Okay, I feel a little odd in that this is the first time I've posted fic on the boards here (more of a reader than a poster really) and it's SR instead of L&C, but this hit me really strongly today and just begged to be written and shared. And at least Lois will likely be much more like the L&C version than SR, and I know this crowd won't find it strange. So, working title, very rough idea of where I'm going, but I think it should be a fun ride.

ETA: Told you it was a working title! Came up with a better one overnight.

Operation Argus

Prologue

As the plane tail came down with soft thump, Lois stopped breathing. The last few minutes had spun her around, but at least she'd been focused on trying to make it through her last moments on (or at least above) the earth. But they'd all survived, and Lois finally began to process the glimpse of red and blue outside the window and the miraculous landing of a plane that had no wings, no power, and no hope of making it home.

A new shot of adrenaline restarted her lungs as the front cabin door groaned and then disappeared. Sunlight streamed in, accompanied by a roaring sound. The uniform was ever so slightly different, making him look overly thin and gangly - but the cape, the hair, his face were all the same. Superman. Alive. And here.

"Is everyone all right?"

Shaking, Lois grabbed the seat in front of her and pulled herself up, staring. Part of her still didn't believe it until his blue eyes met hers.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded dumbly, afraid to look away. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, with the start of a smile, and then he flinched.

"Right. Well, emergency services will be here in just a minute." With that, he disappeared out the doorway. Lois shoved her way through the other reporters, throwing herself at the sunlight, searching the sky for him. He was already gone.

But before he'd looked away, when he flinched, Lois saw something in his eyes she'd never seen there before - sheer terror.

The adrenaline suddenly faded, along with the sunlight, and Lois Lane slipped down the emergency slide in a dead faint.

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"Mommy!"

The morning newsroom air was filled with phones ringing, televisions droning in the background, printers screeching, and reporters shouting over everything and each other, but Lois could hear her little boy through anything. She dropped her bag where she stood and knelt down to catch Jason as he ran to her, enfolding him in a tight hug. "There's my little man!" She breathed in the smell of him, holding him close. Finally, she leaned back and brushed his long hair out of his face to see his beautiful eyes smiling at her. Part of her wanted to cry with relief - just the prior afternoon, she'd thought she would never see him again, but now here they were. But Jason hadn't been told that Mommy was on the plane that Superman saved, so she reigned in her emotions and fell back on routine. "So how was school yesterday?"

"It was great! We made pictures of our families and got to tell everyone about them, and then learned a new song…" Jason happily babbled on about his kindergarten class as Lois stood and took his hand. They walked together through the desks to the editors' corner, a few people waving in their direction at Jason. Despite his mother's competitive reputation, Jason was well-liked by most of the Daily Planet staff. He just bounced along, pulling at his mother and continuing his report on everything he'd done while Mommy was out of town. Just as they reached the corner offices, Jason looked back up at Lois. "Mommy, I think Daddy really missed you last night. He didn't sleep at all."

"Oh, he didn't, huh?" Lois smiled as she opened the door to Richard White's office, where he was just hanging up the phone.

"Lois, thank goodness!" He quickly walked around the desk and pulled her into his arms. "You have no idea how glad I am to see you."

"I think I can guess," she murmured against his shoulder, then leaned back to kiss him briefly on the cheek. "Thanks for bringing Jason in this morning, with Perry insisting I come straight in from the airport, and everything going on… I just didn't want to spend all day without him."

"Not a problem." Richard lifted Jason up onto his hip. "Jason's all ready for his day as a Junior Reporter, right kiddo?"

"Right! And Jimmy said he has some pictures he needs help coloring in, too."

"That's great, Jason, but just remember to bring them back to Daddy's office or my desk to work on them, okay?"

"Uh huh," he nodded, his hair flopping into his eyes.

Lois sighed and brushed it aside quickly. "You need another haircut."

Richard chuckled. "And we both need to get to work before -"

"LANE!!!"

" - uh, that."

She leaned out of Richard's office to look at Perry White as he bellowed from his own. "What?!" she asked in irritation.

"I want that follow-up article on the space plane on my desk in ten minutes!"

"I sent it to you as soon as I landed this morning! Check your email inbox, old man!" Lois rolled her eyes as she straightened back up. "I should go check my messages before the morning roll call. Coming, kiddo?"

"Yeah!" Jason leaned down, forcing Richard to put him back on the ground.

"Lois, maybe Jason should stay in here while you get caught up?"

She shook her head. "No, I'd rather keep him with me for a while." She looked away, not wanting to expose the lingering fear in her heart from the day before, believing she was leaving her son behind. But Richard must have caught something of it, since he just nodded and told Jason to behave himself.

Once at her desk, Lois pulled Jason up onto her lap and gave him paper and pencil. He started drawing immediately, and Lois let her gaze linger on him for a few moments before logging into her computer. While it ran the start up processes, she picked up her phone and started listening to voicemails. At first there were just the usual messages - her bank account balance was below the alert threshold, the Metropolis Press Club was calling to remind her to renew her membership, Joanna had that information she'd promised from the deputy mayor's office (Lois quickly jotted down a note to call her back, hoping it would confirm a story lead she'd been following for weeks). Then the messages changed to family and friends calling and leaving messages about the night before, asking if she was all right and when she'd be home. She quickly deleted them, figuring she'd get around to talking to them if she had the time.

But the last message, left early this morning, took her by surprise. "Lois, it's Martha Kent. Can you give me a call when you get this? Thank you."

Lois switched lines without even hanging up and quickly dialed a number she'd memorized years before. She chewed her lip, nervous, as the phone on the other end rang. After the fourth ring, she was greeted with Martha's voice. "Lois, is that you?"

"Yes, Martha, is something wrong?"

"Oh, no dear, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you worry."

"Oh," Lois breathed out slowly, "No, I should apologize. I guess I'm still wound up. How are you doing? How's Ben?"

"We're fine, Ben's fine." But the older woman's voice had a slight tremble to it, renewing Lois's concern. "I just wanted to ask you, well, after yesterday - "

"Martha, I'm fine, really. Nothing worse than a few bruises." Well, maybe a bit more than that - they'd kept her in the hospital until early this morning, in case of a concussion, but she wasn't about to let something like THAT slow her down. "Well, and a really good story that I gave Perry this morning."

"Oh, that's good, that's good, but, well, that's not really what I was going to ask."

The phone fell silent, and Lois smiled as she tucked the handset between her shoulder and ear so she could start going through email. Juggling child, telephone, and computer had become a necessary skill. "Martha?" she prompted.

"Well, I wanted to ask… I wanted to ask if you'd heard from Clark."

Lois's fingers froze over the keyboard, then she slowly leaned back and took the phone back into her hand. She immediately remembered the first time she'd spoken with Martha, six years prior, when she'd asked nearly exactly the same thing.

"Mrs. Kent? Clark's mother?"

"Yes, I hope it's not too presumptuous of me, but have heard from Clark lately?"

Lois snorted loudly and swung lazily in her desk chair. "Look, I know he's your son and all, but he's not too popular right now. He's ditched work two weeks now, only sent in an email to Perry saying something had come up, but no one's been in touch with him since. And I could really use his help right now."

"Oh, no." Something in the older woman's voice made Lois sit up straight.

"Mrs. Kent? What's the matter?"

"It's just… Clark always co- er, calls me every few days, but I haven't heard from him in - did you say two weeks?"

In the present, Lois briefly closed her eyes. Over the following years, the two women had become close. She knew Martha's hope had never died, but it had been ages since she'd directly asked about Clark. "Martha, you know I would call you the second I heard anything," she said gently.

"I - I know." The disappointment in Martha's voice was clear. "It's just, when I saw Superman on the news, there with you, I thought that, maybe…" She trailed off, and Lois couldn't think of anything to say. "I just thought that he'd…"

Lois couldn't imagine what the woman must be going through. Superman had disappeared around the same time they'd started searching for Clark Kent. Lois had never been so disappointed as when Superman failed to come and help her, when, in all honesty, she needed him most: for once not to save her life, but the life of a dear friend. Those early months were a haze as Lois juggled searching for Clark and following up on increasingly tenuous leads on Superman's whereabouts. And when she discovered she was pregnant, it all became too much.

Martha had become her rock. Though they'd never met in person, and the woman had just lost her own son, she was the one Lois found she could talk to on her worst days. She never confided the probable identity of her child's father - that was something she absolutely never spoke of. But everything else - her fears about becoming a mother, the isolation she felt, the frustrating changes at work - she could spill out over the phone late into the evening, without ever hearing a hint of doubt or condemnation. Martha was simply there for her in a way no one else ever had been.

In some ways, Lois wondered if Martha had found her own comfort in helping her son's friend, for when Lois called in tears to tell her that not only the police department but the Daily Planet was ending the search for Clark, Martha had simply asked what she could do to help Lois.

But clearly, Superman's reappearance had sparked some new hope. Maybe Martha was just connecting the two of them - after all, they'd both disappeared at closely the same time, and even Lois had wondered if maybe Clark had left so abruptly because he'd been following some lead on a dangerous story that proved to be too much for both men. Lois hated to be the one to say it, but it just wasn't realistic. "Martha, Superman…" Lois shook her head, then chose a softer approach. "I didn't even have a chance to speak to him. But, I promise, when I do," she sighed, "I'll ask him if he knows anything about what happened to Clark."

Lois heard what might have been a sob on the other end. "Thank you, Lois. I just…" her voice trailed down too low for Lois to really hear, but it sounded like "I just want my boy to come home."

Around her, reporters were picking up their notepads and making their way to the staff conference room. Lois knew there was no way Perry would let her skip out on the meeting today just to console Clark's mother when she was the person to have witnessed Superman's latest save (though he'd probably, maybe, feel a bit bad about it). "Martha, I'm so sorry, but I have to go to the staff meeting in just a minute, and I need to get Jason settled in his dad's office."

"Go on, dear, I'll be all right. I know you must be very busy right now."

"Do you want me to call back after the meeting?"

"Heaven's no!" Lois could just imagine Martha's expression - all at once surprised and commanding. "You just take care of things today, and don't worry about me."

"All right, all right. But I'll call you tonight, if I don't get home too late."

"Thank you, Lois. Give that boy of yours a hug from his Aunt Martha."

"I will, and you say hi to Ben for me." When Lois hung up, she abruptly hugged Jason. He yelped and protested that she'd messed up his drawing, but she just held on tight. Since he'd been born, Lois hadn't been able to begin to imagine what Martha went through when she lost her son. After yesterday, she wondered if maybe now she had an inkling, and it made her heart break.

But after a moment, she sat up and briskly gathered up her own notebook, her son, and his drawing supplies. She dropped him off in Richard's office, made him promise to stay right there, then jogged into the staff conference room and found a spot where she could watch Jason through the cubicle windows. Perry raised an eyebrow at her, but then he opened up the meeting. "All right people! The story today is the same for everyone! Superman!"

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Part Two