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Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

To read Part 179

Part 180

While her mother was safely sedated at the hospital, Lois returned home to change her clothes. This paper jumpsuit she had been given when the crime lab took her dress was neither flattering nor comfortable. She just wanted to take another shower and change into real clothes.

At the hospital, they had given her and her mother detox showers, similar to the ones given to people exposed to a biohazard or radiation. They drenched her in chemicals and scrubbed until her entire body hurt. The blood was sent to S.T.A.R. Labs to be tested for every illness under the sun, but it would be a while before the results came back. Thankfully, they hadn’t put her in quarantine. The doctor suggested that she refrain from sharing her bodily fluids with anyone until they gave her a clean bill of health. Did spitting on Lex’s corpse count?

Lois doubted she would feel clean for a long time to come.

After Clark’s disappearance from Lex Tower, she also had no desire to share anything with anyone ever again. She felt raw and not just physically.

Detective Woolfe had given her a ride home and was currently parking his unmarked car. The offer was made because he wanted to look at the new set of surveillance Lex’s thugs had installed and to organize his team to come in to remove it as evidence. Not that it really mattered, since Lex was dead. Woolfe was just covering his bases, in case they ever discovered who installed the stuff.

The crème of the scummy side of her profession had already started hounding Lois at the hospital. Henderson had wanted Woolfe to make sure their star witness wasn’t harassed or attacked by Luthor supporters before he got her full statement and interview. Other members of Lex’s criminal organization – such as Mrs. Cox and Nigel St. John – were still alive to arrest and prosecute, even if Lex had chosen to end his life instead of face prison.

She found the door to her apartment open. A couple of burly men were riffling through her belongings and loading them into boxes.

“Hey!” she snapped, slamming the door fully open. “What the hell?”

One of the men approached her, and held out a business card. It read: Mega Movers. “We’re professionals, ma’am. We’ve been hired by Lex Luthor to box up Mrs. Luthor’s belongings and put them in storage.”

She couldn’t believe the nerve of Lex Luthor! On what was supposed to be their wedding day, too. Put her stuff in storage, as if she wouldn’t have any need for her belongings after they had gotten married. Did that include her fish?

“I’m Lois Lane,” she informed the men. At their blank expressions, she continued, “And this is my apartment.”

The men paused what they were doing and looked at her.

“Lex Luthor is dead. I’m not moving out,” Lois said, crossing her arms.

The leader whistled and four other men exited her kitchen, bedroom, spare bedroom, and bathroom. “It’s time to break for lunch,” the man informed his team.

Her gaze narrowed. The presumption of that man! “How in the hell did you get access to my apartment, anyway?” she demanded.

“Mrs. Cox provided us with keys, ma’am, when we were hired,” the man replied.

Lois held out her hand.

The man paused. “How do I know that you’re the real Mrs. Luthor?”

“I’m not Mrs. Luthor!” she screamed. “I never was Mrs. Luthor. I’ll never be Mrs. Luthor. This in my apartment and I want you out of here!”

Detective Woolfe chose that moment to arrive. “Everything okay, Ms. Lane?” he asked, his hand on his gun as he entered. “Who are you men?”

“Movers,” the man said, taking the business card from Lois and handing it to Detective Woolfe. “And we’ve got a contract and permission to be here from Mr. Lex Luthor.” The man pulled out a piece of paper and held it up.

“You don’t have my permission, and I never granted it to him!” Lois roared.

Detective Woolfe showed the man in charge his badge and verified Lois’s identity for him. In all the hubbub at Lex Tower, Lois’s purse had ended up with Mother Arnold, who was currently checking out of the Bristol and preparing to return to Philadelphia. She promised to meet Lois over at Ellen’s apartment to say their goodbyes and give Lois her things. Lois knew there was no way she could let her mother stay alone after what had happened to her at Lex Plaza.

The mover reluctantly handed his keys to Lois's apartment to Detective Woolfe and gathered his men together.

“I need you to show me everything that you’ve packed and removed so far to make sure that evidence hasn’t been tampered with,” Detective Woolfe said.

“Evidence?” the man sputtered.

“This is a crime scene,” Detective Woolfe informed them.

“It is?” the mover said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t know that. Really and truly, officer… Detective, I’m just a mover. We were hired to do a job and we were doing it. We’re not criminals.”

Woolfe smiled at them. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said, but Lois could tell that like her, he didn’t buy it.

“Well, we haven’t removed anything,” the man said. “We’re still in the packing stage.”

When Woolfe had finally verified that none of his precious evidence had yet been touched, he let the men go. As soon as the door shut behind the men, Lois went to the telephone and called Mr. Tracewski to request that he change her locks.

She was beginning to wish she had flown off with Clark when he had suggested it the last time they met. Frankly, she would rather be stuck in Nowheresville than dealing with this crappy day.

***

Cat pried one eye open. That better not be what she thought it was.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Sure enough, someone was knocking on her apartment door. Whoever it was was about to meet an early demise. She had hardly slept the night before, had a rough day, and was looking forward to taking a day off to sleep. She didn’t need this!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Obviously, whoever it was wasn’t going to go away. She pushed back her sheets, stepped into her slippers, grabbed the bat next to her bed, and stumbled her way into the living room, turning on lights and wiping sleepers out of her eyes as she went.

She looked through her peephole and groaned. What now? Tossing the bat aside, she wrenched open the door. “Do you know what time it is, Kent?” she growled.

Clark sported a sloppy grin and wavered, took hold of her doorframe, and then leaned into it as if it were moving. “Hi, Cat.”

God help me. “You’re drunk.”

He put a finger up to his lips. “I just finished celebrating Jimmy’s release from jail,” he said, falling forward before catching himself. “I think your floor is moving.”

Cat took a step back and allowed him to stumble inside. She pointed to her sofa. “Sit.”

He nodded and did as she bid.

“What are you doing here?” she asked after closing and locking her door, crossing her arms, and staring at him for a good two minutes.

“Uh…” His glassy stare seemed a bit befuddled.

“Clark, why didn’t you go home after your celebration?” she asked in another manner.

He smiled. “You’re pretty. Did you know that?”

He had to be kidding her, right? “Clark,” she said, throwing up her hands in disgust. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Wait!” he said, trying to lift his butt off her sofa and failing. “That wasn’t Lois in the video.”

Cat paused her steps. Now, he was ready to talk? “So you said.”

“I’ve been thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and think…”

“You’ve been thinking about it, gotcha. I’ve been trying not to think about it,” she retorted.

“It wasn’t her. I can prove it.”

Cat crossed her arms again. “Oh?”

He patted his arm. “No bullet wound,” he announced, and then grinned a sloppy version of that smile he only gave Lois. “See! Luthor lied.”

Big surprise. She shifted her stance and looked at him skeptically, not ready to believe his drunken theory. “And why, pray tell, are you here at…” She glanced across the room at her microwave. “Two thirty-seven in the morning, Clark? Why aren’t you at Lois’s apartment, knocking on her door?” Being her problem?

Clark waved his hand in front of his face as if trying to rid himself of a pesky fly. “Tried that. When I returned to Lex Tower this afternoon, I found out that Lois had already left. Before I got home, she had called and left a message saying she was staying with her mother tonight and that she’d talk to me tomorrow,” he said, pointing at Cat. “When I stopped by her apartment just now, she wasn’t home.”

That made sense. After Cat had taken Clark home, helped him put bandages on the scrapes on his cheek, and examined the lumps on his head, she had left him to sleep off his ordeal. He had said that he had wanted to return to Lois at Lex Tower, but when she had finished washing her hands, Cat had found him passed out on his bed. She had bought herself some lunch and returned to her own apartment to collapse.

Before she had left his apartment, she had given the younger kid staying at Clark’s… Denny?... a cover story to tell Jimbo and Perry. Clark had been beaten up and mugged on his way to her place after meeting a source the previous morning. Perry would see right through that weak excuse, but luckily, he didn’t need more convincing than that. One look at Clark, and Perry – in all of his consummate wisdom – would know what really happened, especially since Lois probably mentioned to their former boss that she had seen them at Lex Tower after the wedding.

Cat had spent the rest of the afternoon watching the coverage of the Luthor/Lane Wedding fiasco unfold on Channel 9. Shortly after she and Clark had sped out of there on her moped, Lex Luthor made a swan dive off his balcony, apparently spraying Lois and her mother with his remains. Mrs. Lane had needed a sedative before she could be loaded into the ambulance and taken to Metropolis General. Lois, still in her white dress, had gone with her. Cat doubted Lois would leave her mother alone, fresh out of rehab, after an experience such as that.

“Anyway,” Clark continued, pointing at Cat. “I’m drunk.”

“Really?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

Sarcasm was lost on the inebriated.

“And I’ve decided that I should be sober to talk to Lois, because her mother’s a drunk and she doesn’t like dealing with drunk people.”

Cat couldn’t believe she and Lois actually had something else in common. If this kept up, they might turn into friends. Then, again, after that video, it was unlikely.

“I might do something I might regret,” Clark said.

“Like tell her about Lex’s sex video?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “That would be bad, too.”

If Lex hadn’t jumped off Lex Tower earlier that day, Lois would’ve killed the billionaire, especially if that wasn’t her on the video. Actually, either way, Lex would’ve ended up pleading for police protection, because if Lex had stopped Lois from ever having Superman again... But Cat couldn’t see how it couldn’t be Lois on the video. The woman looked just like her former colleague.

“I don’t know how I got drunk…” Clark continued.

“Perhaps it was all the alcohol you consumed,” Cat suggested.

“But it’s never affected me before,” he explained. “Although, there was that time with Rachel…” He shook his head.

Cat felt her curiosity awaken. “Rachel?”

“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t exist here,” Clark replied, shaking a finger at her.

Of course, she doesn’t.

“You almost got me to spill my guts about the first girl I kissed.”

“Did I really?” She grinned, sitting down next to him. “And where did you kiss Rachel?”

Clark tapped Cat’s lips. “Here.” His finger glided down her neck. “And here.” And his finger moved further down her chest. “And here was nice, too.”

I bet. Lucky Rachel. Cat raised a brow. “Oh, was it?” she said. Upon hearing how rough her voice was, she cleared her throat and scooted back on the sofa so that his finger fell off her chest.

He nodded, getting a naughty glint in his eye. “I wish I could kiss Lois there.”

Is he saying he hasn’t? She patted his cheek. “I’m sure you’ll get your opportunity at first light.”

Clark shook his head. “Too dangerous to kiss Lois. She could die.”

“Did Rachel die?” Cat asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“Yes. Yes, she did, but not because I kissed her,” he said adamantly.

Oh, right, because Krypton went boom.

“So, why can’t you kiss Lois… there?” she asked, figuring he would bring up the Lex’s sex video again.

Instead, Clark heaved a huge sigh. “Because it would be wonderful.”

Cat felt as if she was going to hurl and decided to change the topic off Lois. She leaned forward and examined the scrape on his cheek under his bandage. “So, I take it you don’t have your powers back?”

Clark shook his head. “My mom always said that you should never fly drunk,” he said, and then laughed. “Well, she said ‘drive’…”

“Clark. Congratulations on your epiphany about Lois. I’m so happy for you,” Cat said drolly, standing up. “Should I call Jimmy and let him know where you are?”

He waved a hand. “Nah. He thinks I’m with Lois.” He reached over to nudge her. “Do you know that Jimmy… no, the other one that wasn’t in jail… he’s going to own the Daily Planet someday?”

“I could own the Daily Planet someday,” she retorted. “It’s a burnt out shell of a building.”

“No, I mean it. He’s going to be a billionaire. He’s a computer genius.”

“Lucky him. I’ve had my share of billionaires for one day, Clark. Why don’t you go to sleep?” she said, opening the linen closet, removing a spare blanket, and plopping it down on the sofa next to him.

“Okay,” he mumbled, lying his head down on top of the blanket. “As soon as you make the room stop spinning.”

“That button is in my room. I’ll flip the switch when I go to bed,” she said, heading towards her bedroom. She wondered if Clark would remember any of this conversation the next day. She would be sure to ask him about Rachel at break… brunch.

“Okay,” he called drowsily.

She paused at the doorway to her bedroom. “Clark?”

“Huh?”

“You said that Lois didn’t have a scar from her bullet wound,” she said.

“Nope,” he said contentedly. “It wasn’t her.”

“What about Lex?”

Silence.

Had Clark fallen asleep?

“Clark? Did Lex have a scar on his shoulder?” she asked.

She heard a soft whimper emerge from her sofa. Was he snoring? Cat moved closer and saw that Clark was laying there, his head on the blanket, his eyes staring at the wall, and tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Clark?”

“No, Cat,” he sniffled. “He didn’t.” He closed his eyes tightly. “That means she did cheat on me… before she got shot.”

Cat wasn’t going to argue that Lois technically wasn’t even dating him, yet, when Lex had shot her.

“She said that she had never brought him back to her bedroom. Never,” he gulped. “She lied to me. Again!”

Cat didn’t bring up the fact that Clark had lied first about being two people before trying to date her as both of them. She patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Clark.”

“I love her, Cat. I love her so much,” he wept, taking hold of her hand with his. “I gave up my whole life, my whole existence for a chance with her.”

She knelt down beside him and pulled his head into her embrace. “I know.”

“That video was almost a year old and I couldn’t tell the difference from her apartment today,” he said, sobbing into her chest. “I was so hoping that Luthor was using that copycat apartment he made for Lois down in his bunker, but maybe that was a lie, too.” He leaned back far enough to look her in the eye. “Do you know Luthor had Mrs. Cox wear a rubber mask of Lois’s face and a wig to trick me into coming into his office? Then he incapacitated me with the Kryptonite. I kept hoping that… that woman on the video was another con… another lie… but now…”

Cat continued to hold him as he cried.

She hated to do this without proof. She must be getting soft in her pregnant state, but she had to break Clark of his ‘all or nothing’ way of thinking. “If that video was a year old, Clark, it doesn’t have a bearing on how Lois feels about you, now.”

“It doesn’t?” he asked her through his sobs. “Then why can’t I stop crying?”

“Because you’re drunk,” Cat replied. And Lois crushed your heart.

“How do I stop?”

“You go to sleep,” she explained.

“Okay,” Clark said, resting his head back on her chest.

It wasn’t long until the exhaustion of his ordeal, his drunkenness, and his crying finally put him to sleep.

Cat moved his head to a throw pillow and covered him with the blanket. She removed his glasses and set them on the side table. Then she slipped off his shoes and left them by the corner of the couch. Standing up, Cat looked down at her sleeping friend. She wanted nothing more than to brush away his fears and pain as easily as she could brush a lock of hair from his face.

I kept hoping that… that woman on the video was another con… another lie… His words echoed in her head.

Lex was a con man. Everything about him was about bait and switch. Telling someone one thing, but giving them another. Showing the world that he was a philanthropist businessman when he was really a murdering psychopathic criminal mastermind.

What if Clark had been right? What if that Lois in the video wasn’t the real Lois? Could that mean that there was another Lex out there without a bullet wound?

Her eyes widened as she slapped herself in the forehead.

Of course!

She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid!

Cat grabbed her notebook and a pencil and sat down at her desk to organize her thoughts. No more leaving things to chance with this pregnancy brain of hers.

***

Clark dimly heard voices, echoing just out of his reach. It was enough to bring him to the edge of sleep, but not fully wake him.

“You did what?” a male voice gasped, bringing Clark closer to the edge.

Clark could hear a soft feminine one replying indistinctly. He tried to focus in on what was being said, but doing so only made his head hurt. He wondered if Luthor had caught him again and put his head in a vice. His mouth was dry and his eyelids felt too heavy to move.

He drifted off again until the shutting of a door woke him once more. He didn’t feel any more refreshed than he had that first time. In fact, he felt worse. There was a pillow under his head, though, and something other than his cape covering him, so he must be free of the cage.

Clark was awake now. He was sure of it, despite of the silence. He tried to crack open his eyelids and found that the bright light before him felt as if someone were stabbing an ice pick through his eyeballs and straight into his brain. Being awake didn’t make him feel any better, though, so he decided that maybe what he needed was more sleep. He closed his eyes again tightly, hoping to block away any and all of the light from penetrating.

Some people, whom Superman had brought back from the edge of death, had told him that a white light had been beckoning to them. He felt so terrible, combine it with a white light and he didn’t want to take his chances. Anyway, he needed to speak to Lois before he died, so he wouldn’t allow it to happen.

If he died in this dimension, would he see the souls of his folks from his dimension? Or did he need to be in his home dimension to ever meet them again? Did souls get to mix and mingle with souls from other dimensions in heaven, and then change dimensions for their next life? What an interesting thought. Then, again, if that were true, what did that mean about Padre Carlos?

Clark pocketed this whole line of queries for now, as any type of thinking seemed to make the drilling into his temples more intense. What had he ever done to make all his joints hurt, his stomach churn, and his mouth taste as if it was full of sand? He felt as if he had flailed all night in the ocean, come near to drowning, only to be washed up here on some deserted beach.

Was he at the beach? Was Lois there, waiting in their cabana for Clark to come and pull the one little string on her bikini, which would make the whole suit drop to the ground?

It wasn’t fair.

Here he was on his honeymoon with the most gloriously wonderful woman around, and he felt as if the doorman had beaten him to death. A doorman, who vaguely resembled Lex Luthor. A doorman who stepped into the cabana and shut the door in Clark’s face, stopping him from entering his room. A doorman who pulled the string of Lois’s bikini and then shoved Clark’s beloved onto the big comfy bed that Clark was supposed to share with Lois. Clark was standing at the window of the cabana banging on it, unable to break it. No matter how much effort he used, he was unable to save Lois from this fate as she fought Lex, screaming first for Superman to save her, then Clark, and finally Octopus.

When Lex finally pushed himself off Lois, disappearing into grey fog, a glassy-eyed Lois stared unseeingly towards the ceiling. She was covered head to toe in blood.

Clark gasped and sat up, his heart racing a mile a second. He raised a hand to his head as the living room light pierced with its brightness the soft bone that used to be Clark’s thickheaded skull. The room swam before his eyes, listing off to one side before jerking to a sudden and disorienting stillness.

“Kent? You’re awake. Good. We need to talk,” a male voice said from across the room.

Clark turned, and through squinted eyes saw a blurry man sitting at a dining table. He felt around, found and put on his glasses, and looked at the man again.

The man was still blurry.

Clark blinked his eyes, trying to dampen the gritty orbs he used to see.

Phil.

Oh, that was right. Clark had gone to Cat’s the night before to… to… Why had he come here, again? The pain in his head made it difficult to think.

“Hey, Phil,” Clark said, his own voice sounding loud to his ears. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Phil reminded him sternly, crossing his arms. “The big question is, Clark. What are you doing here?”

Clark reached into black inkiness of that void in his head. “I… uh… came to talk to Cat?”

“At 2:30 in the morning.”

Clark winced at the sharpness of Phil’s voice. When his words penetrated Clark’s head, he winced again. He raised his hand back to his aching head. “Oh. Gee. Did I? I’m so sorry, Phil. I think I had too much to drink last night and lost track of time.”

Phil’s eyebrows lifted at his understatement. “You came drunk to my apartment in the middle of the night to talk to my wife, who… let’s just get it out there… has a little bit of a crush on you… on a night when you knew I was away from home. You were depressed by something that Lois did and wanted some comfort, isn’t that right? What exactly did you think would happen, Kent?”

Clark cringed. Had he done that? He was sure that hadn’t been his intension. Actually, the nightmare he had just experienced and the rushing into his head of what had been on Luthor’s video made sex the last thing in the world he wanted at the moment. “Nothing!” he exclaimed. “I would never…”

Phil’s stormy expression showed that he didn’t believe him. “We both know that normally, when you’re at one hundred percent, you can resist a charging rhino with one hand. But drunk and vulnerable, lonely and in pain, you’re just as human as the rest of us. Are you saying that you would’ve been able to refuse Cat last night? Had she given you one iota of an opening, are you saying that you would have been able to stop yourself from kissing her… or… or… worse?” he stammered, his face paling.

“But she didn’t! We didn’t!” Clark reassured Cat’s husband, not wanting to even consider the enormity of his own idiotic behavior. “Cat loves you, Phil. She would never cheat on you.” He glanced around. “Where’s Cat? She’ll tell you that.”

“She did tell me that,” Phil said, motioning to the door with his head. “She went out to meet some guy.” He lifted up a folded piece of paper off the table and held it out to Clark. “She wanted me to give you this when you woke up.”

Clark padded over to the table in his socks to retrieve the note, embarrassed at his behavior. He didn’t even want to contemplate how accurate Phil’s guess was. Cat didn’t interest Clark like that, but he vaguely remembered a sharp ache in his chest as if his heart had broken and Cat holding him as he cried. He swallowed, flipping open Cat’s note to read it.

“I can’t believe you, Kent!” Phil said, standing up and starting to pace. “I leave town for one day! Okay, two nights, but still. I trusted you to keep Cat out of your mess. Cat isn’t thinking like a woman who’s carrying precious cargo. She’s thinking like a reporter out to get the story of a lifetime! She could have gotten herself killed doing the things she did to save you yesterday.”

Clark nodded his head. “I owe Cat my life,” he murmured. “But you need to remember, too, Phil, that Cat isn’t just a wife and mother-to-be. She’s a strong-willed and very independent woman. She’s a friend and a sister and a very good reporter. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

Phil scoffed.

“If you try to tie her to one or two roles in her life,” Clark said, holding out his hand with the note in it, as he pointed at Phil. “She’ll resent you for it and break those bounds the first chance she gets. You need to let her be herself and trust her judgment. It’s certainly better than mine.” He crinkled the note in his palm and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. “She may say and do things you don’t always approve of, but that’s the woman you fell in love with. You chose to spend your life with her. If you can’t love her for who she is now, you might as well leave, because she deserves to be treated better than that and trusted a whole heck of a lot more.” He walked back to the couch and slipped on his shoes. Bending over didn’t help the throbbing in Clark’s head.

“You approve of her behavior?” Phil sputtered. “Do you even know… know… what lines she crossed to help you, yesterday?”

Clark winced at Phil’s loud voice. “She risked her life and clearly her marriage to save my life, that’s all I need to know,” he replied softly. “There will be nothing that I’ll ever be able to do to repay her, except be the best friend I can be.” He stood up and walked to the door.

Phil joined Clark at the door. “It’s more difficult than I imagined,” he said before sighing.

Tell me about it. Clark set a hand on Phil’s shoulder for a moment. “Cat loves you, Phil, but loving and sharing a life with a complicated woman like Cat won’t always be easy,” he said. “It’s a gift you should treasure every day of your life, though, because you never know when something will happen to take it all away.” He frowned as he recalled the crash that took his folks’ lives. He glanced at Phil’s downcast face and knew he wouldn’t be a good friend to Cat if he left her husband on such a note. “But, hey, it’ll never be boring, either.” He winked with more mirth than he felt. “My offer to help you two move to Houston still stands, if you still want it,” he went on after a minute. “But know I might not be up to speed for a while.”

Phil chuckled and held out his hand. “Thanks, I… I could use some boring every once in a while.”

“You and me both,” Clark replied, shaking his hand. “Sometimes, I envy those men with boring lives.”

They exchanged a look; then, each shook his head and said at the same time, “Nah.”

***End of Part 180***

Part 181

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