Banner by Summerstar882
Some references back to season six’s Phantom. Some elements borrowed from comics and Superman, the animated series, tweaked a bit. Also references to previous fics in this series.
I apologize for all the info-dumping that’s about to happen.
Thanks again to silversnikle for the beta work and for talking me down when I'm slapping myself around over whether it's good enough.
PREVIOUS CHAPTER
Chapter 13
Clark paced the rooftop, cape flapping in the wind, sometimes right in his face. There was a snow storm coming. He supposed it was a good thing neither he nor John Jones were vulnerable to cold. It was about the only good thing he could find about the situation today.
Sawyer and Turpin had briefed him, or Superman, on the operation and it didn’t look promising so far. They had nothing but a possible money laundering charge involving the Granny Goodness Home for Wayward Children. Even that was just white collar crime, not enough to put Mannheim away, especially not when he had enough disposable thugs to take that fall in exchange for a hefty pay-off when they got out of jail.
One small bit of progress had involved Reilly Metalworks. Turpin had, after two hours nursing iced tea and feeding Patrick Reilly expensive whiskey, learned about the lead room. The only problem was that they didn’t understand what it meant.
“Unsafe? Sure, if it gets in the water,” Turpin had said, “but the most that’ll do is shut Moxie’s down.”
And no one wanted that. Not just yet. Superman had convinced them that the fact that there was a secret room at all was an issue.
Sawyer had reluctantly agreed to start the paperwork on temporarily commandeering the empty offices next door, using construction as a cover to get a closer look. “Even if it’s stolen property, that’s still not enough to…”
“That might take too long. I don’t know if you two are looking at the big picture,” Superman had cut in. “This could be more than just thugs fencing goods or laundering money. There could be something more sinister underneath it.”
Sawyer sighed. “You’re actually not the first person to say that. Except they mostly call it… supernatural.”
“And what if it is?”
She and Turpin glanced at each other and he wondered if they’d take this kind of thing from Superman about as seriously as they had from Clark Kent or Bobby Bigmouth. But they didn’t laugh.
“Do you know something we don’t?” Turpin asked.
He froze then as, at the moment, the only thing he knew that they didn’t was that room could contain Superman’s weaknesses… all of them and possibly more than that. And that wasn’t something he should share, no matter who they were. “I’m not sure,” he finally said. “I need to look into things a little closer.”
But he had no way of doing that. Sometimes, he thought of trying to find a way to spy his way into that room, but there was kryptonite involved and he didn’t know how much, not to mention what else they had in there. He tapped Lois’ pen recorder against his thigh as he paced. He kept thinking of that sound , starting as a low buzz and increasing to an ear-splitting whine. It had felt wrong. Even the memory of it gave him chills.
“Terrific,” he muttered. He was afraid of an eight-by-ten room.
So here he was, waiting for John Jones at nearly the same place he’d officially met him, about three floor’s down in Lionel Luthor’s office, when he’d stopped him from hurting Lionel. ”This man is on our side. He is an emissary of Jor-El,” Jones had said of Lionel before telling Clark about himself, how he’d been watching from a distance all these years. Was he watching still?
If so, he hadn’t made it known for some time. Their first meeting had also been their last. He’d said he needed to leave earth’s atmosphere to heal and that was the last of him until now.
Could he even trust him? He supposed he had to as Jones had saved his life twice. Still, all he really knew of this man – if he could be called a man – was that he called himself Jones, had known Jor-El, was as strong as he was, and could fly, something Clark had yet to grasp then. The only other thing he’d ever sensed about Jones was that he wasn’t Kryptonian. He was something else.
“Martian,” he heard. But not anywhere around him. The word echoed in his mind as he looked around.
He saw him then, hovering above the L in Luthorcorp.
“How did you…”
“It’s easier to slip into your mind when I can actually see you. You haven’t been easy to find lately.”
“Like you have been?” he countered as the man slipped down to the gravel-topped roof. “I wasn’t sure if I’d even see you again.”
“That’s usually the point. But I’m watching in case I’m needed.”
“Really?” Clark almost laughed. “You know, I could have used some…”
“No.”
“You didn’t let me…”
“You don’t need to finish. I know what you’re thinking. I may have promised your father I’d watch over you, but I also promised him not to step in unless absolutely necessary, as you might remember.”
“So why is this necessary now?” Clark asked, figuring there was no point arguing with someone who could read his mind.
“Because there’s something beyond you at work.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to actually explain this time.”
“As best I can,” Jones said. “I’ve been away.”
“So I noticed. Doing what?”
“Things that don’t concern you,” Jones said easily. “But I was called back by a… disturbance. You must have sensed it, too.”
Clark nodded. “New Year’s Eve. There was… I don’t even know what. What do you know?”
Jones nodded to him. “You first.”
“Can’t you just read my mind?”
“Not as easily as a human’s. It’s why I couldn’t find you so easily.”
“So you found Lois.”
“I apologized if I startled her.”
“She doesn’t startle very easily.”
He shrugged. “Regardless, I don’t enjoy invading the minds of those I’d have trust me. I’d rather you tell me all you know.”
“And why should I trust you?” He hadn’t told anyone, even Lois, everything.
“I know your weaknesses, Kal-El, all of them. If I were here to harm you…”
“It’s not that. It’s… Damn it! I’ve completed my training. The time for keeping me in the dark is over. Actually, the time for mysteriously watching over me is over. If you want to know how I am, you could just… say hi. Be a man about it… or a Martian, I guess. I don’t even…”
Jones chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I suppose I’ve just watched you for so long, I didn’t realize it.”
“What?”
“You’ve grown up, Kal-El.”
“Well… damn right.”
“But you are still out of your depth here.”
“Then help put me in it.”
Jones stared at him for a long moment before he nodded. “Fair enough. I’ve gathered some information on my own from the police.”
“How did you…” Clark jumped back as Jones’ face seemed to melt into Inspector Henderson before his eyes.
“Very easily,” he said in Henderson’s gruff voice. “I didn’t want to put your investigation in jeopardy, but I wanted to know all they do,” he said, his face looking almost green before sliding back into the features Clark knew. “And the police are most definitely out of their depth here -- as are Bruno Mannheim and his… associates.”
“How do you know that? Can you see through lead?”
“No. But I can phase through it. And that’s exactly how we’re going to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Clean them out.”
“Steal from thieves?”
Jones inclined his head. “Seems fitting.”
“Do you know what they have?”
“I only have my suspicions. It’s enough to tell me this Mannheim doesn’t know what he’s playing with.”
“Did they get it from Lionel Luthor’s vault?”
“You’re going to have to stop asking questions and listen. You know that Lionel Luthor was once allies with Morgan Edge.”
Clark nodded. He’d gone over and over Lionel’s known history with Jor-El before starting on this. “But what does a plot to kill his parents have to do with…”
“Just listen. The two of them dabbled in more than murder and insurance fraud. They found keys to other worlds, one in particular that could destroy yours.”
“Bobby Bigmouth was right?” Clark whispered. “They want to bring about the apocalypse?”
“How do you know that name?”
“Well, it means the end of the world. Who doesn’t…”
“No. Same sound, different spelling… and meaning. It’s not an event. It’s a planet. And, long ago, Lionel and Morgan opened a portal to it. Or a… boom tube.”
“Boom tube?”
“Silly phrase, I know. But…”
“No. I’ve heard it before. New year’s eve, Mannheim and Stitches said there was enough dark energy there to power a boom tube.”
“What else did they say?”
“There was another strange word…” Clark thought back. “Mother box.”
“So it is true. Idiots,” Jones growled.
“At the time, I just thought they were talking about… lighting cues for the speech. What’s a mother box?”
“It’s one of the things we’ll be taking from that room,” Jones said, pacing back and forth. “I knew it. When I felt that disturbance…. The last time I felt anything like it was when Luthor and Edge...”
“You’re going to have to go back a little,” Clark said, more confused than ever. “Why didn’t Jor-El ever tell me about all this?”
Jones sighed. “It wasn’t programmed in. When I worked for your father, in the years leading up to Krypton’s destruction, information had to be carefully controlled. Zod was dangerous enough without having access to Apokalips. We neutralized the situation as best we could and it was over, as far as we knew.”
“What situation?” Clark burst out.
“Lionel’s time as your father’s vessel didn’t mark the first time we met. I encountered him decades before, along with Morgan Edge. They got hold of a motherbox. Much like these fools you’re dealing with now, I don’t think they understood what they were messing with. You see, when a boom tube is summoned, it creates a rippling disturbance.”
“I heard a whine,” Clark said, thinking back on that night.
“I felt it differently, almost like a shockwave, but it was incomplete. Something must have stopped them from fully opening the portal.”
“That might have been me.”
“So you destroyed the element?”
“What?” Clark shook his head. “I only set off the sprinkler system.”
“Maybe you should tell me more about that night.”
So Clark did, starting with Mannheim and Stitches’ strange conversation and ending with the silent and sullen patrons outside the club.
“That’s another way,” Jones said thoughtfully.
“Once again, you’re being pretty vague and…”
“There are only two ways to power a motherbox that I know of,” Jones broke in impatiently. “One is called Element X, also known as fire of the gods. But it’s not easy to find in this world. Another is using dark energy, which is what I suspect this Mannheim was attempting to do. Digging into the dark corners of their minds, turning anger to rage, sadness to bitterness. Even happiness can turn to mania.”
“But they seemed fine… I mean, they were a bit strange, but no one broke out fighting.”
“Well, he didn’t fully succeed. If he had succeeded, he would have not only called forth a dark force, but had an army of powerful people already corrupted under its control as Goodness and Desaad must have wanted.”
“Goodness. Granny Goodness. Like the orphanage?”
“Is she still playing that game?” Jones sneered. “I suppose it’s all she knows to do without her power. Corrupt the young.”
“Okay. You’re going to have to…”
“Go back. I know. But stop interrupting this time,” Jones sighed. “Keeping this simple, Apokalips,” he stopped to spell the word, “is a corrupt wasteland of a planet ruled by a cruel and powerful despot called Darkseid.” He spelled that as well before he went on. “A long time ago, Lionel Luthor and Morgan Edge unwittingly got further than Mannheim did. That’s how the shrew that calls herself Granny Goodness and the sadist known as Desaad came here in the first place. A rebel scientist on Apokalips named Himon discovered Element X and created the first mother box. He discovered portals to other worlds, better ones than his own. Though he still had hope for a successful rebellion against Darkseid, he planted powered mother boxes strategically on other planets as possible escape routes. When Darkseid’s two most loyal minions discovered his technology, they managed to take one for themselves and come to Earth through a portal two certain fools on a quest for power happened to find.”
So many overheard whispers were coming together now. The new friends Tiny and Rocco found so distasteful. The spooky undercurrents everyone seemed so in awe of. “So the minions were Desaad and this old Granny?”
“Don’t underestimate her. She was Darkseid’s most brutal and powerful soldier. As for Desaad, he was a skilled and cunning scientist with a taste for torture and unnatural experimentation.”
“Like a witch doctor,” Clark said with a shudder, thinking of Tiny and Rocco’s fearful mutters about Johnny Stitches Denetto and how they’d rather die. “He must have been the one who patched up Denetto.”
“I will bring them both to justice this time,” Jones said firmly.
Clark glanced up. “This time? What happened last time?”
“They escaped me. And I barely escaped with my life. I’d have died for sure if your father hadn’t been there. I wasn't much more than a… policeman, I suppose. This strange technology was beyond me, as was fighting someone like Goodness, not just invulnerable, but immortal. He depleted the mother box, closing the portal and stripping Goodness of her power and forcing her into perpetual age and infirmity. Still, they managed to escape us as your father put taking me to heal above giving chase.”
“So is that why you agreed to watch over me?”
Jones smiled and it was almost jarring. “I’d have done it regardless, but it added incentive.” He sighed. “I never could track them down and I had to be satisfied that they were trapped and powerless with no way to open this world to their master. I found Luthor and Edge and modified their memories to remove all trace of the events. Your father took the mother box for safekeeping, but I always assumed he’d taken it to Krypton and that it was destroyed with your planet. It wasn’t something I rethought until a few nights ago. Before Krypton’s destruction he did have a penchant for scattering items he deemed important here.”
Clark nodded, thinking of the global scavenger hunt that was his senior year of high school. “I think I know how they found it,” Clark said. So many overheard conversations and he was only now beginning to piece the puzzle together – symbols Bruno bragged about reading and Rocco thought were Chinese, their knowledge of his weaknesses. “Lionel’s vault. His time as Jor-El’s vessel, he wrote in symbols and…”
“No. Impossible. The last time we met, before I last left Lionel Luthor, I instructed him to destroy his…”
“This is Lionel Luthor we’re talking about,” Clark cut in. “He may have been a vessel for Jor-El, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own interests at heart. Maybe he saved them for protection or a failsafe. We have no way of knowing.”
“I told you. The information was never programmed into…”
“Jor-El might not have synced the complete Apokalips dictionary into the crystals, but that didn’t mean he didn’t leave clues. Whatever writings Lionel had in that vault might as well have been a treasure map to someone who knew how to read it.”
Jones stared at him for a long moment. “Damn it,” he growled.
“This is… bigger than I thought. They’ve been bragging about Superman staying away. I was actually starting to think this whole thing was just about me.”
“It most likely is, for Mannheim and his ilk. They think Goodness and Desaad are bringing an ally here to destroy you and place them in power. What they don’t understand is that Darkseid will destroy more than you and he’s not likely to share power.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Same place we were before. Stealing from idiots.”
“But what about the police? What about putting Mannheim away?”
“Surely you realize that this goes beyond that. We need a solid plan. Now listen…”
**********************
Lois hefted another box and stacked it atop the others in her coat closet. She’d said she’d clean up in the new year and, damn it, she would. Hell, she was even doing it just two days into the new year… even if it was now fifty minutes minutes past midnight and, technically, three days in. She’d started more than an hour and a half before and that counted.
She wasn’t sure what brought it on. Maybe it was the fact that, every time she opened her door and stumbled into her darkened apartment, she fell over a box. Maybe it was because company was coming in – she checked her watch – ten minutes. Maybe it was because, after getting to a place in Dear Lois that had Clark Kent and Chloe Sullivan in a spider-infested Whitehorse roof shed, she had to stop and do something – anything – else.
She stopped to wipe at a trickle of sweat running down the back of her neck and wondered if she should just hit the shower -- just real quick, maybe change out of these shapeless sweatpants. Then she told herself it was just Clark coming over. Did she really have to overhaul herself for him?
Yes.
Why?
You know why.
She was going insane. He didn’t even describe it, instead launching into paragraph after paragraph of rambling mea culpas. But she knew what must have happened. The same thing that happened between them in that Met Vista house, in that cave, and very nearly in his barn. And she wanted it to happen again. A lot.
Take him for a test Drive. That’s what Pammie had said. Drop the baggage. She had said other things but, at the moment, Lois didn’t remember them. She wasn’t recalling anything that didn’t have her just peeling that red and blue off him the minute he knocked on her… Was it going to be the door or window?
She moved to the window and nearly shoved it open before she remembered the other thing Pammie said – that she didn’t want to see her hurt.
Was that what she was hurtling towards? Pain? Then again, how could Clark hurt her? Hell, he seemed more invested in the idea of them than she was. How could that be a recipe for her getting hurt?
She pressed her forehead against the cold window, trying to sort out these roiling feelings and figure out which ones she should pay attention to. There was lust. Hot damn, there was lust. There was fear, but… Strangely enough, the fear wasn’t for her. She breathed heavily on the glass before she stepped away, realizing it was for Clark, for his sake.
She’d read enough by now, heard enough, to know that his feelings for her might make him the very definition of a safe bet. He’d said everything but love. She didn’t exactly have a problem with that. Hell, she didn’t know how to feel. She wasn’t about to slap a capital L all over everything.
There was attraction and history. So why couldn’t they just explore it?
But… Could she hurt him? If it came to it, could she look at him and shake her head and tell him she didn’t feel this, not as intensely as he did?
But what if they tried? What if it just wasn’t right? Maybe he wouldn’t be hurt. Maybe he didn’t feel all the things he thought he did, when it came down to it. Maybe they could both walk away without a scratch. Damn it, it’s just dating!
In the end, she wrenched the window open and left it that way.
Just then, she heard a knock on her door. She rushed to look through her peephole and let out something between a laugh and a groan before she pulled her door open on Clark in a ratty blue T-shirt and jeans.
“I was thinking you’d go for the window,” she said, having to say something, even to fill the nanosecond of silence.
His eyes widened. “Well, I told Bobby Clark would be stopping by not… you know.” He let out a nervous laugh. “I’m never sure how much that guy sees.”
“Well, if he sees you now, he’ll see some nutjob still running around without the nice coat I gave him. Are you ever going to…”
“I will. When I’m…” He seemed to stop himself. “When I’m officially Clark again. Right now, I’m kind of between names. But speaking of Bobby…”
“Did you want to come in?” she cut in, sick of looking at him standing in her hall like some stranger when she knew him so well. Hell, she knew him better than she knew she knew him.
“Yeah. Okay.” And he did.
And suddenly she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Didn’t she have a few million things to say?
“So you got Bobby’s message,” he said, staring at the floor as she closed the door.
‘Yeah. He took my coffee,” she said, having nothing better. “He also took my sandwich and my salad.”
“Yeah. He’ll do that. But he’s not so…”
‘Who’s John Jones?” she suddenly burst out, finally remembering one of the million things.
Clark looked up, then. “He’s… He’s a guy that worked with my father.”
“He didn’t give off that farmer vibe to me.”
“Not that one. I mean…you know.” He peered closely at her.
“Yeah. The… computer daddy. Got it.”
“Yeah. That and… Well… You know everything by now. Don’t you?”
“Yeah. Obviously. Adopted, alien, Superman...”
“I mean you read the…”
“I must have missed the part about Jones,” she said quickly, not sure how to tell him she hadn’t read the whole thing. Hell, who could? There was way too much to absorb and it wasn’t the easiest read.
“He wasn’t in there. I mostly kept it about us and left out all the… less us stuff.”
“Well, you might have mentioned your telepathic cohort before he blindsided me at a parade.”
“Honestly, I’ve only met him a few times. I’m never sure when he’ll turn up. It seems like his main business is capturing criminals of the… intergalactic variety.”
She nodded, pursing her lips. “Not weird at all. So is that why he’s turned up now?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Clark, you have to know by now that I’m not trying to horn in, but if I can help…”
“That’s the thing. Lois, this is bigger than I thought. I have half a mind to tell the police to back away, let alone bringing you in, too.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out her pen recorder. “But thank you for that.”
She took it, shrugging. “Fine. I guess you don’t want to know what else I found.”
His eyes widened. “Lois, what have you been…”
“Oh, calm down,” she sighed, moving to her desk. “I did a little light digging into some of Mannheim’s special guests.” She picked up a folder and held it out to him. “Nothing huge, but every single one seemed to be having an extreme attack of… b*tchiness, I guess. Thomas, too.”
His eyes narrowed as he took the folder. “What did he do?”
She rolled her eyes and took a seat on the couch. “He dumped me and moved back to Gotham, all fired up about routing out the filth in city government.”
“Oh.” He sat down, too. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”
“Oh, you are not,” she scoffed. “Anyway, I was heading over there to end things, anyway.” She shifted her gaze to Clark, wondering why she felt the need to play coy. They were adults. They didn’t need to dance around this. Just dating, just dating…“Clark…”
“Thanks for this.” He cleared his throat and opened the folder, standing.
“It’s just notes. Not a case-cracker.”
“No. But it saves me time.” He paced toward her dining area. “Confirms a few things.”
“Glad to be of service.” She leaned back, resisted the urge to cross her arms and scowl like a teenager. “Anyway, that’s not all I’ve been looking into.” She took a deep breath, wondering how to tell him about Lana in a way that wouldn’t have him just brushing her off this time.
“I know. You’ve read it.”
She turned to see him picking the notebook up off her still-cluttered dining table. “Well… most of it.”
He opened it up to where a Mandarin Gardens receipt was keeping her place. “Ruby Ridge.”
She stood, suddenly really invested in gathering bits of trampled paper from the floor. “It’s riveting stuff. I mean, I knew some of it from my little lessons over vacation, but to read a first-person account was…”
“You haven’t read to the end?”
She straightened and crumpled the wad in her hand. “Not yet.”
“But you have to read it to know…”
“I actually have more things going on than you. I mean… I have… stuff… that I do,” she finished lamely, not sure if he should know about stuff like looking into Lana, running around in medical scrubs in buses that went to Belle Reve, doing a search on Lois’ PC for her own alias, “Leery.” Not much else, though, most likely because Lois came in with pizza and caught her snooping.
It made Lois wonder what else she would have done. Or was that the extent of it? Was this like a self-google? Lois had done it a few times by now. Every once in a while, she was curious if her name was making an impact and refreshed her name in quotations, wanting to know what people were saying. Most of it was conspiracy theories about Lois Lane being in on the global scam that was Superman. Some of it was scrupulously detailed, with photos and evidence of faked footage and photos that put the Moon Landing tinhats to shame.
Maybe Lana just suspected Lois had been looking into her before? It was true now, but it hadn’t been then. Either way, documents had been deleted and retrieved using Victor’s program. Nothing huge. Just one transcribed note from Helen Bryce’s frustrated scribblings.
concentration wrong. last one nearly electrocuted patient. and now supposed to work with this grady. leery. don't care. not my job. just have to figure it out. can't think about that side. just the project. so close.
Such an innocuous note out of many random, messy scribblings. It hadn’t even been used in writing the article. At the time, Lois thought it was just voicing frustration or suspicion about working with Grady. But was it about more than that?
Still, it wasn’t much to go on. Maybe Lana had panicked and accidentally tossed it in the recycling bin when Lois came back in with a Bessolo’s special. It also wasn’t something to tell Clark. It seemed like, every time she brought up Lana, there was the massive wall of guilty looks and sad sighs. Maybe she’d bring it to him when she had something concrete, but not now. She had to look deeper first.
“… and we have to really think about it. Right?”
“Yes. Think.” She snapped out of it, realized he’d been talking all this time.
He nodded. “Then we’re agreed.” He placed the notebook down and took a deep breath. “I should go.”
She followed him to the door. “What? You just got here.”
“Well, I figured we should wait to talk about us after you’ve read it. Besides, I…”
“Wait a sec.” She shut the door and stood in front of it. “Are you seriously saying any discussion of us only happens after I do homework?”
“Well, I just mean…”
“So you and I can’t take in a movie or grab a slice or coffee unless I do my assigned reading first?”
“You just agreed…”
“I did not agree,” she said quickly. She hadn’t been listening, but she knew that much.
“But you need to know everything before you decide.”
“Decide what? To go on a few dates? I know you’re a handsome guy who loves his mother and not a serial killer. That’s more than most people start with.”
“But we’re not just starting. There’s too much in the past for this to just be…”
“What? Dating? Why not try it? From what I know, it’s something we’ve never done. Am I right on that?”
“We… I mean, the… Before, we almost… Yes,” he finished after all the stammering. “But…”
“No buts. Clark…” She moved to her table and picked up the notebook. “Do you want to know why I haven’t finished it? And no. It’s not your penmanship. Though that could use some…” She shook her head. “Not the point. It’s like an exercise in self-flagellation,” she finished on a groan.
“What?” He took the notebook.
“Every time it’s getting somewhere, you stop the narrative for a long whipping session about how you wish you’d done this or said that and how it’s your fault and…”
“Because you need to know that I regret…”
“The past,” she finished for him loudly. “Yes! I know! Because you wallow in it like…” She stopped at a loud thumping from above. “Damn it,” she grumbled. “Now, I’m going to get written up for noise.”
“Well, I was trying to leave.”
“Exactly,” she hissed. “We could have been quietly making out right now, but no.”
He stepped back. “Lois, you don’t know everything.”
She stepped forward. “Do I need to? Maybe we can stop overthinking everything. Do you want to be with anyone else?”
“Of course I don’t!”
“Well, neither do I! God, Clark! I had a perfectly good guy right there and every kiss, every touch, every…”
“Wait a minute…”
“Oh, calm down! We didn’t go that far. The point is all that I could think of was you!”
His eyes softened. “But that doesn’t mean we should…”
“So I could just go around kissing other guys until I find the one that makes me forget about you or we can just… give in to this.” She had him up against the wall by now… literally. His eyes dropped to her lips.
“Or we could wait until…”
“God!” she hissed, moving away. “It’s like you're trying to argue me away from you. Here I thought you were crazy about me.”
“I am. I just…”
“So why can’t we let this happen?”
“And what if you resent me later?”
“I won’t…”
“You will. I promise you will.” He held up the notebook. “Because, at some point, you’re going to think about why you did it.”
“Did what?”
“Grady,” he said gravely.
She shook her head. “This again? If you’re going to go off on some Evil Grady thing again…”
“I’m not…”
“Because I thought we agreed to stop arguing about that. Maybe he persuaded me, but I chose to do it and…”
“I’m not arguing that. Just listen, please.”
She closed her mouth. He did say please.
“There’s more to what happened than the red K. There are so many times I left or I pushed you away…”
“Something you’re still pretty good at,” she muttered.
“Lois, do you want to know why I argue about Grady? Because I’d rather it be true, that the memory loss was something you were forced or coerced into because… the alternative is that you did it because of me.”
“Of you? Clark, I know most of the things that happened. If a person goes through all that trauma, they might make crazy decisions and…”
“Not you,” he said firmly. “You were stronger than that. You always were. Linda said it right after it happened and I’ve been fighting the idea of it ever since. That you did it to forget me. Lois, you still knew Linda, Ollie. Hell, you even remembered Bart and Victor and AC after a little jogging. He manipulated some memories, but me… I was just gone. Most of the things he took were about me, about us.”
She sat down, feeling shaken “That can’t be true. I…” She tried to think of some memory with some connection to him, but all she had were words, things she’d been told, maybe a few familiar feelings, but no clear pictures.
“I fought so long, looking for him, looking for some other explanation, so desperate to think there was more to it, avoiding the guilt – that it’s all my fault.”
She let out a hoarse laugh. “Well, I don't see you avoiding that. I’d think you’d run right to guilt with open arms in a field of wildflowers. Maybe it’s guilt you’re crazy about.”
“Don’t you see? There’s so much more to us, more to what happened. And I want you to know it all before you decide if you want to be with me.”
She looked up, not sure what to say. But she took the notebook. “Well… the red K black-out thing did have me wondering if Chloe Sullivan was in over her head with you.”
“I don’t know if you can really call them black-outs. Deep down, I knew. I just didn’t let it to the surface until that one night. Then I left.”
“Well, if I read that right, you didn’t exactly have a choice. With the ice-man calling and the promise…”
“I also could have wasted less time before that happened.”
She kind of wanted to argue that. It’s not as if he knew what was coming. And couldn’t this, this waiting, be construed as wasting time?
Still… maybe he was right. Maybe somewhere into this handwritten exercise in self-flagellation, she’d find that thing he seemed to be dreading. And maybe she should know what it is before they jumped into this.
“I should go,” he said after a moment.
She stood, kind of dazed. “Yeah. Back to Irving Clemp. Got it.” She cleared her throat and dropped the notepad on her coffee table. “Well, I’ll… see you when I see you.” She moved to the door and opened it. “I guess, if I need to talk to you, I can always use the new system.” She chuckled. “He’ll probably put me out a few lunches, but…”
He didn’t move through. “You don’t have to go through all that.”
“Oh. No. I just mean that, if there’s an emergency. I won’t put Bobby out for just any…”
“No. I mean that you don’t have to go through him if you need me for anything. You can just call my name.”
She laughed. “Sure. Which one?”
“I’m serious. I’d hear you anywhere. I always have.”
“Oh, the superhearing. Yeah. Everyone can just yell it out, but I didn’t want to do that unless there was mortal peril and…”
“You wouldn’t have to yell. Not you.”
Her laugh turned slightly breathless, then faded. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just… With my hearing, I usually have to focus it to hear things. But with you, sometimes it’s involuntary.” He shrugged. “There have been times when I hear you without even trying, when you need me to. So…” He shrugged. “If you really needed me, I’d be there. In a second.”
She shut the door and leaned against it. “See, you almost had me there.”
“Lois…”
“Just when I’m thinking ‘maybe he’s right,’ you have to go and say things like that and…” She gripped him by the shirt and met his lips.
He tried to say something, but she really didn’t care what at the moment. And she didn’t care what else was in that book. All she cared about was right now this kiss, and this guy she couldn’t stop thinking about if she tried.
It didn’t take more than a second for him to give in to it, slide his hands to her back and pull her off her feet as his mouth opened over hers.
Once again, she had to wonder why they were torturing themselves when this felt so right?
She pulled away, only a little, only enough to whisper. “I might resent you.”
He opened his eyes. “Huh?”
“Maybe I don’t know everything I need to,” she said, studying the tiny crease between his brows. “Maybe I’ll get mad when I do. Maybe you’ll just have to… take it. But I know I want this, whatever happens.”
He set her on her feet. “But…”
She put a finger to his lips. “You talk about wasting time. But what are we doing right now? Why are we over-thinking this? Let’s just do it, Clark. Let’s take the leap. Let's…” She took a deep breath. “Date.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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