After the StormA sequel to
Plane Storm Author's note:
Plane Storm left off with the married Lois and Clark happily at home with their four kids, good jobs and Metropolis in one piece.
The
other Lois and Clark had a lot of work to do.
This is their story.
----------------
“What have I gotten myself into?” Clark Joseph Kent asked aloud as he sat down on one of the chairs in the newsroom conference room. The baby, Esperanza Ester Kent, a refugee from another time-line, started to wail and he held her to his shoulder, making sure to support her head. “What have I done?”
“What you always do,” Lois answered, noting how natural he seemed with a baby in his arms. “What you’re best at. Rescuing people. And I can’t think of anyone who needed rescuing more than this little one.”
“I can’t do this by myself,” he protested. It finally sank in as to what was happening. What Lois had planned for him.
“You won’t have to,” she assured him. “We’ll all be here to help.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Clark, I promise you, we’ll make this work,” Lois said. “And besides, despite the fact that I would like nothing more than to knock your block off for lying to me, erasing my memory, and running off for six years, I’m in love with you.
All of you.”
“And I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you. Will it help if I promise never to do those things again?”
“It won’t hurt.”
Perry knocked on the door, then opened it. He walked in, followed by Polly who was carrying a large bag from the nearby Costmart. Jimmy was behind her, carrying a box with a picture of a baby carrier/car-seat on it.
Clark tried to reach for his wallet once more even though he knew all he had were two credit cards and about ten dollars in cash.
“Don’t worry about, Clark,” Polly told him once again. “Consider this the baby shower we couldn’t throw you and your wife.” Polly peered at the younger man. He looked lost, overwhelmed, sitting there with a newborn in his arms.
The Daily Planet newsroom staff had found out less than an hour before that during Clark’s five plus year absence from the Planet, he’d gotten married to a foreign national and then discovered he couldn’t bring her into the U.S. Now his wife was dead, murdered with the rest of her village with the only survivor being their newborn who’d been rescued from certain death by Superman himself.
The newsroom of course didn’t know, could never know, the real story. That Clark had not been in South America at all, but had spent five plus years in space, traveling to and from the dead world of Krypton. That the child was not his, exactly, but was from an alternate time-line where
their Clark Kent was the high lord of the House of El, as well as editor and Chief of the Daily Planet. The baby was that Clark’s biological child by the daughter of a vicious warlord on another planet and was also a pawn in dangerous political game on that same alien world - New Krypton.
She promised to be a serious liability if left alive, only neither set of Clark Kent/Lois Lane had been willing to make that choice, opting instead to send the child into an alternate time-line for safety. This time-line, this reality.
“Thanks,” Clark murmured.
Lois started opening the packages, starting with the baby bottles and formula. She handed a filled bottle to Polly. “Could you warm that up, please?”
“Be back in a jiff,” Polly promised, heading over to the women’s lounge.
Lois took the baby from Clark and started dressing her in the diapers and new clothes Polly had bought. The pink fuzzy jammies were huge on the baby, but Lois knew from experience that the clothes would be just right in less than a month.
She handed the dressed baby back to her ‘father.’ Clark took the child again, her tiny hands waving around impotently, fingers splayed like wrinkled little starfish.
A strobe flash went off and both Clark and Lois looked up to see Jimmy with his camera. He grinned at them. “Hey, I am the official baby photographer around here, you know.”
“Clark,” Perry said. “Do you even have a place to live yet? Your bags are still in the storage room.”
Clark shook his head. “There’s nothing available, with the crystalquake and all, unless I want to commute two hours each way, and even then, who can afford it right now? Rents in the greater metro have more than doubled in the past week.”
“Let me call Alice, let her know we’re going to have company,” Perry said, heading toward the door.
“You don’t have to do that, sir. I’ll figure out something,” Clark protested.
“You haven’t got anything yet and we both know it’ll be at least a month, if not more, for the housing situation to sort itself out,” Perry pointed out. “Besides, Alice would have my hide if she found out I had a homeless new dad with a baby working here.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Clark said softly. He’d looked overwhelmed before, but now he looked exhausted as well.
“Son, when’s the last time you slept?”
“I honestly don’t remember.”
Perry shook his head. “Let me call Alice, then I’ll get you both out of here.”
“What about the story?”
“Lois can handle it.”
0 0 0
Perry maneuvered the black Acura out of the Daily Planet parking garage, over to Clinton, then to Ordway Drive towards Park Ridge. Baby Esperanza was safely ensconced in her car seat in the back. Clark was in the front passenger seat, head resting on the door frame. He was so quiet Perry wondered if he had fallen asleep, but no, his eyes were open, watching the traffic.
“What was the name of the village?” Perry asked.
“Hmm?”
“The village you ended up at? What was its name?”
“Santa Clarita,” Clark said. “Not too far from the border between Colombia and Peru, up in the hills. Not a bad place, except for the drug lords and the warring factions.”
“What was she like, the girl you married?”
“Young. She was the daughter of one of the local militia leaders. I wandered in, stupid American, and she decided I was her best way out,” Clark explained. “I figured she was my best way to stay alive. A marriage of convenience. At least we liked each other.”
“So what did you do, aside from boinking the jefe’s daughter?”
Clark looked momentarily confused, then his expression cleared. “A little of this, a little of that. Bookkeeping, clerical stuff. The jefe’s son-in-law didn’t have to worry about manual labor, at least.”
“Then she got pregnant and that’s when you started trying to get her into the States?” Perry speculated aloud.
“Pretty much,” Clark agreed.
“Interesting,” Perry commented mostly to himself.
The boy’s gotten better at lying, at least.
