Okay, before I post this, I have to apologize if the typos are more abundant and the general writing quality went down this chapter. I hope it's not too bad, but I wrote it about a week ago, and when I went through to edit it today, my brain wasn't working.
Meaning, finals are just around the bend, I stayed up until 2 am last night working on a cursed paper of Doom, and to top it off...I have a head cold. <sniffles pitifully>
The last issue (the cold) is probably the worst. My head is full of fluff.
So hopefully this chapter will be satisfactory nonetheless. <crosses fingers>
And even though I wasn't intending on posting this next part until considerably later tonight (it's on 1 pm here right now), I needed a break. So there you go. Have a party or something.
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Chapter 16: Home Sweet Home
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Lois drove. The hours slipped by, skipping in bouts of panic every time a car came within sight, or passed her. But there was no sign of them being followed, and that bothered her. A lot.
Had these new government arrivals believed Logram? Had they thought Superman had just flown away? But they had shot at her car…surely they weren’t about to let her get away so easily? Even if they hadn't seen her face, they had seen her car. They knew the fake license plate number, at least.
Possibilities flooded her mind, threatening to reduce her into a wreck of paranoid terror as she went along. They were tracking them, somehow--maybe in the car. How else would she have been able to find it so conveniently? But then, it had been the new group that had shot at her, not the old, and it didn't sound like Logram and the newcomers were on friendly, share-and-share-alike terms. But the tapes. If these new arrivals found the tapes, then there was no doubt they could ID her, and from there...But no. Logram had said that all the evidence was gone. Surely that would include tapes.
Did these newcomers know of Lois's presence at the compound at all? She would hope not. They had been quite distant--she doubted they had been able to get more than the barest description of her appearance. So she would hope.
Hope. So little--so thin--that it was like trying to put a tissue between her and a speeding bullet and hope the tissue might stop it. But without it she was going to go crazy.
More crazy than she already was, at least.
And what if Logram talked?
He knew Lois had been there, along with the guards. Or (the worst thought of all) what if Logram went free and came after them again?
Hope. Hope was all she had. If she considered all the possibilities--of everyone that could be after them, of how much they could know--then it was too much. So she blocked it away and just drove.
She had stopped twice—once more to fill up gas and once to check on Superman. She had noticed that the sun was filtering through the window and touching his face with its light, and in his weakened condition Lois didn’t want to add a sunburn to everything else. She took his cape and hung it up in the window—keeping the famed emblem facing inward, of course.
She had been surprised when Superman woke up when she had covered the window, blinking blurrily and beginning to shiver.
“L-lois?” he had asked blurrily, peering out at her as if from a great distance—his voice as one waking from a deep sleep.
“Sh, Kal-El. We’re free. We’re going home.”
“C-cold,” Clark murmured, even as she adjusted the hideous plaid blanket she had got from the gas station over him.
Lois frowned. It was early summer, so the air was not cold, and she had even had the heat on to make sure he was comfortable. But as she felt his hand he felt like ice.
She reached up to touch his forehead, and found it strangely warm—strange in that there was no fever, but out of the whole of his body it seemed the closest to his normal body temperature, if she was one to say. She reached up to brush her hand through his hair, grimacing at the drying blood from where his head wound had broken open again, but the she stopped, feeling the skin of his scalp.
“Superman—” she leaned forward, looking through the tangled dark hair for the harsh bruise and angry cut that she had become so familiar with over the past few days. But she didn't find the tender wound that she had was looking for. She blinked, gently running her finger over the significantly lighter bruise and the healing scab that looked as if hadn’t bled in days.
She paused, looking at the red cape that she had just hung over the window, then back at Clark, then back to the window.
“How are you feeling, Kal?” she ventured.
He shifted, groaning slightly. That was all the answer he seemed able to call forth.
Hesitantly, Lois reached out to pull his cape back from the window, draping it over him instead. She helped him to a drink of the bottled water, and he drifted back to sleep, his pale face illuminated by the sun filtering in through the car’s side window. Lois hopped back in the driver’s seat and headed off again.
It was a frazzled and an exhausted Lois that drove up to her apartment seven hours after the stop at the gas station; it had taken longer than she had estimated, and it was now approaching evening.
She had worried almost the whole while about where she might hide, but the more she thought about it the more simple it seemed. They hadn't seen her face clearly. Her license plate was wrong, and if all of the evidence was gone, such as Logram had been boasting, there may be no record of her being at the compound at all.
So she decided to head home. Head home, then stay low for a couple of days. It would be no good if whatever government agency was after them now recognized the coincidence of Lois Lane's appearance with the escape of their missing person from the compound.
Something at the back of her mind bugged her--something she was sure she might understand if she weren't half-crazed from fear and exhaustion. But even besides that, her woman's intuition told her to go home.
She drove around the block three times before actually figuring out how to get Superman up to her apartment without bringing half of Metropolis—and even the world—down upon them. Finally she drove to a small little convenient store that didn’t look busy, parked her jeep in the farthest corner of the parking lot where no other cars were parked and it looked like no one would pass except to park there, or maybe toss some useless rubbish along with other decades of trash.
She locked the car (for her own comfort more than actual usefulness, considering the broken window) and ran inside, grabbing a white long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of sweats from the shelf, and a cheap pair of slippers for herself. She paid for them quickly, then ran back outside. Superman was still sleeping, unnoticed by any casual passerby.
Lois glanced around quickly to make sure no one was around, then quickly and with no little struggle pulled the sweats and shirt over Superman’s suit. The clothes fit a little more snuggly than was normal, even though Lois had thought she had over-estimated on his size, but considering his normal garb Lois decided she couldn’t blame herself for the mistake.
She drove back to her apartment and finally pulled in to park. Some kids ran past, pausing briefly to gawk and point at Lois’s shattered window, but she chased them off with a curse and a death glare. It would do no good if word got out that Superman was there, even if it was doubtful that anyone would recognize him in his current state. Either way, she’d rather not have some kids crying murder down the street.
She waited until they’d disappeared around the corner and glanced both ways down the street. Sure, there were cars and some people heading her way, but no one really close and hopefully no one that would pay too much attention to her. She prodded Superman gently.
“Kal-El,” she said. “Kal-El. Wake up. I need you to help me. I can’t get you up there on my own.”
Superman moaned softly.
“Sup—Kal-El,” she said again. “I can’t get you up to my apartment on my own. Can you at least…try to walk?”
If she were an observer to herself and Clark rather than a participant in all that had happened, she probably would have laughed at the very suggestion. As it was, she had no other choice but to try.
But to her not-surprise, Superman gave a slight nod. The man really did have no sense of his own limits.
So with a last glance up and down the street, she reached forward and lifted him. With no little struggling they got him out of the car, his good arm drooping over her shoulder, his head lolling. Lois felt like she was lifting a dummy made out of sagging lead. Or steel. It sure gave a whole new meaning to the “man of steel” idea, that was for sure.
She wasn’t sure where or how she got the strength to even get him up the few stairs to the inside of her apartment, and then to the elevator, where they both slumped against the wall, Clark groaning slightly as even the slightest change in g-force caused his injuries to ache. The elevator opened, and they limped out like some awkward two-head creature.
Luckily no one was around—it was the time of afternoon when everyone was either out or in, but doing very little in between. But Lois realized her problem as soon as she came to her door, wavering and shaking under the weight of the man beside her. She almost cried.
No keys. And six confounded locks with not even a bobby pin to get at them with.
It was times like this that she wished she was more like Clark Kent, her partner. The trusting little farm boy hid a spare key under a potted plant right next to his door. He was too innocent, that was what.
Lois growled a curse, reaching out with a hand as she balanced Superman across her shoulders to try the doorknob despite the fact she knew it was locked—just in case. Of course, it didn’t move, and that was how she ended up carrying Superman over to a janitorial closet, kicking it open awkwardly, and hobbling in there.
She turned on the single, dim light bulb and cleared enough space with her foot to lower Superman to the ground, though he didn’t look comfortable, hunched against the wall in the small room. She knelt down beside him, reaching out to touch his face. His deep eyes watched her like a child awoken from a nightmare—trusting in her, but scared.
“Kal-El,” she said slowly. “I need to go get into my apartment. I’ll be back. I promise. You just stay here, and try not to move. Okay?” He didn’t answer, his deep eyes still fixed blurrily on her face. He nodded barely, and she brushed a stray strand of dark hair from his eyes. “Okay.”
She took the elevator, but as soon as the doors closed behind her she wished she had taken the stairs, because it seemed to move so slowly that she wondered if it had broken down completely and was going the pace of a falling helium balloon.
Finally the doors opened and she walked quickly to the side of the apartment, stopping only briefly to fish out her lone heel from the back of the car. Finally standing in the alleyway on the side of the apartment, Lois looked up to the fire escape some a good few feet above her head.
That was not to stop Lois Lane. Not now. She shoved the stiletto heel into the belt of her pants--ignoring the discomfort--and went over to a nearby dumpster and climbed up on top of it, then leaped over and grabbed a hold of the bottom rung. It was a struggle, but with a good many curses and grunts she dragged her feet up and began to climb.
She had never gone to her window from the outside—that was Superman’s specialty, but he wasn’t with her right now. But picturing him alone, shivering, in the grey custodial closet was enough to make Lois move more quickly despite her straining muscles and her weary body and mind.
She finally found her window, but was perturbed to find that they were all quite nicely locked. Once again grateful for her very useful stiletto pump, she pulled it out, and bracing herself jabbed the sharp heel into the window sharply. It took a few loud blows, but eventually a part of the window began to crack. Working away at that point, soon she had a small opening and was able to reach through and unlock the window from the inside.
Lois crawled in, careful not to cut herself from the broken glass from her entry, and made a mental note to buy reinforced glass for the window when she bought the replacement. It was far too easy to break in, and if one can get in the window…What was the point of having six locks on her door at all?
She strode across the room, discarding her heels in the process, and threw open all six locks before stepping out into the hall. She left her door open, and moved down the hall to open the custodial closet carefully.
She was exasperated, concerned, but again not very surprised to find that Superman had pulled himself into a sort of sitting position against the wall, his legs sprawled out before him, his injured arm drooped across his lap, and his head hanging limply away from his shoulders, which seemed almost wedged between the floor and the wall itself. He sat slumped there, and from Lois’s guess he had just had a very failed attempt at standing. He was paler than when she had left him, and his breath had taken on a rough edge again. He looked up with wide eyes when the door opened, but he visually relaxed as he recognized her.
“I told you not to move,” she said, her voice slightly sharp over the concern. The man was insufferable, even injured and half dead as he was. The bandages which had been replaced just that morning were already showing some faint tinges of pink, and Lois was afraid the struggle up the stairs hadn’t been good for Kal-El’s healing at all.
“S-sorry,” he murmured.
Together again, they struggled to lift him in the least painful way possible and hobble the rest of the way back to her apartment. Lois felt like either weeping or laughing for joy when she finally closed the door behind her. They were safe. They had made it. Incredible, impossible, but they had made it.
It felt like a dream.
Still, they moved forward until Lois lowered him gently on her bed. It was wide, soft, and cream-colored, so while Clark tensed slightly as he lay down and Lois pulled the covers up and over him, it was different enough from the white room—the white beds—the stiff sheets—that he was able to relax slightly.
Lois muttered a “be right back,” and slipped from the room to get him a drink. Clark stiffened immediately, lifting his head and watching for her despite the strain until she walked back in the room.
His mind was fuzzy—faint blood loss, exhaustion, pain, and fear. He couldn’t remember much of the ride here—just cold, and pain, and a faint light warmth brushing his brow with a gentle light. He wanted to ask Lois how it had all happened, if she was all right…
and what had happened. The last thing he remembered in the compound had been sudden, searing, and blinding pain, and then...nothing.
He shuddered.
But he was too tired to ask now. Even as he worked to make his tongue move in the right shape to form the words, they died in his sore throat. Sleep called for him.
He was afraid to let go, though. He was afraid that if he fell asleep he’d be back there—back, dying, picked over like a lab rat…an alien.
He shuddered unwillingly, and an unnoticed, slight whimper escaped his throat. No. He couldn’t sleep. He should call his parents—talk to them. They must be worried sick. How long had it been? Days? Months? Years?
He tried to straighten—to stand—to go to the phone, but gentle and kind hands held him down. Lois. She was holding him, murmuring gentle comforts to him. Tell him that he would be all right.
She had saved him. She had saved him more than just getting him away from that place and those men. She had saved him more completely than he had ever been able to save her. More than she had ever
needed to be saved.
And it had cost her. Even floating in the haze as he was, Clark could see that it had caused her. She was scarred—hurt, haunted. A shadow hung over her beautiful soul like a shroud. All because of him.
But she didn’t realize that. Or if she did, she didn’t let it stop her. Clark knew that no matter where he woke up, she would still be there with him.
And with that thought, he was finally able to drift off to sleep.
TBC...
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