Recovery (Superman Returns) 3/?
RECOVERY
RATING: PG-13 (for now)
PAIRING: Eventual Lois&Clark.
SUMMARY: Lex Luthor's plotting anew while Lois, Richard, Jason and Clark come to terms with changes to their lives after Superman returns. (Ch.3: 3300 words)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to my betas, here, htbthomas and history_gurl.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
The one constant about rescues, whether they came as you dodged a collapsing wall or plummeted from a crumpling tower, was that you they occurred before you were even fully aware of your danger. As far as Lois' racing heart and pumping adrenal glands were concerned, she was still about to land face-first in the cold, oily harbour waters. But her sense of touch registered a warm, steely arm holding her close and her mind provided the only possible explanation: Superman. Before she got any farther in figuring out what had just happened, they were settled on the far side of the pier - a gasping, rattled Jimmy gently placed on his feet by their hovering savior who then, in turn, lightly landed with Lois Lane held flush against him.
"Gosh, thanks, Superman," Jimmy managed, one hand still clutching his camera bag while the other fumbled with the camera strap around his neck where his trusty SLR dangled, slightly askew. Jimmy looked beyond them and shuddered. "Man, I thought we were goners!"
Lois and Superman both turned to look where Jimmy had indicated. The boarding tower Lois and Jimmy had climbed a few minutes before was an unrecognizable twist of metal, bowed over a crumbling jetty. If it had collapsed when a tanker was settling into harbour or when its crew was debarking, the damage could have been far worse, Lois mused. But somehow, once again, Superman had saved the day.
“Another casualty of New Krypton,” Superman announced, his gaze narrowing as he focused his x-ray vision. “The pilings at that end of the pier have broken away below the surface and I can see a micro-fault line running right underneath. It’s surprising it lasted as long as it did without collapsing. I should have checked all of this.”
Lois felt her heart clenching as she saw his pain and self-recrimination. “You can’t be everywhere. You can’t do everything. I had to learn that when Jason was little that sometimes, even when you do your best, accidents still happen. Don’t blame yourself, Superman.” His distant look vanished and his stance seemed to soften. She didn’t know if he completely accepted her words, but they seemed to have brought him some comfort.
Lois realized she was still standing in the circle of his arms, an awareness she suspected he'd had for a bit longer, judging by the serious, focused look she encountered when she raised her eyes to his. She cleared her throat and flexed her finger against the minutely rough cloth of his sleeve. "Thanks again," she murmured, feeling self-conscious as her heartbeat continued to race, even though the danger was clearly past.
Superman held her gaze steadily. "You're welcome, Lois, as always."
*click*
Belatedly, they turned to regard Jimmy, who was excitedly snapping shot after shot of them. "Oh boy, Perry's going to love this -- great composition with Superman in front and the wreckage behind." Lois sprang backward out of Superman's light embrace as Jimmy Olsen continued. "Thanks, Lois, that's great! A couple without you in the way would be perfect!"
Superman turned some more to face Jimmy directly, arms crossed forbiddingly across his chest. Jimmy's frantic pace halted and his head shot up over the viewfinder. "Umm, sorry, Superman. I guess I got carried away."
The hero smiled minutely. "That's all right, Jimmy, but I have to go talk to the Port Authority before someone else is endangered.” In the distance, they all heard the sirens of emergency vehicles wailing their way toward the wreckage. Superman gravely regarded both of the reporters. “Will you be able to get back to the paper?" Unspoken but understood to Lois was the and not get into more trouble he directed her way. She nodded. Since somehow her purse strap hadn't given way during their hair-raising rescue, Lois’ car keys were safe so they could make it back to the office.
The Daily Planet photographer belatedly nodded as he lowered the camera, politely refraining from catching any more intimate moments. With a last glance to Lois, Superman rocketed skyward. Lois shook her head sharply and turned to regard the approaching rapid response vehicles. “What took you guys so long?” she barked. “Didn’t you realize you had a disaster in the making here?”
A visibly shaken, gray-haired man slowly extracted himself from the lead vehicle while dock workers began to block off the damaged end of the pier. “Frank O’Connell, Metropolis Harbour Properties Manager. And you are?”
“Lois Lane, Daily Planet. We were here to cover the pipeline inspection when we got sidetracked.” She gestured over her shoulder at the impressive wreckage. “If it weren’t for Superman, we’d be in the harbour or worse.”
O’Connell shuddered and, despite the chill, mopped nervous sweat from his brow. “We had this whole area inspected and approved by Roscoe, weeks ago! We took precautions! We did our best.”
“Apparently your best wasn’t good enough when it came to trusting Roscoe. Haven’t you been reading the Planet? He’s been unmasked as a fraud.”
O’Connell shook his head, emphatically. “He can’t be. Five years ago, when we expanded this pier, he was part of the original team that signed off on this development. Our site was the big launch of his new equipment. I saw it, firsthand. He ran a demonstration right here: one of our tugboats dropped a single silver ingot in the harbour the night before and Roscoe was able to direct our divers straight to that within fifteen minutes of powering up his equipment. His machines map sites that are almost inaccessible and they’re accurate within a thousandth of an inch.”
Lois narrowed her eyes. This sounded like it came right out of Roscoe’s promotional brochures, but the sincere, shaken face in front of her didn’t belong to a salesman. “Do you have some proof of this? Some of the original scans?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure. Back at the office. Come with me, you’ll see!” O’Connell moved to usher them into his vehicle. Jimmy wedged himself in the backseat while Lois continued her questions as they drove towards the business offices. O’Connell offered some answers but was clearly rattled by the catastrophe. Once they reached the low slung building, Lois and Jimmy followed him through the hallways to a modest office stuffed with so many tools and filing cabinets it was a wonder there was room for a desk and chairs. O’Connell gestured for them to take a seat while he rifled through the cabinets. Within a minute, he muttered triumphantly and pulled out a thick manila folder.
“See? We even have photographs from an underwater camera that our port divers used to see if his readings were on the up and up.” O’Connell he fanned out the file’s content on the desk in front of Lois. She quickly leafed through the materials, pushing aside the photographs to study the printouts from Roscoe’s machinery. Beneath a heading with the date and GPS coordinates of the scan, the oversized papers mapped out a remarkable image of the harbour bottom and its underlying bedrock. Struck by a thought, Lois lifted her head to look at the nervous manager. “Do you have the scans from Roscoe’s latest surveying?”
He nodded. “Of course! They’re out in the main office since we were still processing all of our damage reports. They were almost wrapped up, though, since so little structural damage was uncovered.”
Jimmy fidgeted while they waited. “Take some pictures of these files, Jimmy,” Lois directed. “We might want to compare some of this paperwork with what Clark found in your earlier investigation.”
“Sure, Lois!” Jimmy positioned himself over the desk and snapped a series of close-ups of the printouts that Lois slid in front of his viewfinder. Within a few minutes he had to step back as Frank O’Connell returned, papers in hand but a troubled expression on his face.
“What’s the matter?” Lois asked.
“I found the readouts from last month’s re-survey.” O’Connell fanned the papers down on the desk with a sigh.
Lois examined them, looking for signs of what had upset the manager. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be any reason for his discomfiture. The images of the harbour bottom were serene and stable: precisely what a nervous administration would want to see after the disaster that had struck the city. She paused, and then rapidly leafed back through the papers.
“You see it, don’t you?” O’Connell asked, mournfully.
“Yes,” Lois whispered. “Yes, I do. Jimmy? Get a picture of this!”
***
“Great Caesar’s Ghost! Clark? Lois? Jimmy? This is great stuff.” Perry was wreathed in smiles when he read over their copy about the morning’s crisis on the pier and fanned out Jimmy’s photographs in front of him. “This is the smoking gun on Roscoe’s fraud - Clark had him pocketing the money without sending out his crews, you’ve proved that he just recycled scans from five years ago when signing off on current reports,” Perry gestured to the photographs Jimmy had taken in the Port Authority offices, “right down to that silver ingot still showing up in the harbour, five years after the divers recovered it.”
Lois smiled with real satisfaction. Their morning’s detective work would silence the critics who felt that the Planet was sensationalizing the risk to Metropolis.
“Can you give me a thousand-word sidebar on the tower collapse and your rescue? You know, an ‘I was there’ piece with the whole Superman angle? It’ll look good on the front page beside the main stories. Heck, the whole front section’s going to be a Lane and Kent production.”
Lois fought back her automatic annoyance at being asked to write about Superman yet again, and tersely agreed. To be honest, she was more interested in the ‘Kent’ aspect that Perry mentioned. Until now, she hadn’t given much thought to Clark’s day. Clark had finished his story assignment before she and Jimmy had returned to the office so she’d shamelessly badgered her partner into typing and correcting her copy on the grounds that a partner was a partner. Particularly a partner who was a touch typist and could spell! But there had to be something more to what he’d written than just a background on the crooked inventor if Perry was so enthusiastic.
“And Clark, you did a great job getting all that information out of the folks at Met U. Tracking down his old professors from there and getting them to talk about the inventions was good stuff. But you topped it all when you went after his funding source.”
Lois stood on her tiptoes as she tried to read the sheet Perry was waving before them. Frustrated at trying to see what Perry was holding, she growled and her editor jumped. “What’s got your goat, Lois?”
“I didn’t get to read Clark’s piece yet. What does he say?”
Perry shot a look over the rim of his reading glasses at the shuffling reporter standing to her left. “Why don’t you tell her, Clark?”
She could sense Clark’s unease when she turned toward him. Lois cursed herself for not asking Clark about his story before browbeating him into helping with hers: she hated feeling out of the loop. Gathering up her patience, just like she’d do with Jason when he was upset, she smiled encouragingly at her partner and adopted a gentler tone. “What did you find, Clark?”
Clark stilled his awkward shifting as her tone eased and stopped fidgeting with his glasses, but still seemed distressed. “Well, you see, I asked Professor Schmidt what he knew about Roscoe’s patents. Seems he had been in some trouble. Leaving the U and going out on his own was a big splash but it seemed pretty tough. The company was going bankrupt! Roscoe apparently came back to Met U last year in hopes of getting reappointed. Things were going along on that until, well...” Clark broke off and glanced up at Lois before continuing, “well, until just after the New Krypton disaster. Two weeks after that, Roscoe called the whole deal off.”
Lois nodded. “So? He’d landed the big contract from FEMA to resurvey the disaster sites.”
Clark pushed up his glasses again and stuttered, “N-n-no, Lois, he didn’t have that until a month afterward. What he did have, according to Schmidt, was a contract from a backer buying the company’s patents and proprietary equipment for five million dollars. Said they were a mining company, interested in remote sensing of ‘rare materials’.”
Picking up on the intonation, Lois paused then questioned, “’Said’ they were a mining company?”
Clark sighed, “That’s what Schmidt thought. But when I looked up the patent rights, like we’d talked about, they were registered to a company in the Caymans.”
Lois felt her stomach muscles tighten in anticipation. “And?”
Clark cleared his throat, “The only officer of the numbered corporation is a Katherine Kowalski of Metropolis. Her address was the same as the Vanderworth house at the epicenter of the first blackout and the site where you and Jason ended up on the Gertrude.”
For a moment, it felt as if the solid world around her was receding and Lois heard herself saying mechanically, as if it came from a very great distance, “Lex Luthor’s back.”
***
Clark rushed to get her a cup of coffee and Perry insisted she sit down to recover her bearings. Lois brushed aside her editor’s offer to fetch Richard - her fiancé was covering a visit to Metropolis by the Indonesian President that she knew would last into the evening. And there was Jason to consider - she had less than an hour before the daycare pick-up. Brushing aside their concern, she sat down at the keyboard and began to bang out her account of the rescue, grateful for the spell check function on the word processor. With ten minutes to spare, she hit the ‘SEND’ button, directing the copy to Perry for approval. Grabbing her purse with one hand, she swayed wearily as she stood up.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Lois? You don’t look so good.” Clark appeared as if from nowhere, and hovered beside her desk.
She groaned. “Let’s see, I tramped all over the waterfront, nearly fell to my death today and I missed lunch. Nothing a good meal and an early night won’t cure.” She raised her eyes to see him still watching her with a worried look and laughed. “Don’t fuss, Clark. I’ll be fine. I have to run and pick up Jason from daycare. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re going to have to follow up on your discovery, then.” Waving with forced cheerfulness, Lois strode off to the elevators, bouncing impatiently in her heels as she waited to head out. For some reason, she couldn’t wait to give her boy a big hug.
***
The skies of Metropolis were dark as Lois washed up the dinner dishes. Jason’s backpack was on the dinner table with a sheaf of papers from his class and daycare to review and sign off on. From the living room, she heard the tinkle of the keyboard and smiled. Jason had been a bit hesitant to play, since their ordeal aboard the Gertrude, but he’d started back in the last week after spending an evening at the Planet singing Christmas carols with Clark and Jimmy while Lois had worked through another late deadline.
Hanging up her dishtowel, Lois leaned against the counter and listened to her son’s halting rendition of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. She’d not been able to talk about the whole piano incident with Richard, yet, but she knew she’d have to do so at some point. It was hard enough to admit to herself that Jason was not an ordinary human. How much more difficult would it be for the man who thought of himself as Jason’s father to learn that wasn’t the case? She sighed as she found herself fretfully smoothing the wet dishtowel on the rack. Sitting around moping wasn’t going to solve her problems. Checking the clock, she moved to the living room door.
“Hey, kiddo,” she called, “five minutes to bedtime. Better wrap things up.”
With a flourishing finish, Jason ran through the end of the Christmas tune. “Am I getting better, mommy?”
“Good enough to play for Santa,” she promised.
Jason shook his head solemnly. “Santa’s not real, mom. But thanks, anyway.”
She chuckled in bemusement. Sometimes Jason could be so solemn and sincere - like a little boy scout. How he could be that way and still be her son, she didn’t know. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s get you ready for bed.”
Automatically picking up his toys, she watched while Jason put away his keyboard and bounded toward the stairs. “Will Dad be home in time?”
Lois glanced at the clock. The press conference at the Indonesian consulate probably wouldn’t end for another hour. “Sorry, I don’t think so. But Daddy’ll come in to check on you during the night.” Maybe both of your daddies, she added silently.
That seemed to be enough comfort for now. Lois followed her son up the stairs to his room, stowing his toys away while he got changed and ready for bed. With a good-night kiss and a final tuck-in, Lois turned off the lights and left the room. The window was, as always, unlocked. If Superman was going to come, Lois would make it easy on him.
Only when she was back downstairs did Lois admit to herself how tired she really was. Declining to check her email, she powered down her computer, and then went through all of Jason’s paperwork before heading upstairs to get ready for bed. Pulling on a soft, flannel nightgown against the winter chill, she glanced out the window one last time before pulling the drapes shut. Rooting around her nightstand, she found a book she’d been meaning to finish. Lois yawned as she settled into bed, but she was determined to stay awake to greet Richard when he returned.
When she heard the downstairs door open a while later, Lois blinked her eyes wide open. Richard’s tread on the stairs was slow and heavy, as if he was dragging a great weight. When he appeared in the doorway, Lois waited, wondering what was troubling him. Richard’s shoulders seemed slumped and his expression was carefully blank.
“What happened, Richard? Was there a problem tonight at the consulate?”
His laugh was hollow. “No, no problems. Filed my story at the office and got ready to head home when Uncle Perry showed me the front page mockup for the morning edition.” Richard reached under his arm and unfolded a slim sheet of newsprint. “Here you go. Might as well take a look before it hits the newsstands tomorrow.”
Lois put down her novel and reached for the paper, unfolding it to see that she had another front page byline. But her usual smile faded as she looked at the photo Perry had chosen to run above the fold. Instead of anything from the barge or the printouts from the survey fraud they’d documented, he’d wisely gone with the most compelling of Jimmy’s photos. This was one time that Lois wished her editor would have put aside his instinct for a good story and think about the consequences.
On the grainy newsprint, Lois Lane stood in front of a terrifying wreck of the collapsed boarding tower. The image was a perfect accompaniment to the stories that she and Clark had written, no doubt. But it was how she stood, clearly enthralled, embraced by and embracing the man who had rescued her: that was what struck Lois most clearly about this picture.
Lois listened to Richard sigh as he sat down at the foot of the bed. “Lois, I’ve listened to you lie to me countless times over the years I’ve known you. You lie about smoking. You lie about eating healthy. You lie about using spell check! But I never thought you lied about the important things. That is, until now.”
He put his hand out towards the newsprint. “When are you going to admit to yourself that you’re still in love with Superman?”
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE | CHAPTER SIX
RATING: PG-13 (for now)
PAIRING: Eventual Lois&Clark.
SUMMARY: Lex Luthor's plotting anew while Lois, Richard, Jason and Clark come to terms with changes to their lives after Superman returns. (Ch.3: 3300 words)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to my betas, here, htbthomas and history_gurl.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
The one constant about rescues, whether they came as you dodged a collapsing wall or plummeted from a crumpling tower, was that you they occurred before you were even fully aware of your danger. As far as Lois' racing heart and pumping adrenal glands were concerned, she was still about to land face-first in the cold, oily harbour waters. But her sense of touch registered a warm, steely arm holding her close and her mind provided the only possible explanation: Superman. Before she got any farther in figuring out what had just happened, they were settled on the far side of the pier - a gasping, rattled Jimmy gently placed on his feet by their hovering savior who then, in turn, lightly landed with Lois Lane held flush against him.
"Gosh, thanks, Superman," Jimmy managed, one hand still clutching his camera bag while the other fumbled with the camera strap around his neck where his trusty SLR dangled, slightly askew. Jimmy looked beyond them and shuddered. "Man, I thought we were goners!"
Lois and Superman both turned to look where Jimmy had indicated. The boarding tower Lois and Jimmy had climbed a few minutes before was an unrecognizable twist of metal, bowed over a crumbling jetty. If it had collapsed when a tanker was settling into harbour or when its crew was debarking, the damage could have been far worse, Lois mused. But somehow, once again, Superman had saved the day.
“Another casualty of New Krypton,” Superman announced, his gaze narrowing as he focused his x-ray vision. “The pilings at that end of the pier have broken away below the surface and I can see a micro-fault line running right underneath. It’s surprising it lasted as long as it did without collapsing. I should have checked all of this.”
Lois felt her heart clenching as she saw his pain and self-recrimination. “You can’t be everywhere. You can’t do everything. I had to learn that when Jason was little that sometimes, even when you do your best, accidents still happen. Don’t blame yourself, Superman.” His distant look vanished and his stance seemed to soften. She didn’t know if he completely accepted her words, but they seemed to have brought him some comfort.
Lois realized she was still standing in the circle of his arms, an awareness she suspected he'd had for a bit longer, judging by the serious, focused look she encountered when she raised her eyes to his. She cleared her throat and flexed her finger against the minutely rough cloth of his sleeve. "Thanks again," she murmured, feeling self-conscious as her heartbeat continued to race, even though the danger was clearly past.
Superman held her gaze steadily. "You're welcome, Lois, as always."
*click*
Belatedly, they turned to regard Jimmy, who was excitedly snapping shot after shot of them. "Oh boy, Perry's going to love this -- great composition with Superman in front and the wreckage behind." Lois sprang backward out of Superman's light embrace as Jimmy Olsen continued. "Thanks, Lois, that's great! A couple without you in the way would be perfect!"
Superman turned some more to face Jimmy directly, arms crossed forbiddingly across his chest. Jimmy's frantic pace halted and his head shot up over the viewfinder. "Umm, sorry, Superman. I guess I got carried away."
The hero smiled minutely. "That's all right, Jimmy, but I have to go talk to the Port Authority before someone else is endangered.” In the distance, they all heard the sirens of emergency vehicles wailing their way toward the wreckage. Superman gravely regarded both of the reporters. “Will you be able to get back to the paper?" Unspoken but understood to Lois was the and not get into more trouble he directed her way. She nodded. Since somehow her purse strap hadn't given way during their hair-raising rescue, Lois’ car keys were safe so they could make it back to the office.
The Daily Planet photographer belatedly nodded as he lowered the camera, politely refraining from catching any more intimate moments. With a last glance to Lois, Superman rocketed skyward. Lois shook her head sharply and turned to regard the approaching rapid response vehicles. “What took you guys so long?” she barked. “Didn’t you realize you had a disaster in the making here?”
A visibly shaken, gray-haired man slowly extracted himself from the lead vehicle while dock workers began to block off the damaged end of the pier. “Frank O’Connell, Metropolis Harbour Properties Manager. And you are?”
“Lois Lane, Daily Planet. We were here to cover the pipeline inspection when we got sidetracked.” She gestured over her shoulder at the impressive wreckage. “If it weren’t for Superman, we’d be in the harbour or worse.”
O’Connell shuddered and, despite the chill, mopped nervous sweat from his brow. “We had this whole area inspected and approved by Roscoe, weeks ago! We took precautions! We did our best.”
“Apparently your best wasn’t good enough when it came to trusting Roscoe. Haven’t you been reading the Planet? He’s been unmasked as a fraud.”
O’Connell shook his head, emphatically. “He can’t be. Five years ago, when we expanded this pier, he was part of the original team that signed off on this development. Our site was the big launch of his new equipment. I saw it, firsthand. He ran a demonstration right here: one of our tugboats dropped a single silver ingot in the harbour the night before and Roscoe was able to direct our divers straight to that within fifteen minutes of powering up his equipment. His machines map sites that are almost inaccessible and they’re accurate within a thousandth of an inch.”
Lois narrowed her eyes. This sounded like it came right out of Roscoe’s promotional brochures, but the sincere, shaken face in front of her didn’t belong to a salesman. “Do you have some proof of this? Some of the original scans?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure. Back at the office. Come with me, you’ll see!” O’Connell moved to usher them into his vehicle. Jimmy wedged himself in the backseat while Lois continued her questions as they drove towards the business offices. O’Connell offered some answers but was clearly rattled by the catastrophe. Once they reached the low slung building, Lois and Jimmy followed him through the hallways to a modest office stuffed with so many tools and filing cabinets it was a wonder there was room for a desk and chairs. O’Connell gestured for them to take a seat while he rifled through the cabinets. Within a minute, he muttered triumphantly and pulled out a thick manila folder.
“See? We even have photographs from an underwater camera that our port divers used to see if his readings were on the up and up.” O’Connell he fanned out the file’s content on the desk in front of Lois. She quickly leafed through the materials, pushing aside the photographs to study the printouts from Roscoe’s machinery. Beneath a heading with the date and GPS coordinates of the scan, the oversized papers mapped out a remarkable image of the harbour bottom and its underlying bedrock. Struck by a thought, Lois lifted her head to look at the nervous manager. “Do you have the scans from Roscoe’s latest surveying?”
He nodded. “Of course! They’re out in the main office since we were still processing all of our damage reports. They were almost wrapped up, though, since so little structural damage was uncovered.”
Jimmy fidgeted while they waited. “Take some pictures of these files, Jimmy,” Lois directed. “We might want to compare some of this paperwork with what Clark found in your earlier investigation.”
“Sure, Lois!” Jimmy positioned himself over the desk and snapped a series of close-ups of the printouts that Lois slid in front of his viewfinder. Within a few minutes he had to step back as Frank O’Connell returned, papers in hand but a troubled expression on his face.
“What’s the matter?” Lois asked.
“I found the readouts from last month’s re-survey.” O’Connell fanned the papers down on the desk with a sigh.
Lois examined them, looking for signs of what had upset the manager. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be any reason for his discomfiture. The images of the harbour bottom were serene and stable: precisely what a nervous administration would want to see after the disaster that had struck the city. She paused, and then rapidly leafed back through the papers.
“You see it, don’t you?” O’Connell asked, mournfully.
“Yes,” Lois whispered. “Yes, I do. Jimmy? Get a picture of this!”
***
“Great Caesar’s Ghost! Clark? Lois? Jimmy? This is great stuff.” Perry was wreathed in smiles when he read over their copy about the morning’s crisis on the pier and fanned out Jimmy’s photographs in front of him. “This is the smoking gun on Roscoe’s fraud - Clark had him pocketing the money without sending out his crews, you’ve proved that he just recycled scans from five years ago when signing off on current reports,” Perry gestured to the photographs Jimmy had taken in the Port Authority offices, “right down to that silver ingot still showing up in the harbour, five years after the divers recovered it.”
Lois smiled with real satisfaction. Their morning’s detective work would silence the critics who felt that the Planet was sensationalizing the risk to Metropolis.
“Can you give me a thousand-word sidebar on the tower collapse and your rescue? You know, an ‘I was there’ piece with the whole Superman angle? It’ll look good on the front page beside the main stories. Heck, the whole front section’s going to be a Lane and Kent production.”
Lois fought back her automatic annoyance at being asked to write about Superman yet again, and tersely agreed. To be honest, she was more interested in the ‘Kent’ aspect that Perry mentioned. Until now, she hadn’t given much thought to Clark’s day. Clark had finished his story assignment before she and Jimmy had returned to the office so she’d shamelessly badgered her partner into typing and correcting her copy on the grounds that a partner was a partner. Particularly a partner who was a touch typist and could spell! But there had to be something more to what he’d written than just a background on the crooked inventor if Perry was so enthusiastic.
“And Clark, you did a great job getting all that information out of the folks at Met U. Tracking down his old professors from there and getting them to talk about the inventions was good stuff. But you topped it all when you went after his funding source.”
Lois stood on her tiptoes as she tried to read the sheet Perry was waving before them. Frustrated at trying to see what Perry was holding, she growled and her editor jumped. “What’s got your goat, Lois?”
“I didn’t get to read Clark’s piece yet. What does he say?”
Perry shot a look over the rim of his reading glasses at the shuffling reporter standing to her left. “Why don’t you tell her, Clark?”
She could sense Clark’s unease when she turned toward him. Lois cursed herself for not asking Clark about his story before browbeating him into helping with hers: she hated feeling out of the loop. Gathering up her patience, just like she’d do with Jason when he was upset, she smiled encouragingly at her partner and adopted a gentler tone. “What did you find, Clark?”
Clark stilled his awkward shifting as her tone eased and stopped fidgeting with his glasses, but still seemed distressed. “Well, you see, I asked Professor Schmidt what he knew about Roscoe’s patents. Seems he had been in some trouble. Leaving the U and going out on his own was a big splash but it seemed pretty tough. The company was going bankrupt! Roscoe apparently came back to Met U last year in hopes of getting reappointed. Things were going along on that until, well...” Clark broke off and glanced up at Lois before continuing, “well, until just after the New Krypton disaster. Two weeks after that, Roscoe called the whole deal off.”
Lois nodded. “So? He’d landed the big contract from FEMA to resurvey the disaster sites.”
Clark pushed up his glasses again and stuttered, “N-n-no, Lois, he didn’t have that until a month afterward. What he did have, according to Schmidt, was a contract from a backer buying the company’s patents and proprietary equipment for five million dollars. Said they were a mining company, interested in remote sensing of ‘rare materials’.”
Picking up on the intonation, Lois paused then questioned, “’Said’ they were a mining company?”
Clark sighed, “That’s what Schmidt thought. But when I looked up the patent rights, like we’d talked about, they were registered to a company in the Caymans.”
Lois felt her stomach muscles tighten in anticipation. “And?”
Clark cleared his throat, “The only officer of the numbered corporation is a Katherine Kowalski of Metropolis. Her address was the same as the Vanderworth house at the epicenter of the first blackout and the site where you and Jason ended up on the Gertrude.”
For a moment, it felt as if the solid world around her was receding and Lois heard herself saying mechanically, as if it came from a very great distance, “Lex Luthor’s back.”
***
Clark rushed to get her a cup of coffee and Perry insisted she sit down to recover her bearings. Lois brushed aside her editor’s offer to fetch Richard - her fiancé was covering a visit to Metropolis by the Indonesian President that she knew would last into the evening. And there was Jason to consider - she had less than an hour before the daycare pick-up. Brushing aside their concern, she sat down at the keyboard and began to bang out her account of the rescue, grateful for the spell check function on the word processor. With ten minutes to spare, she hit the ‘SEND’ button, directing the copy to Perry for approval. Grabbing her purse with one hand, she swayed wearily as she stood up.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Lois? You don’t look so good.” Clark appeared as if from nowhere, and hovered beside her desk.
She groaned. “Let’s see, I tramped all over the waterfront, nearly fell to my death today and I missed lunch. Nothing a good meal and an early night won’t cure.” She raised her eyes to see him still watching her with a worried look and laughed. “Don’t fuss, Clark. I’ll be fine. I have to run and pick up Jason from daycare. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re going to have to follow up on your discovery, then.” Waving with forced cheerfulness, Lois strode off to the elevators, bouncing impatiently in her heels as she waited to head out. For some reason, she couldn’t wait to give her boy a big hug.
***
The skies of Metropolis were dark as Lois washed up the dinner dishes. Jason’s backpack was on the dinner table with a sheaf of papers from his class and daycare to review and sign off on. From the living room, she heard the tinkle of the keyboard and smiled. Jason had been a bit hesitant to play, since their ordeal aboard the Gertrude, but he’d started back in the last week after spending an evening at the Planet singing Christmas carols with Clark and Jimmy while Lois had worked through another late deadline.
Hanging up her dishtowel, Lois leaned against the counter and listened to her son’s halting rendition of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. She’d not been able to talk about the whole piano incident with Richard, yet, but she knew she’d have to do so at some point. It was hard enough to admit to herself that Jason was not an ordinary human. How much more difficult would it be for the man who thought of himself as Jason’s father to learn that wasn’t the case? She sighed as she found herself fretfully smoothing the wet dishtowel on the rack. Sitting around moping wasn’t going to solve her problems. Checking the clock, she moved to the living room door.
“Hey, kiddo,” she called, “five minutes to bedtime. Better wrap things up.”
With a flourishing finish, Jason ran through the end of the Christmas tune. “Am I getting better, mommy?”
“Good enough to play for Santa,” she promised.
Jason shook his head solemnly. “Santa’s not real, mom. But thanks, anyway.”
She chuckled in bemusement. Sometimes Jason could be so solemn and sincere - like a little boy scout. How he could be that way and still be her son, she didn’t know. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s get you ready for bed.”
Automatically picking up his toys, she watched while Jason put away his keyboard and bounded toward the stairs. “Will Dad be home in time?”
Lois glanced at the clock. The press conference at the Indonesian consulate probably wouldn’t end for another hour. “Sorry, I don’t think so. But Daddy’ll come in to check on you during the night.” Maybe both of your daddies, she added silently.
That seemed to be enough comfort for now. Lois followed her son up the stairs to his room, stowing his toys away while he got changed and ready for bed. With a good-night kiss and a final tuck-in, Lois turned off the lights and left the room. The window was, as always, unlocked. If Superman was going to come, Lois would make it easy on him.
Only when she was back downstairs did Lois admit to herself how tired she really was. Declining to check her email, she powered down her computer, and then went through all of Jason’s paperwork before heading upstairs to get ready for bed. Pulling on a soft, flannel nightgown against the winter chill, she glanced out the window one last time before pulling the drapes shut. Rooting around her nightstand, she found a book she’d been meaning to finish. Lois yawned as she settled into bed, but she was determined to stay awake to greet Richard when he returned.
When she heard the downstairs door open a while later, Lois blinked her eyes wide open. Richard’s tread on the stairs was slow and heavy, as if he was dragging a great weight. When he appeared in the doorway, Lois waited, wondering what was troubling him. Richard’s shoulders seemed slumped and his expression was carefully blank.
“What happened, Richard? Was there a problem tonight at the consulate?”
His laugh was hollow. “No, no problems. Filed my story at the office and got ready to head home when Uncle Perry showed me the front page mockup for the morning edition.” Richard reached under his arm and unfolded a slim sheet of newsprint. “Here you go. Might as well take a look before it hits the newsstands tomorrow.”
Lois put down her novel and reached for the paper, unfolding it to see that she had another front page byline. But her usual smile faded as she looked at the photo Perry had chosen to run above the fold. Instead of anything from the barge or the printouts from the survey fraud they’d documented, he’d wisely gone with the most compelling of Jimmy’s photos. This was one time that Lois wished her editor would have put aside his instinct for a good story and think about the consequences.
On the grainy newsprint, Lois Lane stood in front of a terrifying wreck of the collapsed boarding tower. The image was a perfect accompaniment to the stories that she and Clark had written, no doubt. But it was how she stood, clearly enthralled, embraced by and embracing the man who had rescued her: that was what struck Lois most clearly about this picture.
Lois listened to Richard sigh as he sat down at the foot of the bed. “Lois, I’ve listened to you lie to me countless times over the years I’ve known you. You lie about smoking. You lie about eating healthy. You lie about using spell check! But I never thought you lied about the important things. That is, until now.”
He put his hand out towards the newsprint. “When are you going to admit to yourself that you’re still in love with Superman?”
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE | CHAPTER SIX