Mind's Eye, Part 2
By: C. Leuch
As soon as Lois entered her apartment, she made a beeline for the sofa, tossing her keys onto a side table on the way. The whole mind reading thing was beginning to become a bit too much, she had decided on the drive over while trying to process the various images and emotions that had been directed her way that afternoon. Lois sank into the couch and closed her eyes, leaning forward to cradle her head in her lap. The experience at the fire itself was magnificent and intense, and vivid in a way she would’ve never thought possible. She had been inside the mind of Superman, she’d done and felt what he’d done, and she had no doubt about that. It was like living a dream, and in some ways, it was hard to return to her drab life after such an experience. But Clark....
The image that he’d projected into her mind sprang into her vision again, causing an involuntary shiver to work its way down her spine. It was strange how similar that image was to the one’s that she’d see through Superman’s eyes, down to the orange glow and the accompanying odor of char and smoke. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her, maybe her wires had gotten crossed and she’d become confused, but she could almost swear it was from the same fire. But what was the image exactly? Lois suspected the answer to that question was what caused her negative reaction. The fact that the darkened, charred shape at the center of her vision looked like a man could mean that it was a man at one time, one that had not been saved, despite the presence of Superman.
Knowing that such an image came from Clark was confusing, to say the least. Lois hadn’t seen him at the fire, and he had told her himself that he had another appointment at the same time. So why would he be seeing charred corpses? With a sigh, Lois shook her head slowly and sat up, her hand reaching for the television remote on the side table. Between that ugly vision and the other scary emotion that Clark had unconsciously projected to her, she was too overwhelmed to deal with it all at the moment. It was time for the early news, and nothing helped chase away the problems like scoping out the competition.
As fate would have it, the opening story of the evening was the fire. The facts seemed pretty straightforward, the footage familiar enough. Lois could’ve written the story easily, and with a smile she remembered that she had, in fact, written the story earlier that afternoon. But there was one little item in the TV news that hadn’t made her story, and as the newscaster spoke, she felt the goose bumps rise on her arms.
“Despite the efforts of Superman, one person was found dead inside the building. The name of the victim is being withheld pending notification of the family.” The television showed the burnt building from afar, the picture trained on the upper stories, where Superman stood inside a broken window, the blue and red of his uniform standing out against the charred remains of the office. Firemen had made their way around him, and after a moment, their eyes followed his, and one by one they took off their helmets, holding them to their chests and looking away. Superman’s expression was hard to read, but his eyes looked pained. In an instant, he took off into the sky, and the picture changed to a view of the commentator. “Metropolis fire department officials state that preliminary tests indicate that arson may have been involved.”
The last words from the television barely pierced Lois’s consciousness. Her eyes were wide, she knew, and she was slowly scooting down the couch and away from the television. “Clark,” she whispered, knowing that there was no way that he could be amongst the group that had found that body unless he was just on that screen, and only one logical solution presented itself. It was possible that there was another fire in town, one at whatever appointment he was at, or maybe that he moonlighted as a Metropolis firefighter. But it was more probable that he saw that body because he was...Superman. It made sense, she supposed. Who had been around when she heard the distress call in the newsroom, and who had been the only other person to hear it? Who was the only person besides Superman who she’d had such a strong mental connection to? And who was a closet Kansas City Royals fan?
“Who is this Clark fellow?” came a voice from very nearby, and Lois jumped off the couch with a yelp. As she came to a standing position, she saw the form of her genie hovering above the floor behind the couch, a thin wisp of smoke curling across the room and connecting him to the bottle, which now occupied a spot on her bookshelf. Lois stared at him for a moment, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down before finally giving him his answer.
“He’s my coworker. Well, my partner, really.”
“He sure has an interesting wardrobe,” the genie answered, and Lois had to stifle a giggle. If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black. The genie’s hat alone would make him stand out in any crowd, but that was beside the point. Lois turned back toward the television, where another of Superman’s feats was being shown, this time a rescue during an afternoon traffic pile up.
“Oh, no, that’s not Clark, that’s Superman,” Lois said, bringing a knowing smile to the face of the genie.
“But you just called him Clark,” he said, and Lois opened her mouth to answer, put the genie pointed to his head and nodded. “You’ve put your new gifts to work. It always happens, you know. Things are never what they seem. People are very good about putting up facades until someone crawls inside their head.”
Lois smiled gently and nodded, sinking back onto the couch, facing so that she could observe the news and the genie at the same time. “How did you know?” she asked.
“Oh, you’re hardly the first to wish to see into the minds of others, and your friend is hardly the first to have his secret revealed.”
“Really?” Lois asked, wondering who else had been put in a similar situation, at the same time chiding herself for having wished for such an unoriginal talent.
The genie nodded. “Secret crushes, mainly,” he said with a wave of the hand, his smile knowing. “Something tells me that may be the case here, as well.”
Lois looked down, her cheeks warm. If only the genie knew. The feeling of unadulterated love that had come from Clark after she had reassured him was still overwhelming. She tried not to think about it, and she refused to try and connect that emotion to the possibility that he was Superman. It was too much, too soon. “I don’t even know for sure that Superman IS Clark. All I have are some pictures I saw in my mind’s eye.”
“If you insist,” the genie said, and Lois began to get the distinct impression that she was being toyed with.
“I just wish he would come right out and tell me. It would make things so much easier.” As soon as the words were uttered, Lois’s eyes grew wide and she brought her hand up to her mouth, but it was too late.
“Granted,” the genie said with a wink, and as before, the thunder came with a bright flash of light and he was gone. Just like that, the power seemed to go out for a moment in her apartment, sinking everything into relative darkness before the lights gently flickered on again. The television had reset to a channel carrying only the steady hiss of snow, and the clock on the VCR was flashing 12 AM. And, Lois realized with a feeling of dread, there was a knock on her door.
---
As Lois cracked open her door, her worst suspicions were confirmed. There, standing in her hallway, was Clark Kent, a rather exaggerated smile on his face. He seemed eager, although his eyes appeared to be somewhat vacant. Trying to put on the most hospitable expression possible, Lois swung the door open. “Clark, won’t you please come....”
“Lois, I’m Superman,” he said, his voice a little too loud. Lois was too shocked to say anything for a moment, and she just stared at him, jaw agape. His eyebrows were raised in anticipation, every fiber in his being hanging on her reaction to his announcement. Even when no reaction was forthcoming, he still didn’t move, and after a few seconds, Lois forced herself to push past her initial shock and do something. Nervously, she looked either way down the hall, noting with relief that nobody else seemed to be around to hear his announcement. Quickly, she grabbed his arm, pulling him inside the apartment, dopey smile and all, slamming the door behind him.
The movement appeared to have an affect on him. The almost painfully eager smile faded into a confused frown, and he began to blink, his hand coming up to his forehead. Lois ushered him to the couch, and he gladly sat. “Would you like anything to drink?” Lois asked, realizing too late that she didn’t keep anything in stock besides bottled water. It was with some relief that she saw him shake his head, although she was becoming worried about his apparent disorientation. Without any more thought, she sat next to him. “Clark?” she said, and he turned his head toward her.
Her heart skipped a beat as their eyes locked. With her new knowledge, and his declaration a moment ago in the hallway, it was hard to believe that she ever saw Clark and Superman as two separate men. Superman’s characteristic steely strength might not be present in his eyes at the moment, but it was definitely there beneath the confusion. Likewise, Clark’s quick humor and easy smile were a long way away, but she knew it would only a take an offhand comment on her part to coax them to the surface. In his soft, chocolate eyes she now saw all aspects of his personality, and it was almost overwhelming. She blinked and turned away, pushing the impending heavy thoughts and emotions to the back of her mind. There was nothing to think about anyway, she told herself. This was just Clark, reliable, good-natured, sensible Clark on the couch next to her, and he needed her help.
“What just happened?” he asked, his voice a little shaky. Lois looked down at her hands, wondering how exactly the genie’s spell had worked on him.
“Well....” Lois started, trying to think of a way to phrase her answer.
“I mean, one second I was hovering above the city, then I...was....” Lois looked curiously at Clark, whose eyes had now gone very wide, a look of shock on his face. “Uh, well, what I meant was…” he stammered, but Lois stopped him.
“I have something to confess,” she said, rising off the couch. She quickly walked toward the bookcase, carefully picking up the bottle and heading back toward Clark. “Last night, when that ship blew up, I happened to find this bottle floating in the water.” She sat down on the couch and handed the bottle to Clark, who now seemed more confused than ever. “I know that you’re not going to believe this, but I accidentally rubbed the bottle and, well, a genie popped out.”
“Why do I feel like I just stepped into a fairy tale?” Clark asked, the first hint of a smile forming on his lips as he took the bottle from her. He looked the bottle over, turning it back and forth, as she continued.
“While I was bobbing in the ocean waiting for my rescue, I made my first wish.” Clark’s eyebrow rose as he looked at her, and she managed a self-effacing smile. “Of all the things in all the world to wish for, I ended up wishing I could read other peoples’ thoughts.”
<She can read my thoughts? Oh, no!> the words practically screamed from his mind, his horrified expression giving them a little extra punctuation.
“Oh, no, indeed,” Lois said with a smile.
---
For a man who made his living from crafting the English language, the total lack of words that Clark found himself mired in was disturbing to say the least. His mouth opened and closed once or twice, and he knew that he had let out a small squeak at some point, but he couldn’t seem to put together anything coherent. Lois just stared at him, her eyebrow cocked and a small smirk on her lips. Inexplicably, the first thought to cross his mind was to wonder if she knew how entirely beautiful she was.
At the thought, her smile seemed to fade, her expression quickly morphing to one of timid discomfort. Her reaction was enough to drive the reality of the situation home to Clark. If Lois could read his thoughts, then it wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume that she had discovered that he and Superman were the same person. The thought left him a lot calmer that he had imagined it would, and the fact that she had now turned away from him, apparently embarrassed, told him that she wasn’t necessarily proud of her actions. But still, it left a lot of questions. Why did she listen in on his thoughts? How much had she heard exactly?
Well, she said that she had first made her wish the night before, right before he came to rescue her. That would mean the she had been able to listen in on what he was thinking during the flight home, and at her apartment. Suddenly, Clark’s eyes went wide and his cheeks began burn. Surely she wasn’t listening in when he...? Did she know that he had seen...? Clark looked pointedly in her direction, and she only bobbed her head once, affirming his worst case scenario.
“Oh, God,” he said as he leaned back on the couch and covered his face with his hands. He almost felt violated, naked. At the very least disappointed. On the other hand, maybe it was Lois who should feel violated, naked, and disappointed. After all, he had been gawking at her last night. The way her wet clothes had clung to her body had been hard not to notice. Still, how was he to know that his thoughts weren’t his own? Wasn’t he entitled to a little bit of mental privacy? It was hard enough keeping up an exterior façade when he came to her as Superman, and it would’ve been nearly impossible to keep up a mental façade as well. Once she had first tuned into his thoughts, it would’ve only been a matter of time before....
“It’s not like that,” Lois said, jarring him out of his mental tirade. Clark manipulated his hands so that he was looking at her through a gap in his fingers. Lois sighed, her gaze locked onto some faraway point. “At first it kind of happened by accident. Last night, Superman’s thoughts, YOUR thoughts, entered my mind on their own. I didn’t try to listen for them, I wasn’t entirely sure that I even could listen for them, but they were in my head just as surely as if I had heard them with my own ears. I had always assumed that there was more to Superman than he would let anyone see, but last night was the first time that I knew for sure. That small success made me hungry to uncover other hidden thoughts and facts, so as soon as I could, I put my ability to work.
“I trained my new little toy on the average masses to try and see if I could find something newsworthy lurking in the minds of my fellow Metropolitans. Suffice to say, there’s not much of interest in people’s everyday thoughts.” Lois gave a self-deprecating smirk and turned toward Clark. “It was decided somewhere between hearing about a cabbie’s secret rash and listening in on a passing buisnessman’s deepest Star Trek fantasy that maybe it was best to keep private thoughts private.”
She tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her ear and looked away from him. “Superman, on the other hand, was fair game. It seems kind of hypocritical, I know but….” She looked up again. As she had spoken, Clark found his hands slowly pulling away from his face, his panic subsiding. Lois’s eyes locked into his, and he felt his heart rate speed up a little. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s a strange connection between us. I can feel your moods without even wanting to. If I close my eyes, I can see what you see and hear what you hear. It goes beyond simply eavesdropping on thoughts, and I can’t stop it.”
“So, this afternoon, at the fire…?” Clark asked. He distinctly remembered seeing her standing there, her eyes closed as if she was trying to shut out the world around her. Maybe she was just lost in his mind, in his experiences.
Lois smiled wistfully and looked into the distance. “I saw raindrops dancing in slow motion, and felt fire tickling my skin…your skin. The sights, the sounds, the smells…it must be incredible to be you, to see what you see.” Her gaze turned toward him, and he couldn’t help but smile. After a year of being Superman, a year of using his powers on a continual basis, he had almost forgotten what it had felt like the first time that he had found he could move fast enough to cause the rest of the world to come to a virtual standstill around him. Such occurrences were commonplace anymore, though, especially as he found himself stretching the limits of his abilities, trying to do more than he had ever contemplated before, often times not succeeding.
On its own, the sight of the charred man found in the building today entered his vision again, and his smile abruptly faded. “Not everything I see is incredible,” he said with a sigh.
Lois cringed, evidently seeing the same mental image that he had, and shook her head. “I guess I never realized that before tonight,” she said softly. There was a moment of silence, then she began talking again, her tone reserved. “I finally put one and one together this evening, after watching the news and understanding how it was that you could have seen something so gruesome.” She gestured at the bottle, which was now sitting on the coffee table. “In a case of impeccable timing, the genie popped out while I was in the middle of my revelation, and we got to talking. I made an offhand comment that I wished that you would tell me yourself, and the next moment….”
“I was at your apartment,” Clark said, nodding his head. It was a perfectly reasonable hypothetical request, he supposed, but when in the presence of a genie, wishes tended to come true. He squinted his eyes, furrowed his brow, and tried to recall just how he had happened to find himself inside Lois’s apartment, just what it was that the genie had done, but he couldn’t. “It’s funny,” he said, looking at her. “I don’t remember feeling compelled to do anything. I don’t ever remember telling you…you know.” He gave her a weak smile, well aware that, even though she knew the truth about him, he was hesitant to bring himself to acknowledge the fact.
Lois scooted closer to him, putting a hand on his arm. “Look, Clark, I feel terrible about all this. I had no right to intrude on your thoughts or force you to reveal secrets that you weren’t ready to divulge,” she said. With a sigh and a slight smile, she continued. “The reporter in me wants to know the truth so badly that sometimes I go overboard in order to get it. I don’t know if you noticed.” At Clark’s shrug and knowing smirk, her smile became timid. “Sometimes my zeal ends up hurting my friends, or makes me look shallow and single-minded. I like to think that I’m NOT those things, and I can even be a good friend if I want to be, but it’s awfully hard to argue with the facts, especially when I’m sitting here, facing my best friend, and apologizing for my complete disregard for his privacy.”
She opened her mouth to continue, but suddenly smoke began to rise from the bottle on the table. Despite Lois’s touch and the compelling sincerity that she was directing at him, Clark found himself transfixed at the growing, almost pulsating cloud forming in front of him. It was a little ironic, he supposed – a man who could fly and do however many other amazing things fascinated by some smoke and the promise of magic – but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. After a moment, a man materialized from the smoke, his attire odd to say the least.
The man blinked a couple of times, then looked at Clark with an amused smile. “You must be Clark. I almost didn’t recognize you out of your colorful outfit.” Lois gave a strangled cough, the implication clear enough. The genie cocked an eyebrow and wordlessly looked at her for a moment, then turned back toward Clark. “If it’s any consolation, you’re hardly the first man to fall victim to an unintended wish.”
“Really?” Clark said, too overwhelmed at the moment to say much else. An already unusual situation was quickly descending into the surreal, and Clark had to fight the urge to pinch himself to confirm that he wasn’t just imagining things.
“Oh yes,” the genie replied. “Kings have been deposed, wars have been started, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you some of the more infamous mistakes.”
Beside Clark, Lois crossed her arms across her chest and looked at the genie with disbelief. “After all that we’ve seen and heard, I think I’d believe about anything at this point,” she said, and Clark nodded absently.
The genie looked at her, sizing her up for a moment, then shook his head sadly. “The platypus,” he answered. “Tiny Tim. The Carter administration. Some guy got drunk in a bar and started munching on the house peanuts, then became curious as to what would happen if peanut farmer were made president. He was so embarrassed at the outcome, I don’t think he ever drank again after that night. Or ate peanuts.” The genie squinted and tilted his head as if lost in thought, then raised his eyebrows and looked back at his companions.
Clark had never really been sick before, at least not that he could remember, but he was pretty sure that the uncomfortable throbbing in his head at that moment was the beginning of a headache. It was understandable, he supposed, especially given the mental overload that he was currently experiencing. In the space of a few moments he had found out that Lois discovered his secret, genies exist, apparently he was as susceptible as anyone else to errant wishes, and platypii weren’t originally part of God’s grand design. On its own, his hand wandered up to the bridge of his nose, slightly displacing his glasses as he began to rub.
“Of course, there are other historical events that were undone by virtue of a wish. Those leave an interesting hole in history, let me tell you,” the genie said, his voice thoughtful. “Which brings me back to my point, my boy. Don’t be too perturbed at falling victim to an errant wish. At least you weren’t wished out of existence.”
Clark closed his eyes, lowered his hand, and tried to give his best smile despite the now fairly intense throbbing in his head. “I, uh, appreciate that,” he said, opening his eyes. At the genie’s not quite humble acknowledgement, Clark turned toward Lois. “I think I should probably get going,” he said.
“Yeah,” Lois said. “This is all probably a little…overwhelming.”
“You could say that,” Clark said, standing up. Lois’s expression was worried, if not a little hurt, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she interpreted his departure as a negative reaction to her actions, when that wasn’t the case. Well, he amended, the news she had revealed and her new knowledge had at least a little to do with it, he just needed to go somewhere where there was a little more air, no genies, and plenty of familiar sights.
If Lois had picked up on his thoughts, they apparently hadn’t comforted her. “We can talk tomorrow,” Clark said to her with a nod, then turned toward the door. He heard her sigh as he closed it behind him and quickly walked to the stairwell, changing into the suit as soon as he verified that he was alone. He quickly took off to the roof, then into the night sky. His headache seemed to ease almost immediately upon leaving the building, but the knowledge the genie had imparted upon him, and the fact that Lois knew his secret, was enough to ensure that it would be around for a while.
***
Even though the sun had gone down and most of Metropolis was starting to settle in for the night, the second precinct station was alive with activity. Lois remembered a cop making an offhand comment to her once, something to the effect that prime time at the police station started when the television prime time ended. She had never doubted the statement, and in fact recalled that most of her run-ins with the underbelly of Metropolis society had taken place after dark, including the one the night before. Early in her career, she had taken advantage of her ability to write coherently even when she was practically a zombie due to lack of sleep to snag many stories around town, making the rounds of the police stations, including this one, looking for something that the public might just be interested in reading about.
She tried to tell herself that her presence at the station tonight wasn’t a much needed mental diversion, or a short vacation from genies and partners and superheroes. Her life wasn’t at all different now than how it had been the day before, she tried to convince herself, but one look around the station was all it took to expose the lie. Who was she kidding? Black was now white, up was now down, Superman was now something less than a God in a cape, and Lois Lane, a Kerth award-winning reporter and senior journalist was standing in the middle of a dingy police station, hunting down a lead that could most certainly wait until morning. Okay, she admitted, she WAS in desperate need of a distraction, but at least she didn’t come to the station without purpose. She did have a legitimate reason to be there, had some real information to gather, and now that she had ventured to the station she certainly wasn’t going to leave without empty handed.
“Hello?” she said loudly, leaning over the grimy counter to ring the bell on the reception desk. Several of the criminals handcuffed to nearby chairs shot her dirty looks, be she didn’t care. “Excuse me?” she said, ringing the bell a few more times. After a moment, a perturbed cop rushed over to the desk and snatched the bell away as Lois raised her hand to ring it again.
“What?” the cop asked, his voice steely. Lois crossed her arms across her chest and looked at him for a moment, resisting the urge to poke around his thoughts, find out his reason for tardiness, and use it to score a few points. Her abilities could score points in other ways, she thought with a sly smile.
“Lois Lane, Daily Planet,” she said. “I’m looking for some information.”
The cop shoved the bell in a drawer and looked at Lois with annoyance. “Jeez don’t you reporters ever take a break?” he gestured around the station. “We’re a little busy right now, in case you haven’t noticed. Come back in the morning or park it for a while and we might be able to get to you….”
“All I need is a name,” Lois said. “The guy found in that fire this afternoon.”
At her words, the cop’s eyes narrowed. “We haven’t ID-ed him yet,” he said, but his thoughts said something else entirely. They had known his identity almost as soon as they had found him. More surprisingly, though, they had also known right away that it hadn’t been the blaze that had killed him. Even though someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set the fire, it hadn’t been able to conceal the single gunshot to the man’s chest and the bullet buried in the wall behind the body.
Lois smiled knowingly. “Is that so?” she said, and the cop nodded. He mentally groused at her pushiness, but his expression didn’t reflect his thoughts. No matter, Lois thought. She had the information she needed. “Do you think you’ll know in the morning?” she asked, keeping up the act.
“Don’t hold your breath,” the cop answered. “And when we do know a name, rest assured that we’ll hold a press conference so that you and the rest of your pals know.”
“You’re a peach,” Lois said sarcastically with a saccharine smile. Some cops just loved aggravating reporters, and somehow those cops all ended up manning the night desks at local precincts. The cop just grinned, and Lois didn’t say anything further as she turned on her heel and left the station. It was time to get back to the office and find out all she could about the dead guy in the office building. With any luck, her new mind-reading power will have produced one good thing: a scoop, hopefully in time to make the printing for the morning paper.
---
Clark only had a few moments to gather his thoughts before the first rescue call came. A large accident on the freeway had snarled up traffic for miles, causing a chain reaction of other accidents that ended up being more serious than the one that caused the mess in the first place. The hero work helped to clear his head, and by the time he had taken the final victim to the hospital, he felt grounded in reality once again.
After things calmed down again, he took to the air, hovering above the city, letting the currents guide him. As he floated on his back and looked toward the stars, he tried to process what had happened at Lois’s apartment. Thoughts and emotions swirled in his head, none particularly willing to assert itself, none really sure what to make of the new situation. Only time would tell whether Lois’s knowledge of his secret was a good thing or not, or whether he was justified in the feeling of dread that lurked within in him. He couldn’t change what had happened, or go back to the comfortable, if not schizophrenic, relationship that he had had with Lois only a day earlier. If there was any certainty to come out of tonight, really, it was that things were going to be different.
There was one other certainty, he reminded himself. His thoughts were no longer private. Lois had discovered his identity not through an investigation or by getting close enough to Clark to finally see him beneath the spandex, but by poking around in his head and eavesdropping on his thoughts. For all he knew, she could be listening in on him now, although he had no clue what the range of her new abilities was. The idea that his thoughts were always accessible to her was frightening, and he found himself tensing up, even as the gentle breeze and superb view tried to work their calming influence. It would be very easy to be angry with Lois, all things considered. She hadn’t been honest with him, at least not at first, and she had taken from him more than just his secret. With her actions, she had taken his security, shaken his confidence, and made him doubt her intentions. But the more Clark thought about it, and the more the negative emotions tried to take hold, the more he realized that he just couldn’t be mad at her. Even stronger than the consternation at what happened was the idea of what could’ve been. Lois was under no obligation to tell him that she had discovered his secret, and could’ve just as easily kept the knowledge to herself and tried to exploit it. In the meantime, she could’ve seen things through his eyes that were even more embarrassing that a brief glimpse at her wet, clingy wardrobe. Rather than try to take advantage of him, she had freely admitted her mistake, and given an apology that was sincere, if incomplete, with regret plain in her eyes. No, he thought as he brought his hands up and locked them behind his head, he couldn’t be mad at someone who had always been such a good friend to him in both his guises.
Recalling Lois’s apology, one thing stuck in Clark’s mind. They had a connection, she had said, something that had made it very easy for her to sense his thoughts, sights, and sounds. She couldn’t help but feel close to him, and he had to admit that the reverse was true, as well. Granted, Clark couldn’t read her thoughts and couldn’t close his eyes and experience the world from her point of view, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t feel connected to her. From the minute he had first seen her, he knew that there was something between them, something tangible. He had always assumed it to be deep, usually unrequited love, and maybe it was, but maybe it was more visceral than that.
Clark shook his head and tried to push the thought away. Many nights had been spent pondering the mystery of Lois and the status of their relationship, but she was still just as much of an enigma to him now as she ever was. Unfortunately, she knew exactly who he was now, down to his very thoughts. With a sigh, Clark changed his position in the sky and looked toward the city, almost willing someone to call for help and save him from further ponderings. A moment later, his wish was granted. With a relieved smile, he took off, gladly getting lost in his work once again.
---
When Lois had started to receive the first information about the dead guy found in the fire, she had been sure that there was a mistake in the search. Working on the story about Joey the Rat must’ve tainted her results or left some bias in the search software. Repeated searches using different programs and computers had corroborated her original results, though, and she realized that the story she was hoping to exploit as an exclusive scoop might end up being that and more. The data, if true, might help bring down organized crime in Metropolis.
The man who died in the fire was named Sal “Moneybags” Morocco, a financial partner of Joey the Rat. The two had several business ventures that were known to the powers that be, and probably several more that weren’t. Sal had last been seen alive the night before at an Italian restaurant in a part of town notorious for organized crime, meeting with Joey and a third associate, a man named Ronny Fingers. Now that both Sal and Joey were dead, it was a good bet that Ronny, as the sole remaining shareholder in their businesses, would be a much wealthier man. That gave him a motive, and Lois would bet dollars to donuts that he was the man behind the two fiery deaths. Still, in order to confirm her suspicions in time to make the printing deadline, she’d need more than a hunch and some shady transactions. She needed to get to Ronny Fingers, preferably before the police found the connection, detained him, and kept all the juicy statements that he was sure to make for themselves.
As she grabbed her purse and hastily started to exit the newsroom, she felt a stab of something – caution maybe? – that compelled her to pause for a moment. Superman’s warning from the night before suddenly replayed itself in her mind, along with the sentiment that followed. Maybe this time she should look before she leapt, maybe this time she should take his advice to heart. After all, she was trying to pursue a gangster who had just killed two men, and would probably do the same to her if he found her on his tail. She had a lot to live for, especially given the very recent changes in her life, but….
Lois closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and took a deep breath. She was a professional, and still alive even after following countless bad guys and megalomaniacs. Superman, Clark, always espoused dire warnings about the possibility of what could be if he were somehow unable to save her, but he probably kept a closer eye on her than she had ever realized. Whether it was from the skies or from his desk at the Planet, Clark had her back. It was a sentiment that, if it were about anyone else, would be almost creepy, but not with Clark, never with Clark. With him it was comforting, soothing, giving her confidence even in the face of very real danger. He might argue that it was foolish confidence, but he had yet to complain about the stories that they had gotten as a result. Her mind made up, she opened her eyes and stalked toward the elevator, practically punching the button in her enthusiasm. Soon enough, she was driving across the city, toward the last known address of Ronny Fingers.
