Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic An Extraordinary Man II: Trials And Truimphs (10/?)

Table of contents is here .


LAST TIME ON EMII:

There was an air of finality about Mayson's "Good-bye". She replaced the handset and buried her face in her hands. Although they were muffled by her palms, CJ could hear her muttered words. "Rosie, how could you?" Her breath hitched on a sob.

He had, he thought, seen enough, enough to convince himself of Mayson's own innocence and of her need for privacy.

He also thought, perhaps for the first time, that he and Mayson might actually be fighting on the same side.

He switched off his supersenses and got down to work.

NOW READ ON...


CHAPTER TEN


The fading light as dusk fell helped to hide CJ from view as he flew to Lois's apartment. Instead of touching down on the pavement and using the building's front door, CJ chose to land on the small balcony next to the fire escape. He peered through the window and smiled as he spotted Lois. He stood there for a while, head on one side and a smile playing around his lips, content simply to watch her – she was sitting sideways on to him, so that he could see her profile clearly – until he realised with a hint of embarrassment that his behaviour was voyeuristic. Her expression was one of such total concentration that CJ felt almost guilty at disturbing her as he tapped against the window.

Startled, Lois jerked upright and spun around in her seat. Her instinctive fright gave way to relief. She mouthed, "CJ! You almost gave me a heart attack!" at him. He wasn't sure whether he heard the words, or felt them, or was simply able to lip-read. Whichever it was, her meaning was clear.

He guiltily mouthed an apology back at her and waited for her to open the window, and let him in.

Once inside, he tried to apologise again, but Lois waved his words away with a vague gesture. Lois got straight down to business as she led the way through into the living room. She said, "I hope you've had a more productive day than me. I started out looking for Jules Johnson. Johnson lived in Metropolis, up until a few months ago. I can't find anything more recent than that. It's almost as if he fell off the face of the Earth. I did wonder..." She trailed off into a contemplative silence.

"What?"

"Well, it occurred to me that maybe he'd died. But there's no record of that, either. Of course, if he'd been murdered and if his body had been buried or something there wouldn't be a record, would there?"

"Isn't that reaching just a bit? I know that this is Luthor we're talking about here, but even so... Aren't you being a bit melodramatic, assuming that he's been killed."

"Possibly," said Lois. "Even probably. But I couldn't help but wonder, you know? Anyway, given the problems I'd been having with him, I decided to have a go at tracking down Monique Kahn. At least we know she exists. We know she was alive – she's been seen – in the last week or so. But I can't find anything on her, either!"

"Nothing?" frowned CJ sceptically.

Lois shook her head. She'd opened a bottle of red wine ready for his visit, and had set it out, along with two glasses and some peanuts on a tray on the coffee table. She poured him a glass. He took it from her with a mumbled "Thank you" and waited for her to elaborate.

"I don't get it," she said. "I mean, we know she's out there, somewhere. But she's not listed in any of the phone companies' databases."

"So? Maybe she doesn't want her number available to just anybody. It's common enough. My number's unlisted."

"No. It's more than that," Lois said, blushing a little.

The small part of CJ's brain that wasn't focusing on the conversation whispered to the rest of him, demanding attention, that she looked adorable. He allowed himself a moment to acknowledge the truth of the thought then ruthlessly quashed the little voice. He forced himself to turn his attention back to what she was saying.

"Unlisted numbers exist. They're in the phone companies' databases; it's just that the general public can't get access to those numbers."

"Ah," said CJ, with dawning understanding. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he remembered that his address was unlisted, but Lois had been able to find it anyway. "But you can get hold of them, right?"

"Yeah." She gazed at him uncertainly, as if unsure how he would react to her admission.

She needn't have worried, thought CJ. He thought he'd learned his lesson well and he wasn't planning on censuring Lois for her more... unorthodox... methods again. In fact, he was beginning to almost admire her for them.

Emboldened by his lack of reaction, Lois continued. "Either she's not on the phone, or the line rental is in another name. The second seems most likely to me. I mean, how many people do you know who don't have phones?"

"Not many," CJ said. "And she doesn't strike me as the kind of person who wouldn't have one."

"And then," said Lois, "there's no sign of her in any of the council's databases, she doesn't appear to have a bank account. The IRS have never heard of her... Do I need to go on?"

CJ sighed. "No. I get the picture. But, as you already pointed out, we know she's out there, somewhere," he said. "So what are we doing wrong?"

"I don't know. I'll keep digging, but, quite honestly, I'm not sure where else to look." She looked him straight in the face with an almost imploring expression on her own. "Please tell me you've had better luck!"

CJ sipped his wine and raised his eyebrows in mute appreciation before sighing again. "I wish I could," he said. "But, if anything, I've had worse luck than you."

"Worse? How could it be worse?"

"Well, at least you've been trying to track down a real person. Turns out that my man doesn't even exist."

"What? How's that possible?"

"We've been working on the assumption that all the people in the other world exist in this one, right? That, maybe, they're different, but that they are here, nonetheless?"

Lois nodded.

"Wrong assumption. Apparently some – well, okay, *one* that I've found so far – was never born in the first place. I couldn't find any information about Fabian Leek here in Metropolis, so I flew over to Oregon. I spent the entire afternoon going through various public records in Portland. Eventually, when I couldn't find out anything about him, I decided to look up his parents. They did exist. In fact, they're still alive. Apparently, they couldn't have kids, so they adopted a baby girl. Fabian Leek was never born, and the adopted daughter now runs a real estate business."

Lois slumped back against the stiff back of the love seat and scowled.

"Lois? Are you okay?" CJ asked, concerned.

"I guess," muttered Lois, but she sounded weary. "It's just... I can't help wondering how many dead ends we're going to find. Are we ever going to find anything useful?"

He wanted to give her some reassurance but he wasn't sure that he had any to offer. Instead he heard himself pleading with her. "Lois," said CJ. "Please... Don't give up just yet. Don't be disheartened."

"Why not? It's not as if we're getting anywhere, is it?"

"Not yet, no. But..." He wondered what he could say to make her feel better. Maybe a pep talk, something along the lines of the ones Lois and Clark had given him might help, he thought. He picked his words carefully, then ventured, "I've learned a lot in the last couple of weeks," said CJ. "Two things in particular."

"Oh?"

He nodded. "First, nothing is impossible."

Lois chuckled dryly. "Well, I guess you're living proof of that. What's the second thing?"

"That whatever you can do, that's enough."

"What?" Lois seemed dumbfounded and, worse, appalled by his statement. "Of course it's not, CJ! Accepting that is like saying failure is okay, you know? I'll never be satisfied until Luthor and his kind are all behind bars!"

"Lois..."

"What?" The prickly Lois of old was back full-force.

"I didn't mean it that way. I'm not saying that failure is acceptable – it's not. Not really. What I am saying is that sometimes, no matter how hard we try, things won't work out the way we want. And when that happens, if we can honestly say that we tried our hardest, then we shouldn't go around beating ourselves up over it. So, even if we haven't made any progress today, maybe that's okay, because we've tried our best."

"Oh," she said, her voice small.

"And, by the way," CJ said. "I do have one good piece of news for you, even though it doesn't directly help this investigation of ours."

"Oh?"

"I talked to various people in my office. They're going to look into the charges against Myerson again. Most of the charges against him will likely be dropped. There's not a lot we can do about the attempted murder charge, though. No matter how much he was provoked, there's no justification for what he did there."

"And that's supposed to be good news?" asked Lois sadly. "It sounds more like a tragedy to me."

"It is a tragedy, but it wasn't one of your making. Nor was it one of Judith Myerson's. And you've both done what you could to make things better." He sighed. "I imagine that any judge or jury would be pretty lenient when it comes to sentencing. Especially," he added, correctly interpreting the look on her face, "given the situation with his wife and if you speak up on his behalf."

Lois exhaled slowly and shakily, then she lifted her chin and said, "I'll do whatever I can to help him."

CJ nodded; he knew she would. She was that kind of person. Would he be that generous, he wondered, towards anyone who had tried to kill him? He watched her as she took a sip of her wine and reached over to the nut bowl.

He was fascinated by the dainty way she picked the peanuts up, palming them, then used her other hand to pop them, one by one, into her mouth. It was a sharp contrast to the way he would normally knock them back, a handful at a time. He wondered what she would do if she were alone.

Lois straightened her shoulders then said, "Okay, so what do we do next?" CJ noticed that her frustration of only minutes before had given way to determination. He'd noticed how mercurial her moods were before, and, not for the first time, he wondered how she was able to run through such a gamut of emotions in so short a time.

It took him a moment to pull his thoughts away from Lois and back to the investigation. The change in tack was almost disorienting. He opened his mouth, but had to close it again when no sound came out. He had more luck on his second attempt, however. "I guess," he said, and he was surprised to hear an unfamiliar husky note to his voice, "that we should just keep going. I've taken a week's vacation, so I'll have a lot more time to work on tracking some of these people down. I thought I might get started on Dr Mamba, and, maybe, the Vale brothers next."

Lois nodded. "I have to go into the office tomorrow, but, hopefully, if I tell my editor that I'm working on something big he'll trust me enough to get on with things."

CJ knew that he looked sceptical; did she really have that degree of autonomy at work? Lois clearly read his expression accurately, because she said, "If we pull this off, CJ, it'll be a huge story. Best of my career, even. Perry won't mind, so long as there's a decent payoff in the end."

CJ nodded. He hadn't thought about it in those terms, but that had been an oversight on his part. Lois was a journalist. Of course she'd think of everything they were doing in terms of the headlines she could create.

Lois changed the subject abruptly. "Did you eat yet?"

CJ shook his head. "No. I came straight back from the West Coast."

"Me, neither," she said. "So... You want Italian or Thai?"

*****

The wine bottle was empty, the cartons the food had come in were in the trash, and the plates were in the sink. Lois was leaning in against CJ's side, content to feel his arm around her shoulders as he held her in a light embrace.

CJ, she'd been pleased to note, had expressed neither surprise nor dismay as she'd dialled the number for Rama Thai. It wasn't often, she thought, that her acquaintances were so understanding of her kitchen habits, or, rather, lack thereof.

Over the course of the evening, their conversation had drifted away from the investigation, towards more general topics. Perhaps, Lois thought idly, they should have been concentrating on the task ahead of them, but she found herself content to leisurely discuss movies, books, music and food with her companion. They'd discovered likes and dislikes in common – both loved Lethal Weapon and hated Platoon – as well as things they decided to disagree upon. Lois, an ardent Ivory Tower fan, was dismayed to discover that CJ thought it "trite, escapist rubbish". CJ had been equally disappointed to realise Lois disliked country music, although she did share his liking for old crooners and blues singers.

They talked about travel, of which both had done a little, and both wished to do more. Lois listened in rapt wonder as CJ told her about his recent visits to Antarctica, Kamchatka and the Australian Outback. He listened with equal fascination as she spoke of her stays in France and Ireland.

Then the conversation flowed naturally onto more sensitive topics. Only, by now, they were so relaxed with each other that they didn't recognise the sensitivity. So, when Lois brought up the subject of Elyse, she did so with no hint of embarrassment, and she was delighted when CJ answered willingly and without reserve.

"You know what you were saying earlier, about realising that whatever you can do being enough?"

"Yes."

She sucked on her lower lip speculatively for a moment, then she said in an abrupt change of subject that took him by surprise, "Is that why you don't feel so guilty about Elyse anymore? Because you now realise that you did everything you could to prevent... what happened? Even if it didn't stop her being killed?"

"I guess that's a large part of it, yes."

"I'm glad."

"You also helped," he said softly, and she could feel his breath in her hair. "By telling me how you felt. By showing me that I wasn't the only one..."

"To blame?"

"No. Not to blame. I thought we'd already agreed that there was no blame in this. What I meant was that... that there were other people involved. Affected."

Lois nodded against CJ's chest. It felt good to know that he didn't blame her, just as it felt good to know that she held the power to help him.

They lapsed into silence then. Lois had temporarily run out of things to say, as, apparently, had CJ. yet they were equally reluctant for the evening to end. It felt so... right... to be sitting here, in CJ's arms! If there was one thing that could make the evening perfect, she thought, it was that CJ would kiss her.

Again.

*****

The feel of Lois in his arms was almost enough to make CJ forgive her for the back-breakingly uncomfortable love seats they were settled in. It crossed his mind to wonder whether that was why they were called love seats; you had to be snuggled up to the one you loved to be able to tolerate their use for any length of time.

Lois's body felt warm against his, even through several layers of fabric. His nerve endings seemed to be hyper-sensitive to her presence. Was that because of his superpowered sense of touch, or was it because of her? Somehow he thought it was the latter.

Lois shifted slightly, snuggling closer. The movement sent tremors through his frame. He reached up and gently stroked her cheek with his finger tips. Without any conscious decision on his part, he guided her face around so that they were staring into each other's eyes. Hers looked huge in her face, a deep brown, framed by black lashes and cream coloured skin. Her pupils were dilated in the dim light, giving her expression an almost wanton edge, which was enhanced by a tinge of pink on her cheeks and the way her lips were opened a fraction, an unspoken invitation.

In that moment, CJ wanted one thing more than any other. He wanted to feel those lips against his, to explore the warm velvet of her mouth...

Was it telepathy, or just his imagination that put words to the silent communication passing between their eyes? ("May I...?" "Please do.") Then, Lois was inching her way up the length of his torso until their heads were mere inches apart. CJ leaned towards her as Lois tilted her head slightly, and lowered his lips to hers.

The kiss was everything he'd thought it would be and more. And it was nothing like the few kisses he'd shared with Elyse. He felt no awkwardness, no unease and no reservations with Lois. In fact, it left him with a sense of completeness, of fulfilment such as he had never known.

But he didn't feel comfortable about that feeling when there was one secret he had yet to reveal to her. It was a secret that, if she took it the wrong way, might spell the end for their nascent relationship.

And yet she had a right to know; he needed her to know. He didn't want to leave it any longer, because if she did react badly, he wanted to be able to escape with his heart intact...

Except, he thought, it was already far too late for that.

CJ pulled back, ignoring her quiet moan of protest as he gently withdrew his mouth from hers.

He looked into her eyes again, watching carefully as the worry he was feeling spread to her, pulling her forehead into a frown.

"CJ?" she murmured. Then, with that uncanny knack of hers, she guessed, "There's something you haven't told me, isn't there?"

CJ took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. "Yes," he whispered reluctantly.

"Come on then. Out with it." Her words were brusque, but her tone was gently cajoling, offering him encouragement rather than making demands of him.

Despite her command, CJ found himself reluctant to comply. "I'm not sure," he said, "how you'll react. It's a little... bizarre."

One corner of Lois's lips quirked into an amused half-smile. "That from a man who claims to have visited another dimension and who flies! What could possibly be more bizarre than that?"

When put in those terms, CJ decided that what he had to tell her probably wasn't so very momentous after all. The old saying about mountains and molehills flitted across his mind; he suspected that he'd never personally experienced something that fitted the cliché quite as well as this.

Thus encouraged, he suddenly found it easy to say the words. "I'm not human, Lois."


TBC