. Sitting down, Kal spread out files across the surface with slow, practiced precision. A fresh notepad rested beneath his left hand, audio recorder at the ready beside it. His fingers traced the raised lines of a braille graph he’d drawn before the trip, marking transaction trails between names and dates.

CostMart kept surfacing.

Quietly. Strategically. Always just beneath the surface of every odd land deal and zoning loophole. What had felt like conjecture before now felt like a shadow cast too far and too deliberately to be a coincidence.

Kal pressed record.

“Audio log. March twelfth. Lead one: property acquisition trends along the 36th Street corridor. Five buildings in two weeks, purchased by unrelated LLCs—all recently incorporated. Public face of each purchase is different, but bank records lead back to CostMart holding group.”

He paused, flipping the next file.

“Lead two: zoning commission approvals—fast-tracked despite public objections. Council members’ Language in public hearings mimics phrasing from CostMart’s developer outreach kits. Verbatim repetition in at least two cases. Suggests PR influence or direct memo distribution.”

He clicked off the recorder and sat back.

He could almost hear Lois’s voice in his mind. “That’s too much to be coincidence.” And she would be right.

That night, Kal sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the wind whip through the corners of his house. He thought of the hotel room in Metropolis, the cold quiet, the scent of overwashed linens. He thought of the moment in the alley—the scream, the pull to act, the paralyzing fear. The shame.

He turned onto his side, running his hand across the bedside table until it landed on the Kerth award still tucked in its case. His fingers traced the engraving, not to admire it—but to remind himself that he had done something, even if it wasn’t under his true name. His award was tangible evidence that he still could make a difference, he just needed to go about it in a different way.

The next day, Kal hit the ground running. Norman’s municipal building wasn’t particularly busy, which helped. Kal moved through its halls with quiet precision, checking off items from his list. He requested public records, old committee meeting transcripts, council vote roll calls. When staff offered to help, he politely declined—always preferring to do it himself, even if it took longer. He scanned documents using a portable reader, cataloguing patterns by date, council member, and phrasing.

He was careful not to rush.

That was the difference now. Everything had to be deliberate. Every choice. Every word.

At the local deeds office, he hit something unexpected. Not just a pattern—but a repetition.

Three separate parcels listed under different LLCs had been transferred twice in under a year—and each final purchase listed a CostMart board member as a “silent” stakeholder. The documents had been redacted, but the signatures told a story.

Kal sat with the deed in front of him, recorder on.

“Three parcels. Same language in the closing clause. Same title transfer lawyer. All filed two weeks apart. Different company names—but the funding trail leads back to the same holding bank. That’s not just sloppy. That’s someone hoping no one looks too closely.”

He shut the file.

Deciding he needed to get a better idea of what was happening, he cleared the kitchen table. He needed a textile map where he could see if there were any similarities between Metropolis and Norman.

He unrolled the thick tracing paper, overlaying labels and pins by touch. Over the next few nights, the faint clicks of his Braille labeler echoed through the quiet house as he marked the newest properties—three from Norman, two from Metropolis. Different cities. Different timelines.

Same angles.

Same spacing.

He slid his fingers across the taut rubber bands stretched between anchor points, measuring distance not in numbers but in pressure. Tension. Direction. There was something unsettling about how easily the patterns aligned. As if someone had laid a stencil over two cities and cut them out the same way.

Kal froze.

No—he was imagining it. Had to be. He leaned back, breath shallow, suddenly unsure. What if he was just chasing shadows? For all the evidence, for all the data, there was still that voice in the back of his mind—the one that whispered you’re not who you were. You don’t see what you used to.

His hand hovered over the map.

Then he moved. Slow. Careful.

He shifted one of the Norman bands just slightly to match the position of the Metropolis string. Then another. His fingers pressed lightly over the intersection.

They matched. Exactly.

He didn't need his eyes to see it.

Kal sat back, the breath leaving him in a slow exhale. The map wasn’t a hunch anymore. It was proof.

Deliberate. Duplicated. Designed.

And he was the one who’d found it.

He sat there for another minute, fingers still resting against the crossed bands. The pattern hadn’t changed. He had checked it three times. It was real.

He reached for his phone. The number had been committed to memory years ago.

“Hello?” Lois’s voice was alert, guarded—but not cold.

“It’s me,” Kal said quietly. “I found something.”

The pause on the line was brief—but heavy. “Go on.”

“It’s definitely CostMart,” he said. “Not just in Metropolis. They’re laundering through property shells here too. Same exact pattern. Same phrasing. Same tactics.”

He heard her breath catch.

“I’m sending you the proof. Tactile map, voice logs, and doc references. Enough to confirm what you saw in Southside wasn’t isolated.”

“You sure?” she asked, and Kal could picture her—brows drawn, pacing as she asked it.

“I’m sure,” he said. “This is real.”

Another long pause. Then: “Okay. I’ll loop in Perry. The Planet will back us.”

Kal nodded, though she couldn’t see it. “Good.”

“I’ve been worried about you since you left this weekend. You sound steadier,” she added, a hint of something unspoken in her tone

Kal exhaled. “I am. Being back here—it helped.”

A softer tone now. “Keep going, Kal. We’ll figure it out.”

As the call ended and he sat alone again in the quiet hum of the Oklahoma evening, Kal felt the weight on his chest lift—if only slightly. He didn’t have all the answers yet. But he had a direction.

He had a purpose.

And—for the first time since the accident—he didn’t feel like he was running from something.

Kal felt like he was chasing something that mattered. The stories he’d written at the Oklahoman so far did matter to someone, somewhere—he’d even won an award for one of them. But this was different.

This was investigative journalism, something he thought to be lost from him forever. This week though, he had found himself to be capable of investigating, finding patterns, finding proof. That alone was invigorating to him. He didn’t have to completely abandon his passion, he just needed to pursue it differently now.

Sitting down at his computer, Kal started uploading the information he’d uncovered so he could send it to Lois. There was more than enough to convince Perry there was a story—but what would that look like now? Would he hand over all of his notes and let Lois take the lead? Would he try to work with her again? Would she even want to work with someone who was blind?

She’d seemed willing before he left Metropolis, but after his abrupt departure… he wasn’t sure.

He took a slow, measured breath.

That decision didn’t have to be made tonight. Let Lois look through everything. Let tomorrow’s questions wait for tomorrow.

Today had been a success in more ways than one. For the first time in a long time, he was going to allow himself to enjoy that feeling—instead of focusing on what was, or what could have been. This wasn’t a partnership but it wasn’t solitude either. For the first time in months, he wasn’t surviving, he was investigating.