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

Where we left Lois in Part 194…

The men set her down in a chair next to Flying Officer Fraser who sat in a nearby chair, and grinned at her. “A bit chilly, don’t you think, Miss Lane?” he said.

Ha ha. Lois was able to raise her arm, this time to shade her eyes from the sun. While much closer to it out in space, with the lack of the windows she might as well have been underground the whole time… well, except for the weightlessness, which she was really starting to miss. It felt as if every joint in her body hurt. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, closing her eyes to feel the sun caress her face with its warmth for the first time in two months.

She had wondered why they had put them in these chairs out in the sunshine and didn’t take them straight to the hospital to get their once over to make sure their bodies were functioning as they ought. Then she realized that it was for their mental well-being. They had been cooped up in tin can for at least two weeks – her, two months. It felt good to breathe the fresh air and sense that there were hundreds of feet of nothing surrounding her. No walls. No ceiling. Just wide, open space without actually being in space.

Lois had gone on a spacewalk… or a space stroll, actually. Clark had shared that with her. She wasn’t qualified to do anything outside the Space Station, such as touch anything but the safety bars. However, because Superman had volunteered to fly her around the Space Station from the outside, to give her a Superman’s-eye-view, they allowed her to suit up and step out into the void. All she had to do was not get lost. Superman was even set up with a mic so that they could communicate. It wasn’t private, though, as the scientists on board the Station had monitored their conversation.

Everything had been monitored while on the Space Station, just as Lex Luthor had monitored everything in her life before she had left. Lois had no idea what privacy felt like anymore.

She opened her eyes and saw standing in the crowd of well-wishers a tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a grey business suit, and small John Lennon style sunglasses. He held a Daily Planet newspaper and beamed at her.

Inspector Henderson, her jailer, had come to fetch her.

So much for privacy.

***

Part 195

Lois had arrived back on Earth the previous day, but due to logistics and being on the other side of the world from Metropolis, she couldn’t make this phone call until the next morning. She glanced over at Inspector Henderson. “Are you sure it’s clean?” she asked, hating the shake she could hear in her own voice.

“We never checked the Whites’ home phone for bugs, Ms. Lane,” he admitted. “But I’m sure it’s clean.”

She nodded. Okay. She would be vague and brief, just in case. They still had a long way to travel before making it home. Since Superman refused to pick her up from the Space Station, there was no point in asking Clark to ask him to bring her back from Australia… even if it were the quickest and safest way for her to get back home. She had already tried reaching the Chief at the office.

“Hello? The White residence,” answered a pleasant sounding woman’s voice.

“Alice? It’s Lois,” she said. “Is…”

“Perry!” Lois heard Alice yell on the other end. “It’s Lois!”

Lois couldn’t help smiling at the excitement she heard in Alice’s voice. If she was excited…

“Lois, where in tarnation have you been?” Perry’s southern drawl exclaimed over the line. “No, don’t tell me. Yes, do tell me. Are you back yet? Of course, you’re back, or you wouldn’t be calling me. Neither Bill nor Kent would tell a darn thing about where you’ve been hiding, honey; it almost gives me faith in the justice system again.”

“I’ll be home…” She glanced over at Henderson. He was her ticket and passport home.

“This weekend,” Henderson replied.

“This weekend,” Lois groaned. That long? Wasn’t traveling to Metropolis like going backwards in time?

“I’m just glad to know that you’re okay, darlin’. Kent’s been worried sick,” Perry said.

She pressed her lips together. “He knew exactly where I was and why I couldn’t get back sooner,” she snapped.

Perry paused before responding. “Don’t blame him, honey,” he finally said with his usual amounts of mindreading skills. “Did you know that Sheldon Bender has gone missing? That Nigel St. John was killed in lockup at the Gotham City jail? Asabi is on life support after someone slipped glass shards into his food, despite him claiming that he was merely one of the prisoners in Luthor’s bunker. Elizabeth Cox has been placed into Witness Protection and moved out of Metropolis.”

Prisoners? She turned to glare at Henderson. What else had those two kept her in the dark about? She had read that Daily Planet he had brought her yesterday morning and the one from today and neither paper said anything about Luthor taking captives. “Is Luthor still under lock and key?” she asked. Damn! There was that voice waver again. She wasn’t scared, she told herself. It must be a side effect of traveling to space.

“He was, the last I heard,” Perry replied.

“In solitary,” Henderson added.

“Good!” Lois said, shooting Henderson another look. She covered her mouthpiece. “That better not be for his protection.”

“It’s to monitor all his communication,” Henderson clarified. “In case he’s the one ordering the hits.”

“Good,” she repeated. Somehow, Henderson knew what Perry had told her, or maybe he thought Clark was keeping her abreast of the news. Ha! Little did he know about Clark’s ability to not tell her things she needed to know. Lois uncovered the phone. “Perry, Inspector Henderson said that I can send you the first of my articles as long as you don’t publish them until Sunday. Apparently, he’d much rather have someone try to kill me once I’m out of protective custody back on my home turf,” she said, shooting Henderson a sarcastic grin. “It’s not as if they’re time sensitive. They’re more human interest pieces about where I was.” She chuckled. “But I have enough of them for a whole book.”

“Thatta girl. You’d write on toilet paper if it was the only thing available,” Perry replied with a laugh.

“Who told you?” she growled. “Was it Clark? How did he find out? I never told him. No, I bet it was Martin! I’m going to kill him.”

“May I recommend not threatening people with bodily harm in my vicinity, Ms. Lane? It means more paperwork for me to fill out,” Henderson said.

“Whoa there, darlin’. I’m just joking,” Perry said, and Lois could hear the confusion in his voice. Maybe he hadn’t heard the story about her being locked in the space restroom. “So, you’ll be back to work on Monday? Kent did tell you the good news, right?”

“Didn’t Clark tell you about my reaction?” Lois asked, almost scoffing. What was the point of talking to Clark these last two months if he didn’t relay anything to either her or Perry? “I’m thrilled that Stern was able to rescue her. Henderson brought me a copy of the latest issue this morning.” She ran her fingers lovingly over the Daily Planet name on the newspaper in front of her. “I’ll be in the office on Monday, but it feels like two and half years since I was in Metropolis. Don’t expect me to land on my feet running.”

“Pardon? You’re funning with me, aren’t you?” Perry said. “This is Lois Lane, right?”

“I’ve been out of the loop and off my feet for the past two months, Chief, I’ve got lots to catch up on,” Lois said, not wanting to let Perry know that she wouldn’t be back up to her pre-investigation stamina and strength any time soon. It was almost as if she had been shot again. Rehabilitation sucked. At least she could now check ‘travel to space’ off her bucket list. “Tell my partner he better be prepared to work his butt off as soon as I return.”

“Trust me, Kent has missed you something fierce, honey. He turned in six stories this afternoon alone. I don’t think he’s slept since you left,” Perry said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lois roared.

Perry sighed. “I’m glad you’re back, darlin’.”

“Oh,” she said, calming down. “Me, too, Perry. Me, too. Bye, Chief.” Lois hung up the phone.

“And here I thought I was the only one you laid into,” Henderson said.

“I believe in equal rights for all,” Lois snapped.

“We didn’t get to talk much yesterday before they whisked you off for your medical debriefing…”

“So whose brilliant idea was it to keep me in the dark? Yours or Kent’s?” she grumbled. “What’s all this about Luthor taking prisoners? Who’s killing off all of Luthor’s minions?”

Henderson took a step back towards the door. “I’m not at liberty to comment on an open investi…” He ducked as she threw a book off the desk at him. “I’m sure Kent saved you the clippings from Catherine’s article from the Houston Chronicle.” She could have sworn the edges of his lips tweaked upwards with these words.

Lois’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What do you mean ‘Catherine’s article’?”

“Well, with you and Kent busy at EPRAD that morning, the exclusive for Luthor’s arrest fell to Catherine Grant,” Henderson said.

“What?!” Lois screamed, rising to her feet. Slowly, she hobbled her way across the room to him. She couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly. “What?!”

“Somehow Catherine wormed her way into Lex Tower to cover the whole thing. I thought you knew,” he said, backing further away. “I mean, you sent Olsen to take photos, didn’t you?”

“No!” If she or Clark couldn’t have the exclusive, then Lois would rather nobody got it.

“Oh, well, he was there too. Good thing too. His shot of the mysterious blonde was the only one we got,” Henderson said.

“What blonde?” Lois stammered.

“Um… the one who… um…” He pressed his lips together and held up his index finger. “Maybe it would be better if Kent told you.”

“What blonde?” she asked, finally reaching him. She took hold of his lapels and shook him, but with her weakened muscle mass she made little impact. “Did Clark cheat on me with some blonde?”

Henderson gave her a ‘give me a break’ expression, which blossomed into a grin. “No, but Lex Luthor did.”

Lois grabbed her head and howled in frustration. She was more than ready to go home.

***

Clark was waiting at the airport when Bill Henderson and Lois’s plane arrived into Metropolis on Saturday afternoon. In fact, because Bill had called him before they left Alice Springs with their flight itinerary, Clark had been watching them from a distance since they left the Royal Australian Air Force base outside of Alice Springs Friday morning. Not wanting to trust Lex Luthor’s spy network an inch, he also covertly scanned all three planes for explosives. Somehow, they had been able to avoid Luthor’s radar.

As they walked out of customs, Clark saw that Bill Henderson had the look of being awake for several days straight and that he could use a serious and stiff drink. Clark hadn’t expected anything less. The flight had left Alice Springs just over twenty-four hours prior and despite traveling back a day over the International Date Line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, still hadn’t arrived onto the Eastern seaboard of the United States until Saturday. From what Bill had told him over the telephone, her forced stay at the Space Station hadn’t improved Lois’s temper any. That delay at LAX hadn’t helped any, either, Clark suspected.

Lois had a scarf draped over her hair, which shaded her face along with her sunglasses. He didn’t know if she was hiding from the paparazzi or from Luthor’s spies.

“Hi,” Clark said with a growing smile. He shook the Inspector’s hand. “Thank you, Bill. I hope you had a pleasant flight.”

Both Lois and Bill glowered at him.

“Kent, I’m officially putting her protection into your hands,” Bill said, taking Lois’s hand and setting it in Clark’s hand. “I got her official report and statement while in Australia, so she’s no longer being held in protective custody as a material witness. She’s now your responsibility and I expect you not to mess up my investigation by allowing her to do anything stupid that could lead to her death.”

“Yes, sir,” Clark replied.

“If either of you continue to treat me as a four year old, I’ll be sharing the cell next to Luthor after causing your deaths and dismemberments,” Lois said, steeling her gaze at Clark. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“Lois, what did we discuss about you threatening a policeman in his jurisdiction?” Bill teased before hurrying out the doors to the line of waiting taxis, calling back to Clark, “She’s all yours.”

Clark smiled at Lois and despite not receiving a similar expression in response, leaned over to kiss her cheek. She hadn’t been all his for so long, he was willing to walk through lava, or deal with her temper, to get it. “I’ve missed you, minha,” he said, taking her duffle bag out of her hand, and turning them towards the door.

“Liar.”

He had expected irritability. Not only had Lois been stuck in space two months longer than anyone expected, she had also just endured a long, exhausting flight back from the other side of the world. He hadn’t expected her to look so weak, though. She wasn’t walking with her usual determination and vigor. In fact, her clothes almost appeared to be hanging off her. “Did you lose weight?” he asked, his brow furrowing.

“Muscle mass. Our daily visits to the space gym only made sure that our cardiovascular system and hearts kept working properly, but you’d be amazed at how much exercise one gets just from reacting to gravity on an everyday basis,” she replied. “The doctors said that the joint pain should disappear after this weekend and with regular rehabilitation, I’ll be back to my pre-trip stamina within a few months.”

“Oh,” he murmured and fought the urge to apologize. It wasn’t his fault. “Well, you got to be the first reporter in space.”

She scoffed.

“And I’m betting you’re ready to go home for a good night’s rest,” he continued.

“It’s hardly two, Clark,” she reminded him as they passed out the doors.

“But you’ve been up since yesterday,” he said.

“The day before yesterday, in fact, since it’s now Sunday in Australia,” she corrected with a shrug. “I managed to get a little sleep on the plane as I’m used to sleeping in uncomfortable positions.”

He nodded.

Lois stopped and turned to face him. “I should stay up until at least eight o’clock tonight to adjust to this time zone,” she said. Her hand reached up to his cheek as her eyes sought out his. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she must have found it because she placed her lips gently to his.

Not wanting to pressure her, Clark merely wrapped his arms around her and accepted her kiss. Although it was merely a simple kiss, he had to concentrate to keep his feet firmly planted on the pavement. He was so glad she was back home safely again.

The kiss was entirely too short in his opinion, but after what happened during their last make out session he was okay with that. Just that one kiss and his whole body seemed to be humming with excitement and anticipation. Slow and patient. Baby steps, he reminded himself. They had all the time in the world; there was no reason to rush things. He didn’t want to inadvertently trigger thoughts of Luthor’s sex tape.

“You know…” She shook her head and whatever she was about to say slipped off her lips. Her gaze hardened and her hand slipped from his cheek, only to return in a sharp slap.

Again, he had expected her to blame him for her difficulties. He had moved his face along with her hand so it wouldn’t hurt her. “You want to go home?” he guessed.

She shook her head again. “You owe me an explanation.”

And she owed him one too, a full one. “This isn’t the time or place for that,” he murmured.

“It never is, is it?” Lois retorted with a pointed look. “Let’s find someplace private we can talk uninterrupted then, shall we?”

“Where would you like to go? Tahiti?” The image of Lois in that red swimsuit she had mentioned during one of his phone calls from Las Vegas danced across his mind. He swallowed and cleared his throat, trying to push it away.

She pursed her lips together in annoyance and he wondered if she could read his thoughts. “No. Let’s save that for when I have more energy and stamina,” she replied. There was over-abundance of sweetness to her tone that told him that she was being sarcastic and that he would have to play his cards right before he earned a vacation together in Tahiti.

Apparently, he had misread her signals and her anger was here to stay. At least that was what the tone of her voice seemed to be telling him. So much for the nice romantic reunion weekend that he had hoped for. Perhaps after a good night’s sleep, she would change her mind. “Where to?” he inquired pleasantly, trying not to provoke her. “The world is yours.”

“Actually, I’d like to stay closer to home.”

His brow furrowed as he wondered where she was thinking. “So, home then?”

Lois shook her head again. “Do you think the Kents would mind if we turned their home into a bed and breakfast for the night?” she asked.

Clark picked her up and pressed a kiss to her lips. She felt light as a feather. “They would love it!” At her total lack of response to his kiss, he set her down.

She took a step back away from him, almost as if she were worried he would do that again. “Are you sure?” she asked, pretending as if he hadn’t just kissed her. “I’m mean, I guess it’s okay if we stay in Metropolis…”

“No! They won’t mind,” Clark said. “Actually, they keep asking when I’m going to bring you back out.”

A hesitant smile crept onto Lois’s lips, the first since she had arrived. “I won’t be able to help out, and I don’t cook.”

“They wouldn’t dream of asking you to,” Clark said, wrapping an arm around her waist and walking briskly towards the parking garage. He was more carrying her than allowing her to walk.

“Clark,” she hissed. “We can’t take off from here. There are too many people. What if someone saw us?”

He slowed his steps and glanced around. It was the middle of the day and the airport was crowded. She was right. He might be able to disappear with a blink of an eye, but not with a passenger. “Shall we head into town first?” he suggested. “We can drop off your duffle at the apartment and get some sandwiches from Tony’s.” Perhaps eating at her favorite deli would help soothe the savage beast.

Lois shook her head. “I don’t want to chance running into Jimmy.”

“He’s not there,” Clark said, flagging down a Metro Cab. “He eloped to Las Vegas.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Now, she didn’t have an excuse to avoid her apartment. “I’ve been feeding your fish, though.”

“Eloped?” she repeated, clearly stunned. “Eloped? With Jenny, I’m guessing. When did this happen?”

Clark blushed and ushered her into the cab. “Downtown Metropolis. Carter Avenue,” he told the driver. Lois was still staring at him, waiting for an answer. “At the beginning of August,” he admitted and closed the door after him.

“And you didn’t think that was important enough to mention? One of my best friends got married.”

“To be fair, he didn’t tell any of us. They eloped,” Clark said, trying to dig himself out of this sinkhole of his making. “Secretly.”

“What else haven’t you told me, Chuck?” she growled. From her tone of voice, he could tell that she was already well aware of his omissions from their all too brief weekly conversations while she was on the Space Station.

He smiled sheepishly. So much for their trip to Kansas together.

***********
Time to Talk
***********

“Your moratorium is up, Clark. I’m ready for you to start apologizing,” Lois said, glancing up from her last bite of her pastrami sandwich.

They had picked up lunch from Tony’s deli and now were sitting on a bench in a secluded section of Metropolis Park. She had wanted to be out in the fresh air and sunlight, only not direct sunlight, as she didn’t want to burn. She had been quiet for the last few minutes before speaking.

“There’s nothing I’m sorry for, Lois,” Clark announced, and then added, “But I’m ready to hear your apology.”

“Excuse me.”

“Last year, after Luthor shot you, I admitted that I am in love with you,” Clark said, stressing the present tense of that statement. “Since you were in an emotionally and physically vulnerable state, I let you get away with treating me worse than you ought.”

“‘Let me’?” she tossed back.

He didn’t rise to her distraction. “That’s not going to happen any longer, Lois. I have more than proven to you the staying power of my love. Don’t expect me to be your whipping boy any longer.”

Lois’s eyebrows rose with these words but as her mouth was full, he was able to continue.

“Expect me to say ‘no’ more often. Know that you’re dating Clark, not…” He lowered his voice. “–Superman. You don’t get to tell him what to do.”

She swallowed down her sandwich and took the opportunity to speak. “Then you tell your alter-ego that since he broke up with me last year, he doesn’t get to tell me what I can and cannot do.”

Clark’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Since you’re so insistent on drawing boundaries where he isn’t willing to help me out when I need it…”

“You weren’t in any danger on the Space Station. In fact,” he said, lifting his bottle of water to his lips. “I’d say it was a good, safe place for you.”

Lois held up a hand to stop him from interrupting again. “You’re entitled to your opinion, Clark. However, don’t expect me to stay away from a story just because you…or he deems it unsafe.”

“I’m trying to protect you,” he returned.

“Which is exactly what I was doing when I kept you away from the raid. You don’t get to monopolize the ‘love excuse,’ Chuck, just because you fell for me first,” she said, crossing her arms.

“That’s not what I’m…” Clark paused and took a deep breath. He didn’t want to argue about love. When he spoke again it was more calmly. “I’m thrilled to tears that you love me enough to do anything to protect me, Lois…”

“Then go ahead and apologize already!” she snapped, not yet ready to give up the fight or to accept what she did was wrong.

“But we need to work on being a team. We can’t keep withholding information from each other in order to…” His voice faded as he realized that he was doing exactly that by not telling her about the curse.

Lois’s smug expression told him that she knew that she had been giving him a river of his own medicine and had just been waiting for him to choke on it.

Clark didn’t want to back down. He was tired of Lois’s heels digging into his back, invulnerable or not. “I cannot promise that I will always be able to tell you everything, Lois. There are some things that Superman may do that I will not have the time or ability to tell you about beforehand, but I will always try to let you know if it disrupts our plans in any way.”

She shifted her position and waited, her arms still crossed.

“There are some things that Superman may find out that are classified and that I cannot tell you,” he went on, quietly.

“I always knew I’m the superior reporter, Clark. Thank you for acknowledging it publicly,” Lois retorted.

“Lois,” he began, his jaw stiffening at her insult.

“What happened to a ‘public’s right to know,’ Clark?”

“So, you’re saying that you’ve never held back on reporting something because the public didn’t need to know?” He could tell from her expression that he had hit a nerve.

“That’s different!” she exclaimed, pointing a finger in his face.

“Why? Because it wouldn’t ruin just my life?” Clark softened his taunting words with a smile. “Trust me, Lois, if I had ever felt that you were incapable of keeping a secret, I never would have stayed.”

“Okay. I grant you that there are some things we will have to inform each other about after the fact,” Lois said. Clark didn’t like her use of ‘we’ in that statement, but wisely held his tongue. “But don’t you tell me that I’m the only one in this relationship going behind the other’s back.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. The only time he could recall recently, since they had gotten back together at the honeymoon suite, when he hadn’t been completely honest with Lois was about the curse, Superman and amnesia aside. True, he hadn’t told her everything while she was up at the Space Station, but as he explained on the cab ride to Tony’s that they only had been allotted few minutes together to speak every week. He hadn’t wanted to waste that precious time discussing work.

“This trip to the Space Station was your doing, Clark. Admit it! You set this up to protect me.”

“No!” he exclaimed, holding up his hands in self-defense against that accusation. “I swear, Lois. I was trying to do the right thing here. You deserved the exclusive.” According to Perry, she had gotten it ten-fold. It wasn’t Clark’s fault that the trip had ended up being eight times longer than planned. That certainly hadn’t been his idea. He lowered his hands, caressing her cheek. “If I was protecting anyone, it was myself,” he whispered.

She tilted her head so that their foreheads touched. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened? What he did to you?”

As if a bolt of lightning jolted them apart, Clark jumped to his feet. “No!” He ran a hand through his hair as he started to pace. “Trust me, Lois, you… you don’t want to know.”

She gave him a withering look that told him otherwise, probably more because he told her ‘she didn’t’ than because she did.

“I don’t want you to know, Lois,” he amended. However, he knew that he and Cat couldn’t possibly be the only ones who knew about Lois’s double in the ark or what Lex did to her in his anger. He griped his head again as those nightmares of how truly close he had been to losing Lois in a horrific manner came to the forefront of his mind. “Maybe… someday…” he conceded. “I don’t know… if I can.”

Lois stood up and set a hand on his chest. He calmed instantly. There was still a part of him that marveled at the fact that Lois Lane returned his love. He moved to cover her hand with his, but she had already wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her lips towards his. “As long as you’re not keeping mum to protect me,” she whispered.

“I’ll promise if you do,” Clark replied just a moment before their lips met.

But a moment was all he got.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lois snapped, letting go and stepping back from him.

“No more going behind my back, Lois. No more making promises for Superman to keep without discussing it with me first. You’re not dating him; you’re dating me.”

“So you’ve told me since day one!” she roared. “I was going to tell you about my investigation, but your stupid proposal distracted me.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault that you broke my heart?” Clark said, wishing he couldn’t believe her nerve, but she was right on track for Lois excuses. “And for your information, Lois, it wasn’t stupid. It was heartfelt.”

“It was stupid because the only reason you proposed at that moment was to protect me from Luthor,” she retorted, her finger back in his face. “Ergo, stupid.”

“That wasn’t the only reason,” he mumbled.

“It was the main one and you know it,” she said.

Clark didn’t know it, but he didn’t want to rehash her criticism of the stupid way he had proposed. Instead, he sighed. “You should have told me you were going undercover.”

He refused to back down on this one point. Thinking that Lois had chosen Luthor over him, even after he had warned her about what sort of man the billionaire was, had felt worse than thirty-six hours locked in Luthor’s Kryptonite cage, sex tape and all.

“Yes, maybe I should’ve,” she admitted reluctantly. “But I was ticked off because you never told me who you really are.”

How did he know this argument would come back around to this? He shook his head. How many more times would he have to say this before she understood? “I am this man standing in front of you, Lois,” he said, tapping his chest. He flung his hand into the air to represent Superman. “He’s just a disguise so that I can have a real life… with you.”

Suddenly, Lois was back in his arms with her mouth pressed to his. He stumbled backwards from the shock of the kiss until he hit the tree behind him.

Clark didn’t know if he had won the argument or not, but it sure felt as if he had.

***End of Part 195***

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Part 196