Bolt, From Dubuque (Part 14)
By: Ann Nonymous
Lois was panting heavily as she leaned over the man who had just collapsed onto the pavement, his head hitting the alley floor with a sickening thud. The gray steel of the gun glinted from the ground beside him, no longer a threat, although that hadn’t been the case mere moments earlier. The first three men out the door had been relatively easy to subdue, the dark alley nicely concealing Lois and Lana until they had the opportunity to strike. Lois was well-versed in self defense, and never doubted her own ability to take out these men, all of whom were much larger than she was. She had wondered if Lana would be much help in that department, but had been pleasantly surprised to see that there had been some power to her blows. Between the two of them, none of the men had so much as flinched before being knocked out, Kevin happily continuing his car bashing as they went about their work. Lois knew that there was still one more man waiting for them, but she had sent Lana to tie up the other men in the shadows further down the alley while she patiently hid within sight of the door, waiting, anticipating. But in all her anticipation, she had never imagined that the final man would come out armed with a gun.
Axes and baseball bats, the weapons of choice for the other men, required proximity to be effective. None had gotten close enough to their target to use their weapons, and that was part of the plan. At first, the fourth man had appeared unarmed, but as his arm was raised and the steel caught the reflection of the streetlights, Lois had grown cold with fear. Then she had reacted, fueled by pure adrenaline. All her carefully coached control was gone as she lunged at him, hoping she would be able to prevent what would be certain disaster, but it had been a split second too late. Kevin had collapsed on the street outside even while Lois delivered the knockout blows, the sound of the gunshot still echoing off the high brick walls, barely masking the heavy thud of her heart in her chest. After a few moments, all was still again, and the man lay unconscious in front of her, subdued for the time being, but what had the price been for doing so too late? She straightened up and backed away from the man, intending to head toward the street and her wounded companion. But her movement was stilled as her eyes caught the sight of the open door, and the crumpled form of Clark inside, alone, bathed in a hazy incandescent glow.
A whimper escaped her lips as she stared at him, unable to move. He looked like death warmed over, his skin a sickly pale, his normally carefully coiffed hair disheveled and matted. But even through the obvious distress that his body was broadcasting, his face looked oddly at peace, his features still as soft and angelic as she remembered, his lips curling up slightly as if set into a small, private smile. Her heart screamed out at her to run to him, to ease away all his pain, but her better judgment kept her where she was. First things first, Lois told herself, closing her eyes, clenching and unclenching her fists rapidly, trying to squelch the conflicting desires that she was feeling. Kevin was out in the street, the victim of a gunshot wound, his condition possibly critical. Clark wasn’t in any danger at the moment, not anymore, not with those men out of the way. His shallow breathing said that he was alive.
She pushed the lingering image of Clark out of her mind as she turned away from the building and opened her eyes again. The first thing she saw as she refocused on the scene before her was Lana, who had finished hog-tying the first three men from the building, approaching the man who had fired the gun. As Lana knelt down beside him, her gaze seemed to find the gun lying beside him. With one eyebrow cocked and a curious expression on her face, she gingerly reached out for it
“Wait!” Lois said, causing Lana’s arm to still, her fingers mere inches from the glistening steel. Lana turned toward Lois, a question written on her face. “That gun has his fingerprints on it. He fired it off outside, and I’m sure half the neighborhood heard. That should catch the interest of the police.”
Lana nodded, then pulled her arm back. Lois breathed a sigh of relief, but it occurred to her that maybe it was a good idea to at least get the gun out of reach of the man, should he regain his senses before they were able to tie him up. Lana got to work with the last remaining length of rope, and Lois reached into her pocket, pulling out a tissue. Carefully, she reset the gun’s safety, then used the tissue to pick it up and set it inside the door, out of sight and out of mind, at least until they positioned it for maximum effect after they called the police.
“What about the rock? Do you see it?” Lana asked as she secured the man’s hands behind his back. Lois straightened up and looked back toward the world inside the building, looking for the first time at the room itself. Her eyes drank in all the details as they swept across the room, stopping on Clark again for a long moment before continuing on. Anger began to course through her as she saw the tray of instruments on the table, their purpose patently obvious. The lack of any blood told her that they hadn’t accomplished what they had wanted, that they had probably arrived just in time. But as her eyes continued around the room, there was no sign of any rock.
“Son of a....” she heard from down the alley. Kevin was now sitting up, grasping at his shoulder. A red stain was forming on his white shirt, spreading in a splotchy circle from where his hand clutched his shirt. Lois gave a long, sad glance back toward the helpless form of Clark and ran quickly out of the alley, toward Kevin.
“Are you okay?” she asked. He winced as he looked up toward her, obviously in pain, although his face still seemed to reflect some of the good humor that she knew he held.
“I think I definitely preferred being invulnerable,” he said. “Plus, you know, a hole in the shoulder is going to be a heck of a lot harder to explain away to the folks back home than the occasional soot-covered t-shirt.”
Lois felt her mouth twitch upward as she bent over, touching his hand and gently pulling it away from the wound. He didn’t object as she exposed the bloody hole in his shirt, the damage hard to ascertain beneath the sticky wetness. “It’s a flesh wound, really,” he said, but she shook her head. She might not be a nurse, but flesh wounds didn’t bleed like this, did they?
“We need to do something about this,” she said, releasing his hand and standing, pondering what she could use as a tourniquet. Maybe they could use his shirt, she thought, or maybe there was something in the trunk. She took a step away from his and toward the car, intending to see what she had available, but his free hand clasped weakly onto her arm, stopping her.
“Get the rock first. He has it, I could feel it when he came out,” Kevin said, and Lois looked at him in surprise. He didn’t notice her gaze as he sighed and slumped over, releasing her arm and rubbing at the wound. Lois turned toward at Lana, who had apparently heard the conversation. Lana locked eyes with her, her gaze clearly indicating her understanding, then quickly got to work patting all over the man’s body, searching for the rock. After a moment, her hands stopped over his pants pocket. She reached inside and pulled out a large rock, one that was everything that Kevin had said it would be. The alleyway was suddenly illuminated in a green glow, details that Lois hadn’t noticed before suddenly obvious in the light. Beside her, Kevin moaned lightly.
“I’ll get the safe,” Lois said, running quickly toward her car. Her mind was very focused on the task at hand, but she couldn’t help but notice how dead the neighborhood seemed. Granted, the hour was late, but Metropolis was a city that generally never slept. Even given that, though, there was no traffic on the streets or sidewalks, no lights on inside the windows rising up around her. In a neighborhood that should’ve surely been awoken by the gunshot, there was nothing but darkness. It was eerie, but she tried to push the thought away as she ran back toward the scene, the heaviness of the safe taking some of the quickness from her steps. She continued past Kevin, finally stopping in front of Lana and dropping the safe loudly to the ground. After a couple quick spins of the dial, the door came open, revealing a small stack of papers and a plastic bag.
Lana quickly shoved the rock into the bag and sealed it, setting it into the dark cavity, and Lois closed the door, spinning the lock. Almost immediately, a sense of relief washed over her, an audible sigh coming from both Kevin on the street out front and Clark inside the building. Lana seemed to notice the open door at that moment, her eyes going wide as she finally took a look inside.
“Clark!” she said, immediately standing and running toward him. Lois watched her for a moment, then looked away. Maybe Lana had been in love with him once, and maybe beneath all the bluster and the green hair, she still held some sort of affection for him. It was something Lois could certainly understand, especially after seeing his pale, vulnerable form a few minutes ago. It would take a monster to see him like that, those instruments on the table plainly showing the intention of the kidnappers, and not feel horror and compassion. The jealous part of Lois was somewhat irked that Lana would be the one to touch him first, that her face might be the first thing he saw when he awoke, but the rest of her wasn’t worried. Lana was an old friend, after all, and Lois knew exactly what he felt toward her, what he felt toward both of them. And in any case, there were still things to attend to before they could get Clark out of there.
With a sigh, Lois rose from the ground and approached Kevin, leaving the safe on the ground where it was. The whole side of his shirt was red now, although there wasn’t enough blood to start puddling on the sidewalk. “You think you can survive long enough to help me with a little information gathering before we get out of here?” she asked, drawing his attention. His eyes still seemed clear, his complexion still seemed rosy enough. Apparently his blood loss wasn’t too severe yet, although she wondered if they might not need to eventually take him to the hospital.
“I told you, it’s not that bad,” he said. “In fact, I’m feeling better already.” With a grunt, he gingerly reached down and grasped at his shirt, slowly pulling it up and over his head. Once it was off, he used it to mop the blood off his side, working his way up until he was finally cleaning off the wound. Lois kneeled next to him, getting her first good look at it. She had expected to see a large hole in his shoulder, something truly gruesome, but what she saw was a small half-moon shaped chunk out of out of his upper arm, near the shoulder joint.
“Whatever rabbit’s foot you’ve been rubbing, it’s definitely doing the trick,” Lois said, poking around the perimeter of the wound. He winced slightly under her touch, but didn’t protest.
“No kidding,” he said, pulling away from her gently as he wiped his hands on the now-ruined shirt. “How’s Clark?”
“Come see for yourself,” Lois said, standing, offering her hand to him. He smiled gratefully as he grasped it, and together they pulled him to a standing position. The wadded up t-shirt was brought up and pressed tightly to his still-bleeding wound, the only cover on an upper body that was now completely bare. Lois’s eyes were drawn to his broad, sculpted shoulders and back as she allowed him to fall in a step or two ahead of her, looking but not gawking, appreciative but not desirous. She had a hard time believing that he had been a scrawny comic book geek before he had become a famous hero, that he was truly anti-social even though he had attended gala parties with the political elites of Metropolis. In a way he was an enigma, but he also couldn’t be any more straightforward. He was kind, funny, polite, loyal, and always upbeat, even when he was confronting an uncertain future, even when he was plunging ahead with the task at hand with a badly injured shoulder. In so many ways he was very similar to Clark, but in so many other ways he was strikingly different. Lois doubted that he knew how he had changed Clark’s life, how he had been integral to the creation of Superman, how he had ultimately been the one to bring Clark into her life. She wanted to thank him, needed to thank him, but this was not the time or place. There was too much work to be done to be exchanging platitudes here and now.
As they reached the door and entered the building, he stopped abruptly, a frown forming on his face, replacing the light smile that had been there earlier. “My God, what were they going to do to him?” he asked, then shook his head. He slowly continued toward the center of the room, drawing the attention of Lana, who was now kneeling at Clark’s side.
“They were going to dissect him, I bet,” Lana answered, sad conviction in her voice. “Dissect him like a frog in a high school biology class. I told him that was what would happen if he went public with all the things he could do. If I said it once, I said it a thousand times.”
Lois closed the door as she entered behind Kevin. No wonder Clark had felt so liberated when he had finally been free of that woman. How many years had they been together? How many times had he heard her tell him all the terrible things that would happen to him if he dared to be himself, if he dared to follow his heart and put all his wonderful gifts to work and make the world a better place? Lois wanted nothing more than to tell her to get away from Clark and stop poisoning his soul, to tell her that all her forecasts of certain doom had been just wrong. But in the end she didn’t say anything, because the simple truth was that all the paranoia had turned out to be well founded. For whatever reason, the people who had kidnapped Clark didn’t care about the fact that the world considered him a hero, to them he was just a menace, even in spite of the obvious good that he had done for the world. And so they had taken him, they had poisoned him, and they had deigned to use him as some sort of sick experiment. Why they had found it necessary to do such a thing she didn’t know, at least not yet, but she would find out. Somewhere in that room, in the scored of filing cabinets that lined the walls, was the answer she was looking for, and she wouldn’t leave until she found it.
“Now look at him,” Lana continued, reaching up and brushing a stray strand of dark hair away from his forehead. “Years of careful hiding, years of being prudent and cautious, all thrown away. Will he ever recover? Was the reward worth the sacrifice?”
Lois sighed, then gently punched the cabinet. If Lana had to ask that question, then she was even more clueless than Lois suspected.
“I think all the people that he saved in this last week could answer that,” Lois said as she turned around, her eyes narrowing as Lana looked at her with surprise. “Were their lives worth the exposure to that rock, were their lives worth nearly sacrificing his own? A true hero doesn’t stop because of possible consequences to themselves. A true hero puts that aside and goes on, because they ultimately believe that bringing hope to the world is worth any personal sacrifice.” The room grew quiet, and Lois turned toward Clark, still unconscious, still oblivious, but still the very vision of a hero. “If you can’t understand that, then I pity you,” Lois said as she looked pointedly at Lana, then turned back to the task at hand.
There was no more talking as Lois started to work, rooting quickly though the assorted files. Kevin soon joined her, using his free hand to slowly leaf through the folders, pulling out the relevant ones and setting them aside. Lana remained slouched on the floor, defeated, refusing to help. After a long while, Lois found herself taking a seat at the large, round table at the center of the room and leafing through the papers and files that had been gathered. The picture began to come together fairly quickly as she read the information in front of her, the story it told causing a shiver to work its way down her spine.
The people that operated this office, that had kidnapped Clark, were a highly devoted group of lunatics who believed some sort of conspiracy theory about aliens trying to take over the Earth. It was a theory with no basis in fact or sanity, but it had been manically pursued, with the ultimate aim of using any means necessary to stop the aliens from achieving. The men had gone about their mission with zeal, personally tracking down all possible UFO sightings, no lead going untraced. The files documented cases from around the world, on every continent, in most every country. The names of the locations by and large held no significance to Lois, although she could recall mentions of a few of the larger sightings in the tabloid rags. But one particular case file stood out above all the others, drawing her undivided attention.
The dark typewritten text on the tab of the plain manila folder announced that this sighting had taken place in the town of Smallville, Kansas, in 1965. A meteor had shot across the sky around dusk, landing somewhere in the fields outside of town. When the men had arrived, they had found a small ship, opened, empty, bearing an insignia that was scribbled roughly amongst the neatly typed text, one that matched exactly the symbol on the shirt that Clark wore. Scattered in small craters around the ship were chunks of green rock, unlike anything any of them had even seen before. The ship and the rocks had been gathered together, but the men hadn’t been satisfied. They wanted to know what was inside that ship. To that end, they had discreetly hung around town, looking for anything that was unusual, but without success. The case was never closed, never forgotten, and periodically, when sightings of the strange or unusual discovered, the men would migrate toward Kansas. But they hadn’t found Clark, not until Superman showed up. After that it was all a matter of waiting, of planning, and of acting.
In another bank of filing cabinets, Kevin had found a file detailing some of the measures that they had hoped to take to avert a full-blown alien invasion. Scenarios of varying degrees of ridiculousness were all spelled out in painstaking detail. If innocent people had to be sacrificed to carry though with the plans, then so be it. It was evident through reading the text that they knew how to assemble a bomb, that they had the means to plant a bomb, and that they weren’t afraid to use one of they had to. The last entry in the file, the one with the most recent date, was also the most specific of all of them. A bomb, carefully planted in a center of mass media, would surely draw the aliens who were masquerading as heroes. With both in one place, it was just a matter of subduing them.
Her teeth ground together painfully and her hands crumpled the corners of the folder as she finally grasped the full extent of what had occurred that night. It wasn’t just a matter of these men taking Clark. They had sacrificed the Daily Planet, and the lives of dozens of reporters and the welfare of hundreds of other people in their attempt to relieve the world of a threat that didn’t exist anywhere but in their own twisted minds. How could anyone even conceive of doing such a thing? Evil existed in the real world, yes, and Lois had always thought that she knew its face, that she could spot it when she saw it. But these people, they were firefighters, policemen, teachers, lawyers, engineers. They were generally upright members of society, someone’s father or brother or neighbor, probably perfectly pleasant when in polite company. And they were all monsters. Maybe it was fortunate that this was a world that had heroes, people who believed in the goodness of society and dedicated their lives to putting away criminals like these, because it would be hard to sleep at night if there weren’t.
Kevin took a seat beside Lois somewhere along the line, leaning over and propping his chin on his arm as he leafed through files, taking in the information, every now and then looking toward Clark, a strange look on his face. By the time he finally spoke again, she had a pretty good idea of what he was going to say. She wasn’t disappointed.
“These men, they were targeting aliens,” he said as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes drawn toward the ceiling. “I know when I debuted, people said that about me, that I was from outer space or something, and I just laughed and shrugged it off. Kevin Jones? An alien? I’m just some shmuck from Dubuque who got struck by lightning and woke up the next morning with the ability to fly. I’m as American as baseball and apple pie, and surely anyone could see that.” He closed his eyes and sighed, then turned his gaze toward Clark. “Clark had been there when I got hit. I had just figured that the lightning did the same thing to him, because I’m a big moron. Or maybe I’m just blind to the obvious. But after reading about the saga of Smallville, it’s kind of hard to deny it any longer. Clark’s not from Earth, is he?”
Lana, who had silently stared at Kevin while he spoke, let out a sob, a stray tear working its way down her cheek as she looked at Clark for a long moment. “It hardly seems fair,” she said, drawing the attention of both Kevin and Lois. “We were going to get married, we both knew it, but then he told me that he was...he was....” Lana gulped at wiped a tear off her cheek. Her lip curled up slightly as she looked toward Kevin. “He was an alien. He was from outer space. He could do all these things, these freakish thinks, and he showed them all to me. I knew something like this would happen if he ever made himself public, if he ever told anyone else, and I knew because I could understand why someone might want to.” Her voice, filled with pity and woe, grew hard with those last words. Both Lois and Kevin looked at her with wide eyes, agape, as she continued.
“I’d known Clark all my life, but suddenly he was just a thing, not human. The first reaction was to be afraid, and then repulsed. You wish it weren’t true, you go on pretending it’s not true, but the pretending only hides the obvious.” Lana looked at Lois now, her eyes burning with conviction, although her face was lifeless, limp. “If it had been anyone other than Clark, any anonymous being walking the street, then that fear and revulsion might’ve been more, might’ve led to more. People fear the unknown, people fear those who are more powerful than themselves. Given my first reaction, it didn’t take much imagination to figure out how strangers might see him, and fear him, and want to do something about it.”
Lois felt herself go cold as Lana talked. The words were so hard, so unemotional, but they were also honest, and that was what scared her the most. Even knowing who Clark really was deep down inside, what his thoughts and fears and desires were, hadn’t stopped Lana from looking at him with revulsion we he finally told her his deepest, darkest secret. For whatever reason, she carried some deeply held notion of what an alien was, and she couldn’t get past that. It was probably the same for these men, who only wanted to see the alien, who only wanted to see the strange and the unusual, and the dangerous. Even though what Superman did couldn’t be any more representative of the sweet, kind person that Clark was, it didn’t matter to them. And it hadn’t mattered to Lana.
Lana looked up at Clark again, her eyes suddenly going soft, the emotion returning to her face. Her touch was gentle as she rose to her knees, reached up, and stroked his cheek. “I’m not a bad person,” she continued, her voice barely audible now. “I can’t help the way that I feel. But I’d never let anyone hurt him. He might be alien, but he doesn’t deserve this.”
Beside Lois, Kevin slowly rose from his chair and walked over to Lana. As he went, the hand holding the wadded up t-shirt against the bullet would fell away, and she could see that it had stopped bleeding, that it had scabbed up nicely. His other hand gently reached down and touched Lana’s back, drawing her out of her spell. She looked questioningly at Kevin, but he just smiled at her, coaxing one in return. “He’ll be okay,” Kevin said, and Lana just nodded. Kevin looked back toward Lois, gave her a nod, then returned his gaze to Lana, his eyes meeting in with hers. “Come on,” he continued, his voice gentle. “Lets get things squared away so we can all go home.”
Lana nodded once, seemingly mesmerized, and rose to her feet. Kevin stuffed the bloodied shirt into his back pocket and led her outside, toward the men who were tied up and still unconscious. Kevin was right, Lois thought as they exited the room. It was definitely time to get out of here. She went to work arranging the folders on the table, opening them, making it obvious to anyone who might enter the room what had transpired that night, but stilled for a moment as she realized that she was alone in the room now. Alone with Clark.
Lois walked toward him, her brow knit together, and stopped, her eyes focused on his face. Slowly, she bent over, placing her hand on his forehead and brushing the hair away, trying to straighten it out somewhat. “You’re safe now,” she said with a small smile, then bent down and lightly kissed his lips. It was hard to tell, but she could almost swear that his small smile deepened somewhat at the gesture. He would be okay, she told herself again, straightening up. At that moment, Kevin and Lana returned to the room, dragging the first of the men behind them. Back to business, she thought, looking for a phone. It only took a moment to locate one, off in the corner, sitting on top of one of the filing cabinets. As Kevin and Lana dragged the remaining men into the room, she dialed 911, and reported the gunshot. It would only be a matter of time now. The police would come, they would see the true extent of what these men had done, and the world would be safe. And maybe, just maybe, she would get a story out of the whole deal. With that, she joined Kevin and Lana, and grabbed the safe with the rock and the baseball bat as they gathered up Clark, and together, they all took off for the car, and for home.
*~*~*
Kevin sighed and closed his eyes as the hot water from the shower washed over him, relaxing him, cleansing him. It was nice to be at peace at last, although he knew that once he emerged from the warm shower, he would be confronted with the reality of the situation, and the calm that he was feeling now would simply disappear like so much steam. But none of that now, he told himself as he leaned further into the stream of water, letting it cleanse the grime from his face.
He reached for the bar of soap and lathered up, rubbing the suds over his arms and his abdomen, then over the small pit below his shoulder that had gone mercifully numb. Through all the chaos and the pain and the terror that he had experienced that night, he had learned a lot about himself. After he had been struck by lightning, after he had created Bolt, he had always just figured that it was the powers that had given him strength and the will to be a hero. And maybe that was the case at first. But deep down, there was something that transcended the powers, something that not even a green glowing meteorite could take away, and that part had shone through for the first time tonight. He had never figured himself for someone who would step into harm’s way for the good of a friend, but that’s what he had done tonight. And when faced with the blood and the pain, instead of moping or running away, he had shrugged it off and moved on, doing what needed to be done. Maybe there was more to Kevin Jones than a nerdy college kid, and maybe Bolt was more than some caricature of the hero’s he’d read about in the glossy Technicolor pages of the comics.
Turning around, Kevin leaned back and let the water work its way into his hair. He opened his eyes long enough to locate the bottle of shampoo, squirting a glob of it into the palm of his hand before closing his eyes again. He supposed he wasn’t the only person he’d learned about in the course of the night. Lois, Clark’s mysterious girlfriend whose shower he was even now dirtying up, was quite a remarkable woman. Maybe she was a little pushy, a little intense, but she also was a woman of conviction and infinite understanding. She obviously cared for a Clark a great deal, too, and would go to any lengths for him.
And speaking of Clark.... It was hard to fathom what life had been like for him. To know that he’s not human, but to still have to somehow make a life within society must have been incredibly hard. His girlfriend reviled him, his powers set him apart from everyone else, and ultimately, Kevin supposed, he had lived in fear. Maybe he thought that the look of revulsion that wasn’t too far behind Lana’s gaze would be mirrored in the eyes of everyone else around him. If he had been discovered, then even the illusion of normalcy would’ve been taken away from him. But then that bolt of lightning had struck.
Kevin smiled as he rinsed his hair. He’d have to ask Clark to be sure, but something told him that his own starry dreams of being a hero, and the general good will that he was received with, probably did something to help Clark accept who he was, and to use his talents for the betterment of others. It felt good to think that he made a real difference in someone’s life, and it didn’t come from the powers or from pretending to be a hero. It simply came from him being himself, and following his heart. His smile faded, though, as he thought of the consequences that had come from him acting to fulfill his fantasy. Dozens of Daily Planet employees dead, dozens more injured, the paper destroyed. All because some idiots had decided that he and Clark were dangerous and needed to be stopped.
No, that wasn’t exactly true, Kevin thought as he shut off the water and slid back the shower curtain. Maybe indirectly he was somehow to blame for the actions of those men, but in the end, they had done what they wanted to do, on their own volition, and they were the only ones to blame for what happened. Maybe they wouldn’t have done it if Bolt or Superman hadn’t existed, but maybe they would’ve found some other threat somewhere else, and blown up some other building to satisfy their own delusions. But even if he wasn’t responsible, Kevin figured he should do something to make it up to those people whose lives he couldn’t save, the people who were sacrificed for some fanatical crusade.
Kevin stilled his thoughts as he toweled off and slipped on a pair of shorts. He placed his hand on the doorknob and slowly opened the door, revealing the interior of Lois’s apartment, his home away from home for that night. A quick glance across the hallway and into Lois’s room showed Clark, peaceful and still unconscious, lying motionless on her bed. In the living room, he could hear the muffled sound of the television, no doubt being watched by Lois. Silently, he padded down the hallway, coming to a stop as the hallway gave way to the living room. The couch had been made into a bed of sorts, with a sheet stretched across the cushions, a blanket placed at one end, and a pillow at the other. At some point during the ride over, after they had dropped off Lana and before they had arrived at Lois’s apartment, they had discussed what the future held – what they would do if Clark didn’t wake up in the next day, how Kevin would get back to Kansas. Lois volunteered he apartment for the night, stating that her roommate was out of town for the weekend. All the other questions could wait until later, they had decided, although Kevin wondered if they both weren’t afraid of what the answers might be. There were other details to work out, including obtaining a new set of clothing for both him and Clark, but the late hour made it impossible resolve any of those issues, which was fine. After a long day and even longer night, maybe a little sleep would go a long way toward resolving things.
Lois sat in a recliner at the end of the room, a magazine in her lap, her eyelids droopy. She seemed to sense his presence, though, and she quickly brought her gaze up and met his eyes with hers, giving him a smile as she did.
“Hey there. Feel better now?” she asked, and Kevin couldn’t help but smile back.
“Much, thank you,” he replied.
“How’s your shoulder?” she asked as she got up off the chair and approached him. She squinted as she looked at the thick, tender scab, then continued on down the hall, disappearing into the bathroom he had so recently emerged from. In a moment, she returned, a square of gauze and some medical tape in her hand. She gestured for him to follow her toward the couch, and he did, sitting gingerly on the neatly placed sheet.
“This should protect it overnight,” she said, taking a seat next to him. She didn’t say anything further as she went to work applying the patch. Kevin looked toward the bedroom, wondering if Clark would be jealous if he knew that her touch wasn’t entirely unwelcome. No, Kevin though, clenching his jaw together, those thoughts were best not indulged. Lois was a kind woman, and she was taken, and that was all there was to it. He forced his gaze toward the television, and the late night reruns that were being shown, ignoring the light touch of Lois’s fingers on his arm. Slowly but surely, the diversion worked, and he found himself relaxing. When Lois spoke again, it caught him off guard.
“I was just wondering,” she said, drawing his attention back toward her. “If that rock that those men had was only supposed to work on aliens, then why did it work on you?” She placed a fresh strip of tape over the bandage and looked at him, one eyebrow cocked. It was a question that he had asked himself when he found out the truth about those men and the rock, although the answer hadn’t been hard for him to fathom.
“Whatever happened when that lightning struck, it managed to give me a part of Clark. These muscles,” he said, gesturing toward his upper chest, “were never there before. And the powers, well, I couldn’t tell you how they work, but I do know that they kind of ingrained themselves into me. I can see things I couldn’t see before, I can think faster than I ever could before. Maybe a part of me became alien, I don’t know. But I can’t begrudge that part, because it sure was fun while it lasted.”
Kevin smiled as he finished, the good times flashing past his vision. Even if he had become something that wasn’t wholly human, he found that maybe he didn’t mind. Lois just nodded with understanding, a comforting smile forming on her face. “Do you think any of it will come back?” she asked.
“No,” he answered quickly, trying not to let the sadness that the word brought seep into his voice. It seemed so final, saying it out loud like that, but he couldn’t see how the powers could return. He turned his head to face her, needing to say something that he couldn’t bring himself to say earlier, when the green-haired monster had been around. “Before I forget, I just wanted to let you know that you were right.”
Her hand stilled on his shoulder as her head cocked sideways. “About what? I mean, I’m right about so many things....” Her half smile made him chuckle softly.
“What you said tonight about whether the sacrifice that comes from being a hero is worth the reward.” He twisted away from her and settled into the couch. “If I died this very second, I’d have no regrets, because I know that I’ve done my best to make the world a better place, and I’ve lived my dream in the process. No other accomplishment can ever measure up to that, and honestly, it makes me wonder what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”
“I bet it will be kind of hard to top being a superhero,” Lois responded, but then shrugged. “But there are plenty of ways to help people if that’s what you want to do. Maybe they won’t involve creative disguises or the adulation of the press, but you can still be a hero to people.”
“Yeah,” he said, and they just smiled at each other for a long moment, the soft chatter of the television filling up the emptiness.
“Well,” Lois finally said, “it’s getting late, and I think we both need our beauty rest.”
Kevin nodded, glancing briefly toward the large window on the far side of the room, and the sky that was already beginning to lighten with the dawn beyond it. Suddenly, he yawned, bringing a slight chuckle from Lois as she rose from the couch. “Good night,” she said, switching off the light.
“Good night,” he answered. He watched her retreating form for a moment, then reached for the blanket and stretched out on the couch, snuggling in. He fluffed the pillow before laying his head on it, then unfolded the blanket, drawing it over him, instantly warming him. There were no further thoughts as he slipped instantly into a heavy, blissful sleep.
