Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Missing Lois: Chapter 6 - The Return of Ultra Woman (5/12) (53/109)

Missing Lois - TOC

Author’s Note: The “Lois” in Chapter 5 and 6 refers to alt-Lois. Canon Lois will be called “Lucy” to help lessen the confusion between the two characters.

Story Notes: This story is mostly set in alt-dimension, although visits to the canon dimension do happen from time-to-time.
- Clark = Alt-Clark unless otherwise noted (such as when we are in the canon dimension, then 'Clark' is canon Clark)
- Lucy El = pregnant canon Lois avoiding the curse by hiding out with alt-Clark, aka Lois's secret identity
- Kal = Lucy El's husband's name, or what Lois-Lucy and alt-Clark call canon Clark
- Lois = alt-Lois, wife of Lex Luthor
- Lola Luthor = ‘wife’ of Lex Luthor; alt-Lois, if not referring to Clois (Cloned Lois)
- Mr. Amazing = alt-Lois's nickname for Superman
- Sam Lane = alt-Lois's Dad, Lois's doctor & roommate
- Ultra Woman = the costume Lucy/Lois wore to Perry's 'Come as Your Favorite Superhero' party; now, alt-Lois.
- Mayor White = aka Perry White, former Editor-in-Chief at the DP
- James Olsen = owner of the Daily Planet, Lois-Lucy's friend
- Barry Balson = Superman beat reporter for DP
- Lex Luthor = no explanation necessary, same bad guy as always, this time bald
- Jaxon Xavier = Lex Luthor's son and spy at The Planet, does website design and research for the paper
- Gareth McTinney = new EIC at the alt-DP.
- Mayson Drake = police detective, partner to Detective (in alt-world) Henderson, alt-Clark's ex-girlfriend

- The only people who know canon Lois's true identity are alt-Clark, Sam, Moonbeam (alt-Star), Dr. Klein and alt-Lois. Alt-Clark told Mayson Drake that Lucy El is his sister-in-law and that he has a twin brother, but not about the other dimension. Mayson didn't believe him (thinking instead that Lucy was a con-artist).

***

What happened in Chapter 6: Part 4...

Lois informed Lucy that she had figured out Clark’s secret. Lucy in turn told her that the reason she was in that dimension was due to the curse, which Lois had been able to beat with the help of some lightning, and because she was pregnant with Kal’s child. Lois freaked out as she was once again reminded about how much she lost because of the accident. She confessed to Lucy that she too had been pregnant, according to Kal, but not anymore. Lucy introduced Lois to Ultra Woman by making her look into a mirror.

On the walk home, Clark decided that the best path for him and for Lois was for him to become a world correspondent for the Daily Planet and give Lois space to live her life. Upon making this decision, he realized he loved her and could not live without her, so he rushed back to the apartment to inform her of this. But as he hovered by the living room windows, he saw Lois crying into Lucy’s arms (about the miscarriage, but Clark did not know anything about that) and once again hesitated in telling her the truth. He flew off to help some people, but when he returned the Loises had gone out (to test Lois’s new Ultra Woman powers).

While doing some Ultra apartment cleaning, Lois discovered a part of a rejected passage in Lucy’s journal to Kal, where she discussed Clark’s love for his Lois. Thirsty for knowledge, Lois searched Lucy’s room found her Kal Journal/Diary and read it to learn all about what had happened to Lucy since her arrival in this dimension. Lois discovered from Lucy’s journal that something happened to Clark (emotionally) after Mayson got hurt by the car bomb, but Lois was not able to understand exactly what.

***

Part 5

Lucy pulled herself out of bed, slowly. She was completely exhausted. Drained. The whole weekend was crazy: teaching Lois how to control her heat vision – good-bye notebook with their Saturday afternoon conversation in it – and how to put out fires with her cooling breath. How to fly, how to land, how to speed run without hitting anything like a tree, how to stop on a dime. How to control her super strength without hurting anyone. How to use her x-ray vision.

She moaned and tried to pull her feet to the edge of the bed. She didn’t want to get up and she certainly didn’t want to go to work.

Lois rushed in. “I heard a moan. Are you all right?”

Lucy looked at her. “I got up three times during the night to pee. I’m tired and as big as a house. So, no, I’m not all right.” She growled.

“Whoa!” Lois took a step back. “Why don’t you just go back to bed? Clark can surely survive the day without you. He’s a big boy.”

Lucy looked at her, but did not have the energy to fight. “Agreed. Let me just use the bathroom and call Clark.”

When she came out of the bathroom, Lois ushered her straight back to bed. “I called Clark for you. Don’t you worry. You need your rest. Sleep the day away. You won’t be getting any after the baby’s born.”

Lucy looked at her again, knowing she was completely correct, and happily crawled back into bed to dream again of her man. She and Kal had been playing strip poker during her last dream and he was down to his shirt and shorts. She grinned, wondering where the dream might end. Minutes later, he was beating the pants off her, literally.

***

Lucy beat Clark into work on Tuesday morning. Mudslides in Bolivia. She would probably beat him home, too. Poor Clark. Natural disasters were always especially hard on him. The amount of death. The lack of control.

Lois had walked her down to the waiting cab. Who needed police protection when one lived with a superhero? Lois didn’t want her to come into work this day, either. But Lucy knew with Clark out of the office, someone from Team Superman needed to show up to the morning meeting.

Her back was killing her and all that extra sleep hadn’t helped. She sighed, but she sure had enjoyed all the extra dreaming. Mmmm, Kal. She stretched, still working out some kinks in her neck. What was she going to do when she returned to her dimension and her stand-in returned to her time-slot and dreams were just dreams again? What was she going to do when she had to start calling her husband by Clark and not Kal? She checked her desk for a note from Clark; some heads up on what he was working on.

Continue to do research on Intergang.

Her brow furrowed. What research on Intergang? The last work they had done on Intergang was before Lois’s rescue when they had been able to decode Lex’s L.I., Ltd. as Luthor Intergang, Ltd. Had he found a new lead? She looked around her desk. Someone had moved stuff.

Lucy opened her top right hand drawer and found a photo of her and Clark – true, it was of Kal, not this dimension’s Clark – resting where it had not been when she had left on Friday. She and Clark had decided that of all the photos in her Lucy and Kal collection, this one was the least romantic looking, and showed them least like a couple. He okayed it for her to bring to the office, so she could have a little reminder of home there. They had even come up with matching stories of when the photo was taken. During the previous summer, a baseball game they had attended together. They were laughing. Jimmy had taken the photo and it made her think of him, too. She missed her friends, Jimmy and Perry, and her Dad and even her Mom. She sighed. Who would put this photo in the desk? she wondered.

Gareth called the morning meeting and Lucy grabbed a notebook and slowly, as she no longer ran anywhere, tried not to waddle to the conference room. Gareth pulled her to the side, before the meeting started.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

Lucy wondered about the concern, as he hadn’t acknowledged her previously. “Sure, fine. Sorry, about yesterday. I was exhausted. Long weekend. But I’m here today, one hundred percent, Mr. McTinney.” She nodded.

“Your head better?”

Her head? Was that what Clark told him? “Yes, much, thanks.”

“Do you need extra cushions or pillows for your chair?”

That sounded great, but she wondered why he asked. “No, I’m fine,” she stated, staring at him.

“If you need anyone to take anything down from the high shelves or carry up a box from archives, you let me know and I’ll find you some muscle, understood?”

His concern was bordering on suspicious. “I can do my job, Mr. McTinney. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“I understand, Lucy. My wife just gave birth to our third child a month ago. I know that the last months of pregnancy can be the worst.”

Oh, crap! How in the hell had he known about the baby? She looked down at the clothes, she was wearing. Long and baggy enough to hide the bulge, she thought. But not to an expert new father as her new boss. James had better not have had anything to do with this breach in knowledge.

“Excuse me?” she gasped.

“When will you be leaving on maternity leave? Have you let HR know how long you’ll be gone?” These were all professional, sincere questions, which had this been a normal pregnancy with a normal woman with a normal husband, probably would have been thought of as nice even. But not her secret pregnancy with Superman’s baby in this alternate universe where her alternate Clark was slogging through mudslides… Deny. Deny. Deny.

The room had gone silent and she feared that everyone in the room had overheard his last questions. She knew she was acting like a fish with her mouth opening and closing with nothing coming out. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jaxon looking at her, his eyes opening wider, realization hitting home. Double crap!

“You think I’m pregnant?” she growled as she wrapped her arms about herself.

Gareth’s face went white and then red. “But… But… My wife just gave birth. I know what a pregnant woman looks like, Lucy. I’m not an idiot.”

“Well, you do a damn good impression of one, Mr. McTinney.” Lucy glared at him, grabbed her notebook, and stormed out of the room. She went to her desk, took her coat off her hook and was about to storm out of the bullpen, when she thought better of it. She picked up the phone and first placed an urgent call to Lois. As the phone rang, she could hear Barry speaking in the conference room.

“Gareth, you’re lucky that Clark wasn’t here to hear you say that to her.”

“What did I say that was wrong? She’s obviously pregnant and those are things a pregnant employee should clear with the boss before heading out on maternity leave.”

“She was also the first and only person on a first name basis with Mr. Olsen, with the exception of Clark Kent,” said Barry.

“And even before Clark Kent,” clarified Jaxon.

Everyone nodded in agreement with Jaxon.

“Bollocks!” said Gareth, before wiping his brow. “OK, back to the meeting. I’ll deal with her later.”

Finally, Lois answered the phone.

“Lois!” Lucy hissed into the phone. “I need your help. You’ve got to cover for me. Get your butt to the Daily Planet, immediately, and meet me in the ladies room in five minutes.”

“What happened? Your water burst?” Lois asked.

“No, worse! Gareth McTinney thinks I’m pregnant. I need you to cover for me,” she whispered, hardly loud enough for her to hear.

“But you are pregnant?”

“Lois, this is not the time for semantics. Will you cover for me or not?”

“Five minutes. Ladies’. Be there.” She hung up.

Lucy hung up with her finger, glanced back over her shoulder at the conference room full of the biggest gossips in Metropolis – all watching her, and dialed again.

“James? Thank God. Could you please tell me why Gareth McTinney would pull me aside at the morning meeting and ask me, in front of the entire news staff, when I’m heading on maternity leave?”

“He did what?” James was obviously as stunned as she was.

“So, you didn’t say anything to him?” she asked.

“Absolutely not, Lucy! I promised Clark complete discretion. The only person I’ve talked to about it is Perry, who already knew.”

“Good. That’s what I thought. Thought you’d like to know. I’m going to go have a good cry in the ladies’. Could you please inform our new editor that he has been misinformed, please? Especially before Clark gets wind of it.”

“Clark doesn’t know?” He released a breath of relief.

“Mudslides in Bolivia,” she explained. “But he’s going to blow a fuse when he finds out.”

“It would be my personal pleasure, Lucy, to defuse this bomb. I’ll be right down.”

“Thank you, James. You’re a good friend.”

Lucy put the photo of her and Kal back up on her top shelf where it was previously, and then grabbed her purse and a box tissues, heading for the ladies’ room.

It took Lois two more minutes before she showed up. Lucy was already half-way out of her clothes, when she heard the knock on the door.

“Lois?” she whispered.

“Here.”

Lucy unlocked the door and let her in, locking it behind her again. Lois kindly had dressed in some of her Lucy El clothes and wore the new long brunette wig her father had gotten her for when she needed to be seen as Lois Lane in public.

“I need for you to put on my clothes and pretend to be me from now on. It will get you out of the apartment and back at the Planet and a cover story…”

Lois was undressed in two seconds. “Well, hurry up.”

“My God!” Lucy gasped. “Did you look that good, before the super metabolism kicked in?”

Lois glanced down at her flat six-pack tummy. “I’ve been stuck in that apartment for a month with nothing to do but exercise, plus three years locked in my room before that. What super metabolism?”

“Oh, Kryptonians have super metabolism, so you can eat as much high calorie, high fat food as you want without gaining an ounce,” Lucy explained, taking off the last of her layers of clothing.

“Get out of here. Are there any drawbacks to my new life at all?” Lois was already dressed again.

Lucy sighed, slowly starting to get redressed. “Well, Lucy El’s life sucks. She’s a vegetarian recovering alcoholic, who dresses like a bag lady and is married to a workaholic husband she never sees.”

“She’s a vegetarian?” Lois asked with a raised brow.

“Morning sickness did not agree with the scent of pastrami.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. You don’t know how much I loathe Portobello sandwiches now?”

Lois laughed. “I can well imagine.”

“All right. Clark’s out in Bolivia dealing with mudslides. I’ll explain everything to him later. If he shows up today at all, just fake it and see if he notices.”

“He won’t,” Lois reassured her.

“He might, but I doubt he’ll even be in today.”

“Clark didn’t notice yesterday.” Lois grinned.

Lucy stopped pulling on a turtleneck, the neck part around her nose. “You were the one who moved my photo.”

“I told you that you didn’t have to come into work today. I had it covered.”

Lucy laughed. “And Clark didn’t notice?”

“Oblivious. Of course, I was down in archives, finally catching up on my Superman research. I told McTinney that I had bumped my head yesterday as my excuse for being fuzzy on people’s names.”

“I find that hilarious that the one person, who wants to see you more than anyone else couldn’t see you right in front…” Then again, she had worked two years with Clark without realizing he was Superman. Lucy shook her head and handed Lois her glasses. “You forgot yours. Maybe they really do hide the truth.”

“Clark never noticed the trees in the forest.” Lois grinned, placing the John Lennon glasses on her nose.

“By the way, that photo is of me and Kal, not me and Clark, so don’t take it down, it will make Clark suspicious. James Olsen is coming down to yell at McTinney for telling me I look pregnant. I called him after I spoke with you. He knows I’m pregnant, but also that we don’t want anyone to know, so he’s covering it up for us. We’re good friends, so he might stop by to see how Lucy is doing after he yells at McTinney. I call him James, not Mr. Olsen.” Lucy took the ugly barrettes out of her hair and handed them to Lois. “If at some point today, you can bump into Jaxon so he can feel that Lucy El is definitely not pregnant, that would be a bonus, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to. He looked overly excited when our new editor brought it to everyone’s attention during the meeting that I should be leaving on maternity leave. We don’t want Lex to know about the baby.”

“Understandable. Lucy, I have it covered. Promise.”

Lucy nodded. “I’ve been Lucy for so long now, I sometimes forget that she’s just an act and not really me.”

“Do you want me to walk you downstairs?”

“No, we probably shouldn’t be seen together,” Lucy reminded her as she pulled on the waist long wig. “I’ll leave first and take the stairs. You can stay in here and cry or something for another ten minutes or so.” She opened her purse and applied a light bit of make-up.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Lois said coming to the mirror and wiping off the make-up on her face.

Lucy handed her the compact. “Just a little to make her seem monochrome.”

Lois nodded.

She handed Lois a stick of gum. “Lucy chews it incessantly.”

Lois looked down at the gum. “Did you know that gum chewing is illegal in Singapore? Part of their clean city program.” She shrugged and plopped the gum in her mouth. “Mmmm. This is my first piece of gum in over four years.” She laughed. “It makes me feel naughty.”

Lucy pulled on the coat that Lois had been wearing, an ankle length white coat and a matching white hat. She pulled twenty dollars out of the purse and then handed the purse over to Lois. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. You, too. See you after work. I’ll teach you how to make meatloaf.”

“You’re the best.” Lucy kissed her cheek and then had to wipe the lipstick off. “Thanks.”

“Go enjoy your maternity leave. It’s the last real vacation you’ll get for the next twenty years.”

“Ha-ha,” Lucy sneered at her. More because she was probably right. She unlocked the restroom door, stuck her head out to listen. “James is chewing out McTinney right now. He’s sending someone to come find me, so get cracking with the waterworks. Bye.”

Five steps later, she was out the door to the stairwell and felt free at last. She floated carefully down the stairs, hoping not to twist her ankle with these crazy one-inch heels that Lois had been wearing. She just did not have the weight distribution for heels of any height at this point and time. Soon, she was at the last flight of stairs and she walked slowly down them holding tightly to the handrail. She made it to the lobby and quickly walked out and into the street. She flagged down a cab and rode it home, happy to have left Lucy El behind at work. She hoped that Lois could handle it.

***

Clark looked over at Lucy, sitting at her desk. She looked especially nice today. A motherhood glow? He shrugged. Actually, she had been looking beautiful all week that he could hardly stop looking at her. Of course, on Monday, she had spent all morning down in the archives, researching Intergang’s bigwigs. It had been her idea, okayed by Lois, to use some of Lois’s covert spying notes from her time with Lex to write up some articles on Intergang’s illegal pursuits. Then he had spent all of Tuesday in Bolivia.

This morning’s meeting had gone strangely; nobody spoke, no chit-chat, just eerie silence, like everyone was waiting for a bomb to drop. It was weird. Gareth reviewed assignments and the meeting ended, no bomb. When he had asked Lucy about it, she just shrugged. Maybe he was imagining things.

Lois had called to cancel any activities with him and said that she would be staying home all week, typing up her adventures on her laptop. He was happy to talk to her on the phone, because she refused to see him in person since he dropped her off Saturday afternoon. He wondered if she was feeling a little guilty about her broken elevator escapade. Despite the guilt he felt for being in love with a married woman, he himself couldn’t stop thinking about it and what could have happened if he had not resisted her temptation. It was making it difficult to concentrate on work. He released a breath, shooting papers off his desk and into the air. He chuckled and quickly gathered them back up.

Lucy glanced up from her desk with a smile. He had caught her looking at him with longing a couple of times over the course of the last few days and hoped she wasn’t starting to confuse him with Kal again. He pressed his lips together. Kal. Lucy would tell him nothing about what he overheard Lois say to her the other day. Ask Lois, was all she would say on the matter. It’s not for me to say. He shook his head. She was no longer his mole at the apartment.

Clark was resigned to not knowing about what happened in Smallville. Lois was healthy according to Sam, and that was the important part. Yes, Lucy had told Sam what had happened to his daughter, but Lois had told him not to say word one about it to anyone else, especially to him. He sighed. Sam was happy to oblige. Actually, what Sam had said exactly was that he was fine with what happened in Smallville, preferring this to the alternative. He wondered what Sam meant by that. Probably, that he liked his daughter alive as opposed to…

“Hi, Clark,” said a familiar voice.

Clark glanced up and did a double take. Mayson Drake stood not five feet from his desk, her coat draped over her arm. “Mayson! Wow, you look great.” He gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. She still had a few battle scars on her face from the flying bits of the bomb, but other than that appeared completely healed. Still beautiful.

“Thanks for the flowers. I meant to call you every week when I got them, but I didn’t know what to say.” She looked down and away, lowering her voice. “I feel awful for how I treated you, Clark.”

“Nothing worse than I deserved, Mayson.”

“You’re a man of action, Clark. I should have realized that sitting by someone’s hospital bedside for hours on end wasn’t in your playbook.”

He smiled weakly. “I’m working on my bedside manner.” He stared at her, wondering where their relationship would have gone, if that trip to her uncle’s cabin hadn’t been canceled. “Are you back to work?”

She nodded. “Just got off of desk duty and approved for field work again. I see you found Lois, just where you thought you would. I read that she married that man. How are you managing?” She raised a brow and he didn’t think she meant him alone.

He swallowed. “Life’s complicated.”

“I heard about Lucy’s abduction by Lois’s ex-husband, Lois’s restraining order against him and the police escorts that Perry assigned. Are you getting any sleep? Or are you forcing yourself to do twenty-four guard duty?” She smiled. Mayson had always understood that one of his biggest problems was that he cared too much.

Clark cleared his throat. “Not twenty-four hours, as you can see.”

“So, are you still dating Ultra Woman?” she asked, her voice low. “I know how good you are at keeping things from the press.”

“No,” he stammered. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks. “She just disappeared after that fiasco at Perry’s bash. I haven’t seen her since. It’s probably for the best. I’m not really boyfriend material, as you plainly know.”

Mayson shifted her weight onto the other foot. “I don’t know, Clark. I always thought with the right woman, you’d be amazing.” She smiled weakly. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t the right woman.”

Clark wanted to tell her how he wished she could have been the right woman, but he didn’t. There had always only been one right woman for him and they both knew it. “So, are you seeing anyone?” he asked, thinking it was a polite question to ask in this situation.

“Actually, I am. His name is Dan. He’s FBI and overprotective, like you. But I’m getting used to it.” She laughed. “He’s constantly buying me gifts.” She shrugged.

“Happiness certainly agrees with you, Mayson. I’ve never seen you look more beautiful.”

He heard a growl from Lucy’s desk and he craned around Mayson to look at Lucy, but she turned away. Strange.

“Thank you, Clark,” said Mayson, giving him another hug. “That is kind of you to say. I thought you were supposed to always tell the truth?”

Clark shook his head. “I am telling the truth, Mayson. Why does everyone think I’m lying all the time now?”

Mayson smiled. “I was only teasing, Clark.”

“Oh.” He felt embarrassed by his outburst. “So, what brings you to the Daily Planet?”

“Lucy invited me to lunch.”

“I can’t believe it.” His jaw dropped as he lowered his voice. “You hate Lucy. Plus, you think she’s a con-artist after my vast fortune.”

Mayson laughed. “Well, at least you’ve proved to me that she’s not Lois Lane.”

“You know who she is, Mayson,” he told her in all seriousness. He leaned forward. “Really.”

“I don’t believe you, Clark,” Mayson said pointing at him with a grin.

He lowered his voice. “That’s a photo of her and Kal on her desk.”

She glanced over at the photo and then back at him, whispering, “That’s you, Clark.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Trust me, Mayson, when I tell you it isn’t.”

“Believe what you want to believe, Clark. You don’t have to convince me anymore.”

Lucy joined them at that moment. “Ready?”

“Tell her that’s Kal,” he said to Lucy.

Her eyes opened wide with fear for a split second, then she turned to Mayson. “It is. Shall we go?”

Mayson went to put on her coat with a shake of her head.

Clark jumped to help her, leaning close enough to whisper, “I’ve met him.”

Mayson froze, then shook her head. “Whatever you say, Clark. I believe you.” Clearly, she didn’t, but she was right, he didn’t need to convince her any more. He just hated to have her think he lied to her.

“Bye, Mayson. See you later, Lucy.”

Lucy waved at him with a non-committal flick of her wrist. She seemed annoyed at him. What did he do? He shook his head and tried once more to make sense of the research Lucy had done for him.

*** End of Part 5 ***

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Chapter 6: Part 6