*****Madness: Chapter Eight*****
"'You're out of your mind!'
'That's between me and my mind.'"
-- Simon Tam and Jubal Early, and I should not have to name this reference. :p
Clark shot over to the scene of the fire and evaluated the structure, pushing all of his earlier conversation with Lois and Perry out of his mind with a little bit of effort. He couldn't afford to deal with it right now and risk making any more mistakes, and splitting his attention between an emergency and a fight with Lois certainly wasn't going to help anything. With a deep breath, he let it go and focused all of his attention on examining the fire.
It seemed like it had been started by a gas rupture. Whether it was accidental or not was to be determined at a later time. Right now he had to determine what the best plan of attack was.
Everyone had been cleared out of the building already, which made his job ten times easier as it was. He only had to put out the flames.
Something Clark suspected he'd be doing a lot of in the near future.
He was done in a matter of moments.
When he landed in front of the building, the head fireman approached him, genuinely gracious and not at all suspicious as Clark worried he would be, what with all of the bad news circulating. Focus, Kent, focus. You're Superman right now. What would Lois tell you to do? Focus now. Obsess later.
"Thanks, Superman."
Clark nodded politely. "No problem, sir. Do you have any idea what started it?"
The man shook his head. "Not yet. We think it's likely to be just an accident, but anything goes in this part of town. A couple of witnesses said they saw somebody leaving the building in a hurry about five minutes before the alarms went off-- but again, that could mean anything around here."
Clark nodded along, patiently half-listening. A lot of these sorts of things had just become routine, and surprisingly, the majority of them were actually accidents. Someone left the iron running, or the toaster on, and before you know it, the entire floor is up in flames. Still, this one seemed to light up fairly quick for just a routine accident--
"Kent!"
Clark felt his blood freeze. It was back. The voice. He didn't know how it found him.
"Kent!"
He snapped his head up, looking for the voice to match with a face.
He found it.
It was a man. He wore a tan suit. Average height and build. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Nothing remarkable about him in the slightest. And yet... A shudder passed through Clark's frame as the man smirked before turning on his heel and walking away, quickly turning around a corner and out of Clark's direct line of vision.
It was only then that Clark remembered that he was still in the suit. His eyes went wide and all color drained out of his face. Oh, crap. He'd responded to the name Kent while dressed as Superman. If his blackmailer didn't know that Clark Kent was Superman before, there could be no doubt in his mind anymore. If anyone else realized that, he would be doomed.
"Superman? Superman? Is everything all right?" The fireman drew Clark's attention back to the matter at hand and temporarily away from his perusal of the people around him, the people who might have heard something and made the connection. Clark cleared his throat.
"Um, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, but I have to go. If you've got everything handled here--"
"Oh, yeah. By all means. Thanks again, Superman."
Clark smiled and gave him a brief wave before taking off into the sky. Briefly, he did a scan of the area, but it was too late. The man who had found him was long since gone. If he was anywhere in the area, Clark would have found him by now. Of course, he could be holed up somewhere, or more likely he could have just driven away in a car.
Releasing an irritated groan, he landed once again only a few blocks away as Clark Kent. He had to find out if anyone heard, if his cover had been completely blown by the mystery man's shout and his involuntary reaction.
He strolled up to the scene of the fire, observing, mind racing a mile a minute as he scanned everyone's faces for some hint, any hint of recognition. So far, thankfully, there seemed to be nothing.
"Hold it, sir. We need everybody to stay behind the line, please."
He pulled out his press badge. "Clark Kent, Daily Planet. I was hoping to get a good look, ask a few questions."
A few people looked askance at him. He didn't know whether that was because of just general curiosity or if they were checking him out to see if there was anything about him that resembled Superman. He certainly hoped it was a case of the former and not the latter. The officer examined the press badge and the man who handed it to him closely, in which time Clark squirmed uncomfortably-- if not even a bit suspiciously. Nevertheless, he turned around and waved forward the head arson inspector on the scene and handed Clark his badge back. He couldn't restrain the sigh of relief that escaped him when the officer walked away and the other man approached.
"Kent," the man nodded and offered his hand. Clark took it, still somewhat unfocused. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Tom Hartling, arson inspector. You had a couple of questions for me?"
Clark nodded and collected himself, now scrambling for a good enough reason to be here wasting the man's time. "Uh, yes. I just had a couple of questions about the fire. Do you have any idea what started it? Have you been able to rule it as an accident yet?"
Tom shook his head. "No, we haven't got anything positive on it yet. But I'll be sure to let you know when we do."
Clark nodded, asking a few follow-up questions, habit taking over as his mind descended into a weird kind of fog. Clark left the man his contact information and thanked him, before hurrying off.
*****LnC*****
Lois sat at her desk, chewing on her pen cap anxiously. So she had been a little rude to Clark. Okay, make that more than a little. She was positively horrible. Knowing her husband as well as she did, he had to be taking this pretty hard as it was. He really was a glutton for punishment.
It's really a good thing he's invulnerable, or he'd really be a masochist, she thought, before her mind wandered off to the kinky place it went when she thought of her husband. Which was probably more often than was appropriate...
Stop it, Lois. Focus. You've got to figure out what you can do to fix this. There's gotta be something else wrong with him.
She started to taste plastic as her teeth shredded it off of the pen cap and began to spit. She needed to find a new nervous tick.
Lois turned to check the news, and saw that Superman had successfully put out the apartment fire. No noticeable mistakes, which was good. Though all the news was really talking about was his mistake from the night before.
She let out an exasperated sigh. She had to figure out what went wrong. Was there something else suspicious about the guy? Had Clark really any reason to drop this guy off at the police station personally? And-- the sixty-four million dollar question-- why did this become such a problem?
As hard as Lois had come down on her husband earlier, she didn't want to believe it was just him. It couldn't be just him. It would make no sense. There had to be an outside reason for this confusion. And if anyone would be the one to figure it all out, it would be Lois Lane.
*****LnC*****
Clark flew directly home to shower and change-- he couldn't go into the office again smelling like smoke and ash. Lois had patiently reminded him of that on numerous occassions, telling him to wear some cologne or wash his hair real well before coming back in. Most times, she was the only one to notice, other times he had explained it away, but there could always be that one time where it just didn't add up and someone decided to look deeper.
Crap. Someone already had looked deeper, and was not only onto him, but had just gained confirmation of the fact that he, Clark Kent, was truly Superman. His life was quite potentially ruined.
He heard a noise coming from their living room downstairs. With a frown, Clark slowly traversed his way towards the sound, floating above the steps in order to be as noiseless as possible.
When he realized it was only his wife, he let out a loud sigh of relief. "Lois, honey, you scared me. I thought you were still at work? It's only one o'clock."
Her back was to him, as she sat facing the window with her laptop sitting off to the side. She didn't turn to meet his gaze, she didn't offer any response whatsoever. Clark sighed again, this time out of frustration.
"You're not still mad at me for that mistake, are you?"
She gave a light snort. "What do you think?"
"Lois, honey, I told you I didn't mean to. It was entirely an accident..." Clark let his voice trail off as she turned and he saw the look on her face. It was a look of pure condescension, and it told him he wasn't going to get anywhere with this conversation just yet. He pointed to the stairs behind him. "You know what, I'm just going to go... you know. Shower."
She didn't respond except to turn back away from him and stare once more out the window. Clark sighed and trudged his way back up the stairs.
He had a long day ahead of him.
