Hello, all. If you want replies to reviews or whatever, head on over to the FDK thread for chapter 38. I've been in a pretty crazy mood this last week, so I think I can rightfully say that it's . . . interesting . . . over there, if nothing else.
Thanks for all the reviews. They completely make my day and keep me going throughout the week!
Additional Disclaimer: If you don’t realize it, the passage taken from The Scarlet Pimpernel is not mine. It is from (obviously) The Scarlet Pimpernel. I have no rights to it, and am making no money using it. There. Is that satisfactory enough? <looks around for lurking lawyers>. Good.
Anyway, please remember to review, and I hope you enjoy.
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Chapter 39: Always Watching Over You
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Lois didn’t set her alarm clock, but intended to sleep in as long as she could—preferably very, very late into the morning. The many late and restless nights had taken a toll on her, and now that she knew Superman was back and well enough, considering, she wanted few things more than to just sleep.
Her good intentions, however, were interrupted by one of her cursed nightmares. At 6:30 she rolled out of bed in a tangle of sheets, shaking as she rose to her feet and brushed her hair from her eyes with a clammy hand.
She walked carefully to the bathroom, turning on the light against the darkness that had taken over her apartment. Outside dark, threatening clouds had shut out the sky, and now hid the rising sun behind what seemed like continuing night. Thunder echoed in the distance.
Lois washed her face and looked at her pale reflection in the mirror.
“All right, Lane,” she said firmly to herself, though her voice shook. “S-snap out of it. It’s j-just a dream. It’s always just a dream, now. K-Kal was here last night. R-remember?” Yes, he had been. She was sure that that, at least, had not been a dream. He had saved her, and flown her home. He was coming back tonight. “See? It’s just a dream. Everything’s fine.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath.
She had unconsciously brought Superman’s cape with her from her room, and now she wrapped it around herself as she moved into the living room to turn up the thermostat. She turned on the TV as she fixed herself some coffee.
“Counts are coming in all around the world. Dozens of Superman sightings are flowing in from as far as Seoul to as close as downtown Metropolis. The rescue spree seems to have started early this morning, and Superman doesn’t seem to be slowing down for more than a word and a wave.”
Lois turned down the volume and grabbed her laptop, snatching her laptop and getting into the internet. In a moment she had typed in the familiar address of supermanrescues.com, and the homepage popped up, bearing a massive, strong, and highly attractive close-up shot of Superman from a rescue from some time ago.
Blazing across the top of the page were the letters “SUPERMAN RETURNS,” and beneath that “Back to Earth, Back to Work.” There was no prying article as might be expected, but instead beneath that there was a small counting box.
“Rescues (For the last 24 hours):
117 reported and catalogued.
Lives saved: approximately 54.
Last updated: Sunday, 6:00 ET.”
Lois scrolled down the page. On the right side of the page was a very long sidebar listing the known Superman rescues since his reappearance. Lois scanned down quickly but thoroughly.
His first rescue of the night—saving Lois Lane from a bunch of Lex Luthor’s thugs at about 8:30 pm—was, of course, missing. There were the three rescues Lois had seen from the night before, and then at about midnight Superman had gone on a rescue spree until 1:34, when he was sighted in Metropolis at an attempted jewelry robbery.
After that, he had disappeared for three entire hours.
Not a single sighting or rescue. Not a single flash of red cape or boots.
Lois nodded to herself in satisfaction. She hoped the man had taken the time to get some sleep in the sunlight. He had looked tired, and he was going to work himself to death if he kept this up.
His next recorded sighting had been just before five, and apparently he hadn’t stopped since.
Lois clicked on some random articles, finding a number of blurred pictures from various rescues during the night. Over on the television replay after replay was being shown, but was broken by live footage from an apartment fire in Boston. Superman was flying down from the brightly burning building, carrying in his arms a mother and two small children whom he set down gently and gave them a small smile before he paused, tilted his head as if hearing something darted back upwards.
Lois’s laptop was forgotten as she saw him shoot through a flaming window again. Her heart stopped as he disappeared to her view, and suddenly she felt as if the room had gone cold.
What if his powers gave out for some reason? What if Lex planted kryptonite somewhere, knowing that Superman was too good to resist going to rescue, no matter the danger to himself? What if he was hurt?
What if he died?
The minute stretched out. Lois felt as if her heart had stopped beating, and the taste of her coffee was ash in her suddenly dry mouth.
Superman. Superman . . .
On the television screen the apartment’s upper floors seemed to explode, and even with the volume on low Lois flinched at the sound and sight of the furious flames.
And then, there he was.
He darted out of the flames and downward, his hair and suit smoking from the heat and flames, and his face smudged, but he actually grinned as he landed and unwrapped his cape from the burden he was carrying to reveal . . .
A cat?
Lois collapsed back in her chair with a shaky laugh as she watched the superhero hand the clearly terrified but safe cat to a young boy about the age of seven..
“Oh, Kal-El,” she let out a long breath. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
But he was safe. Kryptonite was a rare substance—surely Luthor wouldn’t risk losing a part of it in a plan that was not one hundred percent sure of working . . .
Lois frowned. Her attempt at thinking “comforting” thoughts was failing miserably. She shook her head.
He’d be all right. That was all. He would just have to be. He had always been all right before, after all.
Had he? In the white room he had avoided the question, but she remembered him hesitating about telling her, now.
He had been exposed to kryptonite before.
But how?
Lois shut down her computer and rose, putting her cup in the sink and glancing back at the television, where Superman was rising into the air with a small wave before he shot off and disappeared.
Lois smiled to herself. She loved that wave. It was so sweet. So simple.
Well, he looked like he was doing better—or at least like he was succeeding in hiding most of his tiredness behind that mask of his, which was well and good for now. Later, though, he’d better take it right back off or Lois would have to do it for him.
Now it was time for her to get ready.
Lois looked around the wreck of her apartment, realizing for the first time what a mess it had become. Papers were stacked, scattered, and tossed around almost haphazardly over the floor, the counters, and the furniture. Dirty dishes were piled high, and her garbage can was overflowing next to a bag of trash that she just hadn’t had the time to take out yet.
Lois grimaced. She might be disorganized, but she usually wasn’t this plain filthy. This was just awful, now that she took the time to notice it. She had just been too caught up with everything to notice, let alone do anything about it.
Taking an armful of empty take-out containers from where they were stacked by her sink, Lois stuffed them into the already filled garbage can. She lifted that and the garbage sack and shuffled towards the door beneath the combined weight and bulkiness.
Superman might be busy cleaning up the world, but for now Lois Lane had a job of her own to do. She had to get her apartment ready for Kal-El to come.
After struggling through her door, the elevator, and finally out to the dumpster next to the complex, Lois dumped the trash inside and brushed her hands together in satisfaction.
It was time to get to work.
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It was a good thing she had woken up so early, Lois realized seven hours later as she unloaded the last clean dish from the fourth full load of dishes from her sink. Why did she even have so many dishes, anyway? It wasn’t like she had company over very often, after all.
But as she turned around and viewed her pristine and spotless apartment it was with no little pride. No doubt it would have taken an average woman twice as long to clean up a mess. Everything was clean—even under the couch and the ancient untouched crevice beneath her bed. Of course, she expected Kal-El wouldn’t intentionally use his x-ray vision to look under such places, but there was no harm in being prepared.
She had done more than just cleaning, however. A not-so-short trip to the furniture outlet and Lois was having a new couch delivered any minute now (she had had to bribe the drivers for them to put her at the top of the list)—something comfortable and homey, rather than the uncomfortable piece of stuffing, wood, and cloth that sat in front of her television, which hadn’t been turned off for a second all morning, even when she left her apartment to go to the store.
She hadn’t tuned out for a minute. She’d been with him when he rushed into the mine collapse disaster in Brazil. She’d felt her heart break when the screen had shown him easing the broken body of a man who hadn’t survived a terrible highway car crash in Washington. She’d flinched every time she saw a bullet hit him, no matter that it couldn’t hurt him.
How could he do it? How could he go out there, after everything he’d been through, and still smile? Still help? Still be able to face the sort of men who would do anything if only they could hurt him? How could he still give that small but encouraging smile of his that made the most terrified looking adults and children alike settle down and breathe of life and hope again? Oh, Lois had seen the smile hesitate and shake more than once before appearing, and it had made her heart wrench, but somehow that only made the actual appearance of it all the more powerful.
The world didn’t know how strong Kal-El Superman of Krypton really was. They knew he could lift rockets into space and catch flying bullets without flinching, but they didn’t have a clue of the strength of his spirit.
A little over two weeks, that was all. A little over two weeks since he had been hovering between life and death. Since he had shrank and shivered under the white light. Since that terrible piercing green glow of kryptonite had caused him the sort of pain that no man should have to face. Two weeks since he had looked at her from those dark, soulful eyes and told her to let him go and move on with her life.
Fat chance, Krypton, Lois thought.
Just over two weeks since he had stopped breathing on that terrible cold metal bed. Two weeks since Lois’s own heart had almost died along with him.
Lois looked around her now clean apartment. Had it already been that long? It felt like yesterday. At times she felt that if she closed her eyes for even a moment she would open them to that terrible white despair.
Had it really been only two weeks? Had she really only spent a little over two weeks buried in this story—driving herself to her very core in her efforts to figure out the five reporter’s questions—who, what, where, when, why?
She still didn’t know very many answers, but she knew Superman was safe. With him she could do anything. Together they could get through anything. They had already proved that to Logram, to Lex—to the world.
They could get through this.
Rain rattled the window panes and Lois looked upwards and frowned. The weather had been shifting between a faint, mist-like, gloomy sprinkle and a torrential downpour intermittently since mid-morning, and the storm was still thick and dark, as if the clouds had lumbered over Metropolis and just found that they didn’t have any energy to go any farther, so they just hunkered over the tall buildings and sat their great weight over the whole city.
At least Superman was out and about. He should be able to get enough sun, she hoped, while he wasn’t caught in the storm that hunkered over Metropolis.
There was a knock at the door. Lois looked over cautiously, then slowly walked over, noting the presence of a table lamp that would be useful if Lois needed to hit anyone over the head. She peered through the eyehole, and let out a breath as she recognized one of the drivers she had talked to earlier. She darted over to turn off the TV, and opened the door as the man began to knock again.
“Hello,” Lois said.
“Miss Lane,” the short, slightly gruff yet plump man said. “They’re coming up with your couch right away. Darn difficult to get it up here, let alone dry, with all the rain starting up again.”
Lois looked over as she saw two men puffing up the stairs, their faces red with exertion from the many floors they’d taken.
Oh. The couch must have been too big for the elevator.
Lois directed them inside and situated the perfectly colored, comfortable couch in the middle of her living room, then slipped them an extra thirty dollars for them to take the old piece away.
Even though . . . She was strangely hesitant to see it go. Of course there was no room for her to have two such couches in her apartment, but she couldn’t help but remember how Kal-El had looked sprawled out on it—looking pale, vulnerable and so innocent as he slept with the healing glow of the sun in his soft dark hair.
But then the couch was gone. Lois’s apartment was clean and ready, and she had the fanciest frozen dinners she could find stashed carefully away in her newly-emptied freezer.
She was ready.
She glanced at the clock. Thunder echoed outside.
She still had plenty of time.
She gathered her things carefully, then took the elevator downstairs. A taxi ride and a short wait later, Lois had picked up her beloved and repaired Jeep and was driving it through the Metropolis streets, listening to the radio prattle on and on about Superman—where he had been, where he was now, and what everyone was doing about it.
But she wasn’t going home.
She pulled to a stop across the street from a certain apartment complex, turning off her car and peering through the heavy rain which pounded her shadowed windows to a window high above the sidewalk.
It didn’t look like there was a light on.
Lois hesitated in the silence of the empty car, then pulled out her cell phone and speed-dialed a number. She waited, listening to the distanced drumming of the rain and tapping her finger against her steering wheel as if to the beat of its humming, thrumming rhythm.
“Hello. This is Clark Kent. I’m not at home right now, so if you could just leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Lois hung up, waited for a minute, and then tried again. She realized she was tapping with her finger and forced herself to stop.
“Hello. This is Clark Kent. I’m not at home right now, so if you could just leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Lois hung up again without leaving a message.
She glanced up and down the street. The only person walking by was a man with an umbrella, hunched over as if to hide himself from the battering wind and rain. Lois watched him pass under the dim grey veils of the streetlights until he was well out of sight.
She glanced up and down the street again, then pulled out her umbrella and stepped out of the car. The rain’s volume increased as she stepped out of her removed world and out into the downpour, and taking a folder of papers with her, she looked up towards Clark Kent’s apartment.
If Clark came back while she was there, she could explain that she had come over to talk about Luthor and had just let herself in to get out of the rain. Simple. Clark was not the kind of guy who would want her waiting out on his front step waiting for him to come home, after all—especially in this sort of weather.
She hurried across the street. Rain splattered against the asphalt and the wind carried it beneath the shelter of her umbrella, scattering dark droplets on her charcoal work pants. Taking some shelter in the open-aired staircase, Lois paused to take a breath, glanced up and down the street again, and then jogged up the stairs.
She didn’t know how much time she had, but she needed to be quick one way or another.
She reached his door at last. Shivering and not exactly dry despite her long coat and her careful use of the umbrella, Lois bent down and lifted the potted plant under which her naïve coworker always hid his spare key.
But it wasn’t there.
It was a simple observation. It shouldn’t have been shocking. The idea that Kent had kept a key there in the first place was absolutely ridiculous—the farm boy was obviously too trusting and naïve, and Lois had ranted about it before. But he had kept it there nonetheless. It was part of what made up the strange and confusing character of Clark Kent.
Why was it gone?
And why did it matter so much that it was? Kent had just decided to listen to her at last. He’d smartened up. It shouldn’t mean anything.
Then why did the fact that the key was gone shake Lois so soundly?
Lois straightened, frowning at her own reaction. The missing key was a little detail, and it hardly made her work any less difficult. Clark knew she could pick locks, after all, and surely he still wouldn’t mind if he found her in there waiting if he were to come back.
Her cover story would still work.
Pulling out the set of picklocks that she had grumbled over a couple days before (half of which were broken), Lois got to work. Less than a minute’s worth of grumbling later, the locking mechanism clicked and the door slid open.
Sticking the picks back into her purse with a small smile of congratulations, Lois stood and stepped inside Clark Kent’s apartment.
It was dark inside. Rain pittered and pattered on the broad expanse of the windows, and water ran down the panes, reflecting a dark and slickly shifting pattern of light and shadow on the carpet and walls—like wriggling snakes. Thunder rumbled darkly outside.
Lois paused, feeling suddenly very much like the intruder she was. She closed the door behind her—the lock clicking closed sounded loud even over the rain in the stillness of the room.
The last time she had been there . . . It seemed so long ago, and she had almost forgotten how she had barged in here, looking for Clark and demanding where Superman had gone. Clark had looked so awful, standing there, and then they’d received news of his father’s coma.
Lois winced and shook herself, trying to banish the shadowed memories. She reached over and turned on the light, bathing the room in warm light. She immediately felt better. Clark’s apartment was probably the most comfortable living space she had ever stepped into. While the many books lining the shelves and the various odds and ends sitting comfortably here and there were not the interior designer’s dream, they made the place feel homely and lived in. She stepped further into the room.
“Hello? Clark? Clark, it’s Lois.”
No harm being extra careful, just in case. But there was no answer.
Relaxing a hair, Lois set her umbrella in the corner and pulled out a hand towel she had stuffed into its interior to quickly mop up the drips of water she had carried in with her. She stepped out of her wet shoes and moved farther into the apartment, her eyes sharp and ready.
“All right, Clark Kent,” she said, hefting her notebook and feeling her camera resting in her pocket. “Let’s see what you have for me.”
She had expected to need to dig quite deep to find anything of interest, but to her surprise she didn’t get beyond his first bookshelf before she had to stop to stare.
What the—?
Okay, so there were the classics. She didn’t really know what she imagined Kent to read in his spare time, and she wasn’t too surprised to find a the complete works of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, philosophers Plato and Aristotle, Nietzsche, several Mark Twain books, all the way to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
No. It was the books sitting snugly between those well-known (and some not-so-well-known) books that drew Lois’s attention.
Dante. Homer. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Victor Hugo . . . She recognized the names, if not the titles in some of the cases, because she was quite sure that the copies of the books were not in English.
They had clearly been read through more than once, Lois thought, pulling down a thick copy of what she concluded was a very Russian copy of Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and paging through the dog-eared pages. There were even notes in the margins, though heaven knew what they said—they were clearly in Russian, and the writing looked as if it could certainly have come from Clark Kent’s hand, though it was a bit cramped in the small space.
Lois put back the book, pulling out her camera to take shot after shot of the bookshelf. There were plenty of authors she had certainly never heard of before, and some books that didn’t have a visible title at all.
Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese . . . and was that some sort of Arabic language? Lois couldn’t tell the difference between a good many of them, but picking up perhaps the strangest looking one she opened it and was soon able to find more steady handwriting in whatever language it was in, though Lois definitely couldn’t say in this case if it was Clark’s or not. She took a picture of one of the pages and put it back. She stood back, shaking her head.
She had long since believed that you could tell a lot about a person by the books they read. She kept about half of her own bookshelf hidden, of course, choosing to show the classics and intimidating novels that she loved which she knew would cow anyone who looked close enough. Nobody but a very select few (in fact, only one—Lucy, by Lois’s knowledge) knew about the hidden half of her bookshelf. Oh, and Superman. He had come by once while she had been reading one of her favorite romances, and found her bawling her eyes out. She had been horrified, of course, but once he had gotten over his concern that nothing was wrong despite her tear-swollen image, he had shrugged it off as no big deal, though he had been somewhat amused by her horror at his knowing about it and finding her in such a state.
Oh, but between those big and impressive books on Clark Kent’s shelf there were others as well. Lord of the Rings. Jane Austin. Hm. Lois loved Austin’s books herself, but most men she came across seemed to think she was more of a “women-only” type of author. A bunch of sports almanacs and magazines pushed up against the wood, a fair many light-hearted comedies, volumes and volumes it seemed of poetry. And there . . .
Lois’s hand stilled over the title of a book that looked even more battered than even the most used. Carefully she pulled it out, leafing through the pages that seemed oh-so-fragile.
It was a cheaper paperback book—older, probably from his earlier years before traveling around the world. The pages were a bit wrinkled as if they had been exposed to damp weather more than once, and as she opened it up she didn’t find any writing in it at first. After a couple minutes browsing through, her eyes fell on a single, unmarked passage where Marguerite had just taken leave of her husband after a cold, emotionless exchange, convinced that her husband loved her no longer.
“Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own suffering seem but light and easy to bear—a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.”
So that was it. The Scarlet Pimpernel. A story of romance, adventure . . . lies, betrayal, and of love overcoming all. A story of a beautiful, able woman, and an apparently foppish man, who really carried the strength and nobility enough for a thousand heroes, but who hid that strength behind a façade of idiocy.
Lois gave a long sigh and carefully closed the tattered copy of the book. She smiled somewhat self-mockingly at her own romanticism, but she couldn’t deny that the book was one of her very favorites. But Kent . . .
Was this one of the books that Clark Kent would prefer to have hidden under his bed? He never seemed too much like the romantic, really. But clearly the book was clearly well-loved.
Clark Kent the romantic. Well, she knew he was old-fashioned, and she knew he was certainly die-hard enough to still hold hopes towards her, no matter how often she smacked him down.
Superman liked The Scarlet Pimpernel as well. He had said so in the white room, during one of the long conversations they had had in the timeless air. Perhaps he had even held this very book, and read that very passage on that very page . . .
Lois felt a slight thrill and quickly—almost guiltily—put the book back in its place. She turned her face away.
The odds and ends cluttering his bookshelves along with his books likewise testified of his time of travel before settling down in Metropolis. She found his music library, which was as diverse a selection as his books. Taking a couple pictures, she moved on.
Photos he had plenty of. Pictures of Kent from a boy to a young man to the person he was now were found almost everywhere she turned. Some football pictures from high school and college—which was odd. She never would have pictured Kent as a sportsboy, despite his claim that he had gone running the other day. There were graduation pictures, around-the-house pictures, and a bespeckled, maybe 12-year-old, awkward-but-charming-looking plaid-garbed boy beaming out at the camera as he hugged a cow around its neck as he held up a bright blue ribbon with utmost pride. It was so classic that Lois couldn’t help but chuckle.
Clark Kent, Kerth Winner—First Place Cow in the Smallville Country Fair.
She scanned over most of them quickly, though, and then tried hacking into his laptop which was sitting on his kitchen table—but to no avail (she had even tried a good many variations of “Lois Lane,” and was frustrated when they hadn’t worked). In his desk she found an almost overflowing drawer of (unsurprisingly) carefully ordered letters. She was disappointed to find that, once again, most of them weren’t in English, and the ones that were seemed like normal, boring, friendly exchanges between acquaintances. She couldn’t read the others, of course but she took a couple pictures for later research.
The search ended up being both intriguing and somewhat disappointing at the same time. Everything she found pointed to everything Clark Kent had ever told her to be as true as gold. He was clearly the farm boy she believed him to be, though perhaps a bit more of a sentimentalist than she had formerly thought, and as clear of an idealist as she had ever guessed. As for informative papers . . . She’d found old papers on articles, old memorabilia from both known and unknown sources, but not even a scrap of paper that she couldn’t find out of place except for those written in other languages in the desk drawer.
And no sign of his famous Lex Folder which she knew he had taken home after she had stolen it from his desk and began to tease him mercilessly over it a couple months ago.
Now where would he have hidden that? It certainly would be useful, now. But despite her best searching it was nowhere to be found. She had even looked under the bed (and it was disappointingly and almost disgustingly clean under there), but to no avail.
While Lois was in the middle of an excavation under Kent’s bathroom sink, the phone rang. She swore and started, knocking her head sharply against the pipes. She pulled herself out and sat up, rubbing her head as the message machine came on and the person on the other end actually left a message.
“Clark? Clark, honey, this is mom. Give me a call when you get home, okay?” There was a pause, filled only with the soft thrumming of the rain on the window, and Martha’s voice shook slightly. “I hope you’re being careful out there. And you better not be overdoing it, or I’ll have to come over there and drag you back to Smallville whether you like it or not.” Another pause. “I love you, honey. You’re the best. I hope you know that. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
She hung up.
Lois stood and walked over to the phone, still rubbing the tender knot on her head. It was kind of an odd call—certainly not like the kind Lois would think to receive from her mother (if she ever got a message, which was rare enough). But of course, Martha’s husband had just passed away, and as far as Lois knew she was away on that little farm all by herself, now that Clark was back. No doubt she was keeping in very close contact with her son, even with him all the way here.
She pushed down the sting of guilt that had been prying at her mind’s shell the whole last while as she pried into Kent’s personal life.
Where was he?
She didn’t know. Her apprehension of him finding her in his apartment had faded to general confusion as time had passed. She’d been there for almost a whole hour. Where in the world would Kent go on a Sunday?
She just didn’t know. But she decided she had stayed long enough, one way or another. Gathering up her things and pulling back on her slightly-damp coat, Lois glanced around the apartment to make sure everything was in the same place she had found it, turned off the light, and opened the door to step out into the rain.
Lois glanced back up at the darkened apartment as she reached her car. She bit her lip, recognizing the guilt that had been eating at her the whole while she had been nosing around in Clark Kent’s comfortable home.
What if she was wrong? What if there really wasn’t anything else behind Clark Smallville Kent? What if it was all just in her head? What if she really was just going crazy?
Well, then. If that was the case, then Lois would put this case behind her and Clark would never be the wiser of it.
She dropped the film from her camera off at an hour-developing place and wasted the time away sitting in a waiting area, staring off into the air.
Had Superman taught Clark all of those languages? Surely that was impossible. She had known that one of her dad’s friends could speak eight, but he was an Oxfordian, brilliant, and 67 years old besides.
Or were those Superman’s letters?
The thought made Lois grow still, and she gritted her teeth.
She’d look at how they were addressed, and she could always just stop there, if they did turn out to be so. She certainly didn’t want to invade his privacy.
Lois bit her lip. But she had invaded Clark’s privacy. And quite knowingly, at that.
It was for an investigation. Mad Dog Lane. No mercy. Kent was going down.
It was Clark Kent’s apartment. How would you feel if he broke into your apartment looking for why you acted so inconsistently towards him?
Lois stiffened. Why, she had Superman’s cape stuffed under her pillow, as she always did. And if Clark were to find her stash of hidden books under her bed . . .
She’d probably die. Or maybe just have to kill him.
But Kent wouldn’t ever do something like that . . .
Was it so illogical to wish that she had found something more out of place than some books and letters in different languages? At least that would justify some of her suspicions.
What suspicions?
She didn’t know, okay?! They were just there.
Lois shifted in her seat under the bright florescent lights, grumbling mentally to herself as her very unreasonable guilt continued to grow. The silence was deafening, and she wished for the steady roar of the rain instead of that cursed hum of the lights. It brought back bad memories and made her feel uneasy.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t all that unreasonable. But she had done such things before, hadn’t she? And she’d never felt too guilty about that, had she? Especially when something had turned up because of her snooping.
No. Not snooping. Investigating. She was an investigative reporter, and Clark Kent was maddening enough that he was being investigated by Lois Lane. The end.
Besides, Melinda had told her to investigate!
But wasn’t this a little extreme? Breaking into his apartment and prying around in his personal things?
Of course not!
Yes.
Well, maybe.
She had found his journal in a small drawer next to his bed, but she had stayed her hand there. There were some boundaries that even she would not cross, even for a potential lead.
But maybe she should have.
No. It’s a very good thing you didn’t!
She could just imagine one of his entries . . .
Dear Journal—Another good day at work. I told Lois I was right about Lex, and she finally got off her so-high-horse (which is about three times as large as old Buck who won first at the country fair last year!) and then admitted so! Oh, I left her in the middle of an investigation (again) and now she’s all furious and spitting at me (again), but with those chocolates and flowers she’ll no doubt be back in shape in no time (again) .
Idiot.
But even as she thought it, the imagined words rang sour like an out-of-tune copper-green church bell. Lois’s frowned as her thoughts pulled to a stand-still. What would Clark Kent’s journal be like?
Today I waited outside Lois’s apartment for four hours . . .
Lois blinked. Four hours? Surely not . . .
But she’d come home after nine, and he hadn’t left until after eleven . . . How long had he been waiting before?
Wow. The man really was persistent.
The page floated into her mind.
Dear Journal. Today Lois came into work at 8:03—one minute and thirty-two seconds later than usual . . . She was wearing her black stilettos and her hair looked just hot . . . Maybe I’ll try to ask her out (again), after I sit outside her door and make her feel bad for me so she’ll say yes. She came home at exactly forty-seven seconds after 9:07 . . .
Hm. Stalker Kent. It just didn’t fit.
Dear Journal . . .
Cows, maybe? Sheep? Corn? She chuckled.
Her inner voice scorned her. Now you’re just being stupid. You know there’s more to Kent than just the country boy. You can’t deny it, even if you did before.
Oh, shut up.
Dear Journal . . .
Dad died today . . .
Lois winced. Idiot man. He always was too much of a softie—that was his problem. He was in the big city now—he had to hit hard, get down and dirty. Dig in with his nails. The world wasn’t going to stop for things like that. People died. The world went on and didn’t wait.
Dear Journal . . .
No! She did not care what might have been written in Clark Kent’s journal!
It had been good of her not to read it. And she was not regretting it.
At least you had enough conscience to let Kent keep that privacy, at least.
Conscience? Lois shook her head. It had been propriety, not guilt that had kept her from opening it up. Kent was a . . . a friend.
Some way you have of showing it—first brushing him off and then breaking into his apartment.
Lois winced.
Okay. Fine.
But what was she going to do about it? Go apologize? For goodness sakes, who knew how the man might react? He might . . . He might . . .
What would he do?
Clark . . .
He’d look so hurt if he found out. His dark eyes would widen behind the glasses, and he’d look just like a kicked dog—or like she’d reached in and ripped his heart out with her bare hands while he had been watching her with those open, trusting eyes. Or maybe he’d actually get angry at her, though the thought was ridiculous.
And it hurt.
Would he get angry at her? Would the cow-hugging, football-playing, philosophically-minded, secretly-romantic, brilliant, multi-lingual, generous, patient, personable, friendly, cheerful, open, caring, self-less Clark Kent (and who cared what he put in his journal?) finally decide not to put up with her?
Lois felt her heart sinking. Rapidly. Dropping down to the very darkest corner of the darkest crevice in the deepest section of the sea.
She couldn’t say why, but the thought of Kent finally getting sick of her and her disgustingly irritating nature made her feel ill.
You should have thought about that before you broke into his apartment, her inner voice muttered.
Yes, maybe.
Maybe she did take him for granted. Maybe she was too quick to judge him, time after time after time . . .
There’s no maybe about it.
Her name was called. Lois stood, feeling utterly deflated, to go pay for the pictures.
You’re right.
She paid for the photos and dropped them in the trash can on her way out.
She had underestimated Clark Kent, one way or another. So he was a farm boy. So he was a bit naïve. But she had found pictures of him standing amongst starving African children, his face as pure as an angel and so beautifully sad yet loving as he looked at their suffering and he held one of the thin and bedraggled little ones in his arms.
Dear Journal . . .
Clark Kent was more than just a good man. Clark Kent was more than just a tag-along of Superman’s as he had flew around the world. No. Clark Kent had a heart and soul as big as that smile that had burst out of that old picture from the country fair.
There was a reason, Lois realized, why Superman had chosen Clark Kent. They were just alike. Caring far beyond themselves, and strong enough to do something about it.
So. Perhaps Superman hadn’t just been being charitable in taking the blame from Clark Kent. Perhaps Superman really had separated himself from Clark Kent for Kent’s own safety.
Lois felt a chill. Perhaps Kal-El meant to do the same thing to her.
Idiot man.
But wouldn’t it be just like him, from what Lois knew. Again and again he tried to pull away—for her safety. Had Clark been so frustrated yet helpless as he had watched his good friend withdraw and pull up that cursed superhero mask of his?
And Clark might be good at being generally kind to people, but how often did people really take the time to be kind back, besides a casual wave? The only one Lois had ever seen Clark succeeding in beings friends with was Jimmy, who was young and sometimes just plain annoying to be around, and . . . herself.
Herself. Her. Lois Lane, who never let him get close. Who slammed him down so hard that he was reduced to a stuttering, bumbling bulk of awkwardness.
Poor Clark.
Lois stopped herself flat. Poor Clark? The same man she was so cursedly furious with, after he had run off the day before?
Brainless, selfish lunkhead!
Oh, she was going to get an answer to that mystery, no matter how deep she had to dig!
Dear—
SMASH!
Lois took a mental hammer and crushed the annoying repeating voice into nothing but a pile of bent and crushed metal and some screws which went spinning off somewhere into the depths of her mind.
Like she was saying, she was going to get an answer to that mystery, no matter how deep she had to dig!
Feeling satisfyingly indignant again, Lois drove back to Kent’s apartment, returned to her parking spot, tried his phone number again, and when she got the message machine again she just sat back and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She had done stake-outs before. Of course, this wasn’t really an official stake out, because she was ready to dart out there as soon as she saw Kent.
To say what? She didn’t know. Her thoughts bounced between an open confession of what she had done and a forceful confrontation of his secrets.
Oh, she was an awful woman. Kent’s little boyish crush would certainly be wiped clean out of his moonstruck eyes if he knew the truth about her.
And for some reason, the thought that that light in her naïve partner’s eye would vanish struck her to the heart.
Lois shook her head at herself. She didn’t know what to do. To think. To feel.
How could the uncertain creature that was her partner be the same man who was in that picture from Africa, calm, confident, and capable of the trust that shone up from the children’s eyes as they looked at him?
Clark Kent in the Congo? Facing the wilds of Brazilian jungles, carrying around a machete like she had seen in that thick book of photos in his drawer? The thought was laughable. She couldn’t see him lasting a day.
But he had. He had traveled the world for four years. He had the sort of experience that could turn men into arrogant narcissists, the intelligence to turn men into overconfident prigs.
Instead, he was just . . . Clark Kent.
Somehow, that made what he had done all the more amazing.
Lois didn’t trust it. There must be something else she was missing. But she had taken the wrong road to try and get it.
The hours slid by. Lois was tired, and her eyes drooped to the comings and goings of the rain, but she forced herself to stay awake. She almost wished she had kept those pictures she had taken from Kent’s apartment, just to keep herself occupied.
Almost.
Finally, tired, cramped from sitting so long, and feeling like a useless and low-life dirt reporter if she ever had felt so, Lois started her jeep and headed home, disappointed that her waiting had come to naught.
But Superman would be coming over soon. She didn’t want to be late.
Besides, she had to talk to him too.
Arriving at her apartment, Lois parked her jeep, darted inside before she could get too wet, and in a minute was up in her apartment, turning on the oven and glancing out the unlocked window.
He was coming soon.
She turned on the TV, double checked to make sure everything was in order, and then sat down to listen and watch the news, which was still caught up in the storm of Superman’s mysterious disappearance and return.
And there, she waited.
TBC . . .
