While I'm working on the much longer story, Smallville, I decided to throw together part 3 of the Feathers universe. I present part one of what happened after Tsunami.
As always, the characters portrayed in this story are the property of D.C. Comics, Warner Bros. et al. and I am only borrowing them for awhile. This story is based on the Lois and Clark episode All Shook Up, and any recognizable characters or scenes are the property of the show. Any changes to the story are mine.
Lessons1/2?
By Nan Smith
"Impact in five...four...three... two..."
Lois held her breath.
The transmission from Superman vanished in a burst of static. Lois stared at the screen in dismay, while around her the murmur of voices from the Daily Planet's staffers who had been listening to the broadcast (which included just about everyone on the evening shift) swelled with alarm.
"This is EPRAD Control," a voice announced suddenly, as the static cleared. "We have lost contact with Superman."
Lois was aware of the dead silence suddenly engulfing the room, and the loud beat of blood in her own ears. She spoke more forcefully than necessary, as if the vehemence of her words would somehow make them true.
"His microphone went out. He's fine. He's got to be!"
**********
But the minutes went by with no further word from Superman. Finally, Lois couldn't take the fruitless wait any longer and left the Planet. She had intended to visit the market before she went home, but now that plan was forgotten. She hailed a taxi and gave the address of her apartment. Even the cabbie was in a quiet mood, apparently, for he drove through the unnaturally quiet streets with the radio turned up. Lois couldn't help listening as well, hoping against hope to hear something that would give her a hint about Superman's fate, but nothing was forthcoming. At last, the taxi drew up in front of her apartment house. Lois paid the man in silence and turned to ascend the steps.
Where was Clark? What had happened to him out there in space? Was he even still alive?
The thoughts spun in endless circles in her mind. She had been watching him covertly now for several weeks, trying to determine why Superman would masquerade as an ordinary man, and finding no real answers.
In her experience, everyone had an agenda. The fact that Superman was hiding among the general run of humanity when he could have lived a completely different sort of life had left her puzzled in the beginning, and wondering why he would choose such a life. He could hold any position he wanted; he could live in luxury, he could have anything -- and yet he chose to be an obscure reporter on a newspaper -- an outstanding newspaper, of course, but still, just a newspaper. So what *was* his agenda?
She had found no answers so far. And then the Nightfall asteroid had appeared, threatening all of humanity, and Superman had answered the call of the President. He'd voluntarily agreed to risk his life to save the Earth. Lois kept waiting for something to happen, for him to back out for some reason. But he hadn't.
And now he might very well be dead. What kind of agenda was that?
She had doubted and disbelieved, and he had proven her wrong by his own actions. She stared out her window into the black sky and felt the tears welling in her eyes. Clark was very probably dead, saving all of Earth. And she had never once believed that he might be simply a good man who had his own, very personal reasons to wish for his privacy.
Privacy. It all boiled down to that, she thought. If the world knew where Superman lived, what would happen to his privacy?
A few months ago, Jason Trask and Bureau 39 had hunted him and threatened his life and the lives of his mother and father in their mad quest to find and eliminate Superman. Wasn't that enough reason for Superman to remain anonymous?
Why had that never occurred to her before? It was obvious, now, that he masqueraded as Clark Kent because if he didn't his family and friends would probably be in danger from nuts like Trask and his crew -- not to mention the media, and certainly fans and curiosity seekers. They would very probably make his life a shambles, and he would never have any kind of peace. Or privacy. He wouldn't be able to do anything without a crowd of obnoxious rubberneckers following him everywhere he went and intruding on him when he wished to be alone. How could he have any kind of life of his own under those circumstances?
The answer was, of course, that he couldn't. No one could. He and his family would be under constant siege. So given those facts, in his place, wouldn't she have done the same?
The thought caught her up.
His family! What about Jonathan and Martha Kent? If they were his parents, wouldn't they have super powers just like Clark? Wouldn't they be trying to find their son, to save him?
But during the short time she had spent in Smallville, she had personally watched Martha Kent fixing dinner, the evening of the day that had seen the death of Jason Trask, when she had managed to cut her hand with the paring knife. She had broken down in tears, mostly, Clark said later, from the stress of the whole day. Clark had taken over and finished the job.
So his mother didn't have Superman's powers, and most likely his father didn't, either. If he had, would he have allowed Trask to threaten the lives of his wife and Wayne Irig? She doubted it.
And what about Clark's allergies the first night they had been in Smallville? And hadn't he had a paper cut? He'd seemed shocked by it, far more so than he should have been. So something had happened in Smallville -- something of which she obviously hadn't been aware. A lot of things didn't make sense here.
But Clark was probably out in space, dead. She would never see him again, never have the chance to get to learn more about him. Never get the chance to have him as her friend again.
A fireball streaked across the sky.
Riveted, she followed it with her eyes. The thing was huge, a brilliant ball of fire, trailing flames as it plunged toward the city. What could it possibly be? A piece of the Nightfall asteroid?
But that didn't make sense. The object was much too far away for the pieces left after Superman's collision with Nightfall to have reached them so quickly. Maybe it was just a freak meteor, but if so, it was sure the brightest shooting star she had ever seen.
And unlike other shooting stars, it didn't burn up, to vanish while still high in the atmosphere. The place where it hit was obvious. There was a brief flare of light and a clap of sound like thunder. It looked like it had struck somewhere in Suicide Slum.
A sudden wild hope seized her and she looked quickly at her watch. It had been about fifty-five minutes since Superman had rammed Nightfall and destroyed it. Pieces of the huge asteroid couldn't have made it to Earth that fast -- but Superman could have. If he had survived the collision and hung onto his air tanks, he could have made it back to Earth. What if that fireball was Clark, perhaps injured, but returning home in an out-of control plunge through the atmosphere?
Without a second thought, or even a consideration that she might not be able to find the point of impact, Lois grabbed for her coat and shoulder bag. She barely paused to lock her door before she was hurrying toward the elevator. If Clark had indeed crashed in Suicide Slum, she was going to find him!
**********
"You want to borrow my car?" Jimmy said.
Lois glared at him. "That's what I just said. I've got a hot lead and I need a car." She tried to curb her impatience. "Please, Jimmy, I'm really desperate. I can't hire a cab for this. I promise I'll take good care of it."
"I don't know..." Jimmy hesitated. "It's the only one I have and I've worked on it a lot. I don't want something to happen to it."
"I promise if I damage it, I'll pay for any repairs," she said recklessly. "It's really important."
"Well -- all right," he said finally. He fished in his pocket. "Here's the keys. It's parked in the lot behind the apartment. You know which one it is."
Lois grabbed the keys. "Thanks a lot. I owe you." She left Jimmy staring after her as she spun and hurried down the narrow hallway toward the steps.
Jimmy's car was parked near the old brick building. Lois got behind the wheel and was surprised when the engine caught on the first try. She backed hurriedly out of the space and turned out onto the street.
According to the map of Metropolis that she found in Jimmy's glove compartment, and judging by what she had seen of the impact, whatever it was had to have crashed near the western boundary of Suicide Slum. Lois drove through the dark streets, slowly covering the area where she thought the fireball -- or Superman -- had come down. After an hour of cruising back and forth, she was almost ready to give up, but she turned carefully down the next street, her headlights on high for maximum visibility.
It was the billboard that caught her eye. The sign, advertising the Metro Liner, was marred by a huge hole with scorch marks around the edges where something had torn through the wood. And before her on the dirty street a deep hole gaped in the asphalt. Lois slammed on her brakes.
She craned her neck, trying to see what might be in the hole, but the angle was wrong. She shut off the motor and looked around.
No one was visible. Still, she hesitated.
In spite of the fact that she was known by her colleagues to be willing to take risks that bordered on the insane, she was not lost to all sense of caution. Still, if she was going to find out what was in that hole -- if anything -- it looked as if she was going to have to get out of her car.
She gave the area a second scrutiny and then a third. She could see no sign of life. Taking a deep breath, Lois thrust open the driver's door, her keys gripped in one hand, her penlight in the other, and scurried over to the hole.
There was something moving in the hole. She flashed her light over it and gasped.
The man stirred as her light flashed over him and began to push himself into a sitting position. Lois caught a glimpse of pale skin, rippling muscle and a few charred and tattered rags of cloth that covered nothing worthwhile. Then he looked up, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of her flashlight.
It was Clark, all right. Clark, without his glasses, his hair straggling across his soot-streaked face. She should have been embarrassed, but the only thought that crossed her mind at the moment was the fact that the mystery was solved. The suit did, indeed, come off.
"Who's there?" She had never heard Clark's voice sound so uncertain and, yes, scared.
Of course! What was she doing, standing here staring when he could very well be hurt? Quickly, she knelt at the edge of the hole. "It's Lois. Are you all right?"
He squinted up at her, shading his eyes. Lois kept the flashlight trained on his upper body while she removed her coat and tossed it down to him. "Here, put that on."
While he was squeezing his muscular body into the coat, she turned to survey the immediate area again. No one seemed to be nearby, but she thought she could see motion across the narrow, broken street. "Can you get out of there without help? We're in Suicide Slum. I'd like for us to get out of here as soon as we can."
He scrambled awkwardly out of the hole and straightened up, clutching the coat around him with one hand. Lois reached out to grasp his wrist. "This way. Quick."
It wasn't her imagination, she thought. There was motion in the darkness past the bright glare of her headlights. Some of the denizens of Suicide Slum had decided to take an interest in her and her companion. Quickly, she hustled Clark to her car. "Get in, quick!"
He slid into the front seat and scooted quickly over into the passenger seat. Lois got into the front seat, slammed the door and locked it.
Wasting no time, she started the engine, grateful that Jimmy had apparently put a great deal of time and effort into the maintenance of his car, backed and turned.
Two men were standing in the glare of the headlights. They were scruffy individuals, dressed haphazardly in mismatching, ragged garments. Dirty mufflers were wound around their necks and chins against the cold of the winter air, and one of them clutched a baseball bat in his right hand. The other seemed to be empty-handed, but, by the look on his face, Lois wasn't willing to stay around to inquire about his intentions.
She eased the clutch out just until the motor caught and let the car move forward too slowly to harm the men if they refused to move.
The bumper contacted the thigh of the man in the lead. He raised the baseball bat.
Lois gave the car a little more gas, pushing her opponent inexorably backward, and just as inexorably off balance. The second individual didn't attempt to block her. He moved quickly to the side of the street. She kept moving forward, pushing the bat-wielder steadily backward. He was forced to yield before her or fall in front of the car.
Lois stepped a little harder on the gas and the engine responded. The bat wielder flung out his arms for balance. She didn't dare stop. If she did, he would swing that bat, she thought, and then she would be stuck with the cost of repairing Jimmy's car. Nobody was going to cost her that much money. She glared at the man pressing against her bumper.
He must have seen something in her face, for he moved suddenly, throwing himself sideways, out of the vehicle's path. Lois stepped on the gas. The car's tires screeched as she burned rubber, and they roared away from the scene. She didn't look back.
**********
"I thought we were in trouble for a minute there," Clark said. He looked down at himself and pulled her coat more closely around his body.
"So did I," Lois said. She glanced sideways at him and quickly returned her attention to the broken pavement in front of the car. "Are you sure you're all right?"
He rubbed his face. "I think so. I don't seem to be hurt. Thanks for stepping in to help me."
"No problem," Lois said. She glanced at him again. "What happened?"
Silence answered her and she again looked quickly at him and back at the street. He was frowning, apparently at a loss for an answer. Lois hesitated an instant, a trickle of worry beginning to run along her nerves. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know," he said slowly. "I don't know what happened."
She didn't answer at once, concentrating on her driving, while she mulled over the implications of that. "You don't know how you lost your clothes?"
"No." His voice shook slightly. "You said your name is Lois. Do you know me?"
If it were possible for one's heart to really climb into one's throat, hers would have choked her. "Don't you know?"
"I can't remember." There was a trace of panic in his voice. "What's wrong with me?"
Lois pulled out onto a main street, leaving Suicide Slum behind, much to her relief. The streets were only sparsely populated at the moment -- probably due to the lateness of the hour, the nearly freezing temperature and the fact that people were probably still listening for news about Nightfall, Lois thought. But the man who had just smashed the huge asteroid was sitting in the car next to her, wrapped in her coat, and apparently he couldn't remember what he had just done, or even who she was. What was she going to do?
Well, the first thing was to not panic, and to try to reassure him. She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. Who was she supposed to be addressing -- Clark or Superman? He didn't know that she knew, and she didn't want to tell him yet. As a matter of fact, that might be more of a problem than she had foreseen initially, but she would deal with that later. One thing at a time.
"You can't remember how you got there?" she asked, stalling for a little more time. She needed to think, and her brain didn't want to work.
"No." His voice sounded more scared than ever. "I woke up in that hole and saw your light."
This was just great. If he didn't know how he'd gotten there, what else didn't he remember? "Can you remember your name?"
A long silence followed, and she could almost see him struggling with his recalcitrant memory. "No." Now his voice was really shaking. "Do you know me?"
"Your name is Clark Kent," she said. "You're my reporting partner at the Daily Planet. I'm going to take you back to your apartment so we can get you something to wear and then we'll decide what to do next."
He huddled into the seat, and another glance at him showed her that his fists were clenched in the material of the coat. "It's all right," she said. "You must have been in some kind of accident. That's probably why you can't remember. Maybe if you get some rest, your memory will come back."
He didn't answer, and Lois concentrated on her driving for the remainder of the trip back to his apartment. Superman was sitting beside her in her car, stark naked, except for her coat, and he didn't remember a thing about himself. What was she going to do now?
**********
"This is my place?" Clark asked. He looked around the cozy apartment that he had rented after his arrival in Metropolis. Lois closed and locked the door behind her and moved past him down the steps to the living area.
"Yes. Does it look familiar?"
He looked around again and then at her. "No."
"Give it time," Lois said. "I'll find you some clothes."
He was standing at the foot of the steps when she returned minutes later, but now he was holding a picture of himself with Martha and Jonathan Kent and frowning at the images. "Who are these people?"
"The tall guy in the middle is you," Lois said. "Those are your parents." She handed him the bundle of clothing that she had acquired from his bedroom, and a pair of his glasses. A look through them when she had discovered them in the drawer of his nightstand had informed her that the lenses were plain glass. "Here are your glasses. Why don't you go in there and get dressed. I'll wait for you out here."
"Okay." He turned and disappeared behind the partition. Lois stood uncertainly in the middle of his living room, trying to decide what she ought to do. Well, he probably should see a doctor to determine if he was hurt in any way, but a doctor might well find out that he was Superman, which might not be a good idea, especially if she introduced him as Clark Kent. Why the heck hadn't she told him that he was Superman? If she told him now, when he remembered he would realize that she knew. On the other hand, Clark was the name that had come first to her mind when he had asked if she knew him. But if he got his memory as Clark back, he would probably remember the Superman part as well, wouldn't he?
But probably the smart thing to do would be to call his parents. Didn't he have an address book around here somewhere, maybe one with phone numbers?
Sure enough, it was in the drawer of one of the side tables, but when she attempted to call the number listed for Jonathan and Martha Kent, she discovered that the lines were still jammed, as they had been ever since the President had announced the Nightfall emergency. Now what was she going to do?
Well, probably she should see if she could get him to rest. Maybe that, all by itself, would help him recover his memory.
He emerged from his bedroom, dressed in the clothing that Lois had selected, his glasses in place and his hair neatly combed. He had washed the soot from his face and, if she had not known better, she would have assumed that nothing at all untoward had happened to him in the last few hours -- which showed how deceptive appearances could be. Lois smiled at him in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "You look better."
He smiled back with a trace of anxiety. "What should I do now?"
"Well, I think you should probably try to get some sleep, don't you? Maybe if you do, you'll start to remember things."
"Maybe." He hesitated. "Can you tell me about myself? You must know some things about me, if we're partners. What do we do?"
"We're reporters," Lois said. "We report the news."
"Okay."
"I'm the senior partner," she said.
"So I do what you tell me?"
She hesitated, and then shook her head. "I've worked there longer, but I'm not your boss or anything. But maybe you should follow my lead for now."
A glimmer of a smile. "Yeah, you're probably right."
"You're from Kansas," she continued. "Your mom and dad are Martha and Jonathan Kent." She nodded at the picture.
"Do I have any brothers or sisters?"
"No," she said. "You're an only child. I tried to call your parents while you were changing, but the lines are still jammed."
"Why are they jammed?" he questioned. "Is there some kind of an emergency?"
"Kind of," Lois said. Maybe now was the time to slip in some information about Superman. "Why don't you sit down. I'll make us some coffee and explain...."
**********
When she had finished speaking, Clark was silent for several very long seconds. At last, he spoke. "But this asteroid or meteor, was destroyed, right?"
"Yes," Lois said. "Superman rammed it and broke it into pieces, but no one knows what happened to him after that."
"Do you think he's alive?"
Lois nodded vigorously. "I'm sure of it. Maybe he got knocked silly, or something. The collision had to have destroyed his radio. Wherever he is, I hope he shows up soon. People are worried."
Clark was frowning. "Why? If he's this invulnerable man, why worry about him?"
"Because we don't know *how* invulnerable he is," Lois said. "He can hold his breath for twenty minutes, but even he had to use an oxygen tank to breathe for a trip that far into space. It's been --" she looked at her watch -- "about three hours since he broke up Nightfall and so far there hasn't been any sign of him."
"I hope he's okay," Clark said. He ran a hand through his hair.
"So do I." Lois got to her feet. "I need to go home and get some sleep. I'll come by in the morning and take you to work. All right? Maybe by then you'll remember more -- or maybe seeing the newsroom will help jog some of your memory loose."
"Do you have to leave?" he asked. The anxiety in his expression deepened. "I --"
She bit her lip. It went against the grain to let him come back to her place, but he was obviously pretty shaken up still. Would it be that terrible if she let him sleep on the couch? Or maybe the floor, she amended hastily. Her sofa wasn't built to accommodate a man the size of Clark Kent. Uneasily, she recalled the sofa in the Honeymoon Suite. That one hadn't really been meant for someone like him, either.
She brushed away the thought. "Well...I guess you could come back to my place," she said, a little grudgingly. "But no funny stuff. Understand?"
His expression of shock was almost funny, and yet it was revealing, too. Somewhat reassured, she patted his shoulder. "I'm joking. Why don't you grab some sweats and a toothbrush, and you can come along with me. At least you won't be alone, tonight."
**********
tbc
